Tom watched in horror from the cockpit of the Phoenix Titan. Lord Xerath had grown to the size of a mountain, and seemed ready to use his newfound power to his advantage.

  “Everyone seeing what I’m seeing?” asked Ethan over comms.

  “Yeah, we see it, Green,” said Rachel. “Not so sure I completely comprehend it yet.”

  “So what now?” asked Alexa.

  Tom drew in a deep breath. The same pit he felt during the battle that cost Scott his life had returned. How was he supposed to lead the team through something like this?

  He heard a voice break in through the noise of his teammates.

  “Tom, it’s Cal.” Caleb’s voice coming through. “This is a secure channel right now, it’s just you and me here.”

  “I can’t don’t this…” he whispered.

  “Yeah, you can,” said Caleb. “You have to trust in your team and yourself. That’s the key here. You’re going to all need to work together.”

  Tom shook his head. “I can’t…I…I don’t know what to do.”

  “No one ever really does. This job doesn’t come with an instruction manual. Half the times I climbed into that same Titan you’re in, I was on the verge of a panic attack,” said Caleb. “The mark of a real leader isn’t whether or not they’re scared or uncertain—it’s how they step up when the time calls for it.”

  Tom took a few deep breaths and he felt his nerves die down.

  “You got this, kid.”

  He opened his eyes and switched his comms back to the team-wide channel. “Fusion is the only way we’re getting through this.”

  “But we tried before with that last monster. How’s this time gonna be any different from last?” asked Olivia.

  “We weren’t ready before,” said Tom. “We weren’t in sync.”

  “What makes you think we are now?” asked Alexa.

  “Because now we have no other choice,” said Tom. “Listen to me: whatever crap you’ve got going on with each other, it can keep until after. We’re professionals. That means we put aside our own problems and get the job done. And it doesn’t matter how inexperienced you feel you are, or if you’re angry at a teammate, or if you don’t think you’re up for the job. This is what we got dealt, and we have to work together to finish this asshole off. Right now, there’s nobody I trust more than you four. And I need you to feel the same.”

  The channel went silent after Tom finished speaking. That delay increased his own nerves, made him wonder if he should say something else to confirm everyone had heard him.

  And then, finally…

  “I’m with you, Red,” said Rachel.

  “Green’s onboard,” said Ethan.

  “That goes for Yellow, too,” said Olivia.

  “Let’s fuck this bastard up,” said Alexa.

  Tom smiled. He reached for the fusion lever. “Fusion sequence activated.”

  The Titans all lined up in formation in preparation for fusion, just as before. Karkinos stood in the center of the configuration, with the Wyvern hovering just a little above him, and the Phoenix above the Wyvern. The Raiju and Unicorn both lined up in front of the Karkinos. Lines of energy arced between all five of the Titans, and their mechanical bodies started to shift in preparation.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  The Karkinos’s shell formed the torso, and his pincers separated and retracted to reveal hands. Both the Raiju and Unicorn planted their heads on the ground, and their bodies shifted upward, forming the legs that the Karkinos’s torso landed atop. The Wyvern’s tail separated from the rest of his body and mounted the top of the Karkinos, shifting form to become a humanoid head with glowing eyes. And the Phoenix completed the assemblage, her wings spreading and her torso attaching to the back of the Karkinos. Her head separated, the beak and the upper half resting atop the humanoid head and becoming like a crown while her wings flared out. The Wyvern’s tail moved into the merged robot’s right hand, extending and shifting until it became a long, giant sword. And the Unicorn’s horn affixed to the robot’s left hand, breaking into quarters and becoming spikes that mounted on the robot’s knuckles.

  Their minds came into synchronization with each other. Now, they no longer saw themselves sitting in their own respective cockpits. Instead, they saw themselves sitting beside each other.

  “Fusion successful,” said Tom. “Say hello to the Uni-Titan.”

  The Uni-Titan stood around the same height as Lord Xerath’s monstrous form. And yet, the interdimensional conqueror didn’t seem the least bit concerned. Instead, he just smiled as his eyes burned like lava.

  “Amusing. This just saves me the time of having to tear each of your mechanical beasts apart individually,” he said. “Now I can simply do so in one fell swoop.”

  Xerath coiled his arm, then threw a punch toward the Uni-Titan. The massive robot moved at a speed unnatural for his size, ducking Xerath’s swing. He jabbed his own fist—topped with spiked knuckles—right into Xerath’s side. Chunks of the hardened lava that comprised Xerath’s giant form broke off as the spikes penetrated the rocky exterior.

  The Uni-Titan took a few steps back, and Xerath dove into it, tackling the giant mech. The two fell backwards, rolling down the mountain until they crashed into the forest preserve below. Xerath rose first, and stomped on the Uni-Titan’s back, slamming it right into the ground. Xerath grabbed the Uni-Titan’s head, molten lava starting to seep down the Phoenix-crowned head.

  Linked as they were with each other and the Uni-Titan, all the Knights felt the same pain simultaneously. The Phoenix’s wings then began glowing and generated a massive surge of energy that blasted Xerath away from them.

  The Uni-Titan slammed its sword into the ground, using it as a crutch to pull itself back up to its feet. It turned, seeing Xerath stumble back into the ocean, waves rushing outward as they were displaced by his mass. The Uni-Titan held out its free hand, using the Karkinos’s control over water to hold the waves back from crushing the towns along the coast. It then drew the sword from the ground and leapt into the air.

  The Phoenix’s wings took control, allowing the Uni-Titan to soar high above the ocean. Xerath rose above the surface of the water, staring up at the mechanical warrior.

  “You think you can stop me?” he chided.

  “One way or another,” said the Uni-Titan, speaking in a voice that was a chorus of all five Knights.

  The water parted around Xerath, the ground rising up to contain him. The Uni-Titan swung its sword, sending razor-sharp slivers of hard air right at Xerath. Each one sliced off another piece of Xerath’s molten armor, cutting more and more away until he was almost restored back to his original form. The Uni-Titan raised the sword high up to the heavens. Dark clouds formed overhead, lighting arcing out from them and coalescing around the blade. The blade itself began to glow bright orange, as if super-heated. Electricity crackled around the sword’s edges, forming a solid blue laser-like border around it.

  The Uni-Titan dove from the sky, its sword held out in front of it. Xerath narrowed his molten eyes, staring down his fate.

  “What I’ve started, someone else will finish…” he whispered.

  The sword made contact with Xerath, the energy contained within the blade exploding outward. A massive burst of light engulfed Xerath, disintegrating not only what remained of his armor but also the warlord himself.

  The waters rushed back in to fill the void, and the Uni-Titan drove its sword into the ocean’s surface. It willed the waters back to calm, and once the surface stilled itself, the Uni-Titan flew back to shore. Upon landing, the Uni-Titan separated back into the five separate Titans.

  Each Knight vanished from their unified hive-mind setting, and was now back in their own cockpit of their own Titan. Tom took a deep breath, his head resting back against his seat. He felt the Phoenix’s contentment mixed with exhaustion, and open up the comms channel to the rest of his team.

  “I think that’s a wrap, Knights,” he said.

  “I don’t think everything’s completely over just yet,” said Rachel. “We’ve still got the Obsidian Dreadnought floating above.”

  “Except all their leaders are now gone,” said Ethan. “Even Sylva ran off before we summoned the Titans.”

  “Control, you have any ideas what we should do about that?” asked Tom.

  No response came.

  “Control?” he asked again.

  Caleb remained silent, even with Tom’s urgings over the comms. His eyes were glued to a series of holographic projections that surrounded him. Each one a different news broadcast. They were coming in from every country all over the world, in all languages. But the story was the same on every single one of them—a massive alien spacecraft now hovered above Hawaii, and a giant monster was just seen battling a giant robot on the world’s largest volcano.

  “I’m here, Red,” said Caleb. “But we’ve got a whole new situation to deal with…”