The world became a blur of motion and purpose. Zhèn, perched on the hoverboard with a look of intense concentration, had his arms out for balance. Elara clung to his back, one hand gripping his shirt, the other holding aloft a Celestial Shard. It glowed with a steady, warm light, but its point pulsed with a sharper, directional azure flare, a compass needle pointing unerringly towards a distant energy signature.
Beside them, a low thunder accompanied a streak of cobalt light. Blitz ran, not on the road, but alongside it, his feet a staccato drum on hard-packed earth, across boulders, over narrow streams, the terrain was a suggestion, not an obstacle. He kept pace effortlessly with the humming hoverboard, a grin of pure exhilaration on his face.
"This is way better than chasing those dumb robots alone!" he called over the wind.
Elara, her hair whipping behind her, consulted a map on her wrist-mounted scanner, cross-referencing it with the shard's pull. "It's heading towards the Greengate Valley! There's a small farming commune there."
The idyllic landscape of rolling hills soon gave way to the first signs of Dr. Circuit's widening net. They crested a ridge, and the sight below stole their momentum.
Greengate wasn't being attacked; it was being processed. A dozen A-7 Enforcers moved with methodical, terrible efficiency through the village. They weren't firing plasma wildly. They were scanning every building, overturning carts, using precise cutting tools to open sealed cellars. Villagers, men, women, children, huddled in the central square, guarded by two more robots, their faces etched with terror as their homes were systematically ransacked.
"He's here already," Zhèn said, his voice hardening. The hoverboard dipped as his fists clenched.
Blitz skidded to a halt, kicking up a plume of dust. "How did Circuit know a shard was here? Did he get a better map?"
Elara's face was grim. "He doesn't need a map. He has a shard of his own now. They resonate. He's using it to track the others, just like I am. It's a race."
The implication was chilling. Every shard they sought, Circuit would be drawn to like a shark to blood.
"Race is over for these ones," Blitz cracked his knuckles, a blue aura shimmering around him. "Let's clear the track."
Zhèn nodded, leaping off the hoverboard and letting it drop. "We protect the people first."
They didn't need a strategy. They were a strategy. Blitz became a sonic boom of chaos, a blue line that zipped through the village square. One moment the two guard robots were standing sentry; the next, they were a heap of sparking parts, dismantled before their sensors could register the threat. The villagers gasped.
Zhèn took a more direct route. He walked calmly towards a robot tearing the roof off a barn. It turned, gun-arm rising. Zhèn didn't break stride. He stepped inside its range, grabbed the arm, and with a wrench that screamed of shearing metal, tore it from its socket and used it as a club to crush the machine's core.
It was a symphony of destruction. Blitz's high-speed precision dismantling and Zhèn's overwhelming, crushing force worked in a brutal, complementary rhythm. Robots were disarmed, de-legged, and decommissioned. The villagers' terror turned to stunned awe.
In the chaos, a smaller, scout-class drone zeroed in on a young boy who had broken from the group, trying to reach a whimpering puppy trapped under a collapsed fence. Its claw extended.
A blue blur intersected. Blitz didn't attack the drone. He scooped up the boy and the puppy in one smooth, impossibly fast motion, depositing them safely behind a stone well a split-second before the drone's claw snapped shut on empty air. Blitz then flicked a pebble with his thumb. It shot out with bullet force, piercing the drone's central lens, and it dropped like a rock.
He knelt before the boy, who was clutching the puppy with wide, starstruck eyes. "You gotta be more careful, kid. Those things aren't friendly."
The boy, no older than eight, stared at Blitz as if he were a sun god made flesh. "That... that was the coolest thing I've ever seen!" he breathed. Then, emboldened by the hero before him, he puffed out his chest. "I have a power too!"
Blitz raised an eyebrow, expecting a claim of super-strength or speed.
"I can fly!" the boy declared.
For a moment, Blitz just looked at him. Then, a genuine, warm smile broke across his face. He wasn't being humored, he was genuinely impressed. He gave a firm, solid thumbs-up. "No way! That is seriously cool. Way cooler than just running fast. You gotta practice that, okay? The world needs more guys who can fly."
The boy beamed, his fear utterly forgotten, a hero's validation etched into his heart.
The last robot fell, its sparking corpse toppled by a well-placed kick from Zhèn. Silence, broken only by the crackle of dying electronics and the relieved sobs of the villagers, returned to Greengate.
An elder, her face a roadmap of wrinkles and kindness, approached. She didn't bow to their power; she looked at them with deep, knowing gratitude. "You have saved more than our homes today," she said, her voice strong. "You have saved our spirit." She turned and gestured. Another villager brought forth a simple wooden box.
The elder opened it. Inside, resting on a bed of dried lavender, was a Celestial Shard. It was smaller than the others, its light a softer, greener blue, like sunlight through a forest canopy. "This has been in our care for generations. A gift from the sky, we were told, to protect while the world was ready. The metal men came for it. We were not strong enough to stop them. But you are." She offered the box first to Elara, whose hand trembled as she took it, then to Zhèn and Blitz. "The world is ready now. It is yours to protect."
As the shard joined the others in Elara's pack, their combined hum grew richer, more complex, a chord missing only a few notes.
Back on the ridge, Elara did the math, her face illuminated by the soft, multi-hued glow from her backpack. "We have four. The one I started with, the one from Kael's house, the one Zhèn was guarding, and now this one." She looked at the map, the shard' compass now pointing in a new, insistent direction. "Dr. Circuit has one shard and the main Stone. That means... three more shards are still out there."
Blitz bounced on the balls of his feet, energy restored. "Three more stops on the crazy-rock-tour! Let's move! Next one's mine, I call dibs on punching the first robot we see!"
Zhèn recalled the hoverboard, a determined set to his jaw. "We must be faster than the Smiling Man."
As they launched back into motion, Zhèn and Elara on the board, Blitz a blue streak beside them, the village of Greengate watched them go, not as victims, but as witnesses to the first sparks of a resistance. The young boy who could "fly" waved until they were specks on the horizon, his small hand clenched in a fist, already dreaming of the sky. The race was on, and the hunters had just become guardians.11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWtcsX5qT8t
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