A week later, the team was finally official. The government recognized Spark's team and gave them their complete support. They were supplied with complete access to different bases around the world.

At first there was a debate about having the team train with normal soldiers. Spark insisted on having his team train separately from the normal soldiers. Eventually, Spark won that argument.

Mark Towers offered up one of his big skyscrapers as headquarters. The building was stationed in Washington D.C, close to the White House. It was E shaped, with many different floors, all unique from each other.

The first day the team arrived at the building, they were greeted by several high-ranking government officials, including the president. After the introduction, Mark Towers gathered the team and explained how they would progress with their training in their new base. Everyone had their own floor with their own training rooms. Each training simulations was specially designed for the diverse powers of its occupants. Yet they all were outfitted with a program that simulated a different location for each new training session and released enemy robots for the user to fight.

Erika's room was on the first floor of the tower. She took a moment to explore her room, which was a bit more pleasant than she expected. She had a big, gold canopy bed, a big screen tv, a bookshelf stuffed to the brim, high tech computer, huge couch, private bathroom, and even a little kitchenette. All decked out in touches of rose gold.

It felt like a vacation, until she decided to try out the simulator. Set the difficult halfway between medium and easy.

"Let's see what you can do," she chuckled.

She rushed into the metallic, glowing room. As soon as the doors closed, her surroundings began to change.

The floor turned into sand and soon it looked as if she was in a desert. Erika was astounded by the simulation as she prepared herself for battle.

Bird like robots flew through the air, throwing bombs that were a bit too realistic. Erika rolled with superhuman speed to avoid them. Grabbed her weapon and the gun morphed into her hands, creating a new type of alien weapon.

In an instant, multiple shots were fired. She launched head shots to all robots at once, delivering killing blows with ease. Followed by quiet. Eerie stillness.

As she scanned her surroundings, a robot jumped out of a bush in an attempt to ambush Erika from the back. With her swift dash, she was able to roll the moment she heard something approaching her and shot multiple shots.

Three shots flew into the air and hit the robot ambushing her. The other two hit robots that were flying towards her from a far distance.

"Piece of cake," Erika said, as she finished up her mission and left the simulator. "And for that, I think I deserve some cake." She rewarded herself with a trip to the refrigerator.

After taking a nice, long, bubble bath, Diana explored her simulator on the floor above Erika's.

"I wonder how this works," she said, as she spun the knob between the medium and hard setting. 

She was used to being stronger than other humans, so without much thought she walked through the doors, into the metallic room.

The doors closed and the room started to morph into a forest. As soon as the terrain changed, Diana prepared for battle. Her eyes scanned the area.

A bush began to tremble. Then three robots jumped out of the branches and sprinted towards Diana at full speed.

She jumped up and threw some vines onto the ground that came to life and trapped the enemies. Diana destroyed all three in one slash.

Boom!

A huge explosion behind her broke up her celebration. The noise had been huge, but she couldn't see anything amiss. She closed her eyes to listen to her surroundings, then dashed backwards twenty yards.

Five arrows hit the ground in front of her. She stopped as a streaking noise, like a generator powering up, caught her attention. Seconds later, a laser beam was aimed at her heart for a direct hit.

Diana quickly latched her vine onto a tree and pulled herself up. She dodged the laser beam with half a second to spare and counter attacked by throwing a bomb from the palm of her hand. The flying robot exploded in midair and fell to pieces.

"That was a close one," chuckled Diana. Surprised by that last robot, she shakes it off and ends the simulation.

Mark Towers, the multi billionaire who owned Energy Corp, was on the third level. His company owned the biggest skyscrapers all around the world. They also set up different bases for the energy shard users. So, he knew a bit of what to expect when he stepped in front of the simulator.

Mark looked down at the settings. "I think I'll pick the city to battle in," Mark said. Turned the difficulty up to hard.

He walked into the steel plated room and watched as his surroundings began to change. Morphed into the city at the night. The footsteps of his enemies echoed through the streets.

Within seconds, swarms of robots emerged from the alley ways. Mark jumped into action and disappeared before his enemies could trap him. He reappeared soaring up high through the air and dropped multiple bombs from his belt. A large, high-velocity explosion erupted and destroyed all the enemies in an instant. Sending bits of metal throughout the city.

Mark landed on the ground. Had two seconds to breath before he heard more robots moving in on his location. This time there were twice as many robots with thicker armor.

Mark jumped in the air. He disappeared and then re-appeared behind the seven robots coming from the right side. He dropped bombs and then dashed away before a huge boom echoed against the skyscrapers.

Three of the robots survived the impact. Fifteen more robots arrived with weapons.

Mark threw a smoke grenade to hide himself from incoming fire. Then he moved quickly through the smoke, darting among the robots and slicing off their heads with his sword. Disabling them one by one.

When the smoke cloud disappeared, two robots remained. One of the robots had a gun and the other was heavily armored. They seemed to be working together when they executed their attack on Mark.

The first robot lunged at Mark, so quickly that Mark lashed out with his sword. While he was distracted, the other robot shot at him from behind. The shard heightened his senses, so just as the bullets were mere inches from his back, he disappeared.

Reappeared about behind the robot with the gun. He sliced the robot's head off and grabbed his guy as the enemy fell to the ground. Shot at the armored robot a few times before finding his weak spot.

"I'll need to make it harder next time," Mark said, as he sat down to hearty lunch.

Ace was occupied the level above Mark's. And he had spent a good deal of time exploring his room, watching movies, eating, sleeping. So much time that a guard had come down to nag him. He had to use the simulator, that was part of the rules.

"Fine," Ace grumbled, as he stood in front of the machine. "I guess I'll try this crappy game they want me to do so bad." Not only did Ace believe the simulator to be a joke, but also a waste of time.

He examined the machine and all of the different knobs and switches. They didn't have anything like this in the woods.

"How do I get this stupid machine to work?" He asked whoever cared to listen.

Slowly getting aggravated with the machine, Ace started hitting it. After he'd put three, big dents on the right side of the machine, Ace finally calmed down. Started to fiddle with the big red knob. He set it to extremely hard.

He walked into the shiny, metallic room and the big doors closed. The room started to shift. The floor grew rocky, covered in dirt and roots. Trees popped up in the distance. A longing stirred in Ace's heart as he ached to go home. He was in a mountain highland, just like where he and Spark grew up.

Before he could get too tangled in memories, there was a roar in the distance. An army of robots sprinted towards him on top of the mountain.

Ace wasn't afraid. He ran full force to the army of robots. Met them without hesitation. He rammed through the army like if they were bugs getting swatted away. In the matter of minutes of close combat, Ace had already depleted half of the robots' force. Ace grabbed a broken robot and swung him around like a bat, knocking more than half of the fleet off the mountain.

The next wave of twenty robots arrived and they had guns this time. They started to shoot at Ace. He began grabbing the dead robots around him and throwing them at the enemies with the guns. The robots flew so fast when thrown that it completely destroyed both robots in the process.

Then flying bird robots appeared with bombs. Bombs started dropping on Ace, which he quickly dodged. As he was escaping them, forty new enemies arrived with guns from the right, along with armored units in the front. This caused Ace to get pushed to the left of the mountain.

"This is getting exciting," said Ace. He started giving off a small glow and then disappeared. He re-appeared on top of one of the huge birds and forced the bird to drop bombs on the troops below.

"What kind of disappointment is this," laughed Ace.

Five new robots appeared from the sky, all with flying capabilities and unlike all the other robots. These robots had laser weapons and extremely good accuracy. The robots began to close in on Ace.

He jumped off of the bird and to the ground with a boom. The force behind his power left a huge impact, throwing rocks into the air and forming a smoke cloud. Two of the robots were knocked out of the sky. Three remained.

The remaining robots coordinated really well with each other and started doing tricks to confuse Ace. Testing his abilities. Making him work as hard as they could.

Ace was always one step ahead and dodged all the laser attacks. So one robot went to ram himself onto Ace while the others continued shooting the lasers. Ace punched the robot that was ramming him, shattering it into pieces. The other two robots followed in pursuit of the first one and attempted to ram into Ace.

The robot that was crushed in the ground shot his laser beam at Ace's leg. The sharp pain enraged Ace, activating the full power of his shard. His aura became so immense, so fatal, that all the robots died.

When the battle came to an end, Ace was very disappointed with the simulation. "What a complete waste of time and energy," he grumbled. "What a complete joke. I've just been smacking around robots for the past fifteen minutes and I come to find out they don't handle my energy level."

The top floor was Spark's hideout. He loved to go on the roof of the building and watch the sunset. Spark would go into deep meditation sitting on the roof top in silence, listening to the wind. Controlling his thoughts made him a stronger leader, mentally and physically. So instead of boosting his powers with the simulator, he was clearing his thoughts and boosting his intellect by meditating.

Ace went to the top floor, looking for his friend. Finally found him up on the roof.

"Hey man, why is my simulator so trashy?" Ace asked, as he sat next to Spark.

"What do you mean?" Spark replied. "They're all the same."

"Really?" Ace shook his head. "They're all useless then. I need a real challenge, not these scrap metal robots that couldn't hurt a fly. I want to battle you instead."

"I don't think right now is the right time," said Spark.

"Why not? Are you chicken?" Ace teased. "Come on, you know you want to. Don't be such a little girl."

"It's not that, you know I'm always up for a challenge. But we need conserve our energy. Make sure no one gets hurt. There's something coming and we have to be ready."

Ace stopped his teasing and looked at Spark, wondering just what he meant. They stared off into the horizon, quietly processing how crazy their lives had become.

The next morning, Spark met with the special forces general.

"It looks like our satellites picked up an unidentified flying object heading towards Earth," said the general. Spark had a bad feeling and remembered that he had the same feeling the night before with Ace. Spark looked at the night sky, then gathered his team in the meeting room of the E tower and briefed them about the situation.