The Perfect Run

Bugs Bunny.

The rabbit was Ryan’s most beloved character in all of fiction, and he had watched all its cartoons during his endless wandering. The courier always laughed at hunters’ failure to catch the wily animal, their rage growing with each missed bullet.

So it must have been very frustrating for these two.

“Stop it!” By now, Ghoul fumed so much that it became difficult to see through the white mist surrounding him. The whole harbor was slowly freezing, while the Psycho threw car-sized blocks of ice at Ryan. “Stop dodging!”

Ryan lazily stopped time, moved out of a projectile's path, then cancelled his power. The Psycho was actually getting worse with his aiming the more angered he grew. Unfortunately, the white mist surrounding Mr. dem bones also made it impossible for Ryan to get in close without freezing in place.

He knew he should have invested in a thicker sweater.

“Ghoul, he’s a speedster!” Sarin snarled, still standing on a roof to keep the high ground. She was no more successful than her ally at hitting Ryan, who mocked her by activating his time-stop just when her blasts were within an inch of reaching him. At one point, the courier even took the time to blow her a kiss. “Just freeze him already!”

“I’m not a speedster, I’m Quicksave!” Ryan shouted, before revealing his greatest secret. “I’m immortal, but don’t tell anyone!”

“Soon you’re just going to be blood on the pavement!”

What pavement? By now the two Psychos had destroyed the entire waterfront, turning it into an icy wasteland of snow and craters. Ryan had to keep moving north to find ground to stand on, eventually luring the duo to an empty parking lot.

While Ghoul pursued him on foot, his female companion glided on top of a streetlight, somehow managing to avoid slipping up. There was something wrong with the way she moved, as if she had no weight at all. All Psychos were mutants, so she must have an abnormal physiology beneath the hazmat suit.

“I’m sorry but you make ice cream and blow off air,” Ryan pointed out. “Household products can do it. While I control the lynchpin of all reality. I try not to sound patronizing but…”

Ghoul unleashed a wide burst of white mist with a furious growl, freezing everything in its path.

Ryan simply activated his time-stop and dodged once again. Still, growing bored with the pursuit and now having an opening, he grabbed two of his throwing knives; launching one at Ghoul’s remaining eye, the other at Sarin.

When time resumed, Ghoul lost his remaining eye, and Sarin took a knife to the chest.

“You ain’t making it easy.”

Ryan stopped talking, however, when green gas came out of Sarin’s hazmat suit. The strange substance immediately rusted the streetlight below the Psycho, causing the electrical parts to short-circuit and the metal to slowly bend. Sarin put a hand on the opening, trying to keep the gas inside.

He knew she was full of hot air.

“I’ll kill you…” Ghoul whined, his face now looking like a strawberry sorbet with all the frozen blood flowing from his skull. It was vaguely horrifying, but Ryan had seen worse. “I’ll kill you…”

“Ghoul, I know the sight of my dashing costume and my long, bloody bat made you fall for me at first sight,” Ryan taunted him. “Trust me, I get that a lot. But I just don’t see you that way.”

swear to God, I swear it,” rasped the abominable ice cream, his hands on his face,

give me the cold shoulder?” Ryan chuckled, unable

mist. The strange substance seemed to swirl around

gone, replaced with a four meters tall titan of ice and snow. This strange fusion between a snowman and a

“Oh.”

him like a bug. The sheer strength of the elemental construct shattered the concrete and shook the ground. Sarin meanwhile,

that body work? Ice didn’t work

growing louder with each new step. Something heavy was rushing towards

hands manifesting a sword of crimson light. “The Security is

dodging another strike from Ghoul. He wondered how the Psycho could locate him without his eyes, guessing it probably had something

streetlight on which Sarin stood. Miss Chernobyl glided to the other end of the parking lot, confirming Ryan’s suspicions that she

Yet the limb quickly reattached itself to the body, Zanbato having to step back to avoid being frozen by mist. The Augusti mafioso still tried to hack at the giant, proving himself so annoying that Ghoul abandoned his pursuit of Ryan to

an aircraft echoed above them, Ryan raising his eyes to watch an attack helicopter fly above the parking lot. He recognized it as a

notes

with

but not as much

hand and avoided being knocked back, his armor deflecting debris; while Ghoul’s snowman form took the projectiles without showing any form of discomfort. Sarin, however, was pushed backward by

and the other towards the skies. A second later,

gone on long enough.

Sarin pointed her gauntlet at Ryan, the courier stopped

a flying form next to the aircraft. A humanoid figure, nearly impossible to see in the darkness, and only visible due to the

That meant Ryan could

avoiding the clouds of toxic fumes hanging in the air from her wound, and

of compressed air head-on. Physics being physics, the ice construct exploded in a rain of droplets and shards, a helpless Ghoul hitting the ground face-first. Zanbato quickly cut him in half

the time to turn her

“Blow this.”

Ryan introduced her to Fisty, face

her mask’s glass parts and tossed her backward. Ryan barely had the time to dodge by leaping to the side, as the holes in her mask unleashed a stream of

face as the gas rusted the pistons into scrap within seconds. Yeah, sure, he could have ended it a lot sooner

wasn’t about winning. It was about having

Zanbato asked,

Ryan shrugged, before realizing he couldn’t see his favorite undead

power. He never dies, even when missing the right

immortal too?” Ryan gasped,

glanced at the space where Sarin had blasted the Private Security’s helicopter. The machine had crashed into the Mediterranean Sea, the mysterious superhero gone. “Luigi’s team has already left, and we should make our escape before more Security guards arrive. Can you

hear his self-driven Plymouth Fury circle around the battlefield to reach

by itself?” Zanbato asked,