The Perfect Run

It was May 8th 2020 for the fifth time, and Ghoul once again had a car accident.

As he climbed down from his Plymouth Fury after hitting his favored undead maniac, Ryan took the time to look at his beautiful partner. The car he had rebuilt from the husk he had found in the ruins of Florence, all by himself; over the years, Ryan had customized it into a marvel of technology that would make most Geniuses envious. The courier had drifted for years at the driver’s seat, survived countless explosions, rode over so many old people! Ah, the memories…

All in all, his Plymouth was the one constant in his life, the thing most important to him after Len. The partner he could never find in any human being since they couldn’t remember him from restart to restart.

“I swear, I won’t let anyone hurt you again,” Ryan whispered to his car while stroking the hood, like a cat. “The bad Psycho is gone.”

“Are you talking to your car?” Renesco asked from behind the bar counter.

“I’m not the one judging you on your current company!” Ryan replied, opening the car’s back. Once again, he decided to do something new and interesting for this restart. A method to avenge his car’s death upon the Meta-Gang once more.

“I know this sounds cliche,” Ryan told Ghoul, raising the jumper cables while doing his best German accent. “But we have ways of making you talk!”

After delivering a shocked Ghoul to the Private Security, finishing his delivery, and paying everyone off, the courier thought about his next course of action.

Intending to return to the Augusti Path—without screwing it up this time—Ryan returned to the first hotel he had booked in the city center instead of the southern district. He met Wyvern, warned her of Ghoul’s escape, and received her business card.

This time, Vulcan contacted him as normal.

He went to the Bakuto, met Zanbato, and received his mission. The day afterward, before he left the hotel, he hid a small remote camera in the room. Ryan had already booked a place somewhere else to avoid the assassination attempt, but he also wanted to catch a glimpse of the killer.

This time, Sarin showed up alone at the delivery. It appeared Ghoul remained in custody, and the Meta couldn’t spare anyone else as backup. Ryan would have wanted to say it had been a hard, tough fight. That he struggled for his life, and that Sarin proved herself a welcome challenge.

Instead, the battle lasted ten seconds.

He punched her in the face in the stopped time with Fisty; gas came out of the Psycho's mask, and she crashed on the supertanker like before. She could dish out a lot of damage, but couldn’t take it.

They hadn’t even destroyed the Old Harbor this time!

“I’m bored,” Quicksave complained, while the Augusti finished putting crates in the bathyspheres. The Private Security hadn’t even shown up!

“Good,” Zanbato replied calmly. “That means things are running smoothly. I would rather have boring efficiency every day than chaotic excitement.”

“That’s what she said,” Ryan replied, drawing a cell phone out of his pocket. It was an old pre-war Samsung he had tinkered with, enhancing its performance to match newer devices. With it, he could observe through his bedroom’s camera from afar.

The camera didn’t notice anything strange. According to the thermal sensors though, someone had flown close to the window, peeked through, and then left. Considering his room was on the tenth floor… definitively a Genome.

Now that he thought of it, he had glimpsed a flying hero during his first battle with Ghoul and Sarin. Could it be the same person?

“Does anybody know a flying invisible man or woman around here?” Ryan asked. “Asking for a friend.”

“Anybody with 100k in their account can buy an Invisibility Elixir at Dynamis,” Luigi replied, closing the bathyspheres after putting the last crates inside. He typed on his phone and the submarines vanished beneath the waves, carrying their supplies elsewhere. “For flight though…”

“The only fliers in town I know of are Wyvern, Geist, Vulcan, Devilry, Wardrobe, Mosquito, and Sarin,” Zanbato said. “Among them, only Geist can turn invisible.”

“Does he spy on people at night by peeping through their window?” Ryan asked. What confused him was that the mysterious visitor didn’t enter the room nor leave a bomb behind during this iteration. Did they detect the camera from afar and decided to avoid detection?

“No, he’s bound to one place outside town and can’t leave it at all,” the Augusti enforcer replied. “He’s a Yellow whose powers activated post-mortem, binding him to his grave.”

Ah yes, Yellow Elixirs. The potions granting ‘conceptual’ powers, from astral projection to bad luck. Ryan liked them, mostly because you never knew what to expect with them. Even by Genomes standards, their abilities were downright bizarre with weird limitations.

“Why the question?” Luigi asked, suspicious, Ryan feeling his truth-telling power activate.

“Someone like that blew up my bedroom a few days ago,” Ryan replied, which was technically true. The power forced him to be honest, but he could phrase his sentence to mislead. “As if that was original!”

“You certainly make enemies quickly,” Luigi noted, frowning. “How do you feel about that?”

prepared to tell a joke, but he felt an alien force take over his

glanced at him strangely. “The

inside.” Ryan shrugged his mind now on autopilot. “Like my brain is a bottomless well I try to fill with dopamine and endorphins. So the more trouble I have, the greater

An awkward silence followed.

bright side, I look fabulous on the outside!” Quicksave added to lighten the mood, before turning to Luigi, unable not to

said,

happy to apathetic on its own. “To be honest

you have serious issues,” one of the grunt guards said. “You should see a

an end. He didn’t want to talk about his emotional hang-ups, let alone with strangers

place where I don’t want anyone inside, and

for the probing,” Luigi apologized, Ryan sensing the

nor a word, making the truth-teller uncomfortable. Damn it, he hated mind-readers and their cousins. No

to split up and go on our merry way,” Ryan said, turning to Zanbato

Zanbato said. “Change of plans. You’re

take me

plan,” Zanbato replied, much to the courier’s surprise. “Do you like pizza? I cook it like

serious?

Zanbato insisted, with the same tone as a big brother

must catch my secret

“They will wait.”

clearly amused. “Zan is like cream. Sweet and it sticks to you when you get

vanilla ice cream?” Ryan asked innocently. “I

should try chocolate,” Zanbato suggested. “It’s good for

Being led at knifepoint to a dinner party was certainly

literally at knifepoint, but metaphorically so. Zanbato simply stepped into Ryan’s Plymouth and refused to exit until the courier agreed to come

having backed down for now, Ryan

north of Mount Augustus. The area was definitely higher-income than Little Maghreb nearby; local houses were large, modern, and built on steep hills overseeing the poorer districts below. Class

modern, two-floor house with an incredible view of New Rome and an infinity pool built next to the hill’s edge. Colored in rich warm brown

a Lexus ES and a heavily customized Harley Davidson sportster. Zanbato took the opportunity to remove his power armor, showing no apprehension at revealing his face to Ryan. The courier had to admit, the Japanese counterfeit

Ryan’s hand. “No masks inside

want to know my secret identity?” Ryan replied. “I must warn you,

being stolen, “To your credit, that’s pretty much all I know. My bosses

his mask, hat, and trench coat, tossing them into

large living area that could probably fit a two-room apartment inside, including the kitchen, a sofa with a big plasma screen, and stairs to rooms above. Huge picture windows gave a marvelous sight of the city below, and the deco involved a lot of Asian art. A katana hanging on a wall,

already present. A dark-brown woman drank a soda can near the balcony, while an Asian girl sliced

pay them much attention, his gaze

looking at Ryan with curiosity. The courier waved a hand at it, and the critter

Jamie kissed the girl in the kitchen on the mouth, while she put her knife and dinner aside. Probably his girlfriend.

showing him a friendly smile. As skinny as her boyfriend was muscled, she kept her black hair short, dressed modestly, and wore discreet, yet elegant glasses. Ryan would have considered her pretty if she hadn’t suffered from weight loss and

“Waza?” Ryan answered.

with the

gasped in realization, having finally met someone who

who tilted his head to the side. The dark-brown haired woman looked at them as if they had gone utterly mad, while

Ki-jung reassured him. “You have to know the

pinnacle of culture,” Ryan said, politely introducing himself to this delicate woman. “Ryan ‘Quicksave’ Romano.

say that to everyone,” Jamie pointed out, lovingly putting his arms around his

watched a documentary on the

told Ryan, petting the kitchen rat from behind his ears. “Somewhat.

or Green?”

meaning her power affected biology rather than mere rodent telepathy.

thought Ryan would recognize the

she even bore a bird symbol below her right eye, although it was hard to notice due to her stained glasses. The woman dressed like a biker