The Perfect Run

Aliens.

Of course it would be aliens! Everything made perfect sense now! Still, Ryan wondered if these visitors would look like tiny grey dwares, or humans with ridged foreheads. If the eight-meters tall monster in the snow was any indication though, they were probably cold-blooded.

Wait… Ryan glanced at the monstrous creature’s corpse, and came to a sudden realization.

“I knew it!” He shouted, pointing a finger at the colossal beast. “I knew it was the Reptilians!”

These scaled bastards had tried to infiltrate human governments to destroy democracy!

“It can’t be aliens,” Shroud said in denial. “Maybe the Alchemist… maybe she’s building a spaceship to leave the planet?”

“That piece of crap obviously crashed years ago,” Sarin pointed out. “If I listen well to our jackass-in-chief, a good four-fifths of it is buried in the ice. Who would build a ship like that?”

“We… we know Elixirs came from alien dimensions,” Len said, trying to scan the ship with her power armor. “It’s… it’s not impossible.”

Shroud still shook his head. “Can’t be aliens.”

He could accept the existence of a time-traveler, but not extraterrestrial visitors?

In any case, Ryan activated his time-stop as his group debated. Although he sensed an opposing force struggling back against his power, the icy wasteland turned violet to his relief. Since the strange purple lightning bolts in the alien skies kept moving in the frozen time, Ryan guessed they were made of Violet Flux.

Much like his experience in Monaco, his time-stop would work as long as the Resonators kept the portal open, allowing him to converge the Purple World with this pocket dimension.

But something else caught the courier’s attention. The Black Flux particles produced by his armor seemed to devour the space around them, creating tiny, almost invisible cracks in the fabric of reality itself.

“Huh?” Ryan said as time resumed. Though the black particles vanished, the damage they had caused remained.

“What is it, Riri?” Len asked, noticing his confusion.

“It seems my power has an anomalous effect on this thin place.” Come to think of it, Ryan remembered Black Flux consuming Alphonse ‘Fallout’ Manada’s radioactive Red Flux during their fight.

All hints so far indicated that the Black Ultimate One had given the courier the power to kill what couldn’t die. But how far could you push that definition? Could you kill energy? Items? Ideas?

Black powers were paradoxes, and didn’t follow the rules. Lightning Butt himself had become more like an animated statue than a man, and yet Ryan’s power could damage him. It could even kill a ghost.

Maybe it could kill Elixirs, or the alien energies they produced.

“That power gives me a headache,” Ryan said, deciding to prepare his team for battle. Sunshine and See-Through observed the dome cautiously, Sarin looked tense, Len and the didn’t hide their anxiety, and Mr. Wave barely restrained himself from going in guns-blazing. “Alright mooks listen up, who’s never explored a spooky alien spaceship among you? Raise your hand if this is your first time.”

Everyone raised their hand, except Ryan and Mr. Wave. “Mr. Wave caused the Fermi paradox,” the genome explained. “When alien civilizations see Mr. Wave, they go extinct.”

“Riri, why didn’t you raise your hand?” Len asked.

Sarin looked at Ryan with skepticism, which wounded the courier’s heart. “You saw aliens before, oh great and powerful leader?”

“Yes, but their ship was round and flatter.” Also, the passengers had kept trying to pay him in seashells for some reason. “In any case, rule number one for spaceships, and the most important one by far: don’t touch the eggs. A good egg is a boiled egg.”

The gasped. “But Sifu, eggs are cute and rounded!”

“Eggs are the enemy, soldier!” Ryan snarled with the passion of a drill sergeant, the adopting a military salute. “Any egg found in an alien ship is a potential W.M.D.! Boil them all!”

“Y-yes, Sifu!”

“Second rule, we don’t split up. Ever.”

“It wouldn’t change much,” Mr. Wave boasted. “Even if Mr. Wave faces an army alone, they will still be outnumbered.”

“I agree,” Ryan conceded, “but this is the principle of the thing.”

“I am usually more fond of dividing forces to cover a greater area, but in this case numbers might prove safer,” Leo agreed. “We have no idea what to expect within.”

“Which way do we use to move in?” Shroud asked, glancing at the blast doors.

“Mmm…” Ryan approached the gates to observe them. On a closer look, while the blast doors were mostly made of the same black metal as the rest of the ship, they showed hints of having been breached in the past. Someone plugged the cracks with a standard steel alloy. A cursory scan from his armor told the courier that the doors could probably survive extreme conditions such as atmospheric reentry. “Sunshine, we might need a solar eruption or two.”

“I see another perfectly good entrance up there,” Sarin said, pointing a finger at the hole in the ship’s metal dome. “If the lizard blasted his way out, then it means that path is clear, right?”

“Possibly,” Shroud conceded. “But we might find workers repairing the damaged area.”

“What bothers me is that nobody came to intercept us,” Hargraves said, his radiance dimming for an instant. “I expected more activity in the Alchemist’s base of operation, but the area looks deceptively empty.”

“Perhaps the thing killed everyone on its way out,” Sarin guessed.

then, what killed the creature? The gash that slew it came from a claw. “I am tempted,” Ryan said. “On one hand,

refrain from hostile actions until we

roughing up that bitch of a mad scientist along the way. She owes me more than

I’m leaving the person responsible for Last Easter unmolested. She has far too much blood on her hands, whoever or whatever she

the full truth, and an open conflict will lead us nowhere. Let us act cautiously, figure out what is happening, and then decide

won out, and the group settled

rule then. If it looks cute and cuddly…” Ryan loaded his chest cannon.

Sun. Shortie used streams of pressurized water to launch herself at the ship’s roof, while Sarin did something similar with

only the upper part of a colossal sphere with a diameter slightly more than two hundred meters wide. One end of a five-meters wide bridge extended out to a central platform equipped with strange biomechanical devices, while the other part led to smashed blast doors. The debris of the dome’s ceiling

Mechron’s own holographic orbital monitoring systems, albeit far more advanced and damaged. The projections flickered, and all the platforms’ devices were deactivated. Whatever juice the ship used, it was starting to run

the bridge to secure the dome’s other entrance. Meanwhile, the courier and the Carnival members checked out the projections and tried to make sense out

arrays of colors; each representing

lacked substance and permanency. It was as feeble and immaculate as a dream, but sometimes colored splashes gave it variety. A red star here, a green

shining heart of nuclear chaos burnt at its center, the first and greatest sun illuminating the universe; and when Ryan squinted at it, he realized that this star had the shape of

were represented there. Other stickers contained substances he had never seen, crystals that shifted like living beings, blackened

worlds. It was the strangest of them all, a patchwork of chaotic ideas made real. Nothing unified the creatures and places

slime, teeth mountains, and forests of blood vessels. The atmosphere itself buzzed like trillions of microscopic flies, and the poles briefly

would ever be. The azure glow

mirrors closed this

Purple World from his brief contact with

to snap in his

had decided to float amidst the holograms, swiftly pointed a finger

made of a substance that the courier had already seen before. One that looked very similar to ivory, and yet

of anything?”

The substances that surrounded it were all metals, from iron to bronze and gold. It was at the

Hargraves whispered, astonished. “It’s the same color, the same texture… I would wager my life on

was made of an anomalous metal. It was the only explanation for why Frank the Mad’s ability to absorb these alloys had seemed to affect the invincible warlord. But

suddenly

power gave his body the properties of a metal from the Orange World, the source of all inorganic material. A world made only of matter, without energy,

not exist in the

A world without time.

“Adamantine…” Ryan whispered.

him

harder than anything? Did nobody read the classics?” Ryan shrugged. “It’s as good

courier stopped time by causing the Purple World and Earth’s dimension to align, creating an anomaly where he alone could affect causality. But that substance, the

laws of physics held no sway. From its location in the cube, it might even be the ur-metal, the ultimate substance that all lesser

in

Augustus might be an Orange,” Sunshine whispered

“Julie Costa?” Ryan asked.

Wave answered, his voice more somber than usual. “Create new life, or

make contact with him,” Sunshine said, “but it may be that Julie’s power simply didn’t register him as ‘alive’ in the

done his research. “We know he

pointed out. “And if he had a latent

gave his body the properties of that alien metal,” Ryan theorized. “Lightning Butt may not eat or breathe, but I know for a fact that he sleeps, creepily so. There are still chemical processes taking place inside him, they’re just no longer biological

slow, almost imperceptible degradation. It could resist atomic explosions, but not reality itself trying to reject

wasn’t a perfect defense either. Frank could affect Augustus, as did Livia’s time-skipping.

of harming Augustus,” Shroud said, “or whatever ability you used to defeat

here,” Len shouted from the other end

way into the next

swirling liquid. Alien orange crystal growths had started taking over the ceiling like an infection,

Sarin immediately

once!” The Psycho whistled as she opened a wonderbox, revealing seven bottles inside; one for

of them north of the laboratory. Each contained gallons of Elixir, one for each of the seven standard colors. Computers, human computers, were linked to

computer, equipped with large control panels and a comfy chair. Though energy still flowed into

access the database?” Sunshine asked Shroud, as they immediately moved

Only a white spot to write numbers and letters had appeared on the screen. “It’s password-protected, and that

of mass destruction, Ryan would never understand, but it survived.

you do that?” Shroud asked in shock, as Len joined the to

sheepishly. “I made a psyche profile of the Alchemist based

through the membrane separating

replied, before explaining his guess. “Six is a perfect numerical number and a better bet than seven, the exclamation point reinforces security, and since the Alchemist likened herself to a god creating perfection, I figured

replied, unimpressed. She kept searching through the Wonderboxes like a child through Christmas presents.

but I can figure it out!”

you remove the safeties, could you transfer data to my suit’s computer?” Len asked the manbear. “This… this may contain all the information

in front of the demolished door leading into

Wave replied as he peeked through the blasted hole in the walls. The

precious to be left undefended,