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.

slew it came from a claw. “I am tempted,” Ryan said. “On one hand, blowing our own hole would be good and proper. But using the other path would bring less

from hostile actions until we can

Sarin said, her fists clenched. “No way I’m not roughing up that bitch of a

agree with the Psycho,” Shroud declared. “While we might need her knowledge, there’s no way I’m leaving the person responsible for Last Easter unmolested. She has far too much blood on her

know a small piece of the full truth, and an open conflict will lead us nowhere. Let us act cautiously, figure out what is

group settled on exploring the dome

time to explain the third and final rule then. If it looks cute and cuddly…”

the hole, followed by Shroud, Mr. Wave, and Leo the Living Sun. Shortie used streams of pressurized water to launch herself

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 glittered at the bottom of the

albeit far more advanced and damaged. The projections flickered, and all the

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

seven holograms, each using different arrays of colors; each representing strange and

shapeless cloud that 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 bird there. These phantom

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 an eye. One that looked

stone, gold, zinc, water, gas… all metals, all liquids, all inorganic matters Ryan knew of were represented there. Other stickers contained substances he had never seen, crystals that shifted like living beings, blackened metal as

strange golden carnival of cubic angels, many-legged demons, cohorts of ghosts, and 2D picture-like worlds. It was the strangest of them all, a patchwork of chaotic ideas made real. Nothing unified the creatures and places of this realm, except that

one where everything was alive. A pulsating cell with seas of green slime, teeth mountains, and forests of blood vessels. The atmosphere itself buzzed like trillions of

and numbers; a compendium holding all knowledge and information that ever was, is, and would ever be. The azure glow of a

this alien panorama, all overseen by an eerie, inverted

the Purple World from his brief

head to snap in

to float amidst the holograms, swiftly pointed a finger at the Orange World’s projection.

widened as he followed his friend’s finger. One of the stickers of the Rubik’s cube was made of a substance that the courier had already seen before. One that looked very similar to ivory, and yet with a unique

of

were all metals, from iron to bronze and gold. It

“It’s the same color, the same texture… I would wager my

loop ago, Ryan had theorized that Lightning Butt’s body 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 doubt always remained, because how could

suddenly made more

properties of a metal from the Orange World, the source

exist in

A world without time.

“Adamantine…” Ryan whispered.

him from his

said to be harder than anything? Did nobody read the classics?” Ryan

anomaly

laws of physics held no sway. From its location in

it behaved in such an

be an Orange,” Sunshine whispered to himself. “I always wondered

“Julie Costa?” Ryan asked.

than usual. “Create new life, or give people cancer.

thought Augustus slew her before she could make contact with him,” Sunshine said, “but it may be that Julie’s power simply didn’t register him

aging and tumor then?” Shroud asked, having clearly done his research. “We know

Sunshine pointed out. “And if he had a latent cancer before he gained his power,

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

reacted negatively to the laws of physics themselves, causing a slow, almost imperceptible degradation. It could resist atomic explosions, but

Augustus, as did Livia’s time-skipping. Other

the Mad might be the only person capable of harming Augustus,” Shroud said, “or whatever ability you used to

Len shouted from the other end of the bridge, interrupting the discussion.

rejoined their allies, making their way into the next room in a tight

servers, and heart-shaped vats full of swirling liquid. Alien orange crystal growths had started taking over the ceiling like an infection, while piles of Wonderboxes lined up the southern wall. A large hole led into a dark corridor beyond the

Sarin immediately moved to investigate

at once!” The Psycho whistled as she opened a wonderbox, revealing seven bottles inside; one for each Elixir color except

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

a central computer, equipped with

Sunshine asked Shroud, as they immediately

a white spot to write numbers and letters had appeared on the screen. “It’s password-protected, and that machine is clearly Genius tech of some kind. It might take me a while to figure out a way

man, gently moved him aside, and took the seat for his own. How the chair managed not to crumble beneath a seven hundred kilos bear of mass destruction, Ryan would never understand, but it survived. The typed three passwords in a row on

did you do that?” Shroud asked in shock, as Len joined the to examine the computer’s

explained sheepishly. “I made a psyche profile of the Alchemist based on compiled second-hand information,

separating it from the outside world. To his surprise, the slime created a tentacle and

guess. “Six is a perfect numerical number and a better bet than seven, the exclamation point reinforces security,

through the Wonderboxes like a child through Christmas

can figure it out!”

you transfer data to my suit’s computer?” Len asked the manbear. “This… this may contain all the information we need to understand Elixirs. This

genome had moved in front of

in the walls. The corridor beyond had no lamp

place is too precious to