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.

creature? The gash that slew it came from a claw. “I am tempted,” Ryan said. “On one hand, blowing our own

from hostile actions until we

Sarin said, her fists clenched. “No way I’m not roughing up that bitch of a mad scientist along the way. She owes

I agree with the Psycho,” Shroud declared. “While we might need her knowledge, there’s no way I’m

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

and the group settled on exploring the dome by

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

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

wide bridge extended out to a central platform equipped with strange biomechanical devices, while the other part led to smashed blast doors. The debris

far more advanced and damaged. The projections flickered, and all the platforms’ devices were deactivated. Whatever juice the ship used, it was starting to

the platform, with Len, Sarin, and the crossing 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 of

arrays of colors; each representing strange and wonderful

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 images

burning stars, and lights. A 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

Rubik’s cube with countless stickers made of different matter: steel, glass, iron, 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

all, a patchwork of chaotic ideas made real. Nothing

green sphere that superficially imitated a planet, but 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 supreme godmind cast

mirrors closed this alien panorama, all overseen

Ryan said, recognizing the Purple World from his brief contact with it.

Black?” Leo Hargraves asked, causing Ryan’s head to snap in his

holograms, swiftly pointed a finger at the Orange World’s projection. “Here. Look

of the stickers of the Rubik’s cube was made of a substance that the courier had already seen before. One that

this remind you of anything?”

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

the same color, the same

metal. It was the only explanation for why Frank the Mad’s ability to absorb

it suddenly

the source

not exist in the Purple

A world without time.

“Adamantine…” Ryan whispered.

him from

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

the Purple World and Earth’s dimension to align, creating an anomaly where he alone could affect causality. But

an unnatural metal from a higher realm where things like death, time, or the laws of physics held no sway. From its

it behaved in such

Augustus might be an Orange,” Sunshine whispered to

“Julie Costa?” Ryan asked.

voice more somber than usual. “Create new life, or give

contact with him,” Sunshine said, “but it may be that

and tumor then?” Shroud asked, having clearly done his research. “We know he doesn’t eat or breathe. If he is made of metal, how

a latent cancer before

his power only 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

laws of physics themselves, causing a slow, almost imperceptible degradation. It could resist

Livia’s time-skipping. Other conceptual abilities might bypass

the only person capable of harming Augustus,” Shroud said,

from the other end of the

way into the next

area had a source of light, namely red crystals embedded in the ceiling. This laboratory was far smaller than the metal sphere outside, but large enough to house workstations, biomechanical servers, and heart-shaped vats full of swirling liquid. Alien orange crystal growths had started taking over

caution, Sarin immediately moved

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

contained gallons of Elixir, one for each of the seven standard colors. Computers, human computers, were linked to the devices

All of them joined up in a central computer, equipped with large control panels and a comfy chair. Though energy still flowed into the

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

and letters had appeared on the screen. “It’s password-protected, and that machine is clearly Genius tech of some kind. It

and took the seat for his own. How the chair managed not to crumble beneath a seven hundred kilos bear of mass destruction, Ryan

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

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

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

better bet than seven, the exclamation point reinforces security, and since

She kept searching through the Wonderboxes

encrypted, but I can

“This… this may contain all the information we need to understand Elixirs. This room… this room

Hargraves crossed his shining arms, before glancing at Mr. Wave. The laser genome had moved in front of

peeked through the blasted hole in the walls. The corridor

precious to be left undefended,