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.

The gash that slew it came from a claw. “I am tempted,” Ryan said. “On

us refrain from hostile actions until we can figure the truth out,” Hargraves

“No way I’m not roughing up that bitch of a mad scientist along the way. She owes me more than a decade of pain

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

Alchemist might deserve our scorn,” Sunshine conceded. “But we clearly only know a small piece of the full truth, and an open conflict will lead

won out, and the group settled on exploring the dome

third and final rule then. If it looks cute

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

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 sphere, and huge, colored holographic projections hovered

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

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

different arrays of colors;

A red star here, a green bird there. These phantom images only existed

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 an eye. One that looked

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 shifted like living beings, blackened

and 2D picture-like worlds. It was the strangest of them all, a patchwork of chaotic ideas made real. Nothing unified the creatures

with seas of green slime, teeth mountains, and forests of

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

closed this alien panorama, all overseen

said, recognizing the Purple World from his brief contact with

to snap

pointed a finger at

his friend’s finger. One of the stickers of the Rubik’s cube was made of a substance that the courier

you of anything?”

The ivory sticker’s location was unusual as well. The substances that surrounded it were all metals, from iron to bronze and gold. It was at the very center of it all, the core of one of

same color, the same texture…

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

suddenly made more

the source of

does not exist in the Purple

A world without time.

“Adamantine…” Ryan whispered.

on him from his vantage

Did nobody read the

and Earth’s dimension to align, creating an anomaly where he alone could affect causality. But that substance, the adamantine, didn’t

death, time, or the laws of physics held no sway. From its location in the cube, it might even be the

wonder it behaved in such an

an Orange,” Sunshine whispered to himself.

“Julie Costa?” Ryan asked.

than usual. “Create new life, or give people cancer. Pretty nasty power, but one that could

“but it may be that Julie’s power simply didn’t register him as ‘alive’ in the first

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

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

eat or breathe, but I know for a fact that he sleeps, creepily so. There are still chemical

that Lightning Butt’s body reacted negatively to the laws of physics themselves, causing a slow, almost imperceptible

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

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

the other end of the bridge, interrupting the

their allies, making their way into the

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

all caution, Sarin immediately moved to investigate

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

north of the laboratory. Each contained gallons of

appeared someone had connected Earth technology to alien devices with biomechanical technology. All of them joined up in a central computer, equipped with large control panels

asked Shroud,

denial. Only 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

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

you do that?” Shroud asked in shock, as

sciences,” the explained sheepishly. “I made a psyche profile of the

observing the Blue Elixir through the membrane separating it from the outside world.

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

guess, nerd,” Sarin replied, unimpressed. She kept searching through the Wonderboxes like a child through Christmas presents. “Anything

but I can figure it

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

in front of the demolished door leading into the next part of the complex. “Do you see

The corridor beyond had no lamp to light it, leaving only an abyss of darkness. “Too

open,” Hargraves said warily. “This place is too precious to be left