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 hole would be good and proper.

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

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

her knowledge, there’s no way I’m leaving the person responsible for Last

clearly only know a small piece of the full truth, and an open conflict will lead

argument won out, and the group settled

to explain the third and final rule then. If it looks cute and cuddly…” Ryan loaded his chest cannon.

the and flew with his bear inside the hole, followed by Shroud, Mr. Wave, and Leo the Living Sun. Shortie

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 in the air all around

reminded Ryan of Mechron’s own holographic orbital monitoring systems, albeit far more advanced and damaged. The projections flickered, and all the platforms’ devices were deactivated.

the bridge to secure the dome’s other entrance. Meanwhile, the courier and the Carnival members

using different arrays of colors; each representing strange and wonderful

dream, but sometimes colored splashes gave it variety. A red star here, a green bird there. These phantom images only existed for an instant before returning to the white, and

bolts, 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

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

2D picture-like worlds. It was the strangest of them all, a patchwork of chaotic ideas made

with seas of green slime, teeth mountains, and forests

and would ever be. The azure glow of a supreme godmind cast the light of enlightenment like a lighthouse

this alien panorama, all overseen

worlds,” Ryan said, recognizing the Purple World

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

holograms, swiftly pointed a finger at the Orange World’s

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

you of

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

body,” Leo Hargraves whispered, astonished. “It’s the same color, the same texture… I would wager my

why Frank the Mad’s ability to absorb these alloys had seemed to

suddenly made more

power gave his body the properties of a metal from the Orange World, the source of all inorganic material. A

not exist

A world without time.

“Adamantine…” Ryan whispered.

him

material from Greek mythology, said to be harder than anything? Did nobody read

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

like death, time, or the laws of physics held no sway. From its location in the

behaved in

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

“Julie Costa?” Ryan asked.

Mr. Wave answered, his voice more somber than usual. “Create new life, or give people cancer. Pretty nasty power, but one that could

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

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

a latent cancer before he gained his power, the tumor might have gained

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,

to the laws of physics themselves, causing a slow, almost

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

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

other end of the bridge, interrupting the discussion.

their way into the next room in a tight

biomechanical 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

caution, Sarin immediately moved to investigate the

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

paid more attention to the strange vats, finding seven 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 the devices by

computer, equipped

database?” Sunshine asked Shroud, as they immediately

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

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 the computer, before the screen let out a melodious ‘ding’ sound and revealed

Shroud asked in shock, as Len joined the to examine the computer’s

“I made a psyche profile of the Alchemist based on

Ryan asked lazily as he approached the vats, observing the Blue Elixir through the membrane separating it from the outside world. To his surprise, the slime created a tentacle and

a better bet than seven, the exclamation point reinforces security, and since the Alchemist likened herself to a god creating perfection, I figured ‘Homo Novus’ and

searching through the Wonderboxes like a child through Christmas presents.

all encrypted, but I can figure

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

before glancing at Mr. Wave. The laser genome had moved in

as he peeked through the blasted hole in the walls. The corridor beyond had no lamp to light it, leaving only an abyss of darkness.

said warily. “This place is too precious to be left undefended, and