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.

said. “On one hand, blowing our own hole would be good and proper. But

us refrain from hostile actions until we can figure

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

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

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

settled on

If it looks cute and cuddly…” Ryan loaded

followed by 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 with a

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

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

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

using different arrays of colors; each

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 images only existed for an instant before returning to the white, and the shapeless

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

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 dark as night, or pinkish liquid. Orange lines

a patchwork of chaotic ideas made real. Nothing unified the creatures and places of

with seas of green slime, teeth mountains, and forests of blood vessels. The atmosphere itself buzzed like trillions of microscopic flies, and

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

violet expanse of compressed space and strange mirrors closed this alien panorama, all overseen by an eerie,

said, recognizing the Purple World from his brief contact

Ryan’s head to snap in his direction. “It’s a long

had decided to float amidst the holograms, swiftly pointed a

made of a substance that the

remind you of

surrounded it were all metals, from iron to

color, the

ability to absorb these alloys had seemed to affect the invincible warlord. But doubt

suddenly

the Orange World, the source

not exist

A world without time.

“Adamantine…” Ryan whispered.

on him from his vantage

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

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

physics held no sway. From its location in

wonder it behaved in such an

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

“Julie Costa?” Ryan asked.

could alter life with a touch,” Mr. Wave answered, his voice more somber than usual. “Create new

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 as ‘alive’

his aging 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 can he

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

but I know for a fact

causing a slow, almost imperceptible degradation. It could resist atomic explosions, but not

a perfect defense either. Frank could affect Augustus, as did Livia’s time-skipping. Other conceptual abilities

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

the other end of the bridge, interrupting the

their allies, making their way into the

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 the ceiling like an infection, while piles of Wonderboxes lined up the southern wall. A large hole led into a dark corridor beyond the room, with the remains of a shattered blue gate laying in

caution, Sarin immediately moved to investigate

whistled as she opened a wonderbox, revealing seven bottles inside;

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

a central computer, equipped with large control panels

database?” Sunshine asked Shroud, as they

reactivated it, but quickly shook 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 is clearly Genius tech of some kind. It might take me a while to figure

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

Shroud asked in shock,

sheepishly. “I made a psyche profile of the Alchemist based on compiled second-hand information, tried to figure out the likely

membrane separating it from the outside world. To his surprise,

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 ‘Homo Novus’ and ‘Magnum Opus’ were

replied, unimpressed. She kept searching through

but I can figure it out!” The

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 to understand Elixirs. This room… this room might very well

genome had moved in front of the demolished door leading into the next

Mr. Wave replied as he peeked through the blasted hole in the walls. The corridor beyond had no lamp to light

“This place is too precious to