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

hostile actions until we can figure the truth out,”

clenched. “No way I’m not roughing up that bitch of a mad scientist along the way.

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

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

out, and the group settled on

rule then. If it looks cute and cuddly…” Ryan loaded his chest cannon. “It

followed by Shroud, Mr. Wave, and Leo the Living Sun. Shortie used

part of a colossal sphere with a diameter slightly more than two hundred meters wide. One end of a five-meters wide bridge extended out to a central platform equipped

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

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

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

but sometimes colored splashes gave it variety. A red star here, a green bird there. These phantom images only existed for

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

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,

all, a patchwork of chaotic ideas made real. Nothing unified the creatures and places of this realm, except that they only ever existed in human dreams

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

compendium holding all knowledge and information that ever was, is, and would ever be. The azure glow of a supreme godmind cast the light of enlightenment like a lighthouse in the night, while its neural

mirrors closed this alien panorama, all overseen by an eerie, inverted pyramid

recognizing the Purple World from his brief

Leo Hargraves asked, causing Ryan’s head to snap in his direction. “It’s

pointed a finger at the Orange World’s projection. “Here. Look at this

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

this remind you of

to bronze and

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

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,

it suddenly

the properties of a metal from the Orange World, the source of all inorganic material. A world made only of matter, without

exist in the Purple

A world without time.

“Adamantine…” Ryan whispered.

on him from

than anything? Did

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

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

in

whispered

“Julie Costa?” Ryan asked.

alter life with a touch,” Mr. Wave answered, his voice more somber than usual. “Create new life, or give people cancer. Pretty nasty

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 as ‘alive’

done his research. “We know he

and iron rusts,” Sunshine pointed out. “And if he had a latent cancer before he gained

metal,” Ryan theorized. “Lightning Butt may not eat or breathe, but I know for a fact that he

could be that Lightning Butt’s body reacted negatively to the laws of physics themselves, causing a slow, almost imperceptible degradation. It could resist atomic explosions, but not reality itself trying to reject

defense either. Frank could affect Augustus, as did Livia’s time-skipping.

only person capable of harming Augustus,” Shroud said, “or whatever ability you used

the other end of the

way into the next room in

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

immediately moved to

The Psycho whistled as she opened a wonderbox, revealing seven bottles inside; one for each Elixir color except Black.

seven of them north of the laboratory. Each contained gallons of

devices with biomechanical technology. All of them joined up in a central computer, equipped with

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

letters had appeared on the screen. “It’s password-protected, and that machine is

to crumble beneath a seven hundred kilos bear of mass destruction, Ryan would

asked in shock, as Len joined the

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

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

point reinforces security, and since the Alchemist likened herself to a god creating perfection, I figured ‘Homo Novus’ and ‘Magnum

She kept searching through the Wonderboxes like a child through Christmas

I can figure

Len asked the manbear. “This… this may contain all the information we need

Mr. Wave. The laser genome had moved in front of the demolished door leading into

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

an eye open,” Hargraves said warily. “This place is too precious to