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.

claw. “I am tempted,” Ryan said. “On one hand, blowing our own hole would be good and proper. But

we can figure the truth

roughing up that bitch of a mad scientist along the way. She owes me more

way I’m leaving the person responsible for Last Easter

a small piece of the full truth, and an open conflict will lead us nowhere. Let us act cautiously, figure out

argument won out, and the group settled on exploring the

final rule then. If it looks cute and

hole, 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

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 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

advanced and damaged. The projections flickered, and all the platforms’ devices were

on 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

holograms, each using different arrays of colors; each

lacked substance and permanency. It was as feeble and immaculate as a dream, but sometimes colored splashes gave it variety. A red star here, a green bird there.

lightning 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

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

the strangest of them all, a patchwork of chaotic ideas made real. Nothing unified the creatures and places of

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 microscopic flies, and the poles briefly opened to reveal eyes

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

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

the Purple World from his brief contact

causing Ryan’s head to snap in his direction.

had decided to float amidst the holograms, swiftly pointed a finger at the Orange World’s projection. “Here. Look at this

was made of a substance that the courier had already seen before. One that looked very similar to ivory, and yet with

of

from iron to bronze and gold. It was at the very

astonished. “It’s the same color, the same texture…

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, because how could

suddenly made

his body the properties of a metal from the Orange World, the

not exist

A world without time.

“Adamantine…” Ryan whispered.

looked down on him from

anything? Did

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

was an unnatural metal from a higher realm where things like death, time, or the laws of physics held no sway. From its location in the cube, it might even be the ur-metal, the ultimate substance that all lesser

in such an anomalous

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

“Julie Costa?” Ryan asked.

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

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

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

Sunshine pointed out. “And if he had a latent

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 he sleeps, creepily so. There are still chemical processes taking place

of physics themselves, causing a slow, almost imperceptible degradation. It could resist atomic explosions, but not reality itself trying

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

might be the only person capable of harming Augustus,” Shroud

other end

their allies, making their way into the

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

Sarin immediately moved to

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

of Elixir, one for each of the seven standard

computer, equipped with large control panels and a comfy chair. Though energy still flowed into the machine, the screens had gone

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

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 out a way

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 a

did you do that?” Shroud asked in shock, as Len joined the to examine the computer’s

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

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

explaining his guess. “Six is a perfect numerical number and a better bet than seven, the exclamation point reinforces security,

She kept searching through the Wonderboxes like a child through

all encrypted, but I can figure it out!” The

to my suit’s computer?” Len asked the manbear. “This… this may contain all the information

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

through the blasted hole in the walls. The corridor beyond had no lamp to light

to