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.

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

actions until we can figure the truth out,” Hargraves

of a mad scientist along

as it sounds, I agree with the Psycho,” Shroud declared. “While we might need her knowledge, there’s no way I’m leaving the person responsible for

deserve our scorn,” Sunshine conceded. “But we clearly only know a 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

group settled on exploring the dome by

final rule then. If it looks cute and cuddly…” Ryan loaded his

the hole, followed by Shroud, Mr. Wave, and Leo the Living Sun. Shortie used streams of pressurized

it turned out, the dome was only the upper 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 with strange biomechanical devices, while the other part led to smashed blast doors. The debris of the dome’s ceiling glittered at the

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

crossing the bridge to secure the dome’s other entrance. Meanwhile, the courier and the Carnival members checked out the projections and tried to make sense out of

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

that 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. These phantom images only existed for an instant before returning

nuclear chaos 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 of an eye. One

iron, stone, gold, zinc, water, gas… all metals, all liquids, all inorganic matters Ryan knew of were represented there. Other stickers

strangest of them all, a patchwork

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

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

worlds,” Ryan said, recognizing the Purple World from his brief contact with it.

causing Ryan’s head to snap in

swiftly pointed a finger at the

of the Rubik’s cube was made of a substance that the courier

this remind you of

to bronze and gold.

same color, the same texture… I would wager my life on

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

suddenly made

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

does not exist in the

A world without time.

“Adamantine…” Ryan whispered.

him

be harder than anything? Did

to align, creating an anomaly where he alone could affect causality. But

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

wonder it behaved in

an Orange,” Sunshine whispered to himself.

“Julie Costa?” Ryan asked.

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

could make contact with him,” Sunshine said, “but it may be that Julie’s power simply didn’t register him

asked, having clearly done his research. “We know he doesn’t eat or breathe. If

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

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

causing a slow, almost imperceptible degradation. It could resist atomic explosions, but

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

of harming Augustus,” Shroud said,

Len shouted from the other end of the bridge, interrupting the discussion.

making their way into the

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

immediately moved

Elixirs at once!” The Psycho whistled as she opened a wonderbox, revealing seven bottles

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

with biomechanical technology. All of them joined up in a central computer, equipped with large control panels and a comfy chair. Though energy still flowed into the machine, the

the database?” Sunshine asked Shroud, as they

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

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

do that?” Shroud asked in shock, as Len joined the to

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

separating it from the outside world. To his surprise, the slime created a tentacle

bet than seven, the exclamation point reinforces security,

Sarin replied, unimpressed. She kept searching through the Wonderboxes like a child through Christmas

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

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

genome had moved in front of the demolished door

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

open,” Hargraves said warily. “This place is too precious to be left undefended, and yet nobody intercepted