The Perfect Run

It was May 10th, 2020 for the first time, and Ryan hadn't blown up something yet.
Frankly, this surprised him. Seventy-two hours were almost a hard cap for him for
non-destructive behavior; he didn’t always cause it, he just had a knack for
getting into exciting situations. Ryan wasn't drawn to adventure. Adventure was
drawn to him, and he couldn't wait for a new adrenaline rush.
Driving at night up north, the courier and his Plymouth left the wealthy districts for
more industrial ones. Hotels and casinos slowly vanished, replaced with railroad
stations, grey buildings, taxi centrals, and other businesses. According to the
map, they should reach the old harbor in no time.
“Existence is subjective.”
“Mmm?” Ryan asked, turning his head to the passenger to his right. He had to
lower himself in the car, to avoid reaching the roof with his head.
“Your question, about whether I exist if you can roll back time,” Zanbato
continued. The man had put crates full of chemicals at the car’s back, then
insisted on chaperoning Quicksave during his first job for “the family.’ Both were
supposed to protect a shipment from attack and beat up the Meta if they dared to
interrupt it. “We can never know we exist, so there is no objective truth to
existence.”
“You're still thinking it over?” Ryan asked, a bit surprised. He said so much
nonsense in such a short time, that people usually forgot what he said halfway
through.
“Yes. It's disturbing.”
“Eh, you get used to the uncertainty.” Better not tell him the truth.
The sound of cars gave way to that of waves crashing on the shore, and the faint
rustle of the evening wind. The city’s old harbor seemed rather derelict, rusting
buildings standing next to abandoned waterfront warehouses. The remains of a
massive supertanker overlooked the sea, having crashed against a stony beach;
the captain must have been drunk when it happened. If humans lived in the area,
Ryan didn’t notice any.
They had entered the Poor Zone.
The quality of the air also drastically declined, to the point that Ryan felt like he
was kissing a professional smoker; the stink even overwhelmed the smell of the
sea. He blamed it on the proximity of a nuclear power plant, industrial facilities,
and the famous Rust Town further north. “Somebody call Greenpeace,” Ryan
complained. “They can't all be dead.”
“Dynamis uses knockoff Genomes to keep the pollution in Rust Town,” Zanbato
replied as they drove towards the stony beach. “But they don't do much to protect
this area.”
“Is this what remains of Naples’ old port?” Ryan asked, curious. He had always
been interested in pre-war facilities, especially since most cities had been
transformed into nice, aesthetic craters.
“Yeah. Dynamis is building new docks in the south for freighters.” Zanbato
pointed at a spot at the waterfront. “We can stop there.”
Ryan parked the car between two warehouses, then stepped down alongside his
chaperone. A group waited for them near the remains of a pier, next to a huge
pile of crates and a minivan.
The leader, and the youngest, was an African-Italian barely above eighteen, yet
taller than Ryan himself. Physically fit, he kept his hair short and dressed
fashionably; he had invested his drug money on a stylized sweater, boots, and
refined pants. He really gave off a cultured middle-class vibe, even if he was
busy smoking a joint as the duo showed up.
The rest... well, they were grunts with submachine guns, nothing special.
Cannon fodder with a short life expectancy, and even shorter opportunities for
career advancement, whom Ryan could identify on sight nowadays. The courier
nicknamed them Grunt 1, Grunt 2, and Gruntie.
“Finally!” the leader complained upon seeing the two Genomes arrive, “What took
you so long? You were supposed to arrive first! We're in the open!”
“Sorry Luigi,” Zanbato replied, much calmer. “Traffic delayed us.”
“Hey, Luigi!” Ryan said with his best accent ever. “It's-a-me, Mario!”
Luigi frowned, trying to make the connection, and failing. “I don’t get it.”
“I think it's video game stuff,” Gruntie said, the other mooks shrugging their
shoulders.
Ryan sighed. “It's exhausting,” he complained, “to be an island of culture amidst
a sea of ignorance.”
“Luigi, this is Quicksave, the new muscle I told you about,” Zanbato made the
introductions. “Quicksave, this is Luigi, alias Crypto. He's our supply guy.”
“You have a superpower too?” Ryan asked, faking astonishment. Could the only
guy without a weapon be special?
“Yeah, I have a bullshit filter,” Luigi replied, tossing his joint into the sea to share
with the fish. “Who's your favorite Genome?”
“Well, I don't—" A foreign force took over Ryan's mind, twisting his tongue. “Mr.
Wave is so cool.”
“Seriously?” Luigi asked, a little peeved. “You like that cringey weirdo?”
Ryan couldn't stop himself. “Also, I'm pretty hetero, but if Leo Hargraves sneaked
into my room at night, I would still let him—"
“Okay, okay, stop, I don’t want the details,” Luigi said, the effect lifted from Ryan's
mind. “See? Once you start talking, you can’t lie to me.”
“One day,” Ryan warned, wagging a finger at Luigi, “You're going to ask me the
wrong question, and you won't like the answer.”
As in, he would have to reload and start over. Bragging about his time stop was
one thing, but Ryan always kept quiet about his save point. Someday, someone
smart might figure out a way around his ace in the hole, so Ryan always kept it
hidden up his sleeve.
“Why did you bring this guy instead of Sphere?” Luigi complained to Zanbato. “Or
Chitter?”
“They're busy elsewhere,” the samurai replied. “And you have five bodyguards.”
“Bullets aren't going to stop any of the Meta,” his fellow crook replied, turning to
the grunts. “No offense guys.”
Zanbato cleared his throat. “We can always argue about security after the job.”
“The submarines should arrive soon,” Luigi replied. “I paid off the Private Security
to look the other way, so no problem on that front.”
“What about Il Migliore?” Ryan asked, curious. “Can you even buy superheroes?”
Luigi chuckled. “Those over-marketed clowns? Don't worry, they make a show of
hitting our operations from time to time, but they're too scared of us to try
anything truly disruptive. They usually go after independents, not professionals.”
“They let us do our business, we let them do theirs,” Zanbato explained,
removing the crates from Ryan's car. “It's like the Cold War. But we're close to
Rust Town and the Meta already hit delivery runs like this one, so prepare
yourself.”
“Then time to fist,” Ryan said, opening the trunk of his car to get his pisto-
gauntlets.
Pisto-gauntlets were metallic gloves, first developed by the infamous Genius
Mechron to equip close-combat drones. Quicksave's own weapons looked like
gauntlets with a hydraulic piston-powered ram built upon them. The mechanism
pushed the ram forward, knocking back the enemy upon smashing; the courier
even improved upon the original design by adding an electrical shock effect to
the mix, for double the pain.
“They are pisto-gauntlets, but they aren't any pisto-gauntlets,” Ryan boasted at
Luigi, as he put his gloves on and showed them off. “I call them The Fisty
Brothers because they fist people to oblivion. Everyone is afraid of nuclear
bombs, but these? These are the real A-bombs.”
Only Grunt 2 laughed, proving that he alone had a future. Luigi looked at Ryan's
gauntlets, then at Zanbato. “Zan, I don't know on which planet your guy lives, but
it's clearly not ours.”
“They say madness is a pit,” Ryan replied cheerfully, hands on his waist. “They're
wrong. Madness is a rollercoaster.”
“I kinda like him,” Zanbato told Luigi, as the other grunts helped add their crates
to the existing pile. “He's funny.”
“You like weird people, period.” Luigi shrugged, raising his sweaters sleeve to
reveal a watch. “Anytime now...”
The waters near the pier grew agitated, the trio looking over the edge. Three
strange, spherical bathyspheres emerged from the waves, each large enough to
house many within their confines. The machines lacked any form of cables,
unlike old bathysphere models, and instead seemed powered by small
propellers. Their reinforced glass door opened, but Ryan couldn't see any
controls or buttons inside.
Ryan gasped, instantly recognizing the design. “That's Len’s stuff!”
“Hey!” Luigi shouted as the courier summarily pushed him out of the way to
observe the machines better.
It barely took a few glances for Ryan to confirm his hypothesis. He could
recognize her work among thousands; the fondness for an outdated, steampunk
technology made viable again; the ruggedness of the design, with beauty
sacrificed on the altar of barbaric efficiency; the crimson paint, her favorite, dulled
by the sea.
The sight of the bathysphere awakened old emotions in Ryan, long-buried
beneath the apathy and boredom. Nostalgia, joy, longing... and even hope.
Finally, after years of fruitless search, Ryan was finally on the right track. His
days of solitude would soon be over.
He knew this mission would further his main quest!
“Len...” Ryan struggled to avoid having a flashback, turning to Zanbato and
pleading like a child. “Where did you find it?! Please, please, please!”
“I dunno,” Zanbato replied. “Vulcan's division takes care of the tech, not ours. We
just transport and manage the supplies.”
“I'm not even sure we even own these machines,” Luigi said, dusting his clothes
and bringing out a phone. He started typing as the grunts threw the crates in the
bathyspheres, perhaps sending a signal to someone else. “Just help us put the
supplies inside and I'll look into it afterward. It's getting cold, and it ain't safe
here.”
Speaking of cold.
Now that Ryan thought of it, it seemed to be getting chillier by the second.
Unnaturally so.
Zanbato noticed it too, and immediately braced himself for an attack. A swirling
sword of solid crimson light appeared in his hands, the perfect replica of a
katana. “They're here,” he said, the grunts immediately raising their machine
guns.
Ryan looked around and quickly noticed them coming from the north.
A distant figure froze the sea, creating a bridge of ice on which he skated. Ryan
immediately recognized Ghoul, although instead of a hoodie, the geriatric
disaster had covered his body in sheets of ice, forming a multi-layered armor. His
body released a cloud of white mist, making it difficult to clearly distinguish his
features.
Another figure flew behind Ghoul, although floating might have been a better
term. The second Genome wore a black hazmat suit and gas mask, giving them
a spooky vibe. Their gauntlets unleashed streams of compressed air, allowing
them to propel themselves on the sea. In short, a living Chernobyl holiday ad.
“Ghoul and Sarin,” Zanbato recognized the two. “Maybe more.”
“I'll take care of them,” Ryan said, eager to continue his main quest without
interruptions. “You can continue with the menial manual labor, minions.”
“You want to take them on alone?” Zanbato asked, a bit concerned. “You're sure?
They're killers.”
Aw, he cared! Ryan raised a thumb up and walked up north towards the stony
beach and the supertanker. He almost slipped on the oiled stones, caught
himself, and then glanced at the sea. The two Psychos clearly aimed for the pier
and the bathyspheres, perhaps having been forewarned.
Then Ghoul noticed Ryan, who mimicked a home run with an invisible bat.
Like how a bull challenged a matador, the Psycho instantly veered off course,
much to his companion’s surprise. He charged at Ryan with murder on his mind.
“You motherBLEEPer!” Ghoul screamed over the sea, the stone beach mimicking
the arctic as he came closer. A dozen ice shards formed from the moisture
around the Psycho, while he said so many insults that Ryan's mind automatically
censored him. “You BLEEP, I'm going to BLEEP your skull and BLEEP BLEEP
BLEEP with my BLEEP!"
That wasn't child friendly. That wasn't child friendly at all.
“You grew back your teeth?” Ryan noticed. “You must have drunk a lot of milk.”
Ghoul responded by leaping on the beach, unleashing a dozen ice daggers at
Ryan at the same time. Apparently, he no longer played baseball but throwing
knives. The courier accepted the challenge.
Ryan stopped time, brought out the knives hidden under his trench coat, aimed,
and threw them. When time resumed, Ghoul’s projectiles were deflected by
Ryan's own; most ice shards hit a warehouse behind, missing their targets, while
a throwing knife found its way to the Psycho’s unprotected eye.
Nailed it! It took him so many restarts to master knife throwing, but it had been
worth it!
“I'll peel your skin, like an orange,” Ghoul hissed in pain as he removed the knife,
his screams music to Ryan's ears. The eye's blood turned to strawberry-colored
ice cream when it came out of the socket, making the courier hungry. “Then I'll
drink your blood, and the sweet Elixir it carries!”
The other Psycho chose that moment to land on the beach, hitting the ice floor
with a loud thump and somehow avoiding slipping up. Ghoul’s white mist slowly
widened the ice layer over the beach, which now spread to the sea and the
walkway; Ryan suddenly wondered if he should add a scarf to his outfit.
“Ghoul, what the hell?” While her voice was somewhat muffled by the mask, miss
nuclear disaster was clearly a girl. “You heard Adam. The shipment first.”
“That's him!” Ghoul snarled, creating blades of ice over his forearms and pointing
them at Ryan. “That's the bastard who beat me up! I told you he was an August!”
Slander? That was the thanks Ryan got for trying to alleviate that old fossil's
suffering? And they said euthanasia was progressive!
“I guess Adam can't be mad at us for dusting one of “em then,” Sarin said, raising
her gauntlets at Ryan as if he should be intimidated. She mustn't have washed
her hands. “If you knew what's good for you, you should have stayed the fuck out
of Rust Town, but I guess you pussies are pretty slow to learn.”
“Don’t worry,” the courier replied. “Whatever happens, Blower—"
“Blower?” the hazmat girl interrupted him, confused. “That's not my na—"
“Your name is Blower now because you blow air.” Ryan then pointed a finger at
one-eye, menacingly. “And now his name is Picard because I liked French frozen
food.”
In retrospect, calling a girl Blower might have sounded a little dirty, because she
became really upset.
Her gauntlets began to vibrate, unleashing a blast of compressed air at
Quicksave. The ice below them began to crack from the shockwave, and Ryan
realized he should have nicknamed her the Vibrator instead.
Stopping time for a few seconds, Ryan lazily waltzed out of the blast's way,
almost slipped on the ice, caught himself, cursed, and then let time resume. The
compressed air blew up the walkway behind the beach, grinding stones to dust
and redecorating the pavement in a straight line for at least ten meters.
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Trying to make it a threesome, Ghoul
skated after Quicksave speed rivaling
that of a car, blades raised. Not
swinging this way Rya)dadged the
aftapk By lowering his head. His time
stop could last for up to ten
seconds—and you could do a lot in
ten seconds—but suffered from a
cooldown duration afterward. It was
equal to the amount of time Ryan
spent freezing time. The content is
on Novelxo.org! Read the latest
chapter there!
Use the time stop for five seconds, can't do it again five seconds afterward.
Not understanding the concept of personal space, Ghoul kept trying to nail Ryan
with his blade and received a punch in the stomach for his trouble. Fisty activated
on contact, the ram smashing through the Psycho’s ice armor and sending him
flying backward to take a bath in the sea. The water froze right after he entered it.
Unfortunately, the contact with Ghoul’s white mist froze Fisty, jamming the
pistons. Goddamnit, it always had performance issues when things heated up.
Not caring about her teammate, Sarin kept focusing on attacking Ryan, who
chuckled at his own mental joke. The courier had to run away from the beach
and on the walkway, as a shockwave collapsed the ice, even briefly stopping
time to make it.
“You blow air very fast? That's your power?” Ryan struggled not to laugh, but
almost slipped on the frozen pavement, ruining the moment. Why didn’t he
dedicate a loop to learn ice skating again? “My fan can do the same, and it cost
me fifteen bucks!”
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Seeing Ryan escape and still pining
for his undivided attention, Sarin
pointed her hands at her feet andy
unleashed a new shédiavare A
Ne :
cblurhn'of compressed air propelled
her upward, allowing her to leap over
the harbor. Ryan looked up and got a
perfect view of her back, but much to
his disappointment, she seemed to
float inside her suit. Very strange.
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Read the latest chapter there!
“Why the obsession, Blower?” Ryan asked, trying to unjam Fisty so he could
introduce her to that crazy girl's face. Nothing dirty. “Have you fallen for me at
first sight?”
“Unfortunately for you,” Sarin replied, vibrating her gauntlets from above to rain
short blasts at the walkway, “I'm a necrophiliac.”
Oh, a fellow quipper! Ryan was so happy to have some back and forth
interactions, even if he needed to focus on avoiding the blasts. So many people
just tried to kill him without exchanging pleasantries, it was just rude.
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Stopping time again, Ryan ran away
and managed to reach the part of the
. )
walkway which hadn't frozen over.
Running on ice was a lot harder iq do
than it sed
ipbrtantly, made him look like a
> San
klutz. When time resumed, Sarin’s
volley had turned the frozen
pavement into a cheese. On the
horizon, the courier noticed Zanbato
and Luigi finishing the supply run,
seeing that he could handle the
: : “pr )
situation well. “I'm sure we'll break
> » .
the ice between us.” The content is
on Novelxo.org! Read the latest
chapter there!
“That's just pitiful,” Sarin replied upon landing on the roof of a waterfront
warehouse. The height gave her a better view of the walkway, and solid ground
allowed her to focus entirely on Ryan. This time, having resolved her own
performance issues, she switched from short bursts to sustained fire.
“Did my invitation leave you... stone cold?” Quicksave shouted innocently to Miss
Chernobyl, running away while managing to unjam Fisty. The sustained blast
collapsed the walkway behind him, stones falling on the beach. Frankly, it
surprised Ryan that they hadn't woken up the whole neighborhood.
“Don't you ever shut up?!” Ghoul's voice snarled, as the drenched Psycho leaped
on the walkway for a second round. Even with his armor of ice on, he left
saltwater behind with every step, and... was that a starfish stuck to his leg?
“Anyway, as I said before you interrupted me, whatever happens...”
Ryan turned to face his foes and extended his arms, doing his best to look
fabulous.
“I won't take you seriously.”