The Perfect Run

Ryan thought his life was a role-playing game.

“Kill them all!” a druggie shouted from atop a roof, hitting Ryan’s car with a submachine gun, the bullets unable to pierce the shielding. Everywhere, the courier heard the sound of bullets flying. “Kill them all!”

But somewhere along the line, it had turned into a FPS.

Hiding behind his car with an earplug in his right ear, Ryan reloaded his pistol while mourning the Plymouth Fury’s paint job; at his side, Fortuna fired over her shoulder with a pistol with one hand, and texted on a phone with the other. She didn’t even aim, and her bullets always resulted in a headshot. At least she had taken to wearing a white, streamlined armor to protect herself.

Seriously, one bad haircut, and suddenly the world wasn’t safe anymore?

In total, twelve people, Ryan and Fortuna included, hid behind the cover of half a dozen cars and SUVs. Most were henchmen wearing riot gear and carrying powerful firearms, with one exception: a woman in a suit of heavy, red padded advanced armor whose design reminded Ryan of steampunk comics. That Genome had drunk the Firebrand knock-off Elixir, and as promised by Vulcan, her armor boosted her pyrokinesis. Sometimes, she looked over her cover to throw a car-sized fireball at the enemy.

“You know texting while fighting is the first cause of bullet accidents?” Ryan asked Fortuna, as one of his car’s windows exploded, shattered by a 20mm round.

“I’m texting my brother,” she replied dismissively, barely paying attention to the battle. The lucky Genome didn’t even bother to protect herself, the snipers having a clear line of fire to hit her head. Yet so far, every bullet had narrowly missed her helmet.

“Felix the Atom Cat?”

“You know that?” Fortuna groaned. “I’m in the middle of a firefight and he won’t answer his big sister!”

Having reloaded, Ryan froze time for ten seconds and peeked over his car. Beyond the protective vehicle line, the welcoming committee had taken refuge inside two half-demolished apartment buildings, surrounding the main road leading to the Junkyard. Most of the walls had fallen, but the remains provided snipers with enough protection. As for the road itself, the Meta’s men had blocked it with a trash barricade, leaving only small openings to allow their machine guns to fire through. The Augusti’s Firebrand Genome had managed to set the road on fire though, forcing the defenders to flee or die in the flames.

However, it didn’t look like the snipers would run out of ammo anytime soon. Ryan shot two of them, before taking cover as time unfroze. Far in the distance, west of his position, he noticed crimson beams piercing through Rust Town's polluted clouds. Sparrow’s doing, probably.

In total, Vulcan had deployed three hundred soldiers to retake Rust Town, divided in groups all across the district. Most of them were non-superhuman paramilitary. Others were Genomes having drunk a knock-off Elixir; people like Ryan or the Killer Seven, with original powers, were a minority in the squad.

The Private Security had watched the squadron move inside Rust Town without reacting, perhaps hoping the Augusti and Meta would slaughter one another. Vulcan then deployed her forces all around the Junkyard, where the Meta had established their headquarters.

Unfortunately, as soon as Ryan’s group approached the area’s outskirts, they found themselves welcomed by armed men.

“Vulcan here,” Ryan heard through his earplug. “How’s the situation?”

“It’s a camper contest here,” the courier replied. “It’s the bad days of Quake all over again! But my car is alright!”

“Yes, that’s the important thing,” Fortuna replied with a sassy tone. “If someone could help us, that would be great. I’ve got a date tonight.”

“You will wait,” Vulcan replied, although she sounded quite blase. “Cancel and Sparrow are busy dealing with Gemini and Sarin, and I’m fully occupied dealing with cannon fodder. It’s such a drag, pursuing them house to house.”

“No sign of Acid Rain or Adam?” the courier asked. The Meta’s leader was their main target, as Vulcan believed he alone held his group together; if he died, the Psychos would splinter and become manageable.

“Scared?” Fortuna taunted him, putting her cell phone back into one of her armor’s pockets.

“Frankly, I could do without Acid Rain,” Ryan replied, being in no hurry to die to her again. “Our powers interfere with one another. She can predict my shifts and counter them.”

“Then Fortuna will stay with you,” Vulcan declared. Wise choice. No matter how powerful she was, Acid Rain needed guns, knives, and weapons to kill. And Fortuna’s cheat code of a superpower allowed her to neutralize them. “And no, no sign of either yet. Nor of any of the big guns, oddly.”

“Why do I have to stay with that maniac?” Fortuna complained, as their fire Genome set a building floor on fire with a well-placed fireball. “Can’t you send me with Greta?”

“You will stay with Quicksave because I say so, brat.”

“I’m older than you!”

“Don’t waste my patience, Fortuna. Clearing out the outskirts is already more exhausting than I expected, so I’m not in the mood to hear your whining.”

Clearly, Vulcan didn’t think the battle would last for so long. The Meta had a lot more foot soldiers than anticipated.

Ryan briefly froze time and glanced over his cover to survey the situation. Much to his horror, a new, scrawny sniper had appeared inside the left building, rejoining two other men with what appeared to be an archaic rocket launcher.

“Uh, oh, rocket launcher to the left!” Ryan shouted a warning as time resumed. How did the Meta-Gang recruit so many mooks?!

“On it,” a voice echoed through the earplug.

Mortimer suddenly phased through a wall behind the sniper nest in the left building, taking them by surprise. Mortimer was the only member of his hit squad who went into the field without armor, perhaps because it interfered with his power. From what Ryan had seen, the killer could phase through surfaces, from cinder block walls to the earthly ground.

In any case, Mortimer slaughtered the mooks with a submachine gun, then phased through the ground within the blink of an eye. The man with the rocket launcher fell through a destroyed wall, falling on the ground below.

“Thirteen,” Mortimer gloated through the earplug. “I’m leading.”

“Not for long, Morty!”

Fortuna fired one bullet.

snipers fell from the right building’s

the kill contest when the reality of the situation hit

two people

two people with one

…

did it work?” Ryan asked.

with a shrug, amused by his confusion. “The world simply

and spent the entire ten seconds looking at the scene and trying to puzzle it out. Did the bullet bounce back on one sniper's skull

“What? Why?”

rabbit’s, I want some of that sweet

of fact, go BLEEP yourself, you crazy… homeless… you crazy

pitiful attempt at improvisation, shaking his

angry snarl, rose up from behind the car, and unleashed a volley of bullets at the defenders. When she emptied her magazine, the fighting suddenly came to an

as did the rest of the Augusti. They only faced corpses with holes

coming out of her gun's barrel. “I

Mortimer complained.

and lost only one henchman, shot at the beginning of the firefight. Such was

the area until I give new instructions,”

perimeter, but Ryan didn’t join them. Instead, he focused on what truly mattered to

His Plymouth Fury.

sigh of blissful relief after he reviewed the engine and key parts. The protective alloys had held against the gunfire. “I will have to repair the

intercom. “Does your car have a heart, on top of the

heart, but not

must have gone Michael B. on her

Gemini retreated,” Sparrow replied, ever the professional. “We have control

losers about it,” Mortimer said, his voice turning raspy as he cleared his throat. “Look at the

clouds spread above the Junkyard,

Acid Rain.

the west, so she

with their heavy hitters,” Vulcan guessed. “But I wonder how they

quite optimistic though. If the Meta struggled to mount a defense, it meant the attack took them by surprise. He could always refine the plan in a future loop,

plan,” Vulcan muttered. “Now that we have control over the roads, he won’t

said. “It’s not about winning, it’s about getting off on our

see mountains of trash from my rookery,” Mortimer said. “It

could take them in

“I’ll fly by and do some recon first. Hold the road, there’s definitely something fishy going

a hawk, while Fortuna had again begun to

notice the Dynamis logo on quite a few. It

found it oddly familiar. As if someone had pointed it at him

as he turned the dead sniper’s body on his back, to get a good look

“Paulie?” Ryan said, astonished.

away from her cell

“But that makes no sense,

service,” the pompous woman replied, her voice softening. “My condolences. You

threatened to throw a plushie at

to her texting and

voice turned from surprised to

her cell

have

explosion, both in the distance and

without warning, the

quite put a word on it, but he felt no longer welcome in Rust Town. He sensed hundreds, thousands of invisible eyes gazing at him in judgment; the courier’s body entered a fight-or-flight response, his muscles tensing in alarm. He had entered the den of a mighty predator and now had its full

and suddenly collapsing to her knees. A cloud of yellow energy flared around her body, an ethereal field surrounding her. An invisible force

struggled to stand on his feet, as some

could say more, the building he stood on collapsed due to the earthquake, the hitman phasing through the falling cinder blocks and

into it and gaining psychic control over a certain territory. Add geokinesis on top of that, and you had a truly

apparently, their intel had miscalculated her powers’ range. The tremors spread all over Rust Town, collapsing every building in sight in a catastrophic domino effect and blowing dust across

raining on them. The Augusti ran in all directions, Ryan included, but some of the henchmen were soon buried alive under

threatening to disappear entirely. Debris that passed through the yellow aura miraculously