Chapter 5: Mission Accomplished (1/2)

Bugs Bunny.

The rabbit was Ryan’s most beloved character in all of fiction, and he had watched all its cartoons during his endless wandering. The courier always laughed at hunters’ failure to catch the wily animal, their rage growing with each missed bullet.

So it must have been very frustrating for these two.

“Stop it!” By now, Ghoul fumed so much that it became difficult to see through the white mist surrounding him. The whole harbor was slowly freezing, while the Psycho threw car-sized blocks of ice at Ryan. “Stop dodging!”

Ryan lazily stopped time, moved out of a projectile's path, then cancelled his power. The Psycho was actually getting worse with his aiming the more angered he grew. Unfortunately, the white mist surrounding Mr. dem bones also made it impossible for Ryan to get in close without freezing in place.

He knew he should have invested in a thicker sweater.

“Ghoul, he’s a speedster!” Sarin snarled, still standing on a roof to keep the high ground. She was no more successful than her ally at hitting Ryan, who mocked her by activating his time-stop just when her blasts were within an inch of reaching him. At one point, the courier even took the time to blow her a kiss. “Just freeze him already!”

“I’m not a speedster, I’m Quicksave!” Ryan shouted, before revealing his greatest secret. “I’m immortal, but don’t tell anyone!”

“Soon you’re just going to be blood on the pavement!”

What pavement? By now the two Psychos had destroyed the entire waterfront, turning it into an icy wasteland of snow and craters. Ryan had to keep moving north to find ground to stand on, eventually luring the duo to an empty parking lot.

While Ghoul pursued him on foot, his female companion glided on top of a streetlight, somehow managing to avoid slipping up. There was something wrong with the way she moved, as if she had no weight at all. All Psychos were mutants, so she must have an abnormal physiology beneath the hazmat suit.

“I’m sorry but you make ice cream and blow off air,” Ryan pointed out. “Household products can do it. While I control the lynchpin of all reality. I try not to sound patronizing but…”

Ghoul unleashed a wide burst of white mist with a furious growl, freezing everything in its path.

Ryan simply activated his time-stop and dodged once again. Still, growing bored with the pursuit and now having an opening, he grabbed two of his throwing knives; launching one at Ghoul’s remaining eye, the other at Sarin.

When time resumed, Ghoul lost his remaining eye, and Sarin took a knife to the chest.

“You ain’t making it easy.”

Ryan stopped talking, however, when green gas came out of Sarin’s hazmat suit. The strange substance immediately rusted the streetlight below the Psycho, causing the electrical parts to short-circuit and the metal to slowly bend. Sarin put a hand on the opening, trying to keep the gas inside.

He knew she was full of hot air.

“I’ll kill you…” Ghoul whined, his face now looking like a strawberry sorbet with all the frozen blood flowing from his skull. It was vaguely horrifying, but Ryan had seen worse. “I’ll kill you…”

“Ghoul, I know the sight of my dashing costume and my long, bloody bat made you fall for me at first sight,” Ryan taunted him. “Trust me, I get that a lot. But I just don’t see you that way.”

“I swear to God, I swear it,” rasped the abominable ice cream, his hands on his face, “If you crack a joke again, I—”

“You will give me the cold shoulder?” Ryan chuckled, unable to resist.

Ghoul exploded in a snarl of fury, his body swallowed by white mist. The strange substance seemed to swirl around him, creating layers upon layers of stalagmites.

When it dissipated, Ghoul was gone, replaced with a four meters tall titan of ice and snow. This strange fusion between a snowman and a hedgehog had maces instead of hands, and a thick defense of ice spikes.

“Oh.”

Ryan barely had the time to leap to the side, as the enormous snowman attempted to squash him like a bug. The sheer strength of the elemental construct shattered the concrete and shook the ground. Sarin meanwhile, was too busy trying to cover the hole in her suit to assist.

How did Ghoul manage to make that body work? Ice didn’t work that way, it couldn’t even bend! Ryan called cheating!

A rumbling noise echoed across the parking lot, growing louder with each new step. Something heavy was rushing towards the battlefield, to claim part of the glory.

“Quicksave!” Zanbato entered the parking lot, his hands manifesting a sword of crimson light. “The Security is coming!”

“I thought you guys paid them off?” Ryan asked, dodging another strike from Ghoul. He wondered how the Psycho could locate him without his eyes, guessing it probably had something to do with temperature.

“We paid them to ignore a delivery run, not the harbor’s destruction!” Zanbato glanced at the two Psychos present, and first cut the streetlight on which Sarin stood. Miss Chernobyl glided to the other end of the parking lot, confirming Ryan’s suspicions that she was made of gas.

Zanbato switched target from Sarin to her compatriot, who was closer; moving at great speeds in spite of the heaviness of his armor, he cut through the giant snowman’s leg like a turkey, slicing it clean in half. Yet the limb quickly reattached itself to the body, Zanbato having to step back to avoid being frozen by mist. The Augusti mafioso still tried to hack at the giant, proving himself so annoying that Ghoul abandoned his pursuit of Ryan to attack this new foe.

The sound of an aircraft echoed above them, Ryan raising his eyes to watch an attack helicopter fly above the parking lot. He recognized it as a customized Agusta A129 Mangusta, piloted by two security guards.

Ryan waved a pile of bank notes at them, as a sign of friendship.

They responded with a missile.

Ryan stopped time just long enough to move out of the bomb’s way, thankful that they didn’t use laser weapons; he was fast, but not as much as light. When time resumed, he quickly realized that the Private Security targeted everyone, the missile impacting in the middle of the battlefield.

Zanbato protected his face with his hand and avoided being knocked back, his armor deflecting debris; while Ghoul’s snowman form took the projectiles without showing any form of discomfort. Sarin, however, was pushed backward by the blast, quickly getting back on her feet with fury.

“Fuck off!” Hazmat girl moved a hand to cover the hole in her suit, and the other towards the skies. A second later, she fired a blast straight at the helicopter, destroying its tail and sending it on a crash course towards the ground.

Alright, it had gone on long enough. Playtime’s over.

As Sarin pointed her gauntlet at Ryan, the courier stopped time for the last time.