Chapter 121: Presidential Debate (1/2)
Two presidents had walked into a room, and only one would escape it alive.
“How about we start this debate with gun politics?” Ryan said, as he clocked his Beretta. “Then we can move on to the War on Terror. Spoiler warning: you’re going to lose it hard.”
“I was about to suggest dietary policies, Laddie,” the living Michelin ad replied with pitch-black humor, as he kept his left hand hidden behind his back. Having lived through this situation before, Ryan had a pretty good idea of what, or rather who, he kept in reserve. “You’ll be the second person most concerned.”
He revealed his left hand, and Ryan didn’t flinch.
Big Fat Adam had brought a hostage, as he did during the courier’s suicide run. An Arab boy no older than fourteen, with tears of terror raining down his cheeks. A Rust Town denizen kidnapped to serve as cannon-fodder against the bunker’s defenses.
“And though I prefer to eat French,” Adam said with a vicious smirk, moving his right hand to hold his prisoner like a sandwich, “I can settle for a keb—”
Ryan swiftly shot him thrice, once in the face, and twice in the left hand.
Big Fat Adam closed his eyelids on reflex, but the first bullet impacted on the giant’s left eye and bypassed the carbon skin. The ocular organ exploded into a rain of shrapnel and blood, while the other bullets blew off the Psycho’s thumb.
The surprised Adam let out a roar of pain and agony, and his victim slipped through his bloodied fingers.
“Sorry, fatass, you made that joke before,” Ryan said as he rushed toward the falling victim and activated his power. “And it wasn’t funny the first time either!”
Adam’s right hand lunged to grab his hostage, but stopped inches away from his neck as the world turned purple. Ryan caught his ‘damsel-in-distress’ in his arms, and immediately moonwalked in the opposite direction.
No sooner did time resume than Adam’s carbon fist hit the metal ground, bending the steel.
“Run!” Ryan said, as he helped the hostage stand on his feet.
“But—” he started to speak in a Turkish dialect, too shocked to react.
“Escape through the corridor to the nearest voting booth, and stuff these ballots!” Ryan shouted in the same tongue, while Adam rushed at them with murderous fury. “Vote for me!”
The hostage was too shaken to do his patriotic duty, so Ryan decided to narrow his voting options. He began to freeze time, right as Adam the Ogre protected his face with his right hand.
Huh? Odd timing.
But still, Ryan loved immobile targets, and shot the hardened Psycho in the left leg thrice. One bullet bounced off his knee, but the others blasted holes in the calf.
“Let me introduce you to my friend, Depleted.” Ryan said as time resumed. Adam stumbled on the cold hard ground, and the courier was still out of his hand’s reach. “Family name Uranium.”
President Romano did not believe in gun control.
Where Ryan’s presidential charisma failed, the fear of the opposition worked like a charm. The hostage ran as fast as he could through the entrance corridor, leaving the two POTUS candidates to fight for the White House.
“I remember that voice…” Adam rasped as he rose back to his feet. In spite of the calf wounds, his enhanced Genome metabolism allowed him to carry on. “You’re Bloodstream’s kid. Cesare something. You’re here to settle Daddy’s score with us?”
“Actually, I’m here to take your presidential office for myself,” Ryan said, as he circled the giant from the left and waited for his time-stop’s cooldown to end. “Even people in your campaign staff voted for me!”
“The dead don’t get to vote,” Adam replied, although without any false joviality. His jaw extended as he put his unharmed hand through, and he brought out a grenade with Mechron’s symbol on it. “And you’re forgetting abstention.”
He activated the bomb and tossed it at Ryan.
The courier froze time and dashed to the left side to dodge, while Adam lowered himself as if to sprint.
Ryan couldn’t afford to waste his precious special ammo, as he had only a limited amount. Worse, although the bullets were top-notch quality, the caliber couldn’t piece the colossus’ carbon shield in all places. The bones below the knee were probably as hard as the skin protecting them, and unlike Lightning Butt, bullets didn’t have enough strength to break them.
The courier would write down ‘adamantine bullets’ on his Christmas list, but in the meantime, he needed to target Adam’s throat and stomach. Ryan wondered how the Psycho’s second power would react to intestinal wounds though.
Well, time to find out.
The courier shot the Psycho in his belly, which was so big that he barely bothered to aim. The bullet tore a hole through the carbon skin as time resumed, but no blood flowed out of the wound. If anything, Ryan noticed air getting sucked into the opening.
The live grenade exploded in a fiery blast of red particles without harming anyone, while Big Fat Adam sprinted at his rival. Ryan had to roll to the side to avoid a punch, then lower himself to avoid a second. The ogre moved with greater speed and agility than his size would suggest, giving his foe no breathing room.
Worse, Ryan quickly realized that the Psycho’s attacks weren’t random at all. Though the courier survived the volley of blows by retreating, he did so by getting closer to the colored vats in the chamber.
Some contained knockoff Elixirs, or substances just as dangerous.
“Say no to drugs, kids,” Ryan replied while raising his gun to counterattack, freezing time to get a better line of fire. But Big Fat Adam quickly covered his head, once again shielding his lone remaining eye.
A doubt crossed Ryan’s mind.
The courier fired another bullet in the frozen Adam’s gullet, before diving down between the giant’s legs. The shot opened a hole in the Psycho’s throat, but once again no blood flowed out. Big Fat Adam held a pocket dimension in his innards, but it seemed to spread all the way through the gullet.
When time resumed, Ryan had ran away as far from the Knockoff vats as possible, while Adam the Ogre quickly pivoted.
“Eight seconds, mate,” the Meta-Gang’s leader said, as glanced at the distance between Ryan’s current spot and his previous one. His voice had turned raspy from the throat wound, but he could still speak. “Ten if you push it. That’s your limit.”
“How did you know I was a Violet?” Ryan asked, holding the Beretta with one hand and grabbing throwing knives from below his trench coat with the other. “You hadn’t recognized me then.”
“Call it a gut feeling, boyo,” Adam replied, before grabbing the blue liquid vat with both hands, and ripping it off the ground. Cables dangled from the device, spraying the carbon-skinned man with azure, shining liquid. “Takes one to know one.”
Acid Rain.
Adam was like Acid Rain. He could sense Ryan’s power, at least instinctively.
The courier had never dueled the Meta-Gang’s leader for an extended period in the past. Each of them usually fought with back-up, so Ryan never paid his movements full attention. But the way the Psycho covered his vitals whenever the courier attempted to freeze time, or the quickness of his reactions whenever time resumed…
Ryan remembered his first encounter with the big fat president, which ended with the courier backhanded all the way across this very room. He thought the fatass had simply been fast enough to hit him right after his time-stop ended, but now, the courier wondered if Adam actually sensed him.
That bastard! Even after so many loops, he still kept tricks up his sleeve!
Thankfully, unlike Acid Rain, the Fatass didn’t have the reflexes nor teleportation ability to fully exploit that knowledge. Ryan still had the edge, and most importantly, experience.
The Psycho threw the vat at the courier, right as Ryan tossed a knife at his right eye. Adam closed his eyelid and the blade bounced off it, but this gave the courier time to adjust his aim.
His bullet crossed the gap between the two fighters faster than the glass vat did, blowing off Adam’s other eye. Ryan froze time before the vat could hit him and quickly dashed to safety, counting back his ammo.
He still had half left, but he was burning through his reserve faster than the national defense budget.
The vat exploded on the ground on impact, spraying blue liquid and glass shards in all directions. Ryan had escaped to safety by then, but a puddle of liquid spread on the steel ground.
If the drops made it past his clothes and reached the skin beneath…