First contact started with a fight, but to mankind’s credit, the aliens shot first.

Ryan barely had the time to activate his power and push Len and the Panda down, as the mysterious intruder fired a crimson ray into the room. When time resumed, the laser had vaporized the computer’s chair and blown a molten hole in a metal wall. Mr. Wave, who could move at lightspeed, sidestepped to dodge the attack, while Sarin and Sunshine were immediately on high alert. Shroud turned invisible, as he usually did.

The creature quickly stepped into the laboratory, in all its inhuman glory. The horror was a biomechanical, humanoid abomination three meters tall, its entire body covered in crimson-orange metal armor. A strange, black biological growth taking the shape of an organic cannon covered the right arm, while the left arm’s humanoid hand had claws as sharp as knives. The armor showcased reptilian green eyes on the shoulders and the chest, while acid drooled down a fanged mouth where the stomach should have been. A cyclopean gaze peered through a green visor and a crimson helmet.

Ryan decided to call it ‘E.T.’.

“Well, I guess we’re too late for the boiled eggs,” the courier said as he rose back to his feet alongside his teammates. “We’re skipping straight to the omelet.”

“Sifu, what is this thing?!” the Panda asked in horror, though to his credit the young pandawan had already adopted a fighting pose.

“It’s them!” Nice Guy answered from inside its tank, though only Ryan understood it. “They’re back! They’re back!”

“Who cares,” Sarin said, energy building up in her gauntlets. “It struck first!”

The alien answered with a gargling, inhuman roar.

“Mr. Wave guesses you will join all his dead enemies,” the boastful genome said, his body flaring red. “Deep down the extinct species list!”

Mr. Wave turned into a laser to smash into E.T. head on. However, the creature teleported in a flash of purple light before the Carnival member could hit it. Mr. Wave continued his course into the next room, while E.T. reappeared in the middle of the laboratory. Sarin raised her gauntlets, but Sunshine interrupted her before she could strike. “Careful, you might hit the Elixirs’ containers!” he warned. “If any drop hits one of us—”

To her credit, Sarin didn’t open fire, and tried to position herself to avoid both damaging the facility and harming her teammate. Sunshine followed her lead, while the Panda and Len attempted to engage E.T. in melee. Finding the area too crowded for his usual acrobatics, Ryan attempted to encircle the creature from the side.

E.T.’s body flared with an orange glow, and both the Panda’s claws and Len’s mechanical fists phased harmlessly through the creature. Yet when the monster’s left hand reached for the Panda’s throat, it turned solid. The claws sank into the manbear’s flesh like butter, lifted him above the ground, and tossed him at Len. Shortie caught the pandawan, but both were tossed back. To Ryan’s horror, Shortie’s back impacted on Nice Guy’s biomechanical container, but to his relief, the machine was much more solid than it looked. The vat stood firm, not even showing a crack.

While the Panda quickly shifted between his bear and human form to heal his wound, the alien’s multiple eyes then started projecting a blue light that reminded Ryan of a sci-fi scanner. Each of the eyes analyzed a single member of the group, but E.T.’s visor snapped in the courier’s direction when his turn came. The courier immediately recognized the emotion within the alien’s cyclopean gaze.

Fear.

“Before you ask, I don’t have a phone,” Ryan replied, and the disappointed E.T. responded by turning red and charged at him. Though far larger than the time-traveler, the alien moved at a speed almost too fast for the eye to follow. Ryan barely had the time to activate his time-stop before the monster’s left claw reached out for his head.

And they kept going.

Ryan watched on as the claws slowly moved closer to him inch by inch, so slow the movement was almost imperceptible. The alien’s ocular organs glanced around them in slow motion, keeping an eye on the thin cracks that Ryan’s Black Flux particles ripped into the fabric of spacetime.

Damn it, could everyone move inside Ryan’s private time now? He should charge them for the privilege!

Though thankfully the alien couldn’t move very fast, unlike Lightning Butt. Ryan pivoted on the creature’s flank, aimed in the direction opposite to the Elixirs’ vats, and activated his armor’s chest weapon at point-blank range. A gravity projectile rushed at E.T. when time resumed, hitting it in the chest.

Ryan had seen that device blow a hole in Mechron’s bunker, but it failed to even damage the alien’s biomechanical suit. It only pushed E.T. back a few meters into one of the lab’s corners, the monster’s armored feet anchoring themselves into the metal ground.

“My homo sapiens will kick your pseudopod!” Nice Guy shouted through the telepathic link. The ‘my’ part made Ryan shudder, but he focused on the fight ahead. “Right between the globules!”

Shroud chose this moment to reveal himself, flying right above the alien. Using his glass armor’s extra mass, the vigilante manifested thick bindings keeping the surprised E.T. restrained. “Now!” he shouted.

Now their line of fire was clear, both Sarin and Sunshine struck right as Shroud retreated. The cornered E.T. took a blast of solar plasma and a powerful shockwave to the face.

Or it should have, if it hadn’t manifested a white, rounded energy field right before the impact. The protection took the appearance of a small sphere around the alien’s armor, and canceled the attacks the moment they hit it. Solar flares and red shockwaves were instantly canceled, while Shroud’s glass restraints turned to harmless glass dust.

White Flux. The creature could use a variant of Cancel’s power.

Ryan almost activated his power, but decided against it. If that shield allowed the monster to move at normal speed inside his time anomaly, then it would massacre his allies. At least E.T. had stopped moving while it kept the shield up, its multiple eyes glancing in all directions.

“I can’t feel my glass inside that shield!” Shroud shouted as Len and the Panda joined him, the group surrounding the alien from all sides.

“White Genome!” Leo shouted, while Mr. Wave returned to the laboratory, ready for round two. Neither Sunshine nor Sarin had interrupted their barrage though, keeping the creature pinned to its corner. Perhaps they hoped to short-circuit the shield too. “Don’t enter its range.”

“It’s not a host!” Nice Guy protested. Though nobody but Ryan could understand what the trapped Elixir said, it could clearly hear what the group said. “It stole our energies and bottled them up!”

“So it has a limited supply?” Ryan guessed, preparing to open fire with his gravity gun. The creature exhausted Flux the way a car used oil, which meant it could run out of juice. “Keep going!”

The courier opened fire with his chest weapon, while Len did the same with a jet of pressurized water. Neither projectiles used powers to work, so they bypassed the white Flux shield.

However, E.T. responded by collapsing its white shield and teleporting away before any attack could connect. “Above!” Shroudy shouted out a warning, as the monster reappeared above their heads. Its feet clung to the ceiling like Spider-man.

The alien raised its organic, right hand cannon. The weapon shifted to reveal a dozen mouths on all sides, each spitting out a spiked, green seed.

The group dispersed in all directions to avoid the barrage, even the Living Sun. He was wise enough not to take an unnecessary risk, and right to do so. When the projectiles hit the ground, their spikes immediately expanded into fanged roots capable of shredding through the steel. One landed among the Wonderboxes, and to Ryan’s horror, it seemed to gorge itself on the Elixirs. That particular seed started to grow unnaturally large at a nightmarish speed, forcing Leo to immediately incinerate the plant before it could overtake the room.

E.T. continued its onslaught, forcing the group to disperse. Much like he saved Ryan during his first loops, Mr. Wave used his astonishing speed to move the slower members of the group to safety. Ryan and Shroud both took flight and attempted to hit the alien from both sides.

The creature responded by teleporting again, this time walking on the surface of Nice Guy’s vat. E.T. must have noticed the group’s unwillingness to damage the room’s equipment, and now using its position as a defense while it continued its bombardment. The alien’s chest-mouth gargled, and Ryan realized the creature was talking.

“What does it say?” Sarin asked, repelling a seed by creating a weak shockwave around her entire body.

“I think—” The Panda squealed as he barely managed to dodge an organic projectile, his power allowing him to grab the basics of the alien’s language. “I think it said ‘peace among the stars’!”

Ah, so the ‘kill everyone who resists’ kind of peace. Wonderful. While Ryan’s experience with the Elixirs had taught him most extraterrestrial creatures were benign, the courier guessed they had just met one of the rotten apples.

The courier charged with his armor, deciding to engage E.T. in close combat.

In response, the alien stopped its onslaught, an orange hue spreading through its armor. When it receded, the suit had changed color. From the plates of crimson to the visor, all parts of the armor had turned into ivory.

Into adamantine.

The creature could change its armor’s material on a molecular level, even into something indestructible.

Yet in this case, that was a mistake. The alien arrogantly leaped on the ground, hand raised to engage Ryan in close combat. Its adamantine claws could tear the Saturn armor apart like butter.

“Don’t!” Mr. Wave warned, attempting to prevent a close encounter by ramming into E.T. himself. But the extraterrestrial thing didn’t even register his presence, the living laser bouncing off its indestructible armor like a tennis ball on a wall. The alien charged at the courier with mechanical determination.

When Ryan was within a few inches of the alien, he froze time and punched it in the helmet. E.T. didn’t even attempt to dodge, as arrogantly confident in its invulnerability as Lightning Butt. Its adamantine armor allowed it to move normally in the stopped time, but its foe had centuries of experience under his belt.

Ryan lowered his head to dodge E.T.’s claws, while his fist smashed the alien’s visor. A crack spread on the ivory metal… and black particles slipped inside.

The alien let out a burst of multi-colored energy in the stopped time, sending Ryan stumbling backward. The creature screeched when the clock resumed, scratching its helmet in panic.

“Nerd, what did you do?!” Sarin snarled, creeped out by the scene. She unleashed a shockwave at E.T., but the attack had no more effect than a breeze against the creature’s indestructible body.

Ryan took a step back, as E.T.’s high-pitched screams only increased in intensity. Black lines appeared all over the armor’s surface, revealing nearly invisible circuits surging with Flux. The courier noticed streaks of white, red, blue, and all the other colors of the Elixir rainbow.

All of them were quickly turning black.

Black’s essence was paradox, a destabilizing influence, and the alien’s armor seemed to use the core seven colors in tandem. A perfect union which Ryan had disrupted.

“I think I caused an oil spill,” the courier admitted sheepishly.

E.T. let out an abominable scream as its eyes all turned black, and a sphere of darkness appeared inside its maw. Gravity collapsed around it, cutting the monster in half and dragging both parts into the tiny black hole. The Black Flux devoured the alien from within.

“Riri, get doooow—” Len rushed to her best friend’s side, but her movements slowed down, her sentence left hanging. Though the world around Ryan hadn’t turned purple, everything had frozen in place. Sunshine flames consumed the seeds without ever finishing the job; Shroud gave a hand to Mr. Wave, but their fingers never reached one another; Sarin’s gauntlets shone with red energy, while the Panda’s head peeked from behind the room’s computer. Even the alien’s body remained trapped between the two seconds, its body perpetually devoured by the black hole at its core. Tiny cracks in the fabric of spacetime spread around it.

Everything had stopped except for the Elixirs, which still swirled inside their containers, and Ryan himself. The courier looked around himself, but his body neither produced violet nor black particles. No phantom of the past pursued him.

This space-time anomaly was unrelated to his power, and it frightened him.

“Gee, did I accidentally break time?” Ryan asked, before glancing at the trapped Elixirs. He focused on the violet one. “Any idea how to fix this?”

To his surprise, the Violet Elixir answered with a telepathic message of its own. “Are you a homo sapiens?” it asked, hopeful.

Ryan sighed. “No, I’m a platypus.”

“Oh. I am sad.” Apparently, though they could understand the human tongue, sarcasm was still beyond an Elixir’s power. “The Black does as it wills.”

Of course it did. Ryan approached the black hole, in case he could close it the same way he had once opened a gate to the Black World.

“My friend.”

Though it echoed in Ryan’s mind, the voice didn’t belong to Nice Guy, or the Violet Elixir. The courier could have recognized it among any other.

Ryan peeked into the black hole, a speck of darkness no bigger than a finger. It was no bottomless pit, but a door. A portal to a familiar place.

“Darkling?” Ryan called out into the void.

And it answered, with what could pass for psychic frustration.

“My name… is not Darkling.”

“Yes it is,” Ryan replied, though he let out a breath of relief. “I’m glad to hear from you too, my alien minority friend.”

“We have little time…” the alien warned, going straight to business. “When the Black Flux has finished consuming this creature’s Flux reserves… the door will collapse and time will resume… I cannot talk to you for long.”

Ryan let out a sigh of relief, thankful he wouldn’t need to reload to put time back on track. “How is it even possible?” he asked. “We needed a particle accelerator to open a portal last time.”

“Spacetime in this metal prison is… irregular. Thin. I believe it was meant to be… to open doors to the higher realms.” And as it was often the case with would-be summoners, Eva Fabre had probably summoned something she couldn’t put down. That would also explain why Ryan’s Black Flux particles had such an easy time destabilizing the pocket dimension. “I have observed this place from the Black World… where time holds no sway. From this portal, I have seen the past… and the present… I watched… and I learned.”

“Can you tell me what this place is?” Ryan asked, glancing at the facility.

“Once there was an empire… in another universe… that established contact with the higher realms…” Darkling struggled to find the words. Though it had spent quite a lot of time around Ryan, he still had trouble with human concepts. “They learned to use Flux to fuel their technology… before trying to enslave my kindred to ascend by force… after the Ultimate Ones brought them low, they fled here... to your universe.”

Remembering Bacchus’ story, Ryan put the two and two together. “The Alchemist found this ship after it crashed,” he muttered to himself. “She used their technology to create Genomes, so we could have a fighting chance, if these creatures went after us.”

“Yes but… she was wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have asked the Black Ultimate One for answers… the empire that built this ship collapsed many decades ago… overthrown by their slaves… nothing remains.” Darkling marked a short pause, its words heavy. “No invasion is coming… nor even a rescue. This ship is... all that is left.”

Ryan observed the armored warrior, the black hole slowly consuming its edges while leaving the courier unscathed. “It’s a Japanese holdout,” the courier whispered. “They’re still fighting a war they lost long ago.”

“What is a… Japanese?”

“A husbando, or a waifu.”

Darkling didn’t answer immediately. “Whatever… an ember can still spark a fire if left unchecked… this Alchemist had the opportunity to destroy this place once and for all… as you plan to do with the machines’ base in that city of yours.”

“But she didn’t.” Eva Fabre tried to give humans superpowers instead, to fight against whatever extraterrestrial entity might reach Earth. But if Darkling was correct, then she had been crusading against windmills.

Universal master race…

Eva Fabre had learned of these aliens’ history, but instead of taking it as the cautionary tale that it was, she repeated their mistakes all over again. She tried to make mankind this extraterrestrial’s successors, to give humans the power to conquer the cosmos.

And instead of supermen, she had created the likes of Mechron, Bloodstream, and Augustus. Or maybe she just didn’t care. She had to have known about the Psycho condition before releasing the Elixirs in the wild.

“She could not resist the lure of its power… she summoned creatures from the higher realms… tried to harvest the technology of the slumbering soldiers…”

“But something went wrong. Test subjects escaped, and she lost control of that facility.”

“She has retreated deep into the ship… if the last soldiers escape this place… they will bring great destruction to your civilization… they can replicate even the most powerful of your powers. All of them… but the Black.”

Ryan shivered, as he realized that the creature they fought hadn’t been a boss.

It had been a grunt.

“They are vengeful ghosts... They must rest.”

“But if the Ultimate Ones brought that empire low, why don’t they finish the job?” Ryan asked. “The Violet One knew about this place, since it sent me visions. Why doesn’t it take direct action?”

“It did,” Darkling pointed out. “It sent you.”

Ryan froze, as everything suddenly fell into place.

The Violet Ultimate One had sent the courier visions, and used messages to guide him into transporting minds across time. The interdimensional entity never intervened directly, but it gave hints, or what could pass as such for a trans-dimensional entity.

All to nudge Ryan into being at the right place at the right time.

“I understand now,” the courier said, frowning behind his helmet. “It sent me this vision, so I may make my own decision. A human sparked this disaster, and a human must end it.”

“Yes… you can bring down this place... now and across all timelines. The decision of what to do… is all yours.”

In the end, this ship was no different from a Mechron base. “How do I destroy it?” Ryan asked, entirely serious.

“This ship has a control center… a mind… find it. I believe a way might reveal itself then.” Darkling let out a strange feeling through the telepathic bond, which Ryan took for an attempt at reassurance. “We Elixirs communicate with each other using Flux… you spent so long bound to your messenger… and made contact with the Ultimate Ones.”

Ryan turned his head at the captive Elixirs. All of them had grown quiet, perhaps eavesdropping on the discussion. “So I picked up the language?”

“Yes… out of all humans on this Earth, you alone are closest to ascension. Direct communication with you is… difficult… but possible. In time others will learn too… this will make you compatible with the technology… but she might fight back.”

Might? More like will, from what Ryan had seen so far. The Alchemist wouldn’t let that treasure trove of technology go.

Unfortunately, time was running out. The courier already noticed movement returning at the edge of his vision, more parts of the armor being absorbed into the portal. “Thanks, my friend.”

“Good luck…” Darkling said, the hole collapsing on itself. “I wish… I could help more.”

“You already did more than enough.”

Ryan expected a bright explosion, but the spacetime anomaly ended with a whimper instead. The alien’s entire being collapsed into the dark hole, which dissipated right as time fully resumed.

“—own!” Len finished her sentence, but her hand froze in midair before it could touch Ryan’s shoulder. Of the alien warrior, not even dust remained.

After a short silence and no further attack, the Genomes regrouped. Sunshine had finished incinerating the seeds, and though the Wonderboxes and walls had taken heavy damage, most of the facility remained intact.

“Is it gone?” Shroud asked, floating above the spot where the alien used to stand. “Or did it teleport away?”

“It’s gone,” Ryan replied, glancing at the corridor leading to the next room. “And I know what to do.”

His teammates must have noticed his serious tone, before Shroud looked at him warily. “Go on,” he asked.

“You played Metroid,” Ryan reminded his friend. “If so, then you should know it can only end up one way.”

With one big explosion.