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 cocked 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 pierce 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 run as far away from the Knockoff vats as possible, while Adam the Ogre quickly pivoted.

“Eight seconds, mate,” the Meta-Gang’s leader said, as he 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…

“You know me, mate,” Adam rasped angrily, before grabbing another liquid vat, red this time. His face had turned red from the blood flowing from his eyes. If anything, the outside now matched the inside in its horror. “You know how I fight. You move like a dancer rehearsing his show. This isn’t our first rodeo.”

“But it’s gonna be the last,” Ryan replied, before realizing his mistake as the blind Psycho tossed the vat in his direction. He might have been blinded, but he could still hear his foe.

The courier dodged another projectile, but another red puddle joined the blue one, both covering half the chamber’s ground. Adam dragged a heavy flail from his gullet, and swiftly swung it with his right hand.

Realizing he couldn’t keep fighting in this arena without risking getting exposed to the Knockoffs, Ryan dashed towards the chamber’s exit. His boots made a sound while he walked on a drop of liquid, alerting Adam to his position.

The Ogre’s flail lunged for Ryan’s head so fast that the courier had to stop time to avoid becoming a Picasso picture, rushing into the corridor without looking back. The time-traveler heard the flail’s spiked head hit a wall with a devastating impact, but he had safely made it out of the chamber.

Or so he thought.

A sharp pain raced across his waist, making him stumble inside the corridor.

The panicked Ryan glanced at his belly, seeing the tip of an arrow sticking out from his trenchcoat. Crossbow, the courier realized, as he heard footsteps behind him. A crossbow bolt.

“Not so easy without space to run around, huh?” Adam said as he dropped the flail and entered the steel corridor, his head reaching the ceiling. “You’ve been here before.”

His smirk widened, a crossbow bolt sticking out from between his teeth.

“Lived through this before.”

Shit.

Struggling against the pain, Ryan opened fire with the Beretta. He blew holes in the blind Adam’s throat and chest, while the Psycho responded by spitting out a volley of crossbow bolts. First one, then two, then ten.

Ryan exploited his time-stop to dodge the first volley and back away, but the bolt embedded in his body slowed him down. When time resumed, one of his foe’s projectiles hit him in the right leg below the knee. The courier collapsed on the cold hard ground, the ogre’s footsteps growing ever closer.

“I can smell your fear,” Adam said as he gained ground on the courier. The wounds didn’t slow him down at all. “I knew something was up when I watched you on the cams. Your timing was too perfect, your team too well-prepared. And then I wondered… if you can control time enough to stop it, maybe you could turn it back too?”

Ryan attempted to shoot his foe again, before realizing he had exhausted all his ammo. With one last card up his sleeve, the courier put a hand in his trench coat and grabbed his secret weapon.

Time to see how far your pocket dimension extends, Bibendum, Ryan thought.

“But well, if you could do it all the time, you would have turned the clock by now. And if you fear the substitute so much, then the real deal will hurt even worse.” Adam opened his mouth, the tip of a Blue Elixir’s syringe sticking out from the gullet. “Time to take your medici—”

“Filibuster!” Ryan replied before throwing the triggered A-bomb down Adam’s throat midspeech.

The surprised Adam gulped on instinct, swallowing both the explosive device and his own Blue Elixir. The Psycho covered his mouth with his hands, perhaps trying to vomit out the bomb, but he was too late to make a difference.

Ryan immediately crawled as far away as he could, while the bullet wounds on his foe’s chest and throat started to light up. “Bon appétit,” he said, taking the time to taunt his foe one last time.

“Urgh…” Adam hiccupped, and then breathed atomic fire.

As it turned out, his pocket dimension was large, but not infinite.

The courier barely had the time to dive down as streams of flames erupted from the Psycho’s mouth, nose, and his bullet wounds. They hit the corridor’s ceiling and walls in straight lines, melting the bunker’s steel. Ryan himself used quick bursts of time-stop to position himself out of the fires’ paths.

Like a balloon deflating as air escaped him, the flames’ power tossed Adam the Ogre backward, his body rebounding off the walls. His empty eye sockets unleashed a stream of light, the blood drying up. The air in the corridor heated up by twenty degrees, enough to make Ryan sweat beneath his coat.

And then, the flames died out as quickly as they had spread. Bibendum ended his flight at the corridor’s threshold, right before the vat chamber. When Ryan finally dared to look up at him, the Psycho’s face had turned into a volcanic landscape, his metal skin melting off the charred hole that used to be his skull.

Adam’s pocket dimension had contained most of the explosion, but flames from the blast had traveled up through his gullet, nostrils, and the openings the depleted uranium bullets had created in his belly… cooking his organs from within.

“Spicy dessert, whalie,” Ryan said to Adam’s corpse, as he heard his allies’ footsteps. His vision blurred from the blood loss and the pain, but he couldn’t help but chuckle to himself. “Served with Karmic Sauce.”

Adam the Ogre didn’t answer.

The Meta-Gang’s presidential debate had ended in a K.O.

Like any good administration, Ryan’s first act in office was to clean up the house.

Though he had to give orders from the infirmary, after expelling the former vice-president. Thankfully, Livia knew exactly what to say to Agent Frank to lead him around, even managing to get the overdosed Psyshock out of his care. She had pretended that she would send him to a special doctor’s care.

A doctor called Cancel.

“Thank God you have a doctorate in medicine,” Ryan said to the Panda as he lay on the operation table, his sidekick surgically extracting the crossbow bolt and quickly patched up the courier’s wounds. Livia sat at her boyfriend’s side all the way through the procedure, holding his hand. “Alongside physics, philosophy, and pretty much everything else.”

“I don’t learn quickly anymore, Sifu, but I remember everything!” the Panda replied while applying bandages. “Does it hurt?“

“I’m a Vietnam vet,” Ryan replied, “I can endure anything.”

“Be careful, phony veterans don’t last long in office,” Livia mused.

“I’ve lived through more wars than chest colds!” Ryan protested, before apologizing to his sidekick for the loss of his Elixir. “I’m sorry that you won’t get two powers this time around. Do you want a cushy job as an apology? Maybe Air Force One?”

He owed the Panda for his victory. The manbear’s fight with Adam in the previous loop had taught Ryan that the Psychos’ leader was vulnerable to internal damage, and thus gave him the idea of using his A-bomb as a deadly main course.

“He might still get a second wish,” Livia said with a wistful smile. “Elixirs are extra-dimensional entities and can resist a great deal of damage. I’ve seen possibilities where we extract it from Adam’s pocket dimension.”

Ryan hoped so. He couldn’t consider this loop a Perfect Run with casualties, and Elixirs were sentient beings too. “How is the situation in the field?” the president asked. “Are the troops behaving?”

“The others are helping Len transport the captive Psychos to underwater habitats,” his First Lady explained. “We’re also giving first aid to the hostages.”

“Any casualties?”

“None,” she said before lightly kissing him on the cheek. “Thanks to you.”

The news came as a relief. Ryan had worked over more than ten loops to save Rust Town from the Meta-Gang, and he had finally succeeded.

Having been warned, both Alchemo and the Carnival would make their way to New Rome. They would conquer the bunker, exploit its resources, and lay the groundwork for its final destruction. At long last, Mechron’s ghost would be put back six feet under and never threaten the world again.

Ryan couldn’t rest on his laurels though. After recovering, he would bring the hammer down on Dynamis, and bury his own past. As for the Augusti…

“What about Geist—” Ryan asked, but an amused Livia pushed her index finger against his lips. “Mmm!”

“Shush, we’ll see to that later,” she said with a tone that broke no disobedience. “Let’s celebrate today’s victory before moving on to tomorrow’s challenge, Ryan. We’ve earned it.”

He couldn’t argue with that.