"That's stupid!"

"Lanka......" Jamie said slowly from the back of the car. Calm down. ”

Ryan listened to their argument as he peeked out of the car window. Dy

AMIS's "Star Studio", which received the Award for Originality of the Name, covers an area of about 2.5 square kilometers and is located east of New Rome. They have a full open park and about seven warehouses. From a distance, Ryan noticed that the staff was carrying cardboard, the intern was bringing coffee to his superiors, and the stand-in was preparing. There is only one checkpoint entrance to the studio, and there are few guards; They clearly did not expect to be attacked.

Still, the group parked their car outside the studio because there were no surveillance cameras blocking their way and they couldn't find their way in. Ki is napping with his eyes closed and resting his head on her boyfriend's shoulder. While the group kept a safe distance from the studio, she sent the rats to do reconnaissance work.

According to Rya

Understanding, Chitte

The rat family acts as a relay, allowing her to control a large area of a swarm of pests. Ryan suspects that Chirp isn't really telepathy, it's a blue power, but rather the transformation of her rat into an extension of her own nervous system. On the one hand, this means that destroying her main rat cancels her powers for a while, but on the other hand, her pest chums can act independently without her direct input.

"I mean, why should we risk going and Wyve

Combat, aka the Dragon Shapeshifter, can take on the boss so he," Lanka pointed a finger at Ryan accusatory, who made an offensive gesture, "can win personal help for himself?"

"Because Vulcan wants it, and she's one of the Caposs," Jamie replied, "and if we're lucky, we don't have to face her." "I doubt she'll have time to be an actress."

"What if you're wrong?" None of us can fight her!"

The problem is, Ryan also has a bad premonition.

He can't explain it, but the courier has a strong intuition about his various cycles. Now, his sixth sense warns him of danger and that someone is watching him. But where they are now should be the blind spot of the surveillance cameras.

He should have a radar in the car.

A little distraught, Ryan turns on the radio and activates the special feature, hoping to find good old-school music to mask out the noise. "Another piece of news, the Roman Republic is still under curfew, after the assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar—"

With Caesar again? Two thousand years have passed!" What's that news channel?" Jamie asked curiously. "I don't know the person who speaks."

"This is my Ch

o

o

adio," Ryan explained, switching stations. "It can listen to channels that span time and space. But for some reason, it usually defaults to the era of the Roman Republic. ”

"You should write your story well, you long-tongued woman," Lanka taunted him. "Two thousand years ago they didn't have a radio."

"In the past version, they did."

"You can't have multiple versions of the past."

Ryan looked at her expressionlessly. Wearing a mask is a wasted effort, but still. "Time is not like this," he said, in a tone like an adult speaking to a wayward child.

"Fuck you, Einstein."

"You can come whenever you want," Ryan replied, and then finally found the post-apocalyptic blues channel. Ki is choosing to wake up at this moment.

"So?" Jamie asked her.

"The Wyvern isn't here." She said, scratching her neck. "Someone will take her place."

"You see, I knew she didn't do her stunts herself," Jamie said to Lanka. "She's probably too busy with fieldwork."

"There's no guarantee that she won't fly in after someone calls the police," she replied, opening the window and lighting a cigarette.

"The bad news is that the wardrobe has replaced her stunts," Ki continued, "and the atomic cat is there too. ”

Jamie doesn't sound like he cares about the wardrobe, but when she mentions another genome, he immediately gets angry. "The strength of the wardrobe depends on her outfit, right?" Ryan asked, trying to bring back his memory.

"If she dresses up as a vampire, she drinks blood and burns in the sun, and if she dresses up as a wyvern, she flies." Ki-ju

Nodding. "It's a very weak version of the real thing, so even if she's dressed like Augustus, you can still hurt her, and the effect will last as long as her clothes are relatively intact."

"Yellow genome is," Ranka complained.

"I can understand the existence of a wardrobe, but what about the atomic cat?" Jamie asked his girlfriend.

"He made a cameo in the movie," she replied, showing concern. "Shall we abort?"

"Aborted?" Ryan turned his head. "Why aborted? Is he that strong?"

"Atomic Cat...... It's one of us," Jamie said.

"He's a spy?" Ryan asked. "Like James Bond?"

"Nope. It's complicated. Jamie put his fingers together, trying to find the right words. He's in the midst of teenage rebellion, but he'll be back eventually. His parents were the inner circle of Augustus, and we are expressly forbidden to endanger him in any way. ”

"Don't let him touch you, big mouth," said Lanka, "or you'll be finished." ”

"He can turn anything into a bomb, but only in direct contact with the skin," Ki Zheng added.

"Interesting." Ryan lied, and then asked Ki-jeong a question that really mattered. "CGI, special effects, or stop motion?"

"They use CGI."

The courier rests his head on the steering wheel and mourns the passing of the golden age of cinema.

"So what are we going to do?" Lanka asked Jamie. "We rush in, make a commotion, and run away?"

"No," Jamie replied, turning to his girlfriend. "We're going to do it. You get rats all over the ground from afar, make a noise, and we'll drive away at once. ”

Ryan immediately understood the obvious flaw in this plan. "Wait, aren't we going to fight anyone?"

“No.”

"Betrayal. Treachery! The courier pointed at Jamie. "You can't do this to me!"

"I'm not going to let you fight with the Atomic Cat, help," Jamie replied. "I'm sorry, but I don't want to have any trouble with that."

"You're asking too much!" The messenger said that his companion Genome sighed. "You're going to kill me, Jamie!" You're going to kill me!"

"You'll get through it." The swordsman shrugged, then turned to Kizheng. "So?"

"I'm your girl," she said, falling asleep. Ryan turned to Lanka for support, but she just looked out the window and finished her cigarette. He couldn't blame them, because they weren't immortal, but damn it, which made the mission take all the fun out of it.

A few minutes passed, and Ryan noticed the commotion near the studio. People came out of the warehouse, screaming.

Then they crawled over.

Thousands of black and brown mice. They escaped from the warehouse, smashing windows under the huge weight. There are so many of them that these rodents have to climb up to the other to move forward, forming walls of waves and fur.

Ryan almost felt sympathy for the poor Dinami cadets, who toiled in the face of this horror without any hope of getting a paycheck. Apparently, panic spread throughout the area, the staff scattered in all directions, coffee cups were spilled, and the guards desperately tried to shoot the rodents......

"Oh my God, oh my God......" Ryan whistled. The city has a rat problem......"

"That should satisfy Vulcan," Jamie said with a laugh. "Now, let's go home before the private security arrives."

The courier couldn't agree more, especially when he was still feeling uneasy.

Ryan stepped on the gas pedal and left the pest-infested studio and headed out into the wide alleys of the city. As he drove all the way to the house they shared, he almost wished for Wyve

Come down from the sky, or Atom Cat stalk them on a motorcycle for an epic car chase. Even superpowers come to ambush them.

Instead, they returned home safe and sound.

Frankly, the heroes of New Rome let the Courier down. Maybe Leo Hargraves' Carnival gave Ryan a false impression of what superheroes should be like because they were both very capable, but Dinamis' corporate champion didn't impress him too much.

"Are you sulking, Big Mouth?" Lanka asked him, and threw out the window after smoking. Ryan stopped time, grabbed the cigarette, and put it in the ashtray on the dashboard.

"It's just, I thought there were going to be some obstacles," Ryan replied when time resumed. His instincts may have been wrong. "It's so boring."

"On the bright side, you can finally see your girlfriend again," Jamie tried to comfort him.

"What does she look like?" Ki-ju

G asked.

"I'm going to introduce her to you," Ryan said, much to her delight. He had to admit that he was starting to like the group. He doesn't get too attached to them and doesn't make an effort to get to know them because they can forget him at any moment, but it's a pleasure to be with them for career criminals.

Parking the car in front of the house, Ryan asked the others to climb down, but hadn't kept up. "I'll just listen to the radio for a while," he replied. "Can you call Vulcan?"

"Of course," Jamie agreed, "and, it's movie night." RoboCop or RoboCop 2?"

Ryan held up two fingers because he liked movies with freeze-frame action; Even though he has seen these two movies countless times. He was busy looking for the "Jazz Sixties" channel on the radio, when Kee walked to the door and exchanged a few words with Lanka.

But Ki-jeong stopped abruptly because she was only an inch away from the doorknob. Ryan rolled down the window. "What's wrong?"

"I don't feel the rats I left at home," the rat owner replied with annoyance.

"They ran away?" Jamie asked.

His girlfriend shook her head. "I told them to stay and watch the place."

Ryan isn't the only one who feels bad. Lanka drew his gun and walked ahead with a frown. Ki is taking a step back, her female friend putting one hand on the doorknob and the other ready to shoot.

Click.

When Ryan heard the familiar voice, he immediately stopped the time, but it was too late.

When the world turned purple, his power froze everything, and the house had turned into a huge burst of flames and debris; Hell engulfed Lanka and Kizheng and immediately burned them to ashes. Somehow, the explosion caused the reinforced glass of his car to explode into sharp shards and set off an alarm.

Ignoring the glass shards bruising his skin, Ryan gets out of the car and rushes to Jamie's side, trying to save him without success.

When time returned, he got a mouth full of dust, ashes, and stones as his trouble, and the whole house evaporated. Thanks to his armor, Jamie was scared more than he hurt physically.

Feelings though......

“KI-JUNG !”

The swordsman rushes to his girlfriend's side, but even though her genes are long-lasting, the explosion kills the young woman instantly. Her flesh was charred, her eyes were charred, and bones could be seen.

"Damn," Ryan said as he looked at the bodies, then looked around for the person responsible. A person could not see either, although he could not see clearly in the smoke. "I didn't expect this at home."

“Ki-ju

G......" Jamie muttered to himself as he hugged his girlfriend as his horrified gaze turned to Lanka's body. Then he turned to Ryan, panicking. "We need to go to the hospital!"

"It was useless," Ryan replied, having studied enough medicine to know that they either lacked the tools or didn't have the time to make changes, "and they died." You can't do anything. ”

For the first time since meeting Ryan, Jamie looked at him with a whole new emotion: pure, undiluted anger. "That's what you're talking about?" He asked viciously. "Are they dead?"

The problem is, Ryan has seen so many people die that he's already numb. He cares on an intellectual level, but since he can still turn back time and avoid this attack, this destruction has no emotional weight. The courier likes these two girls and will definitely let them live next time, but he doesn't think there's any point in being sad now; He prefers to gather as much information as possible to ensure that he wins in the future.

Ryan would have liked to say that he had become a logical creature, but apathy was a better word.

Still, Jamie's angry, distraught expression makes the courier sad, so he makes an effort; After all, the swordsman had tried to help him get rid of his lingering sadness. "It's okay, I can bring them back," Ryan assured. "I can- - - - - - -"

The messenger noticed movement at the edge of his line of sight and turned around.

Shards of glass from the car flew towards him like thrown knives.

To make matters worse, Jamie's armor suddenly short-circuited, and a bolt of lightning electrocuted him. The swordsman let out a scream of pain as the sheer voltage scorched his flesh, forcing him to release Ki-jeong's corpse.

Damn, the murderer is still around!

Ryan stopped time and dodged the knife. He looked around, looking for the source of the attack, but saw no one. Are the attackers invisible again?

He never had time to confirm, no pun intended.

As soon as time returned, the messenger felt a sharp pain in his neck. His vision was upside down, his ears touched the grass, and his entire body from the throat down was numb. Shards of glass swirled above him like a tornado, and Jamie was torn apart before he could recover from the armor's failure.

…

Is Ryan's headless corpse next to him?

The decapitated messenger could only keep his eyes open, and all the shards of glass rained down on his skull.

Ryan woke up in his Plymouth driver's seat and returned to the starting point.

The "genome" did not go directly to Re

ESCO's residence, but parked the car near the entrance to the city, quietly thinking.

"Twice! He yelled. When he almost found happiness, he was cheated twice!

Well, that's settled.

Someone was following him. He has the guts to attack with a set of genomes behind him.

But who? Ryan is glad that he has a secret enemy, but he doesn't see anyone with such means and motives except for the superpowers. Or was it because he had joined Augustus that the Assassins had their sights on him?

Is it a lone wolf? This person looks professional, and you need a powerful bomb to cause such a powerful explosion. Ryan dies after stopping time, meaning the killer already knows his cooldown, and the chirping rodents are killed to prevent them from warning their owners. This certainly involves a lot of information gathering, and maybe even a whole team.

The way things happened... The person responsible can obviously control the glass. Because they can blow up the tech parts of Jamie's armor, maybe even silica kinetic energy. This could also explain that the supposed invisibility is an optical illusion, or some kind of mirror suit.

The attack was brutal and unexpected, lasting less than five minutes. The murderer is not an inexperienced hero like Panda, but a cold-blooded professional killer.

The messenger thinks about what to do next. The problem is that even if he successfully completes the task given to him by Vulcan and avoids the ambush in the house, continuing not to deal with the assassins may allow them to find Ryan directly.

Although this infuriated Rya

, but he nevertheless decided to put his main task on hold for the time being until he solved the obstacle. The mysterious killer had murdered him twice, but never appeared directly, and apparently he didn't care about collateral damage. To make matters worse, if the killers weren't lone wolves but someone else's agents, killing them would only give Ryan a break.

The meaning of life is to find happiness. Without Ryan, Ryan was unhappy. Whether it was intentional or not, the killer separated them, so they had to leave. At last.

He also doesn't want Jamie and his friends to die. The Messenger does not like others to suffer, despite such bastards as ghouls. His perfect run will make everyone he likes happy, and Jamie's team is now part of the VIP category.

He's not going to let them die.

Ryan thinks about this with calm logic and sees how to solve it in this new cycle. So far, the killers have only attacked the Augusti or the courier himself, but this may be because Ryan is working with the criminal syndicate. Excluding the lone wolf hypothesis, only two organizations have the genome, motivation, and resources to attack them: meta-organization and dynamic organization.

If it's superpowers, Ryan has promised to eliminate them, so it kills two birds with one stone. But his instincts told him that he had missed a detail that he quickly remembered.

Port.

Ryan remembers receiving a flyer rescuing members of the private security forces when he was there battling ghouls and sarin. He thought that because of the darkness, he couldn't see them clearly, but maybe because they were invisible, their presence was only shown in the smoke. Since this number did not help Meta, but it saved Dy

Amis employee, Rya

The former is excluded as the guilty party.

That's all that's left for a vigilante, or an agent of kinetic energy.

It's time to accept Wayne's offer.