Leaderboards 01-Prologue

Date: 6 months earlier
Location: unknown

The broad shouldered man winced as Soviet Superwoman's punch glanced off his Kevlar flack jacket. Even with the protection of the flak jacket he felt as if he had been hit by a dump truck.

"Shucks, sweetheart, I've been tapped harder by my baby sister," he grunted.  His breath was ragged, but he could not afford to show weakness. With his right hand he pointed his Heckler and Koch MP5 at the Russian's head and squeezed the trigger.  The beautiful Russian ducked under the deadly 9 mm bullets, but she met a perfectly timed southpaw uppercut that lifted her off her feet.

Instead of falling, she staggered back a step.  He let loose another burst of fire from the MP5, but she managed to sidestep and grab his weapon with her powerful hand. Their heavily muscled forms struggled for a moment, and then the Soviet Superwoman forced his fist up, stepped under, and rocked him back with a short palm-heel strike to the man's chin, twisting viciously so he couldn't find his equilibrium.  In the process she ripped the weapon from his grasp.

As he turned, she stepped in wide behind his legs, lifted his body with her arm, then drove him into the floor so hard that a delicate spiderweb pattern formed underneath his skull.

"Nazi pig," she snarled, "I should have finished all of you when I had the chance!"

The man blinked, trying to uncross his eyes and locate his weapon.  He looked up in time to see her lifting her boot, her thick thigh bloating with power as she prepared to crush his skull beneath her heel. Without much time to react and fighting an already painful headache, he rolled hard into her supporting leg and she toppled over.

The woman's leg flashed out as she fell but still caught him with a glancing blow on his left shoulder blade. There was a sickening crack and his face went white. He tried to catch himself with his arms, but the excruciating pain was too much as his left arm collapsed underneath him. Meanwhile, Soviet Superwoman rose gracefully to her feet.

"This," she said quietly, punctuating each word with a solid punt into the man's ribs, "is for Mother Russia!"

He coughed, surprised to see flecks of red foam spray forth from his mouth. "W- wait-," he protested weakly, but the unstoppable Russian juggernaut ignored him. She raised both her hands and clenched them together in a tight fist. Taking a wide stance, she slammed the blow home between the man's shoulder blades, once more driving his body into the floor. There was a sickening sound as bone  met concrete and the man lay still.

Dim lights wavered to life overhead. In the corners of the room, the red eyes of the watching cameras simultaneously flickered and died. The Soviet Superwoman stood frozen, a grim monolith over her shattered victim.

A disembodied voice in a Midwestern American accent proclaimed, "The fight is over."

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For the re-release of Leaderboards, I sucke- uh... convinced to lend her formidable talents to the program.  If you've never read this before, it's a fun little bit of world-building and, additionally, introduces a number of my favorite characters.  And, of course, you get to see what appears to be Soviet Superwoman about to deliver a truly formidable beatdown...

This story was co-written by and myself several years ago and is republished here with his permission.

Tyche and Network belong to .
Mane Attraction belongs to .
Soviet Superwoman and American Hero are the property of .

The next chapter is here:   Leaderboard, Chapter OneChapter One - Tyche
Date: Present day
Location: Angel Falls
"I am the American Hero," the tall blonde amazon said in a southern drawl, a smile on her perfectly made-up face, "I am the sword, shield, and spirit of America."
Tyche looked at the self-proclaimed American Hero skeptically.   Tyche was the daughter of Italian-American immigrants and considered herself patriotic, but she had little patience for American Hero's rhetoric.  Tyche cracked her knuckles noisily.  She would relish kicking the pompous hero's ass.
American Hero turned like a well-oiled machine, her gaze snapping into place followed by her guard and then, lightning fast, a kick that, had it connected, would have turned any normal woman's internal organs to paste. Somehow, the raven-haired beauty shifted bare inches and Hero's kick impacted the wall.  Tyche smiled coldly and swept Hero's base leg out from under her.
American Hero moved quickly to activate her flight harness, but couldn't compensate f.

Leaderboard is set in .