Leaderboards Revisited- Arachnia vs. Tyche

Angelo dabbed at Alessia’s forehead with a wet washcloth and she batted it away with a grimace of annoyance.

“Lay off, Angelo,” she said, hissing through her teeth as the fabric irritated the abrasion at her temple, “I’ll be fine.  Nothing injured but my pride, okay?”

“You are sure?” he asked, shifting his bulk nervously.

“I’m a doctor, remember?”

“Yes- and I remember that you told me, and I am quoting you now, so pay attention: ‘Doctors make the worst patients.’”

Alessia snorted.

“So…?” Angelo pursed his lips and looked curiously at his niece.  “Your father will be pretty unhappy with me about this- I told him I would take care of you, you know…”

“Oh, come on- it’s not that bad- I’ve had worse!”

“That is not nearly as reassuring as you seem to think it is,” Angelo remarked.  He sighed.  “So… go ahead.  Tell me what happened, bella di zio.”

Alessia grimaced sourly and took a long drink of water, then leaned back and began.

*****

I’ve been hitting the Leaderboards ever since RWD opened them.  I admit it- I like the exercise and I like knowing that I can go toe-to-toe with metas in a one-on-one battle… and I love having the bragging rights for being the top-rated hand-to-hand combatant in my weight class.

That’s not to say that I’ve never been beaten- I have- but it’s rare.  Quite frankly, I’m an exceptional fighter even without my powers- I’m stong, fast, skilled, and experienced, and I’ve managed to parley all of that- along with my rather under-appreciated metahuman abilities- into a modest reputation for being a woman who can get a job done.

Hold your horses, Angelo- I’m getting to it, okay?  Let me tell it.

Yeah, okay- so this last time I went, I saw that they moved me up into a new tier; apparently no one wanted to compete against me, anymore, I guess.  It didn’t really bother me, since I mostly use this game for an alternative workout, right?  It’s fun, it’s violent, and it’s competitive- stuff any girl would like.

Well, let me tell you- the higher tier?  That was a whole new level of challenge.  I took three rounds by storm- I faced off against a whole God-damned SWAT team in one round, and that was exciting.  They actually used tactical advance, covered each other’s flanks, tried sneaking guys into overwatch positions- I had to scramble to take ‘em all down.  Gave me a lot of respect for what well-trained mundanes- sorry, Angelo- non-metas can do.

The next round I went toe-to-toe with some super strong, super tough chick I didn’t recognize.  That was hard mainly because I couldn’t seem to do enough to her to make her back up.  Fortunately, she wasn’t super fast, as well, and I was able to use my superior maneuverability to, eventually, work her into a position where she was incapacitated by the environment.

Why didn’t I “kill” her?

Honestly, I don’t like doing that, even in training.  Even against robots; frankly, I worry that I might make a mistake, someday, and accidentally kill a real person, and I’m not sure I could live with myself if I did that.

Don’t look at me like that, Angelo- I know how hard you struggle, looking for redemption and all that, and you have faith…

The third round nearly threw me for a loop; it was basically a protect mission- you know, like in those video games where you get the idiot NPC who you have to keep alive as he walks the most deliberately stupid way across a battlefield?  Yeah, it was like that.

The setup was that there were a group of civilians in a park- there were trees and various water features and the like providing cover and concealment, and various paths that the civilians mostly stuck to- and there was an alien invasion.  The goal was to keep as many civilians as safe as possible for as long as possible.  Frankly, even though it surprised me, I cleaned up on that round- I think I scored the all-time high score, after adjustment for tier- possibly even before adjustment.

Anyways, I was feeling pretty full of myself when I went back and signed for another round- I mean, three rounds in and I hadn’t lost yet.  Hell, I’d barely even gotten tagged, and, while I might’ve bruised my ribs, it was nothing I couldn’t focus past and work through.

So, anyways, my number comes back up and it’s a straight-up donnybrook, again.  Seems like it’s every other match is a fight at this tier, which works for me, ‘cause it lets me really push myself.  Only, this time I get into the arena- and I’m all alone.

Given that my opponent is an android, it should already be there, right?  But I don’t see it and I can’t hear it, which is seriously creeping me the hell out.  I mean, I can hear a butterfly fart- sorry, Angelo- but I can’t hear my opponent at all.

It wasn’t until I started cautiously exploring the arena that it moved and I got my first sense-picture of my opponent.

She had been sitting perfectly still, clinging to the wall above me and blending into the shadows; frankly, if I’d thought to look up a little more, I doubt I could’ve missed her- most people probably would have, but my eyesight is hella better than most people’s.

I’d heard of Arachnia before; frankly, I’ve always wished I could get her into the clinic, because her physique is so unusual that I think I could learn a lot from it, but that’s probably not much of a selling point to her.  Sorry- got distracted.

Like I was saying, I’d heard of Arachnia, but I’d never actually seen her in person.  Assuming the android was a reasonable facsimile, she wasn’t as big as I had been led to expect.  When I finally came within range, I actually felt the shift in energy before I managed to pinpoint the source.  My guess is that she used electromagnetism to simulate the heroine’s ability to cling to walls, and I detected it when she shut it off.

I was already turning even before she hit the deck and I managed to evade her first flurry of attacks fairly easily.  She was fast and strong- I estimated that each of her fists would probably hit with roughly the same force as a jackhammer, if I let her get close enough- but she was more of a brawler than a disciplined combatant, and I was able to counter a lot of her blind fury with strategy.

At least, that’s what I thought was happening; now I’m thinking that she was using those first few flurries to gauge my reaction speed and time her own maneuvers.  At any rate, I turned into her next series of strikes, slipping past the blows and clocking her in the chin with a palm-heel strike.  If she’d been a little weaker and a little slower, it would’ve been beautiful.  As it was, she managed to block my arm at the biceps with her lower set of arms and at the wrist with her upper arms; at the same time, she shoved me away with a double-thrust of her mid-limbs.

I stumbled back, overbalanced, and tucked into a backwards roll, coming to my feet a short distance away only to realize that she’d used her block to slip a loop of webbing around my wrist.

I doubt it had the same composition as Arachnia’s true webbing- it wasn’t sticky, for one thing, but it was tough; I could tell that simply snapping the stuff was out of the question.  I’d need something to cut it.

Arachnia hurled herself through the air at me and I used her momentum to flip her into a modified sacrifice throw, but I wasn’t able to maintain contact and she sprang back and popped to her feet before I could close the gap.

She yanked on the cord that bound us together and I lurched forwards into her waiting strike; that would’ve been the end, right there, but I saw it coming and managed to twist and jump enough that I took the blows mostly on my thigh instead of my chest or face; my whole leg went tingly from the force of her strikes.

On instinct, I grabbed her shoulders- her top set, I guess, although, honestly, it was hard to tell in the chaos if she had one set for each pair of arms or just three sets of arms growing out of one pair of shoulders.  I’m not sure, physiologically, which would be more unlikely for a hominid.  From there, I planted my knee in her chest and pushed off hard.

I have to give the designers credit- that stunt actually made the android cough.  I saw no real reason to design the androids to mimic human systems so closely, but it was a nice touch of realism until I realized that the air coming out of the body was identical to the air going in- it served no function other than cooling the system, I guessed.

My leap would have put me in a good position to use my superior mass and leverage against her, but she recovered too quickly and was already pulling on that damn web again before I landed.  She yanked me out flat and I barely managed to keep from smashing my face into the floor.  She hauled back with all six arms and I found myself skimming across the floor towards her waiting grip, bouncing painfully over the breaks in the terrain that the arena design team had added for, I guess, verisimilitude.  That was, incidentally, where I managed to pick up the scrape on my face- one sharp, jutting edge and it tore away a chunk of flesh like a belt-sander.

She grabbed me with all six limbs as I slowed near her and hurled me away; that little bitty android was strong.  I mean, I’m pretty strong, and there’s no way I could’ve gotten the sort of lift throwing her, at what I would guess is a little over half my weight, as she got tossing me.  Frankly, if not for the web she added to my thigh and the one she already had in place on my wrist, I probably would’ve gone for a full twenty feet or more.

As it was, the webs prevented me from reaching the full distance and when they tightened, I had the sickening sensation of being the ball at the end of a tetherboard.  My head whipped forward and I had to force myself to go limp so that I wasn’t broken by the tension in my body.  I fell almost straight down and only just managed to turn a collapse into a controlled landing.  I was back on my feet before she could counter, and this time I was ready when she yanked me back towards her.

I used the force of her pull to set myself spinning, going around three full times before I brought my foot up for a formal heel-to-jaw meeting.  For once, my timing was spot-on perfect and the android spun and dropped to five limbs while her other three arms went to her jaw as if she was checking for damage.

I have to wonder if I’d be able to pull a stunt like that against the real Arachnia- from what little I’ve read and seen of her, I suspect she has some sort of limited precognition or danger sense, not unlike what I can do.  That, coupled with her reaction time and her physical power would make her a formidable opponent.

I don’t know, honestly; I guess the RWD lab boys simulated it by amping up the android’s reaction time and predictive calculus - sort of like one of those point-defense systems that battleships use, only scaled down for a single human-sized target.  However they managed it, it was scads more accurate than any Aegis-system I’ve read about, anyways, and landing hits was less about luck or bluff and more about pure maneuver.

Unfortunately for me, Arachnia had twice the number of limbs to maneuver with and none of the attendant millipede’s dilemma that might’ve made that work out in my favor.  I had to work for every shot that connected, and I struggled to keep from taking any really dangerous hits.  It was flat-out crazy.

I went to sweep her legs and she somersaulted over me, leaving another strand of webbing in place to trap my free leg.  Before I could reverse direction, she swarmed over me, closing the loop and pulling it tight.  Now she had both my legs and an arm, and I had nothing to cut my way free with.

She flipped up and stuck herself back to the wall, hauling me up after her; all of a sudden, I was suspended in midair.  She moved to start tightening the cords around me, but I had just enough room to brace against the wall and was managing to hold her off.  I started to use the webbing to pull myself up to her, but she found a crossbar and scurried out onto it, leaving me dangling in space.  I still might’ve managed, at that point, but she used my grip on her web to finally capture my other free hand, trussing me up like a Christmas pig.

From what I’ve seen of how Arachnia normally deals with her opponents, I’m guessing the android’s supply of webbing was considerably more limited than the real deal’s- the difference, I guess, between being a real metahuman and a simulacrum, not that it really mattered at that point.

A voice came on, then- the first time anyone had spoken since I’d entered the arena.  It was the fight announcer, and it was not a welcome message: “The fight is over.”

The Arachnia bot scuttled back to her starting point on the wall and went inactive; I was stuck until a number of RWD technicians entered the arena and cut me down- I don’t think I’ve ever been that thoroughly embarrassed before in my life, but the guys were very professional and I didn’t catch one of them cracking a smile, for which I was grateful.

I got a copy of the fight and the after-action report, which was, frankly, more flattering than I deserved.  My own assessment was that I need to start being better prepared for the weirdness that Angel Falls likes to have waiting in the wings.

Amazingly enough, after that fight, my rating actually went up- apparently, Arachnia is the android to beat, now.

Soon as I kit out a proper utility belt, a la furry-rodent-themed vigilantes, I’m looking forward to it!

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This is actually the third of four Leaderboards sparring matches that made for me; I'm still waiting on one last permission for the second one...

Arachnia is property of ; her android clone is used by permission.

Angelo and Tyche are both property of and happily donated their time to the cause (although Tyche would like it very much if I quit letting her get beat up...)

The Leaderboards, trademarked by RWD Industries, were the brainchild of and and are still operating in .