“Colonel Danvers,” I greeted her politely, hand over fist. She was giving me a wary once-over as she came up, and after a moment of hesitation, she sighed and returned the gesture.

She’d watched me power through Thundra, totally beat down the arrogant Hippolyta, and literally walk Fury back across the floor, the winged paramount landbound and unable to stop my fists. Given how reliant Comet’s own power was on sucking in extra juice, she’d lost her confidence at being able to handle me, and it showed in the resignation in her eyes.

“You know you wouldn’t even have a chance if I were properly charged up and could fly, right?” she told me, raising her hands in a boxer’s stance.

I lifted an eyebrow and smiled. “I’m capable of Stillflighting you regardless, so that’s moot. How much of a charge are you thinking you need to beat me?”

The ref was looking back and forth between us, while Carol glanced at the hot glow of the arcs on my arms. “You want to make this a fair fight?” she asked archly, surprised.

“Sure, why not?” The Bands of the Titan unswirled, and turned into a raging, blinding net of voltage arclights dancing between my hands. “How much juice do you need?”

Despite herself, she smiled thinly at me. “You seem pretty confident of yourself, Dynamo.”

“So do you, Colonel.” I extended a fist, multiple streams of electricity bouncing back and forth into and out of it. “Just say when.”

“Lady Comet, if you accept an artificial charge-up, you are conceding the match,” the referee warned her calmly.

She barely glanced at him. “That’s fine. Fighting under a handicap has never been my style, anyway.” She took a step forward and extended her fist to touch mine.

The arcs of voltage around me collapsed instantly into a solid stream of electricity entering her fist. Her blonde hair started to ripple with light and straighten out, her eyes started to glow, and the air around her started to tremble as she sucked in everything I was generating.

“You definitely put out the amps!” she grinned over the crackle of lightning, lifting her other arm to flex as stray blue and purple arcs began to dance over her. “Can I bring you home and use you for power-ups?” she laughed.

I just grinned. 10d6 of Spider Totem bioelectricity, boosted by my Chasuble. 9d6 of Lightning Reserve. +2d6, +2d10 when critting from the Energized Sapphire currently on Function, the Shocking Imbue on the Tiara of Brilliance inside my Mask, and the Shocking Burst Infusion; +5d6 from the Shock Gauntlets under the plain but brutally useful adamantium fists I was using.

Yeah, a straight 26d6+ 2d10 on crits was a LOT of electrical juice. Technically speaking, it was more than a normal lightning bolt coming down out of a storm. It was also the amount I was pumping into my Capacity all the time, if I was not using it.

“That’ll do!” Col. Danvers finally said, breaking contact with my fist. Lightning swirled around and gathered in hot rings around my biceps again. Looking much more confident now, she settled into a fighting stance, hands up and eyes wary, but plainly thinking she had the advantage now. “This is probably going to hurt,” she warned me, her eyes twinkling.

---

It did.

“Uncle!” She slapped the ground hard enough to make the metal ring, looking up at my fist looming over her, not wanting to put another dent into the plates via her skull. She had a massive bruise swelling around that eye, her nose was flat, and her lips were split.

“Three! Match to Dynamo!” the referee called out.

I didn’t let her go. Instead, the Bands fell apart into streams of electricity again, and I dumped them down the arm I had in a lock, bringing my hand down to the side of her face, and I lit her up.

She tensed up for a moment, and then breathed a long sigh of relief as she sucked in the juice. The swelling went away, her nose mended and inflated, her split lip sealed up, and the glow returned to her eyes.

She relaxed completely, and I let up on the juice, pulling her up to her feet weightlessly as I stood up. She shook out her pinned arm as she stared at me, touched her lip to make sure it wasn’t bleeding, and shook her head.

“Damn, you have fast hands,” she complimented me, “and it’s like trying to hit smoke. Even when I hit you, you just took it, and ouch!” She worked her jaw around a few times.

“Yeah, sorry, I don’t fight like a tank, Colonel,” I agreed with a half-smile. “Fragile girl here not wanna get hurt.”

She reached out to turn my cheek slightly. “You don’t even have a damn bruise,” she muttered, rolling her eyes. “Okay, I’m leaving now. Any other women want a shot at you, they have to go through me all charged up.” Electricity crackled around her fist, and there were a lot of people who heard her words, being on holo and all. Enthusiasm to challenge me dried up quickly from this side of things, but oddly enough, didn’t stop the challenges from the other side, bombastic retorts from the men quickly materializing all around.

I was getting bunches of them from Champion’s Students, too. They all enthusiastically wanted a piece of me.

It was fine. My share of the betting proceeds was swelling my Credit account, and the bets made for me to triumph over all these guys and gals were swinging ever more to my favor.

They wuz investments, see. I had bills to pay!

------

A big orange-furred man-ape was striding in across the arena as Comet exited. He looked both eager and wary at the same time, typical of a guy getting to fight an attractive woman who was going to kick his ass.

The Sasquatch of this universe had a more savage reputation than I remembered, probably because the power he was tied to was not a nice Entity in the first place, and was rather opposed to the Tribal gods to begin with. Walter Langkowski was an intelligent man, but he had been raised on Caucasian elitism and bias against the Tribes, and that ferocity shone through when he was fighting. Using the power of their own gods against them just fit the bill too well, and he’d been rumored to be involved in the border fighting in the West... very secretly.

His arms were also longer than I was tall, and his hands just as outsized, with his feet being prehensile, too, and he had a distinct absence of a normal neck.

He loomed over me as he stepped into the center circle. 83 tons on the test, probably higher if he went berserk, as he’d been known to.

“You’ve been putting on a pretty good show here, Dynamo,” he grinned, showing very sharp canines while flexing his massive hands. “Think you can do the same with me?” he asked, crouching slightly, broad feet splayed and trying to grip the ground harder.

No heavyfoot, I noted, and shook my head inside. There was a reason he’d been on the bottom of the rankings. Now, if we were fighting on a floor of steel bars, he’d be doing fine.

Well, I wasn’t going to do a martial analysis for him, but I was not the opponent he wanted. If he couldn’t tell that after my earlier fights, he deserved what I was about to do to him.

Hells, he deserved it anyway. I was pretty sure he had Tribal blood on his hands, and got along with the werewolf Clans, if Tribal intelligence was any sign. One of these days he was going to go along on a raid, and the Hag was going to be there waiting for him.

Him and his Great Beast Patron were both going to die, then.

His long arms were made for grappling and throwing and broad sweeps, hitting like a cat with speed and agility. He was indeed more agile than the average bruiser, certainly then the women I’d fought, able to bound like an ape and close on me.

But his fighting style was predicated on things that couldn’t react to him in time, getting into contests of rip and tear, or throw and hammer into things.

Most Brick-type fighters relied on their defense, not their agility. While he was agile for a Brick, he still relied on his defenses to take hits from other Bricks.

Defense was natural armor, armor, indestructibility, invulnerability, and Damage Reduction. That was it. It could manifest many ways, but that was it for Bricks. Sure, sure, there was intangibility, illusions, invisibility, speed, and straight-out dodging, but those weren’t Brick defenses.

To counter the high degree of all of those, most Bricks were One Strike specialists, with big powerful blows that could pound through rigid defenses and actually do some damage.

I was not a One Strike specialist, and really, my set of Melee Skills was not very impressive from a real perspective.

I had a +12 Melee Attack Bonus, which was pretty impressive. It meant my foundational skill was totally superhuman, and I could hit an average person faster than they could see or possibly dodge.

I had Unarmed Combat Mastery at /5, and Profound Weapon: Oak and Willow, which meant Spear and Stick fighting worked off my UA skill. My Arcane Fist meant my base damage increased with my chosen Caster Class Level, not my Monk Level, using Arcane energy instead of Ki.

I also had Powerful Finesse, Power Attack, and Penetrate Damage Reduction, which if you didn’t know in a world full of Powered, you were an idiot if you were a fighter.

No, I didn’t have most of the Way Feats, as I didn’t have enough Class Levels to pursue that Level of fighting skill without compromising my Casting. Really, there were half a dozen ways to boost my Melee capabilities with spells easily, but none of those were allowed in a fight like this.

Dumping five points of Soul into my Philosopher’s Might totally was, however.

Natural armor was the ‘bounce’ effect. Simply put, you had a body too hard or a hide too thick, and attacks did nothing to you. Unless an attacker could overwhelm your skin or hide’s protection, they were harmless. It was an all-or-nothing defense, such as it was.

Armor was if they added artificial external defenses on top of themselves. It didn’t always help them, but it never hurt to have another layer between themselves and some incoming damage.

Psychic Impact Strikes were popular ways to bypass both such defenses, overwhelming both and allowing the incoming kinetic force to hit the next layer.

That was Indestructibility or Invulnerability. Sometimes both, but not often. Both were forms of Damage Reduction, along with insta-heals and auto-deflection.

Indestructibility was simply being hard and strong, and was the most common type, psi or magic-enhanced bodies too powerful to be hurt easily. The downside was that kinetic energy acted on them like anything else, and so unless they had heavyfoot, big impacts could still send them flying.

Ben Grimm’s default protection was Indestructibility. His orange hide could endure a lot more punishment than any rock anywhere could, as could whatever passed for the muscle, bone, and other organs below his skin. But hit him hard enough, and until he’d developed heavyfoot, he’d still go bouncing.

Invulnerability was the improved form of that, directly nullifying damage by use of force fields, kinetic drains, or similar effects. That was what Primus had, most gods did, and most of Mr. Hill’s DR worked that way, especially if he was Rooted. Slam into them, and they just vented the force, took it, and there was no rebound or anything, it just did nothing to them. Only if you overcame their Invulnerability did Queen Physics come back to let them know they weren’t all that, and give King Gravity something to play with.

Unless you could overwhelm the amount of energy they could endure or neutralize, you couldn’t do anything to a Brick, and that level of protection in a Superverse like this could easily get totally ridonkulous. Primus, for instance, could bounce tank cannon shells without any difficulty. Grimm could weather them, although a square shot might send him flying, and if Rooted, Mr. Hill would just be knocked around a bit, but not lose his footing.

That was at least DR 40/-. Just ridonkulous from a real perspective.

It also meant they could beat on one another with +30 Strength bonuses and not really hurt one another much, even as they deformed steel plates with ease. Hence the Power Attacks and One Strikes and whatnot, stacking damage mods to overcome defenses and land blows that actually hurt one another.