The only woman who might have been a competitor for me in the strength department was Amazonia, who purported to draw strength from the Amazon jungle and supposedly was damn powerful there. Alas, this was Texas, and her strength was easily cut in half here, just like many of the European Captain Country X’s who had shown up.

So, I walked up to get my rating, with Sif at 42 tons and Brunhilda at 45 looking on as I did.

Without the Spider Totem, just the Wrecker Buff would have got me to 40. With the Totem, I could hit 50 tons.

With the Bands of the Titan, I had no problem whatsoever hitting 100 tons, and technically could hit two hundred if I cared to.

When my lightning flared up and out and around my biceps like seething coils of living lightning, I heaved up the hundred-ton grav bar without a problem, holding it up over my head smoothly without faltering for five seconds, before letting it down smoothly and under control, unlike those who let it drop.

With a flash of light, DYNAMO – 100 TONS took over first place on the women’s leader board.

It wasn’t that impressive next to the men, who had multiple fellows hitting the hundred-ton limit by then; over a dozen, in fact, including Mr. Hill and Mr. Grimm. But me sitting over there looking pretty, with a substantial lead over everyone, kinda pissed all the women off.

A hundred tons was the limit of the test. Champion didn’t consider higher Might any more important than his casual efforts there.

Going from being known for lightning and exploding Fists to pure brute strength was a bit of a stretch in the heroic world, but it just showed how adaptable my lightning actually was. Some of them smirked about alchemy and Potions and body transforming... which wasn’t illegal, so it was immaterial. As long as I could sustain it indefinitely, it was acceptable. If it had a time limit on it, it was not.

Gwen came in at 12.5 tons, Cindy at 8. That was still pretty damn good, and when you added in their speed and agility, still made them extraordinarily dangerous. Their main problem was that none of their webs or gear was allowed in the fighting, and you weren’t allowed to just keep bouncing around and evading your opponent, you had to come to blows. You could block, you could dodge, you could tumble... but you could only stay out of reach a few breaths at a time. Running away was not being tested here.

Those who knew me knew that the combat skill test was not going to be an issue. My strength level tossed me directly into the primary combat line, so I was tested out by a Oluugian, a rather roundish, green-hided humanoid race with immense durability. This one happened to have a Might Rating of 70, so he could definitely handle some combat.

Unlike many of the men he faced, he couldn’t lay a big fist on me. I rapidly pounded him right out of the ring through the ring-out gap, smashing him off his feet as he reeled from some really fast and precise punches, and then palmed him out precisely through the gap into the force-net beyond.

The sheer difference in style also instantly put me into number six on the main ranking boards. I noted that both Sama and the Great Bear were not listed on those boards, and had the distinct impression that Primus was sitting on top because an Elder of the Universe didn’t want to get chopped in two.

If they really wanted to see who was better, a private bout was still totally possible. I was privately assuming that Sama and Briggs could clean his clock, but I could be wrong. Even if he was a chi-user, and I assumed an Elder had some way to use internal energy or an equivalent, it wasn’t going to mean a thing against Forsaken, and I doubted he had Six or Sevenfold Way Mastery of Seven Dragons like I assumed the two of them did.

King Namor, the Rock, the Mountain, Hercules, and Primus were all rated above me, which was fine with me. All those Class 100 brutes below me were not happy with the situation, however, and given they couldn’t automatically challenge anyone not directly above them, that meant if they wanted a shot at the top five, they would have to go through me.

Oi. I rubbed my jaw, glanced at the Mercy Bracelet, and the first pings of ranking challenges outside the main system were already coming in. A lot of them were provocative, especially putting down my gender, trying to get me to accept their challenge so they wouldn’t have to go through everyone between me and them.

Well, wasn’t that what I was here for? Training up some nice Attack Bonus using the superhero system? Technically I could and should have done that at the lower level, but once I saw Champion’s Strength-centric rating system, I got a little overly proud and since I had the tools to do the job, why not?

I also sent off copies of all those challenges, especially the misogynist ones, to all the women, and any jealousy they had quickly evaporated in the face of the urge to stomp a lot of those men into the ground.

Those challenges soon hit the general Boole, much to the glee of the marketers and gamblers. The odds I’d be able to keep my place started moving around hastily. I wasn’t actually required to accept all those challenges, I only needed to accept one from the person directly below me, who was the Abomination.

But I came here to fight. The Wrecker Buff totally juiced my recovery ability and Damage Reduction. I should totally be able to recover from a fight within fifteen minutes between them, courtesy of Healing Reserve and Wands or Healing Magic. Physical injuries I was going to work through within a minute or two, Soak would be the slower thing... and a lot of these guys had massive Health pools, unlike me.

Well, that was what I was here for. Spider Totems were already really good at soaking blunt trauma impacts, and the Wrecker Buff really helped with both that and energy resistances. They weren’t going to like how totally tough I could be.

------

Surprising everyone, my first five challenges were not men, but women.

Jennifer Walters was of course unhappy that I was on top, and Thundra was also convinced she could take someone late to the super-strong game down. A latecomer, Hippolyta, the daughter of Ares, was also crazy confident no mortal could defy her, and, well, Comet wanted a shot at me, too, and I was happy to give it to her, while Fury was far too proud to just concede the point.

So, to the surprise and pleasure of the ranking system, I set up my first five duels one after another with other women... or, if I lost, the winner got to take on the other top four women.

---

“Hey, Jennifer,” I greeted her as she stepped into the ring. She had on a tight sleeveless shirt and short capri pants, everything skintight and showing everything off. Given she was green, she had an instantly substantial following among the hundreds of thousands of aliens in attendance, who promptly erupted into cheers as soon as she came into the ring.

“Dyna,” she answered. She didn’t know me that well, being more one of Stark’s recent recruits. She handled a lot of legal matters for the Avengers, whereas the Baxter crew tended to work with Nelson and Murdock directly, who she was affiliated with and was going to be made a partner of soon. She took her role of setting up superhuman law precedent very seriously, and was naturally quite competitive, moreso when she was a green Amazon.

“You sure you’re going to be able to fight like this?” she asked me, trying to needle into my confidence as she entered the middle circle with me.

I just grinned, not rising to take the bait and get her angry so she’d get stronger. “Ah, you know me. Dumb broad constantly overreaching and doing things she shouldn’t.”

Her face worked a bit in disbelief at my modesty. I wasn’t one to throw myself into the limelight, unlike her, who reveled in it. At the same time, I had a reputation for sheer brainpower that probably no woman below the Golden Hag could rival... and given how much Tony Stark cursed about me finding holes in his equations and designs, I was probably equal to at least him.

“Right.” Lightning converged on my biceps, ignited into hot coils of green-white light wrapping them, and the crowd went wild as I powered up. As long as it was internal, it was perfectly okay, no different than her own gamma-form transition. She winced as she looked at it, and the arcs around my feet on the plates of the hundred-meter arena.

Yeah, the Gamma Crew had a natural talent for using force energy, but that didn’t mean she was all that great at it, yet.

The referee was a senior student, capable of easily weathering any fallout, and fast enough to stay out of most area effects, read the fight, and not get between the fighters. All of them had at least a 60+ Strength rating, too, so they could toss contestants around if required, and they had power fists to back them up in case of recalcitrant grapplers and the like.

“Fight!” he shouted, and Jennifer lunged at me with barely a flex of her feet.

Unfortunately for her, the eight Red Eyes were all up, and while she had good reflexes, mine were far superior. It was a very dumb thing for her to do, and while her fist came in at 300 mph or something, we both watched it drift past my nose as I slid sideways without shifting my feet. Then I locked down my feet to the floor for ten feet around me with an audible snap and clang of metal anchoring me, and drove my fist into her face with absolute Rooting.

Her nose flattened instantly, and I clotheslined her completely. Her forward momentum went bye-bye, and suddenly she was heading for the ropes in the other direction, half-stunned and wondering just what had hit her.

I was also taking off after her. The rules of the fight said that contestants could kite, but no more than ten seconds between retreat and advance, or they’d be ruled for a knockdown.

“One!” called out the ref, seeing Walters limply flying through the air and not rolling with the blow and taking control of her flight. She hit the super-elastic ‘ropes’ of the field, which took her impact and sent her right back at me.

Her eyes cleared as she came hurtling back in my direction, going wide as I came right in at her again, hand coming across my chest, waist torquing...

She started to get her hands up and raise her legs into a cannonball, but I was up on her too quickly, and she couldn’t block in time.

The shockwave of the hit rippled the air and the net as I backfisted her. She went flying tail over teakettle, not even hitting the ground, and shot right through the Ring-Out circle to my right helplessly, smashing face-first into the force field there and sliding down it half-stunned.

Wow, that picture was going to get a lot of play...

“Two points! Three!” the referee called out, chopping his hand. “Match to Dynamo!”

There was a collective intake of breath in disbelief, and then the arena erupted in cheers, thoughtfully collected from the whole breadth of the place and piped in so the contestants could hear them. Most people were watching holos, of course, given the scale and number of events going on, but the systems automatically conveyed their cheers to whoever they were watching.

Morale was such a finicky thing, as it were.

“Do you need a rest?” the referee asked me, his voice neutral and face impassive.

“Two punches?” I rolled my eyes, and found Thundra down there, suddenly not looking as confident as she had. I gestured her up as I headed back for the middle of the ring. “I’m good. Let’s keep the schedule moving, shall we? If I finish early, I can fit in some of the guys on the main tranche, right?”

“That should be permissible. Let me clear it...” he said, also trotting back with his digigrade stride towards the center as Thundra stepped up into the arena.

I was pretty sure that if all I did was just take on challengers one after another, they’d be happy to give me this arena as long as it took. There were other big arenas there for bruisers to fight in, but for some reason they weren’t getting near the holo numbers that I was.

My odds on taking out the other top four women had just skyrocketed. I noticed Comet was looking very irritated at me...