The Impossible Girl

Victoria

Out of order a bit, think I skipped this one before getting to the zombies. Oops.

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This story is in its way the big one. Things changed from here on out in a big way. It used to be Lisa would come and go and when she was around she was busy shaming everybody. Lisa had so many social circles it was hard to keep up, she had academic, medical, and engineering contacts, in addition to runners and the list goes on. Chick does fucking everything and blazes by the pros before she should even be entirely settled, it's inhuman but I think most of us were getting used to her. You don't doubt her, you don't prank her, and you don't call her a freak and she seemed content to let ya admire her... break an unwritten rule and suffer depending on her mood. It just so happened to be her weightlifting acquaintances to get to view the day her life got thrown upside down, taking the rest of the world with it.
A woman getting into such an elite, high-end gym was generally noteworthy, the few others than Lisa were generally power-lifter thick, so of course everyone noticed when this blonde bombshell struts in like she owns the place. She kept covered in sweats as she kept herself occupied, she ran on the treadmill, punched a bag, and lifted a few weights. She was impressive, and completely gorgeous so of course she was surrounded by guys the whole time. She evaded questions, but she was polite enough. Little did we know we weren't seeing the start of what she could actually do.
Lisa came in, stripped off her outer layers and went about doing her workout without any fanfare. She sat at the weight pull machine that had become so infamous, and reminded everyone just how much she'd improved. One rather interesting day she'd struggled to max out the machine - it's probably worth noting that it really wasn't meant to be maxed out, the final weight was such that it was a goal for someone looking to trump the world record - but in the few years since then she'd improved to the point that she was treating it as a low-weight high-reps work out. As she started to leave that and go on to whatever she was doing next today the mystery blonde girl intercepted her, looking her directly eye-to-eye interestingly. So they weren't both just warrior princess tall (Lisa objects to this description, insisting she's a fifth of an inch taller than Lucy Lawless), they're actually the exact same height...
"Hi, you're Lisa DeLuca right?"
"Yeah, you a fan?"
"Well, I've certainly followed your 'career' very closely. My name's Victoria Cross, I doubt you know me at all."
"Can't say I do. You want something signed? Or maybe, feel something?" Lisa says as she puts her hands behind her head in a faux innocent gesture that just happens to make her biceps pop up pretty impressively.
"I want to know why you do it."
Lisa put a hand to her chin as she thought for a moment, "I'm afraid I don't know what you're asking, it's too vague."
"Shouldn't you try to fit in? What do you achieve when you do things like win the whole Olympics?"
"You think I should pretend I'm normal?" Lisa seemed to contemplate that a while, "I guess it never seemed like much of an option to me? I just always went at things, and everyone around me realized I was the smartest, strongest, fastest kid in the school before long. I was clearly exceptional from the start, so why start holding back? What would that get me?"
"You wouldn't be on anyone's radar, you could just be a skilled person in the public eye. The way you've done things...anyone that's bothered to watch that movie or checked the way Guiness World Records has a 'Lisa' and 'Not Lisa' record for so much stuff knows you're something else."
"Something...else..." Lisa fumes quietly for a little bit and a bunch of the other guys start clearing out around her. She might not blow, but if she does you really don't want to be too close.
"I came here across the Atlantic to meet you Lisa. Not just to chat though, I really want to spar with you."
Lisa clenched her fist and muscles across the length of her arm rippled before she started to walk past Victoria, "Not right now you don't."
"Don't walk out on me, Miss DeLuca."
"Try and stop me!" Lisa started to walk faster with longer strides.
"You are a charlatan and a fraud Miss DeLuca! You think you can be best at everything? You're deluded!"
Oh dear lord...I was taking cover at that point, and a handful of guys just ran out of the gym entirely.
Lisa kept herself in control, but both fists clenched and unclenched a couple times and I'm pretty sure I heard her teeth grinding together.
"You want to take that back..."
Victoria turned her back on Lisa and strode over to the boxing ring. She grabbed the lower rope and pulled herself up onto the mat before turning around and retorting, "Make me."
Lisa turned and ran at the ring, quickly picking up to an unreal speed and jumped high enough to kick off the top ropes, she sailed over Victoria and twisted in the air so she landed on her feet facing Victoria. Victoria smirked and threw off her outer garments and holy hell was the woman the whole package. Long, strong legs, a tight and toned body from head to toe and light, white skin just as flawless as Lisa's. Actually, aside from the thickness of their muscles and their color...these two women looked an awful lot alike... looking each other eye to eye they had equally long legs and stunning curves.
"Whoo!" "Cat fight!" "Cat fight!" There was a bit of a cheer from a lot of the people that hadn't bolted yet. Yeah, thanks guys...I'm sure that has nothing to do with the small number of women that come to our gym...
Victoria bound her curly hair up with a bandana before assuming a defensive posture, "You are far too public Miss DeLuca, and I'm not just talking about police reports that show just how easy you are to bait. Do you think this world is ready for you Lisa? One ant is no threat to a person just as one person is no threat to you, but a million ants can tear a person apart, and there are seven billion people on this world. They tolerate you for now, but trust me Lisa, the human race will turn on you en-mass if you keep on your current course."
"You might actually be a little interesting to debate with, but you said you wanted to spar. I'm going to enjoy shutting you up the primitive way."
Lisa moved in with a right punch that was deflected, followed with a left that was deflected and then Victoria lashed out with a counter punch that snapped Lisa's head to the side and back. I don't think she was hurt, but she was sure as hell confused - an expression I'd never seen on her. A hush fell over the gym as everyone was shocked into silence.
"One for me. Shall we make this out of three Miss DeLuca?"
"Are you...like me?" Lisa sounded so hopeful in that instant, her previous anger had vanished faster than I'd ever seen before for sure.
"Maybe you're just having an off day, will you try again or admit defeat?"
Lisa moved to attack again, moving faster this time. At least five blows from her were shifted aside and Lisa tried to follow one with one of those overly flashy spins she sometimes uses when she gets in a fight. Victoria made her pay for it, ducking under her arm and raining blows on her ribs. Lisa stumbled backwards several steps and clutched at her struck ribs with wide eyes.
"That's two for me. You're losing, Miss DeLuca," Victoria grinned at Lisa oozing smugness.
I'm sure that gave Lisa something of an identity crises, she'd only ever been the one to do that, now on the receiving end she got angry again quickly. She charged Victoria like a bull, Victoria tried to dart to the side but Lisa caught a hold of her. They started to struggle and wrestle against each other. Taunt, well muscled bodies struggled against each other as they tried to shove each other around and gain an advantage. It was soon clear that Lisa was stronger, Victoria had to keep trying to get leverage on her as she'd quickly start to lose any kind of head-on shoving contest. However seeing the strain on Lisa's face and fearsome rippling and bulging of her muscles, this Victoria was making her work much harder for physical control than anyone ever had before. In one relatively long session Lisa managed to push Victoria over to the ropes, but the blonde stranger was able to step up on them and then launch herself into the air over Lisa's head. Except Lisa kept her hold on her and they both spun around in the air. Lisa landed second and she flung herself back like she was trying to throw Victoria, but the blonde woman kept her grip. They flew up higher than they had with Victoria's jump and spun around at least three times in the air before landing on their feet again. One of them went to headbutt the other, the other one saw it coming and countered with the same move, I can't say which was which, it was just a blur of contrasting hair colors to me. There was a loud crack that echoed around the gym and they let go of each other and bounced away. Victoria went further and had to catch herself on the ropes, but Lisa went down to a knee and clutched at her head as well.
"Dude, if we stay here for this we're going to be like the random civilians in an Avengers movie..."
"I'll risk it." "Not me." "Yeah, I'm out of here." "God I wish I had a video camera."
Victoria groaned and muttered something in a foreign language, so I didn't understand her at the time, but Lisa shared their conversation during this ordeal eventually, <"Ugh...You know, I fatally broke a man's skull with a move like that once and I barely felt it...">
<"I guess this is new territory for both of us. Nice German, how's your Japanese?">
Victoria shifted to Japanese to answer, <"I've been praised for its excellence more than once, thank you. Anyway, since I got the worst of that...I'll go ahead and give you the point. 2 to 1 Lisa.">
Lisa shifted to something, I think Cantonese to say <"You knew what you were getting into, and made a point of surprising me. I want an extension on a three point match.">
Victoria responded in yet another language to answer, <"Alright then, does five feel like enough to you?">
Lisa nodded and moved in to fight Victoria again, this time going all out. It seriously turned into a ground-bound Dragonball Z battle as they spun around each other in barely intelligible blurs. The smacks and thwacks of their blows and deflections came at a rate like machine gun fire for nearly a minute before a loud crash rolled over the entire gym with enough force to make all the regular people grab their ears. Lisa shot away from Victoria and caught herself on the ropes, doubled over clutching at her stomach. Victoria stood with her foot upraised, frozen in place at the end of her kick. She stood perfectly still for a moment before stretching out into a splits that went over her head and pivoted in place before she lowered her leg and took a standing position. Crap, I'd seen twirls like that done by athletic women before but pretty much exclusive with use of a pole... What? Don't judge...
<"Good thing I honored your request for an extension, hmm Miss DeLuca? Or you'd have already just experienced your first loss right now."> Yet another new language.
Lisa stood there a while longer to collect herself and plan for her comeback, and stunningly a big area next to her formidable abs was starting to bruise.
The crowd chimed in again, "What are you waiting for Lisa? Just kick her ass!"
Lisa huffed and slammed her hands against the ropes, "I'M TRYING DAMN IT!" She looked surprised and said more quietly to herself, "I am trying...this is hard..."
Victoria, just out of breath enough to make her nicely expansive chest just a little more interesting to look at smiled at Lisa, "It's exciting isn't it? A whole new chapter in our lives."
Lisa shifted to Russian to keep her conversation away from most of the others in the gym, <"Are there others? Do you know?">
Victoria answered her in another new language and I was surprised to see Lisa squint a little and shake her head. I understood enough of her Spanish retort to realize she hadn't understood.
"Oh, do I know more languages than you? Isn't that interesting."
"Hey, these take time and dedication, even for me," Lisa said as she flexed her arms and then a leg to emphasize her point.
<"True enough, but I'm afraid even you have fallen into the trap all bodybuilders seem to fall into. You think just because your muscles are big that they're better. Every opponent you've faced before has been so sluggish I'm afraid you've failed to realize just how much that bulky musculature slows you down.">
Lisa glared at Victoria silently as the blonde woman walked backwards into the ropes. No, not into, she raised one foot to the lower ropes and hopped up where she landed and balanced on the top rope. She started to actually walk around the ring using it like a tightrope with her hands behind her back like she was on a casual stroll.
<"To answer your previous question, Miss DeLuca, I'm quite certain we are the only two of our kind in this world. What do you know of your birth-creation?">
Hopefully at this point it's clear that these women were switching languages each turn they took speaking, whether it was to show off or make sure that no one in attendance could catch much of their conversation or to test each other, I have no idea, but anyway I was in the dark for a long time about most of it, Lisa replied <"Not much. My parents died in a car accident when I was still fairly young. I was told something about a signal from nowhere and that they couldn't get any sort of funding to try to follow its instructions or permission to look for test subjects, so they pulled a bunch of tricks to try it on their own child. I, or rather my all around superior capabilities, were the result.">
<"A bit like my mother then, she couldn't secure official support either, but she wasn't the sort to marry so she went the route of artificial insemination with the most all-around talented donor she could find. The rest is similar to your story, in fact I'm just nine days your senior. You know all my life she told me I was unique, that no one else could have gathered the resources that she did to finish her...experiment... I was one of a kind, able to do any and everything, the future Queen of the Earth. I had to hide it though, she hammered it in that I couldn't let anyone know my full abilities. I was home-schooled and all kinds of physical instructors were made to perform house-calls. Can you imagine what I felt like when I found out about you? What it was like to see you running around flaunting your superiority in the face of everyone?">
<"I imagine you felt a lot of things, though clearly one of them was a desire to punch me in the face.">
Victoria grinned as she dismounted with a flourish, landed on her hands before gracefully returning to her feet in an impossibly smooth motion, "Quite right, I do say that urge isn't entirely out of my system. Shall we continue?"
They went at each other full bore again, blurring overall and sometimes limbs just seemed to vanish. This time it went on for even longer and I'm certain they each sprung off the ropes clear to the other side of the ring in mighty leaps. More of those thundering cracks echoed around the gym and I eventually had the thought that they were from Victoria's kicks. At first I was going to dismiss the idea that she could possibly be breaking the sound barrier and generating sonic booms with her feet because it was ridiculous, but then I remembered this was the woman who was actually beating Lisa. I hugged myself hard trying to fight a piercing chill that had nothing to do with the temperature.
This time when they broke apart and returned to a track-able speed it was Victoria flying through the air with Lisa crouched in a low punch. Victoria hit the ropes high and fast enough that she flipped right over them and out of the ring. She managed to grab the top one briefly and she controlled her remaining flight enough to tumble in a way that she didn't hit anything and ended upright. This time she was clutching her stomach and she went down on her knees gasping and groaning.
"Two to three now. Getting closer," Lisa was smiling as she strut over to the edge of the ring, "Though we didn't discuss bounds at all...maybe you should time out of the match if you can't recover quick enough?"
Lisa was cheerfully rocking back and forth as she held onto the top rope, looking much more like herself. It was a little reassuring.
"Like that ring...ugh...is really... big enough for the likes of us," Victoria forced herself to stand, but couldn't quite force herself all the way upright, tilting to the side she'd been punched in, <"You can't seriously suggest that we bind ourselves to the dimensions of a ring meant for this lot? We're more than a cut above Lisa.">
<"I'm stronger than anyone I've met...I've always been the fastest until I met you, and it is true that I learn things much, much faster than other people. I can't think of a time I felt outmatched or even threatened... but I have some pretty glaring character flaws. I sometimes think I'm a rotten person, I'd probably lose some sort of morality competition...">
<"What? Because you know you're superior or because you like to hurt people?">
Lisa winced a little and I remember wondering what could have caused that doubtful, hurt look on her face.
"Don't try to deny it...I've seen the police reports. You've been in far too many fights for it to be accidental. You look for fights. You can't be challenging yourself, you could kill anyone in here that isn't me with one punch before they had time to react. Sometimes the person's a right bloody wanker that has it coming, but sometimes your excuse is paper thin. You're a bully that likes it when burly men cry and beg you to stop, you like to feel their feeble strength leave them as they exhaust themselves trying to challenge or escape you."
"You don't know me."
<"Don't I Lisa? I know that's how you feel about fighting pitiful men, because it's exactly how I feel. I'm just much more covert and I don't drag it out like you do. We aren't the same and we have completely different parents, but that set of modified DNA instructions made us closer to sisters than anything else."> Victoria was recovered at this point, standing tall and proud and staring up at Lisa defiantly.
<"What is the deal with that anyway? I got my Ph.D. in genetics just to study myself...I had a phase where thought I might be an alien or something..."
<"What? Like you should be wearing a big 'S' on your chest?">
"Come on, you can't tell me you don't identify with Superman or the X-Men or something just a little bit."
Victoria laughed outrageously at Lisa's indignant protest, so much so she turned a little pink and a couple tears rolled out of her eyes before she stopped, "Oh dear me. You're a dork. You over there, with your ridiculous number of degrees and your peerless, amazing muscles...you are a nerd? It's too hilarious for words..."
Lisa jumped into action and Victoria's laughing fit must have left her off her guard. They were quickly back to a grappling competition where long, shapely muscles bulged and strained against each other as the combatants strained and twisted and arced in a dangerous dance. Some opening formed and Victoria lept into the air and wrapped her legs around Lisa. With a powerful motion, throwing herself from being nearly doubled over to bowed backwards she threw the both of them into the air and they both fell on their backs. Victoria grabbed Lisa's forearm and wrapped her thighs around her upper arm and arced backwards, pulling it out into a wrestling hold. Lisa fought admirably, her trapped arm swelled in size and made Victoria's hold slow to take, even looking like it might overcome Victoria's efforts a couple of times. Long seconds went by as Victoria stretched Lisa's arm out to the center of her chest, her legs mashing into Lisa's chest. Lisa tried to arc herself to get some kind of leverage as Victoria tried to arc herself to overextend Lisa's arm. Damn I wasn't sure if I needed a cold shower or some private time.
"God damn it why don't I have a decent camera with me?! Stupid antique phone!" I think the guy threw his old buttoned phone to the floor so hard it broke on impact, but I kind of got where he was coming from.
I thought Lisa was going to have to tap out, probably concede another point to Victoria. It turned out I lost faith in her way too quickly. Lisa managed to get her limbs under her and somehow throw herself into the air, she spun around as though she was going to punch the ground with Victoria's head and she damn near succeeded but for Victoria's insane speed. Victoria launched off of Lisa's arm and rolled away as Lisa's arm punched into the floor. Lisa jumped up and ran at Victoria while she was still rolling into a ready position. Still crouched she fired off one of those supersonic kicks in a low, sweeping move but Lisa had actually jumped over it. Victoria rolled backwards away from an airborne punch from Lisa and Lisa followed her closely. Stomping and kicking, Lisa was bound and determined not to let Victoria regain her feet. Victoria ended up rolling over a bench press platform and jumping up while the bench gave her some breathing room, but she ended up regaining her feet just in time to be clipped in the shoulder by a kick from Lisa. It wasn't a solid hit for Lisa, but it spun Victoria off balance and she caught herself on the next bench over and vaulted over it into the air into a perfect gymnastic twirl and landing.
"Tied score now." "So it is."
<"What did you ever discover about your own DNA, Miss DeLuca?">
<"It was hard to call conclusive, there was enough of my parents to see both their heritage. My mother's half Japanese and half Ojibwe ancestry and my father's mostly Ukrainian but quarter Yoruba ancestry, but there was some that seemed inspired by non-human animals. Literal eagle eyes but combined with more color cones and night-vision strong genes...things with stronger, denser muscles than a human... senses and bone density... The majority of it though seems to be deliberately engineered though.">
<"And so it is. Definitely not alien in origin though.">
<"Well, my parents did tell me that it seemed to come from a patch of space with nothing in it.">
<"Ah, I think I can explain that. It seems they didn't expand their thinking far enough, or they failed to consult the right specialist. See, that patch of