Continuing their rivalry, Kate and Yelena had begun resorting to increasingly extreme methods to outdo one another. Every time one of them seemed to finally come out on top, the other would return with some new technology, training method, or chemical advantage to reclaim the lead.
Two months ago, Kate had vanished.
Now, reading the latest reports of unexplained tremors rumbling through downtown New York, Yelena was certain her rival was up to something big.
The tremors led her to a location directly beneath one of the apartment buildings owned by Kate’s family. That alone was suspicious enough.
Yelena made her way into the building, dealing with the guards the direct way; quick, efficient, and not particularly quiet. Moments later she found herself standing before a massive reinforced security door.
No keycard. No access panel she could hack in time.
"Fine."
Having come a long way herself in the past months, brute force would do just fine.
She gripped the edges of the thick metal door and wrenched. Steel screamed as the hinges tore free from the wall, the entire slab of reinforced metal crashing aside under the sheer force of her strength.
Behind it waited a gigantic industrial lift. Easily large enough to carry two trucks. Yelena stepped onto the platform and pressed the single button. The machinery groaned to life.
After what felt like a long drop, the lift finally shuddered to a halt deep beneath the streets of New York. With a soft click, the lights flickered on automatically.
They illuminated a large underground gym.
But something about it immediately felt… strange.
Weights, racks, and machines filled the room/ But they were scattered everywhere. Plates were piled haphazardly against the walls, barbells lay abandoned across the floor, and several racks looked half-collapsed under the strain of whatever had once been lifted there.
Yelena stepped forward cautiously.
The weights themselves were enormous. Plates thicker than her torso. Dumbbells the size of engine blocks.
She knelt and grabbed one at random.
“My god,” she blurted, straining as it took nearly all her strength just to raise it to waist level.
She dropped it again with a heavy clang.
“Who did she build this place for?”
Even Steve probably wouldn’t have been able to move half this equipment.
Then again… Yelena had surpassed Steve herself by now.
“What has Kate been up to?” she muttered, moving further into the underground compound.
The rooms ahead were dimly lit, shadows stretching across unfinished concrete walls. But from somewhere around the corner she heard a loud THUD.
Then another...
Each impact reverberated through the floor like a distant explosion.
And there, around the bend, bright light spilled from another chamber.
Slowly, carefully, Yelena approached the corner.
She turned it... and froze!
Before her stood Kate. Or at least… something that had once been Kate. The woman now standing in the chamber was enormous. Bigger than the Hulk.
Taller. Wider. Vast shoulders and arms swollen with impossible muscle, every movement making the colossal mass shift and flex under sweat-slick skin. Her entire body pulsed with raw power.
Suddenly the discarded equipment in the first room made sense. Kate had simply grown beyond it.
In her hands she held a barbell of absurd proportions. The solid tungsten bar groaned and bent under the crushing weight of the plates loaded onto it.
Kate lifted it one last time. Then she noticed her visitor. Or rather... her rival.
A smug grin spread across Kate’s face as she let the barbell drop.
The impact slammed into the floor with a thunderous BOOM, shaking the entire compound and undoubtedly sending another tremor rippling through the city above.
“Hi there,” Kate said casually.
“I was wondering when you’d finally show up.”
She rolled her shoulders, towering over Yelena like a living mountain of muscle.
“Care to pick up where we left off last time?”
Her grin widened.
“Something tells me my odds of finally settling who’s superior between us… just got a lot better.”