A Real American Hero, part 6

Continued from: [link]


Another explosion rocked the streets of Angel Falls, blowing out windows and showering the people running to get out of harm's way below in glass. BlastWave could barely breathe as he reloaded his wrist blasters, bits of asphalt and debris raining down on his armored helmet. He slapped another clip of his home-made explosive balls into each gauntlet and chambered another volley of rounds. They were a combination of chemicals, semtex and ball-bearings that he used as shrapnel and exploded on impact. He had used them to great effect knocking over armored cars and banks in the mid-west but his heist here had gone sour fast. He wiped the dirt and soot out of the goggles on his faceplate and scanned the area with his arms both out in front. Alarms were going off all over from the nearby buildings and cars and the smoke was obscuring everything around him. Maybe he got her in that last blast? He wasn't about to take any chances. He'd seen what had happened to that fucker King Snake only a few days earlier and told himself (and his employer) that this was his last job in this city. The goody-goody super-heroines were quickly being replaced by psychotic ones and he had no intention of dying here. Texas maybe, but not here. There was a crunching sound to his left, causing the short man to swivel around.

Through the haze BlastWave just made out a large, four door sedan hurtling towards him, slicing through the air. He fired off both gauntlets as he dove rather nimbly to the left, throwing himself down into the shallow crater he has made only a few moments earlier. The explosives slammed into the hood of the vehicle, detonating in a tremendous fireball. The flaming wreckage shot past him as he scrambled out of the way and down the slope. He could feel the heat through his insulated bodysuit behind him and grit his teeth in frustration. Fuck the money, all he wanted to do was get out of here. He launched another volley of bombs in the direction the car had been thrown from and began to take off straight down the road. Another series of explosions shook the block as the entire adjacent store front was blown out into a massive fireball of rubble and flames. Ted Snyder, once a promising bomb disposal expert before turning to a life of crime as BlastWave didn't even look over as he crossed the battlefield that was once Novack Street. He raced, wheezing and coughing down the shattered cityscape past the terrified masses and stand-still traffic.

The manhole cover cut through the air and slammed into the back of his knee like a battering ram, instantly breaking it and eliciting a scream from the masked criminal. BlastWave collapsed to the ground in-between two parked cars and clutched his maimed limb. He swung around to see American Hero almost on top of him. He made a fist to launch another volley of grenades only to have the blonde heroine grab his gauntlet and crush the firing port closed. He instantly released his trigger, not wanting to blow his entire arm off, as American Hero grabbed a hold of his collar and ripped him off the ground to her eye level. With her free hand, the amazonian woman gripped his mask and tore it off to reveal his wide eyes and pain laced features.

"You've got good reflexes for a chubby bastard don't you Blast?" she smirked at the terrified man. "Not good enough however."

Somehow Ted worked up the courage to sneer at her with contempt and snarled, "You gonna drop me off a building like you did King Snake bitch?"

Jane laughed and ripped open his gauntlet down the side like it was made of paper and not fiberglass and ballistic steel. Reaching into the housing she pulled out several of his tiny explosive spheres and held them in her hand like marbles.

"I'm thinking of something much more ironic for you dipshit." she growled with her Georgia accent.

"PUT HIM DOWN! NOW!"

Hero wheeled around slowly, still smirking. She knew that thick Russian accent in her dreams and had longed to hear it again. The woman that she had followed to this dumb-shit dimension and gone through all this trouble...the woman that had killed her father was walking through the broken and burning streets towards her. She was walking through the flames and the rubble like a vision of the Devil himself.

The Soviet Superwoman.

Jane nodded, closing her eyes for a moment and tossed the humiliated criminal down several feet away. Ted didn't know exactly what was going on, but he didn't want to stick around and find out. Better to make a break for it and take his chances with the AFPD or another hero. He took off like a shot and didn't look back, hobbling away as quickly as he could despite the searing pain as the Russian heroine advanced on the American vigilante. Jane Smith tucked the explosives away in her gauntlet as she turned to meet her foe, placing her hands on her muscular hips. She took a deep breath as the gray clad woman with the scarlet cape stopped a few yards away and stared at her.

"Well, well," American Hero began, "I knew it wouldn't take me long to get your attention."

"Who are you?" Olga asked in a commanding voice. "How do you know about..."

"About this uniform? It belonged to my Daddy, Colonel John Smith...the man you murdered in Moscow in 1953. I'm his daughter."

Olga tried not to look stunned at the revelation. She had prepared herself for just about anything: a trick of Ilsa's, this dimension's version of that "hero", something pulled from her head by one of her enemies...but not this. She held her ground, her hands tightening into fists at her side. This wasn't going to go well.

Hero continued, "I was given these abilities...your abilities before he was killed. The same formula that runs through your veins now pumps through mine. I am what he should have been."

"Nyet. Your father was an assassin who when cornered committed suicide rather than face justice."

"JUSTICE?!?" American Hero took a step forward, her face contorting into a mask of rage and hatred, "Justice? Like the kind your miserable people were famous for? Sending innocents to the gulags in Siberia? Rounding up political enemies and having them disappear? That kind of justice? You make me sick. You're nothing but a commie lap-dog of Stalin, no better than the Nazis. That's all you ever were!"
She waved her arms around at the devastation surrounding them as she continued.
"You come here and try to pretend that you're the hero but I see you for what you are. You're nothing but a miserable Soviet murderer. You dare call my father an assassin, but how much blood is on your hands Olga Yehov? How many 'criminals' did you capture that disappeared? How many of Uncle Joe's 'enemies' did you round up for his firing squads? You make me sick."

"You killed a man...in cold blood. You dropp..." Olga started before she was cut off.

"A man? King Snake was anything but a fucking man! Maybe in Moscow he would be considered a hero but here he was a low-life bastard who tried to murder an innocent child and got what was coming to him. You can pretend with me all you want and try to fool these people that you aren't a killer. You fly around snatching up criminals and dropping them in jail...rescuing kittens from trees and helping old ladies across the street. It's all an act. You crave power and glory just like you always did. I wouldn't be surprised if that Muslim socialist president this world has doesn't have you on payroll with a secret agenda. I deserve to help fix this nation and that first step involves ridding it of vermin like you."

The Soviet heroine took a step forward and pointed at the blonde woman, her body shaking with a building rage. "The only one who tried to fool people was you, telling these people you were a hero when all you are is a woman so blinded by revenge and grief that she no longer knows right from wrong. You gave these people hope and then smashed it on the ground. I have killed, da. I killed during the war. Countless soldiers. After that never again would I take a life...not even my most hated enemy have I killed though she has earned it a dozen times over. Your father shot Comrade Stalin and I defeated him. I would have brought him in alive but he chose to take his own life, not me."

American Hero shook her head, her full lips quivering. "No...my father was a strong man, like he raised me to be. I don't believe your lies, any of them. I sacrificed my entire country...my world to those alien bastards just to get my chance to kill you. I let them take me here!"

Olga's rage began to rapidly bubble over. Her eyes narrowed and her hands clenched and unclenched. Her breathing began to quicken. This woman had a chance to stop the aliens...to save their home dimension and instead abandoned it to come here and get a chance at unjustified revenge. All those people...all their deaths...and she dared to lecture her about murder. She could feel the heat rising in her and her nostrils flared with white-hot anger. American Hero could tell she hit a nerve and nodded up and down slowly as she began to walk forward towards her adversary.

"That place was already infected by international Communism. Better to let it burn for it's failure. Here the USSR was crushed like it was destined to be, and the problems are only now beginning to leak insidiously into this nation...socialism, atheism, illegal immigrants polluting and flooding our nation...and I can prevent it, all of it. After I've killed you of course sugah. After your broken, hammer and sickle bearing body is thrown down on the streets just like King Snake."

To be continued...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Artwork once again provided by my amazing friend , who I'm not sure actually sleeps. Thank you once again!

The story, Soviet Superwoman and American Hero (I & II) are all my creations and property.

BlastWave I'm making open-source so have fun with him kiddies!

This takes place in the setting.