Re: 2004 Summer Olympic Games -- Nova Events
Nova Weight Events
A half-flooded drydock had been prepared as the special arena for the lifting events. Scientists had set up up a considerable array of equipment to make observations, and camera crews were in place to document the scale of the events for posterity. Like most nova-events, this was invitational, to reduce the need for qualifying rounds, ensure the marketability and integrity of the athletes, and put some limit on the scale of the miracles to come. Even with twenty five competitors, it was awe inspiring. Mythology made flesh.
Comstock reflected on this, internally, as he felt out the shape and structure of a yacht held overhead. He realized, also, that he was cheating: the platform he was standing on had been bolted into place, and so as his feet sank into the earth he'd bolstered his stance and corrected his balance by reaching out to the bolts and the rebar.
He had not been able to replicate the miracle of the bomb again, his transmutation at range. There were promising moments, sensations from afar, but no manipulation. He had not told anyone this yet, since few knew he had accomplished it the first time. The implications of this stumbling block were not lost on him. The rules of this competition demanded physical contact, something that had kept Comstock in the running against more colorful and impressive competitors. Some amount of showmanship was demanded, though collateral damage was frowned on. Indulging the crowd, he paused, holding the yacht horizontal before him, making it float five feet in the air purely through his tenuous grip on the prow. The yacht wanted to break, but Comstock circulated himself through it and so it did not. Quantum was a strange thing.
The competitor following him had named himself Da Yu and competed for the People's Republic of China. With a stomp of Da Yu's foot, the water fled the dry dock. With a second stomp, it rushed back in and straight to him. He seemed to absorb it, growing large, and though he'd performed this trick in earlier rounds, this time he stood like a titan, ten meters tall at the least. The ship was little more than a rowboat in his grasp. Comstock might be stronger, but Da Yu could lift the ship higher. He also photographed well.
France had found someone to compete, some Algerian outdoorsman named "The Great Bear" for this competition at least, but the brute lacked creativity and endurance. They'd probably dug him out of the XWF. He faltered as the weight passed into dozens of tonnes. His story was not unique. In the final rounds, it was those with endurance that remained, those who'd not overexerted themselves or spent their quantum frivolously.
Determined glares were exchanged. More weight was loaded onto the yacht, and competitors were encouraged to lift, rotate and even toss and catch the boat to increase the challenge. A few others fell out. A naval gunboat put into drydock for maintenance was volunteered, but it too posed little trouble to those that remained. After some stalemate and two hours wait, at last a venue for some final challenge was decided upon. A container ship. Competitors would do what they could to move the container ship without losing any cargo or damaging the ship itself.
Russia's competitor, the charismatic and nationalistic Hammer of Industry (Молот промышленности), graciously withdrew from the competition at this time. Vicious rumors circulated in the months afterward that the sometimes-Elite had been juicing, that his friends in organized crime had provided him with cybernetic or biological enhancements, or that using his full power could have resulted in the irradiation of the crowd.
Ricardo Montoya-Bernal was next out, though for Mexico making it to fourth place was impressive. He managed to pull the ship behind him as he swam, but little more. Commentary wondered if Montoya-Bernal's recruitment into the new T2M:A was intended to fill the void left by Comstock.
Da Yu's command of the waves and sizemorphing enabled him to hoist the ship and swing it about. But he had his limits. Within China, the bronze metal was much celebrated, proof that the government had enough power to stand toe to toe with the best of the world. In a competition dominated by three T2M members, there might be something to say for the sentiment.
Comstock lacked Da Ya's showmanship. But when stepped into the ocean, he climbed out with the ship held overhead. It took him nearly ten minutes to maneuver the vessel safely over land, ten minutes to cheat the laws of physics into allowing him to stand upon the dock and walk with one-hundred-and-fifty thousand tons supported by a pair of human-sized feet. No containers tumbled off the ship's deck. Every motion was controlled and smooth. "I outlast you," the Metal Man grunted. He ought to have crushed the ground. In effect, he pressing the earth with the same quantum principles he used to hold the ship together. He'd bothered Gravitas a dozen times or more in mastering this power, and kept the full limits secret, practicing beneath the earth at the Sierra Nevadas base. Carefully tilting the ship up, he swung the ship slowly over the crowd, then set it carefully back into the water, inch by inch, until it settled with nary a splash. Exhausted, he stumbled away from the dock.
Caestus Pax glared. He'd talked his way into an invitation to the event. The somewhat vocal kid he'd informally made a leader on the first day of the Equatorial Wars would not upstage him anymore. The one thing in all the world that Caestus Pax was sure of was his own greatness. Perhaps, if Impetus had not played upon his ego and pushed him on this path, if he had not persuaded himself that Comstock was a threat to his image, if Divis Mal's enigmatic power had not planted the seed of self-doubt in his heart, if he had not begun reading the Null Manifesto as something other than a terrorist apologetic, he might not have cared about the gold. But events had conspired to bring him here.
In one furious dive, Caestus Pax burned with quantum fire and swept the whole container into the Grecian sky. The eerie silence of Comstock's display stood in start contrast to the raw energy of Pax. Force was his domain, his and his alone, and so he threw the ship like a rod from heaven back at the crowd and cameras below. Armageddon loomed. Before impact, it slowed, it's kinetic energy sapped and returned to the hero. At televisions around the world, millions released a breath that the scarcely realized they were holding. None of the other competitors had enough strength left to compete. None even knew how to begin to compete.
There was no doubt: he was great. And in a world of escalating displays of power, he wanted no doubt left behind who deserved the title of the World's Strongest.
