Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events are imaginary. Any similarity with real life events is purely coincidental. Some of these stories contain erotic and often very violent and immoral content. To continue reading, you should be 18 years or older, and over the age of majority in your country. You should also understand the difference between fiction and reality. If any of these conditions do not apply, leave now. --------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Doppelganger Main website: /~doppelganger/ Title: A Democratic Leader Keywords: (M/F, humil, tragic, viol, snuff) Optional Keywords: (snuff) --------------------------------------------------------------- 5 years ago, what is now called "the event" happened: 99% of the world population died as a cause of a virus. The remaining 1% were immune and survived, and the virus strain has now dissappeared, but the decomposition of power hierarchies and the full stop of most industries and services made governments and authorities over the world crumble down. Progressively, groups of survivors began to emerge. Most groups could be categorized in one of three groups: 1/ Peaceful groups, mostly composed of normal citizens with the main objective of surviving while trying to maintain as many customs from civilization. 2/ Military groups, mostly composed of members of the armed forces that self-organized after the event. Most went rogue, specializing in looting and often killing other groups. 3/ Biker gangs, mostly composed of criminals that didn't need to become rogue to start basic their survival into looting and killing. They are suually more nomadic than military groups. As food and goods from the civilization are beginning to become less available, competition for food, energy resources and machinery and spare parts is becoming harsher. Clashes are becoming more brutal and ruthless. Some biker gangs and even military groups have even engaged into cannibalism as a source of food. For some people, society rules no longer apply. Sophie is part of a group of around 80 people that live in an abandoned prison. The group is peaceful and tries to maintain civilized values. They share the food, resources and work according to everybody's needs, they do not attack strangers but welcome them if they abide by their rules. The group works reasonably well, though, besides the inevitable share of latent grudges. They have a system where they elect a leader by single majority every 6 months, and they can veto him at any point if a majority of two thirds wants to. The leader has something that at that small scale resemble executive powers, but not judicial or legislative. To solve disputes, they have a system where the whole group is the jury, whereas in order to change general rules, two thirds need to agree with the change. Sophie is young and not specially physically strong, even for a woman. She is a rather bookwormy kind of girl. However, she was elected as leader one year ago and she has maintained the position so far, because of her ability to mediate conflicts by means of dialogue, and her demonstrated will to work for the benefit of everybody, working hard and not seeking personal benefits. She is not though, and even though she is smart she is not specially experienced, but her soft and humanistic approach works and has good commuication skills. The former prison in which they live has very good defences and even though the group is not inherently violent and well armed in the offensive sense, the intrastructure of the prison gives them strong defensive abilities. In the last 3 years that the group has existed in that prison, they only have received a couple of attacks from small biker groups, which they could easily repel. They also have a very good infrastructure product of what was before and other things they have built over the last years: large reservoirs of water that capture rain, a medium-sized fully functioning wind turbine, a large greenhouse to produce vegetables, and large amounts of food. One day, a exploratory group of 3 people from Sophie's group is captured by a biker gang. The gang is larger than usual, around 20 people, and what is worse: they have a fully functioning tank with plenty of ammunition, grenade launchers, trucks and assault weapons stolen from a military group (Another option is that they are a rogue military group themselves, or a mix of both, you can decide that; tell me what you prefer after I paste this text). They interrogate the captured members until they reveal the location of the rest of the group, and they surround the prison with their heavy artillery. Because of the defenses of the prison and the 1:4 ratio of people, a man-based direct invasion of the place would cost the invaders too many casualties, despite their higher fighting experience. On the other hand, they could heavily shell the place before taking it, which would make the invasion safer for them, but the place would lose a lot of its valuables. The leader of the invaders, upon learning about Sophie and the social structure of the group from the captured people, devises a plan. He communicates with a loudspeaker that he challenges the leader to direct mortal combat. He says that... 1. If he is defeated, his group will free the 3 captured people and leave. Of course, having learnt that the formal leader of the place is a weak and bookwormy young woman, he knows this will not happen. 2. If he wins, he will also free the 3 captured people, but he will be the new leader and he will take the place without resistance. He says that in this case, anybody that submits to his new command will be spared and given an opportunity in his group, and the rest will be allowed to leave if they do not take anything with them. 3. He further makes clear that if their leader does not accept the offer, then he will kill the prisoners, shell the place to ruins, and then show no mercy with any survivor. Sophie is not even close to being a fighter and she knows that she has no chances in any sort of physical combat if she accepts, that he will likely kill her, and that he is not even forced to keep his promises in the first or second case, but that he can and probably will carry out his threat in the third case, because she realizes he prefers to waste some of the infrastructure that he wants to pillage rather than the losses he would endure if he tried a man-only invasion. Some of the people of her group want to leave, others want to defend themselves, and some do not say anything but she knows they might join the external group if given to choose between that and being killed or having to leave everything behind. But since he is asking for her "political head", she has no other option than accepting the "offer" in order to do everything that is possible to avoid a bloodshed for the rest of the people, including the captured ones, and allow at least the possibility that that the invaders keep their word and allow everyone to choose between leaving or joining them. After pondering and feeling covert but growing pressure among members of her group, she accepts she has no other option than sacrificing herself for the common good. The leader of the invaders could use his upper hand to impose humiliating conditions for her in the so-called fight. His plan would be denigrating and showing no mercy with their leader, killing her in a terrible way. He would want to make clear that he is to be feared, sending a message to his men and the few potential recruits in that group that only his leadership based on force is the one that prevails and ensures suvival, and that soft leaders based on consensus, respect and dialogue are just cannon fodder. That diplomacy and democracy are over. But at the same time, he would free the prisoners later as he promised, showing he keeps his word and he is also a trustworthy leader, no matter how cruel he might be. In this way, he expects people that would be willing to join him to fear him but also accept his ways and let him in, and additionally he would have removed any former and potentially troubling leadership. He could then take the place, the goods and find a few new recruits among those willing to join a predatory group.