Mary Jane blinked at the sorceress across from her, down at the Sword between them. “Is this dangerous?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Will I be taken over by her personality?” she floundered, wondering where this was going.

“No. The fact you are standing here now reinforces the fact that such a thing is impossible. This is your time.”

“Why... would I want to do that?” she finally asked, staring at the Sword. “I mean, I can’t deny I’m intrigued...”

“There are only a handful of names that survive from that time period, and the number that are women you can count on one hand.” Dealer tapped the Sword. “Your soul is one of them. Or, to put it another way, if your past life was Joan of Arc or Guinevere or Cleopatra, would you be interested?”

She blinked. “Well, yes, of course!” she agreed quickly.

“Those women were utter pansies compared to Red Sonja.”

She stared at Dealer, whose smile only grew wider. “Um, wow?” she managed to say. “And... I became this woman last night?” she asked, amazed.

“Kicking demon arse, beating up sorcerers, rescuing Spider-Man... yes!” Dealer chuckled.

“Really!” MJ found herself smiling despite herself, and her eyes fell on the Sword again. “I could learn... what it meant to be Red Sonja?” she guessed.

“I can enchant the Sword so that if you sleep with it at night, you will relive her life in your dreams. The amount of time you relive will vary, and this will not be a quick process... possibly up to a year a night while she’s a child, and down to a month or so as she gets older.”

MJ stared at her. “That... is incredibly tempting,” she realized. “Why are you doing this for me?” she asked intently.

“How could I not? A legend of the Hyborian Age, her reincarnation right in front of me... Of course I would do this! It is far too much fun and right NOT to do this!” Dealer beamed, her blue eyes dancing.

MJ couldn’t repress her own smile. It DID sound very cool. And if there were no threats of being taken over like a bad movie...

“This doesn’t sound like it’s going to take a short amount of time,” she finally realized, as she did the math belatedly.

“Probably a good year,” Dealer agreed. “Any quicker, and you’re going to be pulling at her life, instead of living it. That’s when Mary Jane Watson and Red Sonja start mixing.”

“Slow and easy does it, then,” Mary Jane sighed, but she had an expectant smile on her face.

“It’s going to change your life, you know,” Dealer warned her.

“Well, yeah, living someone else’s would probably do that, but why?” MJ had to ask.

“You’ll know the history of an era that’s only legends now. You’ll know languages that haven’t been spoken or used on this planet for literally millennia. Nations and societies barely hinted at in records in a few scattered museums, or the oldest and most magical of libraries, will be places you saw and walked the streets of.

“You aren’t going to be an actress, Mary Jane Watson. You’re going to be a scholar and an author!” Dealer beamed again.

“Oh.” Mary Jane blinked.

“Mary Jane Watson, foremost authority on the Hyborian Age! Have a ring to it?” Dealer smiled at her, framing the words.

---

Although she finished up her coursework for the semester, the physical conditioning started immediately. She was going to be appreciative of it when she found out about the physical ability of Red Sonja, and what was required to be a She-Devil with a Sword...

But we had the money and the facilities, and soon enough she was writing a novel and history about the greatest heroine of the Hyborian Age, starting with her childhood.

Mary Jane Watson on this world was going to have a very different future than that on other alternate Earths...

=======

More time passes, dread schemes are discovered and foiled, crazy canon stories somehow take place and are forgotten with the droll power of a supersverse...

“OTTO OCTAVIUS!”

The windows of Avenger’s Tower rattled, and the Sinister Six who had invaded it all fairly jumped as it echoed over every surface and out of every speaker. Cursing, they tore their coms off their ears as feedback squeals surged through them and promptly fried them.

“Who is that?” snarled the portly genius, his four mechanical arms snapping up to readiness, their motion detectors looking for foes.

“A woman, but not one of the Spiders,” murmured Vulture, who’d had run-ins with them more than a few times. “She just overrode and formed a resonance feedback circuit to fry all the speakers, just with her voice!”

Mysterio, barely visible in the mists he was blanketing the outer rooms in, swore. “I tried to play her voice back, and got nothing!”

“That was Dynamo,” Kraven declared authoritatively. “I have seen and heard her in action. She does not speak much... but when she does, those about her pay attention.” His dark eyes flickered. “Octavius, be quick about this. That is an extraordinarily dangerous woman...”

There was a crumping noise, and a rising scream of “AUUUUUUGH!” going to the higher registers, recognizable as Piledriver before it abruptly cut off. The Wrecking Crew had stumbled across her. Mysterio moved out into the mists, which thickened as his defenses moved into place, and then there was the crunching sound of something meaty hitting steel far too hard.

There was a popping and surging, the lights around them all flickered, came back on, and then popped again and went off-line.

“Noooooo!” Octavius swore, as the console he was working on went dark for lack of power. “She cut the power supply, and fried the back-ups somehow! I can’t get the satellite connection I need here now!”

---

Bulldozer thunked down to the floor, his ribcage indented for a foot radius, his ribs plainly shattered. Only his superhuman physique was keeping his heart beating.

The Wrecker and Thunderball were staring at me in shock and alarm. Bulldozer was over there, slumped over with a concussion, his massive hands shattered and bones sticking out of them and his forearms after 1-2’ing my Fists faster than he could react to his hands being pulped by the impacts.

I jammed Function into Thunderball’s ball and chain, which he had thoughtfully waved at me and let me stick to, ripping it out of his hands after a blast of lightning numbed his grip.

There was a surging pop of light, and the entire heavy ball and chain dissolved into filings. With an identical popping sound, Thunderball suddenly lost a lot of bulk and over two hundred pounds of high-density weight.

“Holy shit!” he swore, looking at his hands as he lost the Wrecker Buff. A second later a Bite blew him across the room and into the wall, and he fell sprawling to the floor, twitching uncontrollably.

“Six goddamn Avengers in the hospital in critical condition. You boys did real good, hunting them down on their civilian time. I am fucking here to show you my goddamn appreciation for your proper employment of attack strategy and cunning tactics.” Lightning arced around me wildly from my hands and hair. “I bet you are so goddamn happy you didn’t kill them just about now, because if even one of them died, none of you would make it out of here alive.”

His eyes flickered. There was a clink behind me, as the hurled spear, spot on, hit the hexagonal Shield that flitted over to block it, and both hung there in midair.

There was a poof as something detonated against Kraven’s chest, driving him back out the door.

“Kraven the Hunter. Probably the one who came up with the strategy.” My voice was as cold and level as ice. “I can now sense where you are from a continent away, oh Great White Hunter!” My voice was rising, and sizzling with lightning now, the floor humming with it. “RUN, LITTLE MAN! I WILL BE COMING FOR YOU SOON ENOUGH!”

Arcs of lightning crawled in his direction. His face ashen, Kraven leapt away, and kept going.

I slid backwards, just a flash of motion, and there was a crunch as I drove my hand through the wall a foot to the right of the door. There was a shocked curse, and I turned my elbow ninety degrees, bringing around a dark face inside a fishbowl helm, now suspended a foot off the ground by the glowing fingers that had punched through his mask and he was now staring at.

“Smile for the cameras,” I said mirthlessly, and let the lightning go.

It was a long six seconds as he danced there in midair, lit up from the inside by the voltage, no features visible through his skin and shining bones.

Then I blew his bowl off my fingers, and retracted my arm.

My eyes had never left those of the Wrecker. He swallowed hard.

“This is it,” I told him, stalking forward, as he clutched at his Crowbar there and watched Mysterio’s mists start to dissipate with his fried suit systems and general unconsciousness. “My Function is going to eat the magic of your little Crowbar, and then siphon the rest off of you. Then the four of you get to work the rest of your goddamn lives helping pay for the nine people on permanent disability, and the twenty-three with permanent injuries of one kind or another you’ve created since you created your little band of working-class bonebreakers.”

He lifted up the Crowbar, clearly ready to plan something. “Go on, take the power back from those two. They’ll die in under a minute if you do. I’m not going to heal them up and keep them alive if you’re going to drain them, and then, since you’ll be a murderer...” I tapped my Fists together, and there was a shriek and buzz of kinetic fields and steel having vibratory kittens.

There was a distant shout and scream. The Vulture had just found there was a Stillflight Field in existence around the Tower, and his suit’s anti-grav wasn’t working.

Spidey would grab him before he splattered against the ground, as his suit was quite unable to glide far enough to get away from the field.

“That’s the sound of Toomes falling to his death, unless someone catches him.” The Wrecker grimaced as I approached, completely unafraid of him. “That leaves just you AND GODDAMN OCTAVIUS, IF YOU MAKE ME CHASE YOU, I AM GOING TO RIP OFF YOUR FLESHY LIMBS AND STUFF THEM DOWN YOUR THROAT!” All the steel around me shook and echoed back my voice.

“He stopped at the edge of the window,” Gwen whispered on coms. She might have been a little impressed.

“AHHH!” screamed the Wrecker, despair in his eyes as his saw his superhuman days coming to an end, and he charged at me, swinging that Crowbar.

It was convenient for me, as there was no way he was going to hit me. I stepped to one side, Red Eyes watching it sail past, raising a Fist as I did so, and there was no smile on his face as he watched it rise while his blow sailed a half-inch past my chin.

My Fist didn’t miss at all.