The ogre was smoking a cigarette. It wasn’t even one of the good cigarettes, it was this foul, brown, hand-rolled thing that smelled like burning seaweed mixed with dung. His human seeming was artless, bulky without looking like it had any real distinguishing features, simply changing his skin color from its natural blue and concealing his fangs and horns.

Oni, or Japanese ogres, were only slightly smarter than their fey counterparts. I was tempted to end him right here and now, because like their Unseelie counterparts, they were well-known to be brutal cannibals and basically uncivilized jerks that clothed themselves with a thin veneer of civility. This particular clan took it a step further, however, adding in the trappings of a Yakuza clan.

Not that that made it any better, the Yakuza were the same, brutal thugs that pretended that somehow their shallow concept of Giri, or honor-debt, made them better than the street thugs and drug dealers that they truly were. Like somehow cloaking the thuggery in a tradition made them better than all the other cartels and mafias. I knew better.

It made me want to see how much of the purple ichor they called blood the wannabe blocking my way through the back entrance actually contained, by spilling it all over the tunnel he was supposedly guarding. But this was the modern era, we were supposed to treat sapient monsters like they were people instead of obstacles, even if we knew that in the past they consider humans little more than slaves or food.

The vampires, I could understand. There weren’t many of them, and before the era of blood donors, just a hint that something was feeding on humans was enough to send the absolute worst sorts of hunters running at them. It was not unjustified, since allowing a human to live after feeding on them was almost certain to attract attention. As long as they signed and held to the compact, they wouldn’t be targets, at least from the likes of me. Most vampires remembered very well being human and were torn up with guilt, and enough of them volunteered, and died, fighting in Siberia to have earned themselves a hint of forgiveness for past transgressions.

Werefolk, however, that had a history of preying on humans were not welcomed to the compact at all, if they lived long enough to even ask. It had never been necessary for them to eat human flesh, and those who chose to do so did it because they enjoyed it.

The Oni, however, had been offered the compact. They had refused, collectively and individually. Since the 40s, when Warlock had broken the essence seal, they had grown quite a bit in power nearly matching the strength they had displayed 3000 years ago when the seal had been placed. As far as I could tell, they were convinced that eventually they would take over the Japanese islands and rule them with an iron fist the same way they had before the seal.

The idea was not only short-sighted but incredibly stupid. Back then there had been less than a hundred million humans in total. And the new wave of essence had awakened hundreds of the most creative. If they tried to annex Japan, the local heroes alone would probably be able to turn the entire pack into lunch meat, and unlike their western counterparts, Japanese metahumans were well aware of the historical enemies of humankind.

It’s possible that their Shuten-Doji would be challenging enough that Proteus might get involved, but the Oni had missed a significant opportunity by trying to play power games. The most powerful were damned close to class C and could have earned an enormous amount of goodwill by helping to contain the Siberian breaches.

Instead, they had decided that their own selfish need to dominate everything around them would somehow protect them from the eaters if the lines of defense fell like they were somehow insulated on Honshu and merely had to bide their time for the eaters to devour all the other superhumans and they could pop out, mop up the eaters, and reclaim their rightful place as rulers of Japan and the world.

Dumb, just dumb. Utterly selfish. And then they had to go and kidnap someone that I had decided I wanted to be friends with.

Three years ago, when I had first met him after Calliope mentioned a new sparring partner that I wanted to screen, he had been much more easily handled. He had been staring at her like a starving man looks at a buffet, and he even radiated interest when I had thought he was a meta and strong-armed him a little.

To be honest, if Callie hadn’t so clearly staked him out, I probably would have been more than happy to give him a turn myself, since he was clearly durable. Most human men, even the well-built ones, were amazingly fragile, at times making me curse my deific heritage. The men had it a lot easier, despite the ‘man of steel woman of Kleenex’ stories, their sperm didn’t actually shoot out at the speed of sound. I mean, he wasn’t afraid of me, didn’t want me to dominate him, and if I hadn’t been working so hard to maintain my Sif persona, I probably would have laughed at his medical kit until I peed.

Other scions were out of the question, of course. Not only were the ones that were tough from their divine heritage frequently my brothers, but the ones that were not were almost always the spawn of that dick, Jupiter. That almost always meant incredible arrogance paired with a micropenis, and they had giant attitude problems when they met a girl that could kick their ass.

That was a problem shared by many metahuman men as well, and while I loved testing myself against other warriors and sex, I didn’t want to do them both at the same time. Fighting them first was not only a way to make sure that they could handle a little rough sex, but you never knew if a little time in the sack was going to wind up lasting a lot longer. I had already had two husbands, and after they died I resolved I’d rather do without physical intimacy than have to bury another lover or let them be used against me because of their fragility.

But when you are around a guy that looked like he should have starred in an underwear commercial, who was clearly interested, and was both confident and amazingly humble at the same time, even the fact that he had two beautiful girls desperately clinging to him made the resolution hard to remember. The bull dyke look was usually more than enough to warn the more fragile ones off, except for the dorks that thought a well-endowed super suit was just as good as putting in the work. Ugh.

If we ever did come to a brawl, even if he couldn’t take me, which was likely, if he could hold his own I would probably jump at the chance to… Jump. With pets like his little subby girlfriends were turning out to be, he probably wouldn’t try to make it anything permanent, and if a little fun time on my back could secure an ally like him, it would be worth it from a coldheartedly practical standpoint as well.

Punto Doble had been an idiot. He would have healed in a few days anyway, and his life wasn’t in danger because the beast had already dealt with any of the cartel members that could have threatened him even in a disabled state. The potion he had downed had been amazing, restoring his health in minutes, and if Alchemyst were capable of producing more of that quality, it was far better than even I could obtain from my contacts among the scions or other paranormals.

The Sensation could have survived if Torrent hadn’t gotten herself killed barely a week after Lumberjack had repeated the same feat. Lumberjack could have been saved by the potion, if he’d had one, and could have grown back the leg he’d lopped off instead of bleeding to death in the street. His ax had lopped it off too high for a tourniquet, and based on what I had heard the potion would not only have restored his leg eventually but would have stopped the bleeding almost instantly and started healing it, albeit painfully. Pain is better than death.

Of course, a potion of regeneration would not have saved Torrent, but that’s why both Callie and I wore helmets whenever we wore our costumes. Maybe mostly-exposed tits and a beautiful face would stop a horny bad guy from shooting at you, but they didn’t stop ricochets from blowing your brains out of your ear. After the two deaths, though, We had both decided to hook up with the Defenders. There were more meta villains every year, And even a warrior like me worked much better with a team at her back. At least the Defenders, unlike the Sensation, were trained more for fighting than showing up half-dressed on Instagram.

I had noticed an aura of magic on the emptied bottle, the same aura that lingered around where the beast had struck, and clung to Alchemyst himself. The first time we had met, I had only sniffed the tiniest hint of that aura, but now it was very strong. It wasn’t unpleasant, rather like the smell of freshly-baked cookies, and it was surprising that the aura had been so pleasant after a clearly magical beast had rampaged through the resort. Dark intentions led to dark magic, which had its own foul smell, which was why, when Alchemyst’s message had gotten to me, I had decided to show up myself despite the possible presence of such a beast, or the possibility that it was Alchemyst himself.

And now I was all riled up with no one to fight. Or do something else. When he had suggested a clothing-optional hug just after he got my phone number, I had been seriously tempted. And now that Kyokudai had told me about his disappearance and possible location, I wanted to cut my way through the ogres until I found gold.

The whole slave thing didn’t bother me in the least. Yes, he looked at the girl possessively, and with a hint of anger, but he also looked at her fondly, and she didn’t have even the slightest hint of abuse, or for that matter, any real fear. My forebears had thralls, and even today some of the scions kept them, but mostly they were beloved family members that wouldn’t even consider leaving if ordered to be free. The way he looked at her son with almost unconcealed affection in his little carrier confirmed my guess, and if I hadn’t known exactly where he was over the last two years, I would have expected the boy was his own.

The attitude was unconventional today, of course, but I could see him presiding over a feasting hall, his men partying over the rewards of going a-viking, proudly selecting prize women to be his thralls, to someday be his beloved wives and bear his legacy.

I had gone to the oracles and asked for a read on what to do about Alchemyst, and to my embarrassment, all three had pulled Fehu, Gyfu, and Ingwaz. Fehu was good fortune and fertility through hard work, implying cultivation, Gyfu was love and sexual fulfillment, and Ingwaz, when read with the other two, was straight-up sex magic. I hadn’t been lying when I told Callie that the Allfather had said to cultivate him, I just hadn’t let her know that he had basically said we should be fucking his brains out.

Knowing the way Odin worked, that probably was supposed to lead us to prevent Ragnarok, which meant it was closely tied to what was happening in Siberia. No one wanted Ragnarok, least of all the guy that was supposed to start it, Loki, because that meant the games were over. I just hoped that by ‘cultivate’ he hadn’t meant ‘bear his children'. That would be very inconvenient, although it would be very traditional for his concept of the role of women.

I had been a little surprised when Kyokudai contacted me, telling me what happened and why she needed backup. Apparently, Vectress had informed her of my contact with Louis and arranged for us to meet. I had never worked with her or even met her before, but she was apparently some kind of mercenary rather than a member of a team. In general, superpowered mercs were considered ‘supervillains’, but unlike most of the metahumans, I had lived long enough to know how slippery that term was, especially when dealing with Proteus.

This was some kind of an outpost or safe house, and she wanted my backup. We were here for answers, not a bloodbath, and so I reluctantly slipped past the stinking creature without slitting his throat. Scions who were known to have powers were also occasionally labeled with the supervillain brand by Proteus, and no matter how much this creature might deserve getting treated just like the monsters that occasionally hunted scions, I was asked to keep this polite until we had our answers.

Despite this place being underground, someone had taken the time to carve the raw stone walls smooth, inlaying fancy designs in the walls that looked like figures and the occasional Kanji character. The art was not particularly good, but it mostly featured large armored figures with horns doing horrible things to much smaller figures, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out what it was supposed to represent.

The longer I spent here, the more I wanted to start chopping. I used a spear that I had custom designed. It had an almost two-foot-long sword for a head, with a short shaft of about a foot behind it that I could use as a gladius or piercing weapon, and I had another three feet of haft I could use separately as a club or connect to the bottom of the stabber to create a six-foot-long spear. It was my signature weapon, but that was mostly because it would be useful under almost any combat conditions. I had been using it for almost thirty years, and it had been made for me by one of Hephaestus’ daughters whose human brother I was married to at the time. Neither she nor her brother were still alive.

I was much relieved when I stepped past a small group of the creatures watching two of them playing a game of Go. Animalistic as they may be, their sense of smell was as bad as a normal human’s. I was looking for some sort of a hall, one where the local lord or Kyodai would be holding court or using as his office. We were entering the HQ right after dinner time and hoped to catch him and his lieutenants giving their daily reports or separated from their troops.

According to Kyokudai, an overwhelming display of force, without actually killing them and making them declare some sort of blood feud, was the secret to forcing their cooperation. Like most intelligent monsters, when they had the upper hand they were merciless and brutal in the extreme. When on the back foot, however, their innate selfishness made them utterly cowardly. As long as we allowed whoever it was to save face, we should be able to walk out of here without a slaughter.

I knew that even though neither of us could penetrate the other’s concealment, Kyokudai would smell when I was in the room with me. She would proceed as though I was watching her back when she smelled my presence, and despite us technically being on opposite sides of the law, we had a common goal.

I slipped into a large room with several low tables and noted that there were half a dozen men seated at one of the slightly higher tables, with an elderly-looking man at the end of the table. There were plenty of plates and serving dishes still scattered on the tables, and it looked like they’d just wrapped up dinner and sent off the rest to have a private meeting, and the older man was probably the Kyodai. And the rest were his Shatei, or little brothers, the term they used for lieutenants.

I lightly eased the two pieces of my spear out from behind my back. I was an old hand at the stealth game, and the leather brackets holding the pieces didn’t make the slightest noise as I withdrew the guard in my left hand and the head in my right. Did she want a show of force? She was going to get one.

I could see their true forms through their kind of sad glamours. They were all blue-skinned, definitely ogreish, with long bullish horns under their guises. The one in the middle had three eyes, one in the middle of his head as well as the two normal eyes, and as I drew closer, carefully taking each footstep to minimize noise, I noticed that the middle eye flicked up to look at me, followed by the other two a moment later.

Unlike the other Oni I had seen, the men here were not armed with automatic weapons. Instead, they each appeared to be carrying around a long club with a bronze, hexagonal head. Perhaps some kind of a rank symbol? They were reasonably powerful, and I could smell a considerable amount of magic around each of them, concentrated on the larger one in the middle. I assumed that the guises were a fairly recent magical innovation, since they were not well-constructed, but they would generally be more than enough to fool an ordinary human.

The man in the middle smiled slightly, speaking in Japanese. My language was a bit rusty, and I hadn’t actually expected him to see me, so it was no surprise that the other men at the table wrapped their hands around their clubs at his words, looking around to try and spot me.

I managed to hold onto my temper by a thread. I recognized a certain smell in the air and grasped my weapons more tightly. I stated, despite knowing that the sound would allow the lieutenants to note my presence, which they quickly did. They started to get to their feet, but the Three-eyed Ogre lifted his hand confidently, settling them down. It was nice that he was so confident of his supremacy here.

he asked quietly, quickly using all three eyes to scan my form lasciviously.

I was not supposed to take the lead in questioning, but since he had spotted me I decided to roll with it. Apparently, Kyokudai would be watching my back instead of the other way around. I said.

“You will have to be a bit more specific than that, scion.” He stated in English, grinning, “Lots of people feel that we possess things that formerly belong to them, despite our earning them through our own hard work.”

I shrugged, if he wanted to play the language game, we would play, for the moment. “Your clan was given a gift by a young man trying to buy peace for his own clan. That gift was not his to give. Perhaps you are familiar with it, a certain enchanted ring?”

He shrugged, “Perhaps I have heard of it, perhaps I have not. Enchanted gifts are always left in the hands of the Oyabun, and would only wind up in my hands were it given to me as a token. Why ask me?”

I had seen the lie in his aura when he said perhaps not and decided that this individual had been a good choice. Ogres tended to be braggarts, even the western kind, and I imagined that their Oyabun had been no exception. Generally power and strength equal status, so he had probably shown it off to secure his subordinate’s submission within days of getting it into his possession. It had been nearly a month since Louis had gone missing, and Kyokudai had only recently contacted me to claim she had found a hint of his location. Her people, some kind of shadow-shifters, were supposedly very good with stealth, and that had proven very true… I was generally able to penetrate almost any kind of magical distortion, but her shadow walking had foiled even my senses.

“You have seen it,” I stated flatly. I was not really one for word games. “Tell me where it is, and I will not torture the information out of you.”

“Torture?” He chuckled, “I thought your kind had codes and vows against such behavior, at least the ones that chose to work with the American hero teams. Yes, I know who you are, Sif, but you will have to offer something much more compelling than vague threats in exchange for such information.” This time, when the five lieutenants began to rise and grab their maces, he didn’t stop them.

Asked Kyokudai, her straight blade pressed against his throat. She was apparently quite aware of his strength as an ogre, as she had both of her hands clasped around the handle of her long sword but was far enough away that any move he made towards her would take at least a moment to complete.

The Oyabun hadn’t seemed to lose his composure. “Ahh, if it is not the sister of the man who made peace between our clans. I am truly surprised to see you here, threatening the peace in such a fashion. I am well aware of what you have to offer in exchange for this information, and I would happily accept since your clan’s bedroom skills are more than legendary. You might wish to put away your little knife, however, before you displease me.”

I sighed, I really wished she had remained hidden as a backup. “She’s offering you nothing. I am offering you exactly what I proposed. You might know who I am, but your confidence is slightly misplaced.”

The lesser ogres had moved to surround me. I knew something would happen momentarily, but I watched closely, clipping my two weapons together into a single spear. Ogres were stupidly strong, even stronger than me, so keeping them at range was my best bet. I smiled a little, licking my lips as two started trying to move towards where Kyokudai held the Ogre, Shentu, at sword-point.

“So I take it that means no deal then?” I chuckled, nodding towards the creatures trying to surround me. They weren’t quite doing the circle of death thing, but two of them were almost equally distant while the third was back a little.

He shook his head, “I am afraid I am going to have to decline. Once my Shatei have you tied naked into my bed, we can renegotiate under…” He let out a hurk noise as Kyokudai tugged her sword back away from his throat. She had flicked it forward for a moment before she withdrew it, and an amazing amount of blood was falling from his slit throat as he collapsed to the floor.

I started to say, “I thought…,” as I spun my spear around, and apparently, the class D monsters hadn’t realized that the sword edge of my spearhead was every bit as sharp as the point, and two of them lost the tops of their heads, starting to scream before slamming into the ground. I tried to foot sweep the third since my spear was out of position, but he took a step back and reached down to grab my ankle, yanking me faster than expected and slapping me down against the stone floor on his other side. The edges of my spear were very sharp, barely slowing as it went through the thick bones of their skulls.

“Ugh…, ” I continued, smashing at his fingers with the butt of my spear. He had slammed me pretty hard, and it had hurt, but my helmet had protected my head. I was able to roll slightly as his other hand brought the metal-shod cudgel down, to strike a chip out of the floor where my hip had been a moment earlier. Sure, I was tough, but this was exactly the reason why I wore armor. If he had knocked the wind out of me, the fight might have been over. “I thought you said we had to leave him alive for questioning?” I said as I started kicking at his fingers with the steel-shod heel of my boot, breaking several of them before he let go of my ankle.

The Ogre, noting that Kyokudai had already dispatched the two that were, turned to run and started bellowing something in Japanese that was too fast for me to catch. Most likely calling for guards, but we had seen most of them on our way in, and I planned to turn them all into kibble anyway.

She nodded, “He will live. Oni of his rank regenerate way too fast, but for right now this will keep him out of the fight until we are ready for him to talk. I thought we weren’t going to start a bloodbath?” She panted.

I threw my spear at the retreating Oni’s back, the head passing completely through his neck and nailing him to the stone wall next to the exit. I trotted towards him to retrieve my spear. “Do you smell that?” I asked.

The grey-clad young lady lowered her mask slightly to expose her nose and then took a sniff, “You mean underneath the gore and b…” She paused for a moment. “Oh.”

I nodded, “Yep. That’s the smell of seasoned and roasted human flesh. Very young human flesh. I was going to try and keep things civil, but now I have to kill every one of these cannibalistic motherfuckers.” I knew what was going to happen next, so I tugged my shield out from behind my back, breaking the spear in half as I pulled it out of the dead meat and stone, and tucked away the lower shaft. It was certainly possible to use a spear and shield at the same time, but these bastards were incredibly strong, and I’d rather any attempt to grab my weapon meet blade instead of the shaft.

“You should probably hide again, there will be a lot of lead flying soon. The guards have MP-5s, and while their fists are probably more dangerous, they are going to take one look in here and realize their little sticks aren’t going to be much use.”

***

Remember how I said Oni were stupid? In legends, they were supposed to be fiendishly clever, but they hadn’t been expecting a stormcalled lightning bolt to shock almost two dozen of them and cook off their ammunition, or two opponents that could both vanish into the mists and then cleave them into pieces. Their decision not to join the compact really had been shortsighted, all so they wouldn’t have to give up long pork. I was far from the strongest of my kin, and Galactica could have turned this entire hill into a slag heap before they could blink.

When he was able to talk again, Shentu looked surprisingly bleak. He had started to rant about the offerings that would be required to prevent a war between the Shakoti-Gumi and the clan of the fox until I decided I’d had enough and cut out that so-irritating third eye.

After that he had been rather more forthcoming, telling us exactly where the Shakoti-Gumi hideout, in the northern Oe mountain near Kyoto, was located, as well as the name of the Shuten-Doji that had the item in question. He was telling the truth, so he looked surprised when I didn’t torture him anymore, right up to the point where I shoved my speartip through the eye again, wiggling it until it had split his fool head in half. Kyokudai had warned me about the fact that some of them could even keep fighting with their head removed, so I had taken steps to ensure that it was unlikely.

Kyokudai shrugged at that, “Well, I suppose eliminating the last witness will not start a war right away, but you know that the Oe mountain Oni are far tougher than this guy, right? He’s only one of their Shatei himself. The Shuten-Doji is probably stronger and faster than Hyde, and I have seen Hyde in action personally.”

I nodded, “Yes,” sort of wished I could get Kyokudai into one of the teams. She wouldn’t be much use in the kayfabe, too deadly, but against some of the nastier real monsters we sometimes fought, she would be incredibly useful. Not to mention that even in her faux ninja outfit she was supremely photogenic. I was not one of those sales slobs, but popularity led to better funding, better funding led to better training and gear, and both of those led to better chances against the spawns in Siberia. The fact that few governments save Russia and Proteus took the threat seriously was disgusting, and even the DMA’s shoestring budget barely helped.

If the rumors about Louis being able to boost more metas to class C were true, I would happily give him a hell of a lot more than a clothing-optional hug. I know it sounds mercenary, but I think I was looking for an excuse. Something about his smell… Not for the first time, I wondered what the hell Callie was thinking, feeding him that bullshit story about dating someone. She’d been a nun. I could easily handle a few years, or a decade, without a man, but her excuse that she wanted to make sure he wasn’t obsessed seemed a little flimsy, especially with the way she’d hunted for him when he first disappeared.

“If we are going to get him out of there, then we should probably get a bit of backup,” I said, trying to decide who would be best to help deal with the Oni probably guarding Shuten-Doji. “I hate to have to do this, but I may have to call in a favor. She’s not going to be happy getting called into action over less than a full-scale portal infestation, especially to help a putative supervillain, but this is probably worth it.”