“What have you been eating for the last six months?” Mary Jane asked me, looking me up and down in interest.

“Totally cheating with Asgardian magic,” I admitted shamelessly, and she rolled her eyes.

“So I could..?” she asked, rolling up her forefinger and thumb in my direction.

“Yep!” I confirmed, not losing my smile at the threat of a Null Strike. “Do we get to see your Sword?”

“Oh, of course!” She stepped back, and suddenly what looked like a golden rod swinging from the side of her hip flashed out to her hand. The guard and quillons grew around her hand, and a blue-black adamantine Blade with a coppery-red core and ten full Slots down the middle of it extended out of it in a heartbeat. The golden light of a soulsword, so hard and real it looked like actual metal, swirled around the Divine-class Sword in her grip, and everyone’s eyeballs flinched at the sight of it.

Shinggg... the single note trailed off, rising and falling for a moment.

It was Her Sword. Hers, and no other. Everyone around was staring at it, acknowledging the fact, and that the Sword would never be anyone’s but hers.

Even Thor was staring at the artistry of that Sword. No one who had ever seen Tremble would mistake who had made that Sword for her.

“Oh my stars and garters,” mumbled McCoy, staring at the sight of Sword and wielder, so complete together. It forcibly reminded him of Antarctica.

Vier sent out a wave of greeting, and got a wary flashing of Runes in reply.

“Her name is Sonja,” MJ said firmly, and came out of her stance like an uncoiling cobra. A whisper of motion, and the Soulsword was hanging from her hip as a a baton once more.

I distinctly heard Peter swallow, as well as everyone here who had any inkling of how dangerous that Weapon was.

MJ was no longer the token human hanger-on who didn’t know anything and had to be protected from all the nasty supervillains around! Oh, if Harry Osborn Sr. tried to pick on her...

“You are so gonna tear up the martial artist side of things,” I smirked, putting an arm around her shoulders. “C’mon, let’s go take our gatekeeper tests, and let the universe know how magnificent we all are.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Grimm grunted, clearly enjoying all this, and we all headed into the Arena.

----------

Champion’s people were plainly very good at what they did. The scans gave an idea of physical ability. It didn’t test skill, and since a strong but unskilled opponent clearly wasn’t going to be rated high, and so had to be tested. If they wanted to labor up the standings afterwards, they had to do it the hard way.

Superhuman skilled fighters clearly had an edge over non-superhuman, and the advancement brackets and groupings were going to reflect that. There were a lot of martial artists and Core users who were going into the psi/chi brackets so they could use energy releases of various types, and there was even an independent bracket for weapon-users, since Terra had so many of them, and the aliens were enthusiastic in their testing, too.

I quirked a smile when I got to my testing station, as did all the other women. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they’d still put the women in the same place... and there was a lot of camera attention there. Like, two to three times the attention being placed on the men by numbers, can’t imagine why.

The guys accompanied us there, and were kind of looking in all directions at the terribly fit women all around, more than a few of them plainly superhuman. There were martial art uniforms from dozens of schools and societies, all eager to make a name for themselves and represent Terra against these aliens. That these aliens weren’t easy and soft marks was slowly becoming more obvious to them, as the gatekeepers thrashed them and didn’t care what gender you were when they did it.

Bunches of disgruntled people were being sent into lower brackets, even if they were enhanced, because their skills obviously weren’t up to snuff.

“Gah!” exclaimed Peter, just before he headed to his own site. He pointed, and we all followed his finger to where a silken-haired woman in a tight black suit with white gloves and boots was currently taking the lift test. “That’s, that’s the Black Cat!”

She was also lifting four tons over her head, and looking fine doing it. The cameras were having a field day, and a lot of the women around were muttering jealously.

She let the grav-bar fall, and was waved into a line for the skills test. She also felt the eyes on her, turned around, and saw Spidey gaping at her.

“Hey, Spider!” She blew him a kiss and sashayed away, instantly turning a lot of attention on him.

“Uhhhh...” he murmured at the sudden attention, and decided to beat feet hastily.

“And who is the Black Cat, Dyna?” MJ leaned over and whispered to me, obviously having a personal interest in this. Cindy, Jess, and Gwen also crowded in, just to hear what I said.

“Cat burglar who has been running around making him look bad. Supposedly has bad luck powers. Technically has never been caught in the act, and there’s been a strange reluctance by those she’s been seen leaving to admit she actually stole anything. I haven’t actually seen her in action at all, she keeps a very sneaky profile.”

“She’s, uh, pretty smooth, for a shameless skank,” Gwen added, looking away. I glanced at her, having no idea she’d run into Felicia, and was not about to Mark-talk here, in a place with so much psionic monitoring and suppression going on.

Cindy looked like she wanted to tell a story, but held back. “Haven’t seen her in action, either. Kinda weird she’s here. She never struck me as a fighter.” Jessica just looked mightily amused at all this.

I pointed at the Cat’s name on the rankings, and her Strength rating of four tons. “I’d say she can hit pretty hard, and people that strong in our line of work can generally fight.” I happened to know she could fight incredibly well, as even the base Spider Buffs gave fantastic physical ability, and she was a Melee/Ur-Priest/Scout-Monk build, totally hitting above her weight in hand-to-hand combat, which Pete and Gwen would have found out if they had ever managed to catch her... which, being good at what she did, they hadn’t.

“So, thrash her just on general principle?” MJ smiled, and the other two did as well.

“She’s probably here for publicity of some kind, so sure, cut it short if you can,” I agreed. They all looked after her, plotting with their eyes. Deuce was going to have a time of it, obviously...

“Brunhilda! I did not expect to see you here!”

The tall, muscular, staff-bearing brunette turned a lot of eyes, near as many as the two equally tall and muscular women she was striding towards were attracting. They were armored up with swords and actual shields, even if they weren’t planning to employ them.

Thor had not left yet. “Brunhilda? The Valkyrie?” He turned in that direction, and blinked again. “Sif?” he blurted out in astonishment, looking about again. “Are the Warriors Three here as well?” his voice echoed out, clearly not expecting this development.

“Thor!” rang out a loud voice from the distance, as heads turned every which way at the Divine Allspeech carrying everywhere.

“Ursula!” Brunhilda greeted the priestess walking her way warmly, moving to greet her with a warm embrace. The flaxen-haired Valkyrie then introduced the raven-haired warrior-goddess at her side smoothly, before all three women turned to face the coming of Thor, and in the distance, three heroically large figures were hustling this way.

I made a face as Thrice met my eyes, and for a second, a second pair of green eyes seemed to glitter behind her brown ones.

Mission: Asgard successful. The Enchantress was effectively taken out of the game, and Brunhilda had been restored to her true body at the same time. Win-win!

Thor was obviously very happy to see the woman he was closest to in Asgard, albeit Sif had never been able to conquer his wandering heart.

I Sent off a message to Thor, “That woman who could serve as your High Priestess? That would be Ursula there.”

His gaze lingered on her for a moment, introductions were made again, and a minute later the Warriors Three came pounding up to make it a party of Asgardians.

I looked around to see who else was there.

I picked out four different Widows and three other women Shielders, Peggy heading that way to make contact with them. Ho, that looked like Natasha herself was here. Deuce really did have some work cut out for her... I glanced at Red MJ, and noted the Shielders and the Widows did, too, while she was surveying the competition in return.

There were many martial artists there, including several from the Hidden Cities, and from the Ten Rings, the Hand, and the Yellow Claw, although those places didn’t have good Traditions for women fighters. Assassins, maybe, but they tended to the seduction/stealth/poison kill side of things.

Ah, but that looked like Kwannon and Yukio, both rivals from Japan, but nevertheless having an unspoken truce between them. Looked like a couple women from schools of the sword, getting tested for the weapons competition. Yukio wouldn’t be competition for a Widow, although she’d probably do well for a baseline human.

That hair! Had to be one of Logan’s daughters the way her hair bristled so much. She didn’t have her claws popped, so it was hard to be sure, but the feral air about her was scaring away any non-Tribals, while the Tribals were gathering to her and treating her with great respect.

Lots of Tribals, from both the psi and chi side of things. There were Russians, too, several of them obviously superhuman. There was a red-headed woman there as tall as Brunhilda, another one in white furs, and a couple in tight armor moving like they were used to flying around.

Ha, wasn’t that Thundra? Did she actually time travel from her alternate future back here for this? Jennifer Walters looked to have already passed the Strength test, sitting firmly on top at 75 tons. Comet had come in at 55, Fury at 65, and Mesa at 50.

There was a slew of women in the 20-tons and less category, which is where the Spiders and MJ would be going, and Felicia was in there, too, naturally enough.

I looked at the Strength Rating and quirked a smile despite myself.

The Wrecker Buff gave me a more muscular build than normal, definitely something noticeable, like I had a base 18 human Strength Stat instead of the 14 I was built on. I effectively looked like another Asgardian, but obviously wasn’t dressed like a Norse God and didn’t sound like them.

Also, I sparked every so often, and my costume colors were known by those who wanted to know them, even if I generally kept my image off media, not needing to make money off my appearance.

Thor eventually had to depart for his own tests. He’d make it into the main competition, but he simply didn’t have the expertise in brawling there to make it to the top. Hammer in hand, he could take on anyone, sure. Without it, not so much of a threat on offense or defense.

Both the Abomination and the Juggernaut had shown up. I saw them talking with Mr. Hill in the distance, big men towering over most of the humans around, if not all the aliens. They were soon joined by the Brass Bull, the Compact’s representative, and then Atlas wandered over to join them, followed by Sandman, Rhino, Orca, and a few other oversized foreign mercs I wasn’t exactly familiar with. At least six aliens who’d been active on Earth in the past, including the Bi-Beast, ended up joining the party of oversized contestants.