She is standing there, all pure and sharp and dangerous, like a diamond knife. I…well, I knew what she did, I knew she killed. But I didn't expect to be released by Tora and to leave the room they were keeping me and Logan in and to find her sitting in the middle of a room of murdered men, calmly cleaning her blade. She looks up, eyes dark with anger.

"I told you not to leave! I have enemies who make the Skull look like a fluffy guinea pig! And this lot weren't even that bad."

I just stare and Logan nods.

"The female of the species is more deadly than the male."

Etana rolls her eyes in a way that makes me feel that Kipling may have based that poem on her.

"No, I just wasn't going to sit around and wait for your idiot teammates to weigh up all the options. I decided to do what I've always done. Worked out a basic plan and then added to it as occasion demands. It's held me in good stead for as long as I've lived. So why do all your stupid friends need a five-point plan?"

She stands up, glances along the blade and gently tilts it so it catches the light then swings it up, over her shoulder and fits it into the sheath crossed across her back. She glares at Logan.

"And you. You should know better than to go charging off after Steve when he was kidnapped. As I guessed, they wanted both of you and you fell right into their trap. I think we're going to have to go through those lessons again."

Logan goes pale but I'm finally mad.

"Etana, we're standing in a room full of bodies and you're lecturing Logan on being stupid."

She glares at me then throws a sheaf of papers over to me. I start to read but in the end only words leap out at me. Children. Sacrificial. 100000. Demonatia. Portal. Hell. Earth. Torn Asunder. Her eyes are fixed on me.

"That is their plan. Are you saying I did wrong?"

I can't speak. What these people were planning… It was horrific. Etana looks at me.

"This is actually quite normal for me. I leave the easy jobs, the not too serious ones to you and your amateur team. But things like this, I go at alone."

I look at her again in a new light. Once again, she's surprised me. She has deliberately kept things like this under wraps to protect the Avengers and all the others. The amateur remark slips past because, well, she's Etana and being rude is part of what she is. She has gone against evil, twisted monsters and not told anyone. And if they caught her, she would be killed and her body never found. She would just disappear. And five, ten years ago, no one would have noticed. Her 'colleagues' would just assume she'd moved on and at that time she didn't have friends. She would have died alone and afraid and desperate. And she continued to fight for people who hated her because that's what she is. At times like this, when I see her tall and defiant, knowing what she is but also knowing what she's stopping, she is truly beautiful.

But truly terrible in that beauty.