STREET LEGENDS > Janus calls himself a historian. He’s chronicled the shadow history of Japan since the late ‘40s. When I told him what we were doing here he asked if he could talk about mihoshi oni. I was hesitant until he showed me some files that had me second-guessing what I thought I knew. If even a little bit of this is true, mihoshi oni has a history far beyond her years. > FastJack I enjoy the current times. We know so little of history that one might make something new of themselves merely by paying the right people and cleaning up the proper electronic records. This is the platform upon which Mihoshi Oni has built her house of cards. It may surprise some of you to know she is not the first Mihoshi Oni, though it seems obvious now that she will be the last. The first Mihoshi was an ork. She was seventeen when she came into the name as a member of a Hokkaido go-gang. She was a fierce rider, wired into a night-black Rapier, her face hidden by a red helmet cut to let her tusks hang out. This was the 2020s. Back then, a woman’s place was beside her man’s ride, so to see Mihoshi racing and beating much of Hokkaido’s top talent caused quite a stir. Three weeks into her reign as Hokkaido’s underground circuit champion, the first Mihoshi Oni met her end on a two-lane strip of black top outside of Yakumo Town. The police report called it an accident, one of forty-three head-on collisions there that year. > If you’re saying she has the same name as another runner then I don’t see what the big deal is. It happens all the time. there’s gotta be four or five guys out there calling themselves Sticks. my actions are what speak for me. the name is not the thing. > Sticks > there are four or more Sticks out there that I know of, but only you work out of Seattle. that makes all the difference. names matter in an area where your name is all your contacts have to go on. > Riser > that being said, wouldn’t her contacts know it wasn’t the same gal? > Baka Dabora The second and third Mihoshi were sisters. One was a meta, a frumpy troll with arms as thick as fir trunks. Her sister, a normal, was wired to be as strong as any troll, and she was tough as one to boot. They ran the shadows through the‘30s, behind the same mask borne by their predecessor who died on the side of a forgotten road all those years ago. It is important to remember that the women behind the mask were not a sorority. The new Mihoshi sisters did not know their predecessor. After her death, a shrine was erected on the side of the road where she died. It was taken down within the year, but an online shrine popped up shortly after, transforming a little-known biker into a talisman. The name Mihoshi Oni roughly translates as “beautiful star demon.” “Oni” in particular is the name classically 18 MiHosHi oni MiHosHi oni POSTED By: jANUS attributed to undesirable metas such as dwarves, orks, and trolls. There is evidence that the combined name was pilfered from a Japanese folktale. In some variants of the Momotaro folk tale, the champion of the Oni who battles the boy and his followers is called Mihoshi. With the birth of Yomi Island, the name Mihoshi Oni took on a greater significance. It became representative of the hero who would rise against the racism and isolation of Japan to usher in a new world. I suspect this is where the first Mihoshi Oni came upon her name. Her successors then took that name, as well as the look of the original. The nonmetahumans among them did not wear a helmet, but rather a mask that had the fangs of a cat and the horns of a bull. In the cases where a troll took the title, the horns were real. The two sisters took up the mask as a show of respect and solidarity. But cultural memory is short. The Mihoshi myth vanished into anonymity within a decade, a brief and flickering flame relegated to shadow and replaced with a street rep that dwindled as the years wore on. When their time was done, the mask was passed to an ork from Toyama. She’d run with the sisters for a year before they decided it was enough vetting, and she was worthy to receive the legacy. They were wrong. The period from ‘42 to ‘47 represented perhaps the darkest time in the legacy. Mihoshi Oni number four was an ork spellslinger who specialized in glamours. She did not enjoy the notoriety her predecessors had, so she focused her energy and her mana on altering that street rep. She became known as a contract killer. She tried to connect her rep to the first Mihoshi Oni. A few people remembered the name, and none of them were bothered much by the surprising longevity of this ork’s career. They had bigger concerns—the new Minoshi was ruthless, often taking out innocent bystanders if she thought they had seen too much. She was also incautious in the jobs she took and the enemies she made, and eventually that cost her. Her death came at the hands of Renraku’s Red Samurai when she took on an assassination job that was too big for her to handle alone. Whatever her faults, though, this Mihoshi had done a good job making a fearsome name for herself, and her body was barely cold before someone else in need of a tough rep took up the mask. Mihoshi number five was also an ork, a former soldier who took up the mask in the early ‘50s. She restricted her operations to the area around Kyushu, where she balanced being a shadowrunner and a mother. Mihoshi V did light runs; work that wouldn’t ruffle anyone’s feathers and kept food on the table. During her years behind the mask, this Mihoshi Oni became known as a tough and reliable customer who may have once been a vicious killer but had toned down her work. She was the proverbial sleeping dog and best allowed to lie still. She would have continued in this fashion as long as she lived if the Mihoshi Oni we know hadn’t come along. Our Mihoshi, Mihoshi VI, started out as a kyabajo working specialty hostess clubs in the Ibaraki prefecture. It wasn’t that she wanted to be sexy. She was fourteen, homeless, and SINless. She was a survivor and used whatever was at her disposal to
VITAL STATS: MIHOSHI ONI Age: 29 Height: 2.1 m Weight: 118 kg Hair: Brown Eyes: Brown Gender: Female Metatype: Fomori Awakened: No MiHosHi oni 19
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