"Mortal, your gaze is very disrespectful."
Hawkeye's skeptical glare stung Loki's pride. Whether in the golden halls of Asgard or down here in the dirt of Earth, there were always people who looked at him with such disdain. And all of it was simply because he did not possess the same raw, brutish power as Thor.
"Heimdall!" Loki shouted toward the sky, utterly annoyed by the confinement.
Hawkeye's insolence had left him with absolutely no desire to linger in this pathetic cage. As for punishing the archer, that would be a simple matter once he returned to Asgard. That damned pink pig, Thor, and this offensive human—he wouldn't let a single one of them go unpunished!
Loki's sudden shout left Coulson and Clint somewhat confused. But a microsecond later, their confusion was answered.
A deafening, roaring pillar of iridescent light crashed through the ceiling of the temporary base, completely engulfing Loki. The Bifrost appeared instantly and vanished just as quickly. When the blinding light faded, Loki was nowhere to be found inside the reinforced cell.
Looking at the complex, smoking pattern scorched into the floorboards, Coulson immediately called for technicians to photograph and document it. Although the beam had taken Loki away, it had at least left something behind—the intricate circular formation of Asgardian runes.
[The Next Day - Puente Antiguo]
Inside the house rented by Jane Foster and her team, the group was eating breakfast.
"Is this what you humans usually eat?" Hawk complained, his pink snout scrunching up in profound disgust as he swallowed a piece of dry buckwheat toast whole. "It tastes worse than tavern leftovers!"
Darcy raised an eyebrow, waving her fork. "Do you want me to make roast suckling pig instead?"
"Roast suckling pig?!" Hawk perked up, looking around hungrily. "Where? Where?!"
Then, seeing Darcy's predatory gaze fixate directly on his plump belly, Hawk shrieked. "Eh!!! No way!"
Darcy, who had quickly become enamored with the talking pig, laughed and began to chase him around the living room.
On the other side of the room, Dr. Erik Selvig and Jane were constantly firing questions at Thor. After seeing everything that happened at the S.H.I.E.L.D. base last night, they were brimming with academic curiosity about Asgard. An entirely new, highly advanced world—for researchers like them, it was an irresistible subject.
A sudden knock on the door interrupted their conversation.
While Erik and Jane were still turning their heads, Hawk's agile little body had already sprinted to the entrance. He stood on his hind legs and swung the door open.
"Balding Uncle!" Hawk cheered happily.
"Hello, everyone," Agent Coulson said, standing on the porch with a polite, unwavering smile. "Sorry to intrude, but we have some matters that require your immediate cooperation."
Without waiting for an invitation, Coulson walked into the house, stepping directly up to Erik.
"We need to requisition all of your atmospheric research materials for a period of time." Coulson took out his S.H.I.E.L.D. credentials and held them up. The agents filing in behind him had already begun the process of unhooking servers and packing up hard drives.
"Wait! What are you doing?!" Jane shouted.
Just as Jane and Darcy stepped forward to physically stop the agents, Erik reached out, grabbing their arms to hold them back. The moment he read the acronym on Coulson's badge, he knew they had absolutely no power to refuse. S.H.I.E.L.D. was an intelligence apparatus vastly more overbearing and dangerous than the FBI. He had an old colleague who had once brushed up against them, and he knew the horror stories.
Once all the research materials were boxed up and cleared out of the house, Coulson walked calmly up to Thor.
"Mr. Thor Odinson," Coulson said. "And the rest of you. I'd like to buy you all a drink. Could we move to a more comfortable location?"
[The Local Tavern]
It was the exact same tavern from the day before, except S.H.I.E.L.D. had already cleared the room and replaced the bartender with an undercover operative.
Thor, Jane, Erik, Darcy, and Hawk took their seats in a large booth across from Coulson.
"Your brother," Coulson began, sliding a glossy photograph across the table. "He escaped. The look in his eyes before he left makes me... a bit uneasy."
Thor picked up the photo. It clearly showed the intricate, scorched runic mark left by the Bifrost.
"The Bifrost," Thor muttered in a daze. "Heimdall."
He had screamed at the sky so many times since arriving on Midgard, yet the gatekeeper Heimdall had never given him a single response. Yet Loki was able to freely command the Bifrost to return to Asgard.
'As expected, what Loki said was true,' Thor thought, his heart shattering all over again. 'Father... is really dead. And it's all because of me!'
Connecting the photo to the devastating words Loki had spoken last night, Thor's eyes grew red, and tears flowed uncontrollably down his bearded cheeks. Even as Princes, neither he nor Loki could use the Bifrost at will. Heimdall had always strictly obeyed only the commands of the All-Father.
And now, if Loki could command Heimdall at will... then everything Loki had said was true. Loki had ascended to the throne of Asgard.
Drowning in his grief, Thor did not realize the tactical importance of the information he was freely revealing. Whenever Coulson gently prompted him, Thor answered everything.
The geopolitical landscape of Asgard pieced itself together in Coulson's mind. However, the more he learned, the more solemn Coulson's expression became. Asgard wasn't just a myth; it was a hyper-advanced militaristic empire with a complete command structure and a standing army of super-soldiers. They had conquered the Nine Realms thousands of years ago. And now, their new God-King was clearly full of hostility toward Earth.
An interstellar war might already be imminent.
[S.H.I.E.L.D. Temporary Base]
After the tavern meeting concluded, Coulson returned to the temporary base in the desert. Because they simply couldn't move Mjolnir, their command center had to remain anchored to the crater.
"Director, this is the current situation," Coulson reported into a secure video terminal. "If the intelligence we just gathered from Thor is correct... we might soon face an interstellar war."
On the other end of the encrypted feed, Nick Fury's single eye narrowed, his expression grim. The situation was dire, but the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't at the point of despair just yet.
"Monitor Thor 24/7," Fury ordered coldly. "If war really comes to our doorstep, he and his pig might be our only hope for resisting Asgard."
Time flew by. Coulson monitored Thor's movements around the clock according to Fury's orders.
With the help of Jane, Erik, Darcy, and Hawk, Thor gradually became accustomed to mortal life on Earth. During this peaceful interlude, genuine sparks of romance had even begun to ignite between the fallen prince and the brilliant astrophysicist.
Just when Coulson thought time would continue to pass steadily, a massive, apocalyptic fireball plummeting from the sky shattered his hopes.
"Quick! Quick! Quick! Evacuate the civilians!!"
Rows of black S.H.I.E.L.D. tactical SUVs flooded into the small desert town, blaring their sirens and issuing frantic evacuation notices to the residents over their loudspeakers.
"Meteorite strike! Emergency evacuation! Clear the streets!"
The entire town instantly fell into chaos, crowds pushing and shoving as they fled in their vehicles.
Standing on the porch of Jane's house, Thor watched the terrifying fireball streak across the sky. His mind fell into a dark memory. Once, when he had been fighting terrifying wars in the Outer Realms, whenever the Asgardian armies were completely outmatched, a weapon exactly like that one would be deployed from the Bifrost to annihilate the enemy.
'The Destroyer!' Thor realized with dawning horror.
'Loki, what on Earth are you trying to do?!'
Thor, who had grown significantly during his brief, humbling time as a mortal, finally understood that war was not glorious. He had been exiled because of his arrogant lust for war. His father had died because of the stress of it.
He didn't understand why Loki wanted to launch an unprovoked attack on an innocent world like Midgard. But he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he had to stop it.
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