Deep in the Black Forest, Germany.
Ancient cedars — trees that had been growing since before most European nations existed — snapped like matchsticks. Dirt geysered into the air. The forest floor cratered and buckled under impacts that had no business happening outside of a warzone.
A god-level brawl was tearing the landscape apart.
BOOM!
A gold-and-red figure rocketed backward through the treeline, smashing through three trunk-thick cedars before finally grinding to a halt in a spray of bark and soil.
"Armor integrity down fifteen percent. Sir, the opponent's hammer exhibits a hardness value that exceeds our gold-titanium alloy by a significant margin." JARVIS's voice was calm. The data was not.
"Shut it, JARVIS. Reroute all power to thrusters."
Tony Stark clawed his way out of the splintered wreckage, and beneath the faceplate, his expression was pure, distilled fury. The blond meathead in the cape hadn't just snatched his prisoner mid-transport — he'd swatted him into the ground like a fly. For a man whose ego had its own zip code, this was beyond insult. This was personal.
"Round two."
Repulsors blazed to maximum output. Tony became a streak of light, rocketing back toward the clearing.
On the opposite side, Thor was equally incensed. He'd come for one thing — his brother — and this tin man wouldn't stop buzzing.
"MORTAL! You dare provoke the God of Thunder!"
Thor raised Mjolnir to the sky.
KRAKA-BOOM—!
A bolt of lightning as thick as a tree trunk hammered down from the clouds and struck the hammer's head. Thor swung, channeling the captured thunder into a devastating arc aimed directly at the incoming Iron Man.
ZZT—!
Lightning enveloped the armor. Tony braced for the worst — the sensation of being slowly cooked inside his own suit—
But the readouts on his HUD told a very different story.
[Energy absorption... 300%... 400%... Weapon systems entering overload state.]
"Huh." Tony actually laughed. "Looks like your electricity bill just paid for my next upgrade, big guy."
He fired the unibeam — a concentrated blast of arc reactor energy, supercharged by Thor's own lightning — and it caught the thunder god dead center.
BOOM!
Thor skidded backward ten feet, leaving furrows in the earth. He shook his head once, rolled his shoulders, and stood up completely unharmed. The lightning in his eyes burned brighter.
They collided again.
Fist against repulsor. Hammer against armor. The pinnacle of Asgardian divine power versus the cutting edge of human engineering, and the forest was paying the price for hosting the event.
Just as both of them wound up for the kind of attacks that would level every tree in a quarter-mile radius—
Whoooooosh—
Something was falling. Something heavy. Something that was making the particular whistling sound that said large mass, terminal velocity, imminent impact.
"MOVE!!"
BOOM—!!!
A red meteorite slammed into the ground between Thor and Tony with enough force to send both of them staggering backward. A shockwave of dirt and gravel blasted outward, and the nearest trees groaned and leaned away from the impact like spectators flinching from a fight.
The dust cleared.
Four Arms. Three and a half meters of crimson Tetramand muscle, crouched in a fresh crater, one hand steadying a slightly green-looking Captain America who was still finding his legs after a thirteen-hundred-foot freefall.
"Thanks," Steve managed, taking a deep breath. He raised his shield and slipped into a combat stance with the automatic precision of a man who'd been doing it since 1943. "Next time you do the landing thing... a countdown would be nice."
Jake straightened to his full height. Four fists cracked in sequence. Four golden eyes swept the clearing — Iron Man on one side, Thor on the other, both of them mid-tantrum.
"Are you two done?"
Jake's voice rolled across the forest floor like distant thunder.
"Loki is sitting on that cliff up there watching you. You're putting on a show for the guy you're supposed to be catching."
"He started it!" Tony jabbed a finger at Thor with the righteous indignation of a man who had absolutely started half of it.
"He stole my prisoner!" Thor gripped Mjolnir, his glare swiveling to Jake. "And you — red monster. Don't think that because you helped me in New Mexico, you can give orders to the Prince of Asgard."
His jaw set.
"Mortals have become entirely too bold."
Whether it was the battle-rage still pumping through his veins, or some lingering resentment over having his hammer drained like a dead battery in New Mexico — Thor made a decision.
He swung Mjolnir overhead, leaped skyward, and called the lightning.
This time, the bolt that answered was massive — a column of white-blue divine fire that lit up the forest canopy and turned the clearing bright as noon. Thor descended with the full weight of Asgardian fury behind the strike, Mjolnir aimed directly at Jake's skull.
"JAKE! LOOK OUT!" Steve shouted.
Jake didn't move.
Didn't flinch. Didn't raise his arms. Didn't even shift his weight.
"Seems like the lesson from New Mexico didn't stick, Thor."
He watched the hammer come screaming down, wreathed in a sky's worth of lightning, and his mouth curved into a grin that had no business being on the face of someone about to be hit by a god.
"Against energy attacks, Four Arms is a little out of his depth. But—"
His finger found the Omnitrix emblem on his chest.
"—I've got the perfect counter."
"Switch!"
ZZT—!!
A millisecond before Mjolnir connected.
The red giant vanished.
In his place — black skin, golden electrical arcs, one massive green eye, twin antennae, cable-tail, and three-fingered hands tipped with metal conductor plugs.
Feedback.
Thor's hammer struck a black palm.
More precisely, it struck the metal plugs at the tips of three alien fingers, and those fingers closed around the hammer's head like a trap snapping shut.
"What—?!"
Thor's eyes went wide. Recognition hit him like his own lightning — that shape, that aura, that horrible, hungry feeling—
"No. Not again—"
"Your electricity is mine now, blondie."
Jake's single eye curved into a crescent of pure satisfaction.
The antennae blazed gold. The tail lit up like a live wire. And the absorption began — not the gentle, measured draw he'd used on Mjolnir in the desert, but a violent, aggressive pull that ripped the energy out of Thor's attack like draining a pool through a fire hose.
"Give — it — to — me!!"
ZZT-ZZT-ZZT—BOOM!!
The lightning cocooning Mjolnir reversed direction. Every spark, every arc, every joule of divine thunder that Thor had summoned from the sky poured through Jake's fingers and into his body. But it didn't stop there — the suction reached deeper, past the hammer, past the surface charge, and began pulling on the divine power Thor had mobilized within his own body.
"NO!! THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE!!"
Thor felt like he was being skinned alive from the inside out. The magical backlash of having his own power forcibly extracted numbed his limbs, locked his muscles, and sent white-hot pain lancing through every nerve. He tried to wrench the hammer free—
But Feedback's grip was a black hole. Inescapable. Absolute.
Three seconds.
That was all it took.
Mjolnir — which had been blazing with divine lightning, radiating enough power to level a city block — went dark. Gray. Matte. The runes faded. The glow died. For the second time in a month, the weapon of the God of Thunder looked like a particularly ugly doorstop.
Thor's silver armor dimmed. His cape stopped billowing. He dropped to one knee, gasping, looking like a man who'd just run a marathon after donating blood.
"Burrrp—"
Jake released the hammer and staggered back a step. A burp escaped him — involuntary, sparking with golden electricity, deeply undignified.
He raised one finger casually and flicked a bolt of golden current toward the ground near Tony's feet.
CRACK!
A small, perfectly charred crater appeared in the dirt, smoking gently.
"Sir," JARVIS said, and even the AI sounded impressed, "I'm reading a high-dimensional energy signature from the target. His biological superconductor architecture has an energy conversion efficiency approximately ten times our arc reactor technology."
Tony looked at the smoking crater. Then at the sparking alien. Then at his own repulsor, which suddenly felt very inadequate.
He raised both hands.
"Okay. I'm done. My electricity bill clearly isn't paid up either. Nobody fight the walking battery."
Jake turned to Thor.
The God of Thunder was on one knee, holding a hammer that looked like it belonged in a museum's Things That Used to Be Impressive exhibit. The expression on his face was the particular cocktail of shock, humiliation, and grudging respect that came from being completely and undeniably outclassed in your own specialty. Twice.
"Now." Jake's voice was calm. Pleasant, even. "Can we have an actual conversation, Your Highness?"
Thor stared at him. Then at the drained hammer. Then at the three-fingered hand that had just treated the Odinforce like an all-you-can-eat buffet.
The fight drained out of him in a single, heavy breath. He recognized — with the wisdom that occasionally surfaced beneath the warrior's pride — that attacking an alien who ate lightning for breakfast with lightning was not a strategy. It was a donation.
"You..." Thor exhaled slowly and hooked the dim hammer back onto his belt. "You win. But I am taking Loki to face Asgardian justice. The Tesseract belongs in Asgard's custody."
"Maybe." Jake detransformed in a flash of green light, standing human and brushed with residual static. "But Loki's been sitting on that cliff watching us fight like it's dinner theater for the last ten minutes. If you really want justice, bring him to the helicarrier. We'll help you find the Tesseract, and then you can take him wherever you want."
Steve stepped forward, shield on his arm, steady as a compass needle pointing north.
"Thor. We need your help. Loki isn't just an Asgardian problem anymore — he made it Earth's problem the moment he stole the Tesseract. We need to stand together on this."
Thor looked at the three of them. A teenager who could eat divine power. A soldier from another century. A man in a metal suit who'd charged headfirst at a god without hesitation.
Mortals. All of them. And not one of them had backed down.
"Very well." Thor's voice was quieter now. Steadier. "But if Loki attempts to escape... I will end him myself."
Ten minutes later. Quinjet. En route to the helicarrier.
The four of them — plus one smirking prisoner — filed aboard the jet. Loki wore the expression of a man whose plan was proceeding exactly as intended, which nobody found reassuring.
The atmosphere in the cabin was... complicated.
Tony was running a damage assessment on his armor while surreptitiously trying to scan Jake's watch. Thor sat in the corner, quietly polishing Mjolnir with his cape, trying to coax the glow back into the runes through sheer force of will. Steve maintained a rigid vigil over Loki, shield across his knees, looking like a man who'd been doing guard duty since the invention of guard duty.
Jake settled into the co-pilot's seat and pulled up his system interface.
The brief clash had done more than settle an argument. The Omnitrix had absorbed another massive dose of Asgardian energy, and the system was processing.
Two full-power absorptions of Thor-grade divine lightning. The cumulative effect had triggered something new.
[Special Notification: Feedback DNA has acquired the passive trait — "Thunder Affinity."]
[Effect: Complete immunity to all lightning-attribute damage. Lightning energy striking the user is automatically converted to physical stamina recovery.]
Jake glanced at the rearview reflection of Thor in the back, still buffing his hammer like a man trying to polish away his shame.
Lightning immunity.
From now on, every time Thor tried to shock him, he'd just be... recharging Jake's battery. Like plugging a phone into a wall socket. The God of Thunder had been permanently downgraded from threat to portable charger.
Jake bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.
"Everyone."
Natasha's voice came from the pilot's seat, cutting through the cabin's awkward silence.
"Director Fury is on the line. He wants the full team ready. Interrogation begins the moment we dock."
Jake turned his head and looked out at the clouds sliding past the cockpit glass.
Somewhere behind those clouds, on the helicarrier, a glass cage was waiting for the God of Mischief. And somewhere beyond the sky, a portal was waiting to open.
The real fight was about to begin.
Show Some By Powerstones
Next BONUS CHAPTER at 200 powerstones