Chapter 220: Asgard — Heimdall
"Gurararara — age is no barrier to this old man adopting a child! The question is simply whether you're willing, little Thor! Take on the Whitebeard name, become my… what number am I up to now? Gurararara — regardless, the question is whether you want to!"
Whitebeard waved off the age issue as a trivial detail and extended the invitation again.
The Shiba understood perfectly well. It whimpered quietly and retreated behind Ryū, making a face that conveyed small-animal distress — the universal expression of something that has been mildly hassled by a well-meaning giant.
Whitebeard's old face took on a slightly put-upon look. Why was nobody in this group willing to become his child?
Was his personal magnetism failing?
In the One Piece world, announcing he wanted to adopt someone would have produced a queue from the Reverse Mountain to the New World. Not metaphorically. Every civilian, merchant, pirate, and noble within reach would have been fighting for the slot. The percentage who'd decline would be vanishingly small.
Here, somehow, his adoption offers kept getting politely deflected by a Shiba Inu.
Yukari stepped forward.
Every set of eyes in the vicinity went to her — from the Chat Group members as the only moderator, and from the S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel because she was the kind of person who captured attention without doing anything in particular to produce that effect. No celebrity comparison held. The assembled operatives were used to seeing unusual people, and they were still slightly thrown.
Kaguya looked at her curiously. "Yukari-nee, what are you doing?"
"The hammer looks interesting. Without earning its approval you can't lift it — I simply want to try. And looking at it, it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that breaks easily~"
She said this without lowering her voice. The S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA operatives around them all heard it clearly. Several exchanged looks.
A dog lifting a hammer and summoning lightning — they'd absorbed that. When an event existed in the world, accepting it was the only available option. Trying to remove the event wasn't going to work, based on everything they'd just observed. The Shiba alone, they suspected, could handle whatever response they managed to put together.
Now a blonde girl who didn't look physically imposing wanted to try the same thing.
Several thousand light-years away from Earth, at a precise location without a convenient name in human geography:
Heimdall, one of the twelve gods of Asgard, stood at his post and stared at the stars.
His expression had shifted from composed to something he would have been embarrassed to admit — a kind of extended, repeating double-take.
He rubbed his eyes.
Looked again.
"A dog on Midgard has lifted Mjolnir."
He said it to himself, quietly, as though saying it aloud might help it make more sense.
"Not just lifted it — the hammer recognised the animal. A dog. Has been granted the hammer's recognition. Commands the thunder's power." He paused. "And in the dog's other paw there was a smaller hammer — similar in form to Mjolnir, carrying an equivalent divine resonance."
Heimdall, whose sight reached across the nine realms without aid, questioned for the first time in a long time whether something had gone wrong with his perception. Had some enchantment obscured his view?
He'd communicated with the Supreme Sorcerer of Midgard. She'd confirmed no interference. She wouldn't play this kind of game regardless — she'd been alive long enough for pranks to lose their appeal.
Unless the All-Father has… no. No. Odin would not do that.
He discarded the thought.
He also discarded the chain of anatomical reasoning that the discarded thought had briefly initiated.
The hammer-using Thor — is he still with the Midgardian locals? He must have sensed Mjolnir being lifted. Though he doesn't know by whom. If he did, his expression would be worth seeing.
Heimdall muttered this to himself with the mild satisfaction of someone who finds other people's confusion vaguely entertaining. Even his characteristically composed demeanour had a small crack in it.
The central question remained: what was the dog?
"You don't know their identities either?"
A voice in his ear. Utterly sourceless.
Heimdall's hand went to his sword and stopped. His arm was no longer obeying him. A chain of magical force had wrapped around it without warning.
The voice again: "Don't be alarmed. It's me. The Ancient One."
A ring of crackling light appeared in front of him. The Ancient One stepped through it.
Slim build. The top of her head at roughly his shoulder height.
The presence radiating off her was, by any objective measure, not his.
She snapped her fingers lightly. The magical restraints fell apart.
Heimdall held his wariness in his posture rather than in his expression. "Most honoured Supreme Sorcerer of Midgard. I assume your visit to Asgard wasn't solely to demonstrate binding magic on my arm?"
"No." She shook her head. "I came because of the group of people."
Heimdall paused. He recalled what she'd said when she arrived.
"You don't know the dog's identity either?"
"I don't. I've never encountered anything like them. More than that — from what I sensed, they carry an energy that is fundamentally wrong for this world. I suspect they may not originate here at all. That they come from other dimensional realities entirely."
"The blonde woman in particular. The ability I detected in her — it requires careful handling. And she isn't quite human. Something about her is different at a fundamental level. More like a human-shaped entity that has adopted human form."
The Ancient One's tone was calm but not light.
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