Chapter 127: Thor? I Thought That Was a Speed Bump...
Thor pitched forward and slid face-first down the wall before landing on the floor with an undignified thud. It would have been funnier if Victor Gideon and the rest of the hospital staff hadn't just been on the receiving end of him.
They stood holding whichever part of themselves Thor had hit, wearing the contained expression of people who had a great deal of feelings and no outlet for any of them. The only thing keeping certain members of the nursing staff from expanding their job description considerably was the knowledge that there were rules about this sort of thing.
"Get the restraints on him." Victor Gideon addressed the nurses with the tone of someone issuing an order for the last time. "Multiple sets. Make them tight."
"And get psychiatry on the phone. I believe this patient may be having a manic episode."
He reached up and rubbed his nose, which had narrowly survived the encounter intact.
This bastard. Nearly put it sideways.
With Thor securely restrained flat on the hospital bed, Matthew and the others were directed out of the ward.
Darcy's gaze had drifted to the electric baton in Matthew's hand and hadn't moved since.
"Mr. Lawrence."
She chose her words carefully. "This might be a bit rude to ask. But I'm curious why you're carrying a taser."
"And also how you had it hidden on your person."
She wasn't the only curious one. The rest of them were looking at him with the same question.
They genuinely could not figure out where it had come from.
Matthew cleared his throat. "As most people know, I enjoy hunting. And in the course of hunting, there are times when you need to..." He paused. "Actually I can't finish that."
He gave up and spread his hands. "The honest answer is I brought it because I wasn't sure about him. And a taser is better than a gun."
"But how did you hide something that thick?" Darcy pressed.
"Oh, that." Matthew pressed a button.
The forearm-length baton snapped back on itself, collapsing in under a second to the size of a pencil.
"Technology. Making life better."
He put it away.
Matthew looked at Erik and the others. "Now that we've dropped him off, should we go back to the site? Take a closer look at the data?"
The mention of data was apparently all they needed. Everyone who had been standing around contemplating Thor's existence instantly remembered they had somewhere more important to be, and turned for the exit.
Darcy moved fastest of all.
Listening closely, she appeared to be muttering something about six academic credits.
Some things were the same everywhere.
Matthew didn't follow them back to the site this time. He made up a vague excuse and slipped away from the group, heading in the direction Mjolnir had come down.
Shortly after, he was hovering in midair.
He looked down.
Directly below him was a crater roughly twenty meters across. And at the center of that crater, sitting completely still, was a square hammer.
"So this is the famous meow meow hammer."
Matthew studied Mjolnir from above.
In the Marvel universe, the hammer was forged from Uru, an alloy made from a dead star. The strength of the material was not in question.
He descended slowly and landed at the crater's edge, then walked to it.
He took a moment to examine it, then wrapped his hand around the handle.
He applied force.
Mjolnir didn't move.
Two seconds of silence.
He applied more force. Full commitment this time.
A faint red mist spread from his body. Flesh armor erupted across his skin.
The ground beneath his feet caved inward under the load.
Mjolnir didn't move.
Tch.
"An upstanding young man like me doesn't qualify? Who exactly are you holding out for?"
He pursed his lips, then tried a different approach: gravity. He focused on the hammer and pushed upward.
Whether Mjolnir sensed where the force was coming from was impossible to say. The hammer sat exactly where it was.
He was out of ideas.
Credit where it's due: even having come this far, he still couldn't crack a single enchantment.
Marvel was a dangerous place. There was always further to go.
He gave the handle two resigned pats. "Mjolnir. I'll lift you one day."
"I don't have any particular attachment to you, but a man always wants to prove he measures up."
He tried twice more.
Nothing.
He gave up and returned to the villa.
After he left, a raven that had been sitting silently in the branches above the crater spread its wings and rose into the night sky.
Someone, it seemed, would be spending tonight without sleep.
Jane and the others had worked through the night on the observational data. When Matthew arrived the following morning, they were still at it, coffee in hand, poring over everything the instruments had captured.
"Erik, look."
Jane held up two enlarged photographs side by side.
"These are the stars the equipment captured during the storm. They're completely different from anything we observe from Earth."
"And this."
Darcy pointed to a separate image. "There's a person in this energy distribution map."
Erik was already forming an objection when he looked at what Darcy was pointing at. He closed his mouth.
She was right. There was a person in it.
"I think we need to go to the hospital," Jane said.
"I think so too," Darcy agreed.
"Then let's move." Matthew was already in the driver's seat somehow, calling into the room and beeping the horn twice.
Erik went with obvious reluctance, though in the end curiosity won over skepticism. He wanted to know how the man who had fallen from the storm had ended up as a figure in the data.
Hospital.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"
Victor Gideon was holding court in the corridor, his voice carrying through the entire wing.
"I specifically said multiple restraining straps. I specifically said make them tight. So why is he not in that room right now?!"
The doctors and nurses receiving this were doing their best impression of people who were not present.
One of the younger doctors, deciding he'd taken enough: "We tied them as tight as they'd go. He has supernatural strength. How exactly is that our problem?"
"Supernatural strength?!"
"If it was supernatural strength, why didn't it finish you off with one punch just now?!"
Victor was too busy breathing through his nose to answer that.
"Go find him. Now."
The corridor emptied.
Outside the hospital.
Thor was running with the enthusiasm of someone who had just escaped captivity, which was in fact exactly what had happened. He ran and looked back over his shoulder, unable to stop himself from narrating.
"A pack of mortals!"
"Think they can hold Thor, son of Odin?!"
"What deluded-"
BANG.
A car doing sixty miles an hour came around the corner and sent him flying.
Matthew: "Hmm? Is there a speed bump here?"
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