Thor, son of Odin, was lost. Physically, mentally, he no longer knew who he was. He didn’t even know who he was supposed to be.
Very recently, he had been on the verge of becoming king. He would have ruled Asgard in place of his father. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that was what Thor LIVED for.
It had been stripped from him. He lost his place as Odin’s heir, he lost his home, he lost his hammer, and now he was just… Left. Just Thor. Not even the Odinson: just, Thor. A man on Midgard with slightly above average strength and no place or purpose.
“What does that look mean?” Jane Foster asked.
Like lost men often do, Thor was wandering aimlessly. He had been struck by metal Midgardian mounts twice. He believed they were called “cars”. In fact, it was the same one, ridden by the same woman. Jane Foster was as beautiful as the maidens of Asgard, as was her young friend, Darcy. They were also accompanied by a wizened elder by the name of Erik.
“It clearly means he’s moping,” Darcy said. “That’s a moping face.”
“Moping about what?” Jane asked.
Thor still had not answered, so Darcy addressed the question.
“Maybe he’s heartbroken?” Darcy said.
“I am NOT heartbroken!” Thor said. “I have heavy troubles. I am a warrior who has lost his hammer.”
“Erectile dysfunction?” Darcy whispered.
Jane kicked her in the shin. The two women were walking slightly behind Thor as he meandered around this unfamiliar town in what was called New Mexico. Erik Selvig was further behind them, consistently looking troubled.
“You lost a… Hammer, you say?” Jane asked.
“My mighty Mjolnir,” Thor said. “She is more than a hammer. She is the might of thunder given form! One swing will blow away a frost giant as easily as if it was a toddler!”
“Let’s try not to blow away any toddlers,” Jane said. “What happened to Mjolnir?”
“It was stripped from me,” Thor said. “Only those who are worthy can wield such a weapon. My father, Odin, performed the enchantments himself. With my hammer stripped from me, I am reduced to this pathetic state.”
Thor gestured at his body, garbed in the Midgardian clothes of Jane Foster’s former lover. While it was an upgrade on the dress that the place of healing had given him, he longed for the comfortable weight of his armor.
“I wouldn’t describe your state as pathetic,” Jane said, biting her lip.
Thor wasn’t listening. He had stopped walking, craning his neck to look at two strangers conversing on a bench.
“Did you hear about the satellite crash?” one had said. “It came down right here in the desert.”
“Hear about it? I saw it!” said the other one. “It came out of the sky yesterday, flying so fast that it was just a streak! It happened right when that weird storm blew in.”
As quickly as he had stopped, Thor began to walk quickly.
“Where are you going?” Jane asked.
Thor spun around, backpedaling in his excitement. “To find a mount and reclaim what is mine! The services you have given me will not be forgotten, Jane Foster! When I have reclaimed Mjolnir’s might, I will blow away your enemies in thanks for this fine garb!”
Thor ran off, looking for a horse fit to carry him. What the mortals had mistaken for one of their devices was most assuredly Mjolnir, his missing hammer. If Thor could find it and lay claim to it once more, he would no longer be lost. It wasn’t over. Thor could make a comeback.
First, he just had to find a horse.
LINE BREAK
One day later, Thor sat in a room made of glass. The floor was white. Outside, men in suits did work. One of them had come in and asked Thor many questions. His name, where he was from, where he had been trained, those such things.
Thor had remained silent. The memory of Mjolnir within his grasp was too strong to ignore. He had found his hammer, he strained to lift it, and in the end, it escaped his grasp. He was not worthy.
That was what had first reduced Thor to silence. Then, his brother visited him.
Odin was dead. Thor’s father was gone, and it was Thor’s banishment that broke him. Foolish Thor, who had spat in the face of peace by taking his friends to Jotunheim. Thor wanted battle, he got it, and in doing so he provoked war. His father had to send him away. Loki was now king and still, Thor couldn’t return home. He was here and he was nothing, with no one left who cared about him—
The door opened. It was the man, Coulson, who interrogated Thor earlier. He was no longer alone.
“Blake!” said Dr. Erik Selvig. “What have you done this time? We told you to lay off the steroids! Come on, I’m getting you out of here. You’ve caused Jane enough trouble already.”
Thor stared at him. There were tears on his cheeks from the news about his father. He blinked and stood up.
Erik Selvig wasn’t as good a liar as Thor’s brother, Loki. Thor could spot that something was strange. He called Thor Blake, for one thing. However, the intent was obvious all the same.
Someone had come for him. Someone wanted to help him.
Thor got up, squaring his shoulders.
LINE BREAK
Thor awakened with the grogginess that alcohol always left in you after a night that had been spent well. Erik Selvig had taken him to a bar. There, they shared a talk over tall glasses of Midgardian ale.
The man was wizened indeed. He had maturity that matched Odin, not like Thor and his impetuous nature. The man had helped him clear his head.
What followed, Thor had a blurrier recollection of. They had returned, with Thor carrying Dr. Selvig. Jane had met them. She and Thor had sat outside and looked at the stars. He told her of the Nine Realms and the truth of the world. She had been fascinated with the Rainbow Bride most of all. Thor smiled as he recalled the look in her eyes, so full of more than imagination; she had been picturing it through the lens of the science that she studied.
Thor’s joy redoubled when, at breakfast, denizens of the cafe where he, Jane, Darcy, and Erik were eating suddenly began to clamor. There was a pounding at the window.
When Thor looked up, he saw his friends. Sif and the Warriors Three were out of place in Midgard; even more so than Thor had been when he came to this place. Thor surged out of his chair, laughing boisterously. Introducing his old friends to his new ones was a treat he had not expected.
Thor knew this burst of joy wouldn’t last indefinitely. The loss of his father still ached deeply. However, he couldn’t have expected how badly things would turn.
A shockwave swept through the desert with a mushroom cloud of dust. Thor stood in the street with the others, observing the occurrence, as were many of the ordinary locals.
“Were we expecting more friends?” Erik Selvig asked. His words were tinged with hope more than expectation.
Thor felt rage in the pit of his stomach. Through talking with Sif, he had already learned the truth. His father wasn’t dead, merely slumbering. Loki had worked his lies on Thor and fooled him once again. Only this time, the stakes were higher than ever before. From the start, Loki had been working with the frost giants. He had orchestrated the situation where Thor’s pride ran out of control. He coveted the throne and had taken it through his favorite method: trickery.
But Thor’s rage was muted and remained deep inside of his gut. He was no longer the kind of man to roar like thunder when he was wronged. Although he could not forgive Loki, he was more scared of losing what he had.
In the desert, where the mushroom cloud originated from, flashes of orange appeared. Each of them created its own small explosion. Thor understood what he was looking at.
He seized Jane by the shoulders.
“Listen to me,” Thor said. “You must leave here, Jane. You and everyone else. That thing is not a beast that Midgard can handle. It is here for me and it will destroy anything that is in its path.”
“What about you?” Jane asked. “What will you do?”
“Thor will fight with us!” Volstagg.
“No,” Thor shook his head. “I cannot. I am a man now, not a warrior as you are. If I fight with you, I will only put your lives at risk. You will fight, I will make sure the mortals here do not pay for my crimes.”
“Then we’ll help you!” Jane said. “If you’re staying to evacuate people, so am I!”
“If she’s doing it, then I’ll do it too,” Darcy said. “But um, maybe we should get started? That thing looks like it’s coming closer.”
She was right. As the shape came toward them, any last scrap of hope Thor held that he was wrong about their opponent disappeared. It was the Destroyer, a weapon of Asgard as fearsome as any warrior. It was tireless in its pursuits and could not be reasoned with. He prayed that the Warriors Three and Sif would succeed.
It wasn’t to be.
When the dust settled, while the town burned, Sif and the warriors were scattered and crippled. Thor had to send them back to Asgard. They would know the truth. If they could rally the armies, Loki could still be foiled.
As for the Destroyer…
It stomped down the street, a massive suit of armor without any skin beneath its metal, only fire and vengeance. Thor walked down the street to meet it. He had told the Sif that he had a plan.
He did.
She would never approve of it.
Thor held his arms out on either side of his body.
“I am Thor, son of Odin!” Thor said. “It is I you have come for, and you have found me! Strike me down and leave this town! They have no place in the quarrel between us, brother!”
He didn’t know if Loki could hear him through this servant. Thor had never grasped all of what his brother’s magic was capable of. He only knew that by doing this, Thor may be able to end the destruction and death. He wished Sif and the Warriors Three luck in saving their home. This was the most that he could do.
The titan of metal looked down at him. It curled an arm, then bashed him with the back of its hand.
Thor flew. He hit the ground heavily and in an awful state. Distantly, he heard a scream. He felt someone grabbing his side. Jane Foster was crying his name. This was not a bad way to die. He could die as he did not live: saving lives instead of taking them.
It began as a hum. Next, Thor felt wind on his skin. Something came alive in him, a burst of energy which forced his eyes open.
His hand shot up, catching Mjolnir as it sailed into hand.
Thor’s body healed. His clothes changed to his armor and red cape. He found his feet as a boom of thunder echoed down the street.
“I’m worthy?” Thor said. “I’m worthy!”
He flew at the Destroyer, his might returned. Now, he could do more than die for these people.
He could fight for them!
The Destroyer stood no chance against his might. When it had been defeated, he returned home, promising Jane that he would be back soon.
Thor won the battle that followed. Loki and the frost giants were defeated. In the process, he was nearly lost, but his father saved him, holding him above the vast expanse of space beneath where the Rainbow Bridge had run, until Thor destroyed it in his battle against Loki.
Loki, Thor’s brother, was beneath him. Thor was holding his staff while Odin held Thor. Despite everything, Thor looked imploringly at his brother.
Yet, Loki was laughing.
“Fine. You win,” Loki said. “Well done, brother.”
“Come back,” Thor said. “Atone.” As I have.
But Loki smirked and did the opposite.
He let go of the staff, falling away, and disappeared into the void as Thor screamed his name.
LINE BREAK
Dr. Erik Selvig walked through a government base, following a man with one eye and a deep voice. Nick Fury was bald and decently old, with dark skin and (occasionally) a dark look in his eyes.
“Your work in New Mexico has impressed a lot of people, Doctor,” Fury said. “People much smarter than I am.”
“I can’t take all the credit,” Dr. Selvig said. “The entire situation has been beyond my wildest dreams. Anyone with a decent mind could make a breakthrough, when they’re watching other kinds of beings come and go from our world.”
“I think you’re underselling yourself,” Fury said. “I don’t mind a bit of modesty. But I want you to tell me, honestly, what you make of this.”
Fury led Selvig to a briefcase placed on a table. Fury undid the latches and popped it open. Inside, Selvig stared at a blue cube that was spraying its light across his face.
Selvig looked up. “What is this?”
“Power, Doctor,” Fury said. “Possibly unlimited power. IF it can be harnessed.”
Selvig looked down again, staring at the cube in wonder, trying to take its measure. Behind him, his reflection was visible in a polished sheet of metal. A second reflection joined his, only without a body in the hallway.
Loki gazed at the tesseract, then slowly raised his eyes.
“Well,” Loki said, “now THAT is worth a look.”