Chapter 224: Thor, Thoroughly Broken
Thor's expression was one that people in his position rarely wore — the expression of someone who cannot accept what they are currently experiencing because accepting it would require revising too many things at once.
His hammer. His oldest companion in battle. He could not lift it.
He had tried twice. He had employed every ounce of strength his body contained. The muscles of his forearms had trembled with the effort. The soles of his boots had compressed the soil half a centimetre into the earth from the force he'd driven downward through his legs. The hammer had not moved.
A golden-haired woman he'd never met had lifted it by threatening to convert it into a toilet. And he, the God of Thunder, son of Odin, wielder of Mjolnir since before he could count the years —
Could not.
He told himself it was a prank. Some enchantment placed on the handle, perhaps. Father's idea of a lesson. A temporary state with a discoverable resolution.
"Old friend. I know what you're doing. You're testing me. Very amusing. Shall we try again?"
He released the handle, shook out his hands, reset his stance. The grin he produced was a little too fixed to be entirely convincing.
He took the handle again and pulled.
Nothing.
The vein at his temple pulsed. His expression lost the grin and found something beneath it that he wouldn't have called despair but which was adjacent to it.
Sweat was running down his face. A drop reached the hammer's surface. The hammer produced a small blue arc and evaporated the drop, in what Thor chose to interpret as fastidiousness and what the Chat Group members watching from above interpreted as a conscious decision about hygiene standards for things it found beneath its attention.
"This isn't funny," he told the hammer quietly. "I want you to know that I recognise this is a joke, and I'd like it to end."
He tried a third time.
He was beginning to feel the effort in his shoulders in a way that hadn't happened in many years.
When did I become this weak?
The thought arrived and he refused to examine it.
Then the Shiba arrived.
It had crossed the crater floor at a small dog's walking pace — unhurried, head level, tail at a neutral angle. The posture was not aggressive. It was the posture of something that has decided on an outcome and has all the time available to achieve it.
Thor watched the Shiba approach his hammer with the feeling of someone witnessing something they know is about to be bad for them and are temporarily unable to prevent.
The Shiba extended one paw.
The paw reached the handle.
Something about the grip didn't make anatomical sense for a dog, but the grip happened regardless.
Blue light bloomed from the hammer. The same lightning that had refused to acknowledge Thor for the past several minutes now flowed up the Shiba's arm and across its frame like it had come home — gentle, almost affectionate, arcing through the air around it in patterns that seemed decorative rather than violent.
The Shiba was not injured by any of it. The lightning moved around and through it with complete indifference to what should have been physics.
The Shiba lifted the hammer.
Thor watched this happen.
The sky above responded. Clouds building, the same rapid atmospheric change as before. Lightning of a different character now — not the Shiba's, exactly, but drawn toward it, converging.
The Shiba turned its head and looked at him.
It was not a neutral look. Even accounting for the limitations of reading expression on a Shiba face, what it was doing was clear. It held the look for several seconds.
Then it dropped the hammer back into the crater with a casual motion that left no question about its feelings on the subject, and the weather normalised.
It pressed its button.
"I AM THOR, GOD OF THUNDER!"
"I AM THOR, GOD OF THUNDER!"
"I AM THOR, GOD OF THUNDER!"
Then, with what appeared to be considerable effort for an animal whose anatomical equipment was not designed for this specific gesture, it extended one paw and raised a single digit.
It held this for a moment, made eye contact with Thor one more time to ensure the communication had been received, then turned and walked back toward the Chat Group.
Thor stood in the crater.
He looked at the hammer.
He looked at where the Shiba was walking to.
He looked at the hammer again.
His face had moved past disbelief, past bewilderment, past confusion, through the territory marked "cannot currently process" and arrived somewhere that had no sign.
He reached down with the last fragment of hope he had and grabbed the handle.
One more pull.
Nothing.
"Why," he said to no one in particular, "is it like this? If Father is testing me, why were two others permitted to lift it? The woman — perhaps she's Father's — but even granting that, she and I share a colouring, there might be some lineage I'm unaware of—"
He stopped.
"But the dog. That was a dog. A dog that cannot speak, which raised Mjolnir without difficulty, and which then — which looked at me like that—"
The thought couldn't complete itself. The thought had encountered something it wasn't built to handle and had simply stopped.
Thor had been described, by people who knew him and people who didn't, as having a personality that leaned hard toward one direction and didn't naturally pivot. This was accurate. He was learning, slowly, that the universe contained outcomes that didn't yield to being pushed at directly. But the lessons were coming in in batches today, and the batch was large.
He sat down on the crater floor next to the hammer.
What neither Thor nor the assembled S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives knew was that the Shiba's entire performance — the dignified dismissal, the held look, the final gesture — had been staged.
Tony Stark had coordinated it via Chat Group.
I'm Rolling In It: @I Am Thor, God of Thunder — excellent work, buddy!
I'm Rolling In It: Time for the human connection phase. Uncle Tony is going in. By the time I'm done, this thunder god will be a loyal ally, and when the Avengers project eventually happens, he'll be in my corner.
I'm Rolling In It: Long-term investment. Beautiful.
[Group member "I'm Rolling In It" has sent a targeted red packet, claimable only by "I Am Thor, God of Thunder"!]
[The red packet has been claimed. "I Am Thor, God of Thunder" is the Lucky Champion!]
I Am Thor, God of Thunder!: He and his hammer seem to have broken up.
I Am Thor, God of Thunder!: My relationship with my hammer is excellent, for the record.
Kaguya-sama: The dirty scheme. Poor Marvel Thor.
Roar of the Evil Dragon: We're both called Thor. Why is that Thor so — simple? Is this actually a thunder deity? Doesn't quite match my expectations.
RawrSoFierce: An innocent alien visitor has been subjected to the full application of Earth cunning. Is this the depravity of humanity, or the moral collapse of the universe? I'm beginning to seriously wonder if this is a villain group chat.
Eternally Seventeen: I have been recognised by the Thunder God's hammer as a person of righteousness! How could this possibly be a villain group? Categorically impossible~
RawrSoFierce: I have never seen such shamelessness.
Admiral Kizaru: I have never seen such shamelessness~
"…"
Tony suppressed a cough. Even he had to admit that Yukari-senpai operated at a level of brazenness he couldn't fully approach.
He composed himself, reviewed the draft he'd been mentally preparing, and walked down into the crater.
Coulson and the other agents watched this happen with the expressions of people who have lost count of how many times today they've been surprised and have simply stopped tracking.
Coulson's communication equipment had been destroyed by the electromagnetic field from the hammer. He had no way to relay anything to Director Fury even if he'd known what to say. This was what he had instead — ringside observation of events he couldn't stop, couldn't report, and couldn't fully categorise.
Tony reached Thor's position, looked at the man sitting in the bottom of a crater next to a hammer, and let his expression settle into something warm and authentic-seeming.
"You said you were Thor. The Thunder God. Is that right?"
Thor looked up. The face was unfamiliar. Some human, in a suit, who had apparently walked into the restricted area without anyone stopping him.
He laughed — a small, rueful sound, nothing like his usual register. "If I tell you yes, will you believe me? You shouldn't. I can't lift my own hammer. I've lost the right to call myself a thunder god. Right now a dog is doing better than I am. A dog looked at me with contempt and I had nothing to answer with."
Tony's expression shifted to something different. He clapped a hand on Thor's shoulder.
"Actually," he said, with the specific sincerity of someone who has prepared for exactly this conversation, "I believe you. You're Thor."
Thor stared at him.
He didn't know this man. This was a stranger. A human, from this world, who had no particular reason to believe anything he'd just claimed.
And yet something about the moment — the simplicity of it, after everything else that had happened today — produced an unexpected response.
From the crater rim, Ryū watched Tony take a seat next to Thor and begin talking. He shook his head slowly.
"That man is going to have this thunder god completely turned around by the time he's done. Thor's been battered enough today that his defences are basically gone. Tony is going to walk out of this crater with a new friend and a long-term strategic asset."
He paused.
"I find I can't fully object to this."
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