Welp I'm back, and I recently got diagnosed with ADHD, which perfectly explains why I always struggled to finish my projects, schoolwork, and translations! After starting therapy and medication a few months ago, I can't believe how calm my mind is now, it honestly feels unfair that everyone else has been thinking this clearly their whole lives. Now that I can actually focus without getting distracted so easily, I am highly motivated and completely ready to finally finish this story!
- Isopuff back again for who knows how many times already
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Whatever Manager Rosh's true reason for coming all the way to New Mexico was... Coulson knew better than to stick his nose into it.
Some secrets operated on a security clearance far above his pay grade.
After spending years climbing the ranks at S.H.I.E.L.D., Coulson had mastered the most important survival skill in the intelligence business: know your limits.
He didn't ask awkward questions. He didn't try to probe Rosh with clever conversational traps, nor did he attempt to guess the Manager's ultimate agenda. Instead, after watching Rosh's figure disappear into the shimmering heat of the desert, Coulson quietly walked back to the central command trailer, picked up the encrypted satellite phone, and dialed a direct line to Nick Fury.
That was his job. Nothing more, nothing less.
"Manager Rosh went all the way to New Mexico?"
In his office back at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, Nick Fury's dark brow furrowed tightly as he listened to Coulson's debrief. "And from what you're telling me... it doesn't sound like that hammer was even his primary target."
The one-eyed director fell dead silent, his mind instantly racing to connect the dots.
If a cosmic powerhouse like Rosh hadn't crossed the country just to examine an unliftable piece of metal... then there had to be something else hiding in the New Mexico desert. Something massive enough to catch the attention of a man who traded reality-bending powers for fun.
What could it possibly be?
Before Fury could dive deeper into his theories, Coulson's voice came through the receiver again, dropping an octave.
"Director, Manager Rosh also dropped a major piece of intelligence before he left." Coulson paused, his tone growing noticeably heavier. "I think you're going to find this pretty hard to swallow."
Fury's single eye sharpened. "Try me. What is it?"
Without wasting another second, Coulson repeated everything Rosh had revealed at the bottom of the crater. The weapon's real name, its ancient origins, and the divine title that had left Coulson completely speechless just minutes prior.
Mjolnir.
The legendary war hammer of Thor, the God of Thunder.
For the first time in a very long while, Nick Fury was completely lost for words.
"...Thor?" Fury leaned back heavily in his leather chair, repeating the name under his breath. "The actual Thor from ancient Norse mythology?"
For a solid five seconds, the line was dead quiet. Then, Fury slowly narrowed his remaining eye.
If the information had come from anyone else on the planet, Fury would have laughed them off the line and ordered a psych evaluation. But because it came straight from Rosh... it was as good as cold, hard truth.
Which meant only one thing: Thor wasn't just a fairy tale, he was real, and if his legendary weapon had crashed straight out of the sky into the desert dirt... its owner couldn't possibly be far away.
A sudden realization clicked in Fury's brain.
'Did Manager Rosh come to New Mexico specifically to find the God of Thunder?' The more he chewed on the idea, the more obvious it seemed. It made perfect sense.
Still, one huge, frustrating question remained. Why was the mythical war hammer of a god sitting buried in the desert sand like a piece of discarded junk? None of it lined up.
Regardless of the backstory, Fury knew one thing for certain: this incident had just turned into an absolute, code-red priority for S.H.I.E.L.D.
He spoke into the receiver without a second of hesitation.
"Coulson."
"Sir."
"The exact second anyone suspicious tries to get near that hammer... I want a full tactical report on my desk instantly."
"Understood, Director."
After ending the call, Fury sat alone in the dim light of his office, staring blankly at the wall.
There wasn't much else he could do right now. Without understanding why a god had dropped onto Earth, taking aggressive action would only escalate a situation they barely understood.
Thankfully, there was one major silver lining.
Manager Rosh was already on the ground in New Mexico. As long as a guy with lightspeed powers and dimensional portals was keeping an eye on things, Fury could sleep just a tiny bit easier knowing Earth had a very heavy safety net nearby.
After ending the call with Director Fury, Coulson didn't waste a single second putting the new directives into action.
The security perimeter around Mjolnir was upgraded instantly. Within hours, S.H.I.E.L.D. engineers erected a massive, climate-controlled temporary research facility directly over the crater, sealing the hammer inside a labyrinth of plastic tunnels and high-tech scanners. Armed tactical teams were dispatched across every square mile of the surrounding desert, tasked with flagging anything or anyone out of the ordinary.
If Thor had truly landed on Earth, he couldn't have just vanished into thin air.
Sure enough, it didn't take long for one of the field teams to hit pay dirt.
A report came in from a small county hospital nearby. Earlier that morning, ER staff had admitted a strange, muscular patient. The man was huge, wildly athletic, had long blond hair... and spent every waking second screaming at the doctors that he was Thor, the God of Thunder, son of Odin, and heir to the throne of Asgard.
Naturally, the local medical staff thought he was completely out of his mind. They labeled him as a severe psychiatric case, sedated him, and strapped him down to a hospital gurney for observation.
Under normal circumstances, S.H.I.E.L.D. wouldn't give a random, delusional guy in a hospital gown a second glance.
But this wasn't a normal day.
What immediately caught Coulson's sharp eye was the timeline.
The mysterious patient had popped up in the local database at the exact same hour Mjolnir crashed through the atmosphere into the New Mexico dirt.
"...Are you serious?" Coulson muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose as he pulled up the patient's file on his tablet. "Don't tell me... that guy looking like a confused homeless bodybuilder is actually a Norse god."
The whole thing sounded completely absurd. Yet the deeper Coulson dug into the local police logs, the weirder the story became.
He carefully reviewed the intake statements: The man wasn't a local, didn't have a state ID, and wasn't in any federal fingerprint database. He didn't arrive by bus, car, or train. According to local witnesses, he seemed to literally drop out of the sky in the middle of a freak lightning storm. Lastly, Jane Foster, a local astrophysicist studying weird atmospheric anomalies, had actually hit the guy with her research van while driving through the desert night.
Coulson leaned back against his desk, running a hand through his hair.
One coincidence was a fluke. Two coincidences were suspicious. But this many? At a certain point, logic demanded you accept the crazy truth.
The wild guy screaming about Asgard really was Thor.
Of course, accepting that fact immediately unlocked a brand-new, thoroughly confusing mystery.
If this guy was a legendary, immortal God of Thunder... why was he so ridiculously fragile?
Coulson flipped to the medical notes and squinted at the text in utter disbelief. According to the hospital report, a few ordinary ER nurses had managed to tackle him and pin him to a bed without much trouble. But the part that truly made Coulson's head spin was a witness statement from Darcy Lewis, Jane Foster's college intern.
Darcy had casually admitted to shooting Thor with a standard, off-the-shelf civilian stun gun when he started yelling at them in the desert, and it had knocked him out cold.
Coulson stared at the digital file in dead silence.
"..."
He slowly closed his eyes, tapping his finger against his desk in pure bewilderment.
"He's Thor..." Coulson muttered to himself, his voice dripping with utter confusion. "The God of Thunder. The master of lightning... and he got folded like a lawn chair by a fifty-dollar plastic taser from Walmart?"
The more Coulson thought about the physics of that situation, the less sense it made. Unable to figure out the puzzle from behind a computer screen, Coulson personally drove over to the facility to interview the mysterious patient himself.
Sitting across from the man in a secure holding room, Coulson quickly realized Thor wasn't trying to hide anything. The prince was direct, arrogant, and brutally honest about his situation.
Thor openly admitted that his father, King Odin, had stripped away his divine powers, shattered his armor, and banished him to Earth as a punishment for his foolish arrogance. Right now, he was trapped in a body made of ordinary mortal flesh and bone.
That was why a few hospital staff and a cheap taser had been enough to bring him down. Yet despite being completely mortal, Thor's confidence hadn't waned for a single second.
He looked Coulson straight in the eyes, his voice booming with absolute certainty as he made his demand, "Take me to my hammer. The second my fingers touch Mjolnir, my strength will return, the storm will answer my call, and I will be the God of Thunder once more."
After listening to Thor's dramatic explanation, Coulson fell completely silent for a long, heavy moment.
He had spent the entire conversation reading the man's micro-expressions. As a seasoned interrogator, Coulson was trained to spot every nervous twitch, exaggerated blink, or shifting gaze that gave away a liar. But Thor's face held none of those signs.
Either this man was the most insanely talented liar on the planet, or he was genuinely telling the absolute truth, and honestly? There was only one way to figure out which one it was.
"Mr. Thor," Coulson said slowly, leaning back in his chair. "You want your hammer back, don't you?"
Thor's ocean-blue eyes lit up like a pair of fireworks. "More than anything in the nine realms, Son of Coul!"
Coulson gave a calm, professional nod. "Then come with me. I'll take you straight to it."
From Coulson's perspective, this was the safest, most logical move on the board. If the guy were a delusional human, he'd march down there, fail miserably to lift the hammer, and the truth would be exposed in five seconds flat. But if he actually was the God of Thunder... S.H.I.E.L.D. had zero interest in holding a divine, alien weapon hostage. Trying to keep a god's personal hammer was a fantastic way to vaporize an entire agency.
"HA! I knew it!"
Thor's booming laughter echoed off the sterile metal walls of the holding room, practically shaking the ceiling lights. A massive, golden retriever grin spread across his face.
"Coulson, you are a man of true honor!" Thor declared, clapping a heavy, mortal hand onto the agent's shoulder hard enough to rattle Coulson's teeth.
For the first time since falling out of the sky, someone on this weird, primitive world had actually listened to him instead of calling him crazy. Every time he had introduced himself as Thor Odinson, Prince of Asgard, people had either laughed in his face, pointed tasers at him, or strapped him down in a psych ward.
Only this soft-spoken, slightly balding agent had treated his words with respect. Thor silently swore to himself that once his divine power returned, he would reward Coulson handsomely.
Coulson offered a polite, practiced smile, gently stepping out of Thor's crushing grip. "It's really no trouble. Follow me."
Escorted by a squad of armed S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, Thor was led straight through the climate-controlled security corridors surrounding the impact crater.
The moment they stepped through the final plastic barrier into the open desert air, Thor's eyes went wide.
"There it is!"
Thor's face practically glowed with pure, unrestrained joy. He pointed an eager finger toward the center of the muddy pit. "My hammer! Mjolnir!"
He spun around to Coulson, beaming with absolute pride. "Thank you, Son of Coul!"
Coulson's polite smile stiffened ever so slightly. "...It's just Coulson," he corrected softly, his left eye twitching just a bit.
'He can't even remember a simple two-syllable name...' Coulson thought to himself, watching the giant blond man bounce on his heels like an excited kid. 'Is this really the mighty God of Thunder? Maybe supreme divine power doesn't come packaged with a high IQ.'
'Still, none of that mattered now. The truth was about to reveal itself in a matter of seconds. If Thor could pick up Mjolnir, every wild claim he made about gods, Asgard, and cosmic realms would be instantly proven true. If he couldn't... well, back to the hospital he went.'
Thor took a deep, steadying breath. Then, without a single shred of hesitation, he strode down the dirt slope into the crater.
His posture was tall and proud. His shoulders were squared, and his face overflowed with supreme confidence. This was his hammer. The loyal weapon that had flown into his hand through countless bloody battles across the cosmos. It was the absolute symbol of his royal identity.
There wasn't a single doubt in his mind that it would answer his call.
*Grip!*
Thor wrapped both of his massive hands around Mjolnir's worn leather handle, planting his boots deep into the desert clay. A triumphant, arrogant smile spread across his lips as he looked up at the sky.
"HRAAAAGH!"
With a mighty, chest-rattling roar, Thor threw his back out and pulled upward with every single ounce of strength in his body.
...
Nothing.
The triumphant smile on Thor's face slowly froze, then began to fade.
He frowned, his brow furrowing in confusion. He reset his stance, wrapped his fingers even tighter around the grip, and flexed his arms. Thick veins popped out like tree roots along his biceps and neck. His face turned from pale to a deep, embarrassed crimson as he poured his entire soul into the pull.
"HRAAAAAAAAAAGH!"
Nothing.
Mjolnir sat embedded in the red dirt, cold, heavy, and completely dead to his touch. It didn't budge. It didn't hum with lightning. It didn't shift even a fraction of a millimeter.
The boundless confidence in Thor's eyes shattered into a million pieces.
His hands slowly, weakly slipped off the leather strap.
"...No..."
Thor stared blankly at the motionless block of metal sitting between his boots. The shocking disbelief in his chest quickly curdled into raw, soul-crushing despair.
The last remaining thread of his legendary pride snapped. His knees buckled beneath him, and with a heavy, sickening thud, the fallen prince dropped straight into the cold mud.
He threw his head back toward the stormy clouds above, his voice cracking with unbearable grief and heartbreak that echoed across the dead, quiet desert.
"FATHER... WHY?!"
His agonizing cry hung in the air, leaving Coulson and every S.H.I.E.L.D. agent watching from the ridge completely, utterly speechless.
Coulson let out a soft, defeated sigh and slowly shook his head. It seemed he had been completely mistaken after all. The man inside wasn't an ancient, thunder-wielding deity. He was simply a deeply broken, delusional stranger who had convinced himself he was a god.
After all... how could an actual god fail to lift his own signature weapon? More importantly, how could a godly warrior be so completely, hopelessly clueless about basic human concepts?
Coulson raised a quiet hand toward the nearby tactical team. "Take him back to holding. Keep him secured."
"Yes, sir."
Two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents immediately stepped forward to escort Thor back to the central tent.
This time, Thor didn't resist. He didn't shout insults, he didn't demand his freedom, and he didn't raise his fists. The soul-crushing failure at the bottom of the crater had completely demolished the very foundation of his pride.
His massive shoulders slumped forward. The radiant, golden fire in his eyes went completely dark. As he shuffled through the dirt, he looked like an empty shell of a man, staring blankly at the ground, stripped of every ounce of majesty he had carried into the facility.
The God of Thunder... had been utterly broken.
Back inside the dim, rain-slicked canvas holding area, Coulson attempted one final round of questioning.
It was a completely useless effort.
Thor sat motionless on the edge of a folding chair, staring at the concrete floor as if Coulson didn't even exist. He was far beyond processing human words. He looked less like a dangerous prisoner and more like someone who had lost his entire reason to exist.
Seeing that he wasn't going to get anything useful out of the man tonight, Coulson gave up.
"We'll resume this later," Coulson said quietly.
Leaving two armed guards posted at the entrance, Coulson pulled back the tent flap and stepped out into the night air.
The heavy canvas fell shut.
Silence returned to the small room.
Then…
*Shhh!*
The green-tinted shadows in the corner of the tent suddenly began to ripple. The air distorted like heat rising off asphalt, shimmering with emerald light as a taller, leaner figure materialized out of thin air.
He wore dark, elegant leather robes trimmed with brilliant Asgardian gold. Long black hair draped neatly over his shoulders, framing a pale, sharp face that wore a deeply practiced expression of tragic grief.
Loki, the God of Mischief.
Thor's lifeless eyes slowly drifted upward, instantly widening in shock. "Loki...?"
He stared at his younger brother, unable to process his sudden appearance. "How... what are you doing here?"
Loki looked down at his brother, his expression heavy with sorrow. "I had to see you..."
On the surface, Loki looked heartbroken. In reality, every single twitch of his brow was calculated. He had practiced this moment down to the exact second.
He was about to tell Thor that King Odin was dead. He was going to claim that the grief of Thor's banishment had shattered their father's heart, that the responsibility of the throne now rested on his shoulders, and that Thor could never, ever return to Asgard.
With a few carefully chosen lies, Loki was going to seal Thor's exile forever and secure his own reign.
Loki parted his lips, drawing a dramatic breath to deliver his heartbreaking masterpiece.
*CREAK!*
Before a single syllable could escape Loki's mouth, an impossibly sharp, wooden creaking sound cut through the silence of the tent. Directly between the two divine brothers, right in the center of the room, a solid, vintage wooden door materialized directly out of the empty air.
It didn't phase into existence like Loki's green illusions. It literally folded open out of space itself, revealing a glimpse of a warm, brightly lit storefront on the other side.
Both Thor and Loki froze.
Loki's grand, dramatic speech slammed into a brick wall. His eyes widened in genuine, unscripted shock as he stared at the physical door floating in midair.
Then, a tall young man stepped casually through the threshold, stepping right into the middle of their Asgardian family drama.
He had neatly styled dark hair, a completely relaxed posture, and an easy, effortless smile on his face. He adjusted his collar, dusted off his sleeve, and gently pulled the spatial door shut behind him with a soft click.
It was Rosh.
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Next Chapter: A Devil Fruit That Left Even Loki Speechless
Next Next Chapter: The Devil Fruit That Could Replace Thor
Next Next Next Chapter: The Manager vs. The God of Mischief
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