A week slid by the way desert weeks do—sunburned at the edges, all light and long shadows. Our routine in Puente Antiguo hardened into a rhythm that even the Marvel Cinematic Universe would have to respect: drills at dawn, quiet patrols through the dusty grid of New Mexico streets in the afternoon, motel check-ins like clockwork. By day three the waiter at the diner knew my order; by day four he'd stopped flinching when two or three very large men accepted water refills without blinking. By day five Agent Phil Coulson had perfected his slow drive-by—window up, tie tidy, the world's politest head-tilt a stand-in for a warrant. S.H.I.E.L.D. was everywhere and nowhere, and we pretended that was fine because it had to be.
Thor Odinson brooded less with each sunrise. At first he sat on the edge of the Desert Star Inn bed the way dethroned kings sit on chairs that aren't theirs—back straight, jaw iron, the word unfair hovering like a halo he refused to wear. But Jane Foster has a way of dissolving sharp edges without asking permission; around her, Thor's voice softened by degrees, pride developing manners. Darcy Lewis kept poking the balloon whenever it tried to re-inflate—sarcasm plus shock-taser equals excellent therapy. Erik Selvig continued a running commentary on S.H.I.E.L.D. that would have been libel if it weren't mostly true, and I agreed with him out loud enough to keep him from popping a vessel.
Seven Spartans changed the neighborhood's math. A purse snatch? Thirty seconds to apologies and the purse returned with the cash untouched and a stern lecture about better hobbies. A bar fight trying to audition for YouTube? Ten seconds to de-escalation, two minutes to everyone discovering the miracle of going home sober. We used our Spartan-II posture as theater and our restraint as a weapon. The townsfolk learned the difference between scary and safe and decided we were very much the latter, even if they also decided to cross the street when we were three-wide because elbows are elbows.
The real entertainment lived in the rookies. Alpha-05 sharpened under Alpha-02's relentless footwork notes; he started the week stepping like he was wearing someone else's shoes and ended it moving like lines had asked for his autograph. Alpha-06 learned not to overcommit as Alpha-03 pared his strikes to clean, almost gentle paths—less exclamation point, more period. Alpha-07 mirrored Alpha-04 with freaky-fast adoption, his guard going from hopeful to hateful in forty-eight hours. Each night I watched and pretended I wasn't feeling proud enough to choke.
"Look at my boys," I'd say from a folding lawn chair in the motel parking lot, sipping a soda like a dad who'd won visitation. "Growing up so fast. Soon you'll be terrifying in your own right."
"Terror not objective," Alpha-02 would reply without glancing up, as if terror were an item you could misplace.
"Yeah," I'd concede. "Yet."
Coulson's S.H.I.E.L.D. presence loomed like a respectful thundercloud—no rain, but you keep an umbrella handy. He'd lace a question into a pleasantry, get an answer that didn't fully qualify as one, and mark a box on an invisible clipboard. We made a sport of being boring where we could, helpful where we must, unphotogenic wherever possible. It was our brand.
On the eighth morning, the sky forgot itself. Clouds didn't roll; they shimmered, as if the atmosphere had learned to breathe through a lens. The hair on the back of my neck did that small salute it saves for moments you'll later call fate. Even before the town reacted—even before Darcy's phone rose like a lark and Jane's eyes went huge—we all felt it. Pressure. A soft hip-check from the universe.
Thor froze mid-sentence outside the diner, sun cutting his profile into a coin. And then the visitors from the sky arrived.
The Bifrost didn't slam like a drum this time; it sighed. The column of light that stabbed down into the two-lane road at the town's edge was still the business card of Asgard, but someone had edited it for finesse. Four figures stepped out of the gleam like the air had been saving them: Sif, her spear a straight line that could argue anyone into submission; Fandral, smug in a way only genuinely talented men survive; Hogun, quiet enough to be a weather pattern; and Volstagg, whose stomach got there first and whose heart arrived with it.
"Thor!" Sif called, relief and an argument braided into the same syllable.
"My friends," Thor breathed, and there it was—the first true smile he'd given Midgard. It hurt to watch, in the good way.
We had five seconds of reunion—shoulders grabbed, words tripping—before the sky moved again. Not the Bifrost this time. Not storm. Something colder. The clouds puckered, then smoothed, as if a fist had pressed against a velvet curtain from the other side.
Sif and the Warriors Three pivoted as one. Their faces did not do panic. They did grave.
I leaned against the SUV, took a last pull from my water, and let deadpan keep my blood pressure reasonable. "That doesn't look like a thunderstorm."
"It is the Destroyer," Volstagg said, and for once his voice had misplaced its laughter.
"The what now?" I asked, even though a dozen fan-wiki pages were already flipping open in my head.
"A weapon forged in Asgard," Sif said, jaw tight enough to cut rope. "A guardian. A judgment."
Thor's expression collapsed inward, the way a tower settles after you pull the right stone. "Loki."
I whistled low. "Well, that explains the sense of doom."
Behind me, Alpha-01 shifted closer—a movement so small it only qualified as motion if you measure in atoms. Alpha-02, -03, -04 mirrored him, and I felt the rookies' eyes click to me like magnets finding north. Alpha-05, -06, -07 stood at readiness and tried not to look like they were trying.
"Alright, everyone, breathe," I said, tossing the empty bottle into the SUV and letting my grin fade to command. "It's just a big, shiny suit of armor. How bad could it be?"
Answer: very.
The Destroyer strode into Puente Antiguo like a lawsuit. Towering, sleek, polished to mirror—an armored cathedral with legs. Each footfall rattled the pavement and shoved the air. It hissed steam through vents like it had decided to sigh in a way that melted things; its faceplate irised open with a whisper that sounded like a secret you didn't want to hear. Behind that opening: fire, banked and hungry.
"Oh my God," Darcy whispered from behind me. "It's Iron Man on steroids."
"Nah," I said, because I am compulsively myself. "Iron Man'scuter."
The beam came without warning: a line of heat that unstitched a parked car, pinwheeling it into a storefront where it retired permanently. Screams tried to be orderly and failed. Civilians did that herd math where everyone becomes someone else's elbow.
"We have to get everyone out," Jane said, grabbing Thor's arm with a thoroughly human strength.
"Right," I said, already snapping into our SOP. I pointed at the rookies. "Alpha-05, -06, -07: evacuation duty. Get people out. Keep them safe. No heroics."
"Acknowledged," they chorused, and disappeared into motion—peeling civilians out of chaos with hands that understood leverage, turning panic into lines, building corridors out of air. Alpha-05 swept a kid into his mother's arms and was gone before she could thank him. Alpha-06 pivoted a man away from a falling awning with a palm on his sternum and a single "sir" that taught obedience. Alpha-07 moved side-by-side with an elderly couple so gently they looked like they'd planned it.
I turned to the veterans. "Stay standby. Let the Asgardians make the first move. We intervene if they fail. Contain, don't kill."
"Understood," Alpha-01 said.
The Warriors Three and Sif were already charging—Volstagg roaring with his axe like he'd found a reason to exist, Fandral vaulting high with that acrobatics-as-arrogance thing that would be grating if it weren't effective, Hogun cutting low with quiet violence, Sif driving her spear point like a thesis statement.
It was gorgeous in the way doomed things often are. Blades rang off metal; the Destroyer didn't flinch. Heat vented; a second beam swatted Volstagg through a truck with the casual efficiency of physics. Hogun crumpled like a man who had done his math and still found out the world cheats. Fandral's landing turned into a skid and a sword tumbling away in a glittering arc. Sif jammed another thrust; the Destroyer answered with a backhand that treated her like punctuation.
"All right, Spartans," I snapped, the edge in my voice leaving fingerprints on the air. "Your turn. Engage, but don't kill. Contain only. Move."
Alpha-01, -02, -03, -04 hit the street together. The ground felt it.
Alpha-01 took point, his punch landing with a crack that spidered the asphalt under the Destroyer's heels. It staggered—not injured, but interrupted. Alpha-02 stepped through and slotted a textbook knee kick into the joint; metal groaned, and the massive frame adjusted to remember it had to obey torque. Alpha-03 vaulted high and clamped onto its back, his forearm cinching around the collar assembly in what read as a choke on anything with a windpipe. The faceplate tried to turn toward him, heat spooling; Alpha-03 rode it like a mechanical bull and pressed down, angling for denial rather than domination. Alpha-04 swept low, caught the leading leg, and forced a stutter step that threw off its aim by degrees.
They moved like a single organism—no wasted motion, no chatter, everything learned repeated correctly at speed. For the first time since it crested the hill, the Destroyer looked less like inevitable and more like prey being asked an unwelcome question.
"Now that's teamwork," I said, letting my hands slide into my hoodie pocket because some habits are armor.
Thor watched wide-eyed, his face running the math of a thousand years of Asgard and arriving at a new variable. The Warriors Three groaned where they lay; Sif clawed herself upright by will and grit and something more complicated called love.
"What are they?" she breathed, not at me so much as to the story.
"Mine," I said cheerfully, keeping my gaze on the monster so I didn't have to explain the ethics of ownership.
The Destroyer vented with a furnace howl, the faceplate snapping toward Alpha-01, light coiling behind it.
"Alpha-01, move!" I barked.
He dropped like the command had cut his strings; the beam lanced through the space his skull had been occupying and carved a glowing scar across Main Street. Alpha-02 was already in, elbow slamming into the jawline to force the plate shut; Alpha-03 cinched tighter, his body a lever. Alpha-04 wrenched the near arm into a joint-lock that would have popped bones on anything alive. Metal shrieked. The Destroyer whipped its free arm into Alpha-04 and launched him backward; he rolled with the hit and rose in one breath, stance already reset.
Dented now. Scorched by its own heat. Still dangerous.
"They're holding it back," Jane said, voice thin with awe.
"Of course they are," I said. "That's what I pay them for."
"You don't pay them," Darcy said, not taking her phone off the spectacle.
"Details."
"Impossible," Selvig whispered, but he cleaned his glasses anyway, as if clearer lenses might downgrade reality to reasonable.
The Destroyer's backhand caught Alpha-02 across the chest and skidded him ten feet; he planted, reset, and charged again. Alpha-01 and Alpha-03 worked the head—drumbeat strikes in a pattern that stopped the face from finding a clean line. Alpha-04 dove and seized an ankle; tendons don't live in that leg, but balance still does, and the machine shuddered as its weight shifted onto its own bad decisions. Heat surged. The air around us turned into oven-wind; I shielded my eyes with one wrist and didn't blink.
The faceplate flared again and the light inside throbbed. Uh-oh did a small tap dance in my ribs. "It's going to blow. Pull back!"
All four disengaged in the same heartbeat, breaking contact like professionals who preferred not to die. The beam scythed across the street, turning asphalt into molten opinion. Cars went up like punctuation. Glass rained. Heat roared and the town's painted signs curled inward like shy things.
"Enough!" Thor shouted into the world's hair dryer. "Stop this madness!"
The Destroyer turned its head—the movement somehow judgmental—and faced him.
"Spartans—protect civilians. Do not re-engage." My voice didn't have to be loud; it had to be true. They fell back to the perimeter, slotting in with the rookies, opening and reopening evac routes as S.H.I.E.L.D. agents—stiff, brave, overmatched—started pushing cones and regret.
Quiet arrived, not as mercy but as prelude, the way it often does when myth needs the floor. Thor stepped into the street—calm where pride had lived—arms spread. He looked less like a fallen prince and more like a man who'd changed his mind about what winning meant.
"Brother," he said to the empty air where Loki undoubtedly listened, "if you hear me, take me. Spare them."
The Destroyer tilted its head, as if trying on his words for size, and then struck. One devastating blow—no heat, just physics—and Thor flew, hit the ground wrong, and stopped moving. The sound Jane made knifed through the burn and hit marrow. Darcy clapped a hand over her mouth. Sif staggered forward and collapsed to a knee as if she could hold the earth together by posture.
I clenched my fists and watched, understanding this part because the MCU loves structure and sacrifice is a lever you can pull only once if you're honest. Jane cradled him; dust made tears into mud. The Destroyer loomed, heat gathering for a final line.
Very far away, the hammer moved.
Out in the desert, in the shallow crater under S.H.I.E.L.D. scaffolds, Mjölnir shuddered, then ripped upward with the petty violence of an object remembering it has a favorite person. A silver comet shredded the sky and stitched a storm behind it. The clouds split like a courtroom parting for a verdict.
Mjölnir found Thor's hand with a sound like the world exhaling.
Lightning told the air to sit down. Armor re-wrapped him in a shimmer—the red cape snapping like punctuation in Odin's language. Thor stood whole; the eyes that had been full of questions carried power again, and something new behind it that had to be humility.
"Well," I said, grinning because sometimes the universe pays off foreshadowing the way it should. "About damn time."
The Destroyer fired. Thor met the beam with Mjölnir's face and thunder sang harmony. He rose into the storm on a column of air that wasn't there until he needed it and fell like a gavel. The Destroyer bent, faltered, collapsed; light guttered like a candle that had lied about being fireproof. The shell caved in on itself with a series of sighs that read as cooling metal to civilians and admission of defeat to the kind of men who measure these things.
Silence returned, this time shaped like mercy. Hiss of heat leaving. Clink of settling plates.
Thor settled back onto the asphalt, breathing steady, Mjölnir easy in his hand as if it had never been heavy. Jane watched with her mouth open and all her science intact. Darcy muttered something about muscles that I chose not to quote. Selvig cleaned his glasses again as if the third pass might finally teach him it wasn't a hallucination. Sif and the Warriors Three regained their feet, relief loosening the corners of their mouths even as pain wrote side notes in their posture.
I slid my hands deeper into my pockets and smiled. "You finally got your toy back, Goldilocks. Took you long enough."
Thor turned, and for once he smiled back—not the grin of a frat god, not the smirk of a man with more hair than sense. A real smile. It sat well on him.
Ding.
Reward: 2,000 points
Targets:Thor Odinson and civilians of Puente Antiguo
Reason: Provided containment and support during the Destroyer incident
Oh, that was pretty. The HUD tucked the number away with a satisfied tch, and I let the dopamine do a polite lap.
"Good work, boys," I called as my Spartans regrouped from the perimeter, moving past clusters of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who were whispering versions of what are they you can't print on a form. "Clean fight. Nobody died. Thor powered up. And I just scored two thousand points. That's a win."
Alpha-01 nodded once, the crease at the corner of his eye softening in a way that, if you squinted, could be called pride. Alpha-02 adjusted his stance and did a quick head-to-toe on himself and then on Alpha-05 because habits are love in camouflage. Alpha-03 flicked a scorch mark off his sleeve with a motion that said annoying more than injury. Alpha-04 flexed his hands once, satisfied the joints still understood cooperation. Alpha-05, -06, -07 took three deep breaths in sync and let them out as one, the exhale of rookies who had watched a cathedral try to sit on their town and learned the right lesson.
Across the way, Agent Coulson approached, tie somehow still at regulation after a small war. He took in Thor, took in Jane, took in the Destroyer cooling into modern art, and then let his eyes visit us like a diplomatic delegation.
"That was… contained," he said, which, from S.H.I.E.L.D., is a standing ovation.
"We aim for boring," I said. "The good kind."
He almost smiled. "If you ever decide to fill out an application, I'll burn the paperwork the same afternoon."
"Flattered," I said. "We'll stick to volunteer work."
"Of course you will." He glanced at Thor, who was in the middle of inventing a new category of apology with Sif and the Warriors Three. "We'll need to… debrief. Later."
"Later," I agreed. "He earned a minute."
Coulson nodded, touched the earpiece he always seems to have without touching it, and moved off to convert chaos into reports before it had a chance to grow back.
I watched Thor look at Jane like Midgard had invented light just to keep her visible. I watched Darcy film the last hiss of the Destroyer like a girl who would absolutely edit a fire emoji into that video. I watched Selvig brace against the fender of a still-smoking car and take the kind of steadying breath that promises future lectures in future bars.
"We'll celebrate later," I told the squad. "For now, let the god have his spotlight."
We melted back, hinges again instead of hammers. S.H.I.E.L.D. moved cones and courtesy and tried not to mind that their day had been stolen by a myth and a man who learned to be worthy without winning first. Civilians trickled from alleys and doorways, faces smudged and alive. Someone clapped and then pretended they hadn't. A dog barked the bark that means the world is wrong but mine is okay.
For the MCU historians who will want the details: Sif's spear didn't break. Fandral retrieved his sword and kissed it because some men can't help but be themselves. Hogun refused a stretcher with a look that turned the medic into furniture. Volstagg made a joke about breakfast and then admitted he wanted to sit down. Thor hugged Jane in a way that counted as PG-13 and then met Coulson's eyes with the respect of a man who now understands authority and service are cousins, not enemies.
As for me? I leaned on the SUV and watched the points meter in my peripheral vision tick from 3,000 to 5,000 and tried very hard not to spend any of it immediately. Quality versus quantity could wait a few breaths. Today I'd pick gratitude as my reward. Today I'd choose boring and mean it.
"Hey, Goldilocks!" I called when the hugs thinned and the speeches threatened. Thor looked over. "If you're done saving New Mexico, we should talk about clean-up."
He laughed. Laughed. The sound sat on the street like a blessing.
"Your warriors are formidable," he said, nodding at my walls that walk.
"Hinges, not hammers," I corrected, then shrugged. "But we can swing when we have to."
He lifted Mjölnir a fraction. "As can we."
"Good," I said. "Because next time the sky changes, I'd prefer if it were for good news."
He looked up as if Asgard might have posted a weather report and then back down with an expression that made me suspect Loki was about to become our problem and our entertainment in equal measure.
But that was tomorrow's story. Today the Destroyer lay in pieces cooling itself into scrap. Today the town remembered how to breathe. Today S.H.I.E.L.D. pretended they were in charge and we pretended to agree. Today a prince learned the shape of worthy, and seven Spartans became the kind of rumor that keeps streets safer than patrol cars do.
We didn't take a bow. We don't bow. We assist.
We let the god have his spotlight and turned our backs to the sun so the shadows we threw would be long enough to cover the people who still needed them.