Leo walked toward the Destroyer with a slow, deliberate stride that felt heavier than the machine's own footsteps. The air around him hummed, vibrating with a frequency that made the nearby windows rattle in their frames.
He didn't look like a child anymore. He looked like an inevitability.
The Destroyer, controlled by a frantic and vengeful Loki, didn't hesitate. It swung a massive, heavy palm—a blow powerful enough to send an armored van tumbling like a toy—directly at Thor's head. But the strike never landed. A sudden, invisible wall of force halted the metal hand inches from Thor's face.
The jagged metal spikes Leo had previously embedded into the machine's back suddenly ripped themselves free, flying through the air to form a protective lattice between Thor and the giant.
Thor, still reeling from the realization of his own mortality, was startled by Leo's sudden intervention. He reached out, his instinct still geared toward protection, and tried to pull the boy behind him. "Leo, get back! This isn't your fight!"
In the Golden Palace of Asgard, Loki's eyes blazed with a manic, frustrated fury. His hesitation toward his brother was a complex web of grief and guilt, but he felt no such conflict toward Leo. To Loki, this boy was a glitch in his master plan, an anomaly that needed to be erased.
The Destroyer's faceplate hissed open once more. The orange furnace within roared to life, countless streams of destructive energy converging into a single point, aiming point-blank at Leo's chest.
Leo didn't flinch. He simply extended his right palm in a gentle, almost dismissive pushing motion.
BOOM!
The colossal Uru armor was launched backward as if it had been struck by a runaway freight train. It flew several hundred meters, tumbling through the air and crashing through the town's welcome sign. Even while airborne, the machine's programming held true; it discharged a jagged beam of destructive energy mid-flight.
With a flick of his wrist, Leo seized Sif's fallen battle spear from the dirt. The Uru weapon blurred as it spun in the air, transforming into a massive, rotating round shield of silver light. It intercepted the beam just meters away from the group, the resulting explosion sending a violent shockwave through the street.
The impact sent Thor tumbling once again. He landed hard, the world spinning. Jane rushed to his side, pulling him into her arms, her hands trembling as she wiped the dust from his face. "Thor! Stay with me, please!"
In the haze of the explosion, amidst the ringing in his ears, Thor felt a voice echoing from the depths of his soul. It was Odin's voice, stripped of its anger and replaced with the weight of a father's final lesson.
'Your arrogance and folly have brought the fear and destruction of war to the innocent people of peaceful realms!'
He saw it clearly now. His journey to Jotunheim hadn't been about justice or bravery; it had been a monument to his own vanity. He had treated the Nine Realms like a playground, and his "glory" was a crown of thorns he had forced others to wear.
He looked at Jane's tear-filled eyes. He looked at the Destroyer, which was already righting itself, a relentless tide of steel returning to finish the job.
Thor's gaze sharpened. The confusion and the self-pity vanished, replaced by a cold, resolute clarity. He stood up, his legs steady for the first time since he had landed in the desert. He didn't want the power for the throne anymore. He didn't want it for the songs or the mead. He wanted the power to stand between the people he loved and the darkness that sought to consume them.
Fifty miles away, inside the S.H.I.E.L.D. crater, the earth began to groan.
The monitoring equipment in the nearby tents went haywire. The immovable block of iron, Mjolnir, began to vibrate with such intensity that the concrete surrounding it cracked and crumbled. The ancient runes etched into the metal flared with a brilliant, blinding blue light.
'Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.'
The mud and the years of dust fell away like dead skin. With a sound like a thunderclap, the hammer tore itself from the ground and soared into the sky. It broke the sound barrier instantly, trailing a shimmering white streak across the New Mexico desert as it hurtled toward Old Bridge Town.
Dr. Erik Selvig looked up, squinting against the sun. He couldn't see what was coming, but he felt the displacement of air, a roar like a coming storm. He lunged forward, grabbing Jane and pulling her away from Thor. "Jane, move! Something's coming!"
Leo, sensing the approaching weapon, didn't move an inch. He watched the Destroyer charging toward them and the hammer screaming through the clouds.
He lifted both hands. The Destroyer, caught in a sudden, localized gravity well, was yanked upward into the sky—directly into Mjolnir's flight path.
CLANG!
The sound of the collision was felt in the bones of everyone in town. The supersonic hammer slammed into the Destroyer's chest, driving the machine back down into the earth with enough force to create a crater the size of a house.
Mjolnir didn't bounce off. It looped in the air, its leather strap snapping like a whip, and delivered its handle perfectly into Thor's outstretched hand.
The sky, which had been clear only moments ago, turned a bruised purple. Massive, roiling clouds gathered in a spiral, and a pillar of pure, white-hot lightning descended from the heavens.
It struck Thor directly.
Leo watched with his enhanced vision as a titanic surge of cosmic energy flowed through the hammer and into Thor's body, merging with the nascent energy core in the prince's mind. The lightning didn't burn him; it remade him.
Fragments of silver Uru metal materialized within the electricity, snapping onto his limbs and torso piece by piece. The crowd watched in stunned silence. Within the shroud of the storm, a silhouette began to grow, his cape billowing outward like a wing of blood.
Erik Selvig couldn't find the words. He had spent his life studying the stars, but he had never seen a star walk upon the earth. Jane watched the transformation with a look of pure, unadulterated awe, her heart racing as the man she had cared for revealed his true self.
Sif and the Warriors Three let out a unified roar of triumph. "THE PRINCE HAS RETURNED!"
The lightning receded. Thor stepped out from the settling dust, and the change was staggering. The disheveled, sweater-wearing mortal was gone. His golden hair was swept back, his silver scale armor gleamed with a celestial light, and his crimson cape snapped in the wind.
But his expression wasn't one of triumph. It was a look of somber duty. He finally understood that the hammer was a burden, not a toy. He was the protector of the Nine Realms, and his first task was right in front of him.
The Destroyer clawed its way out of the crater, its armor dented but its internal fire still burning hot. Leo, floating a few feet away, continued his assault. He seized the machine's own weight and slammed it repeatedly into the ground, trying to crush the internal mechanisms.
But the Destroyer was a relic of a different age. Even when Leo swung Sif's spear with enough force to cleave a tank, it only left shallow scratches that smoothed over almost instantly.
Leo's eyes flashed with a lethal, golden brilliance. He was done playing around. He extended his hands, and a focused beam of golden light erupted from his palms, bathing the Destroyer's chest.
Under the intense illumination, the dark Uru metal began to turn a dull, matte silver. The "Nirvana" energy was attempting to rewrite the machine's very molecular structure, turning it into something inert.
A pulse of colorful, Bifrost-like light rippled across the Destroyer's surface—Odin's defensive enchantments. The silver was "purified" back to black, but the machine shivered. For the first time, the Destroyer felt a sense of existential threat. It stood still, locked in a silent struggle against Leo's eroding light.
Thor floated up, spinning Mjolnir until it looked like a shimmering disc of light, lifting him into the swirling storm clouds above.
"Leo! Step aside!" Thor's voice boomed with the authority of the heavens. "Let me dismantle it!"
Leo felt a surge of competitive anger. He wasn't used to being "helped," but he glanced at Thor and saw the raw power the God of Thunder was channeling. He nodded once, tossing his backpack to the side where Darcy caught it with a squeak.
"Fine. Let's see what the 'God' can do," Leo muttered.
Suddenly, two massive, shimmering golden wings unfolded from Leo's back. This was his first time deploying the Nirvana Golden Wings in a real fight. The air around him turned into a golden haze, making his body feel weightless and hyper-responsive.
Leo transformed into a streak of gold, hurtling toward the Destroyer. He moved so fast that he left a dozen afterimages in the air, encircling the machine. To the onlookers, it looked like a golden cage had been dropped over the Destroyer.
Each pass of the wings left a trail of "Sword Light"—blades of pure energy that lashed out at the machine's joints. The Destroyer tried to track him, its head spinning wildly, but Leo was too fast, a golden phantom cutting through the morning air.