Chapter 176: Let Me Teach You How to Use Lightning, Thor
Odin's question landed in the hall and nobody answered it immediately.
Thor, who had been standing off to one side with the expression of a man who had been waiting for the portion of this meeting that involved hitting something, looked at Ethan with renewed interest. A Midgardian who carried chaos, space, and lightning — that was a combination that didn't fit the category of ordinary visitor. That was the category of worthy opponent, and worthy opponents were Thor's favorite kind of person to encounter.
Whatever frustration had been sitting on his shoulders a moment ago evaporated. He stood a little straighter.
Loki, by contrast, gave Ethan approximately the level of attention he gave things that were beneath his consideration, which was to say he glanced once and then looked away. Midgardians were Midgardians. The Ancient One had some genuine accomplishments — he could admit that, privately — but whatever mortal she'd brought with her was not going to alter his opinion of the species.
She thinks this is the one who should have the Sorcerer Supreme title, he thought, watching his father's face. Truly.
The Ancient One, standing quietly to the side, registered something she hadn't expected. She'd known about Ethan's Space Stone influence and his chaos magic — she'd been paying attention since their first meeting. But the lightning was new. When did he acquire that?
She recalculated several things upward and found the exercise satisfying.
Ethan processed Odin's question — what exactly are you — and his first internal response was not diplomatic.
You're calling me a what?
He filed it. The Allfather had lived for thousands of years and developed the conversational habits of someone who was used to everything being beneath him, which produced a certain directness that other beings tended to read as rude. Ethan understood the mechanism. He didn't particularly enjoy being on the receiving end of it.
"Just someone with a moderate amount of ability," he said. "Not a sorcerer."
"Not a sorcerer," Odin repeated. The single eye was doing the thing it did — reading, probing, checking whatever frequencies he used to assess beings. "A moderate amount of ability. That is one way to describe it." He looked at Ethan with the expression of a man who had decided that the stated answer was not the complete answer. "Your power is unlike anything I've encountered before. The simultaneous presence of chaos, space, and lightning in a single Midgardian — that requires an explanation."
Ethan looked at him.
Then he looked at the Ancient One, and then back at Odin, and said with complete composure: "I wonder what your purpose is in having us here today, Allfather. This doesn't feel like how you treat guests."
Odin's eyebrow moved slightly.
He glanced at the Ancient One with an expression that asked, plainly: Is this the one you've chosen?
She met his look and nodded. Yes.
The exchange was not subtle enough to miss.
Thor had been watching all of this with increasing impatience, and now the impatience reached its threshold. A Midgardian speaking to his father with that tone — standing in the throne room of Asgard, in front of the Allfather, with that particular relaxed confidence — was something that required a response.
He stepped forward. "Enough. You stand in the throne room of Asgard and address the Allfather with that manner? Let me correct that attitude."
Ethan looked at Thor.
He looked at Odin.
"You sure about this?" he said, conversationally. "I can't promise your son walks away from it."
The hall went very quiet.
Odin's expression didn't change. He was, Ethan suspected, entirely aware that this was a test — he'd ordered the encounter, in the way that experienced monarchs ordered encounters without appearing to order them. The Ancient One had declined to intervene, which meant she wanted Odin to see what Ethan could do. All of that was fine.
Ethan didn't particularly want to be Asgard's ally. The Asgardians were going to spend the next several years creating problems for themselves that no amount of allies would fix, and he had no interest in being on the hook for those problems. But giving Odin a clear picture of what he was dealing with — that was worth a few minutes.
Thor was already moving.
Ethan wasn't there when he arrived.
He reappeared behind Thor, unhurried, in the same easy posture he'd occupied a moment ago. He looked at the back of Thor's head.
"So you're the God of Thunder," he said. "The hammer god. I expected more."
The hammer god framing hit exactly where he'd aimed it.
Thor turned with lightning already moving across his skin, Mjolnir swinging in a wide arc, and the hall lit up with the crack and roll of genuine thunder. He wasn't holding back — this was Thor actually trying, which was meaningful. The power behind it was real.
Ethan moved through it.
Not around it. Through it — stepping between the arcs, reading the pattern, moving at a speed that the Enel template had added to his existing kit in ways he was still calibrating. The lightning passed through spaces he'd already left. Thor adjusted, swung again, and Ethan was already elsewhere, his path through the hall tracing something that looked, from a certain angle, like the movement of current along a conductor.
Who's the real lightning here? hung in the air without being said.
"Stand still and fight like a warrior!" Thor's voice filled the throne room, and the frustration in it was genuine. He wanted a test of strength, not a game of positioning. "What kind of fighter hides behind footwork?"
Ethan reached to his hip.
The sword looked like what it was — a zanpakutō, elegant, unremarkable to anyone who didn't know what they were looking at. Thor saw it and his posture shifted: finally, a real confrontation, I can work with this.
"Yes," Thor said. "Face me directly. That's what a true warrior does."
Ethan held the sword loosely in one hand. He looked at Thor for a moment. Then he looked at the blade.
He said it quietly, the way you say something that doesn't need to be loud to work:
"Shatter, Kyōka Suigetsu."
The sword disappeared.
Thor blinked. "Where did your—"
"Don't worry about it," Ethan said. He rolled his shoulders slightly, easy and unhurried, and looked at Thor with the expression of someone who is about to demonstrate something. "Now. Let me show you what lightning actually looks like."
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