Chapter 243: Thor's Despair and the Invincible Destroyer
The Destroyer had no opinion about Thor's arrival. It registered a target and continued operating.
The red beam swept across the field with the methodical patience of something that didn't get tired or frustrated, reducing a concrete barrier to crystallized rubble, cutting through the frame of an abandoned vehicle, not particularly caring whether it hit anything because it had time.
Thor was faster than he looked without his powers. He'd grown up in Asgard, which meant he'd grown up fighting, and the body remembered even when the lightning didn't answer. He rolled clear of the beam's path, came up running, and made it to Fandral first.
"You have to go," Thor said. He was talking to all four of them but looking at each of them in turn the way you look at people you might not see again. "I know what happened. My father is alive — Loki arranged this. Someone has to stop him."
Volstagg started to object. Sif was already calculating the angle of the Destroyer's attention.
"Go," Thor said. "This is mine to finish."
They went. Not happily, not without looking back, but they went.
Thor turned to face the Destroyer alone.
Tony watched this from the perimeter. "You know," he said quietly, "for a man who was crying in a government facility three hours ago, he cleans up well."
"He's Thor," Ethan said. "The crying was always part of it."
Tony processed this. "Is that supposed to make sense?"
"He's someone who feels things completely. The grief was complete. So is this."
The Destroyer had tracked back to Thor. He stood in the open field in front of it with no armor, no hammer, no powers — just the decision he'd made walking across that ground.
"Brother," Thor said. His voice carried in the desert silence. "If I've done something to deserve this, I'm sorry. I mean that. But these people — they have nothing to do with whatever is between us. End it with me. Let them go."
A beat.
The Destroyer stopped.
Tony's eyebrows went up. "Did the robot just — respond to a speech?"
"Loki's watching through it," Ethan said. "Thor's talking to Loki."
"That's—" Tony paused. "Actually that's quite clever."
The moment held for approximately four seconds.
Then the S.H.I.E.L.D. artillery opened up.
The sound was what reached them first — the dense percussion of a coordinated volley, missiles and tank fire converging on the Destroyer's position with the enthusiasm of people who had been waiting for an opening and had decided this was one.
It was not one.
The smoke cleared. The Destroyer stood in it, unmarked, and turned toward the source of the attack with the specific attention of something that has been interrupted.
"They have terrible timing," Ethan said.
"They really do," Tony agreed. "Also I notice their weapons are doing nothing."
"Nothing," Ethan confirmed.
The beam came again — this time at the S.H.I.E.L.D. armor column. The tanks that had looked substantial from a distance turned out to be considerably less substantial than the Destroyer's opinion of them. The beam cut through the first three without pausing.
Tony watched this with the expression of someone conducting involuntary research. "The energy absorption coefficient on that plating is extraordinary. I've thrown everything at it — missiles, railgun, focused laser, EMP adjacent — nothing registers. The material is actively redistributing impact energy somehow." He paused. "I need that material."
"You're not getting it."
"I need it for science."
"You're not getting it."
"For the greater good—"
"Tony."
Tony went anyway. He'd said he wanted to test his armor against it and Ethan had said go, so he went, and he tried everything systematically and nothing worked, and he came back.
"It's extraordinary," he said. "Three or four of those and Earth is a historical footnote." He didn't look particularly alarmed by this. "Also I still want the plating."
"I know."
"I'm going to find a way to get the plating."
"I know."
The Destroyer had found Thor again. One punch, clean and direct, sent him across the field. Thor landed badly and didn't get up immediately.
The beam started charging.
Ethan sighed.
He was supposed to do this himself.
He moved — not fast, just purposefully, crossing the distance before the beam reached full charge and stepping between it and Thor.
The beam hit him.
He stood in it for a moment the way you stand in heavy rain, then let it redirect into the ground. The Destroyer's face panel tracked slightly, recalculating.
Thor looked up from the ground.
"Ethan." His voice had the specific quality of someone who expected the end and got something else. "You came."
"You were taking too long," Ethan said.
He didn't look away from the Destroyer. It was recalibrating its threat assessment, which would take a few seconds, which was enough.
「DING!」「Congratulations, Host! Thor Odinson's Friendship Level has risen to ★★!」
Ethan heard it in the back of his awareness and filed it without reacting.
"Can you stand?" he said.
"Yes," Thor said, and proved it.
"Good. Because the hammer is about thirty seconds away."
Thor looked up at the sky, then at Ethan, then at the sky again.
The ground hummed.
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