The sun did not arrive politely. It rose harsh and bright over the scrub, turned the two-lane blacktop into a griddle, and made the heat ripple in layers as if the sky had a fever. Even with the SUV's AC doing its best imitation of a miracle, heat shimmered off the asphalt in waves. I drummed the steering wheel anyway, because percussion is how you assert control over your nerves.
"Eyes up," I said. "Time to welcome the blonde thunder god to his new vacation spot."
"Thor Odinson," Alpha-02 confirmed, voice soft as a checklist.
"Yep. Asgard's golden boy—formerly. Dad dropped the hammer. Literally."
Alpha-01 rode shotgun, watching the horizon like the cacti might stage an ambush. Alpha-03 and Alpha-02 sat behind us, quiet, taking in the kind of empty that only deserts do on purpose. Puente Antiguo approached in a series of low, sensible buildings and bare utility poles. A diner banner promised the county's best pancakes with the weary confidence of a veteran. A dusty main street, a hardware store that probably sold more gossip than nails, a gas station where the overhang had opinions about wind. Perfect stage.
We parked. People noticed us instantly because three large men walking in formation look like they've already made a decision you weren't consulted on. I smiled; the Alphas didn't. We covered the sidewalk in a precise rectangle and drew a few curious stares and one wary glance from a sheriff's deputy nursing a coffee.
"Smile," I told the squad. "We're celebrities."
They didn't. It's a long-term project.
The morning broke with a low boom rolling over the rooftops—distant, metallic, unlike thunder, but fitting for something landing quickly. Heads turned toward the horizon. A young guy on a BMX pointed with his whole arm. Two tourists craned for a view. Somebody said, "what the," and someone else said, "meteor."
I tipped my head, listening to the second beat behind the noise—a hush that meant everyone's brain had switched from breakfast to story. "There he is," I said, and we were already moving.
Back in the SUV, Alpha-01 followed the dust plume and traced a line without using a pen. We continued beyond town, past fences that had abandoned subtlety, past scrub that had endured on less water than patience. In the distance, the crater made itself known: a scorched bowl carved into the desert crust, with a rim of crumbled caliche shining like broken pottery. We came to a stop inside the safe zone and outside the spectacle.
Thor was sprawled facedown in the dirt.
Not majestic. Not framed by lightning. No cape. No armor. Just a large man with blonde hair matted with dust, groaning like his bones had learned gravity the hard way. No Mjölnir. No thunder. Pride only, and even that had a limp.
I turned off the engine, stepped out into the heat that bit the back of my neck, and whistled. "If it isn't the god of thunder, face-first in the dirt. Not your best entrance, big guy."
The Alphas fanned behind me like we'd rehearsed it—which we had, because everything is a rehearsal if you admit it. Alpha-01 took the right, eyes soft and attention hard. Alpha-02 took the left, hands empty in a way that promises competence. Alpha-03 covered the back angle with the kind of calm that invites decisions to be better.
The man in the crater pushed up on his palms and staggered to his feet. Even without lightning, he had weight—the kind of presence that makes the world give him space. He glared, pride blazing through defeat. "Who are you? Where am I?" His accent made vowels sound like weapons.
"New Mexico," I said. "I'm Shredder. These are my brothers. And you just fell out of the sky."
He swayed, eyes glass-bright with pain and disbelief. "I must return to Asgard. My people—my father—"
"Slow down, champ," I said. "You're grounded. At least until Odin decides you've learned your lesson."
His eyes narrowed. "You know of Asgard."
"Let's say I keep up with the news."
Tires spit gravel. A van slid to a halt near the rim, desert dust fountaining around it. Jane Foster hopped out first, hand over brow, squinting into the glare, hair caught in the wind and not caring. Erik Selvig followed—worried professor face, protective stance. Darcy Lewis trailed with the wide-eyed courage of someone whose curiosity had always been louder than her fear, a taser clutched like a security blanket.
"Well, well," I said, "cavalry."
"We saw something fall from the sky," Jane said, her voice a mix of breathless excitement and scientific curiosity. Her eyes locked on Thor and widened significantly. The intensity of her curiosity was like a pressure you could sense. "He—he shouldn't be alive after that. But he is."
"Jane," Selvig warned, already hearing how this would sound in a grant application.
"I know what you're going to say," she whispered, not taking her eyes off the man in the dirt. "But look at him. He's not normal. This is… extraordinary."
"You there—take me to—" Thor tried, and Darcy zapped him before he could finish. It sounded like a bug light meeting a summer evening. He made a surprised noise that would have been funnier if it had belonged to a cat, then went down like a sack of flour.
I blinked. Then I laughed and couldn't stop. "The almighty god of thunder dropped by a taser. I think I love you."
"Uh, thanks," Darcy said, adjusting her grip on the taser like it had just proved itself. She took one look at Alpha-01, who returned the look with polite, blinking-free attention, and did a shiver that was seventy percent adrenaline and thirty percent admiration. "Y-yeah, okay."
"Let's not overdo it," I said when she lifted the taser again. "He's funnier conscious."
Thor groaned and rolled, hand going for a hammer that wasn't there. The move stopped halfway when fingers met air; the loss registered on his face the way a silence registers in a song. "Where is Mjölnir?" he demanded, still trying to growl through sandpaper. "Where is my hammer?"
"About that—" I said. "You won't be seeing it for a while."
"You speak as if you know," he growled.
"Lucky guess," I said.
"Pretty sure it's in a crater like twenty miles from here," Darcy chimed in, phone already out. "Twitter's blowing up. Hashtag #desertballpeen is trending and I'm kind of mad about it."
"See?" I told Thor. "Even gods can't hide from social media."
Selvig had eyes for me now, measuring, careful. "Who are you?"
"Shredder," I said, easy. "Just passing through with my brothers. Happened to be in the neighborhood when your science experiment landed."
"Science experiment?" Jane echoed, offended and delighted simultaneously.
I gestured at Thor, who had taken offense at gravity and hadn't recovered. "Man falls from the sky, rants about his father and a place called Asgard. Doesn't scream ordinary."
Thor pushed himself upright again, wild-eyed. He looked like a general waking up on the wrong battlefield. He took a step and almost felt dizzy. Alpha-03 moved slightly closer—not touching, not threatening, just available—and Thor noticed. He noticed Alpha-01 too, and Alpha-02, and made the same calculation every fighter makes when assessing new terrain disguised as men.
"I am Thor Odinson," he bristled, because a man reaches for names when everything else has been taken.
"Yes, yes, and I'm Elvis," I said. "Welcome to Earth."
Darcy snorted. Jane made a face that shows she wants to be serious all the time but sometimes fails. Selvig rubbed his temples in the universal gesture meaning I need more coffee. Thor glared as if he could will lightning back with just his personality.
A truck pulled up. Two ranchers leaned out, boots dusty, eyes bright with the curiosity that comes from land ownership and being close to the strange. "Everything okay?" one asked in a tone that hinted he'd happily drop a lasso on a problem if needed.
"All good," I said, raising a hand in a soothing circle. "Airport drill. Vouchers."
He squinted like he heard the joke under the words, nodded anyway, and eased off, satisfied that the strangers with a taser and a very large blond man had their own plan.
I tipped my head to Alpha-01. "The weather looks bad."
"Pepperoni," he murmured. Low. Observation only. He had already counted the vehicles and clocked the dust rising from the south as just wind, not convoy.
Jane knelt beside Thor again, studying him as if her eyes could function as a CT scan and a lie detector. "You fell from that"—she pointed at the sky—"and you're not broken. Your vitals are… annoyingly normal. Who are you?" She wasn't talking to me.
"I told you," Thor said, voice softer at her than it had been at me without meaning to be. "I am Thor, son of Odin."
She absorbed it the way a scientist absorbs any sentence that announces a new category: not as an affront, but as a question marked future work. "And Asgard is… what, exactly?"
"A realm beyond yours," he said, and did not try to hide the grief that made the words thicker. "I must return."
"You can't," I said gently. "You're grounded. Think of it as… a study abroad program without the abroad part."
He turned that glare on me again. I let it hit and bounce. Pride does what it does; my job was to make sure it didn't get him arrested before lunch.
"Right," I said, cutting the tension before it made stupid decisions. "You want to help Goldilocks figure out his situation? Fine. My brothers and I will join and keep him from getting himself killed. Right now, he's just a guy—a big, loud guy without a hammer."
Jane stood. "I don't know who you are," she said, "but if you can help me keep him from getting himself arrested, I will take it."
Selvig looked like he wanted to ask for credentials, a background check, and a blood type, then realized nothing about this morning involved forms. "We don't even know his name," he protested weakly.
"I do," Thor said, dignity rallying. "You have it now."
"Great," Darcy said. "That'll help when we call 9-1-1 and say hi, we tased a man named Thor, can we keep him?"
"Let's skip 9-1-1," I said. "And skip the taser unless he tries to arm-wrestle a semi."
Ding.
Reward: +1,000
Targets:Thor Odinson, Jane Foster, Darcy Lewis, Erik Selvig
Reason: Assistance (de-escalation, scientific integrity protection, civilian safety)
That hit the ledger like rain. From zero to a thousand. Another five hundred and I could summon Alpha-04. I kept the grin off my face because smiling at points in front of people makes you the wrong kind of person.
"Okay," I said, turning the moment into action. "Step one: get Thor out of the hole and into the shade. Step two: water. Step three: S.H.I.E.L.D. will have opinions, so we make sure any data stays Jane's. Step four: if Mjölnir becomes a community art project, we avoid becoming performance artists."
"Scientist priority," Alpha-02 said, naming the rule like it lived on the fridge—which it did.
"Help me with him," Jane said to Selvig, then eyed Alpha-03 and decided she would, after all, accept assistance from a man who looked like he could move a piano with a firm suggestion. "You too, if you don't mind."
Alpha-03 gave a small nod. He isn't gentle to look at, but he's gentle to touch when a task requires it. He slid his arm under Thor's shoulder, didn't pull—invited the movement instead—and let the larger man choose to accept balance. Thor tried to refuse and made the kind of face you make when pride meets physics and loses by a little. He allowed Alpha-03 to bear some of his weight and didn't comment on it.
We guided Thor to the van. Jane searched for water and a towel that used to be white. Selvig showed concern and a worn-out notebook. Darcy hovered with the taser holstered like a sheriff in a town where chaos rules.
I popped the back doors. Alpha-02 set to work with the cool indifference of a combat medic whose patient is mostly ego. He draped the towel over Thor's neck for shade, handed him water, and said "sip" in a tone that has gotten results from men with worse opinions. Thor, to his credit, followed instructions.
"New rule," I told the group. "We call him Thor because calling him Goldilocks invites choices we're not ready to face."
Jane cracked a smile she tried to swallow and failed. Selvig looked resigned to a day where his schedule had been kidnapped by mythology. Darcy pulled out her phone and took a photo of the towel, thinking that detail would make sense to her future self.
I took three steps away and did a slow circle. A handful of locals had arrived at the rim, drawn by the noises their town had never made before. Phones up. Faces curious. Two teenagers rehearsing bravado. One grandmother with a cane and a heart big enough to carry two counties.
"Inside the line," I told Alpha-01, pointing between two low rocks. He moved to make a human gate and tipped his head to the crowd to show friendliness that said not today. I met the grandmother halfway when she started down the slope.
"Morning, ma'am," I said. "We're about to get into some science. Best view is from the top."
She peered at me like I was a toddler with a screwdriver. "You're very polite for someone dressed like a refrigerator," she said, then smiled. "I'll stay put."
"Appreciated."
Jane leaned around the van door. "We need to move him somewhere we can observe without, um, this." She gestured at the crater, which was currently serving as a public relations disaster for gravity.
"Your lab?" I asked.
She winced. "Calling it a lab is generous. It's a garage with dreams."
"Garage is fine," I said. "It's yours, which is more important than what you call it."
Thor tried to stand on his own again. Alpha-03 let him. He swayed and caught himself on the van frame, then glared at the sky like Odin might be watching. "Where is my hammer?" he repeated, the question turning into a mantra meant to summon metal.
"Mjölnir," Darcy said helpfully, "is creating a crop circle somewhere that already has a food truck. People are selling churros by the crater. It's a whole thing."
"Of course they are," I said. "America makes fairs out of physics."
Selvig pinched the bridge of his nose. "If S.H.I.E.L.D. is already looking, they'll cordon it off and we won't get near it unless we have a badge or a miracle."
"I'm fresh out of badges," I said. "Miracles come in three-man varieties."
Jane gave me a look that suggested she hadn't decided whether we were the problem or the solution. "If you can keep him from, I don't know, punching a cop, you can come with us."
"Deal," I said. "We do non-punching better than most."
We formed a small convoy: Jane's van led with Thor, Selvig, and Darcy; our SUV followed at one car length, since shadowing with honesty is less suspicious than being clever. Alpha-01 drove smoothly, hands relaxed on the wheel; Alpha-02 monitored mirrors and memorized license plates; Alpha-03 scanned the sky as a hobby and kept an eye on the shoulders like a cop. I watched the dust and distance, feeling in my teeth that signals S.H.I.E.L.D. before you even see the logo.
We rolled back through Puente Antiguo, drawing fewer stares than before because the town had pivoted to its other form: a place that minds its business in public and tells stories in kitchens. The deputy from earlier watched us go past and radioed someone with the kind of voice that means I'm being helpful.
Jane's "lab" was in a garage that started out as a place for tires to ponder their choices and grew into a shrine to storm chasing. Whiteboards with equations and three-colored markers. Cables. Laptops with stickers. Charts that looked like a professor had flirted with a tornado. A stack of hard drives labeled in Sharpie. It smelled like possibility and solder.
"Home sweet research," Jane said, apologetic and proud.
"It's beautiful," I said, and meant it. There is nothing prettier than work that hasn't been stolen yet.
Alpha-02 placed a bottle of water on the table next to the drives and casually rearranged two so their labels faced away from the door. He didn't look at Jane while doing it, which is how you keep pride intact. Scientist priority isn't a slogan; it's a choreography.
Thor took in the space like a man scanning battlefield elements: exits, shapes, potential weapons (wrenches), potential threats (none), potential allies (one woman with fire in her eyes, one old friend with worry, one young woman with a taser). "What is this place?" he asked, baffled and irritated by the idea of a garage having authority.
"My lab," Jane said, chin up. "Our lab," she corrected, nodding to Selvig and Darcy. "Where we study atmospheric anomalies and Einstein-Rosen bridges and—" She stopped herself before she said wormholes, as if the word might summon trouble faster than she was ready to greet it. "We study weather," she finished, unconvincing and adorable.
"Wormholes," Darcy whispered anyway, because whispering to the void is a hobby.
Look," Selvig said, stepping into the role of the man who keeps situations with names like Odin from knocking over whiteboards, "we need to figure out what happened without throwing around words that invite government interest."
"Too late," I said lightly. "Interest is already at a rolling boil. We'll keep the lid on as long as we can."
"The weather looks bad," Alpha-01 murmured from the doorway. A sedan had cruised by twice too slow and then decided to learn patience farther down the block.
"Sausage," I said. Medium. "Observation only."
Jane pulled a stool over for Thor. He considered it like a man considering a throne made of aluminum and pride, then sat because his body insisted. The towel had done its good work; color returned to his face. The part of me that is a bad person considered getting him a sippy cup. I did not act on that impulse. Growth.
"Okay," Jane said, shuffling papers into a stack that pretended there had ever been a filing system. "You said Mjölnir. That's… your hammer. It's very, um, important to you."
"It is my birthright," Thor declared, and for a brief moment, he was no longer a man with dust in his hair but a story itself. "It is... me."
"Cool," Darcy said. "I feel that way about my taser."
"We do not hand Darcy ideas," Selvig muttered.
I leaned against a workbench, careful of cables, careful of ownership. "Here's how this is going to play, if we have our say," I told the room. "We escort you to the crater if we can. If we can't, we watch from the edges and keep people from getting hurt while you figure out how to be human for a while. We don't pick fights with S.H.I.E.L.D. We don't touch the hammer. We do not turn someone else's discovery into our footage."
"Who are you?" Jane asked again, still deciding.
"Neighbors," I said. "With good knees and better timing."
"Not an answer," Selvig murmured.
"The only one you're getting today." I smiled to take the sting out. "I can offer references from Hell's Kitchen if you like."
Thor bristled at the human, then looked at his hands and bristled at the truth. "I will take back what is mine," he said, and the room believed him not because the words were loud but because they remembered they were true in a different tense.
"Great," Darcy said. "But maybe after lunch? You get very cranky when you're midgod."
I turned the smile down to practical. "Alpha-02, make us useful."
He was already moving. He taped the clinic number we preferred to the inside of Jane's cabinet door because life sometimes becomes louder than theory. He placed a small battery bank next to a laptop and pretended it had always been there. He glanced at the whiteboard, took a mental photo, and intentionally forgot it—privacy is part of a scientist's priorities too.
"Alpha-03," I said, "window."
He took it, eyes on the street like breathing. The sedan had turned into an SUV two addresses down; he watched it catalog the world and let it. Not S.H.I.E.L.D.—style wrong. Could be curious. Could be bored. The desert makes nosiness a form of recreation.
Okay, I said to the room that had agreed to be a team for an hour. "Timetable. If Mjölnir is where Twitter says it is, there will be a crowd, cones, and agents who consider personal property a suggestion. We will be unimpressive at exactly the right moments. If Thor gets mouthy—"
"I do not—" Thor started.
"—Alpha-01 will stand in his peripheral and radiate consequence until the mouth learns manners."
Jane pressed her lips together to hide the smile, but it escaped anyway.
"And if anyone tries to confiscateJane's hard drives," I said, "we ask them for their paperwork and their warrant number and whether Agent Phil Coulson signed it. We also ask them to wait while we optimize her backups. I can have a surprising number of questions when I'm worried about file integrity."
Selvig looked at Jane, something like hope dressed up as caution. She nodded once. We were in.
A siren blipped somewhere in the distance, not a wail, just a reminder that authority can find its keys. Alpha-01 tilted his head. "Weather looks bad."
"Still sausage," I said. "Let's keep it that way."
We didn't linger. A plan this simple only gets worse the longer you look at it. Alpha-02 returned the towel to a hook where it belonged. Alpha-03 checked the alley, the roofline, and the ant parade on the far curb because patterns soothe him. Thor rose under his own power this time, steadier, the towel gone, pride restored to its armor. Jane grabbed a laptop and three drives, and Darcy took a deep breath that smelled like adventure, fear, and charging cables.
"Convoy, again," I said. "We let Jane lead. We take up space without taking over."
Thor looked at me like a man resenting the presence of a shepherd and needing one anyway. "If your purpose is to guard, then do so," he said.
"If our purpose is to assist, we do that too," I said, and he heard the difference even if he didn't approve of it yet.
We kept moving. The sun had slowly risen higher, turning the dust into shimmering light. The road to the hammer site sliced past a rattlesnake tour billboard and a convenience store that had once been a chapel. Traffic grew heavier, moving at a slow, deliberate pace: pickup trucks, minivans, and a food truck that had seen opportunity and parked like it was meant to be there.
We crested a rise, and there it was: a fence surrounding a crater within a legend. Cones. Temporary signs. Men in windbreakers that wanted to be uniforms when they grew up. S.H.I.E.L.D. had arrived with expertise and clipboards. Mjölnir sat at the center of it all, like a story waiting for its writer.
My ribs did a happy little drum. I did not let the smile out. This was not our scene to steal.
"Remember," I said into the cabin, soft. "We are hinges, not hammers."
"Understood," Alpha-01 said.
"Copy," Alpha-03 murmured.
"Affirmative," Alpha-02 finished.
We parked with the humans, not the heroes. We stepped out like installers on a job, not saviors on a stage. And when Thor strode forward to discover that being human had rules and S.H.I.E.L.D. had fences, we were there—not to wrestle destiny, but to hold open doors for the people who'd earned their way inside this story.
A familiar sedan slid into view near the perimeter—the kind of unremarkable that speaks fluently. Agent Coulson got out with a clipboard and a smile that could sell fire extinguishers in a rainstorm. He glanced across the crowd and found us without looking like he looked.
I touched the card on my chest pocket like a charm and said, mostly to myself, "Networking."
"Weather looks bad," Alpha-01 said one last time, not as warning, but as a blessing: eyes up, temp controlled.
"Pepperoni," I said, and we walked with people toward a hammer that didn't belong to us, ready to earn the next thousand the way we intended: quietly.