After the Monaco yacht fiasco—where Alex Dumbfort turned a high-stakes espionage op into a floating buffet explosion—life at Stark Industries returned to something resembling normal. Well, as normal as it gets when your boss is Tony Stark and your official job title is "Chaos Consultant (Unpaid Snacks Included)."
Tony was now deep in prep mode for his big Jericho missile sale in Afghanistan. The tower buzzed with engineers tweaking final designs, Pepper Potts juggling schedules like a circus act, and Alex... Alex was in the executive kitchen, attempting to "improve" the espresso machine by adding what he called "extra kick" (a handful of crushed energy drink tablets). The machine promptly erupted in a fountain of caffeinated foam, coating the ceiling and shorting out the overhead lights. In the resulting darkness, a junior engineer tripped over a cable Alex had left dangling, unplugging a test server that was running simulations for the Jericho's guidance system. The sim crashed, revealing a tiny calibration error nobody had noticed. Fixed in minutes. Crisis averted. Again.
Tony found Alex mopping foam off the floor with his hoodie. "Dumbfort, you're a menace. A beautiful, pizza-stained menace." He tossed Alex a set of keys. "Take the company jet. Go... somewhere. Test the new snack cart prototype. Just don't start any international incidents this time."
Alex blinked. "Jet? Like, airplane jet? Sweet! Where to?"
"Anywhere. Just be back before I leave for Afghanistan next week. And try not to meet any more spies."
Famous last words.
Alex, with zero flight plan and a backpack full of prototypes (including the drone that had survived Monaco's champagne apocalypse), ended up in New Mexico. Why New Mexico? He saw "desert = good for testing flying snacks" on a napkin sketch. He landed the jet (barely— the pilot was too terrified to argue when Alex insisted on "helping" with the landing gear), rented a beat-up pickup, and drove into the middle of nowhere, drone buzzing behind him like a metallic bumblebee.
He was testing "Snack Delivery Mode: Extreme Terrain" when the drone malfunctioned, veering wildly toward a dusty road. Alex chased it on foot, yelling "Come back, you little traitor!" and promptly tripped over a rock, rolling down a small hill and crashing into... a crater. Not just any crater—a massive, smoking impact site with a hammer embedded in the center.
The hammer? Mjolnir. Freshly arrived on Earth after Thor's banishment from Asgard. The God of Thunder himself was nearby, in civilian clothes, trying (and failing) to lift it while locals gawked.
Thor turned, eyes narrowing at the disheveled guy covered in dirt and chip crumbs who had just face-planted into his divine punishment.
"Who dares disturb the resting place of Mjolnir?" Thor boomed.
Alex popped up, spitting sand. "Whoa, big guy! Nice hammer. Looks heavy. Want a chip? They're kinda sandy now, but still barbecue."
Thor stared. This mortal had no fear, no awe—just genuine confusion and an offer of snacks. "You... mock me?"
"Nah, man. I mock vending machines. You look like you could use a snack. Rough day?"
Before Thor could thunder a response, SHIELD agents swarmed the site—vehicles screeching up, guns drawn. Phil Coulson stepped out, sighing like a man who'd seen this movie before. "Mr. Dumbfort. Of course."
Alex waved. "Hey, Johnson! Long time no see! You guys doing a movie here too?"
Coulson pinched the bridge of his nose. "This is a restricted area. Step away from the... artifact."
Alex shrugged, wandered over, and—because why not?—grabbed the hammer's handle to "help" Thor pull it. Nothing happened, of course. Worthy and all that. But in the tug-of-war, Alex slipped (classic), yanking the handle sideways just enough to shift the hammer's angle. The shift caused a tiny tremor in the ground, dislodging a buried power cable from some old SHIELD monitoring equipment. The cable sparked, shorting out the agents' comms gear. Radios went dead. Drones crashed. Chaos.
In the confusion, a rogue SHIELD agent (secretly on HYDRA payroll, because even in 2008 the infiltration was real) saw his chance to grab classified data from a nearby van. He bolted—only to slip on Alex's spilled chips (the ones that fell out during the roll-down-the-hill incident). The agent face-planted, dropping the drive. Thor, still hammerless but ever heroic, grabbed the guy by the collar and hurled him into a cactus patch.
Coulson, watching the slapstick unfold, muttered into his dead radio: "Sir, we have... interference. Again."
Thor, now oddly amused, looked at Alex. "You are a strange mortal. But your heart is... true. In a baffling way."
Alex grinned, brushing dirt off. "Thanks! So, you wanna try lifting it again? Maybe after some tacos? I saw a truck on the way in."
As SHIELD cleaned up the mess (and quietly thanked the universe that the HYDRA mole was caught thanks to a face full of prickly pear), Thor pondered his banishment with a new perspective. This idiot mortal had accidentally helped expose a traitor and reminded him that worthiness wasn't always about strength—it could be about sheer, dumb persistence.
Back at the tower a few days later, Tony reviewed the footage (because of course SHIELD shared it). "Kid, you just met a literal god, turned his punishment site into a comedy sketch, and accidentally foiled HYDRA. Again."
Alex, munching leftover tacos, shrugged. "He seemed nice. Kinda dramatic, though. Needs to chill with the hammer thing."
Tony laughed. "You're gonna be the death of me, Dumbfort. Or the salvation. Jury's still out."
As Tony boarded his plane for Afghanistan, the Marvel Universe kept spinning—gods falling, monsters raging, spies scheming. But Alex Dumbfort? He kept stumbling forward, no plan, no clue, turning potential disasters into accidental triumphs with nothing but snacks, bad luck, and the universe's weirdest good fortune.
Next stop? Who knows. Probably the bathroom. Again. But wherever he went, chaos—and improbable victory—followed.