#lomb20

After some delicious jerk chicken from their favorite joint, Carol and Beau made their way to the police station to keep working on the Delmar’s case. Since Carol wasn’t actually a psychic, she needed to surreptitiously do some snooping around the evidence, witnesses and detectives working on the case. She usually disguised this activity by acting like an idiot who was just fooling around. Which wasn’t out of character, per se, but she was also working.

Just as they walked in, Coulson was dropping a teenage boy off at the reception desk to fill out his check-out paperwork. Coulson and/or Hill must have been questioning him, but the forms he was being presented weren’t bail forms, so it was purely investigative and he wasn’t a suspect.

Something was off about the kid, but Carol couldn’t put her finger on what it was. He was skittish and clearly anxious, a relatively short boy, and despite the lack of spectacles, he was clearly a huge nerd (he had a t-shirt on with Einstein’s face and some pun about gravity that went over Carol’s head). He was brunet with big, emotive brown eyes and a cute nervous smile; the word “puppy dog” came to Carol’s mind as an apt descriptor.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Carol greeted Hill at her desk. She was greeted back with a roll of the eyes.

“What do you want, Danvers?” Hill asked.

“You know I need to be close to the action to get the tinglies going.” Carol wiggled her fingers near her head.

“Never say that combination of words ever again,” Beau advised Carol with her own eye roll. “Who’s the kid?” she asked Hill.

“Why don’t you ask the psychic?” Hill asked sarcastically, but Carol was seemingly distracted ‘listening’ to the stapler.

Hill sighed and explained, thinking Carol wasn’t paying attention, but she was. “The kid was brought in as a witness on the Delmar deli fire-slash-21st Street bank robbery. Peter Parker. His DNA was all over the deli, but it’s just from his visit there that afternoon. He’s a regular and it must not have been the most sanitary of establishments.”

Beau pointed a finger in Hill’s face. “Hey, Delmar’s had the best damn sandwiches in Queens, and was the pinnacle of good business practice.”

Hill put up her hands in surrender. “I’m just relaying the facts.”

“Did he provide any information useful to the case?” Beau asked.

Hill shrugged. “Nah, he wasn’t there at the time, obviously. All he had was a lot of praise for Delmar,” she answered. “Just an antsy and annoying kid, honestly.”

The ‘antsy and annoying kid’ was finishing up his paperwork, and Carol had the distinct feeling he knew more than he had let on.

“He might have been more helpful if Hill hadn’t made him so nervous,” Coulson admonished, approaching the desk with an armful of paperwork for her superior to proofread. “I told you intimidation wasn’t the right play; he’s just a kid.”

“Bah.” Hill brushed her off and snatched the files out of her hand.

Parker’s bulging backpack was open slightly, and Carol could see the insane number of books inside. Huge, brick-like textbooks and also an antique computer with a battery the size of a small car. The satchel should have broken the back of any reasonable person without Captain America’s strength, but Peter picked it up and slung it over his shoulder like it was no heavier than an empty garbage bag.

Carol clutched Beau’s elbow and began to move them both towards the door without a word.  

While observing him exit the building, Carol thought she figured why he seemed so off: he was reacting to stimuli he shouldn’t be able to perceive. Carol was uncannily observant, more so than the average un-enhanced person, but she didn’t have superpowers; she simply noticed things. Small things, like the single ant scurrying inside as Peter opened the door, or the vibration of the phone of the officer manning the desk from deep inside her purse. Peter was noticing these things too, Carol could tell by his reactions, but he was also noticing things he shouldn’t have been able to sense at all. Carol could hear a uniformed officer’s music through his headphones very, very, very faintly behind her. Peter was far enough in front of her that there was no reason he should have been able to hear the melody whatsoever, and yet he was tapping his fingers against his thigh to the rhythm, and as they neared, Carol realized was humming along under his breath.

Once through the doors, Carol held Beau back and they lingered at the top of the precinct stairs while Peter loitered at the bottom, glancing occasionally at his phone. Waiting for his ride, Carol supposed.

Through the gap in the zipper of his backpack, Carol spotted something made of red stretchy fabric, and a flash of bright blue. The pieces clicked.

Carol leaned into Beau and whispered in her ear, so softly no one even a foot away from them should be able to hear, let alone someone at the bottom of the stairs,”What was it you you were saying about Spider-Man earlier?”

“What?” Beau asked at an equal whisper, though not yet understanding why they were keeping their voices soft. “That he shoots webs out of his ass?” she asked, and Carol observed the tiniest twitch of a subconscious reaction out of the teenage boy who should have been entirely out of hearing range. “Or that he has super hearing?” Beau continued.

Carol smirked. “The second one,” she said. “Which I can now confirm. And I’m pretty sure I can categorically deny the first thing, which is honestly just disappointing. What’s the point of having spider-related powers you can’t even shoot webs out of your butt?

“Don’t you agree, kid?” she called down to Peter.

He winced, a large enough movement for even Beau to notice, then finally turned and looked up at the pair of private detectives.

“How did you know?” he asked dejectedly.

“I’m a psychic,” Carol declared. “I know a lot of things.”

“You’re saying that’s…?” Beau whispered furiously to Carol. She nodded, as did Peter, though he had no business hearing her hushed inquiry from the distance. “But he’s just a kid!”

Carol shrugged. “Is there any evidence from all we’ve seen of Spider-Man that he isn’t a kid?”

Beau considered this. “He does do an awful lot of backflips. No self-respecting adult does that many backflips.”

Carol jogged down the stairs and Beau followed after.

“Please don’t tell anyone,” Peter whined once they reached him.

“We won’t,” Beau promised. “If you tell us everything we need to know.”

Peter sighed in defeat. “Ok, what do you need to know?” he asked Beau.

Carol leaned against the railing, trying to look suave. It only sort of worked. “Tell us about the bank robbers.”

“They had fancy tech,” Peter began. “A really powerful weird blaster thing that they used on the ATM, and an anti-gravity gun.”

Carol and Beau exchanged a look. “And where did they get their hands on that kind of tech?”

“That’s what I want to know!” he exclaimed.

Peter hiked his backpack further up his shoulder, and fiddled with all the zippers, making sure they were shut. The panicked look in his eyes that flashed when he realized one of the zippers was open made Carol suspicious. That wasn’t just about the suit; they already knew he was Spider-Man. There was something in his bag he didn’t want them to see.

Carol closed her eyes and put her fingers on her temple. “I’m sensing some of this tech is closer than we think.”

Her eyes shot open and she glared at Peter. Beau picked up on her insinuation and leaned in, whispering, “You mean he has some on him?”

“Yes, my bonnie Beau, that is exactly what I mean,” said Carol, still not taking her eyes off of Peter, who had begun to squirm under her gaze. She crossed her arms.

With great reluctance, Peter put his bag on the ground and began to rifle through it. He had to pull out some books, a sweatshirt, his laptop, his laptop case (which his laptop was not in), and a Nalgene water bottle, but underneath all of that he finally found what he was looking for.

It was a strange looking device, clearly part of something larger, maybe a charger or base of some kind. It was glowing an eery red hue.

Peter scratched the back of his head. “I’ve just been calling it the glowing thingy,” he said. “I have no idea what it is.”

Without asking, Carol scooped it from his hands. “Thankfully, I know someone who may be able to help us out.”

“Hey!” the teenager pouted.

“You’d get in a lot of trouble if someone found out you had this, kid,” Carol said, passing it to Beau.

Beau carefully placed the device in her large purse. Then, she pulled out a small card. She handed it to the spider-kid.

“Call us if you think of anything else,” she said. “Or if anything else comes up.”

Peter frowned. “Um, this is a card for an interior design firm.”

“You still haven’t had the Psych cards made?” Carol admonished her partner.

“I can’t use the company printer for shit like that; I told you! Do it yourself at Staples!” Beau defended. “It’s still my number, kid. Just call us if anything happens.”

The pair walked away and towards the subway. After an overly cautious distance had stretched between them, to be certain she was not overheard even by enhanced ears, Beau asked, “So how did you know he was Spider-Man, anyway?”

Carol shrugged. “A number of things. His suit was hanging out of his backpack, for one. Also, every single thing he owned was second-hand, clothes, books, everything—except for a stupid expensive looking Stark Watch. His form said he had an internship there—“

Beau cut her off. “Why did his form say anything about it?”

“He seemed confused how to fill it out,” Carol answered. “He checked off that he was a student, then filled it in under ‘employment’ anyway.”

“So he has an internship at Stark Industries and they gave him a watch,” Beau accepted.

Carol stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk. “Are you serious? I worked as a sales rep for Hammer Tech—a real job, not an internship—and I didn’t get shit.”

“To be fair, you only lasted a week,” said Beau. “Maybe it was a bonus.”

“Interns don’t get bonuses, they get coffee and ‘experience,’” said Carol cynically, continuing to walk again. “Anyway, the point is, I was right.”

Back at the Psych office, Carol and Beau examined the gadget. Beau turned it this way and that on the desk, squinting.

“You know,” she said. “This bottom piece looks exactly like what I charge my toothbrush on.”

That comment caught Carol’s attention. She lifted the thing closer to her face. Sure enough, the metal was different in the bottom piece that Beau recognized as the charging plate versus the top piece that held what Peter had called the ‘glowing thing.’ It was subtle, and the welding that brought them together was masterful, but upon closer inspection they were indisputably different metals. The one at the base seemed normal; Carol couldn’t identify it, because she was a normal person with a normal range of knowledge on most things. But the top bit was too shiny, too smooth, too bright, too perfect to be of this world.

By the time they brought it to Carol’s weird friend Talos, who had a lab in his basement with some pretty weird stuff that made this thing look as normal as apple pie, they’d received an email from Peter thoroughly describing the circumstances under which the ‘glowy thing’ had come into his possession. Carol read the email aloud from her phone as Beau drove them back from the laboratory, where Talos had promised to call them as soon as he found anything out about the device.

“Ok so that was definitely some kind of weird advanced tech arms deal,” Beau asserted after hearing the explanation of the encounter.

“Yuperz,” Carol agreed.

Only a few minutes after that, Talos called to confirm that the device was definitely part alien. The glowy bit was explosive, a quality that would be activated if it were exposed to radioactivity.

“Isn’t the Spider-Kid, like, low-level radioactive himself?” Carol had asked. “Since he was bit by a radioactive spider?” But Talos said it wasn’t the right kind to activate the device.

One year ago, Carol Danvers was nothing more than a bit of a bum, tossing around from job to job at theme parks and restaurants and museums, anywhere that would take her. It wasn’t that she wasn’t intelligent or capable—she certainly was. She was far above average in intelligence and capability and certainly in observation and deductive reasoning, but her attention span was zip. The longest, most sustainable, and most responsible decision she ever made was, ironically, to lie to the cops (a felony) and create a psychic detective business with her best friend, Maria “Beau” Rambeau. They called their agency Psych. They had solved nearly forty cases for the NYPD that year alone, plus a slew of private cases (mostly less exciting, like ‘is my husband cheating on me?,’ but those were the cases that kept the lights on in the small office Carol leased).

It was all bullshit, but Carol was exceptionally talented at bullshitting. And at least she used her bullshitting ability for the greater good.

Today was supposed to be an off-day. Carol was simply accompanying Beau on her lunch break from her day job at a medium-sized interior design firm for a jaunt down to their favorite little bodega/deli. But when they arrived, they found it burnt to the ground.

“Noooo, Delmars!!!!” Beau lamented dramatically as they approached the burnt husk of a corner building.

“Hey look.”

Carol nudged her friend and nodded her head across the street. The little entry to the bank where the ATMs sat looked smashed and beaten to hell, but not burnt like the restaurant. There was crime scene tape around the whole bank, and CSIs milling about—EMTs and forensics guys and—

“Hillyyyy!” Carol shouted gleefully, skipping merrily through the dazed onlookers to get to the chagrined detective.

“Danvers,” Head Detective Maria Hill responded curtly. She was a skeptic of the psychic thing, and generally pissed off at the world, but especially at Carol’s mystifying success rate.

Her junior partner, Detective Phil Coulson, was generally more optimistic and accepting of Carol’s “gifts” and continual presence.

“Hey, guys!” Coulson greeted both Carol and Beau. “Did the chief send you over?”

“Nah, Beau and I just…” Carol lifted her hand to her head and wiggled her fingers, along with her eyebrows. “Followed the spirits.”

“She followed the spirits.” Beau was moping. “I was following my growling stomach. I was really looking forward to one of Delmar’s sandwiches…”

Carol elbowed her in the ribs. “And I told her there was some blockage but she wouldn’t believe me.”

“Right… Blockage…” Beau just looked forlornly at the destroyed sandwich shop.

“Well, this is completely unrelated, so you can go mourn your sandwiches on that side of the street.” Hill shooed them both away.

Carol’s eyebrows shot up. “Completely unrelated? Really?”

“Well…” Coulson interjected. “The owner of the deli, Georgio Delmar, did make the 911 call that alerted authorities to the robbery in progress last night.”

Hill shrugged. “The distraction probably just caused him to forget to turn the stove off, or dip a greasy towel in the fryer. But they’re separate incidents, with separate investigations. The fire department’s got their guys over there. This is our zone.” Hill glared at Carol. “And if the chief didn’t send you, then you’re not needed or wanted here.”

Coulson gave Carol and Beau a sympathetic look, but didn’t have the authority to override his senior investigative partner.

“Fine with me,” Beau said, already beginning to walk back towards the subway station. “Time to find a new sandwich place, I guess.”

But Carol lingered. When Beau tugged on her sleeve, Carol whispered, “They can’t really be unrelated.”

“Like Hill said, we’re not welcome. It’s not our case,” Beau replied.

“But it could be,” said Carol. “Lemme have a little look around. If I find something interesting, I’ll have some psychic vision about it and we’ll get put on the case. If not, we’ll go.”

Beau sighed heavily, very used to Carol’s shenanigans. They had been friends since childhood, after all. “Fine.”

Carol put her hand to her head, just two fingers and her thumb. That wasn’t a gimmick; it was actually how she got into her zone. It was just convenient that it made her look like she was tapping into some psychic channel or whatever.

She looked around. A few things caught her eye. First, the transcript on an officer’s clipboard that he was holding upside down and facing out. Carol was skilled at reading upside down and could read it perfectly well. It was a transcript of the 911 call Mr. Delmar placed. One word in particular caught her eye: Avengers. She read the full sentence— “Spider-Man is fighting the Avengers in a bank on 21st street.”

Just at that moment, something on the ground grabbed her attention. A piece of evidence among the rubble of broken metal and glass that had yet to be identified or bagged: a silver plastic horn, like from a viking helmet, only flat instead of three-dimensional. Carol’s deductive reasoning skills were uncanny, and so in that single instant, she managed to put together that the robbers must have been wearing Avengers masks, plastic ones like you can get at Party City.

Immediately, Carol acted like she’d been struck—punched in the chest or slapped upside the head or, rather, hit suddenly with a miraculous vision.

“I’m seeing something!!!” she cried dramatically, drawing the attention of everyone at the crime scene, as well as several passersby on the street. “RAAAWWRR!!! HULK SMASH!!!!”

Carol ducked under the crime scene tape, then started stomping around the crime scene. It looked hectic and haphazard, but she was being careful not to step on any evidence or touch anything. That said, she was waving her arms around in what seemed like a wild, erratic motion, pretending to punch and smash.

“HULK SMASH ATM!!!!” she yelled, air-punching where the cash withdraw machine used to be mounted on the wall.

“The Hulk was here? Trying to smash the ATM?” Beau was playing along helpfully. “Wouldn’t the ceiling be broken too then? I mean, more than it is? The Hulk is a big dude.”

Carol pretended to ignore her and snapped to attention, all at once ceasing her roaring and thrashing. She made sure to keep her eyes glazed and distant so as not to ruin the illusion of her trance. Then she switched gears, suddenly pretending to hack at the wall with a shield.

“So you’re trying to rob a bank,” she said seriously, like one of those stupid government PSAs they got Captain Rogers to record a trillion of. “No, Captain Rogers! We know you’re a criminal now, but how could you stoop so low!!” Carol cried, distressed, as if a bit of herself were breaking through her vision just clearly enough to comment.

Another snap to attention and dramatic pause with a glazed expression. At this point, all eyes were on her and the entire crime scene was dead silent.

Carol thrust out her arm and made a “SSSSSWWOOOOOSHH” noise, then a “FFFFWWWWMM” noise, pretending to carve around the outline of the ATM with Iron Man’s gauntlet. Just then, actual inspiration hit her. She acted like she’d been hit off course, and her arm (and its fake laser beam) redirected to the broken window of the bank, which was directly in line with the wall of the bodega. “Oh no! My super powerful blast meant only to carve out this ATM has struck the bodega! Burning it down!”

“That’s nonsense! There’s no way this was Stark, or his tech!” Hill broke in, exasperated, hands on hips.

“Of course not.” In an instant, Carol had slipped out of her trance and was herself again, speaking calmly and directly. “But something similar. Alien tech, maybe?”

“You think aliens came to Earth again after four years, and they chose to rob a small bank on the corner of 21st street?” Hill asked, unimpressed.

“She didn’t say aliens,” Beau interjected. “She said alien tech, or Iron Man-level tech.”

“Something super powerful did carve the ATM out of the wall,” Coulson pointed out. “If it was strong enough to do that, it may have had the power to blast all the way across the street and set Delmar’s Deli on fire.”

“Exactly!” Carol exclaimed.

Hill was only half-listening, reading the report that the fire detectives had thrust into her hands a few moments before. She sighed when she got to the pertinent information. “The fire folks say some sort of powerful blast knocked the window in and caused the brick pizza oven to explode, lighting the entire restaurant on fire.”

“Aha!” Carol cried triumphantly. “So, uh… Why was I seeing the Avengers? In my vision?”

The uniformed officer who had been holding the phone transcript Carol read upside down stepped in. “Georgio Delmar said on the phone to the dispatch officer that ‘Spider-Man was fighting the Avengers.’ His statement from the hospital corroborated that the criminals were hiding their faces using Avengers masks.”

“Ah,” Carol said, as if she were learning new information. “So that’s what I was seeing. Avengers masks, not the Avengers.”

“But still Avengers-level tech?” Beau tried to clarify.

Carol shrugged. “Or…”

“Alien,” she and Hill said at the same time, but Hill said it with a frustrated roll of her eyes.

“All right, Danvers,” a silky voice no one was expecting, not even Carol, came floating from a dark man leaning against the light pole on the corner. “You’re on the case.”

“But her vision was useless!” Hill argued. “We got the same information from the fire detectives!”

Police Chief Nicholas J. Fury glared at his surly head detective. “Maybe she’ll get more information. This suddenly turned into a lot more than just a small bank robbery. It’s arson, and possible illegal weapons possession. We need all the help we can get.”

“We won’t let you down, Chief!” Carol saluted, then skipped off with her best friend.

“Can we get a sandwich now?”

“How about jerk chicken?” Carol suggested.

After a few days with no additional leads, Beau got another email from Peter. He'd hacked into his own super-suit and discovered it had more features than he previously realized, including a constant recording device that had captured the encounter he had described, when he obtained the ‘glowing thing’ and saw more of the same and similar tech that was used at the bank. He attached the footage as a secure, encrypted video link.

The video caught the entire illicit alien arms deal, or at least as much of it as Peter had witnessed. There were two figures—the seller and the buyer. The video got a decent enough view of each of them, but the Psych Private Detective Agency LLC barely had a printer/copier, let alone facial recognition software. And they couldn't bring the video to the police without revealing Peter’s secret.

But Carol had a brilliant idea to solve that conundrum.

“Quick! Quick! Get me a sketch artist!” she shouted, running into the police station with her eyes closed, knocking into things unnecessarily (she could and had navigated the precinct blindfolded without so much as a misstep). “Hurry! Before the vision fades!”

Beau came jogging in behind her, after locking the car. “Someone get this lady a damn sketch artist!”

This was what Maria Hill hated most about Carol Danvers (and Maria Rambeau, but mostly Carol Danvers). Their damn dramatics. Their lack of order. And their uncanny ability to steal any spotlight she managed to even briefly step into. This outburst just so happened to occur while Hill was revealing her ingenious insight on a different case to Chief Fury, undercutting the meticulously planned out delivery of said insight. Now the chief was distracted by Danvers’ shenanigans and was not the anticipated level of impressed at Hill’s achievements, and she was miffed about it.

“Where’s Dave?” Fury stepped out from behind his desk and leaned against the doorway of his office, all but abandoning his conference with Hill. “Danvers, you can stop hollering; I see Dave coming down the hall. What do you need him for, anyway?”

Carol just groaned loudly and squeezed the balls of her hands into her eyelids, like she was trying to hold the phony vision there and keep it from escaping.

So Beau picked up the mantle. “She’s had a really clear vision that she just knows is connected to the Delmar’s deli fire-slash-21st street bank case.”

“We really should come up with a catchier name for that,” Carol mumbled through her fingers, then groaned again.

“It’s a face,” Beau explained. “It was clear as day at first, but she says the image is slowly fading.”

“Well, Dave is here,” said Fury, indicating where he stood, clearly very nervous and confused and gripping his sketch pad to his chest. “Use my office. We’re done. Right Hill?”

Hill glared at Carol as she returned to her desk, now exceedingly grumpy.

Carol described the seller to Dave, just as he appeared in the video. Her photographic memory ensured that the image was not going to fade anytime soon, but unnecessary dramatics was the most fun part of the game.

Dave was the most talented sketch artist in the NYPD, and the image came out perfectly. So perfectly that even though it was just a sketch and not a photograph, it was able to be run through the police’s facial recognition software. It came up with no criminal background hits, but it did find some information, as the person identified turned out to have been subcontracted by the New York City government at some point in the past. Jackson Price.

In fact, that subcontracting job was his most recent employment listed anywhere. It was back in 2012, and a thorough examination of the facts revealed that he had been getting away with minor tax fraud for those intervening four years. He continued to list that disposal and waste management company, Toomes Disposal, on his taxes as his income, but the company folded that same year.

“Weird year for a waste and disposal company to fold,” Carol mused. “New York was a fucking mess that year, after the attack. Waste and debris everywhere.”

“Yeah, and the waste guys were stoked at first, until they learned that SHIELD had their own guys. A couple companies folded, ‘cause they invested in new equipment or what-have-you right after the attack, then got kicked off the job. Looks like Toomes was one of them.”

“Why does Toomes sound so familiar?” Beau muttered to herself.

“So how is this Price guy connected to the case?” Fury asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Carol answered. “The spirits have yet to inform me.”

“Then how do you know he’s connected at all?” Hill asked, rapping her fingers on her desk, getting quite sick of the way everyone was breathing down her neck looking at the computer screen over her shoulder.

“Oh, Hilly bo-billy fo-filly,” Carol chided, leaning against the back of Hill’s desk chair with a familiarity that made the lead detective prickle. “You know how in dreams, your surroundings can be completely blank and yet you just know with a searing certainty that you’re in Paris? Or your childhood bedroom? Or the 1855 World’s Fair?”

“Which was in Paris.” Beau cheerfully pitched in the completely unhelpful fun fact.

“The spirit world is the same way,” explained Carol, wiggling her fingers around her head in her characteristic manner. “I just, know, some things, you know?”

“Let us know when you know something more concrete,” Fury directed, and Hill looked smug as she shrugged Carol off her chair.

🍍

On the drive home, it suddenly occurred to Beau where she had heard the name Toomes before.

“My firm was hired to design their house. Huge fuckin’ McMansion out in the suburbs,” she explained.

Carol frowned. “And it was the same Toomes?”

Beau shrugged. “The file said Adrian, right? That sounds right.”

“It doesn’t make any sense.” Carol shook her head. “A tiny waste management company goes bankrupt, and less than four years later he’s got a huge mansion? Did he marry rich?”

“No, that can’t be it,” Beau said slowly. “His wife said the redesign was a tenth wedding anniversary present. That was two years ago.”

“Huh,” Carol said simply.

🍍

So their next move was to follow Adrian Toomes and see what the hell was up with that guy. It was easy enough to find his McMansion, once they found the records in Beau’s work files. The more difficult task was actually following him. He was definitely shady, driving in circles and switching lanes constantly, like he was trying to throw someone off his tail at all times. But Carol managed to stay on his trail on her motorcycle, discretely. She followed him to a creepy-looking warehouse on the outskirts of the city.

There were several cars parked out front, and Carol knew she couldn’t go in now, in broad daylight. She didn’t even pause, just committed the location to memory and zoomed on by.

Later that night, she and Beau returned in Beau’s car. She expected the place to be completely deserted, but there was still one rusty car in the parking lot. Carol recognized the license plate as that registered to Jackson Price; the background check had turned it up. However, all the lights were off in the warehouse and there was no sign of life.

“Maybe the car wouldn’t start and he caught a cab home,” Beau suggested with a shrug.

They parked their own car, a bright blue Chevy Beau got from work, and wandered inside. Beau hung slightly back on super-duper high alert, baseball bat in hand. Inside, it became extremely evident what they had stumbled across: an illegal alien tech weapons ring. Extremely funky-looking weapons and StarkTech sat intermingled with traditional weapons and partly disassembled computers and other tech. Clearly stolen cargo crates were lying around labeled “SHIELD” ; “AVENGERS, INC.” ; “STARK INDUSTRIES” and “DEPARTMENT OF DAMAGE CONTROL.”

Carol and Beau stayed in the doorway, careful not to contaminate anything that might be evidence or might turn into a crime scene, and careful not to leave any evidence of their own. The discovery of the location had to appear to come from some sort of psychic vision, not good old fashion sleuthing.

But just before they were going to turn and leave, Beau’s flashlight fell upon a particularly interesting artifact and she hesitated.

“Um, Care?” she said, a tremble in her voice.

“Yeah, Beau-bear?” Carol asked, turning back towards the warehouse and her best friend.

“I don’t think Jackson Price took a cab.”

Beau indicated the pile of ash spotlighted by the beam of her phone flashlight. Unfortunately, from a previous case they did know the approximate texture and size a pile of human ash was, and this fit that profile perfectly.

Thor knew he was adopted. He looked nothing like his parents, Amara and Alan. He also knew he was special. He was stronger than any other human he knew, starting when he was a child. And when he got upset, a storm would rage. The more emotional Thor got, the louder the thunder crashed and the closer the lightning struck. But he was clumsy and uncontrolled with his strength and his powers. He would accidentally hurl things through the wall he meant merely to toss lightly, and shock people randomly when he got excited.

On his eighteenth birthday, his parents decided it was time to tell him the truth. Or at least, what they knew. They had found him when he was a baby, swaddled in a blanket of a luxurious red fabric that they brought out to show him now. They had been clearing rocks and debris from the field so they could sow it and harvest there, when suddenly a brilliant multi-colored flash of light shot from the sky towards a spot in the middle of the field.

Amara opened a closet that Thor never knew existed that had remained hidden behind the kitchen pantry. The only thing in the closet was a hammer, a large and stately metal head with a thick leather handle.

“This was beside you when we found you,” Alan explained. “It has many runes we cannot understand, but see here it says, ‘Thor.’ So that is what we called you.”

Thor approached the hammer cautiously. The runes seemed possibly intelligible, but the way the hammer was laid on the ground, they were upside-down, so he lifted the hammer to get a better look. As soon as the hammer was off the ground, both his parents gasped. Thor whirled around, startled.

“Neither of us could lift it even a millimeter,” Amara explained slowly. “So we just built the house around it. It hasn’t moved from that spot for eighteen years.”

Thor’s brow furrowed. “I do not find it absurdly heavy,” he noted. He proceeded to inspect the markings engraved onto the metal. “I understand these also. It is a list of names. It says Thor again, then Odin, then Bor…”

Thor trailed off, intensely studying the gorgeous weapon. He was only ripped out of his reverie when his mother placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Then to search for answers, you must go to the Temple of Odin, in Oslo,” she said.

⚡

It was an arduous journey, especially to make alone, but the scraggly Thor managed it. He carried with him a pack ladened down with food and water, too heavy for any normal person (especially one with his scraggly appearance), but it was like a feather to him. His mother sewed a leather strap to the pack for the hammer, and off he went.

Once at the Temple of Odin, he hesitantly walked inside. As a simple country boy from a small town by the sea, he did not know  the proper protocol for praying in a consecrated temple, but he figured he would be forgiven. He knelt down to the ground before the grand alter—a massive twenty-foot-high statue of the Allfather—shut his eyes and began to pray.

“Oh mighty Odin, please hear me and answer my prayer. I need to know—Who am I? Where do I belong?” Thor pleaded.

The wind howled and the stones of the ancient temple creaked so loud Thor was afraid the roof might cave in on his head. And yet he dared not open his eyes in fear his prayer would not be heard or answered.

But then he heard a booming voice, despite complete certainty he had been alone not only in the temple but on the whole mountainside. “My boy. My little Thor,” the voice intoned.

When Thor finally peeked open one eye, he saw a giant stone hand reaching for him. He screamed. The hand wrapped around his middle and pulled him towards the carved head of Odin, while Thor struggled to escape its grasp.

A booming chuckle echoed through the hall of the temple. “Hey, hey, hey. Hold on, kiddo! What's your hurry? After all these years, is this the kind of hello you give your father?”

Thor paused his writhing around. “F-father?” he stuttered.

“Didn’t know you had a famous father, did you?” the animated Odin statue asked. “Surprise!”

Thor was gobsmacked, stunned completely silent while his stony father appraised him.

“Look how you’ve grown,” he preened. “Why, you’ve got your mother’s beautiful eyes, and my strong chin!”

“I-I don’t understand,” Thor stammered. “If you’re my father, that would make me a—“

“A god,” Odin confirmed.

“A god,” Thor repeated, awe-struck. “A god!”

“Hey, you wanted answers, and by thunder, you’re old enough to know the truth,” said Odin firmly. “You’d be the God of Thunder in fact!”

“But why did you leave me on Earth?” Thor asked, his voice suddenly small and insecure. “Didn’t you want me?”

Odin’s face softened, as much as a face made entirely of marble could soften. “Of course we did. Your mother, Frigga, and I loved you with all our hearts.” His expression turned stern. “Someone stole you from us and turned you mortal, and only gods can live in Asgard.”

“And you can’t do a thing?” Thor asked, nearly despondent.

“I can’t, Thor,” Odin admitted. “But you can.”

Thor’s blue eyes flashed with hope.

“Really? What? I’ll do anything!” Thor bounced up and down in his seat on Odin’s giant statue hand.

“Thor, if you can prove yourself a true hero in Earth, then your godhood will be restored!” Odin declared.

“A true hero. Great!” Thor exclaimed. “Uh, exactly how do you become a true hero?”

“First you must seek out Peter Selvig, the trainer of heroes,” Odin instructed.

“Seek out Peter Selvig. Right. I’ll—Woah!” In his haste, Thor forgot he was several dozen feet above the floor by the monument’s face and nearly plummeted to the ground. He was caught by Odin’s other hand.

“Woah! Hold your horses! Which reminds me…” Odin let out a long whistle, and an eight-legged horse came trotting into the sanctuary.

“You probably don’t remember Sleipnir, but you two go way back, son!” Odin was smiling broadly as the horse approached.

After a few tentative sniffs, the horse nuzzled its snout against Thor fondly. Then Thor mounted his steed and announced, “I’ll find Peter Selvig and become a true hero!”

“That’s the spirit!” Odin cheered.

Thor called over his shoulder as Sleipnir bounded away. “I won’t let you down father!”

“Good luck, son.” Odin allowed himself one parting look at his son’s retreating form, then removed his spirit from the statue and returned to Asgard.

⚡

Peter Selvig was an eccentric man who did not like wearing pants while he worked. He was jaded from training heroes, only for them to turn out to be villains. Or worse, duds. It took some convincing, and Thor accidentally nearly burning his house down with one of his errant lightning bolts, but he eventually agreed to the job. And the training began. Thor began to develop actual muscles to match his uncanny strength, along with other important skills like balance, agility, quick reflexes, and sword-fighting skills. He also learned how to effectively use his hammer in combat. Selvig could not lift it, but he demonstrated swinging techniques with a replicated version.

When the day came to test his skills, they set off towards the big, bad Bergen.

Immediately upon entering the city, both astride Sleipnir, they struck gold. They heard the distinctive cries of a woman screaming.

“Sounds like your basic D.I.D,” Selvig said with a smile that did not fit the upsetting nature of the scream. “Damsel In Distress.”

While Thor urged Sleipnir on, he heard a deep and wicked chuckle.

“Not so fast sweetheart.”

“I swear, Surtur, put me down or I’ll—”

“Whoo!” came the wicked voice again. “I like ‘em fiery!”

Thor’s blood boiled at the sexist attitude this monster was exerting, and Peter could see his rage taking over the logical part of his brain.

“Now remember, kid,” he cautioned. “First analyze the situation. Don’t just barrel in without thinking, eh?”

But that was exactly what Thor did. He rushed in, hammer drawn, without any idea what he was going to face.

What he faced was a ten foot tall man seemingly made of fire with what looked like very aggressive, pointy eyebrows also made of fire holding aloft a small woman. The woman was short, slender, with fair skin and thin, light brown hair that reached just past her shoulders. She was somehow not being burned by the flaming hand gripping her around the middle, and her expression was one of anger more than fear.

She spat, “You don’t know what you’re—“

“Halt!” Thor shouted.

“Step aside, puny man,” said the fiery man, whose name was apparently Surtur if the woman’s cries were to be believed.

“Pardon me, my good, uh, sir,” Thor stammered, trying and failing to come across as intimidating and noble. “I’ll have to ask you to release that young…”

With one swipe of his giant hand, Surtur knocked Thor over and he fell backwards into a stream. When he surfaced, he could hear the damsel’s voice, sounding surprisingly relaxed and exasperated. “Keep movin’, junior.”

“lady,” Thor finished, then continued, thoroughly confused. “But you—Are—Aren’t you a damsel in distress?”

The woman was trying to push against Surtur’s giant knuckles and shimmy her way out of his grasp. “I’m a damsel,” she grunted. “I’m in distress. I can handle this.” She relaxed back into his grip for a moment to give Thor a little wave. “Have a nice day.” Then she resumed her attempts at escape.

“Uhh.” Thor was still sitting in the stream, gob-smacked. He tried to gather his wits.  “Ma’am, I’m afraid you may be too close to the situation to realize—“

“Ohhh, what are you doin’?” Peter mumbled from his place hiding behind a cluster of trees with Sleipnir. “Get your hammer!” he shouted at his protege.

“Hammer, right, right.” Thor felt around in the murky water. “Rule #15: a hero is only as good as his weapon!” He brandished the hammer with a flourish, then had to peel some seaweed away from the head.

Surtur wrapped his free hand around Thor’s waist and pulled him up. Holding both humans, he looked like a child playing with dolls. In the lift, Thor had dropped the hammer. Surtur held him up to his face and squinted at him. Thor tried to pull Surtur’s fingers away from his torso, but was not having much luck.

“Come on, kid! Concentrate!” Thor heard Selvig shout. “Use your head!”

“Oh!” Thor exclaimed. He whapped Surtur’s forehead with his own, causing the giant to reel backwards and drop his doll people. They both fell into the stream with a loud and painful-sounding splash. When the woman sat up, she was rubbing a spot on the back of her head.

“Oh, gee, miss, I’m really sorry,” Thor reached out but she waved him away. “Oh. That was dumb.” Thor chastised himself.

“Yeah,” the woman readily agreed with his self-admonition.

Thor suddenly became aware of the fact that Surtur was still at large and sloshing towards them. The stream somehow did not extinguish the flames surrounding his entire body.

“Excuse me.” Thor nodded to the woman, grabbed his hammer, and proceeded to beat the shit out of Surtur while the woman crawled to the shore. Was it the most elegant fight? Absolutely not. Did Thor look like a complete idiot? Absolutely.

And yet, Selvig was still proud of him. “Nice work! Excelente!” he shouted his encouragement.

The woman began wringing her dress out as she approached where Selvig was peaking out from the little grove. “Is Wonderboy here for real?” she asked.

“What are you talking about? Of course he’s real,” Selvig replied. Then he turned to look at her and saw how pretty she was. He leaned in with a cheeky grin. “And by the way, sweet cheeks, I’m real too.”

She shoved him and he fell backward into Sleipnir, who kicked him in the backside to get him off him.

With a well-aimed blow to the head with his hammer, the weird eyebrow thingy, which turned out to be some kind of helmet, went flying off and the flames surrounding Surtur’s body extinguished. After a moment of swaying, he fell to the ground with a thud that shook the earth a few hundred square feet around.

Thor approached his mentor, panting and sweating, his long blond hair a rat’s nest. “How was that, Pete?”

“Rein it in, rookie,” he said. “You can get away with mistakes like those in the minor decathlons, but this is the big leagues!”

Thor sighed. “At least I beat him, didn’t I?” he whined.

Selvig pointed a finger in his face. “Next time, don’t let your guard down because of a pair of big goo-goo eyes!” he chastised. “It’s like I keep tellin’ ya! You gotta stay focused and…”

He trailed off because his audience was no longer rapt. Thor’s attention had been captured by the way the sun haloed around where the woman he’d saved was leaning low over the water wringing out her hair. He wandered over to her as if in a trance.

“Are you, uh, all right, Miss—“ Even as he spoke, he realized he didn’t know her name.

“Dr. Jane Foster,” she replied. “But my friends call me Jane. At least they would if I had any friends.”

Thor didn’t respond, just stared at her dumbly.

“So did they give you a name along with those rippling pectorals?” she asked, swiping a finger across his chest as she passed him.

“Uh, I’m, um, uh—“ he stammered.

Jane smirked. “Are you always this articulate?”

“Thor,” he blurted out. “My name is Thor.”

“Thor, huh,” she repeated. “I think I prefer Wonderboy.”

“So uh, how, how, did you get mixed up with, with…” Thor tried to lean his weight on a tree in a cool, suave manner, but there wasn’t really a good angle and his arm dropped lamely to his side. After a moment, he awkwardly repositioned it to his hip.

“Sauron with legs?” Jane supplied. “Well, you know how men are. They think that ‘no’ means ‘yes,’ and ‘get lost’ means ‘take me, I’m yours.’” She leaned into Sleipnir and batted her eyelashes dramatically as she completed her explanation. The horse was not a fan, and nudged her out of the way with his snout.

“Well thanks for everything, Thor.” Jane gave a little salute. “It’s been a real slice.”

“Wait!” Thor called. She turned back, and he realized he didn’t actually have anything more to say.

He felt like even his horse was giving him a judgmental look for his awkwardness, and that’s when an idea hit him. “Um, can we give you a ride?”

Sleipnir reared back and snorted derisively at this suggestion.

“Uh, I don’t think your pinto likes me very much…” Jane noted.

“Sleipnir? Oh, no. Don’t be silly. He’d me more than happy to—“ Thor was cut off by Sleipnir giving him two quick kicks to the ass with two of his eight legs.

“I’ll be all right,” Jane declined again. “I’m a big, tough girl. I tie my own sandals and everything. Wrote my dissertation all by myself.” She started to walk away, swaying her hips. She gave a little wave over her shoulder and said with a low, sultry voice, “Bye-bye, Wonderboy.”

⚡

Jane began the arduous hike up the hill. She hitched her skirt up with a sigh and trudged ever higher, her sandals not suited to this kind of activity. She was so focused on the placement of her next step, that she did not notice two strangely-hued animals until she practically tripped over them.

“Aw how cute,” Jane gushed. “A couple of rodents looking for a theme park.”

“Who ya callin’ a rodent sister? I’m a bunny,” the sky-blue-tinted rabbit spoke with a jarringly deep New Zealand accent.

“A-and I’m his gopher!” his turquoise companion added.

Suddenly, neither was the animal he had professed to be and they turned into annoying little demons. The one that had been a bunny had two triangular stripes on the top of its head, and the gopher had a stripe of blue under its chin.

“Ta-da!” the tall, thin one with the stripe on his chinny-chin-chin, whom Jane knew was called Grandmaster, sang.

“I thought I smelled a rat,” Jane murmured.

“Jane?” They were nearing the top of the mountain now, and Jane heard the voice of the person she was both seeking and dreading calling her name.

Hela. The Goddess of Death.

“Speak of the devil,” Jane mumbled to herself as Hela came into her sights.

“Jane, my little flower, my little bird, my little Mary, Jane. What exactly happened here?” she asked. “I thought you were gonna persuade Surtur to join my team for the uprising and here I am, kind of Surtur-less.” She made a vague gesture to the space around her where there was, indeed, no Surtur.

“I gave it my best shot, but he made me an offer I had to refuse,” Jane explained, settling down onto a rock.

Hela pinched her temples. “Fine. So, instead of subtracting two years from her sentence, hey, I’m going to add two on, ok? Give that your best shot,” she spat.

“Look, it wasn’t my fault. It was this Wonderboy, Thor.”

“Thor? Why does that name ring a bell?” Grandmaster asked, tapping the blue stripe on his chin.

“I don’t know.” Skurge, his fellow demon, shrugged. “Maybe we owe him money.”

Hela squinted at Jane. “What was that name again?”

“Thor,” Jane repeated calmly. “He comes with this big, innocent farm boy routine, but I could see through that in a Norwegian minute.”

Skurge had a small epiphany. “Wait a minute…” he mused. “Wasn’t Thor the name of the kid we were supposed to…”

“Uh oh,” both demons said in unison.

“Run for it!” Grandmaster said, but before the pair could get more than two feet, Hela had encircled them with a ring of swords she produced out of midair spiked into the ground like a gruesome picket fence.

“So you took care of him, huh?” Hela’s voice was unnervingly calm. “‘Dead as a door nail.’ Weren’t those your exact words?”

“This might be a different Thor,” Grandmaster offered.

“Yeah!” Skurge jumped in. “I mean, Thor is a very popular name nowadays!”

“Remember, like, a few years ago, every other boy was named Steve and all the girls were Sharon?”

“I’m about to rearrange the realms, and the one guy who can louse it up—“ Hela’s voice increased in volume steadily as she approached the demons with angry steps. “Is running around in the woods!”

“Wait, wait!” Skurge shouted out, just as Hela raised her arms to shoot more daggers at them. “We can still cut on his waltzing!”

“That’s right! And at least we made him mortal! That’s a good thing!” Grandmaster hastily corroborated. Then he added out of the corner of his mouth just to his fellow demon, “Didn’t we?”

“Hmm,” Hela hummed. “Fortunately for the three of you—“ She tossed this back to where Jane was still seated on the rock. “We still have time to correct this rather egregious oversight.”

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