Three days passed in a row.
Five days had passed since Luke bid on the second-hand glasses.
Finally, the glasses that had belonged to Sam's grandfather—the ones he'd been obsessing over—arrived.
Luke tore open the package and grumbled, "Same city, same school district, and it still took five days to deliver! If this were back home, I'd have left a one-star review already!"
"Do these people even want to do business? Do they want money or not?"
[Anomalous object detected: Sam's grandfather's glasses. +100 Anomaly Points. Current Anomaly Points: 2200 / 2300]
"Fuck yeah! It's the real thing. Now I just have to wait for Bumblebee to come looking for them."
Luke gave the glasses a quick once-over and set them down on the living room table.
Jenny twisted her soft, supple waist and slipped into Luke's arms like a cat.
"You want it?" Luke saw right through her in an instant.
Jenny nodded, her big, glistening eyes fixed on him.
Luke gently pushed her head down. "Then help yourself; there'll be plenty for you."
"Mmm~ Jenny, you really are a natural-born machine-gun mount."
Darcy, in a silk nightgown, came downstairs, rubbing her sleepy eyes.
"Darling, I have to head back. My credits are waiting—Oh?" When she saw the scene, she didn't even blink and just slipped into the bathroom.
As soon as she reached the door, she suddenly poked her head back out. "Oh, right, three days have passed, and Thor still hasn't shown up. He's not planning to welch on the debt, is he?"
Women can hold a grudge. Even though Darcy had been thoroughly "persuaded" by Luke in bed, she hadn't forgotten why she'd come here in the first place.
Wasn't it because she'd "offended" Thor?
So for the past three days, she'd been tossing the occasional snide remark about him.
Before I became Midgardian Thor's "wife," I couldn't afford to provoke you.
But if I still can't provoke you after becoming his "wife," then didn't I get dragged off to bed for nothing?
"Welch? Honestly, I'm hoping he drags it out even longer. The longer the better."
Luke wasn't the least bit anxious.
Asgard wasn't going anywhere.
The three-day deadline had passed; every extra day was pure profit.
Roooooaaaar!!!
BOOM.
Just as Luke was enjoying himself, a hellish roar and the thunderous crash of something massive slamming into the ground echoed from right outside.
"Oh my God, is it an earthquake!??"
Darcy, half-naked, bolted out of the bathroom in a panic.
"Why panic? I'm your god; everything is under my control."
Luke lightly scolded her, and Darcy calmed down instantly.
Gluck! Gwack! Lick!
When she looked again, Jenny hadn't missed a beat; if anything, she seemed even more absorbed.
"Good grief, are you that starving?"
Seeing that Luke was completely unfazed, Darcy relaxed too.
Veronica and Madison came hurrying downstairs.
When Luke noticed Yulinka trailing behind them, he casually cast an illusion to conceal Jenny.
Madison glanced around. She had a vague feeling Jenny was still in the room.
"Where is she?"
Veronica's gaze instinctively swept toward Jenny's spot, and she couldn't help shooting Luke a knowing look.
Right then, another thunderous boom of cannon fire sounded nearby, followed by the churning whirr of heavy rotor blades.
Yulinka yelped in fright, darted around Veronica, and latched onto Luke's arm like a frightened koala.
Luke felt a sudden squeeze and his body gave a tiny shiver. No misunderstanding here; it was just the tremor from whatever was shaking the ground outside.
"Don't worry, they won't find us," Luke said with a meaningful little smile.
Yulinka didn't seem to catch the implication, so Jenny relaxed and went right back to what she'd been doing.
Even though gunfire and explosions were rattling the windows, the women took their cue from the unflappable man of the house and calmly settled onto the sofa.
Yulinka blinked her big eyes, looking genuinely puzzled. "Daddy, where's Mother?"
"Ehm.." Luke drew in a slow breath but kept his face perfectly neutral. "Your mother is busy with something very important right now. She'll come out when she's finished."
Yulinka nodded happily. "Okay! Then we won't bother her while she's working."
She sniffed the air, then suddenly pointed at the window with an excited squeal. "Look what I found!"
Everyone turned.
Through the glass, a black silhouette streaked across the night sky, followed by another earth-shaking roar as it slammed into the ground nearby.
"What is that?" Madison muttered, eyes wide. "Is someone seriously skydiving without a parachute these days? Has suicide gotten that expensive?"
"It's the.. ugh.. Hulk."
Luke cleared his throat twice, his expression growing more and more content.
"Haah.. Looks like we need to wrap this up. I.. am coming—I mean I have to go. I still have a front-row seat to the main event."
The next instant, his face settled into pure satisfaction.
By now everyone else was glued to the chaos unfolding just beyond the window, completely oblivious to what had just happened in the living room.
A minute later, Jenny quietly slipped away to quench her thirst with some milk.
Good thing Luke always kept plenty stocked; however much they wanted, there was always more.
"You all stay put and don't go outside," Luke told them, layering three protective barriers around the house for good measure.
With a flicker, he vanished and reappeared high above the streets of Manhattan.
Down below, the veteran performers Hulk and Abomination were putting on a bare-chested (well, big-shorts-only) street brawl for the ages.
[Anomalous entities detected: Bruce Banner (Hulk), Abomination. +200 Anomaly Points.]
[Reality Editor upgraded to version 3.3. Current Anomaly Points: 100 / 2400.]
"In broad daylight, two nearly naked muscle freaks are going at it in the middle of the street. This is a public-indecency lawsuit waiting to happen."
Luke shook his head and dumped 255 points across his six-dimensional attributes.
Attributes:
Strength 1685 (965+720)
Intelligence 965
Agility 1165 (965+200)
Endurance 1565 (965+600)
Soul Strength 965
Energy 2765 (965+1800)
After just three version upgrades, every stat had more than doubled. His overall numbers now sat at roughly seven or eight Thors stacked together.
"As expected: the rich rely on tech, the strong rely on mutation, and a golden finger is just mutation with extra steps."
Luke smirked to himself, then shifted his attention to a nearby side street.
In a shadowed corner no one was watching, a white-haired, muscle-bound, one-eyed old man stood quietly observing the brawl.
[Anomalous entity detected: Odin Borson. +100 Anomaly Points. Current Anomaly Points: 200 / 2400.]
Well, well, if it isn't Odin himself.
Luke's eyes lit up. With a thought, he stepped straight out of thin air and appeared right beside the Allfather.
Odin was still frowning at Hulk and Abomination when, in the split second his attention slipped, a hand landed on his shoulder.
When did—?!
"Enjoying the show, old man?" Luke asked with a cheerful grin.
Odin's battle-forged reflexes kicked in at once. The Eternal Spear was half-materialized in his grip when he spun and saw who it was.
"Oh… Midgardian Thor...?"
"Just Luke is fine. I'm not big on the codenames."
Luke chatted like they were two old neighbors bumping into each other at the store, completely ignoring the fact he was talking to the Allfather.
Odin's single eye flickered with a complicated swirl of emotions.
Images of Thor flashed through his mind, and he sighed inwardly.
He was already staring down the end of his long life, yet here he was, still running around cleaning up the messes his son left behind.
A perfectly good banishment, meant to teach humility, had spiraled into absolute chaos.
The trial had failed, Thor was still the same arrogant hothead, Loki was (dead)missing, the Bifrost was destroyed, relations with Jotunheim were worse than ever, and, to top it all off, his "good son" had racked up foreign debt in Asgard's name.
If Thor weren't his only remaining heir, Odin would seriously consider scrapping the whole project and starting over.
Disaster didn't even begin to cover it.
He looked at Luke, the root cause of this entire chain reaction, opened his mouth, then closed it again. There was nothing to say.
After all, both of his sons had simply been… useless.
He'd handed them every opportunity on a golden platter, and they'd still managed to fumble it spectacularly. The exhaustion went bone-deep.
"Easy there, old man. Deep breaths. Keep smiling and good luck will find you," Luke said cheerfully, patting Odin's shoulder as the Allfather kept sucking in slow, deliberate lungfuls of air.
______
12 Advance Chapters—Patreon.com/HornyFBI