Location: Asgard - Royal Training Grounds
Week 3 After Initial Manifestations
Thor Odinson had faced many foes in his long life. Frost Giants. Dark Elves. His brother's illusions more times than he could count. But this?
This was impossible.
The being before him was perfect. Golden hair flowing in the wind. Broad shoulders. Red cape billowing dramatically. And in its hand—a hammer. His hammer. Or at least, something that looked exactly like Mjolnir, down to the intricate runes carved into its head.
"You are skilled with your mimicry, Loki," Thor called out, raising the real Mjolnir. "But your illusions cannot fool the God of Thunder! Show yourself!"
The doppelganger tilted its head. Its face was... strange. The features were right—Thor's own strong jaw, his nose, his eyes—but something about them seemed soft. Malleable. Like looking at oneself reflected in water.
"Ditto," it said, and its voice was wrong. Not Thor's voice. Not even close. A strange, almost gelatinous sound.
Thor frowned. "That is not how Loki sounds either. What manner of trickery—"
The fake Thor attacked.
The hammer swung with Thor's own strength, Thor's own technique. Thor blocked with Mjolnir, and the impact sent shockwaves through the training grounds. Stone cracked. The golden pillars trembled.
They were evenly matched.
Thor pushed forward, lightning crackling along Mjolnir's length. The doppelganger responded with its own lightning—somehow pulling electricity from the air itself, channeling it through its false hammer.
"Impossible!" Thor roared. "Only those worthy can wield the power of Thor!"
They clashed again. And again. Each strike perfectly mirrored. Each dodge anticipated. It was like fighting his own reflection, and Thor found himself in a standstill, hammer to hammer, neither able to gain ground.
"Who are you?" Thor demanded. "What are you?"
The doppelganger's face shifted slightly—its features becoming even more like Thor's, perfecting the mimicry. But those eyes... those strange, blank eyes...
"Ditto," it repeated.
And then something small and yellow landed on Thor's nose.
Thor went cross-eyed trying to look at it. A spider? No, too round. Too... fuzzy? It was barely larger than his thumbnail, bright yellow with blue markings, and it had more eyes than Thor was comfortable with.
It looked at him.
Thor looked back.
"Little creature," Thor said slowly, "you have chosen a poor time to—"
It bit him.
Not a painful bite. Not even particularly noticeable. Just a tiny pinch on the bridge of his nose.
And then the lightning came.
Not from the sky. Not from Mjolnir. From the spider.
Power flooded into Thor's body—raw, uncontrolled electricity that would have killed a mortal instantly. It was like being struck by lightning, except the lightning was pouring into him instead of through him. Enough voltage to power a city. Maybe several cities. All at once.
Thor's vision whited out. His muscles seized. The Bifrost felt like this sometimes, when the energy of the Rainbow Bridge wrapped around his body, but this was wild. Untamed. Chaotic.
Through the blur of electricity and overloaded nerves, Thor saw the doppelganger move. Saw his own hammer—no, the fake hammer—swinging toward his head.
Thor tried to dodge.
Too slow.
The hammer struck him square in the temple, and the world went dark.
Some Time LaterThor woke up sitting.
His head throbbed. His body ached. Lightning still crackled faintly across his skin—residual energy from that strange spider's attack. But he was alive. Conscious. Sitting in...
A chair?
Thor blinked, trying to clear his vision. Yes. He was sitting in a chair. In the middle of the training grounds. Which made no sense whatsoever.
He tried to stand, and the chair felt... wrong. The texture was off. Too smooth. Too warm. Almost like—
Something slid off his lap.
Thor looked down and saw a purple blob hit the golden stone floor with a soft plop. It was roughly the size of a loaf of bread, amorphous, with two small black eyes and what might have been a smile.
The blob had been sleeping on his lap.
Thor, son of Odin, God of Thunder, Prince of Asgard, stared at the blob.
The blob stared back.
"Ditto," it said sleepily.
Thor's eye twitched.
He looked around the training grounds. His hammer—the real Mjolnir—lay on the floor a few feet away. The golden-haired doppelganger was gone. The spider was...
Actually, the spider was sitting on a piece of fallen masonry nearby, grooming its tiny legs with what Thor could only describe as smug satisfaction.
Thor stood slowly, and the chair beneath him made a sound.
Not a creak. Not wood settling. A sound like "Dit-to."
Thor looked down.
The chair rippled.
And then it started to change.
The wooden texture melted away, revealing purple gelatinous substance underneath. The arms of the chair retracted. The legs shortened. And within seconds, where there had been a chair, there was now another blob. Identical to the first one. Looking up at Thor with those same black eyes and that same unsettling smile.
"By Odin's beard," Thor breathed.
The first blob—the one that had fallen from his lap—rolled slightly across the golden floor, leaving a faint trail. It bumped against the second blob, and they made happy sounds at each other.
"Ditto!"
"Ditto!"
Thor's mind was racing. The doppelganger that had fought him. The hammer it had wielded. These... creatures...
"You," Thor said slowly, pointing at the blobs. "You were the warrior. And you—" he pointed at the second one, "—were the hammer."
Both blobs looked at him. One of them seemed to nod. The other just continued smiling.
"But how? What manner of sorcery allows you to take the form of—" Thor paused. "Can you understand me?"
"Ditto," one of them said.
Which could have meant anything.
Thor looked at the spider. The tiny yellow spider that had somehow channeled enough lightning to overwhelm the God of Thunder himself.
"And you, small one. What are you?"
The spider—Joltik, though Thor had no way of knowing its name—tilted its head. Then it made a sound like crackling electricity and waved one tiny leg.
Thor felt a headache forming that had nothing to do with being struck by a fake Mjolnir.
"This is madness," he muttered. "Strange creatures appearing in Asgard itself. Defeating the God of Thunder through trickery and electrical assault. What is happening to the Nine Realms?"
One of the Dittos had started to change again. Its form rippled, stretched, and suddenly it wasn't a blob anymore.
It was an apple.
A perfect, red apple from the palace orchards, sitting on the golden floor.
Thor stared at it.
The apple didn't do anything. It just sat there. Being an apple.
"Why," Thor asked the universe at large, "are you an apple now?"
The apple didn't answer. Because it was an apple.
The other Ditto, seeing its companion's transformation, apparently decided to join in. It rippled, shifted, and became...
A rock.
A gray, ordinary-looking rock.
Thor looked at the apple. He looked at the rock. He looked at the spider, which was now grooming its other set of legs.
"I am Thor Odinson," he said aloud, as if reminding himself. "I have fought armies. I am worthy of Mjolnir. I will not be bested by fruit."
The apple rippled and became a blob again. It rolled over to Thor's boot and bumped against it affectionately.
"Ditto!"
Thor sighed deeply and picked up his hammer. The real hammer. Which was definitely real because it responded to his call and crackled with proper lightning.
He looked down at the two Dittos, who were now watching him with what seemed like expectation. And the Joltik, which had climbed onto one of the Dittos and was nestling into its gelatinous body like it was a bed.
"You three," Thor said, "defeated the God of Thunder. Through trickery, yes, but effectively nonetheless. I... suppose I owe you warriors' respect."
The Dittos bounced happily.
The Joltik sparked with tiny bolts of electricity.
"Though I still do not understand what you are, or why you attacked me, or—" Thor paused. "Did you attack me? Or were you... testing me?"
One Ditto transformed into a crude approximation of Thor—purple blob with a vaguely Thor-shaped outline and what might have been a cape. It struck a heroic pose.
The other Ditto transformed into a hammer shape.
The Joltik sparked again.
And suddenly, Thor understood.
They had been playing. Or training. Or... something. The Dittos had mimicked him—one his form, one his weapon—and the spider had provided the power. They hadn't been trying to kill him. They'd been engaging with him. Testing themselves against the God of Thunder.
And they'd won.
Thor didn't know whether to be impressed or insulted.
He settled on both.
"You have skill, strange creatures," Thor admitted. "And power I do not fully comprehend. But know this—" He raised Mjolnir, and lightning crackled across the training grounds, arcing between the golden pillars. "—next time we meet in battle, I will not be caught off guard by tiny spiders and shapeshifting blobs."
The Thor-shaped Ditto saluted. Badly. Its arm was too blobby to make a proper fist.
The hammer-shaped Ditto just wobbled.
The Joltik chirped happily and burrowed deeper into the first Ditto's mass.
"Are you... staying here?" Thor asked, suddenly uncertain. "In the training grounds? Do you have a... home?"
Both Dittos looked at each other. Some kind of silent communication passed between them. Then they both looked at the Joltik, who sparked once.
And then all three of them looked at Thor.
"Oh no," Thor said. "No, no, no. You cannot be suggesting—"
One Ditto transformed into a tiny version of Thor. It toddled over to his boot and hugged it.
The other Ditto transformed into what Thor could only assume was meant to be Mjolnir, though it was far too blobby to be convincing.
The Joltik climbed up Thor's leg, scurried up his armor, and settled on his shoulder, crackling with happy electricity.
"I am on a quest to prove my worthiness!" Thor protested. "I cannot have... companions. Especially companions who defeated me through trickery and electrical assault!"
The mini-Thor Ditto looked up at him with huge, watery eyes.
The hammer-Ditto wobbled hopefully.
The Joltik nuzzled against his neck, and Thor felt a gentle tingle of electricity—not painful, almost... warm?
Thor stood there, the mighty God of Thunder, with a blob hugging his boot, another blob pretending to be his hammer, and a tiny spider on his shoulder.
He looked up at the sky.
"Father," he said to the heavens. "If this is part of my lesson in humility, you have made your point."
The sky did not answer.
The Dittos continued being adorable.
The Joltik chirped.
Thor sighed, long and deep and suffering. "Fine. Fine. You may... accompany me. For now. But—" He pointed at the Dittos sternly. "—no more transforming into me without permission. And you—" he carefully lifted the Joltik from his shoulder, "—no more lightning to the face. Understood?"
The Joltik tilted its tiny head, then sparked once in what Thor chose to interpret as agreement.
One Ditto transformed back into its natural blob shape and rolled happily around Thor's feet.
The other Ditto... stayed as a hammer. Because apparently that was comfortable.
Thor picked up the hammer-Ditto. It felt nothing like Mjolnir—too soft, too warm, too alive—but it seemed content to be carried.
"This is madness," Thor muttered, starting across the training grounds with his real hammer in one hand and a fake hammer-blob in the other, a tiny electric spider on his shoulder, and a purple blob rolling along behind him like a strange, gelatinous puppy. "Absolute madness."
But as he walked toward the palace, passing the golden statues of Asgard's heroes, the Dittos made happy sounds, and the Joltik crackled with tiny lightning bolts that made Thor's hair stand on end. Despite himself, the God of Thunder found himself smiling.
Perhaps there was more to being worthy than simply wielding a hammer and fighting with honor.
Perhaps it also involved accepting the utterly bizarre with grace and dignity.
Or at least, accepting that sometimes Asgard itself sent you shapeshifting blobs and electric spiders, and you just had to deal with it.
"Ditto!" said the blob at his feet.
"Yes, yes," Thor said. "Onward, strange companions. Let us see what the All-Father makes of you."
The Joltik sparked happily.
The hammer-Ditto wobbled contentedly.
And in the throne room, Odin watched through Heimdall's vision and allowed himself a small smile.
His son was learning.
In the strangest way possible, but learning nonetheless.