Phil Coulson was having a remarkably strange week, even by his usual standards.
First, there was a hammer in the middle of the New Mexico desert that no one could lift. Then, a supposed "God of Thunder" appeared in the dead of night at a high-security facility.
That one man had made Coulson's team—some of the most elite tactical professionals in the world—look like a bunch of minimum-wage mall cops. That realization stung.
He had initially assumed the intruder was a highly skilled mercenary from a foreign power—perhaps South Africa? But oh boy, had he been wrong. He knew the true scale of his error the moment that thing appeared.
Fifteen minutes ago:
Phil stood in the desolate desert heat, examining the intricate geometric patterns scorched into the earth by the Bifrost.
"Get somebody from Linguistics down here," he ordered a nearby agent, his voice flat.
But the weather shifted violently. A localized tornado began forming overhead, the air currents intensifying by the second until the moment of impact.
The Bifrost surged open. When the blinding light and howling gusts finally subsided, the massive, metallic form of the Destroyer stood motionless in the crater.
"Is that one of Stark's?" Agent Sitwell questioned, stepping up behind him.
"I don't know; the guy doesn't tell me anything," Phil replied.
He grabbed a megaphone to initiate contact with the construct.
The Destroyer began its advance. Each step sent a heavy vibration through the desert floor, a testament to its sheer weight.
"Hello! You are operating unregistered weapons technology. Identify yourself!" Coulson commanded. Behind him, SHIELD agents drew their sidearms and rifles, aiming at the metallic giant.
Suddenly, the Destroyer's faceplate shifted open. "Here we go," Phil muttered. But then, the interior of the machine began to glow with a orange hue, charging for an attack. Coulson saw it instantly. "Incoming!"
A concentrated blast of Odinforce struck the lead SHIELD vehicle, vaporizing it before tearing through a second. The explosion killed the nearby agents instantly.
They retreated then, and the Destroyer, thankfully, did not pursue. Instead, it turned toward the nearest town: Puente Antiguo. Coulson didn't know what the armor was hunting, but he knew it would kill without hesitation to find it.
Two of his agents were dead; several were critically injured.
Coulson reached into his suit jacket and brushed the kunai Ethan had gifted him. Upon receiving the weapon, he had ordered SHIELD technicians to sweep it for bugs or tracking devices.
To his surprise, it registered as a standard kunai—well, as standard as a glowing artifact could be. The blade pulsed with a soft light whenever Phil touched it, a unique resonance that failed to trigger for anyone else.
Director Fury had personally ordered him to keep the weapon close and test its utility in a genuine emergency. Phil was well-versed in Ethan's profile: A High Priority asset. A boy capable of flight at the velocity of a fighter jet and Superspeed.
He had also been flagged during the Harlem incident, where he was suspected of killing the Abomination. Hours later, he was spotted again near the Stark Industries headquarters in Los Angeles, saving Tony Stark from a fatal fall.
Furthermore, reports of instantaneous mass-healing had emerged from the coastline of Labutta Township—an event eerily similar to the December 26th incident.
While Ethan's involvement was heavily suspected, no definitive imagery had captured him near the site, leaving his true power levels a matter of high-stakes speculation.
It made sense that someone like that would possess a magical artifact—Phil had encountered them before—but why give such a precious item away? He didn't have the answer.
"Take us to the city," he commanded the driver.
"Yes, sir," the agent answered immediately, though his voice betrayed his discomfort with the order.
Phil had to get as close to that machine as possible to throw the kunai. He didn't know for certain if Ethan would actually appear, but the boy was likely the last hope for this town. Coulson, at the very least, was going to give him the opening he needed.
In Puente Antiguo, Phil watched as four figures in authentic medieval war-gear engaged the Destroyer. Their gambit nearly worked; the three men served as the primary distraction while the woman vaulted from behind, impaling the armor's neck.
For a brief, hopeful moment, the town went still.
Then, The Destroyer began to grind and shift. Its plates all over it's body rotated 180° with a metallic shriek until the glowing faceplate was staring directly at the warrior woman perched on its back.
It blasted and all hell broke loose.
The Destroyer began attacking indiscriminately, its energy beam vaporizing a gas station and leveling the local bar. Multiple homes were reduced to smoldering rubble by its heat.
Coulson tracked the machine's charge towards the centre of the city and gripped the kunai's handle, his knuckles white and taut.
With a sharp exhale, he hurled it into the Destroyer's path. Based on Ethan's file, Phil expected him to drop from the sky, in a high-speed glide. They could use his speed to rescue as many people as possible.
Ethan had said he would appear, and Phil's mind had already calculated a vertical entry.
The reality was jarringly different.
Ethan didn't descend from the sky; he materialized from the ground using Shadow manipulation—a feat of instantaneous teleportation that was definitely not in his SHIELD dossier.
Though in doing so he appeared directly in the path of a pre-charged Odinforce blast.
Before he could even plant his feet, Ethan was caught squarely by the beam. The force was enough to blast him backward and sending his form skipping across the asphalt until he vanished into the wreckage of an old Mexican home.
The streets of Puente Antiguo fell into a silence. The Warriors Three and Lady Sif, with their Asgardian enhanced senses, heard a mechanical sound cut through the air—the heavy, rhythmic click of a wheel turning.
Click.
Six more rotations. Six more turns of the wheel, and Mahoraga would adapt to the Odinforce.
Ethan lay amidst the splintered timber and drywall of the wrecked home.
The Odinforce was a terrifying, near-limitless reservoir of cosmic and magical energy, a power that defined the very sovereignty of Asgard.
While enduring another direct hit would undeniably accelerate the adaptation process, it wasn't a risk he needed to take; the wheel would turn regardless.
Besides, Ethan didn't necessarily need to adapt to the Destroyer's specific energy blast just to dismantle it.
From the wrecked home, Ethan sat on the debris like it was a throne... a sharp smirk tugged at the corner of Ethan's mouth... He clasped his hands together in a focused, prayer-like stance before thrusting them forward with intent. "Water Piercing!" he roared.
Using Convergence, Ethan compressed a massive volume of water drawn from the Max Elephant into a hyper-pressurized state.
But instead of a singular, linear stream, he unleashed a barrage of tracking blasts. These liquid projectiles, propelled with enough force to cleave a skyscraper in half, slammed into the Destroyer. This attack was meant to test it's infamous durability.
The attack failed to breach the armor. The construct was forged from an unknown, enchanted Asgardian metal—a substance rumored to be even more resilient than Uru or Adamantium.
Though the sheer impact of the water was enough to send the metallic giant hurtling toward the outskirts of town. It skidded through the dirt, a massive furrow marking its path, it regained its footing only moments later.
"Your defenses are definitely a league above any opponent I have faced," Ethan noted, his mind flickering back to the Disaster Curse renowned for her durability.
His expression hardened as he analyzed the battlefield. Dead bodies everywhere, that was the grim difference between reality and movies.
"And that Odinforce blast... it would have killed any of my Shadows instantly if it had landed a clean hit. Only Tora and Mahoraga could have weathered that."
He shifted his focus inward. On, he thought. His Cursed Energy Trait flickered, transforming from a steady flow into a crackling electrical discharge.
In this unique CET state, Ethan's speed and sensory perception were boosted to an entirely new level.
It was a trait he rarely tapped into, primarily because he seldom encountered an opponent capable of tanking his standard attacks.
He still remembered the scorched remains of The Kerguelen Islands. Even now, three years after the Tenth Ritual, that land remained a barren wasteland where no life could take root.
Ethan stepped out from the wreckage into the clearing, jagged streaks of purple electricity dancing across his skin.
He peered down the length of the ruined street. The Destroyer had been blasted back nearly two hundred meters by the previous impact, leaving a scorched furrow.
To his left, he spotted Coulson. Their eyes locked for a fraction of a second before Ethan shouted with a mischievous look, making a makeshift megaphone with his hands.
"You just had to throw the blade directly into the line of fire, didn't you, Phil?"
"I didn't know you'd materialize from the ground! You guys never tell me anything!" Coulson shouted back, his voice strained. "Are you alright?"
Phil was clearly bewildered. It wasn't just the instantaneous teleportation that rattled him, but the "Piercing Water" technique he has heard Ethan announce—and now, this purple lightning. And what the hell was that Wheel above his head?!
SHIELD had seen it once before in Harlem, when an unknown figure had confronted the Hulk, but they didn't exactly know what it was.
Ethan had taken the brunt of the Odinforce blast with his right arm, but the flesh had already knit itself back together through RCT.
He gave Coulson a casual thumbs-up and began his steady walk toward the Destroyer.
"Midgard have Sorcerers now?" Volstagg grunted from among the Warriors Three. Survival after a direct hit from the Destroyer was a feat few in the Nine Realms could claim.
"That wheel..." Lady Sif noted, her eyes narrowing as she gripped her sword.
"Yes, I see it too," Fandral added, his usual charm replaced by fascination.
Thor stood stunned for a moment, watching another mortal command the very element he had lost his connection to. Though he quickly composed himself;
His priority had to be the townspeople. He had been ready to offer his life to Loki to end the slaughter just before Ethan appeared.
"It doesn't matter," Thor said firmly to his comrades. "You must return to Asgard. You have to stop Loki." He glanced at Volstagg, who was clutching a heavy wound in his abdomen. Without a healing pod in Asgard, he wouldn't survive the hour.
"What about you?" Fandral asked.
"I am just a man now. I will only be a hindrance," Thor replied. When they hesitated, he spoke with the authority of a King: "Go. Now."
Reluctantly, they obeyed. Ethan spared a brief side-glance at the Asgardians before turning his full attention back to the Destroyer. The machine was already pre-charging its next Odinforce beam, when Ethan moved.
"Yes, your attack and defense are off the charts," Ethan remarked, his voice appearing behind the Destroyer before it could even track his movement.
His hands clamped onto the armor's chest plates like a vice. "But you might as well send your attacks through mail."
He delivered a Cursed Energy-infused punch. The impact hurtling the massive armor away from the town and deep into the New Mexico desert.
As the Destroyer tumbled through the dunes, the wheel above Ethan's head turned once more.
Click. Five rotations remained until Ethan—and Mahoraga—adapted to the Odinforce.
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Vote for A cursed Tool for Ethan:
• Sword
• Spear
• Shield
• Warhammer
• Bow and Arrow
• Maybe a combination of above, give me a combination.
I rewrote Chapter 29 and 30, many of you didn't like it that Ancient One hesitate, so you check it out, though the final result is same."Mahito escapes"
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