Clink.
The sharp tap of a champagne flute against glass snapped me back to the present.
The banquet hall murmured with curated elegance—velvet laughter, hollow toasts, and the practiced glide of servers weaving through clusters of high-powered smiles. Light danced across sequined gowns and vibranium-threaded lapels, every detail polished to perfection.
I blinked, still tasting smoke in the back of my throat—though it had been years since that night.
Funny.
The first time I used my powers, I almost leveled a corner store.
Now? I'm expected to smile for cameras, shake hands with senators, and give speeches about unity and heroism like it's all a marketing strategy.
I scanned the room. Politicians. Corporate backers. Next-gen heroes with brand deals and built-in media teams. Everyone here played a part.
And mine?
The symbol.
The leader.
The Paragon.
But all I saw—beneath the suit, behind the titles—was the kid crouched behind a fridge door, fingers sparking, terrified and reckless and very, very real.
A toast went up. Applause followed.
I lifted my glass, the crystal catching in the overhead light.
No sparks this time. Just skin.
But the hum?
It was still there.
Deep under the surface.
Quiet. Steady.
Waiting.
Always waiting.
My thoughts are interrupted by a familiar presence.
Across the banquet hall, leaning casually against the bar with a half-amused look on her face, is Torunn—one of the few people here who knows who I am.
The sight of her pulls me back, a flash of memory hitting me like a shift in gravity.
Back when I first landed in this world—before the Avengers, before any of this—I did the only thing I could think of:
I studied.
If I were stuck here, if this was my life now, then I needed to understand everything, especially my powers.
For the first month after arriving, I spent hours in the New York Public Library, poring over books on physics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics—anything that could give me insight into what I was capable of.
I used public computers to dive into scientific forums, watching lectures, reading theories, piecing together whatever I could.
I learned fast.
Faster than I should have.
And while I was learning, I was also surviving.
My powers made that part easy.
A subtle shift in gravity made pickpocketing feel like sleight of hand.
A bit of electromagnetic interference let me scramble ATM systems just long enough to pull what I needed—small amounts, untraceable, just enough to keep going.
And yeah, it's 2043.
The tech's smarter. Security's tighter. Some machines scan your damn retinal signature before they'll cough up a dollar.
But no matter how advanced things get—even in a world with gods and gamma giants—systems can still be bent.
You just have to know where to push.
Nothing big. Nothing that would put me on anyone's radar—just enough to get by while I figured out my next move.
Then I got careless.
One night, on a rooftop, while messing around with what I'd only half-jokingly started calling my "gravity thing," I tried something new. Not just adjusting my weight—I'd already done that during a few midnight parkour runs—but really pushing space around me. Stretching the field. Seeing what happened if I stopped obeying the laws of physics and started rewriting them instead.
Oh—I forgot to tell y'all.
After the whole store clerk incident—the one where I blew out a steel-reinforced door and turned a couple of trigger-happy goons into cautionary tales—I started noticing a second hum in my body.
See, I always knew there was electricity in me. That buzz in my bones? That pressure behind my teeth? That was the easy part. But this other feeling… it wasn't crackling or sparking. It was heavier. Slower. Like standing in deep water you didn't know was moving until it dragged your legs out from under you.
Took me a while to realize it.
Wasn't just electric.
It was gravity.
Turns out, there were two rhythms humming under my skin.
One fast and sharp—electricity, always ready to jump, to lash out, to light the air around me.
The other? Deep. Subtle. Anchored. Like the orbit of a planet, always moving but never rushed.
That second rhythm had always been there. I just didn't know how to listen.
Didn't know what I was feeling that night behind the red door, when the charge built in my chest and something in me pulled.
Not pushed—pulled.
The field didn't just respond to me. It bent to me.
And once I understood that?
It changed everything.
So yeah, back to that rooftop.
I pushed into that pressure—leaned into it. Tried to wrap my mind around it. And for a split second, I felt something snap into place. Like a rubber band stretched too far.
And the next thing I knew?
The stars weren't in the same place anymore.
I wasn't on Earth.
One second, I was standing on solid ground.
The next, I was somewhere else entirely.
A rocky landscape. Two moons in the sky. Air that—thankfully—I could breathe.
The good news?
I hadn't warped myself into deep space.
The bad news?
I had no idea how to get back.
At first, I thought I could jump again—bend gravity, feel for the pull of my last location, slingshot myself home.
It didn't work.
So I tried again.
And again.
I hopped between planets for weeks—deserts, jungles, frozen wastelands, alien cities that weren't Earth.
Each time, I hoped for a familiar skyline, a recognizable landmark—something that told me I was getting closer.
But I had no control.
No way to navigate.
Not gonna lie, I had no idea how I wasn't warping straight into a sun.
But the more I jumped, the more I noticed a pattern:
every planet I landed on had life.
At first, I thought it was just dumb luck.
Then I started paying attention.
There was something in the way gravity behaved—a subtle frequency I could sense before jumping—one that only seemed to exist on planets with life.
Maybe, on some level, I was tuning into it.
Or maybe I was just too afraid to question it.
I wasn't a space traveler.
I was a cosmic castaway, hopping blind.
Each gravity-jump flung me further from anything familiar—different stars, different skies, different rules. I had no map, no guidance system. Just instinct, exhaustion, and the strange gravitational rhythm I was slowly learning to trust.
Eventually, I stopped jumping.
Because if I kept going, I was just going to keep getting more lost. Or worse—hit the wrong planet and land in a black-site prison or a beast's stomach.
So I landed. Stayed. Let the galaxy breathe around me instead of trying to outrun it.
That's when I found the translator.
It was buried under a pile of cracked visors and scorched flight helmets in a scrap trader's bin—just a rusted black disc, half-fused to a cybernetic jawbone that may or may not have belonged to something human.
I didn't recognize it from firsthand experience—obviously—but the shape clicked instantly. I'd seen something like it in a dusty corner of the old internet back on Earth. One of those sketchy forums where digital tinkerers, washed-up theorists, and conspiracy nerds swapped "leaked" alien schematics like they were Pokémon cards. Half of them were fake, the other half... probably also fake. But this?
This looked exactly like one of the so-called "translator nodes" someone once claimed fell off a Shi'ar freighter.
A neural-sync universal translator. Common in most interstellar systems. Smugglers, bounty hunters, diplomats—you name it, they used them. Speak every language from Shi'ar to Skrull, all without moving your lips.
But on Earth? We didn't have this tech.
By 2043, we weren't exactly backwater anymore. There were alien embassies, scattered trade accords, even some controlled cultural exchanges. A few starliners occasionally parked above orbit for diplomatic stops. But commercial space travel? Interplanetary tourism? Anything that looked like regular contact?
Still lightyears out of reach.
Earth was adjacent to the galactic conversation, not part of it. Like someone who technically got invited to the party but wasn't cool enough to hitch a ride.
Most of the galaxy still sees us as the hillbillies of the cosmos—loud, chaotic, technologically undercooked. They don't go out of their way to make trade deals or political alliances with Earth unless they absolutely have to.
The only reason we even get a second glance—or the occasional scrap of respect—is because a few of our own went off-world and made names for themselves.
Carol Danvers? Galactic powerhouse. Peter Quill? Interstellar menace with charm. Richard Rider? Literal Nova Corps legend.
Basically, Earth's rep is like a band whose music sucks, but the lead guitarist's solo went viral in six star systems.
Our tech was advancing—artificial gravity, energy-based guns, limited warp research—but we were still centuries behind the core systems. No colonies. No real trade hubs. And maybe that was for the best. Because if we did get out there too fast?
We'd probably start a fight with someone on accident.
So yeah—finding one of these translators?
That was like stumbling across an iPhone in the Stone Age.
Mostly.
It glitched a lot. Spat out nonsense. Once translated "Hello, I'm friendly" into something that got me chased out of a bazaar with plasma spears.
Still—worth it.
Because in that sector of space?
Words were the only thing keeping you from getting shot before the drinks arrived.
Didn't matter how old it was. Didn't even matter what language it was coded in. All I cared about was whether it worked. And it did. Mostly.
It lagged. It skipped. It threw sarcasm where there shouldn't be any. But I could understand enough to bluff my way through customs, get by in trade ports, and—most importantly—know when someone was threatening me.
Because out here?
The galaxy's not like Earth.
Some sectors run like old Westerns—frontier planets, outlaw moons, mercenaries guarding fuel depots in rusted armor that hums with old tech. No laws. No shields. Just guns and grit and whatever alien deity you still half-believe in.
Other sectors are straight-up fantasy. Floating citadels, planetary rings made of living crystal, spell-tech merchants selling dream-forged weapons. Magic that runs on data. Gods with Wi-Fi.
And every single sector?
More advanced than Earth.
That's what shook me the most. Back home, I thought we were on the cutting edge. But here? Earth's like a toddler with a toy wrench, still learning to walk while the rest of the galaxy rewrites reality in its sleep.
And me?
I didn't even have a place to sleep.
Which brings me to the bar.
Backwater planet. No name I could pronounce. Two suns, dust storms sharp enough to cut bone. I'd been there two days—long enough to realize my stolen rations wouldn't last, short enough to still have hope I'd jump out soon.
I was sitting at the bar, sipping something that glowed, smelled like battery acid, and somehow tasted worse, when a local warlord's idiot son decided I looked like I owed him something.
I blinked wrong, apparently.
He swaggered up with two guards in tow and all the smug, inherited power of someone who'd never been punched in the throat by reality. You know the type—stiff shoulders, loud boots, expression like the universe owed him rent.
He muttered something at me—garbled and low, the syllables sharp and wet-sounding. My janky, half-fried translator barely kept up but managed to spit out the highlights: fresh meat… soft-worlder… bounty.
Nice.
So, naturally, I tried to defuse the situation with my best space-age charm. I raised a hand, smiled like an idiot, and said:
"These are not the Jedis you are looking for."
It was a long shot, but maybe they'd seen some old Earth broadcast and laugh it off. Maybe they'd think I was harmless.
Instead?
The translator froze. Buzzed. Then coughed out a sentence in his native language that, judging by the guards' reactions, may as well have been "I respectfully request the honor of insulting your ancestors and mating with your livestock."
Apparently, his species has very specific tonal rules—where "friendly sarcasm" in Galactic Basic sounds like "kill-your-lineage" in their dialect.
He blinked once.
Then twice.
Then his eyebrow twitched like it had just declared war.
He didn't like that.
Things escalated.
Fast.
The first punch came quick—wide and lazy, like he assumed I'd just take it. I didn't. I ducked low, palm planted to the ground, and pulled.
Not him—space.
The gravity around his foot shifted like a snapped rope, and he face-planted into the floor hard enough to bounce. His guards moved, shouting something in a dialect my janky translator didn't catch. One leveled a blaster. I snapped my hand up—pressure spiked. The air around his weapon turned heavy and dense, and the shot curved wildly into the ceiling.
That got their attention.
But I was already breathing hard. Too many jumps. Not enough rest. Each move burned more energy than I had. I stumbled back, ready to fake one last surge and hope I didn't pass out before landing it.
Then—
CLANG.
A blade carved clean through one guard's blaster. He yelped, dropped the sparking half, and crumpled when the hilt of the sword met his jaw with a thunderous crack.
She landed between us like lightning in human form.
Torunn.
She wasn't just strong—she was a force of nature. Tall, with an Asgardian warrior's build and the kind of effortless confidence that only comes from knowing nothing in the room can actually challenge you.
She fought with the kind of skill that wasn't just brute strength, but precision. Calculated. Deadly.
Her sword—dragonforged steel, runes pulsing along the blade—crackled with divine energy each time she swung it. Sparks of raw power cut through the air with every movement, and in seconds, what had been a brawl was reduced to scorched floor tiles and groaning bodies.
She turned to me, eyes narrowing.
"You fight like a Midgardian," she said, tilting her head. "But you don't look like one of my father's people."
Midgardian.
Earthling.
She recognized where I was from instantly.
That was how I learned what had happened to Asgard after Ragnarok—and why Asgardians were living on a planet that wasn't Earth.
After Thor and Hulk's battle on Sakaar, something changed.
The two of them forged a bond that went beyond battle—an unbreakable loyalty.
When Asgard was destroyed in Ragnarok, Thor led the survivors to Earth.
But after Infinity War, they were scattered.
The survivors found refuge in Norway, but after Endgame, when the Blip was reversed, Thor knew they needed more than a corner of Earth to rebuild.
That's where Hulk came in.
After the Grandmaster's fall, Hulk didn't just leave Sakaar behind—he ruled it.
Became its king.
Something no one saw coming.
When Asgard needed a home, Hulk gave them one—a planet within Sakaar's system, untouched, perfect for Asgardian life.
A new homeworld.
And it wasn't just Asgardians who had ties to Sakaar.
That's where I met Skaar.
Hulk's son.
Half-Sakaaran, half-gamma powerhouse, and every bit his father's child—except with more focus, more control, and a lot more to prove.
Torunn and Skaar had been working together for years—running off-world missions, occasionally backing up Rocket Raccoon's Guardians crew when they needed muscle.
One conversation turned into a deal—help them on a job, and they'd help me figure out a way back to Earth.
That was how I became a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy, under Rocket Raccoon's... enthusiastic leadership.
For a while, anyway.
For a year, Torunn, Skaar, and I ran jobs together—bounty hunting, smuggling, taking down intergalactic threats most people didn't even know existed.
I fought in space battles.
Learned alien tech.
Saw things I never would've dreamed of.
And through it all, Torunn?
She was one of the first real friends I had in this universe.
She didn't care that I was lost.
That I wasn't from here.
That I had no idea where my story was supposed to go.
She just saw me as someone who could fight beside her.
And in a universe that never stops testing you, that meant something.
The memory fades.
And I'm back in the ballroom, still wearing my practiced smile, still playing the role.
But now?
Now I know I'm not alone in this room.
Torunn raises her glass from across the hall, a knowing smirk on her face.
I smirk back.
Because no matter how much I've changed—no matter what mask I have to wear here—she remembers the guy I was before all of this.
And that?
That's worth more than anything else in this room.
Torunn moves through the crowd like she owns the room—and somehow still looks like she couldn't care less about it.
Her posture is regal, yet relaxed. Her presence? Impossible to ignore.
She's used to this—being the center of attention, the subject of whispered conversations and lingering stares. It's not just because of who she is, though that certainly plays a part. Being the daughter of Thor and Jane Foster, she carries the weight of her lineage everywhere she goes.
But it's more than that.
She's tall—standing a few inches above most of the men in the room. Her frame is built like a warrior: broad shoulders, long limbs, strength packed into every movement. She's proportioned in that impossible, Asgardian way—muscle like a sculptor's dream, curves that make armor designers reconsider their blueprints.
Even in a formal gown embroidered with starlight and woven history, there's no mistaking her for anything but a fighter. She doesn't wear dresses so much as inhabit them—like she's doing them a favor by not slicing them into a battle skirt.
Her hair's done up in elaborate braids, threaded with silver, catching the light in soft flashes like chainmail catching a distant sun. Her features are striking—sharp in the way that makes you stare too long without realizing it. Eyes like stormfronts. Lips curved just enough to make you second-guess if she's amused or calculating.
She's drawing more attention than me tonight.
Which is fine.
For all my title as the leader of the Avengers, I'm still human. Torunn, on the other hand?
She's the daughter of a god.
And every step she takes reminds people of it.
But if she notices the stares—or the people shamelessly trying to get her attention—she doesn't acknowledge them.
A U.S. Senator from the Metahuman Oversight Committee steps into her path, flashing a rehearsed, too-white smile and starting with, "I'd love to talk policy sometime over dinner—"
She sidesteps him without breaking stride.
A biotech CEO from Enhanced Dynamics tries the subtle approach, raising his champagne flute in her direction like it's an invitation.
She doesn't even glance his way.
One of Wakanda's younger international liaisons, barely out of university and dressed like a tech mogul in training, nervously adjusts his jacket and blurts, "Can I—uh—get your comm ID?"
Comm ID—basically a contact ping. Part phone number, part encrypted link, used for everything from messaging to official clearance tags. And this kid clearly thought he was about to land a date with a thunder goddess.
She walks past before he can finish the sentence.
A BuzzFeed Superhuman correspondent, mic at the ready and eyes wide, doesn't even get the chance to speak. She's left standing there blinking, her camera crew already lowering their gear in defeat.
Torunn keeps moving, completely unbothered, regal and untouchable in her Asgardian gown. It's not arrogance. It's just who she is—someone used to being the center of gravity in every room without ever having to reach for it.
She ignores them all.
Effortlessly. Not out of arrogance.
She just genuinely doesn't care.
She's here for one reason.
And it isn't politics.
She stops in front of me, tilts her head slightly, and studies my face like she's debating how hard to roast me in front of high-ranking diplomats.
"You look like you'd rather be anywhere else," she says, sipping her drink with the kind of effortless calm that somehow makes the jab feel worse.
I smirk. "And you look like you're one more speech away from flipping a table into a senator."
Her eyes flick toward the stage, where some foreign dignitary is still droning on. "If one more guy asks for my number or bets his buddies he can get me to say yes to dinner, I swear to Odin—"
"Yikes," I mutter, raising an eyebrow.
"They assume I'm into strong men with influence or muscle," she says, rolling her eyes. "Which, fine, I get it—power is attractive. But maybe consider not opening with your net worth or your bicep circumference."
She takes another drink and exhales like she's tired of the entire room. "Half these guys think I'm a trophy, the other half think I'm a challenge. No one asks if I want to be either."
I chuckle. "You are doing a fantastic job of looking terrifying, for the record."
She tilts her glass in mock toast. "Play nice. Look scary. Drink politely."
I raise mine to meet hers. "You're crushing it."
Her smirk returns. "Of course I am."
"Obviously."
She takes a slow sip of her drink, eyes sweeping the room like she's already memorized every exit and written off every man in a suit.
Then she leans closer, just enough that I know something unserious is about to drop from her very serious mouth.
The corner of her lip quirks.
"I swear, next time one of them tries to flex his family's legacy at me, I'm gonna challenge him to a tournament instead of a duel."
I raise an eyebrow. "What, like fencing?"
She smirks—wolfish, knowing.
"Tekken. Or Mortal Kombat. Whichever one they can actually put up a fight in."
I blink. "Wait—you're serious?"
She arches an eyebrow.
"Max. You know damn well I am. I can't throw hands at this banquet summit thing, so I'll settle for doing it through a controller. And by the way—you still owe me a rematch. Don't think I forgot."
I chuckle, shaking my head. "First off, I don't owe you anything. Second, I'm not about to sit here and get bodied by an Asgardian princess who somehow a tryhard at games!"
"Genetics," she says with mock pride. "Mom was a scientist. Dad's a god. Somewhere in between, I became the perfect gamer."
I cross my arms. "Perfect, huh? You talk a big game for someone who got cheesed by my sweep-spam last time."
Her smile twitches. Dangerous.
"You were playing Eddy Gordo. That doesn't count."
"It counts. You just don't know how to deal with my flowchart mixups."
She rolls her eyes but doesn't deny it.
"Fine. One set. After this farce is over. And if I win, you owe me dinner."
I grin. "And if I win?"
"Then you owe me dinner."
I stare at her. "That's the same bet."
She shrugs and pats my shoulder like she already knows I've lost.
"Then shut up and pretend to look engaged. Before someone mistakes your brooding for deep geopolitical insight."
She turns back toward the bar, ignoring yet another diplomat on the approach.
And I shake my head.
Because this Torunn—the one trading fighting game banter and low-key threatening me with dinner dates—is nothing like the Torunn I used to read about in comics.
In every version I knew before this universe, she was the same:
A weapon forged in Thor's shadow.
A warrior bred to protect Asgard.
Myth made flesh.
But this Torunn?
She's something else entirely.
She doesn't just swing swords.
She makes them.
Under the dwarves of Nidavellir, she learned to forge enchanted weapons with divine metals. And because she's a deep-dive, RPG-lore-min-maxing gaming gremlin, she started making replicas of weapons from her favorite games—imbued with real Asgardian enchantments.
Not perfect one-to-one copies, but close.
Close enough that Doctor Strange himself had to stop and stare when she unveiled the Moonveil blade.
"This... shouldn't work," he muttered, hand hovering over the edge of the sword.
And yet it did.
It pulsed with dimensional tension, slicing through reality like space was paper.
But that wasn't even her greatest creation.
Because eventually, building weapons one at a time wasn't enough.
She wanted more than just an arsenal.
She wanted an armory that could move with her.
So, with help from the mystics of Kamar-Taj, she built something no Asgardian ever had before—
a fully bound dimensional construct: The Gate of Valhalla.
A set of pocket-dimension vaults tethered to her magical signature.
A treasury of weapons, forged by her own hand, floating just out of sync with reality.
Accessible with a gesture. Summonable in a blink.
It should've taken years. Layers of enchantments. Dozens of failed prototypes.
She made it work in months.
Because Torunn isn't just a warrior.
She's a builder. A visionary. Someone who sees an impossible idea and makes it real—
not because anyone asked her to, but because she can.
And now?
Somewhere out there, in a vault woven from pure Asgardian magic, thirty-four weapons rest.
The Gate of Valhalla.
An arsenal in its infancy—soon to grow.
Also—side note?
She's really into anime.
Way more than she'll ever admit in public.
The Gate of Valhalla?
That wasn't some sacred Asgardian concept handed down through Odin's beard.
Nope.
It was inspired by Fate/Stay Night.
She watched Gilgamesh summon weapons out of thin air and said,
"I could do that. But with dwarven metal and actual runes."
And then she did.
was inspired by Fate/Stay Night.
She watched Gilgamesh summon weapons out of thin air and said,
"I could do that. But with dwarven metal and real runes."
And then she did.
Torunn once spent three weeks forging a replica of Tanjiro's blade from Demon Slayer—not because she needed it, but because, in her words, "the aesthetic slapped."
But it was never just about the aesthetic.
Torunn didn't forge weapons for cosplay. She forged them for war.
She studied swords the way others study philosophy—methodically, obsessively, with the kind of precision you only get from someone whose parents are a literal god and a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. If a blade had a purpose, a mythos, or even a fictional combat mechanic, she wanted to understand it. Replicate it. Then improve on it.
When Torunn set out to make a weapon that could actually hurt the dark things—vampires, demons, necrotic entities—she didn't start from scratch.
She started with Blade.
One of his old glaives turned up—scorched, half-melted, but still laced with the kind of enchantments that hummed when you held your breath. Don't ask how she got it. Let's just say someone at Kamar-Taj owed her a favor.
She reverse-engineered everything: the layered silverwork, the anti-necrotic wards, the solar-binding runes etched so finely into the metal they looked like filigree. Turns out, the secret wasn't silver—it was silver acting as a conduit. A spell-laced solar conductor. Sunlight in a blade.
That became her foundation.
But Torunn doesn't do "just enough."
While most people would stop there, she went full anime.
Specifically: Demon Slayer.
She didn't care that Nichirin blades were fictional. What caught her attention was the lore—sun-forged steel, glowing in combat, burning through evil like it owed them rent. It clicked. The concept mirrored radiant spellwork from Kamar-Taj. So she got to work.
She deconstructed a basic radiant conduit spell—the kind used to banish curses or cleanse haunted relics—and rebuilt it from the inside out. Then, she restructured the casting language into Old Norse runes. No circles. No chants. Just raw energy, rerouted through god-forged syntax.
Or as she explained it: "Like converting a firewall protocol into Viking poetry. Except when you get it wrong, it explodes."
And it worked.
When she first unsheathed the sword, it didn't shimmer—it blazed.
But she wanted more than heat and damage.
So she added purification magic—Strange's kind. Deep-cut incantations from the Sanctum archives. Spells meant to balance energies, not just burn them. Magic designed to turn corruption inside out.
She wove all of it together—radiant energy, divine metallurgy, eldritch purification—and sealed it in a blade that looked like it had leapt out of an anime and straight into a prophecy.
It didn't just slice through darkness.
It made the darkness beg for forgiveness.
Swing it fast enough, and it left afterimages in the air—trails of flame that weren't fire, but radiant burn signatures. Echoes of heat and light, visually identical to the anime's artistic flair, but grounded in actual, lethal magic. And yes, it burns vampires like they've been locked in a tanning bed on high for an hour.
Blade showed up out of nowhere within days of the first field test.
Not a call. Not a text. Just materialized like a rumor with shades and a trench coat.
And yeah—he's still alive in the 2040s. Man's half-vampire, perks of immortality, I guess.
What confused me wasn't that he showed up. It was how the hell he knew.
How does a guy who lives in shadows and probably sleeps in a UV-proof panic room find out that Torunn—a blonde Asgardian demigod—is crafting custom anti-demon, vampire-scorching anime weapons?
How did Blade even find out?
Easy. Magic gossip.
Someone at Kamar-Taj definitely couldn't keep their mouth shut. Word probably spread like wildfire the second Torunn lit up a training dummy with an anime sword that left scorch marks shaped like flame decals.
I imagine it went something like this:
"Yo. You hear about the blonde?"
"What blonde?"
"The Asgardian one. Made a sword from some anime."
"…Okay, but like, actually made it?"
"Yeah. Burned a soul right out of a training dummy. Left a flame trail."
"You're messing with me."
"I'm serious. She used lightweaving and rune magic. Some Fate/Stay Night nonsense. I don't know, man."
And honestly? It tracked.
It's 2043—even the secluded, monk-like sorcerers of Kamar-Taj know their anime. Don't let the robes fool you. They've got Wi-Fi. They're not savages. You think they've been guarding the dimensional gates of reality without sneaking in a little anime on off-days? Please.
So yeah, word got out.
And sure enough, there he was.
Didn't say hello. Didn't blink.
Just strolled up while Torunn was still calibrating the blade's balance settings, tapped the flat with one gloved finger, and said—completely deadpan:
"I want three. One for work. Two for the vault."
That was it. Then he tossed her a duffel bag full of bloodstone fragments and walked out.
Then he vanished again like he had a full schedule of brooding and vampire decapitations to get back to.
Torunn stared at the empty space where he'd been for a full ten seconds, then muttered, "Should've charged him double."
I shrugged. "You should've made a fourth. He's gonna dual-wield that thing like it's Soul Calibur."
She didn't laugh.
She just nodded thoughtfully like she was adding it to her next build sheet.
But Doctor Strange?
He wasn't giddy.
He summoned Torunn to the Sanctum Sanctorum under the pretense of "urgent arcane anomaly clarification," which—translated from Strange-speak—basically meant: "I'm not sure if I should be impressed, concerned, or already drawing containment sigils."
She brought the blade.
The final product kept the silhouette of Tanjiro's sword from Demon Slayer, but with her own Asgardian spin. The red flame motif still curled across the guard, but the rest of the blade had been reforged in black-and-crimson uru—dwarven-forged, rune-bound, and unnervingly alive with magic. Instead of Japanese characters, a string of glowing Norse runes ran down the flat of the blade, softly pulsing with reddish-orange light, like it was holding in heat from some unseen sun.
studied it in utter silence for twelve minutes straight—didn't even blink. Just ran gloved fingers along the runes carved into the spine, occasionally muttering incantation checks under his breath. At one point, he held it up to the window to observe how ambient leyline energy refracted off its surface.
He paced. Not calmly. Like a man mentally running through every known containment sigil in case the sword decided to open a hellmouth unprompted.
Finally, Strange turned to her, the Cloak of Levitation gently furling behind him like it was bracing for impact. His brow furrowed behind the glint of candlelight and sanctified nerves.
"Torunn… what exactly did you use to align a Kamar-Taj radiant conduit with an Asgardian divine-channel casting frame? Eldritch current doesn't cohere inside a divine lattice—not without either a Limbo-tempered null buffer or a sympathetic artifact to stabilize the runes. Especially not with freeform rune-casting. That entire matrix should've collapsed."
Torunn blinked once. Then casually shifted the blade in her hand like she was about to parry something more annoying than dangerous.
"Didn't need a buffer," she said plainly. "I tripled the weave density, phase-braided the radiant current across three split channels, then diffused the field into discrete rune paths."
Strange stared at her. "...You phase-split raw Kamar-Taj energy?"
"Only for the initial conduit. I wrapped the strands in a multi-threaded rune band. Used inverse resonance tuning from an old Loki scroll I found in the embassy archives—he used it to stabilize bifrost misfires."
"You're telling me," he said slowly, "you reverse-engineered Loki's interdimensional travel failsafes… and rewrote the binding script to house solar-charged eldritch flow?"
Torunn shrugged like she'd just rearranged furniture. "I mean, I subbed in photonic charge logic instead of dimensional inertia, but yeah. Same concept."
Strange opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
Torunn smiled, and gently tapped the flat of the blade with a knuckle. The runes flared in sequence, heatless but brilliant—golden-orange radiance casting long shadows across the room like sunrise filtered through divine circuitry.
"And I anchored it," she added, "to a blood-enchanted silver filament—same kind they use in Blade's anti-necrotic gear. Mimics focused UV output with directional burn. Very demon-unfriendly."
Strange blinked. "So you weaponized an anime blade by binding an elemental solar aura to a light-channeling combat ward, encoded it in dwarven-wrought uru, and framed the whole thing inside a hybridized magical structure that shouldn't logically exist?"
Torunn tilted her head. "You say that like it's a bad thing."
Strange turned away, muttering as he paced. "Centuries of mystical development—and she's out here using Japanese cartoon as a proof-of-concept for metaphysical engineering."
"It's called anime," Torunn retorted
Wong, who'd been watching from the corner with a cup of steaming tea, didn't even look up. "Honestly, at this point? I'm just impressed she hasn't accidentally opened a gateway to the Darkhold Annex."
Strange stared like she'd just told him she solved interdimensional calculus using Naruto filler arcs.
And the wildest part?
Torunn wasn't even trying to flex.
She genuinely just thought it looked cool
And now?
Torunn's working on Rengoku's sword next.
Because as she says, "If demons ever take over Hoboken, I want to look stylish sending them back."
And really… can't argue with that.
And yet she's here, in a gown, sipping champagne, challenging me to Tekken like she's just another bored party guest.
I shake my head.
Because Torunn is a walking contradiction.
And maybe that's why she's still one of the few people I trust in any room, on any planet.
She's also one of the reasons I came back to Earth.
Or at least, she made staying feel less like settling.
But the actual reason?
That's Morgan Stark.
And that, well…
That's a whole other storm.
The whisper didn't start when she returned to Earth.
It started long before that—when she was still young, maybe ten or eleven, during her early visits with Thor while New Asgard was still settled on Earth.
Everyone knew who she was.
The daughter of Thor.
The lightning girl in the royal blue cloak. The one who stared down cameras, dignitaries, and war reporters with the same Asgardian fire as her father—but twice the composure.
And then she disappeared.
When Thor took his people off-planet, so did she.
Out of sight. Out of reach.
Until now.
So when she returned four years ago, taller, broader, eyes brighter, the world remembered.
The whisper became a roar.
A video of her lifting a food truck with one arm to save a trapped cook went viral overnight. The image—her in a gown, barefoot, soot on her face, arms flexed—ignited something.
Within a week, she wasn't just trending.
She was a movement.
She became a symbol.
For strength.
For unapologetic femininity.
For all the women who were told they were too much—too loud, too strong, too sharp-edged to be accepted as beautiful.
The ones who lift.
The ones who lead.
The ones who don't shrink themselves for the room.
Torunn didn't have to make a speech.
She just showed up.
And people noticed.
I see it again tonight.
A woman—early 30s, all sharp lines and quiet nerves—approaches her like someone walking up to a shrine. Her voice shakes as she speaks, but I catch a few words.
"Thank you. For just… being out there."
Torunn listens, quiet and focused.
"It means something," the woman says, tears brimming. "To see a woman like you at the front. Not apologizing for your strength. Just… being. I didn't know we were allowed to look like this and still be leaders."
Torunn doesn't interrupt.
She just nods, gently hands the woman a napkin, and says something quiet.
The woman laughs. A real one.
They talk for another five minutes.
And just like that, Torunn makes this the most important night of someone else's life.
The rest of the room?
They're watching too.
A circle of guys near the bar are doing a spectacularly bad job pretending not to stare.
They're the type that showed up to this kind of summit as plus-ones or mid-level sponsors, pretending they're used to being in rooms with gods and galaxy-savers.
They're not.
One of them leans in, trying to whisper, but failing miserably.
"Yo... is that her?"
Another nods, glass halfway to his lips.
"Thunderbabe. The Asgardian sword queen. Look at her—she's built like an action figure but with hips."
A third, eyes wide and half-delirious, whispers reverently:
"Nah, bro. That's Muscle Mommy Supreme. Have some damn respect."
The first guy exhales, hand over his chest like he's trying to steady his heart rate.
"I'd let her break me. Spine first. No hesitation."
Then the fourth chimes in—clearly the one who should've stopped at his second drink.
"Man... I'd bust the fattest nut in them thick-ass Asgardian cheeks."
Everyone freezes for a split second.
Even the drunkest one in the group knows that was too much.
Then the fifth guy elbows him hard in the ribs, grimacing like he's embarrassed to exist.
"Dude. What the hell is wrong with you?"
And just when I think it's over, the second guy nods solemnly and says:
"I'd trade my left nut for just one night with her."
I blink.
Then exhale through my nose and look away before they catch me listening.
She doesn't hear any of it.
Or if she does, she doesn't react.
Because Torunn doesn't live for attention.
She doesn't seek approval.
She exists loudly, in full god-tier glory, and leaves the world to figure out how to handle it.
She doesn't ask for space.
She is the space.
And the rest of the world just adapts around her.