Beside the blond man, a young woman knelt on the ground, panic written all over her face as she made a frantic call.
She was beautiful—that was the first thing they all noticed. Long, flax-colored hair, a jacket thrown over a short T-shirt, the shirt pulled a little tight so that it made plain she was rather generously built up top. She stood about Lorna's height and ran a touch on the thin side.
The woman went wary at the sight of them, but seeing that it was three girls, she let her guard down a little.
Every member of the future-famous Girl Detective Squad had a bit of guile in her and knew better than to blurt things out. The approachable Mary Jane put on the act of a passerby looking to lend a hand, and won the woman's first measure of trust.
"Oh, God—hello. My name's Jane Foster. Could you help me carry him out? My car's just at the corner. He's too heavy, I can't lift him on my own." The young woman hurriedly hung up the phone and pointed at the blond man on the ground, a hopeful note in her voice.
Curiosity had brought them this far, and they wanted a closer look at what made this man so special, so they agreed at once.
Had Thor still carried his divine power—had he still been an Asgardian—not all of them together could have budged him; that triple density was no joke. But the Thor of the moment had been stripped of everything. He was just an ordinary man.
Apart from Mary Jane, every member of the Girl Detective Squad was a touch stronger than the average kid their age, and Lorna, mutant that she was—however faint the boost her mutation gave her body—was the powerhouse of this little crew!
"He stinks!" The girls clapped their hands over their noses in unison. Between all the liquor Thor had put away and the beating he'd taken, the smell was truly something.
"Peter, you take the front!" Lorna, playing the boss, assigned Peter to the head end—the most eye-wateringly pungent post of all.
The three girls and Jane Foster quickly divided the load, some at the arms, some at the legs.
Even without any extra buffs, Thor was a strapping Nordic brute, and five people couldn't lift him. All they could do was haul him along like a dead dog, dragging him toward the street.
After a good deal of effort, just as they were about to load the blood-streaked blond into the car, they ran into a moderate bit of trouble—neither large nor small.
Six or seven men in tattered clothes, looking for all the world like a pack of vagrants, blocked their way—every face full of menace, clubs in hand.
"What do you want!" Jane Foster, counting herself the only adult present, bravely planted herself in front of the children, her slight frame looking painfully flimsy.
Peter Parker fell in right behind her, shielding the girls. There was a reason Cable had called Spider-Man the greatest superhero in human history—greater than Captain America, greater than Iron Man. Peter had no powers at all just now, but he had the heart of a hero all the same.
Having picked up a few tricks from the company she kept, Lorna—long since used to playing the harmless fool to catch her prey off guard—hung back at the very rear, the power in her palm stirring slowly to life. To her, these were nothing more than a few ordinary men.
The vagrants leered, sizing up the women and children and trading ugly grins among themselves. Their leader, his full beard filthy and matted, reined his companions in—this was still uptown, and if they pulled off something big, none of them would get away clean.
"Hand over all your money! Now!" He laid the terms out plainly for both sides: it's only about cash, so don't anybody get clever.
Hearing it was only money, Jane Foster let out a quiet breath of relief. Plenty of people in America had been robbed at some point; the gulf between the poor and everyone better off was widening by the day, and killing a man over a hamburger was nothing new. She was prepared to part with some cash to make the trouble go away.
Then she took stock of her own situation and sank right back into gloom. She'd already been robbed once tonight—the blond man lying in his own blood had gone down fighting for her during that very robbery—and now she had nothing left to hand these vagrants.
"My money's already been taken, my bag too. I don't have anything on me now..." She tried to reason with the big man.
The vagrant gave her plain clothes a once-over, took in the blood smeared on her sleeves and the bloodied man laid out behind the group, and silently cursed his sloppy peers. Robbing people was one thing—but why beat them half to death? If this guy went and died in a bit, who was going to take the fall for it?
He wanted to back off, but his underlings wouldn't have it, clamoring that they'd come for money. Gritting his teeth, he jerked a thumb at the half-grown kids behind her. "You've got nothing—what about them? Hand over whatever they're carrying."
The way he saw it, even a few dozen dollars would mean they hadn't come for nothing.
Jane Foster, every bit worthy of being Thor's girlfriend, had a sense of justice that ran over the brim, and she refused the man flatly.
The vagrants drew their circle tighter. They meant to rob the lot of them out in the open.
Unlike the rest of the tense little group, Lorna was perfectly composed. She had her power in hand, sure, but she also had a handgun tucked at the small of her back—and between the two, she found the gun rather more intimidating.
She shoved Jane Foster aside and stepped out in front of the vagrants like the boss of the whole affair, whipping out the handgun faster than the eye could follow and leveling it at the big man.
He froze on the spot. Squinting through the dim glow of the streetlight, he couldn't tell whether the thing was real or a fake.
"Go on—want to try me?" Lorna tipped her chin up, her eyes nothing but challenge. Compared to combat training, she far preferred playing with guns, especially since the day Daisy had offhandedly mentioned curving a bullet, bending its path through the air—it had been like a door swinging open inside her.
For an ordinary person, a curving bullet was so much nonsense. For someone who controlled magnetism, it was no trouble whatsoever!
A swing of the arm, and the bullet would arc out along a beautiful curve, dashing and fierce all at once. Lorna was absolutely in love with this way of fighting.
Right now she was half-hoping they'd rush her, just to give her a chance to show off her marksmanship in front of her friends.
The big man swore under his breath—the country's gun laws were far too slack; a half-grown kid like this had no permit, guaranteed! But the situation left him no room to simply turn and bolt; he couldn't afford to lose that much face. Tightening his grip on the iron club, he braced to charge.
His left foot had barely taken its first step when he heard the click of high heels striking the pavement somewhere behind him.
An uncommonly soft, sweet voice rose at his back. "It's awfully late for you kids to still be out. Won't your families worry?"
Wine-red hair, a spaghetti-strap gown with a high slit—Black Widow came strolling over on her high heels.
There was something deeply languid about her, like a Persian cat, and the smell of liquor clung to her.
Black Widow was in low spirits today. Her calm, still inner world had been shattered by Daisy's talk of heroes; from start to finish, she had never once thought of herself as any kind of hero.
You had to be joking. A woman who'd killed without number, who'd done every wicked thing there was to do—she, a hero?
But that brief brush with Mjolnir earlier in the day had stirred something deep in her. She'd left S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters without a word to anyone, and it was because the hammer had recognized something in her. The artifact had judged her to possess a nobility beyond ordinary mortals—and yet, in the end, it had let her go, because her own conviction wasn't steady enough.