Rogue had finished the third sentence of the explanation when Ethan's answer was already clear.
He listened to the same details they'd heard all week in Coulson's updates: only bad people were targeted. It couldn't be hurt by normal weapons. It moved with purpose, and there was intelligence behind it. As usual, since nothing pointed to real danger, he wasn't anxious. He didn't see this as a threat that needed a plan or special preparation. It was just something to check out.
"Let's go find it," Ethan said, decisive.
Everyone came along. He extended his biokinetic aura to cover the group, and they took off—not at his top speed, but fast enough to cross a hundred miles in the time it takes most people to gather their thoughts. Below them, the suburbs of Westchester gave way to Connecticut's thick forests, with trees growing closer together and fewer signs of people.
He set them down in a clearing where the most recent sighting coordinates pointed.
The forest fell silent as soon as they arrived. Not because nothing was there, but because everything else had noticed them and decided to stay hidden. Ethan used his x-ray vision to scan the trees in the direction the sightings had been heading.
He found the hellhound in a few seconds.
It wasn't hiding. It moved through a patch of birch trees about two hundred meters to the north, walking with the steady, purposeful stride of something that knew exactly where it was going. It noticed his gaze but didn't change direction.
"That way," Ethan directed, striding forward.
---
They came around the birch and found him stopped.
He had already stopped before they came out of the trees. He'd noticed them, adjusted, and stood in the center of the clearing, alert but not hiding or getting ready to attack. He simply watched them approach.
He was big—large in a way that felt real. Not legendary, but bigger than any wolfhound on Earth. He was built solid and practical, with nothing extra. His coat was dark. His eyes were amber and steady. He watched Ethan with a focus that seemed meant just for him.
The group stopped.
The moment stretched for several seconds—six people and a hellhound in a clearing, all quietly taking each other in. Raven noticed, correctly, that he didn't see them as threats.
Then Thori spoke.
"Does anyone here know me?" Thori asked, voice steady.
His voice was clear and direct. The sentence was short and simple, leaving no room for misunderstanding.
Madelyne made a sound.
Rogue muttered something under her breath; her tone and body language showed she was more impressed than alarmed.
Jean made the mental shift that comes when a telepath meets a nonhuman mind. She noticed its shape, how it was organized, and how it processed and communicated. It was familiar in structure, even if the details were different.
"No," Ethan replied, recovering first as usual. "We haven't met before."
Thori took this in. He didn't look disappointed—just thoughtful, as if he was making a mental note. "You seem like I should know you," he said. "I don't know why."
He wasn't pretending. Ethan could tell by his heartbeat—there was no sign of a lie. Thori was genuinely puzzled by what he'd said and was just sharing his confusion, not trying to manipulate anyone.
Ethan looked at the group. Then back at Thori.
"What are you doing here? In this part of the world?" Ethan asked directly.
Thori sat down—not to show comfort or aggression, but simply because he'd decided this was a conversation, and it was easier to talk while sitting.
"I am looking for a family," he said. "A witch told me my family was on Midgard. I came to find them."
Ethan heard the word Midgard and turned to Jean, Raven, Rogue, Ilyana, Madelyne, and me with the quick translation ready.
"Midgard is what the Asgardians call Earth," he said. "He is not from here."
Jean became more alert. Raven was already thinking things through. Ilyana watched Thori closely, sizing him up the way she did with anything she hadn't made up her mind about yet.
Ethan looked back at Thori. "Have you found your family?"
Thori's ears shifted a little down—not a full dog's ear rotation, but close enough to send the same message.
"Not yet," he said.
---
The clearing held the quiet of a forest that was willing to let this continue.
Ethan thought for about two seconds. It wasn't a hard decision: this was a smart, direct creature from Asgard or somewhere similar, with a clear moral code and no innocent victims after a week of activity. Thori had said a witch sent him to find his family on Midgard.
He made the offer the way he always did when he was serious.
"Would you like to come home with us? Live there. Permanently, if it works out," Ethan offered.
Thori's amber eyes were steady on his face.
"The only rule I need you to follow," Ethan continued, "is that innocent people are off limits. If someone hasn't done anything truly wrong, you leave them alone."
Thori's answer was immediate and carried no ceremony. "I do not hurt innocent people," he said. "I never have. Bad ones are the only ones I want to murder anyway."
He said it as a simple fact, not as if he was agreeing to a new rule. For Thori, telling the difference between people who deserved his attention and those who didn't was easy. That's how he'd always lived.
Ethan nodded.
He turned to Jean. "Can you take everyone back? I want to walk with him."
Jean glanced at the hellhound, then at Ethan for confirmation. She telekinetically lifted Raven, Rogue, Ilyana, and Madelyne, making sure everyone was secure before departing.
Ethan and Thori watched them go.
Then they started walking.
---
They walked through the forest at a normal pace. Ethan didn't do this much anymore. He chose it on purpose—they could have reached the house in seconds, but he wanted to walk.
Thori trotted beside him, moving in a way that looked like he could keep it up forever.
"You are not from here," Thori said after a few minutes of walking.
"No," Ethan said.
Thori thought about this. He didn't ask where Ethan was from—just seemed satisfied with the answer.
"Where are you from?" Ethan asked in return, curious.
"Asgard," Thori said. "Before that, Hell. I've been to a lot of places." He paused briefly. "Heimdall let me come here. He told me not to bite anyone who didn't deserve it."
"Good advice," Ethan acknowledged.
"I told him I already knew that," Thori replied.
They passed through a part of the forest where the trees thinned, and late-afternoon sunlight shone in. Thori's coat caught the light in a way no normal dog's would—the darkness seemed to have depth, not just color.
"Tell me about the home," Thori requested.
Ethan told him about the girls—how many people there were and who they were. He shared just the basics for a walk. He mentioned Raven's greenhouse, Indominus, the size of the house, and its grounds. He also explained how the household had grown and settled into its own routines over the past few months.
Thori listened.
"There is a young dinosaur," Thori observed when Ethan finished.
"In the greenhouse," Ethan confirmed.
"Is it dangerous?"
"It's young and still figuring out its situation," Ethan replied.
Thori accepted this calmly, like someone who'd seen worse than a young T. rex. "Okay," he said.
"About what you've been doing in the forests," Ethan said, voice free of accusation. He already understood the situation. "I'm not going to ask you to stop. The people you've gone after deserved it. I just need you to keep it that way—only go after truly bad people. Not people who annoy you or get in your way. Only the genuinely bad."
Thori was quiet for a moment.
"I'm happy when bad people are around," he said. "It means I have something to do. I don't like seeing good people get hurt." He spoke so plainly that the difference was obvious to him. "I've never hurt a good person."
"Then we are aligned," Ethan said.
They walked in a comfortable silence, both having said what needed to be said.
"You are stronger than anything I have met on Midgard," Thori told Ethan.
Ethan looked at him.
"I can tell," Thori continued. "Very strong things have a certain feel. You have more of it than anything I've met." He paused. "It doesn't bother me. I just noticed."
"What do you do with things that are stronger than you?" Ethan asked, genuinely curious.
Thori considered this.
"Depends on if they are bad or not," Thori answered.
---
Jean set them down in the grounds of the house, and they went inside.
Raven went to the kitchen, her favorite place to think in the afternoon, and put the kettle on. Jean went to the window and reached out with her mind toward where they'd come from—she could sense Ethan, and next to him, the hellhound's distinct nonhuman presence. Both were fine and heading home.
Rogue flopped onto the main room sofa and stared at the ceiling, looking like someone who was happily processing good news.
"We have a hellhound," Rogue announced.
"We are getting a hellhound," Ilyana said from the doorway.
"He said yes basically," Rogue said. "So we are having a hellhound."
Ilyana thought about the difference and seemed to decide it wasn't worth arguing over.
Madelyne came into the kitchen, sat at the table, and was quiet for a moment. Then she said, to Raven, with the directness she was developing: "What does the household look like to a normal person?"
Raven set two cups on the counter. "Four women, one man, a teenage girl, one of the women with the same face as me, a baby T. rex, and now an Asgardian something hellhound," she said. "There is no normal person framework for that."
Madelyne thought about this. "Do you mind that?"
Raven brought the cups to the table.
"No," Raven replied, sitting down.
Jean left the window and joined the others. Rogue heard her and came in from the main room, following her usual instinct for finding the group.
Ilyana found her chair.
Everyone gathered around the table, in their usual spots, in a house that belonged to them. They'd just added an Asgardian hellhound to a home that already included someone made from another's genetics and a young dinosaur named Indominus.
Rogue looked at the table and then at all of them.
"Our household is the best," she said, as directly as she always did.
Nobody disagreed.
---
Ethan and Thori were approximately one mile from the house when Ethan stopped walking.
He looked at the open ground ahead—the way was clear between them and the house, a straight line with no real obstacles. The building stood in the distance, its roof and windows catching the evening light.
"That is where we are going," he said, pointing.
Thori looked.
"I could get there in a fraction of a second," Ethan said. "So I will give you an actual chance."
Thori looked at him.
"Do you want to race?" Ethan asked.
Thori's ears came fully up.
"Yes," he said.
They lined up at roughly the same position. Ethan counted down from three. At one, they went.