The portal closed, and the Westchester grounds received them.
The transition happened instantly: one moment, they were in a mountain cave; the next, they stood on a summer lawn, with the warm June air replacing Kun-Lun's cold. The guardian lion was the last to step through before Ilyana. She studied her new surroundings with the careful focus of a young animal figuring out where she had landed. She slowly turned in a full circle, taking in the house, the greenhouse wing, the treeline, the grounds, and the sky. Then she returned to Raven's side, where she felt most comfortable, and stayed there.
Indominus was at the far end of the property.
He faced the perimeter road, standing alert like a young apex predator who had sensed something unfamiliar and was following his instincts to protect his territory. His head was low, and his focus was straight ahead. He had not moved since Jean noticed his reaction, and he stayed still because the unfamiliar presences remained.
Ethan read the situation in a single glance.
"Stay here," he told the group, and walked to the perimeter.
---
Three figures at the property's edge.
Thor stood out immediately. His physical presence was not an act or a show, but simply the natural state of someone whose entire being was built differently from anyone native to Earth. He held his hammer at his side with the ease of someone who had carried it for so long it felt like part of him. His expression was open and interested as he looked over the property, calmly taking in his surroundings.
Loki stood to his left. He was calm and watchful, quietly studying the situation with the focused attention he always used in new places, cataloguing and sorting everything he noticed. His face revealed almost nothing of his thoughts, which was exactly how he wanted it.
Amora stood a little behind the others. The locating spell had faded from her fingertips, its job done. She studied the house, the grounds, and the greenhouse with the focus of someone who had expected to find a hellhound but instead found a much more complicated situation.
Ethan walked out to them and stopped.
He was not alarmed. He understood what he was seeing: Asgardians, brought here for some reason. The spell had worked, Loki had found his hellhound, and the universe had delivered all of this to his front lawn in its usual, unsubtle way.
"You're on private property," he said, direct and without edge. "What brings you here?"
Loki took this as his chance to explain: Thori, the search, the Bifrost, and Amora's spell pulling them north by northeast across much of the eastern United States. He was halfway through his explanation when Thor stopped paying attention.
Thor was looking at Ethan.
Thor was not looking at Ethan's face or posture, but at everything about him, the way someone with centuries of experience reading combat potential would. The solar energy filling Ethan's cells was clear to someone with Thor's senses. The results of multiple full sun-immersion sessions, weeks of smaller sun work, and months of steady buildup were all visible in how Ethan stood, how the air around him felt, and in every way Thor could perceive beyond just sight.
Thor's face changed.
Thor's interested look turned into clear excitement. He raised Mjolnir, not as a threat, but with the obvious intent of someone who had finally found what he was looking for and wanted to show it.
"Finally! A worthy opponent!"
Ethan looked at him.
He paused for a moment, just long enough to quickly assess the situation, and then spoke, because it was true and there was only one right answer:
"Our battle will be legendary."
Nice meme, Ethan thought, privately and sincerely.
The duel began.
---
Thor hit first.
The strike was fast and real, not a gentle test but the full force of someone who had decided his opponent deserved it and would not be insulted by anything less. Mjolnir swung in at shoulder height with the kind of speed that made Thor truly formidable.
Ethan caught it.
He caught it with one hand, not two, his fingers closing around the hammer's head with the confidence that came from two weeks of real solar immersion. The force of the impact travelled up his arm and into the ground, pressing the grass beneath him. He held firm.
Thor's face did the thing it did when he was delighted.
Thor pulled the hammer back, changed direction, and attacked from below. Ethan let go and stepped aside, then used the opening in Thor's recovery to land a counter that hit Thor's shoulder hard enough to send him back three meters and leave two furrows in the lawn from his boots.
Thor recovered immediately and came back faster.
The exchange that followed occupied approximately forty seconds and left a crater where the centre of the property's main lawn had been.
They moved so quickly that it was hard to follow them from any one spot. They weren't invisible, but they were fast enough that people only saw the results of their movements, not the movements themselves. Shockwaves from their clashes spread out, causing effects even far away: two trees at the north edge of the grounds fell without being hit directly. The greenhouse windows on the nearest side needed protection, so Raven put up a telekinetic shield, but Jean was even faster, already aware of the danger before the pressure reached them.
Thor was having the best time he had had in recent memory.
This showed in every part of his fighting. He was not grim or calculating, and he did not look like someone dealing with a threat. He was truly happy. He laughed when Ethan blocked a strike that should have been impossible to block. He said something in Old Norse with a tone that was clearly a high compliment. He used all of Mjolnir's abilities: lightning that made dodging difficult, and the hammer's return path as a second attack from an unexpected angle.
Ethan did not use heat vision or frost breath. This was a duel, not an elimination, and those capabilities were not appropriate for the moment. He fought with physical strength and speed, which, after everything the sun had given him across two full immersion sessions, was fully, genuinely dominant in this fight.
---
Loki watched from the property's edge with the sharp interest of someone who had just discovered that the afternoon was considerably more interesting than he had anticipated.
He was not worried about Thor. Thor had been in worse situations and always made it out, sometimes in ways that made no sense, but always unharmed. Besides, his opponent was clearly not trying to kill him. The fight felt like a true duel, with two skilled fighters testing each other's limits, something Loki had watched Thor do for centuries.
What he was actually interested in was everything else.
He took in the house, the property, and the people watching from the grounds: women, one with the distinctive blue skin of a shapeshifter he knew by reputation, another with red hair who might be a telepath judging by her calmness, and a young woman who looked like she had faced tough challenges and survived. There was a hellhound he recognised from much closer than he expected, a young T. rex at the far end of the grounds, and now, coming from near the greenhouse, a young guardian lion he did not know but whose presence raised several questions.
Loki watched the fight and catalogued the household simultaneously.
This was a practised skill. He had been doing it since childhood.
---
Amora was not watching the fight.
She was watching Ethan.
She had come here for Thor, but Thor was occupied, and normally this would have been a problem, since proximity to Thor was the entire operational value of this trip, and fighting Ethan had temporarily removed him from her orbit. Normally, she would have filed this as an interruption and waited for the fight to end before returning to the primary agenda.
She was not doing that.
What she sensed in Ethan, using the detailed way Asgardian sorcerers read power, was remarkable. Solar energy filled every cell at a level she had never seen before. It was not exactly the power of a god, nor the lightning-born strength of Thor, but something just as powerful, working through a different method. It was built up, layered, and she suspected it was still growing, still becoming whatever it was meant to be.
She had not encountered this in a mortal.
She had not encountered this in most non-mortals.
She quietly decided, without acting on it, that her reasons for staying had just become more interesting than when she first arrived. Thor was still her main focus, and that had not changed. But she was in no rush to leave. She had not planned to hurry when she joined this trip, and she still did not plan to, especially now that her reasons had grown to include a new factor.
Amora always collected variables.
---
The duel reached a natural pause.
They had been fighting for about eight minutes, and the property showed it: a crater, fallen trees, and sections of lawn that were compressed and torn up where the fight had been most intense. Both of them were still standing and ready.
Thor was breathing harder than his usual resting state, which for Thor was the equivalent of a significant exertion. Ethan was not.
Thor noticed this and focused on it, as someone would when they find a fact more interesting than expected. Then his face broke into a wide, simple smile, the kind of happiness that comes from discovering the world has more of what you love than you thought.
"This was excellent," Thor announced. He was not performing this. He meant it completely.
Ethan looked at the crater in his lawn.
"It was," he said. "We may need to revisit the venue for the next one."
Thor looked at the crater. He appeared to notice it for the first time.
"I will help fix it," he said, speaking with the honest sincerity of someone who truly meant the offer, not just saying it to be polite.
---
Thori had watched the duel from the group's spot on the grounds, showing the focused interest of a creature who knew a good fight when he saw one. When the fight paused, and the Asgardians became approachable, and the mood shifted from battle to aftermath, he moved.
He walked toward Loki at his own pace. He did not rush or put on a show. He simply went where he wanted to go, heading for the person who had named him, crossing the Westchester lawn in the late afternoon sun.
Loki looked at him.
Loki had expected this trip to be simple: find the hellhound somewhere on Midgard, retrieve him, and return. Instead, he found the hellhound he had named walking toward him across a surprisingly pleasant property, while the aftermath of a duel played out around them and the June afternoon continued on its own.
Loki's face did something he did not attempt to control.
He was glad. The gladness moved through his expression without the management he usually applied to visible emotional responses, because the management cost more than it was worth right now, and he had decided not to pay it.
Thori reached him and sat. He looked up at Loki with the direct, uncomplicated attention of a creature that had something to say and was going to say it.
"I found my family," Thori said.
He said it without drama. It was a fact he wanted Loki to have.
Loki was quiet for a moment.
"I can see that," he said.
Loki's tone was genuinely warm, with a layer of composure that was thinner than usual. You could hear it in his voice and in the brevity of his words.
Thor stood next to his brother and listened to the whole exchange. He looked at Thori, then at Loki, and then at the group gathered on the damaged grounds of this unusual house—a place that now included a hellhound, a T. rex, a guardian lion, and more remarkable people than anyone would expect to find in one home.
Thor was straightforwardly pleased about all of it.
---
The guardian lion had already explored the house and was now carefully checking out the grounds, moving with the methodical curiosity of a young animal learning the boundaries of her new territory.
She was curious about everything: the greenhouse and its scents, the northern treeline and its inhabitants, and the area that Indominus had claimed after months of being there. She explored confidently, moving through the property like a creature who had decided this place was hers and was learning all about it.
She reached the far end of the grounds where Indominus had settled after the duel's alarm had been resolved.
He watched her approach with the focused animal attention he brought to new variables — reading her, assessing, making the determination that all animals made when encountering a new member of their environment. She stopped at the appropriate distance. She looked at him. He looked at her.
She was smaller than him, since he had been growing quickly ever since the Savage Land, as young T. rexes do. Still, the Shou-Lao blessing was strong in her, and even without words or reasoning, animals could sense it. There was something about her that felt heavier and more solid than her size suggested.
Indominus decided, over approximately thirty seconds, that she was acceptable.
The lion made up her mind even faster. She moved closer and settled near him, not touching or asking for anything, just sharing the space with the easy comfort of an animal who had found someone worth being near. Indominus accepted her presence without hesitation.
Their relationship was different from Thori and Indominus. It was more like equals than siblings, two young creatures sharing the same space and figuring out what that meant. Neither of them needed words. The chapter simply notes this and moves on.
---
By late afternoon, the house's grounds had taken on a new character they did not have that morning.
There were now two craters where the lawn used to be, and two empty spots in the northern treeline where trees once stood. Mjolnir rested on the ground near one crater, left there by Thor while he talked with Ethan about fixing the damage—a conversation that could now happen on this property.
Three Asgardians were now blending into the household in different ways. Thori sat beside Loki, and the guardian lion was near Indominus. The girls were talking with Thor—Rogue asked him something directly, and he answered just as directly. Their conversation felt natural, as if both were incapable of anything but complete honesty. Amora stood near Jean, and the two were beginning a conversation marked by the careful assessment of two highly skilled people sizing each other up.
Loki was watching all of it.
Ethan stood near the edge of the larger crater and looked at the full scope of what the afternoon had produced.
He looked at the crater, then at Thori sitting beside Loki, then at the guardian lion near Indominus, then at his three girlfriends engaged in first contact with the Asgardian delegation, then at the house behind all of them—the house that was actually, genuinely, fully theirs.
He thought it would mean no more difficulties, a break from everything that demanded so much of him. Instead, he found that the challenges remained, but so did everything that made them worthwhile. The extraordinary and the ordinary now existed together: craters in the lawn, a guardian lion exploring her new home, and Loki truly happy to see a hellhound on a summer afternoon in Westchester.
He decided this was better than what he had originally expected.
He walked toward the crater, ready to figure out how to fix it. Thor had offered to help, and whether that help proved useful or just caused more chaos, the rest of the afternoon was sure to be interesting.