A hammer had fallen from the sky two days earlier, landing in the wilderness outside a small town in New Mexico.
The short-handled iron hammer possessed many unusual properties, but its most remarkable trait was simple: no one could lift it.
As soon as the locals discovered it, word spread rapidly. People came in an endless stream to test themselves against it.
From manpower to livestock, from pickup trucks to construction cranes, challengers formed a long line across the desert. Yet in the end, not a single one succeeded in moving it.
One particularly enthusiastic Irish immigrant even insisted that it was a hammer version of the Sword in the Stone—that whoever could lift it would become the next King Arthur.
To Coulson, however, such stories were little more than amusing folklore. This hammer was no gift from a Lady of the Lake. It was a genuine extraterrestrial artifact.
After clearing away the dozens of hot dog stands, taco trucks, barbecue carts, beer vendors, popcorn sellers, and curious spectators that had gathered around it, Coulson grabbed a taco to go and erected a security perimeter around the object.
"Are New Mexico tacos any good?"
"They're not bad. I'll bring you one next time—wait... stop interrupting me, Tony! I'm getting to the important part!"
This was where things started getting strange.
On the very night the perimeter was established, a towering and highly skilled man broke into the restricted area. He incapacitated more than a dozen agents before being subdued and detained, all while insisting that he was 'Thor, God of Thunder.'
And that impossible-to-lift hammer, according to him, was Mjolnir—the legendary weapon of Thor from Norse mythology.
"What's so strange about that?" Tony asked. "Sounds like some lunatic who's read too many Norse myths."
As he listened to the story, Tony didn't dare move an inch. The Amazo Core was currently hidden beneath him in the couch cushion, and the last thing he wanted was for anyone else to learn of its existence.
His early Iron Man suits had already driven the North American arms market into a frenzy. If news of this thing leaked out, the consequences would be far worse.
With that in mind, all he wanted was to get Coulson out of the house as quickly as possible.
"My time is extremely valuable, Calson. If there's nothing else—"
"No, Tony. A lunatic wouldn't be able to accurately name the person he's looking for as Kal-El, a.k.a. Superman, or Joey."
Coulson had no intention of leaving without answers.
"You are going to tell me everything you know. This 'Superman' and this 'Thor'—where do they come from? And more importantly, are they a threat to us?"
---
"So let me get this straight. You used Mjolnir to punch a hole through time and accidentally pulled a future version of me into your era, where he fought alongside you for a while?"
"Exactly. Though 'a while' might be underselling it. We fought together against the forces of darkness for about a thousand years."
The reason this black-eyed Thor knew Joey while Joey had no idea who he was was because their timelines formed a loop moving in opposite directions.
Thor's past experiences belonged to Joey's future.
And Thor's present was part of Joey's past.
"So you're telling me you dragged a future version of me across time and forced him to work for free for a thousand years?!"
"Yes! See? I knew you'd understand immediately! At the time, you and Dian—Shit!"
Relying on centuries of combat experience and razor-sharp instincts, Thor tilted his head aside just in time to avoid Joey's sudden right hook.
"Ha! Missed me—AAUGH!"
Now he had two black eyes.
Thor had come to Midgard after being exiled by Odin. Stripped of his divine power, all the combat experience in the world meant very little against Kryptonian haymakers.
Retracting both fists, Joey looked thoroughly exasperated.
He had emphasized so heavily that it practically echoed through the room. How was this idiot still not getting it?
According to Thor's story, he had fought alongside Superman—that is, Joey himself—more than a thousand years in the future, together with Diana.
The eldest son of Odin, crown prince of Asgard, had to be several thousand years old at minimum.
How was he still this hopelessly dense?
No wonder Odin had eventually thrown him out of Asgard and dumped him on Earth like a stray dog before collapsing from exhaustion himself.
Who wouldn't be depressed with an heir like that?
Joey was just about to refuse whatever favor Thor had come to ask when he suddenly felt a chill run through his body.
Like Spider-Sense, his superhuman senses warned him of danger.
Starfire was standing behind him.
She stepped closer and wrapped her arms around his waist from behind. The steadily tightening grip immediately made cold sweat break out across Joey's forehead.
Resting her chin on his shoulder, she looked curiously at the disheveled man claiming to be the God of Thunder.
"Please continue," she said. "Especially the part about Diana."
Held firmly in Starfire's embrace, Joey stared directly at Thor. Blood vessels bulged in his eyes.
For the first time in a while, he seriously considered using heat vision to eliminate a witness.
"The one from Themyscira—"
Give Thor a case of beer and he could ramble for an entire day. But the sight of Superman's glowing red eyes set off every survival instinct he possessed.
Normally, when Superman looked like that, it meant he was moments away from unleashing absolute carnage.
Thor instinctively shrank back.
"Can I have a drink first?"
Crack.
He pulled a bottle from the minibar and drained it in one go.
Then he opened a second.
A third.
A fourth.
Only after finishing half a dozen bottles and taking a short break did Thor once again find himself under Starfire's interrogation.
"Your story is fascinating," she said with a pleasant smile.
"Now keep going."
If this were his old self, as a typical Asgardian warrior, a few barrels of strong drink would've had him rambling endlessly for an entire day.
But now, Thor decided it was wiser to read Superman's expression.
"There's nothing to it. I've never in my life known any daughter of Zeus, Queen of Themyscira, named Diana."
Seeing Thor's late realization spiral into an epic-grade blunder, Joey felt complete despair and could only immediately try to salvage the situation.
"Sorry, Starfire, don't be mad, I can explain!"
This story starts with a helmet...
"Hold it!"
Thor—already deep into a bottle of vodka from the fridge, half of it gone in one gulp—paused as something clicked through his alcohol-fogged mind.
"Starfire? Starfire!"
He interrupted Joey mid-sentence, suddenly remembering something useful.
"Koriand'r of Tamaran?"
Starfire found everything involving Joey increasingly unpredictable. Like this homeless drunk in front of her.
"You know me?"
"I don't know you personally, but I've heard Joey mention you. First time meeting you—I am Thor, God of Thunder, son of Odin. And as a gesture of greeting, please accept my...uh"
He fumbled around his body for a moment, realized he had nothing presentable in his current homeless state, and instead handed over an empty aluminum can.
"...this! A gift for little Jonathan."
Starfire, holding the crumpled aluminum can, heard yet another unfamiliar name.
"Little Jonathan? Who's that?"
"It's you and Joey's son!"
Thor, now fully drunk, began wildly improvising, turning the empty can into a symbolic IOU.
"With this, my little nephew will one day be able to take anything he wants from the Asgardian vault. Even Gungnir—I can get Loki to steal it for him so he can play with it for a couple of days!"
The Asgardian vault contained countless relics from Odin's conquests across the Nine Realms. And Gungnir was Odin's spear itself.
"Thank you so much, Thor!"
Joey immediately believed it at this point—Thor was absolutely his long-lost best friend. He almost wanted to perform a sworn brother ritual on the spot.
Not because of Asgardian treasures or Gungnir, but because Thor had just cleared up a massive problem for him.
How was this idiot not saying this earlier?!
Upon hearing the name of the nonexistent little Jonathan, Starfire panicked slightly and pressed herself closer to Joey, her burning-hot cheek resting against him.
Her voice trembled.
"You heard that, right? We have… b-but I'm not ready..."
At this moment, she seemed to hold a mix of fear, confusion, and faint joy—but at least the earlier anger was gone.
"Yes, I heard it. We have a child."
Joey gently patted her back, calming her down.
"That's far in the future. We still have time to prepare."
---
"We don't have much time, Tony. Earth is far less peaceful than you think."
Meanwhile, Coulson was still trying patiently to pry information out of Tony, but the billionaire remained completely uncooperative, leaving the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent increasingly frustrated.
S.H.I.E.L.D. had always worked in the shadows, dealing with supernatural threats and protecting humanity from hidden incursions—but most of it happened where ordinary people couldn't see.
And Coulson couldn't just dump everything on Tony all at once. The gap in perspective was too large.
To Tony, a wealthy playboy living in the sunlight, it was hard to understand the scale of what S.H.I.E.L.D. was dealing with.
That was Coulson's belief.
Just then, a message came through his communicator, finally relieving him of the conversation.
He stood up and politely nodded to Tony.
"Sorry for the disturbance these past couple of days. I'll have to take my leave."
With no progress on Tony's side, S.H.I.E.L.D. had another lead anyway.
While trying to track down Superman through Tony, they had also staged a prison break operation on the side.
This gave the so-called Thor—who claimed to know Superman—an escape opportunity, along with a fully fueled car, a road map, a compass, stacks of cash, and more.
It seemed the towering drifter—who skipped all the gear they've prepared, rode a stolen farm cow across North America—had finally found Superman.