After regaining his senses from the initial shock, Thor opened his eyes mid-flight only to meet a woman's intense glare directly in front of his face.
Their eyes met at point-blank range. Thor could feel her breath on his neck, hot with exertion and anger. Her soft hands were pressed firmly against his chest, pushing him downward with incredible force as they rocketed through the air together.
If he wasn't currently being rubbed into the ground like an eraser by this furious woman, Thor thought with a flash of absurd humor, he might have mistaken this intimate position for her expressing romantic interest.
The thought was ridiculous enough that he almost laughed despite the situation.
Although he'd been caught completely off guard by her initial sucker-punch attack—seriously, who shoots someone before even saying hello?—as a seasoned warrior with millennia of combat experience, Thor quickly began to fight back.
Using his body as the focal point, he directly called upon the thunder and lightning that was his divine birthright.
The sky, which had already been dark with storm clouds from the earlier battle, responded instantly to his will.
KRAKOOM!
Massive bolts of lightning fell directly on both of them, each strike carrying enough electrical power to vaporize a building. The concentrated barrage finally interrupted their uncontrolled flight trajectory.
Both combatants tumbled from the sky, hitting the ground hard and rolling across the terrain with dust and debris flying everywhere from the impacts.
And before Thor could fully regain his feet, before he could establish proper defensive footing, he saw the glowing woman already rushing toward him again with single-minded determination.
With her fist raised, crackling with golden cosmic energy, she directly threw another devastating punch aimed at his head.
Thor hurriedly raised Mjolnir to block the strike, the hammer intercepting her fist with a sound like a bomb detonating.
Even through the block, Thor felt incredible power transmitted through the legendary weapon into his arms. The force was enough to send him flying backward into the air once again, his boots leaving deep furrows in the earth before he became airborne.
But this time, he was prepared. Thor quickly planted his feet mid-flight using electromagnetic manipulation and stabilized his figure, hovering in the air with lightning crackling around him.
Captain Marvel didn't stop her relentless assault, chasing Thor once again through the sky, raising her energy-wreathed fist for yet another punishing blow.
BOOM!
A face was hit with incredible speed and devastating force—but this time, it was Captain Marvel's cheek that took the impact, not Thor's.
The moment her punch passed through empty air where Thor had been an instant before, Thor had lightly moved his entire body with practiced combat flow. Using her own momentum against her, he pivoted and directly struck her head with Mjolnir in a textbook counter-attack.
With a loud sonic boom that shattered windows for miles, Carol was driven straight down into the ground. A massive crater directly formed from the impact, earth and rock exploding outward.
And Thor didn't wait politely for her to recover and get up. This wasn't a sparring match with rules and referee—this was combat.
Bringing Stormbreaker down in a powerful arc, calling intense thunder from the heavens above, Thor followed up his advantage with overwhelming divine power.
Lightning thick as tree trunks cascaded down toward the crater, ready to cook anything inside.
But before Thor's axe could physically connect with his downed opponent, before the lightning could finish its descent—
Suddenly another punch hit him directly in his stomach with enough force to fold him in half.
The blow sent Thor flying backward again, tumbling through the air, the wind knocked completely from his lungs.
The dirt in the crater quickly parted away like water, revealing a golden figure rising from the impact zone. Carol Danvers stood, and she was glowing even more brilliantly than before, her energy output visibly increased.
"Energy absorption," Thor muttered to himself, analyzing the situation with a warrior's tactical mind. "Of course."
He'd clearly felt it when the thunder struck her directly—the massive electrical discharge had simply vanished, converted into power that fueled her abilities rather than harming her.
Fortunately, it seemed to be a lower-level version of energy absorption, Thor assessed. Only capable of absorbing energy-based attacks, not physical kinetic force or blunt trauma.
So hand-to-hand combat it would have to be. No more lightning, no more energy projection. Just fists, hammers, and thousands of years of experience.
"Fine," Thor said aloud, cracking his neck. "Let's do this properly."
Captain Marvel's Perspective
Captain Marvel flew toward Thor with renewed confidence, her absorbed energy making her feel stronger and faster than ever.
This guy was very strong, Carol assessed clinically. Definitely one of the strongest beings she'd encountered in her years of cosmic heroism. Maybe even THE strongest, if she was being honest.
But his speed was clearly much slower compared to hers. She could fly circles around him, could dodge his attacks, could strike and retreat before he could respond.
If she didn't get entangled in close-quarters grappling with him, if she maintained distance and used her superior mobility, it should be manageable.
She launched herself forward at maximum velocity, planning to execute a hit-and-run strike—
And in the next second, she was proven wrong. Incredibly, catastrophically wrong.
Her left hand was directly caught mid-punch, Thor's grip closing around her wrist like an iron vice. The pressure was so tight, so overwhelming, that Carol felt her bones might directly shatter from the compression alone.
She immediately raised her right hand to punch him with her free arm, to break his hold through overwhelming force—
But she failed to notice that Thor had already raised his right leg in a perfect counter-position.
CRUNCH!
The distinctive sound of breaking bone echoed across the battlefield.
Carol suddenly felt intense pain shooting up from her leg, unlike anything she'd experienced since gaining her powers. Pain she'd almost forgotten was possible for her to feel.
Her head subconsciously looked down in shock and horror.
Her leg had bent at an unnatural angle, the knee joint completely destroyed, bent backward in a way that human—or Kree-enhanced human—anatomy absolutely should not allow.
She suddenly heard Thor speaking, his voice calm and almost pedagogical in tone: "Don't remove your eyes from your enemy in the middle of battle. First lesson of combat."
BOOM!
Mjolnir was directly smashed into the back of her head with devastating precision, and Carol's face was planted into the ground hard enough to create another crater, her consciousness briefly flickering from the concussive force.
Thor's Analysis
Thor had already become completely familiar with Captain Marvel's fighting style and capabilities through just these brief exchanges.
She was strong, almost comparable to him in raw power output, he assessed professionally. And her speed had already surpassed his by a significant margin—she could move faster than he could reliably track.
According to conventional combat mathematics, this combination should result in a one-sided battle. Thor should be the one getting beaten down, unable to land hits on a faster opponent.
But reality was completely different from those theoretical expectations.
The fundamental difference came down to experience and actual combat training.
Carol had only a few years of fighting experience since gaining her powers. And even that limited experience had degraded significantly because she'd spent years fighting weak opponents—pirates, small military forces, primitive civilizations that couldn't really challenge her.
She'd never needed to develop proper technique because raw power had always been sufficient. She'd never been hurt badly enough to learn from mistakes. She'd gotten sloppy, overconfident.
Meanwhile, there was Thor. With over a thousand years of actual life-or-death combat experience across the Nine Realms. Fighting warriors, monsters, cosmic threats, dimensional entities.
And more importantly, getting absolutely brutalized in training every single day by Hela, who never pulled her punches and seemed to actively enjoy beating her brothers into the ground.
There was simply nothing to compare, Thor thought as he pressed his advantage. This fight was almost like watching a cheater with infinite health and damage codes fighting against a professional esports player.
But suddenly, the cheater's codes got turned off mid-match. And all that remained was skill versus power.
And skill was winning.
Thor didn't give Carol any time to recover. The moment she tried to rise from the crater, he was already there, Stormbreaker descending in a brutal overhead swing.
Carol managed to raise her arms in a block, cosmic energy flaring—
But Thor had already shifted his attack mid-swing, the axe becoming a feint. His actual strike came from his left fist, connecting with her broken ribs with surgical precision.
Carol gasped, more from shock than pain, and tried to fly away to create distance—
Thor's hand shot out and grabbed her ankle, the one attached to her broken leg.
And then he swung her like a hammer, slamming her into the ground on his right, then his left, then overhead in a full circle before releasing her to crash through a nearby cliff face.
This, Thor thought with grim satisfaction, is what happens when you attack an Asgardian warrior without proper introduction or challenge. You get a very thorough education in why that's a terrible idea.
He flew toward where Carol had crashed, ready to continue the lesson.
Meanwhile, Back in Asgard's Dungeons
Loki sat in his cell nursing his many injuries, magical healing working slowly on the broken bones and bruised organs.
Through the transparent barrier that separated cells, he could see Thanos in the adjacent prison, the Mad Titan sitting in defeated silence with his missing arm.
"So," Loki said conversationally, trying to salvage some dignity from the catastrophic failure, "how did your grand plan work out? Seems like it went about as well as mine."
Thanos turned his head slowly to stare at Loki with an expression of pure, concentrated hatred.
"If you speak to me again," Thanos said quietly, each word measured, "I will find a way to kill you despite these cells. I will dedicate my entire existence to making you suffer. Do you understand?"
"...Right. No talking. Got it." Loki turned away, slumping against the wall.
A long silence fell.
"Although," Loki couldn't help adding after a minute, "objectively speaking, my entrance was quite dramatic. The timing, the portal work, the heroic posture—"
"SILENCE!"
"Silencing! Silenced! Not another word!"
Loki mimed zipping his lips.
Five seconds passed.
"But you have to admit, the clapping was a nice touch—"
The sound of Thanos roaring in impotent rage echoed through the dungeons, and even the guards outside winced in sympathy.
It was going to be a very long imprisonment for both of them.