Word Count:3k
Patreon-Beyblade245
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The kitchen was a monument to neglect. No, that was too poetic. It was a fucking shrine to giving up, a temple dedicated to the diety of I Don't Give A Shit Anymore. A single bowl sat in the sink, the water long since evaporated, leaving a crusty ring of what looked like old oatmeal that had dried into cement. The counter was sticky in places, not sticky like someone spilled something and didn't clean it up, but sticky like someone had stopped noticing the concept of clean altogether, like the very idea of wiping things down had become foreign.The whole apartment had that vibe, that specific energy of a person who had just been going through the motions, existing instead of living, breathing instead of being, taking up space without occupying it.
Jake didn't give a shit about any of it. The dust, the neglect, the sad little bowl with its fossilized oatmeal—none of it mattered. He had one thing on his mind, one thought crowding out everything else, and it was beating against his skull like a fist on a door.
He needed to know.
The voice said he was Thor. Fine. Great. Fucking fantastic. But Thor came in flavors, like ice cream, except instead of chocolate and vanilla you had god of thunder and dude with a hammer. Was he the god from the myths, the old Norse one, all wisdom and doom and fucking goats that pulled his chariot? The one who drank mead from skulls and was destined to die fighting a serpent at the end of the world? Or was he the Marvel version, the one who got drunk and started wars and talked like a Shakespearean actor with a hammer fixation, the one who had daddy issues and a magic hammer that judged your worthiness? There was a difference. A big fucking difference. The mythological Thor was older, scarier, more alien. The Marvel Thor was a himbo with god-tier powers who eventually grew a brain. And he needed to know exactly what kind of weapon he was packing before he went hunting Homelander, because showing up to a laser fight with the wrong kind of thunder god powers would be embarrassing. And fatal.
He yanked open a kitchen drawer. It was full of the usual junk: takeout menus, dead batteries, a roll of tape that had seen better decades. And a knife. A decent-sized kitchen knife, the kind you'd use to chop an onion, or, you know, test the validity of a cosmic gift.
He picked it up. It felt light in his hand. Insignificant. He looked at the blade for a long moment, the steel catching the dull light from the window. He wasn't scared. That was the strange part. He should be fucking terrified, right? About to slice his own wrist open? But the power was still there, buzzing under his skin, a constant reassurance. A promise.
"Alright, let's see if the universe is in the mood for jokes today," he muttered.
He didn't hesitate. There was no pause, no deep breath.He just drew the blade across his left wrist in a fast, firm motion, the kind of cut that should have parted skin like butter, should have hit veins and arteries and made a fucking mess all over the sticky kitchen floor.
The knife skittered across his skin like it was made of plastic.Like his skin was made of something that had never heard of the concept of being cut. Didn't even leave a red line. Not a scratch. Not a mark. Not even a fucking tickle. Nothing.
Jake stared at his unblemished wrist. He turned it over, inspecting it from every angle, holding it up to the light like he was examining a piece of art. He ran his thumb over the spot where the blade had touched, feeling nothing but smooth, healthy skin. Then a slow, small smile touched his lips. It wasn't a happy smile.It was the smile of a man who just found out the gun he was holding was loaded.
He tossed the knife onto the kitchen table. It clattered loudly in the silent apartment, spinning once, twice, before settling, the sound echoing off the walls like a question nobody asked. "Cheap piece of shit," he said, though it wasn't the knife's fault. The knife had done its job. The knife had tried. The problem wasn't the knife. The problem was that he wasn't the kind of thing knives worked on anymore.
He grabbed a coat from a hook by the door—a simple black jacket, a little worn, the elbows shiny from use, the pockets stretched from years of carrying things—and shrugged it on. It fit differently now. The shoulders were tighter. The arms strained slightly against his new muscles. He didn't know where he was going, but his feet did. The original owner's memories were like a ghost riding shotgun, whispering directions, pointing at street signs and buildings and saying turn here, go there, this way, that way. The ghost was quiet, mostly, just a presence in the back of his mind, but when it came to navigation, it knew what it was doing.
Out of the apartment, down the stairs (he avoided the elevator instinctively, too many people in one elevator), and onto the street. The city hit him like a wave: noise, fumes, the endless shuffle of people all trying to get somewhere they probably didn't want to be. He walked, head down, following the ghost's directions.
The building was on the edge of a forgotten part of town. An old factory, maybe, or a warehouse that had been converted into cheap offices and then abandoned when the money dried up. The original owner had walked past it every day on his way home from school, a grey, hulking skeleton of a place that no one ever entered. Perfect.
The front door was chained, a thick padlock holding together links of rusted metal that looked like they'd been there since the building was built, but a ground-floor window was smashed in. Someone else had been here before him, looking for a place to drink or fuck or both. Jake climbed through, the glass crunching under his shoes. The inside was dark, dusty, and smelled of piss and rust. He found the stairs and started climbing. And climbing. His new body didn't even register the effort. He took the steps two, three at a time, a grin spreading on his face.Felt fucking great.
He burst out onto the rooftop. The wind hit him immediately, a strong, rushing force that pushed against his face and whipped his hair into a frenzy. The view was… well, it was a view of a shitty part of the city, but from up here, fifty stories up, it almost looked like a real place. Almost.
In the middle of the rooftop, separating this section from the stairwell access, was a solid brick wall. Load-bearing, probably. Thick. Old. It looked like it had been there for a hundred years and would be there for a hundred more.
Jake walked up to it. Didn't stretch. Didn't warm up.Didn't crack his knuckles or take a deep breath or do any of the things people do in movies before they do something impressive. He just looked at the ancient, weathered bricks for a second, then hauled off and punched it.
The sound wasn't a crack. It wasn't a thud. It was an explosion. A deep, percussive BOOM that echoed across the empty rooftop.
The wall break into the fucking powdered. Bricks disintegrated into dust and small pebbles, the impact cratering a hole three feet wide straight through the middle. Dust billowed out, coating him in a fine grey film. He pulled his fist back, unharmed. Not even dirty, really. The dust just sort of slid off his skin.
He looked at his fist. He looked at the gaping, smoking hole in the wall. He looked at the sky.
A laugh escaped him. A real laugh, loud and raw, swallowed by the wind. He spread his arms wide, face tilted up to the grey sky.
And the sky answered.
It started as a tingle in his fingertips, that warm current surging, that blue electricity flowing through his veins like a river finding its course. Then, with a crackling hum, arcs of blue lightning began to flicker around his body, dancing from his shoulders to his fingertips to his feet, tracing patterns in the air that burned themselves into his vision, not hurting him, never hurting him, just… playing. Just welcoming him.The clouds above, previously just a flat blue and white sheet, the kind of clouds that had been there forever and never done anything interesting, began to darken, to churn, to boil like water on a stove. They swirled directly above him, a personal storm answering its master's call.
He stood there for a moment, bathed in his own fucking lightning, a god on a crumbling rooftop. He felt invincible.
"For now," he said to himself, his voice carried on the wind, barely audible over the crackle of electricity and the rumble of thunder, "normal Supes can't touch me. Shit, even some of the top ones probably can't lay a finger on me." The lightning crackled brighter, responding to his words, feeding on his confidence. "But Homelander… he's got those laser eyes. The heat vision. I don't know if I can handle that. That's a different kind of weapon.That's focused, concentrated destruction. I need to know if I can tank that, or if I need to dodge it, or if I need to kill him before he gets a chance to use it."
He wanted to test more. He focused, and the lightning intensified, lifting him gently off the rooftop. He rose into the air, more blue energy spiraling around his body like a living cage of electricity. The wind was stronger up here, but he felt stable. Solid. Like he was exactly where he belonged.
"Thor powers," he continued his internal monologue aloud, floating fifty feet above the building. "Pretty sure it's the Marvel version. The comics or the movies, probably the movies. Not the mythology one. That Thor would be… different. Older. Scarier, maybe. But movie Thor…" He thought back, racking his brain for the details. "In Infinity War, that hammerless fucker survived the full force of a dying star. A star. He was nearly cooked, yeah, but he survived it long enough to forge that axe. If my powers are even half of that…" He looked down at the city below, a toy town. "If my guess is correct, even that milk-drinking bastard's laser eyes can't hurt me. Maybe they'd sting. Maybe they'd feel like a really bad sunburn. But kill me? I don't think so. I don't think he has anything that can kill me."
The thought was intoxicating.The knowledge that the most powerful being on this planet, the thing that everyone feared, the monster in the blue suit, might not be able to hurt him.A slow, vicious smile spread across his face.
"Only problem is," he said, his voice dropping, becoming thoughtful, "I don't have the hammer. Mjolnir. Stormbreaker. Whatever. That's a problem. In the movies, Thor without his hammer is still powerful, still a god, but the hammer focuses him. It channels his power. It makes him more than he is. Without it, I'm just a really tough guy who can throw lightning. With it…" He clenched his fist, and the lightning around him surged, responding to his emotion. "With it, I could fly right up to his stupid perfect face and fuckin' end him. Directly. One shot. One blow. One moment of impact and it's over, it's done, it's finished. No more Homelander.No more of his bullshit."
He hovered there for a long moment, just feeling the power, the wind, the sheer fucking audacity of his new reality. Then he let the lightning fade. He descended slowly, landing softly back on the rooftop. The dark clouds above him began to dissipate, rolling away like they'd never been there.
He walked to the edge of the roof. Looked down. Fifty stories. The street below was a distant ribbon, cars like ants. The wind howled around him.
"Alright. Next test."
He didn't climb down. He didn't even think about it. He just stepped off the edge.
The fall was… liberating. The wind screamed past his ears, the building blurred beside him, the ground rushed up with terrifying speed. It was the ultimate trust fall. For a split second, a primal part of his brain, the part that remembered being a normal, fragile human, screamed in terror.
Then he hit.
The impact was seismic. The concrete pavement of the alley below didn't just crack; it shattered. A spiderweb of fractures exploded outwards from the point of impact, chunks of debris flying everywhere. A massive CRUMP sound echoed between the buildings, followed by a cloud of dust that billowed up and out, choking the alley.
For a moment, there was silence.
Then, from within the dust cloud, a figure emerged. Walking slowly. Calmly. Jake stepped out onto the sidewalk, brushing a little dust from his jacket. He looked back at the crater he'd just made. A hole a foot deep in solid concrete, surrounded by cracks and debris and the evidence of his arrival. It looked like something had fallen from the sky, like a meteorite, like something that shouldn't have survived but somehow did.
He looked down at his legs. His body. Fine. Perfect. Not a scratch.
He looked up at the sky, at the building he'd just jumped from, at the tiny edge of the roof fifty stories up. A faint smile played on his face, and he started walking. He had things to figure out. A timeline to confirm.
As he walked, his mind shifted from testing his body to testing his memory of the world he'd landed in. The original owner's memories were a blurry mess of grief, but Jake could pick through them, find the useful pieces.
"Alright," he said to himself, his voice low as he navigated the dirty streets. "Need to know where I am in the story. Is Hughie's girlfriend already a red mist on the street? Did A-Train already do his thing, already turn her into a smear on the pavement, already ruin that poor bastard's life? And Translucent… is that shiny-skinned bastard already tied up in The Boys' little hideout, already waiting for a very unpleasant conversation with a very angry Frenchman and his blowtorch?"
He thought back. The original owner's memories were fragmented, but he'd watched the news. He'd seen the reports, the cheerful Vought-approved bullshit that played on every channel, the carefully crafted narratives that turned murder into accidents and massacres into misunderstandings.There had been something… just a few days ago? A flash of a story about a tragic accident in an alley. A young woman. A red blur. A-Train. The memory was there, buried under the trauma of his own parents' death. He'd seen it.
He stopped walking for a second, a cold certainty settling in his gut like a stone. "Fuck," he said, the word soft but heavy. "She's probably dead already. Robin. That's her name, right? Hughie's girl. The one who got turned into pink mist because a famous asshole wasn't looking where he was going. Shit. Shit, shit, shit."
He started walking again, faster now, his stride eating up the sidewalk. "And if she's dead, then Hughie's already met Butcher. Which means The Boys are probably already a thing. Butcher, Hughie, Frenchie. They're already out there, already planning, already moving against Vought. And Translucent…" He tried to recall the news from the original owner's final weeks. Had there been anything about a supe going missing? A hero just disappearing? Any mention of an invisible man who hadn't been seen in public for a while? Nothing specific. Just the usual Vought propaganda, the endless stream of carefully managed information designed to make people believe everything was fine, everything was under control, the heroes were heroes and always would be.
He reached the edge of the cratered alley and turned onto a main street, blending in with the crowd. His face was too handsome now, too striking, and he caught people staring. He ignored them.
"Best guess," he muttered, barely moving his lips. "I'm either right at the beginning, or a little after. Robin's gone. But Translucent might still be alive." A thought struck him, and a grim smile touched his lips. "Or maybe he's already captured. Maybe he's right now, in that moment, about to get a very unpleasant surprise from a very angry Frenchman."
He didn't know. But he knew how to find out. The original owner's memories included the layout of the city, the news channels, the general feel of the place. He needed information. He needed to find Hughie. Or better yet, find Butcher.
He looked up at the sky, at the buildings, at the oblivious people walking past him.
He was Thor now. The God of Thunder. And he had a score to settle with two specific assholes who thought they could kill with impunity, who thought no one would ever make them pay.
"Alright," he said to himself, his voice a quiet promise as he disappeared into the flow of the city, becoming one with the crowd, becoming invisible in his own way. "Let's go find The Boyz. Let's go find the people who hate supes as much as I do now."