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Note: Mjolnir played by Rogue, with Thor's permission.
Time slows to a dead crawl. Lightning leaps along the crystal walls chopped from the same icy mineral the whole palace is constructed by. The low thum hangs in the frigid air, and somehow, that clarifies the seductive purr. Plasma trickles through openings, forced through shattered holes punched by the Doctor's spells.
The only reason the storm is here is to wreak havoc. How does he know that, in his bones? How does he know his existence separate from any other collection of neutrons and protons in space? It just is.
Blood hangs thick in the air around the elf (weak, that race). It is good, satisfying. Blue and clotted drops sing gloriously. (Most noble enemies)
The terrible stir of ice explodes around the bloody Midgardner, his defense coming up too late in slow motion. (God-touched. Outsider. Does not belong but much worse than he looks.)
Brother descends upon the massive (diminished hate-hate-hate defiler) hunched form turning to unleash a sickening amount of magic stolen back at 'him.' Convulsive outrage sparks along the bond, the fall of noblesse oblige and wrongness drenching him. Black clouds surge in a thickening twist. (Yes, kill him, the punishment for treason against the All-Father is death and death is deserved for Laufey of Jotunheim.)
He hangs in midair, ahead of where he stepped, facing the upright swirl of a ghost. Those blue-white grubs that rooted among the panels of his arm have evaporated. Those panels like smooth and banded, resistant to the static crackle that junked the gear work within, seizing on the primitive technology within. Oh, this is a different interface altogether, smooth and polished metals — vibranium reworked, slick and warm — bound together with the strength of thought and magic. Not magic.
Something old. Something bound to the howl of the surging pitch of electricity and plasma and so many other nameless forces pointed up to the wound in the sky. (Stolen and shackled. They burn me down to build their profane purpose.)
Buck's overwhelmed with confusion. What's happening? He knows little of magic, save what he's seen Strange and the Asgardians do. The arm feels different: no longer slow and unwieldy, whining under the burden of current overload. We're here to free you. To get you where you rightfully belong, and keep this world from overwhelming ours. I've got you for now - what do I need to do to stop them draining you? To heal that gap? Telepathy feels weird, though this is nothing like Xavier's investigations… It's too hard to take in, at first glance, what he's seeing.
The voice bounds through his head. It hangs in the air, aloud. The thoughts are there before his mind recognizes them, his alone. Communion strangely done where the ghost solidifies into a cracked stretch of metal with a pointed sledge of a head. The short haft doesn't match its top-heavy construction, a thick leather loop matching the bloodied wrappings that spin down its truncated handle. Not at all difficult to imagine how he might loop that over his wrist and spin the weapon.
The hammer wants to spin. To move.
Where do I belong? The honourless brother slew the king, my Odinson. Who yet sits on the gold seat of Asgard?
Ichor-black clouds crackle. The ozone scent builds. The storm around him doesn't purr, not now. He can hear the raging scream and the howling lamentation. Grief provisions power to the immense winter rage. It's but a fraction to the storm inside Mjolnir, a storm so vast, so great, Hydra would collectively shit their pants in excitement.
You have the word of the Odinforce. We are one. Take me. Take in the storm. Take back what Laufey worm guts stole from me. The traitor-spawn All-Father will hunt for us. But he craves to break the walls between worlds and seize the World Tree for their own visions. Midgard. Alfheim. Vanaheim. He wants to take them all.
Your world's version of the sorcereress and Loki, he tells it. Thor is dead. But the offer of power is unmistakable, and he puts out the human hand to it. Right. Let's do this. We'll get him. As if it were simply another warrior to ally with them. Buck reaches out to it. He expected to slay the sorcerer with a rifle. This is so much more sure….letting the hammer guide him, becoming part of the storm.
Enchantress? Pawn blind for power. The Borson's adopted whelp cannot see his plans to an end. Mjolnir roils in the offense, radiating a crackle of lightning that crawls over the blunt, dark uru body facing him. Runes that creep crawl along the sides hold that triple triangle knot in glowing relief.
When Bucky takes the hammer, awareness charges in. The vastness of an impossibility — a storm filling space, vast beyond a nebula, the solar system — hovers in the void. Its halo explodes in gaseous strands. Electricity rips and roars through interstellar gas. It is an infinitely lonely, wrathful presence that immediately engulfs him, suffusing every last space between the splitting cells that make up the man.
Thor is not dead. You are Thor now. I will serve the purpose decreed by the old bugger and you will do it. A statement of fact that booms through him. The stretching and compressing somehow fills him out, taking what the super-serum started and running it to its natural conclusion by a range of, say, seven magnitudes. Jump from the kilo to the yottabyte, say, and go running beyond. Ties blow apart, uninteresting garments from army surplus replaced by shining links of metal and leather from exotic sources clamped around him. The steady weight of Mjolnir in his hand hums with the same awakened power of the electric charge. He can hear it, the muttering of the stolen energy, screaming defiance and still unable to fully resist. There is a break in the hammer, somewhere, a flaw. From the fall.
King Thor Odinson is dead, all hail the All-Father.
One small step for a supersoldier, one giant leap away from the kid from Brooklyn he started out as. Wait, I'm wh- There is no waiting. And now it's Bucky shoved into the passenger's seat by whatever version of Thor he's become. Move over, Winter, it's getting crowded in here. Thor?!? A look down confirms - that isn't his body. Wasn't his body until moments ago, anyway. That's armor, scaled and dark. Not quite black, but the deep, deep blue-gray that might as well be. There's an inner sigh of acquiescence - fine feathers won't make a crow a peacock….or an eagle, for that matter. But there's flight as a temptation. After they destroy Laufey. Let's get him. He's all business again, the rest of the weirdness can be figured out after that crucial point.
Winter might have a very, very hard time. Squashed into the corner by the immediacy of Asgardian knowledge, the Odinforce-trapped storm blows out everything. What is winter to the lightning? What is snow for the laughing gale, the howling joy of rulership? It is right and just and good to serve Asgard and the World Tree. The man who sat the throne before had his flaws, but so too the deep nobility of purpose. Of righteousness.
All of it is him. Still him. Greater, not likely to be slain by such simple things as a bullet from his Skorpion (not so good as me) or the pesky sorcerer's magic (never trust sorcerers).
Fandral has not fallen. Too noble, too proud, too honorable. But he risked too much to get this close to Laufey. The irritation from Mjolnir is loud. Others fight. When Thor All-Father died, he saved what he could. The rest scattered before the wreckage. We could find them. We could gather the pieces of the Warriors and strike down the liar.
Laufey first, if we can, Bucky affirms. But if we need those Warriors, then them. I want this done. There's a niggling doubt in the back. Is this permanent? Is he forever part of this frozen world, the risks and pleasures of his own at least comfortably known, now gone? Though there's a flash of temptation to return in this guise and wreak serious vengeance on those who hurt and violated him. He's nowhere near as forgiving a soul as Cap.
A bitter crow of laughter practically shakes him off his feet as the hammer hauls him upwards. Mjolnir draws terrifying strength out of the earth, into the bones of the man reinforced against falls from moons. Oh, it won't be pretty. Bucky has to know that. But he'll rise.
Your enemies, whispers Mjolnir, are not the enemies of the Nine Realms. They do not imperil the very survival of Yggdrasil itself. Their lives won't matter when the traitor makes his move. Do you really think he'd tolerate humans to live? That he would not enslave men, Kree, Shi'ar, Badoon, Kryptonians, kelshae, morroi?
The relic isn't smug. Hard words and ideas shiver through his body and coil in the pit of his belly. There may remain some sick sense, some grim knowing. A general's purpose added to a soldier's shoulders. Pray he doesn't break. Mjolnir may not let him. Laufey first. It is best to be swift and hard. My recovery will draw attention. Let them come, challengers one and all. You must be stronger, your claim better. In a crownless time, only the strongest shapes the wyrd.
A flawed vessel, into which to pour that power, that knowledge. But so it's always been, reforged again and again to others' purposes. He'll bear up under it, with it. He has to. A last backward glance for who he was, and then his attention is fully on Mjolnir. Laufey first, then, he agrees. And then on. Let them come. Resignation, if not wholly grim. Not with that power singing through him, that new strength, that can't be denied.
Not alone. Never alone.
Mjolnir's presence on that is adamant, the storm seething, crackling. Weakness will be ruin. Strength will be glorious. As I am taken up so may I be set down. Kings may abdicate. Emperors retire. Grim, unhappy thoughts on its part, but still they ring. He deeply worried for men. For Midgard and everyone. His dying thoughts were not for himself but his failure to that realm he so loved. His mother. His paramour. His true born brother. I have heard those pains. I knew how greatly he wished that mankind would not suffer under the traitor. A humming comfort wreathed in grief fills that space, a quieting of the soul. To the last breath he fought to keep Midgard safe. He would be glad one of your race came. It is appropriate. Perhaps we together can see that last wish done.
There's a dry quality to his response. You may be. But will I be willing or able to, when the time comes? Buck shakes himself, like a dog settling its coat. Well, when tomorrow comes, we hunt for tomorrow. We'll see this done. I gave Odin my oath, even if it was to a different Allfather in a different world. Branches on the tree. We'll avenge Odinson. A quirk of humor. I guess I'm Thor Georgeson, now.
By George, you've got it. No, Mjolnir would never say Jove. Wrong pantheon. Wrong language.
The storm screams and slams down through him, all that lightning gathered overhead rippling out and bending to the focus for the power that he wields in his fist. Millions of volts sizzle through the great squared head and explode up the length of Bucky's arm, radiating through his body until his eyes shine an impossible plasma blue and the crawling radiance spills off him instead of any other rod. Conducting it gives a shock of vitality and grounds him to the very ground.
Blood droplets splatter to the ground. An elf's twin blades hiss in a weak, unacceptably dim mutter to the great relic.
Ice pierces the sorcerer's flesh. Blood runs down his face, a thickening quagmire blotched against pale skin gone tense from the force of his casting.
Fandral spins, grey cloak rippling and oh, how hot the shine of honour is around him. He practically glows with an upright nobility, untarnished, and frankly more than a little priggish. (Needs to get laid. Would take that edge off and make him remotely bearable. What the All-Father always said.)
Muscles bulge. The fleeing guard practically coalesces a miniature blizzard around him, spellfire wreathing his hands and unleashing three quick blasts one after the other. The Trickster prince, ill-begotten son, dives for the vulnerable spot that the ankle of a great leg, large as any mammoth.
Time dilates. He's shoved into the now in a realm not of his birth, wearing a mantle not of his making, sold and sworn by an oath to the One-eyed Bastard himself.
And somewhere, Odin frowns. Who what now? Frigga tells him to go back to bed.