While Kraft was soaking in the life-support pod, lost in his grand dreams, Thor, who had been banished to Earth, arrived near the site where Mjolnir had fallen with the help of his new acquaintance, Jane Foster.
Because of the commotion Kraft had caused earlier, security here had become much tighter.
"Wait here. I'll go get my hammer and your equipment back."
Without waiting for Jane Foster to stop him, Thor darted toward the temporary base S.H.I.E.L.D. had set up.
But he was spotted as soon as he slipped through the wire fence.
"Intruder spotted! Intruder spotted!"
Kraft's earlier intrusion had prompted S.H.I.E.L.D. to tighten security yet again. The base's alarms sounded once more, and its agents quickly converged on Thor.
"Ha! Bring it on, then!"
Thor, a reckless brute through and through, showed no fear. Instead, he abandoned any attempt at concealment and chose to charge straight through.
Though he had been stripped of his divine power, Thor's thousand-plus years of warfare were not just for show. Even a pig would pick up a skill or two after a thousand years, let alone Thor, who had served as a vanguard commander.
Without using firearms, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were no match for Thor. But they had numbers on their side: whenever one went down, a whole crowd remained. Without his divine power to sustain him, Thor eventually collapsed from exhaustion under their human-wave tactics, never even catching a glimpse of Mjolnir.
It was just as well that he hadn't seen it. Otherwise, he would have looked just as bewildered as his younger brother Loki.
Was Mjolnir... supposed to look like this?
As Thor's weapon, Mjolnir was impossible for Loki not to recognize. But what was that little extra piece sticking out of it? Had something gone wrong while it was