The Prince's Transformation, Part One

Thor Odinson woke with a pounding pain in the back of his head.

He was lying on a rather short sofa, his ankles hanging over the armrest, with an unfamiliar ceiling above him. He only remembered finally taking down the guards, enduring their poison to escape that white cell, and then getting sent flying by an iron box. When he opened his eyes again, he was in this fairly decent safe house?

"You're awake?" Dr. Selvig sat in a chair with a cup of coffee in hand. "Our car hit you again. You happened to be standing behind it while we were backing up."

Thor sat up and reached back to feel the back of his head. A bump. A real, swollen bump. After losing his divine power, he was experiencing the pain of minor injuries again for the first time in a long while.

Jane dug out a towel from a storage cabinet and tossed it to him. "Go take a shower first. You're covered in sand and blood."

Thor caught the towel and lowered his head to smell it. It had a pleasant scent, like some kind of flower. He nodded. This was worthy of a god. He approved.

The bathroom was at the very back of the room. Thor leaned over the faucet and studied it for quite a while: one side had a red marking, the other a blue one. After thinking it over, he reached out and twisted the blue side.

Cold water sprayed from the showerhead and drenched his face.

He jerked backward, and the bump on the back of his head slammed into the ceiling.

Thud.

The entire room heard it.

"Are you okay?" Jane called from outside.

"I'm fine," Thor replied, his voice muffled. "I'm adapting."

He turned the red side. A few seconds later, steam from the hot water drifted out from above the door. Then came an extremely faint sigh, as if someone had finally relaxed.

On the second floor of the motel, Chen Xiao sat cross-legged on an old sofa by the window. A palm-sized blue ring of light floated before him, delicate runic patterns slowly turning along its edge. Last time, he had used it to watch Tony's hearing live. This time, he was using it to watch Asgard's crown prince shower.

He swore he hadn't done it on purpose. He had only wanted to make sure Thor was awake. Then his sensing range had accidentally included the bathroom. Then the image came through. He couldn't just not watch, could he? That would be rude.

Fortunately, Thor had already finished bathing.

He stood in the middle of the room, wearing a pair of jeans one size too large. Water droplets ran down the lines of his chest and abs, darkening the fabric around the waistband. Every muscle stood out clearly after the hot shower: chest, abs, arms, back. Those weren't the kind of lines built in a gym with protein powder. They had been forged by a hammer over fifteen hundred years of battle.

Chen Xiao looked at the image in the blue ring and instinctively whistled.

"At least he doesn't look like a homeless man now," Selvig remarked sharply, tossing him a belt.

Darcy poked her head out from behind the computer screen, only for Selvig to shove her back down.

"I am Thor." The blond man straightened his back. "Prince of Asgard, son of Odin, God of Thunder."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Darcy's voice came muffled from beneath Selvig's hand. "You're the God of Thunder. The God of Thunder who got knocked out by a stun gun."

Jane pulled out a stack of clothes from a storage box and set them on the table. Her gaze swept over him from top to bottom, paused somewhere for a moment, then moved away. "Put these on."

Thor picked up the T-shirt. It was gray, with a line of English letters printed across the chest that he couldn't understand. He turned it over to inspect the back, then turned it back over to inspect the front before pulling it on.

The fabric stretched tight across his chest and shoulders, clearly one size too small. The stitching around the collar was pulled slightly out of shape, making faint creaking sounds. The sleeves clung tightly to his upper arms, outlining his biceps with perfect clarity.

Chen Xiao's blue ring transmitted all of it back. He raised an eyebrow, whistled again, then looked down at his own arms. Never mind.

Thor picked up the belt next and studied the zipper and button for a while before putting on the jeans. The legs barely reached his ankles, while the waist was clearly too loose. He threaded the belt through the loops and fastened it at the tightest hole. It was still loose.

He looked down at the jeans hanging on his hips, looking ready to slide off at any moment, and fell silent for a while.

"In my homeland," he began, his voice low, "armor is forged to fit the warrior. From shoulder width to arm circumference, every inch conforms to the body. Going into battle in ill-fitting armor is an insult to a warrior."

He tightened the belt another notch. The fabric bunched into a wrinkled mess around his waist.

"But this isn't armor. So I'll endure it."

Chen Xiao paused with his bottle of Coke raised to his lips. Not because the words were funny. It was because when Thor said them, there was no self-mockery, no anger, no grievance in his expression. A man who treated a warrior's honor as his creed had clearly stated that this was an insult, then endured it without any excessive reaction.

Though he remembered Thor acting like a harmless golden retriever in the movies, this was the real world. If someone with great power really ended up in the world of ordinary people, he might have long since gone full, "I don't eat beef."

Chen Xiao took a sip of Coke. "Fine. I won't laugh at you here."

Unfortunately, none of the ordinary people present understood Thor's grievance, because his stomach chose that moment to growl loudly.

Darcy was the first to laugh. Then Selvig. Then Jane, whose lips kept twitching upward no matter how hard she tried to hold them down.

Lunch was settled at a diner in town.

Thor sat in a booth, his T-shirt stretched like a layer of skin ready to split at any moment, the waistband of his jeans wrinkled from the tightly cinched belt. He stared at the menu for a while, then put it down. He couldn't recognize a single word.

When the bacon and eggs arrived, he lowered his head and looked at the plate. The bacon was fried slightly crisp, its edges curled and glistening with oil. The eggs were sunny-side up, with a golden-brown ring around the whites and plump yolks that trembled faintly. He didn't touch his fork. His gaze shifted from the yolk to the bacon, then from the bacon back to the yolk, as if he were observing some creature he had never seen before.

"What is this?"

"Bacon and eggs."

"Bacon. Eggs." He repeated the words, then picked up the fork—gripping its handle the way he would grip a hammer—and stabbed the yolk.

The yolk broke.

Golden liquid flowed out, spreading across the egg white and soaking the edge of the toast. Thor's fork froze in midair as he looked at the sunny-side-up egg he had punctured, his expression like he had just killed an innocent life.

"It's bleeding."

"That's egg yolk," Jane said.

"Egg yolk." He put down the fork and used his fingers to pick up the toast soaked in yolk, stuffing it into his mouth. He chewed. Then chewed again. Then he picked up the second slice of toast and dipped it directly into the yolk.

Jane opened her mouth to say, "Use your fork," but when she saw Thor's fascinated expression, his eyebrows slightly raised and his eyes fixed on the yolk soaking into the toast as if he had discovered something extraordinary, she swallowed the words.

The bacon came next. He ate it with his hands, slice after slice. Grease stuck to his fingers, leaving several faint prints on the chest of his T-shirt.

When he reached the third slice, he paused, licked his fingers, and looked up at Jane. "What animal does this meat come from?"

"Pig."

"Pig." He repeated it, as if filing it away in his memory. "Midgard's pigs taste better than Asgard's."

Selvig raised his head from behind his coffee cup. "Asgard has pigs too?"

"It does. But their meat is very tough. You have to stew it for an entire day before you can chew it." Thor stuffed the remaining bacon into his mouth. "Because those pigs are warriors too. They fight back."

The table fell silent for a moment, and Darcy slowly put the bacon in her hand back onto her plate.

Thor didn't notice. His attention had already shifted to the coffee cup. White ceramic, black liquid, steam rising from it. He picked it up, looked at it, smelled it, then tipped back his head and took a huge gulp.

His whole body froze as if he had been struck by lightning.

His eyes narrowed slightly, his Adam's apple bobbing. Then the corners of his mouth slowly curled up.

"This drink," he said, his voice full of sincere, unguarded delight, "I like it."

Then he raised the ceramic cup high and slammed it hard onto the floor.

Another cup!

Ceramic shards scattered everywhere, and coffee splashed across the floor. The entire diner instantly fell silent. An elderly woman at the next table held her fork suspended in midair, the waitress behind the counter stood with her mouth open, and a young man pouring coffee remained motionless with the coffee pot tilted in his hand. Everyone was looking at them.

Jane's face burned. "What were you doing just now?" she asked in a lowered voice.

Thor looked at her, his expression sincere and confused. "That drink was delicious. I wanted another cup."

"You could have just said so!"

"I did just say so!"

"I mean, ask politely!"

Thor fell silent for a moment. His expression shifted from confusion to a deeper kind of confusion, as if Jane's words had no corresponding place in his understanding of the world. "I meant no offense," he said, much more quietly than before.

Jane looked into his eyes. She had never seen blue like that before. There was no arrogance in them, only an awkward sincerity that seemed unsure where to put its hands.

"...All right." Her tone softened. "No more smashing things. Deal?"

"You have my word."

Jane raised her hand toward the waitress. "Another coffee. In a stainless steel cup."

The waitress looked at the ceramic shards on the floor, then at Thor, and silently turned toward the kitchen. A moment later, a stainless steel cup was brought over. Thor accepted it and carefully took a sip. His brows furrowed into a tight knot, his Adam's apple moved once, but he didn't throw it. He swallowed, remained silent for quite a while, then nodded.

Chen Xiao laughed so hard on his side of the ring that he slid right off the sofa. The back of his head hit the windowsill, hurting in exactly the same way as Thor's had.

He climbed back up, rubbing the back of his head, and sent Tony a message. "Have you ever smashed a cup after drinking coffee?"

Tony replied instantly. "No. But I've smashed a coffee maker before. That time, JARVIS made it too disgusting to drink."

"...That shouldn't have happened, right?"

"The algorithm had a problem back then. The coffee beans got roasted into carbon."

Chen Xiao silently put down his phone. He suddenly looked forward to having JARVIS make Thor a cup of coffee.