He was standing inside the shadows of a dark alley in New York. Leaning lazily against the dirty wall, he took another drag on his cigarette and passively observed what was happening, neither his facial expression nor his relaxed calm body pose exposing the excitement that was building up inside of him. Right before his eyes, an intriguing scene was taking place. There were three other figures who seemed oblivious of his presence. An old man in shabby clothes removed his hand from the head of a huge blonde athlete who was kneeling right before him and turned around towards an appearing whirling wheel of light that was now hovering in the air right above the ground several feet away from them inside the alleyway and which was slowly but steadily growing bigger and bigger. The young tall brunette man who was standing right behind the other two seemed like frozen, all three were now staring at the glistening opening of the whirlwind that seemed to come from nowhere. The old man said something to his two companions, but the person in the shadows who was watching the entire scene from a distance couldn't understand what he was saying over the static crackling coming from the opening in space. The blonde man had stood up, his posture and determined expression made him appear ready to take on the entire world if necessary. There was a bright flash of light and the two young men suddenly didn't wear their casual clothes anymore but instead were clad in dark leather and shimmering steel like warriors or knights from the Middle Ages, the blonde athlete clenching a mighty hammer in his fist, both seemed ready and capable to ward off any danger that might appear in their way.

Suddenly, a shadow seemed to move inside the rotating lights. A human silhouette began to materialize inside the eye of the storm and finally stepped outside and onto the cobbled street with a clacking sound. A tall and dark woman with an imposing presence was now calmly surveying the scene in front of her, her eyes attentive but her face relaxed, almost bored while her three counterparts were staring at her with tight expressions. The two young men were standing frozen into battle-ready poses, while the old man was now stepping towards her. "Hela," he addressed her flatly. "Odin," she responded with a husky voice that probably hadn't been used for a long time and that reminded the man standing in the shadows at the growling of a wild and hungry predator having caught sight of its prey, while she also was beginning to walk towards the old man. She moved slowly and gracefully like a snake, almost flowing forward, with a hidden strength like steel wrapped in cotton that betrayed her slim yet streamlined appearance. Her raven hair was long, wild and disheveled and was hanging in strands into her angular face, she was garbed in a scuffed archaic warrior suit of armor or harness made out of matte black leather and matte steel and which seemed to stem from a long gone prehistoric and primordial era, when the world still would have been in its early spring, still in its labor pains of birthing raw and fresh life, a fierce, simple and elementary world in which the fundamental opposing and ultimate polarities of nature, fire and ice, spirit and matter, were constantly clashing, copulating and merging with each other, and of continuous battle for survival in which only the strongest and mightiest champions endured, and which was now worn out, dusty and dirty, yet her pale skin appeared fresh and shining like glazed porcelain and her posture displayed the calm stability of an ancient cyclopean and monolithic pillar of stone that once might have supported the weight of an entire kingdom. So there she was. The man released himself from the wall he was leaning against the entire time and took a small step forward, just enough to step halfway out of the shadows and took up a relaxed pose as if these incredible scenes would not affect him in the slightest. It worked, the woman, still walking slowly towards the old man, who also was still approaching her, remarked the movement out of the corner of the eye, slightly turned her head towards him and noticed him. He suddenly had a black and white scene of an old film noir playing in his head, the hardboiled detective anti-hero walking into the dangerous port tavern and then spotting the femme fatale, who despite her actual intentions inevitably would lead him to his doom, passively eying him with unfathomable eyes through the clouds of smoke of her cigarette. He took another slow drag on his cigarette, then leisurely breathed out the smoke and with an expressionless face looked straight into Hela's eyes.

And what eyes they were, dark, deep and cold like an abyss, hard and unrelenting like folded steel, ruthless and sharp like a guillotine. Due to his clothing and because they rather seemed to be on Midgard than on Asgard, immediately identifying the watcher as the minor annoyance of a mortal man who through coincidence had stumbled into the scene of her long-awaited reunion with her father, Hela, first-born daughter of Odin, made a casual hand movement with her wrist, materializing a sword out of thin air and catapulting it in one fluid motion towards this stupid mortal and then immediately focused her attention on Odin again. She just had broken free from millennia of imprisonment and seemingly eternal battle against her shackles and now was face to face with her jailer. She wanted blood. Odin, previously stepping calmly towards her, after having played the role of the benevolent father for his two sons one last time, ready to face death in front of their eyes after the impression of his final act was still fresh on them and to set his ultimate plan successfully into motion, hesitated. He stopped, turned around and looked for the target of his daughter's sudden act of aggression.

All of a sudden, Odin's gaze was flickering and his face became a distorted grimace while staring into the direction in which Hela had thrown her sword. "Devil!" he shouted, "I know what you want! Go away!" Hela was irritated and halted. She turned her head and followed Odin's stare. There the man still stood, leaning casually against the sword which stuck halfway inside the house wall. She had not missed her targets in a thousand years, how was this possible? The look of the mysterious mortal separated from Hela's face and his eyes met with Odin's glance. Odin's two sons, previously fixated on their father and their sister approaching each other, now also turned their attention to this person who was standing there until then without them taking notice. The blonde athletic man, who was actually Odin's son Thor, shouted towards the person: "Hey, get away from here fast, or you probably will get hurt!" The man, who had been addressed by their father as "devil", nonchalantly ignored Thor and took a few steps more forward towards Hela and Odin, who now were just an arm length apart from each other standing in the middle of the alley and both looking towards him. "Your plan was pretty good," the man said coolly while pulling something out of his pocket that resembled a metallic tiara. "Just a few weeks before you knew your daughter would break free, you deposited Surtur's crown inside your treasure vault, just a few feet away from the Eternal Flame..." Both Hela and Odin visibly tensed up. "You were actually willing to sacrifice not only yourself but also your kingdom and country to finally being able to wipe your daughter out of existence."