Unworthy

Thor had been wounded before.

He knew pain, and he knew struggle.

In his youth, during his training at Asgard more than in actual battle, he had been forced to grow into the promise of his blood, slowly but surely, until his might grew enough to make him the best warrior of the Eternally Golden Realm. Less and less since taking Mjolnir, Thor had found himself winning every confrontation with hardly any struggle, the only wounds he received amounted to bruises fading in a manner of days.

It has been a long time since he had known pain, and never, never in his life, had Thor been powerless.

Oh, the Thunderer had been poweless before his parents when they reprimanded him, deciding what punishment he was to take when he did something unworthy of his station.

Yet, since that ill-fated excursion to the realm of the Frost Giants, powerlessness had been the defining trait of his existence. It had taken him a while to understand it, and he still struggled with the concept, but the truth could not be denied.

The strange being that so effortlessly reminded him of Odin himself had helped him, only to betray him when Mjolnir had refused to answer his call. Not only that, be he had dared manhandle him, manhandle the Crown Prince of Asgard...

His friends had appeared as Yamamoto began to beat Thor, but before he could even shout in joy, they had been cast aside: their tactics were read as if from a book, their movements foreseen down to the most minute twitch of a muscle. Their strengths denied, their weaknesses -few as they were- were dragged in the open and ruthlessly exploited.

During all the confrontation, which took place at speeds that Thor could barely follow with his human, weak body, the one-armed elder had dominated Hogun, Fandral, Volstagg, and Sif, like he had fought them a thousand times before.

Then, with a single, insolent finger, he had delivered the Thundered in an abyss of agony.

Thor felt like his bones were breaking apart under the tension exercised by muscles that were tearing themselves asunder. He felt the metallic, familiar tang of blood on his tongue, but this time, for the first time since he was a child, he knew that it was his own. He felt like with each ragged breath his lungs would implode, bringing his ribs with them, his heart stole his monicker, and rumbled in his chest with no rhyme nor reason.

Thor remained kneeling on the too warm asphalt of the empty parking lot, his blue eyes burning as sweat poured under his eyelids, and with every heartbeat, he felt like his head, no, his very mind, would explode in a thousand of pieces. His muscles spasmed without control and he found himself falling forward, the skin of his cheek splitting open on the unforgiving ground, and his hair, matted with sweat and dust, fell over his head like some mockery of a halo.

Hazy forms moved around him, and while a part of his mind recognized them, the greater part of his consciousness was simply too seized up to care: why wasn't it ending? Whatever offense he caused, surely this pain should be enough of a punishment?

In that deep pit of agony, the merciless voice of Yamamoto reached him when nothing else could: "Will you stop these fools before they force me to harm them?"

Fools. Such was the only title that the one-armed elder could give to those so ignorant as to face him directly.

Thor screamed with his mouth shut, his jaw unwilling to listen to his commands, and from under his matted hair, he witnessed as those of the Warrior Four capable of rising had been beaten in the ground all over again. And again. And again.

The thunderer seized up on the ground, his contractions forcing him to scrape against the asphalt that unforgivingly cut his frail human skin.

Unfocused shapes that he could recognize only thanks to the colours of their familiar armours met against the white, untouchable figure that was Yamamoto, and each time they rose, they were put down harder. "Will you rise and fight to save them? Or will you all die?"

You are unworthy of these realms. The Allfather's voice was bound tightly around his heart: preventing his power from breaking through.

Thor screamed again, and this time his mouth opened enough to allow his lungs to expel their air unimpeded, but his body seized up again, and under that ocean of pain, deep under that impossible storm of nerves set afire with lightning that was for the first time harming him, he felt like crying: he couldn't help his friends.

You're unworthy of your title. The judgment of the King of Asgard bound the ex God of Thunder to the ground, never to fly again.

Deep in his pain, Thor fancied he could even feel different kinds of it: with his mind impossibly slugging through the fiery hurt that thundered across his whole being, he felt a sharp something that stabbed deeper and deeper with every broken heartbeat.

You're unworthy... of the loved ones you have betrayed! So spoke his father, disappointment and unbridled rage warring in his lone eye as he cast out his son.

That different sharp pain, had a quality that was entirely different from anything Thor had ever felt before: forced by the slowly encroaching pain that he knew was going to kill him, with an instinct that went beyond experience, a certainity that could only be granted by the Norns themselves, the ex god of thunder grasped that pain with both hands, and gritting his teeth, he forced his eyes to open once more.

Lightning cursed through his veins, but he couldn't control it, it was simply... too much.

The ex god of thunder screamed hoarsely as he tried to beat back the raging storm that threatened to tear him asunder: but where before he had always been able to unknowingly rely on Mjolnir, now his only tool was his own determination, and a once unyielding will that had been made soft in centuries of shameless, unearned victory.

Close to the dying Thor, Yamamoto observed stoically the ragged warriors that kept trying to reach their friend: they kept rising, that much was true, but that was the only thing resembling a non-negative judgment that he could spare for them.

Their tactics were limited, their overall strategy non-existent, and they kept repeating the same mistakes: each followed a single role, and after the first two exchanges, the one-armed Shinigami had fruitlessly waited for a trap to be sprung. Fools.

The change had come from an instant to the next, but it was there: the blond fool that he had been suggested to help, the one that revealed himself as so much less than what he should be, had finally noticed what Yamamoto had done, and now he was sluggishly, tentatively, hopelessly trying to grasp that faintest spark that the Shinigami had separated himself from. It would fade in time, of course, but the boy already had power, and a lot of it, he didn't need the entirety of a Shinigami's might to unlock it, not as Kurosaki Ichigo had back when he was human.

Thor had his eyes scrunched shut while his body kept spasming, but where before he only irradiated hopelessness, he now exuded determination: the power surging through him, the unfocused lightning that was tearing his mortal body apart, had always been his: he only had to find in himself the strength to dominate it.

"...w-what..." the half-whispered words of the woman crashed nearby came with a dry cough that rattled against the ears, "have you d-done to him?"

Yamamoto felt his hand twitch with the barely repressed impulse to smack the girl for her disrespect, but seeing as the boy was finally motivated, he decided to answer: "His weapon refused him, but the power comes from within, so he will master it, or die."

Disbelief flashed prominently into Sif's eyes as she tried to reconcile what she had witnessed with what she had been told by Heimdall himself, obviously, there was no denying that if this one-armed warrior wanted to kill Thor, or any of the Warrior Four to be honest, he could have. Slowly, she forced one arm to drag her to a seated position while her Asgardian's bloodline allowed her to already recover from her exhaustion: "You... weren't hurting him?"

This time, Yamamoto felt the urge to snap his walking cane against the ground, and the muscles of his forearm contracted lightly: "Broken bones must be set straight before they're allowed to heal."

A frown appeared on the girl's features, but the Shinigami simply huffed and closed his eyes: by the standards exemplified by the current group, she was remarkable as she was the only one who clung to consciousness, but he didn't need to explain himself, now the only thing they all could do was waiting for Thor to either succeed, or die.

The following questions of Sif fell on deaf ears, as Yamamoto was busy listening not to the irregular cries of his blond charge, nor to the deep breathing of the unconscious that characterized the three male fighters that had tried to save their 'friend', but to the power struggling within the ex god of thunder.

With the clumsiness of those who had never wielded reiatsu before, he was grasping, slipping in his attempts to recognize his power as his own without the middle-man that his weapon had always been. Mjolnir had made all the work for him, crippling his growth in a way that was nothing short of criminal. In the light of long-term consequences, Yamamoto knew, the most important task of the powerful was to shape those who would come after them.

The sun moved in the sky over the quiet of the empty parking lot, but just as a set of annoying-sounding vehicles started to approach -the local forces had likely decided that since the strangers in the city were still, it must have meant that there was a chance of success in restraining them- another intruded upon them.

In a rainbow-colored column of dazzling light, a three meters tall, humanoid-shaped machine of gleaming metal was delivered right next to the incapacitated Asgardians and the Shinigami in quiet contemplation. The soft gasp of a terrified Sif was the only sound that could be heard in the parking lot, if one ignored the gut-wrenching cries of Thor.

With the smooth whirling of dense metal over gravel, the Destroyer turned towards the downed warriors, and the plates covering his visage slid down, revealing the mounting fury of a star's fire.

Yamamoto tilted his head of a fraction towards the newcomer, and one eye opened of a fraction, attracted by the intense heat that rolled off the machine in waves: "Oh?"

For a single instant the Destroyer, a machine that had been built with a single purpose so encompassing that it gave it its name, stilled despite the clear directions that had been given by Loki-king, who was now observing from the edge of Asgard's throne.

AN

To those that don't read my main stories... yeah, I can't apologize for my update rate because considering the number of words I churn out for my fics, I really don't feel like it will ever be possible for me to be faster. And for those that PM'd me asking if I abandoned this story -you faithless heatens, you- just chill, ok? Read one of my other 30 fics to pass the time.

I'm trying to work on engineering some emotional/philosophical conflict for Yamamoto, but while he always learns when it comes down to war-related shit, he's a very old man fixed in his ways, so he'll be repeatedly subjected to the same lesson in the future.

In any case, with this and the next couple of chapters, we should wrap around Thor: God of Thunder, which was more or less my synopsis for this while fic. Soon enough we'll be able to get started on the more relevant stuff that will lead to the Infinity War true and proper.

Having said that, I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter: opinions, hopes about the future?