When Hela opened her eyes again, her warrior instincts immediately kicked in. She suddenly sat up and assumed a defensive fighting stance, her muscles tensed and ready for combat. But instead of finding herself on a battlefield or in a prison cell, she discovered she was lying on a soft, comfortable white bed with high-quality linens.
The tattered green battle outfit she'd been wearing—torn and shredded from the fierce combat—had been replaced with an elegant Asgardian-style white dress that flowed like water. The fabric was fine and well-made. Frigga had put it on her personally while she was unconscious, treating her daughter with care despite everything.
"Where is this?" Hela frowned deeply and looked around the unfamiliar room with suspicious eyes. The architectural style here—modern, clean, with floor-to-ceiling windows—did not match any place she remembered from her long life.
She got out of bed cautiously and walked to the large window. She pulled open the heavy curtains that had been blocking the bright sunlight. What came into view was the boundless blue ocean stretching to the horizon, waves rolling gently. The familiar coastal location made her immediately remember where she was!
Tony Stark's Malibu villa! She'd seen it on the Screen.
Hela narrowed her eyes dangerously and suddenly heard a noise at the door—footsteps approaching. She quickly spun around and raised her hand to launch an attack, summoning her power. But the Sword of the Night Sky did not appear as she willed it to. Nothing happened. Her hand remained empty.
"You finally woke up? I was starting to think you would just keep sleeping!" Natasha appeared casually in the doorway of the room, leaning against the frame. She was still holding Mjolnir in her hand—the Meow Hammer that had once belonged to Hela. She tossed it playfully in her hand and looked at Hela with barely concealed amusement.
"What did you do to me?!" Hela demanded, looking at her empty, powerless hands. She glared at Natasha with pure fury and confusion.
"We didn't do anything terrible," Natasha said with a shrug, her tone deliberately casual. "We actually healed your injuries! You were pretty badly hurt. You should be thanking us, really!"
Natasha tilted her head and looked at Hela, who had been stripped of her power, with a half-smile playing at her lips.
Hela suddenly had a realization at this moment. She reached up urgently and touched her hair, running her fingers through it, searching. Then her face became completely dark with understanding and rage.
"You took my Nightshade Helmet!" she snarled, her voice low and dangerous.
Just like Thor had once needed Mjolnir, Hela required an external focus like the Nightshade Helmet to help her master and channel her divine power effectively. Once the helmet was taken away, her connection to her goddess abilities would be severed, and she would become little more than an ordinary Asgardian—albeit one with millennia of combat training!
"It was Odin who ordered it! How dare he?!! That damn old fool!" In her explosive rage, Hela didn't even call him father anymore. She called Odin by his name directly and started cursing him with ancient Asgardian profanity.
Wanda and Captain Marvel came over upon hearing the commotion and raised voices. The three women gathered at the doorway, forming a wall, and looked at the furious Hela.
Natasha's smile softened slightly, becoming almost sympathetic. "We originally planned to kill you, you know! Execute you for your crimes! But your dear brother Thor and your father Odin didn't want to see you die. So instead, they chose exile and imprisonment. You should consider yourself fortunate!"
"Should I thank them for this mercy?" Hela asked sarcastically, looking at them with extremely cold, bitter eyes.
Then she silently focused her gaze on Mjolnir in Natasha's hand, studying it with calculation. If she could somehow get the Meow Hammer, she would be able to obtain the power of Thor through it. In that way, even if she had lost the power of the Goddess of Death, she would still have enough strength to fight her way out of here!
However, Natasha and Captain Marvel, who were both present and experienced warriors, could of course see through Hela's transparent thoughts. Her eyes had given her away.
Hela made her move. She rushed forward suddenly and threw a punch at Natasha with all the speed and skill of her millennia of combat experience.
But at this moment, Natasha—empowered by the divine magic of Mjolnir—easily caught Hela's fist in mid-strike, stopping it cold without any apparent effort.
"You want to take the hammer?" Natasha asked, her voice carrying a challenge. "If you can lift it, you can have it! Go ahead and try!" As she said this, she actually released Hela's fist and deliberately placed Mjolnir on the floor between them.
Hela's expression changed, flickering between confusion and suspicion. She didn't understand why Natasha would dare to do this! But she soon remembered the spell Odin had left on the hammer—the worthiness enchantment.
A trace of disdain flashed across her face. She'd wielded this hammer before Odin had ever cast that spell! Odin's worthiness enchantment could affect other people, could stop mortals and lesser beings, but surely not her! She was his firstborn, his original heir!
Thinking this, she bent down confidently and tried to pick up the hammer, wrapping both hands around the handle. But she suddenly found that the weapon that had once been as light as a feather in her grasp was now as heavy as a mountain, impossibly dense. No matter how hard she tried, no matter how much she strained, she couldn't move it even a fraction of an inch!
Natasha's mouth curled up in a knowing smile as she watched Hela struggle.
"Don't waste your energy!" she said cheerfully. "To specifically prevent you from picking up the hammer, Odin used a significant portion of Thor's own divine power to enhance the spell's effectiveness and reinforce it. This way, even if Odin dies and passes on, the spell will still remain effective indefinitely!"
She paused, letting that sink in. "By the way! Your helmet—that thing called the Nightshade—has also been cursed by Odin with similar magic! If you can't learn to feel genuine mercy and compassion, even if you somehow manage to find it, you won't be able to lift it or wear it. Just like you are with the hammer right now!"
Hela sat heavily on the floor, her defeat sinking in. She took a deep breath, trying to control her emotions, but she still tried to attack them with her legs without giving up—a sweep kick aimed at Natasha's ankles.
Natasha casually reached out and recalled Mjolnir to her hand, the hammer flying across the room. She used it to block Hela's kick effortlessly.
There was a slight flash of red light in Wanda's hand, and suddenly Hela found herself lifted by invisible force. She was thrown backward onto the big silk bed, landing in a heap. Then the red light in Wanda's hand intensified and flowed outward. Powerful chaos magic appeared, spreading through the room like red mist. The entire room became enveloped by this reality-warping power, sealing it off from the outside world.
"Just stay here and think about what you've done!" Wanda said firmly, though not unkindly. "You can't leave this room until you learn kindness and compassion! You're welcome to try jumping out of the window if you don't believe me!" After casting the containment magic, Wanda added that last part playfully, almost teasingly.
The three women turned and left the room together. The door closed behind them with a solid click, leaving Hela alone. She rushed to the door in fury, pounding on it with her fists and roaring angrily, screaming threats and curses.
A powerful red magic circle appeared above the door, glowing brightly before being imprinted into the wood itself. It transformed into an extremely exquisite pattern that looked almost decorative—beautiful but deadly.
"Is this really all right? We truly don't have to worry about her awakening her power like Thor did and taking back her divine abilities?" Pepper stood in the villa's living room, her arms crossed. Although she understood they had made sufficient preparations, she was still a little worried. After all, Hela's devastating power was obvious to everyone who'd seen the recordings.
"Of course it's fine! Don't worry!" Natasha reassured her. "To prevent her from regaining her power on her own through sheer force of will, Frigga personally cast an incredibly powerful binding spell on Hela while she slept. One that nearly drained all of Thor's divine power to fuel! It was exhausting for him. Not to mention Wanda's additional chaos magic layered on top!"
"Yeah!" Captain Marvel added. "If she doesn't physically retrieve the Nightshade Helmet and relies only on herself to break free, she will probably have to wait until both Thor and Wanda are dead before she can even begin to crack the seal of the spell! And that could be thousands of years!"
Natasha and Captain Marvel had both witnessed the spell being cast on the sleeping Hela. They'd seen Thor afterward—he'd been so exhausted he could barely stand, nearly collapsing. Even Wanda had been sweating profusely after assisting in casting such a complex and powerful enchantment.
"She can't leave that room, period," Wanda said, nodding at Pepper to comfort her. "You just need to deliver meals to her on time every day through the slot we installed. Don't open the door!" She shrugged slightly. "Besides, Tony and I don't live here anymore anyway, so you won't have to deal with her often."
What Pepper was most worried about was the possibility that if Hela somehow regained her divine power, she might go on a killing spree in New York, taking revenge on innocent people. After getting these assurances from several powerful heroes, she finally felt somewhat at ease.
Inside the sealed room, Hela pounded on the door for a long time, her fists bruising, but still no one responded to her fury. Angry beyond reason, she immediately grabbed the delicate chair next to the mahogany dressing table and threw it with all her strength at the window, trying to smash her way out.
The chair hit the bulletproof glass with a loud crash, but the window didn't move at all—didn't even crack. The red magical light embedded in it flashed slightly in response to the impact, and the chair bounced back elastically, nearly hitting Hela in the face.
This made Hela even more furious, her rage building to new heights. She grabbed an expensive perfume bottle from the dressing table and smashed it against the wall with tremendous force, glass crackling and liquid spreading.
She violently overturned the carved and gilded dressing table in one motion, cosmetics and jewelry flying everywhere. The bronze mirror fell to the floor with a resounding crash. The broken lens reflected her face, which was distorted by uncontrollable anger.
The pearl hairpins and diamond brooches that had been carefully arranged in the drawer were scattered all over the floor, rolling into corners.
She stalked to the walnut wardrobe and pulled the door open so hard it nearly came off its hinges. The beautiful clothes and silk nightgowns that Pepper had thoughtfully tailored for her—expensive, high-quality garments—were pulled out and torn into strips with savage fury. Pearl buttons popped off and rolled everywhere across the floor.
Finally, she pounced on the large bed covered with silk sheets like a wild animal. The velvet curtains were torn down from their rods and stepped on, ground into the plush carpet. She tore a huge hole in the expensive mattress, and snow-white goose feathers exploded out, flying everywhere like a sudden indoor snowfall.
Hela stood in the center of the complete mess she'd created, her hair disheveled and wild, breathing hard. When the last silver candlestick hit the floor with a dull, final thud, she finally fell to her knees exhausted. Her chest heaved violently as she tried to catch her breath.
But before she could even begin to recover from her destructive actions, before she could feel any satisfaction, the entire room suddenly lit up with ethereal green light. Then, impossibly, everything she had just destroyed began to move on its own. The furniture righted itself. The torn fabric mended. The scattered items flew back to their places. Within moments, the room was completely restored to its original pristine condition!
Hela was no fool—she'd lived for thousands of years and seen many forms of magic. She immediately realized what was happening and gritted her teeth, saying the words with bitter recognition: "The Time Stone..."
This was Doctor Strange's contribution to her imprisonment. Although it was somewhat wasteful to use an Infinity Stone to do something as trivial as restoring a room, he had still agreed to Tony's request. The goal was to make Hela realize that destructive tantrums were completely meaningless—that she could destroy this room a thousand times and it would simply reset each time.