Listening to the crashing sounds and muffled shouts coming from inside the sealed room, Natasha smiled with satisfaction and said, "It looks like it's very lively in there! She's really going at it!"
Wanda shrugged philosophically. "Let her vent her frustrations! It will be fine once she's done getting it all out of her system! Going from a high and mighty goddess who conquered realms to a powerless mortal prisoner is something that absolutely no one can accept all of a sudden! It's a massive psychological shock. Just like what Thor went through!"
Captain Marvel glanced calmly at the door that was periodically emitting pulses of green light as the Time Stone reset the room. "She must learn to face her new reality. Resistance is completely useless—she'll figure that out eventually. Once she realizes that her past actions were wrong and accepts genuine change, you can consider letting her out!"
"Then how can we be sure that she's not just deceiving us?" Pepper asked, still visibly worried. Her arms were crossed protectively. After all, the Hela shown on the Celestial Screen had been too cruel, too ruthless. "What if she just pretends to change?"
Natasha tossed Mjolnir casually in her hand, the hammer spinning in the air. "This is exactly why I'm staying here in the villa! This hammer is the test! Only when she can pick up Mjolnir will she be qualified to leave that room! The worthiness enchantment doesn't lie!"
"But aren't you afraid that she'll kill you after somehow stealing your hammer?" Pepper pressed, not understanding why Natasha seemed so relaxed about guarding such a dangerous prisoner.
Natasha chuckled warmly and explained with confidence, "Because if she had murderous intentions—if she wanted to kill me or anyone else—she wouldn't be able to pick it up in the first place! That's the whole point of the enchantment! You have to be worthy, and worthiness requires mercy!"
The group headed upstairs to the villa's main living area and saw that all the available Avengers were gathered there, relaxing and happily chatting about various topics—missions, training, the latest Celestial Screen revelations.
"Oh! You're coming up! How is she doing?" Tony asked, becoming curious when he saw them ascending the stairs. He'd been monitoring the situation remotely.
Natasha tilted her head dismissively. "What else could it be? She's reacting exactly as we expected! Throwing a massive tantrum!"
"Okay! I actually thought she would be calmer than that!" Tony admitted. He snapped his fingers, and one of his small hovering service robots came over carrying a wallet. He took out a ten-dollar bill from it and handed it reluctantly to Captain America.
"I win this time! Finally!" Captain America took the ten dollars with a genuinely happy smile. He still remembered that he'd lost ten dollars to Nick Fury back during the Avengers 1 incident over whether anything could surprise him anymore. And now he'd finally earned money back from Tony with a similar bet.
What? You say he didn't actually bet with Fury originally? Well, that just makes his profit even better!
"It seems that even without her divine power, the Goddess of Death will lose her temper just like an ordinary frustrated woman!" Tony shook his head, feeling a little embarrassed at his miscalculation. He'd actually made a fool of himself with that bet!
He had sworn confidently that Hela would handle imprisonment more stoically than Thor had, that she'd be calmer and more controlled. But he clearly hadn't expected that the siblings would have such similar temperaments! Hela was even more volatile than Thor had been!
-Broadcast-
[The scene shifted. The Statesman was shown sailing steadily through space toward Earth, its engines leaving faint trails of light.]
Thor and Loki stood side by side next to one of the large observation windows, looking out at the infinite universe beyond the ship—stars, nebulae, the vast cosmic ocean.
"Do you really think it's a good idea for us to go to Earth?" Loki asked, his tone carrying genuine concern beneath the casual words.
Thor crossed his arms confidently and turned his head to look at his brother. "Yes! Absolutely! The people of Earth love me! I'm very popular there! They'll welcome us!"
Loki opened his mouth slightly, then clarified with exaggerated patience, "Let me rephrase that more clearly, brother! Do you really think it's a good idea to bring me back to Earth? You know, given my history with New York?"
Thor paused, considering, then shrugged. "Maybe not the best idea? But honestly, I'm not worried about it, Loki! I think everything will work out fine!"
[Loki's lips curled up into a slight smile when he heard his brother's faith in him, touched despite himself.]
But soon both brothers' expressions changed dramatically, becoming serious and wary. Their eyes shifted upward, their heads tilting back slightly, as if they were looking at something massive appearing above them—something far larger than themselves.
A dark shadow slowly enveloped the two brothers, blocking out the stars. For a moment, they felt as if they were surrounded by complete darkness, swallowed by it. A profound sense of foreboding gripped their hearts—the instinctive recognition of mortal danger.
[An extremely large spaceship appeared directly in front of The Statesman, emerging from the void like a nightmare made manifest. Compared to it, The Statesman seemed like a child's toy, utterly dwarfed—impossibly small and fragile.]
-Real World-
"Oh my God!!! That's..." Gamora stood up suddenly from where she'd been sitting, nearly knocking over her chair. She looked at the screen in complete disbelief, her face draining of color.
"The...Sanctuary...!!" Nebula gritted her teeth as she recited the name of the giant spaceship, her voice filled with old trauma and terror. Her cybernetic implants whirred anxiously.
"Sanctuary? Is this Thanos's personal flagship?" Tony asked, his eyes narrowing dangerously. He set down the wine glass in his hand with deliberate care.
"JARVIS, calculate the approximate size of the Sanctuary based on the visual comparison..."
Although The Statesman had been taken by Korg and his group and hadn't followed the Avengers back to Earth, Tony still had some rough specifications data from Asgardian records.
In less than a second, JARVIS calculated based on the comparative image analysis. "Sir, the Sanctuary's length is approximately five to eight kilometers. Margin of error plus or minus three hundred meters."
When they received this staggering number, everyone in the room drew in sharp breaths. According to Nebula's previous descriptions, this massive warship was carrying a huge army—thousands of Chitauri and Outriders—plus devastating weapons of mass destruction!
"It seems that Thor and the others are in extremely grave danger!" Captain America said, frowning deeply. He leaned forward in his seat. "I don't know how Thor and his people could possibly escape from this!"
"He's literally just escaped from the wolf's den only to jump directly into the tiger's mouth!" Natasha observed grimly. "Thanos's power and threat level is not much less than Hela's, from what we know. He may not be able to defeat Hela while she's empowered in Asgard, but he would never lose to her so easily outside of it. And Thor just exhausted himself..."
The Black Widow couldn't help but shake her head with concern. "Yeah! Thor is in serious trouble now, weakened and with only refugees to protect! I hope he and his people can somehow escape this danger!"
In another location, in a massive throne room, Thanos sat watching the Screen with intense interest. His imposing figure leaned forward slightly. "It seems that my alternate self has finally taken action? About time! Come on! Let me see how the Avengers claim they'll win this war! Show me your strategy!"
Ebony Maw stood quietly and obediently behind Thanos, his robes perfectly still. "My most respected father! It seems we can simply wait and see how events unfold! The Screen will show us everything!"
"Hmm!" Thanos nodded slightly, his massive head inclining. Then he suddenly asked a different question:
"Have you found the current whereabouts of my two dear daughters yet?"
"According to our current intelligence networks, they both seem to have followed the Guardians of the Galaxy to Earth!" Ebony Maw reported efficiently.
Thanos frowned, his scarred face creasing. "Earth again! It seems these Avengers are there specifically to oppose me at every turn! What about Hela? Where is Odin's daughter?"
"The situation regarding Hela's location is still unclear, my lord!" Ebony Maw answered cautiously, knowing his master's temper.
The Black Order knew very little about Hela, the dangerous daughter who had been imprisoned by Odin for thousands of years. If Thor: Ragnarok had not been played on the Screen for all to see, they would not even have known that Hela was still alive—they'd assumed she was dead, not merely sealed away.
"Goddess of Death... Humph!" Thanos snorted softly, but the sound carried deep displeasure.
Compared with Death herself—one of the four great abstract cosmic entities, the fundamental concept of ending—the presumptuous title of Hela calling herself "Goddess of Death" made Thanos feel extremely disgusted and offended. It was almost blasphemous.
In his philosophy, who could possibly be worthy of claiming that title and tampering with Death's domain? He had dedicated his entire existence to Death! He slaughtered half of all living things in the universe, partly for the sake of pleasing Lady Death herself. Now, Hela had appeared and claimed to be the Goddess of Death, which made him feel as uncomfortable as if he had swallowed a live insect.
"Find the place where Odin is holding her prisoner as soon as possible!" Thanos commanded, his voice hard as iron. "Get rid of her before she can return to Asgard and regain her full power!"
This order was issued not only to eliminate Hela, who had dared to tarnish the sacred name of Death, but also for his subsequent invasion plans—to prevent Hela from escaping her prison and causing dangerous complications for his gathering of the Infinity Stones.
Ebony Maw bowed deeply and retreated. He immediately began arranging for operatives to search for Hela's possible location. However, his first areas of investigation were not Earth, but the other realms in the Nine Realms system!
Ebony Maw's reasoning was logical: he knew very well that Odin would never imprison someone as dangerous as Hela on Earth—too much risk to the mortals. And the Ancient One who protected Earth was traditionally indifferent to Asgardian affairs. So he concluded with certainty that Hela must be imprisoned in another realm—perhaps Niflheim, perhaps Muspelheim—and would eventually make her way to Earth.
But they didn't know the truth—that Hela had already been defeated by Thor and his Avenger allies and brought directly back to Earth for imprisonment. So Ebony Maw's search operation was doomed to fail from the start, looking in all the wrong places.
However, Hela herself—trapped in a room in Tony's Malibu villa, far away on Earth—had absolutely no idea that she had inexplicably been put on Thanos's assassination list.
After venting her rage and exhausting herself, after watching the room reset itself multiple times, Hela finally regained some measure of composure. She sat on the restored bed and looked up at where she knew surveillance equipment was hidden, speaking to the sky with bitter sarcasm:
"My 'good' brother Thor, it seems that your disaster has just begun! Let's see how you handle the Mad Titan! I'll be watching!"
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