Annie actually felt a pang of sympathy for Gorr the God Butcher—especially for his poor, innocent daughter.
Which made Billy Butcher's snide remarks all the more repulsive. She turned on him, eyes blazing.
"If a father willing to sacrifice everything for his daughter is a coward and a loser, then what about you?" she snapped. "What does that make you, huh?"
Billy sneered, his expression darkening like a lion about to pounce.
"I'll rip those goddamn bastards' cocks off and ram 'em straight down their throats!"
The sheer vulgarity of it made Annie's face flush red with embarrassment. She turned away, annoyed and refusing to dignify it with a response.
Deadpool, naturally, was delighted.
"Aw yeah, now we're talkin'! Let's go, Billy, tag-team divine dismemberment!" he cheered, happily joining in the vulgar tirade. Their back-and-forth quickly devolved into a crude shouting match that had everyone else wincing.
Thor, in particular, looked deeply offended.
Hard to blame him. They were lobbing verbal nukes at all gods, and they weren't exactly making exceptions for the ones in the room.
Thankfully, the commotion died down when the screen began playing a video—mercifully cutting off the verbal dumpster fire.
In the footage, Thor and his group had just departed Omnipotence City and were heading straight for the Shadow realm. They didn't waste any time.
Along the way, Thor had a rather... personal chat with Stormbreaker.
Apparently, the axe had developed a bit of a jealousy streak—toward Mjolnir.
Yes, the axe was jealous of the hammer. The two weapons were basically fighting over his attention.
But to be fair, these weren't ordinary weapons. Mjolnir and Stormbreaker were genuine god-forged relics, borderline sentient. So a bit of possessiveness? Not totally unexpected.
After calming down the axe, Thor had a heart-to-heart with his ex, Jane Foster. Since their unexpected reunion, it had been one chaos-filled event after another. This was their first quiet moment, a chance to talk about their long-ended, unresolved relationship.
Seeing rough-and-tumble Thor acting like a bashful teenager around his ex was... jarring. Especially considering this was the same guy who had casually one-shotted Zeus not long ago. The contrast was almost hilarious.
But it was also clear—Thor and Jane both still had feelings for each other. They were trying to reconnect.
During the conversation, Jane let something slip: she had cancer.
The revelation stunned Thor. But the big guy's emotional IQ kicked in, and he comforted her as best he could. It ended, of course, with a kiss—sweet and romantic.
Outside the video, Deadpool made a dramatic squealing noise.
"Aww, so romantic. Stars in the background, soft lighting... damn, Thor, I'm kinda crushing on you a little right now. You've got some serious game, my guy!"
Thor gave him a withering glare.
"What game? That's love, you cretin. Something you wouldn't understand if it hit you in the face with a hammer!"
Deadpool cackled.
"Oh my god, did Thor just call me emotionally stunted? Are you giving me love lessons now? This is adorable."
Back in the footage, the goat-powered ship sailed silently through the cosmos, growing ever closer to the Shadow realm. Eventually, it landed without incident.
The Shadow realm resembled a small moon, and just as Thor had warned earlier, all color vanished upon arrival.
The vivid hues of their clothing, the ship—everything—looked like it had been scrubbed away by an eraser, leaving only stark black and white.
They quickly found the cages where the kidnapped children had been held—but they were empty now. The group began scouring the eerie, colorless landscape, eventually stumbling across a messy tent setup.
No sign of Gorr. No sign of the Asgardian kids.
Then Jane noticed something: a clue Gorr had left behind.
The Rainbow Bridge. It was marked as the key to Eternity.
"It's a trap," Jane realized instantly. Gorr wasn't after the kids—he was after Stormbreaker.
She bolted out of the tent, flinging the axe as far away as she could to keep it out of Gorr's reach.
From their outside perspective, the audience already knew this. Gorr's true target was no mystery. But for Thor and the others inside the video, the pieces hadn't quite come together yet. They were being lured—step by step—into Gorr's snare.
Right on cue, after Jane's warning and her hasty disposal of the axe, Gorr emerged slowly from the darkness.
Thor didn't summon Stormbreaker. Instead, Jane made the first move, hurling Mjolnir straight at Gorr.
He dodged with eerie ease.
Of course he did—this was his trap. He came prepared.
From the shadows, tendrils of darkness shot out like twisted vines, snaring Thor, Jane, and Valkyrie in a blink.
That's the price of overconfidence.
Thor was hoisted into the air, and Gorr approached, pulling back his hood to reveal a pale, horrifying face.
His pupils glinted amber like a cold-blooded animal. A dark stain—blood?—marked his lips. When he spoke, his blackened teeth peeked through like something rotten. He stared at Thor with manic intensity, as if he meant to devour him whole.
Not literally, of course. Gorr didn't eat people. He just wanted one thing: Stormbreaker.
Thor had figured that much out by now—and wasn't about to give it up. Instead, he mocked Gorr's grotesque teeth.
But Gorr wasn't easily rattled. Seeing Thor resist, he tried prying his hands open with his shadowy tendrils, hoping the axe would respond.
It didn't. Because Stormbreaker didn't respond to hands. It responded to Thor.
Seeing that brute force wouldn't work, Gorr tried persuasion.
"You prayed to them once too, didn't you?" he said. "Begged the gods for help—and they did nothing. Just like me. We're not so different."
"Don't flatter yourself," Valkyrie snapped. "Thor's nothing like you."
Gorr grinned, stepping in so close their faces almost touched.
"Of course not," he whispered theatrically. "I'm not a hypocrite. I want to bring peace—the real kind."
To Gorr, all gods were the disease plaguing the universe. And Thor? Just another fraud in a cape.
Valkyrie wasn't buying it.
"You're murdering innocent gods!"
"Innocent?" Gorr asked, voice quiet and chilling.
"You're a Valkyrie, aren't you?"
"Damn right," she said with pride.
Gorr's expression twisted into manic delight.
"Oh, how wonderful," he whispered, then suddenly let out a mad laugh. "They've marked you too, you know. Your sisters... they're next."
___
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