Anton Vanko's voice crackled through the secure comms link from Russia, thick with his accent and his irritation.
"I tell you, Hephaestus, this armor is not for the parade. If you want humans to survive inside it for more than five minutes, we need more software support. You can put a man in a suit made of gold, but without proper targeting protocols, he is just a walking coffin."
On the other end, in her workshop on American soil, the goddess of forging rested an elbow on her desk and pinched the bridge of her nose.
"No."
Anton blinked. "No?"
"No AI, no smart cores, no neural overlays," Hephaestus said flatly. "Luthar made that rule very clear—nothing that thinks for itself. The suits already walk a fine line in their adaptability. If we start feeding them autonomous logic, we're halfway to creating a problem which Luthar is not going to like ."
Ivan Vanko leaned into the microphone on his father's end, his voice sharper, younger, and far less patient. "We don't need something that thinks. We just need something that can process input faster than a human. The armor is heavier than a tank and three times more complex. Without that processing power, the operator's reflexes—"
Hephaestus cut him off, her tone as immovable as the anvils in her forge. "Then Lat Luthar modifies the humans or simplifies the armor interface, then adds responsive counterbalance systems, refines the servos, and adjusts the feedback layers—those are mechanical solutions. But intelligence? Even dumb intelligence? No."
Anton gave an exasperated sigh and sat back in his chair, muttering something in Russian about "stubborn goddesses" while his son paced behind him.
"If this armor fails in the field," Ivan warned, "you'll regret ignoring this."
"No," Hephaestus replied, calm and certain, "I'll regret not stopping you from killing yourself if you use any AI in Luthar technology, he is going to kill you."
She cut the line before either Vanko could fire back.
The forge's lab returned to silence broken only by the faint hiss of cooling metal from a half-finished blade. Hephaestus stood, brushed soot from her hands, and crossed the workshop.
Luthar's workroom was three doors down, past a sealed corridor lined with drone racks. She found him crouched over a crystalline sphere, his mechadendrites delicately inserting golden filaments into its surface.
"I thought you'd be buried in diagnostics until tomorrow," she said.
He didn't look up. "I was. Until you walked in."
She smiled faintly. "We need to talk."
Luthar's eyes flicked toward her—human, yet cold in their calculation—and then returned to the sphere. "Vankos again?"
"Yes. They want software cores in the armor. I told them no."
"Good." His hands never slowed, but there was a trace of satisfaction in his voice. "The moment they get used to a machine thinking, they'll forget how to fight without it. That makes them liabilities, not assets."
She hesitated, watching him work. It wasn't just his skill that struck her—it was how seamlessly his ideas flowed into practice. And yet, in the back of her mind, she was aware of her own change.
Months ago, she didn't know about computers. Now she could walk into one, pick out flaws in most of the technology, and redesign half the process before lunch. Luthar had provided her with a kind of knowledge that made divine craftsmanship feel… different.
"You're thinking too loud," he said suddenly, setting the sphere aside.
She smirked. "Just wondering how I went from sculpting blades one at a time to plotting the layout for a new planet manufacturing station."
"You learn Fast." He finally looked at her, "That is what matters."
By the next morning, the hangar was alive with motion. Lily zipped past in her flight suit, humming a tune far too cheerful for a mission involving Mars, heavy machinery, and possibly lethal accidents.
The Drop-Wing shuttle sat ready, loaded with modular equipment crates and atmospheric drones. The plan was simple: hop to Mars, deploy automated mining rigs, and return before anyone had time to notice they were gone.
"Is everyone aboard?" Luthar asked, stepping onto the ramp.
"Yup!" Lily chirped from the cockpit. "Extra snacks, fuel topped off, and I even polished the stabilizers so they look shiny in sunlight!"
Hephaestus followed, arms folded. "I still say this is overkill for a resource sweep."
"It's never overkill," Luthar replied, settling into a seat. "It's insurance."
Meanwhile, in Asgard…
Thor knelt in the throne room, his armor battered, breath coming fast. Odin's voice echoed in the chamber, heavy with disappointment rather than anger. The details of the skirmish with the Frost Giants were already fading into the background of Odin's mind.
Frigga watched her husband closely. She could see his distraction—he spoke to Thor, but his gaze seemed turned elsewhere.
"This was folly," Odin told his son. "You disobeyed me. You endangered the Realm. For that, you will be stripped of your power."
Thor began to protest, but Gungnir's butt struck the floor with a sharp crack. Magic surged, and the golden light of the All-Father's decree wrapped around him.
"I, Odin cast you out!"
The rainbow light of the Bifrost burst through the chamber floor, seizing Thor in a torrent of color and sound. He vanished into the void between worlds—followed, a heartbeat later, by the hurtling form of Mjolnir, sent spinning toward Midgard.
Odin at this time didn't realise what type of trouble he had caused.
Just a few minutes ago, at The Drop-Wing was coming back from Mars. Inside the drop-wing, as Lily hummed happily, flicking toggles on the control console as Luthar reviewed the mission logs. The cargo was secure, the atmospheric survey drones had been deployed, and Hephaestus seemed satisfied with the day's work.
"Everything's smooth," Lily reported. "Stabilizers steady, fuel margin at twelve percent, and ETA to Earth orbit is eight minutes."
"Good," Luthar said, his eyes scanning the instrument readouts. "Once we re-enter, we—"
The ship jolted as the transition burn ended, and the blue-white marble of Earth grew larger on the forward screen. The Drop-Wing angled for its re-entry corridor, slicing through the upper edge of the thermosphere.
Something flashed across the viewport — a glint of silver tumbling against the black.
Luthar's head snapped up. "What is—"
A silver streak of spinning metal roared into view, trailing divine energy like a comet. In the half-second before impact, Hephaestus swore in a language older than stars.
Mjolnir slammed into the Drop-Wing's port wing with the force of a small meteor. The world turned into a blinding light and shrieking alarms. The stabilizers Lily had so proudly polished tore free in a spray of molten plating.
"We're losing altitude!" Lily yelled, wrestling with the controls. " also atmosphere! That's bad!"
The craft tumbled, caught between the pull of Earth's gravity and the sheer force of the blow. Panels blew out along the hull. Crates broke loose in the cargo bay, clanging like war drums.
"Brace!" Luthar barked, gripping the crash harness.
"Uh—where?!" Lily shouted back, even as she fought to level the ship. "We're aiming everywhere!"
The burning Drop-Wing tore through the clouds, its re-entry trail visible for miles. It struck the desert hard, skidding through sand and rock before finally grinding to a halt in the sun-baked wastes of New Mexico.
Inside the battered cockpit, Lily groaned, brushing her hair out of her face. "Sooo… are we really going to tell people we got hit by a flying hammer? They will call us crazy?"
Luthar didn't even look at her. His gaze stayed fixed on the smoking wreckage outside, following the faint contrail where Mjolnir had vanished toward its master. His voice was calm, but edged with irritation.
"Forget the locals. We have bigger problems."
A beat passed before he muttered, more to himself than to her, "Half a meter of armor plating—rated to shrug off railgun fire—and it still gets torn apart by a flying hammer. Perfect. Absolutely perfect."
Authors note: Well if there is any mistake make sure to point out I will try to correct and if there is suggestion you can comment and if you want to support in dark times you can join on patron or just wish me good luck
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