Thor looked out from his balcony to the realm eternal, Asgard. The dwindling twilight flashed over the great sea flanking the Bifröst Bridge, where Heimdallr stood watching the cosmos and guarding the entrance to and exit from Asgard. He leaned on his right hand, propped up by his elbow, and allowed a smile to come across his face. The evening was so peaceful now that he didn't have any enemies to fight. New York was long behind him, and the fall of his pride on Earth before that seemed an eternity away. With Mjölnir safely at his side, as it always was, for the first time in what seemed like forever, Thor was glad for the grace of enjoying an evening.

Three strong raps at his door shattered that grace. Groaning, Thor hoisted Mjölnir off the ground and walked to his door. To his surprise, instead of a servant or messenger, his own mother was standing before him. In an instant Thor knew his evening was gone, for worry was bright in her eyes.

"It's your father," she said softly. "He's gone into a fit and shut himself in his room. He won't see any of his friends and demands to speak with you and you alone." She laid herself on Thor's mighty armor, and Thor gathered his mother into his arms. This was unusual indeed.

"I will speak with him," Thor answered. "Knowing father, he might have just hit the mead a little too hard."

"Oh Thor you know your father doesn't drink!" his mother cried, tossing herself away from him and rushing down the hall. Thor sighed; his jokes were still a little on the poor side thanks to spending time on Earth. Closing his door, Thor walked down the hall towards his father's bedroom.

0-0-0-0-0

When Thor arrived at his father's chambers, he found Odin's room to be in a frightful state. The bed was in disarray. Curtains had been torn down. Clothing and trophy weapons were scattered across the floor. Out on the balcony, Thor found Odin clutching the railing with such tension the marble was actually beginning to crack.

"Thor?" Odin asked without turning around. "My son? Is that you?" His long white hair didn't move as he spoke, and Gungnir was lying against the edge of the railing. Their rooms were on the same side of the Asgardian palace, and as Thor followed his father's gaze, he could see that his father was looking to where Heimdallr guarded the Bifröst.

"Yes father, I am here," Thor answered.

"Trouble is afoot my lad," Odin said. He still had not moved. "Terrible trouble."

"Allfather—" Thor began, laying a hand on Odin's shoulder. Odin turned around in a flash, grabbing Thor's hand and slamming the boy into the wall behind them. Cracks jumped up the face of the marble palace, but Thor was unafraid. Odin was, after all, his father.

"Problems, my lad! Awful events are going to happen!" Odin yelled into Thor's face.

"Odin!" Thor finally had to cry out in anguish. The Allfather hesitated for a moment before releasing Thor. "Speak true, father. What is wrong? What is it that ails you?" Thor watched as Odin returned to his original spot, taking Gungnir firmly in his hand. He leaned upon it as an old man would lean upon a very tall cane. He was looking to the Bifröst.

"A man who has no business existing has appeared on Earth," Odin finally said. Thor remained silent, waiting for Odin to continue. "His very presence shakes all of Yggdrasill. I fear the worst for not only Asgard, but for the rest of our universe."

"Is that why you called me? To combat this menace?" Thor's blood was beginning to stir at the prospect of battle, even though he remembered well what Odin once told him about the kings who seek battle and are prepared for it. "I see no other reason why I should be told of this. Shall I call upon my friends and prepare for combat?"

"In due time," Odin replied. "If you were still a boy, you would never willingly go into the fray against that... That..." Odin lost his words for a moment, and he struck Gungnir into the ground in a flash of anger. Thor waited quietly for Odin's temper to fade before speaking.

"Stark will contact me if it is too fierce of a problem for them to combat, I am sure," Thor said. "But the people of Earth have mighty heroes to defend them. With Banner and the director of SHIELD on the forefront of defense, Earth could not be in better hands." Thor saw that Odin was not listening, his eyes still locked on Heimdallr's post at the edge of the Bifröst. "Allfather, are you listening to me?"

"Mark my words," Odin was saying. "The day will come when the people of Earth will call upon you, and the people of Midgard will desperately need our help. But I do not know if we will be able to stop this. It might even be the day of reckoning, my boy. Ragnarök."

"You always said it is best to die in battle, rather than to die in hiding. But do not fret, father. Ragnarök is a long ways off," Thor replied. The word Ragnarök felt unfamiliar and poisonous on his tongue, and he did not like it. "I doubt this new threat on Earth will bring about the end of our reality."

"Time will tell," Odin responded, and they both fell silent, looking out to Heimdallr's gate.

0-0-0-0-0

It was 2 in the morning when Reed Richards awoke to a call on his secure cell phone from an unknown number halfway across the world.

He slipped out of the bedroom quietly. The last thing he wanted to do was to wake up his wife, Susan. It was a miracle the phone buzzing on his nightstand didn't wake her up. He thanked his lucky stars that Susan was a hard sleeper.

"Hello?" Reed managed, wiping his face with his hand as he walked down the hall to his study. Who on Earth was going to call at 2 in the morning? Didn't people have any sense these days?

"Reed," came the smooth, almost sleazy voice from the other end of the phone. Reed stopped in his tracks. It was Victor von Doom.

"Victor?" Reed whispered, still unmoving.

"Best get to your study, Reed. You're going to want to be sitting for this." Reed made a sound of half-disgust and walked to his study without saying another word. When he finally sat down and was leaning back in his chair, Victor began to speak again. "Just thought I should let you know that I found something you weren't awake to see. Something very, very big."

"Congratulations Victor," Reed said humorlessly. "If that's all you've got for me, I'm going to bed now."

"And this also happened to register a 0.02 on my Tegmark scale," Victor added. Silence came out the mouth of Reed Richards, one of the greatest scientific minds of all time.

"It..." Reed gulped. "What?"

"0.02, Reed," Victor replied, his voice heavy with excitement and fear. "Even when New York was happening with the Avengers initiative, it didn't even ping on my Tegmark scale. I couldn't even get the scale to register anything until Sentry and Banner had it out in Manhattan. And then that event was in the high trillions, nowhere close to absolute zero. This is the single biggest event to ever occur in the history of the universe!"

"What is it?" Reed was asking, turning on all of his equipment. He would have to start running hundreds of scans as soon as he possibly could. "Something of this magnitude should have broken every sensor on Earth, ripped apart the dimensions, disrupted phone calls, merged Asgard with Midgard—"

"You leave those arrogant 'gods' out of this," Victor snapped. "They have nothing to do with this at all."

"What is it, Victor? What could it possibly be? Where is it? How did it not rip apart all of reality? Something that close to absolute zero must be phenomenally powerful." Reed was now looking through charts. He hurriedly put his phone on speaker and turned it up high in case he had to cross the room. "Nothing that I have recorded even comes close to mirroring this. Galactus's appearance with the Silver Surfer for the first time, after we had gotten used to our powers, was in the high billions on your Tegmark scale if I remember correctly."

"Approximately, yes," Victor replied. "But here's the biggest news, Reed. It's basically right down the road from you."

"Right down the road? Here, in New York? Where? I see nothing on my sensors right now," Reed responded. He began running a scan for disruptions in space-time within the bounds of New York City. Something was bound to come up.

"I'm not entirely sure where, Reed," Victor admitted. "All I know is that the ping came between midnight and one o'clock. I was doing some analysis on the metal exoskeleton which was once on my entire body when the Tegmark scale went off. At first I was terrified, but then I was just confused. Surely the Tegmark had just malfunctioned, right? If it wasn't malfunctioning, I should be running or hiding or something. Getting away from there."

"More or less," Reed said absently, messing around with his instruments. "After all, if your scale picks up something, it's bound to be important enough to warrant immediate action."

"I restarted the damn thing a hundred times," Victor was saying. "I kicked it and swore at it and generally raised Hell trying to get it to stop saying that a 0.02 event had just occurred, and right next to Reed Richard's hometown at that. But no matter what I did, I couldn't get it to stop beeping. A real reading of 0.02 and somehow we're all still alive."

"When are you coming to New York next?" Reed asked. "I have a feeling that I won't be able to do this much work all by myself. Susan isn't prepared to handle something of this magnitude."

"I've already bought my ticket, Reed," Victor answered. "I'll be seeing you very soon, I promise."

Victor hung up the phone. Richards turned back to his instruments, trying to iron out where the Tegmark had pinged the event at and why everyone on Earth was still alive.

0-0-0-0-0

A young man sat at the corner booth of a coffee shop. He was alone, though he seemed to emit an aura of friendliness and acceptance. He pulled a strand of long, dark red hair out of his eyes and tucked it behind his ear. He looked out of his thin, square glasses to the busy streets of New York City, where cars were bumper-to-bumper and horns cut through the air every now and again. A young girl came up to his booth and politely cleared her throat, catching his attention. When he fixed her with his calm, soft blue eyes, the waitress involuntarily gasped. They were the most aesthetically pleasing eyes she had ever seen in her entire life.

"Can I get you anything?" she finally asked, a little taken aback by the young man's striking facial features. His gorgeous hair and beautiful eyes were further complimented by his lean face, with prominent cheekbones and well-formed lips. His forehead was broad, though it was mostly covered by his lengthy bangs.

"Black coffee would be great, Marilyn," he replied, his eyes never once darting to her name tag. His voice was smooth and silky, like the way a cup of hot chocolate feels after being outside in the cold for several hours. "If you have any maple-glazed donuts, I'll take one of those as well."

"We do indeed have maple-glazed," Marilyn said, jotting down his order. "I'll make sure to get you a fresh one, on the house." She winked flirtatiously, and the young man smiled warmly. Marilyn felt like his smile was the sun as it broke through the overcast sky of her day-to-day life. "Can I get a name with this?"

"Aaron," the young man replied. "My name is Aaron."