[Third Person Pov]
Thor had only just finished the medical scan. The healers had declared him free of serious injury—bruised ribs, a few strained muscles, nothing that would allow them to keep him as he was only hit by a close range thunderclap. He exhaled a long, weary sigh and reached for the door of the small recovery room when the sounds reached him.
Voices. A sharp thud. The unmistakable crackle of magic.
Curious, he cracked the door and peered out into the corridor.
His eyes went wide.
Spider-Man had his sister pinned face-first against the opposite wall, one of her arms twisted firmly behind her back, the other held secure at the wrist. Loki's cheek was pressed to the metal plating, green eyes blazing with pure murderous indignation.
Thor blinked once. Twice. Then a slow, deeply amused grin spread across his face.
"Sister?" he rumbled, stepping fully into the hallway. "What are you—uh… I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"
Peter's head snapped toward the voice so fast his mask nearly twisted. He immediately held up his free hand in frantic surrender, still keeping Loki locked in place with the other.
"Hold on—this isn't what it looks like! I can explain!"
Thor's grin only widened, the kind of brotherly, shit-eating smile that had tormented Loki across centuries. He leaned casually against the doorframe, arms crossed, clearly enjoying every second.
"Oh no, don't mind me. I'm terribly sorry to interrupt." His gaze slid to Loki, sparkling with pure mischief. "I'm glad to see your taste in men has improved, sister. Your previous choices were… rather questionable."
Loki's face burned so hot the air around her shimmered. Embarrassment and pure, homicidal resentment warred across her features.
"Will these humiliations ever cease?" she hissed to herself through clenched teeth.
Green magic exploded outward in a violent wave. The blast tore Peter free of her and sent him skidding several meters down the corridor. Loki spun on her heel the instant she was free, emerald energy coiling around her fists like living smoke.
"I will not rest until you are under my heel, begging for mercy, you no-name mortal!"
Peter landed lightly on his feet, already recovering. He rolled one shoulder, then casually flicked his fingers. Reality folded open beside him like a pane of liquid glass—the Mirror Dimension blooming into existence with a soft, crystalline chime.
He stepped forward and simply kicked Loki through the shimmering portal with one boot.
"I'm sure a lot of guys would be turned on by that," he called after her, already leaping through the opening himself. "Unfortunate for you, I'm not one of them. Also—can you not destroy this place? I'm the one who's going to have to pay for the damages, you know."
Thor stared at the rippling gateway for a long moment, fascinated. He reached out and passed one large hand through the surface. When he withdrew it, the skin was perfectly intact. No burns. No frost. Just a faint residual tingle of magic.
He shrugged, the grin never leaving his face.
"Well. I've always loved an adventure."
And with that, the God of Thunder dove in after them.
---
He slammed shoulder-first into what had once been a wall and was now the floor.
The Mirror Dimension stretched in every direction like an impossible labyrinth. Corridors twisted at sickening angles, staircases led into empty space, and gravity seemed to have given up entirely. Hallways rotated slowly around one another like the gears of some vast, broken clock.
Loki landed in a controlled crouch several meters away, rising slowly as she took in the shifting architecture. A reluctant spark of interest flickered in her eyes.
"I see. So you're a magic-caster as well." She turned in a slow circle, green energy already gathering at her fingertips. "What an interesting little dimension you've brought us to… but it still won't be enough to spare you from my scorn."
Peter hung upside-down from what was currently the ceiling, the entire corridor slowly rotated. He sighed the long-suffering sigh of a man who had already had a very long day.
"Girl, I know you couldn't help but fall for me—ladies fall at my feet all the time—but obsession is not a good look on you."
Loki's eyes flared brilliant emerald.
She launched herself forward, running along the wall in long, powerful strides as gravity twisted beneath her. A swarm of daggers materialized around her in a glittering green arc and shot toward him like a volley of arrows.
"I have never met a more irritating mortal in all my years—" she snarled, each word punctuated by another lethal throw.
Peter slapped the first dagger aside with the back of his hand, twisted, and redirected the next three with precise flicks of his wrists. Loki closed the distance in a blur of green mist, slamming him hard into the shifting wall, reforming right in front of him. One elegant hand locked around his throat, lifting him clean off his feet. Her remaining dagger spun into a reverse grip as she drove it straight toward his eyes.
Peter twisted his head at the last possible instant. The blade scraped across the side of his mask in a shower of bright sparks.
He drove a knee up into her midsection with enough force to break her grip. The moment her fingers loosened he unleashed a rapid flurry of punches—holding back most of his strength, but moving so fast that even Loki's godly reflexes struggled to keep up. A solid blow to the gut sent her crashing into the opposite wall. She hit with a pained grunt and slid down, landing hard on one knee, blood already staining her lower lip.
Peter hands raised in a placating gesture, "Come on. Can we please stop now? I know this whole mess started because of me, so hitting you back feels… wrong."
Lady Loki wiped the blood from her mouth with the back of one hand, then deliberately licked the rest from her lips. Her smile was all teeth and promise of pain, "No. The wrath of a goddess is inescapable."
Green light exploded around her. In the space of a heartbeat she transformed into an enormous black wolf, eyes glowing like twin lanterns. A dozen more wolves erupted into existence beside her, all of them lunging as one.
Peter's webs shot out in every direction. He swung, twisted, and yanked the very corridors of the Mirror Dimension into new alignments, turning walls into floors and ceilings into sudden dead-ends. In less than a second every wolf was entangled, slammed into solid surfaces, or spun helplessly through open space. One by one they dissolved into bolts of pure green energy that streaked back together and converged on Peter in a single, devastating blast.
The detonation swallowed the entire corridor in a blinding wave of magic and force.
Peter was hurled backward through the expanding shockwave, green smoke rolling off his shoulders like steam. He twisted mid-air, corrected with a graceful acrobatic flip, and landed lightly on a newly rotated stretch of corridor, already crouching low.
A thunderous roar shook the entire shifting corridor. From the swirling green smoke a giant troll erupted—hulking, gray-skinned, and easily four meters tall—brandishing a massive club studded with jagged stone. It was not alone. More shapes tore free of the haze one after another until a small army of the brutes filled the impossible space, each one towering over Peter, their heavy footfalls making the warped architecture tremble.
Peter slowly exhaled. Beneath the mask his eyes shifted from their usual calm to a piercing electric blue. Then he vanished.
Only a bright neon trail remained where he had stood.
The first troll never even finished its swing. Peter reappeared already mid-strike, bone claws and raw force carving the creature into neat, tumbling pieces. The severed head spun through the air; he snared it with a web, yanked it into his palm, and hurled it like a cannonball. It struck a second troll's skull with a wet, catastrophic *crack*, both heads erupting into a spray of dark gore and dissolving magic.
He moved like a living executioner's blade—fluid, inventive, and terrifyingly efficient. Webs shot out in glittering lines, hardening into razor-thin wires that sliced the next two trolls into perfect cubic sections before they could even roar. He landed on the shoulder of a third, drove both palms into the side of its head, and released a concentrated blast of magic that detonated the skull from the inside. The shockwave launched him forward like a living drill, carrying him straight through the chest of the next beast in line.
An arsenal of glowing chi blades erupted from the air around him and buried themselves deep into another troll's torso. Peter used the embedded weapons as instant anchor points, swinging in a wide arc on fresh webs and letting centrifugal force finish the job. Torrents of spider-silk flooded the corridor until the once-spacious hallway resembled the nest of some colossal spider—thick cables crisscrossing every surface, ensnaring the remaining trolls like helpless prey. One by one the giants struggled, then went still as the webbing constricted and the magic that sustained them unraveled.
Thor, meanwhile, could only stare.
He had seen countless warriors throughout his life. Asgard was home to some of the greatest fighters in the Nine Realms, warriors who had trained for centuries and mastered weapons and combat techniques that would be incomprehensible to ordinary mortals.
Yet even Thor had to admit that Peter's fighting style was something entirely different.
The spider warrior wasn't simply strong, he was also creative.
Every part of the environment became a weapon. His webs were ropes, blades, restraints, traps, and launching points. His magic became propulsion, ammunition, and raw destructive force. Even the trolls themselves became tools that Peter could manipulate against one another.
Thor couldn't help but grin, "By the All-Father…" he muttered in genuine amazement. "He fights better than most Asgardian warriors."
And that wasn't an exaggeration, Thor had watched entire squads of trained warriors struggle against troll armies. Peter had dismantled this one almost effortlessly.
When the last troll dissolved into smoke, Peter hung upside-down from a single web-string, arms spread wide and a cocky grin audible in his voice.
"Your move, Rudolf. Or are you more of a Prancer or Dasher kind of girl?"
A green dagger sliced through the air and severed the web. Peter dropped, stuck the landing perfectly as every troll illusion burst apart and the scattered energy raced back together, reforming into the true Lady Loki. Instantly a dozen perfect copies of her bloomed into existence around the corridor.
Peter only laughed and created matching duplicates of himself. The mirrored hallway filled with flashing black-and-blue figures trading blows with emerald-clad goddesses.
"Perhaps Dancer or Comet?" he called cheerfully while his clones fought.
All the Lokis spoke at once, voices overlapping in perfect, furious unison. "I swear to the All-Father, do you ever shut up?! I don't even understand what you're saying!"
"Nah~ and if you don't understand then educate yourself"
Peter slapped his palms together. A wide, crackling discharge of raw energy erupted between them. He drove both hands into the shifting floor. The power surged outward in a brilliant blue wave, racing along every surface. The duplicate Lokis screamed in unison as the energy tore their forms apart, leaving only the original standing in the sudden silence.
She wasted no time. Green light flared and she became a massive black wolf, charging straight at him. The moment Peter leapt to meet her she shifted again—body elongating, scales racing across flesh—until a colossal serpent coiled around him in a crushing embrace. Her jaws unhinged, fangs gleaming with venom and magic, and she struck for his shoulders.
She never fully sank her teeth in.
A wild electrical discharge exploded from Peter's body, racing through the serpent's coils in a storm of blue-white lightning. Loki convulsed, a long, agonized hiss tearing from her throat as the shock hurled her backward, reverting back. She slammed into a wall hard enough to bounce, stumbled forward on unsteady feet—
—and walked straight into a fresh volley of webs that yanked her close. Peter's roundhouse kick caught her cleanly across the midsection and drove her into the wall a second time. She crumpled, trying to rise, only for Peter to step forward, and sat down on her back as if settling into a comfortable chair. He rested his forearms on his knees, completely at ease.
Smoke curled from Loki's form as she struggled to catch her breath.
Peter looked down at her with a thoughtful little smirk, then snapped his fingers as if the answer had just occurred to him.
"I got it. It's between Cupid or Donner."
Loki's fists slammed against the floor beneath her. Frustration glittered in her eyes, bright enough to look almost like tears.
"This isn't over, do you hear me? I'll get you back for this… you will rue the day you made an enemy of me, mortal Spider."
Peter only snickered, giving her back a casual pat. "Yeah, whatever you say, princess. This was a lot of fun. We should do this more often."
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