FBI: Chapter 125: Orange Light Forging, Begin!

Dante stepped forward and grabbed the uru metal.

A large chunk was suddenly in his hand.

It looked effortless, but he was putting serious muscle into lifting it.

“As expected of Mjolnir’s raw material. Just this small piece is ridiculously heavy.” Surprise flashed in his eyes. “But this stuff, being Asgard’s special mineral, you’ve got more than this lying around, right?”

“What, you not only want to take all the uru metal in Odin’s Vault, but also track its source?” Hela gave him a look. “Honestly, I think the Greed Orange Light should have attached to you, not me.”

“What are you talking about? This isn’t greed. I just want to help you forge an Orange Lantern Ring. I was only worried about running short on materials, that’s all.”

Hela stared at the small mountain of uru metal piled waist-high in front of her, eyes twitching.

Others might not know, but she did.

How could forging a Lantern Furnace possibly need that much material?

Dante pretended not to notice, used dark magic to open a pocket dimension, and swept every last scrap of uru metal inside.

He didn’t leave Odin a single metal particle.

The uru metal might not be the rarest thing in the Vault, but for Hela, it was definitely the most useful.

“The main body of the ring is settled. Next, we need the essential item to strengthen it.”

He turned his gaze to the basin of Eternal Flame.

In the movie, Hela used it to resurrect her Asgardian army instead of necromancy.

The Eternal Flame granted actual permanence, letting warriors already in Valhalla physically rise again.

Of course, they still needed the Goddess of Death to command them.

They were ordinary undead soldiers, yes, but they had once been Asgard’s warriors.

If the Eternal Flame’s power could be merged with the Orange Lantern Ring, letting the fallen Asgardian army become Hela’s Orange Lantern ghost corps…

Definition: becoming an army by yourself.

Dante’s method was simple. He picked up the entire brazier and dropped it into his temporary pocket dimension.

Then he turned, smiling brightly at her.

“Now we just need a place to forge the Lantern Furnace and the ring.”

At first, he considered transforming into Ion Man again and molding them directly with Ion Man’s power.

But that felt a little wasteful.

Using Ion Man’s power for the Red Lantern Ring was an emergency, back when there were no proper forging conditions.

Now, they were in Asgard, and Asgard stood among the worlds of the World Tree.

One of those worlds belonged to the Dwarves.

The forge star, Nidavellir.

It was the same place Thanos later came to for the Infinity Gauntlet, wiping out almost all the Dwarves afterward.

That was post-Bifrost destruction in the movie, when Asgard’s planetary links were cut.

Now, Nidavellir was still lively.

…

Dante sat on the deck of the Asgardian Domain, holding lamb skewers, eating like a man who hadn’t seen food in days.

First thing he did after getting the Eternal Flame? Grill skewers with it.

Thor and Loki sat nearby with their own skewers, though far less relaxed.

It was their first time on the Asgardian Domain too.

The hyper-light speed ship, long a legend, had been sitting in Odin’s Vault until Dante dug it out.

Now he was barbecuing on its deck using the Eternal Flame.

“Isn't this a waste of resources?”

“What do you mean waste? As long as we’re using it, it’s not waste.”

Seriously, these two had the nerve to call him wasteful?

If he hadn’t bumped into the idle Asgardian princes after leaving the Vault, he wouldn’t have been stuck with them.

They had no idea their captain and brother-in-law already found them annoying. They were just curious about the Orange Lantern Ring’s creation.

They’d missed the birth of the green and red rings, so they weren’t going to miss this one.

So they followed Dante and Hela aboard.

Watching the cosmic scenery blur past, Dante sighed inwardly.

Hyper-light ships were great, but pointless.

The thing ran on Bifrost energy.

Would Asgard ever share Bifrost rights?

So he ditched the idea of tricking them out of the tech.

“Thor, you’ve heard Loki signed a two-hundred-and-fifty-year labor contract with me for the FBI. You interested in joining for real?”

Thor, busy demolishing a skewer, looked up.

He’d implicitly been accepted by Dante, but officially, he was still free. No pay, just mooching Loki’s salary.

Loki couldn’t beat him, so he tolerated it.

“I’m not already an official Agent?”

“Sign this, and you will be.”

Dante pulled an A4 paper contract from his pocket dimension. Same terms as Loki’s, except…

“Dante, you bastard! I had to sign a Mephisto-cursed parchment, but Thor gets A4 paper?” Loki shoved the skewer into his mouth, chewed twice, threw it aside, and stomped up.

“Nonsense. Are you like him?” Dante gave him a look. “With your cunning, if there wasn’t a cursed scroll binding you, you’d have bolted halfway through.”

“But Thor, even if he’s a bit dim, he keeps his word.” Dante handed the paper to Thor. “Right?”

Thor, bewildered, signed his divine name under Dante’s urging.

“OK! Welcome Thor Odinson to the harmonious, loving FBI family!”

He shook Thor’s hand with exaggerated ceremony.

Even Hela had to look away.

Was he really treating her brothers like total fools?

Two hundred and fifty years, just like that.

Before Thor realized he’d been conned, they’d already arrived at Nidavellir.

They didn’t even have to check in. The local guard waved them through.

Dante had expected to need Thor’s big blond head as a pass, but the Asgardian Domain itself was enough.

“No surprise. The ship was originally built by Nidavellir’s Dwarves as tribute to Odin. They recognize it.”

Two escort ships appeared, guiding them to a massive steel ring orbiting a blazing star.

Dwarves, led by King Eitri, came to greet them.

As Dante and the Asgardian trio disembarked, he had a moment.

Folks,

He’d wondered since the movie, why were the Dwarves taller than Thor?

In the comics, they were genuinely short.

In the movie, “Dwarves” just meant “shorter than Frost Giants.” In reality, they were taller than most humanoids.

Proportions were bizarre, like dwarf-gnome hybrids with oversized heads.

Seriously, how did that species happen?

“Respected Prince Thor, respected Prince Loki, welcome to Nidavellir, the Forge Star.” Eitri greeted the two princes, then looked past them.

And froze.

His eyes locked on a face he hadn’t seen in two thousand years, one burned into his nightmares.

“H-Hela!?” The massive king dropped to his knees like a collapsing mountain. “Crown Princess of Asgard, Commander of Asgard’s Army, Goddess of Death, you’ve returned!”

“Eitri, I am no longer Crown Princess. I have no interest in Asgard’s throne.”

She wasn’t bothered by his submission. She had been the one to force Nidavellir into its current humble state.

The old Dwarves had been raiders first, smiths second, until Hela led a massacre, sparing only the docile ones.

Asgard might have erased her from history, but Nidavellir remembered vividly.

Even Odin wasn’t as terrifying in Eitri’s eyes.

“Even without your titles, Nidavellir will honor you as Death Goddess.” Eitri’s tone turned fawning. “When did you break the seal? And what brings you here?”

“Enough, Eitri. My reason is the same as last time — forging.”

His eyes widened.

Last time had been Mjolnir.

Was she about to make another divine artifact?

Hela waved for him to rise, then pulled Dante forward.

“My God Queen will explain the details.”

God Queen? And a Midgardian?

Even Eitri was thrown, but fear trumped curiosity.

“Activate the star ring, ignite the Furnace!”

Lights flared, energy drawn from the central star into the massive furnace.

“What are the materials and specs?” Eitri asked. “The Furnace will be charged in minutes.”

“This one’s tricky to explain, so I’ll handle it.”

Dante took Hela’s hand and led her to the Furnace.

As the energy condensed, he didn’t hesitate, activating his Red and Green Lantern dual transformation.

“Guardian, I sense the aura of Greed Orange Light…”

“That’s right, not just me, the Shark feels it too!”

Ion Shark and Butcher’s voices echoed in his mind.

“Guardian, Orange greed is unlike other emotions. When you finish, be extremely careful who wears it.”

“Yeah, Orange wants everything. Even when I take a dump, it wants that too!” Butcher sounded offended.

“Damn it, that’s disgusting.”

“What’s disgusting? I’m a Lantern Beast born of the Emotional Spectrum. What I excrete is Rage Red Light! Don’t you excrete Will Green Light, you stinky Shark?”

Dante rolled his eyes. Kids. No shame.

He ignored them, stepped onto the Furnace with Hela, and placed uru metal on it.

In the star’s heat, it grew hotter but held its form.

He summoned a massive forging hammer of red and green light and brought it down hard.

Orange Lantern Furnace, forging begins.

(To be continued.)