19 Arc V Infinity War - What if... Thor was the MC for a single chapter

Thor watched his son get whisked away by the Bifrost, but he did not feel good for long. He watched Thanos stab Heimdall to death for his actions. Next, Loki had his neck snapped by the titan, and the space stone fell in the maniac's hands.

Thanos closed a fist, and the Statesman, their spaceship, slowly began to unravel and explode from every direction. Thor had to watch Thanos, and his four children teleport away in a blue cloud as everything around him caught fire, purple fire. After Thanos and specifically the Maw left, the god of thunder was dropped from the scraps holding him in place.

Writhing in pain, Thor slowly crawled forward to embrace his dead brother in mourning. As he finally reached Loki, the ship shattered and exploded fully.

Thor didn't know how long he floated in space, but he was suddenly woken from just floating in space when he hit the 'windshield' of a ship that had just exited hyperspace. He immediately fell unconscious again.

Moments later, not that he any frame of reference, Thor felt something stir in his mind. Someone softly whispered 'wake' in his mind, and Thor shot up from his lying position.

"Who the hell are you guys?" Thor panted hard after he had run forward a few steps and warily turned around.

"Uh, Guardians of the Galaxy. I'm Rocket, that's Quill, he's Drax. That sap over there's Groot. Those two chicks are Mantis and Gamora," the furry raccoon-looking animal called Rocket spoke up, who walked and behaved oddly human.

"You're those morons who told my son and I to stop calling ourselves Asgardians of the Galaxy, threatening us to tell everyone we're really the Ass-guardians of the Galaxy?" Thor asked, losing a lot of vigilance.

Everyone on the ship looked toward the man Rocket had pointed toward when he said 'Quill'.

"What? He was stealing our vibe!" Quill shouted as Gamora sighed in exasperation.

"What's the arm for, buddy?" Rocket asked as he pointed at the severed arm Thor held in one hand. Apparently, he had grabbed it unconsciously after the explosion.

"That's... my son's."

Everyone looked at Thor sadly, thinking that this son of Thor had died in the shipwreck, only leaving behind this cleanly severed arm.

"Oh, no worries. My son survived, surely. He is a mighty warrior, just like me. Something like this won't kill him. And my best friend sent him away in a magical bifrost tunnel just before Thanos killed everyone else," Thor said in a jovial tone that sounded very forced.

"Thanos did this?" Gamora asked with a haunted look.

"The titan has started his quest for the inifnity stones. By his own admission, he took the power stone from Xandar last week when he decimated their home planet," Thor explained.

"And us Asgardians had just lived through Ragnarok. I thought the tesseract was destroyed together with our home, but it turned out my brother, the God of Mischief Loki, had one last ruse in store for us. The tesseract's true nature was the space infinity stone and led the madman toward us. Thanos killed everyone in sight, who did not flee fast enough and took the stone when I was the last one alive. Then he shattered our ship, killing everyone not already on a lifeboat," Thor continued, looking incredibly lost. He was given a blanket and something to eat by Mantis.

"He already has two stones, then?" Rocket looked on in horror.

"I am Groot," said Groot with a nod toward Rocket.

"What do you mean? Of course, I know how to count to two, you d-hole!" Rocket shouted.

"The entire time I knew Thanos, he only ever had one goal. To bring balance to the universe by wiping out half of all life. He used to kill people planet by planet. Massacre by massacre," Gamora narrated.

"Including my own," Drax added.

"If he gets all six infinity stones, he can do it with the snap of his fingers, like this," Gamora finished, gesturing a snap.

"You seem to know a great deal about Thanos," Thor mused as he was eating.

"Gamora is the daughter of Thanos," Drax explained.

"Your father killed my brother," Thor said as he raised to his full height after a short moment of silence.

"Oh boy," Rocket exclaimed.

"Stepfather, technically. And she hates him as much as you do," Quill interjected. Thor moved toward Gamora with firm steps. Everyone turned vigilant.

"Family can be tough. My own son hid from me for sixteen years on his mom's orders... And you know, before my father died, he told me that I had a half-sister. That he imprisoned in Hel. And then she returned home and stabbed me in the eye. So I had to kill her... that's life, though, isn't it, I guess. Goes round and round... I feel your pain."

"I feel your pain, as well. Because... I mean, it's not a compe..." Quill started, but Thor quickly blended out the rambling.

"I need a hammer, not a spoon," Thor contemplated as he ignored Quill. The inspiration for this genius observation came from the spoon in his soup. He walked toward the back of the ship.

"How do I open this thing? Is there some sort of...a four-digit code, maybe? Maybe a birthday?" Thor mumbled as he began inputting several wrong codes in a panel next to a pod in the spaceship they were on.

"Uh, what are you doing?" Rocket asked in confusion.

"Taking your pod," Thor explained by not really explaining. It prompted Quill to clear his throat.

"No, you are not. You will not be taking our pod today, sir," Quill said in a deep voice, clearly trying to imitate Thor's way of talking.

"Uh... Quill, are you making your voice deeper?" Rocket asked with a raised brow.

"No," Quill denied.

"You are. You're imitating the god-man. It's weird," Drax described.

"No, I'm not," Quill denied again, this time in an even deeper voice.

"*Gasp* He just did it again," Mantis observed as she pointed to Quill.

"This is my voice," Quill defended himself.

"Are you mocking me?" Thor asked as he stepped to Quill.

"Are you mocking me?" Quill quipped back like a child.

"Stop it. You did it again," Thor argued back angrily.

"He's trying to copy me," Quill mocked, looking at Drax for support.

"ENOUGH!" Gamora shouted to stop the squabbling.

They followed this with a discussion where they contemplated how to find Thanos. Thor offered that Thanos would be going to Knowhere. When asked how he knew, he explained how the reality stone was with the collector after Asgard obtained the stone during the dark elf invasion but judged that having two stones in their posession was too high a risk.

Thor explained that Thanos had two stones, again, power and space. He learned that the time stone was in the hands of the Sorcerer Supreme just before Ragnarok and the mind stone is with Vision, so there were two stones protected on Earth by the Avengers. Since nobody knew where the soul stone was, that only left the reality stone on Knowhere as the next obvious destination for Thanos.

Left with no weapon and his son hopefully recuperating on Earth to help defend the two stones, Thor insisted he needed a Thanos-killing weapon, and only Eitri the dwarf on Nidavellir could forge something like that for him.

Rocket immediately jumped on that and wanted to visit the planet known for their 'horrific weapons', he thought was only a myth.

The best course of action they then decided was to split up. Thor, Rocket, and Groot would go to Nidavellir for the weapon and a new arm for his son. The rest would go to Knowhere to try and stop Thanos from getting the reality stone.

"I bid you farewell and good luck, morons. Bye!" Thor shouted as the three had packed up some provisions and Eli's arm in the pod and undocked the pod for their journey after entering.

Hours later, Thor was sulking in the back of the pod. Rocket walked close to Thor and started a conversation.

"So, family, eh? Dead father, brother, half-sister. Son without an arm and MIA. Still got a mom, though?"

"Yes, she woke up from a coma not too long ago after a dark elf cut out her lung and an arm," Thor explained.

"A lot of missing limbs and other body parts going around in your family," Rocket mumbled under his breath.

"Not all hope is lost. Not only did more than half of Asgard flee on a different ship. We also know where Thanos is going. And he's never fought me before," Thor told Rocket, who looked down.

"Yeah, he has, and he wiped the floor with you," Rocket shot back.

"He's never fought me twice. And I'm getting me a new hammer, don't forget."

"It better be some hammer," Rocket said to nobody in particular.

"You know, I'm 1500 years old. I've killed twice as many enemies as that. And every one of them would've rather killed me, but none succeeded. I'm only alive because fate wants me alive. Thanos is just the latest in a long line of bastards and he'll be the latest to feel my vengeance. Fate wills it so," Thor grandly explained.

"Mmm-hmm, and what if you're wrong?" Rocket mused.

"Well, if I'm wrong, we'll all lose everything either way," Thor shrugged. Rocket didn't look particularly convinced, but there was nothing really he could do to stop all of it from happening.

Rocket wanted to increase their odds, so he threw Thor a mechanical eye he stole from someone who lost a bet against him. With it, Thor once again had eyesight in both eyes. Groot even looked up curiously from the arcade videogame he was playing during the travel to see how the eye would fit.

With a short flurry of alarms, they reached Nidavellir. But Thor was horrified to find the forges no longer lit, the neutron star looking cold.

Once they reached the main ring, they landed, exited the pod, and began looking around. There were no sounds anywhere, no light anywhere. Something was very wrong.

Their feelings of terror only increased when Rocket found a gauntlet that matched Thor's description of Thanos' gauntlet exactly. Just as the horror settled in, a huge shadow appeared and swung a heavy fist toward Thor. Caught off guard, Thor was pushed away but quickly identified the attacker.

"Eitri, wait! Stop!" Thor shouted.

"Thor!?" the giant shadow asked in disbelief.

"What happened here?" Thor inquired, hands held up in surrender.

"You were supposed to protect us! Asgard was supposed to protect us!" Eitri shouted in anger.

"Asgard is destroyed... Eitri, the glove. What did you do?" Thor asked, pointing toward the gauntlet. Eitri looked at it, seemingly very conflicted about something.

"300 dwarves lived on this ring. I thought if I did what he asked, they'd be safe. I made what he wanted. A device capable of harnessing the power of the stones.... then he killed everyone anyway. All except me. 'Your life is yours', he said. 'But your hands, your hands are mine alone.'" Eitri narrated, tears pooling in his gigantic eyes.

"Eitri, this isn't about your hands. Every weapon you ever designed, every axe, hammer, sword.. it's all inside your head. Now, I know it feels like all hope is lost. Trust me, I know. But together, you and I, we can kill Thanos," Thor tried his best convincing the king of the dwarves.

Eitri took a deep breath and gave Thor a firm nod.

"Follow me," Eitri said toward his three guests.

"Can you do something about Eli's arm, by the way? If you don't have the mold you took a few years back, I brought it with me," Thor said as he held up his son's severed arm. Eitri looked at it as he continued to walk and scratched his head.

"Remember when I kicked you two off Nidavellir back when I made your son's armor and told you I had some inspiration? He told me about the Midgardian warrior Iron Man," Eitri began.

"Instead of technology, imagine I imbue an armor with the magics of the Destroyer, that was my inspiration. It is still a work in progress because I never figured out how to channel all the energy without cooking whoever is inside the armor. But if he doesn't have an arm, that's no longer a problem. I can use the bones in that arm you brought as a way to fasten the uru attunement process. I see you also brought that special black uru piece... I could use it for the arm since he is already attuned to that piece of metal to quicken its power gain even further," Eitri finished his musing.

Thor looked excited. That would be the best present he would ever bring his son.

"That's what we shall do! Can you do it with your hands like that, though?" Thor looked at Eitri's hands that were stuck in a clump of metal.

"Can the tree strip the arm of the flesh? And the rabbit work on the mold I already have for some light adjustments?" Eitri asked.

"Quit calling me a rabbit!"

"I am Groot."

"You have my thanks, Groot. My son will appreciate your help. I bet he'll become friends with you once you meet," Thor gushed.

They arrived in a wide open room that held the focal point of the forge. Eitri brought them over to a console, and he instructed Thor to press a few buttons. When he was done, something was moved out of a shelf near the ceiling.

"This is the plan? We're going to kill Thanos with a brick?" Rocket asked sarcastically once he saw what all the button presses did.

"It's a mold. A king's weapon. Meant to be the greatest in Asgard. In theory, it could even summon the bifrost," Eitri proclaimed proudly.

"Does it have a name?" Thor asked.

"Stormbreaker."

"Eh, it's a bit much," Rocket shrugged.

"So how do we make it and the arm?" Thor inquired as he looked excitedly at the mold.

"You'll have to restart the forge. Awaken the heart of a dying star," Eitri gravely stated, looking toward the sleeping neutron star.

"Rabbit, fire up the pod!" Thor shouted.

"Wait, your son's arm mold!" Eitri shouted to stop them.

Eitri and Rocket quickly fiddled with the mold of Eli's arm, with Rocket taking out a few parts and replacing them with smaller inserts at certain places to leave room for the bone. Eitri then gave the furry tinkerer a tool that automatically inscribed runes on the bones of the freshly stripped arm, and they were done with everything not twenty minutes later.

Rocket commented on how he thought this should have taken weeks, but Eitri was well prepared for every eventuality it seemed.

When Rocket was inside the pod and Thor floated next to it with a long metallic rope attached to the pod in hand, they flew out of the ring to restart the forge. Eitri and Groot started preparing the forge.

They filled two kilns with uru ingots and placed the molds under them. The last ingredient was the arrow-shaped piece of black uru Groot threw into the kiln for the arm.

In a feat of godly strength, Thor managed to reallign the rings of Nidavellir and restart the fires of the neutron star. But before they could celebrate, the iris snapped shut, and the kiln's stopped heating up.

They discussed how they couldn't forge the weapon and arm without the iris open, and Thor offered to hold it open. Eitri countered that it would be suicide to stand before the iris inside the star's focus for the minutes it would take to heat the metal. Thor argued it would be suicide to fight Thanos without the new weapon.

"Allfathers, give me strength," Thor pleaded in a kind of prayer as he stood inside the iris moments after their discussion.

"You understand, boy? You're about to take the full force of a star. It'll kill you," Eitri tried convincing Thor against doing it one last time.

"Only if I die," Thor argued.

"Yes... That's what killing you means," Eitri explained, unsure if they were talking about the same thing.

Thor managed to hold open the iris for two minutes before he collapsed and was shot toward the forge hall with the focus that Eitri and Groot were in. The iris immediately closed behind him and the star once again grew cold.

When the metal was heated up properly, Eitri tilted both kilns to fill the molds with the metal. He watched the process and saw, to his chagrin, that the piece of black uru was not entirely molten yet. It was still vaguely in the form of an arrowhead, yet it looked thinner and elongated. Almost like it gained an arrow shaft that was still only barely the length of an index finger while being a little slimmer than that.

The arrowhead entered the mold and settled in somewhere inside the arm without blocking the flow of the metal. That was something that Eitri was very glad about. Still, he didn't know what it would mean for the end result, and that was something Eitri didn't like.

Thor had landed in front of the kiln station, unconscious, and Rocket had landed the pod and ran to him. Thor looked badly burned, and Rocket was freaking out. Eitri kicked down the mold of Stormbreaker, and it broke apart with a few more punches from the giant dwarf, showing two glowing pieces of metal.

"He needs the axe! Where's the handle? Tree, help me find the handle!" Eitri shouted as he ran around the room.

Groot looked up from his videogame he started playing after he finished cleaning away all the flesh he removed from Eli's arm before and walked toward the two axe pieces. Groot grew out his arm and picked up both pieces. While screaming in pain from the heat, the two pieces clanked together, and Groot chopped off his arm holding Stormbringer.

The completed weapon floated up as lightning began to trickle out of Thor's outstretched hand. Rocket quickly jumped away when the axe moved on its own and landed in Thor's hand. Immediately, everything around Thor, especially the axe, was bathed in heavy lightning.

Rocket and Eitri looked on excitedly as Thor's wounds began to close, the burns receding back to show healthy skin.

Groot, in the meantime, looked at the second mold, thinking he would need to use his other arm to mend more pieces of metal together. He tipped over the mold, and it fell to the ground. Groot mimicked Eitri's action from before and broke the arm out of its mold with punches.

Once he was done, Groot tilted his head in confusion because only one piece of glowing metal came out. Though cast in a single mold, the arm still looked like it was crafted out of several ringed pieces of varying sized pieces stacked on top of each other to allow movement in all and every direction. It was still a little red, but as it continued to cool down, the arm looked to be a darker shade of cast-iron silvery grey that Mjolnir used to have.

The arm was a perfect replica of Eli's severed arm in both size and proportion. The black uru 'arrow' that was a little longer than the arm's index finger rested on the inside of the forearm, pointing toward the wrist.

"Is it too late to ask for one such arm for myself?" Rocket asked as he arrived next to Groot with Eitri.

Eitri looked at Rocket in contempt and didn't answer. The lightning stopped wreaking havoc in the forge room after that exchange, and everybody turned to see Thor standing wide awake and completely healed.

"Is the arm ready?" He asked Eitri and received a nod.

"I guess it is time to kill Thanos, then," Thor concluded.

"No, wait, I was serious. Is it too late to ask for an arm?" Rocket asked.