It's been a long week for this sophomore in high school.

Not only did I have my grueling studies and Madame Nonsense Haruhi to deal with, but then I wound up with a frost giant sitting on my head, and then I found out that my fiancée-slash-stalker magically went bald, and that of course meant that I had to go kick dwarven butt until they agreed to restore her hair, and then I had to go and put the fear of me in my not-half-brother for… what, the fifth time now? And I still haven't had time to do my homework yet…

I'm Kyon, by the way. Yeah, it's a stupid nickname and I don't remember how I got it.

Of course, you're wondering how the heck a formerly ordinary high school student got caught up in such wacky misadventures as that.

Well take a seat, dear friend of mine, and if you'll let me start at the beginning, then I'll tell you a story.

Like all good stories, it has romance! Danger! Comedy! Epic action! Occasional fanservice! And cyborg ninja penguins!

… Okay, it'll be a while before we get to the cyborg ninja penguins, but first things first.

You see, it all started on a day unlike any other.

When a hammer fell from the sky…

The Mighty Kyon

It all started during Christmas break three years ago. I know that you and I both are going to be sick of those words by the time we catch up to the present, but bear with me for now.

My little sister, whose name I know and yet don't plan on disclosing anytime soon, had been precociously trying to convince our parents to take us on a vacation. And since I'd gotten good (if average) grades and she behaved well, we wound up going to a mountain resort. At a time of year when it snowed a lot. This detail is important because it means that nobody would've noticed if a frost giant showed up and caused a blizzard.

It was a nice couple of days, nothing too interesting happened. Until, of course, my seventh-grade self went hiking in the woods one day and stumbled upon a clearing.

And in the middle of said clearing was a good-sized crater.

Looking back on it now, my common sense should've been tingling like crazy, but like all seventh graders, I was kind of an idiot back then. So of course I went to go look at it.

The hammer bore an inscription, but I had no idea what it said. Last I checked, the average Japanese elementary school doesn't offer a course in Nordic runes.

Thankfully, no sooner had I gripped the handle than my common sense kicked in and I got the distinct feeling that actually picking it up would be the end of my life as I knew it. So I did the smart thing and promptly ran back to the lodge, intending to watch Sentai reruns.

Unfortunately, a hole opened up in the sky and I found myself standing before a huge blue guy with an axe to grind. About that time, the aforementioned blizzard kicked up, and then a few other huge, axe-wielding blue guys fell out of the sky.

And, of course, it didn't seem like they showed up to give humanity the gift of chicken teriyaki, even if it would've been a tad late.

One of them boomed something. Whatever it was, it sounded like bad news. It was at that point I decided that since the world had already devolved into insanity, I might as well grab the hammer anyway and see this madness through to the end.

So, screaming giants all around me, I turned around, intending to go after the hammer… and promptly tripped on it.

Even though I hadn't touched it and was clearly thirty yards from where it had been previously.

Yeah. Turns out even the inanimate objects aren't above stalking me.

But it was convenient to have it right there, so I picked it up anyway.

And the insanity cranked itself up to eleven.

For you see, like any self-respecting weapon from another dimension, picking up the hammer – which I would later find out to be called Mjolnir - isn't permitted to be a low-key event. No, instead, there's about ten seconds of being blasted with lightning as the hammer shows off that it found a worthy wielder.

Although, I seriously have to question the Aesir on this. I mean, Mjolnir's original wielder, Thor, was kicked out for his sheer arrogance. Oh, and kind of being a jerk to everyone all the time except to his wife Sif, to whom he was only a jerk half the time.

So what does it say about the situation when a random seventh grader is apparently more worthy to be the God of Thunder than the God of Thunder himself? Is it that I'm just that special? Probably not. Is it that Thor was really so big a problem that even a child was preferable? Could be. Or were they just so desperate to have a new champion that they didn't give a damn who picked up the hammer?

Of course, actually voicing these gripes of mine would mean whining to the Big O himself, and that's not a great idea.i

Anyway, I picked up Mjolnir. There was a lot of thunder and lightning, and then I found myself in a tight pair of pants, a shirt with no sleeves, wristbands, a nifty helmet, and one badass red cape.

I also found that the cold didn't bother me anymore, and that I could understand what the frost giants were saying.

And in the years since that day, I have never come across profanity even half as vulgar as what I heard on that day.

To be honest, even at that age, it was a sign that somebody needed a punch in the face.

Although, when one of them threatened little sister with a plan that involved a rubber duckie, my newfound hammer, a printout of Unequally Rational and Emotional, and a vacuum cleaner, I was actually sort of impressed at the creativity the obviously drunken frost giant had just displayed.

Of course, that didn't stop me from going into 'irate big brother' mode on the MacGuyver wannabe.

That's right. You don't mess with little sisters, because we older brothers will hunt you down and rain ten billion gigawatts down on your ass. Not even a list of noodle implements will save you.

Speaking of which, it's not that hard to use the extraordinarily strong lightning powers. It's basically just 'point, yell, KABOOM'. So easy a freshman can do it.

Anyway, after beating up all the frost giants, another hole opened up in the sky – what is it, some kind of colander or something? – and… I don't know how, but it was like gravity reversed itself.

Actually, describing in detail what happened next would be a massive pain in the ass, since I don't remember it all that clearly and I'm still kind of confused. Seriously, even Koizumi's babbling makes more sense on average than that mindfuck. Hell – and don't get me wrong, I love the show ten ways to Sunday, but the series finale of Evangelion made more damn sense than whatever spacetime… thingy… happened.

To sum up the results, though, the beaten-up frost giants wound up back in Jotunheim – that's their realm, for the uninitiated – and I was standing on a rainbow in front of a big musclebound fella decked out in gold armor and with a big honkin' sword.

Seriously, I couldn't make this up if I tried. I'm not imaginative enough.

Anyway, the guy – Heimdall – took note of my size and asked if I was a stray dwarf who stumbled into Midgard somehow.

Then he saw the hammer, and his expression was pretty much the perfect picture to go with 'aw, hell'.

Anyway, I was directed to cross Bifrost, head just past Valhalla, and kick open the door to the giant wooden complex.

No, seriously. He told me to kick it open.

At first, I was kinda thinking 'what the hell?', but then I remembered that I'm dealing with superpowered god-vikings. Of course pointless shows of over-the-top of manliness are encouraged.

Note, however, that even though the Aesir are often bombastic, they are also incredibly intelligent. It's like they've got Koizumi's or Nagato's intelligence and Haruhi's lack of subtlety.

Anyway, I kicked down the door to Odin's hut-palace, he raised an eyebrow at me, stroked his admittedly awesome beard, then shrugged and started speaking.

First, he explained the stuff that I've already taken care of in the narrative – the hammer being Mjolnir, the blue guys being frost giants, me apparently being the new God of Thunder and inheritor of Thor's legacy, the reason why Thor was sealed in a can somewhere (arrogance and jerkassery, in case anyone forgot), stuff about the Aesir, the Nine Realms of Asgard, Vangard, Jotunheim, Muspelheim, Niflheim, Midgard, and I already forgot the three that don't matter…

Then, after that, he asked if I had any questions.

Which prompted my first instance of swearing as I told him to fuck off and promptly went back to the lodge.

In the years since, I have learned that Odin has a fantastic sense of humor, because repeating that stunt would be a spectacularly bad idea. And that's not the "grounded for a week" kind of bad idea, it's the "lucky to be alive after a weeklong savage beatdown from an entire society of god-vikings" bad idea.

And that's the mandatory origin story for this tale.

The next couple of years were kinda boring as far as storytelling goes, but there is one incident from last year – that would be two years after this chapter, of course.

Yeah, remember that cyborg ninja penguin I promised?

I'll tell you about our first encounter in the next chapter.