A hotel employee named Valerie is
hanging on for life from a hotel balcony as a brutish guest who expects sexual
favors threatens her. He grabs her by the hair and lifts and she slashes at his
hand, making him drop her to her death….
In the alley below, paramedics
Ziggy and Joe are working on the dead Valerie. Joe tells Ziggy to give up but
he tries the paddles and the shock is like a bolt of lightning from the sky but
it brings her back to life, confused and giving her name as Brunnhilde. As Joe drives
them to the hospital, Ziggy tries to keep her awake and talking. But what goes
through her mind is Thor’s summoning her back to life. And then she remembers
that someone killed her and she leaps out of the back of the ambulance
brandishing a sword, running off into the rainy night. Reading her nametag
leads her back to the hotel where she demands to know who she is, threatening
the manager with the sword, demanding the name of the man in the room with her.
He indicates the computer but she impatiently smashes it with her sword. A petite
co-worker reveals the man’s name was Ryan Sandusky and he wanted her to come to
his room but she was afraid so Valerie went up and died. The police arrive and
try to calm her down but she swings the sword to keep them back, leaving and
telling them not to follow her….
Val arrives at the Cresskill, New
Jersey, home of Janet Van Dyne a/k/a the Wasp. Janet recognizes her and invites
her in, showing off her latest costume. Val reveals that Valerie is dead and
she doesn’t know who Brunnhilde is. She remembers dying in Ragnarök but beyond
that, nothing. Jan suggests she return to Asgard to find out but she does remember
she was banished from the Golden Realm. Jan isn’t sure who Brunnhilde is with
her very complicated life so tells her to follow her heart but Val bluntly tells
her that she was not a positive example of following her heart. Jan ruefully
admits that, telling her to just be honest with herself. Val recalls the two
men in her recent life: one who killed her and one who restored her….
She returns to the hospital to
find Ziggy the paramedic but they decline to give out employee’s addresses even
to women who claim to be cousins. She learns Ziggy is Richard Siegfried, the
same name as her long-ago lover. And Ryan Sandusky, her killer, is Brian
Calusky, the criminal called Piledriver. She threatens the nurse, hoisting her
into the air, shouting that Ziggy is in danger because of her. Ziggy’s partner
Joe is there and Val orders him to take her to Ziggy’s home….
They arrive in time to find
Piledriver threatening Ziggy’s young child and his wife, demanding to know what
happened to Valerie. When Val walks in, the villain seizes her by the throat
and pushes her through the window. Choking, her past flashes before her eyes:
Asgard, her forbidden romances with Siegmund and his son Siegfried, her
banishment, her time with the Defenders, the other women whose lives she shared,
Ragnarök, and her recent reanimation. Then she gets angry and takes the form of
Valkyrie, punching Piledriver across the room. He is delighted and grabs her in
a bear hug, hurling them through the window and onto a construction site across
the street. He tries to bash her with a girder, calling her a man-hater. She
grows angry and delivers a single punch that knocks him to the ground below.
Then Ziggy suffers a heart attack and, to return the favor he did for her, she
borrows a policeman’s horse and hurries him to the hospital….