The environment we entered after going through the time portal was strange. At first glance, it seemed as if we had stepped straight into the Middle Ages. But I was sure that Mobius had said that the attack in Oshkosh had taken place in 1985.
Everything here suggested we were in a medieval town, from the half-timbered houses, the blacksmiths, the bakers' stalls and the other goods transported by horse-drawn carriages. Only when you looked closely could you see that some of the people present had not paid complete attention to their costume and were holding red plastic cups or wearing wristwatches and trainers. If you paid more attention, you could also see women with handbags, dyed hair and the odd person walking around in perfectly 'normal' clothes.
B-15 led us to a tent from where she received the highest variance energy and therefore assumed that this was the place of action. The tent also provided some protection from prying eyes.
Inside the tent we saw the full extent of the fight. The Minutemen were all down and as in most other incidents, the reset charge was missing. I found it very disturbing that the Minutemen didn't seem to have had much of a chance. It looked like they had been ambushed and that they had in no way expected it. However, there was one thing that even worried B-15 and that was the fact that not all of the unit were here. C-20, a Hunter, that is a troop leader of the Minutemen like B-15 was, was missing. Only her helmet and baton lay by a broken wooden lance.
But none of them could really explain it, because so far the variant had never taken a hostage. Until now, all Minutemen had simply been killed by the Variant. Those present wondered whether the Variant had now begun the next phase of what he was up to. Or perhaps C-20 had simply fled when she saw her men fall, although B-15 could not imagine that. She seemed to know and like C-20.
"Wait," Loki stopped a few Minutemen from leaving the tent to look around the market again and maybe find a trace of C-20. "If you leave the tent, you will end up like them." The drama Loki was suggesting again was incredible and I was about to intervene because I was sure Loki was exaggerating, but Mobius raised his hand, indicating he was listening to Loki.
"What do you see?" he asked, actually seeming interested in Loki's perspective on things.
"I see a scheme," the apparent theatricality Loki displayed was almost unbearable. I assumed that this was how he hoped to gain Mobius' trust. He probably wanted to make it clear to Mobius that he was indispensable to the TVA. "and in that scheme, I see myself," Of course he saw himself, because he was making it up as he went along. I wondered how long Mobius was going to listen to this before he let me speak. Loki walked up to one of the corpses and knelt down beside it.
"We have a saying in Asgard: where there are wolf's ears ..."
"... wolf's teeth are near," I finished his sentence and he looked at me in wonder for a moment. Probably because he wondered how I knew this saying, after all he couldn't have known that I knew Asgard. But he skilfully covered his surprise with annoyance that I had interrupted him and continued his talk. He compared the TVA to his own people, the Æsir, and what he said showed me once again that he was indeed good at assessing others. "Those you underestimate will devour you." He was certainly speaking from his own experience, after all, he had escaped from such a situation with the tesseract. "You underestimate me, just as you underestimate this, lesser Loki. Which is why you stumble into one wolf's mouth after another."
He certainly had a point. The TVA's arrogance was certainly a considerable factor in why the other Loki variant managed to ambush and overwhelm Minutemen time and time again. Unfortunately, the fact that Loki combined truth and assumptions, with other facts and possible character weaknesses of his opponent, managed to make his manipulation perfect.
I could hardly listen to Loki trying to tell Mobius that he had changed and was following his 'new purpose', as he put it. He was laying it on pretty thick and I could see from the looks on B-15's face that at least she wasn't buying a single word the god of mischief was saying. Mobius, however, kept him talking and seemed genuinely interested in what Loki had to say, and I wondered where this quite shrewd man was, who had been able to read so much between the lines while questioning me and Loki.
"I need reassurances," Loki told Mobius, circling him like a vulture circles its prey. But even if Mobius was willing to continue listening to Loki, I was sure now that he in turn seemed to be testing how far Loki would go, whether he would reveal his true motives. "We'll need to speak to the timekeepers at once. They're in graver danger than we realized." And bingo! There were his motives. He wanted to get to the timekeepers as soon as possible. I shook my head imperceptibly and was once again amazed at how obtuse Loki must think other beings were. Was he really this convinced of his own intellect that he thought no one would see through him?
Mobius pretended to think for a moment, giving Loki a moment to draw confidence. I, however, wondered what I was doing here. Obviously, Mobius already knew Loki's tricks well enough, surely I didn't need to help him with them. "He's lying, just playing games. There's no one out there," he said, looking at Loki almost disappointedly. Loki, on the other hand, seemed surprised and looked at me as if I had said something, while the Minutemen machinery prepared everything to reset this branch of the time stream before it finally reached a point of no return.
"Well done. You really made an effort," I commented sarcastically as an angry Mobius indicated to us with a rather negative attitude that we should now leave this timeline. Not for the life of me could I imagine that this action of Loki's would not have consequences for him, and perhaps for me too. Who knew what they would do to me once they realised that this Loki was not really a help here but rather an obstacle?
The really bad thing about it all wasn't even that Loki had tried to manipulate Mobius. No, everyone had probably expected that at some point. The bad thing was that in doing so he had actually provoked the branch to go beyond the red line.
That was also the reason why we immediately were intercepted by a senior TVA staff member upon our arrival. He informed Mobius that judge Renslayer, the judge who had wanted to sentence us, wanted to see him to discuss this most unpleasant mission with him.
"Come with me." was all he said to us and it was plain to hear that he was in no mood to say more at that moment. I looked at Loki and I noticed how the wheels seemed to be turning in his head, how he too was slowly but surely realising that he might have just made quite a mess of things.
Arriving in front of the judge's office, Mobius just left us and went in alone.
"I always thought you were clever," I remarked through clenched teeth. I was angry and he should notice that. "But it looks like you not only like to destroy other people's lives, but your own as well." He didn't look directly at me, pretending to deliberately overhear me, but I'd had enough of his behaviour. Had enough of his games, which now threatened to endanger my life too. "Do you think you're the only one playing games here?", it burst out of me. I turned directly to him and looked him in the eye. "Are you really so arrogant to think Mobius would have just let us off the leash like that. Without knowing how to deal with us? Do you think you're the only variant he's used for his own purposes?" I knew my words were getting somewhere deep inside him, but he wouldn't let it show. He didn't want to admit that maybe someone else had a sharp mind as well. In some ways even a sharper one because I lacked the ego to always feel superior to others.
"Oh, come on! You can't be completely indifferent to the fact that we're being held here!" he suddenly burst out as I didn't stop staring at him. "You said yourself that there are foul tricks being played here. So who's to say we won't be disposed once they have no use for us?" His objection was quite valid. I had also asked myself that question several times. Had pondered what would happen to me once the dangerous variant was caught.
"We should work together and make sure we have a plan when the time comes." I rolled my eyes. Another of his plans. Of course, I knew that our existence was only a matter of time for the TVA. As soon as they had the chance, they would get rid of us and not shed a tear for either of us. And I couldn't deny that there were other words echoing in my head, words of the past: "If you want to go home again, you should trust me."
I stood directly in front of Loki and pressed him against the wall, digging my index finger into his chest. "I'm only playing along because you're the lesser of two evils. An evil I know and can assess because we come from the same timeline." His gaze was piercing as he seemed to study me closely for a moment.
"I can live with that." Carefully, he took my finger from his chest and disengaged from the wall again. "I feel the same way, Avenger." He nodded at me and then held out his hand to seal our just-closed pact. It was a strange feeling as I took his hand and squeezed it. It was so familiar and yet strange to me at the same time.
"Never shaken the hand of a god before?" he asked smugly, for apparently my brief uncertainty had not escaped him. It pleased him and brought back his initial arrogance, which came much more easily to him.
"This agreement doesn't mean I can't kick your ass when it suits me," I said, raising my finger again threateningly, almost like scolding a child. But instead of retorting anything on his part, Loki just grinned in amusement. Apparently he was beginning to like the fact that I wasn't afraid of him and was telling him straight out what I thought.
Then we heard that Mobius had apparently finished his meeting and was about to open the door into the corridor, so we silently decided that it was better not to talk any more. No one should know what we had been talking about.
It was clear to see that the conversation with the judge had cost Mobius a lot of nerves. That it had certainly not been particularly pleasant for him to have to explain to the judge how it had come about that he had allowed himself to be led by a variant to come so close to the red line before he had acted.
When Loki started to talk to Mobius in this tense situation and tried to make him understand that his games on the mission had only served to give Mobius a better insight into the manipulations of Loki, I wondered what had gotten into this supposed god. I had tried to stop Loki's flow of words with hand signals, but he had simply ignored me, too consumed by the thought that he could get out of the noose with words.
"Okay. Just shut up!" Mobius burst out when it became too much for him. It was unbearable, I had to agree with the analyst. "What happened to the guy I met on the elevator? Who didn't like to talk. Remember him?" I wondered what Mobius was talking about. A Loki who doesn't like to talk? That was unimaginable and at the same time the most beautiful idea there was. "Now I'm stuck with this guy who won't stop yacking away about what makes a Loki tick"
Loki looked at me for help but I could only give him a tone-deaf "He's right," and shrug my shoulders. I also thought that these endless attempts at explain this failed manipulation attempt were incredibly annoying. All Mobius wanted was for us to help him catch the other, superior variant, nothing more.
"Hang on!" If I'd had the chance, I would have taped Loki's mouth shut myself. He really didn't seem to be able to find an ending and was on the verge of talking his head off. "I'm not sure 'superior' is actually quite the right word"
He was interrupted by Mobius immediately: "See? There it is. Right there!" The man's annoyed voice was hard to ignore and I feared it wouldn't be long before Loki crossed a line and we would both have to face the consequences.
"I believed, stupidly, that insecure need for validation would motivate you to find the killer." I looked back and forth in wonder between Loki and Mobius who were now facing each other. "Not 'cause you care about the TVA mission or bein' a hero, but because you know this Variant is better than you and you can't take it."
It was awkward to stand by as a more or less uninvolved listener, but I couldn't deny that I was amazed at how good Mobius seemed to be at sizing Loki up. I wondered if the term analyst, which was his working title, would have been something like a profiler in our world, for the statements he had made came from someone who could accurately analyse the character and background of others.
"Very nice.", Loki replied with a grin. I knew him well enough to realise that what Mobius said had indeed hit him, that he had scratched too close to the truth. Of course Loki could not allow anyone to manipulate him, the king of all manipulations. And no matter how right Mobius was in what he had said, Loki would not allow him to succeed. "I'm ten steps ahead of you. I've been playing a game of my own all along." In my mind, I ruffled my hair. Why did Loki have to be so easily influenced. Why did he always have to try to make others know he was superior?
Mobius, however, was less than impressed. "What, charm your way in front of the timekeepers, hustle them, and seize control of the TVA? Am I getting warm?" I wasn't the only one whose features slipped, but Loki had clearly regained his composure faster than I had. Apparently he hadn't expected Mobius to see through him like that. He finally seemed to realise that perhaps none of his tricks would work here and his manipulations had been the only weapons he had left. I myself was losing control of my facial expressions because although I had known that Loki was up to something, I had not imagined that he had wanted to talk to the Timekeepers because he wanted to overthrow them.
On the other hand, this was Loki, and a Loki who had recently attacked a metropolis because he wanted to take over a planet. This Loki was obsessed with absolute control. "Why were you in there sticking your neck out for me?" he asked, no longer able to suppress his astonishment. The question also crossed my mind.
"I'll give you two options, and you can believe whichever one you want. A, because I see a scared little boy, shivering in the cold. And you kinda feel bad for that ice runt." That was a hit, and it's going down, I thought to myself. That statement hit far too close to home and I saw how the comment about the 'ice runt' hurt Loki deep inside. "Or B, I just wanna catch this guy, and I'll tell you whatever I need to tell you."
"I don't need your sympathy." I could understand Loki. It hadn't exactly been the nice way to exploit the matter of Loki's origins so shamelessly for his own ends. For this younger Loki, it had not been so long since he had learned that he was not a true áss. For him, it had been barely two years since Odin had revealed to him that he had been taken from Jotunheim as a baby to ensure peace. That he had been abandoned to die by his actual father, the frost giant king Laufey, because he had not been big and strong enough for a frost giant.
Then we got into a lift without another word and I was actually not sure where it would take us after Loki and Mobius had had such a discussion. Probably it remained to be seen what consequences would follow for us and I was not exactly eager to find out.
That went well, right? Anni does know a bit about Loki and now they agreed on working toghether, but what does that exactly mean?