Loki
I can still remember that moment.
The raging Hulk had knocked the future Tony Stark onto the floor.
The case in Stark's hands fell to the floor and the tesseract slid as if it was on ice.
And it came to me as if it was fate.
What I did next determined the path my life would take.
If I had just stared straight ahead and pretended that the opportunity of escape was not right at my feet, I would lead a very different life.
A life of deception and betrayal. But also a life of redemption and forgiveness. Whether I had lived to my fullest potential in that life was up for debate.
Being the survivor and trickster that I was, however, I did not let the chance to escape pass me. I bent down and picked up the tesseract. Thus, starting me on an entirely new life course.
I assume that you know the rest of the story.
I was arrested by the Time Variance Authorities and learned that my desired destiny was never meant to be. In fact, the tesseract and scepter which I had coveted so much had as much value of a paperweight in the TVA offices.
This glorious purpose of ruling the nine realms was nothing more than a childish fantasy. Even if it had come to fruition, it would never have compared to the true power of the TVA.
Being struck down and at a low point, I agreed to cooperate with them.
Besides, there was another Loki out there who was superior and it perturbed me greatly.
Then I met this Loki, who as it turns out, was a woman.
Now laugh all you want, but I fell in love with her.
I fell in love with myself.
She shared similar feelings, but she was filled with more anger and vengeance than I had been.
I believed it was justified to a point.
But she was willing to risk the arrival of something much worse than the TVA.
She was filled with such anger that she killed He Who Remains, who paled in comparison to the threat a hundred variants of himself.
And before she did it, she threw me into a time portal and I found myself back at TVA headquarters.
So now I swallowed the bitter taste of rejection and abandonment and did the next right thing. He Who Remains was coming. He needed to be stopped. I wasn't sure if there was enough time.
Worrying about time and the future in a place that controlled time and the future. How painfully ironic.
I tore through the hallways, searching for the only other person who could help me.
Despite my notorious status of being a variant in the TVA, none of the agents and hunters that I passed paid me any mind.
Then I saw him.
Mobius was engaged in a tense discussion with Hunter B-15.
"What? 63 branches in this unit alone?" Mobius asked, staring at a tempad.
"Does he want us to let them all branch?" B-15 asked.
"At this point, how are we gonna stop it?"
"We can't!" I shouted.
They looked in my direction.
"What?" Mobius said with impatient surprise.
I took a few steps towards them, panting.
As relieved as I was to see Mobius, there wasn't enough time for me to explain everything.
It had been a very long day. I didn't even know how much time had passed since I slept. I was beyond exhausted.
"What did you say?" Mobius asked.
"It's done, Mobius. We've made a terrible mistake."
"What's done?" Hunter B-15 asked.
"We freed the timeline. We found him beyond the storm. A citadel at the end of time."
Mobius and B-15 stared at me in confusion.
"He's terrifying….He planned everything. He knows everything. He's seen everything." my voice was as panicked as my thoughts.
Mobius attempted to calm me.
"It's complicated, okay?" I said. "But someone is coming….Countless different versions of a very dangerous person. And they're all set for war and we need to prepare!"
"Calm down." Mobius said. "You're an analyst, right?"
I paused. I had never been referred to as an analyst, even when I was doing analyst work. I was not sure if this was Mobius considering me one of the TVA agents.
"What division are you from?" Mobius asked.
"What? What are you talking about?"
"Who are you? What's your name?"
It took me a moment to process what he had just said. Mobius didn't remember me? After everything that we had been through?
Hunter B-15 spoke into her com device. "Boots on the ground now. Archives."
I wondered if she considered me a threat or she wanted to bring in a task force to sort this out.
"Who are you?" Mobius repeated.
That's when I saw the statue.
When I first came here, there were three enormous statues of the timekeepers at the heart of the TVA headquarters.
The offices and archives and elevators all surrounded the statues, symbolizing the importance of the timekeepers.
But now that statue has been reduced to simply one statue.
The statue of a man with frightening similarities of He Who Remains.
The timeline was already altered.
He Who Remains had taken over.
I was too late.
Suddenly, a unit of TVA hunters marched towards us.
They had their pruners turned on and pointed at me.
"Variant Loki, you are under arrest for aiding a Variant in assassination."
"Hold on, what do you mean he's under arrest?" Mobius demanded.
They were referring to me assisting Sylvie. They had distorted the truth, of course, but what I had done was also bad enough to imprison me.
So I found myself on the run again. The hunters unit pursued after me.
Sylvie had pushed me away.
Our fellow variants still remained in the void.
Mobius didn't remember me.
No one could help me. I was on my own again.
So I continued to run.
After racing down several corridors, I took refuge in a vacant room.
The hunters sped past the door.
Once they were gone, I breathed a sigh of relief.
I was safe…for now.
I decided that I would wait for several minutes and then continue on through TVA headquarters.
Perhaps I could take a tempad and hide in an apocalypse.
Even though the TVA knew that apocalypse timelines were safe from nexus events, it would be awhile before they searched there.
But I only needed some time to rest and plan out my next actions. Then I would be gone from that timeline before they could track me.
Then I realized that this storage room was much bigger than I anticipated.
It expanded into a large hallway.
There were no lights except for the glowing pieces of rectangular glass that were lined up on shelves.
Upon closer look, I realized that these rectangles were temporal auroras with labels.
When I was captured by the TVA, I went through a machine that scanned my temporal aurora.
After I went through the machine, the agent received one of these pieces of glass.
I never knew what they used it for, other than to determine if I was a robot or not.
At the time, I assumed that they were for tracking your place or your existence on the timeline.
I had never realized that they had an entire storage room devoted to these temporal auroras. Perhaps it could have been due to the sudden change in management.
As I continued through the room, I read the names off of the auroras. Some of them I recognized.
Arnesto Garcia
Stan Lee
Thomas Hiddleston
Thor Odinson
Amanda Cho
Steve Rogers
Tony Stark
Most of these glowed a soft, neon green colour. But a few of them were yellow or even red. The yellow auroras were labeled with Critical. The red ones read Highly Critical.
Most of these critical auroras bore the names of skrulls, vampires, and titans.
The majority of variants were of these species, so this was no surprise.
But then one aurora in particular caught my eye.
It glowed a brighter red than the others. Instead of simply labeling the name and status, it also included additional notes.
Peter Parker
Highly Critical
THREE KNOWN VARIANTS DETECTED. UNABLE TO DETERMINE PLACE ON TIMELINE FOR PROSECUTION. MULTIPLE SEARCH MISSIONS FAILED. VARIANT IS DETERMINED THREAT TO TIMELINE.
I picked up the aurora as anger boiled up inside me. Whatever this Peter Parker or Parkers had done, it had upset the TVA enough to give them notes on their temporal aurora.
To me, it seemed they were doomed like us Lokis; an individual who could escape the TVA, but always be hunted. Neither of us were supposed to exist.
But if the Peter Parkers had not been arrested, then perhaps they were living out their lives in relative peace.
I realized that if I tilted the aurora rectangle slightly, it would appear that there were three copies of the glass in my hand.
Peter Parker must have done something that greatly upset the timeline.
A loud noise interrupted my thoughts.
The TVA hunters unit stormed in, brandishing their pruners.
"Drop the aurora! Put your hands in the air!" they barked at me.
I did what they were told.
"I returned from the Void." I reminded them. "I've done it before. I can do it again."
Perhaps I was boasting too much. I required a tempad to come back.
Suddenly, Mobius stepped in between me and the hunters.
"No, stop! What are you doing?"
Even though Mobius didn't remember who I was, he was still defending me. I found it oddly touching.
"Our orders are to prune the variant on sight." one of the hunters said.
"Prune on sight? Last time I checked, he was under arrest!"
Another TVA hunter appeared.
"New orders."
He uncapped the bottom of his pruner, revealing the pointed spear at the bottom.
"Kang the Conqueror wants him executed."
Mobius gave an anxious laugh, hoping that this was a jest.
"You're joking, right? Please tell me you're joking."
No one responded.
Mobius threw up his hands in frustration.
"I don't even know who he is! How could you prune him if one of the top analysts doesn't know who he is?"
The hunters ignored him and started towards me.
I was running out of options. The hunters were closing in on me.
In a moment of desperation, I slid under the legs of a large hunter.
When I rose to my feet, I held his tempad in my hand.
It was a useful pickpocketing trick I learned from my childhood.
One of the hunters snatched up the temporal aurora of Peter Parker that I dropped. He held it in front of him with a gloating look, almost as if he had the winning ace card.
The aurora gave a soft electric humming sound.
That couldn't have been good.
I typed a random year and location into the tempad.
Just as I was about to vanish into the portal, the hunter threw the aurora on the ground, causing it to shatter.
It made a violent explosion for such a small object.
The impact was so strong I was thrown into the portal.
In a flurry of dust and debris, I landed on the ground in an unknown year.
Here's chapter 6! I hope you enjoyed the name references.
I loved Loki in the tv series. I can't wait for season 2.
Thanks for reading!
I'll soon be posting a new story: The Spiders and Soldier Part 2. Some of you may have read Part 1. I'll be balancing updating chapters between this fanfic and Into the Multiverse.