The scene that greeted Lucky and Variant Mobius held them both captivated in fear, not just because of the dilapidated, war-ravaged buildings piercing the sky like broken teeth, but because of its sheer silence. They'd landed in a city, someplace called 'New York', that looked like it had once been bustling with people. Cars lined the streets, but they were covered in dust, windows broken, tires flat. The streets were filthy with debris. Not trash… there wasn't a speck of human refuse, actually. The detritus was made of bricks, concrete, glass, broken pieces of asphalt, like a playset that some gigantic, tantruming child had dashed to pieces.
Before they'd left, Variant Mobius-it felt strange to think of him like that, since he was the only Mobius around at the moment-had changed from his plaid pajamas into a suit that had been folded neatly for him, waiting by his beach chair. Lucky had turned around to give him some modesty while Variant Mobius got dressed, and he'd heard him hiss and gasp with pain on occasion while trying to lift his arms too high. Lucky had even sheepishly offered to help, but he'd declined. Now, the only way he could distinguish between his Mobius and Variant Mobius was by the scruffy half-beard growing on Variant Mobius' chin, connecting haphazardly to his mustache.
Lucky tried to remember his hazy dream that the mind stone had coaxed out of him, the beginning of it, when he'd flown over a battle raging below, and tried to pick out the buildings that lay before him now, rotting and dead. A shiver ran up his back that was so strong it nearly made him retch. He'd done this. Not him. But someone who used to be him.
Same difference, apparently.
Variant Mobius let out a short sigh. "Okay. According to my tempad, we're about ten blocks south of the Empire State Building. Fitting that he would have holed up there, huh?"
Lucky didn't answer, only shrugged. Variant Mobius' voice seemed to be swallowed up by the terrible quiet, digested by some invisible force that held the city suspended in horror.
He followed Variant Mobius closely through the deserted streets, his shoes crunching on bits of broken glass and concrete as they went. It seemed like every single storefront had been smashed in. The shops and buildings were all dark and empty, like man made caves, but the sunlight shone brightly, blue skies clear and strangely hopeful.
"Mobius," he asked, dropping the doppelganger's title, "what happened to everyone?"
"There are still people around, hiding, probably," he answered, "the Chitauri trashed the place even worse after the Battle of New York. They couldn't have killed off all eight million people, though."
"Chitauri?"
"A race of alien beings that Thanos put under Loki's command. In this branch, Loki wins the battle… but, uh…"
"The mind stone saps him of his life," Lucky finished solemnly.
Variant Mobius nodded, as if thankful he didn't have to say it out loud. "Have you heard the phrase, 'be careful what you wish for, because you might get it'?"
Lucky shook his head.
"Well, he got it. He won, crowned himself King of Earth… for a while. Pretty sure he went crazy. I'm surprised this branch survived for so long before someone noticed it needed pruned."
They crossed the barren streets together, Lucky keeping pace with Variant Mobius while marveling at the destruction all around.
"I still don't understand how I could have done something like this," said Lucky softly, half to himself.
"This Loki isn't you," Variant Mobius explained. "He's a variant of you, one that was a lot more… let's say, misguided." Variant Mobius kept his lip buttoned tight, as if he wanted to keep it at that, but Lucky couldn't help press further.
"How many Lokis are like that, Mobius?" he asked. "Misguided?"
Variant Mobius let out a long, tired breath. "A lot of them. Like, a vast majority. The roles they play usually seem to be to hone other people's sense of justice, to prove other people's heroism. That's not something that all of them can help, I guess. That's just… the role that the universe designed for them."
Lucky didn't realize that he'd slowed down to a shuffle until Variant Mobius stopped and turned around to look at him. Variant Mobius squinted sympathetically and patted him on the shoulder.
"That's not easy for you to hear, I get it. But you… and the Loki I know… are in a unique position. He's one of the few Loki variants who is capable of self reflection. At least, I think he is. I know you are. I could have misjudged all of them, but I'm also sure there's several truly rotten apples in the bunch."
Lucky stuck his hands in his pockets, half wishing that he still had the time stone, so he could bring back all the people that had been destroyed, fix everything to the way it used to be. He smirked, imagining how grateful everyone would be to him, how they'd cheer him as a hero instead of fearing him as a tyrant. His smile fell quickly. That's what he'd wanted, in a way, when he'd imagined himself winning fight night. People cheering his name, praising him. For a gruesome moment, he really could imagine himself, his mind twisted by an infinity stone, thinking that he had actually won the planet's admiration after destroying a city of eight million people.
He shook the thought out of his head and walked on, looking down at his feet and the rubble instead of the broken buildings.
Variant Mobius looked back on him with a grin. "If it makes you feel better, some of my other variants were pretty heinous, too. I found one that set fire to stuff for fun, and-"
A sudden clattering noise from an alley made them both jump. Lucky instinctively got behind Variant Mobius as they watched the darkness, waiting for whatever horror that might pop out.
Lucky sighed and chuckled with relief when he saw what it was. A cat, just like Quibble, and completely unlike the jaguar, padded out of the shadows and looked up at them with forlorn, yellow eyes. It was mostly black, with white on its chest and little white socks and a smidge of white on the very tip of its tail, which twitched back and forth. Lucky noticed how skinny and frail it looked compared to Quibble, who'd been practically fat by comparison. The cat let out the most pathetically adorable mews and chirps that Lucky had ever heard, then rushed straight up to them, making a loud rumbling noise and rubbing itself all over Variant Mobius and Lucky's legs.
Variant Mobius reached down and scratched the poor thing's ears while it leaned all its weight into his hand. He then found a collar hanging limply around the skinny animal's neck; pink, but filthy, with a heart-shaped tag attached to it.
"'Jellybean'," Mobius read on the tag, with a tinge of sympathy in his voice. "You were a pet, weren't you, kitty cat?"
Jellybean seemed to respond in the affirmative, with a hopeful, two toned chirp.
Variant Mobius picked up the cat, who didn't seem to mind at all. Lucky scratched under Jellybean's chin, which made her purr even harder, but he came away with some nasty black stuff under his nails and quickly picked it out, trying not to retch again.
"Man, I'd keep you if I could," said Variant Mobius. "But you are covered in fleas, and I don't even have a desk or a bedroom…"
He seemed to think hard for a moment, while holding Jellybean in his hands, then shuffled the cat around to take his tempad out of his pocket once again. He typed in some coordinates and a timedoor opened before them. Lucky was amazed to see a bright, beautiful, bustling city beyond the doors, clean and ultra-modern, cars replaced by hovering crafts not unlike the transports in the TVA. Without stepping through the door, Variant Mobius called out to the first person he saw walking by, which was a woman younger than both of them, wearing a backpack.
"Hey," he said, holding up the cat around the stomach with one hand, who hung there, limp as a rag, "do you like cats?"
The young woman's mouth fell open as she stared at Variant Mobius, Jellybean, and Lucky, then her eyes went even wider when she seemed to see all the destruction behind them.
"Is… what is…?" she stammered.
"Answer my question please," said Variant Mobius, like he was casually annoyed that the woman would be more interested in the ruined city than a cat.
She finally blurted out, "I mean, yeah, I like cats…"
"Want a cat?"
Variant Mobius held Jellybean through the door, who looked up at the woman and made a single peep.
Completely dumbstruck, the woman simply held out her hands as Variant Mobius transferred the cat into them.
"Her name is Jellybean," he said. "Take care of her."
"Uh… okay," was the only thing the woman had time to say before Variant Mobius closed the timedoor. Variant Mobius wiped the fur off his hands and walked down the street again, leaving Lucky there, almost as flabbergasted as the woman had been.
"Mobius," he said, jogging to catch up with him. "What was that?"
"That was also New York City, seventy years into the future, in a different timeline."
"No, I mean… why did you do that? Won't that create a nexus event? She saw the timedoor and us and the other world and everything!"
Variant Mobius' glance at him held a bit of disgust in it, to Lucky's dismay. He shook his head at Lucky. "Man, the TVA really did a number on you, didn't they?"
Lucky shrugged hopelessly. "Well, what am I supposed to believe? I know that they're lying about making us in pods, but surely there's a reason that we have to keep the sacred timeline pruned."
"The reason, as far as I can tell, is because the Timekeeper wants total control over the flow of time. That's it, Lucky."
"How do you know that, though?"
Variant Mobius chuckled mirthlessly and muttered, "I can't believe you, of all people, would become a TVA apologist."
Lucky wasn't sure why, but he felt the urge to not give up on his point and let it be moot. "We aren't made there, but we have to be there for a good reason, don't you think? No one would build an institution in the quantum realm with almost a million people without a good reason."
Variant Mobius stopped again, giving Lucky a harsh look. He gestured to the broken buildings towering above them.
"Look around. Was this for a good reason? Who could have caused such destruction, if not for a good reason?"
Lucky snapped his mouth shut, astonished into silence. Variant Mobius groaned a bit and rubbed his forehead.
"I don't think it's just my sense of injustice talking here, but I can't believe anything the TVA says anymore, not after seeing what I've seen. Putting a cat into a different timeline is an act of civil disobedience. Of protest. A very, very small disobedience, but disobedience, nonetheless." As they started walking again, he added under his breath, "I thought you would be all for disobedience."
Lucky scoffed. "Like I've never broken the rules," he said, covering his uncertainty with as much casual bravado as he could. "Whatever happened here was obviously wrong, though. Why would the Timekeeper go through so much trouble just for his own ego?"
Mobius' smirk came back. "You'll probably figure that out as soon as Loki gets his memories."
They fell into silence again. He didn't know if Variant Mobius meant it that way, but it certainly felt like Lucky wasn't the one Variant Mobius wanted around. It had been him who'd insisted they needed Loki. Which implied, implicitly, that Lucky was less than useless.
Before he knew it, they'd reached what he assumed was their destination, only because the building before them was mostly intact. It reached up above the destruction, sporting only a few broken windows and minor damage. Attached to its spire hung a triangular, green flag, snapping in the wind. Lucky marveled at it for a moment before turning back to Variant Mobius.
"Wait… where are all of those Chitauri things you were talking about? If this is his palace, then won't there be some around guarding it?"
"Normally, yes," said Variant Mobius, "but I've timed this so we get here right about when this Loki dies. The Chitauri are connected by a hive mind, and that hive mind was connected to Loki's will. When Loki dies, they go back to their mothership and leave humanity alone. And that must have just happened, because I don't see a single one of those nasty things around."
"You're one-hundred percent sure we're in the right spot, and the right time?"
"Yes… why wouldn't I be? My tempad says everything's good."
"Mobius," said Lucky, suddenly feeling terribly hesitant, "I don't know if the other Mobius told you this or not, but… I don't know if our tempads are working right."
That made Variant Mobius spin around on his heel.
"What?"
"Well, it could be nothing," Lucky backpedaled, "it could have only been G.'s tempad… but I think something went wrong in Russia, too."
"What went wrong?" Variant Mobius' tone was dead serious, chilling Lucky to the bone.
Lucky swallowed the lump in his throat. "G.'s tempad didn't get us exactly in the right spot. We weren't far off, but we weren't precisely where he meant us to be. And then, I think things happened when me and Mobius and everyone else went to Russia that weren't supposed to. But it could have all been a big coincidence," he added quickly with a shrug, wishing he hadn't brought it up at all, now.
Variant Mobius seemed to hold his breath. He took his tempad out again, checked it, squinted, and tapped it against his other hand, all in rapid succession. Finally, he nodded.
"I think we're alright. Like you said, if we'd gone to the wrong time, there would be Chitauri swarming the place. And if Thanos was here for the mind stone, we'd definitely know." He paused again and grimaced. "But the fact that this place wasn't reset before Loki won… that does worry me. The TVA seems to be slipping."
"Slipping?" The word came out of Lucky's mouth in a half-whisper, like he was afraid the TVA could somehow hear them talking about heresy.
Variant Mobius nodded. "Only a theory, though. Like you said, it could be a couple of coincidences. The important thing is that we're in the right spot. Plus, I snagged one of these."
With that, Variant Mobius pulled a small cylinder out of his pocket, a scrunched-down time baton, flipped it up into the air, caught it expertly, then stuck it back into his pocket.
They both looked up at the massive Empire State Building before them. It somehow felt even more imposing than the palace in Russia. Its stonework wasn't nearly as ornate, no gold trim, just a huge block of granite with windows; built for utility, not for royalty. Yet, by the virtue of its name and size, that's what it had apparently become.
As they went inside, the first thing that jumped out at Lucky was that the lights were still on, somehow… barely. The soft lighting flickered and buzzed, casting a golden glow to the ornate marble walls and floors. It did make the inside look almost majestic, though still bare and utilitarian in nature. A half-broken carving, an image of the building itself emanating gilded rays of light, loomed in front of them in the lobby. A fine coat of dust from outside covered the floor and crunched very softly as they snuck through the place.
"Oh, great," said Variant Mobius sincerely, "the electricity still works. That might mean we can take an elevator instead of the stairs."
"You know exactly where he is?" asked Lucky.
"Lokis are pretty predictable about certain things. If they're in a position of power, they're going to find the biggest building, or structure, or whatever, and nest themselves in the most impressive part of that building. That means he's probably made the observation deck into his throne room."
As Variant Mobius found an elevator, which hummed and groaned to life when he pressed the call button, Lucky wondered to himself if that's what he would have done, too, had the opportunity arisen. He did feel like he deserved a bigger room, as an agent, but that wasn't quite the same thing.
The elevator made a quavering 'ding' and Lucky and Variant Mobius stepped into the elevator car. As it moved upwards, slower than mud, a narrator from a speaker seemed to be trying to tell them about the history of the building, but was interrupted every few seconds by a rolling brown-out threatening to turn black any second.
Variant Mobius sucked in a breath and cringed. "Come on, baby, you can make it," he whispered.
The elevator dragged itself laboriously, lurching every once in a while as the electricity dimmed. It felt like an hour had ticked by while a drunken, invisible hand pulled them up and up. All of a sudden, at the eighty-third floor, the electricity finally sputtered one last time and faded into darkness. With a surge of terror, Lucky thought the car might plummet downwards, but thankfully it just stayed put while a tiny red emergency light came on in the pitch black.
"Aw, shit," grumbled Variant Mobius. "Sorry, Lucky. This was my fault for not wanting to go up eighty-six flights of stairs."
"How do we get out?"
Lucky saw the small orange light of the time baton brighten Variant Mobius' face for a moment. He touched the pruning light to the elevator doors, which fizzled and disappeared into the Void, revealing that they'd stopped halfway past the eighty-third floor. The bottom of the elevator was at about chest height, and the top half of the opened door showed bare cement bricks. Variant Mobius had to kneel down and maneuver himself through the half-sized hole and safely into the eighty-third floor. Lucky clambered awkwardly down after him, nearly panicking when his leg went under the bottom of the elevator for a second, touching nothing but air, but Variant Mobius helped get him down safely. One wrong move could have sent him directly down the shaft and to his death.
The electricity was apparently out in the whole building. The elevator hallway was almost as pitch black as the elevator itself, with the dim promise of midday light shining past the hall. Shadows and stillness seemed to suffocate them as they moved cautiously forward.
"Look for a sign that says 'stairs'," whispered Variant Mobius, even though there wasn't another soul around. "Should be lit up, even in a blackout."
They both heard something move in the office room behind them. Lucky's bowels dropped. Perhaps a chair, or something bumping into a desk, but the noise was big enough to make them both freeze. Even Lucky knew whatever made the sound was way, way too big to be a cat.
Variant Mobius moved his head ever so slightly, and Lucky followed, his gaze landing on a door with a red sign lit up over it that said 'STAIRS' in bold, shining letters.
"Run."
Lucky found himself taking off instinctively right behind Variant Mobius, like a fawn chasing his mother. The next moment was filled with horrible, garbled screeching noises from behind them. Chairs and desks and furniture were smashed out of the way as unseen monsters emerged from the dark and roared. Almost at the door, too terrified to turn around, Lucky gasped as they were suddenly confronted by a disgusting, muscular humanoid creature that had stepped from the waiting room to their right, covered with plates of gray-black exoskeleton. A deep warning rumble emanated from its face, as its mouth wasn't immediately apparent, nor were the beady eyes set far into its skull.
They stole a glance behind them to find other monsters slowly closing in.
"Chitauri?" Lucky rasped. Variant Mobius didn't have to say a word, or even move, for him to know he was right.
Lucky felt Variant Mobius grab onto his sleeve just as he swung his time baton and sent the Chitauri in front of them sizzling into the Void. The others screamed like banshees, but Variant Mobius had already dragged Lucky through the door and closed it behind them. Lucky thrust his full weight against the door to keep it closed, his considerable strength just barely keeping back the Chitauri hoard trying to burst through. His shoes started to slide against the bare concrete floor. His weight couldn't compensate for the Chitauris' sheer brute force.
"Get out of the way!" yelled Variant Mobius.
"What?! No, they'll kill us!" His point was punctuated by a thud against the door so violent that it knocked the wind out of his chest, and got the door open just enough that Chitauri fingers started to poke through.
"When I say 'move', do it!"
Variant Mobius switched the time baton to the purple slowdown function, and Lucky got the vaguest idea of what he meant to do.
"Move!"
In one swift motion, Lucky catapulted himself away from the door, into the stairwell, and Variant Mobius touched the baton to the door, slowing down the door's opening to a snail's crawl. Frustrated claws scratched at the frozen door, angry aliens wailed behind it like sirens.
Lucky laughed despite his terror, standing to brush himself off. "Clever! Now, let's get out of here-"
"You go," he said sternly. "I'll distract them, get them to focus on me, not you."
"You can't fight them!"
"I can do this," said Variant Mobius, switching back to the orange pruning function and touching it to one of the Chitauri's fingers. It fizzed as it vanished to a drawn out screech of terror on the other side of the door. "They're too stupid to do anything but fight."
"But-"
"You have to survive," he commanded, the strength in his normally docile voice at once concerning and surprising. "I put you here, in the TVA, in this mess, you get out of it. Here," he added, sticking his other hand in his pocket and giving him his tempad. Lucky held it with a trembling grip.
"I-I can't-"
"You're going to," he said, with a determined nod. He looked almost nothing like Mobius, at that very moment, silver hair drenched in sweat, eyes both frightened and committed to what he might have to do.
As the enormity of their mission finally pierced through his fear, Lucky nodded back and swallowed hard.
"Go up three flights of stairs. Floor eighty-six," said Variant Mobius, picking off a few more Chitauri hands ever so slowly making their way through the time-locked door.
Desperate to stay, to help, to do something, Lucky forced himself to run up the stairs instead, with the hideous shrieks echoing in the stairwell, following him up, ripping his soul to shreds. He was going to let Variant Mobius die. He was going to lose, or not even find the scepter, or the Loki variant. Imminent failure pressed down on his chest, making it even harder to breathe as he pumped his legs and made himself go up alone.
