I do not own Marvel or any of its characters.
New Hire
"You're all set!" the floating, orange, clock hologram chimed happily. "Your new designation is A-Zero-One! I'd call you A-One, but that just makes me think of the steak sauce."
"It's fine," the newest Hunter of the Time Variance Authority said. "What's next?"
"Now you have to go to the armory, where you'll get your Time Stick and your TemPad, and then you'll be assigned missions as they arise," the clock, Miss Minutes, said.
He nodded, walking through the TVA facility until he reached the armory. As he walked in, Miss Minutes appeared again, greeting him and directing him to his Time Stick and TemPad. However, as soon as Miss Minutes had assigned the TemPad to him, it received an alert of a branch in the timeline. A Variant had accidentally killed someone that was important later on.
"Oh, you'll need your armor!" Miss Minutes said. "And a reset charge! You can get your armor right over-"
"No need," the hunter interrupted. "I'm not that fragile."
"Alright," Miss Minutes nodded. "The reset charges are right here."
He collected his reset charge then input the temporal coordinates for the Nexus Event and opened a Timedoor, a rectangular portal through time and space. As he stepped out of the Timedoor, however, he immediately noticed a problem. The Nexus Event was centered in Asgard, inside of a bar filled with Valkyries. The one who had been killed was Brunnhilde, the Valkyrie who was supposed to one-day aid Thor in the battle against Hela. All of the Valkyries stared at him in silence for a long few seconds before chaos erupted. Those closest lunged at him bare-handed as those further away drew their blades. The Hunter unleashed a blast of emerald green energy from his hands, knocking them all away before priming his reset charge and hurling it into the air, drawing his Time Stick. On one end, it had a device which glowed orange and could prune anything it touched from the timeline they were in, resulting in immediate disintegration. On the other end, once he'd yanked the baton-length weapon out to its full, quarterstaff length, was a collapsible blade about a foot and a half long, like the head of a spear. He extended the blade in time to begin fending off the Valkyries, now all using blades.
He spun around one Valkyrie, jabbing them in the back with the Pruning end before deflecting several blades and stabbing a Valkyrie. He pivoted around the Valkyrie, ripping the Time Stick out of the Valkyrie's chest and Pruned another, then sidestepped a stab before stripping the Dragon's Tooth sword from her before Pruning her as he hurled the sword into another Valkyrie. Just as he twisted and swiped his Time Stick through the air, a half-dozen replicas flashing into existence and spinning away from him, pruning, cutting, smacking into, or impaling others, the reset charge finally reached the ground again, the billowing, purple smoke inside igniting, a wave of disintegrating energy rapidly spreading from it.
A-01 flicked his left hand, his TemPad appearing in it, and with a press of a button, a Timedoor appeared behind him just in time for a blonde Valkyrie to tackle him through it. Both crashed to the ground, A-01 doing a backward somersault to his feet as the Valkyrie rolled to a stop. However, as she stopped herself, she looked up just in time for A-01 to press the Pruning end of his Time Stick to her forehead. Once she'd disintegrated, Miss Minutes appeared off to the side, sighing in relief.
"Did you bring back the Variant?" Miss Minutes asked.
"It wasn't an option," A-01 said. "There were twenty Valkyries. I only had enough time to Prune the branch. The Variant is gone now, too."
Miss Minutes nodded as A-01's Analyst, Heather, walked into the armory, raising an eyebrow.
"Successful first mission?" she asked.
"Sort of," A-01 nodded. "I had to Prune the Variant along with the branch timeline, but..."
Heather sighed, shaking her head. "Sounds like it's handled, then. Come on. We've arranged for you to have a special uniform. Given your past, you'll be working alone on more serious Variations."
A-01 nodded, following Heather to a side room of the armory where a suit of specialized TVA armor sat on an armor stand. It had a black, form-fitting armor vest under a form-fitting, black jacket, black gloves, black pants, and black combat boots. For armor beyond the vest, it had black, splinted greaves with an orange inner layer just barely visible over the tops of the black ones, black knee-pads with an orange section along the top giving them the appearance of shields, splinted, black vambraces with orange along the outer edges, and thick, black, leather pads running front-to-back over his shoulders with orange along the outer edge. The jacket had orange along its bottom edge, the hooded cape attached to the outfit had an orange border, and the coil it included that left only his eyes exposed had a rigid, hard leather section over his mouth and nose as protection and a pair of small, black horns extending from the forehead which only barely extended out of the hood and curled up just slightly.
"We based it off of your old armor and the armor of a guy called Ronin from the Sacred Timeline," Miss Minutes explained.
"I thought Hunters had a uniform," A-01 said.
"The normal ones do, yes," Miss Minutes nodded. "But you're special."
"You've been chosen to work alone as...let's call it Special Forces," Heather said. "You'll be assigned the more dangerous missions. The ones where it is unsafe to send less skilled Hunters. Like the one you just completed."
A-01 nodded just as another alert appeared on his TemPad.
"Oh, and Loki, one more thing," Miss Minutes spoke up.
"My name's not Loki," A-01 said. "Loki was my old life. You may call me Veles."
Miss Minutes smiled, nodding. "Alright, Veles. As I was saying, one last thing. You are not, under any circumstances, to tell anyone from the TVA about your past."
Veles nodded, then turned, heading through the Timedoor.
Veles ducked aside from Thanos's fist, then drove his Time Stick into his chest, Pruning him. He narrowed his eyes as he looked around at the slaughtered, maimed corpses of the Avengers. Then, he set his reset charge down and activated it before walking back through the Timedoor.
Thor shouted in effort as he lunged at Veles, but Veles spun out of the way, deflecting his hammer.
"Brother, listen to me, I can explain," Veles pleaded.
"Explain then!" Thor shouted. "Explain why you killed father while he slept, killed mother, killed Sif, and tried to kill me! And explain how you can be alive after I removed your head!"
"That wasn't me!" Veles said. "It was a shapeshifter! Think about it! In all of the times we've fought, when have I ever put in so much effort as to be killed instead of surrendering at the last second to save myself?"
Thor hesitated. "You've never...Then who..."
"I don't know who sent him, but if you'll allow me, I may be able to find out," Veles said. "I just need you to show me where you left its body."
Thor frowned, then nodded, turning to walk into the palace. And at that exact moment, Veles struck, Pruning him. Veles sighed, activating his reset charge and tossing it carelessly over his shoulder as he headed back through his Timedoor.
Veles narrowed his eyes as he stepped out of the Timedoor, staring at the massive green ball of rage before him.
"Of all of the beings in the entire timeline, it had to be you," Veles sighed. "Let's see. This is the moment when you're supposed to join together and give Bruce Banner all of your strength so that he can help defeat Thanos."
"No Banner, only Hulk!" Hulk roared, immediately grabbing a massive steel door from the radiation chamber behind him and hurling it at Veles.
The door flashed through Veles' body, the projection fading as Veles sighed, off to the side. Several more Veleses appeared around the room, all of them activating their Time Sticks.
"Hulk, do us both a favor and just stand still for a moment," Veles invited him.
Hulk roared, launching himself at the nearest Veles, crushing him, only for that Veles to vanish. Then, Hulk was off, leaping around the room, punching, slapping, kicking, hurling anything he could get his hands off. For nearly five minutes, first the room then the entire building were a storm of destruction. Then, finally, as Hulk crushed a pair of Veles projections under his feet and caught two more to crush in his hands, Veles drove the end of his Time Stick into Hulk from behind, Pruning him at last. Then, he sighed, arming his reset charge and walking back through the Timedoor.
As he arrived and the Timedoor closed, Miss Minutes appeared in front of him, smiling proudly.
"You're doing great!" Miss Minutes beamed. "You've completed over two hundred successful missions! And it's only been two months!"
"How are there this many missions?" Veles asked. "Who was doing these before me?"
"Well, you're not the only special unit the TVA has," Miss Minutes explained. "Let's be honest here, you already know more about the TVA than anyone else in it, don't you?"
"You mean that everyone in it are Variants?" Veles asked. "And that I'm the only one who retains my memories because when you tried to reset them upon me being recruited, I was immune to the attempt, so you decided to force me to have no interaction with the rest of the TVA so that I couldn't accidentally spill the secret and in exchange you don't Prune me? No, I don't know anything. What could you possibly be talking about?"
Miss Minutes narrowed her eyes but smiled knowingly. "Well, how about this secret, then? You're not the first Special Force we have at the TVA. You're just the only one who knows where you came from."
"I know," Veles said.
"You know?" Miss Minutes asked.
"With as many missions as I get sent on that are too dangerous for normal Hunters to go on, there's no way that the TVA managed to make it this long without a team of elite troops to handle the missions I'm now doing," Veles reasoned. "So, who are they? Avengers Variants? Frost Giants? Asgardians? Please tell me it's not a bunch of Hulk Variants."
"No, no," Miss Minutes shook her head. "Hulk's too volatile to be made into a useful Hunter. Plus, he's too big. He'd stand out. The team's made up of some of the best fighters from all across the Sacred Timeline, and other than losing their memories, all of them remained largely unchanged. Just like you, they still have their abilities from before."
"And why are you telling me this?" Veles asked.
"Because, if a mission arises which is dangerous enough, you'll be joining them," Miss Minutes explained. "So, you need to know who you're working with."
"Alright," Veles nodded. "Who are they?"
"One of them used to go by Daredevil," Miss Minutes explained. "He's blind, but his hearing's so good that he can use it to see, sort of like a sonar, for a lot further than a normal person can see with their eyes, not to mention through walls and behind him and things like that. He's an expert in hand-to-hand combat. Goes by D-Two. The next one's a Variant of a girl named Gamora. She's Thanos' adopted daughter, and she's the most deadly fighter in his entire army. At least, in hand-to-hand combat. Her call sign is G-One."
"Hang on, is the letter in our call signs just an initial for whatever our name or code name is?" Veles asked.
"Most of them," Miss Minutes nodded. "Yours stands for Asgardian."
"But I'm not," Veles said.
"Not what?" Miss Minutes asked.
"An Asgardian," Veles said. "I'm a Frost Giant."
"Veles, it's just a label," Miss Minutes said. "And it's already set, so it's too late to complain. Now, can I get back to it?"
Veles sighed, nodding. "Go ahead."
"Thank you," Miss Minutes huffed. "Now, the next one on the list is called Thena. She makes weapons out of pure cosmic energy. Her call sign is E-Forty-Five. And the last Special Forces member is their leader. You never got to meet her in your own Timeline, but in that first Nexus Event you Pruned, you saw her. She goes by Valkyrie."
"Brunnhilde, then?" Veles asked.
"That's right!" Miss Minutes said brightly. "V-One-Forty-Two. Expert at hand-to-hand combat, strong, fast. She's better than you. Well, better than you're meant to be. You actually seem to have grown more skilled since you started at the TVA."
"Yes, well, that tends to happen when one does nothing but fight against superior opponents," Veles said. "So, under what circumstances am I to join these expert combatants in battle?"
"Well, there are a few potential Nexus Events where you alone wouldn't be enough," Miss Minutes explained. "Take the final battle against Thanos, for example. There's lots of chances for that battle to become a Nexus Event, but if it does, you alone wouldn't be able to Prune it. There's just too many powerful opponents there."
"Yes, and I'd imagine five new arrivals bearing TVA colors would just blend right into the chaos," Veles said sarcastically.
"Well, no," Miss Minutes admitted. "But there'd be enough of you there to survive."
Veles sighed, shaking his head. "Whatever. I'm going to go and rest before another Nexus Event happens."
"Alright!" Miss Minutes chimed brightly. "Sleep well!"
Veles narrowed his eyes as he surveyed the other members of his team. One of them, Daredevil's Variant, was dressed in an entirely black suit with an orange belt, straps on his thighs to hold the armor in place, and a pair of small, conical horns on his forehead. The next, Gamora's Variant, despite being supposed to be green, actually had coppery skin and black hair that had been died red at one point but had grown out leaving the lower half of her hair red and the upper half black, looking effectively human, aside from thin strips of metal peeking out through her skin along the contours of her face. She wore a bodysuit with the majority being a dark, dull green, then black under the arms and along their length and along the insides of her legs, then small green pauldrons and elbow guards, plus armor on her arms that looked closer to leather than anything worthwhile. On the back of her jumpsuit was a large, orange, "TVA", and she wore a silver sword on her left side with a two-pronged blade that could extend to either a foot-and a half shortsword or a two-foot blade but which was collapsed into its own hilt when at her side. The third, Thena's Variant, looked like a rather attractive, blonde human, but was apparently an Eternal, a race of artificial beings created by Celestials. Her armor was entirely black and was all form-fitting armor with several strips of black cloth hanging down from the front and back of the armor's belt, and a circlet which swept into a "V" on the forehead, the point decorated by a coin-shaped piece just below her hairline. The last member, Valkyrie's Variant, Veles recognized only from the corpse he'd pruned on his first mission. She had coppery skin, dark brown hair tied into a small bun at the back but with excess hair falling behind her to her shoulder blades in a ponytail. She wore a black cuirass with orange over the shoulders and around the back of the neck, in a design like a stylized "Y" on the upper chest then down the center, then in a design like a set of wings on the abdomen and reaching down to the bottom of the cuirass, the center of which was split and replaced plate mail for scale mail in below the cuirass's belt for flexibility. There was no armor on her arms, she wore black, fingerless gloves with reinforced knuckles, tight, black pants, knee-high, black boots with orange highlights, and wore her Time Stick on her hip like a sword.
"What are you supposed to be?" Daredevil scoffed, surveying Veles's armor. "Robin Hood?"
"This coming from the one who looks like a male stripper with an off-brand devil costume," Veles countered.
"Classy," Daredevil said sarcastically.
"So, what is your name?" Gamora asked.
"What, is A-Zero-One too hard for you to pronounce?" Veles asked.
"It's too long," Thena said. "We prefer actual names as opposed to labels, since it's easier to learn a name than a number. I'm Thena."
"Thena?" Veles scoffed, shaking his head. "How original."
Thena shrugged indifferently.
"What's yours, then?" Gamora asked.
"Please, ladies first," Veles invited, though he gestured to Daredevil.
"Funny," Daredevil said. "If it's ladies first, shouldn't Little Orange Riding Hood be saying her name."
"Oh, that was a good one," Veles countered. "Not bad at all. But let me guess your name. Is it Lilith? Horny Mike? Devil Lady?"
Daredevil narrowed his eyes. "I go by Daredevil. He was a vigilante in the Sacred Timeline who's blind like me, so I had my armor styled after his and borrowed his name."
Veles narrowed his eyes but said nothing about the near-miss connection Daredevil had made.
"And the rest of you?" Veles asked.
"Nova," Gamora's Variant said. "I go by Requiem."
"Pretty," Veles said belittlingly.
"The TVA named me Val," Valkyrie's Variant said. "It's short and easy to remember, so I use that. Now you."
Veles snorted. "Veles."
Several of the others snorted.
"And you mocked us?" Daredevil snorted.
Veles narrowed his eyes. "Care to step onto the Sacred Timeline with me for a moment? I'd love to show you what a real fighter looks like. Whoops. I mean 'sounds like.'"
Daredevil smirked. "Keep up that big talk, Hood. Where we're about to go, you'll be running back to Grandmamma's house in seconds."
Veles narrowed his eyes, but as he opened his mouth, Val stepped forward, silencing them both.
"Enough!" Val snapped. "We need to go. We'll have ten minutes when we arrive. It's not a lot of time."
"Oh, please, Veles scoffed. "How bad could this Nexus Event be?"
"Bad," Val said flatly, picking up a reset charge and drawing her Time Stick.
"It's a war," Thena explained.
"Where's your Time Stick?" Veles asked.
"I don't Prune," Thena said. "We're under explicit orders, as you normally are, to Prune on sight, rather than to apprehend, so I simply kill Variants and let the reset charge prune them."
"Fair enough," Veles nodded, extending the blade on the back end of his own Time Stick as Daredevil drew a pair like eskrima sticks and Requiem drew her sword in her right hand and extended her Time Stick to its full length and extended its blade in the other hand.
As one, they all passed through the Timedoor Val opened for them. As soon as they were through, Veles' gut dropped as he saw the full scope of the war they'd stepped into. It was a battle of Asgardians against Frost Giants. Within an instant of them all stepping out of the Timedoor, they realized the Nexus Event. Odin was in the distance, impaled on a blade of ice formed around Laufey's arm.
"Well, this is about to be messy," Veles said, whipping his left hand out to his side, a double-edged blade appearing along the back of his forearm and out past his hand in a wave of greenish-gold light.
"We have to Prune Laufey and set the reset charge off next to Odin!" Val instructed. "Go!"
As one, they all charged and were immediately assaulted by both sides of the battle. Before Veles could even react, Thena was spinning and dodging through the mixed armies of Asgardians and Frost Giants with a ridiculous grace, slaughtering anyone within reach of her weapons, a pair of swords that looked almost like short katanas, except that they were little more than an outline formed from a lattice of gold energy. On Veles's other side, Daredevil and Requiem were carving and Pruning their way through the combined forces there with a combined effect equal to Thena's solo contribution. Ahead of them, Val was using her brute force and her Time Stick to clear their path, but she lacked Thena's horrifying level of lethality, so Veles darted forward, joining her in time to slash a Frost Giant up the front, then Prune an Asgardian, both of whom had been about to attack Val while she was distracted. As they fought their way forward, Val began to entrust more and more of the battle at the front to Veles until they were fighting equally. However, as they finally neared Laufey, the Asgardian Honor Guard and Laufey's commanders all rushed to greet them. Veles lunged for the Asgardians, leaving the Frost Giants to Val, who made no comment about it.
As Veles faced the most elite of the Einherjar, at least for the time period they were in, he narrowed his eyes, steeling his heart and silencing his emotions. One of the warriors brought down an axe as large as Veles' torso, and Veles stepped aside, using his left arm's blade to deflect the blow, only for the blade to shatter. In a wave of light matching the one that had formed it, the remains of the blade vanished, replaced by a dagger as Veles spun away from the warrior, driving the blade on the back of his Time Stick into him. Another stepped forward with a shield, and Veles stepped forward, jabbing with his Time Stick's front end. The Asgardian moved to block the strike with his shield, only for the shield to be Pruned. As soon as it was, and before the warrior could recover from his shock, Veles twirled, slashing his throat with his newly-formed dagger, then slashed his spine with the blade on the back of his Time Stick. Then, he hurled the dagger, sending it into a Frost Giant's eye just in time to make its ice blade miss Val, who was struggling to fend off so many powerful Frost Giants.
"Val!" Veles shouted, hurling his Time Stick across the distance, the front end slamming into a Frost Giant's chest and Pruning it before Val caught the weapon.
As she began to beat the Frost Giants back, now much more effectively, Veles spun, forming a long knife about a foot long in his right hand in reverse grip and using it to deflect a spear, then formed another arm blade on his left arm, driving it into the Asgardian's throat. He let the arm blade fade instantly, jumping back and making himself thin to avoid the sweep of a warhammer before leaping forward and driving the long knife into the Asgardian's heart, slamming him to the ground on his back. He looked up as the last two Honor Guard warriors charged, both bearing the standard sword and shield, but before they could reach him, Loki leapt into the air, forming a pair of throwing knives and hurling them into the two warriors' throats. Then, as he landed, he was faced with only Laufey, who still bore the bloody, jagged, single-edged ice blade around his arm with which he'd killed Odin.
"Who are you, warrior?" Laufey asked.
Veles stalked toward Laufey, using his foot to flick Gungnir into the air and caught it. "My name is Loki, son of Odin, and I will make you pay!"
Laufey snorted, then lunged, slashing at Veles. Veles spun, deflecting the blade with the back end of Gungnir before finishing his spin by stabbing up at Laufey. Laufey spun, narrowly evading the strike and receiving a shallow scratch diagonally up his back before slashing out to the side at Veles. Veles ducked, allowing the blade to pass over him before slashing at Laufey with the head of the spear. Laufey caught the shaft, then yanked it away from Veles, only to drive it back into Veles' chest, hurling him backward before casting the spear aside.
"You are weak, Loki Odinson," Laufey mocked, picking Veles up by the throat. "Your spearwork is pathetic."
"Yes, well..." Veles paused as his skin turned blue in a wave starting at his neck, his eyes turning red as his true form was revealed. "Spears never were my forte."
Ice materialized along his right arm, forming a blade not unlike Laufey's, though double-edged, before he slashed upward, tearing a gash across Laufey's chest and breaking Laufey out of the stunned stupor caused by Veles' change in appearance. Laufey howled in pain as Veles stalked after his retreating form.
"And you're mistaken, Laufey," Veles said. "My name is Loki Laufeyson. You are my father by blood, but Odin is the father who cared for me and raised me. But even still, being your son does have is uses!" He punctuated the statement by jabbing his arm at Laufey and sending the ice flashing across the distance into Laufey's left shoulder, missing his heart by inches.
"My son was just left to die today!" Laufey snapped. "He is a worthless whelp! Barely half the size of a true Frost Giant!"
"I know," Veles said, raising his hand and materializing himself a new Time Stick. "Die."
Laufey roared defiantly, smashing the ice blade Veles had left in his shoulder and forming himself a pair of even more jagged blades, one per arm, as he moved to meet Veles's charge. However, as he assaulted Veles over and over with a savage ferocity, Veles used every ability he'd ever learned to fend him off. He projected Time Sticks, daggers, swords, shields, axes, spears, hammers, flails. He fired powerful blasts of green energy into Laufey. He formed ice weapons. He created both incorporeal and also corporeal duplicates of himself to attack Laufey, forcing him to try and kill every Veles around himself instead of ignoring the duplicates in favor of the original. Laufey spun in a circle, slashing and destroying all of the illusions and duplicates of Veles before leaping at the original. However, before he could reach him, Val flipped over Laufey, slamming one of the two Time Sticks she had with her into his back and Pruning him.
"Time's up!" Val said, tossing Veles his Time Stick back, Veles letting the one he'd created vanish. "Reset charge goes off in thirty seconds, and we need to be gone!"
Veles nodded as Val opened a Timedoor, Veles looking around. The rest of the team were already sprinting toward them, followed closely by the Asgardians and Frost Giants, who seemed to have put aside their differences in order to crush the five people who'd been slaughtering them all. Veles stepped forward just as the others passed him and stomped his foot. Two attacks shot outward from his foot. First was a massive wall of green energy that blasted the closest ranks of soldiers backward. Following directly behind it, all of the ice below Loki raced outward at his command, reforming itself into a massive ring of spikes that, when they charged through the dust, smoke, and lingering green energy from the first strike, dozens of Asgardians and Frost Giants impaled themselves on, the first of them just barely catching a glimpse of Veles passing through the Timedoor before it closed. A few seconds later, the reset charge detonated.
"You fight pretty well," Daredevil admitted. "I can see why you were working alone initially, unlike the rest of us."
"Where are we?" Veles asked, looking around at the grassy field they were standing in.
"Somewhere away from prying eyes and over-sensitive ears," Val said. "Our TemPads are all off, and yours..."
Veles glanced down at his when Val tilted her head to the side and looked at it. He hummed interestedly, noticing for the first time that there was a shard of ice formed into a spike sticking out of the TemPad. He removed the TemPad entirely and noticed that the shard had only barely gotten through enough to leave a small hole not much bigger than a needle would make.
"Well, that was close," Veles said, flicking the ice shard out of his TemPad. "Wonder when that happened."
"Now that we have some privacy, let's get a few things straight, Loki Laufeyson," Val continued.
Veles grimaced.
"We're not stupid," Requiem said. "We know that we're all Variants, and that the reason we, as Special Forces, are under strict orders to remain a secret even from the TVA is because we're the only members of the TVA who have special powers, like my mechanical augmentations, Daredevil's hearing, Thena's weapons, and you and Val's laundry list of abilities."
"Speaking of, I had you pegged as an Asgardian," Val spoke up. "Really wouldn't have guessed Frost Giant."
Veles smirked.
"Point is, we all know we're Variants, and that probably the whole of the TVA is the same," Daredevil said. "We all found our originals. I didn't just choose Daredevil because we're similar, it's because we're the same. We may not have our memories as Variants, but we all know who we were originally supposed to be, before we made a wrong choice."
"But you," Thena cut in, "still have your memories. What makes you special?"
Veles was silent for a few moments before shaking his head. "I was just immune to their attempts to erase my memories, so they made special arrangements instead, since I'm useful enough to not Prune yet."
The others all nodded and turned their TemPads back on, Val opening a Timedoor back to the TVA for them.
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