Angst warning, not that that should be any surprise to regualr readers of my little scribblings. But it's all for a reason.

Thank you for reading, and I'll see you in Part Four.

-SIX MONTHS PRIOR-

Because his primary concern right now is trying to figure out how to maximize his workload without triggering another not-really-timeslipping episode, and his secondary one a side project even his teams don't know about, Mobius eventually gets distracted for three seconds on a dangerous field op.

He ends up taking a solid, teeth-rattling punch to the face from their deadly Richards variant, and while he's definitely had worse, it's not like it was fun, okay.

But it's apparently the last straw for everyone else in his strange little army and its accomplices. Both his task forces and half a dozen of his hunters-turned-field-operatives put their collective feet down and immediately collaborate to throw him headfirst into a rigorous self-defense training regimen.

Being a thinker, not a fighter is apparently all well and good, but not for someone on a rapid trajectory to senior management in a wartime TVA. The more cerebral approach will get you killed, if it's all you rely on in the field. (Or something like that.)

B-15 takes the lead and dedicates way, way too many hours of her already precious time for the next four months as Mobius' personal drill instructor, ruthlessly running him through defense exercises and hand-to-hand combat techniques he probably knew decades ago but hasn't had to employ in ten times that long. She pushes and shoves and prods and drags him along until he can finally at least dodge a punch, if not return it when the opportunity presents itself.

(She seems to enjoy continually putting him on his ass just a tiny bit too much, but it's somehow much less humiliating than his office fight with Ravonna, so. There's that.)

Casey and two of the former minutemen then take over and force him to sharpen his skills with various weapons, including some of the strange devices they've been confiscating from dangerous variants. And while they're at it, they all come up with a rough training program outline for potential Special Ops recruits. Definitely needed in the upcoming war, so it's two birds with one plasma rifle.

O-55, who is calling herself Octavia now, had immediately and expertly laid out the teenaged variant who managed that solid right hook on the aforementioned field op; and her idea of helping now, is to recruit a rotation of Field Observation personnel who start jumping Mobius at completely random times and even more random locations around both TVAs. Because, directly quoted, he 'has the heart but also the reflexes of a golden retriever, and like hell we're going to lose him on a field op just because he has no sense of stranger danger'.

Which, rude. But also not wrong. He's always been a little too trusting.

Much to his chagrin, however, his training becomes a fairly well-known thing, in the months following. Mobius eventually gets well accustomed to watching for shadows around every corner before he turns it, and immediately identifying ductwork large enough for a human to fit through in every hallway. Spotting every potential entrance and exit from a room, and pinging whether something looks suspicious or out of place. Generally acting like a semi-competent secret agent, not the extremely competent analyst he is underneath.

Most people would probably be a ball of anxiety about the whole thing, but it actually is kind of fun, and it certainly keeps things interesting. (His own mind is his worst enemy right now, not the impending multiversal war.)

Learning to duck a stun stick takes a little longer to learn that you'd think, and there's a couple really embarrassing incidents in the elevator and the Automat; but eventually it becomes muscle memory, knowing how to spin out of range or block, feint and parry, dodge and weave.

O.B. takes things further one day and surprises him with a new Advancement: a short, dagger-length version of the stun stick. He high-fives Mobius with way too much enthusiasm, when the latter disarms him in two seconds without even thinking about it. They then spend the afternoon figuring out the best length and weight parameters for the thing as well as a potential belt holster to hold it; and voila, new defense tools for the minutemen.

And so, the cycle continues.

Mobius gets his own back in spades, finally, when Retrievals Operative D-93 surprises him just inside the War Room when Mobius is already running late to a council meeting. At this point, it's reflexes more than skill, but he's dodged the first swing, made judicious use of an elbow, and has the poor kid slammed up against the wall with one of the handheld stun sticks across his throat before the startled council can even react.

B-15's quiet laugh breaks the dead silence as a dozen people stare at him in varying shades of curious to mildly impressed. D-93 offers him a congratulatory grin over the top of the baton, and at the opposite end of the table, Octavia holds up her tablet with a giant number 8 visible on the screen.

He'll take it.

"So, can we be done with this now?" he asks, as he releases the poor guy and dusts himself off. "I'm getting a little tired of people dropping on me from out of the vents."

"This one was on you, for being late," B-15 informs him serenely. "Again."

-PRESENT DAY-

All that to say, Mobius is by no means a skilled combatant, but he's improved by leaps and bounds since his desk days, thank you very much.

And the whole purpose of these expeditions to locate any remaining variants in the Void is, at its heart, a show of cautious good faith rather than immediately defaulting to violence, so self-defense isn't the primary thought in his mind when it starts going wrong five minutes in. He'd survived for a few hours by himself in the Void the first time, so there hadn't been any real reason to think he couldn't deal with it now, if he's careful.

It's been more difficult than anticipated, tracking down Void survivors. Where once you couldn't swing a dead cat around without hitting a Loki, they seem to be much fewer and more far-between now, indicating that they've adapted to the new world with all the barbarism and distrust that is crucial for survival of the fittest.

Or, in the case of a Loki, possibly just the most cunning.

During his first encounters in this cold, barren place, Mobius had been able to civilly converse with a couple of variants. Granted, one was an alligator and doesn't really count, and the other two had seemed far more impressed with the fact that he had turned his back on the institution and then been pruned by it, than they were with Mobius personally; but at least they hadn't been inclined to revenge themselves for the TVA's cosmic scale of wrongdoings.

No agent's ledger is ever going to be balanced in this area, but that's a burden each of them just has to find a way to live with now. For all time.

But these three new variants are singularly unimpressed with both Mobius and his agency, much less his well-intentioned questions designed to feel out potential future alliances (or at least, a temporary truce). The child remains silent and distrustful, and never gets close enough for Mobius to really see him in detail amid the gray, rock-dotted landscape.

Although the younger of the two adults seems mildly intrigued with hearing why a TVA agent is taking up partial residence in the Void and what his motives really are for being here, the elder variant is not so interested. He's the bigger threat, obviously, both physically and verbally, and so Mobius keeps a watchful eye on him at all times.

And in an ironic show of predictable unpredictability, it's actually the younger and more reasonable of the two that ends up stabbing Mobius in the back.

Literally.

To be fair, the child looks horrified when it happens, and promptly darts away. But the eldest variant laughs aloud, a cold and mocking sound Mobius barely hears as the shock and dizziness hit simultaneously. The impact is like being struck by tidal wave, an icy flood that crashes over him and takes him to his knees on the rocky soil of the Void.

Yeah, he's badly fumbled this one. Four-hundred-plus years of specializing in dangerous variants, and it's gonna be a half-assed routine stabbing that takes him down for no better reason than the fact that he got cocky.

His task force is going to kill him, if this doesn't.

But while the kid has made himself scarce, the two older variants are having a very loud, dagger-gesticulating confrontation about whether or not to finish the job or keep Mobius alive as potential leverage against the TVA. Neither are attractive prospects.

He manages to drag himself into a semi-sitting position against a large boulder, and rests his forehead on one arm for a moment, panting with the effects of what's probably a damaged lung. In this condition, there's no possible way he can safely direct HWR's temporal device to drop him anywhere, and of course he isn't carrying a standard Tempad.

The chilling realization that if Mobius does die here in the Void, the variants will have access to the most dangerous temporal technology in the universe and will certainly take it off his body, is nothing less than horrifying. He's put everyone in serious danger.

A nauseating swoop of blurred grays and browns, his hazy vision tells him there's probably only time for the nuclear option. One single hail-mary gesture that has, so far, had zero indication it'll work, or that it even can work.

All Mobius has left now is faith.

"It's been a while. And I dunno if you're even still listening to little ol' me," he murmurs, more a prayer than a conversation. "But I've…got myself in a bad spot here. Could really use some help." Oh, that cough is not a good sign. The next words are barely a whisper, because it's painfully hard to catch his breath. "Please, Loki."

His head feels incredibly heavy as the frigid wave of numbness creeps from back to front, up and down. Not like this, for heaven's sake.

But despite tunneling vision, he's still vaguely with it enough to hear when an earth-shattering crack of lightning explodes basically on top of them, leaving the stringent tang of ozone and something far more dangerous lingering in the air. And that's the wrong color for the Void, that's definitely not Alioth's deep purple against his closed eyelids.

He blinks everything back into focus, and the entire world is glowing emerald.

In any other circumstances, he'd be transfixed. Awestruck, in fact, to see that this is no illusion, no uncertain shadow or half-formed phantasm lurking in his breakfast nook.

This is a very powerful, very present, and very, very angry God of All Time.

At this angle, Mobius can only just see Loki in mesmerizing profile. He hovers effortlessly about a meter off the ground in full costume and helm, robes fluttering in the high wind and each outstretched hand haloed in a crackling circlet of wild, barely constrained magic. His eyes literally blaze with the same fury, and at every movement, a menacing peal of thunder rumbles directly overhead.

He is equal parts magnificent and unspeakably terrifying.

"You dare."

The snarl cracks like a gunshot across the wind-swept landscape, and with the last syllable, a magical barrier springs up to divide the shocked variants from their target. The two fall back before it, but the viridescent flames sweep forward like a wildfire, destructive and inevitable.

Mobius closes his eyes against the sudden flare of light.

"Run."

The single word rumbles like a ponderous, booming death-knell amid the howling wind. But Lokis are survivors, Mobius knows, so he's not that worried. They're expert in when to cut their losses, and boy would they be wise to cut them right now.

Then the blinding light dwindles, vanishes. Something fumbles at his jacket, searching for injury. Reaches around him and then abruptly applies pressure, causing a spasm of agony that makes him flinch and bite back a choked noise of pain. A sharp inhale, and then the hands withdraw, leaving him even colder than before. Cold enough to drift on the wind, almost.

"No, no no. Mobius, open your eyes this instant, do you hear me?"

Something soft, lightweight but comfortingly warm, settles over him, a barrier from the wind. Then an inhumanly icy hand is on his face, and it's enough to shock him back to partial consciousness.

Still bathed in the hint of an eerie green glow but completely, blessedly here, Loki looks almost eldritch in this shadow realm. Otherworldly. Beautiful. An unearthly, unholy being of pure power.

And right now? Just a scared little boy.

"Hi," Mobius whispers, with the ghost of a smile. "Look at you."

"Yes, do look at me. Eyes open, if you please." Loki tucks the fabric up more tightly under his chin, and waves a hand overhead, creating a translucent bubble that immediately makes the air feel a little warmer. "Mobius, listen to me, I don't know how long I have."

"'M listening."

"I don't have enough power at this time to access any kind of healing magic." There's a frantic, wild look in those barely-glowing eyes, and the words almost run together with urgency. "I severely underestimated the amount of focus it would require to cast a molecular duplication of this intensity without endangering the branches, and particularly after I, well…"

Mobius opens one eye in curiosity, and then the other, because he didn't mean to close them anyhow. "Hm?"

"I might have…unintentionallywreakedhavocintheTVAtryingtogethelp," Loki says in a rush, and then glares at Mobius when he snorts.

But that's a bad idea; the snort is followed by a violent coughing fit that hurts everywhere, and it's not funny at all. His head spins a little, and comes to rest briefly on Loki's shoulder.

"Easy," Loki whispers, helping him lie flat so that pressure is on the wound. "Help should be here in a moment, they just had to recalibrate the Tempad interface. I believe I overloaded a few vital systems in my haste."

That doesn't seem right. Mobius frowns, confusion driving back the lightheadedness for a second, and blinks slowly. "You…the TVA?"

"Somehow, yes. I am genuinely not certain as to the methodology. I could hear you, but I couldn't locate you, and I became slightly desperate, and I somehow found myself there again, and it never occurred to me you might be here in the Void, of all places! Did someone prune you?" An eerie rumble overhead punctuates the last question.

"No, no. Been working here, last few months. On purpose." He offers a lazy smile, because he's too tired to do more than that. "Gotta say. This's all it takes to get a real visit, me getting stabbed? Shoulda painted a bullseye on this jacket a couple years ago."

Loki looks utterly appalled, which certainly wasn't Mobius' intention. Tough crowd.

"Hey, I'm joking." He reaches out from under what he only now realizes is Loki's dramatic but awfully comfy cape. His unsteady fingers are caught and cradled in both hands, infinitely gentle. "I'm glad to see you."

"I would prefer the next time not be in these dire circumstances," Loki mutters, squeezing his hand tightly. "You must be more careful, Mobius."

"Mmhm."

Those strong hands tighten on his fingers at the quiet acknowledgement, and what do you know, maybe they're not that cold after all. Or he's just not noticing much anymore.

"Mobius, I – I need you to stay with me." A haggard expulsion of breath. "Where the Hel are they?"

Then the welcome fwomp of a Time Door opening prods gently at fading consciousness, and it's followed by a hectic jumble of shouts, barked orders, stomping feet and other sounds that are impossible to sort out right now.

But just beyond the chaos, is a whispered promise in his ear, and the lingering ghost of ice at his fingertips.

-FOUR DAYS LATER-

"He did what?" Mobius asks incredulously over the top of the mug containing, not coffee as he'd requested, but the most bland, bland broth the bland, bland cafeteria can provide. Fifty shades of bland, this stuff.

"Caused significant structural damage at the foundation level and demolished the magic safeguards when he…landed? Descended?"

"Rained down righteous fury and brimstone?" Casey supplies wryly, without looking up.

O.B. laughs, which might be a bit too cheerful a reaction given the subject matter, but then again he's had some very unusual repair work to keep him busy and fascinated the last couple of days, and in the end, there was no permanent harm done. "We are actually lucky. We don't have any dangerous magic-users in holding cells right now. And he didn't damage the time-lock protocols in any way."

"Just everything else," Casey adds.

Mobius sets the mug down, thinking through this. "But all of that is supposed to be completely impossible. He's explicitly said he can't see us here, and last I knew, he wasn't even able to manage an illusion projection for long. Much less whatever this was."

"Exactly. I've never seen anything like it." O.B. replies. He glances over at Casey, who had stopped by to talk through an upcoming heist with Mobius here in the infirmary, and then been drafted to help monitor advanced diagnostics being run on the damaged systems. "Given what we know: I have no idea how he honed in on us, and even less idea how he broke through the most powerful sigils I've ever encountered. Without even knowing where they're carved in the sub-foundation. They were cracked right in half!"

"Huh."

"I guess he must just be that powerful." O.B. adjusts his glasses, and squints again at the tablet he's working from. "At least when he's, well."

"Properly motivated?" Casey side-eyes Mobius knowingly. "He was not happy, that's for sure."

"He wasn't the only one," B-15 interjects from the doorway, where she now leans against the wall with arms folded. "Where the hell was your defense training when a Void Loki walked up behind you holding a knife?"

Mobius gingerly flops back on the pillow with a sigh. "I blocked the first dagger, and nobody even saw how cool it looked," he mutters, a little gracelessly. "I just forgot they usually fight with two."

"Hmm." B-15 makes a note on her pocket device, and then points the stylus at him. "Next lesson as soon as you're back on your feet. Dual wielding. You need to learn how to use a weapon and stun stick simultaneously."

"It's a NAPSA."

"It is not."

"Can I at least have a week or two off before you start drilling me again?" Mobius interrupts what is, by now, nothing more than a good-natured running gag. The question is probably too close to a whine to really be dignified, but then again, he's recovering from being stabbed, so. He's entitled.

"Oh, now you want to take the proper time for recovery?"

"I'm trying to be a good patient, here," he says, with the most innocent of expressions.

"You're trying to finagle a branch vacation on the TVA's time and money so you can field test duplication casting," B-15 says dryly. "I'm not an idiot, Mobius."

He can fairly feel his face heating up, and O.B.'s quiet chuckle is sufficient confirmation.

"Hey, don't be mean," Casey interjects, elbowing O.B. as he walks by. "It's taken long enough, you know."

"We're just teasing," B-15 assures him, moving out of the doorway so he can pass. "Casey, make sure you run your next acquisition plans past the council, Gamble had some special requests to make if you're targeting the thirty-first century this time."

"Can do." Casey waves as he departs in a cheerful, authoritative stride.

Arms folded, Mobius then glares at the room in stony silence. B-15 hefts a paper airplane his direction with strangely deadly accuracy. He snatches at it, unfolds the sheet, and then smiles at the sight of his leave already stamped and approved, an hour before.

And all else aside, Mobius is going to need the time. While they've come leaps and bounds in the infirmary department, including the addition of some amazing machines and procedures pilfered strategically from futuristic timelines, it's still going to be a while before he's in condition to actively run a project again.

"Correct. We should be back up and fully operational in another twenty-four cycles, as promised," O.B. says, in response to a question from B-15.

"Wow." Mobius pockets the folded paper. "It's taken that long to repair the damage?"

"Oh, yes," O.B. replies. "Not only did Loki scare the living daylight out of every person in the building, he blew out 90% of the lights in the archives, reset the mainframe and the magic dampeners, overloaded at least a dozen important systems, and damaged the structural integrity of three load-bearing columns in the Atrium. I had to draft your Void engineers back here to help get things put to rights before we had real problems."

"All that, from one projection," Mobius muses, somewhat in awe.

"Yes," B-15 adds, not in awe, or at least reluctant to be. "So this can't happen again, Mobius. He's too powerful. If the time-lock protocols are ever damaged –"

"We could end up visible to any number of HWR variants, and bring the war on decades too early, I know." Mobius exhales slowly.

"The Void hub maybe could withstand another hit like that. But not TVA Central." O.B. says seriously. "If it happens again, we could be in big trouble."

"Understood. All jokes aside, I have the feeling he won't be coming around for a while – I'm pretty sure the whole thing was taking a lot out of him. But regardless, I'll make sure it doesn't happen again."

"I'm going to hold you to that, now. You go out on your own one more time to locate a Void variant and I will ground you from field work for a year," B-15 assures him sweetly. "I don't care if it's a child, a frost giant or just a gold-horned squirrel, you take a hunting detail with you."

Mobius snaps his fingers, ignoring the not-idle threat for now. "Wait, the kid!"

"What kid?"

"There were three variants, one was just a child. He ran away, I think, when I got shish-kabobbed."

"The task force didn't see a child when they arrived," B-15 says. "But I'll check with Ops and make sure."

"He looked scared, even before the daggers started swinging. Might be an option for a future ally, if our proposal's good enough," Mobius muses. "O.B.?"

"On it." O.B. continues frenetically typing notes into something that looks like an extra-large Tempad equipped with a bizarre spherical keyboard at one end. "Perimeter defenses are done, and living quarters are well underway, so I can start on the long-distance scanners. If he's out there, we'll be able to pinpoint him once they're calibrated. Along with anyone else, and you'll have an idea of what we're looking at, exactly."

"Great. Make sure the guest quarters are finished and fully magic-blocked first, yeah? Shelter and food are probably our best bet for bartering, right now, but there's not gonna be any trust involved."

"You got it."

"I think we're done here, then. Mobius, I'll have someone come by in a few hours to get you settled in at home." B-15 then frowns, seeing his expression. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing, nothing." He shakes his head. "It's just weird, calling a branch home."

She looks genuinely curious. "Good weird or bad weird?"

"I'm not sure. But not all bad, at least," he replies thoughtfully. "I'll let you know when I figure it out."

When I figure several things out, actually.

-THREE WEEKS LATER-

"It looks great, O.B. You guys have outdone yourselves. And without my hovering over your shoulder every day, even."

"Right?" On-screen, O.B. fairly bounces up and down in his enthusiasm. "It's exciting, isn't it. We've actually got one of the finish lines in sight."

"Sure is. Give yourself a pay raise, and show me the archive vault again?"

Outside the open window, the evening rain sounds like it's tapering off into a lazy, molasses-slow summer drizzle, dripping from the roof-edge in a gentle patter above the whitecaps which had formed rapidly the last two hours. There are times Mobius feels a little guilty for having this more peaceful refuge to retreat to; but then again, with time, this small haven, too, will pass.

He's just trying a little harder now to enjoy it while he can.

"Here we are."

"And that's completely time-locked?" Mobius asks, peering closer at the screen. While they've finally figured out a way to add a visual component to Tempad comms, it's not exactly high-definition video.

"It is indeed," O.B. replies cheerfully, panning slowly around the modest, lead-lined room situated deep underground beneath the new archives. "Time-locked and magic-blocked. And it's temperature-controlled."

"Miss Minutes doesn't have access, does she?"

"Nope. The vault is completely disconnected from both mainframes. Pre-analog era security."

"Good. I just felt like we might need a Plan B."

"Plan Q at this point, I think. But yes," O.B. replies, not incorrectly. "And while the vault is completely self-sustaining, the panic room in Sector 2 will technically be remote-accessible, once it's finished. She wouldn't have access unless we specifically allow it from within the room, but it's a fallback option if we're ever under attack, or something. The panic terminal will have its own controls and a backdoor to access the satellite and Central mainframes, if you know what you're doing."

"Do we have anyone who knows what they're doing?"

"No. Me included, and I can't take the time to become an expert. You need to recruit someone very soon here, who can pick up some serious coding knowledge quickly. Probably a whole team, just in case. We don't know how advanced the other side's technology is, but what we've confiscated from Kang variants so far makes ours look like something from the Stone Age."

"Noted."

In fact, their biggest issue right now isn't a lack of manpower, it's that said existing manpower is understandably reluctant to learn how to use a tablet instead of a decades-outdated paper filing system, among many other things. And they're running out of time and tolerance for baby steps.

"But anyway: Worst case, if Central has to be evacuated under an invasion force, we can move the most valuable files here, as well as any dangerous artifacts, and permanently seal them in. The vault would never be accessible again without a combined temporal aura scan from five different people, which likely won't be possible if we're at war."

"Good work, O.B. Really, really good work."

O.B. looks pleased with himself, and well-deservedly. "That's not all. I have more good news. Good enough that you may want to come back tonight instead of next week."

Mobius sets down his coffee, and leans back in his heavily-cushioned chair with full focus on the screen. "Well, by all means, hit me with the good stuff."

"Now that we have the long-range temporal scanning system installed, I've been able to pinpoint the location of your variant groups."

"Already? That's great!"

"It is! But that's not actually the good news!"

"What is it, then?"

"The extension software patch I added to the temporal scanner interface was finally long-range enough."

"You mean…" Something wildly hopeful flickers through Mobius' expression, though his tone remains calm. "What, exactly, do you mean, O.B."

"It means we're in business," O.B. replies, grinning. He holds up a thick stack of printouts, and shakes them briefly, an accordion-like rustle of understated triumph. "We've finally got detailed readings of the Tree."