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Universal Collisions: The Trailblazer
Chapter 3: The Director
Time Variance Authority-Variation 20457 out of Infinite
He tapped his pen against the arm of his chair, observing yet another trial. As he had seen it done so many times before, a variant was brought up to the court. The judge looked down at a teenage girl; there was no sport in judging Nico Minoru.
"You stand accused of crimes against the sacred timeline, you and your friends were destined to run, always run, never to stand alongside Earth's mightiest heroes!"
"But I stopped the blip," was her excuse.
Another judgement of the day was against one Grant Ward, again there was no sport in it.
"You stand accused of crimes against the sacred timeline, you were a Hydra agent charged with infiltrating Philip Coulson's team, you were supposed to betray them to your mentor."
"I wasn't going to betray my friends," was the admirable retort of a far better Ward variant.
The next judgement came in the form of Glenn Talbot, or the simulacrum of personalities affected by his transformation into Graviton.
"You stand accused of crimes against the sacred timeline, in piercing the Earth's core, you led to its destruction."
There was no great argument from the military man, no excuse. Because in the end every shift against destiny led to disaster, destiny was the one thing that could not be avoided. The sacred timeline was more than just the dictation of order over chaos, but the necessity of the universe's continued existence.
Or at least that was the sales pitch Mr Minutes gave the Director's men.
"Prune them," he said, rising from his chair.
"Nico Minoru, perhaps you save the world by pure accident, but your fate is never to rise beyond what you are, a fearful runaway, prioritising yourself and your friends," he cast judgement over the girl.
"Grant Ward, you weren't supposed to become a better man, you were always going to be the traitor, the man who takes every second chance he is given and ruins it because that is who you are," he cast judgement over the soldier.
"Glenn Talbot, you were never going to be a hero, just a laughing stock, a name drop in the careers of better men and women," and he cast judgment over the soldier.
He cast judgement like a king, because in the end, that was who Nathaniel Richards was. A man who sought authority, who wanted to be the one in charge, the one with all the power and control. With the court sessions now finished, the Director returned to his office where his most loyal agent Mobius waited.
"What was the last communication from our pruning teams?" he asked the older looking man.
"Same communication we had on the last branch we sent a team to Prune, these guys got their butts kicked bad," Mobius said.
"Clearly they encountered more enhanced individuals," the Director said.
"These weren't your average Rogers or Stark variants boss, these were completely different people," Mobius said.
"All the more reason for these areas to be pruned immediately don't you think?" the Director asked as he sat down.
He loosened his tie and pulled open a drawer, taking a bottle of scotch out, one of the first bottles Jack Daniels had released. Last week it was wine from Henry the eighths cellar, the week before that mead from the halls of Ragnar Lothbrak.
"Sit, I can tell when there is something on your mind Mobius, you don't doubt the cause do you?" he asked.
"Never sir, my concern is that there might be more to these new divergent timelines than we know, that anomaly, that event, it was unlike anything we ever saw before, it wasn't an Inversion, it wasn't a blip, it was something else entirely. Then there's the individual cases," Mobius explained as he sat down, accepting the drink the Director offered him.
"Go on, elaborate for me," he said.
"We have one case where our agents were wiped out, slaughtered like soldiers on a battlefield. Then there's the most recent case, our readings indicate that our agents are still alive," Mobius said.
"Mobius, in spite of whatever morality one divergent timeline might have over another, it doesn't change the fact that it is not in keeping with the sacred timeline. You do realise what will happen if divergent timelines are allowed to grow, one leads to another, then another, and then another, like a disease spreading across the body, a cancer that if we don't act, we will be too late to stop," the Director explained.
Mobius hesitantly nodded his head, as the Director expected. Across many universes and many variations of the Time Variance Authority, Mobius was the man who doubted, the man who weighed the supposed necessity of the TVA with the morality of his heart. It was also in countless variations of the TVA that Mobius discovered the mystery behind it, the great lie that is the preservation of the sacred timeline. The Director and his variants understood time travel better than anyone, and the fundamental principle of time was that it was chaotic.
"What is our next move then sir?" Mobius was not yet on the verge of discovering that chaos.
"Let us look at this variation that has vexed us, and see if we cannot extradite our comrades yes?" The Director asked and Mobius smiled.
"A rescue mission and a pruning mission, okay, I'll go get some guys together, see what we can do," the time agent said.
As Mobius left, the Director sat at his desk and closed his eyes, taking some deep breaths and listening to his own heart beat. He knew of several phenomenon across the Multiverse, dreams linking variants lives partially, variants not always being doppelgangers and another curious one, variants being in perfect synch. The Director knew that somewhere out there, there was a variant of himself who heart beat with the same rhythm as his.
That was what he and Mr Gryphon had in common, an in synch heart beat. Clark could hear the man's heart, there was only one person on his Earth who had that same eerily calm heart beat, a man Clark once considered a friend. Despite Oliver and Tess watching Gryphon closely, he wasn't afraid in the least, standing in the middle of the Kent barn and looking at the red paint and hay with a wondrous expression.
"How quaint, I once considered living the life of a farmer," he said.
"You're in charge of the people who attacked Clark and the kid?" Oliver asked.
"No, I'm simply a variant, there was a time when I gave the 'Time Variance Authority' a try, with a lot more success than my other counterparts. Partly because I discovered something quite unique about most timelines in your Multiverse," Gryphon explained.
The science of course went over Oliver, though he had a partial understanding considering who he was married to. Tess however understood everything Gryphon spoke of, and even seemed fascinated by it. Clark though knew exactly what Gryphon's discovery was, it was one he had made himself when he was younger, pining for a future with Lana Lang. He only thought briefly of his first love before smiling at his true love.
"My time line is chaotic, a future timeline could survive, and there could even be an alternative past. Destiny too is a thing, sometimes you could alter predicted events and they wouldn't occur, or they would because the timeline finds a way for those events to happen, but in general my timeline cannot be manipulated with a hundred percent guarantee. Yours however, is perfectly malleable, like clay," Gryphon explained.
"That's why time travellers we've encountered take so much care to minimise their interference or what we know about their present," Tess said.
"Fascinating isn't it?" Gryphon asked and Oliver rolled his eyes.
Clark ran, moving as a blur from his house to the barn, appearing between Gryphon and his team mates.
"You called them variants of you, so at some point you were all the same exact person right?" he asked.
"I was at some point in my long life a Director of the TVA existing between time, the Pharaoh of a forgotten past, the superior man in an altered present and now, simply a man of many futures," Gryphon explained.
"You lived so many different lives that you lost control and created variants of yourself that oppose your future," Clark said.
"Well figured out Mr Kent, speaking as the former evil genius, I would be particularly drawn to the person who was at the centre of the events that linked all the Multiverses together. What do you say we go to your fortress and speak with this young boy?" Gryphon asked.
"I don't think so," Clark shook his head.
Even though he didn't float or make his eyes glow, he still appeared intimidating to Gryphon, whose heart remained calm. The intimidation factor wasn't necessary; he just wanted the man to know that whatever alliance or control Gryphon thought he could get wasn't possible. Clark believed in the good in people, but he also believed that Gryphon had plans to betray them.
"The people who work for the Time variance authority had their own lives, they're prisoners robbed of their memories committing one atrocity after another, decimating entire worlds. So I say we put a stop to the TVA, save as many timelines as we can, whilst freeing their agents," Clark explained.
"I would be disappointed if you trusted me to see the boy that easily, very well Superman, here's my information on the 'sacred timeline' and which variations would be considered threats to it," Gryphon said.
Clark nodded to Tess and Oli, and then looked towards the people standing at the entrance to the barn.
"Did you bring your suits?" he asked, a smirk crossing his face.
Meanwhile back at the fortress of solitude, J'onn looked at the people in the holding cells. They hadn't been stripped of their armour, but their equipment belts had been taken away. Appearing as John Jones, police detective, the Martian closed his eyes and drifted into the consciousness of the man who led the 'Pruners' as they called themselves. Suddenly the fortress surrounding J'onn faded away and he was in the New York streets. He looked towards a theatre, where a couple and their children walked out. The boys were smiling, throwing punches and kicks, much to the amusement of their parents. They made sounds like martial artists, and making whooshing sounds when they moved their arms.
"All right _ take it easy on Donny," the man said.
"Go, Go power Rangers," the boys cheered.
"But you know where we need to go boys? Home," she said, patting their shoulders and making them groan.
"Their suits were awesome, the moves were awesome, I want to be a super hero too when I grow up," the older boy said.
"We'll both be heroes _" there it was again, a block from the boy's real name.
They continued through an alleyway, in a scene that was all too familiar to J'onn. But there was a divergence, a group waited for the family, fake smiles on their faces.
"Well, well, a nice family night out, it's a well deserved night Mr _," the block occurred even when the thugs spoke to the father.
"Cornell," the man gulped, his smile fading from his face.
The man wore a finer jacket than his thugs. But it still wasn't as expensive as the clothes the family wore.
"You know when Mariah told me you had moved out of Harlem, I didn't believe her, no not _ he's cool, he's good, he knows where he comes from," Cornell said, playing with the rings on his fingers.
"So this is what white money gets you huh?" one of the thugs asked, touching the collar of the woman's coat.
Suddenly, her husband lashed out, punching the thug across the face. He fell to the floor, and the man was immediately on him, punching his face again and again.
"What the hell is this Cottonmouth?" he demanded.
Cornell raised his arm, holding the other two thugs back. There was satisfaction, victory in his eyes, fear in the eyes of the boys and finally, defeat in their father's eyes when he finished beating the thug.
"You might have changed who you're working for, but you haven't changed who you are, you're still a night thrasher _and in my experience, the apple doesn't fall far," Cottonmouth said, looking at the children.
"You stay away from my family, you tell Mariah to stay away, I don't associate with her anymore, I don't owe her anymore…she's nothing to me, is that clear?"
"Crystal, good luck to you _" Cottonmouth turned with his gang and began walking away.
The man looked down at his sons and shook his head.
"No more fighting you two, just books from now on," he said.
"What is this?" the Pruner asked, appearing behind J'onn.
"One of those boys was you, couldn't you tell?" J'onn asked.
"That's impossible, we don't age in the TVA, we were all created by the Time Keepers," the commander said.
"Yet here it is," J'onn gestured to the image of the child.
"You've put this in my head," the commander snapped.
"I'm certainly capable of it, but I wouldn't, not after what happened to my world," J'onn turned into his Martian form, not the green skinned man he often appeared as when being a hero, but a form some on Earth might consider monstrous.
New York too changed into what Mars once was, a metropolis of culture and technology. Then came the wars, conflict between White, Green and Red Martians. Old ancestral hatreds spiralled out of control until Martians violated one another with their telepathic abilities. What came after was a long burning of the planet.
"There's a reason I disguise myself as a black man," J'onn said, returning to his human form.
"Better looking face," the Pruner quipped.
"It's so I never forget where I came from, and what ultimately caused the downfall of my civilisation, this is a memory young man, I think a part of you believes that just as there has always been a part of you that has doubted the stories you've been told," J'onn explained.
"I protect the sacred timeline."
"But in an infinitely expanding Multiverse, how can any timeline be sacred, why can't all timelines be sacred?"
"We must prevent a Multiversal war."
"You haven't prevented anything," J'onn said.
"Get out, I don't want to hear this anymore," the Pruner gripped his head, attempting to claw at his face before his projection faded.
J'onn returned to the fortress, telepathically calming the prisoner into unconsciousness again.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
"So they were pretty heavily brainwashed weren't they?" Sieg asked from behind J'onn.
He was in his repaired costume, plus a Smallville jersey Clark had on hand. There was concern on his face when he looked at the trio of TVA agents. It put a smile on J'onn's face to know that there were people as compassionate on other Earths too.
"Their memories have been suppressed heavily, its less brainwashing than it is simply their lives. For the longest time, they have known nothing else but the TVA and what they have been told by the TVA, they haven't been given any other narrative than what they are doing is right," J'onn explained.
"Well now, I wouldn't say that!"
Sieg's sword suddenly flew to his hand, pointing it at the new arrival. He had light grey hair and wore a smart suit, appearing nervous and then impressed when Sieg pointed his sword at him.
"Wow, so that is the blade that ripped a hole through reality," he mused.
"What are you talking about, I saved my reality and this one," Sieg said.
"You lit this place up like a beacon, our instruments had trouble detecting these divergent timelines before and then boom, our whole scanning department was in uproar, we could suddenly find hundreds of splits in the sacred timeline," the man explained.
"So these people came to this world, because of me?" Sieg asked and when the man sympathetically nodded, Sieg lowered his sword and grimaced.
"Oh, I'm Mobius by the way," the man said.
"Nice to meet you Mobius, why do you want to destroy my world?" J'onn asked.
"It's not that I want to destroy your world, if there was a way to stop the disasters it creates from happening, without destroying it then I would do it without hesitation," Mobius explained.
"But instead you 'prune' these worlds, erasing them from existence," Sieg said.
"Thus erasing the possible futures and even pasts that could be created from them. Take yours for example, ask yourself several what ifs, they've probably occurred somewhere or other in the growing Multiverse. What if Davis Bloome had been taken in by the Kents?" Mobius asked, his expression not changing even when J'onn looked at him in shock. "What if Lex Luthor had died in that car crash regardless of whether Clark had saved him, what if Clark kept on taking his red Kryptonite, what if it came to the point that he didn't need it to be a terrible person? You see for every thousands of timelines that could exist where good triumphs, there are a thousand more where the worst things that could have happened, happened," the TVA agent explained.
"So you'll erase all of the possible good so long as it erases the bad right, there's no equivalent exchange going on there," Sieg retorted.
"No there isn't, and unlike the rest of my colleagues, I accept that regardless of our actions, the Multiverse exists but…"
"Like pruning a garden to keep it from over growing you'll get rid of the plants you don't like," Sieg said.
"You don't have to make it sound so discriminatory, I never did like the term pruning," Mobius shook his head.
"Your mind is quite well shielded, and you have good control over your conscious thoughts," J'onn said.
The Martian's eyes suddenly glowed red, Mobius flinched as this happened, but then tried to shift into his relaxed demeanour.
"You see you can't conceal completely even your conscience thoughts, you can only think about something for so long before it changes, like how interesting this place is, or how much you wish what we say is right before you think 'I hope they're distracted enough'," J'onn smirked before turning around.
He phased, passing through two seemingly invisible agents. Their armour shifted, revealing themselves temporarily. Director Timely always thought that previous TVAs somehow looked like they were on a budget, armour that looked Earthly, weapons limited to batons, he scoffed at the idea. Stealth troopers were equipped with armour of the late twenty first century, the US army eventually succeeded in creating a stealth camouflage suit. The Director applied the Prune tech to other weapons as well, it required a factory of course, but turning the tip of a bullet into a pruner was child's play for him. Those uncloaked soldiers fired their rifles, missing the nimble Sieg and the phasing Martian, pruning instead items throughout the fortress. Mobius rubbed his head, disappointed and annoyed with himself.
"Well this didn't turn out like I hoped it would," he said.
J'onn passed through two of the uncloaked soldiers, grabbing another one to uncloak him. He threw them across the fortress, releasing beams from his eyes and cutting the barrels of the weapons firing at Sieg. This gave the boy an opening to rush in, bashing two agents across their heads, breaking their helmets. Orange portals opened behind Mobius, expanding until they were big enough for bulking, heavily armoured soldiers to walk through. Four emerged from the portals, bearing the helmets of the Heart Breaker Iron man suits, and the bulk of the Igor armour. Their knuckles though were glowing, one punch and they could prune whatever object they hit.
"We can't dodge, they might prune the fortress if we aren't careful," J'onn projected to Sieg telepathically.
'Then we'll just have to break their weapons apart, break…' Sieg's thoughts drifted.
He stretched his sword out in front of him, gritting his teeth together before the blade shattered. The pieces flew around Sieg, forming duel tails on his back. J'onn manipulated the shape of his hands, and then flew forward whilst Sieg ran. The boy slid underneath one of the armoured soldiers, slashing the gauntlets with his armoured tail. He jumped over his second opponent and brought the shards of his sword to his arm, forming a shield he slammed into the armoured man's helmet, knocking him to the ground.
"You know this is actually the first time I've witnessed a super hero fight up close, wow," Mobius exclaimed.
Bullets ricocheted off of his armour; Patriarch's sword acted more like a blunted weapon, throwing those he struck back with sickening cracks of their bones. He grabbed one man by the face and lifted him up, using him as a weapon too to hit his squad mates. The soldiers were sent flailing across the corridors of the facility. Patriarch threw the man he held aside as he walked towards one of the blast doors. The door opened before he could lift his sword, courtesy of Lex. Microscopic machines floated out of Lex's gloves, devices he had designed to assist in his mission.
"What have you got to stop those men?" Flash asked as he and Gwen ran out of the observation room.
Orders were orders, but if the order was stupid, Flash was compelled to disagree with it. Spider-man would do what was right after all. Gwen tied her hair back as she ran, thankfully she was wearing practical shoes and trousers. She took her ID tag and ran ahead of Flash.
"Sorry," she said.
"Don't worry about it, just get to whatever your 'contingency' is," Flash said.
Patriarch threw more of the soldiers aside, letting out an annoyed huff as heavily armoured troopers came through one of the doors. Clearly they were using weapons meant for the symbiotes, one trooper let loose a cloud of fire from the back pack and gun he had. Patriarch stood in place, taking the blast of flame. His feet dug into the ground before he launched himself at the soldiers, taking a shotgun blast to the chest as he crushed the flame thrower with his sword. Grabbing another soldier by the foot, he swung him around before throwing him down the corridor. Flash was barely able to stop his wheelchair when the soldier slammed into the wall ahead of him.
'Damn it, who are these people, what's going on here?' he wondered.
He looked down the corridor, half expecting Patriarch to be walking down it. The armoured man stood at the end of the corridor, but he just looked at Flash before he turned and walked in another direction. Flash lowered his head, gritting his teeth together and gripping the rests of his wheelchair, again he was dismissed, ignored. He kept rolling in the direction Gwen had gone in, finding her punching a code into a heavy vault door.
"This way hurry," she said.
"I'm hoping your plan isn't to simply hide out," Flash said.
"No, my plan is to if necessary destroy those symbiotes," Gwen said.
She shut the door behind Flash, the soldier looked around the room and saw a multitude of advanced guns and body armour.
"How come no one out there is wearing this?" he asked.
"It hasn't finished testing yet," Gwen retorted.
She walked into the middle of the room, where a rotating chamber had been placed. Typing a code into the key pad, she then twisted a handle and pulled it up like a lever, revealing a glass tube filled with a clear liquid. A white blob floated inside the liquid like a lava lamp, and Flash couldn't help but feel hypnotised by it.
"What is this thing?" he asked Gwen.
"Every poison has an Anti-Venom, this is a synthetic version of the symbiote, linked to the hive mind but incapable of individuality," Gwen explained.
"And we didn't lead with this why?"
"Because it is extremely experimental, it could still be capable of developing a persona, or driving whoever wears it mad," Gwen said.
"But if we don't use it then those two will get a hold of those symbiotes and use them," Flash said.
"We still have enough fire power to potentially kill the symbiotes at least, you don't have to do this Flash," Gwen said.
"You didn't have to wait for me but you did Gwen, despite what you say, this is the only way. I take this and then I can kill the symbiotes, probably even separate them from whatever poor bastards those guys will force them on. Whatever the personal risk, Spider-man would never have hesitated, and I've never hesitated either, honey, where's my super suit?" Flash asked, grinning as Gwen shook her head.
"You are full of surprises Captain Thompson," she said.
"Am I going to have to strip or something?" he asked.
"Of course not, just get close to the opening," Gwen said.
She walked over to the console, beginning to type in a sequence of powers. They included dates of the project, the month Eddie Brock died, the favourite movie of the Colonel (Devil's Advocate) and her pass key and biometrics. For the sake of flexibility, Flash removed his uniform jacket and rolled in front of the container. He unclipped is seat belt and shuffled forward on the chair, looking at the synthetic symbiote. It remained in place for a moment, shifting its form; a head like appendage stretched out of the container and stared at Flash. He could see the dark portion of its face develop eyes, glaring at him for a moment. Flash took a deep breath and then glared back.
"Come on then," he urged it.
Suddenly, the synthetic symbiote jumped at Flash, knocking him backwards off of his chair. Gwen ran around the container, hearing Flash yell in fright as the creature became an ooze, spreading across his body. It went over his clothes, seemingly breaking them down to tightly wrap over his skin. Rolling across the floor, Flash went to his knees, the material covered his hands and stretched his fingers like claws. His muscles bulged through the suit, expanding and shrinking chaotically. Tentacles burst out of his back, sticking to the ceiling and lifting him off of the floor. Just as the suit began to cover Flash's hair, he saw his knee stumps begin to grow. He began to breathe rapidly, feeling as if he was hyperventilating, heights had never been something he had been afraid of. But in this moment he felt like he was being dangled off of strings. When the tentacles dropped him, Flash landed on his feet and it was a strange an unfamiliar sensation. He stumbled like a baby, spreading his legs and flailing his arms.
"It's okay Flash, concentrate, the symbiote is acting as your new muscle fibres, your new nerves, you need to remember what it was like to walk," Gwen explained.
She was reassuring, kind, both of which Flash had experienced in the military as contradictory as that might have been. There was discipline and Flash found it physically harder than a football field. But when he had lost his legs, the support he got from his fellow soldiers, from doctors, it honestly made him rethink all those years he spent picking on nerds like Parker. The memory of the explosion flashed in his eyes and he fell back. Finally, the symbiote covered him completely, turning his mouth in a snarling maw.
"Flash," Gwen called to him
He stood up, roaring, driven mad by a flood of information and memories that didn't belong to him. The berserk symbiote looked at Gwen and grinded its teeth together, fighting the great blood lust filling its mind.
"Flash," again she called to him and he answered with a roar before lunging towards her.
The Director looked up at the monitor that displayed the sacred timeline. Every other agent of the TVA looked at it with concern, but he only saw opportunity. When time travel occurred on variations of his Earth, alternate timelines were born, alternate pasts, alternate futures and of course the perceived alternate presents. He wasn't even the first or only 'he who remains' to experience the rise of the Multiverse. But the expansion of the Multiverse, was in fact a joining of multiple Multiverses, one Multiverse where time travel truly did shape the timeline. Potentially the control he wanted for so long could exist on one Earth.
Setting up another Time Variance Authority was a simple task. He went to an Earth and plucked a select few whom had lived mundane, meaningless lives in the grand scheme of things. Manipulating their memories through an evolved method passed down from the Winter Soldier and Widow programs, no frying the brain, no chemical manipulation, just hypnotic editing of the mind. As always the Director started with Rebecca Tourminet, or as he renamed her, Ravonna Renslayer. Throughout every variation of the TVA, she remained the most loyal, the one who never questioned her purpose. The Director theorised this was because she lacked purpose in any other life, so she yearned for the chance to matter. He didn't collect a Mobius variant, he didn't need one for his simple experiment.
Then the Director found a world to be his 'Sacred Timeline'. It had the basic mould of a world, a universe filled with sapient life that originated from Earth. The Director and his ancestor always theorised on the Celestial experiments and the buildings blocks of life being taken from Earth and then seeded elsewhere. It was why so many 'aliens' just looked like different versions of humans. In forging his sacred timeline, the Director observed the 'fated future' of this world. He saw the destruction of Krypton, the rise of Clark Kent to becoming the super hero Superman, the formation of the Justice league with other heroes.
The Director observed that if he altered events in the path, then it would truly alter events in the future. He altered the course of Kal-El's ship, ensuring it landed no in Smallville Kansas, but in Russia. From there the Director observed the times that this Russian raised Kal-El would join the state and help prepare his motherland for the rising population of Meteoritnyy urod.
Eventually that timeline led to war with Russian led by its Superman and America led by President Luthor and his army of meteor enhanced super humans.
In another twist of fate, the Director went back and manipulated the timeline again. This time he ensured that it was not the Kent's who found Kal-El, but the Luthor family. Clark was raised by Lionel Luthor alongside his older adopted brother Lex. For Lionel it was an attempt to replace his son Julian in the eyes of the public. But he also knew that there was more to Clark, that he was an alien and that there was a great design on him. It was Lionel's schemes to learn more of Krypton that led to the breakdown of Clark and Lex's relationship. Lex excelled at business, and Clark publically made a name for himself as the fabled Superman. He romanced Tess Mercer, franchised his name into toys and comics, all whilst 'saving' the world from meteor freaks he would catch and then experiment on. For Clark was the favourite son of Lionel Luthor, but he still very much remained a Kryptonian and when general Zod arrived, Clark sided with his fellow survivors. This variant timeline came to a head with a battle between the Kryptonians and a resistance Lex assembled with Kryptonite armour and weapons.
The Director didn't even need to manipulate the distant past. He could go into Clark's adult life, or the life of Barry Allen, repeatedly creating many variations of their lives. Lives where Bruce Wayne killed his parents for inheritance money, where a 'Green Lantern' ring ended up on the finger of a woman of the mythical Amazons, where Kent remained a farmer and not a super hero, the Director studied so many variations of a single timeline that he began to keep a journal of his discoveries. He learnt that much of human history would remain the same up until a 'modern' age, generally ranging from a 1930s to 2000s time frame. After this was when the timeline became malleable, but the Director had more that he needed to discover.
It was the Richards in him that made him want to know, need to know, to satisfy his curiosity or just to prove himself right. Throughout every manipulation he found undeniable truths, in many different forms it begins and ends with Superman. And the second that no matter the variation, no matter the side of perceived good or evil, Superman and Lex Luthor would always be opposed to one another.
"Is there something funny sir?" Ravonna asked.
Had he been laughing? Perhaps he had, his manipulations had often been covert, but that didn't mean they didn't have their own risks. Unexpected things always happened; the Director and his ancestors knew that better than anyone. He had laughed, not by his own intention, it didn't matter because he had determined what he needed to know.
"A timeline that can be manipulated, and a sword," he remembered the boy with the sword and laughed again. "A sword that can bridge the gap between Multiverses, perhaps even merge them together, I think I know what my next experiment will be," he chuckled and giggled, making the TVA agents look at him.
He put his hand to his mouth, leaning against a tray that was nearby. This TVA like all the others was simplistic, having a 1960s Sci-Fi style to it, as he had for many variations of the organisation. His laugh turned into a frustrated growl.
"Are you all right sir?" Ravonna asked.
"A smidge of trouble, it seems during my manipulation of these timelines, I altered the course a certain John Doe in Gotham took in his life, or was it Jack Napier, or that depressive pussy Arthur Flick? Oh well, if he's going to have a real name it might as well be multiple choice," he seethed before he laughed again, the sound echoing in the room.
"Manipulation of the timeline, but sir we're supposed to protect the sacred timeline," Ravonna said.
"Now that is some discriminatory behaviour my dear, why should one timeline be more sacred than the other, not a good thing to teach your students," he explained.
Ravonna looked at him in confusion. He shook his head and straightened out the creases in his suit. Once he had regained his bearings he stood up straight and rubbed his hair.
"It seems that during my experiment, I had exposed myself to a chemical compound, no matter, it won't interfere with my mission. That is to say this version of the TVA has fulfilled its overall mission, study of time travel. I thank of all of you, particularly you Rebecca, you've done more good here than you ever would have in your class room. Miss minutes…" he looked up and the cartoon clock that was the TVA's AI appeared.
"Yes Director Richards?"
"Richards? Or am I a Stark? Or perhaps a Doo…no, can't use his name yet, HA! Pardon me, please engage TVA pruning protocol, password Valeria Richards March 1999!"
"Yes sir, everybody congratulations for all your hard work, it was an honour to know you, goodbye," Miss Minutes said before her hologram disappeared and horror spread through the TVA.
Their city and their office began to be consumed by the same energy they used for pruning. The Director's plan was originally to just leave them all to die, but he stayed for a little bit, just to drink in all that panic, that fear. Then he brought up the hologram of the boy's sword, that sword that touched infinite and chronal energy, and saved many worlds by bringing them together. Ravonna fell to at his feet and cried, fading away, at that point he had a new theory. Perhaps it wasn't his intellect or brilliance that drove him to do all this, he thought, perhaps he wasn't curios at all.
Maybe he wanted to be a god.
"HA!"
Next Chapter 4: Web warriors
Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter and the set up for this arc's villain. Next time we return to Spider-man and his family.