Chapter Text
No, it couldn't be.
It was all changed. No one remembered him. The statue of the Time-Keepers was gone and in its place was a statue of—
“He Who Remains,” Loki said. Dammit. Sylvie had got what she wanted, but at what price? “And then there’s me, a trickster god who got tricked.”
He wanted to laugh even though it wasn’t funny. While he and Sylvie had been demanding answers, He Who Remains had been altering which timeline they were in.
He should have anticipated this. An all-knowing being who suddenly couldn’t see the ending to his own plan, and what, He Who Remains was just going to rely on the ambition of his variant selves to get back in power if the pair of Lokis killed him? No, of course not. He stacked the deck in his favor instead.
Clever really. The rebellion in the TVA? It didn’t exist here. Loki’s friends and allies? Not even Mobius knew him.
Assuming this was a different timeline and that He Who Remains hadn’t altered reality itself, or that Sylvie hadn’t accidentally or purposely stranded him into the wrong timeline, or—
“Sir?”
Perfect, no doubt it was the requested guard here to shoo him away.
“Sir, I have been tasked with returning you to your office. What division are you in?”
“I hope you know you deserve to be alone and you always will be,” Loki whispered to himself. Ah, Sif. Never had imagined her an oracle. She had been right; here he was again. Alone, no lover, no friends—
“Uh, wow. A little harsh there. He’s just doing his job, like all of us.”
Who in the nine realms? Loki turned, giving the guard his full attention and next to the guard was—
“Casey?” Loki said.
“Yeah, um, hi.” Casey squinted and leaned forward to peer at his face. Loki learned back as far as he could with the railing digging into his back. “Great to see you again.”
“You remember me?” Had the Loki of this timeline met Casey? For the first time since Sylvie had pushed him through the Timedoor, relief poured into him. Casey could help convince Mobius. Loki on his own would sound like a madman explaining all that had happened, but if he had a trusted member of the TVA to back him up, yeah, that could work. “You don’t know how glad I am to hear it. Listen, this is going to sound insane, but there’s something important I need to tell you.”
“Of course I remember you.” Casey laughed. The laugh sounded all wrong: stilted and nervous. “You know my name. Which means we’ve met. And I totally remember it!”
“What—”
“We met at a thing, you know, at a time and it was all, uh, very memorable.” Casey’s hands fluttered nervously about. His smile was more of a guilty grimace.
“Wait. Do you not remember me and you’re just pretending you do so you won’t hurt my feelings?”
“What? Of course not!” The smile looked even guiltier. “I totally remember you!”
“Really?” Loki crossed his arms. “What’s my name then?”
“Uh, it’s, you know. That very nice name. It begins with a letter, and then… there’s more letters.”
“Unbelievable.”
So much for that plan.
“I think he might be an analyst.” Loki’s breath caught at the familiar voice. He turned to watch Mobius approach. Despite how much it hurt to see the lack of recognition in his eyes, Loki couldn’t help but stare at him. He had learned to trust Mobius, then Mobius was pruned, and then he was back, and now Mobius had no idea who Loki was. “Probably in shock. He couldn’t even tell us his name. Figure out where he belongs, okay? Look, where’s your office?”
Oh, Mobius was talking to him now.
“What? I don’t have an office,” Loki said.
“But every analyst has an office.” Mobius’s face did the scrunch it did every time something was bothering him. “Were you just promoted to analyst today? Wow, what a first day, huh?”
“Congratulations on the promotion! I knew you would be an analyst one day.” Casey slung an arm around Loki’s shoulder. Loki frowned at him and stepped out of the embrace. “I can assign an office for him.”
“Oh. Good, thank you.” Mobius’s hand was now on his shoulder. Even though he didn’t know Loki, he still had a reassuring smile for him. No banter though. No admiration for Loki’s chaotic nature. This hurt worse than Sylvie. “Everything will be fine. You’ll see.”
Loki watched Mobius walk away, Hunter B-15 at his side, both of them staring at the TemPads in their hands and no doubt fretting about the branching timelines.
“I told you I remembered you!” Casey beamed at him.
“I cannot believe you lied rather than admit you don’t remember me. You do realize I’m not an analyst?”
“Woah, hey now, just because you’re new at it doesn’t mean you’re not really one. You’ll be a great analyst, I just know it!”
“No, that’s not what I—”
Well, he had an office now. A depressing, bleak office in a doomed organization about to face a thousand variants of what might be the most dangerous man in the multiverse.
And now, to make things even worse, Hunter B-15 was here to help him lead his first mission.
“I am not an analyst.”
“I know this is a lot to take in and you’re new to this,” Hunter B-15 said, “but we don’t have time for whatever breakdown you’re having here, Agent… uh…”
Hunter B-15 stared at the nameplate on his desk. The nameplate Casey had placed on his desk and Loki had never looked at. But Casey didn’t even know his name. Loki turned the name plate around so he could read it. It was a bunch of letters written over one another, completely illegible.
What in the Hel? Loki sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Gods didn’t get headaches easily, but he was about to get one if this kept up. “My name is Loki.”
“Agent Loki,” Hunter B-15 said. “Pull yourself together! Do you hear me?”
“You’re not listening to me—”
“We’ve got a report of a variant causing mass destruction and mayhem,” Hunter B-15 said loudly over him. “All of it not authorized as part of the Sacred Timeline. A truly catastrophic nexus event.”
She smacked the report on his desk.
“Be ready to leave with my team in a half hour. Familiarize yourself with the file fast, we don’t have a lot of time.”
“This is ridiculous, there are too many nexus events to even stop all of them. What’s the point—hang on.” Loki pulled the report closer, eye caught by the photo paperclipped to the front. It was He Who Remains! “This is the guy I was trying to tell you about! Do you understand what I’m saying now? He calls himself He Who Remains.”
“I assume you meant he calls himself Kang the Conqueror. He Who Remains is the one in charge; this is just a variant.” Hunter B-15 did not look impressed. “Read the file, agent.”
Loki flipped through the hefty stack of papers in the folder. No wonder Mobius had known everything about him before meeting him that first time, these reports were thorough. A page even listed archived reels filled with every important moment in this variant’s life. A variant who apparently called himself Kang the Conqueror.
“And don’t get in my way during the mission,” Hunter B-15 called back as she marched out the door. “You’re untrained for combat and this variant, he’s more dangerous than anything you’ve ever faced.”
“Don’t worry about me, I can keep up.” This TVA would have files on every version of Kang. Maybe being an analyst here was the place for him to be right now.
“Ow!” Loki wheezed, trying to force a breath back in his lungs and pick himself off the concrete floor.
“Ahhh!” a hunter yelled as he was flung past Loki, smacking into a wall and slumping to the floor unconscious.
“I thought you said you could keep up!” Hunter B-15 said as she dodged a blast of energy from Kang the Conqueror’s ultra-diode gun. She stabbed her baton forward, but Kang grabbed her with the robotic arm attached to the energy pack on his back and also flung her across the room. Scientists were the worst to fight. They either had robotic armor or turned in giant green monsters or—
“Don’t prune him!” Loki yelled as he stumbled while getting to his feet.
“Are you insane?” Hunter B-15 yelled back as she stood up and readied herself for another attack. “You plan to invite him for tea or something?”
“You send him to the Void and he’ll just gain control of Alioth! We can’t let that happen!”
“Who? Alioth?”
“A terrifying beast that consumes matter and energy. And its power has already been harnessed once by a Kang.” Loki magicked a dagger in each of his hands. Again. Maybe this time he’d hang onto them a bit longer before Kang knocked them out of reach.
“You really think you can stop me?” Kang laughed. He Who Remains had been right; his variants were terrifying. “I have laid waste to a thousand nations. I have conquered all the worlds within my own universe. And now, I plan to conquer all within the multiverse!”
“Just remember, Kang is human,” Loki said. Hunter B-15 did not look reassured. “He can die just as easily as any other Midgardian.”
Easier said than done. After being thrown to the floor three more times and once into the wall, Kang had finally been distracted fighting Hunter B-15 long enough that Loki had an opening to finish the fight for good.
After, when both of them were panting and trying to recover from the fight, Hunter B-15 said, “So instead of a TVA baton, you use a couple of blades you magic out of thin air and then stab into someone’s heart?”
“Well, I mean, if it works,” Loki said.
Two Weeks Later
“The rumor is management finally knows what’s going on with all these Kang variants and the timeline branches.” Hunter B-15 leaned in close, talking to Loki in a low voice as she walked alongside him. “Maybe we’ll finally get some answers.”
“One can only hope.” As far as he could tell, he was the only analyst who had any success at stopping the Kangs with any consistency. Which was sad, considering he wasn’t really an analyst.
She took a sip from a bottle in her hand and passed him an unopened one. Ah, the Orbitz soda, excellent. Wait, no, it was the flavor with raspberry in it. Loki made a face at it.
“I thought you liked these?” Hunter B-15 playfully nudged his arm with her elbow.
“Not the raspberry.” Loki tried to pass the bottle back to her but she refused to take it back. Well then, he’d toss it in the trash as soon as they got to the meeting.
She rolled her eyes and fondly muttered, “Picky.”
They arrived barely in time, which was not by accident. He had already learned through experience the small talk in the TVA was dull enough to be painful. Casey was already seated in the mass of chairs set up facing the front of the room and waved at them as soon as they entered the room. He gestured to the two empty seats next to himself. Well, at least Casey liked even the worst soda and one could only hope he might be too busy drinking to talk.
Loki passed the bottle to Casey as he and Hunter B-15 took their seats, not even bothering to ask first. Casey opened his mouth, probably to say thank-you, and Loki hastened to say, “The meeting is no doubt about to begin. We best be quiet.”
Mobius was standing at the front of the room. Hel, he looked good.
It was hard not to notice there were worry lines crinkled around his eyes and stubble on his chin. These past couple weeks must have been rough.
Loki missed his own Mobius.
“Hey everyone, sit down and please pay attention,” Mobius said, gesturing at anyone still standing to sit. “I’ve got some news. Some good news, some not so good news. Okay, first, the good news: we know what’s causing all these nexus events and we know why Kang variants keep showing up. Ends up He Who Remains is dead. Yeah, that’s not part of the good news.”
“I tried to tell him this weeks ago,” Loki said. No one ever listened to him.
“And all of these variants are here to try to take over or annihilate the other universes. Also not part of the good news.”
“Could this get any worse?” Hunter B-15 whispered to Loki. Oh, it could get so much worse.
“So, the not so good news,” Mobius said. “There are an infinite number of Kang variants, many of whom want to conquer or destroy universes instead of restore the timeline, and we have no idea how to stop them all. Any questions?”
The silence was truly impressive. Loki was fairly certain half the room wasn’t even breathing.
“Now as all of you can imagine, this is gonna be one hell of a war we’re about to fight. Yeah, a multiversal war. The thing we were trying to prevent, it’s happening now. Has been happening the past two weeks.” Mobius coughed and awkwardly glanced around the stunned room. “Right, well, to end on a brighter note, I would like to give a big shout-out to the analyst who has stopped the most Kangs these past couple weeks. Well, the only analyst to really stop any of them—Agent Loki!”
“Not an analyst,” Loki said, words drowned out by the applause.
“Too bad we don’t have a hundred of you,” Casey said. So much for the soda keeping him quiet. “Maybe we’d actually stand a chance.”
“Wait, that’s it,” Loki said.
“What? What’s it?” Hunter B-15 asked.
Loki slowly stood up. How had this not occurred to him before?
“I know what to do, I know how to stop him!” Loki announced to the room. The applause faltered into scattered clapping and then silence as everyone turned to look at him. “Don’t you see? When He Who Remains died, it left the largest power vacuum in the multiverse. There’s an infinite number of his variants trying to take that power, but what if you had someone power hungry enough and crazy enough to fight him for it? Each of their variants can fight each of his variants.”
“But Kang is capable of becoming the most powerful being in the universe. Some of his variants are more cruel and dangerous than can even be comprehended.” Mobius laughed. “I mean, what kind of lunatic would be willing to do such a thing?”
“Me, of course!”