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❛ ᴇᴡᴛʀᴛᴡ. ❜ ° . ༄
- ͙۪۪˚   ▎❛ 𝐎𝐍𝐄 ❜   ▎˚ ͙۪۪̥◌
»»————- ꒰ ʜɪᴛᴄʜʜɪᴋᴇʀ's ɢᴜɪᴅᴇ
ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴜʟᴛɪᴠᴇʀsᴇ ꒱　


❝ FALLING TO OUR DEATHS
IS NOT SAVING ME! ❞

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"Who are you?" Mobius asked. "What's your name?"

Loki stared at him in horror as Jimin's expression became unimpressed. "Now isn't the time for jokes, Mobius. I thought—"

Her voice trailed off as her attention caught on something much, much worse. The brunette stared at the statue that stood in front of the elevator— though it wasn't of the three space lizards she'd last seen in the same position. Her blood turned icy as the true consequences of their actions made themselves known. Unthinkingly, her hand reached out to grasp Loki's arm, catching his own notice as she raised a hand to point at the terribly familiar statue of a man. ". . .look."

Something was very wrong. It didn't take a genius to figure that out, though it did take him a moment to register the significance of the change in the statue's appearance. The sound of Hunter B-15 radioing into her mic for backup was enough to pull Jimin out of her stupor. Her grip tightened on Loki's arm as she gave him a violent jerk in the direction of the archive's doors.

"Run, you idiot!" she hissed. Her feet were moving seconds after she'd finished speaking her order and for the first few yards, she was pulling him along. Loki then had the wherewithal to get his feet underneath him so they could run side-by-side.

Thanks to her Special Ops training, Jimin had had plenty of practice with long distance running and kept up with the god easily. Their feet pounded on the shiny, tiled floors in sync as the all-too-familiar clunk of heavily armored guards soon sounded behind them. As she'd been taught to do, she made sure to keep her breathing even. This helped to regulate her heartbeat and allowed her to focus on speed rather than the general discomfort of running.

Surprisingly, Mobius was athletic enough to stay at the front of the soldiers his coworker had called for. However, this fact didn't give Jimin any comfort as he clearly held no particularly caring feelings towards them since he made no attempt to stop the chase.

They had made it to the balcony that overlooked atrium. Loki kept glancing back at the man who'd they once considered an ally, but the brunette kept her gaze solidly ahead, not allowing for a moment of distraction. Her survival was of the utmost importance; everything else paled in comparison— and, in order to survive, she had to run.

Their flight was abruptly cut off as guards appeared in front of them, bringing the pair to a stumbling halt. "Hold it right there, Variants!"

Loki made another attempt to get Mobius to recognize them. "What is going on? Mobius, it's me." He glanced at Jimin. "It's us."

He was breathless from their sprint and there was desperation in his tone. Jimin made no attempt to add to the god's pleas as she observed the gray-haired man with pursed lips. Her chest was heaving from running as well, but she showed no visible signs of distress as she kept her face carefully blank.

Mobius remained unmoved by Loki's appeal. "I don't know you," he insisted, punctuating each word carefully.

The guards behind him activated their pruning sticks, ready to attack should they make any sudden movements. The Asian woman tensed— or, at least, became more tense— at the sound. She shook out her hands and made an effort to loosen her shoulders, preparing for a fight. (Not that fists would do much against the TVA's weapons, but it still made her feel more in control.) She shifted her weight on her feet as she watched the soldiers carefully.

In a decision of fight, flight or freeze, Jimin went with the first one whenever it made sense; she was loathe go the coward's way out. Seeing as she had a god on her side and no foreseeable escape route, she had resolved (as usual) to fight. Loki, on the other hand, had a different idea: flight. Stuck in the first mindset, the brunette startled as an arm wrapped around her waist before her world tilted.

There were two thoughts on her mind as gravity caught her body: one, being that she was airborne. The second was an act of instinct: her fist flew out to attack the closest area of her captor that she could reach. Her legs made an effort to kick at her abductor's as well in an effort to free herself as she squirmed against the hold. She barely heard Loki's grunts of discomfort or his attempts to reassure her that no, she wasn't being kidnapped.

They landed harshly on the back of a flying vehicle, which bounced at the impact. Jimin immediately took the jarring landing as an opportunity to free herself. As she pushed herself away from. . . whoever it was, her fist flashed out again, this time connecting with flesh. She sprang back in a crouched position, ready for whatever came next. Loki clasped a hand to his nose; although she hadn't broken it (it would take a lot more power to break a god's bones), she had a good hit, especially for a mortal.

"Ah! Jimin, it's me!" he exclaimed.

She blinked, and rose to a standing position as she finally realized what had happened. "Oh," she replied nonchalantly, in an I-knew-that sort of way (although she definitely hadn't). "That's why I did it, then."

He gave her an affronted look. "Excuse me, I just saved you! Again, might I add!"

Apparently, the woman driving the flying vehicle had been more interested in her new passengers than, well, steering, and when she turned around, she let out a scream at the sight of the statue bearing down on them. The front of her vehicle crashed into the face of He Who Remains during her turn, sending them careening precariously through the air as the stone around his cheek crumbled from the force of their collision. The pair stumbled as they tried to stay on the dangerously tilting flatbed. As they rolled, Jimin grunted, "falling to our deaths is not saving me!"

"I had a plan!" he insisted, his back hitting the side of the truck.

"Then it was a stupid one!" she snapped in reply. "Was this—"

But her retort was cut off as the vehicle crashed into the windows of the nearest building. Shards of glass rained around them as the truck wobbled unsteadily on the ledge. Both Loki and Jimin rolled out of the back and onto the TVA's tiled floor. It wasn't the most comfortable of surfaces, but the brunette was just grateful for solid ground.

"I'm fine. I'm fine," Loki said to their general audience of the watching employees. "Morning." Then, the vehicle slid off its perilous perch and into the abyss, causing the driver to scream as she fell. "She'll be fine."

He looked over at Jimin, who hadn't gotten up from the floor. "Are you fine?"

The Asian woman grunted as she stood, making sure to pin him with an especially harsh glare that would have made a mortal man regret ever being born. "Remind me to kill you later."

The god let out a quiet breath of relief. "Yeah, she's fine," he said to the room at large.

Before anyone could say anything at their unexpected appearance, the orange monitor that hung above them fell as the ceiling gave way. The pair leapt out of the way as the TVA agents startled at the noise and sparks. The round display rolled off to the side, revealing a newly-cracked floor.

Seeming to realize that— for the moment— they weren't in immediate danger, Loki allowed himself to lean his weight on the monitor. Jimin sent him an unimpressed look for the weakness he was currently displaying in front of who she considered 'the enemy.' Still, she felt some sort of. . . ally-ship towards him, which prompted her to take a protective place between him and the other agents, should they attack. While it wouldn't do much, it would at least give him a few spare seconds to recover.

A static-filled woman's voice broke the silence as Casey's headphones played loud enough for them to hear: "'Level five intruder. He's hopped into a mail cart and descended to the lower level.'"

"Casey," Jimin began cautiously. Although she highly suspected that he'd have the same reaction Mobius had, it wouldn't hurt to try and reason with him.

"Have. . . we met each other?" he asked.

She pressed her lips together in annoyance. "Apparently not. This amnesia thing is getting really old." When she spoke to him again, her tone was similar to that of when she spoke to her superiors at S.H.I.E.L.D: brief and straight to the point. "nobody seems to remember us, even though we've met you all before. Do you know why that is?"

Unfortunately, that was the wrong thing to say to him as he lifted his TemPad and spoke into it: "I got them. I got the intruders. I got the intruders!"

"Damn," Jimin cursed, preparing to run once again— but she never even got to put her feet in motion.

There was a suctioning sound as her body was suddenly jerked into a void. She was only there for seconds, the place between worlds, or times, or something, but it was enough to cause severe pain to rip through her body— and that was saying a lot for her, since she had a high pain tolerance. This was unlike anything she'd ever felt before; it was as if every molecule of her body was being torn apart, individually, and then slammed back together with the force of an earthquake as she came out on the other side.

She appeared in front of a backlit, glowing yellow wall. Jimin glanced around and relaxed at the sight of Loki panting next to her, though she told herself her relief was only because his presence meant she wasn't alone in this situation. (Not at all because she was worried about him, of course— though, she didn't attack him this time when he reached out to put a hand on her shoulder as reassurance that one of them wouldn't disappear without warning. She did, however, glare at his hand for a good measure, just to show her displeasure with its position.)

A familiar voice greeted them as they took a minute to recover: "Loki. . . Jimin."

"Oh, now he remembers us," the brunette sneered.

"What?" Loki exclaimed, still breathing heavily. "Just a second ago, you didn't know us." He ran up to the other man and grabbed him by his shoulders. "Casey. Casey. Casey, something terrible is happening. I'm— we're— being pulled from. . ." He paused as his eyes caught on a particular change in the floor. "Wait, no. Has that always been there?"

Jimin followed his gaze to the place just before her feet, where there was. . . a crack. It wasn't just any crack; it splintered around the TVA's crest, as if something very heavy from long ago had landed on the floor. She felt her stomach swoop at the realization. 

"The crack? It's been there for as long as I can remember," Casey said.

Jimin met the god's eyes as they came to the same conclusion: "we were in the past."

He turned back to the TVA employee. "Where's Mobius? B-15?"

Casey took a moment to answer as he watched them with confusion. "They're probably in, uh, Chrono Bay Three, so. . ."

Before he could give them any further directions, both Jimin and Loki were pulled through time once more.

✧✧✧

The second time they reappeared, they scared the living daylights out of Casey, who let out a scream at their arrival. Neither Loki nor Jimin paid his startle any mind as the former asked, "Mobius. Where is he?"

The Asian woman next to him let out a panting breath, looking worse for wear as her normally short, well-kempt hair fell into her eyes from all of the jerking around her body was doing. Her eyes were wider than usual as she tried to get her bearings straight, though it would soon be all for naught.

Casey looked between them nervously as he answered, "He's in the War Room."

They wasted no time in heading in that direction, neither one knowing when they might disappear again. Jimin curled her hands into fists to hide the shaking of her fingers as she struggled to focus on her breathing. She tried to think about anything other than what was currently happening to them, which was something unknown, an invisible force that was pulling them apart and pushing them back together. It was, in her opinion, simply. . . chaos, and as someone ruled by order and consistency, this new development was throwing her off. (She wasn't scared. No, of course not. Fear was for the weak; she hadn't felt afraid since her father had beat it out of her when she was a girl. If there was anything Hui Jimin was, it would never be scared.)

These were the thoughts she concentrated on as they rounded the corner, where they saw two figures walking up ahead. She felt a surge of hope because if anyone knew what was happening to them, it would be Mobius. They just had to get to him and everything would work out, she was sure of it. Except— when Loki went to call the man's name, he hardly got to speak before they vanished once more.

✧✧✧

When they emerged from the void again, they were still in the hallway. But, as they arrived at the war room, they were met with dead silence. Mobius wasn't there, nor was B-15, or any employees whatsoever. Only the many-faced sculpture of He Who Remains greeted them from across the large table.

Loki moved around the edge of the room to take in the details of the artwork as the brunette stood with her back against the door for a moment. She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths as she assessed how she felt from her head to her toes. The only positive thing was that nothing seemed to be broken or otherwise injured, despite the burning feeling that prickled on her skin upon every disappearance.

She didn't know if it was because she was a mortal and Loki was a god, but he seemed to be taking this much easier than she was (which peeved her to no end to admit.) Although he seemed equally disoriented whenever. . . whatever happened to them, he appeared to be otherwise unaffected. Perhaps it was because he was used to chaos, used to causing it, that this sort of death and rebirth experience felt more natural to him. Either way, it was taking a toll on Jimin's mortal body. . . well, mind.

Finish his observation of the sculpture, the god noticed a sound system set up in the wall nearby. Glancing over at the door to where the Asian woman still stood, he moved over to it and experimented with the buttons. The voice of He Who Remains filled the room: "'you are quite a marvel. I will be proud to lead with you. You made a difference in this war. Thank you for being on my team. For us. For All Time.'"

Then, unexpectedly, another familiar woman's voice replied, "'always.'"

"'Ravonna Renslayer, you are quite a marvel. I will be proud to lead with you.'"

Jimin's hands curled into tighter fists, the only sign of weakness she would allow herself. Although she would have liked to sink to the floor and bury her face in her palms, that wouldn't have helped anything, and it had never been her way. Wailing about the insurmountable task before her would have only put off the inevitable. It would be an inefficient waste of time— something that they certainly didn't have enough of. Instead of focusing on the unfairness of it all (she was just a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and worse, a mortal. Her job had only been to make sure that Loki didn't escape; if only she had been less proactive about keeping him in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s custody.) the only thing to do was to carry on.

The most she could hope for was that their next travel through time would put them in the place they needed to be to get the message to the right people.

✧✧✧

Thankfully, the universe— or fate, or chaos, or whatever was influencing them— seemed to heed her wish and they burst into existence in the middle of the war room in the right time period.

Mobius turned to them in surprise. "Loki? Agent Hui?"

"Mobius. You know us!" The god ignored the soldier's order to stop as he rushed towards the gray-haired man.

"Where the hell were you?"

Voices overlapped as everyone spoke at once, but one broke through the din. Jimin recognized the older woman as a general, thanks to the many patches and medals that decorated her uniform. "Everyone, stand down!"

The room quieted, though Loki continued to speak in a quiet voice: "Mobius. We found him."

"Who?"

"He Who Remains," the Asian woman supplied, but her clarification only earned her confused looks.

"Who?" Mobius repeated.

Not wanting to take the time to explain more than once, Loki grabbed the pruning stick out of the soldier's hands. He held it up to the other man's face threateningly. "Get back!"

The soldier put his hands up in surrender as the orange light glowed at the tip. The god flipped the device around to stab it directly in the center of the portrait, which began to burn away on contact. Behind it, the same sculpture from earlier was exposed, and this revelation was met with stunned silence.

It was broken as Loki shouted, "that's who built this place! That's who stole your lives! That's who's coming back!"

Mobius was— understandably— cautious as he tried to take the weapon from the other man. "Okay. Easy, put it down. Put it down."

"She was going to kill him."

"Sylvie," Jimin added, since Loki apparently thought that details were unimportant. "She was with us at the end of time."

This caught the general's attention. "Where is she?"

"I don't know," Loki said, still breathing heavily.

Mobius began to usher the pair out of the room. He put one arm around the god. As he made for Jimin, she smacked his hand out of the way before she sped up a bit to walk in front of them, not wanting to be shepherded out of the room like a child. The soldier snatched his pruning stick back from Loki as they passed, an irritated expression on his face.

"Who's she? What does she want with Sylvie?" Loki asked as they walked down the hall.

Mobius was quick to answer, his voice remaining calm as he explained, "General Dox. Don't worry. Are you okay? What happened with the cloud monster?"

"Alioth? Alioth was a distraction. He was a guard dog. We found him."

Jimin turned her head to look behind her as she explained, again, "He Who Remains. That's where he lives— or lived, I suppose— at the Citadel at the End of Time."

"But where's Sylvie?" Mobius wanted to know.

Loki was still speaking quickly as he replied, "I don't know, she's still there. I just wanted time to think. It was an impossible choice, but she seemed so certain. How could she be given the consequences? I just wanted time to think."

The Asian woman narrowed her eyes. "Why would you even need to think? The obvious answer was to keep him alive. Now look what happened— all this chaos and it's only just starting. Who knows what it will be like in an hour? A day?"

"And let him just keep pruning lives away?" the god challenged her. "That's a worse crime, isn't it? For a mortal, that's surprisingly callous of you."

"Says the man who was willing to sacrifice countless lives just so he could rule over a floating rock in the middle of space," Jimin scoffed.

"Whoa— hey, hey," Mobius cut in, still with that infuriatingly calm voice. "It's good to see that your argumentativeness is still intact. But let's all take a moment to think. You needed to think, so let's do that. It's okay."

His words didn't stop Jimin from glaring at Loki, who went on to explain: "Mobius, we got to the man at the End of Time, and he made sense. We thought it was about freeing the timeline, but that brings only more malevolence, more violence, more war. More of him. They're coming. They're all coming."

"Who?"

"'You came to kill the devil.' I don't understand. Maybe he was. But maybe he wasn't. She was convinced he was. We fought, Mobius, and she kicked me through a Time Door," he finished in one breath.

Mobius glanced between them. "Well, I'd ask who won, but. . ."

The S.H.I.E.L.D. agent held up her hands. "Hey, I wasn't even a part of that fight. I'm a casualty."

"It was a draw," Loki insisted.

His defense earned him an eye-roll from the brunette. "I was there. No it wasn't."

Mobius seemed equally skeptical. "You both kicked each other through Time Doors simultaneously?"

"No. I was actively trying not to fight her," the god argued. "I was trying to stop her. She was gonna kill him."

Realizing that Loki was getting worked up again, Mobius quickly returned to the original subject. "Stop. Relax. Forget about it. Look, Renslayer kicked me down some steps, too. Listen, just calm down."

Unfortunately, the word 'calm' didn't seem to be in Loki's vocabulary as he continued breathlessly, "I just wish I had tried harder, I wish I'd had more time."

"Look," Jimin cut in shortly, always one to get straight to the facts. "We can't do anything about what's in the past. Would things have turned out differently if we coulda-woulda-shoulda? Maybe, but who's to say? It's a waste of time to think about the what-ifs. We know what's coming: war. The only thing left to do is fight."

Loki took in the woman's never-ending determination that showed in the hardening of her dark eyes, her thin-pressed lips, the straightening of her shoulders. Although he'd been focused on the recording hours ago in the war room of the past, he'd noticed out of the corner of his eye that she'd looked seconds away from breaking. Now, in front of him, she looked as strong as ever— a natural-born soldier, ready to face the coming battle. Not for the first time he noted humans' instinctive resilience, but instead of being annoyed by it as he had been in New York, he now admired it, at least as it present itself in Jimin. He found himself taking some form of comfort from her steadfast fortitude, which was so different than all of the disordered feelings that he was currently experiencing.

For the first time since they'd reached the Citadel at the End of Time, he took a deep breath. He gave her a grateful nod as he spoke in a calmer but still urgent tone. "She's right." (He ignored her muttered 'that's a first.') "What's coming is war, and it's on its way. Maybe it's true, everything he was doing, the pruning, the preservation of the Sacred Timeline. It was about preventing more of him. There was no simple choice, no other way."

"That's who you showed us in there?" Mobius nodded to the Asian woman. "You said his name was. . . what was it? He Who. . ."

"Remains," she supplied. "He named himself king and this was his domain."

Loki continued, "and he said he keeps us safe, but how can you believe that? He built this place."

"Now, how would I not remember that? How could he. . ."

"Because he wiped your memories. And he obviously did it more than once." He turned around to march back to the war room. "They have to listen to us."

Mobius grabbed his arm to stop him. "Hey! Believe me, they listened to you, okay? We heard you loud and clear. You have to explain to me exactly, how did you just appear in there? Did you come straight from the End of Time?"

"I wish," Jimin muttered. "It would've saved us a whole lot of trouble. We sort of. . . -party-crashed into the past, except there was no party."

"What do you mean, in the past? Where?"

"Here, the past TVA," Loki answered.

The gray-haired man shook his head. "No, there is no past TVA. Time doesn't work like that here."

"It does, it's happening to us."

"It's impossible."

"No, it's not."

Jimin sighed, resisting the urge to rub the sides of her head at the headache that was forming from the constant arguing. "Trust me, It's possible. I'm the first person to wish that it wasn't."

She was proven true once more as they. . . well, glitched was the easiest way to describe it. They were there one second and gone the next, leaving a very startled Mobius alone in the corridor. He only had a couple of seconds to remain stunned as the pair burst back into existence.

"Did you see it?" was the first question Loki asked.

"Yeah, I saw it."

"Yeah? What does it. . . How does it look?"

The Asian woman glanced over at him in disbelief. "We're travelling between times and you're worried about how it looks?"

"What, you don't want to know?"

She huffed in reply, not deigning to give him a response. Mobius did his best to lie reassuringly, but he wasn't very good at it. "It looks. . . I mean, how does it feel?"

Jimin leaned closer to Loki to stage-whisper, "in other words, that means it looks terrible."

The gray-haired man tried to cover up his reluctant answer. "No, no. I'm just saying that maybe. . . maybe we should get you guys help. Let me call Miss Minutes."

"No. You can't trust her," the god said quickly, holding out a hand to stop the other man from using his TemPad.

"What? Are you sure?"

The brunette gave him a firm nod. "Pretty sure. She was there with him at the End of Time. Gave us a real jump scare, appearing in the middle of nowhere like that."

Understandably, Mobius seemed to be having a hard time processing all of the information that he was receiving. Trying to get the situation back under control, he chose to do something that they could fix easily (or, at least, sort of easily.) "No, we gotta get you checked out. Yeah, let's swing you by Repairs & Advancement. Come on. They'll have a look at you."

A/n: welcome to the first chapter of Loki s2!!!! I'm sorry it took me so long to get it up- October was a very hectic month for me and I barely had any time to write. I can't promise consistent updates, but I can promise that I'll finish this book. I don't even have the next chapter written yet, but I wanted to publish something since I noticed a lot of people were finding this book since the release of s2.