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❛ ᴇᴡᴛʀᴛᴡ​​​​​​​​​​. ❜ ° . ༄
- ͙۪۪˚   ▎❛ 𝐅𝐈𝐕𝐄 ❜   ▎˚ ͙۪۪̥◌
»»————- ꒰ ʟᴏᴋɪ ɪs ᴛʜᴇ
ɴᴇᴡ sᴄʀᴏᴏɢᴇ ꒱


❝ I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU
WERE D.B. COOPER! ❞

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Jimin did her best to appear unaffected after seeing people from her past that she thought she'd never see— or hear— again. Instead, she fixed Mobius with an irritated glare. "I don't think the T.V.A. is as on top of things as you think they are. The last one never happened."

The man acknowledged her words with a tilt of his head. "It's what would have happened had you stayed in your timeline. It was your fate."

The Asian woman appeared unconvinced— though she was starting to believe him— and scoffed. "Alright, what about him?" she asked, nodding to Loki. "What about his fate?"

Loki glowered at both of them, though Mobius only seemed amused. "If looks could kill."

"What do you want from me?" the god demanded.

"Well, let's start with a little cooperation," the man suggested. "From both of you."

"Not my forte."

"I only cooperate with people I trust," Jimin added, making it very clear that she didn't plan on working with either of the men.

Mobius gave them a questioning look. "Even when you're not wooing someone powerful you intend to betray?" he asked the god. "Come on."

Loki crossed his arms. "You don't know anything about me."

The Asian woman's expression became sneering. "Please. You're an open book written for very dumb children."

The Asgardian opened his mouth to give her a sharp retort only for Mobius to cut across them, opening a can that sat in front of him. "Maybe I'd like to learn," he said pointedly, not letting them derail the conversation again. "I specialize in the pursuit of dangerous Variants."

"Like myself?" Loki asked. "Then why is she here?" He nodded to the agent, who gave a light snort at his words.

Mobius took a sip of his drink. "Mmm. . . no, particularly dangerous Variants. You're just a little pussycat. Agent Hui is an unexpected guest. I got a set of questions for you," he continued, addressing the god. "You answer them honestly and then maybe I can give you something you want—"

"I let you put on that performance of my life without protest," Jimin interrupted. "What do I get?"

"You both wanna get out of here, right?" he saw them both straighten with interest. "Yeah, so we'll start there."

Mobius went on to interview the Asgardian as if he were asking questions for a potential job position— which, for all she could tell, he might've been. Loki, of course, revealed that he intended to rule over all of space (an idea that Jimin found laughable.)

"The Time-Keepers have built quite the circus and I see that the clowns are playing their parts to perfection," he finished with a chuckle.

"He's a big metaphor guy," Mobius observed. "I love it, makes you sound super smart."

"I am smart."

"I know."

The Asian woman resisted the urge to roll her eyes at their exchange and watched as Mobius leaned forward again to place a different tape in the projector, this one detailing Loki's life. As the screen played the god's defeat, the gray-haired man made a comment about it: "it's funny. For someone born to rule, you sure do lose a lot. You might even say it's in your nature."

Loki gave him a dark look. "Things didn't turn out so well for the last person who said that to me."

"Oh yeah, Phil Coulson," Mobius acknowledged, pressing a button that caused the image to change to the man himself, holding an extremely large gun.

Jimin saw Loki appear behind the man, scepter in hand, only to stab him— literally— in the back. Her eyes narrowed with dislike, the scene before her yet another reminder that the god was someone to hate, not befriend. While she'd never met Coulson during her time at S.H.I.E.L.D., she'd heard of how good a person he was and he certainly hadn't deserved that ending.

"Didn't the Avengers come together to literally avenge him by defeating you?" the man questioned him.

"Little solace to a dead man," Loki responded unsympathetically.

"Do you enjoy hurting people?" Mobius asked. "Making them feel small? Making them feel afraid?"

The screen played more of his destruction of New York, a battle she hadn't been a part of until the end.

"Your games don't frighten me," the god said.

"Making them feel little?"

"I know what I am," Loki told him.

"A murderer?"

"A liberator."

"You killed eighty people in two days and probably more than that," Jimin spoke up, her tone steely. "What exactly are you liberating them from? Life? Because if you kill everyone who's left to rule over?"

"I weed out the weak," the Asgardian answered bluntly. "Those that survive will be the ones under my rule. I'm not the only one who's killed in this room from what I've seen," he added, giving her a pointed look. "I only liberate."

The Asian woman clenched her teeth together and turned her head away from him, feeling the sting of his words more than she would've liked. It only confirmed her guilt, after all.

"A liberator of eyeballs, maybe," Mobius spoke up, breaking the sudden awkwardness. He changed the film to show Loki bending over a man, a device in his hands as he removed the eye from the man's head. "Look at that smile. You are enjoying that. Did you enjoy hurting them?"

Loki remained unmoved. "I don't have to play this game. I am a—"

"God?" Jimin finished in an attempt to recover her damaged pride. "Oh, no, whatever shall I do? Get some new material, would you?"

"I am a god," he repeated. "I have rule over—"

"Mischief, right?" Mobius asked. "Yeah, I don't see anything very mischievous about this." He gestured to the image.

"No, I don't supposed you do," Loki answered, deciding to ignore the irritating woman.

The man sighed. "Let's talk about your escapes. You're really good at doing awful things and then just getting away."

"What can I say? I'm a mischievous scamp," the Asgardian said sarcastically.

"This is one of my favorites," he announced, putting a new scene on the projector.

The short sequence showed Loki— Jimin would say he looked younger but since they aged differently, she couldn't tell— parading as a Midgardian, something she found ironic. She watched as he eventually jumped out of the plan, cash flying after him as he disappeared in a flash of rainbow light.

"I can't believe you were D.B. Cooper. Come on!" Mobius exclaimed enthusiastically.

"I was young and I lost a bet to Thor. Where was the T.V.A. when I was meddling with these affairs of men?"

"We were right there with you, just surfing the Sacred Timeline, just like when Agent Hui made the first move to uncover Hydra's secrets after nearly half a century."

"So that had the Time-Keepers' seal of approval, did it?" Loki demanded.

"Well, I wouldn't think of it in terms of approval and disapproval. That's sort of a. . . let's get back to escapes and a little psychobabble. What is it that you think you're really running from?"

"Enough," the god ordered, standing. He made to head for the door, prompting Mobius to take out his device and send him back to his original position.

"Back in your cage. See, I can play the heavy keys too."

Jimin watched the two men begin to argue again feeling more bored than anything else. Even some of her worst captures— not that there had been many— had been more interesting than this. Mobius returned to the projector to show more of Loki's New York flashbacks. It only got intriguing when the consequences of his actions appeared on the screen, the god in chains on Asgard after she'd completed her job.

"You and Agent Hui here were only supposed to interact for a short amount of time. If you hadn't picked up the Tesseract, you would have been taken to a cell on Asgard," the man explained as he narrated the scene.

"What is this?" Loki asked as his image-self spoke with a woman, presumably his mother (though it was hard for Jimin to imagine that he had one.) "This is nonsense, more tricks. This never even happened."

"Like Agent Hui's fate, this has not happened to you, not yet. Look, the T.V.A. doesn't just know your whole past, we know your whole life, how it's all meant to be."

"Like some sort of Charles Dickens character?" the Asian woman asked. "The ghost of Christmas Past, Present and Future?"

"Exactly," Mobius agreed. "Think of it as comforting."

"This is absurd."

After another exchange between Loki and his mother, the gray-haired man continued to speak, "and then the Dark Elves attack the palace and you think you send them to Thor. But instead, you send them. . ."

The woman was shown in an armlock, a creature that looked otherworldly holding her neck securely. "I'll never tell," she said.

The being stabbed her in the side causing her to collapse on the ground. Jimin turned to see the god's reaction and was surprised by the look of remorse on his face as he demanded, "where do you have her? Where is she?"

"You lead them right to her," Mobius answered.

"I don't believe you. You're lying, it's not true."

"It is true," he pointed to the screen. "That's the proper flow of time and it happens again and again and again because it's supposed to, because it has to. The T.V.A. makes sure of it."

"Where is she?" Loki asked again.

"Now, why don't you tell me: do you enjoy hurting people?"

"I don't believe you."

"Do you enjoy killing?" Mobius questioned him.

"I'll kill you," the god snapped.

"Like you did your mother?"

The insult made Loki pick up his chair and hurl it at the man, who dodged it easily as it crashed through the tiled screen which reformed as if nothing happened. The god moved towards Mobius aggressively, causing him to send Loki back to his original position. He grunted as he landed harshly on the floor.

"Sorry, the Time Twister just loops you, not the furniture," the man apologized, "you weren't born to be king, Loki. You were born to cause pain and suffering and death. That's how it is, that's how it was, that's how it will be, all so others can achieve the best versions of themselves."

A panorama of the Avengers gearing up for battle played after his words. Loki shook his head, though Jimin couldn't tell if it was in denial or embarrassment. Mobius came over to the god and offered him a hand up.

"What is this place?" the Asgardian asked, looking up at him.

"Come on."

Surprisingly, he accepted the help as he stood. Behind them the door opened and their guard from earlier entered. "What are you doing?"

"My job. Is it yours to interrupt?"

"We have a situation."

Mobius sighed. "There's always a situation." He pointed a stern finger at the god. "Don't go anywhere." As he walked away, he added, "it was just getting good, spirited."

Jimin watched Loki pace for a moment before he turned to her. "I'm going to leave. Are you going to stop me?"

The Asian woman gave him a rather condescending look as she swung her feet up onto the table and crossed her legs at the ankle. "I'll see you later." 

A/n: I couldn't resist an Umbrella Academy reference. . . (there's one in the next chapter too.)