Clock's Ticking

Teeth and Ears

When we arrive on the 1985 stream I look around and find that we are in, what looks like, 18th century England. It takes me a moment to realize it's what some would call a renaissance fair. As we walk around one of the Hunters calls out the reads on his wrist device, "apex of nexus signature located."

As we head toward the apex, Loki stays next to me and the two of us a few steps behind Mobius, "let me ask you this, why don't we just travel back to before the attack, when the Variant first arrives?"

"Because it doesn't work like that," I sigh. Loki looks over to me a bit confused and I roll my eyes, "nexus events destabilize the time flow. This branch is still changing and growing, so we have to show up in real time."

"Did you watch any of the training videos you were supposed to?" Mobius looks back to us.

"Well," Loki shrugs, "as many as I could stand. Your TVA propaganda is exhausting."

"He's right," I nod, "I didn't even watch all of them."

"And what do these do?" One of the Hunters behind us holds up one of his reset charges.

Loki sighs a bit, clearly unamused, "reset charges prune the affected radius of a branched timeline, allowing time to heal all its wounds. Which, by the way, sounds like a nice way of saying 'disintegrate everything in its vicinity'."

"Because that's kind of what it means." I chuckle and step up to Mobius, who is lifting up the side of a tent to allow us in, "he's on it."

"I watched the videos. I mean, some of them."

We walk in and I look around, noticing C-20 is nowhere to be found, "what, he's taking hostages now?"

"The Variant's never taken a hostage before," Mobius shakes his head.

"Upping his game?"

"Or he pruned her."

"A Loki couldn't have gotten the jump on C-20," B-15 protests.

"I think you underestimate, actually..." Loki takes his hands out of his pockets.

"Fan out and search for her. And hurry up, we're at three units until red line."

We begin to move out to look for C-20, but Loki stays put, "wait." We all turn back to him, curious as to what he has to say, "if you leave this tent, you'll end up like them."

Mobius walks over to Loki, "what do you see?"

"I see a scheme, and in that scheme, I see myself." Loki walks around the crime scene, "we have a saying in Asgard, 'where there are wolf's ears, wolf's teeth are near.' It means to be aware of your surroundings. Which is absurd, because my people are, by nature, gullible fools. A trait that I, the God of Mischief, exploited time and time again simply by listening. My teeth were sharp, but my ears even sharper."

"We're running out of time, Mobius," B-15 rolls her eyes.

"Hold it, just give him a chance," Mobius holds up a hand to B-15.

"You remind me of them," Loki looks around to all of us. "The Time Variance Authority and the Gods of Asgard, one and the same. Drunk with power, blinded to the truth. Those you underestimate will devour you. You underestimate me, just as you underestimate this lesser Loki. Which is why you walk into one wolf's mouth after another."

Her device beeps and B-15 becomes more and more impatient, "two units, he is wasting our time."

"Okay," Mobius comes closer to Loki, "come on, Loki, make a long story short."

"We need to look for C-20."

Loki passes around the tent, "that's exactly what the Variant wants you to do. It's a trap. He's waiting for you outside this tent."

One of the Hunters comes up behind B-15, "should I set up the reset charges?"

"No. He wants me. I'm the key to his plan. He knows that I'm stronger."

"Almost one unit," B-15 sighs.

"And he rightly believes that together we can overthrow and rule the TVA. But that's not what I want. I have a new purpose. I am a servant to the Sacred Timeline. And knowing what I now know about his tactics, I can deliver you that Variant," Loki walks over to my right side, lowering his chin down toward my shoulder, "but I need assurances."

"Yeah?" I look over, but not up to him.

"Assurances that I won't be completely disintegrated the moment the job has been done."

"Right..."

"We'll need to speak to the Time-Keepers at once. They're in graver danger than we realized."

I finally look up to Loki and take a deep breath. Loki and I look into each other's eyes for a moment, "he's lying," I turn back to the others, "there's no one out there."

B-15 shakes her head, "reset the timeline."

I turn back to Loki, who scoffs, "when did you make me?"

"Somewhere around the 'my ears were sharper' bit." I smirk, "but there's something you should know about me, my teeth and ears are sharp too," I bite at the air between Loki and I before I turn and walk through one of our doors.