Mischief and Enchantments

Chapter 8: Asgard Isn't a Place, It's A Salad

After searching a few floors of the TVA, Loki eventually found Mobius in the cafeteria.

"I found something." He said as he walked over to the table Mobius was sitting at.

"No," Mobius said, "I said, 'Don't bother me until you've read all the files.'"

"I have," Loki replied.

"Every file?" Mobius pressed.

"Yes."

"Pertaining to the Variant?"

Loki got straight to the point as he took a seat across from Mobius. "The answer isn't in the files, it's on the timeline."

Mobius was slightly intrigued now, so he was willing to hear what he had to say.

"They're hiding in apocalypses," Loki revealed.

"Which apocalypse?" Mobius asked. "Any time in history? There's, like, a million of them."

"Ragnarok. Are you familiar?"

"Yes," Mobius answered. "The destruction of Asgard and most of its people. I'm sorry."

"Yes, very sad," Loki said. "Anyway, it got me thinking..." he paused to make sure Mobius was listening.

"Go ahead." Mobius prompted.

"Nexus events happen when someone does something they're not supposed to do, right?" Loki began.

"Well, it's a little more complicated, but, yeah."

"Great." Loki continued. "And then that thing that they're not supposed to do, cascades into a whole range of other things that aren't supposed to happen. And so on and so forth, until eventually, a new timeline branches. Yes?"

"Chaotic alterations of a predetermined outcome." Mobius rephrased.

"Exactly," Loki said. "So, let's just say..." he grabbed the salad that was in front of Mobius. "your salad is Asgard in this scenario."

"What are you doing?" Mobius asked. "It's not Asgard, that's my lunch. I want that salad."

"It's a metaphor," Loki said. "Just hang in there. I could go down to Asgard before Ragnarok causes its complete destruction and I could do anything I wanted. I could, let's say, push the Hulk off the Rainbow Bridge." He grabbed a salt shaker and started to shake it all over Mobius's salad. "There he goes."

"The salt's Hulk?" Mobius asked.

Loki didn't answer him. "And I could also..." he grabbed a pepper shaker. "Set fire to the palace." He started shaking the pepper over the salad. 

"No, just stop," Mobius said.  "Don't set fire to the palace."

"I can do whatever I want to do," Loki went on. "and it would never matter. It wouldn't go against the dictates of the timeline because..." he grabbed a juice box off of the table Casey was sitting at. "Because, the apocalypse is coming. Ragnarok, Surtur will destroy Asgard no matter what I do." He poured the juice over the salad, a grin plastered on his face. "There's the apocalypse. Ragnarok obliterates the salt."

"That's the apocalypse?" Mobius asked, sounding exasperated.

"There it is."

"What am I looking at?"

"Okay, it was a clumsy metaphor," Loki admitted. "But you see what I mean. It could be any apocalypse. It could be a tidal wave. It could be a meteor. It could be a volcano, a supernova. If everything and everyone around you is destined for imminent destruction, then nothing that I say or do will matter, because the timeline's not going to branch. 'Cause it gets destroyed. Hence, the Variant could be hiding in the apocalypse and do whatever they want, and we wouldn't know!"