The Variant's Shadow - LokixOC - ONGOING

* People change *

Ophelia gave OB one last look. This had to work. She’d been his testing subject so far, and if nothing harmful had happened to her yet, she was almost certain she’d caused one dinosaur species to go extinct. 

The thing had looked rather surprised, if not on the verge of a cardiac arrest, when it saw a new form of life appearing right next to its eggs. Fortunately, Ophelia hadn’t taken the time to check around and had immediately walked back to the other side before any of them would have mistaken her for their dinner. 

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Not the Big Bang,” she whispered, taking a step forward. 

📍CLEVELAND, OHIO, 2022 - BRANCHED TIMELINE

Ophelia opened her eyes. People. A very confused man… and Loki, just as confused to see her. “It worked !” she shouted. She stretched her arm back into the orange door, grabbed OB’s shirt and pulled him through. “It worked,” she repeated, forcing herself not to jump around. “No dinosaurs this time.”

“Dinosaurs ?” the man standing next to Loki repeated. 

Loki’s eyes kept going back and forth between Ophelia and OB. “What are you two- How did you build a Tempad so fast ?”

OB winced. “I don’t know if I’d say 18 months is fast.”

“19.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, nodding at Ophelia. “We had to take a break when I moved out and I lost my job and my wife left me.”

Ophelia pressed her hand on his shoulder before quickly turning back to Loki. “I got a job,” she excitedly said. “OB got me fake papers, and I got caught, but now I have a real one but better fake papers. I make enough money for us to live and-” She finally stopped to take a deep breath, but noticed the machines behind the man. “Oh my- OB, what year is it ?”

“2022,” he replied, checking on the Tempad. 

“They were right !” she shouted, clapping in her hands once. “Look, flying cars.”

The man raised a hand, stopping her from asking if they could take a ride. “What’s happening here ?”

“I promise you this will make sense,” Loki told him. He pulled Ophelia away from the others and whispered : “Please, help me make this make sense.”

She nodded and forced herself to calm down. “You dropped me with OB when you left my apartment,” she explained. “I’ve been with him ever since. Have you been here the whole time ? Almost two years and he still doesn’t know what’s going on ?”

“10 minutes.”

“2 years.”

“I was with you 10 minutes ago, Ophelia,” he insisted. 

She frowned. Time still didn’t make a lot of sense to her. But it worked out, and they’d finally found Loki again, along with a man who was staring at her as if he’d seen an alien. 

As soon as OB was done setting up a new door, Ophelia left Loki to walk through first, as per the protocol they’d come up with. She immediately went back to get them all to join her. 

“That’s a really nice house,” she said, looking at the man’s place, along with him and his children. Time travel was absolutely exciting, now that it wasn’t involving bloodthirsty creatures from the past. 

“Reality isn’t what you think it is,” Loki told the man. “This isn’t the life of the man I know.”

“Which one is he ?” Ophelia asked. 

“That’s Mobius.”

Her eyes widened. She looked away from the house and rushed to shake the man’s hand. “So nice to meet you,” she said with a bright smile. “You’re my boss. Will be. Whatever.”