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𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐎𝐧𝐞, 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝟐

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 > Once the three arrived at the correct floor and were out of the elevator Mobius began questioning the other two more about what happened at the End of Time.

"Okay, Sylvie kicking you guys through the Time Door into the past, that somehow started all this?" Mobius gestured to the blinking lights that lined the hallway.

"All I know is we were in the past." Loki answered.

"Considering Sylvie had He Who Remains' TemPad, that might be how we ended up in the TVA's supposedly nonexistent past." Ivy continued.

"Wait, that's who you said had my memory wiped?"

"Yes. He Who Remains." Loki answered.

"Is that what you're calling him, or that's his name?"

"That's how he referred to himself, yes." Ivy answered as the trio turned a corner of the seemingly never-ending hallway. She seriously didn't understand how no one ever gets lost around there.

"That's pretty arrogant. It's like calling yourself 'Last Man Standing'."

"Hey, isn't that the name of the show the guy who played Santa Claus is in?" Ivy questioned, to which Mobius confirmed even though he was confused as to why that's what she was thinking when time as it is seemed to be changing.

Loki on the other hand had absolutely no idea what anything in that sentence meant and decided to ignore the comment. "Uh, anyway... Is it arrogant if you can back it up?"

"Well can he back it up?" Mobius retorted.

"Yeah, I'd say so." Ivy answered.

"That's scary."

"Imagine a million of them." Loki added.

"I'd rather not." Ivy and Mobius said at the same time.

The trio then stepped into a very narrow elevator with walls painted blue and dingy lights above. The elevator couldn't have been any more than four feet wide, and maybe eight feet long.

"I've been in some creepy elevators in my time as a spy, but I think this one takes the cake." Ivy pointed out. "Very grateful I'm not claustrophobic right now."

"It's all right," Mobius reassured. "Where we're going is just a little off the beaten path." He then hit a button on the elevator with his shoe. "You know I have no memory of having my memory wiped."

Both Ivy and Loki shared similar confused faces, Loki with his hands on his hips and Ivy with hers crossed. "I- I think that's the whole point?" Ivy responded as the elevator began to move.

"You're sure you know where you're going?" Loki asked Mobius once they were off the elevator and headed down another hallway.

"Yeah, it's just right up here." In a few more feet the three turned the corner and walked through a small tunnel to get to the room they were headed to. "It's been a while since I've been down here. Actually, I'm not sure I've ever been down here."

The room in question was littered with anything and everything. Shelves lined the walls filled with random assortments of boxes, files, and other things Ivy couldn't distinguish. In the middle of the room sat an oval shaped counter that was equally as filled with dozens upon dozens of just stuff. It honestly reminded Ivy of one of SHIELD's dozens of storage rooms. She figured that all highly organized and powerful agencies must have "messy storage place" on the list of requirements.

Suddenly the three turned their gazes upwards to where they heard the sound of some sort of machine running. When they all looked up, they were met with a TVA worker lowering himself down from the ceiling by wires.

"Oh, hey, welcome to R & A." The man called out as he reached the ground and unbuckled himself.

"Good. We're in the right place." Mobius sighed in relief.

"Wait, you weren't sure?" Ivy whispered.

Mobius pretended as if he didn't hear this comment and turned to the man behind the counter. "We have a little bit of a situation we wanted to run by you."

"Mobius!" The man exclaimed. "Wow. Great to see you again!"

Ivy and Loki turned their heads to Mobius in confusion. He never mentioned knowing anyone who worked in this department.

"Good to see you, too. Yeah, I..." From the shuddering and long pause it was clear Mobius also did not know he knew someone from there. "Uh... Loki, Ivy, I wanna introduce you to..." He then kept gesturing between the two and the man repeatedly in hopes for someone to help him.

"I'm Ouroboros!" The man saved Mobius from his suffering and held out his hand. While reaching for a handshake Loki knocked over a container on the desk. "Nice to meet you, Loki." Ivy did a poor job of hiding a little chuckle as Loki quickly tried to put the container back in place. "Nice to meet you too, Ivy." The god and the agent said their greetings back. "He calls me O.B. though."

"I- yeah, I call him O.B. That- That's a nickname I heave. Yeah." Mobius continued to try and dig himself out of the hole he was in.

"Wow. How long has it been?" O.B. questioned, sitting back on his chair.

Mobius exhaled. "How long has it been? Uh..."

"Yeah, how long has it?" Ivy leaned on the counter next to Loki, she was finding this to be hilarious. Loki too soon after mirrored her.

"Uh, could it be three or four..."

"Four hundred years." O.B. confirmed.

"What?" Ivy and Lok exclaimed in disbelief.

"Feels like a thousand, right?" Mobius laughed.

"Yeah! Remember, you got off on the wrong floor and I told you it was the wrong floor..." What O.B. said confirmed to Ivy's previous thought, apparently people do get lost around here.

"Wait, yes that's right! Yes!" Mobius seemed to think he was finally in the safetyzone. "Because I stayed for a little bit. He took me over..."

"No," O.B. cut him off. "You left immediately."

Now both Ivy and Loki were trying their hardest to not burst out laughing. There seemed to be a split second silent mutual agreement between the two that if they were to look at each other right now they most definitely burst out in laughter. Instead, Ivy kept her gaze to the floor as Loki looked amusingly between Mobius and O.B.

Mobius briefly side-eyed the two before turning back to O.B. "Well, I'm back."

"Yes, you are." O.B. smiled back, seemingly completely unaware Mobius did not remember him. "Believe it or not, he was my last visitor."

"Wow. Reunited. Four hundred years." Loki continued his best not to start laughing. Ivy had to cover her face with her hand to stop herself from making a comment as well.

"That's right." Mobius laughed uncomfortably. "Hey, how are the other guys doin'?"

"What other guys?" O.B. questioned.

"What other guys?" Loki repeated, thinking this was getting funnier every second.

"It's just O.B." Mobius fake laughed back.

Suddenly something came down a tube in the back of the room, hitting the bottom of a bin with a loud thud. O.B. quickly got up to retrieve it despite Mobius' protests for him to ignore it.

"The work orders really pile up if I take a break, so I just keep at it. Forever. No sleep." O.B. called out as he started meddling with the container and then hammering something on the counter.

Ivy and Loki took this moment to finally laugh as quietly as they could, both leaning on each other to keep one another upright.

"Wow, real mature guys." Mobius was unamused. He then quickly turned his attention back to O.B. "Hey, we just have a quick question for you."

After messing with the container some more and then sending it back up another tube, O.B. finally walked back over to the others. "Great being part of a team. So, how is the team doing up there?"

"Pretty great." Mobius nodded. "Yeah. I mean, well... You know about the Time-Keepers and, you know..."

Suddenly both Ivy and Loki were pulled through time and space for the dozenth time. This time, however, when they reappeared, they appeared in the same room but clearly a different time. The room was as messy as ever, but the lights were much darker and the two noticed O.B. suddenly wasn't wearing glasses anymore.

"You alright?" Loki questioned Ivy.

"I think I'm getting used to it at this point." Ivy responded.

Loki nodded in agreement and then turned to the man at the counter. "Ouroboros. Uh, may I call you 'O.B.?'"

"'O.B.'? I like that." O.B. smiled. "Uh, do I know you two?"

"Yes. In the future. Well, it's your future. My present. It's complicated." Loki began. "We've been pulled through different times in the TVA..."

"Time slipping."

"That!" Loki and Ivy said in unison.

"We've been time slipping in the TVA..."

"It's impossible to time slip in the TVA." O.B. cut Loki off.

"But you just saw us do that?" Ivy pointed out.

"Yeah..." O.B. seemed just as confused as they were. "I'm having trouble reconciling that."

Ivy let her face fall into her hands before leaning back onto Loki, this was going to definitely be an interesting conversation. She could only hope whatever discussion they were about to have could benefit in the future somehow.

"It's not impossible because I was just with you in the future." Loki continued to explain what was happening.

"Mmm... I think I would remember that."

Ivy dropped her hands from her face and leaned back off of Loki. "But it hasn't happened yet, so that's probably why you can't remember. Do you see?"

"Good point. It sure would be convenient if we were having this conversation in the future and this were the past."

"We were. This is the..." Loki then shook his head defeated. "Never mind."

"Okay, for the sake of argument, if it were possible to time slip in the TVA, how would one..." Ivy began.

"It's not."

"But theoretically, if it were possible to time slip in the TVA, how might one remedy that?" Loki continued.

"Well, first off, someone in the time you want to end up in would need a Temporal Aura Extractor." O.B. explained.

"Well, do you have one?" Loki questioned.

"I do not." O.B. responded. "But I can make one!"

For the next however long it took O.B. to make a Temporal Aura Extractor, Ivy and Loki stood around doing whatever they could to pass the time. At first Ivy took the time to snoop around the room in search of anything she would find interesting, and Loki decided to hammer and staple things at random. Eventually when Ivy couldn't find anything, and Loki got too bored they both found this small beach ball to throw back and forth. The sight of a SHIELD spy and a literal god playing catch would have been an unbelievable sight if anyone else ever went to that room. Especially since it was already an unbelievable sight to the two in question.

Eventually after some time O.B. finished making the contraption. "I got it! One Temporal Aura Extractor."

"Great! Now can you hold onto that until my friend Mobius drops by?" Once O.B. agreed, Loki began questioning further. "Now how do we use it?"

"Well Mobius needs to get to the Temporal Loom, so the Extractor can pull you both directly out of the time stream." O.B. explained. "It could be very dangerous."

"What do you mean dangerous?" Ivy questioned.

"It's not too bad if he's quick about it. But if he spends too long in it, that kinda temporal energy will peel the skin right off of him."

"Skin peeled off?" Ivy and Loki questioned, concerned.

"That's not too bad compared to what you have to do." O.B. then continued to explained what Ivy and Loki would have to do.

"Violently rip ourselves from every thread of time and space!? All at once?" Loki questioned to confirm he heard him right.

"That means prune yourselves."

"And what does that do exactly?" Ivy questioned. She also heavily wished O.B. would have just said to prune themselves and not the ripping from reality thing.

"Well, when something is pruned," O.B. began to explain. "...it's released from time, so the hope is that after you prune yourselves, the Extractor will pull you into the present."

Ivy blinked rapidly in confusion and the feelings of fear making their way back into her system. "Yeah, I don't like the way you said 'hope'."

Loki wasn't feeling all that great either. "Yeah, um... if it- if that doesn't work?"

"Have you heard about how if you fall into a black hole you turn into spaghetti?"

"Yes, unfortunately." Ivy responded. That piece of information was actually one of the many reasons she never wanted be a SHIELD pilot.

"No?" Loki responded, looking very concernedly towards Ivy who just shrugged in return.

"Well, good for you at least." O.B. looked everywhere but the two standing in front of him. "The less you know about that, the better."

Ivy and Loki didn't have too long to sit and think about the potential spaghettification because the universe decided to pull them through time and space and back to the present.

"Damn it!" Mobius yelled out. This time as the two were launched into the future they knocked into Mobius, scaring the shit out of him.

"Hey, they're back." O.B. on the other hand seemed unfazed. "Well, I guess you three are ready to go."

"Wait, hold it!" Mobius protested. "Am I ready to get my skin peeled off? I don't know."

"Yeah, am I ready to violently rip myself from every thread of time?" Loki added.

"I'd rather have that." Mobius cut in.

"What? You'd rather be atomically disassembled and never reassembled?"

"Yeah, then have your skin ripped off?"

"At least you get to live!"

"Live? What's the quality of life with no skin?"

"Is anyone else more focused on the whole spaghettification aspect!?" Ivy made her point.

"Yeah..." Loki seemed to pause and think about what Ivy said. "...there has to be another way."

O.B. didn't answer verbally but instead just held up a pruning device. He then was sidetracked by a lamp nearby flickering, to which he tried hitting it to stop.

"No, it's not the lamp. We're having power surges all through the TVA." Mobius explained exasperatedly.

"What did you say?" For the first time O.B. seemed completely serious and the happy ole lucky demeanor seemed to go away. It honestly frightened the three.

****

After the three quickly gave O.B. a quick summary of what has happened in the last however many days, weeks, whatever its been, he quickly began leading them to the Temporal Loom.

"So, the timeline is branching now? I bet that's what's causing the power surges. And maybe you guys' time slipping." O.B. spoke as he led the little group around the bottom floor.

"Really? How?" Loki questioned.

"Things are a mess upstairs, Mobius." Suddenly Hunter B-15 appeared out of a passing hallway. Mobius had contacted her as they were leaving the other room a few minutes prior. "This better be important.

"It is." Mobius reassured.

"The branching is overloading the Temporal Loom." O.B. explained.

"That doesn't sound good. Not even remotely." Ivy noted.

"Temporal Loom?" Loki questioned.

"You know, the Temporal Loom. It's in the TVA Guidebook." O.B. threw back a copy of the book to which Loki caught it mid air. "It's a detailed index of every mechanical classification and maintenance routine in each sector, on each device, and inside every computer program at the TVA. I wrote it myself."

As the group made their way through a set of metal doors one of the light covers, they just passed shattered suddenly. This momentarily distracted them from the other side of the room. When they did look however, they were met with a set of big red metal doors that had in bold red letters "DANGER" in front of them.

In both hesitance and awe the group walked into the room that held the brightest light any of them had ever seen. Here they were able to see clear as day, the timeline itself. Only a reinforced window sat between them and the pull of the timeline. Everyone felt the sense of pure beauty but also the sheer destruction it put off.

"The Temporal Loom is the heart of the TVA. It's where raw time is refined into a physical timeline." O.B. explained. "And it's not constructed to weave together so many new branches, so it's overloading. I've never seen it like this."

"It looks like a disaster." Loki spoke as he walked closer to the window.

"It is a disaster." O.B. confirmed.

"You don't get down here too much, I guess." Mobius noted the dust that covered everything.

"I never had to." O.B. corrected. "Miss Minutes took care of everything. I just ran diagnostics every few hundred years."

"So, O.B., what do we do? How do we stop it? The meltdown?" Loki turned towards O.B.

"We need to prune those extra branches."

"That means the death of countless people. We can't do that." B-15 spoke up.

"Then I'll need to close the blast doors to protect the TVA, while I figure out how to retrofit it to handle those branches."

"What about us time slipping?" Ivy questioned, walking up to stand next to Loki.

"Once those doors close, we won't be able to re-sync you two, so, it's now or never."

"What?" Both Ivy and Loki spoke barely audibly. They both were equally filled with fear, anxiety, stress, and everything bad you can name.

'This is it' Ivy thought to herself. She always thought she'd go out in some government takeover, or a mission gone wrong. She wouldn't have even thought to think of potentially going out because of a time vortex collapse or phasing out of reality.

"Okay." Loki nodded eventually. He then began to quickly switch on the pruning device and turned it on himself.

"Wait!" O.B. yelled out, causing everyone to jump. "It's now, but now isn't for a little bit. We still gotta get Mobius into position. But first..." He turned to Mobius who was writing 'Skin?' in the dust of an old computer. "Mobius, to fix their time slipping, you'll go out there and launch the Extractor, which will pull them from the time stream before I need to close the blast doors." Mobius gave a hesitant thumbs up as O.B. turned to Loki and Ivy holding up a timer. "This timer is synced to the Loom. You'll stand by to prune yourself within moments after this turns green. Green means Mobius succeeded. Green means prune. If you're too late, you will be lost to time forever and Mobius will lose all of his skin. Okay, you've got about an hour." A blast from the Loom suddenly cracked the window. "You've got about five minutes. Anyway, I'm gonna get everything ready."

"Okay..." Ivy and Loki breathed out heavily. It didn't feel real that this small little device had the job to tell them when they could potentially be erased from time. But then again nothing has felt real since the second they landed on that desert plane forever ago.

"Dox and her crew are raiding the armory." The hunter who was in the War Room stepped into the room.

"They're going after Sylvie." Ivy spoke.

"She's their only lead." Loki noted. The two then began to walk towards the main doors.

Mobius ran in front of them, his hand held out as if to stop them. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you two doing? Where are you going?"

"Sylvie, obviously." Ivy answered. Sylvie may have duped them, but Ivy still had hope that there was the potential to be great in Sylvie. She had to at least try one more time.

"No! We have one shot at this." Mobius argued.

"I'll handle Dox." B-15 reassured. "Good luck." She gave a nod of reassurance and left with the other hunter.

"Hey, Ivy, Mobius, if I... If I don't make it back, I..." Loki began, solemnly.

"You'll make it back." Ivy reassured, holding onto his arm. "We'll both make it back because we have to." She said as if she wasn't also almost