### LOKI
Tao looked up to see a figure in the distinctive TVA uniform, the word 'VARIANT' printed boldly across his chest and back. Even without the familiar face of an actor from his memories, the circumstances ~ the timing, the demeanor ~ made the man's identity clear enough.
*If all the main players here have different faces than the ones I know,* he mused, *it'd be near impossible to identify them at a glance without peeking inside their heads. Though HWR was close, for some reason.*
"Not at all. Help yourself," Tao replied, gesturing to the empty seat.
The variant ~ Loki ~ arranged his paperwork with fastidious care and began examining each document with an intensity that suggested a deep personal stake.
They worked in a comfortable silence until Tao noticed moisture gathering in the god's eyes. The display of vulnerability seemed starkly inconsistent with the narcissistic archetype he knew.
"You okay?" Tao asked.
*The one I know was narcissistic enough to fall in love with himself, literally.*
A moment after the thought, a pang of unexpected guilt surfaced. *Am I also describing myself? A future me?*
♠♠♠
Loki startled slightly, noticing Tao's observation, and quickly composed himself. "It's nothing. What's your name?"
"Nathan. I'm an agent here. I saw you with Agent Mobius earlier." The name matched the identification he'd borrowed. He set aside his own files and leaned forward with practiced interest.
"Job stress? No, wait ~ you're a variant. That's unusual around here. Gotten permission I assume. You're researching apocalyptic events? - classic my favorite; Do you want to discuss it?"
Loki's shoulders sagged slightly. "Do you guys usually talk too much? .... "
Seeing Tao's eager face, and feeling the subtle, almost imperceptible nudge of a soul suggestion, did the trick. "..... Asgard's destruction. It was... it still is a peaceful realm, despite everything."
"I'm sorry for your loss, but I can't say I understand," Tao said, layering his voice with bland sincerity. "The TVA has been the entire world ~ home to everyone here. It has existed this way since the beginning, with the Time-Keepers maintaining order. Just another day at the office, every day. Only problem we expect would be a variant running loose."
Something in those words struck a nerve. Loki's expression shifted to mocking skepticism. "The TVA, a home? You actually believe those stories about space lizards?"
"Whether the stories are true matters less than the TVA's continued operation. You are a person from myth now sitting here with me. What actually makes sense?" Tao deftly steered the conversation back.
"But speaking of Asgard and stories, you must be the variant who was on trial earlier and gained a pardon. What exactly are you searching for?"
"Well, a variant... of myself is causing considerable trouble. Killing hunters, stealing reset charges. I am impressed. Truly. It's exactly what I would expect from my inferior copy, yet they manage to remain hidden without creating any timeline branches. You see..."
"Loki....I understand," Tao cut him off, preventing a long-winded explanation about the nature of Lokis. The first psychic experiment had been a bit too compelling. "Tell me something, Loki. I've heard you're a god. Is that really accurate?"
"Of course I am a god. Why do you ask? If this is about 'what makes me tick' nonsense, spare me the BS. Do all agents use that here?"
"Nope." Tao shook his head amiably. "Do gods require food and water for sustenance?"
"... We do, actually. In fact, we thrive on it. Where are you going with this?"
"Then I assume your variant has the same biological needs. The Tempad usage isn't unlimited. Whatever they're doing, they've either stockpiled substantial supplies or they're hiding somewhere with abundant resources readily available."
"That could mean anywhere. What's your point?"
"Look at the records in your hands. Do apocalyptic events generate any variant energy? In fact, they're similar to places under reset charges ~ the exact opposite of nexus events."
"Yeah, none whatsoever. So?"
I opened my two palms and showed him the action of bringing them together. The excitement was immediate and visible on Loki's face. He stood abruptly, raising the report as the two correlating implications became clear.
"You would have found it eventually anyway... Your target could be hiding within those events, specifically where supply is readily available."
"That's brilliant. What did you say your name was again?"
"It doesn't matter. Farewell, ... God of Stories."
"It's actually God of Mischief..." He turned back to correct Tao, ready to rush off to find Mobius, but discovered only an empty chair and table where the helpful agent had been sitting moments before.
### Leaving TVA
Tao was already outside the TVA an instant later, his form shimmering back to a fixed, nondescript human appearance, his armour seamlessly shifting to mimic the local clothing style.
His memory of experience on Asgardian Magic was very interesting, but he didn't delve on it and engaged in the conversations, because he felt even more peculier things.
***
The moment Loki had sat down, he'd felt the cause and effect rippling across time. Every word exchanged had been a delicate dance on the very edge of permitted chaos. Any more, and he sensed a tangible chance that a future, time-slipping Loki might have bled back into that moment, drawn by the significance of the conversation.
*Imagine him popping in mid-chat to ask, 'Nathan, how do you decide who to keep and who to prune?'* Tao thought with a wry smile. Part of Loki's mastery over time-slipping was training his mind to sense and shift through these overlapping frames of existence. Even if he did come back, he'd find nothing.
The layer of cause and effect involving Tao simply didn't exist anymore. *I doubt he can even sense the complete rule structure, but creating confusion for him isn't really that interesting.*
### Psionic Nexus
There was nothing left for him inside the TVA. The place itself felt like a padded cell outside time ~ no growth, no challenge, no true cause. Just endless, sterile bureaucracy.
But one odd thing had resurfaced while observing Loki and employing those subtle psychic suggestions. The decisions, the intelligent back-and-forth, didn't just influence the god personally; he could feel the thoughts themselves manifesting and rippling outwards, as if he were speaking not just to an individual, but to a wider, conceptual network.
*So, have higher beings started to monitor anomalies like me?* he asked the silent shield surrounding him.
A moment later, the LoHP provided clarity. No one was bothering him. Instead, it delivered an influx of information on what some called the Astral Plane ~ a higher frequency of reality built from, but independent of, mind and spirit. It also pointed to something deeper, more foundational.
This was the nexus of all psionic energy that has, does, or ever will exist across the entire multiverse. Not a spatial dimension, definetly. From his own memories and the earlier cosmic awareness, the concept of this plane snapped into sharp focus.
****
This nexus, given many names across realities, had its heart in a realm outside of time and space known as the White Hot Room.
Simply put, all of what is ~ the grand dream of reality, is a manifestation of possibility arising from the super-flow ~ was ultimately rooted in this psionic dimension. Every conscious entity possessed a filament, a psionic thread connecting them to this complex, layered plane. For most, it was an unconscious link, an open canvas only they could paint with their thoughts and memories.
But for beings with psionic aptitude ~ Omega-level telepaths like Jean Grey ~ it was a tangible connection they could trace back to the canvas. For science and technology enthusiasts, it was a Psionic quantum field interlink that could be controlled and manipulated.
For reality warpers like Jamie Braddock or Mad Jim Jaspers, existence itself was perceived as a tapestry of these quantum strings, which they could pull and rearrange at will just like what a telepath could do in astral plane.
### Psionic Energy
Earlier, when the cosmic rules were being translated through his domain, this link had first attempted to manifest. Inside his soul core, he'd sensed a small amount of primitive energy forming by itself, unaffected by any other presence. His own soul force and life force had resonated with it, creating a unique signature ~ a new energy distinct from both, tied purely to consciousness.
Because the scope of the rules was confined within his domain, the full connection wasn't established. But the LoHP, piecing together data from the cosmic noise his enhanced mind had filtered out, had identified it.
In quality, it stood higher than any energy source he currently possessed.
Psionic energy was produced by any conscious entity simply by existing. On a grand scale, it was possibly the reason for the translation of myth into reality, the very substance of sentience given form as energy.
It had an intimate connection with the cosmic awareness and was the hardware for all sorts of precognition or threat prediction abilities, whether granted by science, magic, or the entities themselves.
Earlier, in the library, when the resonance began to influence the divine energy flowing through him, it had spiked dramatically ~ because he was, in a sense, encompassing the minds of every single person in his internal world. To prevent any unforeseen consequences of having a trillion generators of such energy, he had manually ceased the process.
### Cosmic Impact
Besides that, based on its earlier information mapping, the LoHP inferred that the incident in Oblivion had possibly been noted by the other cosmic abstracts. Their natures complemented one another, making it easy to spot the anomaly he'd caused, and that discovery hadn't been through the psionic link.
*They can investigate all they want, for all I care,* Tao thought, unconcerned.
A final question arose: Would every cosmic abstract and high-level being simply leave their thoughts open? Of course not. Beings of a higher life level could prevent the cessation of their psionic links by themselves. Heck, even humans in stories had even invented frequency modulators to achieve similar effects. For the true powers of this reality, it would be trivial.