## Re entry.
Warm air and bright environment.
He passed through multiple energy fields on earth upon entering. Being in null state he simply slipped through without raising any ripple.
Tao relaxed his perceptual shield, allowing himself to become visible to the mundane world after entering the atmosphere. The core domain around his soul remained intact, a perfect filter, but now it allowed outsiders to perceive him through normal senses. He could be seen, heard, and touched just like when he was in TVA.
The earlier, dizzying sense of temporal overlapping was gone, grounded by physical reality. Yet, being connected to the timeline's information streams through his divine sense meant he was acutely aware of the immediate future ~ a shifting fan of probabilities spreading out from his every action.
He could still perceive time as a non-linear concept, but his presence was a stone dropped in a pond. The originally "written" future was now in constant flux, reshaped by his actions but shorter.
Tao existed as a singular anchor for this new timeline. Any event branching from his position would wither, unable to sustain itself without the causal weight of his unique existence. The timeline simply couldn't handle the retro-causal shock - waves of someone like him; the entropy cost was too sharp to hold onto his presence.
Timeline a singular branch as long as he stays. As long as the cause and effect was perfectly balanced, the reality could continue even after he leaves when anchor shifts to someone.
## Flesh and Form Embodiment
My original body is not supposed to be brought out now, for some reason. A premonition, cold and certain, held me back.
It remained locked away.
Maintaining my usual state was becoming a constant, draining effort - a perpetual consumption of my own energy to smooth over every ripple that might trace back to me.
It was an unsustainable paradox: to be present, I had to actively erase my actions every second.
There has to be a more elegant solution, he thought.
Instead of endless concealment, he would craft a shell. A physical avatar with an origin in this very reality. A vessel to contain his anomalous nature and interact with the world while he figure out why his true form was locked away.
Besides, a regular mortal shell felt… apt. Right for this fresh start. As part of the cosmos here, when he fully adapted, he could borrow its potential without constantly worrying about violating every other law.
The decision manifested instantly. The world around his position suddenly felt his request.
Under his will, the sand around his spiritual form shuddered and rose in a swirling vortex affecting everything around a mile.
In the heart of that arid cyclone, an uncanny silhouette began to coalesce.
It is as if someone sculpting it with precision beyond human, molecule by molecule. A skeleton of condensed minerals formed, woven with filaments that mimicked neural pathways.
A web of capillaries and arteries branched into existence, followed by spongy lung tissue and the intricate labyrinth of a brain but without fully formed cerebral cortex ~
Its synapses firing even half-formed, his soul's consciousness tethering to meridian structures in brain area.
The uncanny half formed humanoid can be seen moving around as if a ghost, stretching its bony fingers before even the muscles fully formed. Sand continued to transform fixing into the spaces becoming bright red.
Muscle fiber layered over the frame, and finally, a sheath of skin sealed it all, cool and pale at first, then warming to a lifelike hue.
This way, it's not a violation. It's rule manipulation.
The transformation drew from existing mass-energy. The resonance simply instructed local laws to favor carbon-based order over silicate disorder. The desert itself paid the cost ~ entropy repaid in shifted sand and cooled air.
The storm cleared away peacefully from its center, where Tap took a long breath with eyes closed.
"Successful touchdown," he joked aloud, his new vocal cords vibrating the sound with unfamiliar voice.
He felt his new feet imprint the sand. He felt himself hot as if boiling his innards. Cooling it by absorbing the chaos within he examined naked body.
The body was a basic human shell, a mashed-up template from the LoHP: part mutant, part Asgardian, part Jötun, part alien, but somehow all working together organically.
He hadn't bothered with perfect genetic accuracy; It looked human, some remote resemblance to his face; it was a base to be fine-tuned later.
The template itself was formed after endless permutations during the coming here.
The domain translated all local interactions, feeding biological sensations to the newly formed brain. He felt exposed, sun above, the air on his skin, the grit of sand underfoot. The appearance was a more realistic - a general humanoid, without the uncanny valley of his previous soul forms.
A mild suffocation and warmth came with being fitted into the flesh, but a deep breath settled it. Basic martial arts capability and Qi transport veins equivalents based on magical energy he felt in Loki, condensed on their own, pre-integrated so he wouldn't have to waste time training a newborn body.
His Adaptive Nexus activated briefly. His skin roughened and tanned to a light brown, adapting to the arid environment. When it started to over-engineer, he stopped it.
I don't want to be Superman from the start. Not like this.
He could feel time pushing through him, aging the body, leaking its limited life essence. He had no intention of bothering; he could have the domain to automatically translate and reabsorb any life energy that leaked out. But even that is not his own. He could feel it, the moment he took the first breath - the distinct chaotic life energy that rushed to fill the space of his presence.
Small amounts of perspiration beaded on his skin.
Sweating. Feeling human again.
His senses were now governed by hormones and neurons. Just like the sensation of sight too detailed, the distinct smell, hearing, tactile senses and warmth rush in to fill the space. A He felt thirst.
Extending a hand, his soul acted on its own, condensing elemental moisture from the arid air. In a minute, a sizable amount of normal water floated in his palm and He drank, feeling rejuvenated. A trickle of Qi stabilized the hunger that followed. It didn't disappear but not so annoying any more.
The sun was too hot to stand naked. His feet were already burning. With a thought, his soul armor, still styled as a TVA agent's uniform, enveloped his new flesh.
The comfort of normal clothes and boots returned.
"Now," he murmured, looking around.
"Where am I?"
## Cairo, 1983
Dunes stretched to the east. In the distance, smoke-streaked rooftakes hinted at a city. His landing point, based on the intent he'd conveyed ~ the return of Apocalypse ~ had sent him right to the place and time of the event.
The weather was unusually turbulent for a desert. Activating his divine sense, it immediately bloomed outwards, covering half the planetary system.
Yes, the lower the level of reality, the farther my senses can spread.
He saw everything he expected: the bustling, conflicted planet Earth. And more ~ numerous dimensional planes sat adjacent to Earth. Sanctums, he believed, in parts of China, India, and the United States. Arrays that tapped into other energies enveloped the planet.
And he'd definitely triggered one or two people sensitive to soul strength now that is not fully in null state.
I'll just shift to concealed techniques from now on, he decided. With my divination shielding, even if they look, they'll find nothing immediately. They'll probably just correlate the sensation with the events I'm about to witness.
***
His arrival point was near the Giza plateau, where sand met the fractured bones of history ~ half-buried tombs, eroded stelae, and forgotten shrines long swallowed by the dunes.
The late twentieth century was almost unrecognizable from his past-life memories except for few documentaries about cold war, unipolar worlds and later raise of powerful nations.
The placement of continents had subtle changes. The Nile, the artery of civilization, pulsed with human activity, boats crawling on its surface like water striders. To the east, the desert broke into rugged escarpments; to the west, the vast emptiness of the Sahara began.
The atmosphere was thin with dust and oil smog ~ a civilization choking on its own growth. He could taste the industrial pulse: refineries on the Suez, skeletal outlines of unfinished housing projects, generators that coughed more than they breathed. Wars simmered; military stand-offs were tense realities at nearby borders.
***
The planet itself was healthy but strained. He could hear its quiet plea beneath the buzzing gnats of human noise ~ ozone thinning, oceans warming, the biosphere struggling to adapt.
The airwaves were cluttered with crackling analog radio and the ghostly patterns of early television. Few satellites, no dense constellations, no International Space Station.
Humanity was restless but fragile. Their technology was primitive by his standards ~ cathode screens flickering behind dirty glass. Yet, there were pockets of more advanced tech, mostly in military zones. It was even a step ahead of the black technologies from his first life.
The cities were built on ancient bones and borrowed ideologies. Yet, he sensed ingenuity everywhere ~ metalworkers, construction crews, engineers, teachers, students arguing under flickering lights, the hum of typewriters in government offices trying to impose order on chaos.
He also saw their primitive nature, the ideological struggles, the poverty, vulgarity, and cruelty. It was the one constant across geography, in peace and war.
Beyond his immediate surroundings, the superpowers hummed with their own energies: the United States, a continental engine of industry; the Soviet Union, a bastion of rigid control and harsh winters; China, transitioning from recovery to an industrial surge; Europe, still fragmented. There was no technologically advanced Wakanda hiding in Africa but some appear to be present in the ocean.
Much of the world was still filled with frail humans, where poverty and survival were the primary concerns beyond ideological battles.
***
## Beyond the normalcy
Instead of diving deeper into geography or politics of humans, he focused on the mutants. Tuning his senses to the psionic energy now nestled in his own soul, he sought out similar signatures. And he found them ~ in larger numbers than he expected. The psionic energy signatures of mutants were brighter, operating on shifted frequencies compared to the general populace. Many were still unawakened.
He observed them underground, in military zones, in islands, in what looked like containment facilities, sometimes also in leading governance, ruling group, royalty, and even in war zones.
Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters was there, its telepathic signal a faint, persistent whisper. They're trying to hide, he noted. But the wheelchair guy can't sense divine sense fluctuations.
Another powerful telepath registered on his senses ~ Jean Grey, he presumed. Another significant presence was in Poland. Magneto. And in the Himalayas, figures drawing energy from other dimensions… magic users.
***
The players were in place. All he had to do now was decide his role.