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9worldstales · 4 years ago

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MCU Loki Ep 2 “The Variant” intensive analysis

So, the 2nd “Loki” episode come out and, again, I couldn’t stop myself from talking about it.

Beware about spoilers!

After a brief summary that’s basically made by showing us the most relevant scenes of Episode 1 we’ve the Marvel opening, this time with its usual music… though the Marvel studios logo is still in green and gold.

We start this episode in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, 1985, the year of “Back of the future”, only there’s no Martin or Doc or the DeLorean, but just some sort of medieval fair.

Pity.

Anyway Minutemen get on the place and didn’t care at all about how they’re attracting the general attention with their look. We know why, because they think to reset the timeline before leaving so it’s not like their magical apparition might change something.

They believe they’ve detected the Variant so they enter in a tent thinking they can capture them… only to fall straight in a trap, as the Variant was waiting for them, starting a registration as soon as they are where the Variant wants them to be.

Yeah, the registration was meant to be for the show that should have taken place there but the Minutemen are smart enough to get it’s a trap.

After a recorded message that seem to imply in that tent there was meant to happen some sort of contest or show about saving a princess…

My lords, my ladies, welcome and thank you for joining us, here at the castle. Please, settle into your seats for a great battle is about to commence. The prize? Our princess. Will evil prevail, or are we holding out for a hero?

…the song by Bonnie Tyler “Holding Out For A Hero” starts and, as it does Hunter C-20 gets possessed by the Variant (we can see a hand touching her head, green magic on the tip of its finger, and then Hunter C-20’s eyes take an odd green colouring for a moment, a sign she’s possessed) and starts murdering out her own men in a joint effort with the Loki Variant. However while she fights she suddenly drops unconscious and a figure in a cape, clearly our Variant, stabs with her sword the last minuteman. Then, as usual, the Variant steals from the Minuteman what she needs and, this time, also kidnaps Hunter C-20 before disappearing.

Many have seen in the scene a reference to the Shrek 2 scene in which Shrek and his friends storm the castle in order to stop Fiona from kissing Charming, disguised as Shrek.

Me, I would just want to know if the princess is meant to be Hunter C-20 or this Loki Variant.

We’ll see.

Well, anyway we get the Loki title and them we find ourselves with Loki reading a jet ski magazine when Miss Minute would want him to review what he had learnt instead. She tries to quiz him but, although Loki seems to know the answers, he’s not interested in being quizzed, defining it boring.

His attention focuses on Miss Minute, asking her if she’s a recording or alive. She explains she’s both.

Loki looks around then tries to test it, rolling the magazine and attempting to use it to hit Miss Minute, who jumps around in an effort to avoid his blows. He seems to have fun. If this is idea of venting for the mistreatment he suffered at the hands of the TVA or he’s just being playful that’s up to speculation.

Miss Minute escapes inside the pc, complaining he’s being a jerk.

Mobius joins him and from his dialogue we discover the magazine is actually Mobius’ not Loki’s. The guy gives him a package, telling him they’ve to go and that he has to wear what’s inside it, which is actually a jacket, which Loki wears.

They join the others and Hunter B-15 explains how C-20 and her team disappeared in 1885 and they expect it to be an ambush by a Loki Variant, although they don’t know which kind of Loki Variant it can be. Loki suggests they’re the lesser kind, lesser than him, of course.

Hunter B-15 demands to see the back of his jacket on which we can see the writing Variant. She laughs seeing the writing, mockingly, the way one would when he has managed to put an insulting sign on someone’s back without them realizing.

Loki points out she was very subtle in it and she explains she doesn’t want anyone to forget who he is… which, I guess, means Hunter B-15 found yellow, star shaped badges too subtle or maybe not fitting to everyone they deemed a less human to prune away.

Still Loki asks her back if she means they shouldn’t forger he’s their only hope of capturing a murderer.

B-15, who never believed him to be capable of something, correct him saying they should never forget he’s ‘a cosmic mistake’. In short the writing is there to make him recognizable, to ostracize and to humiliate him. He’s not like them, he’s a Variant.

She’s not doing this because he’s dangerous and they should be wary of him, just because he shouldn’t exist.

Mobius states that this is enough… which hints he’s not enjoying this, but he allowed it to happen and didn’t even warn or prepare Loki about it.

Long story short he’s clearly different from B-15 who relishes in all this (and mind you, this is not a critic to Wunmi Mosaku, who’s awesome in the part, just to her character) but he still doesn’t really take a big stance against it as he stopped it only when it dragged on too long.

Mobius brings them back to business, telling everyone they’re looking for a Loki, a variation of the guy with them. He reminds them they should be familiar with Loki because they had pruned more Loki Variants than any other Variant and they’re all different, in appearances.

As Mobius speak we’re shown some Loki Variations with their numbers. Our Loki is the Variant L1130.

I wanted to check the numbers near the Lokis but it seems there had been a mistake in the handling of the numbers

Jotun Loki appears to have first the number L1247 but in the close up it switches to L6792

Cyclist Loki is L1247 and the hulking one is L6792 while the green dressed one is L8914 and the last one with the big helmet is L7803.

Long story short Jotun Loki has probably 2 wrong numbers pasted on himself as they belong to other variations but all the Lokis’ numbers has in common the letter L at the beginning which I guess, stands for Loki.

The visual makes something interesting, projecting the various variants on Loki, which makes us immediately aware of the differences but also reminds us they’re all still Loki.

What leaves me perplex is how those Variants became so different from the original Loki. I mean, our Loki was caught few minutes after he escaped. Unless those Loki managed to escape to the TVA for a while (which would risk the timeline to reach a red line so it seems unlikely it happened) how did they manage to deviate so much from how they were meant to be in the Sacred Timeline?

I mean cyclist Loki would have needed the time to take part to a race to in that cup!

It’s true that in this episode it will turn out the TVA worries only of deviations that impact the timeline, so maybe the TVA started worrying late in their case but it’s still weird.

Anyway Mobius starts digging into the powers they’ve in common which are shape-shifting, illusion-projection, duplication-casting and Mobius’ favourite, which we don’t get to hear as Loki interrupts Mobius saying he got one of the names of his power wrong, it’s Duplication-casting, not Illusion-projection and explains the differences between the two, finishing with:

“But you already knew that.”

… which they didn’t. In short it’s Loki’s turn to point out they act as if they know him when they don’t know him and his powers as well as they think and that he’s actually of some use.

On a sidenote there’s to wonder which one is Mobius’ Loki’s favourite power and if it’s meant to be relevant. This Variant showed it could posses people, and I wonder if what happened to Selvig at the end of “Thor” is a hint our Loki can as well. Our Loki could travel through the secret paths… in “Thor” he could spell his knives, which we know he can make appear out of nowhere. In deleted scenes we learn he could cause mist to appear. “Thor: Ragnarok” said Loki turned Thor into a frog. I wouldn’t mind if he were to start turn people of the TVA into frogs.

Anyway Mobius accepts his explanation and tells the others they’re gonna break in two teams, one of which will include himself and ‘professor Loki’.

B-15’s words about Loki being a cosmic failure clearly made an impression as one of the minutemen question the idea and Mobius is forced to admit since they can’t find this Loki Variant they need an ‘expert’.

Loki takes his chance to remind everyone that by expert Mobius means him. He’s there because he has a use, an importance, a role and they shouldn’t look down on him.

The scene switches.

Loki and Mobius are walking toward the door that will bring them in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, 1985.

Loki, repeating a pattern seen in “Thor: The Dark World” asks for a weapon…

Loki (Thor: The Dark World): “You could at least furnish me with a weapon. My dagger, something!”

Loki (Loki): “Do I get a weapon?”

…which Mobius refuses to give him. Loki though points out once out of the TVA he’ll have his magic back and asks Mobius if no one is worried he’ll betray them.

Loki: “Well, I'll have my magic back. Is no one concerned about that?”

Mobius: “Of what?”

Loki: “Me betraying you.”

This also is something we saw in “Thor: The Dark World”.

Loki: “You must be truly desperate to come to me for help. What makes you think you can trust me?”

Mobius can’t say Frigga did trust him or that he promises him vengeance in exchange of loyalty so he tries to go for something he knew Loki wanted, a meeting with the Time-Keepers. Considering Renslayer, who’s above Mobius, couldn’t grant Loki that, if I were in Loki I would genuinely doubt Mobius can. He just tries to dangle in front of his eyes something Loki might want to win him over.

Loki pauses as Mobius mentions he could meet the Time-Keepers and asks if that’s what’s on the table. Mobius doesn’t really give him a straight answer, just a ‘Keep that focus’.

I wonder if Loki really wants to meet the three space lizards or he just let Mobius believe so because, by acting that way, he made clear he’s interested.

Oh, now that I look at it behind the helmets of the minutemen there are codes which could be their identification codes or names, since they don’t seem to use names.

B-15 has obviously written B-15 while other minutemen had much longer codes.

The group arrives in 1985 and Loki makes a relevant question:

“Let me ask you this, why don't we just travel back to before the attack, when the Variant first arrives?”

It’s something many viewers have been wondering and it turns out that the answer is:

“Nexus events destabilize the time flow. This branch is still changing and growing, so you gotta show up in real time.”

In short the authors knew this could feel like a dumb plot hole so they made a rule to explain why this couldn’t be done. It’s still not perfert… I mean, what it means to show up in real time? They aren’t in the same time as 1985, when itìs real time for them? But whatever, it’s nice they tried to fix this problem.

Mobius asks Loki if he watched all the explicative videos he was supposed to watch and Loki replied only as many as he could stand because he find that their ‘TVA propaganda is exhausting’.

I’m glad Loki and I see things in the same way. Most of the TVA babbling is propaganda meant to brainwash people’s mind.

A Minuteman then asks Loki what ‘these’ (these being the Time Charges) do.

Loki knows perfectly and gives us the confirmation to the thing I, and many others, suspected in the past episode.

Time Charges…

“Reset charges prune the affected radius of a branched timeline, allowing time to heal all its wounds. Which sounds like a nice way of saying disintegrate everything in its vicinity.”

So yeah, it’s genocide or total destruction of that timeline and all the people in it.

But also yeah, Loki studied all he was supposed to study although he insists he watched only some of the videos. I’m not surprised though, a wizard had to be good at studying things and Loki clearly wanted to know how that world worked so of course he would have watched the video even if he’s downplaying it.

They reach the place in which the TVA fought Loki and discover the Loki Variant kidnapped C-20. It turns out that it’s the first time that Variant kidnapped someone. A minuteman suggests the Variant might have pruned (aka killed but the TVA doesn’t use that word) C-20.

B-15 acts defensively, saying a Loki couldn’t have beaten C-20. She clearly views the Lokis, the whole of them as this time she’s not even saying Variants, as inferior. She should probably remember she got collared by one Loki.

Loki tries to warn her saying she’s underestimating the Variant… which she’s doing as the Variant could have very well ‘pruned’ C-20 had the Variant wanted to.

B-15 isn’t interested in hearing him out as she interrupt him and tells the other to fan out and starts searching for C-20 fast as they’re approaching the red line.

Loki stops them, telling them if they’ll leave the tent they’ll end up killed. B-15 thinks it’s a waste of time but Mobius is willing to hear him out.

Loki launches himself in a long explanation, the gist of it being he thinks there’s a scheme behind the Variant’s actions, that they should be aware of their surrounding, listen more (like he does) and less prone to underestimate him or the ‘lesser Loki’.

Now… he’s not completely wrong, the TVA underestimates him, and they has underestimated the other Loki Variant, which we saw lead to some of their losses.

Loki claims the Variant wants him because they know he’s the stronger Loki and so wants to join forces with him to overthrown and rule the TVA. I’m not sure how the Variant would have known there’s a Loki working with the TVA but let’s assume they do and that Loki’s reasoning could make sense… or could be explained with him trying to paint himself as more important than he is.

But then he goes saying that this isn’t what he wants as he’s now a servant of the Sacred Timeline… which is patently untrue and hard to believe… who can hand them the Variant but what assurances he won’t be disintegrated once the job is done.

And okay, his own is a legitimate worry and a legitimate request.

It’s actually clever to ask for reassurances the TVA won’t dispose of him once the job is done… though it’s not like there’s an actual bargaining ground because, if Loki isn’t cooperative and therefore is useless, the TVA will dispose of him anyway.

It’s not so clever he would try to pass himself for a servant of the timeline when he clearly didn’t play the part well. Of course since he said Asgardians were fundamentally naïve, maybe that’s the kind of people he’s used to deal with… but he has experienced distrust in Asgard in “Thor”, proof his own people isn’t so naïve… and he should have figured out Mobius isn’t either.

And then he presses for urgently meeting the Time-Keepers saying they’re in grave danger… and this jump isn’t smooth.

Mobius knows Loki wants to meet the Time-Keepers, so of course if Loki pushes the issue in this way he’s going to be prone to assume it’s a trick. The speech doesn’t even keep a logical flow because Loki first presented himself as better than the Variant and capable to handle it but reluctant to do so for fear of being erased… but now he’s presenting the Variant as a grave threat that requires them to urgently talk with the Time-Keepers.

So from one side it’s pushing for too much when he hadn’t even shown himself to be useful yet and for another it makes for a weak argument if he’s really as superior as he claims to be.

So… hum… the speech seems to tumble down in an unsatisfactory manner, ‘seems’ being the operative word because, if there’s a goal behind its weak points, then they still have a reason to exist.

I’m actually not quite sure which game Loki is playing with the TVA.

He’s for sure trying to survive but then what else does he want to get? I don’t believe he aims to control the universe but I’m pretty sure he’s not swallowing the TVA propaganda and he doesn’t enjoy to be there.

His timeline was pruned so he can’t go back there. Does he want to save Frigga? Is that what he aims to do? Does he want to go into the timeline after… let’s call it ‘canon Loki’ died so as to replace him?

Prior to it?

I don’t know.

Is he saying all those things for the Loki Variant’s benefit? He hopes the Variant is out there hearing him and his speech would make the Variant interested in joining forces?

I don’t know. We’ll see.

Anyway as expected Mobius figures it’s a trick and, since there’s no more time to do anything else, they just reset the timeline and leave.

On another note I like how Loki uses an Asgardian way to say. Way too often in movies even aliens feel compelled to use English ways to say instead than way to say from the world they belong to.

We also see how a time charge works. Loki hurries to move away as soon as he sees them starting it.

They… do something with the top part of it, I’m not sure if they push a button or pulled some sort of safety pin. We see something yellowish being released in the fluid inside the time charge which then turns purplish. The purple colour expands to the whole glass of the time charge until from below it something like a coloured expanding pool comes out. Everything that gets touched by that pool ends up being disintegrated.

At the TVA the monitors show that the ‘reset’ (read ‘disintegration’) of the timeline is done and that C-20 ended up MIA.

A music that’s half sad half… disquieting, start being played and we move into Renslayer’s office.

Mobius is complimenting for her office, pointing out how there’s a new snow globe in it and how he doesn’t remember bringing it to her.

She replies he’s not the only analyst working for her, which seems to imply analysts working for her are meant to bring her souvenirs from their missions. Or better… not quite. Mobius asks her why she gets to keep all the trophies from his cases, which seems to imply they weren’t given willingly.

Still, he tries to get her to admit he’s her favourite analyst.

I’m not really sure what’s going on between these two. They don’t seem to be in a relationship and I’m not sure if Mobius’ attempts at flattering her are because he’d like to be in a relationship with her but doesn’t dare to push the issue or because he’s currying her favours.

We’ll see.

Renslayer moves the discussion to the mission Mobius just botched and I don’t know if I would define it as such. Okay, so they didn’t find C-20 nor the other Loki Variant but chances here are two:

- the Loki Variant was out there using C-20 as bait as Loki said, setting a trap for them, and they successfully avoided it

- the Loki Variant wasn’t out there and so wasn’t C-20 and therefore was nothing for them to find.

Either way the mission wasn’t botched as they came back and successfully disintegrated… pardon, the TVA doesn’t like that word, they prefer ‘purged’ the branched timeline and any living being inside it.

Renslayer, referring to Loki as just ‘this Variant’ complains he’s insubordinate, stubborn and unpredictable like Mobius.

Honestly I think the whole series is trying to draw parallels between Loki and Mobius, where Mobius is however the one who chose to submit to the system where Loki just can’t stand it and wants to break it down.

So, although Mobius should be ‘all lawful’ we can see there’s a bit of ‘chaotic’ inside him.

It’s probably worth to remember that ‘lawful’ and ‘chaotic’ are nothing else but the two opposite extreme on the Ethical axis used for RPG alignment where Lawful represents obedience to the law and Chaotic leans toward personal freedom, without regards to the law.

There’s another sign Mobius isn’t fully lawful, the fact he has the bad habit to leave the glass rest on Renslayer’s furniture, leaving rings, and then insisting he’s not who caused them as they were already there… when Renslayer points out they’re all there due to him.

I know a part of the fandom loves Mobius but I wonder if he’s in the story not only to interact with Loki but also to work in contraposition to him. There are two paths for him, either he chooses the same path as Loki or the opposite. We’ll see.

Mobius tries to blame the ring on Renslayer’s other favourite analyst. I wonder if such person exists and is meant to have a relevance in the story. It’ll be interesting if it’s the other Loki Variant in disguise.

I mean… the other Loki Variant knows plenty of things about the TVA which hints at how they should have a previous and prolonged contact with them because the TVA explains nearly nothing about how their things work to their captives but the other Loki Variant knows what Reset charges are and how they work or how to use a TemPad to open Timedoors.

Yet Mobius doesn’t seem to have info on when they captured that Variant, carried it to the TVA and then let them escape, so again, how did the Variant learnt so much about the TVA?

From another escaping Variant?

Hard to say?

Did they saw the TVA and tailed them till the TVA unnoticed?

I can’t really tell, we’ll see.

Anyway, back to their conversation, Renslayer points out the issue isn’t Mobius’ methods with Loki, but the fact he towed a dangerous Variant into the field… meaning they consider Loki dangerous.

Mobius claims that from that they had learnt ‘the Variant’ likes to stall for time, so the other Variant might end up doing the same, because, to Mobius, understanding one Loki leads to understand the other.

And I’m:

- actually you didn’t need to bring Loki to the field to learn this, didn’t you notice that’s what he did in other circumstances?

- if the two Lokis are different, no, understanding one doesn’t mean understand the other. I mean you had a Loki who was fine living as a Jotun while this one was traumatized by the idea he was a Jotun, Loki can be pretty different about them, enough to be complete opposite so no, nobody said they’ll surely share that particular trait.

Whatever, let’s go on.

Renslayer says Mobius has a soft spot for broken things (which Mobius denies because he’s a bit like Loki and doesn’t want to show weakness), which acknowledges this Loki is broken… but gains him no sympathy from Renslayer as she said that ‘Loki is an evil, lying scourge’. Because he attacked New York? Nope, just because this is the part he plays on the sacred timeline and he can change only if the Time-Keepers decree so, not because he wants to.

Renslayer is big on the predeterminism when it’s about Loki (who’s a Variant by the way and therefore already out of the Sacred Timeline) but why doesn’t she apply it to the TVA as well? They’ll take the Variant only if the Time-Keepers will so.

I think the TVA’s faith in the Time-Keepers has plenty of weak points and is hypocritical. I wonder if the show will explore this.

Mobius switches topic asking how the Time-Keepers are and it turns out he NEVER met them. So he basically can’t even be sure they exist or not, yet he’s pouring all his faith in those three space lizard.

Mobius seems kind of glad he hadn’t met them, which seems to hit they’re either dangerous to meet or he doesn’t have a good opinion of them.

Renslayer says:

“The Time-Keepers are monitoring every aspect of this case. I've never seen them so involved. They want that Variant caught.”

…which seems a way to put Mobius under pressure but really, if they decide the flow of time, shouldn’t the decide if Mobius will catch the Variant or not? They can decide if a Variant Loki can change or not but they can’t control the other?

Anyway Mobius signs the event report Renslayer already signed. We can see Renslayer signs R Slayer while Mobius signs M. M. M.

Mobius notices the pen he used for signing has the writing ‘Franklyn D. Roosvelt High School’ on it and complains that pen too should be from the other analyst Renslayer favoured. And I wonder again, who they are? They’re meant to be relevant? Or they’re only a plot device to make Mobius jealous?

Renslayer only tells him to stay focused. As he’s about to leave though, she stops him asking him if he believes in that Variant. Mobius doesn’t confirm this, saying Loki believes in himself enough for the both of them, complaining Loki is really arrogant and that he will delete him himself if this doesn’t work.

Of course these might be just words he tells to Renslayer but we saw him taking part to erasing timelines and even if he showed sympathy and kindness to the French boy he met in the cathedral in the very first episode, he let him be reset.

“Don't worry, that devil's afraid of us. We're gonna take care of him. And we're gonna put you back where you belong.”

This apparently kind sentence meant they disintegrate him and his timeline so the place the boy belong is basically oblivion.

But I’ll dig on Mobius and Loki in a moment.

For now let me pause a moment on the pen, another gift of Renslayer’s mysterious over analyst, with written on it ‘Franklyn D. Roosvelt High School’.

Franklyn D. Roosvelt, ex-president of the united state is also relevant for the MCU.

In 1940 Roosevelt ordered the formation of the Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR) to fight the Nazi Party, even though the United States was still at peace with Germany. To ensure that only the greatest scientists work for the SSR, Roosevelt ordered Chester Phillips to recruit Howard Stark into the agency. SSR works in the creation of the Super Soldier Sierum, which ‘gives birth’ to Captain America then it is the re-tasked to fight Hydra. Later it will become part of S.H.I.E.L.D.

So yeah, maybe it’s a coincidence but it’s interesting.

Back to the story.

Mobius leaves Renslayer and we discover Loki has been left outside Renslayer’s office to wait.

Mobius whistles and also motions to Loki to follow him.

Some has compared this with how one would act to a dog. It’s possible they’re not so off track.

The TVA is a world that discriminates Variants and find them worth only being erased. They shouldn’t exist, they’re cosmic jokes, no one should forget someone is a Variant.

Mobius too in his discussion with Renslayer referred to Loki as just “the Variant”. Yet Mobius also feels some sympathy for Loki. Renslayer says he has a soft spot for broken things, if can mean she acknowledges Loki was broken by his experience… but she might also refer to the mere fact he’s a Variant and Variants, in a way, can be seen as ‘broken’ as they didn’t function properly but followed their own path instead than the one the Time-Keepers traced for them.

So the idea Mobius sees Loki as some sort of pet can be fitting. Mobius is growing fond of Loki… but he’s still imbued in all the TVA’s beliefs and teachings about predeterminism and how Variants are bad.

He doesn’t want to be needlessly mean to Loki, but the latter isn’t equal to him, he’s a tool, as everyone reminds him and as he has to remind to everyone else.

Variants has no rights in the TVA, they just exist to be pruned, reset, or, in less pretty but more realistic words, disintegrated.

And Mobius is a guy in the middle.

While he doesn’t want to be a jerk to Variants… or to people in the Sacred Timeline who’re going to die, he’s not really willing to fully fight against the system because he has faith in the system and a side of him he thinks Loki should just accept his place.

We see it in their discussion.

Loki is somewhat nervous… which, I’ll be honest, feels a little weird to me because he’s being openly nervous when usually Loki can keep controlled and hide this sort of things.

He had played a high risk bet during the mission and lost, he had time to think at what to say to Mobius while Mobius was discussing with Renslayer yet what he comes up isn’t really worth of someone who’s supposed to have a silver-tongue.

Okay, so it’s not like we were shown him using his silver-tongue in the movies, as people tended to do the opposite of what Loki asked them or not listen him at all, with the exception of Malekith and the Grandmaster… but we don’t get to see how Loki won the Grandmaster over.

Whatever, maybe there’s a reason, maybe not, we’ll see.

When facing the Variant later, Loki will say he kept the TVA vulnerable at the Renaissance Fair for some time and also that he has been working on gaining their trust. Presenting himself as openly insecure to Mobius, instead than hiding it as he would usually do, might be part of winning him over. As I said in the past commentary for ep 1, sometimes there are more benefits in being honest than in lying, so it can be that it’s not that Loki isn’t nervous, it can be he sees more benefits in showing it to Mobius.

We’ll see.

Mobius is in a bad mood. Although it didn’t seem Renslayer had given him a earful for his failure, it can be his failure burns. He tells Loki to show up, reminding him in the elevator he said he didn’t like to talk… which is something else that makes me think Loki is trying to give Mobius EXACTLY what Mobius asked for, so as to fulfil his expectations and lower his guard.

The following conversation is relevant.

Mobius: Okay. Just shut up! Please. What happened to the guy I met on the elevator? Who didn't like to talk. Remember him? Now I'm stuck with this guy who won't stop yacking away about what makes a Loki tick!

Loki: What? Isn't that precisely why I'm here?

Mobius: No. I don't care what makes you tick. You're here to help me catch the superior version of yourself. That's it!

Only Mobius in the previous episode told him he wanted exactly this from him.

Mobius: I'm serious. All I seek is a deeper understanding of the fearsome God of Mischief. What makes Loki tick?

This is the problem of an unequal partnership like their own. Loki isn’t there because he’s Mobius’ partner and equal, Loki is there to serve a purpose, capturing the other Loki. Renslayer might be right and Mobius might have a soft spot with him, but in the end Mobius ends up reminding Loki his place in the TVA, he’s there to be useful.

Loki takes offence by Mobius calling the other Variant “superior”.

Mobius gives us a slice of his mind… and Loki calls him out on his attempt of manipulation.

Mobius: See? There it is. Right there. I believed, stupidly, that insecure need for validation would motivate you to find the killer. Not 'cause you care about the TVA mission or bein' a hero, but because you know this Variant is better than you and you can't take it.

Loki: Very nice. I mean, it is adorable that you think you could possibly manipulate me. I'm ten steps ahead of you. I've been playing a game of my own all along.

But there’s something else worth pointing out. Mobius clearly believes working for the TVA equates at being a hero… and also that Loki would be so prideful he would serve the TVA merely to show them he’s better than the other without caring of how the TVA then might dispose of him.

And again Loki shows his cards way too openly so Mobius calls him out.

Mobius: What, charm your way in front of the Time-Keepers, hustle them, and seize control of the TVA? Am I getting warm? A double cross by history's most reliable liar.

Is really this what Loki aims at? This is what he’s telling around but is really this? Maybe but it seems so obvious, even Mobius could guess it in 5 minutes so… I don’t know, it seems too predictable for someone who’s supposedly smart.

The discussion goes on. Loki has figured since Mobius didn’t have him erased after that failure he is sticking his neck out for him so he asks him why.

Mobius: I'll give you two options, and you can believe whichever one you want. A, because I see a scared little boy, shivering in the cold. And you kinda feel bad for that ice runt. Or B, I just wanna catch this guy, and I'll tell you whatever I need to tell you.

I think both options are true, although usually, when proposing two options, the implication is the speaker is telling us to chose the last one… and it makes sense because this is the main motive Mobius is helping Loki. He could do nothing for him if it wasn’t because Loki could be useful… but this doesn’t men Mobius has no sympathy for him.

On another note it’s the second time the scripts hints at Loki as being young

Loki: I was young (in 1971), and I lost a bet to Thor. Where was the TVA when I was meddling with these affairs of men?

I really wonder if the idea is that Loki is young for Asgard standards.

Anyway Loki points out he doesn’t need Mobius’ sympathy, at which Mobius replies that’s good because he’s running out of it.

And again in itself there’s a problem. Mobius probably sees himself as a good person, because the fact he’s using Loki also means he’s sparing Loki from being pruned but, of course, if he has no use for Loki, this wouldn’t save him any longer.

If sympathy is tied to personal convenience, it’s not really sympathy.

As soon as they caught this Loki Mobius ran there to get him for himself because he thought it would be useful. He could have grown fond and it’s fine because it happens… but the key is still Loki has to be useful to him in order to be kept. So he’s not a really selfless act.

That’s why Mobius is no hero, who selflessly sacrifice for Loki, because he hopes in personal gain and… and it’s absolutely human. Mobius might have studied Loki but he basically just met him. Mobius has his own life. Why should he sacrifice it for Loki?

He’s planning for their allegiance to offer mutual benefits, Loki helps Mobius to wipe another Loki out of existence and Loki gets to live a little longer even though, being a Variant, Loki should have been already disposed of.

Mobius probably feels very kind and the other at the TVA would probably agree with him, because he’s giving a chance to someone who is lesser and has no right to chances and this is how their world work.

But we, viewers should be capable to understand their world works in the wrong way.

Loki: What's this? Next step of your manipulation...

Mobius: This is the final step. Your last chance.

Loki: Oh, and what does my desperate last chance require?

At this point Loki has moved back into keeping distance. He calls what’s Mobius is doing as manipulation and sounds flippant as he talks of his ‘desperate last chance’.

Mobius might have sympathy for him but Loki has likely figured out Mobius wouldn’t save him from the TVA beyond a certain point. The very best Mobius can offer him is to remain there working for the TVA to catch other Lokis, all while wearing a jacket that points out he’s a Variant as well, a cosmic joke.

Maybe Mobius might manage to have him dismiss wearing that jacket. Still, all this is tied to how much useful he can be. Mobius though can’t offer him freedom or a way back home.

Anyway Loki’s last chance is to work, to go over each and every one of the Variant's case files, and then, give him his unique Loki perspective and find something. All this while Mobius goes to eat something and keeping in mind his life depends on him proving to be of some use.

Again we’re reminded that Loki isn’t free to drop this work, he’s forced to cooperate, his life depends on it.

Loki starts looking through the documents which basically cover the various cases in which the Variant ambushed the Minutemen and stole their reset charge, clearly not finding them interesting. A woman hush him and he hush her back.

Loki tries going to the one who seems a librarian… but who’s actually so mechanical she feels more like a robot who can’t stop typing to pay attention to those who call her if they don’t ring at her first.

Loki asks her for more files. No, not files on the case, files pertaining to the creation of the TVA… but they’re all classified. The same goes for files pertaining to the beginning of time and the end of the time.

Exasperated Loki asks which files he can have and he’s handed a handful of them which, merely cover his case as a Variant and the life of his alternate self in the sacred timeline.

Loki reads them anyway and discovers of the destruction of Asgard.

As he does he can’t help but shed a tear for his former planet, before noticing the TVA also noted that during the event there was zero variance energy detected.

This causes him to connect some important dots and so he rushes to join Mobius to the restaurant.

At first Mobius doesn’t want to listen him, claiming he told him not to bother him until he read all the files which Loki claims to have done.

Honestly he didn’t seem particularly interested in them but he might have done it as someone who practices magic should have been good at studying. Mobius insists and Loki points out what they’re searching isn’t in the files but in the timeline as the Variant is hiding in the apocalypse.

Mobius asks which one and Loki mentions Ragnarok, asking him if he’s familiar to it. And I wonder if Loki wanted an answer to this one question, if he wanted to know if Mobius knew his homeland was wiped away, that this is something the TVA allowed.

Mobius confirms he knows about it and apologizes to him.

Loki pretends not to care and goes on discussing how a Nexus event is the result of someone doing something he’s not supposed to that causes a chain reaction of things that aren’t supposed to happen.

Mobius confirms.

At this point Loki steals the salad Mobius was eating for his example and decides in his metaphor that salad will represent Asgard.

And tell me whatever you want but, as far as I’m involved this is Loki paying back Mobius for letting him to work while he went to eat.

Mobius gets immediately that his lunch is going to meet an abrupt demise but Loki doesn’t let this deter him.

Loki suggests if he were to go on Asgard before Ragnarok he could do whatever he wants, even push Hulk off the Rainbow bridge, and to prove his point, he adds more salt to the salad. He then says he could also set fire to the place. I don’t know what he adds to Mobius’ salad as he says so, maybe pepper, but this is enough to make Mobius beg not to set fire to the place, which I find hilarious. Loki continues to put salt and… pepper? Into Mobius’ salad commenting that he can do whatever he wants without going against the dictates of the timeline.

He then picks up Mobius’ drink only to find it empty so he goes to get the drink from the nearby’s table, Casey’s table. He then pours it into Mobius’ salad, likely making it impossible to eat, explaining how the drink represents Surtur who will destroy Asgard no matter what Loki does so what he does doesn’t matter.

In short, in addition to making his point, Loki let Mobius too without lunch.

Fair since Loki didn’t have lunch at all.

Mobius still doesn’t get it so Loki goes further on explaining if they have an apocalypse of whatever kind it doesn’t matter what one would do in it because everything would get destroyed so the Variant has to be hiding in an apocalypse, doing whatever they want without them noticing.

Mobius is forced to admit it’s not a bad theory and Loki tells him to bring him to an apocalypse and he’ll show him.

Mobius accuses him of wanting to run back to his homeland and Loki says whatever apocalypse will do. Mobius makes clear he’s afraid to bring Loki around and Loki insists they’ve to test his theory. Mobius makes clear he’s afraid Loki would want to test how stabbable is his back.

Loki complains stabbing someone in the back is a boring form of betrayal. Mobius said he has done it 50 times… which is really not much for someone who lived as long as Loki especially since most of those stabbing if not all took place during battle, because Mobius is talking of literal stabbing here, not metaphorical one.

Loki is not really interested in arguing this one though and just says he won’t do it again because it got old which causes Mobius to laugh. Loki insists that he understands Mobius doesn’t trust him but he should trust something else, Loki loves to be right… and this seals the deal.

So the guys are at Pompeii, Italy – 78 AD, though it would be more correct to say they’re at Pompeii, ROMAN EMPIRE – AD 78 or 78 CE.

Eruption day.

While Mobius is absolutely scared they might mess up the timeline Loki is as overexcited like a kid on a sugar rush.

Loki cried reading of the destruction of Asgard but here he seems pretty giddy.

To Mobius scolding him because ‘it’s just not in good taste’ he replies ‘they’re gonna die anyway’.

And in itself is interesting. Mobius said he’s sorry for Asgard destruction, now he worries about ‘good taste’ but in the end he’s not going to do anything to spare those people’s lives.

The dead count will be of over 2.000 a good part of it dying a horrible albeit fast death as they’ll be literally vaporized by the heat of the pyroclastic flow.

In face of so many people about to die Mobius worrying Loki’s behaviour isn’t in good taste feels hypocritical, a mere care for the form, in fact he agrees with Loki it’s ‘cool’ the whole city will be wiped off the planet and his main worry is they shouldn’t create a huge branch.

Anyway, while Mobius insist they should start creating only a very small disturbance, Loki ends up freeing animals and announcing the eruption and the following death of everyone to the people.

Loki making all that chaos feels as if this is way to distance from the apocalypse that hit Asgard. Honestly I don’t think he wanted to go there during Ragnarok if there was nothing he could have done to save it.

However his speech is also an interesting way for Loki to try and pry info from Mobius about the TVA

Loki: ( Speaking latin ) You’re all about to die. That volcano is about to erupt! I would know, because I’m from the future. ( In english ) We are from the future, right? What is the TVA? I mean, it's from the future. It sounds from the future. It's pretty future-y.

Mobius won’t reply to him but the eruption will start right there, the Tempad continuing to sign zero variance energy, proving Loki was right. I wonder if this was also Loki’s way to try and see if an apocalypse could be prevented.

Oh, Loki talks Latin here but I’ve already talked about the language problem in the MCU and how the TVA seems to have a tv series version of Allspeak which, evidently passed to Loki too as he showed he previously couldn’t talk to Mongolian people.

On another note… the eruption, as depicted in the show, is not historically accurate.

Around 1:00 p.m., Mount Vesuvius violently erupted, spewing up a high-altitude column (the column supposedly as high as 30 km) from which ash and pumice began to fall, blanketing the area. Rescues and escapes occurred during this time.

It’s only much later, in the night or during the day after that the pyroclastic flows began and it Pompeei 4 minutes later, murdering everyone there.

The show instead seems to mix up the first eruption with the beginning of the pyroclastic flow (which is the one we see approaching from behind Loki), skipping the fall of ash and pumice.

Of course from a storytelling point of view it works a lot better, so it’s not a big deal and it’s just artistic freedom, it’s just my history lover’s heart which is bleeding.

If you want to enjoy how the eruption looked like there’s a nice video on Youtube “A Day in Pompeii - Full-length animation”.

The switch between Pompeii and back to the TVA feels a little abrupt, as if the Pompeii scene was meant to last more and they cut it.

Anyway they’re back on TVA and Mobius is summarizing Loki’s theory. Loki tells him he’s welcome, which, I take, is Loki’s clue he’d like to be thanked for his contribution. Mobius though is more focused on the mechanics of their new discovery.

He believes for Loki’s theory to hold the disasters have to be naturally-occurring, sudden, no warning, no survivors. So Ragnarok wouldn’t be okay because Loki and Thor triggered it and there were survivors. That is unless the TVA retconned “Thor: Ragnarok”.

Anyway, they decide they’ll have to find out how many of those natural disasters there are… but in the end Loki falls asleep on all the documents they’re checking.

I know there’s a debate if this proves he trusts Mobius or not… but the point is, he just proved himself he was of great help, so Mobius who has shown to have some measures of sympathy toward him despite his strict adherence to the TVA code and that make him capable to disintegrate him should need arise, has really no reason to harm him, quite the opposite.

Also he’s likely quite exhausted, both physically and emotionally otherwise he clearly wouldn’t fall asleep on an uncomfortable position over a stack of papers.

And differently from Mobius he supposedly didn’t even had lunch.

Mobius yawns which shows he’s clearly worn out as well, wakes him and tells him they’re going for a walk. So no bed, they’ll only take a small break.

I take they end up in the TVA version of a cafeteria where Loki asks Mobius about the jet ski magazine. Mobius ends up showing his total love for jet skis.

“Yeah. You know, some things... Actually, most things in history are kinda dumb, and everything gets ruined eventually. But in the early 1990s, for a brief, shining moment, there was a beautiful union of form and function, which we call the jet ski, and a reasonable man cannot differ.”

Actually he sounds like a fanboy, dismissive of everything he doesn’t like and imposing his own likes claiming no one could have a different opinion from him. It’s not a complain, it’s human. I like how the TVA members, despite their dystopian setting and their fanatic faith to the TVA religion have characteristics, both good and bad, that made them human.

However, at Loki’s question if he has ever tried a Jet Ski, Mobius admits he never been on one because if a TVA agent were to show up on a jet ski that would create a branch. It’s a poor excuse since they show up in timelines in their everyday clothes in time periods in which those clothes aren’t appropriate and anyway, who cares since they reset the branches so they could even show up naked and everything would get erased?

In this Mobius is the opposite of Loki, although he too has wishes that make him similar to Loki he doesn’t dare to fulfil them, he completely focuses on his work, he claims to read the magazines because they remind him what he’s fighting for… jet skis appearing in the Sacred Timeline in early 1990s apparently.

Okay, it’s more that he believes if the Sacred Timeline gets destroyed everything would but people who were believing to be heroes like he does would say they would fight for people, not for a beautiful vehicle that could be enjoyed only for a brief amount of time.

Mobius in a way is disconnected by the people on the sacred timeline, maybe because he never met them, he met the Variants, which are considered something to be pruned and nothing more and he actively help in pruning them.

So maybe he can’t work for people, because as soon as those people become variants, bang, they need to be wiped away. I think Mobius would like to be a decent person, I think he doesn’t want to harm people so he keeps distance and blindly swallows the TVA teaching and this discussion further proves it.

Loki asks if he really believes in all the TVA preaches and Mobius replies:

Mobius: I don't get hung up on, "Believe, not believe." I just accept what is.

It reminds me of a discussion he had with Loki in the past episode:

Loki: So that had the Time-Keepers' seal of approval, did it?

Mobius: Well, I wouldn't think of it in terms of approval and disapproval. That's sort of a... Let's get back to escapes...

Mobius just accepts things as they are presented. But why he accepts them?

Loki goes on summarizing how the TVA’s beliefs are that three magic lizards created the TVA and everyone in it including Mobius, which for Loki is clearly something dumb to believe.

Loki: Every time I start to admire your intelligence, you say something like that.

Mobius tries to retort it by turning tables on Loki.

Mobius: Okay, who created you, Loki?

Loki: A Frost Giant of Jotunheim.

Mobius: And who raised you?

Loki: Odin of Asgard.

Mobius: Odin, God of the Heavens. Asgard, mystical realm, beyond the stars. Frost Giants. Listen to yourself...

Loki: It's not the same. It's completely different. No. It's not the same.

Mobius: It's exactly the same thing.

The HUGE problem in Mobius’ reasoning is that he’s mixing up what Loki has experienced, his skin turning blue, proving he’s a Jotun, living his whole life with Odin, believing him to be his father, with Mobius merely believes as Mobius has no knowledge of what the Time-Keepers are since he never met them and likely doesn’t even remember when he was created or things like that.

Loki believes in what he lived though because he touched and sampled it and, in fact, he had a breakdown when he discovered part of it, the part he had no memory about but embraced out of faith was a lie (Loki couldn’t remember his Jotun heritage or his birth so he accepted what he was told, that Odin and Frigga were his parents). This likely makes even harder for him to accept that Mobius would just blindly believe in something he hadn’t experienced in the slightest.

Mobius had said:

Mobius: I don't get hung up on, "Believe, not believe." I just accept what is.

But at the end of it what motivates him is blind belief.

Mobius: Because if you think too hard about where any of us came from, who we truly are, it sounds kinda ridiculous. Existence is chaos. Nothing makes any sense, so we try to make some sense of it. And I'm just lucky that the chaos I emerged into gave me all this... My own glorious purpose. Cause the TVA is my life. And it's real because I believe it's real.

The TVA is real because he believes so. It has to be or his own ‘glorious purpose’ would mean nothing. Loki got burned by the truth. Mobius doesn’t want to end up the same, he doesn’t want to think at the absurdity the TVA feds him, he doesn’t want to question if what he does is right or wrong because the truth might disappoint it, it might be ridiculous, in bad taste, like being excited as Pompeii is about to be buried by the volcano.

The TVA is Mobius’ religion, and, to paraphrase Karl Marx faith in the TVA ‘is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.’

But this kind of mindset is also the mindset of whose who represent the ‘banality of evil’ of those who indulge in the capital vice of Acedia, whose who do not care, who do nothing to stop evil empower it and support it.

“...morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.” ― Abraham Heschel

And, after all, Mobius works to support it, to support the TVA as they prune/reset countless lives.

There’s something else that’s interesting.

Mobius is supposed to be a lawful character… yet he doesn’t believe existence is order. Existence is chaos. And, in the same way as he’s afraid to try out a jet ski and making excuses for why he doesn’t do so, I think Mobius deep down is scared by chaos. Fascinated by it but scared by it as well. In fact he’ll later says that he believes when it all will end and the Time-Keepers will have finished untangling the timeline all that will emerge will be order.

Loki: Ah, I see. So, when they're finished, what happens then?

Mobius: So are we. No more nexus events. Just order. And we meet in peace at the end of time. Nice, right?

Loki: Only order?

Mobius: Mmm-hmm.

Loki: No chaos? It sounds boring.

Mobius: I'm sure it does to you.

Order is reassuring, it gives people a sense, a purpose, order is explainable. Order follows laws so it’s lawful. But order, like Loki points out, is also boring, predictable. No bad surprise would come out of it, true, but no good surprise either. No change. No possibility to get worse… but no possibility to get better either. Order is static where chaos is always changing. You need a mixture of both to make a worthy life.

Besides the idea they ‘meet in peace at the end of time’ to me feels more like an attempt to use a different wording to say ‘we’re all dead’ or ‘we’ll be all pruned/reset’. So not particularly encouraging.

But I’m running ahead a bit. When Mobius says Loki that the TVA is real because he believes so, Loki accepts it. For the moment.

Loki: Fair enough. You believe it's real.

And I wonder if, in a way, Loki can understand. Because the chaos, the unpredictable, is what made him discover he wasn’t an Odinson. If he hadn’t questioned Odin’s words, if he hadn’t gone and taken the Casket of Ancient Winters in his hands but just turned his eyes away when his skin turned blue, if, like Mobius said, he hadn’t thought to hard at it, or at how bad Thor could be as a kind, if he just had shrugged everything off and said ‘yeah, I’m sorry Thor will be a poor kind but that’s what meant to be, who cares?’ and ‘yeah, it’s weird my skin turned blue but Odin said I’m his son so who am I to question him?’ he would have spared himself many unpleasant things.

He would be at Asgard, thinking to be Odin’s son, trying to help Thor, who prior to his banning to Earth was completely unfit to rule, not ruin completely the planet. That would be his own glorious purpose. Nothing more.

And while it wouldn’t be a great purpose… well, it would have spared him of a lot of pain so I think Loki can see the charm of it… but at the same time he can see the danger of it. If we’ll blindly follow the rules we give up on our free will.

Loki: So everything is written. Past, present, future. There's no such thing as free will.

Mobius: Well, I mean, you know, it's an oversimplification...

Mobius thinks it’s an oversimplification but it’s not. He’s probably telling himself since he submits to the rules willingly, well, that’s his free will. But we’ve seen that the other option is being reset. The Variants are nothing else but people who didn’t follow the dictation of the Time-keepers, a dictation they didn’t even know existed, but merely followed their free will. And the TVA erases them.

It’s true, the ones that follow the Sacred Timeline, not knowing they’re following the dictation of the Time-keepers, are still, in a way, following their free will, but it’s actually a pretty tricky situation because their options get pruned by the TVA.

People don’t exist in a vacuum. We take decisions according to what happens around us.

Now think to a world in which Odin tells Loki the truth right from the start. This would lead Loki to get very different decisions… only that Odin, if it ever existed, got pruned.

Think to a Thor who’s ready to rule when he’s about to be crowned so that Loki doesn’t have to disrupt the coronation. Well, think twice because that Thor got pruned.

Think to a Frigga who hands the crown to Loki but also sits next to him instead than next to Odin to support him while he’s going through his worst crisis. Pruned again.

Think to the Warriors Three and Sif not attempting to go fetch Thor after he’s banned. Sorry, they got pruned.

Think to Heimdall not allowing Thor to go to Jotunheim. Never mind he got pruned.

Loki made his choices. It was his free will. But his choices were tied to all that happened around him, and since all that happened around him was decided he was channelled toward certain decisions, everything working to make him take such decision.

Actually, each time he tried to take a different decision he too got pruned.

The resulting Loki that inhabits the Sacred Timeline, more than the result of his own free will, is the result of manipulation of the events and TVA selection. Which is kind of creepy.

But okay, it’s interesting how, in a way, Loki tries to connect with Mobius.

Maybe it’s Stockholm syndrome as Loki was someone held captive and sentenced to death and then Mobius came in and made clear that Loki’s survival depended on him, maybe it’s just that Mobius showed him some measure of kindness and appreciation and it doesn’t matter if he was being manipulative or not, Loki was so starved for it he fell for it, or he caught up on some similarities between them.

Sure, it can be that by connecting with him he can better use him but I don’t think that’s just it.

Mobius is someone Loki can connect with on an intellectual level, where Thor was just ‘let’s hit things’ and the Warriors Three and Sif were just, let’s do what Thor says.

And after Thor and his friends there were Thanos and the Other and clearly Loki couldn’t connect with them. So it doesn’t matter how screwed up the situation is and how Mobius manipulated Loki in their first meeting and what he told him, fundamentally Mobius is the only one Loki, who’s forced to go around with a jacket saying ‘Variant’ because no one has to forget he’s a cosmic joke, has in that setting.

So yes, it’s VERY screwed up but it makes sense Loki would partially latch on him. It’s human.

On another note I’m not really fond of the idea of Mobius using the French ‘au contraire’ while talking with Loki. Maybe it’s an ad-lib but since there’s already enough mess on how the TVA can talk all the languages and Asgardian somehow don’t have Allspeak, I would have preferred if they hadn’t mixed English and French now. Whatever, maybe that’s just me.

Loki goes on.

Loki: You called me a scared little boy.

Mobius: I called you a lotta things.

I wonder what Mobius means here, if he’s just telling Loki he shouldn’t focus on that (as calling him as such was Mobius’ attempt at showing him sympathy), but Loki nails another relevant topic.

Loki: You did. You're wrong, though. You see, I know something children don't.

Mobius: What's that?

Loki: That no one bad is ever truly bad. And no one good is ever truly good.

It’s interesting it’s coming from Loki because it means, differently from how sometimes Marvel movies seems to depict a world in black and white, Loki could see the shades of grey.

In his family. In the Avengers. In Thanos and the Other. Maybe even in the TVA people. And this means in himself as well.

And we go back to what he said in Ep 1:

Loki: I can't go back, can I? Back to my timeline. I don't enjoy hurting people. I... ( Sighs ) I don't enjoy it. I do it because I have to, because I've had to.

Mobius: Okay, explain that to me.

Loki: Because it's part of the illusion. It's the cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak to inspire fear.

Mobius: A desperate play for control. You do know yourself.

Loki: A villain. ( Sighs )

He painted himself as a villain, as someone all black, to show as if he was someone in control… in “Thor” when he was in an emotional storm, in “The Avengers” when he actually was working for Thanos.

But if we consider Loki’s words solely for their tie to the present discussion, he’s trying to tell Mobius that the black and white vision Mobius is trying to adopt doesn’t work. If there’s good in bad and bad in good, the perfect world Mobius thinks he can archive doesn’t exist and his glorious purpose is not so glorious.

Nothing is perfect and so no perfect order or perfect chaos can exist and trying to paint things or people black and white as the Time-Keepers are doing and the TVA as well, is a mistake.

Loki’s words though cause Mobius to remember the boy he met in the cathedral before going to Loki’s trial and how he had a candy box left by the Loki Variant. And I’ve always wondered WHY did the Loki Variant left that candy box behind? Is like she’s leaving breadcrumbs for the TVA or someone working with them to track her down.

Kablooie was only sold regionally on Earth from 2047 to 2051. While it wouldn’t be easy to track the Variant with just this, the Variant limits the place they’ve to search for them to only 4 years.

On an interesting note although Mobius claimed to know everything about Loki’s life he evidently had no idea if Asgardians had candies or not. So yeah, I think Mobius didn’t exactly knew EVERYTHING about Loki’s life, only what the TVA deemed relevant.

Anyway Mobius decides since they now know the Variant is hiding in an apocalyptic event in which Kablooie are involved they can cross-reference the two things.

Mobius has probably more clearance than Loki as he gets the files and then gives Loki a half, encouraging him to search fast through them by making it a competition… which actually is dumb, because the Variant can only be in one place so only the one who got that file among them can find it, no matter if he’s fast or slow… but whatever, Loki is motivated enough by this because he likes to win.

However, although Mobius asks him if he wants to bet on something, then he demands they’ll play for pride.

Anyway, as Mobius realizes it’s one apocalyptic event after another (all in 5 years) Loki finds what they’re searching for in an apocalyptic event in Alabama, 2050.

This gains him Mobius’ praise as he tells him he’ll take his job if he’s not careful.

I remember reading some interviews suggested Loki and Mobius had a mentor/student type of relation. Well, Mobius definitely feels like the mentor, one who takes care of Loki and teaches him how it works at the TVA, completely not focusing on how Loki was basically kidnapped by the place, doesn’t aim to stay there and people look down at him and is always ready to dispose of him because he’s a Variant… and what’s worse, the Variant of someone who, according to the Time-Keepers is meant to be ‘an evil, lying scourge’.

On the other side… working for the TVA is Loki’s only option to survive in that setting so Mobius likely sees it as Loki having to stop ‘thinking too hard’ and also make the TVA his life. In short he should just be like him and submit to the Time-Keepers.

So yeah, his point of view make sense but… it’s terrible, it’s actually telling people not to resist to wrong conditions but submit to them. It’s the typical mindsetting of a bureaucratic huge corporation or system, where no one matters and everyone obeys without worrying to much about what they’re obeying at.

But back to the story Mobius goes to Renslayer to asks her ‘to approve deployment of a fully-armed task force to the Variant's potential hiding spot’.

By the way said hising spot is in ‘Haven Hills, Alabama, corporate town owned by Roxxcart until it's wiped out by a hurricane’.

The name Roxxcart might remember to who read the comic or watched “Agent Carter” of the Roxxon Corporation, one of the world's largest conglomerates, founded in the 1940s. It also appeared in Marvel “Cloak & Dagger” and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, with vague references at it in “Iron Man”, “Iron Man 2”, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor's Hammer”, “Iron Man 3” and the MCU comic “The Avengers Prelude: Fury's Big Week”. It’s hard to say if this will be another vague reference or there will be more.

Renslayer is prejudiced against our Loki as she continues to call him a Variant and tries dismissing the whole thing merely because HE suggested it and the other time he ‘blew up’ the previous mission. Which he didn’t but of this I’ve already talked.

Mobius is all happy Loki proved himself useful and his idea to use him was right but Renslayer instead insists on not trusting him, even though he just discovered a huge hole in their security system.

Now, okay, Loki isn’t to be trusted blindly, but Renslayer isn’t really giving a rational reason why this theory, which actually makes a lot of sense and is supported by some evidence Mobius collected, would be wrong. If they’re going to shot down any theory Loki comes up just because he’s Loki then she shouldn’t have even given him to Mobius.

In fact when Mobius point out how Loki HELPED discovering the hole in the security she’s only more worried.

Anyway Mobius is so excited he manages to get her to agree, although she warns him she won’t be able to help him if this doesn’t work out.

They kind of repeat something that was included in the video/commercial of the TVA Miss Minute showed Loki in the previous episode.

Mobius: For all time.

Ravonna Renslayer: Always.

I wonder if this is actually meant to be the TVA catchphrase.

Anyway Mobius leaves Renslayer and we see Loki is out of the room, nervous, waiting for him. He seems quite satisfied when Mobius says they’ve got permission.

Mobius is still all excited… and make a vague promise that amounts to… basically nothing, to Loki.

Mobius: I'm tellin' you. You actually help us catch this Variant, and who knows, my friend.

Loki: What, good enough for a face-to-face with the Time-Keepers?

Mobius: I didn't say that. One step at a time.

Loki: All right. One step at a time.

He actually promises nothing to him, because, as he said, he said nothing. ‘Who knows’ can mean anything, even that after they catch the Variant they’ll prune him, or they’ll merely allow him to live at the TVA, forcing him to work for them. Who knows what ‘who knows’ mean!

Loki tries to have some more solid confirmation and basically gets nothing, which is not very promising.

As far as I’m involved I think Mobius is doing this promise more because he’s trying to keep Loki loyal than because he has something solid to offer to him. In fact he hadn’t bargained with Renslayer for this. Loki is there to catch the Variant, catching the Variant would end their need to use Loki but, as soon as Mobius got permission for the mission he left without insuring if they were to succeed he could keep him.

Does Loki really want to meet the Time-Keepers? What he aims to get from them?

Anyway Mobius is so excited he tries to give knives to Loki.

Enters Hunter B-15, who strongly despise Loki who takes them away from him (I wonder if Loki managed to steal them back unknown to her. I would love if he did). She briefs her men for the mission, which also allows us viewers to get some info and orders them to prune Loki at sight. Clearly she doesn’t even believe in putting him to that mock trials the TVA offers to its captive Variants.

Loki makes present they should preferably prune the bad Loki, not him and then the scene moves to Haven Hills and I love how this time they had introduced it not by writing it on the screen but by showing us a sign saying we’re in Haven Hills, Alabama… before having it destroyed.

I really love this scene.

The TVA arrives at Roxxcart and they’ve the good sense to open their Timedoors outside of it.

It’s interesting how Loki looks up at the storming sky. I wonder if he’s searching for thunders (we saw one hitting the ground before the TVA appeared) as a way to check if Thor is around, even though it’s clear Thor wouldn’t cause such destruction.

To Hunter B-15’s surprise Loki uses his magic to dry up, which somehow seems to make her even more suspicious of him. Because yeah, drying yourself is such a sinister act.

Mobius would like to go with Loki at the Green House but Hunter B-15 forbids it, wanting to part them. Mobius has to go with Hunter D-90 while Loki has to stay with her.

And I’ve the personal suspicion that’s because she hopes in a not to obvious chance to prune him too away from Mobius’ eyes.

B-15 tells Mobius if he’s not fine with it, he can go argue with Renslayer about it.

It’s interesting how they’re arguing. I wonder if Hunters and Analysts actually form two different and opposite classes in TVA who argue against each other despite a poster depicting them as working together.

Anyway Loki gets in between and tells Mobius it’s fine, that he can trust him and that he’ll understand trust has to be gained so he’ll gain it.

Honestly the way Loki puts it makes him even more suspicious for me, but I wonder if the key is it has to work for B-15.

Mobius complains about how is always the people you can’t trust that tell you ‘trust me’. Well, the people you trust wouldn’t need to ask you your trust so they won’t tell it to you.

Mobius though at this surrender as well, he’s so excited to get the Variant he doesn’t consider he could ask to stay with B-15 as well, or that he could say B-15 is asking this because she wants to try to harm Loki. He just let the issue go after a jab about how the past time B-15 ended up wearing the Time Collar.

Meanwhile the Loki Variant has noticed they’re in thanks to all the cameras in the place, as if they were waiting for the TVA. Again I wonder if the Loki Variant has someone supporting them in the TVA because they seem to know too much, later they’ll even show knowing the other Loki was brought in by the TVA to capture them.

We see the Loki Variant leaving down a tempad on which there’s a countdown that’s at 20 minutes.

Back to Loki he’s in the greenhouse with B-15, trying to chat with her… which could be a genuine attempt at communication or an attempt at warning the Variant they’re there. I’m not sure on which side Loki is… but I wonder if his goal is to stall things.

He might suspect if they get the Variant he’ll be disposed off so his aim might be to show he’s useful but also to stall the capture of the Variant. This might be what he was trying to do in the previous mission as well. So it’s not exactly he’s trying to help the Variant, he’s trying to gain time for himself.

B-15 doesn’t feel like talking with him but then they find a guy who claims to be shopping for plants despite the hurricane.

B-15 asks Loki if the guy could be him and Loki points out he ‘probably would have worn a suit, but, yes, maybe’, hinting at how Loki cares about how he looks.

B-15 gets too close to the guy who manages to grab her. We see some green magic pass to B-15 and then the guy faints. Loki asks if he’s dead but ‘B-15’ tells him ‘they usually survive’, making clear she’s no more B-15 but the Variant possessing her, who also recognizes Loki for who he is:

“So, you're the fool the TVA brought in to hunt me down.”

As I said this sentence gives me the feeling the Variant knew the TVA brought him someone to hunt them, in short they’ve inside intel about the TVA and I would love to know how.

Now possessing B-15 is a good move as she’s a good fighter with a weapon in her hands and this also leaves Loki on her own.

Loki recognizes the speaker for what they are, the Loki Variant possessing B-15, in short himself.

The Variant points out:

“Please. If anyone's anyone, you're me.”

Implying the Variant saw themselves as the better/original Loki version.

Wunmi Mosaku does a good work at playing the Loki Variant here, really.

Back in the shelter people is clearly in deep distress and a guy thinks the TVA is there to help them.

I think Mobius is torn, a side of him would just search for the Variant, the other is being affected by the situation but he tries to suppress it.

D-90 instead doesn’t care and pushes the man away as if he didn’t even exist. Which he doesn’t for him.

Mobius: What are you doing? Hey! These people are scared.

Hunter D-90: They're about to die. They should be scared.

Mobius: Okay. Not of us.

Even though those people aren’t Variants as they’re going to die the TVA doesn’t acknowledge them right. Like the Loki Variant they don’t care what they do because everything will be erased, either by a reset charge or by the apocalypse.

Mobius doesn’t like this… but again it’s not like he’s trying to save those people, he’ll let them die because the Time-Keepers dictate so.

Hunters in the TVA are somehow all jerks. Again they would work well as stand in for police brutality but I don’t know if the series wants to go this way.

Mobius and D-90 are interrupted when a Minuteman informs them they had found a tied C-20 who’s in state of shock and repeating over and over ‘it’s real’.

So C-20’s role isn’t to be a bait, I think it’s possible the Variant wants to use her to deliver a message to the TVA.

Back to Loki he comments on the spell used.

“Enchantment is a clever trick. Cowardly, a bit amateur-ish, but clever.”

The fact enchantment was used seems to be a nod to how the Variant might be Sylvie Lushton, who also went under the alias of enchantress.

In the comics Sylvie is not the original enchantress, that one was Amora, sister of Lorelei who appeared in “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”. Sylvie was supposedly a human created by Loki who also gave her her magical powers. Although she has no training she has amazing magical powers and moved from wanting to be an Avenger to trying to become a Villain.

We’ll see what this Variant will turn out to be.

Anyway the Variant blames Loki of being the coward one because he works for the TVA. She mocks this asking him if he really believes that, which he confirms so she dismisses him:

Hunter B-15 (possessed): ( The variant chuckles ) And here I was worried that they'd found a better version of me.

And this again seems to imply the Variant KNEW the TVA got themselves a Loki but who told them? They just discovered it at the fair?

A person, Randy, appear and B-15 touches him then faint. Loki almost hurries to help her before realizing what had happened.

Well, the Variant could have disintegrate Randy instead she preferred to transfer themselves into him. This is interesting because it seems although they’ve no hesitation in killing TVA people they’re against harming normal people.

Loki still go to check B-15… or can it be he placed something in one of her pockets? Like a message for Mobius? Loki touches his jacket before bending down on B-15 and this time we don’t see what he touches as she’s cut off the screen which is odd.

The Variant thinks he’s trying to search a transmitting device to call the others for help. Loki tails the Variant, challenging them to face him and then explaining how he had gained the TVA confidence.

The Variant is not that much impressed but they continue to give Loki their back. Not that it matter as that back isn’t really the Variant’s back.

Loki explains his plan… which I don’t know if it’s really his plan or a trick.

Loki: I'm going to overthrow the Time-Keepers. And, uh, cards on the table, I could use a qualified lieutenant.

It’s relevant how Loki, talking with the Variant, uses a more polite and Asgard like language.

The Variant is clearly not interested in working for Loki but what hits me is that they don’t want to be called ‘Loki’ which could be because they aren’t Loki after all.

Loki: What say you... Loki?

Randy (possessed): Ugh. Don't call me that. You can call me... Randy.

I love how this meeting helps Loki to realize why Thor found these techniques annoying.

Loki: God. Now I understand why Thor found this so annoying.

Loki claims he has helped the Variant at the fair so yes, apparently he has played that risky bet back then for a reason. I really would love to know which game Loki is playing.

Loki: Listen. Enough with your games. I've been trying to help you. I kept them vulnerable at the Renaissance Fair for some time.

The Variant still isn’t interested in joining him as they don’t care about ruling the TVA.

We see that there are Time charges placed all around, partially hidden from sight which don’t promise anything good and someone, likely the Variant, is tweaking with them while ‘Randy’ keeps Loki distracted. So yes, this Variant too is good at stalling.

C-20 is still babbling, while Mobius tries to get something out of her.

D-90 just waves her off saying she’s off the dial and showing a worrying lack of a care for a companion.

Although C-20 says she wants to go home when Mobius offers to send them back she says she can’t as she gave away the position of the Time-Keepers.

Oh, so C-20 knew it? Did she, differently from Mobius met them?

D-90 tries to contact B-15 causing her to wake up.

Loki tries to get what the Variant wants but the Variant refuses to explain themselves saying Loki is too late. Loki counters he’s ahead as he found the Variant’s hiding place, then notices the Time charges and thinks the Variant lead them there to blow the place up.

As he turns his gaze Randy has disappeared and the Variant has possessed a big guy who starts beating Loki. Loki is not really fighting back. Are possessed people really so powerful or Loki is trying to pass himself for weak?

Anyway, after pointing out:

Loki: I would never treat me like this.

Which might be our clue the Variant isn’t really a Loki but someone pretending to be one, Loki starts more actively to try to avoid blows and even use his magic to get something he can use as shield.

The Variant’s language is nowhere near as polite as Loki and the possessed guy manages to send Loki on the ground. The idea of a toy dachshund bumping against him is cute.

B-15 manages to find Mobius and she’s forced to confess she lost Loki. Likely she thinks it’s due to Loki but doesn’t know how to explain it while D-90 just says Mobius’ favourite Loki betrayed him as they run to search for him.

The possessed guy is using another tempad connecting it to another mechanism. Although Loki couldn’t move he hadn’t tried to kill him and now Loki wakes up and demands to know what the Variants wants from him and what is this about. He’s clearly angry.

The possessed guy stands up and then tells him to brace himself before fainting, a sign the Variant isn’t possessing him anymore.

A recording keeps on repeating Loki’s last two sentences ‘What do you want from me? What is this about?’.

I’m not sure why the Variant would record those two sentences and play them over unless we’re to assume they’re actually only playing in Loki’s head.

The Variant appears, removes their hood to reveal it hid a blond woman face then in an unfriendly tone she states:

“This isn't about you.”

Loki’s surprise lasts only few seconds before he says ‘right’.

Meanwhile the countdown has reached 0, the light shot down, the time charges, tons of them, turn on but then below them timedoors appear, sending them away.

Mobius notices what’s going on and worries about where the Time charges are going.

Back at the TVA we assist to the sudden formation of LOTS of branches. The Analysts come to the conclusion someone ‘bombed’ the Sacred Timeline.

Renslayer, who has a hunter helmet that starts with A-25… which might mean she was one of the first hunters of the place, grabs her weapon as Minuteman spun to action.

Loki sees the Variant grabbing the Tempad again and using it to open a human size timedoor as she watches him. She waves at him the way he did at the Hulk when he went on the lift and goes through the Timedoor. Loki considers following but stalls for a moment. Mobius is running there, telling him to wait. Loki sees him but decides to go through the timedoor anyway and, as he does the timedoor disappears, leaving Mobius and the hunters outside.

The episode ends here.

People had been wondering what was Loki thinking when he went through the Timedoor and Tom Hiddleston explained it in an interview:

There's a very big moment at the end where Loki steps through that portal. From your perspective what is going through Loki's mind when he looks back at Mobius and then decides to go through the door anyway? Is he feeling any remorse there at all?

I think certainly there's conflict. I think he… you know, Mobius is someone who, perhaps for the first time in his life, he thinks he might be able to trust, and perhaps trusts him, and he doesn't want to betray that trust, but at the same time he has to go and see what that's what's going on, he has to do that. I think it was he can't help himself but follow… uh… because it's too strange and to, you know, provoke so much curiosity within him. So there is a huge conflict there, he thinks “I probably shouldn't do this, maybe there can be repercussions down the line, but I have to see what that's about”. ['Loki' - Tom Hiddleston & Owen Wilson Talk Ep 2 Twist! _ TVLine Interview]

Now this might be not the full truth because Tom might have been forced to withhold information in order not to give away the plot of future episodes but it’s worth considering it.

Undoubtedly following the other Loki is a risk. It’s clear the other is challenging him to follow… and he knows next to nothing about the other Loki so, if the TVA is bad for him, the other Loki could be worse and he might be trading a bad place for a pure hell. Who says the other Loki doesn’t work for Thanos for example?

In the TVA he has Mobius as some sort of interested ally, with the other Loki he has no one. You know, "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know". At the same time it makes sense he wants to try following the other Loki because he’s not the type to stagnate and remain there. He has to see, he has to try. Where Mobius wouldn’t risk, Loki does. I hope for him the bet will be worth it.

Last but not least it’s worth to mention in the ending theme they’ve replaced two photos of Loki with one of the Loki Variant and another with just a different image of Loki with the TVA jacket.

So anyway we’ve gotten to the end of it. I still wonder if the Loki Variant as an insider in the TVA passing her info and if she’s really a Loki or she just pretends to be. How she came to make all this big plan? Why she had looked like she wanted Loki to tail her?

We’ll see.

#loki #loki odinson #loki laufeyson #mobius m mobius #hunter b 15 #hunter c 20 #ravonna renslayer #casey #mcu loki #tom hiddleston #9 worlds study #9 worlds study mcu loki

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ficmylife4 · 4 years ago

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Back to the Future Wild Theories

After my breakdown post of how I viewed the timelines and events of Back to the Future in a previous post here, this is my post about the awful implications, though I do try to find a bright possibility at the end!

First, when Marty 1 arrives in Timeline 2 and witnesses Doc 2 get shot in his bulletproof vest and Marty 2 gets into the Delorean...when does Marty 2 go? If everything was the same, he’d go back to Timeline 2 1955, because Timeline 2 is his point of origin so that’s the line he’s traveling back to. So he’d go back to when Young Marty 1 is first trying to get George and Lorraine together. If Marty 2 spots Marty 1 and figures out he shouldn’t change anything so he can go back to where he came from, Timeline 2 1985--then he should arrive to Marty 1 having taken over his life! Two Martys exist and always will, because they can only move along the timeline even as it changes course, one can’t go to one version and the other jump to another. That other timeline no longer exists.

Now the horribleness. You were warned.

Doc 2 knew Marty 1 and went through his friendship with Marty 2 knowing he would succeed in building the Delorean. So he had forewarning not to set the Delorean time to 1955 or else younger Doc 2 would end up with Marty 1 and Marty 2 both in 1955 trying not to mess up their parents and much more in danger of wiping out their existences. Does Doc set the default time to 1255 Middle Ages, where there is little chance Marty 2 could have enough of an effect for it to last on the timeline? No one would believe him, he’d have no tools or even books to try to charge the Delorean, and he’d probably die young from the lacking medicine, sanitation, food if he can’t figure out how to hunt or any skills for work. Doc 2 condemned Marty 2 to a miserable death centuries from any of the people he loved, alone and unprepared, without even indoor plumbing, just to get him out of the way so there would be only one Marty around.

Alternatively, if Doc trusted Marty could keep his head down, he could be trusted around a society with flush toilets. So he sets the date far into the future instead of the past. Nothing Marty 2 does then would affect the timelines when Doc 2 and Marty 1 are living. But in a totally different time and society and life and its amenities unrecognizable and with everyone he loves long dead, Marty 2 might act rashly like try to tell other scientists about time travel to ask them to fix the Delorean, and with the secret of time travel out who knows who would do what and the final Timeline result. So what if Doc puts Marty 2 in a future time, but not so far his family is dead or he won’t be able to at least recognize things. If Doc impressed on him how important not revealing himself is to the space-time continuum and stability of the universe, and Doc 2 offered him fake IDs and background so he could grow up and live his life--starting from 2005. Maybe Doc 2 could even get something to make him look different and his ward/student/adopted son/visiting cousin could stop by the McFly house with him sometimes. Or maybe Marty 2 would want a clean start and live a life in another town, only occasionally checking in on his family, and aching as he watches Marty 1 and Jennifer 2 together, established adults with young children while he’s a teenager.

If Marty 2 does go to 2005 and start a new life, he would be there in 2015 when Old Biff 2 steals the time machine and changes the timeline. Would Marty 2 be wiped out when the 2015 Timeline 2 he’s in is ended? Like Jennifer 2 being left in Timeline 3 1985 and still being there when Marty 1 gets back to Timeline 2 1985 from the 1880s, I think the timeline would instead warp around Marty 2 so at least his existence wouldn’t end. But I wonder if he would retain all the memories, so he’d be aware of the changes? First when Biff 2 created Timeline 3 and then when Marty 1 at the end of Part III film is left to create a brighter future without the car accident.

With Timeline 1 inaccessible, it seemed only difficult endings were left when Marty 1 and Marty 2 had to both exist but only one family remained, so one was losing their normal life in 1985 no matter what. The only possibility I could think to avoid that is a little out there but my background is fantasy not science fiction so watch me:

Matter is not created or destroyed, only altered. In the first movie, Marty 1 fades away with his timeline when George McFly becomes a more assertive person who would make different choices. But Marty 1 pops back up again to play the guitar. Why? He was fading when any Marty McFly wasn’t going to be born, but even though George was creating Timeline 2 and Timeline 1 as fading, there was now going to be a Mart McFly. So what if Marty 1 and Marty 2 merged at that point. Marty 2 takes off from the Lone Pine Mall parking lot and arrives where Marty 1 is in 1955. And there’s crossover between them, two bodies of the same age and same moment and same genetics, and we saw Marty 1 pale and cramping and falling to the ground, his hand becoming transparent, his body was clearly going through something. Somehow a merge. Human brains are incredibly complicated and data contained in every engram, so lots of people talk about how much people know that they don’t know, it’s there in their heads but they can’t consciously recall it or have pathways developed to bring it forward easily. What is when the Martys merge, Marty 1 because he had to be working with George and was most active was the predominant memories, while Marty 2 was in shock from time travel and thinking he saw Doc die, but really the final Marty there at the dance had all of the memories encoded in his brain after the crossover? Marty (1) returns to Timeline 2 1985 and sees Marty 2 leaving in the Delorean, and he’s left there to live the life in Timeline 2. And slowly he comes to realize he’s more comfortable than expected, things are more familiar, until he recalls what he needs and remembers growing up in Timeline 2 too. So a happy Marty comfortable in his place and no displaced or lonely Marty stuck anywhere else.

#back to the future #time travel #marty mcfly

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szopenhauer · 5 years ago

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Walking into a party, what’s the first thing you look for? someone I know lmfao also a toilet Who was the last person you ate with? my mom, sister and niece

What do you do when you’ve had a bad day? depends Kiss on the first date? maybe Have you ever had a best friend who was of the opposite sex? yes Are you too shy to tell people when you’re developing feelings for them? wouldn’t say so If you could pack up and leave to move away, would you? yeah Do you wish you were with someone right now? I wish my dad was already home and everybody else OUT or just leave me alone, I wouldn’t mind my gf’s company much either How many more people do you think you’ll kiss before you die? nobody else unless CPR will count if I will ever need it Do you like messing with people when they’re drunk? nothing rude/dangerous Whats a song you absolutely hate? Gangnam style for example Your opinions on bi people? most of them end up in heterosexual relationships anyway because it’s easier Song playing right now? Melanie Martinez songs Has anyone ever mistaken you for someone else? my mom and sister

What color dominates your wardrobe? dunno

Do you prefer color photos or black-and white? color, black and white or sepia only if they’re really old - elseway they usually remind me of death What color is your house? What about car? white What color “emotion” are you feeling right now? I’m feeling blue? Have you ever seen a double rainbow before? yep, even this year Do you own anything that is rainbow-colored? like one item that I don’t even use anymore Do you enjoy coloring? not really

If you had the chance to get the cast of any canceled tv show back together to make one “reunion” season, would you? Or do you think it’s better remembering it the way it was? If so, what show would you choose? BUFFY!

Do you find music helps you sleep? Which type of music do you sleep to? recently it helps me survive until I feel sleepy enough to not overthink/cry/get anxiety attacks

Would you try to hold back your tears if you were attending a funeral? I didn’t cry but I believe it depends on who’s funeral it is

If you could be one age forever, how old would you be? I just want to be a kid

Do you have a particular shoe brand you favor over others? nah

If you had the choice, what would your final words be? telling my loved ones that I love them

What is one thing you always wanted as a child, but never received? big stuffed black panther and a treehouse mostly

What social situations tend to make you most nervous? all of them?...

What is one medical myth you’re tired of hearing? for an example that severe illnesses are visible all the damn time

Do you like making up nicknames for people? love, they’re catchy and other ppl start to use them to :D

Delete a year of your life, or start over in a new town? deleting one year wouldn’t help unless it was a year I was born like in Shrek movie...

What do you call your grand-parents? babcia

What’s your favorite song by Taylor Swift? Why is that your favorite? the only one I liked was Bad blood mostly because of the music video

What do you think about your hair right now? ugh...

Do you do your homework at the last minute? oh well...

Would you rather get a new brother or sister? new as in a way of replacement or another?

Have you ever used a Polaroid camera? I wanna buy one someday

What is your favorite thing to do online? lots

Have you ever gone to see a movie just to make fun of it? that’s stupid

Would you rather watch Family Guy or South Park? Simpsons

Does it bother you when people wear pajamas out? I’d do that myself :3

Have you ever tried online dating? How did it go? I tried and every single “relationship” failed, not that there were many of them, I met plenty of people that I wish I didn’t tho

Who was the last person you took a picture with? my sister and niece but shadows only

Do your parents allow smoking in your house? nooo

Is your last name shorter than your first name? longer

Last two numbers in your phone number? personal

Who’s in your house? my fam just went to the garden and I have a moment of silence, finally

What magazine(s) do you look at the most? interior design

Are you paranoid? kind of

What item should never be shared? toothbrush, bloody period pad, underwear, towel, used piece of toilet paper, gum that someone already had in their mouth etc.

Do you sleep with a fan on? I don’t even own a fan

How many plants are in your home? too many

Do you ever type “kik” instead of “lol”? it never happened :o

Do you know how to play chess? forgot

Are you picky? about some stuff, sure

How tall is the person you like? tall, much taller than me

Are you excited for winter? if I was then only for Christmas or New year eventually my birthday but it’s doubtful

If it was free and it would work perfectly, would you get plastic surgery? but it ain’t safe and painless etc.

Have you ever been called prince or princess? I dislike that

Do you like your body? pfft

What do you hear right now? dog barking

Last thing you wrote your name on? documents

Where did you get the pants you’re wearing right now? I don’t even remember anymore

When is the next time you will see your grandma? ...

What is it tomorrow? Sunday

Have you ever laughed at someone because they had a funny name? not face to face, I heard some funny names during mass or my mom told me about them and I saw some online or in movie credits Speaking of names, why do celebrities always call their kids stupid ones? to be unique If you have a problem with someone, will you confront them? maybe

Are you more likely to be called a hard worker or lazy? lazy What is your sense of humor like? quite dark, sarcastic, dry, witty, puns, daddy jokes, memes Have you ever had a dream in black and white? I don’t recall What about a dream with no sound? it’s possible What types of people do you tend to avoid? ... all of them? What is one personality trait a potential friend must have? understanding and similar sense of humor Have you ever been in a helicopter? no What color car would you like to have? DeLorean is grey but if I had a jeep then yellow, red, gree, black or silver

What is your favorite mode of travelling? on foot or train, definitely not plane Are your favorite characters often what the majority like? I hardly ever like the main character so I doubt it but who knows? Is it dark outside right now? not yet Do you get scared when it’s a full moon? when I’m outside it’s bothering If you travel anywhere, do you always buy souvenirs for people? often Are you waiting on anyone coming home right now? YES Do you like the way your voice sounds? nope Can you see the stars from your house? not currently but at night - if it’s not cloudy - yup How would you react if your favorite band made a song with your first name as its title? awesome! unless it was real bad Are you considered an awkward person? it seems Is there a light on in the room you’re in? too bright for that What day were you born on? Saturday, my mom said I shouldn’t be lazy then but I responded with - I was half an hour late for Friday Do you like having a favorite everything or do you enjoy keeping open? I often say I have a lot of favorites of things as I have a hard time choosing just one for most of them

How often do you feel pressured to be better than or different than you are? For example, how often do you feel pressured to be skinner, tanner, prettier, etc? Keep in mind that pressure doesn’t always have to come from others; In fact, we can put a lot of pressure on ourselves. ugh...

Would you rather it snow for three days or rain for a week? rain for a week if it didn’t cause the flood

Have you ever changed the look of a survey because you didn’t like the way it was presented? This can even include adding or deleting numbers to the questions. many times

Does it bother you when surveys ask questions that Google could answer? I agree

When is the last time you had a cell phone that wasn’t a smartphone, if ever? 3 years ago

Do you know anyone who can speak more than 5 languages fluently? noooo

Would you rather write an essay on global warming or UFOs? UFO

Do you like sailing? When was the last time you went, if at all? never been and don’t wanna Favourite Pokemon? Mimikyu and Pikachu Do you or have you done martial arts? Which type? karate, self defence

Favorite animal. raccoon

Any turn ons? personal

3 most important people in your life right now? my dad, my gf and my mom

Do you respond to texts quickly? depends

Who was the last person you called? dad

Winter or summer? summer

What is the secret to a happy life? good health, enough money, peace and quiet, either no people around or only good ones, no worries/problems

What are some phrases/words you say often? MAYBE

What are some of your greatest fears? personal

Spicy food:Like or dislike? my stomach doesn’t like spicy food

Do you like to travel? nope

Do you like rain? yup

Would you rather visit the past or the future? future to see if it’s worth living for - past if not to enjoy once more what I lost

How often do you go to parties? never?...

Do you think you’re ambitious? I know I’m not

What makes you nervous? what doesn’t?...

First mobile phone? grey Siemens

Do you like sharing? sharing what?

What was the last picture you took with your phone? single tiny cloud

If you had one word to describe yourself, what would it be? ME

Are you more creative or logical? why can’t I be both?

Would you rather lie or hurt someone with the truth? I don’t know anymore

When you imagine yourself as really, really relaxed and happy, what are you doing? sleeping well and having a good dream?

What is the best news you could hear right now? that I have no allergies

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awkwardnessandbaseball · 5 years ago

Photo

IT’S FINISHED!!! I hope you all enjoy the final installment of this story, which really stretched my creative muscles because I’ve never written a witchy/supernatural story before!!!

Tag list: @kmomof4, @capnjay21, @revanmeetra87

It’s @csrolereversal AND @cshalloweek!! Roughly one BILLION thanks to @sherlockianwhovian for making sure my words make sense and, of course, @courtorderedcake for her lovely art that inspired this story. Without further ado, I present:

A Fan of Every Part of You

A Captain Swan Halloweek Story in three four parts

AO3 if that’s your jam: Ch1 | Ch2 | Ch3 | Ch4

Killian Jones has a really loud, destructive upstairs neighbor, and he’s about to lose his patience with them. But when he discovers that it’s a beautiful witch with a soft spot for his dangerous familiar, Captain, that complicates things just a bit.

Chapter Four:

“What the hell was that?” Swan whispered, somehow louder than the ringing in Killian’s ears. As soon as their lips had touched for the second time, it was as though the entire world had… broken.

Or something.

There had been shaking, and a bright light, and the sound of an explosion.

Killian looked around his apartment, but nothing seemed amiss. For how hard the shaking had felt, not a single book on his shelf or trinket above the fireplace seemed out of place. The bright white light had faded and the dim lamp shone on Captain--

Captain.

Where Killian’s oversized hybrid familiar had been curled up in the recliner only moments before, now lay a small black cat with no wings.

“Captain?” Killian whispered, and the cat moved in its sleep. Killian stood and approached the small creature. “Captain!” The cat’s eyes opened and they were the same blue as his own, the same as Captain’s had been. So… was this Captain? Uninterested, the cat closed its eyes and returned to its slumber.

“Killian, what’s going on?” Emma whispered.

“Honestly, love, I’m not sure. But I think… I think we’ve changed.” Killian spun around and looked at her. She was glowing pink, despite the distance between them. He looked down at himself and saw the same energy there. He’d never been able to see his own energy before. “And that made Captain change.”

“No, Killian, that’s not possible. Captain… he was a hybrid. That’s so rare and doesn’t happen by accident and Odette was the same way. And those familiars are signs of danger.” She was breathing far too quickly, tears falling down her face from all the excitement and confusion. Killian sat beside her and took her hands once more.

“Emma,” he said softly. She stopped talking, looking him in the eye. “I don’t think… that’s necessarily true. I think maybe our familiars are who we need them to be. And when we were alone, the two of us, we needed something to protect us, or make us feel safe. And now, perhaps we don’t… need that.” He looked at her hopefully, and she nodded before her eyes suddenly widened again.

“Odette,” she whispered.

Killian glanced at the time. It was just after eight in the morning, meaning the Emma’s spell on her own apartment door should have been broken.

“Let’s go,” he said, taking her hand.

They ran up the stairs to her apartment, leaving the door to his own open in their haste, and Emma reached out to touch the doorknob. She waved her hand over it once, unlocking it, and opened the door. There was no sign of Odette, in her original form or a new one, but there were splashing sounds coming from the bathroom. Killian followed Emma down the hall towards the source of the noise.

In the bathroom they found a swan. A swan who had, somehow, figured out how to run the bath, and was now quite happily splashing around in the pool she’d made for herself in the tub.

“Odette?” Emma questioned, and the swan turned towards her, shaking her feathers in acknowledgement.

And then, to Killian’s surprise, Emma laughed. A loud, carefree, boisterous laugh that caused Killian to join in. Odette watched them curiously. There were soft footfalls in the hallway and Killian turned to find Captain, in his new, small form.

“So, what, we found each other and suddenly our familiars changed?” Emma said, tears running down her cheeks from laughter. “That’s insane.”

As if in response, Odette shook once, hopped out of the tub, and changed forms once more.

And then again.

And again.

She moved between swan, cat, and her original hybrid form, shifting back and forth right before their eyes. She finally settled on a white cat and sat calmly on the bathroom floor.

“She can change?” Emma asked. They turned to Captain, who seemed to roll his eyes before going through the same motions. Cat. Lion. Jaguar. Wings. No wings. It was giving Killian a headache.

“It seems our familiars might know better than we do, Swan.”

“About time you two found each other,” came a voice from Odette’s general direction. But it couldn’t have been Odette. “Yes, before you ask, I speak.”

Or maybe it could.

“Odette!?” Emma asked again.

“Yes, Emma. I’ve been waiting a long time to show you my true form. I’m so glad you’ve finally accepted yourself.” Odette moved closer, rubbing her body against Emma’s legs in a distinctly cat-like move. “And him.”

“Me?” Killian asked, pointedly ignoring the fact that he was talking to a cat, familiar or not.

“Oh yes. Captain and I have waited a long time for the two of you to come together. We came to you in your times of need, becoming the protectors you’d either lost or never had to begin with. But we were always destined to be more. We just needed both of you to cooperate, and you’re both quite stubborn. Emma, I’m sure you’ve figured it out by now, but time travel is impossible. The DeLorean is meant to see through time, but cannot travel throughout it.”

“See through time?” Emma asked, her eyes seemingly stuck as wide as saucers. Killian took her hand and she squeezed once.

“Yes. With it, you can observe things that have happened in the past, but you cannot experience or change them.”

“Have you always been able to talk?” Killian asked suddenly.

“Yes, Killian.” Captain spoke this time, and Killian’s head felt like it was spinning from all of the new information. “But Odette and I, and other familiars like us, those who are able to take many forms, choose not to. Our speaking to you would have only hindered your progress. You needed to get here on your own. Just the two of you.”

“So we were, what, destined to meet?” Emma asked.

“Not exactly. It’s rare for two witches like yourselves to be so close in proximity. You’re quite strong, both of you, and your potential for good magic seems to have unlocked when you touched.”

“Good magic,” Killian repeated. “That’s… that’s what’s happening when I can see the pink around us, right?”

“Yes, Killian. Of course, you both also had the potential to unlock bad magic. It seems that when your paths crossed, your destinies were sealed. You both needed each other in order to complete the change. And now, you don’t need us to protect you anymore. And so, while we can still take other forms as needed, we’ll present ourselves in this way.”

“I think we’ve got a lot to learn, Swan,” Killian said, rubbing the back of her hand with his thumb.

“You wanna stick around and listen to our cats talk some more?” Emma looked at him with hopeful eyes, as though she expected him to say no.

“Oh, I intend to stick around for much longer than that,” he said with a wink. She leaned against him, and Odette began to tell them the story of dark magic and good, or light, magic, and how the two of them were now linked together, destinies intertwined.

#csrolereversal #cshalloweek #captain swan #captain swan fanfic #captain swan fan art #caitlin writes

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douxreviews · 6 years ago

Text

Back to the Future (1985) Review

"Great Scott!"

"This is heavy."

Sitting down to write this review has been one of the more difficult challenges I've had as a reviewer. Because no matter what I say, words are bit inadequate to describe how much this film means to me. This is one of my favorite movies of all time, and because of that it has some deep emotional ties for me. This review contains spoilers, but since we're coming up on the thirtieth anniversary of its release, I don't think it's much of an issue.

I remember feeling excited leaving the theater after seeing Back to the Future for the first time. I won't say how old I was, but considering it came out in 1985, and I was a kid... well you can do the math. The wonderful thing about this one is, nostalgia isn't really a factor. This is a genuinely good movie, with good acting, writing, directing, and music. It even stands up to the test of time with only a couple of visual effects showing their age.

I won't say it's a masterpiece or anything. That would be silly, but I'm not sure how much more I could ask for in a fun time travel adventure flick. I mean, we get your classic fish out of water scenario, a very well set up plot with tons of details, and Michael J. Fox in his prime. Okay, that last one is probably why this movie is as good as it is. Seriously, Michael J. Fox just exudes this likeable charisma, even when his character isn't necessarily the best person in the world.

Marty McFly has some pretty serious issues, and it takes three movies to fully address them. He's arrogant, overconfident, reckless, not particularly bright, doesn't respect authority, and is always in way over his head. But I guess that's what makes him a good lead, he's flawed and so he's relatable. Marty doesn't always make the right choice, but he always tries to fix his mistakes. He's also very loyal, almost to a fault.

Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown, on the other hand is brilliant, but not quite all there. Spacey, eccentric, and always able to think his way through a situation, Doc Brown spends a majority of the movie trying to help Marty fix his problems. He's sarcastic and sardonic when he needs to be, and points out the things that Marty misses. In other words, he's the perfect partner to our lead. He makes up the deficiencies in Marty's character, and compliments him in such a way that together they can overcome any problem.

Of course Marty's problems are seemingly impossible to solve. Marty is stuck in the past with a time machine that no longer functions, he inadvertently took his father's place at a pivotal moment in his parents' relationship, which leads to the biggest issue... his mother has the hots for him and not his father. None of those problems can be solved quickly or easily, but the writing is such that each issue has an organic solution.

The biggest strength of the movie is in the setups and details. Each little thing is there for a reason. The parallels between the past and present are especially important because they lay out all the answers in the first ten minutes of the movie. This works because each bit of information is fed to Marty little by little. It comes across as background information that feels natural, but it is so vital that without that set up, the plot would've been a mess.

Back to the Future always been a bit more than just a fun movie. It represents the concepts that are fantastical and wonderful to me. It explores time travel in a way that's accessible. There is some token science from Doc Brown about unraveling the space/time continuum, but for the most part the time travel is simply a MacGuffin, a way to tell a story about a bunch of important themes. We get everything from standing up for yourself, to not being afraid to be who you really are. We discover that our parents are real people, and that the world can change by our actions. That's kinda deep for what is ostensibly a kid's movie about a time machine made out of a car.

Bits:

I've always thought Biff was a good villain, but he isn't particularly scary. There is one thing that has always bothered me, though. Why does his personality change so completely after the fight with George? Did one punch really change him so dramatically? I have a theory about this and I think it's the only way this makes sense. Okay, so George punches Biff, knocking him out in one hit. That changes the dynamic between them, maybe even to the point where they become friends later in life. Biff also seems to love cars, and it makes sense that with some encouragement (perhaps from George) Biff could've ended up starting his own business. It is still a bit strange that Biff is so different, but it really is a small detail.

It took four years for the sequel to get made. Four years is a very long time to a kid, especially back in the stone age, where video tapes and cut up re-runs on cable were the only options to see a movie again. Normally the idea of a sequel isn't that much of an issue, but the movie ended on a freaking cliff-hanger! I don't know what behind the scenes drama kept the production delayed for that long, but four years! I'm still pissed about that, twenty-nine years later.

The DeLorean is the car I wanted until I was a teenager. Of course I wanted it with all the time travel stuff included.

Michael J. Fox and Lea Thompson (Lorraine) were born only nine days apart. Crispin Glover (George) is actually three years younger than Fox, who was twenty-four when the film was released.

There is a fun story about Ronald Reagan related to the film. Apparently he loved the moment where Doc Brown couldn't believe that an actor could become president so much, that he asked the projectionist to roll back the film so that he could see the scene again. Reagan even mentioned the movie in his 1986 State of the Union speech.

In the 1985 scenes, most of the store fronts in the town square are bars, liquor stores, pawn shops, or adult bookstores. The movie theater only shows XXX features. There is also graffiti on the lion statues flanking the entrance to the housing community Marty lives in. Hill Valley seems like a pretty crummy place to live.

Christopher Lloyd's reactions are all over the top and amazing, and most have almost no dialogue attached to them.

Huey Lewis had a cameo as one of the members of the selection committee listening to Marty's audition for the school dance. Marty is playing one of his songs. Lewis also provided two tracks on the soundtrack "The Power of Love" and "Back in Time."

Quotes:

Marty: "Whoa. Wait a minute, Doc. Are you trying to tell me that my mother has got the hots for me?" Doc Brown: "Precisely." Marty: "Whoa. This is heavy." Doc Brown: "There's that word again. Heavy. Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?"

Marty: "Wait a minute. Wait a minute, Doc. Ah... Are you telling me that you built a time machine... out of a DeLorean?" Doc Brown: "The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?"

Doc Brown: "Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads."

Marty: "Calvin? Wh... Why do you keep calling me Calvin?" Lorraine: "Well, that is your name, isn't it? Calvin Klein? It's written all over your underwear."

Marty: "Where are my pants?" Lorraine: "Over there, on my hope chest."

Biff: "Since you're new here, I'm gonna cut you a break, today. So, why don't you make like a tree and get outta here?"

Lorraine: "It's our first television set. Dad just picked it up today. Do you have a television?" Marty: "Well, yeah. You know we have... two of them." Milton: "Wow! You must be rich." Stella: "Oh, honey, he's teasing you. Nobody has two television sets."

Marty: "Hey, hey, I've seen this one. I've seen this one. This is a classic. This is, uh, where Ralph dresses up as a man from space." Milton: "What do you mean, you've seen this? It's brand new." Marty: "Yeah, well, I saw it on a ... rerun." Milton: "What's a rerun?" Marty: "You'll find out."

George: "Who are you?" Marty: "Silence, Earthling. My name is Darth Vader. I am an extraterrestrial from the planet Vulcan!"

Doc Brown: "1.21 gigawatts! 1.21 gigawatts. Great Scott!" Marty McFly: "What-what the hell is a gigawatt?"

Back to the Future is one of the seminal movies that came out during my childhood, and so I will always love it. It might have a couple of flaws and plot holes, but they don't matter much to me.

4 out of 4 Time traveling Deloreans

J.D. Balthazar is a confirmed nerd who loves most things sci-fi or fantasy-related.

#Back to the Future #Marty McFly #Emmett Brown #Doc Brown #Michael J. Fox #Christopher Lloyd #Doux Reviews #Movie Reviews #something from the archive

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forkanna · 6 years ago

Link

[AO3 LINK] [EF LINK]

WARNING: Character death. (Sort of.)

As she rolled into the parking lot of Twin Pines Mall, video camera under one arm, the first and only thing she saw was a huge white eighteen-wheeler truck. It read "Dr Emmett L. Pabbie – Scientific Services" on its side, which really misled any potential passersby as to the eccentric old man who owned it. This late, no one else was using the lot, and she rolled lazily down the ramp and onto the concrete. The momentum took her all the way up to the truck where she could knock gently on its side.

"Doc?" she asked as she kicked the edge of the board to pop it up and catch it. "You in there? Or… what?"

Before she could call out again, a mangy white dog came loping around the corner, barking and wagging its tail. Anna bent down with a slight smile and scrubbed behind his ears. "Heya, Olaf! Where's the Doc, boy? Where'd he go?" He gave an answering yip that really was no help at all.

The hissing of hydraulics and white steam emanating from the back of the truck gave her all the information she needed. Moving around, she watched as the doors opened further; far enough to reveal piercing lights shining through the fog. A ramp slid out and down to the concrete, and out rolled…

A car. Not just any car– it was a crazy old 1980s model that almost looked more like something out of a cheesy movie on Syfy than a real automobile. It was familiar, though Anna hadn't ever seen one in person. What's more, this one was so souped up beyond recognition that it took her a moment to recall its name.

"A DeLorean…?" Stepping closer, she muttered under her breath, "Jesus, Doc. If you wanted a junker, we've got a freshly smashed one at home."

Then the gull-wing door of the ancient car hissed open, revealing a wild-eyed old man. His normally-white frizzled hair was stained green today – Anna didn't even want to ask why – and he was wearing a white radiation suit. When he got himself disentangled from the seatbelt and out of the car, she took a hesitant step toward him.

"Doc?"

He jumped, turning around to catch site of his poor assistant. "Anna!" he cried, breaking into a wider grin as he approached and gripped her shoulder, a zealous gleam in his eye. "You made it! And you brought the camera – excellent!"

Glancing past him at the car and its previous hiding place, she whispered, "Did you rig up a fog machine literally just for this reveal? Dude, that's… a little much."

"Don't be silly!" he chuckled. "Why pay for a fog machine when I have perfectly good dry ice just lying around?"

Anna could have left then and there. Instead, she rolled her eyes, yawned, and gestured pathetically with the camera. "Can we hurry up, please?" she asked. God she sounded pathetic, too. "Today hasn't been great…"

"Ah." Nodding sagely, he patted one shoulder even as the other hand moved to pick up a clipboard from the seat. "Trouble with your parents again? I understand. My own were rather… let's use the phrase 'disapproving' when it came to my own academic leanings. They wanted me to go into law – LAW!"

Then he leaned in, a gleam dancing in his beady eye. "But they were wrong, as are yours. Tonight, you and I are going to make scientific history!"

That was… honestly not what she wanted to hear. But maybe it was what she needed to hear. Something to get her mind off everything. Sucking in a breath, she nodded. "Okay, fine. Scientific history. What are we doing this time? Figuring out how to make weird cars worth something?"

"I know you're only joshing, but what if I said yes?"

Anna stared at him. "I'd say that you seem to misunderstand what 'scientific breakthrough' means, and this was a waste of time," she replied. Doc just laughed again.

"We have all the time in the world! Nothing will ever be a waste of time again because you see, my dear, dear Anna, what you're looking at isn't just a car! Oh no. It's a time machine."

She blinked. Then, she blinked again.

"Time machine," she repeated, voice terribly flat. Doc nodded. Pointing at the hunk of junk in front of her, she said, "That. Is a time machine."

"It is indeed. You're looking at the most valuable material possession in the world! See, look– come on! Turn on the camera!"

Numbly, Anna did as he said, turning on the antiquated device and pointing it at her mentor. It was way too late for this kind of bullshit. Patting down his front, Doc began speaking to the camera.

"Good evening. I'm Doctor Emmett Pabbie, and I'm standing at a parking lot of Twin Pines Mall, Dell Valley, California. It's Saturday morning, October 24, 2015—" here, he paused to check his watch, "—one thirty-eight in the morning, and this is temporal experiment number one."

What the- an actual experiment? Anna had seen enough Mythbusters to know that there should at least be safety glass and a fire extinguisher. Things always either exploded or caught on fire. Or both.

"This is not what I had in mind when I answered your Craigslist ad two years ago," she muttered under her breath as she focused the lens on him. No, she'd expected to be making a thousand pots of coffee a day and helping to type out some terrible handwriting. Not this.

She was brought back to the present by a whistling noise – Doc was flicking his fingers back and forth over the driver's seat, calling Olaf to him. The dog hopped up into seat, and Doc put a seatbelt around his furry body.

"Alright," Doc said as he held up two stopwatches, one from around his own neck and the other from Olaf's. "As you can see, both watches are synchronised, down to the millisecond." They both turned over to 1:40 at the same instant. "Great. Now, Olaf – stay."

The dog obediently cocked its head at his master, as if he might get a treat if he obeyed, but instead the door was shut above him. Then, Doc pulled out something she definitely did not expect to see next: a complex remote control setup that made her think of the ones used by drones and other UAVs. Before she even had a chance to say, "What the actual fuck," the car was zooming away, Doc controlling it with the remote.

Poor Olaf.

He was making it travel to the far end of the parking lot, lining it up so it would have a clear run of the parking lot. Whether it was supposed to do something fancy like time travel or what, Anna had no idea – she was more concerned by the fact that it was pointing directly at them. But they were supposed to move before the experiment began.

Right?

"This is it" he was saying with that same old Doc Pabbie manic gleam in his eyes. "We are standing on the precipice of the greatest scientific discovery since the wheel." He turned to look at his young protegé. "Keep that camera rolling, Anna, because if my calculations are correct, as soon as this baby hits 88 miles per hour, we're going to see some serious shit."

"Well, if we don't move, I'm going to shit myself. It's pointed right at us!" Anna's eyes widened as she stared at him. Doc noticed.

"Don't film me! Watch the car!"

Quickly correcting herself, she pointed the camera at the car, very aware of the fact that the car was pointing at them, and Doc actually seemed pretty keen on keeping it that way. He glared – actually glared! – at her when she shuffled to the side. Then, he hit some buttons and pressed some levers, and suddenly the air was filled with the smell of burning rubber as the car's tires spun in place along the pothole-riddled bitumen.

Anna's brain did some rapid calculations as the car came careening towards them. On the one hand, she was pretty upset right now with her whole life and family and all that shit; on the other hand, she didn't actually want to die.

But, then again, in all the years she had spent assisting Doc, she could truly call him a friend, even with the half-century age difference. Running them over with a rapidly moving chunk of nostalgia was wildly out of character – not to mention the fact that Doc would never, ever knowingly put Olaf in danger.

This was, after all, the man who had taught her to drive because her mother couldn't and her father wouldn't; the man who once spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time working on an immortality serum for dogs. He had a plan, Anna knew he had a plan.

Which was good. because the DeLorean was almost on top of them.

Anna was moments from deciding to shut her eyes, unwilling to be faced with her own mortality, when something odd began happening with the car. Huge crackles of electricity began to crawl over the bodywork of the car and a jet of flame erupted from the back of the vehicle.

And then it was gone. The entire car, everything inside of it, had winked out of existence, leaving behind nothing but two fire trails along the ground.

"I… wait, WHAT?!"

"It worked!" Doc cackled, hopping up and down. "What did I tell you?! Eighty-eight miles per hour!"

Anna stumbled, the camera now hanging loosely from her hand as she walked toward the only piece that had been left behind when it vanished; a smoking license plate that said "OUTATIME". She would have laughed at the humour if the rest of the situation felt as funny. Her hand strayed down to pick it up, but it was hot to the touch, and she dropped it with a hiss of surprise.

"What the actual shit?! Jeez, Doc, you disintegrated Olaf!"

"Not 'disintegrated', Miss McFly!" he said, doing a little jig of pure glee as he joined her side. "I assure you, both my trusty canine companion and his scientific chariot are both perfectly intact!"

Mouth flapping for a moment, Anna couldn't quite find her voice. She opened her arms, indicating the empty parking lot as her head swung back and forth. Almost as if she would see the DeLorean in some far off corner - which was ridiculous, but she couldn't help herself. Doc may have been a tinkerer, and true, many of his inventions did work. But they weren't marketable ones, and never on this scale! It was more likely that he'd figured out how to do literally anything else to the car other than it being a time machine. Disintegrating it was high on her list.

"Then where the hell is he?" she cried, when he didn't seem to be understanding her unspoken question,

"Wrong question, dear girl!" he giggled, like a preschooler with a secret cookie in his pocket. "You should be asking, 'when the hell are they?' I have just sent them into the FUTURE!" Anna was still blinking when he held up a pair of fingers. "Two minutes into the future, to be precise! Only enough to ensure that the experiment is a success, but not so much that we lose control of the testing site!"

Anna needed to sit down. Her legs were jelly. "Time machine," she said dazedly, eyes wide. Her stomach rolled and she wasn't even sure why. "You built a time machine. Out of a DeLorean?" Where the fuck did he even get a DeLorean, anyway?

"Well, if you're gonna build a time machine, you may as well do it in style," he said. Anna barely got through her eye roll before he continued with, "Plus, the stainless-steel construction made the flux dispersal a full 67% more effective than if I'd used a more contemporary model."

"Where did you even find one, Doc?" Anna asked in an exhale. Maybe if she focused on the small impossibilities, it would make the bigger ones less daunting.

Doc grinned. "Well, funny you should ask-" He was cut off from continuing by a sharp beep, emanating from the watch. There was a millisecond of silence before Anna was pushed roughly to the side. "Look out!"

There was a very sci-fi sounding whiz-bang-pop, and suddenly the car reappeared, skidding along the ground. It seemed to hiss as it settled, and steam was rolling off it in waves. Or perhaps not. As Anna moved slowly, a few paces behind Doc, it became apparent that the car wasn't burning – quite the opposite.

It was frozen.

Careful to keep his hand wrapped in the sleeve of his labcoat, Doc opened the door. Olaf let out a cheerful yip and Anna was not going to admit just how relieved she was that he wasn't disintegrated.

"What did I tell you?" Doc repeated over and over, scrubbing behind the dog's ears. Anna had to admit, the man really did love his dog; at first, she had been worried that he used him for experiments - after her initial concern that he wanted to use her for experiments - but it didn't take long to see that he loved Olaf, and only used him as a practical test subject once he was at least reasonably certain that he would be safe. Most of the time, he would use a potato or something similar first, then graduate to Olaf, and then run the test on himself – sometimes herself, too, if necessary. And she consented - whenever it didn't sound like she would be in mortal danger.

"It actually works," she breathed numbly, approaching. But then she saw Doc waving at the camera, so she raised it and aimed at the two of them. It had been recording the whole time; she forgot to hit 'pause' because she was so distracted by a working time machine actually existing.

"As you can see here, now Olaf's stopwatch is exactly two minutes behind mine and still ticking! For us, he ceased to exist for that period in time, but for my little devil here, it was as if he never left. Isn't that right, Laffy?"

Once more, Olaf gave a happy little yip. Well, he sounded happy, but as soon as Doc gave him enough room, he was out the car and into the Doc's trailer, staring at them through one of the grimy windows. Whatever Doc said about it being instantaneous, Anna had the impression that perhaps it wasn't quite that clear-cut. Perhaps it was one of those sixth-sense things that animals had. Either way, Olaf seemed pretty chuffed at not being in the DeLorean anymore.

She didn't have much time to wonder, though, because Doc was quickly calling her over. "Come and I'll show you how it works!"

Intrigued, Anna moved closer. It looked like a car, and it was. Well, the front half. The back started looking more like some relic from an old Star Trek series, all winking lights and buttons.

"This," he said, pointing to a few cables in a glass box nestled in the back seat. It was shaped like a Y and had the words 'flux capacitor' written above it. "Is the flux capacitor." Well, duh… "It's what makes time travel work. And here," he turned, pointing at the front console where the CD – or probably cassette – player should have been. Instead, there were three rows of clocks, looking similar to her digital alarm at home. "This is where you input the destination. The middle one is when you are, the bottom is when you were, and the top one is when you're going. "

"If you say so," Anna mumbled distantly. They were all labelled, as Doc was always completely meticulous about labelling everything. Even a saxophone hanging in his lab had a label stuck to its side that said "saxophone", as if it was at all necessary.

"Anywhere – anyTIME you want to be is at your fingertips. Let's say you want to witness the signing of the Declaration of Independence. All you need to do is type the date – in the scientific fashion. Year, month, day." In he typed 1776-7-2. "Or the Normandy landing?" 1944-6-6. "What about… seeing 'The Wizard Of Oz' when it was brand new?" 1939-8-25.

"Follow the yellow brick road," Anna couldn't help muttering, filming everything even as her head spun. "Wow… you can seriously do that? I mean, not just make a dog disappear for a few minutes?"

A twinkle shone in Emmett Pabbie's eyes. "That, and so much more. Ah – here's a red letter date in the history of science: November 5th, 1985." Wistful, he typed in the date.

"Right, yeah. I mean… wait, what date is that? You know I suck at history."

"Well, it's Guy Fawkes Night, but I wouldn't expect an average American student to know that. No… it's going to be remembered for a completely different reason: the date that time travel was invented." His eyes took on a distant look as he leaned back in the DeLorean's seat. "I remember it vividly: I was hanging a clock in my bathroom, standing on the toilet. The porcelain was wet, I slipped and hit my head on the edge of the sink; knocked myself out cold. When I came to, I had a revelation! A vision, a picture in my head! A picture… of this."

His finger drew both of their attentions to the flux capacitor, gently glowing in the technology-appropriated back seat. He had said that was the only thing that made time travel work in the first place, and it had all come to him because he was a klutz. Why not? That was one of the few things they had bonded over when she started working for him: both were slight outcasts who could be remarkably uncoordinated.

It was sort of encouraging, in a way. It meant that Anna could maybe be a complete failure and still succeed at something. Then again… her parents didn't have a great track record.

Ugh. She didn't want to think of her parents. Shaking her head, she followed him as he moved back towards the trailer. "So Doc, I don't suppose this runs on regular unleaded? You sure did add a bunch of equipment on the back there."

Doc gave a snort. "Unfortunately, no. A machine like this requires a little more… kick. Plutonium."

Wait, what? "Plutonium? What kind of- Doc, are- are you telling me this baby is nuclear?" Anna found herself taking a cautious step to the side – not that it would make much of a difference.

"Of course not. It's electrical – what is this, the Dark Ages? I just need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of power I need."

"And where, might I ask, did you get the plutonium? Just run down to the closest nuclear power plant and ask for a sample?"

At that, the Doc came striding back, waving his hands like he was trying to get her to shut up. "I stole it," he whispered harshly. "From a group of nationalists. They wanted me to build them a bomb, so I took their plutonium and, in turn, gave them a shoddy bomb casing full of used pinball machine parts. Come on! Let's get you a radiation suit. We must prepare to reload."

"Wha-?" Honestly, Anna had not signed up to handle nuclear material. Seriously. The ad had said "part time assistant to help eccentric inventor". The pay wasn't half bad and he had zero expectations other than "show up". It was perfect!

Except for when shit like this happened.

Soon enough, they had "reloaded" the nuclear chamber in the back of the car. At least Doc was professional enough to have dressed them both in radiation suits; Anna was sweating from the thick material, but she definitely didn't feel any weird tingling that might mean she was infected by the plutonium.

"Almost forgot my luggage," Doc said, slipping a suitcase into the car. "Who knows if they have my brand of underwear in the future?"

"The future," Anna breathed, mystified by this entire series of events. Now that she had gotten over the bizarreness and thought about the possibilities, she was excited and began to grin. "Headed forward, like Olaf? How far?"

"Twenty-five years," he said with a shrug. "2040 should be interesting. I've always dreamed of seeing beyond my years, observing the progress of mankind. Find out if that Phantom cartoon was correct about anything."

Anna's eyebrows twitched together. "What cartoon?"

"Roll tape." Obediently, she raised the camera. He was the inventor and she was just along for the ride; no sense in delaying him. "I, Dr Emmett L. Pabbie, being of sound mind, am about to embark on a historic journey." Then he slapped his forehead. "IDIOT!"

"What?!"

"I almost forgot to bring extra plutonium!" Gesturing toward the yellow crate, he laughed. "Where is my head today? One rod, one trip – I'd never be able to come back here without it! I must be losing-"

They were interrupted by Olaf's excited barking. Both of them looked over at the far corner of the mall parking lot to see a beat-up white VW van barrelling toward them. It was still quite far away, but it looked very conspicuous given that the entire carpark was completely deserted.

Anna was still staring at them when Doc stumbled towards her, a hand on his head. "Oh my God. They found me. I don't know how they possibly could have, but they found me." Taking a staggering step back from the DeLorean, he shouted, "Run for it, Anna!"

"Who?" Anna swung the camera round reflexively as Doc rushed away and to the other side of his own truck. Even in that short a time, the camper had come significantly closer. The men inside appeared to be hell bent on arriving as fast as possible, with no regard to safety whatsoever. They did not, however, need safe driving, since what they appeared to have was a statistically significant quantity of AR-15s. One of the people inside, wearing a scarf and a balaclava to hide his identity poked his torso out of the sunroof of the camper and pulled the slide back on his automatic weapon.

Anna considered herself something of a wild child – and perhaps in her more fanciful moments even a child of the world – but this was completely outside of her norm. No one should find themselves staring down the barrel of a gun, let alone a teen girl whose only weapon was a video camera. She jumped behind the only object nearby that might offer her any protection, the DeLorean, as her mind went blank with terror. The distinctive sound of automatic gunfire resonated in her torso, as the sound of bullets tore through her mind.

It is an oft-noted fact by gun enthusiasts throughout the world that handling an automatic weapon is a tricky endeavour at best, and that a solid stable firing platform is required, along with good trigger discipline and time down the range to learn to deal with recoil. But clearly the half-crazed fanatic leaning out of the top of the camper had absolutely none of these qualities, and consequently managed to place bullets in a wide array of locations in the car park. None of them in Anna, Doc, or Olaf and none in the DeLorean either, she hoped.

That would really ruin her boss-slash-friend's day.

'I don't want to die. I really don't want to die.' The thought kept rolling through Anna's mind, over and over again.

"Stay down, Anna!" Doc shouted, pulling out of his toolbox… a revolver. Not a handgun, not a police-issue Glock or a private one, but an actual legit revolver like someone would use in an old gangster movie. It would have been comical if the situation weren't so serious.

The van bore down on him, and he held up both hands before he could get the gun loaded and fire off a single shot. So he tossed it toward them, palms open. From her position, Anna could see him. Hands up and sweating, despite the cool air.

"Gentlemen! Perhaps I could persuade you to reconsider such a drastic course of action? There's still plenty of plutonium left; I could have something for you by the end of-"

He never got to finish the sentence. Now that they were parked and idling in front of him, the jilted terrorist seemed to have no trouble firing a few rounds into his chest, blowing him backward and out of Anna's sight.

"NOOOOO!" she wailed, face stretched wide in horror. Gripping the camera more tightly, she ran toward them. She didn't know what made her do it, other than adrenaline and grief, but she ended up screaming the stupidest thing possible with tears running down her cheeks.

"IT'S NOT NICE TO SHOOT PEOPLE!"

By the time she realised that running towards the armed men was possibly even sillier than the words she'd just uttered, it was too late. She was directly in their sights.

Shit. Her life flashed behind her eyes. Pathetic life, obviously, but with a few bright spots. Despite the bizarre experiments, she had actually enjoyed working with Doc. And Jennifer… she would wake up tomorrow to see her face plastered across the news She could even see the headlines: "Eccentric Doctor, Stupid Assistant, Killed".

Closing her eyes, accepting her fate, Anna sucked in a breath. It was like the world had narrowed into this one moment; lights flooding down, bad guys staring at her down the barrel of a gun. Maybe her family could finally be happy this way. Always a silver lining somewhere.

Click.

Eyes opening, Anna realised with some surprise that she was actually Not Dead, and her face lit up in a grin. "HaHA, suckers!" she crowed – before they glared at her. "Oh shit!"

But they were still struggling with the jammed rifle. That gave her time to actually get out of the way. There was only one option: she leapt into the open DeLorean.

Her hands found the keys as her foot punched the accelerator. Luckily, the car seemed to have been converted to an automatic at some point in its existence, and it flung itself forward across the tarmac. The crazed gunman twisted wildly whilst yelling something at the driver, and the camper lurched forwards.

"All right, time to see if your shitmobile can keep up with a time machine," Anna muttered as she swerved the DeLorean wildly across the lot, forcing the camper to turn unexpectedly and throwing the terrorist's aim off. The staccato of bullets caused Anna flashes of sheer terror and she punched the accelerator right through the floor.

Anna had of course forgotten something significant. It actually was a time machine, and not just a getaway vehicle. Just as she saw a rocket launcher in her wing mirror – AN ACTUAL ROCKET LAUNCHER, IN DELL VALLEY, WERE THEY CRAZY – lights began to flash and flicker, both inside the car and outside. She gripped the wheel more tightly, glancing down at the speedometer: 88.

That particular number seemed familiar for some reason…

Then electricity began to crackle in front of and all around her, temporarily blinding her, and the car was shaking as if caught in a hurricane. And something felt very different, as if she were being forced through a pinhole by an unseen deity. There was else nothing for her to do but hang on for dear life.

"Help!"

To Be Continued…

#Fractal The Future #fruipit #forkanna writes #Back to the Future #elsanna fanfiction #forkanna the writer

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sailormew4 · 7 years ago

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Hole in Time Chapter 1: When Are We?

Summary: What if instead of going to another reality Team Voltron goes to a different time?

A.N: Couldn’t get this idea out of my mind and Mind Trip has been hard to think of a decent plotline so here is this garbage.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After receiving a ditress signal the Paladins rush over to find the source. When they arrive they see a large wormhole.

“Are we sure Lotor is in there?” asks Lance curiously as they stare at the wormhole.

“I’m certain,” answers Allura as she wonders why would anyone possibly choose be in there.

“I don’t know Allura, I don’t trust the fact that it’s not like any wormhole we’ve seen before,” comments Hunk staring at it with reluctance.

Allura looks at it as she bites her lip as she sighs and says, “We’re Paladins of Voltron, we should at least see if its safe then see what Lotor is planning.”

“Sending drone now,” says Pidge as she sends a drone.

They all watch with baited breath as the drone goes through the wormhole as Pidge looks at the scans as she comments, “The drone is completely fine, so I’m assuming it’s safe to go through.”

“Let’s form Voltron just in case,” comments Keith as they go down to the Lions. “Who knows what he’s planning.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After a quick forming of Voltron Keith stares down the wormhole as he orders, “Pidge, keep an eye on Voltron’s vitals.”

“Got it.”

They float cautiously through the wormhole as they brace themselves for any attack, but none come.

“Shouldn’t we be seeing Lotor or anything right now?” asks Lance curiously as they look around to just see empty space.

Keith growls annoyed as he says, “Lotor, couldn’t have just vanished. Let’s go back and see where he might’ve gone.”

Everyone sighs in agreement as Pidge looks behind them and says, “Uh guys, that might be a problem, but look the wormhole is gone.”

Quickly they all turn around as Hunk asks, “Uh so what did we just go through? And how do we get back?”

“I think it might’ve been a natural teleportation wormhole but a small one. I see the castle in the distance,” says Allura as they saw the castle as well.

“Looks, like Lotor was just looking for a short cut,” says Keith as he groans as he looks in distance. “He’s long gone too, so let’s head back and maybe we can regroup and find him. It’s already late.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When they arrive at the castle they arrive in the Hanger when alarms begin blaring through the ship as Lance sees something in Red’s Hanger asks through the comms, “Uh is anyone else seeing something in the Hanger?”

“Oh good. I thought I might’ve been the only one,” says Hunk with a sigh of relief.

Keith growls annoyed as he asks, “Allura, is there a place where we store the Lions till we figure this out?”

“I believe so,” answers Allura as she leads them to a second Hanger. When they do Keith motions them to take out their Bayards to deal with the supposed intruders.

They sneak around the castle as they walk to the Bridge as they look around as Hunk comments, “Wasn’t Coran supposed to be here waiting?”

Allura looks around the Bridge and thinks back to Hanger incident as she comments, "This is quite strange. We couldn't have been gone that long."

Suddenly the lights go out as panic begins to ensue through the Paladins.

"What's going on?!"

"Guys?!"

"Allura! What happened?!"

"It must be the intruders!"

"Show yourselves!"

Suddenly yells of shock and grunts of pain are heard as the lights turn back on as the Paladins blink rapidly adjusting to sudden change in light as they look to see six people in Paladin uniform while they're tied up in a green rope as Keith demands, "Who are you?! What are doing in here?!"

"Keith?" asks a somewhat familiar voice in the Blue Paladin uniform.

"Do I know you?" asks Keith rudely.

The man in blue looks at the others as he motions them with a confused look and a shrug as they take a closer look as they gasp in shock and mutter in amazement.

The person in the Pink armor looks as they whisper, "Oh dear. This can't be good."

The person in green cringes as they takes off the ropes as they apologize, "Sorry about that we thought you were intruders."

"If anyone is the intruders it's you! What are you doing in my castle?!" demands Allura annoyed even they're free as she forms her energy whip as the "intruders" back up.

"Allura! Calm down! We can explain!" says the person in black as they take off their helmet to reveal.....

"Shiro?!" yells the Paladins shocked and confused.

"Shiro?! What's going on? Where have you been? We've been looking for you! And who are they?" demands Keith irritated yet relieved to see his brother safe and sound.

"Uh well um Keith I don't know what or how to tell you, but I'm not your Shiro," says Shiro slowly as the Paladins look at weirdly. "I mean. I am, but you see I'm 28."

The Paladins freeze as Pidge asks slowly, "So wait... we time traveled? That's a thing now?!"

"Forget that! How do we get back! The wormhole closed!" yells Lance suddenly even more worried.

Shiro clears his throat as he says, "Don't panic. We'll figure this out. So while I go wake Coran to help us just sit tight and chat?"

Shiro quickly walks out the room as Pidge stares at the others as she guesses, "I'm going to guess that you're our future selves."

They nod as Lance notices the awkward atmosphere as he jokes, "Well come on. Don't be shy. It's not like we don't know each other. I bet I'm even more attractive then usual."

The future Paladins snicker as they go take off their helmets as they take a good look at what might come to.

Allura takes notice how her future self cut her hair to little above her shoulders. She greets, "It's nice to see you."

Allura takes her hand as she says, "It's amazing to see that I might make it through this war for another three deca-phoebs."

Hunk looks at his future self. He definitely grew more muscles in these three years. He also sees stubble growing around his chin. He also has piercings as Hunk asks, "Are those Balmeran piercings?"

His future self blushes as he answers, "Uh yeah... we visit Balmera some time in your future."

Pidge looks at her future self with an analyzing look. She has longer hair enough to put it into a small ponytail. She still has Matt's glasses which is good she wouldn't know what she do if she lost them as she decides to comment, "It's nice to see some things haven't change."

"Yeah, and I gotta admit it's nice to be tall," she jokes as she is now a head taller than her past self.

Lance looks at his future self as he has a scar right above his eyebrow as he grew a little more lean and muscular but something about the way he keeps looking to the side shows Lance he's nervous as he jokes, "Good to see my looks stayed."

His future self chuckles as he adds, "Please, as if we could lose it."

Keith scoffs at the sight of them as he looks at his future self. Nothing change other than the fact he has two scars on his cheek and he puts his hair in a ponytail. Keith just greets with a simple 'hey' as they greet back with a nod.

Shiro quickly comes back with Coran as Coran says with wide eyes, "Ah I see Shiro was serious, but need not worry. This is just a simple of creating a device to return you to your time."

"Great, do we need a DeLorean or a police box?" jokes Lance as some of the Paladins snicker at the joke.

"I'm not sure that species or a box to hold law enforcement could help with this, but I need to ask," starts Coran as he looks at his past Paladins. "Did anyone else go through the wormhole?"

"We received a message saying Prince Lotor went in the wormhole as well," answers Allura cautiously.

The future Paladins grow wide as before they could say anything Pidge lets out a yawn as she apologizes, "Sorry, continue."

Shiro smiles as he says, "No. You guys need sleep. I can't imagine how long you were up. Go to bed I'm sure we won't mind sharing."

"But Shiro-," starts Keith before Shiro gives him a look as he groans as they walk to their rooms.

Keith looks at them with one more look before the door closes on them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shiro sees the door close as he looks back to his team as he says with an exasperated sigh, "So, looks like we need to deal with Lotor... again."

"He can't be too hard to find Shiro. We know how he works," reassures Allura as she looks at the time. "But, I believe after that... surprising awakening we need to rest. So I shall be turning in."

Allura goes over to Shiro and kisses him on the cheek as she mutters about how he needs to sleep in his own room. Shiro then looks at the others to see what they're going to do.

"Yeah, sorry after that I'm wide awake I'm going to see if I can find a way to make a time machine," says Pidge before she snickers. "Hehe, Matt is going to freak out when he finds out what I'm doing."

Shiro then realizes about that factor as he warns, "When you call him tell him to warn us if he's coming back home."

"Got it!"

Shiro looks at Hunk who says, "I'm going to bed. Night Shiro."

"Night," responds Shiro as he looks at Keith and Lance. "You know what this means right? If I have to hide my relationship so do you too, so what does mean?"

Keith rolls his eyes as he says, "We sleep in our own rooms instead of each others."

"Exactly," agrees Shiro as they look at Lance.

"But we can kiss and stuff if they aren't around right?" asks Lance as he kisses Keith on the lips as he pulls back with a smirk. "You know. Outta sight. Outta mind."

Shiro nods as he walks off mentioning about going to bed. Lance and Keith look at each other as Keith notices the look in Lance's eyes as he says with a smile, "Fine. One more kiss and then you gotta go to your own room.... promise."

"Paladin's honor," says Lance as he kisses Keith one more time.

Lance watches Keith walk away with content smile as he follows him after about a minute past. He just hopes they don't ruin the timeline but an accidental slip up.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yeah, not a good start I know but I promise it will get better... I hope. Either way hehe anyway anyone want to help me think of ways to differentiate between present and future Paladins.

#voltron #voltron legendary defender #klance #shallura #takashi shirogane #lance mcclain #keith kogane #princess allura #pidge gunderson #hunk garrett #coran hieronymus wimbleton smythe #time travel fic #hole in time #my fic #matt holt #is mentioned #might be hints of shalluratt in future

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supernatural-firstwatch · 7 years ago

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Season 5 Episode 13: The Song Remains the Same

It’s snowing! But I won’t get a snow day tomorrow because I am telework ready. Sad.

- Are we ever going to see Anna again? I don’t know why I just now thought about the fact that it’s been a LOOOOONG time since we last saw her. And the last time a couple of Angels “escorted” her back to heaven. Is she dead? Is that what happened? :(

- LOL! Oh Dean. It’s good to know your still meeting your carnal needs.

- OH! SPEAK OF THE ANGEL AND SHE APPEARS!!!! HI ANNA!!! I WAS LITERALLY JUST THINKING ABOUT YOU!

- Awh, poor Dean. It was just a dream.

- Oh, Angels have a prison too? Oh, sounds unpleasant. “All the torture, twice the self-righteousness.”

- So, in the previous episode we had Dean with a bounty on his head courtesy of the the Demons, and in this episode we have the Angels gunning after Sam.

- AWH!!!! CASS!!! Sam has grown on you, huh? “Sam is my friend.” I wonder if Sam realizes that...? It’s not like Cass and Sam have had that much meaningful interactions on screen so far.

- That’s a nice car. WOAH! ANNA!!! Oh, she’s alive. Uh... Wait. That poster of Grease is like, it’s out right now. What year did Grease come out? 1978, so Dean’s not born yet.

- Awh, Cass is totally lying about Sam dying not stopping Satan.

- DEAN THAT IS A BRILLIANT REFERENCE!!!! “So you’re like a DeLorean without enough plutonium?” LOOOOL!!!!! Oncec they’re done saving the world, Sam and Dean are going to have to have a couple of marathons with Cass.

- BACK TO THE FUTURE!!!!! But it’s not 1955, it’s 1978! SAM IS GOING TO GET TO MEET HIS MOM!!!! Cass, that’s what you call “better than I excepted”??? You’re coughing blood! “What do I look like, Dr. Angel Medicine woman?” LOL!

- You know, the best part is that they can just tell the truth to Mary and she’ll be like “Awh, fuck me. Fine. Let’s go kill some angels.” Although, depending on the year, she might be preggers with Dean cause Dean was born in January 1979 so she was pregnant in April 1978. Grease came out in June 1978. So Mary is 2 months pregnant with Dean right now! Man, sometimes my nerdiness astounds me.

- SAM’S FACE AT SEEING MARY!!!!! You can see he’s just drinking her in! AWWWW!!!! SAM!!!! He’s all teary-eyed at meeting his mom!!!! I wonder if he was emotionally prepping himself for this. I don’t think there’s enough preparedness in the world for this...

- Sam, you need to stop being so creepy. I know this is emotionally difficult for you, but... You’re creeping out Mary. And she’s a hunter.

- Oh John. The times when you were still young and innocent. And didn’t know any better. Awh! Owner of the shop got his eyes burned out by Anna. Thanks a lot, Anna. You know, if she managed to kill John, Dean would still be born, but Sam never would.

- WELL THEN!!! JOHN JUST LEARNED SOME LESSONS JUST THEN!!!!

- FUCK! IT MUST HAVE BEEN SO FUCKING WEIRD FOR JOHN WHEN HE REALIZED THAT THE DEAN HE MET IN 1978 WAS HIS SON AND THEN MADE THE CONNECTION THAT SAM WAS HIS SON TOO!!!!

- AWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!! THIS WHOLE SCENE BETWEEN SAM AND JOHN!!!!! AND SAM FINALLY GETTING TO TELL JOHN THAT HE UNDERSTANDS WHY HE DID WHAT HE DID! AND THAT HE FORGIVES HIM! AND THAT HE LOVES HIM!!!!!! SO WHEN SAM WAS AN ANGRY TEENAGER JOHN KNEW THAT SAM WOULD LOVE HIM AND FORGIVE HIM! I AM GETTING VERY EMOTIONAL OVER THIS!!!!

- URIEL??? BUT I THOUGHT HE DIED!!! CASS KILLED HIM! Oooooh... It’s 30 years in the past Uriel! Right. Everyone would be in the past.

- DEAN SPILLED THE BEANS!!!!! MARY KNOWS EVERYTHING!!!!!! AWH!!!! THAT MEANS SHE NOW HAS MET HER ADULT CHILDREN! AND SHE KNOWS HOW THEY TURN OUT!!! That was likely a comforting and distressing thought to her for the next 5 years.

- HAH! See? June 1978. She’s 2 months pregnant with Dean already!

- OUCH!!! SAM JUST GOT IMPALED!!!

- WOAH!!!! Michael took over John! Likely because he wants his vessel :P

- That... is an unpleasant death for Anna.

- DEAN AND SAM ARE RELATED TO CAIN AND ABEL???? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!! That actually explains their relationship a lot. Lulz. But funnily enough it’s from their FATHER’S side! HAH! The non-hunter side! This is just hilarious. OMFG DEAN! “Six degrees if Heaven Bacon.” That’s fucking gold.

- Awh no... Mary and John forgot everything. And now John won’t know what Sam told him... That is sad...

- “Team Free Will. One ex-blood junkie, one drop out with six bucks to his name, and Mr. Comatose over there.” I mean, so, like, we all know the brothers are each others’ weak spots. If they could save one another, they’d say yes. It’s like Sam said. “If you could save mom, would you say yes?” And Dean did not have an answer to that. I do like the fact that Sam agonizes over the fact that he’s “been weak before” in reference to him starting to drink demon blood when Dean died. Dean sold his soul and Sam turned into a junkie. That shrink from Sam, Interrupted was right. They have a very unhealthy co-dependent relationship.

- Awh, Mary. No. Don’t even joke about that because it’s true. Angels are fucking watching over Dean.

I AM VERY EMOTIONAL OVER SAM MEETING HIS MOM!!! AND GETTING TO TELL JOHN THAT HE LOVES HIM AND FORGIVES HIM!!! AND THE FACT THEY BOTH FORGOT THOSE THINGS!!!!!

#supernatural #sam winchester #dean winchester #season 5 #first time watching #mary winchester was a hunter #and she kicked ass #john learned the truth #john and mary met sam and dean #but then angels happened #angels are dicks

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pizza-is-my-buziness · 7 years ago

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write me that good fwen fic tho

Guys I don’t care I’m so committed to this idea (that I have invented honestly with very little actual real-life support because that’s how I roll) that Dove Cameron is playing Gwen Stacy and man I am here for it. I am here for Gwen Stacy and Fitz joining forces to bring the team back from space and so…

True friendship is sending prompts for a ship/character that doesn’t exist.

He starts keeping a countdown after a week, something he addsto every morning when he wakes up and walks into the motel’s bathroom to brushhis teeth and splash some water on his face. He studies his reflection and addsanother tick with dry-erase marker in the corner of the mirror: day eightwithout the team. Day ten. Day fifteen. Day twenty.

Every mark makes Fitz’s mouth go dry and a heaviness settleover his shoulders that he isn’t sure that he’s ever going to be able to shake.

Of course, that’s not entirely true, he reasons. He will beable to shake that heaviness when he stops being such a disappointment andfigures out how to bring the team back from…wherever they’ve gone to.

The problem, Fitz knows, is that he has literally no idea ofwhere they could have gone. And the universe, as large and multi-layered as itis, is a very large place to search. A needle in a haystack that stretches outinfinitely.

Fitz adds another mark to his calendar, tries to make himselflook presentable, and goes out into the world, marveling over the way it’schanged in the past twenty-three days. No one seems to realize it but him, ofcourse. Everyone he passes is going on with life as he assumes they alwayshave, unaware that his entire world has disappeared. His team, his friends. Allof them gone.

Every morning, he goes to the diner where he last saw them.Fitz plays the scene out endlessly in his head, over and over, searching forsomething he might have missed. First: breakfast, the plates spread out beforethem on the counter, the first hot meal he’d had in days. Second: the lightsgoing out, the place swarming with black-clothed figures with guns. Heremembers putting his hands up and then…

And then he was alone. When he opened his eyes again, when helooked around, when he tensed, ready to take on the threat, it was only him atthe counter and a handful of confused restaurant patrons and employees whocouldn’t seem to quite remember that there had been other people there at thecounter with Fitz.

The team had vanished into thin air. And he can’t figure outhow to get them back.

Fitz shakes his head at himself as he pushes the door open tothe diner, stepping inside, trying to swallow down the disappointment. Someoneelse should have been left behind; the team’s return and survival should dependon someone else. Someone better. Someone who can actually figure out what todo.

Fitz sits in his usual booth, always empty by chance, thoughit seems more and more like fate, and pulls his laptop out, watching as thescreen brightens with life.

“You again,” the waitress says when she sidles up to thebooth, sliding over an empty mug and filling it with a flourish. “You mightwant to try the Starbucks down the street. Better coffee.”

She’s been his waitress for the past several times he’s comein; Fitz figures that her shift lines up perfectly with the start of hisendlessly disappointing day. Her nametag says Gwen and she always wears herblonde hair back in a messy ponytail that always looks one good shake away fromcoming loose.

Fitz grunts a sort of thank you, a smile on his face as hetakes the coffee. “I like this place,” he tells her, though that’s pretty farfrom the truth. “Can I have-”

“The usual,” Gwen supplies for him without taking the pad outof her apron pocket. “Enrique is already on it.” She jabs her thumb over hershoulder in the direction of the kitchen. “You’re pretty predictable, you know.”

Fitz shrugs, sipping his coffee. It takes like tar mixed withdishwater, the way it always does. Gwen, or someone, leaves the pot on theburner for too long. Maybe he shouldtry the Starbucks.

Except the Starbucks isn’t where his friends up and vanishedfrom.

Gwen disappears to wipe the counters and talk to the handfulof other customers in the diner –there are never many- and reappears only todrop off his food and to fill his coffee mug. And all the while, Fitz searchesfor something he’s missed before.

He scours the news reports of mention of Quake, of mysteriousstrangers, of unexplained occurrences.

He checks hospital and prison intake records, looking forpeople making the team’s description, for patients or prisoners with memoryissues and unexplained backstories.

Fitz messages Jemma’s parents, a causal query so they won’tworry. He reaches out to Mack’s brother, tries to contact May’s father…whichdoesn’t work, of course. He even searches through the lowest bowels of theInternet, trying to see if people are talking about…anything.

There’s nothing.

There’s never anything at all.

Because if there’s one thing Fitz has been good at recently,it’s disappointing his friends.

Finally, Fitz looks away from his computer, rubbing hisblurry eyes with the heel of his hand, glancing around the diner. The world isstuck in the weird window of time between breakfast and lunch and he’s the onlyperson in the diner aside from an older man, another regular, who sips coffeeand studies the newspaper every morning.

Across the diner, Fitz can see Gwen sitting in one of thebooths, headphones in, bobbing her head in time to whatever music she’slistening to. There are books spread open before her, science and chemistrytexts by the look of them, and she has her feet propped up on the bench seatacross from her.

She looks, for the first time, like someone that people wouldlook twice at.

Gwen lifts her head, meeting his gaze, lifting her hand tohim in a brief wave of acknowledgement. Fitz nods, turning his attention backto his laptop. It’s just as useless now as it was sixty seconds ago.

It’s almost a welcome relief when Gwen steps up to his booth,sliding into the seat opposite of where he’s sitting. Fitz sits up straighter,staring at her. It’s strange: she and the people who work at this diner are theonly people he’s interacted with in the past twenty-three days.

“So what are you always working on?” Gwen ask, tapping hislaptop. “Whatever it is, it always leaves you looking incredibly depressed.Though,” she reasons, “that could be the coffee.”

Fitz smiles, a half-smile, but it’s the best he can do. “Whatare you studying?” He asks rather than try to invent a way to respond to herquestion.

Gwen glances down at the bag sitting in the seat beside her,strap slipping off her shoulder. “Oh, Selvig and Foster’s theory onmulti-dimensional travel.” She flips her hand. “I’m working as a TA for Dr.Boothby this semester.”

Fitz sits up straighter in his seat, eyes widening. “Multi-dimensionaltravel,” he repeats, barely above a whisper.

Something he hasn’t considered before.

Now that Gwen has any idea the switch she’s just clicked intoplace. “We can’t exactly ignore the facts anymore,” she says, “not with whathappened in New York and with Thor and with-”

“I don’t know why I didn’t think about that before,” Fitzsays with a shake of his head.

Gwen’s brow furrows slightly. “Are you the type of person whousually thinks about multiple dimensions?”

“Gwen,” Fitz says, his smile genuine for the first time in twenty-threedays, “you’re a genius.”

“I’m sorry you’re only just now figuring this out,” Gwen sayswith a sigh. “That’s a little disappointing, honestly. I thought you would bemore impressed by my coffee-pouring abilities.”

Fitz pulls a notepad out of his bag, flipping it open to ablank page. He heads the page possiblemethods of travel and begins making notations underneath.

“Hypothetically, of course,” Gwen says, leaning forward, “youcould use a vehicle. Like the DeLorean.”

Without thinking, Fitz adds the word vehicle to the paper, his mind spinning too quickly to possiblyfilter through the idea at the moment.

“Or,” Gwen continues, “a doorway of some kind. You know, it’sopen on both sides so you can just step through and be somewhere else.”

Fitz’s hand stills and he swallows around the sudden lump inhis throat. A doorway.

The Monolith.

On the paper, he makes himself write portal instead.

“Are you writing a book or something?” Gwen asks him, tiltingher head so that her hair spills a little more out of her ponytail. “Orconsidering some multi-dimensional travel?”

Fitz looks up at her. “You’ve never noticed anything strangeabout this place, have you? Unexplained…objects? Or people?”

Gwen barks out a laugh, shaking her head. “Yeah, of course.Everything about this place is strange. Have you seen the bathrooms?”

A pause. Both of them are silent. Gwen’s expression slowlybecomes more serious as her smile fades away. “You’re serious,” she decidesfinally. She studies him with renewed interest, brow furrowing. “What are youworking on?”

Fitz scoffs, shaking his head. “It would sound entirelyridiculous, I can assure you.”

“You know what’s ridiculous? Genetically engineered spidersgiving someone super powers,” Gwen tells him. “But the world is a crazy place. Trustme, I can handle ridiculous.”

Fitz hesitates, uncertain. He knows so little about Gwen; hisonly interactions with her have been at this diner, when she’s bringing himcoffee or his check. And yet…maybe what he’s been missing for thesetwenty-three days is another brain to pick, another head to put to the problem.

He’s always had Jemma, after all. Maybe he works better witha partner.

Fitz sighs, leaning back in his seat. “It’s a long story.”

Gwen shrugs. “I’ve got plenty of time.”

She reaches for his half-empty cup of coffee and takes a sip,fixing him with a stare as if to say well,what are you waiting for?

“Okay,” Fitz says with another sigh, “have you ever heard ofSHIELD?”

#fwen #you know #fitz and gwen #because that's how we roll #also shout out to the vague Spider-Man movie reference #and also platonic fitzsimmons #because that's how *I* roll

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fishdavidson · 7 years ago

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Dream Journal 2018-01-08: Sky Piracy Is A Fine Way To Redistribute Wealth

Buckle up, my friends, because I suspect this may be a long post! This most recent dream takes place in a future version of our world where income inequality has continued to grow unchecked but the one bright spot to this future is that everyone has access to flying cars and jetpacks. People at the top of the hierarchy had wealth, power, and influence almost beyond comprehension, and there were maybe a few dozen people like this in the world. Everyone else led lives that today would be considered “lower-middle class.”

The wealth disparity between these ultra-wealthy people and literally everyone else was so great that stealing from these rich people was a relatively common way for regular people to make ends meet. Poor people would stage (mostly) nonviolent raids against the flying luxury ships that transported the wealthy people and shake them down for money. And it was more cost effective for these ultra-rich people to just give the poor folks whatever money they asked for instead of hiring armies of bodyguards every minute of the day.

Holding people for ransom was still a crime, but even demanding $1,000,000 from these people had such little impact on their net worth that it was effectively imperceptible. The courts of this reality agreed, and people who were convicted of piracy faced a maximum of three years in prison. But the upside was that you still got to keep the money you stole, even if you were convicted. This was mainly because the time of these wealthy people was worth more than attempting to recover the money and the rich people got to write off the ransom payments as “charitable giving” or something similar.

I was one of those people who just barely managed to scrape by each month, so I decided to strap on my jetpack and try my hand at robbing the next luxury liner that I saw. I didn’t really need the money, but it would be really nice to have some sort of financial safety net. That’s how I ended up soaring over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New York, waiting for the next airship to come back from London. I tried to time everything correctly so that I would be the first person to target the ship once it made it into US airspace.

Unfortunately another individual had similar thoughts, and she (like me) was going to try to shoot a grappling hook onto the cruiser and board it while the vehicle was still flying. But our grappling hooks got tangled up together and ruined the element of surprise. We tried to demand ransom once we got inside the cabin, but our demand did not go over as we had hoped. In most cases, the pirate gets sack of cash and tossed out of the plane immediately, but we were asked to make a choice. We could either continue our attempt at piracy, after which we would be reported to the police and convicted for the 3-year maximum sentence; or we could wait until the vehicle landed, do a favor for this wealthy dude, and walk away with much more money and be in the good graces of a very powerful individual.

Despite having zero reason to trust this guy, I, along with the other bumbling pirate, opted to see what favor this guy was going to ask us to do. The lady who unknowingly attempted to pillage the ship alongside me was a professor of literature who hoped to score some money to pay for her wife’s cancer treatments (because health care is still apparently a problem in the future US), which was why she wanted to stick around to hear about other potentially legal methods of obtaining more money. I had no such lofty goals, but my opinion is easily swayed by additional large bags of cash and I opt to stay out of laziness so I don’t have to try robbing another dude in the future.

Once on solid ground, we are escorted to a Chinese restaurant near the top of skyscraper. A man in a purple suit who looks a lot like Will Ferrell in Night At The Roxbury is talking to a man named Tony Chen who owns the restaurant. The man we had attempted to rob was not actually the wealthy guy we were expecting. He was an assistant to the wealthy guy, and the dude in the purple suit was actually the person we were hoping to snatch money from. Tony and the man in the purple suit were arguing about something when we got there.

"My time is worth more than thirty billion dollars a minute, and you want to ask me something that will take up more than three minutes?" Purple Suit asks Tony. And then apparently Purple Suit offers Tony a significant amount of money to jump in the koi pond inside the restaurant in exchange for not asking any more questions and letting Purple Suit conduct his business in peace, which Tony agrees to.

The people involved in this meeting are escorted over to a large round table. In addition to the literature professor and Purple Suit, there are three or four other people present. Purple Suit tells us that we were brought here to help him accomplish a particularly audacious plan. Purple Suit was one of the richest men in the world, but alas, he was not the richest. So Purple Suit reasoned that if poor people could steal from rich people with relative impunity, other rich people should be able to do the same.

"If you are rich and powerful enough, you will always be above the law,” he told us. “And if you help me pull this off, I will make sure you are always above the law.”

Then Purple Suit tells us his crazy plan, which of course happens in real-time in the dream. A team of people in a nearby tower is in the process of giving an even richer guy some sedatives before he goes on an yet another international trip. This older, richer guy has in his possession a box that is connected via a physical wire to his pacemaker. The battery in the pacemaker keeps the old guy’s heart pumping, but it also provides power to that box. Inside that box is a tiny circuit board that generates time-sensitive cryptographic keys that are used to secure his vast and fabulous riches. If the key generator is disconnected from the battery for more than a few minutes, it stops working permanently and can no longer be used to access his fortune.

My job is to take the box, hook it up to an emergency power supply that can put out enough power to last for maybe 10 minutes, and run down to the base of the tower where I will meet my next team member. I’m freaking out a little bit because I know I’m not very inconspicuous as I’m running through elevators with a pile of wires in my hand. But the next team member intercepts me before I get to the ground floor.

This guy is probably in his late 30s and he’s got a beard. He gives me a silver sticker called a LOOP that I’m supposed to keep on my person until the mission is complete. I don’t know what the first letters stand for, but the “OP” in LOOP stand for “Obfuscation Protocol,” and this sticker is supposed to be able to jam electronic location trackers from following the path.

But there’s still one last problem that we have to get past in order to reach the rendezvous point: there are a few security guards who know something is up (presumably because the airship that was parked on the roof didn’t take off on time. The Bearded Dude gives me a backpack and sends me into a janitorial closet to change clothes.

Inside the backpack is a bunch of athletic clothes. I ask The Beard why I need to change into these particular clothes, and he tells me that if I dress and act like a runner, no one will suspect anything. Runners can look disheveled, and they also have an excuse for running in public places.

Seems like solid logic to me, so I change clothes and go “jogging” with The Beard as my running buddy and the code generator is tucked underneath my shirt. Nobody pays us much attention, despite us passing right under the noses of several of the building’s security guards. We pass off the code generator to the next group of team members waiting in a limo, and they reconnect the code generator to a more stable power supply and use the codes that it generates to siphon away the riches of the older guy.

In exchange for our troubles, each of us is given several million dollars and a favor from Purple Suit that may be cashed in later. I woke up before I could ask about the specifics of the favor, but I’m pretty sure it would have afforded me a life of luxury for the rest of my days.

----------------------

Header image is of a render of the proposed DeLorean Aerospace flying car featured in a recent article in Wired.

#wired #heist #dream journal #delorean #night at the roxbury #will ferrell #dreams #fishdavidson #piracy #pirate #airship #flying #jetpack #hof

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acabecca · 7 years ago

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Fired Up // a prompt that literally no one asked for or wants but I don’t care because I love Garcia Flynn and I want him to have a family again :) Alex never tired of flicking through the leather bound journal. She had read it dozens of times, she knew it like the back of her hand, she had memorized certain pages and yet each time she opened it, it felt as though she were seeing it all for the first time. It had been different back then, though. It had felt as though it were just her and Flynn against the world, just the two of them against her brother and his team, and against Rittenhouse. But now, after working with and growing close to Lucy, the words in the journal Lucy had yet to write held a whole new meaning. It had all seemed so unbelievable at first – time travel, an evil organization so intent on changing history, and a small team of just three people trying to stop someone who was always one step ahead. It was like something out of a science fiction movie and Alex had started to understand how Marty McFly must have felt when Doc Brown had shown him the DeLorean. That was why Alex was struggling to understand how Flynn had so easily believed Lucy when she has supposedly appeared from the future to warn him about Rittenhouse. She’d never really given it much thought before but being stunk in this godforsaken bunker had given her nothing to do but think, and it occurred to her that it didn’t make any sense. Flynn was nothing if not careful, he never rushed into anything without thinking it through and she found it hard to believe that a journal was enough to convince him that time travel existed. Her eyes drifted from the page she was reading and landed on where Flynn was sat on the too-small sofa across from her, his feet propped up on the table and his eyes trained on the TV. It was rare that they found any time alone in the common area of the bunker, but here they were. Alex assumed Wyatt was done keeping an eye on her and just being a general pain in her ass, but had no idea where everyone else was. Still, she wasn’t bothered, she supposed. It gave her time to talk to him. “Hey.” Flynn’s tore his gaze away from the TV as he shot her a confused smile. “Hi?” “I was just wondering,” Alex started, standing up from her seat and walking towards him, squishing into the seat beside him. “Can I ask you something?” “You just did, Alex.” She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean,” she huffed, and Flynn shrugged. “So, I was just thinking and… Well… I know you said Lucy came to you from the future or whatever, and she told you all about the time machine and Rittenhouse and everything, but… Well, how did she convince you? How did you know she was telling the truth? She must have had evidence.” “You’re reading it,” Flynn gestured to the journal in her hands. “This was all?” Alex raised an eyebrows, waving the journal in front of him. “A book that anyone could have written at any time?” Flynn frowned. “You’ve known about the journal since you found me.” “No, I know, but…” Alex shifted, biting down on her bottom lip. “It just seems… strange, that’s all. I’ve never really thought about it, but this was enough to convince you there was an actual real time machine and that you could go back in time and stop the people responsible for killing your family? If someone gave this to me in a bar I’d think it was the ramblings of a mad woman-” “Has Wyatt gotten into your head, hmm?” “What? No,” Alex shook her head. “No, Wyatt hasn’t said anything to me. I know you, Flynn, and I know you never would have jumped into this without definitive proof. This journal… It just doesn’t cut it. So what else did Lucy say to you?” she asked, and Flynn pursed his lips. “You’ve never questioned me before. Don’t you trust me, Alex?” “Of course I trust you-” “Just not enough to believe me?” he scoffed, standing up from the couch and walking towards the fridge. Alex followed, rolling her eyes behind his back as she dropped the journal on the coffee table. “I do believe you, I just don’t think you’re telling me the full story,” she shrugged her shoulders and Flynn paused, the fridge door open as he reached inside and grabbed a bottle of coke. “Okay I know how that sounds, but I just- listen,” she paused. “There had to be something else, something she told you. I just don’t understand how her journal was enough. I feel like- like there’s something you aren’t telling me and- I can’t explain it. I don’t know if it’s being here with everyone, with us suddenly being on the same side as the other and with us being stuck here with Wyatt, but you’re… Different. Things are different. You’re different with me.” Flynn sighed, glancing around to make sure they were really along before he put his drink down on the table beside them. He moved so he was stood in front of Alex properly, blocking her from view if anyone were to walk down the corridor and she looked up at him, patiently waiting for him to explain. “There was something else. Something that she showed me that made me believe her,” he told her carefully. “But I can’t tell you what that was, Alex. You have to trust me.” “I do trust you, I- I left my brother and my friends because I trusted you, Flynn. I put my life on the line on multiple occasions and I need to know why. What aren’t you telling me?” she asked again, but Flynn just shook his head. “I can’t tell you. It will change everything.” “Plenty of things have happened that have changed everything!” Alex threw her arms in the air. “Jess came back from the dead. Jiya has visions, Lucy’s great grandad is alive and kicking in and probably younger than I am, Wyatt brought JFK to 2018 and lost him. Something is always happening to change everything, but we always deal with it, because we always work together. You need to tell me what she showed you, Flynn. Especially if could affect the rest of us. Please.” Flynn stayed quiet, his eyes not leaving hers as he raised an eyebrow. Alex stared back at him, her brow furrowed slightly as Flynn continued to stare pointedly at her. They stayed like that for a while, the air around them seemed to grow thicker with each second that passed until Alex’s eyes widened slightly when realization hit her. “Me?” she asked in disbelief. “She showed you me?” Flynn shrugged and turned to walk away, but Alex reached out and wrapped her fingers around his write to keep him there. “Why was that enough to make you believe her?” “Alex…” Flynn paused. “I’m not supposed to tell you. It could change-” “Everything, yeah, I know,” Alex snapped. “But we’ve changed the past before and-” “Not the past,” Flynn interrupted. “It could change the future.” “What are you talking about?” her tone was almost pleading, her grasp tightening around his wrist and Flynn paused, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Flynn, please. If this involves me, I deserve to know. Is something bad going to happen to me?” Flynn’s eyes snapped open. “Bad? No. Alex, I would never let anything bad happen to you.” “Then what is it? What aren’t you telling me?” He paused, staring at her for a few minutes as he debated on whether or not he should tell her what Lucy had showed him. He knew it wouldn’t give her peace of mind – if anything, it would make her worse. It would make her paranoid, more anxious than she already was. But he also knew she was scared. Her eyes were wide, panicked, and her breathing had quickened in the few minutes they had been talking. No matter which option he chose, it wasn’t going to make anything better for Alex. But he knew her, and he knew that unless he told her the absolute truth, she would create far worse scenarios in her head. “It wasn’t just you she showed me,” Flynn told her quietly, but Alex’s frown deepened in confusion. Gently pulling his wrist out of grip, he carefully placed her hand on her stomach. “What…” Alex started in bewilderment, but Flynn saw it the second she realised what he was getting at. Her face was blank and her jaw has gone slack, and she slowly lifted her own hand to place it on top of Flynn’s. “W-when?” she asked in a whisper. “I don’t know,” Flynn admitted. “Not yet. But one day.” “I- I don’t-” “Sorry, am I interrupting something? Oh, wait, I don’t care.” Alex dropped her hand back do to her side and quickly brushed Flynn off her when she heard Wyatt’s voice behind her. Scowling at her brother as he shot her a clearly fake smile, she stepped out of the way as he pulled open the fridge door. He paused, one arm resting on top of door and he moved his attention from the contents of the fridge to his sister. “…What?” “Uhm, we’re kind of in the middle of something here, Wyatt,” Alex gestured behind herself to Flynn. “Really?” Wyatt raised an eyebrow, grabbing a bottle of beer from the fridge and pointing behind Alex. “Because it looks like he’s headed in that direction.” Alex quickly turned to glance over her shoulder to see Flynn disappearing around the corner leading to his room, and she sighed heavily as she ran a hand through her hair. “You’re such a brat, Wyatt,” she muttered. “Yeah,” he grinned, throwing an arm around her shoulders and leading her back towards the sofa. Alex followed him reluctantly, casting one last glance in the direction Flynn had walked off on in. Whatever they had to talk about, it would have to wait. After all, they had all the time in the world.

#ocappreciation #allaboutocs #toalltheocsivelovedbefore #timeless oc #did i use the right affect/effect? who knows! do i care? nope!!!#alex x flynn #alex logan #do the gifs match? also no #it is SO HARD to find gifs of goran akjdshljfh #IDK WHAT THIS IS GOODBYE!!!

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businessliveme · 5 years ago

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Tesla Cybertruck Is the Car We Most Want to Drive in 2020

(Bloomberg) –Last week I wrote about the best and worst cars I drove in 2019. Call it the good, the bad, and the ugly.

For 2020 there’s one vehicle in particular I can’t wait to get my hands on: the Cybertruck. (Although production officially starts in 2021, I should have a crack at it, at least in prototype mode, by the end of 2020 if Tesla runs a schedule similar to that of other automakers. It’s cutting it close, but I’ll take my chances.)

Depending on your angle, the Cybertruck is a design disaster made from cheap metal sheets pounded together into a four-wheel ice pick stuck right in your eye, or it’s a slick marketing scheme that earns Tesla Inc. millions of dollars by way of each $100 deposit required to reserve one. The truck won’t see the light of day, this point of view goes—it’s just the latest promise from a company with a history of sporadic delivery on promises.

I disagree on both points. Tesla founder Elon Musk announced on Nov. 24 that he’d taken more than 200,000 deposits for the Cybertruck. At $100 each, that’s $20 million—plenty of cash, but not enough to significantly alter a company that, as of the market close on Dec. 26, is valued at almost $78 billion, third in the industry behind only Volkswagen AG and Toyota Motor Corp.

Meanwhile, in November, new-car registrations for Teslas in China, the world’s biggest electric vehicle market, jumped fourteenfold, to 5,597, from the same period a year earlier, according to state-backed China Automotive Information Net. The increase happened while sales for all other electric vehicles in China dropped over the same period. Musk doesn’t need a scheme to make a quick buck; he’s never been short of brand faithful the world over who buy his products as quickly as he can make them.

More important, if you know anything about Musk, you know he believes what he says, even if the result doesn’t always happen on schedule, whether it’s the first Tesla Roadsters, the hyperloop rapid transit system, or colonizing Mars. I spent six months in 2012 writing a cover story about him, and my impression was that it’s frustrating for him when others fail to embrace and accelerate these plans for saving the planet as easily, and as passionately, as he does. It’s where much of the perception of his alleged arrogance comes from—he can’t imagine how the rest of us don’t see it all as clearly as he does. Musk is many things, but he’s not a con man.

More exciting: The Cybertruck is exciting! That’s not so common in today’s auto market. In 2019 we saw so many bulbous SUVs, appliance-shaped sedans, and out-of-reach supercars that, even for me, they started to blur together.

This enthusiasm is also coming from outside the usual automotive ranks. Surely, as you scrolled through Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok last month, you saw the Cybertruck parked under starchitect houses and made into cartoons and gifs. I have lifelong New York friends placing deposits on it.

The Cybertruck comes by way of its jarring looks honestly. It feels like a descendant of the wedge cars from the 1960s and 1970s—the flatbed version of the Lotus Esprit, BMW M1, Lancia Stratos, Ferrari PF Modulo, DeLorean, and Lamborghini Countach. Those design icons transcended the car world and became pop culture. They dominated fashion editorials and were immortalized in Hollywood blockbusters. When it finally hits the road, the Cybertruck should do the same.

The Future of Trucks

On a broader scale, the success or failure of Tesla’s first electric pickup will indicate the future of the truck industry as a whole.

Light-truck sales in general in the U.S. rose 7.7% in 2018, to a record 11.98 million units sold, according to the Automotive News Data Center. For the past 35 years, the bestselling vehicle in the U.S. has been the Ford F-Series pickup truck. It’s outsold Toyota Camrys, Honda Accords, and even the ubiquitous, Uber-friendly Toyota Prius.

Further, the evolution of the truck has followed the evolution of the American consumer. As an increasing number of Americans bought trucks for more than just farming and ranch work, trucks became more luxurious and expensive. Now you can buy a rolling-office quad cab, with leather heated seats and an entertainment system befitting a town car. It will cost you mid-six figures. Soon you’ll even be able to buy a hybrid F-150.

We have a few brands testing this unchartered terrain: Rivian will debut its $69,000-or-so R1T in late 2020, and Bollinger’s $125,000 B2 will be out in 2021. But if it comes to pass, the Cybertruck can be the first to tell us plenty. I can’t wait.

The post Tesla Cybertruck Is the Car We Most Want to Drive in 2020 appeared first on Businessliveme.com.

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davidcarner · 6 years ago

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Wanting It All Ch 5, Dealing With The Past

A/N: Thank you all for the many notes and reviews asking about Grace…her foot is officially NOT broken. There was something that showed up on the growth plate in the foot that scared them, but after further review, it is a sprain….a SLOW healing sprain. (And that boot hurts if it should "accidentally" catch you in the shin) (She was more upset then me after it happened so I'm sure it was an accident, but dang it hurts!)

I would like to reiterate that AngelGurl0 has been basically co-plotting, if not co-authoring this fic. However, michaelfmx has generously offered to dip his big toe into this one, and beta it for us, so thank you so much sir! I'm not sure how fast to move these two, if I'm honest, and I'm just writing what I feel. There is a bit of a spy thing coming up, this isn't the same Chuck we saw in the show, and it's not the same Sarah, because they changed each other. Last chapter we put some things on the table, this chapter, we talk about them. Welcome to Wanting It All Ch 5, Dealing With the Past

Disclaimer: I don't own Chuck, and don't we all need a proposal plan.....

Chuck picked up his phone and grinned when he saw who it was. His tone was teasing as he answered, "You know. Morgan needs his Chuck time too." Chuck had promised Morgan he would go over and play video games Thursday evening. It wasn't going to be a long session, ending around 9, but after that Sarah had suggested he text her to see if she was awake so he could stop by if she was. He REALLY hoped she didn't fall asleep.

Sarah giggled into the phone. "Oh, I'm aware, he's been bitching to me for the past several nights. I mean, would it kill him if we had some time alone?"

Chuck looked over at Morgan. He smiled at his friend. "I'm willing to risk it." Morgan grinned at him, thinking Chuck had just defended him to Sarah.

She grinned, laughed, and looked over at her four-year-old, the reason she was calling. "Better not, I kinda like the little bearded guy. Look, there's an actual reason for my call. My son refuses to believe me, because I don't know much about Spider-Man. I tried to tell him that just because I don't know Spider-Man, it doesn't mean I don't know other stuff."

"How do you not know Spider-Man?"

"Chuck, focus." She was grinning and felt like he was as well. "Anyway, he thinks you or Morgan would know."

"Okay." Chuck was curious about what this could be about.

"He was mentioning Captain Marvel, and I asked if he meant the DC one or the Marvel one. He told me there was no Captain Marvel in DC. I then explained that Captain Marvel was in DC, due to Fawcett comics being shut down over a copyright lawsuit by DC, and then the characters were leased and later purchased by DC. In Marvel, he was actually aptain Mar-vell of the Kree, who developed cancer and died. Later, Ms. Marvel became Captain Marvel and…." She stopped when her door flew open, startling her. Chuck took three steps toward her and kissed her, soundly. She had forgotten this, both how it felt and how he would react when she started "nerd-talking" to him. In fact, this kiss would probably make her remember her entire life if she ever forgot it. Note to self, kiss Chuck if you ever have some weird amnesia. She had done this to him before. Sometimes she would learn something nerdy just to get him to kiss her like that, passionately, not-thinking, just pure love. He pulled back a little, his eyes searching hers, and she grinned saucily. "Have I told you what I thought of the Solo movie?" His eyes crossed. He shook his head to clear his mind and looked over at Jordan.

"Whoa," was all the boy could say.

"Jordan, you need to know women know just as many things, if not more, than guys," Chuck told him. "Including nerdy things." Jordan nodded.

Sarah wasn't about to let this go. "You know the silliest thing about that lawsuit, if the lawyer had any sense he would have pointed out that he wasn't actually Superman because Superman gets his powers from the sun and has a weakness of magic. Then Fawcett's Captain Marvel, now SHAZAM's powers are magic based so it would be an impossibility for the two to be the same," Sarah said behind him.

Chuck raised a finger to Jordan. "One second." He stood up, turned, and kissed her again. When they broke this time, he looked into her eyes. "Seriously, do you know what you're doing to me?"

She nodded, grinning. "Fully aware."

"Sarah, your door's open," Daniel said coming in. "Oh, I'm sorry. You must be him."

"Him?" Chuck said, confused. He shook Daniel's hand when offered.

"I know you rushed off the other day when I showed up unannounced, but I wanted to meet you. You've made a big impression on my son." Jordan nodded. Daniel looked at Chuck kindly. "He thinks a lot of you."

"I appreciate that," Chuck said.

Daniel studied Chuck for a minute. "You'll take care of him, won't you?"

Chuck was taken aback. "I don't understand," Chuck said. "Are you going somewhere?"

"No, when you two get married," Daniel explained like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Married?" Chuck asked, turning to Sarah, who shrugged like she didn't know what was going on. He turned back to Daniel. "Married?"

-ooooo-

"Does he hate me?" Morgan asked, drinking a grape soda.

Chuck had left Sarah's a few minutes after the debacle and returned to Morgan's. Daniel wanted to spend some time with his son, and Chuck, knowing how important it was to spend time with your dad, gave them some space. Sarah told him to call her, but from the frustrated look on her face, he didn't think he'd be seeing her anymore tonight. He'd told Morgan everything that had happened. Morgan hadn't said anything. He'd gone to get a six pack of soda, sat, and drank before he'd asked Chuck his very confusing question.

"Hate you?"

Morgan looked at Chuck like he'd grown a third head. "Yes, hate me. You know I had your wedding all planned out, the one to Jenny/Sarah." Chuck just shook his head. "PLUS the proposal plan is now back in play, and he just throws that out there. Does he know how hard I've worked on the whole thing?"

Chuck saw they were heading to Morgantown so he just sat back and enjoyed the ride. "Didn't Sarah nix the DeLorean?"

He shook his head, disgusted. "She just didn't understand how important it was."

Chuck really admired the bearded man's commitment. "And the horses on the beach?"

He shrugged at that one, he had to concede her point. "She said she didn't want to have to clean up after them, and to be fair, they do tend to just do their business wherever they wish."

Chuck was hoping this one would stop him. "What about the balcony at the winery up in the Valley?"

Morgan looked at him like he had lost it. "She was good with that but she wasn't waiting three years until you could propose to her." Chuck turned to look at him. Shock covered his face. "Dude, you can't get in until you're 21."

This was news. Was there actually a chance for them back then? He knew how he'd felt, and she had told Morgan this information. "Uh, she was serious?"

"What does it matter if she was or not, I was…I mean am…you know what I mean!" Chuck gave him a look. He thought about asking if Morgan knew it wasn't about him but decided that would be a waste of breath. "Dude, did you not get how much she loved you? Still loves you?"

He shook his head. "I mean, I thought I knew, but then…" he blew out a breath. "Her dad screwed up so much."

"He did, but you can go forward now."

It was so easy for Morgan, he didn't understand. He had to understand, and it was up to Chuck to show him. "Morgan, she has a kid."

Moran stared at him. "Chuck, did she seem bothered by what Daniel said?"

"Morgan, you make it sound simple, it's not that simple. It's actually quite…complicated."

Morgan lost it. "Oh, so for over eight months you two grew so close you could talk about all that stuff at seventeen. But now, now that you're adults and you've found out all the negative stuff that caused you to split was a lie, and you can go forward and be happy, your answer is it's not that simple." He sat up and looked Chuck right in the eye. "Dude, I told you a long time ago, she's the one, and nothing has changed." Morgan stood up and looked out the window. "He's gone, Chuck." Chuck gave Morgan a look. Morgan looked at him. "For someone so smart, you sure are stupid. I'm throwing you out, go over there." Chuck left Morgan's and walked across the yard. He stood on the doorstep, fist raised. He pulled his hand down, got ready to leave when then the door opened, a phone in Sarah's hand.

She did NOT look pleased. "Nope, he didn't knock," she said into the phone. "Thanks, Morgan. Yes, I agree the balcony is still a fine idea." She snapped the phone shut, turning her attention on him. "Any reason you were about to run away?"

"The sight of that ancient phone was too much for me." he deadpanned.

She shook her head, not laughing or smiling. Chuck knew things were about to get serious. "Get in here, I'll put Jordan to bed and we'll talk."

He nodded and followed her through the door. "Sorry about Morgan." She gave him a look, shook her head, and headed off to put Jordan to sleep. She didn't look happy. Great. Now Morgan had her upset. He sat down on her couch, nervous. What was he nervous about? It was Sarah. He knew things were different now. She had a son. It wasn't as simple as it used to be.

"Chuck, Morgan isn't the problem," she said as she came back in. "Lot of things look good on you, Chuck; curls, short hair, rolled up sleeves, and so many other things, but the one thing that doesn't is self-doubt."

Chuck was surprised by that. "I have no self-doubt."

"Really? Huh, well then I guess it was someone else sitting there thinking how complicated things are now."

Who was she, and when did she learn to read people. Had she always known? "I never said those things."

"Chuck, are we really going to argue only to agree in the end that you're wrong?" She didn't wait for an answer, sat down right beside him, took his left arm, put it over her shoulders, and leaned against him. She sighed contently. "I missed this," she said softly. "We watched many a movie like this." He leaned over and kissed her head like he used to, and she melted inside. "You'd better not be thinking of rescinding that invitation for tomorrow afternoon."

"I love you, Sarah, that hasn't changed, but other things have," he said softly. She snuggled closer to him. "But they don't seem to concern you." She shrugged.

"I love you, you love me, everything else, we'll figure you," she said.

"Yeah, but," he began.

"Chuck, shut up. Baby, I love you, but you worry about too much." She sat up and looked at him. God he missed that look. He missed her calling him baby. He missed it all. "Do you love me and want to be with me?"

"Sarah, I do, but-"

"No buts, Chuck, either you do or you do not do, there is no try." She winked at him. He leaned forward to kiss her but she backed away, eyebrow arched.

"I love you."

"You once told me we had forever, remember?" He nodded. "What's changed?" He didn't answer. "Do you like Jordan?"

"Of, course, Sarah."

"So what's the problem?"

"It's not that easy," he replied, as seriously as he could. She shook her head, pushed his face back and leaned back into him.

"Yeah, it is. Now, if you think it's too complicated we just won't come over tomorrow." Chuck started to say something. "Zip it, Bartowski. We've wasted eight years and I'm not gonna waste any more time because you think it's complicated."

"Sarah," he began.

"I'm not mad, Chuck, I'm just telling you how it is. Now are you going to let me enjoy my Chuck snuggle time?"

"You know I'm all about the cuddle and the snuggle." She lifted up and looked at him, shaking her head.

"That's cruel, teasing a girl with some cuddling like that. That's serious stuff, Bartowski."

He took a breath. "I'm serious."

She leaned in and kissed him. When she pulled back she was inches from his face. "Then start acting like it." She winked, and leaned back against him, enjoying her Chuck time.

-ooooo-

Chuck was sitting by his pool. He had been thinking all night since he'd left Sarah's, and she was right. He was pondering lunch when his phone started ringing. He picked it up, saw who it was, smiled, and answered. "Chuck Bartowski, man who realizes loving Sarah Walker is very uncomplicated, speaking."

"Now that's the proper way to answer the phone," she said giggling. "How would you feel about your two weekend house guests showing up early?"

Chuck sat up, grinning. "Sarah, you're always welcomed at my place."

"Not at 3 AM," she countered.

"Sure you are," he insisted.

"Then why don't I have a key? See you in an hour," and with that she hung up as Chuck sat and processed that.

-ooooo-

"If you don't want me here, you should change the code." Morgan had shown up, unannounced, again. Chuck was nearing freak-out levels of spiraling.

"Morgan, it's not that, Sarah and Jordan are coming over."

Morgan hadn't seen Chuck this upset in some time, he was determined to be the pillar of support Chuck needed. "I'm very aware, I'm here to babysit."

"Morgan, I need to do this."

Morgan looked at his friend and it dawned on him what Chuck was saying. "That's what this is about, you're scared of kids?"

"Scared? I wouldn't say scared, it's just I have no idea what I'm doing."

Morgan shook his head. He stared at his friend. "I want head nods and shakes only." Chuck nodded. "Do you love Sarah?" Chuck nodded. "Are you willing to be the father that boy needs." He thought for a second and nodded. Relief showed on Morgan's face. "THEN WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?" Chuck just stared at him, and it dawned on Morgan he had told Chuck to only nod and shake his head. "Go ahead."

"Have you seen that kid's dad? It's not like he's dead, it's not like he's not in his life. In fact, he is working hard to be in Jordan's life." Chuck was beginning to spiral and didn't see Sarah enter the house. She was hearing all of it and grinning. "It's not just her, it's her and Jordan, and that makes things complicated." Chuck noticed Morgan glancing past his shoulder. "Oh God, she's right behind me, isn't she?"

"Well, that explains the complicated remark last night. What are you gonna do about it, Bartowski?" He turned towards her and there it was. The smirk on her face. He had missed that so much.

He spoke as honestly as he could. "Try really hard?" Sarah nodded. "You'll be patient?" She nodded again. Chuck turned to Jordan. "Buddy, can you and I talk." Jordan nodded. Sarah and Morgan gave them some privacy. They sat on the couch. "So, I love your mom."

"I love her too." He thought for a second. "But you kiss her different than I do."

"Right. You kiss her like you kiss your mom or your sister."

"YOU KISS YOUR SISTER!"

Sarah chuckled in the other room hearing that. "Yeah on the cheek, and I hug her too." He looked at Jordan. "So, my mom and dad left when I was a little older than you, and my sister raised me. So she's my sister, but she's more, you know?" Jordan nodded. "I was thinking about, if it's okay with you, taking your mom on dates and sometimes bringing you along, because it's the two of you, not just her."

"Where could we go, because I don't want to see one of those kissing movies."

Chuck nodded. He had to admit he agreed with the kid. "Me either. How about just her and I go see them, that way you don't have to."

Jordan was thankful for Chuck taking the bullet on that one. "Can we go watch Marvel movies?"

"Is that okay with your mom?" Jordan was quiet. "See, that's the stuff you can't do to me. Whatever your mom and dad says goes." He took a deep breath. "And also, I understand, I'm not your dad, I'm not trying to take his place. I never would, but I do love your mother, and I have for a very long time."

Jordan was quiet for a moment. "I like you, and my mom really likes you." Chuck grinned at him. "I won't try to trick you."

Chuck reached over and ruffled Jordan's hair. "Jordan, you're a kid, of course you'll try and trick me, just know the punishment will be the same as if you tried it on your mom." Chuck looked up and saw Sarah standing in the doorway, a happy smile on her face. "I need a minute with her, if that's okay."

"Yep. What do I call you?"

"How about Chuck?" He held his hand up, and Jordan gave him a high five. "I bet if you ask Morgan, he can get the wii out." Jordan took off to find Morgan. Sarah came in, grinning. She sat down beside him, and Chuck reached in his pocket and pulled something out. He handed it to her. She took it and looked at it, confused. "Like I said, you're always welcome here. You need to get away, use the pool, whatever, you're welcome. Even if I'm gone somewhere."

"Did you just invite me to move in with you?" she asked, the teasing tilt evident in her voice.

"I'm not saying I did or didn't, but don't you think that would be a bit much, especially for Jordan, who just moved?" She nodded and grinned. "Also, you two have rooms right beside each other." She cocked an eyebrow. "Sarah…."

"No, no, you're right. Last time probably did scar us both a bit."

Chuck looked a little down. "Well, I don't know if I'd go that far. That night was amazing. The next day, not so much."

She thought about that night, the limo, the music, the dancing, but as great as all of that was, none of it was as great as one Charles Bartowski. He told her he loved her, but didn't expect anything that night. Her face got dreamy for a second thinking how she had finally found someone who loved her for her. Not for how she could run a con, or be a partner for a scheme, but be a partner in life. The plans they had made for Barsoft, the future they had talked about, the house she wanted that she told him about that no one else knew about….And then the next day….she shuddered and blinked back tears thinking about how her world had shattered. She had been devastated with that letter, and, for a moment, she hated herself for ever believing Chuck Bartowski could do that to her. She pulled herself out of her thoughts, saw his face, and knew he'd been thinking similar things.

She ran her hand through his hair. "That night was amazing. The next day was the worst of my life. I promise you the next time it happens," she paused, to let that sink in. He grinned, turned a little red, but didn't pull away. "I'll be right there beside you the next morning and day."

"Oh, great, you're gonna go 'Basic Instinct' on me." She burst out laughing. He took her hand. "We're adults, we're in charge of our actions now, and we can make this work."

She held up the key. "Last chance, Bartowski, take it back, or forever hold your peace." He made a zipping motion over his lips. Sarah found her key chain and put it on her key ring. "Is there anything else I need to know?"

"The security code is your birthday, two-digit month and two-digit day."

She had a sad look on her face, and rubbed his neck with her hand, her thumb just touching the skin below his ear, the way she used to comfort him when he was upset. "You never did forget me, did you?" He shook his head. "Okay, that's in the past, let's move forward." He nodded. "So, any plans?"

"Well," he said grinning and grabbing his laptop. He pulled it open and showed her what he was thinking. She grinned and turned toward him.

"Jordan too?" Chuck nodded. She pulled him in for a kiss. "I love you, Chuck."

"I love you, Sarah." He kissed her again, neither of them noticing the two sets of eyes on them.

"Do they always do that?" they heard Jordan say from the hallway.

"All the time," Morgan admitted. "All the time."

A/N: Next time, the chapter I did the least amount of work on because it was basically all written by AngelGurl0, The Aquarium. (It has been read and approved by halfachance). (PSST! GO READ MAY YOUR WALLS KNOW JOY!) Hoped you liked it, reviews are always welcomed…til next time.

#Chuck #Sarah #Charah #fanfic #fanfiction #fluff

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