Loki opened the door. This door was one of the many in the void that both of them had stepped through, but this one led to Battleworld.
This was how Loki had described Battleworld: "a patchwork of realities held together by the iron fist of a mad man's will".
To which Verity had replied: "Harsh, girl. That's my friend Victor you're talking about."
Loki had shrugged and opened the door.
So this was Battleworld. Verity tried -- and failed -- not to feel let down. It didn't look like what Loki had described, not even a little. It certainly didn't look like the dystopian hellscape Verity had imagined, given the number of terrorist watchlist being a friend of Doom had landed her on. No. I looked like a field outside a small town in the midwest.
"Wow," Verity said. "A cornfield."
Loki grabbed her wrist to whirl her around. "Ta-daa!"
There was a sign, held up haphazardly by a scarecrow. It read 'Lying Competition! Grand Prize:' and the rest was unreadable.
Verity hid a laugh behind her smile and her smile behind her hand. "You can't be serious."
"I'm Loki," the woman said and walked off towards the nearby path.
Verity floated after her. "Hardy-har."
Verity had been at a lying competition, once, out of a misguided idea that maybe overloading her power would break it, but it hadn't worked. All she'd gotten out of it had been a terrible headache that had lasted eleven days.
The crowd at this lying competition was more varied than that one time. Several of the people were not human or at leats not anymore. Not that Verity could talk, still being a ghost herself.
They made their way to the competition.
There was more than one person wielding Mjölnir there. Okay. Not the usual midwest small town, then, not even Broxton, Oklahoma had more than one Mjölnir. She could live with that. As a ghost. Loki had better still be working on fixing that. Being visible to others and half-corporeal was better than neither of those, but it still wasn't being alive. Verity smelled corndogs and she was hungry. She didn't even liked corndogs, but boy, she missed them. She missed food so much.
There were members of the Annihilation Horde, people with whatever skin condition it was Baron Sinister had and and there was also Loki, male now, with Verity in her haircut before last beside him.
That was in poor taste.
Verity put her finger in Loki -- her Loki -- 's ear. Being a ghost meant she had all the advantages of that -- shocking Loki with the cold -- and none of the consequences -- actually putting her finger in Loki's ear.
Loki jerked, but she stubbornly refused to turn around.
"There's another one of you here," Verity said. In response to Loki's shrug, she added, "There's another one of me."
That got Loki's attention. She turned around and scanned the crowd. Her face did a complicated dance when she saw the other Loki and the other Verity. Loki grabbed Verity -- entirely unnecessarily and rather rudely -- and marched them both over to their other selves.
Up close, Verity could see that this Loki's crown was unbroken and he had an air of betrayed innocence about him that was entirely missing from her Loki.
Her Loki leaned on her staff. "What’s a previous self like you doing in a place like this?"
The other Loki frowned at her and crossed his arms.
Verity rolled her eyes in unison with the other Verity.
"Are you dead?" the other Verity asked.
Verity considered her options. In particular, how to adress the other Verity. What was the etiquette in these situations? It had been covered by the handbook for superpowered people she'd been given at registration, but she couldn't remember. She decided on calling her "Willis" inside her head for now.
"She's fine," Loki said, waving Willis off distractedly.
"I'm not dead," Verity said. Aiming the next phrase at Loki, she added, "This is only temporary."
Loki poked the other Loki in the chest with her staff, punctuating each word. "Why are you here?"
The other Loki stood his ground. His jaw was set.
Loki's face took on an expression that Verity had never seen on it before. She had seen in on her grandmother, though, usually accompanied by the words "Oh, honey, no".
Loki patted the other Loki's shoulder. "This is not your guilt to bear."
"You know what? Fuck you!" He shoved her away.
Willis siddled up to Verity. "You know what's happening?"
"How many Lokis have you met?" Verity asked.
Willis' face was answer enough.
Verity caught Willis up to date on the entire brood of Lokis that lurked in their respective past and future, including the dead one. The one Loki had murdered. The child Loki had murdered.
"I was the murder weapon, not the murderer," the other Loki corrected.
Verity ignored him and finished her explanation.
Willis nodded slowly. "You want to save him. The kid."
"Yeah. I thought I might have to die, be unborn, to do it, maybe other me is proof that isn't necessary," Willis' Loki said.
And Loki outlined his plan. His mannerisms were different from Verity's current Loki, even when she was a man, and, to be entirely honest with herself, Verity found that she missed the other Loki, in the same way she missed being friends with Alya when they were kids, even though they were still friends now. Unlike Alya though, Verity and her Loki had not grown into friends together. They'd been friends, then Loki had died and returned, changed and changing, and they were friends again, but Verity was still the first Loki's friend and perhaps she hadn't grieved him properly.
Perhaps Loki had done no grieving either.
Not for the former self facing her now, not for the self before, the innocent sacrifice, if any such word as innocence could be applied to any version of Loki.
Perhaps it was worth it to do this, even without a child’s life in the balance.
In talking to Willis, Verity realised that there were subtle differences between their universes. A a few miles further from Broxton, a spelling variation in their middle name, that sort of thing. Small things, but enough to realise why Verity did not remember this: it had not happened to this version of her. Small things, enough to delay the Loki who had murdered Verity's first friend, but he was coming, there was no doubt of that. At least Willis was warned now. Was this murder, Verity wondered. To prevent the birth of her Loki in another world, was that murder? No. Not even a little. Never being born was not the same as dying.
Alternate universes were never so close together. Sure, in theory they could be, but in practice the differences were always much more significant. Verity brought that up to the Lokis.
Both Lokis launched into a long-winded explanation that Verity would have bet good money they had learned from Doom or some other scientist. Quantum entanglement was not a magical term, not even a little.
"To put things plain," Loki said, "universes too close together ripple into each other, a change to one is a change to all, and so there are quantul ripple dams to stop them from looping ripples into each other..."
Verity and Willis locked eyes, mouthing 'to put things plain' at each other.
"But this is Battleworld!" the other Loki butted in, expansive jazz hands and all. "There are no other universes and so no quantum dams."
Verity glared at her Loki. So much for that totally chill roadtrip they were going to get at some point, just apparently, not now.
"Okay," Willis said, "but how does that help with saving... the third one of you? No. I've got it. You only need to save one to save them all."
Loki nodded, both of them.
"And if we draw Doom here," Verity began, "you can use his magic do to it."
"Steal the deus in machina's creation stuff, yes," her Loki said, never one to pass up a pun. To which the other Loki added, "And then we make out like bandits!"
"Make off," Willis said. "Make off like bandits."
"Yes," the male Loki said. "That too."
"How?" Verity and Willis said at once. As soon as she said the word, Verity could have kicked herself.
On cue, Loki began, "Come on, Verity, I know you're asexual, but you've seen anough TV to know how make outs work. Because I'm your very best friend, I'll explain --"
Verity was half a second faster than Willis on the return. "HOW IS THE lying competition going to help?"
"We're going to win it by telling the truth. That should be a big enough paradox to draw Doom here, especially with all four of us here to help focus the lie into truth," the male Loki said.
Verity's Loki picked right up, "We're gonna lie by telling the truth."
Loki, Loki and the Verity who wasn't a ghost proceeded to enroll themselves into the competition. In Willis' case it was mostly because she thought it would be funny. Verity was suprised to find no such levity in her hard, but Willis had never had to mourn a best friend, she supposed.
Verity herself managed to become one of the judges, invoking the fact that she was a ghost -- she had a whole argument prepared, but she needn't have bothered. The jury was one member short, for what Verity assumed were completely coincidental reasons. Some very nice person even managed to get her a chair that she could sit in, even being a ghost. Wow, that was a relief. She couldn't feel pain or fatigue on account of the ghost thing, but appeared she could still feel their absence and getting to finally sit after so long was as nice as anything had ever been.
She could have done with not being offered refreshments she couldn't drink, though.
The competition began. People spun intricate, lengthy tall takes. Fortified from her fiction binge in the wake of Loki's first death that she had been personally impacted by, Verity found it entertaining enough, when she wasn't pressing the cold metal of the chair against her forehead. At least Willis had headphones.
At long last, Loki stepped on stage. Verity's Loki. She flipped her hair, leaned into the mike and said, utterly neutrally, "I shot a fish with a bazooka."
There was a beat of silence. Then, realising no more story was forthcoming, there was a longer beat of silence.
A chuckle came from the audience. It turned into a giggle, then into a laugh, soon joined by others. Soon everyone was laughing, Verity included. Not even because it was funny but because it was completely incongruous.
With a sound like a crack of thunder turned inside out, His Divine-Imperial Majesty Doom, the God-Emperor arrived.
Verity shook her head. It was just Doom, and just because he saw fit to drop Capitalised Titles into her head didn't mean she had to listen to them. She got out of her chair and floated over to Loki, to stand next to her on the stage. Loki's grip was white knuckled on her staff. The glass pearl that held Verity's soul-anchor was hidden under her shirt, the string holding it unwound from a bracelet to a necklace.
Off to the side, Willis was holding out her hands to the other Loki, who used them as a jumping point to barrel into Doom in the most divine rugby tackle and weirdest foreplay to bandit make-outs that had ever been.
Loki brought her palms together, fingers interlaced, then spread her hands apart, a cat's cradle between them. She hissed under her breath.
Verity held out her hands to the cat's cradle. Loki weaved the magic like it was thread, shifting through universes like flipping through a book. Verity saw it all. Every universe, every life, all beamed into her mind like a waterfall, an ocean through the eye of a needle. A distant part of her wondered if this was what being a god was like -- not the Loki kind of god, the God-Emperor Doom kind of god, the kind that had omniscience -- and if she would survive this.
"It would kill you if you were alive," Loki said. She reached out and plucked a hairpin from Verity. "And he doesn't, you know, have omniscience."
Willis hauled herself up on stage. "You good?"
"Let me put a pin in this." Loki stabbed the hairpin into an universe, five to the left and fifteen back from the one they had been from originally.
There was a sound like the drop of a pin though eternity, high-pitched, unending and sharp.
"Come on," the youngest Loki said. "Watching older me make out with Victor is gross. Let's go."
Verity could not agree more.