Chapter 5: The Anomaly on Sakaar
The Grandmaster's tower had the faces of the Arena Champions carved onto its side. And as I glanced at the faces, I found that Hulk's had yet to be placed there. A lot of time before Avengers: Age of Ultron, then.
"Can I have some clothes at least, Hevnoraak?" She requested in a meek voice just as we began to descend into the hangar bay.
A quick tap of a button on my Company SmartPhone and a plush white sabre cat cloak appeared in my hand before I offered it to her. "M-my thanks."
"Enjoy it while it lasts, I'll be claiming you more thoroughly once we regain some measure of privacy." I softly huskily whispered into her ear as I leaned in over her shoulder. That seemed to send shivers up and down her spine, and made her squeeze tightly around my member- just in time for us to touch down on the landing pad.
Holding Valkyrie by the waist, I lifted her off my cock- promptly making her whimper at the sudden loss of the feeling of being filled up with my hot length and causing me to hiss as the cool air hit my shaft. I set her down on the co-pilot's seat beside me as I tucked myself back in my codpiece.
I pulled out another cloak made of a simple black cloth this time and put it on- hiding my dragonplate armour from view and shrouding my face.
"I believe we were going to your place, Valkyrie?" I asked her rhetorically as I grabbed her ass through the cloak. Nodding, Valkyrie shakily stood up- clad only in the ruined piece of black-leather outfit and the smooth white sabre cat cloak that I covered her in.
"R-right." She replied with a small moan as she led the way- the pitter patter of my semen dripping from between her legs and onto the metal floor with every step visibly mortifying her in embarrassment.
The busy port/marketplace with its bustling crowds of xenos paid us no mind as we walked to her place. And as we did, I couldn't help but be in awe at the fact that I was truly in an alien world. That I had been given the Waifu Catalog and was in the movies that I had enjoyed watching.
Now however, it was more than just movies and movie characters: These were actual real people.
Lifeforms and souls of all walks of life were gathered here in Sakaar. And it was a diverse crowd of some humans and so many xenos. From insect-like bug people to pink-skinned human-like to some Kree to some humans. All living in relative harmony.
At the al fresco of one restaurant was a colourful group of adolescent females of each species gossipping and giggling like you would see teenagers would do on earth.
And as Valkyrie and I walked, we passed by a grinning human man in a biker-like jacket walking side-by-side with an insectoid xeno with the body language that shouted 'I'm with my best mate!'
They were just samples of the many, many sights of the type of thing you'd see on Earth. Only across races.
It was… nostalgic.
Others would look at such xenos with their chitinous insect mandible as enemies of mankind- something to rally against. Others would look at them as potential friends and families.
Yet others still would look at them and see customers and walking labour-generating wallets.
But I was different.
Because I knew then that for as long as there are many others who collectively possess their millions of acres and their thousands of tonnes of gold, and their sisters and daughters, I will never lack for opportunities.
And as my blood red eyes look at the universe around me…. To these masses of people, and to the sky above us where more worlds held even more souls. To various civilizations that spanned all the cosmos, To Asgard, to the Nova Empire, to the Kree, to the Sovereign, To Earth and its mightiest heroes.
… I couldn't help but grin viciously under my dragonbone helm as I saw nothing but opportunities.
x-X-x
[The Citadel at the End of Time]
In a dark foreboding castle nestled on an asteroid, a bright holographic screen the size of a pool table was lit up in a luxurious study room.
And on that screen, was a shining blue line that represented the Sacred Timeline- the entire chronological flow of events across time and space. Everything that has happened and most of what will happen; but most importantly, everything that was supposed to happen was displayed in that single blue line.
The invention of fire. The building of the pyramids. The myriad wars that ravaged the world of Earth. The formation of the Earth's so-called greatest heroes. The rise of Ultron and the Sokovian Accords that responded to it. The Mad Titan on his quest to collect the Infinity Stones and his subsequent victory. The time-travelling of the Avengers that brought them their final, hard-earned victory over the Mad Titan.
All of it was ordained to occur in the Sacred Timeline. Or at the very least, acceptable variations of it.
The extratemporal organization that was the Time Variation Authority existed out of time to keep it that way. Millions of men and women toiled and sacrificed their lives in a tireless effort to maintain the Sacred Timeline as just that- Sacred. Free of deviation and free of the dangers of multiversal war.
But now despite their efforts, the shining blue line that represented the Sacred Timeline that was an almost perfectly straight horizontal line with only slight curves...
...was now shooting straight up at an almost right angle.
It was the equivalent of a train swerving off the tracks and off a bridge. Only that the train's cargo was the entire multiverse, their passengers were completely oblivious to the inevitable crash, and the train engineer responsible for driving it spontaneously became blind and deaf.
Said man was currently in purple robes standing in front of the screen- panickedly running his fingers through the dark curls of his short cropped hair. The fear and sweat on his dark face was lit up by the light shining off the holographic screen.
"No, no, no, no. This wasn't part of the script!" He shouted- his voice high and terrified, "None of this was supposed to happen!"
"Golly, Mister He-Who-Remains, is there anything I can do to help?" a homely feminine voice of a southern belle asked out of concern.
The source of the voice was a holographic projection of an orange, anthropomorphic clock that floated over his shoulder- his custom AI. A look of deep worry on her animated cartoon-drawn face.
"Don't you understand the gravity of the situation!?" The man now named as He-Who-Remains roared as he glowered fiercely at the cartoon- as if he couldn't believe such a stupid question. "The Sacred Timeline in its entirety, all that was ever was or will be. It's all spiraling out of control!"
The clock hologram shrunk back from his angry outburst.
"But sir," she meekly appealed to him, "you know everything about the timeline."
"No, I don't! Not anymore!" he angrily dismissed, throwing his hands up in frustration- the purple sleeves of his robe fluttering in the air, "This anomaly baffles any attempt to know more about it, and I was the one who started this Timeline!"
"But sir… surely the TVA can help fix it. You founded it for that purpose! To preserve the Sacred Timeline!" the clock hologram reasoned to him. And that seemed to give the man pause.
"Yes, the TVA." He muttered, seeming to have remembered their existence only now when he was reminded of them. With a wave of his hand, holographic folders appeared before him, he deftly plucked one from the stack- brought it to the gigantic screen where the bending Scared Timeline was displayed.
An image of a world surrounded by portals appeared on the massive holographic display.
"This place… this time… A planet called Sakaar. Year 2010, Earth Local." He began as he threw the hologram of the folder at the Clock AI who caught it in her hands. "Send all the available units you have within the next few minutes. Do you hear?"
"But the TVA can't mobilize that many Minutemen that quickly." She attempted to explain. The order seemed to shock the Clock AI, her face scrunched in a sheepish look of concern.
"SEND EVERY AVAILABLE PERSONNEL, DO YOU HEAR ME? EVERY LAST ONE!" He-Who-Remains furiously roared with a wide backhand that went through her holographic face.
"NOW!" He urged her- the urgency in his voice was only matched by the look of desperation in his dark eyes. "BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!"
"Aye aye, He-Who-Remains Sir!" She called out as she blinked from existence- already zooming to TVA HQ to inform them all.
Now alone in his study, He-Who-Remains slumped back into the red leather of his chair- a pit of dread growing in his belly. For the first time in countless eons, he did not know what to do next. Something new and unexpected had come to the multiverse; and by their very existence, they were changing the very course of history and destiny.
Whoever or whatever they are. He-Who-Remains could only hope that they were weak enough for the TVA to deal with.
But the worst has yet to come. Soon enough, the point will come when not even he would be able to reenter the Sacred Timeline without making ruinous sacrifices.
And right now, he had to make a rather big one as well, for it is better to excise the anomaly and the surrounding timeline than to risk it metastasizing elsewhere. With a few tired taps of his finger on his Tempad, he shut the temporal and metaphysical door behind his own troops- trapping that anomaly in that timeline with the TVA.
But he could not help but dread the possibility that it would be the reverse...
That it would be the TVA who was trapped in a timeline with the anomaly.
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