Chapter Text
C-20 was like any other hunter at the TVA, until she was taken hostage by a dangerous variant and shown visions of her past in order to weasel the location of the Time Keepers out of her. And now, she was being interrogated by her fellow TVA agents. "You're not hearing me. I was there. This was real, what I saw. This is a place that I've been!" she cried out in protest. "This wasn't the TVA, this was a memory. I lived down there, I went to that bar, I had friends! I had a whole life on the Sacred timeline!" she couldn't believe what she was saying was all true.
"Calm down." said Hunter D-90, one of her coworkers. "Calm down? I'm a variant!" she shouted, outraged. How could they not understand? "So are you. So is every single person in this place!" "I'm ending this." said Ravonna Renslayer, the judge in the TVA court. The camera clicked off. "You can't do this!" C-20 shouted. "Did you know?" "The variant is messing with your mind. It could pose a threat to the entire TVA. You're going to have to be pruned." Renslayer said, avoiding C-20's question. "What?!" C-20 cried. She was speechless. The TVA had been lying to her for as long as she could remember, and now they were going to prune her? She was speechless. Without another word, Renslayer grabbed her prune stick, twisted the handle, and stuck it into C-20's chest. All at once, she felt immense pain as every molecule in her body disintegrated. She let out a terrified scream that quickly devolved into a glitchy buzz.
C-20's eyes blinked open. I'm not dead? she thought, confused at her dishevelled surroundings. Is this what death looks like? She was laying in a pile of greying hay in a rusty school bus. Items of a seemingly random quality were strewn all over the place. An even rustier bike, a 3-foot-tall clock (no face, thankfully), a jar of-ew, C-20 thought. I don't want to know what that is. Before she had time to take in more of her surroundings, a great WOOSH sound flew past her ears with a gush of wind. Turning around to see out the window behind her, C-20 saw a gigantic cloud of purple smoke with what looked like--a face?
Whatever it was, it was approaching rapidly. C-20 had no idea what was happening but knew she had to escape. She probably couldn't outrun the thing on foot, but maybe the bus was still working? Leaping forward, C-20 tried turning it on. It didn't work. Frantically, she tried everything she could to get it working. Finally, she found a set of keys lying on the floor by her feet. She picked them up and turned them in the lock. The bus shuddered back to life. Still shaken, C-20 planted herself in the driver's seat and pressed the gas pedal. The bus moved forward.
C-20 looked behind her. The cloud was still approaching. She kept driving. Where to, she did not know. She didn't even know where she was. All she knew was that she had survived many tough missions with the TVA before, and she wasn't to die to some cloud.