A person in an oddly familiar style of armor pops into existence with a sprinkle of pink light and enough momentum to roll down a flight of crumbling stairs.

"Fuck," she says, then, more alarmedly, "Fuck!"

He stops. The ragged half-armor he's wearing starts to coalesce around one arm. 

"Well, you weren't on the agenda. And I actually read the agenda this time."

"- hello, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt your... wander through the... here," she says, sitting up. "Don't, uh, let me stop you - are you okay?"

"Oh, have you not heard the news yet."

"I'm from way too far away to be getting the bulletins. Er, hang on -" She doesn't appear to do anything except look momentarily thoughtful. "- sorry, I can check exactly how far away I'm from while you tell me whatever it is you want me to know, go ahead -"

"It, ah, won't actually matter how far away you were. Big purple fellow, goes by Thanos, has been collecting infinity stones. He's on a tear to reduce overpopulation. He, uh, got the last one. Ten minutes ago, give or take - computer - eleven minutes ago.

Then he killed half of everyone, everywhere. Now, we're not planning to let that stand or anything, but - yeah, that's how today has been going so far."

"Okay, that's - I'm from an alternate universe, and it requires several instances of alternate universe travel to get from here to where I'm from, but that is still very bad, that's - that's gonna take a while to fix." She starts rummaging around on her person. "You don't happen to have a pen, I assume."

"I do not have a pen. My computer can take notes, if we need to be writing things down. ...are you Asgardian."

"Culturally. I do need to put things to physical medium, yes, and I have paper but not a pen - can your computer take dictation from me okay?"

"Yep, it's got you. Asgard's gone. Like, not just the half-and-half thing that hit everyone, they got blown up before that. And Thanos intercepted the refugees on the way to Earth. And if there were any survivors of that I don't know if he left them out of the half-and-half thing. He did not strike me as a particularly conscientious maniac."

"...this is going to be such a horror to fix, is this how Swift feels all the time - no, I assume he feels worse - okay, dictating now. Letter to Cam code raglan cardboard marionette, I found some kind of variant Edda, half of the entire world's population has reportedly been murdered just now, no one step connections to the map, find me ASAP, love Loki."

"Is there anyone else you wanna address that to in case he was in the unlucky half."

"- sure, to be safe. Carbon copy Attn Vanda Nossëo, carbon copy Ambaróna VIP channel code spork feather, carbon copy Sibyl code bear twig jump. By 'everywhere' do you mean 'places you could theoretically get by traveling through space'."

"No idea. There was a fellow here who could probably have answered that for you, but he was in the other half. And wouldn't have mentioned it unless it changed our plans. Though he didn't mention you, and that wouldn't have taken very long - 'grab the stray Asgardian' or 'don't' -"

"I might need more context, I am I think not from here. I am pretty sure my Asgard spins on. Incidentally when I asked if you were okay I was originally intending to lead into an offer of healing magic?"

"This technically won't kill me but that sounds lovely."

She pops over rather than walk the intervening steps and gives him a noseboop.

He straightens up. "Lovely. But now you've got to testify when we get home that I did not sit out the fight. There are people who I'd hate to have think that, and some of them might even be alive.

We had the time stone, and a wizard. Wizard checked for futures where we won. He was at it a while. Looked through fourteen million where we lost, found something. Where we still lost but if everything lines up right we can undo it."

"Time stone liked the wizard?"

"You know, I'm not clear at all on how the shiny rocks work. Do they have opinions about people? If they like Thanos I question their taste."

"They're not qualified judges of character. I can't guarantee the ones here are like mine, of course."

"Well, maybe the time stone made him sit through fourteen million bad ends because if you're a space rock then that's hilarious, or maybe it was being as helpful as it could. Thanos has it now."

"It's really inconvenient that teleporting requires me to know what the place I'm going to looks like."

"We're going to Midgard! How well do you need to know it?"

"Uh, seeing a picture does the trick. Are you from Midgard?"