Chapter Text
There is a smell. Not quite garbage, not quite road kill. It’s a deep rot with a sweet touch that makes you want to vomit because you know you're most likely inhaling particles of something horrible but you don't know what it is.
That was the smell Loki woke up to when he finally regained consciousness. He lay on his stomach, face smashed into a sinister-looking puddle of goo and legs pinned under some kind of rusty metal debris. All around him he could hear crashing sounds and muffled shouting.
For a while he did not move. He thought perhaps if he wished really, really hard he would wake up and be back on his settee, sipping wine and wondering vaguely which advisories from his government he would completely ignore that day.
Nothing happened other than his legs started to ache.
The memory of his father dying and the confusion of finding out he had a sister he never knew about - who, seconds after they met, tried to kill him - weighed heavily in his heart. Or maybe it was the knife she'd stuck into his chest. Yes, that was it. He could feel the cold steel poking through his armor.
He opened his eyes and immediately regretted the decision. The Bifrost had apparently deposited him onto a giant landfill. Massive holes dotted the sky, spewing out continuous streams of refuse in an almost calming way, like giant cosmic fountains.
If he was honest with himself (which, let's face it, was highly unlikely) he would know being thrown unceremoniously into a pile of trash was what he deserved. And as he ripped the dagger out of his chest a tiny thought formed in the back of his mind: This is your fault.
But it isn't, said the loud, authoritative voice in his head that was his ego. Not really. How was he supposed to know stashing his adoptive father on Earth would result in the old man expiring? Or that his death would release the Sister from Hell (literally)?
This was not the first time Loki had found himself adrift in the cosmos. When he was last stranded in space he’d ended up in a horrible little place called Knowhere, where he had made his arrival by falling through the roof of one of its sketchiest bars. The bar had promptly caught fire due to its contact with the Bifrost, which then resulted in a considerable amount of threats upon his life, followed by a lot of running and hiding. It was a generally unpleasant experience.
This place, somehow, seemed even worse.
In the distance he could see what looked like a city, though it was hard to tell, as the atmosphere was clouded with dust and pollution. Mountains and valleys of trash stood between him and whatever was on the horizon, and there was no telling the distance. But he knew that as soon as he found civilization it wouldn't take him long to come up with some clever plan to find his way back home or, more preferably, somewhere far away from wherever his maniacal, over-powered "sister" happened to be.
So he stood up to his full height, straightened his armor, and pointed himself toward the city.
He took two steps before something heavy hit him on the head and sent him tumbling down a mountain of rusty, jagged refuse and into an unusually organized pile of animal carcasses.
Now Loki - God of Mischief, son of Odin, King of Asgard - was normally an expert at dealing with tricky situations. He was the one who, when his brother and friends got themselves into a spot of trouble every time they went somewhere, would quickly formulate an escape plan and carry it out to perfection. And when he ended up locked in Asgard's dungeons after the fiasco on Earth that was most-definitely-not-completely his fault, he managed to put himself on the throne only a few months later. He was a survivor.
But at the moment Loki, God of Odin, son of Asgard, King of something-or-other, could barely remember his own name. It took everything in him not to pass out again. There was no time to think or strategize. All that his mind could process was 1) that he had fallen and 2) someone deserved to die.
He had barely managed to figure out which way was up before they had bound him in chains.
He was yanked roughly to his feet. It took a moment for him to regain his balance, and when he did he was finally able to get a good look at his attackers. They were a motley assortment of weaklings, most wearing masks and a few with unflattering capes. The weapons they carried were far more intimidating than they were.
They shoved him forward through a swamp of animal remains and out into some sort of pathway, where none of the people they passed seemed to think that there was anything remotely odd about it, as if there was always someone being dragged through the neighborhood against his will.
A strong wind blew through the valley and brought a horrid array of smells with it. He was overcome with the sudden urge to vomit.
"What is that smell?" he heard himself say out loud.
One of his captors chuckled. "That you, mate."
He had to choke down a considerable amount of bile before he was able to speak again. "Friends," he said as their laughter died down, "surely we can come to some sort of agreement? There is no need to chain me up like-"
A large club made contact with the side of his head.
If he previously had any intention of letting the strange, dim-witted creatures that had captured him live, that option was no longer viable. They were scavengers, most likely, and probably not skilled in battle. He decided it would be most prudent to incapacitate the entire group, then make his escape with as many of their weapons as he could shove into his magical weapon-hiding pocket dimension.
He stopped suddenly, causing the group around him to pause. One of them reached for the chains, but he pulled at them first, bringing the largest of the idiots down to the ground like a sack of Asgardian potatoes. He was on the others before they knew what had happened.
The fight was brief; they were even weaker than they looked. He grabbed a few daggers from one of his unconscious victims (or possibly dead - he couldn't tell and didn't care), stashed them away, and bolted down the path.
As he got closer to the city the stench of waste gave way to a far more pungent odor of sewage. There were people everywhere, clogging the streets so that he could barely move. He noticed that a great number of them were wearing masks. A persistent drumbeat sounded from every direction, and there was much reveling and dancing. He couldn't tell if he had stumbled upon some sort of celebration or if that was just the way people on this planet typically behaved. So uncivilized, he thought, as he stole a rag from someone's laundry and attempted to wipe the blood of his dead captors off his armor.
The city was an odd combination of rubbish piles and living spaces, as if the inhabitants had built their homes right into the landfill and made their living off of whatever they could find in the area. Even the buildings themselves were made out of refuse, though they seemed to get nicer and larger as he made his way toward the city center.
The streams of dancers were flowing in one direction and he followed, magically disguising himself along the way. It took three tries to get a feasible disguise in place; half the time he couldn’t tell heads from limbs and there was no easily discernible fashion to copy. It was merely an unnecessary amount of colorful headdresses, masks, armor, and - gods, did they make their clothes out of trash too?
"What's going on?" he shouted over the music to a randomer beside him.
"Don't you know? It's Public Execution Day!"
"It's what?"
He took a closer look at the crowd. Many of the peasants held crudely drawn signs that said things like "NO ONE ESCAPES" and "JUSTICE FOR ALL." Some had drawn crude pictures of gallows.
The crowd made its way toward a large building that looked like it was constructed out of pieces of smaller, uglier buildings that had been smashed together to create one single monstrosity. It towered over the other structures as if it was meant to be visible from any point in the city. Why in the Nine Realms anyone would want to make the thing so prominent was beyond him-
-until the giant, thousand-foot hologram of a flamboyantly dressed humanoid appeared right in front of it.
The crowd cheered at the sudden arrival of a massive man out of nowhere as if they had been waiting for it. Loki stared stupidly with his mouth open. The ridiculousness of it all made him dizzy.
Then he inconveniently recalled the statue he had built of himself back in Asgard. No, said his ego. That's different. For one thing, mine's smaller.
Somehow that thought made him feel worse.
"Sakaarians!" the man proclaimed, "welcome! Welcome to the seven-hundred and thirty-fourth bi-annual Public Execution Day!" He paused at length to allow for cheering. The face was blurry but it was obvious the man loved the attention. "We have a great one for you today! Wait 'til you see."
"Who is that?" Loki asked another stranger in the crowd.
"What're you new here or somethin'?"
"Yes. New." He smiled kindly. It was extremely difficult.
"That's the Grandmaster. He's in charge here."
Loki figured that much. "And where is 'here' exactly?"
"Sakaar!" she said with excitement.
The words meant nothing to him. He had never heard of any Sakaar or a Grandmaster. Who the hell would call himself "Grandmaster," anyway? The type of person that makes thousand-foot holograms of his own image, of course, he thought to himself. (Statues are different, his ego reassured him).
He was starting to think he was even further from home than he had assumed, which was just fine with him, truth be told. Let Thor deal with Hela and the accompanying family drama. He'd make his own way, as he always did.
The parade of people terminated at the steps of the revolting skyscraper, where a large platform was built in the middle of what must have been the city square. Its base was lined with guards wielding spears, and in the center, covered with hoods, were the condemned. There were five of them in a line, dressed in colorful costumes in an obvious attempt to add insult to injury. The Grandmaster stood center-stage. He raised his arms high in a gesture of welcome, his ridiculous sequined cape sparkling in the smog-filtered sunlight.
Loki had no desire to see the show. He had other plans. Slinking around the crowd, he rendered himself invisible and attempted to infiltrate the building. A large neon sign plastered directly above the main entrance read "CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS: |10| DAYS." The doors, large steel panels painted bright purple, opened and shut every few seconds as an array of people filed in and out.
He snaked his way inside just as the crowd started cheering. The executions had apparently begun. There was no shortage of guards here even with the event going on, so he was careful to remain hidden.
The first thing he noticed when he made his way inside was a large purple fountain built in the middle of the lobby area. It was difficult not to notice - it took up so much space that everyone had to walk around it to get anywhere. Upon closer inspection he realized that the statue at the top of the fountain was the Grandmaster, depicted as a god-like beast of a man: mostly naked, wielding a spear and two swords, and spewing water from assorted inappropriate and tasteless places.
For the second time that day Loki found himself staring stupidly with his mouth open. "Ostentatious" was apparently not a word in the Grandmaster's vocabulary.
The next thing he noticed was that the inside of the building was massive. High, vaulted ceilings covered the first floor, with twenty-foot wide corridors snaking off in every direction. It was not possible. From the outside the structure looked like it was, at most, a hundred feet wide. Loki was tempted to contemplate the physics of this conundrum but thought better of it. He was, he believed, learning to take things in stride.
He decided to pick a corridor and explore, and was just thinking of how lax the security was despite all the armed guards, before he stepped over a threshold and froze in place, electricity whizzing through him like thousands of tiny lightning bolts. Involuntary screams left his lips, and between spasms of pain he caught people all throughout the atrium turning to look at him. He sizzled to the ground like a piece of fried Asgardian bacon dropped on the floor.
As he lay there, everything around him moving in slow motion, he realized that he was possibly experiencing one of the most embarrassing moments of his life. Granted, waking up in a pile of trash was rather mortifying. And nothing was worse than being tossed like a rag doll by the Hulk. Thank the gods he never had to see that hellish monster again.
Guards were running at him from all directions. He got unsteadily to his feet and braced for a fight, pulling knives out of assorted hiding places as quickly as he could manage.
Someone shouted from across the atrium.
"THERE you are!"
He braced himself, but nothing happened. The guards had frozen mid-attack, their attention now focused on a spot behind him. He turned around slowly, realizing a second too late that he recognized the voice.
It was the Grandmaster.
The man approached him, all smiles. Loki attempted an innocent smile in return, which was difficult to pull off with a dagger in either hand. It was at that moment he realized there was still blood on his armor.
"You must be the Contraxian Ambassador,” the man said. “Welcome, welcome. You know who I am, of course."
"Yes. Of course."
"Great! Great." The Grandmaster put an arm around him and steered him through the lobby. "So how's Contraxia these days?"
He had no idea what or where Contraxia was. "Wonderful."
"I hear you have a new product line? I'll have to come try it sometime." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, then pointed at the blood on Loki's chest. "How'd you like the Executions? Were you in the blood-spatter section? That's the best section. You really get a feel for it."
"Yes. Definitely."
"Is this your first time coming to the Contest of Champions? You'll love it. The Kree are here too, I think. You know Kree - they're probably off praying somewhere. And the Princess of A'askvaria is here of course. Just warning you," he whispered loudly, "don't stare at her chins. Aha. Ahaha."
He said all of this very fast while directing Loki through the building and into an elevator. An entourage of guards followed them inside and he was pinned between the Grandmaster and a very unpleasant-looking female who kept eyeballing him suspiciously.
"You're gonna love your room," the Grandmaster went on, with undue emphasis on the word “love.” "I heard how you like a good view."
"Thanks." Sure. Why not?
There was a *ding* sound and the doors opened to an explosion of lights and music – if you could call it music – that made Loki feel as if he was stepping off into a seizure. The cacophony of sounds was nothing like the drum- and horn-laden power ballads they had on Asgard. It was more reminiscent of that horrid, electronic-sounding rubbish Tony Stark played in the cell where Loki was imprisoned after the Battle of New York. Every hour Stark would come down to the basement, bang on the cell door, and ask him how the music was, then proceed to turn it up loud enough for him to want to stab himself in the ears.
This was worse. Much worse.
The room was full of people who were, admittedly, much better dressed than the rabble outside. There was more variety here too: he recognized a few species from his own galaxy, at least.
"Okay so uh… Well, have fun!" The Grandmaster and his entourage wandered off, leaving Loki standing there like an idiot. He had no idea what he was supposed to be doing, so he took refuge on an unoccupied chair that looked like a hand covered in fur.
At that point he realized he could do one of two things: either 1) search the city for a viable means of transport and escape, or 2) stay on Sakaar and see where fate takes him. He considered returning to Asgard, but he was nowhere near ready to deal with the emotional fallout of his father dying (which I most definitely do not care about, he thought), and the Asgardian people were certainly not going to welcome him back as their king.
Then he remembered Hela. He would have been more surprised at the discovery of his father's greatest secret if he hadn't already lived through the revelation of his father's (apparently) second greatest secret, which was him. He did not want to think about it.
Instead, he wanted to snoop around the Grandmaster’s garbage heap of a palace and see what he could find.