a/n: Sorry for the delay. Story not abandoned! Lost job, was homeless for a while, etc etc. Back now. Thanks for the reviews! I really appreciate it.
At some point the palace servants had brought Loki a change of clothes. He found them neatly folded on the bed when he returned from his almost-execution, along with several hundred other outfit combinations hanging in a closet that he was 98% sure was not there before. How they managed to replicate his original clothing so closely was a mystery considering he was still wearing it.
Sakaarians were, thankfully, cape-wearers, and Loki was pleased to see that they had included a nice yellow one for him. He would have felt horribly out of character without it. The rest of the outfit was acceptable, though there was a distinct lack of green.
He dared, for a moment, to let himself believe that his circumstances were improving. He wasn't dead, for one thing. And he didn't smell like refuse anymore. He was also now posing as the King of Earth, which he found personally hilarious.
But even so, he was walking that fine line between having the patience to play the Long Game on one side, and giving up and murdering everyone in the building on the other. Just days ago you were an actual, real king, his ego kindly reminded him, and now you're bowing down to some idiot trash lord who wants to use you as a servant. Go you. Well done.
I know exactly what I'm doing, he lied.
No you don't. You haven't known what you were doing since you let those Jotuns into Odin's vault.
"IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY!"
And now he was talking to himself. Thankfully he was alone, so there were no witnesses to his sudden outburst of lunacy.
I'm embarrassed for you, said his ego.
That was the moment a giant hologram of the Grandmaster's face appeared out of nowhere.
"Argh!"
"Hey, 'Your Majesty,'" said the face. "Who are you talking to?"
"Er- no one."
"Uh-huh... Well I have a job for you. Get up here."
"But I was just-"
The image disappeared.
"-there."
He sighed. Just when he thought he was finally getting used to this gods-forsaken place some new idiotic thing would happen to make him question whether he had actually landed on a planet or was, in fact, still drifting somewhere in space, hallucinating due to a lack of oxygen. At this point he would have preferred the latter.
He changed into one of his new outfits (with cape) and made his way up to the Grandmaster's suite, fully aware of the fact that his entire stint on Sakaar so far had been 10% killing people and 90% riding up and down lifts. He considered sending a duplicate this time, just in case the idiot tried to off him again, but he did not have the energy to conjure one. You have to be in the mood for that sort of thing.
Thankfully the room was not filled with guards or attractive women with guns, though Topaz was still proudly wielding the Staff of Foreboding. She leered at him when he walked in.
The Grandmaster seemed to be in some sort of mood. He had his arms crossed and was tapping his foot like an impatient child. "I'm annoyed again," he complained loudly.
Loki bowed. "I'm sorry, sir."
"Yeah, you should be. We have a problem."
"How can I help?"
"Well, as we established this morning, you are not the Contraxan ambassador."
"Correct."
"Yes, I know it's correct. I wasn't asking. I was telling. Shut up and let me finish. Anyway, we had a deal with Contraxia, which you would have known if you actually were the ambassador. Do you have any idea what Contraxia exports?"
Loki hesitated.
The Grandmaster rolled his eyes. "Okay now I'm asking a question. You can talk."
"'Entertainment,' from what I understand."
"That's right. And a particular kind of entertainment, too - the kind that I now find myself in very short supply of six days before the Contest of Champions. This is not good. Not good. Fix it."
"I'm sorry?"
"FIX IT! Now. The rest of the delegations will be arriving tomorrow. How am I supposed to keep them entertained for the next week without entertainment?"
This was ridiculous. Surely he was not asking Loki, an actual king, to find him escorts?
"Sir, are you asking-"
"Find me escorts."
He sighed. "As you wish, Grandmaster."
"And music."
How the hell... "Yes, sir."
"And booze."
He walked away and Loki stood there, staring at the back of his head, wondering if he could throw his dagger accurately enough from that distance to bury it in the man's skull.
Topaz appeared beside him. He had a suspicion that she knew exactly what he was thinking.
"Does dealing with him get any easier?"
"No," she said, and thrust a stick of plastic at him. "Take this."
"What is it?"
"Money. Unless you were planning on paying for all of that yourself?"
Loki ripped the stick from her hand. "Where am I supposed to find all of this? How the hell am I to get music and drinks and... escorts on such short notice?"
She shrugged. "Try the Purple District. South of the city."
"You know, there were plenty of 'amenities' in my suite when he thought I was the ambassador. Where did they go?"
"The Grandmaster hates the Contraxans. Those were the cheapest hookers he could find. It was meant to be an insult." She chuckled. "They would not be suitable for his guests."
"Great."
The Purple District turned out to be the size of a small city itself, with a seemingly unlimited selection of shops, bars, and nightclubs, none of which looked remotely appealing to Loki.
Within the first five minutes of his foray into the District he saw three bar fights, was solicited for sex at least twice, and watched a street urchin stab an old man and steal his shoes. It made him long for the grace and elegance of Asgard, where people acted honorably and pursued the finer entertainments, like axe-throwing and drinking out of barrels.
He scoured the area in search of the most expensive-looking bar, which was difficult in a city made of trash, and finally settled upon a place sandwiched between Pixel's Brothel and ScrapperWare Supplies called Bar-On-Scrap-Heap-12.
That was his first mistake.
The establishment was crowded and noisy. The patrons seemed a higher class than the peasants outside, but they were rowdier than necessary and apparently not shy about public displays of affection, in which many of them were currently engaged.
He took a seat at the bar and signaled the bartender. There was a large amount of the Grandmaster's money in his pocket and he was damned if he wasn't going to buy himself a drink or five.
The bartender was a short, elderly female with a kind face that reminded him of his mother. "What'choo want?" she asked in a deep, husky voice that had no business coming out of such a tiny creature.
"Something strong." He handed her the money stick and she held it up to the light, as if examining its authenticity.
He was going to protest but thought better of it. He wouldn't put it past the Grandmaster to have given him counterfeit currency.
A yellow-skinned Xandarian man was seated beside him, holding his head up with his hands and trying not to fall asleep. Three empty drink bottles littered the counter in front of him.
"Nice lineup today, eh?" he said when Loki caught his eye.
"Beg your pardon?"
"The girls." He jabbed his thumb behind him at the crowd.
He had missed it at first, but it seemed that the bar served as a staging area for Pixel's "employees," and almost every patron - most of which were male - was paired with an escort of some kind (or two, or three).
"Acceptable, I suppose."
"Best in town," said the Xandarian.
Well that was lucky. "Are they really?"
The man nodded. "Oh yeah. You pay a premium for Pixel's."
If they were good enough for Unnamed Xandarian Drunk, they were probably good enough for the Grandmaster. Well probably not, actually, but he didn't care enough to worry. All he had to do now was find their boss and arrange some sort of business transaction. He scanned the room for anyone that might look like they were in charge.
That was when he made his second mistake.
He noticed her immediately. She was dressed in armor, which was out of place in the lineup of escorts but which seemed relatively normal otherwise. There was something vaguely familiar about her but he couldn't put his finger on it. She was deep in conversation with three other women and he concluded (somehow, for some reason that later on he still could not fathom) that she must be their manager.
He approached her slowly. She stood with her back to him, hands on hips.
"Excuse me," he interrupted, "I'm looking for some... company." That was a thing people said, right?
The woman did not turn around or bother to look at him at all. "I'm sure you are," she muttered.
Well that was just poor customer service. "Let me rephrase that. The Grandmaster is looking for some company."
She turned her head. Again, something about her struck him as familiar. "I don't give a shit what the Grandmaster wants," she said. "I was here first."
"Fine." He sneered at her. "If you don't want my business..."
"What are you talking about?" She looked at Loki, then back at the women she was talking to, and something clicked.
She punched him in the face.
He stumbled backwards, just barely managing not to fall over. It was like being hit with a brick. He pulled out a dagger and launched back at her with what he thought was an impressive ferocity, but she was ready for him. She knocked the dagger out of his hand and somehow was able to get behind him before he had a chance to react. He felt a knee in his back, and as he was thrown to the floor a realization hit him.
She was Asgardian.
She had to be. The clothes, the movements, the expert fighting style that was so very much like his brother's... Very few other beings in the galaxy could manage to get the jump on him so quickly.
He laughed. "I take it you're not interested in my business then?"
"I take it you're the Grandmaster's new pet?" she mocked while pinning him to the ground.
He turned suddenly and threw her off-kilter just long enough to get in a punch, which hit her square in the jaw.
She recovered quickly and the next thing he knew he was clutching a very sensitive area and writhing in pain.
"Do it again, fool," she said. "I dare you."
"Hhhgh."
"ONE-FOUR-TWO!" came a booming voice from the back. It was the bartender. The crowd watched as she hobbled over to them and pointed a stubby little finger in the Asgardian woman's face. "How many times must I tell you? Stop beating up my clients, you ridiculous creature. Get out. OUT!"
The woman leered at the bartender and stormed out the door. The bar's patrons gave her a wide berth as she left.
Loki stood up and brushed himself off. "Thank you," he said to the old woman.
"You get out too. I'm sick of the Grandmaster's lackeys coming in here and demanding this and that."
"I'm not the Grandmaster's-"
"OUT!"
He pondered for a second how horrible it would be to stab a woman that reminded him of his mother in the face, and decided against that particular course of action. Instead, he headed out the door and down the street in pursuit of the Asgardian that had just kicked his ass.
He caught up with her a few blocks away.
"You will regret that," he threatened.
She rolled her eyes. "Are you following me? Look, I don't care who you are - the Big Man's servant or concubine or whatever-"
"I am not a concubine."
She looked him up and down and pointed at his cape. "Paid for those clothes yourself, did you? You do know that the Grandmaster's favorite color is yellow?"
"You're Asgardian," he blurted in a desperate attempt to change the subject.
She twitched slightly. "Not really."
"You can't lie to me. I know an Asgardian when I see one."
She looked as if she wanted to say something but thought better of it. "You're wrong. I'm just a scrapper. Always have been."
"And do all scrappers fight like you do?"
"The good ones do."
"Do you have any idea who you are speaking to? I am Lo-"
"I don't care."
"-ki, King of Asgard. And you will obey-"
She put her face right up to his. "You think you frighten me, slave? What are you going to do, tell the Grandmaster on me? He loves me. If I asked him to decapitate you and put your head on a pike he would do it."
Loki did not back down. "I have no intention of informing the Grandmaster. I can kill you easily enough myself."
A smile spread across her lips that clearly said go ahead and try.
They stared daggers at each other for what felt like an eternity. Loki's rage eventually abated, replaced with resignation. "So why does the Grandmaster like you so much?"
She shrugged. "I found him his champion."
"Champion?"
"The winner of the last two Contests. Undefeated. He's brutal and violent and terrifying. Puts on a good show. Makes the Grand Daddy a lot of money."
"Sounds revolting. How can you stand to watch something so barbaric? Especially as an Asgardian? Such ridiculousness would never have been tolerated-"
The woman pushed him against a wall with unnatural force and held him there, arm pressed against his throat. She looked murderous. "Don't you DARE presume to tell me about Asgard," she shouted. "I have witnessed things in that gods forsaken place that would put Sakaar to shame. And if you truly were the King you would know that."
She released him and turned away, clearly embarrassed that she had let slip her origins after so heartily denying them. Loki felt like he'd won a victory. But at the same time, he was confused.
"I'll admit we have a history of interventionism," he said, massaging his neck, "but Asgard is nothing like Sakaar. My father-"
"Who is your father?"
Loki hesitated. "Odin," he said finally.
The woman smiled at him in a sinister way. "Then I'm afraid you don't know your father very well at all," she whispered. "Pick up a history book sometime. One that wasn't written by the All-Father or his scribes. You'll see."
She walked away, leaving Loki looking very confused in the middle of the street.