I wanted to get this chapter done way earlier, but the AP reading came around again, so I've been in Florida grading a thousand hand-written essays about things that are overrated, and it kind of fried my creativity. Then I went to Universal, where I missed the opening of the new Harry Potter ride by two measly days, but it was still a really good time. (Never EVER do Shrek 4-D, incidentally. It is extremely irritating and not worth doing even if there's no wait at all.) But here the chapter is now! Enjoy!

Clint didn't like the look of the instrument in the alien shop owner's hands at all. It was a lot like a gun, but more high tech—same as everything was around here—and with a very pointy end. The lunch he'd eaten two planets ago churned in his stomach as he watched Ul'var load the instrument with a small object that resembled an Earth computer chip, except that Earth computer chips weren't normally covered in tiny, wiggling tentacles.

He'd volunteered to go first. He wasn't going to take that back, but he wasn't thrilled about it either. He tried to think positive by imagining all the kung fu movies he wouldn't need subtitles for anymore, and that Nat would never be able to mess with him by deliberately mistranslating Russian for him again. It didn't really help.

Ul'var patted a spot on the back of his own neck near the base of his skull, raised the instrument, and gestured for Clint to turn around. Clint looked at Thor, who nodded, that obviously fake smile still on his face. Thor might just be the worst liar Clint had ever met, but he complied anyway. Even if Thor was lying about how pleasant this experience was going to be, Clint's gut was still telling him that Thor was a good guy. Maybe it was stupid to trust his gut about a Viking prince from space just because it had been right about a redheaded Russian assassin, but if it was wrong this time, they were all screwed anyway, so it didn't really matter.

He turned to face the front of the shop, meeting Nat's eyes. She had her arms folded and her anxiety on his behalf was showing through. He gave her a cocky half-smile, and she scowled. He forced himself not to tense up when he felt the alien's talon-like fingertips prodding beneath his hairline, followed by the chilly nose of the metal instrument.

"Ready?" said Thor.

"I guess," said Clint.

There was a click, a hiss, and a sharp sting—not much worse than a tetanus booster. He realized that he had shut his eyes and clenched his fists at the last second, and he relaxed, blinking at Thor and at Nat. "Hey, that wasn't so bad." Nat let out a surprised laugh. He lifted a hand to touch the spot where the translator had been injected, but before his fingers could reach it, hot tendrils of pain spread outward from that spot and then abruptly exploded through his skull, whiting out his vision and making his ears ring so loudly that he couldn't hear anything else. He staggered and fell to his knees, a scream tearing its way from his throat.

Thor and Nat were there on either side of him in an instant. He was barely aware of them. He'd had migraines before, but this was worse. He clutched at his head and groaned. It was like there was something crawling around inside it. The pain combined with Sakaar's overpowering smell of garbage was too much. His insides heaved. He only noticed that Ul'var had come around the counter and pressed an empty container close to his face when everything he'd eaten that day came back up and landed in it instead of all over the floor.

The pain continued to crash over him in waves, but after the first few, he realized that each one was slightly less intense than the last. The white-out had receded and the ringing had lessened, but he couldn't have said how long it took. He remained huddled on the floor, hands on his head, dimly conscious of Thor speaking loudly to the shop owner, whose replies seemed irritated. Natasha was still next to him, her hands on his arm, shaking him. Her words eventually penetrated the haze of pain.

"Clint! Clint! Are you okay?" He couldn't remember her ever sounding this unnerved.

"Getting there, I think," he panted. He screwed up his eyes again. "Ugh, this thing packs a wallop."

"Работает?" she said. Clint frowned at her, and she looked even more worried. "You couldn't understand that? It doesn't work?"

Clint squinted at Thor and the shopkeeper, whose argument hadn't ended. On the contrary, Thor looked like he was about to toss the guy through one of the piles of gadgets. When Clint tried to focus on the indignant trilling noises coming out of Ul'var's beak-like mouth, the pain spiked sharply. He recoiled, clapping his hands to his head again. "Not yet, if it's gonna."

"Hey!" Nat said loudly. Thor and the shopkeeper fell silent and looked around. "How long until we know if this thing even works?"

Clint's head was still splitting, but the next stream of trilling sounds Ul'var made in reply suddenly changed to perfectly clear English. "—tried to explain to your large, rude friend, it takes a little while for the programming to sync up with the language centers of the brain," he said.

It was bizarre. The words Clint heard didn't match up with the alien's mouth movements at all, but the voice was the same. Like his brain had switched audio tracks and he was watching a high-quality dub of real life. He let out an incredulous laugh.

"What?" said Nat.

"I understood him!" He couldn't keep being too thrilled about it, though, because fresh waves of agony were still coming in time with his pulse. He thought he could feel those tentacle things on the implant squirming at the base of his skull and it nearly sent him heaving again.

"How about this?" said Nat. Her mouth movements didn't match up either, but what he heard was English. Maybe it was because she was speaking Russian instead of whatever Ul'var spoke, but it sent up another flare of pain.

"Yeah, got that too," said Clint.

"What about this?" said Thor. "Can you understand what I'm saying too?" He was doing that thing people sometimes did when trying to communicate with a foreign speaker, where they spoke extra loud and slow, with wide eyes and exaggerated hand gestures, somehow thinking it would help. The dubbing effect made it extra weird.

"Okay, yeah, it works!" said Clint. "Now stop testing languages on me."

Thor laughed in delight and pounded the shopkeeper on the shoulder, which knocked him into that pile of gadgets anyway.

"How much longer am I gonna have this migraine?"

"I couldn't say," said Ul'var, picking himself up again with a glare at Thor and an anxious glance at his merchandise. "I can give you a discount on something you can take for it, though. It might not do anything about the pain, but it'll definitely take your mind off it for a few hours."

"No, no," said Thor quickly. "We don't need any mind-altering substances. Just being on this planet is bad enough already."

"You still wanna do this, Nat?" said Clint.

"Yeah, it'll be fine," she said, a hint of shrillness in her voice. "Maybe Thor can just hit me on the head with his hammer first, and then I can skip this part."

Clint gave a groaning laugh. "Why didn't I think of that?"

X

"You need to drink more," said the Valkyrie. "Are you always this stiff?"

Loki took another swig of the vile drink. "Would you believe that they call me Silvertongue back home?"

"At this point, no." She was about halfway through the second bottle now.

After another moment in which she continued drinking while Loki tried not to look directly at her, he forced himself to speak again. "May I have the honor of your name?" He suppressed a grimace. What was he doing, addressing her like a courtier when she was a seasoned, elite warrior? She didn't appear to notice, however.

"Scrapper 142," she said flatly.

"That's a name?" he asked. Wonderful. First he addresses her as the wrong station, now he insults her. Silvertongue, indeed.

"Does the job well enough," she said. She showed no hint of curiosity to learn his own name, but then, she probably already knew that too. Unless she was a deserter from the Aesir-Jotnar war, she'd likely been part of the honor guard at the palace when Prince Loki was first presented to Asgard as an infant.

The very thought made him want to shrivel up and sink through the floor. He must look like such a child to her. This realization did nothing to help with his hormones.

"So," she said, clearly losing patience with his abysmal display of conversational skills. "I know what I'm doing in the armpit of the universe, but what brings a couple of princes out here?"

With a quick glance around, Loki opted to switch to the nameless tongue. A couple of the patrons at the table nearest theirs winced and touched the backs of their skulls, where their translators would be located. "We heard the Mad Titan was buying an army from the ruler of Sakaar. We'd prefer it if that transaction failed."

Her eyes widened before she smoothed her expression back to prickly indifference. "I thought Asgard couldn't be bothered to deal with Thanos again as long as he keeps well clear of the nine realms." She used the nameless tongue as well, which surprised him a little. She would've needed to be highly ranked in the Valkyrior to earn that kind of clearance. Very highly ranked.

"Asgard's past leniency was obviously unwise, as powerful as he has grown. We mean to correct that oversight."

"Thanos has torn through dozens of worlds with the armies he already has, and the ones that put up a fight barely slowed him down. You have two pampered royals and a couple of—what, Xandarians?—to succeed where they failed? Bit overconfident, aren't you?"

"They're Midgardians, actually," said Loki, choosing not to dignify the "pampered royals" remark with a response.

She snorted into her second bottle. "Well, in that case, I'm sure Thanos will be quaking in his indestructible boots."

"It's not him we're after just yet. For now, we're only dealing with the lieutenants he sent here."

"Good luck with that." Bottle number three wasn't coming quickly enough, so she grabbed his instead.

"Our luck would be better if we had the help of a Valkyrie."

She set his now-empty bottle down rather hard, her gaze becoming colder than a Jotunheim winter. "It looks like your luck is gonna stay shit, then."

Indignation did far more to loosen his tongue than the alcohol had so far. "Thirty seconds ago, you scorned Asgard for not bothering to do anything about Thanos, and now you would spurn an opportunity to be part of the effort to oppose him?"

Two new bottles were set in front of them. They both ripped the tops off and took swigs without breaking eye contact.

"I haven't fought for Asgard in over a thousand years, and I'm not looking for a reason to start back up again," she said. "We're not in Yggdrasil, and out here, I'm a scrapper, not a Valkyrie."

"I wasn't aware that oaths of loyalty to the throne of Asgard were conditional upon the swearer's proximity to it."

"Looks like there are a lot of things you're not aware of, your highness."

"So you're a deserter," said Loki, his lip curling. "When did your honor fail you? Was it before or after the rest of the Valkyrior fell on Niflheim?"

She was on her feet in an instant, and he only just managed to catch the blade of her dagger against one of his before she could press it to his throat. "If having honor means remaining loyal to the throne of Asgard even after everyone I ever cared about was slaughtered in a battle the Allfather knew we had no chance of winning, then I have no use for it," she snarled. "Odin's never given a shit about me being alive out here before now, so I don't need his boys suddenly showing up and demanding—" She broke off and staggered a little on her feet. As she did so, Loki felt a wave of numbness sweeping over him. Both their gazes snapped to the bottles sitting on the table.

"Oh, damn," she said.

The hairs on the back of Loki's neck stood up. Even with his senses dulled, he could feel the surge of nearby magic, and then the entire outer wall of the dingy building was abruptly torn free with an ear-splitting shriek of metal. Many of the other patrons screamed and began running in every direction, while a flat-faced gray alien Loki recognized from Thor's memories stepped into the gaping hole.

X

To Thor and Barton's relief, Romanoff didn't have nearly as much difficulty adjusting to the translator implant. Ul'var suggested that it had something to do with her being younger and bilingual, so the language center of her brain was much more flexible. As Thor was paying for the two implants, they heard a distant swell of noise.

"Hmm. Battle must be over," said Ul'var. "You three'll want to hurry off to wherever you're headed if you don't want to get caught in the rush."

"Of course," said Thor. They turned and carefully wended their way back towards the exit.

"What battle?" said Romanoff, wincing and rubbing her ear.

"The Grandmaster keeps the people here entertained by forcing slaves to fight to the death in his arena," said Thor.

"What, like gladiators?" said Barton.

"Yeah," said Thor.

"Whoa, this is so weird," said Romanoff, looking around at the shop signs as they reached the street.

Barton followed her gaze and blinked rapidly.

"What?" said Thor.

"It all still looks like alien symbols, but I know what it says in English," said Barton. He turned to Romanoff. "Is it Russian for you?"

"No...wait," she said, frowning. "I think it depends which language I'm thinking in. It's English right now, and…" She blinked and shook her head. "Now it's Russian."

Thor grinned, delighted that they'd found such an excellent solution for this problem. "Very good," he said. "We should head back to the mead hall." The sound of people departing the arena was getting louder, and the overhead traffic of flying crafts was growing thicker, most of it moving outward from the heart of the city.

Thor expected it to be difficult to get any information about the arrangement between the Grandmaster and Thanos's minions, but clearly he had underestimated the former's vanity. They were barely halfway across the street when a massive hologram of the Grandmaster popped up, towering over all but the tallest buildings, and his voice began to issue from what sounded like every direction.

"People of Sakaar, let's give it up for our guests, Ebony Maw and Cull Obsidian. I like to call them Wrinkles and Scales." He started clapping, and the hologram panned over to one familiar and very irritated-looking alien Thor recognized from the battle on the Statesman. The Grandmaster's voice protested, just as loud as before. "No, why are you showing him? Look at his face! Do you want to start a riot?" It blurred back to focus on the Grandmaster himself, who adjusted his collar and gave a big smile. "Well, that was Scales, anyway. Not sure where Wrinkles went, but they'll be sponsoring the new tower for my palace. I know you all couldn't be happier about this project, and I want to help you feel like a part of it, even if you aren't part of the army I'm selling to them. I've drawn up a few different options for tower designs, and I'm taking a poll! Whichever one you like best has a good chance of being the version you'll soon be building for me. So make sure to stop by a directory console to cast your vote, and look out for Scales as the main event in this week's tournament! You've already gotten a taste of what he can do this evening, so come back to the arena for the next battle ready for more."

The hologram winked out, leaving the city much dimmer than it had been and a stunned silence in its wake.

"Is that clown for real?" said Barton. Hearing alien tongues didn't seem to be paining him as much as they had at first. A good sign.

"Unfortunately," said Thor.

"And the big guy it showed is one of the guys we're looking for," said Romanoff.

"He is," he confirmed.

"Looks like the arena might be a good place to get some of the intel we need to take them down," said Barton.

"You may be right."

It wasn't until they had gotten within yards of their stolen ship that Thor realized what was odd about the sounds of the approaching crowd. Namely, that they had started to sound less like the unorganized movements of thousands of people going to separate destinations and a lot more like marching. The street was too winding and full of archways and protruding shopfronts to see very far in any direction. However, when he looked up, he saw a familiar ship—one he had briefly believed to be responsible for shooting the Valkyrie out of the sky during the escape to Asgard. It was flying straight towards them, and its guns were swiveling around.

"Get down!" he shouted, tackling Barton and Romanoff before they could reach the ship, which exploded when the enemy ship fired on it seconds later.

*dramatic chord* Two-pronged cliffhanger! My specialty. :D So we've got Thor and two very headache-y SHIELD agents versus Topaz and a bunch of goons in one part of the city, and a slightly drugged Loki and Valkyrie versus Ebony Maw in another. Fun times!

I've really enjoying working out exactly what the translator implants do, and all that stuff was pretty easy to write. Loki totally bombing at flirting with Valkyrie was much harder, but I'm very happy with the result.

More Grandmaster! Man I love writing him. He's hilarious.

The Russian thing Natasha asks Clint just means "Is it working?" (if my Google translate serves, anyway).