Loki and the Valkyrie stood their ground as the alien approached, his narrowed eyes fixed on them, a satisfied sneer on his lips. Loki gritted his teeth and tried to shrug off the disorienting, slowing effects of the drug. He suspected that the substance had been intended for less hardy beings than Aesir and Jotnar, but even so, facing an enemy sorcerer with dulled wits was not unlike fighting an expert swordsman with only a blunted practice sword.
"Who the Hel are you?" said the Valkyrie. Being half-drunk and drugged only seemed to have made her angrier. Loki was grateful that she now had a target for it other than him. The alien's eyes focused on her, and Loki didn't waste the divide in his attention. It took a lot more effort than usual, but he left a projection in his place and cloaked himself, then began picking his way around the rubble and overturned tables and chairs.
"I am Ebony Maw, the right hand of the Great Titan Thanos," the alien replied. He had a reedy voice and enunciated his words precisely, and he carried himself with the smug confidence you'd expect to see from a man who had just torn the outer wall off a building with the flick of a finger. All of this would have been enough to make Loki loathe him even if he hadn't already known who he was and who he worked for. "I will give you a choice, mage." He fixed his gaze on Loki's projection. "You have an opportunity seldom granted."
"Just what opportunity would that be?" the projection asked.
"You have access to something the Great Titan desires. You will help him acquire it."
"Will I? I thought you said you were giving me a choice. You see, I don't feel particularly obliged to do favors for someone who so rudely interrupted my drink with the lady. It was going so well." Loki saw the Valkyrie shoot the projection an annoyed glare, and he smirked.
"Your petty affections are meaningless in the face of my master's glorious design for this universe," said Maw. Beneath his cloaking spell, Loki raised his daggers. He was nearly behind Maw now, and closing in. "You can either become a part of it willingly or be crushed beneath it. That is your choice. One way or the other, you will serve his purpose."
"I decline," said Loki, dispersing the projection and lunging forward to cut right through Maw's spine.
The heavy cables dangling from what was left of the wall flew up and wrapped themselves around Loki's wrist, halting his motion a mere inch before the tip of his dagger reached the back of Maw's tunic. Maw rounded on him. "You insult me with your paltry tricks," he said, leaving one hand pointed towards the Valkyrie. He lifted his fingers, and the ground at her feet began ripping itself apart.
Loki forced the cables off him with a surge of seidr and fell back. He split two simulacra off him and went left while they went center and right, but before he could feint an attack or make another real one, Maw's head jerked to the side and a line of blood appeared on his cheek, and a dagger went flying past. He turned to snarl at the Valkyrie, who had deftly sidestepped the crumbling flooring beneath her. Loki shot her a roguish grin, but then he had to duck when the second dagger she threw came straight at him.
"Really?!" he said, so deeply affronted that he sacrificed some of his attention for dodging and stopping Maw's next salvo to gape at her.
"What?" she retorted, vaulting over a wall of pavement that hurtled her way and unsheathing a sword he recognized as a Dragonfang. "Just because I'm fighting this pompous, craggy asshole now doesn't mean I forgot where we left off."
X
This wasn't good. Thor had no doubt that he could have handled the attacking ship and the approaching soldiers on his own, but Romanoff and Barton were still adjusting to the translator implants and in poor condition for battle. He kicked a large chunk of their destroyed ship into the air and clubbed it towards Topaz's craft with Mjolnir. It collided with it slightly off-center, sending it careening behind a building, but that would give them only a moment's reprieve. "Are you well enough to defend yourselves from the ground forces?" he called over the sounds of marching soldiers.
"Depends how much better they are than those scavenger guys," said Barton, taking cover and aiming his blaster towards where the soldiers were likely to appear first.
Romanoff took up a position beside him, aiming her own blaster the other way, which left Thor to defend the area in front and above. "Why are these guys attacking us?" she said.
"Yeah, you don't have a bounty on your head on this planet that you forgot to mention, do you?" said Barton.
"Or maybe the scavengers were some important guy's buddies?" suggested Romanoff.
"Not that I know of," said Thor. "But the ship belongs to the Grandmaster's second-in-command."
"Then this isn't an accident," said Barton.
He was right. Somehow, the Grandmaster had gotten wind of them, and he'd sent his underlings after them. For Thor, this realization was followed swiftly by a second, which sparked off equal measures of anger and fear inside him: if the Grandmaster was coming after the three of them, then he must also be targeting Loki, and Ebony Maw's absence from that projection moments ago was suddenly much more worrying. "We have to get back to the mead hall."
The soldiers came into view at both ends of the street and began firing their weapons.
X
Ebony Maw was using telekinesis on a level that Loki had never seen. He continued to deflect his and the Valkyrie's attacks with apparent ease using the materials around him. He made solid masonry and metal support beams come apart with the effort it took most people to flick lint off their clothing, reshaped pieces of it into pointed missiles, and sent it whistling through the air straight for them. It hardly mattered how many simulacra Loki created, because Maw had more than enough projectiles to spare for each.
Loki's current strategy was to keep his real body cloaked continuously while making a projection into a likely-seeming target—speaking through it, using seidr shields to defend it from attacks, and throwing conjured daggers from it, while simulacra continued to peel off it. So far, it seemed to be working. Maw didn't target the spot where Loki was really standing, even as he continued to lob rubble at the Valkyrie and all the copies. However, he also hadn't taken another hit since the Valkyrie cut his cheek. At this rate, the two of them would need to be extraordinarily lucky to defeat him, but Loki's body felt heavier with every passing moment, and by the looks of the Valkyrie's dodges and sword slashes, she was in the same boat. It wouldn't be long before the drug rendered them completely incapable of fighting.
The smart thing to do now would be to leave his distraction in place and flee to somewhere he could focus his seidr on burning the drug out of his system. But that would mean leaving the Valkyrie to Maw. Maybe he should. Pretty or not, she'd made her opinion of him fairly clear when she threw that knife at him. He owed her nothing. He took a few steps towards the street. He could slip down there and make his way towards Thor and the mortals. Perhaps they could come back for her together. He could even insist on it so that Thor wouldn't be angry with him for abandoning her, and if he collected one of her daggers on the way out, he might be able to use it for a tracking spell to help locate her—and, by extension, Maw's ship, which they needed to find anyway.
He looked back. The Valkyrie's skin shone with sweat from the effort of fighting the drug as well as Maw, and she was jumping from one hurtling boulder to the next, trying to reach him. She made a mighty leap, Dragonfang driving towards Maw's throat, but she failed to notice the coil of metal cord rising up towards one of her feet. It caught her and yanked her out of the air so violently that the sword flew out of her hand, and she was left dangling in front of Maw by the ankle, hair and cape hanging down.
Loki could feel his control of his seidr slipping. His projection was too weak to front any attacks to help her now, and the simulacra had all been dispelled by Maw. His distraction was nearly spent, and he was still far too close to the scene. If he didn't run now, he would lose his chance.
"You fight well," Maw told the Valkyrie, who was still struggling to get free. "A warrior such as you would be a fine addition to my master's ranks. He does prefer to start them off when they are young and malleable, but he has made exceptions when it suited him."
"If you take me to that purple shithead, I'll stick my sword through his eye," she said, and spat in his face.
"In that case," said Maw coolly, wiping the spit off with a disdainful grimace, "you should rejoice to know that you will become a child of Thanos in death." He curled his fingers and the Dragonfang floated up off the ground where it had fallen. When he angled his hand, it sped towards her chest like an arrow.
"No!" Loki snarled, gathering up every last bit of seidr he could muster even as the edges of his vision began to fog, then forcing it out towards the airborne sword. The deadly weapon spun off-course and embedded itself six inches deep into the wall of the ruined establishment behind her.
The Valkyrie stared at him with wide eyes. He met them briefly before focusing on Maw, who turned around at a leisurely pace, a smile stretching his fleshy, gray lips. "There you are, mage." He raised his bony hands again. Loki fought to remain upright and lifted his daggers in front of him once more.
X
The Sakaaran soldiers were indeed superior fighters to the scavengers, though not by much. Topaz in her ship was by far their greatest concern, wreaking havoc on the vendor stalls they'd been using for cover with every pass. She'd learned not to linger, though, after what Thor had done to the vessel the first time. Thor very much wanted to launch himself into the sky to bring her down for good, but he couldn't leave Barton and Romanoff alone for that long. They were succeeding in keeping the soldiers from advancing on either side for now with just their two blasters, and Thor had taken down several that came in from the front. It wouldn't last. More were coming by the minute.
"How about some lightning?" said Barton over the sounds of blaster fire.
"I'm just waiting for them to line up for me," said Thor, watching Topaz's ship coming back around. Dark clouds were gathering overhead, responding to the energy building within him and in Mjolnir. The score or so of soldiers coming from the front were right beneath her flight path. He stepped out to make himself a better target. "Come on, you bastards," he growled. Topaz swooped down, the soldiers charged, and Thor smirked. With a roar, he pointed Mjolnir skyward, and a blinding flash of lightning blasted from him to the clouds, then arced back down, lighting up the ship on the way and flinging the cluster of soldiers off their feet.
This time, the ship burst into flames and crashed into the neighboring building. Even if Topaz survived that, her ship was certainly no longer a problem. He hurled Mjolnir at one of the two soldiers still standing in front of him, who was taking aim. It crushed the chest plate of the creature's armor, then curved around and hit his fellow on the way back to Thor's hand. There didn't appear to be any more on this group's tail. "Come on!" Thor shouted at Barton and Romanoff. They laid down a suppressive volley to keep the two groups on the sides from giving immediate chase (though after the lightning, they didn't seem particularly keen to try it) and followed Thor into the new path he'd opened up.
Thor maintained the storm overhead and gave it enough of a push that the sky opened. Rain came pouring down so hard that they were soaked in seconds. They couldn't see more than a few yards in any direction, but the soldiers would have a hard time following them now.
They ran for a few streets, then ducked under an awning.
"Are they chasing us?" Romanoff panted.
"I don't see them," said Barton.
"Heimdall!" Thor called, desperate for news of his brother.
There was no answering voice.
"Heimdall, can you hear me?" he tried again, louder this time. Still no response. "Why doesn't he answer?"
"If time moves differently here than on Asgard, maybe we're going too slow or fast right now for him to be able to communicate," said Romanoff over the pounding rain.
"Yeah, and if your friends still aren't here, that probably means we're the ones going faster," said Barton.
Thor's fear ratcheted up several notches. They were likely right. He must've caught Heimdall during a stable window in which the two timestreams lined up when he communicated with him from Sakaar before. He shot one frustrated glance skyward before turning to face the street they needed to take next. "We should keep moving."
Nothing accosted them as they made their way through the city back the way they'd come. Before long, they were able to merge into the crowd of people returning from the arena, none of whom took any particular notice of them as they hurried to get out of the rain. They gradually grew more confident that they had succeeded in losing their pursuers. It took a frustratingly long time traveling on foot, but flying would surely get them spotted, and another fight could delay them even more.
Nearly an hour later, they were finally approaching the right part of the city, and Thor tried not to think too hard about the way the civilian traffic was considerably lighter than before and the people coming from the direction they were headed looked nervous and frightened. They rounded a corner onto the shabby market square, and Thor's stomach plummeted. The entire area was almost completely deserted, and in the place where the outer wall of the mead hall had stood was now a gaping, ragged hole, and the street and building were both piled with rubble.
There was no sign of Loki.
*evil laughter* We're getting into why I was so psyched for the Sakaar arc now. :D
Okay, credit to my lovely reviewers: the original plan was just to have Loki and Valkyrie get drugged, pass out, and wake up as Ebony Maw's prisoners, but after the feedback on recent chapters, I realized what a terrible plan that was and that it didn't do them justice at all. The drug certainly made things more difficult, but I hope they managed to put up a respectable fight here. Topaz, on the other hand, definitely bit off more than she could chew going after Thor with just one ship and a few dozen soldiers.
There probably aren't a lot of Loki pairings in which he gets to be the sweet one and the other person is the cynical jerk (comparatively, at least). I think that might be my favorite thing about Loki/Valkyrie. Also, to the reviewer who was worried about the Loki/Valkyrie stuff? This is still definitely a Brodinsons fic above all. Romantic subplots are very much going to remain subplots. These two idiot bros are the entire reason I care enough about the Thor corner of the MCU to write fanfiction about it.