Heads up: the scenes that are in italics are flashbacks. It's probably going to be clear from context, but hopefully now there won't be any confusion.
Natasha and Clint stepped over the bodies of the guards they'd just taken out with their blasters and opened the doors to the first pen. Inside, they found a large room that curved out of view in both directions around a wide circular center wall. Several aliens—none the same species—stood clustered just through the doorway. Their eyes traveled from the two humans to the fallen guards and back.
"We're here to free you," said Clint.
"But...you're a scrapper." The speaker was about twice as tall as them and had three heads.
"It's just a disguise," said Natasha. "We're the ones who took care of your obedience disks."
Clint pointed at the spot on his neck where he could still feel the welt left by his own obedience disk. "Come on," he said. "More guards are probably on their way."
They raised no further objections, and the three-headed guy and the next-largest alien picked up the fallen guards' blasters before following them. They went from door to door as quickly as they could. Soon, they were at the head of a crowd of over two hundred pit fighters. Six more guards had shown up, but the two armed aliens took them down with cool efficiency, and then there were eight armed aliens. The first two joined Natasha and Clint at the front while the other six guarded the rear.
Whether it was gratitude, lack of any other ideas, or being accustomed to following orders to stay alive, the whole crowd stuck close to them. Each encounter with palace guards put more weapons in their hands. Natasha and Clint led the way to the hangar. They needed to find Maw's ship and cripple it so it couldn't leave the planet.
X
Brunnhilde had been pacing the cell for what seemed like hours. Loki would probably be doing the same if he were capable of standing for any length of time. The nauseating aura of the ship was so overpowering that he couldn't so much as use his seidr passively to speed up his healing process, so his wounds from both torture sessions still stabbed at him with every movement. All that was already bad enough, but he was also exhausted, hungry, and dirty.
Without warning, the ship lurched around them. Loki's heart leapt. Had Thor and the mortals worked out a rescue plan after all? Were they coming for them? He hadn't doubted that they would try, but succeeding was another matter.
"I think we've lifted off," said Brunnhilde, staring around at the walls. Loki had been trying not to look at that sickly pulsing light too much, as it did nothing to help settle his stomach, but he immediately saw what had caught her attention. The lights pulsed brighter and faster now, the liquid rushed more rapidly through those vein-like structures, and the floor vibrated beneath him.
The brief surge of hope died. She was right. Even if Thor was trying to get to them, it wouldn't matter. They'd be far beyond his reach in moments. He looked at her and narrowed his eyes. She had stopped pacing, and her posture was much more relaxed. "You seem calm for someone about to be delivered to the most dangerous madman in the universe," he observed.
She shrugged, not looking at him. "It'll be a change of scenery."
He held his gaze on her. "You never did say what you're doing on Sakaar."
"No," she said, shooting him an icy glare. "I didn't."
He didn't push further, but the mystery she presented served as a helpful distraction from his condition...and the thought of what awaited them at their destination.
X
Clint and Nat reached the hangar with their small army of increasingly armed freed slaves, but when they got there, the massive, sea monster-looking ship was gone. Clint's stomach dropped. Had he just failed to keep his promise to Thor that they would get his brother back?
Another group of guards came running their way—this time about a dozen. Clint led the charge on them. It lasted less than half a minute. The slaves didn't hesitate to loot the bodies. While they did, Clint pulled Nat to the side and tapped a few things on his bracer. A small hologram of Korg flickered into existence above his wrist. One helpful thing about these bracers was that they were very good at eliminating ambient noise. Only a hint of the raucous shouting around Korg came through when he spoke. Also, judging from the brilliant light illuminating his face every other second, Thor's battle was going well.
"Hey, man. It's too bad you couldn't be out here for Thor's speech. I haven't cried that hard since Mum introduced me to her boyfriend. And now he's actually winning against the big lizard guy! How's it going on your side of things?"
"We took out the mainframe and freed all the fighters," said Clint.
"Oh, wow!" said Korg, looking delighted. "When I let you guys take the lead on my revolution campaign, I mostly expected this would all be a symbolic gesture that would inspire future rebels to take action while we perished in the Grandmaster's cells or the arena, but you're actually a lot better at this than I thought!"
"Thanks," said Nat flatly.
"Yeah, well don't get too excited just yet," said Clint. "Phase 1 went off without a hitch, but we're here in the hangar now and Ebony Maw's ship is gone."
Korg's rocky eyebrows curved briefly into surprise and dismay, but then he seemed to get distracted by something above the arena. "Er...what does the ship look like?"
Clint tapped a couple more things and sent Korg one of the images he'd taken of it when he was here doing recon.
"It's out here," said Korg. "It's nearly over the arena."
"We'll get there as soon as we can," said Nat.
X
Topaz wasn't often unhappy to be proven right, but this was one of those times. She knew it was a bad idea to let that thunder guy have a go in the arena, especially when they still hadn't tracked down the man and woman he had with him. This chaos was their fault, somehow, and the boss had just let it happen. She'd better get a pay rise for cleaning up this mess.
Based on the locations of the posts where guards no longer responded, the slaves had moved from the pens to the hangar. If they'd been hoping to commandeer a ride off-world there, though, they'd been foiled, because now they appeared to be heading for the arena. She sent out a blanket order to all remaining guards in the palace to get to the south corridor immediately.
X
"So, uh, Lord of Thunder," said the enormous hologram of the Grandmaster, "these are probably your last words; you'd better make 'em count."
With that, the hologram disappeared, and Thor felt the weight of tens of thousands of eyes settle on him. He spotted Korg in one of the lower rows (the people behind him were crossly standing up and leaning to the side in an attempt to see around him). The Kronan gave him a wave and a double thumbs up. Had less been riding on his performance, Thor would gladly have returned the gesture.
"People of Sakaar!" he boomed. "I am Thor, the God of Thunder, Crown Prince of Asgard, Son of Odin." He pointed at Cull Obsidian with Mjolnir. "And I am here to reclaim my brother from this creature and his comrade."
He took a deep breath, focused on the way he wanted to narrow his audience, said a brief prayer to the Allfathers that this would work, switched to the nameless tongue, and spoke from the heart.
"Now, this part is for everyone here who isn't happy to be under the Grandmaster's rule."
X
Cull still fought, even though the battle was clearly Thor's. The crowd's steady chant of "THUNDER! THUNDER!" rang through the arena, while the real thing continued to rumble overhead.
Cull swung what was left of the bladed version of his chain-hammer. Thor batted it aside with a hand engulfed in lightning, pressing steadily forward. He threw Mjolnir at Cull's right knee, and he could just hear the sound of shattering bone through the shouts and the storm. Cull let out a bellow of pain, his leg crumpling out from under him, and he went down hard. He tried to swing his sword again, but this time, Thor struck his wrist instead of the weapon itself. More bone shattered, and the chain-hammer fell to the ground.
X
Thor could see that the vast majority of the crowd was still watching him raptly as he spoke, while the remainder seemed to be fighting sudden headaches. He could have laughed in relief. It was working.
"If you can understand my words now, then you know this isn't what you want. You struggle to survive, to keep your families safe, to avoid the notice of the Grandmaster and his guards. You live in fear that someone will slap an obedience disk on you and make you a slave, or that the Grandmaster will decide your existence offends him. It may have happened already to someone you love. My brother and I had barely been on Sakaar two hours when he was taken, though he had committed no crime."
X
Thor seized Cull around the neck, dragging his face up so that he could look into his eyes. The trails of lightning still coming off him left burns wherever they connected with Cull's scaly hide, though there wasn't much left at this point that wasn't already burned.
"Your victory here...is meaningless," Cull rasped. "You cannot stop Thanos. He will correct the universe, and...your brother will help him do it."
Thor swung Mjolnir a final time, bringing it down on Cull's head. Cull's huge limbs flailed for a second, then went limp. Thor glowered down at the corpse of his foe. "I've already stopped Thanos once," he told it. "I'll do it again."
He stepped back and looked up at the crowd, which had gone so silent that it seemed to be holding its collective breath.
X
"Look around you. You think they have more power than you, but you're wrong. Look how many of you there are. Look how few of them. They can be fought, and I'm going to prove it to you."
He pointed Mjolnir at the increasingly restless Cull Obsidian. "This creature, the Grandmaster's honored guest, works for the Mad Titan, Thanos. I know some of you here are from worlds he has already left in ruin. That devastation is only the beginning. He wants to wipe out half of the population of the universe, and yet the Grandmaster is happy to sell him an army and bring him closer to that goal. I didn't come to this arena to fight for a tyrant's amusement. I came to fight for life, freedom, and all we hold dear. Today, I offer you a choice. Will you let this continue, or will you fight?"
X
"I ask again," said Thor, raising Mjolnir high and turning to look at every section of the stands. "People of Sakaar. WILL. YOU. FIGHT?"
X
The Grandmaster slowly got to his feet, frowning down at his new champion, who had briefly spouted gibberish again after dealing the killing blow. His eyes darted to the crowd. At first, it just looked like they were cheering, but as he watched, three of his patrolling guards were suddenly swept under a tide of civilians. The longer he looked, the clearer it was. His eyes widened. They were rebelling. It started with a brave few but quickly spread as the hesitant grew emboldened.
"Hey Wrinkles," he said, looking up at the ship looming into view above the arena. "I, uh, have an idea how you can make it up to me for that embarrassing assassination attempt just now."
"Of course, Grandmaster."
X
Guards poured into the south corridor, which was the only route the slaves could possibly take to get from the palace to the arena. Topaz had counted over a hundred of them, all armed with spears or blasters. She spread them out as much as she could and set them to cover every access point in groups of no fewer than four.
"Remember that you're aiming to incapacitate, not kill," she called as she marched past them. "The Grandmaster doesn't want his valuable merchandise damaged. Anyone who puts a slave permanently out of commission may find himself replacing him in the arena. Understood?"
X
Movement at the edges of Thor's vision made him look skyward. Ebony Maw's ship was there, flying low over the arena. It was large and close enough to obscure much of the storm from view.
"Loki," said Thor. He spun Mjolnir, preparing to take flight. He would smash through that entire ship until he found his brother. However, before he could throw himself into the air, beams of light shot from the ship onto every part of the stands and the arena floor. From those beams, armed Sakaaran soldiers came stalking out.
The hologram of the Grandmaster filled the open space in the middle of the arena again. "One last little assignment for you soldiers before Wrinkles takes you home with him: remind my lovely citizens who's in charge here. And bring me the Lord of Thunder."
More soldiers spilled from the deployment beams every second. All those people Thor had riled up to rebellion wouldn't stand a chance. He could already hear screams coming from multiple places in the stands. Instead of taking flight, he slammed Mjolnir down, creating a rippling shockwave of earth that threw dozens of the nearest soldiers off their feet. That bought him enough time to target the ship itself with his lightning, aiming at the sources of the deployment beams. He was able to hit eight or nine of them before more soldiers closed in around him, but dozens remained.
I realized after writing Thor's stuff that I'd pretty much written him a hybrid Maximus/Leonidas moment with his speech, based on the way he introduces himself (to the shock of a villain who hadn't recognized him before) and his call to arms. I decided to just go with it. Though I might've changed the number of freed slave fighters to be something other than 300 once I noticed the similarities.
If Loki had been the one to give the revolution speech, he could have used his illusions to create a second version of himself giving a very sycophantic speech for the Grandmaster and all of his followers to hear while the unhappy people heard the real thing. Thor just got lucky that the Grandmaster was too busy dealing with Maw to pay enough attention to him to figure out what he was trying to do.
This is really pushing the limits of what the nameless tongue can do. The rules I made up for it are that the spoken version can be directed to anyone within earshot who you can clearly define as your audience, but the written version requires you to know specific names. Which is why Thor couldn't do this as a pamphlet campaign.