InsaneJournal

Who: Loki
What: narrative. How Loki ends up sipping Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters in Sakaar.
When: After leaving the battle in Wakanda.
Rating/Warning: Green.

There is a problem with hopping across a universe: having a fixed destination in mind. Even more so, having a safe location to hop to, one that he hadn't been to before or that wouldn't be expected. If he ended up on a planet, it would be where the inhabitants were impartial or benevolent, rather than the malicious type. That left random chance. The request boiled down to 'place me forward x number of light years' as the location. Which meant it was a random chance where he ended up, yet an even slimmer chance of being found by Thanos or the Chitauri.

Several random hops through space were taken. Each time the Tesseract propelled Loki forward a few million light years, he arrived in an unexpected place, covered in ephemeral blue flames. Each time, there was a new level of pain involved.

Too close to a sun? Burned. Too far away? Turning that loathsome blue from freezing. Land on a planet? Inconvenient mineral deposits formed like blades, as far as the eye could see. Landing in those was a minor inconvenience. A barren moon offered a respite before the next hop put him too close to a black hole, where he nearly lost his grip on the blue cube. Another leap and he was shot at by a warship, the likes of which - even with his extensive knowledge of lore and alien beings - he had never even seen before.

After that series of unfortunate events, his exposed skin was a spreading collection of what looked like freeze-dried bloody scabs. Scabs that he promptly scratched at with crunchy fingers over one side of his neck. He looked down at fingers that were wet with blood before the cold of space turned the liquid to a solid.

It was no lie that he knew such a jaunt was going to hurt. He was so weary with the mere thought - as well as the jaunt - that he nodded off for a few scant minutes, long enough to dream. Of an endless expanse. Of Darcy. Of a place with many doorways.

Loki jerked awake to instant pain. Of course, it wasn't the first time he passed out in space, before. He fell from the Bifrost all the way down Yggdrasil. He'd never survive the full force of a star as Thor was capable of doing, but if that sort of long fall through space didn't obliterate him? Then he could survive this, too. And he knew of a place with many, many doorways. A place that, if Thanos came for him, he could beat an easy retreat, and it would be somewhat difficult for Thanos' ships to pursue.

A thought in mind, Loki forged a path to Sakaar. He was able to pull his adopted guise over the dreaded Jotun blue, and to tuck the Tesseract back into his magical pocket space before crash landing in a trash pile.

True to form, scavengers swarmed on the new thing which dropped from the sky.

"Is it food?" one of them asked.

Loki tried to roll his eyes while being poked at with weapons. The weapons made a clunking noise since his limbs were in dire need of a thaw. It was too much, even for an Jotun. At least the cold never bothered him? Being prodded with weapons did, and he glared furiously up at his captors.

A united cheer went up from the scavengers. "IT'S FOOD!"

"Let's defrost it and then cook it!" a scavenger child chimed in.

One of Loki's eyes twitched with derision. If he were capable of sneering at them, he would have said, 'You are all dead as soon as I am capable of murdering you. Except for the child, for he shows pluck and is industrious.'

Before the scavengers could find a means to 'defrost' him, a fat green caterpillar crawled up to perch itself atop Loki's chest. It was a little over six inches long, and the only facial features it possessed were two tiny black pin pricks for eyes and a humanoid mouth with pearly white teeth. The mouth was so large in ratio, that it looked capable of swallowing the rest of the insect whole.

The scavengers stared as the caterpillar decreed in a booming voice:

"THIS NOT-YET-A-CORPSE IS MINE! I CLAIM IT IN THE NAME OF JULIUS SALAZAR THE THIRD!"

At this moment, Loki decided that he both loved and hated Sakaar. In equal measure.

"ALL WHO DARE ME SHALL FACE MY WRATH!" Julius bellowed as he pointed his rear end at the scavengers. "THIS BEING IS UNDER MY PROTECTION!"

The leader of the scavengers made a dismissive pffting sound. All of the scavengers started to move in as if they were of one mind, hands raised to smash the caterpillar.

An astounding array of foul-smelling silk thread shot out of the caterpillar's butt all over the scavengers. It was, actually, the rarest silk in the entire universe, so Julius was winding and binding them in sheer (stinky) luxury.

"Ugh! Ugh! It smells!!" a scavenger screamed.

"It's worse than the trash we live in!" another screeched.

The scavenger leader bore the worst of the attack, throwing up his hands in surrender as he continued to be sprayed by stank silk.

"Stop! Stop! You win! Stoppit...." His gagging stopped his concession speech, and some of the silk ended up in his mouth. That only made the gagging worse.

"Got it in your mouth, heathen!" Julius joyfully exclaimed. "Away with you! I will claim my prize now!"

Julius spooted out some silk like a New Year's confetti popper as his defeated foes crawled or rolled away, whichever they were capable of doing.

Unable to speak, Loki was dragged off with stinky but rare silk, by a loud caterpillar that remembered who he was. He soon found himself by a fire barrel in a finely furnished apartment, the black and blue skin fading to a bloodied formerly pale mess as he tried to calculate in his head how much time passed.

It's Sakaar. Time moves funny so good luck on that calculating, pal.

Well, when in Sakaar, do as the Sakaarans do. Backstab and drink and try not to die.

After being reassured that the universe's rarest (but smelliest) silk possessed healing properties, he relented and let the insect cover his face and hands so he could recover faster. The smell was overwhelming, somewhere between cheap Midgardian perfume and the trash piles outside.

What wasn't trash was Julius' bold plan to do kill their way into power, which didn't seem like a bad way to pass some time. Julius was hungry for luxury and prestige, and Loki decided it would be easy enough to squash the bug when it ultimately turned traitor, as often was the case.

But first, Loki checked his phone. The time was scrolling forward and backward. The signal was non-existent. Even on a magically boosted phone, he found that Sakaar was a coverage dead-zone. He tucked the phone into his dimensional space where the Tesseract was hidden. He would have to estimate on his own when it might be safe to return, or keep checking for text messages that might not ever arrive.

After a bath. The baths on Sakaar weren't entirely terrible, but they weren't his golden bathing chamber at home. And he missed it terribly, already.

"....how long has it been?" Loki asked, his voice raspy from traveling via Tesseract.

"Ten minutes," yelled Julius, as he squiggled into view. "Would you like a cocktail to help you sleep, your godship?"

"Yes, please. I would love a cocktail."

Julius crept off and crept back, pushing a sloshing green cocktail back with a funny little not-quite-umbrella thing in it. The creature flopped over, heavily breathing because mixing drinks is apparently rough when in the body of a six-inch long caterpillar.

"Thank you. That is very kind of you to put forth such effort on my behalf."

"When you...take over....make me....your second....command....for glorious games!"

"Oh yes. Yes, of course," Loki said, smiling under silk stink bandages and sipping a super powerful Sakaaran cocktail. Despite a journey that was enough to knock a Midgardian dead from various forms of radiation and extreme temperature ranges, now he absolutely loved Sakaar again. "Ahhhhh...."

---Several Hours Later (Possibly Maybe PERHAPS???)---

It felt like the next morning when a somewhat tipsy Loki checked his phone and found no new texts. Frustrated, he began picking bloodied silk off what he believed was his almost healed skin. Almost, as that part suddenly felt wet under the silk.

Julius was appalled. "YOUR SKIN IS COMING OFF WITH IT, GOD OF LIES! STAAAAAHP!"

Loki sighed and tried not to itch or pick. "I clearly need more cocktails to cope."

After the creature placated him with another fabulous cocktail, Loki awkwardly patted a mummy finger on top of Julius' caterpillar head.

"How long has it been now?" he asked.

"Five days!"

"What?" Loki's eyes bugged out. No offense to actual bugs, present company included.

"Oh no, it's fine," Julius assured him. "It will only be ten minutes ago, an hour from now."

The cocktail was good. The wonky time was not. Loki was back to loving and hating Sakaar again.

He was almost confident it should be either three days ago or three months. Some of the math he was doing came up as a negative number, which was mind-boggling. He knew bendy math considering he wielded energy and light and that form of magic is an Asgardian science.

If it indeed were a negative number, there would be enough time to take over Sakaar and rule it for a small while. And before he left, he would give it to the little caterpillar with the big mouth, and let it rule in his stead. After all, this world was starved for leadership, considering Julius mentioned that the recently deposed Grandmaster was imprisoned in everyone's (un)favorite funny tunnel.

Yes, this is what he would do, right after he itched off a small chunk of his right cheek.

Julius was horrified. He couldn't be seen with someone who didn't look the part of a godlike ruler.

"STICK IT BACK IN! I SHALL TACK IT DOWN WITH MORE SILK!"

This was clearly going to be both a delight...and a chore.