Chapter 386: The Black Panther Totem
Batman always prepared for the worst. But that didn't mean he would exhaust himself trying to untangle every thread he couldn't yet understand -- the Ancient One, the phrase Khonshu had used, the darkness supposedly coming. He would do what he always did: work to stop it before it arrived. And if he couldn't stop it in time, he had already made his preparations for what came after.
Khonshu dissolved and was gone. The cabin returned to ordinary darkness. T'Challa unclenched his jaw, and the tightness in his brow slowly let go. He reached up and removed the Vibranium faceplate.
"That... person. He said there's a conspiracy in Wakanda aimed at you." T'Challa's voice was measured. "I'm certain I heard that correctly."
"You did," Batman said.
He had already settled back into the pilot's seat.
T'Challa turned the thought over. "You've never set foot in Wakanda. As far as I know, your entire operation has been based in New York. There is no one in Wakanda who would recognize you. Wakandans have no reason to harm you."
He let a beat pass.
"And I would not lure you across the world under the pretense of my country's suffering."
Venom Robin glanced at Batman. He knew, without any doubt, that this exact scenario had already passed through Batman's mind before T'Challa voiced it.
Batman looked ahead at the cloud sea. His voice carried no inflection at all.
"I know."
T'Challa exhaled slowly. "Who was that figure? If it's not something you can speak to freely, don't answer on my account."
"The Egyptian moon god Khonshu," Venom Robin said.
T'Challa nodded. He didn't look particularly surprised, which was notable.
Batman let his eyes rest on T'Challa's face for a moment, then steered the conversation with a light touch.
"You didn't react with much surprise. Have you encountered evidence that genuine divine beings exist?"
"Not directly." T'Challa shook his head. "I've never seen the Black Panther God personally. But in Wakanda, every single person -- without exception -- holds an unshakeable belief that the Black Panther God has watched over the nation for generations. You don't grow up in that and remain entirely neutral on the question."
Batman nodded once. His tone shifted, easy and conversational, as though he were simply passing time.
"If a king consumed the Heart-Shaped Herb and received the Black Panther's power -- but then spent his reign acting against everything the Black Panther is meant to embody -- would he lose that power?"
Venom Robin blinked. He couldn't work out why Batman was asking something that felt like it was walking close to an edge.
T'Challa turned and looked at Batman's profile. He considered for a moment, then apparently decided honesty was the right answer.
"I don't know your reason for asking," he said. "But yes. What you're describing is exactly right. A king in that situation would lose the power the Heart-Shaped Herb granted him. In Wakandan understanding, that moment represents the Black Panther God reclaiming His gift."
"And if that king later regained the trust of his people?"
T'Challa smiled slightly, without much humor in it. "That I couldn't say. I've never been the Black Panther."
It didn't matter. Batman already had what he needed.
He didn't speak his conclusions aloud. He let them settle in his mind and worked through the implications quietly.
Wakanda's Black Panther God was not simply an object of religious belief. It was something more structural than that -- an intelligent totem, a discrete source of power that could be connected to or severed from depending on whether the vessel remained aligned with its purpose. The Heart-Shaped Herb wasn't the source of the power. It was the medium. The bridge between a person and the totem.
Which meant Peter Parker's abilities followed the same logic. The loss and return of those abilities -- the reset to initialization values when he'd worn the Spider-Man suit -- was almost certainly the totem reasserting its terms. The power wasn't simply genetic or biological. It had conditions attached.
He looked at the moon through the forward glass.
The pieces were accumulating faster now. Conspiracies, totems, an Ancient One who sent letters from across the Pacific describing events two months before they happened, a moon god appearing in an aircraft cabin to deliver warnings he claimed he couldn't fully explain. Beings from orders of reality well above the human register, and more of them appearing every week.
Maybe Khonshu was right. Maybe darkness was actually coming.
Wakanda.
Even in the deep hours of the night, enormous floodlights blazed across a section of open rock face, filling the gorge with harsh white light. The Vibranium vein had been exposed and was being worked.
Hundreds of Wakandans moved along the mine face, using their hands and simple tools -- nothing engineered, nothing efficient. The technology existed to do this ten times faster. It wasn't being used. Surrounding them on all sides, armed international mercenaries paced back and forth. Any Wakandan who slowed down received a rifle butt across the back or shoulders for it. Cries of pain rose occasionally and were cut off quickly by the muzzle of a gun. Then the silence resumed. Then the work continued.
Two of the mercenaries had slipped away behind a rock outcropping to smoke.
"I don't understand it," the first one muttered, exhaling. "Modern technology being what it is, and Wakanda being ahead of everyone else on top of that -- why are we using these people to dig? Buy a few heavy rigs from Germany, ship them in, and you'd more than double the output overnight." He took a long drag. "Instead we can't even sleep. We're standing here watching every shovel-swing personally."
"If Klaue heard you say any of that," his companion said, "he'd kill you."
"Why?"
The companion raised an eyebrow. "You think Klaue doesn't want to? Or that he can't?"
"Can't, obviously. But why can't he?"
The cigarette was almost finished. The companion dropped it and ground it out under his boot, twisting his heel.
"Because Klaue is furious," he said, with a thin smile that held no warmth. "We helped M'Baku take the throne. And once M'Baku had it, he turned around and decided to have us all quietly eliminated. He's planning to use Wakanda's own military to do it."
The first mercenary's eyes went wide. "And you're smiling?"
"Relax. You think Klaue didn't account for that possibility?" The companion patted his shoulder. "We have leverage." He gestured toward the line of Wakandans moving rock in the floodlit dark.
"And we have a partner." He tilted his chin toward a point perhaps a hundred meters away.
A figure sat reclined in a folding chair, legs crossed, completely cloaked in black from hood to hem. No face visible. But the outline of the hood and the pair of pale, smooth hands resting on the armrests suggested a woman.
"She's been with the column since we left for Wakanda," the first mercenary said. "Who is she?"
"You only need to know one thing." The companion's voice was flat and certain. "With her help, taking Wakanda completely is a question of when, not if."
The first mercenary stubbed out his cigarette and picked up his rifle again. "If you swapped that black hood for a white headscarf and tied a belt of explosives around her waist, I might actually find her reassuring. At least that I'd understand."
The companion offered nothing back. Just a short, cold exhale that wasn't quite a laugh.
One second later, the first mercenary watched his companion's knees buckle. He moved fast and grabbed him before he went down.
"While I have you -- I never asked. How do you know all of this? Who told you any of it?"
The companion's brow creased. He looked at the arm around him as though only just becoming aware of it.
"Know all of what? What did I tell you?"
He shook the arm off and walked away, rifle over his shoulder, not looking back.
The first mercenary stood where he was. The floodlights hummed. The sound of tools against rock continued in the dark.
And in the space between one blink and the next, he thought he saw something. A translucent shape -- formless, like a shadow cast by nothing -- drifting away from his companion's back and dissolving into the night air.