[Feat Achieved! Cover the Retreat]
[+1 Bronze Gacha Ticket]
[Rolling Bronze Gacha Ticket]
[Object Attraction]
|Trash Ability|
MHA - You can slowly draw small objects toward you, useful for when you don't want to get up from the bed to grab the remote.
Goddammit.
Was the streak of useless rolls still haunting me?
"Surrender yourself or—" one of the Dora Milaje snapped, her spear already leveled.
I barely caught the rest. My head was still spinning too hard for that. The warmth from the Sun Princess ring was helping, taking the worst of the nausea and vertigo with it, but I had still overdone it. The whole world looked like a disco ball had shattered inside my skull.
Stall. I needed to stall.
I braced a hand against the THWOMP and forced myself upright, breathing through the sick, twisting pressure in my head. When I looked up again, nobody was speaking anymore. Every single Dora Milaje had their spears out, formation tight, disciplined, and very, very bad for my continued survival.
"I know where Ulysses Klaue is," I blurted. "Hear me out, and I'll tell you."
That got a reaction. A visible ripple passed through them at the name alone.
T'Challa—or at least I really hoped it was T'Challa—stepped forward. If the Skrulls had gotten to him too, this was going to go to shit at record speed.
God, I fucking hated shapeshifters.
"Enough," he said, his voice sharp enough to cut. "No tricks from you. Answer me. Where is my sister Shuri? If she is harmed, you will suffer the Black Panther and Wakanda's wrath."
I raised both hands slowly, making a point of keeping the lightsaber off. "She's safe. Completely safe. My companions and I stole a jet from the men trying to abduct her. They should be heading for the border right now. I don't know every detail, but you can probably contact her. They're in a Quinjet."
The woman I recognized as Okoye barked an order, and two Dora Milaje peeled off immediately, sprinting back toward the ships. She and T'Challa exchanged a few urgent words in low voices while the rest kept their weapons trained on me.
I kept my hands up and did my best to look nonthreatening, which wasn't easy while armed and standing in the middle of a Wakandan military response. Still, my head was clearing by the second. I would rather not teleport if I could avoid it, but now that it no longer felt like somebody was driving a knife through my brain, my odds of surviving this had gone way the hell up.
Which was honestly crazy.
I was surrounded by super-advanced aircraft, a cadre of deadly women with vibranium spears, and Wakanda's resident super-soldier king-prince-whatever.
But speed was king, and I was pretty sure I could blitz them all if I had to.
Anna and Illyana had hopefully gotten clear. At this point, I was choosing to trust they had done the smart thing and gotten the hell out.
Which left me here, stuck playing a very fun round of do I stay and help Wakanda, or do I cut my losses and vanish before this turns into an international incident.
The Skrull and Hydra play had probably been foiled, but I had no clue how they were going to react to losing Shuri and the giant crates of Vibranium. I was pretty confident the answer was going to be pretty goddamn bad, especially with Skrulls flying around in stolen jets.
T'Challa's eyes stayed fixed on me. "You will surrender yourself until we may confirm your claims."
"That's not gonna happen."
The spears tightened, and T'Challa shifted ever so slightly, but my mind had already started moving somewhere else.
Because the more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn't actually need to stay here at all. I had done the rescue. I had kept Shuri and the vibranium out of Hydra's grubby hands.
Wakanda was not going to like me for breaking their precious secrecy, and I seriously doubted helping out was going to smooth that over. And, well, I knew several things I could say that would fuck Hydra and the Skrulls over nicely.
Honestly, who better to dump all of this on than the guy standing right in front of me? Prince of Wakanda. Black Panther. There wasn't a more qualified man on the planet.
I gave him a strained smile. "Look, I get why you want me in cuffs, but that's a hard no from me."
"And yet you expect us to trust you?" T'Challa asked.
"No," I said, still holding my hands up. "I expect you to be too practical not to act on the information."
"Liar," Okoye snapped. "Cease this, or—"
Welp… thought so.
I'd already opened Pandora's box with some of the Avengers anyway. What difference did it make if I added Wakanda to the list?
I opened my mouth.
—
"How's your girlfriend Nakia doing?"
It was only a few words, but they were enough to put ice in T'Challa's veins. Even Okoye's rebuke died on the spot.
The identities of the War Dogs were heavily protected, with strict expectations while on duty. T'Challa could not stop the slight twitch as every Dora Milaje within earshot heard his secret.
Their relationship wasn't a simple matter, and if word spread, it would bring… complications even for a prince.
Focus. He needed to focus. Wakanda had stood for thousands of years. It would not falter because of one stranger and a few well-placed words. He couldn't allow this bizarre encounter to shake him.
Even so, if this man truly knew that, T'Challa dreaded what else he might know.
"Do you want me to keep going?" the stranger asked, a wide smile on his face. "I've got a few more in the chamber. Or should we speak a little more peacefully?"
"T'Challa…" Okoye looked deeply unnerved, and he could not blame her. The number of people who knew about his relationship with Nakia could be counted on one hand. He had not even told Shuri, much less his mother or father. Still, if the stranger spoke true, his knowledge could not be ignored.
"We do what is best," T'Challa said quietly to his friend.
Okoye did not look pleased, but after a moment, she nodded with a grimace and began issuing commands to the Dora Milaje. Their spears lowered, though none of them relaxed.
T'Challa and Okoye stepped forward together toward the stranger. By all appearances, he should not have been that threatening, but T'Challa met the eyes of the living stone at his side and remembered the impossible teleportation.
Even so, he let none of his discomfort show as they came to a stop only a few steps away.
"Know this—" Okoye began.
"Are we really gonna do the whole song and dance?" the man cut in. "The whole 'Wakanda is scary, we'll kill you' speech? Yes, I'm terrified of your global spy network and super tech. I'm shaking in my boots. Can I just tell you already? Some of this crap is pretty time-sensitive."
T'Challa quickly put a hand on Okoye's shoulder, fearing she might attack him then and there.
"If you speak true," T'Challa said evenly, "and your claims prove real, then hostility will cease. But I must ask this. How am I to treat you as anything but an enemy when you came to Wakanda already aware of our… feelings on outsiders?"
"You're probably not going to believe me," the man said, "but we landed here by complete accident."
He was right. That wasn't believable at all.
"Okay, yeah, I can see it on both your faces," the stranger said with a sigh. "But reasons aside for why I'm here, I'm not your enemy, because I fucking hate the two groups trying to attack you. So let me tell you a little story about the Skrulls…"
So it was there, in the middle of an empty field, that T'Challa heard perhaps the most fantastical and outlandish story of his life. It was one thing to find a literal alien corpse in one's backyard. It was something else entirely to be told that a race of shapeshifting aliens had quite possibly infiltrated his homeland.
It sounded like the kind of lunacy one found buried in internet conspiracy threads, but T'Challa had to accept that it was real. Too many things began to make sense if his enemies had agents capable of changing their faces at will.
"Are there any limitations or weaknesses to their disguises?" Okoye asked, worry plain on her face. T'Challa imagined this was even worse for her, given how intimately familiar she was with Wakanda's security protocols.
"A few. It's a skill, so the level of mastery varies between them," the stranger said. "They don't get the memories or mannerisms of the people they copy, though some of the really talented ones can pull shallow memories at least. They're also limited by mass. They can't exactly turn into an elephant or a fly. At least, I don't think so."
"You don't think?" Okoye scowled.
The stranger shrugged. "It's not like I know everything."
"You implied they had allies," T'Challa said.
The man nodded. "Hydra… is both a bigger and smaller problem for you than the Skrulls. I'm honestly not sure how you're going to deal with it, so I might as well just throw everything out there. So, it all started…"
The tale of this Hydra was at least more grounded than aliens, but in some ways, it was even more outrageous. T'Challa found it difficult to remain still as the sheer scale of the conspiracy was laid out before him, piece by piece.
"You do not exaggerate when you say all of these people are members?" he asked at last. T'Challa could feel a headache coming on as the stranger listed name after name, several of them figures of real importance on the world stage.
If it was true that Hydra had infiltrated Wakanda, then their secrecy stood on the brink of collapse. He struggled to believe the War Dogs could have missed something so vast. The corruption within SHIELD was no less concerning.
"This cannot…" Okoye muttered, just as shaken as he was.
"What, did you think you were the only ones capable of pulling the wool over people's eyes?" the man asked, giving them a raised eyebrow.
His friend opened her mouth, but no answer came.
T'Challa grimaced. The truth landed harder than he cared to admit. He had always believed Wakanda was beyond the foolishness that plagued the rest of the world.
Now it seemed they might simply be fools of a different kind.
"My Prince! We've gotten in contact with Princess Shuri," one of the Dora Milaje called out as she ran over. "She's alright!"
A small measure of T'Challa's tension finally eased.
Thank Bast.
So the stranger had not lied about that, at least. He tilted his head toward Okoye, and she caught the signal at once, turning back toward the ships.
Even so, he could not afford to take every word at face value, no matter how much he feared the stranger was telling the truth.
"Your sister can corroborate a lot of my claims, if you're worried I lied to you."
"Indeed… and we shall confirm it," T'Challa replied. "But first, I must thank you for the aid given to my sister, as well as for the information. If you are willing, I will guarantee safe travel back to your companions."
"I'll take you up on that."
The man turned and began to stride away.
T'Challa was halfway to asking what was to be done with the giant stone at his side, but he failed to hide his shock when it simply vanished into thin air.
…It seemed they truly had been big fish in a small pond.
Still, he could not let the opportunity slip away, so he spoke quickly. "You mentioned Ulysses Klaue before?"
A minor issue compared to everything else the stranger had revealed, but T'Challa would never waste a chance to track that criminal.
"Right," the man said. "I don't know where he is right now, but I know he owns a ship called the Churchill in a place called the Salvage Yard somewhere in South Africa. He stores the vibranium he stole there."
T'Challa let out a slow breath. It was tremendous information, but for all that, he found himself almost relieved by how mundane it was compared to the rest of the insanity.
"I am glad you have no more mind-blowing secrets to bestow upon me, stranger," T'Challa said, allowing himself a faint joke.
"Who said I didn't?"
T'Challa paused. "About Wakanda?"
A bad feeling began to settle in his stomach.
"Yepppp," the man shot him a grin. "Don't worry. I'll sell 'em to you real cheap."
***
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