When T'Challa had his nose still stuck in the books. learning all about how to rule a country, Shuri was dismantling her hoverbike with a frightening lack of precision.
It wasn't that their father hadn't told her to read, nor that she didn't have access to their admittedly small library, but rather even as a child, Shuri was stubbornly unrepentant about doing what she wanted and her parents had decided that encouraging her would be better than letting her grow up miserable and unable to do what she truly wanted.
"I think that this," she pokes at a little white light attached to the sides, "Can be made bulkier. It will definitely take up more space, but if we just... T'Challa, give me your hoverbike?"
"Hm," T'Challa says vaguely, eyes still on the page.
Shuri stands up to her full height of barely a meter and sticks her chubby hands on her hips. "Is that a yes?" She asks, waving her wrench around.
T'Challa makes another vague, noncommital noise, and Shuri sighs. She bends down next to him and snaps a few fingers in his face, "T'Challa," she reprimands him, "Yes or no?"
"Whatever you want, Shuri," T'Challa answered nebulously.
"You are impossible!" Shuri groaned, throwing her hands up in the air, "But then again..." She tapped two fingers against her chin, a wicked smile overtaking her face. "You said whatever I wanted?"
T'Challa doesn't reply this time, too caught up in his oh-so-riveting book.
Okay, Shuri clapped her hands together, I can work with this.
T'Challa's hoverbike was missing.
And that would be okay, really, except.
T'Challa doesn't lose things.
It just doesn't happen. It has never happened before, and he's not planning on letting it begin to happen now, so he needs to find his hoverbike, preferably before the meeting between the tribe leaders this afternoon.
T'Challa is responsible and he's a prince and if he loses his hoverbike and goes to the council, he's sure that they'll all think that he will be a bad king and his dad will be disappointed, which isn't fair, because T'Challa could have sworn his hoverbike was in the third room down the second floor, except he had checked it over and over and...
"What are we looking for?" Shuri popped up next to T'Challa, a spot of grease on her cheek and a wild smile on her face.
"Nothing, Shuri," T'Challa answered pertinently, "Go away."
Shuri scrunched up her nose and scowled at him, "You're not the boss of me," she huffed, "Besides, I made you a nice present and everything, be nice!"
T'Challa hesitated, eyes flickering to Shuri for a moment before repeating quietly, "...a present?"
"Yes, a present," Shuri punched T'Challa in the arm and no that totally did not hurt because T'Challa was bigger than Shuri and he had magical panther powers from Bast, so there. "Do you want to see it?"
Despite himself, T'Challa was curious. And. Well. He did rather like presents...
"Yes," He admitted.
"In that case," Shuri smiled sweetly at him, and T'Challa tried to find a way to discreetly rub his arm. It wasn't fair. Shuri was a girl and everyone knew that girls were super strong, "Better apologize for telling me to go away."
T'Challa chewed on his lower lip for a moment, and then nodded, "It wasn't nice of me to say that to you," he admitted, "I'm sorry for telling you to go away when you were just trying to help me. It was rude and unnecessary."
"Oh, lighten up," Shuri groaned, "You sound like dad, all polite and stiff."
T'Challa didn't think that sounding like dad seemed like such a bad thing, but decided to stay silent, "Do I get my present now?" He asked hopefully.
"Yeah," Shuri's face lit up with a bright smile, "I upgraded your hoverbike!"
T'Challa froze.
"You did what?" He exclaimed, horrified.
"Yeah, you said that I was allowed to do whatever I wanted when I asked if I could use your hoverbike last week..."
...yes, he vaguely recalled that, but he didn't think...
"So I thought, what if I made it faster..."
...oh Bast, she destroyed it, it was destroyed, horrible, terrible...
"...but then I was like, what if it had comfier seats, right? So obviously I redesigned the frame..."
...it was a disaster, and he had nobody to blame but himself...
"...and voila!" Shuri pulled the sheet off of his new and improved hoverbike.
T'Challa gaped.
"My old one was perfectly functional," he said weakly.
"Perfectly functional," Shuri tapped T'Challa's nose, "does not mean that it can't be improved upon, T'Challa."
"My old one was purple," he mourned, "This one is white."
Shuri folder her arms across her chest and stuck out her tongue, "White is an awesome colour!" She huffed, "Also, I made your hoverbike the most awesome bike in the world, how dare you question my perfection."
"White isn't even a colour," T'Challa despaired.
"Paint it over, then!" Shuri groaned, "Come on, T'Challa, try it out! You'll love it!"
He did love it.
(But T'Challa vowed to never agree to do something with Shuri without listening first because everyone knew that purple was way cooler than white except apparently Shuri! And his hoverbike was different now. It was unnecessarily fast and comfier and... okay, fine, so it was cool, but still. It was white.)
A/N: I don't even know what happened in this chapter, but I'm in love with Black Panther so. *shrugs*