Just a brief note: in this story, Wakanda is basically this alternate universe's version of what Wakanda was like before the events of Black Panther, so they haven't fully opened up to the world yet. Also, this chapter and the one after it are just pure, fluffy nonsense...featuring some special guest stars :)

Chapter 24: The Princess and the King

"Where's Wakanda?" Thor asked.

"Central Africa," Shuri replied.

"And your brother…is the king?" Clint questioned in disbelief.

"Yes."

"Does that make you a princess?" Quill asked.

"Technically yes, but I think that's a stupid title.

"So the king of an entire country is here to address the Vibranin crisis?" Bucky sounded like Christmas had come early and like he'd just stumbled upon a massive pile of diamonds all at once.

"Yes. Wakandan medicine is not privately funded, so we don't have these kinds of issues, but my brother feels obligated to share our resources to prevent anyone going without what they need."

"And you can just do that? I'm not very familiar with what Wakanda has resource-wise," Tony stated.

"Well, for most of history we haven't been very involved globally. I learned that in school—pretty boring as far as things to learn in school go—but it's true. My brother is always willing to revert from isolationism when it comes to aiding other nations with healthcare. That's why I've been along on so many hospital business trips; they're about the only kind of business trip he ever takes."

"Why is he only willing to act when it comes to healthcare? I would think that a country with access to aircraft like you've got is knowledgeable in many more fields," Tony said.

"My father and uncle both died of cancer," she informed them. "And my brother ascended the throne shortly afterwards."

"I'm so sorry to hear that," Steve offered immediately.

"Thank you."

"We know more than anyone how much that sucks," Quill stated, idly scratching the back of his head.

"Yes. And that's exactly why my brother goes out of his way to prevent it from happening to others. You should have seen his face when he heard about Shield, I thought he was going to burst a blood vessel," Shuri said with wide, excited eyes. "Vibranin was originally developed by Wakandan scientists fifty years ago, and we shared it with the world in the hopes they'd handle it responsibly. Clearly, they need a little help in that department."

"Well we're glad to have his help," Bucky said. He stepped forward and slung an arm around Tony's shoulders, "Although this guy here managed to convince his mega-rich father to donate to Hydra to help them up their production and pick up the slack." Tony blushed, undeserving of the amount of credit Bucky just gave him. He'd just made a phone call; Howard was the only one who did anything of actual importance.

"Wait, you're Howard Stark's son?"

"Uh…yeah," Tony admitted.

"Wow! That's so cool."

The princess of a nation, the daughter and sister to kings, just told him that his parentage was cool. Now Tony had really seen everything. Would he still trade his rich and famous father for an ordinary one whose emotions and motives weren't an abominable mystery, who actually gave him the time of day once in a while? Probably. But it was nice to hear at least someone considered his position enviable.

"What's he like?"

"Umm, he's…very good at what he does," Tony said vaguely. The rest of the world saw Howard Stark in a very different light than he did, as his son. He couldn't tell this little girl that a man she obviously respected cared more about his company than his own kid. That he's good at what he does was the highest praise Tony could offer without lying.

"Something I hope he has in common with your brother," Bucky said to Shuri. "I wonder if anyone else affected by this knows that the literal king of Wakanda came to the country to help. The cancer community would go nuts to hear this. The online petition still doesn't even have half the signatures it needs to get onto the president's desk. Not that he would really do anything even if it did."

"Ah, democracy," Shuri sighed.

"I think that's enough of that subject," Steve interjected.

"I agree," Clint chimed in. "We should do something fun."

"Like what?"

"We should teach Shuri Catan," Parker suggested.

"That's a great idea."

"What's that?" Shuri asked.

"Only the most complicated and competitive board game in our closet. Also it's just about the only one we ever play," Tony remarked.

"That's not true," Bucky reminded him. "Remember that one time we played Risk?"

"Yes, and Steve took over all of Europe in a scarily short time and wiped us off the map," Tony countered.

"But I held onto Japan," Clint added.

"Yes you did." Natasha gave him a reassuring pat on the back. Japan had in fact been the only territory he held onto for most of the game.

"Have you considered combining the two?" Shuri asked. "I find it much more entertaining to integrate the rules of multiple games. One set of rules can get boring."

"That sounds like it will take forever to figure out. I'm in," Bucky said.

"Can we play in teams so more people can participate?" Quill asked.

"Sure. They don't even have to be even, so everyone can play. We need four groups," Steve said. "Two pairs and two groups of three."

They broke off into their teams: Clint and Natasha, of course, Thor with Quill and Nick, Shuri with Bucky, and Tony with Steve and Parker. "Dibs on red," Parker called immediately. They spent a solid forty minutes setting up the boards for both games and writing up a list of rules for how to play the two together. It was the first time Tony had to exercise actual brain power since arriving here, with the lone exception of that poetry assignment for school. In the end, they created a conglomerate of a game involving feeding the troops with wheat cards, raiding settlements, and building roads between territories. If they didn't have their list of combined rules with them, nobody would have any idea how to play, and they had to constantly consult it to remember what to do. It was difficult, but also immensely entertaining, at least for Tony.

He was very pleased with his team's potential. They already knew Steve could dominate at Risk, and both Parker and Tony were decent Catan players. They quickly developed an empire in North America and started encroaching on Clint and Natasha to the south while simultaneously creating a resource factory by building a settlement on a two-for-one rock port after placing their first on high-scoring rock hexes. Towards the beginning Tony thought they had a chance at winning, but then Shuri broke out of the gates at breakneck speed. He didn't know how much of their strategy had been devised by Shuri versus Bucky, but whoever came up with it, it was damn effective.

~0~

It was down to the wire now. Thor, Quill, and Nick had been wiped off the map "faster than my white blood cells after chemo," or so Nick put it. Clint and Natasha held on for a while, but a lucky roll on Bucky's part sealed their fate by defeating their last remaining troops. Now it was an all-out fight to the death between Tony, Steve, and Parker's red versus Shuri and Bucky's blue.

"I don't know if we're gonna make it fellas," Tony admitted. He was noticeably sweating with the intensity of the game. Shuri, on the other hand, looked like she'd spent all eight or however many years of her life plotting world domination, and this game was merely the successful execution of that plot.

"Are you afraid?" she asked tauntingly.

"A little bit, not gonna lie," Parker said.

"When it's just me playing you're not scared," Bucky said.

"You're not particularly threatening," Steve told him.

"What? I can be plenty threatening?"

"Nah, Steve's right. You're a softie," Tony said.

"Says the kid with stuffed animals," Bucky spat.

"You have a collage of hand turkeys in your room," Tony countered.

"Which you all made for me! How is keeping valuable memories with friends being a softie?"

"I hate to break it to you—who am I kidding, I really don't hate it—but that's the definition of softie," Quill told him.

"Fine. I accept this new piece of my identity. I am a one-armed softie. Happy now?"

"No. I'm still losing," Tony retorted.

"I don't think what you're doing can even be called that," Shuri sighed.

"What do you mean?"

"Losing implies that you're at least trying to win. I see no evidence of such an attempt."

"Okay, wow. She really went there," Tony said. "Fine. I surrender."

"Tony, we can't surrender!" Steve countered. "We still have Greenland!"

"What good does that do us? There is literally nothing important about Greenland."

"It's a link between North America and Europe," Parker pointed out.

"No, it's a misnamed chunk of ice floating in the ocean that most people assume is just part of Canada."

"Wait, it's not part of Canada?" Quill inquired.

"No. It's a Danish territory," Steve informed him.

"My whole life is a lie."

"The Danes are an interesting bunch," Thor remarked.

"They invented Legos," Parker mentioned.

"That's it, we've mentioned everything noteworthy about Greenland in less than two minutes," Tony said. "That says a little something about how valuable it is."

"I didn't realize you harbored such a hatred for Greenland," Bucky stated.

"I don't hate Greenland. It's just not going to save us from the shit show that is this game."

"I was going to win on the next turn anyway," Shuri said. "Good game. I can never find anyone at home to play with me."

"I wonder why," Quill scoffed.

"Quill, you always lose games and yet you still play," Thor said.

"I do not always lose."

"Yes you do," Tony quipped.

"That's just because nobody ever wants to play the games I want to."

"Alright then, what do you want to do?" Steve asked calmly.

"Dance off, bro!"

"Absolutely not," Bucky immediately shut it down. "We don't need to burn Shuri's eyes out of her head with our dancing. I saw enough of that at my farewell to arms party."

"I second that," Steve contributed. Quill only crossed his arms and huffed. And then Thor seized, which took up several minutes of their time between protecting him and explaining to Shuri what happened. They left him on the sofa to sleep it off, per his request, and moved on.

"Can we meet your brother?" Parker asked eagerly.

"Yeah, can we meet him?" Clint repeated.

"Probably not for long."

"Why not?"

"He'll want to be on to the next hospital we're visiting as quickly as possible."

"I am not letting the king of Wakanda walk in and out of my hospital without me at least laying eyes on him," Bucky practically growled.

"Why do you want to meet him anyway? He's lame."

"You're just saying that because he's your brother," Tony said. "People are way less cool when they're family." That concept had just been proven to him by Shuri's fascination with his father.

"My brother's not lame," Thor added shyly.

"No, but he's a psychopath," Quill stated.

"No he's not!"

"All the stories you tell certainly make him sound like one," Tony said.

"Anyway, Shuri, take us to your brother or we will conspire to deny you creamed us in that game."

"Is that supposed to be sufficient motivation?" she questioned.

"Yes," Steve stated.

"Very well." She looked at her watch, a sleek device which looked like it served many more purposes beyond telling time. "I'm sure we can catch him for a bit before he summons me to leave." They followed Shuri back towards where she disembarked from the spaceship.

"Did you really fly here in that thing?" Clint asked.

"Yes."

"That's so cool!"

"It needs work. I've already thought of several improvements for the structure of Wakandan aircraft, but my brother says I must be older before he appoints me as head of technology and design."

"How much older?" Tony asked warily.

"He said I have to be fourteen or fifteen."

"My dad won't let me help with the company until I'm a legal adult," Tony told her.

"My brother knows that to wait that long would be a horrible waste of resources."

They rounded a corner and Tony saw with Dr. Potts a figure he recognized from the news broadcast. The king of Wakanda was another one of the people they had interviewed about the Vibranin crisis. Tony was used to interacting with rich big-wigs from events he'd attended with his father, but he'd never seen royalty before. The most striking thing about him was just how young he was. He couldn't be more than two or three years older than Tony, which in his opinion was far too young to be the ruler of a nation. It also meant he'd lost his father far too soon. Tony's awe for the king of Wakanda mixed with just a little bit of pity. The rest of the group looked just as dumbfounded as he felt at the sight of the young king, with the obvious exception of Shuri.

"T'Challa!" she called. "My friends wanted to meet you before you left." She gestured to the flock of kids behind her, standing there like petrified sheep. The king broke off his conversation with Rescue and walked over to greet his sister.

"Did you have fun?" he asked her knowingly.

"Yes. We invented a new game," she told him.

"She won," Tony said pointedly, though King T'Challa looked like he already knew that.

"You're Anthony Stark, are you not?" he asked. Tony felt his face flush red when the king looked directly at him and used his full name. Nobody used his full name except his parents when they were mad at him.

"Yes."

"Tell your father I thank him for what he did. It made my job a lot easier."

"O-Okay," Tony stammered.

"And thank you for helping us during this crisis," Bucky said. "A world with a shortage of Vibranin is not a world I particularly want to live in."

"Me neither," T'Challa said. "Fortunately, Wakanda produces Vibranin for use among our own patient population and we have more than enough to help take the strain off of Hydra until production levels are secure. Thank you for entertaining my sister, all of you. She tends to cause trouble when dragged into meetings. I hope she didn't gloat over her victory too much."

"I don't gloat," Shuri cut in.

"Not too much, Your Highness," Steve said. "Though she did win handedly."

"I'm sure you held your own." He glanced down at his watch, a model identical to Shuri's. "I'm afraid we must be going now, many more conversations and exchanges required to sort this whole thing out."

"Thank you for everything," Bucky said again, his words echoed by all of them.

"Bye guys!" Shuri called. The Gravesen residents watched eagerly through the window as they boarded the spaceship and it took off almost silently, disappearing into the sky. As Tony watched it go, he thought about how King T'Challa chose to utilize the power and resources of the country he led. From what Shuri said, it sounded like they stayed out of most international affairs unless it had to do with healthcare. Wakanda certainly had the tech to be a formidable force in warfare. Tony commended their leaders for not using their might for destructive purposes. His own father, on the other hand, led a tech empire comparable in strength to an entire nation, and he used all of it to make weapons. From the first time he was told he would eventually take over Stark Industries, Tony had doubts about what he would do in a position of leadership. After watching the king of Wakanda honor his father and uncle's memory by helping those who suffered as they did, Tony finally had at least a vague idea of what he wanted to with his inheritance—if he lived long enough to receive it.

I know that was a short appearance, but as I've mentioned to some of you, it was genuinely impossible to give every major character equal 'screen time' without sacrificing the plot for the sake of throwing in every character. I'd rather have a coherent story with some fan-favorites only dropping in briefly than have a mess of a story that has every character there all the time.

Also, I apologize if anybody's from Greenland. I have nothing against it, and to be completely honest every single jab at it was just inspired by that one episode of Phineas and Ferb where Perry the Platypus teams up with a Canadian agent to defeat a Canadian villain who turns out to be from Greenland and is super bitter about it because Canada gets all the glory.