And we have reached our final arc of Rando Week … which has no SA-titled rando (which I'm partially responsible for) but our placeholder for that title is someone you've met in this story and SA before.
Chapter 183: At Wakanda's Borders Part One
Seventeen Years Ago - The Great Mound
Growing up, Imanu was always taught to listen to his superiors with respect. For most of his life up to now, that applied to his parents and his teachers. Then he got pulled out of school to work in the mines so his new bosses were whoever was on shift when he was on duty. Even then, he's barely a teenager and he's in one of the most dangerous places in all of Wakanda excluding the castle. The Great Mound, Wakanda's monopoly on vibranium, a tricky yet extremely potent resource only found within the country's own borders.
And here he was at ten years old allowed to work with it. He wasn't building weapons or experimenting it but retrieving it from the mound itself. He wasn't alone. There are other boys around his age but they don't stick around for whatever reasons. Either they go back to school or a workplace incident cuts their time (and potentially a limb) short.
He's relatively new. He knows his schedule and most of the people around, and he has a greater understanding of vibranium just by being in its presence. Besides, he had to learn about it and how to handle it to avoid losing a limb. They wouldn't have taught him that in school. Maybe there was a benefit to being an earner in the household.
"The King and Queen are expected to stop by," he hears a supervisor tell one of the head scientists. "We should send the boys back in to extract some more to show."
"I agree," the head scientist responds. "Will the princess be joining them?"
His supervisor scoffs. "You know Princess Iqadi would never set foot in here. The mere thought of the mines sends her into a tailspin."
Imanu's heard the stories. Princess Iqadi looked and acted like her father but inherited her mother's weather manipulation and extreme claustrophobia. Imanu's heard discourse on Queen Ororo first refusing to enter the mines when she first married King T'Challa but she warmed up to it since his royal council already disapproved of her for many other reasons. Eventually, she's joined her husband on visits and even came on her own. He could tell she was never comfortable in the mines. Fake smiles, always looking at the door, hands clasping and unclasping.
And then there's the discussion on Princess Iqadi. He could only attest to her looks since he's seen her pictures in the news. She's needed nobody's approval mostly because she took after her father but Imanu's heard hushed conversations on how she will handle work in the mines when she takes the Mantle. Would she swallow her fear and enter the mines for Wakanda's most valuable resource?
He'll have to find out.
-o-
Present Day - Wakanda's Borders - 1:52 AM
Lying near a lonely oasis underneath a tree with an encapsulating topiary is a sleeping mother elephant with her calf nestled beside her. All is quiet in the deep blue nearly black sky as small dots of stars litter across the sky with a full moon on the horizon.
Nearby, hiding behind bushes bordering the oasis are two hunters with military-grade weapons rather than some regular hunting rifles. They watch the mother and baby from their spots, eyeing the ivory tusks and leathery skin. The amount of money they'll make on the black market based on a couple of shots is unbearable. But why not shoot them already? The elephants are vulnerable and nobody's here to stop them, right?
Little did they know they were on the border of Wakanda, the richest country in the world masked by desolate farmlands and humble farmers working to pass the act.
Little did they know there's a pair of glowing purple eyes staring them down from the tree branches.
A rustling in the trees strikes the hunters' attention and they draw their weapons, pointing upwards above the sleeping elephants. Nothing comes out.
A sudden tap on their shoulders from behind causes them to turn around and be face-to-face with the heiress to the Black Panther Mantle of Wakanda, the princess herself, in her dark catsuit engineered with Wakanda's best technology.
Nobody has time for introductions but gunfire. One hunter fires its weapon as Iqadi grabs the gun's neck of the other hunter. She kicks the first one over as bullets bounce off her suit. The woven fibres slowly glow in the darkness but she doesn't notice. Her attention diverts to the mother and calf rustling in their sleep due to the noise.
Iqadi knees upwards breaking one of the guns in half before kicking backwards right into the torso on the second hunter who goes flying. Iqadi bends backwards into a handstand to kick over the second hunter. Before he falls over, Iqadi swipes her leg to the side and kicks him right into the oasis. She broke the first gun but she pounces over to pick up the second one. Once it's in her arms and she cocks it, the other hunter scampers away into the night.
Iqadi would catch up later. Give him a chance to run. Why not? She's got all night. She loves a good hunt.
Iqadi eyes the guns and even the broken pieces, making a note to deal with that once she gets back. Foreign military weapons made to look like hunting for sport artillery right on Wakanda's borders doesn't sit right with her, especially when men are masquerading as hunters here when there are more populated savannahs in the next countries.
Iqadi allows the mask of her suit to pixilate and she takes a breath of the night air that's once calm again. She isn't as relaxed as she thought she'd be but then again, nothing's resolved and she has an empty pit in her stomach. She could barely sleep so when she got word from guards about the hunters at the perimeter, she said she would handle it herself. Naively, she thought it would tire herself out, hence why she let the man run for a bit, but the mother elephant and calf remind her why she's at the border past midnight.
Iqadi slowly and cautiously walks up to the elephants, the cub still sleeping against its mother's belly. The mother locks eyes with Iqadi but doesn't budge, almost as if it immediately trusts her after having saved their lives. Iqadi kneels in front of them, holding her hand out as her suit on that part pixilates away. She looks at the mother, silently asking for permission before reaching forward and patting the baby.
To her surprise, the mother stretches its trunk towards Iqadi and rests the tip on Iqadi's stomach. Iqadi's heart stops as the wind chills up her spine. From a mother to an aspiring one, her instinct surely shows but she's gentle, still showing remorse. Iqadi cups her hand around the tip in solidarity.
Elephants are in fact one of the few animals who grieve their young who die young.
Iqadi's lost before but not recently. In her and Imanu's efforts to finally try again, her morning started with a negative pregnancy test.
Iqadi bows her head to offer the mother elephant a blessing before she morphs her suit back into its full panther form and chases the hunter who fled.
Aren't we off to a great start?