A new plan was set. In theory, if the mind stone was removed from Vision, he could still exist – or so Bruce said. He just wasn't the person who'd be able to do it and when Steve suggested Wakanda, they agreed it might be for the best to head there.
They'd called ahead because that was the polite thing to do when you needed help with a sentient robot powered by a mind stone that you needed to remove and might potentially bring a huge battle between humans and aliens to a new country, obviously.
When they landed, the group was greeted by T'Challa, a group of warrior women and a series of guards.
"Should we bow?" Samantha heard Bruce whisper to Rhodey.
"Yeah, he's a king," Rhodey replied and she couldn't tell if he was messing with the scientist or not.
When Bruce started to bow and was stopped by T'Challa, she had her answer.
"So, how big of an assault should we expect?" T'Challa asked the group as they walked towards what looked to be a palace.
"Sir, I think you should expect quite a big assault," Bruce answered.
"How're we looking?" Natasha asked.
"We'll have my king's guard, the border tribe, the Dora Milaje and –" T'Challa stopped as Bucky walked towards the group.
"A semi-stable 100-year-old man," the winter soldier said. Samantha looked at him apprehensively as he smirked. They'd given him a new arm, it was sleaker than the one Hydra had given him. Steve hugged his friend, smiling.
This was hard, aside from the civil war a few years previous, the last time she'd seen Bucky she'd been slamming his head into a metal desk. They weren't exactly friends to say the least.
"How're you doing Buck?" Steve asked and she realised how wide his smile was.
"Not bad, for the underworld," he responded with a smirk. Then he looked at her and she raised an eyebrow. She could appreciate that he did look somewhat normal.
She held back, unsure how to approach it all. She could still remember the feeling of pounding Bucky's head against that metal desk, still remember the sound it made – thump! Thump! Thump!
Then, he looked at her, a smirk on his face and she caught a glimpse what Steve had once seen in him – a cocky guy, the guy who used to work on the docks, the guy Bucky was before HYDRA got a hold of him. She didn't want to trust it though, couldn't trust it. "You're not going to bash my head against a table again, are you?" he asked, that smirk still plastered on his face.
She couldn't think of anything to say, not anything that didn't sound hostile anyway. They couldn't afford any hostility, not with what was ahead of them.
XX
Everyone crowded into a room, a lab of sorts, as T'Challa's sister, Shuri examined Vision. She was sort of pixie-like, tiny with her hair tied in two buns atop her head.
Samantha hung back, arms crossed over her chest. She got the feeling that some of this stuff was going to go way above her head. She'd been good at science, had done well enough in high school, she could read a report for a press briefing, sure, but that was as far as it went.
"The structure is polymorphic," Shuri said, as a hologram of the stone appeared above her hand.
"Right, we had to attach each neuron non-sequentially," Bruce responded.
"Why didn't you just reprogram the synapses to work connectively?" Shuri said as though it was obvious.
"Because… we didn't think of it?" Bruce replied, that much was clear.
"I'm sure you did your best." Oh, Samantha couldn't wait for her father to meet this woman. There would be a pretty entertaining showdown, she was almost sure of it.
"Can you do it?" Wanda asked.
"Yes, but there are more than two trillion neurons here. One misalignment could cause a cascade of circuit failures," Shuri said, looking to her brother. "It will take time brother."
"How long?" Steve asked, speaking up for the first time in what seemed like forever.
"As long as you can give me," Shuri responded.
It didn't seem like there would be much time though as an alarm sounded. Okoye, who Samantha assumed to be the head of the Dora Milaje, looked as a hologram opened up above her hand. "Something's entered the atmosphere," she said gravely.
She watched from a window as things started crashing down outside Wakanda's defences.
"It's too late, we need to destroy the stone now," Vision said as he tried to climb down from the table he'd been lying on.
"Vision, get your ass back on the table now," Natasha ordered.
"We will hold them off," T'Challa said, marching off.
"Wanda, as soon as that stone is out of his head, you blow it to hell," Steve instructed.
"I will," Wanda replied.
"Evacuate the city, engage all defences and get this man a shield," T'Challa ordered.
Steve looked at Samantha, "You going to be okay?" he asked, a look of concern in his eyes.
She bit her lip. "I don't have an option, do I?" she responded. He looked at her, eyebrows raised in apprehension. "We don't have time for this argument right now, we have to go," she said before taking off running.
XX
They'd found themselves amongst separate fleets of Wakandan warriors while Bruce tried out the Hulk-Buster suit. It wasn't going well, as evidenced by the numerous tumbles he was taking.
"I've got two heat signatures breaking through the tree line," Rhodey said through their comms.
Samantha looked ahead of them, to the barrier where Rhodey was flying and saw one of the two aliens from Scotland. "Don't these guys know when to give up?" she muttered to herself angrily.
As everyone approached the trees, they started clambering off the hovercrafts they were on and into formations. The plan seemed pretty simple at this point: defend Wakanda, give Shuri enough time to remove the stone from Vision's head, save the world. She made her way to the front, standing next to Bucky, as one group of warriors started chanting.
She watched as Steve, T'Challa and Natasha moved towards the barrier where a female alien with blue hair was trying to break through with a sword.
It wasn't exactly possible to hear what was being said, even with the comms switched on, so Samantha waited. She watched as Steve returned to the group, watched as ships started rising upwards. "Did they surrender?" Bucky asked.
Samantha rolled her eyes. She'd been dealing with these guys for 24 hours now and she was 90% certain they weren't the surrendering type.
"Not exactly," Steve responded ominously.
