Tony looked at Pepper when he ended the call.
"You heard, right?"
"Yes." She in turn looked at Shuri. "You're going to be our guest until your parents send someone to pick you up."
Shuri nodded; she'd heard, too, of course.
"What's this?" Peter asked reaching for the device that wasn't the communication device. "You said invisibility cloak?"
The girl nodded.
"It is. I use it to conceal myself when I do not wish to be observed."
"How does it work?" Tony asked, curiously, forcing himself to not reach over and take it from Peter.
"It's not a cloak," Peter said. "Not like Harry Potter."
"Correct." She did reach out and take it from the boy, ready to wow Tony Stark with some of her technology now that he was apparently over being angry. "It refracts light."
"So it bends the light around you?" Peter asked, nodding. "And makes you look invisible? Or does it reflect it like the Quinjet and the heliocarriers do and mirror it?"
The girl hesitated. She didn't know what kind of technology the Avengers had but had to assume it was top notch. Tony Stark did much of their creating, after all. She didn't know what a heliocarrier was, at all, and had heard of but had never seen their top of the line jets – or any of their schematics for them. She was also a little surprised at the question coming from Peter, because it had been an intelligent question and showed that he had some understanding of physics.
"It bends it," she decided. "Obviously I do not become invisible like Harry Potter would, but it does become difficult to see me if I am holding still in a corner or something."
"Wow."
Tony smiled at that so familiar word coming from Peter, but it was Pepper who spoke, next.
"Let's get dinner on the table," she told them, more than used to listening to tech talk and well aware that Tony could talk for hours about anything that interested him – like most technology did. She wanted to make sure dinner was hot, though, and stopped things before they could really get going. "Then you can ask her questions to your hearts' content."
Another smile from the billionaire, and a nod.
"Sounds good." He looked at his son. "Why don't you show Shuri how to set the table?" he suggested. "Mom and I will get the food served."
"Okay."
OOOOOO
"Wait. What?"
Nick Fury shrugged.
"I just received word from the state department. The Wakandan embassy is asking for emergency visas for twenty-five people, and they wanted to let us know, since those people are apparently coming to Tony's to pick up his guest."
Romanoff frowned.
"Why do they need twenty-five people?" she asked. "Shuri isn't a very big kid."
"Because her parents are coming to pick her up, personally, and that means security folk as well as whatever personnel a king and queen need when they travel."
"The King of Wakanda is coming?"
"And his wife and their only son," Fury confirmed.
"Is anyone going to stay home and mind the store?" Clint asked, amazed but not really, the more that he thought about it.
If it was his little girl so far from home, he'd come get her, personally, himself. Why would a king be any different?
"We can ask them when they get here, I suppose. The visas are being prepared, now, of course, and we'll get an eta from the feds when to expect the Wakandan flight to land so someone can go meet it."
"The Secret Service?" Romanoff asked.
Fury smirked as he shook his head.
"T'Chaka doesn't want to meet the president," he told them. "Apparently he wants to keep everything low key as possible – and he doesn't want to make it a state visit. Not yet. Just him, his wife and son and a cluster of their staff meeting up with Tony to pick up their daughter and take her home."
"Huh." Natasha raised an eyebrow. "Does Tony know how many people are coming?"
"I doubt it." Fury shrugged. "We should probably give him a heads up once we know the exact number – and when they plan on landing."
"You think?" Barton asked, facetiously. "He's probably going to go ape-shit, anyway, listening to the state department bitch and moan about not getting to be in on the initial contact – not to mention trying to tell him what to say and how to act. He's definitely going to need to know how many to expect and when they're going to get there."
Fury looked at his watch.
"They're not going to be here, tonight. We'll call Tony tomorrow when we have more information."
"And we'll make sure there are plenty of SHIELD people around, right?" Romanoff verified.
They weren't feds, after all, and weren't uninvited.
"Of course."
OOOOOOOOO
"Well?" Tony asked, smiling over at the princess, who was munching on a slice of cake that they'd bought for dessert while at the store. "How did you like it?"
"The cake?" she asked.
"The meatloaf."
"It is a little like a hamburger," she said, licking her fork of icing. "Without the bun and condiments."
"Except we put chunks of bread and crackers and eggs in meat," Peter said, also polishing off a piece of cake. He'd negotiated a bigger piece than Pepper had planned on giving him, but it was much smaller than he'd started at. "Before we cook it."
"It is good."
Peter smiled, pleased, and looked at his parents.
"What are we going to do, tonight?" he asked, curiously. "Games?"
Tony and Pepper had already discussed that. Assuming (correctly) that Shuri was going to be tired (which had been confirmed when the girl fell asleep almost immediately after arriving at the house) they decided that it would be better to have very little structure that evening.
"We'll spend time in the game room," Tony told him, smiling at how Peter looked so excited about something that was so mundane. "Maybe a movie if you guys get bored."
"Okay." He looked at Shuri. "We have a lot of movies."
Every movie, really.
"But you two can do the dishes, first," Pepper said.
Shuri was surprised, and not yet diplomatic enough to know to hide it.
"I cannot do dishes," she said.
"Sure you can," Peter told her. "It's not hard."
"I mean, a princess-"
"Will help do the dishes," Pepper interrupted. "Because that's what she's been told to do." She smiled, slightly, to soften the command, but wasn't about to let the little girl use her title or position to get out of doing something as simple as dishes. It wasn't like she was being asked to scrub the bathroom floor, or something. "Peter will show you what to do."
"Yeah." Peter hopped off his chair, taking his dishes with him. "C'mon, I'll show you. It's easy."
She looked a little uncertain but did as she was told and followed Peter's example and took her dishes into the kitchen.
Her first meal with Tony Stark had been all she'd hoped for, really. The food was interesting (maybe a little greasier than she was used to, but good) and the conversation had been all about technology. Mainly her own. She was more than willing to tell him (and Pepper and Peter) about the projects she was working on, recently and the training she had had from the Wakandan engineers and scientists who she'd followed around since she was old enough to toddle and know that she wanted to be like them.
Again she'd been amazed that Peter had no trouble following the conversation – even though she'd purposely been using complicated formulas and phrases to show off her own intelligence. That someone like Peter (who seemed very young and immature to her) had been able to follow along was definitely forcing her to change her perception of him. She'd 'chatted' with him over the web, of course, but it hadn't been about anything complicated. He'd told her a bit about himself, of course, and she'd told him about her, but she'd been more interested in his father – and now she was learning that Peter might be a little interesting, too.
"What are you going to be when you grow up?" she asked him. He was on a step stool at the sink, rinsing dishes and handing them down to her so she could put them in the dishwasher – once he'd shown her where things went. Tony and Pepper had already loaded the cooking pots and pans, so it was simply a matter of filling the empty spaces with whatever fit – doing dishes wasn't that hard, she was learning. "An Avenger?"
He nodded.
"Probably. Or maybe a scientist of some kind. I built a machine that almost went to Mars," he added.
She was surprised – and again, it showed.
"You did?"
"Well, me and a couple of kids in my class. It was a school assignment."
"Wow."
The boy smiled.
"Yeah. It was neat. JARVIS recorded it all, so if you want to see what it looks like, I can show you, later."
"That would be interesting."
"What are you going to be?" Peter asked. "A princess?"
"I am already a princess," she told him. "When my brother becomes king, I will be his technology advisor."
"What does that mean?"
"I will keep Wakanda's technology running smoothly and develop new things and devices to make things even better for my people."
"Neat." Peter added a soap tablet and closed the dishwasher, ready to do something more interesting than chores. "Come on. I'll show you how to play pool."
"Alright."