AN: Okay, new story! This is the third in the little kid Peter stories that I've written, so it won't be in the typical AU but it'll still be fun, I hope.

OOOOOOOOOO

"What are you doing?"

The girl flinched, startled, and turned off her tablet before looking up at her older brother.

"Nothing."

T'Challa smirked.

"It did not look like nothing."

"It is. Mind your own business."

"Mother sent me to see what you are doing," he told her. "So at this moment, that is my business. What were you doing?"

"I am researching."

"What?"

"Things that you would not understand." She was ten, but she already knew she was smarter than pretty much anyone on the planet. "Go find someone else to pester."ee

The young prince scowled but his much younger sister didn't seem to notice – or she didn't care, one or the other.

"It is dinner time. Father said he wants you there on time. I am here to make certain you do not get distracted and show up late."

It was one thing to annoy your brother, but completely different to be rebellious to a king's demands – even if he was your father. She set the tablet aside and stood up.

"I am coming."

"Good."

She turned and followed T'Challa out of the room she liked to call her lab – it was filled with all kinds of technology and experiments, after all. Things that were far more advanced than kids her own age would even think of – much less understand. What else would she call it? Even if her brother teased her about it and her parents didn't understand why she liked being there every minute that she didn't have to do princess things.

She'd been so close, that time, though, and if T'Challa hadn't interrupted her, she might have cracked the firewall that was keeping her from finding out a whole lot more about Tony Stark than anyone else knew.

Next time.

OOOOOOO

Peter Stark woke with a start, sitting up before he even opened his eyes. Then he opened his eyes and looked around, not worried about the fact that his room was dark, since he could see just fine and knew there wasn't anything there, then, then there had been when he'd gone to bed, earlier. The clock that glowed in the dark told him that it was almost 2 am.

The lights came on, gently, an acknowledgement from JARVIS that he knew the boy was awake.

"You're fine…" the AI assured him.

"Yeah." He hadn't had a bad dream, or anything, but since he did, sometimes, he liked that JARVIS was willing to reassure him like that. "Are Tony and Pepper okay?"

"They're fine, too." JARVIS knew – everyone who was close to the boy knew – that he held anxieties about something bad happening to them in the middle of the night. The assumption made by his psychologist – but unable to be confirmed since Peter didn't remember – was that he'd been woken in the night to be told about his parents' deaths and now it was embedded in his psyche that bad things happened in the night. It was something they were working on but was a trauma that would take time to heal – like all traumas did. "Everyone is asleep."

"Oh. Okay." He didn't lie back down, though. He wasn't sleepy, yet. "Are you okay?"

A slight pause.

"I am fine, as well," the AI replied. "If you aren't going back to sleep, right away, come look at this."

The display on the boy's desk lit up, and Peter went over, looking at it, curiously. He saw lines and lines of code coming up and frowned when he realized what it was.

"Is someone trying to hack you?"

He knew what it looked like because he'd done it, himself, before.

"They are," JARVIS confirmed.

"A bad guy?"

"No." To the side of the coding a photo came up. A little girl dressed in odd clothing (to Peter, anyway) and standing with an older man and woman – and a younger man standing just to the side of her. "It appears that it is her."

"Really?"

"She is the one that the code keeps coming back to," JARVIS replied.

"Did you tell Tony?"

"He is aware of the ongoing attempts."

"It's happened before?"

"Several times in the last few weeks."

"What do you think she wants?" the boy asked, climbing into his chair, now, to get a better look.

"Why don't we ask her?"

"Really?"

"Yes. You know how to do it?"

"Yeah."

The keyboard wasn't used very often, but it was there, and Peter's little fingers flew over it, breaking through the code – much in the same way that JARVIS had done to him when he'd tried to stalk Tony Stark so long ago. At least, it felt like a long time, but really hadn't been even a year.

"What should I say?"

"Start with hello," came the suggestion.

"Okay."

OOOOOOOOO

Shuri frowned at the display in front of her. She'd been working at her computer for almost twenty minutes, certain that she'd have a chance to make her first real try at breaking into Stark's AI, now that the morning court was done, and she had some free time before lunch – and her school after. She didn't really know what she was going to do once she'd hacked it; it was more the novelty of the challenge – and the fact that it was Tony Stark. She just knew that she wanted to know more about him – and wanted to see just what kind of technology he used in those amazing suits that she knew he had.

True, she'd only seen videos on the internet, but it was still exciting, and she was a huge fan. She'd asked – begged? – her father to invite the man to Wakanda, but although T'Chaka was willing to open his country up to the world – a little – he reminded her that they didn't need Avengers in Wakanda, snooping through their country and learning their secrets. She was assured that – eventually – they would have reason to go to New York, if for no other reason than that was where the United Nations were, and that if she was invited to go with him, then she might have a chance to see Ironman flying above the city.

There had been a lot of ifs in that conversation and Shuri had been left annoyed and frustrated. Two emotions that she felt often, really. No one really took her that seriously – even her parents, or her brother. They knew she was smart, but they didn't seem to understand what she was capable of doing. True, she hadn't really done anything, yet, but that was because she didn't have the focus to decide what to do. Not like Tony Stark, she'd decided. He knew what to use his technology on and he was a superhero because of it. She had the technology, she just needed to figure out how to apply it.

It was another reason she wanted to get into his files. To see what technology he had, and if it was similar to her own – and to see how she might apply it, too. She could be a superhero, too, rather than just a Wakandan princess. Her eyes lit up as her fingers flew across the keyboard in front of her.

She could be an Avenger, even.

Then the coding lines had stopped, abruptly, and she froze, her hands coming off the keyboard, feeling awe and excitement – and maybe a little fear.

Had she done it? Did she break through? Before she could type a command to check, her display flared for just a moment, and suddenly there was a single word being typed.

"Hello."

As she looked at it, it simply stayed there. It wasn't – apparently – a harbinger of doom, since there was no indication that she had been caught by a security program and her own files were being erased or compromised. It was just a single word. A greeting. In English letters.

The girl frowned, hesitating for a moment, but then putting her hand back on the keyboard.

"Hello."

"Who are you?"

"Shuri." It was almost a challenge, even though it was a single word. "Who are you?"

What did Tony Stark call his AI, she wondered?

"I'm Peter."