Sorry I know it's been awhile. This chapter was hard to write so I'm sorry if it's a bit weird.
Disclaimer: I do nto own Black Panther.
The three travel bloggers arrive in Wakanda and start snapping everything they can. Wakanda has a small international airport of course. It's where they travel from when the rest of the world is watching and is a good place for any incoming visitors. Of course, since they're trying to impress them a little, a ship picks up the bloggers from the airport and carries them into the city proper. The bloggers start snapping the instant they're in the ship. They video as they go and when they enter the shield, the gasps of surprise make the wakandans smile.
The bloggers hardly wait for the ship to land before their boots are on the ground and they scattering, spreading out to gaze at Wakanda's skylines.
"I see you like it," Shuri says. She's waiting just at the courtyard entrance and grins as all three bloggers whirl to face her.
"Hi, I'm Shuri," she says, smiling at them. "Can I show you to your rooms or would you rather explore first?" To her immense amusement the bloggers all look torn.
"They're crazy," Shuri tells him. Her mouth is half-full. Erik surprises the urge to tell her to swallow just to see what she would say. It's three days since the bloggers had landed in Wakanda and Shuri is giving him an update. It's the first time she's been to dinner with him, but despite Erik's expectation that she would be cold, she's quite sunny.
It's a mask, clearly, but Erik doesn't want to go into any deep conversations with his cousins right now. That only makes him want to strangle them more.
"How so lil cuz?" he says instead.
"If Wakanda was an ocean they'd dive right in and swim to the bottom," she said. "I can't seem to get them to stop. They delve into everything. They ask so many question my head starts to spin. I had to hand one of them of to an elder to explain the past histories of Wakanda and how it helped to shape our culture."
"Please tell me it Elder Bitch Witch," Erik says.
Shuri grins and tries not to. "No," she says and she can't keep the regretful tone out of her voice. "One of the neutrals."
"Well now they're gonna hate us forever," Erik says. "You're supposed to get them on our side princess."
"I think I did actually," said Shuri. "That elder likes to talk about history and culture. The fact that the outsiders show so much interest will help them tilt in our favour."
Erik bares his teeth at her in a grin. "Well look at that. She does have a brain to use."
Shuri makes a face at him and returns to pointedly eating her meal. She can't keep quite for long though. After about ten minutes she speaks up again.
"I told you what we're doing. So, what have you been doing?"
"Sitting in a cell," he says, "Being incarcerated. Rotting my life away."
"Yes, yes. Aside from that," Shuri says.
Erik bares his teeth and thinks he might have liked her in another world.
"Following up something with a philanthropist who donates to African countries," Erik says. "Also trying to pin down another assassin."
"Ahh," says Shuri. "Any luck?"
"T'Challa isn't dead yet is he?" Erik replies sarcastically and Shuri gives him a look but then she says grudgingly:
"No."
A beat of silence. "What's wrong with the philanthropist?"
"Still trying to figure that out cuz," Erik says, "If I wasn't, you'd have already known."
Shuri rolls her eyes. "I can help."
"Maybe," Erik concede, "But you've got your hands full of them bloggers. Worry 'bout that. I got this."
Shuri rolls her eyes again but lifts her fork and says, "Alright. Fine."
They have companionable silence for the rest of the meal and then the princess gets up and leaves. Erik sighs. He is so done with this.
Find the panther.
"No shit," Erik says staring at his tablet the next morning. This time the wall is already a forest scene but the panther isn't in easy sight as it was the last time. It takes him ten minutes of scrutinizing the wall to realize that a dark spot on a tree was actually a tiny curled up panther.
"It's too early for this shit," Erik says and hits the cartoon panther with more force than necessary. To his complete lack of surprise, the thing actually frowns at him before hopping away. His tablet chimes and Erik looks down at it. It's a link and when he taps it, video feds fill up the screen.
It takes him a couple seconds to figure out but soon he realizes that the video feeds are showing him the visitors. Well that didn't take long, he thinks with satisfaction.
He spends the morning cataloging the areas around the palace and coming up with escape routes out of Wakanda. He checks the placement of the guards and taps the number of spies he sees in the crowd acting like normal wakandan civilians. It's a good set up though. The guard's patrols are tight. There are standing guards in the most valuable areas and each blogger is shadowed by three different people. Almost half the crowd at some point int eh local market are spies and Erik grudgingly gives them kudos. They're good. Only someone who had his background would have noticed them.
In addition to that he actually gets to work noting the responses of the bloggers and coming up with ways to get them to respond even more favorably to Wakanda. The foodie bloggers are going crazy at the local market trying out new things while the travel bloggers are pretty much everywhere. Erik watches them all carefully, trying to see if any of them looks like they've been compromised, either bribed or coerced to get something, anything from Wakanda that wasn't allowed. One of the travel bloggers, Eddy, was it? Looked a little tense but that could just be his reaction to the Dora who were very prominently guarding the bloggers.
Eventually Erik has to split his time between watching the bloggers and hunting down the financials of his troublesome philanthropist. Oh, and catching that pesky, SOB assassin. Seriously, who buys eight false tickets? Bruh, five are enough to lose a trail. Eight is paranoia.
Well…Erik stops to consider. It isn't paranoia if you really are being hunted. Oh, there's ticket number nine, on the flight out of London. Erik gets the wakandans to hack the airport security and then grins. There he is. Sorry SOB, you're gonna be sobbing by the time the CIA get through with you.
Erik turns back to his philanthropist when another alert came from one of his operatives. He eyes the alerts and then curses.
"Seriously Cuz, he says out loud. "I can attest to the fact that you really make people want to kill you but this is getting ridiculous. How many people can you piss of badly enough that they hire assassins for you?"
"There are three more assassin after you," Erik informs T'Challa when he walks in that evening. T'Challa stops and blinks.
"I thought I was a nice person," he said.
"Where have been living? Under a rock? Nobody likes the goody-good kid in class. That's the kid we shove down the toilet because they did the homework that no one else did and then had the audacity to tell the teacher that yes, we did have homework, when everybody else is saying no."
T'Challa throws back his head and laughs. In fact, it takes him the next five minutes to actively stop laughing.
"It wasn't really that funny," Erik says flatly. For some reason that sends T'Challa of again.
Erik endures it for a minute and then says. "Man shut up."
T'Challa burst into new laughter and Erik has the urge to throw his tablet at him but refrains because he's a grown adult and don't need to be throwing his stuff like a kid.
T'Challa makes a strong attempt to stop laughing though and finally manages to get out: "Shuri says she gave you some of the camera feeds."
"Yeah so?" Erik says.
"What did you think?" T'Challa said.
"Not bad but you're not as good as you can be either."
"Well," T'Challa sits cross-legged in front of Erik's cell, "Have fun telling me what I'm doing wrong."
Well shit. Erik might decide to give him a quick death instead of a slow torture after all.
"With pleasure Cuz," he says.
Tell me what you think!
Also I saw infinity war. O_O