Chapter 5: "And Get This Man a Shield!"

(Percy)

Percy had a strange sense of déjà vu when he boarded the quinjet to Wakanda. It was the same jet they'd used to fly to Sokovia to stop Ultron. It was the same jet in which Tony's side had captured Steve's in the Avengers' Civil War.

It took a while to fly to Wakanda, even in such a fast jet. Percy hadn't been shot out of the sky yet. Technically Hazel and Nico weren't supposed to fly either, but Percy hoped that Zeus' acceptance extended to them as well.

They flew across the open plains in Africa. Sam looked apprehensive when Steve told them that they were going to fly into a hill.

"Drop to twenty six hundred, heading zero three zero." Steve gave Sam coordinates.

"I hope you're right about this, Cap." Sam said, pushing the correct buttons. Annabeth was hovering anxiously near the window. "Or we're gonna land a lot faster than you want us to."

Percy held his breath as the quinjet got closer and closer to the mountain. Just when they were about to hit it… they didn't.

The holographic image disappeared and standing before them was a city that sort of looked like New York but more… African, but also higher tech.

They landed on a landing strip and the occupants of the quinjet disembarked. Hazel was holding her stomach, but did her best to not look queasy when she saw the current King of Wakanda, T'Challa.

Luckily he wasn't wearing his Cat-Man garb, which Percy had been informed was called the Black Panther suit. Same difference.

"Should we bow?" Bruce asked Rhodey nervously.

"Yeah, he's a king." Rhodey said as if it should be obvious. Steve walked up to T'Challa and shook hands. "Seems like I'm always thanking you for something." Bruce bowed awkwardly to T'Challa.

Leo snorted.

"What are you doing?" Rhodey said, mock shocked.

"We don't do that here." T'Challa said, equally awkwardly. Bruce straightened up, glaring at Rhodey, who grinned. "So how big of an assault should we expect?" He asked.

They began to walk towards an important-looking administrative building.

"Uh, you can expect quite a big assault, sir." Bruce said, trying to make up for his bowing.

"How are we looking?" Hazel asked. T'Challa looked at her in surprise, as if just realizing that there was a teenager in Wakanda about to fight aliens. To his credit, he recovered quickly.

"You will have my King's Guard, the Border Tribe, the Dora Millaje, and…"

"A semi-stable one hundred year old man." Bucky Barnes finished, walking up and hugging a smiling Steve Rogers.

"How you been, Buck?"

"Not bad, for the end of the world."

Annabeth finally exploded with questions, looking like she'd held back for as long as she could manage.

"How do the trains get traction with the ground when carrying such heavy metals? It's obviously magnets, but this is much more advanced than I've ever seen. And is that a holographic phone? That's amazing! I'm guessing that you harnessed the power of the sand's atomic energy, but it must've been a very slow process since one wrong move could create an atomic bomb-"

"Whoa, Wise Girl." Percy put a hand on her shoulder. "Calm down. You can swamp them with questions after we kill Thanos." Annabeth stopped talking with difficulty.

"It's all right." T'Challa said, smiling. "You can swamp my head of technology once we get Vision."

"Who's your head of technology?" Annabeth asked eagerly.

"My annoying little sister, Shuri."

They walked into the science lab, and Annabeth and Leo now looked equally in awe. Percy? He was just wondering where the nearest burger joint was in this place, unless Wakandans ate Vibranium too.

They walked up to a girl who was waiting for them, her light brown hair pulled back in a bun. Percy assumed this was Shuri. She smiled at them.

"So, the colonizers finally have swallowed their pride and asked us for help."

"Shuri." T'Challa chastised.

"Yes, yes, brother." Her eyes sparkled impishly at them. Annabeth turned to Shuri and turned her flood of questions towards her. She answered quickly, and surprisingly enough, when Annabeth paused to take a breath, she started asking questions too.

"I know these are personal questions, but I am very interested in how you became Inhumans. Your skeleton does not match any structure of any other Inhuman, nor does your nerves. I wonder if you could explain to me why you are different than the others, and why you discovered your powers at such a young age."

"You took a skeletal scan on us?" Leo asked, staring at her.

"Yes." Shuri said, as if it was a completely normal thing to do.

"Um… right." Annabeth looked uncomfortable. "Well, uh, we got our powers, uh, the usual way, you know, our parents-"

Bruce cleared his throat loudly. "Um, can we get back to the problem at hand?"

"Right, yes." Annabeth looked relieved, and Vision walked over and lay down on the table.

Shuri raised her eyebrows at them but made no comment. Shuri scanned the stone with some beads and a holographic projection of the stone appeared. "Whoa. The whole structure is polymorphic." For once, Shuri looked amazed.

"Right, we had to attach each neuron non-sequentially." Bruce nodded. "Why didn't you just reprogram the synapses to work collectively?" Shuri asked as if that should've been obvious.

Vision looked at Bruce as if wondering the same thing. "Because we, uh, didn't think of it." Bruce said uncertainly. "I'm sure you did your best." Shuri said with a reassuring smile.

"Can you do it?" Wanda wondered. "Yes, but there are more than two trillion neurons here. One misalignment could cause a cascade of circuit failures." Wanda looked down and Shuri turned to her brother.

"It will take time, brother."

"How long?" Steve said in that stiff, commanding tone that he used when commanding the Avengers.

"As long as you can give me." Shuri looked down. T'Challa's guard, Okoye, flicked one of her beads on her hand where it projected a pulsing location marker.

"Something's entered the atmosphere." Sam Wilson's voice crackled in their earbuds. "Hey, Cap, we've got a situation here."

Percy rushed to a window just in time to see an alien ship get blown up by a previously invisible energy shield.

"I love this place." Bucky said wistfully. "Yeah, don't start celebrating yet, guys." Rhodey said in their earbuds. Nico was waiting outside as well.

"We've got more incoming outside the dome." He said. Shock waves of debris destroyed acres of the Wakandan forest. Steve, T'Challa, and Percy looked at each other in concern. They were going to be facing something big.

Nothing worse than the Battle of Manhattan, though, right? Percy hoped. Somehow he knew it was going to be a lot worse than that.

Vision struggled to sit up and slide of the table. "It's too late. We need to destroy the stone now."

"Vision, get your butt back on the table." Natasha said sternly, fixing Vision with her famous 'Black Widow' glare.

"We will hold them off." T'Challa said, he and his king's guard striding towards the door. "As soon as that stone's outta his head, blow it to heck." Steve said to Wanda. She nodded, grim determination etched on her face.

"I will."

"And Hazel, you better stay too." Steve turned to Hazel.

"What?" She said, looking affronted. "I can take care of myself. Just because I'm the youngest here-"

"It's got nothing to do with your abilities." Annabeth said sharply. "You have to stay here and help guard Vision. We're surrounded by precious rocks. You'd be the best one to stay."

"But-"

"Hazel." Annabeth looked at her. "Please."

"Fine." Hazel said grudgingly and moved to take her place next to Wanda.

"Evacuate the city. Engage all defense positions." T'Challa said, speaking into his microphone. He stopped and turned to Steve.

"And get this man a shield."

Steve grinned.

A/N Oh my gosh guys it's becoming a pattern! Sorry, sorry, sorry. Btw, I only had like three people review. PLEASE REVIEW AFTER YOU READ THIS! It could be one word. I don't even care if it's mean! (Well, I do, but I'd rather you told me about it). Criticism, encouragement, suggestions, whatever, just do it! This chapter was originally going to be longer but I cut it off because I knew I wouldn't be able to finish it in time.

Sorry long author's note. Shout out to reviewers:

ShadeFireDragon
DaughterofAthena223
Sunrider2420 (thanks! Not really sure about the chapters, probably between twenty and thirty)