"Hey… wake up."

Peter felt someone nudging him, and knew from the voice who it was, but he snuggled down deeper into his bedding in response.

"It's early."

"Not that early."

"Is freezing…"

That was from the other side of the tent, where Ned's bed was.

"The early bird gets the worm," Shuri told them both, cheerfully.

"The early bird in Wakanda gets a frozen worm," Peter muttered. Even wrapped up, he could feel the chill of the tent. Wakandan mornings were cold – he already knew that. "We're not going anywhere for hours, right?"

"If we have breakfast, it is possible we might leave earlier."

Peter pushed his head down under his blankets, bringing his wrist up at the same time to look at his watch.

"It's six o'clock."

"Yes."

"Nothing is going to be awake at six in the morning, Shuri," Ned told her, and now Peter stuck his head out of his sleeping bags to look over at her. She was already dressed, wearing jeans, a hooded sweatshirt, and hiking boots. She looked like she'd been awake for hours. "We're going to go out on safari and see a bunch of sleeping animals. No one wants that – including the sleeping animals."

They'd stayed awake fairly late the night before. The guides had made a fire; a shared one for all of them, although the security people weren't interested in socializing with the teens and had set up their own perimeter rather than joining anyone at the fire. Peter, Ned, MJ, and Shuri had found long, straight, sticks and had roasted marshmallows and made s'mores to munch on and had cajoled Chai and one of the others to tell them stories. Since it was in the very nature of every Wakandan to tell their histories, it hadn't been hard, and Chai had told them about the beginnings of the tribes and how they had been formed.

It wasn't new to Shuri, of course, and Peter knew some of Wakanda's history, but it was new and fascinating to Ned and Shuri, and they'd listened with interest through the evening and well into the night. Only when it was too chilly to stay out in the night air did they finally call it a night, and the girls said goodnight to the boys and they all separated – under the watchful eyes of the security team. Peter had checked the time and had called Tony and Pepper, checking in with them and letting them know that he was having a good time, and that, yes, he did miss them.

And his cat.

Tony and Pepper had been cheerful and had been careful not to be too clingy, but he'd recognized that they would much rather that he was home and not in Wakanda. As such, he spent a fair amount of time with the conversation, making sure to let them know what he and the others had been doing that day (and subtly reminding them that he'd made it through the entire day without anything untoward happening to him) and what they'd done since settling in the cap for the evening. Ned had been speaking to his mother, but when he ended that call, he looked over Peter's shoulder and joked with Pepper and Tony also.

By the time they ended the conversation, it was late Wakandan time and Tony had lost most of the tension in his expression. Which was only to the good.

"We will not be leaving within the next few minutes," Shuri pointed out. Peter decided she looked far too awake for the hour, and reminded himself that she was always an early riser so it shouldn't be that much of a shock. He also decided that she wasn't so excited about going out and seeing animals that she'd grown up seeing (and as such they held very little of the mystic for her that they did for the other teens) but rather she was probably looking forward to a full day of the freedom that came with not being called princess by everyone around her. "But we need to be up and ready so that when the sun comes up, we will be in a good position to watch the morning routine of the animals that are close at hand."

Peter sat up, shivering despite having gone to sleep with a sweatshirt on to ward against the evening chill.

"That makes sense."

Ned rolled his eyes, also sitting up.

"You don't have to agree with her just because she's your girlfriend," he reminded his friend.

"Of course he does," Shuri disagreed. "It is a well-known fact."

Another eye roll but Peter looked around before Ned could say anything.

"What's that noise?"

The other two grew still, focusing on listening for a moment.

"I don't hear anything," Ned said.

"Neither do I," Shuri agreed. "What do you hear?"

"A low rumbling noise," Peter replied, also focusing – this time inwardly, as he tried to decide if he was feeling any danger from his spider senses. Nothing was forthcoming and he didn't even feel the slightest concern. Just heard the weird noise. It wasn't anything scary, though, and he shrugged. "It isn't anything," he told them both, throwing his sleeping bags back. "We'll get up and come have breakfast."

Shuri hesitated as if to continue asking him about the noise – well aware that he had different senses than she and Ned – and then shrugged.

"Very well. Do not be long or MJ and I will eat everything and you will be forced to have gruel."

"We won't." She left and Ned turned to Harry. "What's gruel?"

His friend shrugged.

"No clue. But I don't want to find out."

Even as he said it, an image of a bowl of some kind of hot cereal appeared in his mind, only cementing that comment.

OOOOOOOOOOO

"Why are you up so late?"

"I'm just going to bed."

"You're not waiting up worrying about me, are you?"

"Of course not." Tony even looked sincere. He definitely smiled. "I'm working on a project for Bruce and was taking advantage of the peace and quiet to get take a look at it. When FRIDAY mentioned that you're still in camp when I know for a fact that you're supposed to be somewhere looking at lions or tigers or bears, or something, I thought I'd call and see what's going on. Everything alright?"

Peter's smile told the billionaire that whatever it was, it wasn't an emergency.

"It's fine," the boy replied. "We're just being held at camp for a little while."

"What's up?"

"I guess Chai and the others were out scouting for something interesting to see and ran into a big elephant who is really aggressive."

"Aggressive? Aggressive how?"

Tony knew elephants were big, but he also knew they were slow and easy-going. The ones they'd seen on their honeymoon had been, after all.

"It's a bull elephant," Peter told him. "And a big one. Which is okay, usually." They'd seen a few of the big bulls when he'd joined Tony and Pepper on their honeymoon. "But this one is in musth."

Tony frowned and didn't ask what that was – unwilling to admit that he didn't know what something was. Instead, his hand worked quickly to look it up. A bull elephant's version of heat, where it was raging with testosterone and ultra-aggressive. To anything and everything. Even people on safari.

"Do you need me to come out there?" he asked the boy, looking back at the display.

Peter grinned.

"And do what?"

Good point.

"I don't know… Shoo him away?"

"We're fine," Peter assured him. "They're watching him and when he's gone we'll get to go check out the area. They found some lions with cubs, so that's going to be where we head when we can leave the shield."

"Alright. Stay out of trouble."

"We will."

"And stay away from that elephant."

Another smile.

"Go to bed, dad."

"I will."