Look What You Made Me Do (Wanda-SI/OC)

For the second time, I stepped through a portal into the Heart-Shaped Herb fields beneath the Wakandan City of the Dead. Pietro shot me a surprised look—he hadn’t expected me to actually follow T’Challa—and hurried through after me before I dismissed the portal. Several paces ahead, the Wakandan prince turned his head to glare angrily back at us, though he didn’t slow his pace. His sister cradled in his arms, he moved quickly to the pit of sand in the centre of the chamber.

I’d just been lowering a de-Hulked Banner to the ground when Pietro had rushed out and told me that Shuri had needed help. I still didn’t know what was going on with everyone else, but I had to help where I could and trust that Carol and the others had everything else handled.

I didn’t know exactly how fragile Shuri’s condition was, but gamma radiation poisoning was no small thing and if she did end up dying… Well, it would probably have been better if I wasn’t anywhere near T’Challa if that happened, but this was Eliza’s doing and—even knowing it wasn’t my fault—I still felt responsible. I couldn’t just stay back and wait to hear about it afterwards, I had to see this with my own eyes… My presence here might piss the Wakandans off, but I seriously doubted it would worsen our position with them.

Pietro and I followed slowly, keeping a respectful distance away as the prince barked instructions in Wakandan to the priestesses tending to the glowing purple flowers. “Fumana umbingeleli omkhulu! Ngokukhawuleza!” We got some wary looks, but thankfully they seemed more interested in following T’Challa’s orders than making a fuss about us. I had no idea if the Heart-Shaped Herb’s healing properties were strong enough to deal with a Hulk-blood dose of gamma radiation, but this seemed to be all T’Challa could think to try and I didn’t have any better ideas.

Kneeling, T'Challa gently laid Shuri down on the sand. As he did so, she jerked up slightly, turning to one side as she started to retch again. Pietro moved so fast he almost seemed to teleport, retrieving a bowl from amongst the various ritual accoutrements at the side of the room and placing it so that Shuri wasn’t puking on the sand. She shakily grabbed at the bowl with both hands, holding onto it like a life preserver as she shuddered and gagged. Not much hit the bowl—she’d emptied her stomach earlier so it was mostly spit and bile, flecked through with blood. I bit my thumb nervously, trying to remember what I could about radiation poisoning. Throwing up meant it was really bad, right?

Pietro retreated back to where I stood at the edge of the circular pit. When Shuri had finished, one of the priestesses stepped in and retrieved the bowl while another brought a small, wet towel to wipe at her forehead and mouth. Off to one side, Zuri—the elderly shaman that served as King T’Chaka’s spiritual advisor—arrived, entering the room at a near-sprint. He was surprisingly spry for an old guy. He rushed to T’Challa and Shuri, speaking to them in Wakandan. “Ndifike ngokukhawuleza kangangoko ndinako. Kweneke ntoni?”

Pietro looked askance at me and I shook my head. I didn’t have any better idea of what was being said than he did.

“Ayisenamsebenzi ngoku. Usisi wam ufuna ukuphiliswa. Amayeza awonelanga, usisi udinga imifuno emile okwentliziyo kungenjalo uzobhubha,” T’Challa said firmly.

Shuri’s voice was weak and unsteady. “Yityhefu yemitha.”

Zuri nodded and moved purposefully toward the Herb plots, bending down to inspect the more mature specimens. I took a tentative step forward, sand shifting under my foot, and T’Challa’s head whipped around to fix me with another icy glare. “How can I help?” I asked softly.

His expression twisted, anger and other emotions storming across it. “You can stand back and not do anything. You should not be here,” he ground out.

I nodded and stepped back smartly. Better to just keep my mouth shut. I was honestly surprised that he hadn’t directly told me to leave, but I guessed he was far more focused on looking after Shuri than he was on me.

In the meantime, Zuri had selected a specimen from the fields, carefully extracting the glowing bulb from within the flower and placing it into a spouted mortar. Kneeling by Shuri’s side, opposite T’Challa, he used a pestle to crush the bulb with a few practiced motions. “Uqinisekile?” the elderly shaman said to Shuri.

“Ndiqinisekile,” she responded.

Zuri looked from her back to her brother. T’Challa gave a small nod, reaching down to support the back of Shuri’s head. Leaning over her, the shaman brought the spout of the mortar to her mouth, pouring the thick purple liquid into her mouth. I ran my tongue along my teeth as I watched, recalling the bitter, unpleasantly metallic taste of the Herb and the uncomfortable way it had seemed to absorb directly into the soft tissues of my mouth. 

Shuri closed her eyes and Zuri backed off a little, trying not to crowd her. A handful of tense seconds passed by before the Herb began to do its thing in earnest. A glowing patchwork of purple light emanated from within her body, outlining blackened and bulging veins as she twitched and frowned, her brow furrowing. As we watched, the glowing patches flickered and shifted, a bright green colour creeping over their outer edges.

I blinked, my eyes widening. It was hard to tell under the lighting in the cavern, but I thought the colour of her skin had darkened and shifted slightly to a more purple colouration. And was it my imagination, or had her limbs lengthened slightly, her musculature becoming more pronounced? Holy shit. Was the gamma radiation interacting oddly with the Herb? I’d been so focused on the fact that Shuri might die that I hadn’t even considered that as a possibility. My mind conjured a mental image of Shuri turning into an angry, seven-foot-tall, purple-skinned She-Hulk and I surreptitiously summoned some wisps of chaos magic to my hands, just in case—I didn’t want us to be caught unawares if she did transform or lash out.

Several minutes crawled by in tense silence, then the purple and green glow faded away. Shuri opened her eyes, jerking upwards into a sitting position as she blinked and looked around, her eyes wide. “Easy,” T’Challa said soothingly. “You’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” she repeated, a little hesitantly, but about a thousand times steadier than she’d sounded earlier.

Shuri looked a little shellshocked, but other than that she looked normal now—I honestly still wasn’t a hundred percent sure whether the physical changes I’d seen had really happened or if my mind was playing tricks on me. I dismissed the red energy at my fingertips. T’Challa helped his sister back to her feet, a relieved smile curving his mouth, and they embraced.

A moment later, she pulled away from him, looking in our direction, her body immediately tensing up. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

I raised my hands in a defensive gesture. “I was your ride here. Sorry. I just… I wanted to make sure you were going to be okay. We’ll leave.”

Her expression flickered momentarily, then she turned to T’Challa. “We need to go back,” she said urgently. “Now. Our systems might have been compromised. The sooner we can assess the damage the better.”

He nodded and they both looked at me, but I was already spinning up a portal.

 

--

 

“She took everything she could get her hands on,” Shuri said, pacing angrily back and forth in front of the holographic display. “She could not get administrator access to our systems, so it wasn’t everything, but this is a disaster.”

We were all gathered on the bottommost floor of the scientific facility—Shuri’s experimental development lab. By the time we’d returned from the City of the Dead, Eliza was long gone and the Hex had already collapsed in on itself, dissolving into nothingness. I’d felt a twinge of guilt at how relieved I’d felt when I’d found out that everyone I cared about had survived… there were almost two dozen Wakandans who hadn’t been as lucky.

“The hunter-killer code wasn’t directly compromised,” Tony said, sounding a little distracted as he scrolled through a holographic display projected from his Kimoyo beads. The Mark 43 suit was standing open nearby, as if ready for him to jump back inside at a moment’s notice. “She wasn’t able to wipe or edit it, not without admin access, but we’re going to have to start from scratch anyway if she got a copy. Which she did.”

“What else?” Steve asked. Bucky was sitting down on a chair next to him, still looking a little pale from the spider venom that the Hand assassin had dosed him with. “She seemed keen to protect those dragon flyers she stole.”

“While we were distracted up there, she was down here clearing out my experimental prototypes,” Shuri ground out, gesturing toward several empty tables and bare mannequins. “She sent it all to the loading elevators before they took off. Weapons, nanotech… raw vibranium, too. Everything she could take, she did.”

Ah, fuck.

“Nanotech?” Tony asked, tearing himself away from his own screen to glance in Shuri’s direction. “What kind of nanotech? Can it self-replicate?”

Across from him, Bruce also raised his head, looking a little concerned. He’d been extremely quiet so far—I was pretty sure he was beating himself up over the fact that Eliza had so quickly turned the Hulk into yet another distraction for us. The giant cracks in the floor serving as very visible reminders that his fight with Carol could have very easily turned out more disastrous than it had probably weren’t helping, either.

Shuri shook her head, annoyed. “Of course not. We’ve been working with nanotechnology for a few years now—it’s a natural progression from our earlier interfaces. Nanites that rapidly assemble and disassemble into pre-programmed configurations.” Stepping over to a bare table, she ran a finger along the surface idly before glancing back toward T’Challa. “I had an idea for a better Black Panther habit. Rapid deployment using nanites, and I was throwing around an idea for a new way to use the kinetic redirection property of the vibranium…”

“A habit that could absorb the kinetic energy from attacks, hold it, then redistribute it offensively,” I interjected, drawing looks from a few people. “Right?”

Shuri’s jaw worked for a moment before she responded. “Right.” She really didn’t look happy that I was there. “She took the lab’s entire supply of unprogrammed nanites.”

“How much?” Bruce asked.

“Fifty kilograms, give or take,” she said quietly.

My eyes widened. “Fifty kilos of vibranium nanites?” I had no idea what that amount really translated over to from a size/space standpoint, but even layering something like the nanotech Black Panther habit over Iron Legion drones or the Iron Man suit Eliza had stolen would significantly up how dangerous they were.

“If she uses them, can we deactivate them somehow?” Bruce asked. “Like you do with those panels along the train lines?”

Shuri pulled a face and waved a hand dismissively. “That tech’s too energy intensive and bulky to weaponise like that. The panels are already pushing the limits of how small we can go with it. We might be able to create a trap of some kind, but I wouldn’t want to rely on it.”

“How’d they even get in?” asked Steve, changing the subject with a frown. “Obviously the holograms let them move undetected, but those are visual only, right?”

“That is a good question, Captain,” T’Challa responded. He looked pensive. “Our border is heavily monitored. The holograms would not have fooled our other sensors. The Border Tribe trackers we sent to trace their entry point lost the trail in the forest at the foot of the mountain. It is as if they simply appeared from nowhere.”

“…Like magic,” I said apprehensively.

Steve looked over at me and everyone went dead quiet for a moment—you could have heard a pin drop. “You think she has access to magical transportation? A sling ring?” he asked after a few seconds.

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. I really, really hoped not. “Just speculating. This one was Kaecilius’s. I lost my old one when HYDRA ambushed me and Peter, remember? I had kind of assumed it ended up in a police evidence locker. She could have found it, maybe, then she’d have to find someone with a natural talent… might not be too hard, given she’s working with the Hand.”

“If she does, it’d make sense to hide it from us. Try to keep us in the dark about what she’s actually capable of,” Clint said, stroking his chin thoughtfully.

“Is there any way of tracking her with it, if she does? Or detecting a portal as it opens?” asked Killmonger. He was leaning against the wall at the edge of the room, a little apart from everyone else, holding an ice pack against the side of his head.

“Can I just go on record saying I am really not happy he’s here?” I snapped.

“Duly noted,” said T’Challa. “Answer the question.”

“We can detect them opening,” Tony said, a little tentatively. “There are some specific CMB radiation patterns we can actively scan for, but distance is a problem. Easy enough to cover the interior of a building, but anything bigger…”

I heaved a sigh. “No. That won’t work. The CMB radiation’s specific to my chaos magic,” I said, conjuring a wisp of red energy in one hand and letting it weave across the tips of my fingers. “If she’s got someone else doing it, they’ll be using sorcery. There’s a difference.”

Tony blinked. “Huh.”

“What about the Hand? What else can you tell us about them?” Natasha asked. She was rolling a thin needle between her fingers—one of the ones used by the Bride of Nine Spiders on Bucky.

“Not much of any use, really. They’re an ancient organisation. I don’t know how old, precisely, but old. From what you told me earlier, it sounds like Eliza’s working with Madame Gao, one of their leaders,” I leaned back, resting my head against the cool stone of the pillar behind me. “Gao and the others—they’re called the ‘Fingers’—they’re the original founders. They’re from another world.”

“Aliens?” Carol asked. “Which planet?”

“No, no. Uh, sorry, I’m not being very clear. They’re from a place called K’un-Lun. I don’t really know that much about it. It’s… sideways? Like, you won’t find it on a map of Earth, but it’s accessible from here. I think it’s in another dimension.”

“Interdimensional ninja,” Tony sighed. “Of course.”

“Interdimensional pseudo-immortal ninja,” I replied, a little unhelpfully, then straightened up a bit and looked at T’Challa. “Actually, that reminds me—the bodies. We should burn them all as soon as possible. They might try to retrieve them and then we’d probably have to fight them all over again.”

“…They can revive the dead?” the Wakandan prince asked hesitantly. As he spoke, he caught the eye of one of the Dora Milaje standing to one side of the room, gesturing and nodding to her in an unspoken instruction. She inclined her head in a shallow bow and hurried away.

“It’s their one big thing, yeah. I don’t know the exact mechanism, but they use dragon bones to do it somehow.”

Everyone looked at me again. “Dragon bones,” Bruce said, flatly.

“What? Yes, Bruce, dragons are real. So are gods and sorcerers and witches. Why is this a surprise?”

“Alright, so what about retaliating?” asked Carol, folding her arms. “Now that we know about the Hand, can we hit them pre-emptively? Use your ring to go after this Madame Gao woman?”

I nodded. “We could, but Eliza does know I have the ring.”

“So she’s probably expecting us to try something like that,” Steve mused, then shook his head. “We won’t know what we’re going into, she’s got explosives, and she’s obviously not overly concerned about preserving the Hand as long-term allies. Seems dangerous and it could be wasted effort.”

“It’s risky and probably wouldn’t really hurt her,” I agreed, a heavy feeling in my stomach. Eliza had been right, hadn’t she? The rest of us weren’t really a threat to her. Stark and Shuri might be able to develop digital weapons that could to attack her directly but, at most, all the rest of us could do was put ourselves at risk trying to deny her assets she didn’t even really care about.

“I don’t think she was actually trying to kill us.” Nat avoided looking directly at T’Challa or Shuri as she spoke. “Not all of us, at least.”

“Sure felt like she was. At least, right up until she wasn’t,” Clint said with a sniff. “We almost got caught by that initial attack, while the assassins were still invisible.”

“When she spoke to me, she said she was here for Tony, Shuri and me. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want to kill the rest of you if she doesn’t have to. She doesn’t see you as actual threats,” I said slowly, trying to think through what had happened. “She didn’t have just one goal here—she didn’t know how we’d be positioned or where anything was, so she had to be flexible. Tony and Shuri were targets. The Mind Stone was a target. Stealing tech makes sense, too. It’s one of our only advantages over her. Was one of our only advantages.”

“What about the grey assassin—the one who can move through walls—what do you know of her?” T’Challa asked, frowning.

“Ghost. Ex-SHIELD. Well, I guess it was probably the HYDRA part of SHIELD that used her.” I thought about it for a few minutes, trying to recall details off the top of my head. “I don’t remember her real name. She was in an accident involving some quantum technology that gave her powers—she’s basically in constant pain from it. She’ll do almost anything to fix herself… she needs quantum radiation and lots of it. Eliza must have convinced her that she could help, but Hank Pym’s the only guy I know of that could supply enough of the radiation to fix her.”

“Pym worked for SHIELD,” Natasha supplied for everyone else. “Quit in ’89, I think. Fell out with Howard Stark in a big way. I don’t know the details.”

“Do you know about the Ant-Man?” I asked her.

“…I thought he was a propaganda story,” she said with a frown. “Something they made up.”

A small smile curled the corner of my mouth. “I know more than you. He was real. It was Pym.”

“Should we go pay Hank Pym a visit, then?” Steve asked.

“We could, though I don’t think we’d get anything useful out of it.” I grimaced. “Pym hates anything to do with Howard Stark. He’s been nursing a massive grudge for more than two and a half decades… I can’t imagine him working with us willingly knowing we’re working with Tony. And if Eliza’s watching him, it could be a trap. Pym’s shrinking tech is unpredictable bullshit in a dangerous way. I would really, really prefer not to go anywhere near it.”

“What if Eliza grabs him, forces him to work for her?”

I thought about it for a moment. Hank had been obsessively paranoid about keeping the secret of Pym particles to himself. Scott Lang never found out how to actually make them, as far as I was aware, so the formula mustn’t be easily accessible in a computer anywhere. “He’s incredibly stubborn. He loves his daughter—Eliza could maybe threaten her life?—but I don’t think she’d actually kill her for it and, hell, Hank might actually let her die rather than hand out the secret of making Pym particles. He’s a bit of an asshole. As far as I know, the formula’s kept in only one place.” I tapped my temple with a finger demonstratively. “Fury’s been keeping an eye on him, in any case, and if Eliza did have access to Pym’s shrinking tech, she would have used it already. Combined with BARF, I think she’d have steamrolled us.”

“She’s lost a lot of the element of surprise, at least. Now that we know what we’re watching for, we can rig up better sensors to catch any further Hand infiltration attempts. Now that I know BARF’s in play, we can deal with that easily enough, too,” said Tony. “I can rig up some lenses that let you see through the holograms.”

“She’ll know you can do that, right?” I asked. He nodded and I gave a gloomy sigh, rubbing at my eyes with the palms of my hands. “She won’t rely on it again. She won’t need to, either. All that progress you’d made on the virus… we’re starting from scratch and she just keeps getting stronger.”

“We’re losing,” Steve agreed, looking pensive. “If we don’t come up with a better strategy soon, we might not all walk away from the next attack.”

What were we even supposed to do? Had I made a mistake? Should I have just cut my losses and run? I didn’t even fucking like Tony Stark. Wakanda hated Pietro and I. Did I really care what happened to them? I glanced around. Natasha had said she’d run with me, if it came down to it—if I believed her. Carol was probably safe. Steve and Bucky, however… They wouldn’t give up. I couldn’t abandon them. Bruce and Clint were good guys, too. I wasn’t particularly close to either of them, but I knew I’d probably feel guilty for the rest of my life if they ended up dying. Eliza had been relatively restrained so far, but the more she failed at killing Tony and Shuri the harder she’d push and the more collateral damage there’d be.

“In the meantime, you should be back in your cells,” T’Challa said, looking over toward Pietro and I.

My fists clenched at my sides. That didn’t help my mood, either. “Absolutely not,” I said firmly, drawing a couple of surprised looks. T’Challa went to respond, but I cut him off before he could. Like hell was I going to go back into a cell after this. “If Pietro and I hadn’t wasted time being stuck in those cells, we could have made a massive difference. Pietro could have blitzed the Hand assassins. I could have pulled those dragon flyers from the sky. We can't afford having something like this happen again just because you have a grudge.”

“Prince T’Challa, Wanda’s got a point,” Steve backed me up and I shot him a grateful look. “We need everyone to be available easily in the case of another emergency.”

“…Fine,” the Wakandan prince said grudgingly. “But this does not change anything.”