"It could open up all new possibilities!“, the young princess insists. "Yeah, or it could be a serious threat to his mental health!“, Banner snaps back. "Come on now Bruce, we sometimes have to take risks in order to progress!“, his billionaire friend half jokingly states. "We don't toy with other peoples lives, Tony!“, the doctor barks, when Steve, just having entered the lab, interrupts: "Hey guys, what's the shouting about? Shuri, you called me and said there might be something we can do to help Bucky? I'm here now, so what's up?“ He's eyeing her with a mixture of hope and dread, but Tony slaps him on the shoulder with a smile and beams: "Well Cap, we would like to send you on a mission!“ "Yes, if it works, it would be a simple task of find and retrieve.“, Shuri adds, but Bruce gestures with his hands, begging: "Would you two be serious, this isn't a computer game!“
Steve brushes off Tony's hand, giving him a stern look, and before the two excited tinkerers can say anything again, he turns to Banner, asking: "Okay, just calm down, and please explain to me, what this all means. What did you find out?“ Bruce fills him in: "Well Cap, as we discussed before, Buchanan seems to be stuck in some dreamt up reality he created, and we can't reach him. We tried to stimulate certain areas of the brain, trying to jog his memories of the most recent events, or find a way to communicate, but it doesn't seem to work, and even if it did, there's no telling, what we really made him see!“
"I got that, I thought you found something out?“, Steve interrupts, but holds up his hand before Tony can barge in anew, to listen to his more reasonable friend: "Well, yes. The princess believes, that she is able to put him into situations, if she recorded them before. Now, we don't really want that either, but she and Tony think, they might be able to let someone else actually see his memories, if we immerse the person and stimulate their brain the way his is firing.“
Steve looks at the other two and asks: "And you want to try that on me? You want me to read his mind?“ "Yes!“, Tony simply claims. "No!“, Shuri counters, and goes on to explain: "It's actually more complicated than that! Because even if you can read his mind, we still wouldn't be able to communicate that way. No, we want to link your minds together!“, he looks at her uneasy, but she gets excited, "If we stimulate your brain in the way his works, you would see what he sees. And you would then be able to partake in that scenery. We could then link that back to him, so he would be able to notice the change. And that way, once we synchronize your minds, you should be able to share the same dream, and you could communicate just like we do right now!“ Cap just eyes the troop nervous. The unpleasant feeling of becoming a guinea pig resurfaces from the depth of his mind, but just like he had done back then, he now straightens himself up to answer: "Well, sounds dangerous. But I'm in! What do I need to do?“
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Shuri and the others try some things on Steve to see how his mind would react to the immersion. They first give him some virtual reality games to play, so he can adapt to the feeling of going through a dream world. Then the serious tests begin. Hooking him up to a sort of cap lined with about a hundred wires, Shuri starts to practice stimulating certain areas of his brain, the way she had done with Bucky during his healing process. It's frightening at first, and also a little humiliating, as Steve gets startled more than once by dreamed up monsters, or some action packed memories she activates. Tony sometimes teases him, but also admits: "This technology is still in its infancy, Cap, so sorry if the results seem weird to you. To be honest, we don't really know what we're doing either!“
But at least Steve can exit the dream worlds at will, as he only needs to open his eyes or actively touch himself, to see he's not really fighting aliens in New York, or the Red Skull in Italy, but still sitting in a chair in the royal lab of Wakanda. And though he always feels weirded out and groggy 'waking up', he accepts to try it with the tank to connect to his friend. So after only two days training, and keeping a watchful eye on Bucky's vitals, they prepare Cap to submerge him for an undefined time.
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Shuri, operating the controls, reassures: "Okay, just to confirm: The sign to get you out of the dream immediately is?“ "Move my eyes to the upper left corner five times.“, Steve answers calm, though his voice sounds strange with the small hoses going into his nose to keep his breathing steady. She nods and asks: "Good. And the sign to try waking you both up?“ "Upper left, lower right, upper right, lower left, upper left.“, Cap confirms prompt. It still sounds strange, but as the eyes are the only parts of the body that move while dreaming, it's the only form of communication they can use. The princess smiles, and Banner checks the position of the neurostimulizers one last time. Tony, hooking Steve up to the heart monitor, jokes: "Alright Capsicle, do you need me to hold your hand till you go under?“ Steve smirks: "Nah, I'll be alright. After all, I'm just going to find my friend and remind him, I'm still here for him. Piece of cake.“
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