I gestured, wisps of chaos magic glimmering around the vibranium spear that Shuri had dropped, flicking it up as hard and as fast as I could. It blurred forward like it had been shot from a cannon. Eliza wasn’t able to dodge in time—the projectile slammed into her shoulder, sending her shots wide as the force behind the blow almost flipped her over in mid-air. Shuri darted in, using the opening to close the distance and jumping up to meet the AI, leaping a good thirty feet in the air to catch her with her claws and yanking her the rest of the way back down to the ground.
I hadn’t brought my vibranium spears—they were still on the Hoopty, Carol’s ship, for two reasons. Firstly, the fact that I’d stolen them had seemingly been overshadowed by everything else that had been happening and I, a little selfishly, hadn’t been keen on reminding the Wakandans that I still had them. I liked them. I didn’t want to have to give them back. Secondly, when we’d been preparing to leave, I hadn’t thought they’d be that useful in the assault on the warehouse. I’d been wrong about that, of course. I could think of a half-dozen times where it would have been great if I’d had a spear to hand. Oh well, hindsight is twenty-twenty. Nothing I could do about it now.
Eliza recovered and managed to get both of her arms between herself and Shuri’s furious assault, firing both repulsors at point-blank range. The two of them separated, the force of the blasts sending each of them flying in opposite directions.
The AI’s vibranium body listed drunkenly as she landed on her feet, left shoulder separated from her neck where Shuri had ripped her open, but the nanotech started to shift, almost instantly repairing the damage. I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing. On the one hand, any hits that didn’t actually destroy many of the vibranium nanites that made up her form were only a distraction, something she could easily recover from. It was pretty much exactly what we wanted while Clint got into position—we didn’t want to spook her into leaving—but on the other hand… I really just wanted this fight to be over.
T’Challa danced in, ducking under the swing of Eliza’s arm to rake his own claws across her midsection, but she ignored the attack, not letting him distract her. At least she was actually quiet now, for the first time since we’d started fighting, her face a blank mask of concentration. I gestured and the spear came around for another pass, aiming to staple her to the ground. This time, she reacted quickly enough, thrusters in her feet firing as she juked to one side and the spear buried itself in the ground where she’d been standing.
She threw a repulsor blast my way and I shielded myself—even catching it on an angle, the force of the blast knocked me from my feet and I gasped, pain shooting up my body from my injured groin as I landed on my ass. It was a good thing that Eliza’s attention was mostly focused on Shuri, because it took me precious seconds to recover and pull myself back to my feet. Clint was right. I was done. I could barely fight anymore.
Shuri had managed to close most of the distance between them again—she was fast—as Eliza lined up another shot. The AI’s arm had shifted again, additional structures building out in an array around her forearm that pulsed with orange energy before she fired. Shuri stopped dead an instant before it hit her, bracing her feet against the ground and setting her shoulders. The beam hit her and split, dissipating into smaller threads of energy as she tanked it head-on. Eliza didn’t let up, firing the orange and blue repulsor in a continuous beam, pouring more and more power into the blast. The purple giantess was hunched over, leaning into the assault, her face twisted in a snarl that I couldn’t hear over the sound of the weapon’s discharge. She took a step forward.
I had lost sight of Clint, but I knew he’d been circling around during the fight, looking for a good vantage point and the right moment to hit Eliza with Wanda-3. We only had one chance—we wouldn’t be getting any portal do-overs, here. “Now. Now,” I urged him under my breath. I knew he couldn’t hear me, but he had to see it. This was it. Eliza was completely focused on Shuri. He had to take the shot.
There was a flicker of movement and a thin, dark shape shot out from behind the rubble on the other side of the street. An arrow. This was it. It had to be.
Eliza’s repulsor cut out for a moment and she jerked back in mid-air, the arrow passing directly in front of her. She slammed her other arm into the first and they merged together into a larger cannon before firing again, a massive beam of energy blasting forward and sweeping Shuri off her feet. I could have screamed in frustration. Had she actually even seen it and dodged, or had it just been impossibly bad luck, the timing just coincidentally lining up? I honestly couldn’t tell at all.
I whipped my head around, tracking the arrow as it glanced off the wall of a building and dropped down, out of sight, behind the ruined car that I’d used to crush the drones earlier, maybe thirty meters from where I was standing. Maybe we hadn’t blown it. There was still a chance. I started to limp toward it—it seemed so close and so far away at the same time. Clint had the same idea, breaking cover to sprint across the street toward where the arrow had fallen. Was that making it too obvious that something important was there? I didn’t know, but it wasn’t like we had any other choice.
Eliza dropped from the air, landing directly in front of the archer. One of her arms remained a blaster, while the second had already reconfigured back into a hand. He froze mid-step, backing up a pace and nocking his bow. “Hi, Clint,” she said, raising her weapon. He fired first, loosing the arrow and throwing himself backwards in a single motion as her repulsor whined. “Bye, Clint.”
Seemingly coming out of nowhere, T’Challa tackled Eliza around the waist as she fired and she staggered back, throwing off her aim. It wasn’t enough. Icy fingers wrapped themselves around my insides and I watched in horror as Clint’s arrow, his bow, and his entire right arm were obliterated by the beam of energy. He was thrown violently back, the force behind the blast smashing him into a fallen piece of masonry. He didn’t move again. My stomach twisted, but I forced myself to keep heading toward the flipped car.
Eliza reached down and grabbed T’Challa around the scruff of the neck, lifting him into the air with one hand like an unruly kitten as he clawed and kicked at her. Almost contemptuously, she pressed her repulsor against his chest and fired it point-blank. He was blasted backward, tumbling painfully at speed across the ruined street before vanishing into the rubble.
A roar, full of bestial fury, echoed across the street as Shuri returned to the battle. She started to close with Eliza, who peppered her with a few distracting repulsor shots, but the purple giantess ignored them as she sprinted in. From above, a dozen small devices suddenly descended, propelled at speed by their own thrusters. Shuri ignored them as well, letting them slam into her as she closed, but—instead of bouncing off or exploding—they latched on, clicking into place. She was suddenly wrenched off her feet as the impromptu set of thrusters that had assembled themselves on her engaged, sending her rocketing up and away.
I lost sight of her as she quickly disappeared into the distance, her final roar of impotent rage growing faint. What I did see now, though, was the Starktech service platform—essentially identical to Veronica, the unit that had supported the Hulkbuster—hovering maybe fifty or sixty meters above us. With everything going on, I hadn’t even noticed it arrive. Probably neither had anyone else.
Eliza looked in my direction, her arm shifting and reconfiguring again.
I turned and ran, stumbling the last few meters toward my goal. The arrow came into view, lying amongst the rubble, and I reached out, threads of chaos magic flicking into being along its length. Before I could call it to me, however, a shimmering heat-like haze appeared in the air. I barely managed to throw myself to the ground in time as the flipped car was lifted and thrown through the air by an invisible force. It sailed over my head, tumbling a few times as it hit the street, smashing itself to pieces. At the same time, I yanked the arrow forward along the ground, catching it in my hand, hoping that Eliza wouldn’t notice. With a twist of magic, I snapped off the arrowhead and tucked it into my palm, holding it with my thumb, before I rolled over onto my back and let out an involuntary groan of pain.
“You know, I think I get it now,” the AI said as she walked up to me. I started to try to get up and she lunged forward a step, thrusting her arm forward. I raised my free hand to try to shield myself, but I was too slow. An icy feeling spread through my body, starting at my sternum, and I felt the shuddering impact vibrate through me as the tip of Eliza’s blade hit the ground under my back. I looked down, staring dumbly at the length of sharp vibranium that had disappeared into my torso. “I understand why you came. You want me to kill you. You want me to be the one to do it, because you’re too much of a coward to do it yourself.”
I opened my mouth to respond and coughed up blood instead, a sharp, bright pain radiating through my chest as I felt the motion grind Eliza’s blade against something inside of me. The air went out of my lungs and I fought desperately to suck in another breath, the simple act suddenly requiring much more effort than I was used to. The arrowhead. I needed to—
I screamed, blood gurgling in my throat as I felt the nanotech shift inside me, the blade widening into a solid bar. My free hand came up and flailed uselessly at it, fingers not working properly, before another bout of pain fried all my senses, my vision blanking out and going white for a moment as Eliza lifted her arm, hoisting me into the air. My limbs dangled uselessly like limp noodles, as if they’d just given up entirely. For a very brief moment I even thought I’d accidentally astral projected; I barely felt anchored to my body anymore through the haze of pain.
Somehow, I managed to keep my grip on the arrowhead, the sharp edge of it pressing into my palm the only thing keeping me even remotely grounded. Each breath was coming shorter and shorter, each sending a sharp wave of pain through me, each requiring more and more effort and concentration just to force the air into my lungs. I wanted to take a proper, deep breath but it was like my body wouldn’t let me.
“Did you forget there are actual afterlives, here? Where do you think someone like you is going to end up when you die?” Eliza asked me. I wanted to yell at her, to scream in her face to just shut up… was she going to finish this, or was she just going to keep talking?
She reached over with her free hand to pluck the pendant containing the Mind Stone from around my throat. I tried to reach up and grab her arm, to press the arrowhead against it. My elbow put up a valiant fight, my arm curling halfway up before flopping back down uselessly as she withdrew her hand, snapping the chain in a simple motion. She clicked the pendant open to look at it for a moment, before closing it again and tucking it into her palm in what some delirious part of me recognised as a mirror of the way I was holding Wanda-3.
She moved her sword arm and I hissed between clenched teeth, immediately regretting it as I struggled to refill my lungs with air. We were closer, now, our faces level as she looked at me. The fingers of the hand holding the Mind Stone gently—almost tenderly—brushed an errant clump of blood-matted hair away from my eyes. “God, I miss your body,” Eliza murmured quietly. “This one is fine, I guess, but it’s just not the same.”
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I focused on her eyes, trying to gather what little strength was left in my limbs. I couldn’t really feel them at all anymore. I reached for my magic, snagging a trickle of power. It wasn’t much, but maybe… maybe I could still do this. I needed to… I needed to focus. Ignore the pain. Focus on getting this done.
“I blamed you for a lot, at the start, even though it was stupid and we were the same person. I truly, honestly didn’t want to have to kill you. I hope you can believe that.” She sighed softly. “This… this is good. I’m glad I got the chance to say that. This is how it should be, at the end. Just the two of us.”
I tried to respond but succeeded only in making a strained noise, a couple of frothed bubbles of blood and spit appearing at the corner of my mouth.
Eliza looked at me, an unexpected touch of sympathy in her eyes. “What was that?” she asked gently.
“The three of us,” I corrected her, barely managing to get the words out between ragged gasps. At the same time, with what felt like the absolute last of my strength, I forced my arm up with a small burst of telekinetic energy and weakly slapped at the side of her head.
I didn’t hit her hard. I didn’t need to. The nanotech arrowhead attached the moment it made contact. Purple spots danced across my vision and I let out a pained gurgle as her arm reconfigured inside of me again, pulling free and letting me collapse to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut.
“You…” Eliza started, taking a step back and looking at me with an expression of disbelief on her face. “You made another one?” She froze, her body going utterly rigid and motionless. I had no idea what was happening beneath the surface, but I really hoped Wanda‑3 was at least putting up a good fight.
With great effort, I managed to creep one hand up onto my midsection, where Eliza’s blade had perforated me. Looking down, I saw bright red blood coating my fingers. It was a real shame I was probably going to bleed out. There was no way I could put pressure on that. I wondered faintly how long I had left.
“You gave her to Clint? You let Clint be the one to take the shot?” Eliza suddenly asked, a note of incredulity in her tone as she snapped back into motion. She shook her head ruefully. “Well, this is just embarrassing. That was it? That was your plan? I mean, props for the last burst of effort, but—”
The glowing plasma around her head flickered out and the light in her eyes died. There was a brief moment of silence, then she keeled over backward, hitting the ground with a dull thud.
Far above the street, the thrusters keeping the Starktech service platform aloft cut out and it started to plummet. Idly, I realised it had ended up pretty much directly over me. Eliza had probably been deliberately hovering it above her, for some reason. Well, so much for bleeding out. At least it was probably going to be quick.
Sorry, Wanda-3. I guess I wasn’t going to live through this, after all.
I closed my eyes, for what I expected to be the last time.
They flew back open an instant later, a stream of incoherent pained noises coming from my mouth as something grabbed me, wrenching me out from under the falling service platform a bare moment before it crashed to the ground. The impact kicked up a fresh wave of dust, stinging my eyes, and I squinted up at the dark, blobby silhouette crouched above me. It took a moment for the image to resolve properly, my vision swimming. Wait… T’Challa?
The Wakandan prince reached up a hand and ripped his helmet free, dropping it to the shattered ground next to me. He looked utterly exhausted, half of his face covered in dried blood, his suit ragged and torn in a dozen places. Reaching down, he produced a small metal sphere from somewhere. It took me a moment to recognise it. A Kimiyo bead.
T’Challa looked down at me, bead held poised between his fingers. Hesitation flickered across his features—I could have laughed; how ironic would that have been, to have beaten Eliza only for T’Challa to just let me bleed out?—but he shook the moment of indecision off. “This is going to hurt,” he said quietly, then pushed the bead into my stab wound.
It did.
There was a moment of what felt like crushing pressure, the icy numbness that had spread through my body cast into sudden, sharp relief, then the pressure lifted and I heaved in a deep breath, gulping air into my lungs. Burning pins and needles traces paths down my limbs. Painful, uncomfortable… but manageable.
“Haaahhhhhh… Ahh,” I said, mostly just pleased that whatever painkillers and other good stuff the bead’s medical function used were working. Licking my lips, I coughed and almost choked on my own saliva before focusing my eyes on T’Challa again. “Clint? Bucky?” I forced the questions out, dreading the answer.
“Alive,” he responded.
I sighed, relieved. I still didn’t know what had happened to everyone else after I’d lost my comms, so I wasn’t positive everyone had made it out, but the signs were positive.
Neither of us had time to react to the sound of a sonic weapon discharging. A sizzling bolt of blue energy slammed into the side of T’Challa’s head, knocking him down. My eyes widened as he slumped partially on top of me, a fresh splatter of blood trickling down onto my face.
“The fuck,” I yelped. Straining to pull myself up into a sitting position, T’Challa’s limp body slid off my shoulder as I craned my neck toward the source of the attack, scrabbling to grab hold of whatever shreds of magic I could.
Killmonger stalked toward us, sonic rifle held at the ready. He grinned at me. “You good, Red?”
“I’m…” I licked my lips. “Yeah. I’m good.” My eyes flicked back to T’Challa, one of my shaking hands moving close to his face. He was still breathing. Just unconscious.
Closing to within a few meters of us, Killmonger raised his weapon, sighting down the barrel at T’Challa’s prone form. “What a shame my cousin didn’t survive the fight, right? We’ll all miss him.” He frowned as he tried and failed to pull the trigger, tiny threads of chaos magic holding it immobile. “…What are you doing?”
I exhaled, long and loud. I was really glad that my breathing difficulties earlier just seemed to stem from shock and pain, rather than an actual punctured lung. Despite the condition I was in, it really did feel good to be able to breathe properly again. At least, it did until the breath turned into a cough, a series of electric jolts of pain stabbing through my body as I spasmed. I raised my uninjured hand toward Killmonger, holding up a finger in a ‘hold on for a moment’ gesture. His frown deepened, brow furrowing.
“You know,” I said, clearing my throat. “You’re a fucking idiot.” With a gesture, his weapon was yanked from his hands and sent sailing off to disappear into the nearby rubble.
He took a step back, dropping into a ready combat stance, hand creeping toward the knife strapped to his leg. “What the fuck, Wanda?” he hissed. “We had a deal. You think saving his ass is going to make up for everything?”
“The deal was bullshit,” I told him tiredly. “I never intended on helping you. I’m really, honestly a little surprised that I managed to trick you like that. I don’t think I’m a very good liar.”
Killmonger’s hand froze, glimmers of red energy crawling across his body. I was still badly hurt and having trouble grabbing onto much of my power, but restraining a single, completely unenhanced human? That I could still do.
“No one will know. None of our comms are active,” he emphasised, a slight edge of desperation entering his tone. “This is the perfect outcome. T’Challa dies. You’re blameless, and he stops coming after you forever.”
“I don’t care. I’m not helping you. I will never help you.”
Focusing, I tried and succeeded in drawing forth a tiny bit more magic, hoisting Killmonger bodily into the air. Carefully, I tied off the spell. I still wasn’t able to charge it with much power—it’d last maybe five minutes, at most? Still, that should be more than enough. Others would arrive soon. They had to already be on their way.
I took a couple of deep breaths, then tried standing. Nope. Really not happening. I settled for propping myself up in a sitting position. Next to me, T’Challa let out a small groan. I winced, reaching over, grabbing his shoulder and trying to flip him onto his back. No dice there, either. I felt weak as a kitten.
There was a sudden, bestial roar that echoed off the buildings around us, a bare moment before Shuri flew through the air, landing heavily a little way down the street. How far could that girl jump? She looked absolutely furious, tossing her head left and right—looking for Eliza, no doubt.
“Shuri!” Killmonger yelled. “Help me! Wanda killed T’Challa!”
Oh, fuck.
--
T’Challa let out a pained groan. His head was fuzzy—disoriented—and he realised that he was lying, face down, on the ground. How had that happened? Someone touched his shoulder, weakly trying to roll him over. The last thing he remembered was—
There was a sudden, bestial roar, a panther-like cry as if from the mouth of the furious Goddess herself, and a crunch as something heavy hit the rubble not too far away. Shuri?
“Shuri!” N’Jadaka yelled from somewhere nearby. “Help me! Wanda killed T’Challa!”
T’Challa’s eyes snapped all the way open, cold anger filling his body and blotting out the pain. Now he remembered. Now he understood. N’Jadaka had betrayed them, just as the Red Woman had said he would. He thrust an arm down beneath him, pushing hard enough to bounce himself back onto his feet even as his transformed sibling’s sprinting footfalls closed the distance between them.
He had a bare instant to process the scene. Shuri was almost on top of them, her face utterly twisted with rage and fury. Wanda Maximoff was next to him, propped up in a sitting position, eyes wide in fear, a desperate hand held out toward the charging, purple giantess. Whatever power the Red Woman had remaining, it clearly wasn’t enough to stop her. N’Jadaka hung suspended in the air nearby, hands bound behind his back with glimmering threads of red energy, a wicked grin on his face.
In a single motion, T’Challa grabbed Wanda’s outstretched arm roughly around the wrist and flung her out of Shuri’s path, interposing himself between the witch and his sister. She let out a strangled yelp, but he was unconcerned—for good or ill, she would live.
Shuri barely managed to stop herself as T’Challa’s other hand slammed, open-palmed, into her midsection. His arm protested, his sister’s momentum and strength sending a jarring shock of pain up to his shoulder, but he held firm. “Shuri! Stop!”
“Get out of my way, brother!” she snarled back at him, leaning forward against his hand slightly.
She was so strong. He had felt real fear when she first transformed—fear of losing her, fear of her losing her mind in the same manner as Dr Banner, fear what Eliza might have done to try to match her. The transformation that the gamma radiation and Heart-Shaped Herb had wrought upon his little sister was alarmingly powerful. There was absolutely no way he could hold her back if she actually decided to shove him out of her way.
“N’Jadaka lied. I am alive. He betrays us.”
“Then we’ll kill him, too,” she responded, baring her teeth. Her eyes were still locked on the Red Woman.
“No. You are not thinking clearly. It is done. We are safe.”
She slapped his arm away with a restrained swipe of her open hand—even though she was clearly holding back, it still sent him staggering back a couple of paces, his entire forearm stinging with the impact. “We will never be safe. Not as long as the Red Woman still draws breath,” she growled, glowering at him. At least she was looking at him, now.
T’Challa returned her gaze evenly. “We do not need to fear her. Not anymore,” he said, his tone firm but gentle.
“I am not afraid!” she roared in his face, both hands clenched reflexively into fists at her side. She blinked, shrinking back slightly at her own reaction to his words. “I am not afraid,” she repeated, a little less steadily. Her breath was coming short and sharp, her emotions keeping her adrenaline high.
“This beast of fear and vengeance is not you, Shuri. You are not a mindless killer. You are my sister.”
There was the barest flicker of movement at the edge of T’Challa’s peripheral vision—a tiny spark of red energy. “Shuri,” Wanda said behind him, an edge of tired frustration in her tone. “If I had wanted to kill you, I’d have fucking done it already.” Idiot! She should not have spoken! Did she not realise how close she was to death?!
Shuri snarled, barging T’Challa aside, and lunged at the Red Woman. He tried to stop her, but it was like trying to wrestle with a mountain—all he could do is watch helplessly as she seized Wanda around the throat with one hand and lifted her into the air, long fingers wrapping all the way around the woman’s neck. “You—!” Shuri stopped dead, blinking as if confused. “You…”
She let go of Wanda, dropping her to the ground. The Red Woman let out a hiss of pain, but her uninjured hand was around his sister’s wrist, refusing to let go, and Shuri began to shrink. The Hulk transformation fled as quickly as it had originally come, Shuri’s limbs shortening as she stumbled to her knees, joining Wanda on the cracked ground. T’Challa could see, now, the threads of magic under the Red Woman’s hand, joined with a soft golden glow. The Mind Stone.
Shuri finished sinking down, collapsing bonelessly. Unconscious. Wanda let go of her, looking cautiously back up at him. “Sorry, I didn’t think you’d be able to stop her.”
T’Challa scowled at her. She might have been right but, regardless, it did not give her the right to… He pushed down the flare of anger at the Red Woman once again trespassing in the mind of someone he cared about. Taking a deep breath, T’Challa turned to face N’Jadaka, who was still hanging suspended in midair. The smile had been wiped from the other man’s face.
“We have much to talk about, cousin,” T’Challa said.