Soldier Boy

Wakanda

"Drop to 2600, heading 0-3-0." Steve told Sam.

"I hope you're right about this. Or we're gonna land a lot faster than you want to." Sam said. Sam has been to Wakanda before, just not the main city. We entered through the forcefield and landed in front of the palace. We got off the jet and walked over to T'Challa, Okoye, and the Dora Milaje.

"Seems like I'm always thanking you for something." Steve said to T'Challa and they shook hands. Bruce bowed.

"What are you doing?" Rhodey whispered to him.

"Uh, we don't do that here." T'Challa told Bruce. "So how big of an assault should we expect?" We started walking.

"Uh, sir, I think you should expect quite a big assault." Bruce told him.

"How we looking?" I asked.

"You have my Kingsguard, the Border Tribe, the Dora Milaje, and..."

"And a semi-stable 100 year old man." Buck said. Steve and Bucky hugged.

"How you been, Buck?" Steve asks.

"Uh, not bad, for the end of the world." Bucky chuckled. We then headed up to Shuri's lab. She scanned him.

"The structure is polymorphic." Shuri said.

"Right, we had to attach each neuron non-sequentially." Bruce told her.

"Why didn't you just reprogram the synapses to work collectively?" She asks him.

"Because we didn't think of it." He said. Shuri looks over at me. I just gave her a small smile and a small nod.

"I'm sure you did your best." Shuri said as she turned back to Bruce.

"Can you do it?" Wanda asks her.

"Yes, but there are more than two trillion neurons here. One misalignment could cause a cascade of circuit failures. It will take time, brother." Shuri looked at T'Challa.

"How long?" Steve asked.

"As long as you can give me." An alarm went off and Okoye's kimoyo beads went off. She pulled up a hologram of the world.

"Something's entered the atmosphere." She told us.

"Hey, Cap, we got a situation here." Sam said through the comm. We looked out the window to see something falling towards us. It hit the shield and blew up.

"God, I love this place." Bucky said.

"Yeah, don't start celebrating yet, guys. We got more incoming outside the dome." Rhodey said.

"It's too late." Vision said as he sat up. "We need to destroy the stone now."

"Vision, get your ass back on the table." Nat said.

"We will hold them off." T'Challa said.

"Wanda, as soon as that stone's out of his head, you blow it to hell." Steve said.

"I will." She nods.

"Evacuate the city. Engage all defenses." T'Challa ordered. "And get this man a shield." Steve looked over at him. We headed out of the lab. Steve gently grabbed my arm and I stopped walking. I looked up at him. I waited for him to say something but he didn't say anything. He just looked at me. Like it was the last time that he will see me.

"Steve?" I slipped my hands into his.

"Don't do anything stupid out there." Steve says as he rubbed his thumbs against the back of my hands. "Try to stay close to me."