Black Panther: Rise of the Princess (COMPLETE)

Chapter 38: Peter

With Shuri's splinter bombs in arm, I jumped out of the lab, not bothering to take the shuttle. Whatever was made of unrefined vibranium might be able to pick up Wakanda tech, so the best chance I had to disable these things was to do it on my own.

I didn't blame Shuri for feeling responsible for what was happening. It was her country, and her technology, so it was supposed to be her problem. Good thing was that she wasn't doing this alone, even if she understood it best. I didn't know anything about unrefined vibranium, but I knew how to place a bomb, and that was good enough. Hopefully.

All I had was a general idea where the shield generators were, but they were distinct enough in structure that once I was in the right area, I didn't have any trouble picking them out. They weren't very tall, maybe eight feet, but it emitted God knows how much energy a second, and the barrier it created engulfed one fifth of the city. All five of them working together protected all of Wakanda's civilization, from what I had seen. There was probably more, but did I know about it? No.

All of a sudden, the shield generator in Germany made sense. If D'Arku has been working for HYDRA, then they would have inside knowledge of one of the largest energy barriers on the planet. Sure, the design had been different, and Raven had been able to exploit its weak spot, but it was impressive nonetheless.

She could probably have sniped off these things with her now in ten minutes flat, but I was going to have to make the splinter bombs work. If I had to get up close and personal, so be it.

There was a small building next to the actual generator, probably for things like maintenance or whatnot. Since I didn't see anything that looked out of place on the generator yet, I decided to look inside. No one was inside, but it looked like a storage closet in there. If I didn't know better, I would have said it was abandoned.

"Karen, scan for the same energy readouts we go from the float," I instructed. "See if you can't find this thing."

"Give me a moment," she responded, initiating the search. "There is a small crate on the top shelf towards the back of the room, but it radiating at similar levels to the bomb at the parade."

I crept back to where she was referencing, and muttered, "In the back where no one can see it, of course."

Compared to everything else in the room, it looked crude and makeshift. Wakanda tech always looked like someone had made it with care, and the finished product had a certain element of finesse. This did not. It was definitely the sort of thing you would expect from a Nazi terrorist organization like HYDRA.

I activated my communication device behind my ear. "Hey Shuri, these splinter bombs, are they safe to set off inside, or should I take this thing somewhere a little less cramped?"

"Inside is fine," she assured me. "Set one off, and you will see what I mean."

I pulled one out of the case she gave me and activated the bomb. I tossed it onto the crate and stepped back, but in seconds, whatever was inside that crate disintegrated into ashes. After ten seconds, I couldn't even tell what it was supposed to be.

"Have you considered renaming these things to 'Thanos bombs'?" I asked, not altogether joking. I left the room and started off towards the next generator.

Shuri didn't think I was that funny. "If it wasn't so accurate, I might have laughed," she groaned. "Now get going. There are four more sources left!"

I jumped up to the rooftop of a house of the outskirts of the city. "Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm on my way. How's yours out coming?"

"I had to put that off, T'Challa called again."

Not good. "Is something wrong?"

She sighed. "D'Arku confessed his allegiance to HYDRA, and he told the King that they were after the research on synthetic growth. I had to erase everything I had gathered on the project."