Chapter 114: Shuri's Lab

A/N: Shuri and her interns~

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"So what do you guys think is up with Boss Lady, exactly?"

"Huh? Dr. Shuri? What do you mean 'what's up'?"

"Oh come off it, Peter. She's mysterious, duh."

"Michelle is right. She is a little weird. No last name, no country of origin. It's like she appeared out of thin air."

"What are you saying guys? She's just a brilliant woman who we should be lucky to get to work under. Especially given her laboratory is beyond state of the art."

"Seriously Peter? Be a little more suspicious, won't you?"

"Peter is probably right. People are entitled to their secrets."

"Ugh, not you too Gwen. Kiss ass."

"Excuse me?! I just happen to agree with the sentiment, I'm not kissing anyone's ass!"

"I mean… she can't be that bad right, mysterious or not? She's funded by THE Tony Stark, so…"

"While I agree that she's probably no mad scientist or anything, don't be naïve Ned. Most of the world's scientists are funded by Tony Stark these days."

"Yeah Allan is right, anyone with half an idea and ambition gets funded by Stark. He has to be bankrolling at least a few mad scientists and supervillains at this point. Might not even know it with as much money as he flings around."

"I'm pretty sure I said she's NOT a mad scientist, Jones…"

"Guys… we really shouldn't be talking about our boss in the middle of her own lab like this. What if she overhears us?"

"Oh come off it Peter. She's all the way on the other side of the room. How is she going to hear us?"

Across the expansive laboratory space on the other side of the room, Princess Shuri of Wakanda busies herself with her current experiment, being very, very careful not to let on that she can hear the group of interns talking about her. To be fair, the acerbic, distrustful one named Michelle Jones is right. Shuri shouldn't be able to hear them, and normally she wouldn't be able to… except the entire laboratory is JARVIS' domain just like her secret lab in Wakanda, and he's transmitting their voices into her ear so she can snoop a little bit.

It's been a month since Killmonger murdered her father and tried to take control of Wakanda. A month since Friday in turn killed Erik, slaughtering him like the dog he was. And of course, a month since she'd run away from home, jumping through a portal without a care for what was on the other side save for that it would be anywhere but there in Wakanda with her mother.

Of course, finding out that she'd traveled halfway across the Solar System to the further asteroid belt in less than a second had been absolutely wild and utterly amazing. Shuri had almost wanted to stay out there… but in the end she'd had a long distance chat with Tony Stark and had to admit that this was better… even if she was technically being saddled with babysitting duties.

This laboratory was hers, completely and equivocally. Completely separate from Stark Industries and Stark's servers. No oversight from Tony Stark himself, no orders, no restrictions. He'd even set it up so she was in America legally, and then gone and set up her own research company for her as well. All of it was above board, and all of it created several degrees of separation between her and Stark.

Well, except for JARVIS of course. She still had JARVIS… but then to be fair, Shuri didn't need to be connected to Stark's holdings for her to have JARVIS by her side, always. As far as she could tell, everyone had JARVIS at this point. They just didn't know it. He was everything, in everything, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Shuri had, of course, spoken to her brother. She didn't want T'Challa to waste War Dog lives trying to fight a shadow war against JARVIS that he couldn't win. The Princess got the impression that Wakanda believed they'd excised JARVIS from their systems, and that they were buttoned up nice and tight now so that an AI intrusion like that could never happen again.

She didn't think that was true for even a second to be honest, but she wasn't going to ask JARVIS directly and test their friendship like that. Either he would lie to her or he would tell her the truth and she'd have to decide if she wanted to keep lying to her remaining family about it. Shuri had done a lot of lying in the past few years, but those were lies of survival. Now that she was free and safe and Erik Killmonger was dead, she found herself less inclined to lie to T'Challa or her mother anymore.

Fortunately, she hadn't had to yet. She'd been able to tell T'Challa, completely truthfully, about how Tony Stark was keeping her at arm's length. So much so that his fingertips weren't even within a foot of her, to stretch the idiom. There was really only one annoyance that Tony Stark had saddled her with… the interns.

Stark hadn't even tried to pretend it was anything but what it was. He'd told her point blank that she was anti-social, maladjusted, and misanthropic and he was going to help her out by making her interact daily with other human beings her own age. The upside was that she would still be in charge and those other human beings would answer to her as their boss. Also, she still got to keep JARVIS.

In the end, Shuri hadn't fought too hard, though she had to admit… Stark wasn't quite as clever as he thought he was. She'd known immediately that there was going to be some sort of twist, some sort of spanner in the works. While she might not have access to Stark's servers, and her own pride hadn't allowed Shuri to ask JARVIS for help, she'd nevertheless done her own sleuthing and uncovered some very interesting things.

Shuri had three groups of interns working for her from three different schools spread out across New York. All of them were high schools focused on the sciences of course, but while two groups of interns were almost depressingly boring, the group from Midtown School of Science and Technology was far more interesting. And not just because they were basically an American Soap Opera given flesh.

There were the two boys, Peter Parker and his best friend Ned Leeds. And then there were the three girls. Liz Allan, Michelle Jones, and Gwen Stacy. All three young women clearly had a crush on Peter, and their feelings were so obvious that even Ned seemed to recognize it. Peter, of course, was hilariously dense about the whole thing. Oh, and there was a fourth girl who was involved with their group as well but wasn't interning for Shuri. A 'Mary Jane Watson' who wanted to go into acting or something.

They were all relatively smart people, even the Mary Jane girl, seeing as they'd all managed to get into Midtown in the first place. But none of them really held a candle to Shuri herself… except for Peter Parker and to a lesser extent Gwen Stacy. Both of them were the cream of the crop in Shuri's eyes, the smartest pair of interns she had across all three groups. They were geniuses in their own rights, Shuri had quickly uncovered.

But then, that might have something to do with the other thing she'd uncovered. Beyond the brewing soap opera drama that was the love pentagon Peter Parker was part of, there was also the fact that he and Gwen were the New York vigilante duo Spider-Man and Spider-Woman.

… Yeah, that was a little weird. Both uncovering their identities, and also the fact that New York had their own protectors on par with Wakanda's Black Panther… and didn't treat them like the royalty they should have been. But to be fair, America was weird like that, so Shuri didn't think too hard about it.

She did think pretty hard about Peter and Gwen though. She'd ultimately uncovered their identities by hacking into a lot of databases and New York security cameras and tracking their coming and goings. But what really cinched it… was the photos that Peter sold to one J. Jonah Jameson.

Selling pictures of himself in costume doing superhero stunts was honestly really ballsy, but it was also kind of a dead giveaway when combined with all of the other information she'd gathered. And from there, connecting Gwen Stacy to Spider-Woman was simple enough seeing as the laboratory did a full body scan of each intern every day when they came in, and it was rather obvious that neither Peter nor Gwen were baseline human.

Of course, Shuri had done her part to cover their tracks. She'd deleted certain security camera footage that might have allowed someone else to make the same leaps in logic she did, and she'd also gone to great lengths to lock down the bioscans for Peter and Gwen in particular. All of the scans were secured of course, but for Peter and Gwen, Shuri had replaced their scans in the system with doctored versions and downloaded the actual scans to her own private server.

Obviously, Tony and JARVIS already knew who Peter and Gwen were. JARVIS had confirmed it once Shuri uncovered the truth and popped the question. But that didn't change the fact that they and their friends were now Shuri's ickle baby interns and nobody else's! They were her ugly ducklings to lead along and cultivate into proper super scientists!

It also didn't help that Peter was both brawny and brainy at the same time. Shuri wasn't looking for love or anything like that, but he WAS quite handsome… and some of the feats she'd witnessed him perform as Spider-Man honestly had her heart racing with excitement. It was quite exhilarating watching him do his thing, especially knowing that he'd invented the web-shooters he used to secure criminals for the police to pick up all on his own.

He was an impressive young man, and seeing as the women in his life were basically beating around the bush, Shuri saw no reason that she shouldn't be allowed to… throw her hat in the ring if she wanted to.

In fact, glancing over at the group, listening in on their conversation some more, Shuri smirks… and decides to go over and interact with her interns just a little bit.

"I'm telling you; Tony Stark is 100% a supervillain. Are you kidding me?"

"Michelle what are you talking about? He's basically the world's number one philanthropist."

"That's exactly my point, Liz! He won; don't you see? Bread and circuses. It's all just… bread and circuses!"

"You've been watching too much J. Jonah Jameson, me thinks."

"Bah! Look, that guy might be an idiot when it comes to the Spider Twins, but he's on to something with Stark. Nobody is as golden as Tony Stark seems to be. He's hiding something… probably multiple somethings."

By this point, Shuri has reached the group. Moving with a feline grace and stealth that she'd gained from years of evading and avoiding Killmonger in her own damn home, Shuri has managed to sneak up on the group completely. Well, not completely. Both Peter and Gwen have noticed her approach of course, their enhanced senses making it impossible for her to sneak up on them as she is now.

However, they're conveniently facing away from her and not wanting to give themselves away, neither can actually react to her presence… until after she's swung her arms around them both and thrust her head between theirs with a wide grin etched across her face.

"Hm, and what are you all talking about over here? Science, I should hope?"

The gentle chastisement does the trick for most of the group. Peter, Gwen, Liz, and Ned all sputter a bit and begin trying to tell her about their current projects and experiments to cover for the fact that they'd basically been goofing off and shooting the shit for the past twenty or so minutes. But Michelle Jones… that girl is made of sterner stuff.

Wham!

Striking the table with her palm, she shuts up the others and looks directly at Shuri, a challenging glint in her eye.

"Settle a debate for us, Doctor Shuri. Tony Stark… supervillain, or nah?"

While the others blanch at Michelle's audacity, Shuri pretends to consider it for a long moment before finally nodding decisively.

"Supervillain, definitely."

Michelle pumps her fist in the air and crows as everyone else at the table just gapes in absolute disbelief as their 'boss'.

"Knew it! Hah, the Spider Twins are SO going to have to eventually take him down and free the world from his tyranny! Peter, Gwen, pay up!"

Shuri arches a brow as Michelle Jones holds out her hands in the direction of the secret identities of Spider-Man and Spider-Woman… who both object vehemently to her words.

"Nope! Nah-ah! That wasn't the bet!"

"That's right, just because Dr. Shuri made a joke doesn't mean anything. The bet was for if Spider-Man and Spider-Woman ACTUALLY wind up having a super fight against Tony Stark, and that's never going to happen Michelle!"

Scoffing but still looking victorious, Michelle just crosses her arms over her chest, undeniably smug. In the ensuing silence, Shuri interjects again.

"Why do you call them the Spider Twins, exactly?"

As Peter and Gwen groan (though at least Ned and Liz also look a little aggrieved) Michelle just grows smugger.

"Simple, doc. They're literally spider-people. Same powers, same abilities, same neck of the woods. It's pretty much impossible that they aren't related in some way, right? And given they're the same age, they're probably brother and sister. Now admittedly, they're probably not twins… but Spider Twins sounds better than Spider Siblings. Hence, Spider Twins."

Oh… oh, Shuri was beginning to like Michelle Jones. Especially with how she was able to unknowingly tear at Peter and Gwen's souls. Knowing their secret and seeing Michelle spout out such inaccurate information about them with an unmatched sort of confidence, Shuri can't help the wicked grin that spreads across her face as she leans in closer.

"Hm… tell me more."

A calculating glint appears in Jones' eye at that, and she leans forward too.

"Tit for tat, doc. Tell us about Tony Stark and his evil plans for taking over the world and maybe I'll tell you more about the Spider Twins."

Shuri considers how to answer that for a long moment… before deciding there's really only one possible way she can at the end of the day. Sniffing haughtily, she glances at her fingernails for a moment in an almost dismissive fashion.

"Take over the world? I thought we were already in agreement that he'd won ages ago. And besides, as one of his mad scientists, it would be rather disloyal of me to spill his secrets so openly to a bunch of plucky young teenagers. Who knows, maybe one of you is secretly a heroically inclined vigilante that might feel forced to do something about it."

Silence falls at the table as even Michelle just gawks at her for a moment. But finally, a broad smile breaks out across her face and she suddenly thrusts a hand in Shuri's direction. Confused, Shuri offers her own, finding herself in an enthusiastic handshake as the young American woman reintroduces herself.

"Michelle Jones. Pleasure to meet you. I can already tell we're going to get along just fine."

Meanwhile, Peter groans and buries his face in his hands, muttering something that sounds suspiciously like 'oh god, there's two of them now' into his palms. Normally, Shuri would be quite offended… she's one of a kind after all, there's no one else like her in all of existence.

But in this case, feeling a strange warmth spreading through her chest… she lets it slide as she and Michelle continues to exchange comments that completely fluster and shock the others at the table. Until eventually they get so ridiculous that the others are drawn right into their insane discussions and pulled down to their level in the process, the utter fools.

Things were finally starting to look up, Shuri realized in that moment. She feels something loosen within her, and an excitement wells up as she looks towards the future and sees not an ounce of the darkness that had plagued her before. She was, for the first time in a long time, truly happy… and totally at peace.

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Eitri, King of the Dwarves and Master Blacksmith of Nidavellir, curses as another explosion rocks his realm, the latest of several in the last few seconds. He rushes from his forge, out onto the streets of the dwarven homeworld… and lets out a shuddering breath at what he sees before him.

Odin had warned him. Had told him this would happen. They'd done their best to prepare for it. They'd even stationed a full-blown Asgardian Garrison. But for all their preparations, Eitri hadn't been convinced it would ever happen, truth be told.

Well it was happening now. The evidence was right before his eyes. The Mad Titan's forces have come to Nidavellir.

-x-X-x-

A/N: And so begins the End.

With this we move into the Final Arc of this story, ladies and gentlemen. In fact, there's only 10 chapters left... plus an Epilogue. The story ends on the aforementioned epilogue, Chapter 125.

Been a wild ride so far, and it can still get wilder yet! Hope you all enjoy what I have planned~

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