Chapter 43: Cause and Disconnect

"RRUAGHH!"

Brontë burst from his covers, slicing them to shreds as if it was Bast herself that enveloped him in his sleep.

The tattered remains fell down around him like fallen shadows. Expensive fallen shadows.

"Fuck…" Bronte quietly whispered as he looked around his room.

It was still dark. But off in the distance, as he peered out his window, he could see the suns orange rays cutting into the night sky. Erasing the solitary glow of the stars in its solar spread.

It would be morning soon. But until then, he found himself in silence. Something he couldn't even achieve in sleep. Perfect time to be alone.

Hell, the perfect time to go out. See Wakanda for what it was. For the first time he didn't feel so strapped down by Romulus…. The mysteries of his sister and everything else.

Wakanda was a new world. For now at least.

Brontë grabbed a change of clothes and hit the showers. It was there that he found more changes. At this rate he'd wake up as a Monster that would make even Hank McCoy look human.

Scars. That was a first for someone with his level of regeneration. Slash marks that ran across his back and chest like wild designs. It reminded him of bears marking their trees in the Canadian wilderness.

He touched them as he sat under the scorching waters. Immediately, memories of Bast slicing through him with her blade-like claws resurfaced and the pain came back as if it only just happened.

He growled at the pain and hopped out of the shower to get dressed. Nothing too different from the previous days garb. Still too tight. Only now he had a black cloak to go over it.

The bathrooms were a distant memory as he headed down the halls and found a pair of eyes watching him from the shadows.

The sparse amounts of lights coming from the control panels at each door reflected from her eyes like a cat.

He sniffed even though he didn't need to.

"Where to?" Laura asked as she approached him with a yawn.

"Anywhere really. I'm just heading out. I'll be back before breakfast, don't sweat it." Bronte replied.

Laura side eyed him.

"Come on…. We're in Wakanda. You think Romulus is just gonna pop out of a manhole cover at four am? You're bugging." Bronte explained.

Laura smiled faintly before going helicopter parent mode once more, "You know if you aren't back before breakfast I'm tearing this whole place down, right?"

"This whole place….? As in Wakanda or this building?"

Laura headed back to her room. Fuck around and find out written all over her walk like graffiti on a barbershop in Harlem.

"Heard you." Bronte said before heading off to start his day.

***

A few minutes passed and he was at the courtyard once more. It seemed like that's the only place he'd been to ever since making it to Wakanda. He wanted to change that. Everywhere he and his siblings had been to, had been studied and marked in and out. Wakanda was no different. It may have been full of Mutants, precious metals, hyper advanced tech and mystery. But still, no different.

He approached the ledge where he sat the night before, discussing him and his siblings involvement in a possible war with the King and Queen.

Instead of sitting on its metal railing once more, he jumped up onto it and stood.

The world below seemed to stretch forever in the dark. Lights ebbed and flowed across the streets and buildings as if the place was alive. A sleeping techno giant with no beginning or end. Full of lives…. Innocents. People who don't know what waits in the water and at the border.

Bronte removed the thoughts and feelings of guilt from his mind. Wrong time wrong place. He took in a deep breath and felt the winds blow around him.

That rich scent of night air was just beginning to fade. The coldness falling on his dark skin less and less.

He kept that feeling of the wind in his mind. He placed it to the rhythms he imagined. Like Ilyana said, magic requires you to be in a certain headspace.

He'd never flown without music in some capacity. But if there was ever a time to learn.

Brontë took another deep breath. The winds around him swirling like a tornado. And then he jumped.

The decent was fast. He weighed over three hundred pounds. The floor wanted him bad. He focused. He found a tune in the rushing winds defeating him by the second. He found a song in the wind.

In a burst of wind he was rocketing back towards the early morning sky. His eyes glowed in the darkness as he looked over the city hooting and howling at the enjoyment of simple free flight. No real destination. No real purpose. Just being. Pushing his limits.

For the next half hour he traveled at inhuman speeds. Often times falling and crashing into rooftops or recovering right before falling into traffic. He was far from expertise with the wind rider magic, but he was better than before.

In his travels he found that Wakanda wasn't all the same. There were jungles and deserts. All built into and around the nation. No destruction like in the western world. Harmony. Differing types of people were also found with ease.

They sported various colors and seemingly had different ways of life.

Some wore blue. They hung on the outer edges of Wakanda with their armored Rhino's and lanky weaponry. Brontë could smell his father there. The Border Tribe. Some of the other tribes were much different from the norm. Different jewelry, different looking people. And different gods.

Where his current travels took him was the most bizarre. The place was completely devoid of technology. Simply a lush jungle. Fit with rushing rivers and sparkling waterfalls. The greenery of it all was stunning. Like it's own rainbow light source in the growing morning.

Tech had never blessed the lands he hovered over.

Even so, hundreds of people were within. Living in homes built into the trees and canopy. It was beautiful in a primal sense.

Mothers and daughters hung by the waterfalls and rivers washing clothing and collecting the herbs that grew from the rich soil.

The smells that rose to his nose were heavenl—

Chanting took him out of his serene gazing.

He followed the sound. Curiosity holding him fully until he found himself floating above a gathering of sorts. The thickness of the jungle thinned.

No trees or bushes in sight. Just the ground and a dozen men and women. They wore light cloth wrappings that fluttered in the wind over their lithe frames.

Like most other people of Wakanda their skin was dark— beautifully bathed in the sun. But, they also had tattoo's. Their color was something he'd never seen. A dull purple. Under the light of the fire they gathered around it glimmered like stars.

"YOU!"

Brontë didn't even notice one of the men was looking up at him. His masked face hid his features as he pointed.

"You fly….. like the goddess that rules over the new Wakanda! Who are you, young man of the skies?"

"The new Wakanda…? These ones are different." Bronte thought.

"Come! Stand among the Marube people on this sacred day." The man waved him down.

Hesitantly, Bronte descended to the earth. The people gave way, watching him as they whispered suspicions back and forth between their brethren.

The masked man waved him closer to the flaming pot as he pointed to Bronte's chest.

"You wear the royal colors... you fly…. Yet I see no Panther in any of you. You stand out… like us, young man."

"And who are ya'll?" Bronte questioned.

"We are the Marube people!" He said it with pride, the people around him yelled it with him. "Wakanda moves with a flow we cannot follow. So we remain here. Our way of life is an ocean to their fires of western technological advancement."

"Right…" Bronte said casually as the flaming cauldron spit up burnt embers.

The masked man looked from him to the fire as a group of men arrived with a pot of shimmering metals.

"Come. Come watch, young man."

Brontë did just that. He watched as the masked man grabbed the shimmering metals inside the pot and poured them into the flames. The fire exploded with intensity, it's heat like a small sun in the jungle. Slowly, the flames darkened and shifted until they were purple. They had a pulse that radiated through the area with each burst of flame, shaking the grass and trees.

"You know of our richest resource, hm?" The man asked Bronte.

"Vibranium." Bronte replied.

"The heart of Wakanda. Mhm. There was a time when it brought us harmony and beauty. A time before it was harnessed for technology. Back then…. It flowed around us. In the soil. The trees. The water. It was then that we all were one. Now it is only us that flows with it." The man sprinkled an assortment of herbs and animal products into the purple flame as he stirred what was now a silvery purple liquid.

"The nature of Vibranium is appreciative in that regard. It wants us to flow with it as one. And for that, it rewards us with its truest power…."

The others still watched Bronte warily.

"Why are you telling me this?" Bronte asked.

The masked man's eyes twinkled, "So you know what's coming."

Following his words something in the distance burst from the trees and landed on the ground behind the crowd of people. Another man landed behind him. Like the others he had glowing tattooing all over himself. He was at least six and half feet tall as well and strapped with muscle. Like a downsized hulk. His eyes were kind as he watched him.

With the splitting of the crowd he found unkindness in the other new arrivals eyes.

He was smaller. But his tattoos were more intense— brighter. Even his eyes glowed purple from the shadows of his orange hood.

As he walked closer, the metal black sheen covering his legs faded.

"Tosin…. Gentle. Welcome home."

"Who's the new guy?" Tosin asked. He reminded Bronte of Azari. Young and grumpy.

"Royalty." The masked man replied. "You two may see each-other in the Ceremony of the Second."

Tosin approached him and circled. Brontë turned with him, keeping his eyes glued. He wasn't about to be studied and scrutinized for nothing. The Xavier Institute days were over.

"You're no Panther. " Tosin repeated what the man said.

"Yea and what?" Bronte replied. Playing nice was slowly becoming exhausting.

"Do you wish to change that?" Tosin asked.

"I don't give a damn about any of that." Bronte replied.

Tosin's eyes lit up, "Royalty…. AND no wish for the throne? I would've never assumed."

"Assumptions get you killed." Bronte replied.

The onlookers stiffened.

"A threat? Here?" Tosin questioned. The musclehead, Gentle, watched on calmly.

"It's whatever you want it to be." Bronte looked around at the people before speaking again, "It was nice meeting you all. I'm gone."

Then he flew off.

The masked man watched him fly away with a newfound interest.

"I have a feeling today will be interesting, Tosin."

"As long as we win the ceremony we can begin reshaping Wakanda. Success over interest. The Neo-Wakandan's have put us through enough with the Ocean people. I'm done with it."

Brontë turned his ear away from them as he flew further out of earshot. Tosin's anger suddenly made sense.