With Alex's sensing abilities and Natasha's espionage knowledge and experience, the girls were able to explore the palace easily without getting detected by the security measures.
Finally, they found a place where they could get quite a bit of information. The kitchen.
Some random careless gossip could easily reveal some very important information.
An hour later, they didn't get much information other than some information about a change in leadership where the previous king T'Challa was usurped by the outsider king N'Jadaka and murdered by him. They also learned that most of the nation was in mourning over T'Challa's death and the Queen and Princess were occupied with that.
'Fuck, he's really dead. I had some hope that T'Challa could come back and take over Wakanda but this seems pretty unlikely…' Alex thought.
'Wait… Couldn't I…' Alex had an amazing idea. It could change everything about the MCU if he could actually execute it well.
In that instant, he decided to do something that would be game-changing.
'I have to plan things out…' He'd made his decision, but he had to plan the execution and look for the right opportunity.
Soon, Nat and Wanda heard something that had them perking up their ears. They heard where Steve and Bucky were. They were in the dungeon below the castle. It's not surprising that the Wakandan royal castle has a dungeon underneath it. They were a semi-medieval society so it made sense to keep their most wanted people right under their noses.
Both girls started following one of the servants. He was the one taking the food down to the cells of the prisoners below the castle.
…
In the dungeon.
Steve was brooding as he stared at the wall while glancing over to Bucky who was in the adjacent cell every once in a while.
The Vibranium prosthetics that T'Challa had given Bucky were gone and he was armless while his left leg was gone below the kneecap. He was just lying on the ground while staring at the ceiling.
"Any plans?" He asked Steve without turning his head.
"Maybe. I don't know how long it would take for them to arrive." Steve said.
"You sure they're coming?" Bucky was skeptical.
"I trust her. She'll be here." Steve trusted his comrades.
"And if they can't," Bucky said.
"Then we'll think about it when it happens," Steve continued.
"How long before we think about it?" Bucky had asked the same question multiple times and they'd had this exact conversation tens of times.
"Soon. It's not like I can just bend these Vibranium cell bars." Steve said. It's not that he wasn't thinking of solutions, it's just that there were no solutions.
There was a sliding noise as someone called out, "Food," in the native Wakandan Tongue.
Steve looked over and saw a plate of food being slid into his cell.
"At least we're still getting food." He said to Bucky.
"Yeah... Right." Bucky said as he got up and looked to his left and then his right where his arms should've been before looking over at the plate of food.
Steve, acting oblivious to Bucky's dilemma, continued while he ate, "I'm sure that when that Killmonger guy is done with solidifying his regime, he's going to come after us. We have to get out by then…" Steve kept talking.
The situation with Killmonger was slightly complicated. On one hand, he was the king of Wakanda, but he didn't have the full support of all of the tribes and Wakanda wasn't a dictatorship based solely on military power. It was a monarchy. Though the current situation was awfully close to a dictatorship.
Killmonger had the support of a couple of the militaristic tribes while most of the royal family's true supporters weren't very welcoming toward him. And neither were the people of Wakanda. T'Challa, however short-lived, was a very loved ruler. Even as the crown prince, he was loved by the Wakandan masses. He had won the support of both the people and the royal family's vassals. Now, a random dude comes to Wakanda, claims to be of royal blood, and proceeds to kill their king.
So, things were very unstable right now and he had to do quite a bit of work to stabilize his regime in Wakanda.
Killmonger couldn't just go and declare an all-out war on the world the moment he became king. That would've been an extremely stupid decision. And this was something that N'Jadaka aka Killmonger had been preparing for throughout his whole life. He wasn't going to make such a fatal mistake.
N'Jadaka was the son of the late king's brother, T'Chaka's blood brother. T'Challa was N'Jadaka's first cousin. And from the very day that T'Chaka had killed N'Jadaka's father for committing treason, N'Jadaka had been preparing for his comeback. He knew what it took to be a leader.
If he'd just declared war on the world at the moment he became a king, he wouldn't be able to sustain his regime and Wakanda itself would go to shit.
"Mmm!" *Thump* Steve's head perked up as he heard the sound of a muffled scream before hearing a light thump, signifying someone falling on the ground.
"You're looking pretty good." He saw Nat's smiling face looking down at him through the bars of the cell.
"Nat!" Steve was happy to see his friend, "How are you?" He asked.
"You're polite as always," Nat chuckled, "How is he?" She gestured to Bucky by tilting her head in his direction.
"Better… T'Challa helped get rid of whatever Hydra had put into his head." Steve commented.
"I remember him having just one fake limb, what's with the other lost limbs?" Nat asked.
"Can you guys stop acting as if I'm not there?" Bucky finally commented. He was still sore about losing his limbs. Though he wasn't going to go against Tony. Bucky felt like he deserved to die after all he'd done. He knew that he'd brutally killed Tony's parents and didn't deserve to live after having done a similar thing to so many other people.
"Tony…" Steve ignored Bucky's words and said one word with a complicated expression. On one hand, he was angry with Tony, and on the other, he was also grateful to him for sparing Bucky.
Nat understood and didn't comment further on it.
"The guards and the prisoners on this floor are done, along with the cameras." There was another voice beside Nat as Wanda appeared beside her.
"That's new," Steve commented as he saw Wanda's sudden appearance.
"How are you doing, Cap?" Wanda didn't say anything about Alex.
"I'm loving it here. Pretty fun, I missed my shield so much that now I'm living inside Vibranium. I'd still prefer to get out of here though." He said with a joking tone.
"We're working on it. These doors aren't automated so we have to do some work." Nat said. She'd already hacked into the camera mainframe of the prison system and set it to a looping video so that their actions aren't detected. But the cell doors weren't connected to the mainframe and worked on manual locking mechanisms.
"Wanda, if you will…" Nat said as she stepped back from the door, "You should step back," Nat warned Steve.
Wanda smiled excitedly before gathering a red glow in her hands. She was really enjoying blowing open the doors here.
[Try to have the intent to make the door disappear when you cast your attack.] Alex said in her head. Wanda didn't question him and did exactly that. He would regularly give her tips on the usage of her powers.
'Let's see if this works… Disappear.' With that thought and intent, Wanda shot the ball of her gathered Chaos energy at the barred door.
The door opened with a bang as a couple of parts of the bars on the door vaporized.
'It's not perfect, but with some practice, this could be such an overpowered move…' Alex thought. Wanda could literally make Chaos Energy do whatever she wanted as long as she willed hard enough. And she was getting to that point. Alex had decided that after this Wakanda stuff was done, he was going to take a solo trip with Wanda and they would look for the Darkhold.
It was at this point that he remembered the Black Widow movie. The events of that movie also took place during the time after Civil War. So after parting ways, Natasha would also have her hands full with the Black Widow program and her adoptive sister Yelena.
"That's new," Steve commented on the missing areas in the bars of the door.
"It's not really perfected yet," Wanda said with an embarrassed smile. She respected Steve a lot as he was one of the OG Avengers. That was why she'd agreed to stand on his side during the events of the Civil War. The main reason was the Accords, but her respect for him also played a major role.
Steve shrugged his shoulders and moved out of the cell before looking over to Bucky, "Wanda, if you may?" Steve asked.
Wanda nodded and gathered up another ball of energy in her hands before letting it loose with the same 'Disappear' intent.
This time, the door flew open and a bit more of the bars got disintegrated than when she opened Steve's cell.
'I just realized… These are Vibranium bars that she just destroyed…' Alex realized, 'Forget it, I can get the entire mountain to myself later if everything goes to plan.'
"Let's get going, buddy." Steve walked into Bucky's cell before putting him over his shoulder.
"We should first get the Vibranium prosthetics back so that he can be helpful in the case of a battle," Steve said as he naturally took the position of a leader in this group.
It wasn't anything unnatural, but it was just his natural charisma that commanded a certain authority of leadership. People would mostly listen to him unless he says something outrageous. It also had to do with respect. Most people had a certain amount of respect for Captain Rogers as he was the world's first official superhero.
"Any idea where?" Nat asked Steve as the four of them started walking out of the dungeon.
"Sort of… I know the place, but we'll have to look for it. The stuff that they confiscate from prisoners is kept in a storage area nearby. We'll find the prosthetics there." Steve said. Both his and Bucky's confiscated stuff was kept in the general area because Killmonger hadn't given many instructions to his subordinates and they were treated as normal prisoners awaiting their trial.
That's why they had it so easy. Because considering Killmonger's anti-foreign policies, he probably would've been torturing both Steve and Bucky by now for information.
After a while of looking, they finally found the storage area that they'd been looking for.
***
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