Infiltration

[I think we'll have a surprise waiting for us if we walk in through that entrance.] Both Wanda and Natasha heard Alex's voice amused voice. He'd already disappeared into the girls when they landed and didn't plan to come out anytime soon. He would only come out in a necessary situation. Or if he wanted to have fun. But he was more interested in focusing on how this Vibranium tunnel works.

At this point, his inner explorer geek had awakened and he was intent on studying the technology of Wakanda. He wanted all of the information and all of the intricacies of how Vibranium is used by Wakandans.

"Whatever. We'll only know whether or not this is a secret entrance once we go through it. Stay on guard, Wanda." Nat told Wanda as she steadily moved closer to the gate.

Wanda silently agreed to Nat's order. This kind of infiltration is Natasha's domain and Wanda trusted Nat to know what she was doing.

Alex was paying attention to the metal arch that was present at the entrance, 'It's all fucking Vibranium…' He noticed as he paid close attention to the structure of the metal.

The archway at the entrance, the inner walls of the so-called cave, everything was made of Vibranium. And the usage was much more refined than the crude usage of it in Captain America's shield.

The way Vibranium worked is that it absorbs all of the kinetic energy or force that it receives and it can either store that energy or distribute it all over its structure to negate most of that energy.

The way Captain America's shield works is that when some large force hits his shield, it absorbs all of that force and distributes it over the surface of the shield. That's how he's able to tank light blows from beings with Cosmic level strength like Thor.

On the other hand, the storage mechanism is something that is used in T'Challa's Black Panther suit. It stores all the kinetic energy that is received and then releases it all in one big burst.

These tunnel walls have the same mechanism, if someone attacks these walls, that kinetic energy would be stored to be utilized later.

'Though it could also be directed somewhere else…' Alex didn't know what the point of doing this with a mere secret entryway was and had many theories. But that's all they were. Theories.

…

"Don't you think that this tunnel is going on for way too long?" Natasha commented. They'd already walked for about a couple of miles through the tunnel but it was all the same.

[You noticed soon enough…] She and Wanda heard Alex's amused voice in their head.

"You noticed something?" Wanda asked.

[This tunnel is only around a hundred meters long. You've been walking in circles for the past half hour.] Alex said. He'd focused very intently on these walls for a while and he'd noticed that the girls were going around in circles after their second lap.

"And you didn't tell us earlier because?" Nat asked with scrutiny in her tone.

[I wanted Wanda to naturally realize something on her own without my input. But she didn't get the idea.] Alex said. He wanted Wanda to instinctively rely on her powers in a sticky situation.

Even now, even though she uses her powers more freely, she doesn't naturally use them unless they're necessary. She could've easily spread out her Chaos magic through the tunnel to map out the terrain.

They'd already trained this before and Alex was waiting for Wanda to utilize her powers for this.

Hearing his words, Nat's gaze went to Wanda with a slight questioning look. And seeing Nat's expression Wanda was embarrassed and looked down guiltily.

"I'm sorry guys. I don't have a habit of using my powers regularly." She said.

[It's fine. But pay attention to these things. You can't accurately sense your surroundings like me, but you can at least do the simple stuff for now. Try to be more open with your magic.] He said in Wanda's head.

The reason that Wanda isn't able to use Mana Sense the way Alex can is due to her mental capacity. After sensing the surroundings the way Alex does, Wanda's brain would literally fry due to information overload.

Alex was practically a supercomputer with the huge size of his consciousness. After devouring the 39 symbiotes that he'd come with and Venom, the size of his consciousness was very large. He could process a large amount of information at extremely high speeds.

That's why he is able to simultaneously control over 160 bodies without there being any load on his consciousness.

Though there was also a large drawback to this. He'd increased the capacity of his consciousness by unconventional means, which caused the integrity of his consciousness to be relatively weak. This meant that any telepath with some relative strength could mess him up.

This is the main reason that he hasn't even dared to contact the X-Men in Earth-65. That version of Earth is very much like the typical Marvel Comics Earth.

For the longest time, he'd wanted to devour Nightcrawler so that he could get his teleporting powers. That would open up so many avenues for him in the current situation. He would be able to switch between two bodies so that he could bring his hosts to the other versions of Earth. It would solve the problem of necessarily having 40 different hosts for him easily.

But he hadn't done that yet because he was terrified of both Jean and Charles.

They would be easily able to effortlessly whoop his ass telepathically and he wouldn't even know what hit him. He would need to make a lot of preparations before he could contact any X-Men. Wanda herself was an exception because she wasn't proficient with her mind manipulation abilities and she was very afraid of using her abilities. He'd taken a gamble when bonding with Wanda in the MCU and he was glad that he did. It opened up quite a few avenues for him.

Meanwhile, Wanda realized what she should do and let out a controlled burst of Chaos energy and released it outward, mapping out the terrain.

"Let's keep going." Wanda's eyes glowed a slight red as she took the lead this time and Natasha followed after her realizing that she must've found the exit.

About halfway through the path, Wanda stopped and looked at a certain wall of the tunnel.

Without saying anything, she walked into the wall.

Nat realized that Wanda must've found the exit and followed after her, walking into the wall.

The next instant, Nat was standing beside a sightly awestruck Wanda as she looked at the technological marvel that was Wakanda.

'How the hell does this work…' Alex thought as he saw the scene instantly change as if they'd walked through a sort of invisible curtain.

It was a cave that opened up to what seemed like the backyard of the royal palace. 'Backyard' is being used liberally here, it was a huge field where they'd appeared. The only indication that it was the royal palace was due to the grandiose structure of the building in front of them.

Wanda turned around to see the path that they'd come from, but all she saw was the wall of the cave.

"Alex, could you camouflage us? We need to understand the situation and look for Steve." Nat said. They had to infiltrate the royal castle and see where Steve and Bucky were. According to Steve's limited SOS information, they would most likely be present in the royal castle.

[Done.] Alex said to them and both the girls turned invisible.

"Let's take a look around this place." With those words, Nat started moving around the cave to see if there are any clues left behind by Steve.

Not really finding anything worthwhile in the cave, they decided to move out and start exploring this huge field after getting out of the cave.

They both already knew about the drawbacks of Alex's camouflage ability since they regularly used it and understood that it wouldn't work against high-tech cameras since they had many different sensors. And they were sure that Wakandan cameras would be much better.

Alex also kept his senses alerted to the maximum to make sure that they don't end up in the vision of a hidden camera. He would warn them whenever they were about to run into a hidden camera.

'There are way too many monitoring mechanisms in this field…' Alex inwardly complained as he sensed the huge number of safety measures while the girls crossed through the fields.

Finally, they reached a sort of back entrance of the Palace.

Nat and Wanda both examined the entrance to see if there were any hidden mechanisms to it. But seeing that there were none, Wanda tried to push open the door but she failed. It seemed to require some sort of mechanism to open.

"Alex, could you open this door? It would take ages for me to understand the mechanism to lockpick it…" Nat said as she tried to open the locked door.

[I've already checked, the mechanism needs a key to open from the other side too. There's no physical mechanism. Wanda's got to blast it open.] He said.

"Oh, I love blasting through doors…" Wanda smiled excitedly as a red glow gathered in her hands.

"Try not to make too much noise." Nat could only warn her.

[There's no one on the other side.] Alex gave Wanda the all-clear that she needed to lose all her reservations.

She released the condensed ball of red from her hands at the door with the intent of destroying the locking mechanism and the door opened up with a bang as the locking mechanism all but evaporated.

Wanda blinked her eyes in confusion at the result. She thought that it would just blast open. She hadn't used enough energy to actually destroy those hinges.

She didn't think much about it anymore and put it to the back of her head since she and Nat didn't have too much time.

"You could've tried to be a little subtle," Nat grumbled.

'Her use of Chaos magic is getting more and more varied… This is good. I want to see if we can get a hold of the Darkhold…' Alex thought as he saw Wanda's application of her Chaos magic.

With that, the castle exploration started.

***

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