Chapter 55: Blood in the….

"And you're sure you're alright?"

Brontë hopped up off the metal table. "Come on, your highness. I'm a Mutant….. a Mutant like Wolverine. I bounce back easy."

Ororo chewed her lip in a surprisingly youthful and not very queen-like manner as she itched her scalp. Her white braids bounced like coils of cloud. "Your f—….. Logan used to freak me out just like this you know?"

Brontë stopped listening to the commotion behind him to face her as he pulled the high tech bio-scanners and wires off his dense skin.

She put herself together, sweeping her braids behind her ears and adjusting her black white and purple gown. Her white ghostly eyes scanned him over a final time. "I've seen things as an X-Man and Consultant of many Magical Councils. But the way you all put yourselves back together….. it's something else, I'll tell you that much. I've seen that man get scalded almost entirely to the bone and all he needed to do was take a knee for a couple minutes."

Brontë suddenly remembered the files he spent years reading on Wolverine religiously. Fights with Robots programmed to be bigots…. Mutants with poison pheromones and metal snake arms, a spirit of Vengeance even…

"Sounds about right."

"That doesn't mean you're invincible. Especially with your Magic. It can break you in different ways. Don't take a hit to give one if you don't have to." Ororo said seriously as she aimed a jeweled finger at him.

"Hey…. I heard you. I'm grown— I been doing this for years." Bronte held his hands up in a way to show he was fine.

"Oh yea? I'm sure you held up all the oceans at Canadas border…."

"Yea that was crazy as hell I can't lie." Bronte was suddenly taken back to….. well, an hour ago. He reached up and massaged the back of his neck as he turned to face the room. His spine still tingled. Like a magical muscle was strained instead of a physical one. Less of a burn and more of a ice cold shudder.

But he couldn't focus on it long and his mutant superior healing wasn't the cause of that. It was his new surroundings.

He'd heard word of the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda. Apparently it had come into fruition around the time Bronte was born— Ororo used all the political power she could to give it every advance available in an attempt to get the Avengers back to earth so she could be a mother to her firstborn.

Sometimes things went sideways….. or pushed onwards slowly.

But what he stood inside of was neither of those things.

It wasn't a metal box with otherworldly man-made tech hidden beneath the silver flesh. It was a glass dome at the apex of an invisible spire that carried them above the clouds. The night sky enveloped them like a dark starry wallpaper. A calming backdrop to make the anomalous pods, holographic spreadsheets, test tubes and space tech less visually jarring.

It failed.

Bronte's brain was about to melt if he saw another alien piece of weaponry he casually handled like kitchenware.

Not really.

He's eaten Wendigo in Canadian forests lit ablaze by his own magic.

But still…..

"Dope…"

"I know right? This is my true pride and joy!"

Brontë almost jumped out of his skin. The last person to sneak up on him so completely was a toad mutant in Brazil. That was the last time he snuck up on someone too….. thanks to Laura. He was still a rookie.

He turned to his left and found nothing. Nothing more than shifts in the air that slowly gave way to a feminine shape if the hips and tied up bun of hair meant anything.

Slowly the shapes in the air solidified and adopted white and purple hues until a dark skinned tall woman stood beside him. She wore a white lab coat and dark purple pants. Not the same dress she wore at the dance.

"Shuri, meet Bronte." Ororo introduced them formally.

Shuri smiled and held a hand out to him, "I hope you don't mind…. I needed to test my new cloaking equipment on sensory adapted individuals."

"All good….. as long as you tell me how to overpower it." Bronte shook up with her and smiled, "I'm playing…"

"I'm not." Laura yelled from across the room.

"So….. I hear you stopped a tsunami." Shuri said quickly after.

"I definitely stopped something." Bronte was taken back to the memory of the massive wave and the heaps of things inside it that became visible after every blast of lightning. Tidal wave didn't feel like all it was….

"Then you live up to all the good the Queen has said about you. Wonderful." Shuri patted his shoulder, "Now, if you could walk me through what happened in better detail maybe you could tell us something our retrieval team could not…. About this items."

They slowly walked across the room to the center table where an assortment of items was laid out. Tiny Vibranium discs were laid over the tops of each, which seemed to be scanning them repeatedly.

"I still haven't even seen the items….." Ororo mumbled.

"Do you ever. The trash is something we have to deal with alone." Gentle interrupted as he entered the room through the elevator that put him center stage with Tosin. The hulking teen wore his Black Panther suit and held the mesh mask in a tight fist. Tosin stuck to his loose fitting colorful robes and wild nappy hair.

The two looked uncomfortable inside.

"No—"

Brontë interrupted her, "Respectfully, they got a point."

"Everyone's got a point but no one has chocolate!" Raze mumbled angrily to Gabbie as they fell in line.

Everyone approached the table. Tosin and Gentle hovered near him, not too interested in the contents on the table.

"I just got here but from there words this been happening for a while. A whole tribe of people shouldn't be treated like a landfill…. That's wild. I caught it this time. There was enough shit in there to level the forest this time not just drown the crops. I think….. what's his name?"

"Namor." Azari cut in from across the table beside his father.

"Yea— Namor. I think he's starting to realize y'all don't care…. At least it don't look like it. Cops come faster in the hood than y'all did to your own people. And this one wasn't a regular wave."

"What makes you think that? You've only dealt with one." T'Challa questioned.

Suddenly one of the scanned items on the table full of retrieved items began blinking red.

"That…?" Bronte guessed.

Shuri stepped in with a pair of protective gloves and began sifting through it all until the partially fleshed out skull he'd come face to face with before was sitting alone. An aura of red flashes enveloped it repeatedly. The thick black hairs on Bronte's arms stood on end as the things foul breath singed his nose hairs.

Wakandan Computer code hovered above it repeatedly.

"Scanning error— unidentifiable aspect recognized."

"That's one gnarly looking dude." Raze commented, "I wonder if he's r—AH!"

Gabbie and Laura both caught Raze's tongue before it could touch the skull and shoved it back in his face.

Brontë was eye to eye with it again. Old beige bone. Brittle. The flesh that still clung to it was pale as paper despite the speckles of ocean floor sand and pebbles. It's lips were ripped away and showing a hideous row of teeth.

Fangs similar to Bronte's bared to the word and cracked to hell. Slimmer. Not metal like his. And stored above the gums. Retractable.

Obviously a Mutant.

"How would Wakandan Tech fail here? I've genetically scanned thousands of Mutants…. Even some Inhumans?"

"You can't read it because it's neither. It's Magic based." Ororo cut in dryly.

"What? You know what this is?"

"I thought it was a basic white man….." Tosin commented.

"This is a Vampire." Ororo explained.

Brontë cringed internally, "Man— what?! Those are real?"

"Very real. Your father had a run in with them multiple times." Ororo explained.

"Of course he did…." Gabbie rolled her eyes.

"So did I." Laura added.

Brontë held up a hand, "Hold on…. We're not skipping past what Tosin said. You thought that was a normal white dude?"

"Outsiders from Wakanda are barbaric and predatory fiends that mutilate their bodies for the simplest of reasons."

"Porn mag must've floated ashore at some point…" Raze whispered to Daken. His meanmug never wavered. "Personally I don't mind a little plastic in the sheets heheh….."

"So what? This is rare?"

"This is a skull. It would be nothing but..." Ororo snapped a flame into existence at her fingertips and threw it at the last vestiges of flesh on the skull.

"SHAAAAA!!!" The Vampire skull hissed as its skin burned away like old dry paper.

"Oh nah…." Bronte plugged his nose reflexively.

Gentle looked at Tosin. The two had an unheard conversation that ended with Tosin shaking his head a final time. It would've been a quick meaningless exchange if everyone wasn't already looking at them.

Tosin almost swung when Raze's head slithered over to them on an extending neck.

Each eye moved to look at one of them as he sat between them. His slicked back red hair bristled into a blood mane and his blue skin went white— to fit the context of the situation… or to be morbidly comedic, with Raze it was impossible to tell.

"Something tells me you Merengue folks have more…. ERHM…. White men skulls….. is that right?"

Tosin swallowed.