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Story 1 : Multiplication Table

Chapter 1 : The Night of the Fog

MC Age - 9 years

Wakanda, Birnin Zana (2007)
–K'Mehne Ambuba–

Loading the last of the produce on the hovercrafts that the Royal Family had sent for their personal produce, she wiped the sweat off her eyebrows and turned towards her husband and asked, “You think they suspect something?”

Her husband, Ndanah Zaso, replied while going through the monthly reports of the production of their farm, “Knowing how the King and his Royal Council functions, Yeah? They would not have sent all of this if they did not suspect something. Besides, what do we have to worry about? We know his talents are all inborn. No amount of research would get them another one like our son, you know that.”

She nodded and hugged him, still a bit worried about the Royal Family’s actions.

It was not always like this. 

They were both born in the Border Tribe, to the lowest class footmen. While no citizen of Wakanda is mistreated, there is a difference in the level of respect a relative of chieftain gets as opposed to someone who was born to the lowest class of the arguably hardest working Tribe of Wakanda.

Over the years, despite her parent’s insistence, she had chosen to take the classes to remain in the same Tribe she was born in, rather than take the general route that was available to every Wakandan child that allowed them to later on decide their occupation.

Over the years, she proved time and time again that she was the best warrior that could come from her generation. 

Eventually defeating even the vaunted Dora Milaje in one to one combat, she was the first Border Tribe Member to be offered a spot in the Dora Milaje and subsequently, became the first to reject that offer as well.

She could still remember the gaping faces of all the tribe elders when she had publicly rejected their offer and explained how she could do better serving Wakanda in an active frontline capacity by going on missions that were regularly available for the Border Tribe.

You see, while Wakanda itself was the closest thing to Paradise on Earth, at least for natives, warriors often had to venture out of Wakandan borders for clandestine as well as public missions.

For obvious reasons, she was chosen from her generation to go outside for Wardog grade missions.

From what she had heard at the time and later confirmed, it was a very contentious issue among the Royal council since her very ability to perform missions of War Dog level while being a part of the Border Tribe gave her tribe higher standing.

The tribe elders must have tried very hard to stop that from happening since even the King had stayed the order but after relentless badgering from her tribe elder, he gave her permission to do so only with the condition of a year long training with the actual WarDogs. 

She agreed with the condition and so began her training. During her training, she had learned many things, some of which she never thought she would need to use in the field but her teacher was right when he told her that anything could happen in the field and it would be very beneficial for her to know the skill and not need it rather than being caught flat footed on foreign land without any backup.

Though the training was brutal and even her tribe elder had fully expected for her to give up halfway through and come back, she persevered, remembering the face of her mother who worked day in and out for her, ultimately succumbing to old age.

Finally, after a year of staying in the mountains and away from her friends and family, she emerged from the mountains behind Birnin Zana, a trained operative of the most dangerous security force in the world.

Happy with the results of her training, she was immediately put to task by her King.

Back then, she was happy that she was finally getting the recognition she deserved. The fact that the Border Tribe’s standing was elevated due to her was a welcome bonus as well.

Then came the missions.

Horrible horrible missions.

Missions to make sure that warlords didn’t come close to discovering the secret of Wakanda.

Missions to silence the people who knew of Wakanda or had even heard rumours of the Golden City, the paradise where people of the same colour as them lived.

Missions to make sure that no villages settled on the borders of Wakanda.

Missions to destroy supply lines so that the nations turn on each other.

Missions to kill agents, soldiers of different countries and the list went on and on.

At first, she had been appalled beyond belief that this was what Wakanda did throughout the world. 

Over the course of a year though, she grew indifferent towards it, justtifying it as protecting her homeland from people who would harm it, same as the soldiers who were fighting from the other side.

Even that was okay for her since she was killing only armed people, allowing herself to somehow be okay with what she was doing.

But then, as if she had been promoted, she was given international assignments.

The things she had done to unarmed scientists, the people she had to silence forever, the families she destroyed, for what?

To maintain the so called technological lead that Wakanda had over the rest of the world.

Seeing all the atrocities that were being committed and all the others that were being ignored by Wakanda in the name of national security had made her disillusioned with the current regime. 

So, after nearly a decade of active service, at the age of only 26, she gave up. Her resignation came as a shock to many, including the King, especially since there were rumors of the creation of a special unit with her as its head.
Ofvourse she knew it to be her promotion to becoming the head of an existing albeit extremely secretive unit rather than an entire unit being created for her.

Resigning right on the cusp of a promotion that would have put her on the same level of influence as a tribe elder was downright foolish, some would say.

To her, it was the perfect choice. 

She just didn’t have it in her to not only continue her current lifestyle but also send other people on missions that she herself detested doing.

No. She had enough of seeing another confused person dying while they were just doing their duty.

So, she resigned, right as she was about to wield a level of influence that would put her just below the King and on par with the tribe elders.

Some would say that she could have used that new found influence to change things from within, the slow way. But those people had not seen the callousness with which the Royal Council sentenced 18 scientists, one of them being a teenager, to their deaths without even knowing their names.

All in the name of national security. All for the crime of being the first people to find the exact frequency with which Vibranium could be molded to make better weaponry or alloys for advanced load bearing structures.

She had thought that her resignation would mean that she would no longer be welcomed by her tribe since she was widely considered the hope of the tribe, next in line to be the tribe chief and increasingly, the only hope for the border tribe to integrate more thoroughly with the rest of the Wakandan population since the Border Tribe was the next most marginalised tribe in Wakanda after the Jabari Tribe.

But when she came to meet the tribe chief, while she was treated to a lot of hostile and wary looks by the members of the tribe, the chief welcomed her with open arms, just like he used to when she was a child.

That was the first time in years she had cried like a baby, since her parents died.

He understood what was wrong with the situation and while he tried his best, he could not understand or empathise with the situation outside. She wanted to go out and help the others on her own but she was aware of the dark reality within Wakanda.

While it was rare, there had been quite a few individuals within Wakanda who were empathetic with the outside situation and had tried to help, even at the cost of losing their Wakandan citizenship.

They never survived for long.

Without the support that Wakanda provided them, the support that they were used to since birth, they died within 5 years, at best. It was due to a variety of reasons but she suspected that her country itself had a hand in their deaths.

And ever since the dreadful attack on her country by Klaue, citizens had been forbidden to go out of Wakanda for security purposes.

So, the tribe chief asked her about what she wanted and after hearing her plea for some peace and quiet, allotted her a land closer to the mountains.

It was farmland, he told her.

Together, with her husband, they had both decided to start a new life as farmers. While they both wanted to start a family, both her and her husband were damaged in more ways than one and needed the time to heal before they could even think of bringing in new life to the world.

Plus, with the connections she still had during her stint as the top operative of Wakanda, their lives were seemingly easy coasting, especially since all the very expensive equipment that was needed for Farming had mysteriously appeared outside their farm one day.

Ofcourse, being someone who had nearly reached the highest echelons of power in Wakanda meant that detaching completely from the administration would have been a fool’s errand.

So, she compromised on that by choosing to take an exam every year so she can train someone and impart all of her skills because however distasteful she might have found them, they had saved her life more times than she could count, in the field.

Over the years, there had been numerous people who had catched her eye but none that could meet all of her stringent criteria.

She and her husband were also technically still members of the Border Tribe, reserve members to be precise.

So, while they had no active duty to perform, they could still be called back on duty in emergency situations.

Situations like the anomaly that happened right after the birth of Princess Shuri.

MC Age - (-24 hours)

–Flashback (1998)–

It was a momentous occasion for Wakanda as a whole for a Princess to be born. Especially since there was now only a single branch of the Royal Family alive.

Wakanda, unlike the outside world, cherished the birth of a Princess as much as it did the birth of a Prince, no matter the succession hierarchy.

While the rest of the country celebrated in anticipation of the new member of the Royal Family, the atmosphere inside the Royal Medical Ward that had been built in the most secure chamber of the Royal Palace, the basement, was one of wary alertness.

She had been called back by the King personally to make sure that the birth of the Princess was without any interruptions.

Now, if the interruptions expected were of mundane nature, there would have been no need for her at all. 

It was the hidden mystical side that they were worried about.

She had been annoyed at first when she was approached by the King but after being given a direct royal edict from the King to safeguard his wife and his unborn child, she had been given no choice.

She was still confused about the requirement of such severe actions but then the King had told her about the prophecy.

The Birth of the saviour of their world and the person who would go on to integrate Wakanda with the rest of Humanity, leading their species to its golden age.

She had been skeptical of those claims then but even she had to put some stock to the rumours after reading the reports of multiple sniffing attempts by the Wizard’s side after the impending Birth of the princess was announced. 

Then she realised why she had been called back from voluntary retirement, undoubtedly despite the protests from the council.

In the later years of her service, once her clearance level had reached a level the King deemed sufficient, she had been let on the open secret among the top echelons of power.

The existence of magic and the people that practised them, Wizards.

She had been extremely terrified at first when she learned about their hidden societies, their schools, their alleged “champions” of dark and light that fought among themselves, their ability to alter the very mind of a person but then she was introduced to the hidden unit working directly under the Royal Family in order to make sure that the Royal Family and to an extent, Wakanda was never under the influence of any outsiders, be it Wizards or Mundane people.

She had been entranced at first when they introduced her to all the weapons Wakandan Shamans had built in concert with the early iterations of the Royal Laboratory. 

For three whole years, she worked with that nameless, faceless organisation where she never saw another face, never hear an unmodulated voice, never knew their names, not even their gender and it was honestly, the most depressing part of her 

career. 

Killing people she knew were innocent was gut wrenching enough but doing it with the knowledge that death was the best thing she could for them was like a punch to her face for her. People whose minds had been twisted so far that they could never really go back to their normal life.

Teenagers who had been raised from birth to be literal potion material and the worst part was that with the help of magic, the brainwashing had been so intense that to them, it was if dying and becoming a potion was their life’s goal and anybody stopping them from doing their duty was an enemy that needed to be killed at all costs.

The most chilling sight she had witnessed was a wizard literally draining people of their lifeblood and condensing it in a single drop of blood through the use of some ritual circle. She had put a hyperdense bullet in him before he could go any further but she still had nightmares about what he could have done had she allowed him to finish his ritual.

The most heartbreaking part was watching people twisted by mad wizards who are forced to kill their own loved ones and then watch these wizards use normal people with normal lives as their puppets without a care in the world.

She had to admit that her time in the service had jaded her perspective about the world and most definitely clouded her rational judgement when it came to wizards.

That was why she had been the most ardent enforcer of the “No wizard witnesses alive” that the organisation followed to a T.

So, when she realised that freaking Wizards of all people were targeting Wakanda and the Princess of Wakanda at that, she was fucking livid.

She met the new commander and immediately realised that this person was not the same person who mentored her as much as he could and was probably the one who was hurt the most when she quit publicly. Especially since she was the one who was supposed to succeed him and while she never knew him, he had told her that he looked forward to finally retiring to the farms and never looking back.

She hoped that he finally achieved the dream of his but in their profession? That was nothing more than an empty dream that only the lucky few ever got to experience for the brief period of time they have left in their lives before that too is snuffed out like candles in a wind.

Even after all the preparations she had done, she still felt that it was inadequate. To make matters worse, due to some medical complications that she could not understand, the birth was taking longer than expected.

Ofcourse, with all of the medical might of Wakanda, neither the Queen nor the Princess were ever in danger, but the longer the birth took, the more time both of them were in a vulnerable position. Something that she wished to avoid at all costs.

Amidst the heightened tensions and vigilance that the entire country’s armed forces were under, it was after midnight that the sentries that had been posted on the borders began to go down one after the other, leading straight to the one entrance that had the least number of guards.

It was cruel, sacrificing the guards but to make sure that any enemy combatant followed the designated trap grounds, it was necessary.

Still, doing that to her own tribe members left her disgusted with herself. The only consolation she could give herself was the fact that almost everybody’s vitals were in the green, the only thing that was left was checking whether all of them still retained their minds or not.

The next few minutes were very stressful for her as all the cameras in the vicinity began going dark one by one, but the good thing was that it indicated that the intruders were headed straight towards the trap she had set for them. In her experience of dealing with wizards, they almost always underestimated regular humans, armed or otherwise.
To them, people without magic are either fragile creatures that need to be coddled or literal livestock that they can play around with. 

Both mindsets of extremes.

Nevertheless, the fact that almost all unshielded technology on their path was being disabled before they could even come into view indicated that they had taken measures to protect themselves and were considering Wakanda as a threat.

Her palms suddenly felt clammy at that because previous to this day, she had never seen a wizard acting cautious towards another human.

It meant that these wizards had some information regarding the dangers they were about to walk into.

“Send in the Fog,” she ordered one of the faceless people that hovered around her.

Even as she ordered them to bring out the one weapon that was never to see the light of day unless the very existence of Wakanda was threatened, the faceless person never uttered a sound and dutifully went on to fulfill the orders given.

The Great Mound was an area that was naturally isolated from the civilian areas of Wakanda, its natural defensive location allowing the forces of the kingdom to help defend it with little to no manpower. It helped that the Great Mound held a mythical presence in the minds of citizens and as such there had been no security incidence near it since its naming. 

In the deepest stations of mining in the Great Mound, there existed chambers which once allowed ancient Vibranium Miners to stay and rest. Now, it contained various high security items that the Royal Family wanted hidden and isolated from even the tribe elders.

After K'Mehne gave the order, one such chamber opened up and out of it, a flood of insects landed in the hallway. 

In their inert state, the Fog looked like a million insects had been dumped on the ground but as it was activated, the swarm began lighting up the signature blue colour that was reserved for Vibranium alloys. 

Soon, the swarm had been activated completely and it took flight, heading towards the border where the wizards were suspected to be.

In the Maternity Ward War room, they could finally see a feed from a camera that had been specifically protected against external mystical interference.

Soon, the fog covered the city, unseen by the celebrating citizens of Wakanda, as it covered the distance and reached the border checkpoint, breaching the holographic barrier that surrounded Birnin Zana.

Due to the darkness cover that was intentionally made for the border entrances, there was nothing they could see until the Fog’s cameras switched to infrared.

That was when the wizard magic reared its ugly head as their Disillusionment Charm managed to mask even the thermal signatures, along with any visible radiation being given out.

The only way to do so was..”Switch to M-vision” she ordered one of the people manning the surveillance counters.

As if a flip had been switched, the feed now showed a barren landscape with red concentrations of light shaped in a human form walking around in a group. 

The peculiar thing was that their special cameras showed the presence of magic not only in just wizards but also in the land surrounding them.

It had been quite a shock to the researchers when they had first developed the system. Some of them even thought of the sensors being faulty but in the end, after multiple revisions, it was revealed that the land around Wakanda itself is magical.

Now the reason for that is still debatable.

The presence of the Great Mound? The blessings of Bast? Some combination of both?

Who knows?

What was important here was killing the intruders who had dared to try and attack her home. So she gave the order.

“Except subject T-1, disintegrate everyone. Make sure nothing is left.”

“Also, prep Subject T-1 for interrogation, I will be handling that personally.”

She stood up and went towards the makeshift interrogation room they had in the basement dungeons of the Royal Palace.

The confused and terrified screams of the wizards as they died in droves was a welcome music to her ears.

She would say that she had missed those but now was not the time to indulge in personal proclivities.

Now was the time to bring out some of her skills that earned her the fame of being named the “Wizard killer” in the wizarding community, someone who is being actively hunted down by both the light and dark factions of Wizarding Britain.

Word Count - 3736