Let's hit the mountains, literally
It was finally December. Meaning: Holiday! The three arcobalenos can now put their plan for Code: Black in motion now! Their first stop, Africa, Nigeria. Mostly because they had no idea where was their target except that it's around West Africa. As for how they got that information...? Apparently, Verde's little science helper's ("Test subject." Verde corrects) father, has the glowing blue bottom lip thing that they had seen (meaning: grabbed those from Wakanda and drug them unconscious as they were coming out from the pub (drinking of course, sobers are hard to work with especially with no mists to alter memories). Then Verde did a fast whole body checkup before dumping them back to the alley of the pub within a minute or two) from some of those people in the 'building of interest'.
The little helper (Test subject! Verde yells, exasperated) had recently told Verde that she was going back to her father's hometown for the first time. Verde happily congratulates her and gave her 3 vials of different flame types (sun, rain and lightning), and yes, all the vials were bugged with trackers. The flames within the vials has been concentrated and liquidized into 10 milliliters flame filled vials and a flame conducting gun with a compartment to place the said vials inside to use the specific flames. All of which were for people with no flame circuits, which apparently is a thing for people in this world.
Yes, most people have no flames.
And this is how they had ended up in Nigeria.
Staring at the mountain few miles away.
If Verde is correct, there should be a forcefield in that area since the tracker signal was lost once it went beyond the mountain. As for the idea that they were misled into a wild goose chase from someone with better IT specialities into the middle of nowhere?
That was not possible since they had incorporated flame technology inside. And unless the hacker had the talent to break into the whole new can of worms of Verde's expertise, within what? 8 days? There was no way the arcobalenos could be thrown into said wild goose chase.
Well, unless they used the manual way to take his liquid fires to the mountains with the trackers still in them...
Verde does not regret giving those liquid fires to his test subject though.
In the corner of his eyes, he saw Reborn and Colonnello giving him meaningful looks and whispering among one another that he was fond of his friend. Of which he ignored and went back to solving the case of the vanishing trackers. And if his ears were tinted pink, that was absolutely a trick of the light.
Or anger.
Or both.
(Anyway, he will not admit that he was fond of the hyperactive girl with brains that could keep up with his if trained well.)
_____________________________
Rose was absolutely delighted when her father rushing to report to 'King(?)' dumped her to the one he called Princess Shuri. No serious, she is delighted. The technology within Shuri's lab was an absolute utopia for her. She was sure that it will be Verde's utopia too.
Shuri had asked her who was this Verde guy while wiggling her eyebrows at her. Rose was confused at why the eyebrow moved, but she happily told her that Verde was the bestest science person in the world and showed her one of the vials of flames Verde gave her, the green one.
"Ohhh, sparkly. Was it his science project? That's so sweet of him!" Shuri commented, excited at the prospectof hearing a budding puppy love. Or so she thinks until Rose subverts that idea.
"No, Princess Shuri. It's for this gun." Rose replies.
"Oh! So this is a glitter gun then? By the way, call me big sis Shuri" Shuri guesses and gave a look of understanding as she inspects the glitter gun. However, the mechanism within does not look like a glitter gun at all. So she was now extremely perplexed.
Despite that, her eyes were now gleaming in excitement.
"Big sis Shuri." Rose calls politely. "Big sis Shuri, Verde says the gun is for self defense."
Shuri being Shuri, was now absolutely curious about the not-glitter-gun gun. "Well, how bout you show me how this works, Rose?"
Rose thought for a moment and sneakily looked around in case there was anybody else in the room.
There wasn't.
"Promise it's a secret between us? Verde says to not show anyone. But since you're nice to Rose, and you are not a bad guy so I'll show you." Rose whispers in a serious manner. However, anyone who sees that would think that it was cute.
That was what Shuri thought so too. So she indulge in the little 8 year old girl to see how this goes. "Don't worry." Shuri whispers reassurance to the girl. "Your secret is safe with me!"
Rose looks around again then looks back at Shuri. Sticking out her little finger she says, "Pinky promise?"
Shuri hooks the little girl's pinky finger, "Pinky promise."
That seems to have made Rose throw all caution and misgivings she had of the Wakanda princess to the back of her head and asked the princess to give her something which had kinetic energy, like a moving robot or something. Of which, Shuri coos that a child of her age knows such big words.
Rose gave her a confused look.
Shuri is now confused at the confused look that Rose had given her. But she chalked it up as generation difference and went back to finding a pendulum in her clutter of a lab.
Anyway, it has kinetic energy once she allows it to swing. It's safe too, compared to her likely-to-explode experimental technologies.
Shuri then looks back and saw Rose still ruffling her green sling bag for something and eventually took out a small paper around 10 cm. With some kind of codewords written on it. She then heard Rose muttering, 'blue for slowing...' and as Rose was looking into her bag of clutter, she mummers unconsciously, 'blue... blue... ah!'
Rose then easily opens the compartment to place the vial, which tells Shuri that Rose had done this many a times. Shuri then took Rose towards the testing area.
Once within the testing area, Rose aimed the gun towards the swinging pendulum Shuri had found.
Shuri took a step back in case the girl accidentally hit her with the not-glitter-gun. Honestly, Shuri was still a bit skeptical at Rose's words but decided that there was no evidence to dispute that Rose's claims were of childish fantasy. So following the idea of believing until evidence proves it wrong, Shuri decided that it was better to stay behind the little girl until it was proven that the self-defense gun was not lethal.
A short hissing sound was heard from the gun that Rose was holding and a blue flame like thing came out. Shuri's mind wonders if the flame will expand the pendulum (Or whether the flame would even reach the pendulum, in this case). But when she looked back at the pendulum, she saw that the pendulum which was swinging back and forth rapidly, immediately slowed down in ways which were impossible by the logic of gravity.
Shuri snaps her head to look at Rose in blazing curiosity, "How old did you say Verde was again?"
Rose happily replied without thinking, "8! Same as me!" Feeling a bit proud too.
Shuri was now very interested in seeing this Verde. "Do you..." Shuri slowly said while thinking how to phrase her sentence, "Will I..." No, that sounds to formal. "Do you think that you can schedule a meeting with this little friend of yours?" Yup, that was good.
Rose nodded her head with sounds of excited agreement coming from her mouth.
"Great! How 'bout next Sunday, March the 5th?" Shuri asks.
"Okay, I'll tell him!" Rose replies in an excited manner and proceeded to text Verde.
Within 2 to 3 minutes, Rose got a reply.