Spoils

Erik rushed through the maze of corridors and down winding flights and flights of stairs, heedless of the people in his path. Courtiers and servants ducked out of his way as Erik barreled past pushing his enhanced speed to its limits. Even the Dora Milaje guards couldn't keep up with him. His mind was completely subordinated to his alpha instincts now, every cell in his body responding to the siren call from his mate. 

He could feel T‘Challa’s emotions more and more clearly with each step that he took closer to his mate - panic, desperation and an all-consuming, fiery lust that seemed to sear deep into his bones. It would’ve been incredibly hot, except that Erik knew that T’Challa was suffering right now, writhing with pain and frustrated desire with no one to satisfy him. Erik desperately wanted to be by his side right now, and cursed himself for letting T’Challa out of his sight for even one second. With a guilty little squirm in the pit of his stomach, he suddenly recalled sending T’Challa off earlier on some pretext just so that he could have his clandestine meeting with W'Kabi. He shouldn't - he shouldn't have done that. Now T'Challa was alone, just when he needed Erik most.

With an effort, Erik quashed down that uncomfortable feeling of guilt and shoved it to the back of his mind, focusing all his efforts on getting to T'Challa as fast as he could. That was the priority right now. He would make it up to T'Challa later. 

Following the insistent pull of the mating bond took Erik all the way down to the labs, deep in the lower levels of the palace. He recognized the pristine surroundings and cool, white curved corridors from the only time that he had been down here to select his vibranium suit - an outfit that had previously been intended for T'Challa. Back then, Shuri had handed him the necklace containing the Golden Jaguar habit with a polite smile on her face and a glare sharp enough to cut glass, and he had made a mental note then to tread carefully around T'Challa's sister. 

With a final burst of speed, Erik flung the heavy vibranium doors open and entered the labs.

He came face to face with Shuri, who was dressed in full armour and armed to the teeth. She had twin vibranium gauntlets shaped like panther heads strapped to her wrists. Behind her was a row of what looked like white ceramic mannequins, at least ten in all. Were they robots? They weren't moving right now, but then Shuri made some sort of gesture and they arrayed themselves around her in  protective half-circle, moving together in creepy unison. 

Before Erik could even blink, Shuri fired the gauntlets at him, sending twin pulses of sonic energy in his direction. 

Erik ducked out of the way just in time, his herb-enhanced reflexes allowing him to twist out of the way of the incoming blasts as nimbly as a cat. He landed in a crouch on all fours as the blasts impacted against the far wall, rattling the entire lab to its foundations. Erik could actually feel the force of the reflected shockwaves against his skin. A normal human would have been blown backwards by the impact if the blasts had hit him head-on. 

Erik rose to his feet, a growl of pure rage bubbling up from deep within his throat. "What the fuck?" he demanded. How dare anyone stand in the way of him and his mate? 

With a thought, the Golden Jaguar habit activated, the nanites of the suit spreading out across his skin from his fang golden necklace. He stalked towards Shuri, his hands curling into fists in rage. Even if the little princess was T'Challa's sister, no one was going to stand in his way. They'd die first. He'd kill them first. 

Erik slapped down the upswell of murderous rage with considerable effort. All his instincts were screaming at him to destroy this obstacle keeping him from his mate in heat, but a small sliver of reason prevailed. If T'Challa found out that Erik had killed his precious sister, Erik would never hear the end of it. 

"Get the fuck outta my way!" Erik snapped.  

Shuri met his gaze fearlessly, tilting her chin up and levelling the gauntlets at him again. "I don't know how you've brainwashed T'Challa, but you'll never be his mate. I'm going to make sure of that." 

Erik instantly saw red, the restraint which he had so carefully built up disappearing in a flash. "Fuck you!" 

He lunged towards Shuri just as she fired the gauntlets at him again. This time, the sustained barrage of sonic pulses hit him right in the chest. The vibranium suit absorbed the worst of the impact, but the force of the blasts was still strong enough to make him take several steps back underneath the onslaught. He could practically feel his teeth rattling in his skull. Fuck, those weapons were powerful. And it looked like the little princess wasn't going to back down without a fight. 

Erik's lips pulled back into a grin, adrenaline pumping through his blood as he tensed his muscles in anticipation. He was looking forward to this - he'd always loved the thrill of being in a life-or death fight. 

The murder-bots fanned out around him, cutting off his access to the exit. Not that Erik had any intention of retreating when he knew that his mate was just in the next room. With a snick, the mannequins' arms transformed into what looked like long vibranium spears, identical to the ones carried by the Dora Milaje. That must have been where Shuri got the inspiration for their weapons. 

Erik tensed up as the mannequins rubbed their spear-arms together, like a row of creepy praying mantises rubbing their horrible pointed forelegs together in anticipation of a meal. As Shuri's first murderbot launched itself at him, its arms whirring in a circle of deadly blades, Erik raised a hand to fend of its attack.

He blocked the first slash of the robot's vibranium spear with its forearm, but then the others were all on him at once, lunging and slashing at him with their deadly spears, as well-trained and unified as the Dora Milaje. Erik gritted his teeth in consternation. The vibranium suit he was wearing absorbed the kinetic force of the blows, but he wasn't sure how long it would hold up under a sustained onslaught like this. 

He needed to find a way to break through their formation and get to Shuri. Shuri was controlling them somehow, and once she was taken out of commission, he strongly suspected that the murderbots would revert back to lifeless mannequins again. The difficulty was in getting past the ring of very determined, very dangerous robots to get to her without being cut to ribbons first. The robots weren't human, were immune to pain, and wouldn't be deterred by anything short of being completely taken apart. He would have to shred them, to utterly destroy them to stop them from coming after him in defense of the princess. 

And after that, he still needed to take Shuri out without hurting her badly enough to piss T'Challa off later. He couldn't even go all out against her. It was like having to fight with one hand tied behind his back. Erik clenched his teeth in annoyance. He wasn't exactly a huge fan of fighting with restraint.

At least he could still go all out against her damn robots. A feral grin spread across Erik's face, hidden behind the helm of the Golden Jaguar habit, as he met the first robot charging at him head-on. The force of their collision was sufficient to throw it off-balance even as his own vibranium suit absorbed and dampened most of the impact.

The first robot stumbled back as Erik whirled around to face the others, catching one beneath the chin with a vicious uppercut and sweeping the others back with a shockwave, a controlled release of force stored up from the kinetic energy that his suit had absorbed from the previous hits. Most of them were knocked down onto the ground, though a few standing at the periphery were far away from the initial shockwave to be largely unaffected. Still, he could see them wobbling on their legs, and his enhanced hearing could pick up the faintest crackling sounds coming from their joints as they struggled to maintain their balance.

The joints. The joints were their weak points. 

The vibranium-encased arms, legs and torsos of the robots were too hardy to be directly damaged - the robots that he had just knocked down were already climbing to their feet again, moving inhumanly fast, and none of them  seemed to have sustained permanent damage from the shockwave. Erik couldn't even see a single scratch on their smooth white casings. But their joints hadn't been reinforced the same way, and Erik figured that he could take them apart there, rip them apart limb from limb and turn them into a useless pile of disjointed robot parts. 

As the closest robot lunged at him, Erik swept it up in a one-handed hold, using its bulk to shield himself from the short-range melee attacks of the others as he ducked out of the way of a fresh barrage of covering fire from Shuri's gauntlets. This threw the robots off for a bit - they froze in place, confused and unmoving. Shuri had evidently programmed them not to get in each other's way while they were engaged in a fight. Another weakness - another loophole that could be easily exploited. 

Erik smirked at Shuri, unseen behind his Golden Jaguar mask, as a snarl of frustration crossed her face. She couldn't attack him while her gauntlets were still recharging, and the other robots closed ranks defensively around her. A dreamy look came into her eyes - it looked as if she were trying to reprogram her robots. 

Erik knew he had to act fast. The robot still in his hold was pummelling at him now, attempting to stab him with its spear arms. The sharp points glanced harmlessly off his vibranium suit, but Erik didn't know how long it would hold up against the sharp vibranium spears. 

He didn't have a knife or a sharp blade on him right now, nothing except the claws on his Golden Jaguar suit. Erik unsheathed them with a flourish, the swivelled around in a flash to face the robot, digging his claws into the joint where the elbow would be in a human, where its upper and lower arm met. There was an awful screech of metal against metal as he dug his claws in and twisted. Sparks flew, and then the robot's arm hung limply at its side. He had fucked up the gears enough that it could no longer work. 

There was a snarl of rage from Shuri's direction. After only a momentary flash of petty satisfaction, Erik put it out of his mind - the robot still had three other working limbs, and was now attacking him with all three of them. 

It was fast, but Erik was faster. He knocked it to the ground with another controlled release of kinetic energy from his suit, then pounced on it once it was on the floor. He targeted its weak points, claws moving so fast that they were almost a blur - knees, hips, arms, and finally its neck. 

When Erik finally got to his feet, claws still glowing with heat and sparks, the robot was lying practically in pieces, having been reduced to a useless pile of junk. He hadn't completely managed to rip the robot to bits - the chains linking its body parts together were too strong to be torn apart by his little claws. But he had managed to pull them far enough apart enough that Shuri's robot now looked like a strangely disjointed puppet, held together by long links of chains between its body parts. The robot's head twitched minutely from side to side, then fell still. A small shower of sparks emitted from the base of its neck. 

Erik lifted his head to met Shuri's eyes head-on, and was gratified by the look of outrage and slowly dawning wariness bordering on fear that he saw in her eyes. 

Then, the rest of the robots lunged at him the moment that the one at his feet stopped twitching. Without his hostage, the robots had free rein to go at him again. Erik could have grabbed another one of them to use as a shield, but what would be the fun in that when he'd already done that the first time? 

Instead, he met the rush of incoming bodies head-on, letting them pile onto him, not even bothering to step out of the way of the latest blast of fire from Shuri's gauntlets. A heartbeat later, they were sent flying back by the controlled release of charged-up force from his suit. Crashes and clangs rang out as the robots smashed into the walls and assorted lab equipment. No doubt ruining Shuri's very expensive scientific equipment, to Erik's mean delight. 

He went for the robot closest to him and began taking it apart with brutal, almost casual ease, calling out to Shuri as he did so, "Just a little tip, Princess -"

A final swipe of his claws knocked the robot's head from its neck, sending it skittering across the floor, still connected to the rest of its body by a long chain. 

He whirled around to face the others, claws glinting under the cold white fluorescent lights. 

"- don't fucking mess with me and my mate."  

He punctuated each word with a slash of his claws, advancing towards her step by step and decimating the robots along the way. Once he knew which weak points to strike at, it was all over very quickly. He imagined Shuri's face on each robot that he was dispatching, pictured it pleading and tearful as she begged for his mercy. 

The real Shuri, of course, was glaring up at him in outright defiance even as he finally stood before her. He quickly divested her of her gauntlets with a few quick swipes of his claws. They hit the floor with a loud clang. Shuri didn't even flinch. 

"You'll never be a true king," she declared, her voice hard with anger. Even in defeat, she didn't show a trace of fear or submission. "And you'll never be T'Challa's true mate." 

Erik itched to dig his claws into her neck until her blood ran red over his hands, but the thought of T'Challa held him back. His priority  right now was to get to his mate. Even at this moment, he could feel another wave of lust and hot desperation from T'Challa's side of the mental bond, so strong that it almost sent Erik to his knees. 

T'Challa was so close. And he needed Erik right now. 

"It's for T'Challa's sake that you're even alive to sass me," Erik hissed. "Now open that door."

"No."

Fuck that. He didn't have time to waste dealing with her right now. Erik knocked Shuri out with a blast of kinetic energy from his suit. She'd have a killer headache when she woke up, but otherwise she should be fine. He leaned over and grabbed her limp wrist, pulling her kimoyo bracelet off it.

There was the briefest moment of hesitation when Erik considered just… walking away. The mating bond would break - the bond he had never asked for, that had never been part of his original plans - and then he'd be free. Free to do whatever he wanted, without having to worry about… 

T'Challa. 

That hesitation dissipated like the dark, misty wisp of a bad dream. Erik slid the bracelet onto his wrist, touching the beads of her kimoyo bracelet to his own. 

For a heart-stopping moment of anxiety, Erik was afraid that this wasn't going to work.

Then, the doors retracted with a smooth hiss. From the far end of the room, Erik's alpha senses could pick up the overwhelming scent of omega hormones and the sound of a keening, desperate cry. His omega, crying out for him. 

Erik broke out into a jog, then a run, as the doors slid shut behind him.