Now the battle was over and the green plains were covered with mud and blood. It was hard to tell if the battle was actually over or just on a break and harder to tell if they’d won. The enemy’s army - Thanos’s army could no longer be seen but there was not much left of their army, too. They had disappeared. All of sudden, they had all ceased to exist. Like a magic trick, in a blink of an eye. Well, it wasn’t everyone of course, but still it was so many of them it truly felt like it. On the moment Okoye accepted the hand of her king T’Challa to help her get back on her feet, he vanished, leaving nothing but ashes in that hand of her. Thus on the green plains of Wakanda, there was mud, blood... and ashes. It was quite a shock. The survivors looked out for their injured brothers or sisters, found one each other and headed back to the city, hoping they would have answers there. Captain America also returned from the forest. He told everyone what he had witnessed there: Thanos arriving on Earth through a portal and collecting the last Infinity Stone.
The White Wolf was gone and so was the Scarlet Witch along with other Avengers. They figured out that about half of them had disappeared that way. The World itself had suffered the same fate: half of its population was now gone.
“So he did it” said Captain America.
They were back in the palace, looking at the big screens on the wall that displayed TV channels and informations from all around the Earth. Okoye was standing next to Steve Rogers while Shuri was on the floor, too shocked to cry but not enough to prevent her from drowning in her sorrow.
“Captain” said Okoye, “What happened? What shall we do now?”
Cap sighed and did not answer.
***
The green plains outside Wakanda was covered with bodies and ashes. Every breathing person had been removed from there and taken back to the city, though the fallen ones were still outside, lying in blood-colored puddles. As for their hideous enemies, their corpses were to be burned far away and later for they, as mindless beasts, did not deserve to be treated like noble warriors. Yet, the plains weren’t completely deserted for there was one little girl outside. She had a beautiful black skin and magnificent curly long hair. While she usually went bare foot, she wore a fair green dress that matched the colour of her eyes. She was standing in the battlefield holding a pointy stick (meant to be a sword) she had just made herself. She started to walk into the vivid, green forest, amongst the innocent birds songs. Soon, she came to the place where it all ended, where the last fight took place, the last stand against the Mad Titan. She saw ashes amongst bushes. She kept walking and that’s when she found it. The suit. It was lying, motionless, on the ground, like everything else around there. That suit was huge, really huge, coloured with bright colours, red and yellow. It missed an arm, however. She climbed it and looked inside. It was empty. Very cautiously, she sneaked in. Her hand gently went over the surface and came back stained with ashes. Suddenly, a noise came out of her bracelet. She looked down and saw that her mom was calling her. The maternal figure appeared in the centre of her hand, drawn by the familiar fair-coloured sand the people of Wakanda used on so many occasions.
“Mom?” she asked.
“Shuya! Are you alright?” Her mom was clearly relieved to see her daughter safe and sound. Shuya smiled back at her and answered her with the same brilliant accent they shared.
“Yes mom, don’t worry, I’m fine!”
“Good” said her mother “because I need you to come home please.”
“What happened?” the little girl asked, “is there a problem?”
“Please” said again the sand figure “come home.”
The communication ended. Shuya looked around her. The suit was so big and she was so small - she was only eight after all - she could have fitted her whole body in the arm alone. She was really curious about that suit; however she couldn’t stay in there any longer for her mom had called her back. So she made her way out of the suit, then the forest then started to run towards the city. There, she found the streets deserted because everyone had come to gather at the palace’s gates. Few people were tightly hugging each other, but the majority was mourning.
“Shuya! Shuya!”
The girl spotted her mother in the crowd and they both ran to each other. Her strong mother hold her in her arms while crying silently. Shuya looked around.
“Mom...” she asked, “where is Father? And... where’s my brother?”
Her mother looked into her eyes.
“You’ll have to be brave” she said.
Shuya felt tears in her eyes and something heavy in her stomach. Her mother took her hand.
“Come here, now, let’s go home.”
They were leaving the crowd when Shuya spotted Captain America. He was near a plane and thus it was clear he was about to leave, too. She broke from her mother’s grasp and ran to him. Okoye tried to stop her but Steve Rogers let her come to him.
“Where are you going to?” she asked him.
His eyes were as bright as the sky during summer but as sorrowful as the ocean on a storm’s night.
“I’m going to prevent the world from falling into chaos” he answered.
He took a step inside the Quinjet but looked back one last time.
“And after that, I’m going to avenge it” he added.
That being said, he disappeared into the plane which took off without waiting any longer. Shuya watched him as it left Wakanda and felt a strong desire in her heart, the one, she knew, that was meant to help her overcome her grief.
***
The green plains of Wakanda had been cleaned. The bodies of their enemies had been driven away and burnt to ashes. They would help fertilize the soil. The ones of their own soldiers had been deeply honoured however. All that was left to do was to dismantle Thanos’s space ships. As for Shuya, she had hidden the big bright suit under branches and bushes. Soon, it became her secret place. She would come here, creep under the vegetables and get in the suit. And cry. The whole world was mourning and so she was, too, for she had not only lost her father but also her brother who happened to be her closest friend (she didn’t have many). Now, all she felt was alone. Truly, the suit and her were lonely - if it wasn’t for the other. Months went by. A entire year. The world was struggling in order to move on without half its population and almost none of its heroes. Thought Wakanda had opened its gates to it, there wasn’t that much tourism. Every one, every country was being drawn, pushed to withdraw from the rest of the globe. So Shuya stayed in her suit. She filled it with balls of fabrics so she could somehow fit in it. She mimed the battle she would have led into that suit. She talked to it as if it was her personal AI - she heard the great Tony Stark, who had too disappeared during the battle again Thanos and hadn’t been seen since then, used to talk to his suits; she was proud to say she copied that habit.
One day, eventually, she came with a battery and she connected the suit to it. To her greatest joy - and utter amazement, it turned on the suit. The girl quickly get herself in it. Her heart was beating faster than ever.
“Hello?” she tried, unsure of the result that would follow.
“Good morning” said an electronic voice.
Shuya smiled brightly.
“My name is Shuya, who are you?” she asked - and again the suit replied.
“My name is Veronica, I’m the property of Mr. Stark.”
Shuya kept smiling. Yeah, actually, she had figured the last part (but didn’t say a word, though). She felt enthusiastic, more than she had ever felt. Maybe, she thought, she wasn’t alone anymore. In a soft, shy voice, she then asked:
“Nice to meet you, Veronica, will you be my friend?”
“It will be my pleasure miss Shuya” replied the suit.
That was it. No more loneliness for either of them. Shuya wanted to try moving the suit right away but despite the armour being able to adjust to its possessor, the girl was definitively too small for it. Veronica tried to cheer her up, saying it was only a matter of one year or two before she would have grew up enough to fit in, but the proud Wakandian girl didn’t want to hear that. She decided to think about another solution. First of all, she entirely removed the left arm, the one which had been broken during the battle and was thus useless. With these pieces, she was able to make a few repairs. Then, with the help of Veronica, she tried to figure out a way that would allow her to move the armour despite the fact that she couldn’t reach anything because of her small height.
The solution was a joystick.
Shuya put the battery inside the suit, covered it up with a blanket and turned it into her chair. She managed to build a gamepad that was linked to the legs: the right joystick was for the walk or the run and the left one for the direction. They had to try several times but eventually, it worked. Shuya would sit cross-legged on the battery when they were walking and would stand up when they were running. Because the helmet was also too heavy and too big for her, she made up some short of glasses that she connected to the helmet so that what should have been displayed inside the helmet was now displayed on her glasses. Veronica also made sure the helmet was attached and even locked to the rest of the armour so it could never fall off - and get lost. As a consequence, in order to get into the suit, Shuya had to go through the left arm. She actually thought it was hilarious.
However, she didn’t find a solution to move the remaining arm and, more importantly, the fingers, so whenever she wanted to do or grab something, she had to ask Veronica to do it for her. It was fine as long as it was only a matter of picking up a flower or removing a tree that had fallen across a road. But that would never work in a real fight, against a real villain. Because Shuya only thought about one thing: her desire to be a superhero. To help the World. But although she would have fight anyone who would have tried to take the suit from her, at the same time, she knew she wasn’t making good use of it - and it saddened her. Every day - or rather night (for she tried to avoid having the suit spotted by anyone), when she left Veronica, she hid the suit and when she came back to use it, she always found some isolated place to do so. But the both of them talked so much with each other it often happened that Shuya would do nothing in the suit but speaking with her friend.
They talked about the world that had yet to recover from the snap, they talked about the job of being a superhero - and they talked about the fallen ones. After a long time, Veronica finally accepted to show the battle to Shuya. She had recorded it all from the moment the Hulk - or rather, Dr. Bruce Banner - had entered the suit. Shuya sat silently, watching Dr. Banner fighting like Hulk without actually being the Hulk. She got scared when the arm was ripped off. She felt sorry for the Big Guy who wouldn’t want to show up but was kind of proud when Banner vanquished his enemy on his own. Finally, she closed her eyes when the vitals went missing. After the disappearance of Banner, Veronica had kept recording for a little more until, eventually, she had run out of power and shut herself down. As time passed, Shuya watched the recording once more. And twice more. And plenty more during the months and years that followed. Banner became her personal superhero. Everything he said, she said it along with him. Everything he did, she mimed it along with him. She would do the battle again for a lot of times, over and over. It was like her training session: at night, when nobody could see her or when she had found a place where anyone was around, she would ask Veronica to do the same movements Banner did on that day and she would do them too, trying to be in the right tempo. She kept on that training for weeks, feeling more and more confident each time.
Until Okoye found out.
It was a bright day, the sky was clear of any cloud and the forest around her was resonated with thousand of sounds, from the modest bush to the howling carnivore. Her hair was tied in an efficient but not less sophisticated way in order to prevent it from disturbing her while she was trying to follow the fast punches Veronica was throwing at thick air. While doing so, they turned around and suddenly faced Okoye. The fierce warrior had her spear ready. Actually, her intention was obvious and Shuya almost had no time to shout:
“Okoye wait, it’s me!”
Okoye froze immediately, startled. Then she asked:
“Shuya? You are in there?”
“Yes!” replied Shuya “I am! Please don’t attack me!”
Shuya jumped out of the suit, through the missing arm and in her hurry, she forgot to take off her glasses: they were brutally ripped off her face and she stumbled, taken aback by the brightness of the day. She managed to stay on her feet, however, and looked at Okoye, a bit shameful. As for Okoye herself, she kept looking at the suit then at Shuya, then at the suit, then at Shuya again. Finally she asked:
“What were you doing in that armour?”
“Training” replied Shuya while looking down because she couldn’t get herself to face Okoye’s eyes. The female warrior considered her for a moment before saying:
“I’m bringing you home.”
Shuya immediately grabbed her hand.
“Please, no! I don’t want to leave Veronica alone!”
After thinking about it, Okoye replied to her, almost reluctantly:
“Fine. You can bring the suit with you.”
“Thank you Okoye !” said Shuya with the biggest smile “I love you so much!”
Everyone stopped to watch them go by. The people inside their houses went to their windows, the merchants looked away from their dearest goods, the children grabbed their ball they were playing with just the moment before. People muttered behind their backs but she couldn’t hear what they were saying. For those who had fought the battle against Thanos, it was quite a surprise to see that big suit making its apparition again. And for the rest of the population, it was merely a feeling of worry and suspicion for they couldn’t decide whether the presence of that thing was good or bad news. As for Shuya herself, she couldn’t be seen. She was sitting inside the suit, helmet closed and having Veronica following closely Okoye’s steps. Finally, the three of them arrived at the palace’s entrance where the Queen was awaiting. Okoye saluted her by crossing her arms on her chest.
“My Queen” she said, “I have found Shuya and... Shuya has found something.”
She then turned to the red and yellow armour and nodded. Shuya closed her eyes for a brief moment as she was trying to get mentally prepared for what will surely follow. She then removed her glasses off her head and came out of the suit through the missing arm. Shuri looked at her.
“Shuya” the Queen of Wakanda asked, “what were you doing?”
Shuya still couldn’t look at the grow-ups in the eyes - especially the Queen. The enthusiastic princess was long gone; in a world on the verge of self-destruction, excitement towards memes wasn’t welcomed anymore. The Queen hadn’t become harsher, however: only sadder. It hurt Shuya that she could have, somehow, disappointed her. That was why she answered with the weakest voice:
“I only meant to help...”
But suddenly she looked up with determination.
“Please, don’t take Veronica away from me! I trained so much, I promise! I want to fight in that suit! I can do it, I know it !”
Okoye immediately raised her spear. It wasn’t meant to be aggressive, but the message was clear.
“Shuya, you have no idea whatsoever this is and you should...”
“Okoye.”
The woman stopped and turned to her Queen, unsure.
“My Queen” she said nonetheless, “this is too dangerous...”
“She already did a wonderful job.”
“But she can’t even fit in the suit, she’s too small!”
“She will grow.”
Eventually, Okoye had to gave up and stepped back. Shuri moved towards Shuya and put her hand on her shoulder. She smiled briefly.
“One day Veronica could come in handy, indeed. And we’ll need a good pilot. Shuya, do you swear that you’ll always protect Wakanda and everyone in need?”
The little girl who had one day befriended an robotic armour, brightly smiled and saluted her Queen, the Wakandian way.
“I swear it!”
“In that case” replied Shuri, “you should resume you training now. In the meantime” - and for one moment, it was as if the old, annoying sister of King T’Challa, the best inventor of her time and far beyond, had returned - “let’s make a new, decent arm for that suit.”
***
New York City. Also known as the “Big Apple”. Shuya couldn’t believe she was actually staring at it - well, it was through her glasses but who cares? The city laid hundreds of feet beneath her. The journey itself had not taken long, but the young woman was relieved at the sight of the bay and the skyscrapers for that had been her longest flight so far. She didn’t know where to look first so she gently began her descent. She landed on a big avenue. Since the snap had reduced Earth population to half of what it used to be - and despite the general exodus to the cities - that avenue wasn’t overcrowded. In fact, she could almost have walked directly on the road without her being a bother to anyone or vehicle. People looked at her when she arrived. Some frowned, but, all in all, nobody cared. Maybe the Hulk suit hadn’t been recognised. Or maybe nobody gave a shit about their superheroes anymore. Shuya started to walk cautiously in the streets with a map of the city displayed on a border of her screen. There was some places she could already have gone to but she wasn’t even sure who she wanted to meet. New York felt like the right city to go to in order to begin her hero journey but the governments were still a bit disorganized (not to mention the still effective and as much annoying Accords). So she walked while observing with curiosity her surroundings when someone suddenly shouted:
“Help!”
She looked up immediately. Veronica found the source of the shout: it was a man under a shuddering scaffold. The truth was, it was about to collapse. With no hesitation at all, Shuya flew to it and grabbed the pillar the moment it broke up. The whole thing suddenly rested on her shoulders - literally.
“Vero!” she shouted “run simulations! What can I do?”
She looked up at the scaffolding: the people who were working on it until now had started to run away, mostly through the windows into the building. But some others were trapped in their level and had to go down or up in order to escape.
“Can I hold it long enough?” Shuya asked her suit.
“Yes, you can” answered Veronica “however the others pillars won’t.”
“Shit” Shuya said.
Veronica warned her than she had only two minute thirty-three seconds before the scaffolding would collapse entirely. People were hurrying themselves out of it but some were too slow. What could she do? At least the people were evacuating the streets by themselves. Shuya counted three workers who would never make it on time. One minute left.
“Okay Vero! Here’s the plan!”
The thrusters under her feet started roaring. While facing the building, she took a step backwards and freed her right hand.
“Fifteen seconds!” warned Veronica - the whole movement had reduced the time just the way they had calculated it. The Wakandian girl threw her arm in the direction of the sky: her hand changed into an harpoon she managed to sent three levels up.
“Sir, please! Grab it!” she shouted to the worker who was at this level.
The second she knew he had indeed grabbed it, she pulled him back and ejected herself from under the scaffolding. Her left hand turned itself into a harpoon too and as she was in the air, she grabbed the second guy. Meanwhile, she put down the first one and in the same movement, reached for the third and last one. That movement was going full circle and with that speed and the wire’s length, the man were surely to end up into the other building, across the road.
“Now!”
Her thrusters lighted up and projected her into the sky so that the full circle movement happened above the rooftops of the buildings. The scaffolding ended falling apart but everyone who had been on it had been saved. Shuya stayed a few seconds in the air, as shocked as the men who were attached to her harpoons. She only then realised how fast her heart was beating.
“Congratulations” said Veronica “you’ve accomplished your first exploit.”
“Yeah.” said Shuya “Whatever.”
She began going down, very slowly. She put down the two men and the harpoons reintegrated the suit to make both of its hands to reappear. Then she stopped her thrusters and finally landed. When she looked up, she found herself surrounded by a crowd and that crowd was congratulating her. Everyone wanted to touch her suit, say to her how amazing she had been. They also wanted to know her name and if she could show them her face (they could’ve only heard her feminine strong-accentuated voice). So far Shuya had never experienced such attention from people and she was blushing under her helmet. Suddenly, the crowd split up to let a man come through, a man she recognized right away.
“Captain America!”
Immediately, her helmet fell down and seemed absorbed by the rest of the armour, revealing the face of a fourteen-years-old girl, with rituals white paintings all over her dark skin and amazingly wild brown hair that somewhat still managed to stay out of her sombre, sparkling eyes.
“Hey, I know you” said Steve Rogers when he saw her “you were that little girl, hum-?”
“Shuya” she said “my name is Shuya.”
“Nice to meet you again Shuya.” Cap replied. “And nice to see you again, Veronica.”
“Pleasure is mine, sir” said the red and yellow big suit.
Captain America looked at Shuya with proud eyes. Shuya realised he may had been actually impressed by her recent action. Here you go girl, she though for herself, you just proved yourself. As an echo of that thought, Steve Rogers asked:
“May I know why you decided to come here?”
Shuya, the proud Wakandian girl in her Hulk suit, both of them never to be left alone again, looked at Captain America and answered him with determination:
“To help you rebuild the world and avenge it.”
And Captain America nodded.