On the subject of weapons of mass destruction, Storm had nothing safe to add. She smiled awkwardly and made a noise of agreement.
Daisy kept talking. "I don't really believe there's some advanced arsenal out here that S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't know about — but I'm following the evidence. The team I'm tracking is well-trained. Their leader is a French mercenary named Batroc — a skilled fighter, very good at his job."
Viper's network had done its work well. Through a chain of cutouts and intermediaries, she'd assembled a substantial crew of mercenaries. They'd departed at roughly the same time as Daisy, but Daisy had deliberately spent days playing with the lions, which put her about three days behind schedule.
She hadn't known in advance that the crew would include Batroc. The French mercenary was built to the absolute ceiling of human athletic potential — former Olympic weightlifter, with the kind of leg development that came from years at an elite level. Cool under pressure, technically brilliant across every fighting discipline, with a specialty in kicks. In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, he'd traded even exchanges with Rogers for a stretch. His credentials were real.
That evening, as they made camp, Storm's backup arrived.
The man who walked into their firelight was calm-faced and sharp-eyed, with a close-cropped beard and the unhurried movements of someone who never needed to rush because nothing was going to catch him off guard.
"Ororo — is this guy a friend you called in... or wait, someone Professor Xavier sent?" Daisy asked, affecting mild confusion.
Storm flinched. She'd been carrying guilt about Professor Xavier since the moment she'd called for backup without consulting him, and the last thing she wanted was his name dropped into the conversation. She also wasn't sure how to introduce the young man beside her.
She decided honesty was the only real option. "I'm sorry, Daisy — I'm not trying to deceive you. But this has nothing to do with Professor Xavier."
Daisy suppressed a smile. After years in S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA's orbit, dealing with straightforward people felt almost unfamiliar. They were genuinely easy to read once you knew the pattern.
She let her expression shift toward caution. "Are you making a move? Are you two working with the mercenaries?"
Storm rushed to correct her. "No — absolutely not — I promise. But this isn't about Professor Xavier. It isn't about mutants or the U.S. government. Please believe me."
Trusting that in this situation would be irrational, so Daisy shook her head to indicate she didn't.
Then the young Black man stepped forward. Both hands raised, open. Empty.
This was T'Challa — the man who had just received the title of Black Panther from the old king's hands. Traditionally, Black Panther and King of Wakanda were the same person, but the elder king had arranged for T'Challa to receive the title and the Heart-Shaped Herb enhancement ahead of schedule.
T'Challa had gotten Storm's message and come straight from Wakanda.
"I'm T'Challa," he said in measured English. "The people you're tracking — they're looking for me. Or rather, for my homeland. Please trust us. We mean you no harm."
Daisy considered it. "How would I verify that?"
T'Challa and Storm exchanged a look. Then he led her to an open patch of ground and stopped.
Daisy looked around, reached out, and touched the air. "There's some kind of cloaking device here? Something your people developed? Or did you get it from a Western supplier?"
The mild condescension was deliberate. T'Challa took it in stride. The world underestimated African technology as a matter of habit. If Daisy had reacted with immediate deference, that would have seemed stranger.
He smiled faintly, produced a small device, and pressed it.
An aircraft materialized in front of her — gloss black, its surface catching the light.
With an inviting gesture, he gave her permission to look around freely.
Daisy circled it once. The aircraft was roughly saucer-shaped, body elliptical, twin turbine engines flanking the wings, rear thruster glowing faintly blue — no smell she recognized from any conventional propellant. Nothing matching any fuel system in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s catalog.
"Extraterrestrial salvage?" Daisy offered, still performing.
T'Challa had just pulled off a neat bit of misdirection. "Our aircraft," he said. "Wakandan-built. Come, Ms. Johnson — we can talk more comfortably on the way."
He said talk comfortably, and then immediately pushed the craft to full speed once they were airborne. The mercenaries had too much of a head start. Even after flying multiple passes over the area, they found nothing beyond human tracks. Whoever was in Batroc's crew, their concealment was genuinely impressive.
"What exactly are you hiding?" Daisy asked, her voice flat.
T'Challa and Storm traded a look.
"The people you're tracking came for my homeland," T'Challa said at last. "Come with us to Wakanda. My father will answer your questions himself."
She agreed.
The aircraft entered the mountain corridors. But T'Challa's first stop wasn't Wakanda itself — he landed at the perimeter, a settlement the Wakandans called the Border Tribe's territory.
"Please rest here tonight. We go into the mountains tomorrow." With that, T'Challa took the aircraft and left.
Daisy looked around the settlement. Children with dirty faces herded goats. Adults rode horses or worked plots of land by hand. Nothing about it suggested there was anything unusual here at all.
"They build aircraft like that," she said, "but they still herd livestock? Did they develop this themselves, or buy it from outside?"
This wasn't a performance. She genuinely couldn't make sense of the social architecture. Other Wakandan tribes apparently lived with every modern convenience at hand, while the Border Tribe — the nation's first line of external intelligence — lived out here in pastoral conditions.
The inequity was glaring. No wonder the Border Tribe had sided with Killmonger the moment he offered them something different. Wakanda's internal policy had a structural problem, and if the people most exposed to the outside world were also the most neglected, rebellion wasn't resentment — it was logic.
Storm had once asked T'Challa almost the same question. The answer she'd gotten back was: tradition. The Border Tribe's ancestors volunteered for this role.
She hadn't known what to do with that. Maybe the founders had been willing. But were their descendants? One glance at the expressions on the faces around them told a clear enough story.
Ororo was honest by habit. She didn't have Viper's gift for comfortable evasion. She delivered the official answer.
"It's their tribal tradition—"
Daisy's brow creased. "That doesn't hold up. The technology in that aircraft is beyond anything in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s hangars. With that kind of engineering capability, you could deploy remote monitoring hardware along the whole perimeter. Why station people out here living like this? Why maintain subsistence farming when you have fabrication technology like that?"
Storm wanted to bang her head against a wall. She didn't have an answer. But she was, in some sense, a guest — and the question wasn't going away.
She moved from cultural heritage to ancestral values to quality of life, and talked herself into mild shame doing it.
Daisy, at least, let the subject drop.
The two of them walked the settlement's dirt paths, taking in a village that looked no different from the rest of rural Africa.