Issue #9 (July 2019) Written by Jake Hawkins Featuring:
Black Panther
Killmonger
Storm
SOMEWHERE IN TOKYO, JAPAN
Eden Fesi got into a stance as his eyes darted between the king of Wakanda and the X-man at his side. He knew “the sky witch” as the hand’s new leader dubbed her would be the bigger threat. Eden figured neutralizing her would be his first priority, before cutting out the king’s heart. He grimaced as he prepared to lunge into action, the coming conflict one he wished he didn’t have the highest of stakes tied into.
“Whoever you are, we don’t need to do this. Kilmonger’s lead is one that will only take you to misery. An outcome I’m sure you’d rather-”
Eden’s hands began to glow, and a portal opened above T’Challa and Ororo. A small flurry of meteors fell straight towards them, and Ororo managed to create a powerful wind gust that sent the meteors crashing on either side of them before they could be hurt.
“I am far past misery, King T’Challa. The beast has stripped me of everything.”
“We need to take him down very quickly. He could be a problem.” Ororo whispered to T’Challa, who nodded before he sprung into action. He tossed a pair of devices at Eden that ruptured in mid-air, releasing a thick purple cloud that surrounded the young mutant. Eden began to cough violently, dropping to his knees as the poison created from T’Challa’s weapons took its toll on him immediately. As T’Challa neared him, Eden instinctively opened another portal on the Wakandan’s left. A missile emerged from the portal, and T’Challa barely managed to duck out of the way before it exploded behind him. The explosion sent T’Challa and Storm scattering for cover, debris flew around the construction site with deadly speed.
Eden used the missile to get himself clear of T’Challa’s toxin and back on the offensive, his eyes locking on to the Black Panther as he dug himself out from under a pile of rubble. Before he could act, pieces of hail the size of bowling balls begin to fall, battering him and forcing Eden to find cover. Storm hovered above what was left of the site, her focus on keeping their attacker in a defensive state of mind. Eden’s eyes locked on to his fellow mutant and he opened a portal directly behind Ororo. An oil tank emerged and smacked into the X-man, sending her crashing into the ground. T’Challa rushed across the impromptu battlefield towards where Storm had seemingly been crushed, only to walk straight into one of Eden’s portals and emerge directly in front of his opponent.
“This isn’t a personal grudge on my end, King T’Challa.” Eden explained breathlessly as he pulled himself to his feet. “ I’m not some blind soldier cursed by what the Hand teaches. I am here to earn my life back.”
Eden threw himself at the king, attempting to pin him down. T’Challa sidestepped Eden and aimed a kick at the back of his head that the mutant managed to block. T’Challa followed up his kick attempt with a dropkick that sent Eden sprawling. T’Challa’s vibranium claws extended from his gloves as he closed the gap between himself and Eden, ready to finish this fight as quickly as it had started.
“What makes you think the Hand will keep any promises or allegiances they have made to you?” T’Challa asked him as he drew closer. “Does anything about the way they operate tell you to expect them to honor their word? You think killing me will make a difference? Don’t waste your life being that man’s pawn.”
Eden’s eyes go wide with fury, and in a last-ditch effort to win the battle he rips open another portal. A stream of train cars come barreling directly towards T’Challa, but before he can feel their impact Storm swoops in front of the onslaught and flies the king out of harm's way. They land roughly about fifteen feet away as the section of cars bring what little was left of the site crumbling down. Eden stumbles to his feet, his eyes finding Storm and T’Challa as he gritted his teeth and clenched his spear.
Storm propped herself up, wincing in pain from the rough landing she had flown them into. T’Challa helped her to her feet and turned towards Eden. “Finish this. We have bigger problems to handle.” T’Challa nodded at Storm’s command and approached his opponent.
Eden plunged his spear towards the king’s chest, but T’Challa swatted away the young man’s weapon with prodigious skill. He smacked Eden across the jaw with a kick that left him unconscious on his feet, before driving an energy spear directly into his shoulder, pinning him to the ground. T’Challa breathed heavily, the toll of the battle weighing on him as he slumped to his knees.
“My mother...sister. Viper..please take them from her. They don’t deserve my sins.” Eden said hoarsely, blood from his wound seeped all over his chest. “Not one.” T’Challa nodded before turning back to Ororo, his mask fading away as he joined her. T’Challa’s quinjet lowered to the ground and the pair of them boarded before leaving the scene. Onboard the jet, T’Challa pressed a button on the ship’s computer console and a brief message from Shuri played.
“We are en route to the hospital caring for Gedo. I’ve already sent your ship our coordinates.” Shuri’s video message ended, and T’Challa grimaced as he headed towards the cockpit.
“He’s going to attack the hospital next. We need to warn Shuri and W’kabi.” Storm said as she grabbed her own kimoyo card and attempted to contact the princess. Much to her dismay, the kimoyo card could not connect her with Shuri, a fact T’Challa found troubling.
“He’s found a way to interfere with our communications. Which means he figured I’d send someone to find Gedo.” T’Challa slammed his fist on the console and stood up before heading towards the center of the ship. A rack full of unique weapons lowered itself in front of T’Challa as he prepared himself for what laid ahead.
“By now he’s sent someone to the hospital. If we can’t contact Shuri then we are left with very little as our options.” Storm called to T’Challa as she piloted the jet.
“N’Jadaka will not appear before me until he is good and ready, that much is certain.” T’Challa replied as he grabbed a Wakandan assault sub-rifle from the rack and loaded it with four, purple and black pods. “All this chaos is merely his attempt to force me off whatever strategies I concoct to combat him. His manipulation of that young man did exactly what he intended.”
Storm notices T’Challa’s tone of voice and turns to face him, her eyebrow raised in curiosity. “And...is it working?”
“I cannot say he hasn’t hit a particular nerve. I am tired of watching his selfishness cost people their lives.” T’Challa explains as he straps the rifle to his back. He then grabs a handful of black discs and places them each into a slot on his gauntlet. He takes a seat next to Storm in the cockpit, and her hand wraps around his as she does her best to comfort him. “I am coming to the very painful realization I should have put this creature out of his misery a very long time ago.”
“Steady yourself king. Your emotions will only be an obstacle in the coming conflict.” Storm warned T’Challa as she placed a hand on the back of his head. “We should arrive in fifteen minutes or so.”
Shuri sat in the ICU waiting room, her fingers working to fix the mainframe problem freezing the kimoyo network. She and her brother had built the entire system that was the lifeblood of Wakanda’s technological society from the ground up, working for sixteen hours straight at a time to avoid this very situation. Now somehow within minutes, someone had taken it down.
Anna Gedo sat at her father’s bedside, listening to the machine that kept him alive hum quietly in the empty room. She did her best to keep her eyes off her father, the way her mother had reacted when she saw him was bad enough. Her father had always been an oak of a man, a steady piece of her life she knew she could lean on when it was necessary. Now as he laid in front of her, he was anything but the man Anna remembered, a fact she was finally beginning to wrap her head around. It felt strange to her, that now for the first time in her life it was her turn to be the oak in her family. It was then she finally realized how late it had gotten and knew her mother should have been there by now. The two of them had pledged not to leave her father alone, and now Anna’s mind began to imagine the worst as she guessed at what could be keeping her mother.
W’Kabi watched Anna next to her father as he monitored the hallway, finding it strange they hadn’t heard from T’Challa yet. He pulled out his kimoyo card and attempted to make contact with the king, but the device failed to operate. W’kabi took one last glance at Anna and determined it safe enough he could spare a few moments to discuss his malfunctioning card with Shuri. He headed back towards the waiting room, bumping into a nurse that was making his way into Gedo’s room in the process.
The nurse smiled at Anna as he entered and grabbed her father’s chart. Anna managed a weak smile back as she desperately tried her mother’s cell once again, only to be sent straight to voicemail.
*TRANSLATED FROM JAPANESE
*“There hasn’t been much change in his condition.” The nurse informed Anna after setting the chart back down. * “But there usually isn’t in guys like him, is there?” The nurse smirked and winked at Anna before taking a seat on the edge of the hospital bed. “Guys like Mr. Gedo here, they just keep dodging bullets till they get a little too long in the tooth.”
*“I think you need to leave. And I’d like to speak to the physician on duty-” Anna stammers out, but the nurse ignores her, his eyes locked on her father with a vague curiosity.
“I always liked killing guys like him. True veterans of what they do. Guys who really hit the pinnacle of their business, ya know?” The nurse continued, patting Gedo’s leg as he kept his eyes on Anna. “It always leaves me wondering if they think it’s all worth it in the end, when they see me coming. I wonder what he’d think when he saw me coming after you..”
In the waiting room, W’kabi watches anxiously as Shuri attempts to solve the problem within the kimoyo network. “This doesn’t make any sense, how could a virus this complex slip into the mainframe undetected?” The princess wondered as she worked on three separate holographic layouts in front of her. The sight of Wakandan technology drew gazes from civilians and employees of the hospital, but Shuri paid them no attention as she drew closer to solving their problem.
“I think I’ve found a way to reset the system to a program update I installed two weeks ago. It’ll slow the system down until I can create a new patch but at least our communications should be back online.”
“The timing is too coincidental princess. We hadn’t been here for all of ten minutes when-”
“The entire network crashes.”
“And we both know-”
“The network never crashes. I know.” Shuri finally breathes a sigh of relief as the system finishes restoration and begins functioning again. A message from her brother begins to play immediately.
“Shuri, if you manage to get things up and running, we are en route to your location. Keep a watchful gaze, I am positive you are where N’Jadaka will act next.” The message cuts out and Shuri’s eyes go wide as she realizes Gedo’s daughter is currently unattended. She raced down the hall back towards the ICU wing, W’kabi hot on her heels.
The life support system keeping her father alive laid destroyed next to her, and Anna Gedo did her very best to stay conscious as she struggled to keep away from her attacker. The nurse pulled a strange mask over his face, the markings on it resembling that of a bullseye. Bullseye grabbed a nearby syringe filled with a pink hued liquid before turning his attention to Anna now that Liu had been handled.
“You should appreciate me coming here personally to finish the job. I had that much respect for your old man. His people just made the wrong moves with the shot clock running out. But now’s the part where we get to find out what sort of person you really are. You got any of your daddy’s steel in you?”
Anna is frozen for a moment before finally her instincts kick in and she races towards the door. Bullseye smirks as she behaves exactly as he anticipated, and he hurls the syringe at her. It sinks into the small of Anna’s back, its contents taking their toll almost immediately on her as she fell forward into the arms of Shuri.
Shuri looked into Anna’s now glassy eyes as she struggled to remain conscious. W’kabi pulled his military pistol from his waist just as Bullseye grabbed a pen off the floor. W’kabi fired several shots into the room, shattering the glass window as he tried to pin down the assassin. Bullseye ducked around each shot and tossed the pen, which sunk directly into W’kabi’s cheek with a plunk, knocking the Wakandan into the wall behind him. Bullseye dashed towards Shuri and the prone Anna, prepared to finish them both off. Shuri managed to raise one of her arms while still managing to support Anna, her miniature cannons forming just in time to mount a defense. The princess blasted Bullseye in the chest with a charge from her cannon, but the assassin tossed a shard of glass from the shattered window just as he was sent flying back. The piece of glass gashed Shuri along the side of the neck, not enough to do lethal damage but just enough to draw a significant amount of blood.
Shuri did what she could to stop the bleeding, her anger beginning to rise once she saw the twisted expression on Bullseye’s face as he got to his feet. The idiot was enjoying every minute of this exchange, and the longer it went on the more it favored to go his way. Shuri knew she needed to at the very least, get Anna as far away from the present danger as possible, and to do that she was going to have to try and keep Bullseye on the defensive. W’kabi pulled the pen from his cheek with a painful groan and tried to get back to his feet, only to be sent stumbling back to the ground as Bullseye immediately cracked him in the head with a vase. W’kabi again managed to stand and the assassin didn’t let up on his onslaught, leaping through the shattered window and slamming both feet into W’kabi’s chest. The kick drove W’kabi through the wall and into a public restroom. W’kabi tried to get his bearings, his head swimming from the concussion he was no doubt now suffering from. Bullseye pulled a shuriken from his belt and smirked at W’kabi. Before he could bury the weapon in his opponent’s skull Shuri leaped into action, attempting a head scissors takedown on the assassin that he rolled through with ease. He launched the shuriken instead in her direction, and the princess stepped aside just before the weapon could impale her eye.
Bullseye threw a roundhouse kick at the princess she barely managed to block, the weight of his adamantium skeleton taking its toll on her defensive measures. He sent an overhand left crashing into her face, rocking her jaw and sending the princess to the floor. Sensing W’kabi ready to pounce once again, Bullseye turned and tossed six shuriken with rapid fire quickness into the leg, arms and chest of the security chief. The shuriken were well placed, each hitting a pressure point and causing W’kabi’s body to seize up and send him falling flat on his face. Bullseye turned back to Shuri, whose eyes were on the unconscious Anna as blood continued to seep from her neck.
“A princess dying like a dog in the street. Well, at least you’ll have something in common with your father.” Bullseye pulled an adamantium dipped sai from his array of weaponry and took a step towards Shuri. “I can take her or you first, call it how you see fit your highness.”
“Bullseye.” Lester turned to see T’Challa and Storm leaping into the hospital through the windows, his quinjet taking off once he was inside. “I’m your problem now.”
Bullseye’s smirk was replaced by a stern gaze as he began to approach the Black Panther. He tossed the sai at T’Challa, who generated an energy shield that deflected the weapon. Bullseye didn’t stop coming, tossing another sai that bounced off the floor and under T’Challa’s shield. The weapon impales T’Challa in the shoulder, and Bullseye seizes the opportunity to toss a pair of explosive daggers at the king. T’Challa launches a disc from his gauntlet wrist that activated the moment the daggers exploded, triggering a small forcefield that absorbed the blast.
“You going to play hero and fuck around or get things done?” Bullseye said as he tossed another sai T’Challa managed to deflect with an energy sword. Bullseye threw a flurry of shuriken that T’Challa rolled away from, pulling the customized rifle from his back and popping up to a knee. The elevator at the other end of the floor opened, and T’Challa watched in horror as Okoye led ninjas of the hand onto the scene, her eyes coal black. W’Kabi sat up and pulled a few of Bullseyes projectiles from his body, just in time to see his wife appear.
“Beloved?” W’kabi mutters under his breath as he gets to his feet, picking up his pistol from nearby. Okoye ignores her husband, her eyes dancing back and forth between Bullseye and T’Challa.
“We have other business. End this game.” Okoye said as ninjas flooded the fifth floor. Bullseye nodded and took off towards Okoye, who joined him in fleeing the scene as T’Challa and company were overwhelmed by the Hand’s warriors.
W’Kabi tackled his wife before she could reach the elevator, pinning her to the ground. He fired a few shots from his pistol as a number of ninjas attempt to aid their commander, before turning his attention to Okoye.
“Okoye, beloved, wake up from this nightmare. Please, remember your training.” W’Kabi pleaded, but Okoye remained stone faced. Instead she slid from beneath her husbands grasp and aimed a straight kick to the back of his head he barely avoided. W’Kabi aimed a kick at her sternum that she blocked with her spear before another three shuriken sank into W’kabi’s back. He dropped to his knees, turning to see Bullseye leaning out of the elevator..
“I thought we were done playing games.” Bullseye said to her. Okoye dashed into the elevator, and W’Kabi watched as his wife disappeared right before his eyes.
T’Challa and Shuri fought off the wave of ninjas, while Storm used her immense powers to keep Anna Gedo safe, summoning a chain of lightning to halt oncoming attackers.. The quinjet lowered back into sight and it’s bay doors opened, giving T’Challa the signal that it was time to depart this battle. “Ororo, get Shuri and the girl to the ship. I will hold them off.”
Ororo wanted to argue, but knew the safety of Anna Gedo and Shuri was the larger priority. She created a massive snow flurry, causing a blizzard to erupt in the middle of the hospital before throwing Anna’s arm over her and rushing towards the quinjet. Shuri laid down a bit of cover fire with her cannons before following after them. Once they were safely on board, Storm took control of the ship just as Shuri took notice of an emergency alert from the kimoyo network.
“For Basts sake, T’Challa he’s launched a missile strike at the hospital. Payload is thirty-five second’s out, maybe less!” Shuri warned her brother. She immediately hacked into the hospital’s cameras and watched as T’Challa and W’kabi battled the group of ninjas attacking them relentlessly.
“Kimoyo, lock on to my suit’s data signature and initiate phantom procedure.” T’Challa whispered before pulling W’kabi to his feet and sprinting down the hall towards the elevator. Shuri watched in flummoxed confusion, wondering why her brother was essentially boxing himself in to no escape.
A message ran across the ship’s console screens that read “Phantom shift engaged.” Moments later T’Challa and W’kabi teleported from the hospital and on to the ship, the pair of them collapsing the moment they realized they had made it to safety. A series of explosions rocked the air, and T’Challa quickly got back to his feet.
“Get me eyes on the target and links to any news feeds.” T’Challa ordered the kimoyo system, and several screens sprang up around him, some with footage of what was left of the hospital, others with local and global news outlets reporting on the attack.
“Shuri, find out where that strike came from. I’m done chasing Kilmonger’s bait.” T’Challa roared as he headed towards the cockpit.
“Okoye...what did they do to my wife, T’Challa?” W’kabi asked the king, his fist shaking with fury at what he saw his wife transformed into. “She was there puppet.”
“I’m not sure ngumhlobo, but we will break whatever mysticism has hold of her mind. The sooner we track down Kilmonger the sooner this madness comes to an end.”
“Brother, I believe we have another problem.” Shuri said as T’Challa saw the screen she was looking at.
“Set a course for that location. Now.”
Back at the ruins of a construction site, Kilmonger kneeled next to Eden Fesi, his hand touching the wound made by T’Challa. He noticed then that Eden was still breathing, and Viper joined him as they wondered what to do next with the mutant.
“Your performance was a disappointment, as is your continued existence. You couldn’t kill the orphan king for the Hand, you could at least die for the Hand.” Viper said as Eden’s eyes opened. “End him, N’Jadaka. Then I will do what entertains me later with his people.”
Viper turned to leave but stopped when she saw Kilmonger had yet to leave Eden’s side. A chime rang and Viper pulled a cell phone from her waist, glancing at it quickly before turning her attention back to Kilmonger. “That was Harada. The Prime Minister is calling a press conference to issue a state of emergency.”
Kilmonger merely nodded, his eyes still assessing the state of Eden. “There is still much we can reap from this boy’s existence. He has yet to serve his true purpose.” Kilmonger stood up and finally turned to face Viper. “Inform Taskmaster and the samurai that the stage is theirs. I’ll bring in the curtain call myself.”