A/N - Sorry for the inactivity guys. I usually have a continuous update record(5ch/wk) but this week, I had to act as the chauffeur for my parents for a work thing they both had and couldn't write because I was just too exhausted, having driven 1000 miles to get to that place, and then move around in the city as well.
Ugh, anyway, I am home now, so regular updates should be back (hopefully!)
Enough with the rant, enjoy the chapter!
Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.
DoorMan #72
Ta-Lo [February 17, 2008]
–Colin Baxter–
"In hindsight, it might not have been the best idea to introduce you to the Water Dragon," he offhandedly commented as he munched on some chips that were on the table in front of him. After the whole Water Dragon almost being hit by Shuri's strongest weapons fiasco, he had moved the venue and they were now sitting on one of the nearby mountains, overlooking a cliff with a small patio setup, hoping to get a small debriefing done before they moved ahead with the tour.
"You think?" Shuri snarked right back as her eyes continued to move from one screen to the next as she was immersed in the sheer amount of information she must be getting from her four drones that were still working furiously on scanning anything and everything they could get their hands on.
Shuri's suit had to be shrunken down, to get the necessary mass required to make the tools she was using right now. She had no face plate and nothing on her hands as well. Her advanced nanotech suit was just pants and a T-shirt right now.
"Hey," he tried to defend himself, however futile it might have been, "You were the one who couldn't be bothered to stop and listen to what I had to say before flying off to get your own data. That's reckless and you should know better,"
Shuri rolled her eyes at him and he was about to continue his lecture when he sensed something being thrown at him as his eyes lit up, scrambling out of the chair, running towards the edge of the cliff.
"Colin? COLIN? Hey!" Shuri shouted in alarm for some reason. Didn't she know he could fly?
Boosted with an Air Door, he reached the necessary height and bagged everything that Jin'Ya had thrown towards them. A small sack full of carefully cut meat, some veggies, spices, oil and more.
Perfect for the best Barbecue that the Princess of Wakanda would ever have in her life.
"So, that's the stuff we were waiting for? Food? Are you just here to waste my time?" Shuri asked him as he began setting everything up.
He sighed, continued doing his stuff as he replied, "Look, I brought you here to show you some of the other stuff on Earth, so that the Point of View of Wakandans that they are the only shadow realm type civilization on the planet is debunked. And yes, we are still on Earth, sort of."
Shuri thought about it for a moment before swiping down on the screens, shutting all of them down before leaning forward, "Okay, explain sort of, because every single test that I have done indicates that this place is thousands of years old. I have not been able to get any Radio waves, not even the ones that we sent out decades ago in every direction which means we are way far out and the presence of the sky means we are still somewhere in space, not in some locked box."
He smiled at the reply, all technical and very plausible but because she did not have one important context, she got it all wrong. After he set the fire, he turned around with a smug smile. Now was his time to shine.
"You see, my Dear Lady," He said as he sat down next to her and used one of the most underrated and yet, sadly unused skills in his arsenal.
Eldritch shape summoning.
Shuri looked at the orange construct of the Earth with interest as he continued his lecture, "As you can see, this is Earth," He stopped her from interrupting him, "Ah! Please save any questions for later."
"Ahem, as I was saying, this is Earth," With a slight flex, the rough location of Wakanda was pushed forward out of the land, "-and this is Wakanda. Now, there are multiple special hidden locations, connected to Earth," A dozen or so smaller spheres appeared all around the Earth, connected to the planet using thin strands, "-that I know of, like the one we are in right now. Now, you must be wondering how–"
In the middle of his explanation, Shuri sat upright, "We're in a pocket dimension?"
Aaand, she was gone. Once again, his shoulders slumped as the eldritch energy summon winked out of existence.
"I want to know how you did that as well. It was not hard light but some other energy. We'll get back to that later on but THIS IS A POCKET DIMENSION?" Shuri said with the whole nerd maniac energy as she began hammering away at her holo screens.
"Ahem," he mentally called on to the Water Dragon and the Water Dragon responded as all the screens around Shuri shut off, with the Drones falling to the ground in a puddle of nanotech as well, with small bits of white lights sticking out of the puddles.
"Hmm," he mused as Shuri looked at her failing technology with confusion, "So you've gone with a mix of solid as well as nanotech, then? Wise choice, especially with the power source. The Arc Reactor is a solid and reliable choice, especially because it can be scaled either way very efficiently. I wonder how you could incorporate that into nanotech if you wanted to go full nanotech in the future."
"What just happened?"
"That," he said as he turned around and hopped to the Barbecue station he had built to the side, "was the Water Dragon, the one you almost shot with who knows what. They are the owner of this pocket dimension."
"So, that was a real dragon? Not just some monster or an alien? Because we've met some aliens but they were mostly humanoid in nature and most definitely, could not fly." Shuri rapidly fired, walking behind him as her favourite tech just fell apart in this place.
"Eh, you can call them aliens if you want to. There are a lot of subspecies of Dragons in this universe and some of them evolved in different dimensions and then spilled over into the Universe, some were born here, some came from Space but yeah, the one you saw was the Water Dragon and they are the one holding this entire pocket dimension together." He went into a tirade of explanation as the heavenly scent of food began wafting in the area.
He had to immediately send a promise of doing this once again later, to Jin'Ya lest they lose half of their food suddenly.
"How do you know all of this?" Shuri asked him, her gaze unconsciously locked at the food. Well, speaking as someone who knew how it felt like eating the food of this place for the first time, it was going to be hard for Shuri to get used to the food back home.
It was something to do with the Draconic essence in every animal, that made it extra nourishing and humans, Ancient humans, probably did eat magical meat sometime so it must be in their DNA as well, to actively go out and seek magical animal sustenance for better, well, everything basically.
The people in Ta-Lo do not get sick, even after he came in, carrying modern pathogens and introducing them to what was basically a closed system that had stayed closed for centuries.
If the people at the CDC heard of what he had done instead of taking this opportunity to do valuable research and develop protocols for First Contact scenarios, they would probably put out a bounty on him.
Not a single animal, or human got sick because of him and that spoke of the strength they had. Plus, the meat here was not mass produced, so the animals actually lived in their natural habitat for their natural lives and only when they died, were they used as food, and that too, only for greedy people like him.
All the natives were vegetarians, probably because they never needed to eat animals for sustenance, with their grains being super grains, providing everything they needed.
"That," he Answered Shuri's question, "is classified."
"I know you have questions. Ask away, we will begin the tour once we've had our fill,"
"Do you call advanced esoteric energy manipulation Magic?"
Wow, did she begin with the most loaded questions?
"Well, you see, the two things that you mentioned, both of them are the same. Magic or Sorcery," he ignored the snort, "is the art or science of manipulating reality itself with our mind. The Energy and Matter manipulation comes from the mind, not through some machine."
"You're delusional," She shook her head at him, not believing him at all.
He merely deadpanned at her and then snapped his fingers, creating large energy constructs behind him, with all of them being weapons of some sort, along with two Doors right above them, releasing Kinetic Energy from one into the other.
"Okay," Shuri said, a lot more believing now, "that is a little hard to explain with just technology," She then shook her head, "But I still refuse to believe that you can just do that with your mind. You had to have some sort of biological advantage for this to happen. I don't believe, even for a second, that everyone can learn that, as you alluded earlier."
He snapped his fingers, dispelling everything and gave her a look that screamed: Oh, you sweet summer child.
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