Who: Shuri and Tony What: Tech talk and planning. Rating/Warnings: Green
Tony didn't think a teenage princess would want a fancy ass lunch where she was being served a fifty dollar kernel of sauteed corn with Dead Sea salt and gold flake surrounding it. Honestly, Tony tended to squint whenever he was served that. He had no problems with veggie platters or gluten free whatever, but since his diet ran the gamut of everything based on a sudden whim, something microscopic and fancy didn't cut it for him.
He didn't think it would cut it for Princess Shuri either. So there he was at a relatively well known place for desserts, which was neither needlessly fancy nor sketchy cheap looking. It was well lit and clean, and he wasn't getting very many looks and wasn't getting bothered. All good by him. He was there for a sugar rush and to talk shop with someone he heard was capable of outbraining him. Which was great. He welcomed that because the fact was, he wasn't going to be around forever, and he never stopped when there was room left for perpetual and ongoing improvement. He wanted to see what Shuri was capable of bringing to the table, after all the things he had been hearing about her in the tech world. This was going to be light years ahead of anything he was doing before. That anyone except Shuri was doing before.
Needless to say, Tony was pretty psyched. He probably didn't need the sugar. And just so he didn't seem to characteristically hyperverbal, he ordered a decaf coffee while he waited.
There was a definite difference between what he thought was fancy and what she did. What she wanted was a burger and fries. Now that she was in America and her mother wasn’t trying to get her to eat well and control her whole life, so she was going to eat whatever the hell she wanted. She wasn’t gluten free though, and she would pretty much eat whatever. She’d been eating out since she’d gotten to this place. And T’Challa wasn’t nagging her either. It was nice to be on her own.
She didn’t expect a grown man to take her out for dessert for lunch. He was an odd one. Her brother had kind of warned her about all these people, but meeting them was something else. Shuri was just sitting back and trying to figure everyone out for herself. She missed everyone though. It was odd being without them all.
Spotting Tony Stark, Shuri headed over to him and waved. “Hello Mr. Stark.”
Tony waved back with a big smile. He liked T'Challa. He seemed like a pretty serious sort of guy, with a moral compass that was razor shap. Kind of like the claws he was sporting. Grown man dressed as a black cat was no weirder than grown man in a tin can, especially when having a battle in an airport. He wasn't sure what Shuri would be like, other than she seemed sassier than her older brother was, when she was on the network.
"Hey! Hi. Please have a seat, your highness." He had scooted the chair out with his foot before he stood up, just to be a gentleman and not a completely dismissive asshat with no manners. Like he usually was. "Hopefully the ride over was ok. Happy picked you up? Did he make you listen to his crappy playlist? God, it's awful."
Happy had, in fact, been sent to pick up Shuri. Happy was never actually happy, thus the irony of his nickname. Happy also listened to what he had labeled: "greatest auto-tuned one hit wonders" including Trish Walker's I Want Your Cray Cray. Which he mumbled in monotone along to. No, Shuri. You did not escape that experience. You did not escape unscathed.
Shuri made a little bit of a face, “Just call me Shuri. My brother is your highness, not me.” And while she was a Princess, she wanted to just be Shuri. Resident badass and Smarter Than Everyone. Tony could totally understand that, right? “I did not recognize any of those songs. I think it was the classics station because all of those songs were from before I was born.”
Though she didn’t mind Happy too much. She had been on her best behavior and so she hadn’t really gotten any sass from the other man. Except when she said that she didn’t recognize any of these songs and had asked if he had anything by Kendrick Lamar. Happy had never heard of him. Go figure.
"Shuri it is. I'm just Tony. And I listen to a lot of stuff that's older than that, but isn't autotuned to hell and back. I don't even know what half that stuff is. He could at least stick it on new stuff, and not midrange...I don't even know. It's a punch in the face just thinking about it."
Since talking was one of his best defense mechanisms, Tony was watching her in mid blab, trying to get a read on her. She didn't want to carry herself like a princess would, and seemed really confident and chilled out, despite who she was and where she came from. Peter would probably get a kick out of meeting Shuri, so maybe he'd suggest that sometime. It was also going to be nice not having to mind his p's and q's so much. He just had to make sure he didn't say any curse words.
"Oh, hey! Did you get ahold of your mom?" Tony suddenly said, followed by, "Is she pissed off beyond belief that you're not home?"
And there goes not cursing, already.
“Okay, Just Tony.” See? She had jokes too. “No one autotunes any more. That is old too.” Like a couple of years old, but to her it might as well have a couple of decades. People were too busy doing other things. Probably which she could explain, but she wasn’t sure that he would understand. And clearly they had wildly different musical tastes. And she didn’t want to make him feel completely old. Otherwise, he wouldn’t let her use his equipment. He definitely had some opinions on his drivers taste in music though. She wondered what was up with that.
Shuri nodded her head, “I did. She is very … pissed off. So is T’Challa, but I explained that I am here to do what I have already done at home. They did not know what I meant, but that is okay. They would not get it unless they were affected by the time meld.” That’s what she was calling it and there was absolutely no way to stop her. But what she’d meant was that how she had already fixed Bucky Barnes where she had come from, but he was still on a hair trigger in this version of events. Funny how that worked.
“I told her that she could speak to a responsible adult, but I do not know that we have any so I will fake it until she gets mad and comes here.”
As far as Happy's musical choices, Tony had to sit in the back of the car and consider that it was Happy's way of getting back at him for...every single thing that he had ever done for the entire duration of his employment.
Tony was listening to Shuri and looking more and more impressed, because this girl was sharper than T'Challa's claws. Not only did he snerk about the Just Tony smartassery, but he half winced at her family being pissed off. He also realized what the time thing meant (i.e. - everything was screwed up exponentially), but he outright laughed at the responsible adult mention.
"If they show up, you can point your mom and brother in my direction," he offered. "But there's plenty of people that will flat out tell them that I am not a responsible adult. And they'd be right."
He patted the table when the waitress offered them menus. Once it was sat down, he peeked into it like he was expecting some piece of paper to ninja out and papercut him to death. There didn't seem to be anything deadly there, because he flipped it open and started looking it over. What followed was a quick order for some berry laden concoction and more coffee, of the actual coffee variety.
"Since T'Challa opened things up to the world more," he began saying, right after Shuri put in her order, "you've been spearheading plans for outreach centers. That's a great idea. Wakanda's been sitting on a ton of tech advancements, light years ahead of stuff i can do. And I hear that you're at the center of it all. What kind of stuff have you been working on lately? Because I have a metric butt ton of ideas and I bet you can make them even better."
“Yes I know you are not a responsible adult, which is why I did not tell my mother about you,” she said plainly. A grown man acting like that? Her mother would absolutely shut that shit down in a heartbeat.
She ordered something good, that looked like she might not have tried it before and a water. She didn’t need all that sugar after all. Then she’d be bouncing off the ceiling and not get any work done.
“The incident with my cousin left us all in realization that the world needs technology such as this.” And she was happy to help, though she did miss Nakia quite a bit. Anyone else that she knew would have been great. She didn’t like being alone, truth be told.
She hm’d a minute. “I was upgrading our communications devices before I wound up here. With my remote controlled Kimoyo beads and discs. It allows me to be able to for instance drive a car while sitting here, though the car is out on the street. That kind of thing.” Yes, yes she could make them better, but she wasn’t going to agree. Not yet anyway.
"Smart! It's a good idea to never tell any mothers about me. It doesn't even matter who it is."
Tony looked intrigued by all of it, and he had a billion and one questions. It was hard to decide what to ask first, although the Kimoyo beads and disks sounded sparkly.
"I'd like to see those beads, but...didn't hear all the nitty gritty about the cousin thing," he admitted, with a sharp wince.
He'd only heard bits and pieces. As it was, Tony wasn't ever sure how to approach uncomfortable topics regarding relatives, considering it had just been him for a while, with Stane as a surrogate fatherly figure. And that ended poorly. Before they talked about cool and exciting tech stuff, it was probably the normal thing to issue condolences. He wasn't exactly normal, nor where the circumstanced either of them were embroiled in. He could empathize with stuff snowballing its way into an avalanche, unexpectedly.
"Family drama usually isn't the greatest way to kickstart tech advancements," he said, "so I imagine it was messy. Probably a massive pit of suck, so I'm sorry to hear it happened."
Shuri could agree with that. She was never going to tell her mother about anything she would get into in New York. Her mother would be on a first plane out here and then ruin all of her fun.
Quickly she explained what happened recently in Wakanda, about her cousin showing up and not even knowing she had a cousin. All of that. While she explained, she took off her bracelet and handed it over. “You push different beads to get different things.” Then she showed him what she meant by it, showing him the things about like her hologram communication devices and things like that. It was probably a wall of information, but honestly she thought he was used to a lot of going on and on about things, so he could deal with it.
“Thanks. At least it got us to this point. That is all that matters.” Except that she’d lost a cousin she hadn’t ever known and that sucked. “I was working with the White Wolf also, but he has been just being lazy in Wakanda and not doing anything.” Hmph.
It was a wall of information that he was diving into and willingly becoming immersed in. Shuri was smart in a way that would be intimidating to a lot of people, and fascinating to Tony. The beads were a wonder as was her communication system. They were getting a few looks from the patrons, and by the time their orders arrived, Tony was sold on wanting Shuri in a think tank of massive proportions. The possibilities were endless, especially with the concepts she was working with being so far ahead of anything else. There was a lot of info he wanted to share with her, particularly about the weapons and armor and brain scans and...everything.
White Wolf. Whoever that was, was in trouble. Glad it wasn't him. If it was, he'd just be called Lone Wolf anyway.
"White Wolf is....refresh me?" Tony asked, and he was still in awe over the beads and how they worked and how Shuri might use them for other things. "And I have got to show you the suit concepts at the lab, because now I'm wondering if it's possible to nanotech it all, and change configurations and....you wanna stop by and tackle the Research and Dev labs, you have a free pass any time you want."
If anyone could keep up with her thinking, it was probably going to be Tony. She wouldn’t have to dumb anything down, like she might have had to do for Ross. She wondered if he was around. Not that she cared. Honest. Still there were so many things that she had come up with on her own, learning on her own and making on her own. It was no wonder that everyone had put her in charge of everything in Wakanda.
Oh yeah. He was in total trouble. Especially since she hadn’t worked her magic on him yet.
Oh right. What was his white name again? “Bucky Barnes,” she said after a moment. “White Wolf is what all the kids call him, and so that is what we all started calling him.” Once she was told to stop calling him Colonizer or whatever.
“I would like to see them, yes. As soon as possible. I am getting very bored just playing video games all day.”
Tony was more than keeping up, nodding as he took a few bites of whatever it was that wasn't really holding his interest as much as the topics at hand. It was like he had found another person like Bruce, who was riding the same wavelength and could easily understand all the math and jargon behind the things they were trying to do or create. That was a rare quality indeed. Shuri was going to get as much space as she wanted so she wasn't bored, that was for sure.
In fact, he was already on his phone, granting her lab access and sending the credentials over to her network phone.
"Barnes is the White Wolf? Heh. You know, that fits him." Tony thought that Barnes was kind of like the ghost of a wolf, a former predator. The thought of which caused Tony to shake his head suddenly and get the image of that car crash and assassination out of his head. "Speaking of which, I compiled some info on him for you to take a look. And you can take a look at the suit schematics and make suggestions too. I just sent the lab access to you, but I'll send over those files and I'd welcome any suggestions or input. I want to start a build as soon as possible."
Oh right. Food. Shuri had almost forgot. She started to eat, taking bites of all the sugary things. Americans sure did like their sugar. “We don’t get a lot of white people in Wakanda,” she said with a shrug. She was starting to think what they would name Tony. White Buffalo. Ha.
“I’ve already made a print of his brain in Wakanda. I know what I am doing but since I do not have my things here, it will be a bit harder for me to do. More time. But I am ready to get started whenever he was.” She was happy to deprogram him again, as he’d been grateful and a little quiet but she’d liked him enough.
She was curious as to what they put together first though. Doubtful it was better than her stuff but maybe.
Considering how much Tony liked giving nicknames, White Buffalo would be hilarious. Considering his tendency to butt heads with ninety-percent of everything and everyone around him, he could be like a White Ram. Or he was as stubborn as an ox, so that might fit too. There were plenty of stubborn headbutty animals that could be synonymous with Tony Stark.
Meanwhile, all Tony had was reworking extremis in the hopes of modding the suit into himself somehow, some nanobot ideas for the armor, and the mock up of what he wanted to do. But from the things that Shuri was talking about, he might not have to do something so invasive. It might be better to hybrid things out a bit more. The possibilities certainly seemed endless. Not only for him, but it would be good for Barnes too by the sound of it.
"If you can do that, that'd be great," Tony said, thinking it would be a real load off everyone involved. "It'd help out a lot, I think. Uhh, lets troubleshoot the equipment you need most. If I arranged transport, do you think they'd let you bring what you need over here for a while?"
The nicknames were more of a tribal thing than a nickname, but she would have been amused anyway. She was already thinking of ways that vibranium could help his suit be better. In kind of the same way that it did for her brothers. Everyone needed protection. She would have to see everything in order to access what needed to be done. Everything in its own time.
“Of course i can do that. I can do anything,” she said simply. “They might? I have not tried to move all of my things, so I do not know how well it would work but I would like to try.” She needed her things.
He'd accept any name, including answering to a few colorful terms that shouldn't be repeated in polite company. A few senators had called him those things, but they weren't polite company.
At any rate, Tony was grinning like a mad man with a million ideas. Even better, Shuri had the right attitude that she could do anything, including fixing Barnes. That made him feel even more optimistic that what he had in his head - combined with what she knew how to do - was going to mesh well. He'd be one step closer to not having to worry about toting around a suit of armor, or being left with more limited options. Becoming more self-sufficient and covering every base possible was the whole point of the next mach version upgrade for Iron Man. This was going to happen. To say that Tony was excite was an understatement.
But first, air shipping had to be sorted out.
"I bet you can. Ok, I got this part. You drop in to the lab, calculate how much space you need. There's about five floors and you're welcome to one of them," Tony was saying, while putting in a tentative flight window on his phone. "I'll combine some of the teams on another floor. Have your team gather up what you want, and get permission from T'Challa for us to land first, probably? I'll get it flown out in shipments. Doable. Not even gonna worry about it."
Tony smiled and finished with, "Smack us with all of your super science, please."