A/N

Welp. Looks like I'm making good on that '7 months between chapters' thing...

So if you haven't noticed. I did make one little change in the last chapter. It's currently 2004 in the story, and Shuri is 10. This makes her 6 years older than her canon counterpart. I'll reiterate, she is not the love interest. I made this age change because T'Challa is 20 years older than her in canon, and that seems a little excessive to me. I figure a 14 year split just makes more sense, however marginally. Poor Ramonda.

Brace, lads! We approach ramming speed, and by thunder, the depths are dark in these waters!

To reiterate: I don't own Marvel

It's been a while, let's see a quick recap, yeah?

Nathan was specialized in artificial intelligence development in his past life. He was murdered because DarthVader. exe was scary, and other groups of people around the world shat their pants.

Nathan wakes up as the brother to Peter Quill, gets abducted by aliens at age eight along with Pete, where he spends eight more years with the Ravagers being a space pirate. Nathan is aware that he is part Celestial, and knows where the Power Stone is, so he splits from the Ravagers, and grabs the space rock, where he spends a while getting better with his Celestial abilities - using the Power Stone as a fuel source - then fucks off in his spaceship back to Earth. Nathan joins the Masters of the Mystic arts, and over a number of years, becomes a master himself, through the use of the Time Stone, and fighting off Eldritch Abominations.

Most important magic to remember he has, is the ability to shape his mindscape to grant a pseudo-perfect memory. He can't learn as effectively as, say, Dr. Strange, but it's close-ish. What would take Strange one year, will take Nathan two, and a normal person five.

Now, he's in Wakanda. Power Stone, and Magic Apple in his pocket, along with a propensity for munchkin-ing. He messed with the locals for a bit, before chillin' with Shuri.

Mr. Black Panther wasn't exactly happy about it all, but decided to observe the boy's interaction with his daughter, rather than continue trying to apprehend him.

Now, onward to victory and all that:

Ramonda, the Queen of Wakanda, had absolutely no idea what to think of their newest… Guest, or for that matter, where he kept getting all of his clothes. The boy had a change of clothes for every day he stayed, yet brought no luggage.

They were all either dated Asian monk robes, or western in style, to boot.

The child had invaded her family's home, on what she could only assume was a benign whim. The only damage that had been caused, was to the city proper, and done by members of the Border Tribe that minded the border - very on-the-nose naming sense by the way. Not young Nathan. Further, through the entire ordeal, there hadn't been a scrape on any of her citizens.

Speaking of; all of which damage had been mended overnight - by means that none could report. Almost as if the entire event was just a figment of their collective imagination. Well, aside from the rather large apple tree that now lived in the middle of one of their market paths, with branches so high off the ground, it was nearly impossible to reach the fruit. Further, the mere fact that the boy could still be found meandering the city, or with her own daughter in the lab, cemented the events in everyone's minds.

A little white boy was not a very common sight in this particular part of Africa.

He had been within the city for a couple months now, and had only befriended her youngest; talking and learning with her near consistently, all the while her husband stood vigil. In fact, after the beginning incident, her husband had stolen the boy away from her daughter's lab - once Shuri could no longer keep awake to continue, of course - and they held a rather lengthy discussion. The details of which, she wasn't privy to, as the King didn't appear to comprehend it very well himself, however it ended with lowered tensions and a tentative agreement to let the boy stay for a time.

The only detail she got out of that, was that a 'trade agreement' of some sort was reached.

That didn't mean that T'Chaka's advisors were quiet about the ordeal. They continued to bring up repeated demands to incarcerate, or expunge the boy from their borders as soon as possible, every morning. The king; however, had adopted a 'wait and see' attitude, but had put a guard on him. Her husband wasn't completely reckless.

Still, though. This was a lack of caution that surprised her. Something about the meeting he had with the boy garnered a smidgen of trust between the two, but for the life of her, she couldn't guess what that was.

The Border Tribe were particularly adamant, in that it was their duty to defend the borders, and keep outsiders out. This boy had run ramshod over all of that, and understandably, their pride had taken the hit. It didn't help that they were the ones that did all the damage within the city. Even the… what did her daughter call it? The Holographic Mirage Boundary? A pretentious mouthful, to be sure. Anyway, the illusive barrier that hid the city had visibly shattered in the section that the young Nathan entered through, but even that had been repaired in the mere hours that nobody had been paying attention to it.

The only thing the boy had done wrong, was trespass. An argument could be made for 'breaking and entering,' but the evidence for such had since disappeared.

The biggest fear her and her people had was the possibility that the child was after their most precious resource: Vibranium. He clearly had the ability to enter the mine, or the refineries without , and through conversation with Shuri, he was clearly aware of the legendary metal deposits, yet didn't show an ounce of interest beyond helping with her daughter's experiments, and even then, his focus was more on the technology itself, rather than the components of it.

Already, the fruits of his stay had begun to sprout. Her daughter was the happiest she had ever seen her; having the use of another educated mind as a sounding board. From what she could tell, the boy was extremely skilled with certain aspects of technology - specifically a sort of subliminary logic language that her daughter used to make her toys perform their fantastic tasks. He was apparently teaching her how to create something called an 'Artificial Intelligence.' She, herself, was entirely dumbfounded with the concept, but she could not argue the results of these efforts.

Already, some of what they learned together was being used to treat some of the common injuries that the hunters sustained.

Currently, she watched from the sidelines as the two in question reviewed a large pile of medical texts in her daughter's lab. Every table and surface to the left side of the lab, was covered with something related to the biology of the human body. Microscopes and petri dishes, tissue samples, hair follicles, blood, and various vials of chemicals that liked to change color or bubble when something was added to them. Every surface to the right, was covered with computer components, soldering irons, Kimoyo beads, heaps of notes, and about seven different computers, all compiling different bits of code, or moving through massive databases for something called "Machine Learning."

The Queen of Wakanda was completely out of her depth when she visited her daughter's lab, but… she was worried. This boy was too much of an unknown, regardless of the good that he was currently bringing about. He had hidden technology that let him teleport, grow apple trees in an instant, avoid her nation's best warriors without taking or imparting a scratch, and a blasé attitude towards the invasion of her home.

He was both a positive and negative influence, and there was very little she or anyone in her country could do about it. Being the Queen, she had much influence, but very little power in her own country. She could only trust her husband's judgement.

Sighing, she settled herself further into her seat next to the two Dora Milaje warriors that watched the boy like hawks, letting her daughter's laughter and joy wash over her.

A Flat in London...

She was still hungry.

Well, she was always hungry, so that was nothing new. It didn't matter how much she ate, her stomach would never be satisfied. It was starting to affect her. Everywhere she looked, she just saw more food.

An average of twelve larger meals a day just wasn't cutting it anymore, and it was getting kind of difficult to hide it all from her neighbors. Nice people, the Clarke family. And gee could Mrs. Clarke put a yummy pork belly roast together…

She shook her head and slapped her cheeks with both hands. "No! Bad! You just ate, girl. You've got more control than that!"

She needed a distraction. She couldn't afford to add more to her appetite just yet. Once she puzzled out some more of her Father's technology, she could try for a few bigger… requisition missions without using her abilities, but until then she had to keep it low. The more she used her Father's abilities, the more her tummy rumbled, and the more her tummy rumbled, the less she could restrain herself.

A self-destructive cycle, if there ever was one.

The best way to get out of that cycle was to use tech instead of her powers wherever possible, but the process of getting that tech up and running was proving difficult while balancing her caloric needs.

Up until recently, she had made due with some prototype particle converter tech that she pieced together a few years back. They were useful in converting large amounts of biomass into something edible on the sly, but they were not the most efficient tool for the job. Over the past few months, she figured out the designs for a new set of 'utensils' from the vast stores of knowledge in the cosmic database that she called a brain, but she didn't have the tools, nor skill necessary to build the darn things just yet without using her powers, and if she used her powers to do it, she would end up too hungry to think straight half way through, and probably just eat the planet whole to stave it off. Which, if it wasn't obvious, was something she abhorred… not to mention the logistics of it. Her mouth wasn't that big.

However that was a future problem. Now? She needed a distraction.

"TV." She stated with determination, standing up to walk over to her living room. She lived in a decently sized London flat, having just moved from France; her purple beret sitting pretty on her coat rack as a reminder of Paris. She would have to move again in about six years or so. People had started to ask why a girl her 'age' didn't seem to grow past 20. No doubt that trend would continue.

Though that was a worry for later. Something to think about if she hadn't given up by then and turned into something resembling her Father.

She pouted, grabbed the poor remote with a vengeance, and flipped on the TV. "You're better than him, girl. Don't think like that."

"-right, so now that's in the oven, we can move on to the sau-"

The remote flew from her hand, putting a crater in the TV; remote embedded in the screen.

Seething, she stood there for a moment, and gave out a strangled whine before collapsing down on her sofa and putting her head in her hands. "Darn Food Network."

How long had he been in Wakanda? A couple months, now? It felt like a couple weeks, but he hadn't gone through this much progress in so little time since he'd had his hands on the Time Stone. It was screwing with his inner calendar.

Shuri was an absolute monster. Her brain picked up concepts the very first time they were shown, she asked all the right questions with the information she had available to her, and she was by far the more efficient of the two of them at drawing all needed connections between the current problem and even the most obscure nugget of information. She had damn-near perfect recall, or maybe even an eidetic memory, and was able to use all of it at a moment's notice. All that, along with the motivation to put it to use.

Without any magical assistance - like with what Nathan had been pulling out of his ass.

That made for one scary little girl.

A few days ago, he had gotten her to explain the nuclear reactor that she put together when she was, what? Six? Seven? Something like that. She was ten now.

Fuck, this girl was crazy.

As a side note, he spent a couple hours one day just looking around for T'Challa, the future king and Black Panther, but the man was apparently just not home. Asking Shuri about it would have probably been weird, as how the hell would he know that she had a brother? So he settled for a bit of a leading conversation with her; "Why's a ten year old in charge of the science department, anyway? Oh? You're the King's daughter? Must be lonely. I hear royalty is held to a higher standard. Oh? A brother that keeps you company? Where is he now, then?"

Turns out the twenty-four-year-old had been off at college for the past few years. Currently, the man was at Oxford pumping out a Masters in Engineering, and planning on going for gold in a Ph.D in Physics. He even had a habit of staying on for summer and winter classes, trying to get through his full education as fast as humanly possible. After getting his Bachelor's, he told his family that he was just going to hunker down for a few years. "See ya then!"

Shuri wasn't exactly happy when she mentioned that, but apparently having Nathan around was bringing her back out of her shell.

Nathan didn't know how long he was staying, so he didn't even know if he would meet the man while there.

Well, whatever.

All in all, this had been an incredibly productive little trip already. He was learning more about biology than he ever had in both of his lives, allowing for a deeper dive into cell structure and behavior, nervous system pathways and impulses, muscle and tissue reception to stimuli, and even the chemical reactions that make up hormones and emotional responses.

Granted he only had the time to touch on those things so far. By no means could he say that he had actually learnedanything of use yet, but he was well on his way to put his own body back together via Celestial Energy if the need arose.

Seeing Ego do just that in under two minutes in that one move was just too much of a cheat. Doing so directly after being crushed to paste? He had to have it.

Ego's brain; however, was not actually in that body, though. Meaning that if he wanted to be his father's equal in that regard, he would need a lot of time, a lot of knowledge, and a metric fuck ton of bullshit.

Not to mention figure out a way to retain his sense of self if he was nothing but a puddle of goo on the ground.

That was a sticking point.

Then there was the other cool shit that he found himself surrounded with. In particular, his shiny new bracelet that Shuri was so proud of.

Kimoyo beads were relatively new. As of this moment, they weren't useful for much other than communication. Each bead was specifically made for one of a number of purposes; over-air speech - so basically a cellphone in a bead, holographic display projector, 3D spacial mapping and interface - to let you interact with the holographic displays, and power sources.

Shuri had a number of ideas for future uses and tech to stuff into the half-inch beads that she hadn't had the time to implement just yet, but progress was being made. Nathan's own presence was helping it along nicely, as he had a wealth of experience with alien technology - having been a space pirate technician/mechanic, and the only currently living human that had made an artificial intelligence of whatever sort. That he knew of, anyway.

He had the experience in working with nano-scale tech that was required to squeeze something that should have been the size of a car in 2004, into one of Shuri's beads, and he had the software developing prowess to match military-grade code from thirty or so years in the future.

Well… he wasn't sure how that would match up with whatever Stark would put together, but as far as Moore's Law was concerned, he was unfairly ahead of the curve.

Then there was the absolutely magical material known as Vibranium.

Oh boy.

Everybody was doing their damndest to keep him away from the stuff, even though he made no moves to acquire any. Well, the tech in the lab that was powered by it, or used it as a component was pretty much always within touching distance, but in regards to that, the King had been very precise in his wording when he'd told both Shuri and him that experiments and testing in regards to the capabilities of the legendary metal was to be postponed until Nathan had left, or was proven trustworthy.

That's not to say that they couldn't usethe stuff for purposes that they already knew the effects of, but even then, the quantity and purity of the samples had been reduced to disallow him access to the good stuff.

Nathan didn't even blink when that conversation came about. He just nodded and replied that it was a reasonable demand. Of course, he had already scanned the atomic structure of it, and could create a sizable chunk of the purest form of the metal if he was given an hour or so.

The abilities of a Celestial were just… marvelous.

In fact, he had already done so. If one looked closely and compared the Nathan from two weeks ago to how he looked today, they would notice that one of the rings on his left hand was no longer a reddish-gold color, and now sported a silver tinge.

Of course, that was a bit hard to do, as he had layered a small illusion over all the jewelry on his body. What child would walk around, completely decked out like a Hindu deity? That would just be weird. Only another practitioner of the Mystic Arts, or beings of power would be able to see through it without help. No, he kept none of it visible. His Kamar-Taj robes were strange enough, thank you.

After that first day spent… enthusiastically exploring Wakanda, T'Chaka had pulled him aside; something he was totally expecting, considering that the man had glared at him the entire time that he had been speaking to his daughter. The conversation itself wasn't as harrowing as he had expected, mainly because of the mild hypnosis he had casted during his chat with Shuri.

It wasn't anything bad, but it did seem to make the man a bit more agreeable during their conversation. Honestly it was a total bitch and a half to make him succumb to it in the first place, as he had some pretty major resistance to Eldritch Compulsion. It was only when he started using Celestial Energy to power the spell that it took hold, and it was only the four hour conversation with Shuri that gave him the time needed to make the spell subtle enough to fall under his notice.

It was only because of the compulsion that he was able to avoid the topic of his 'invasion,' and convince the man that he should be allowed to stay, making the sincerity in saying that he meant no harm to Wakanda, be taken as a good enough reason.

If he had lacked that sincerity, the compulsion would have failed. The man's resistance was freaking ridiculous for a human. Of course that was most likely because of the Heart Shaped Herb, or Bast's 'blessing' or whatever, but come on! Nathan was a Master of the Mystic Arts!

Well anyway, the conversation ended in a trade agreement that had Nathan imparting his technical knowledge into Shuri's ten-year-old brain, helping her with her inventions, staying far and away from pure Vibranium, and he, himself, learning biology using Wakandan resources to the best of their ability to teach.

Yup. Just biology.

Granted, he was still going to pick Shuri's brain on getting Alice up to snuff, as well as get her equivalent up and running for Wakanda's own purposes, and he had already memorized the atomic structure of Vibranium, so that part of the agreement was moot - unknown to the King. So Nathan was honestly getting more out of this than they were out of him.

Probably.

AI's were pretty freaking cool, and introducing them to Wakanda might boost them to an entirely different level sometime in the future, but whatever. He could make Vibranium now. So there.

Speaking of, Vibranium was by and large the most spectacular find he could have ever hoped for. It surpassed each and every one of his expectations to the nth degree.

The singular ring he had on his finger took all of the energy that he had stored in the rest of his jewelry to make, with only the tiniest sliver left over, but it could store an ocean's worth of the stuff with an efficiency of use outside his body that outshone even Orichalcum.

One little ring.

Ocean of energy.

What the fuck.

Four years later...

Nathan had been having an absolute blast. He finally had been able to start working with Alice again a couple years ago; getting the budding artificial intelligence started on her way up to maturity. Of course, he had to go to his underwater spaceship back in the Bay of Bengal to get her, but that only took about a half-hour or so. Just enough time to portal into the cockpit, download all her files to one of his Kimoyo beads on his bracelet, and portal back. Leaving none of Wakanda the wiser.

Shuri was a godsen-... Panther-send? Bast-send? Whatever, she was way smarter than he was, and had been pointing out fallacies in the AI's code, and implementing new and improved functions for the entire time he had been there. Alice was nearly complete, and he couldn't be happier.

They hadn't yet turned her on, but damn was he looking forward to it.

On the next order of business, Nathan's studies on the human body had also come to a culmination, in both the spiritual, and physical planes. Don't worry, it's not as stupid as it sounds.

The magical, now sixteen-year-old had been memorizing biological structures and their functions for the past four years, and now knew precisely what each cell in his body could, and would do. The only exception to this was his brain. It was simply too complex of an organ to fully understand the inner workings of, but that didn't stop him from learning all about how it worked. Meaning how the synapses fired, basically. He knew the structure. He knew the core elements of the organ's ability to function. However, he still didn't know why it did what it did, nor did he understand the patterns.

Once he figured out that even Shuri was having a difficult time with it, though, he switched gears and focused on the easier bits. The cheeky little fourteen-year-old was embarrassed about finding something difficult. Took him a week before he figured out that she was just bullshitting through all his questions.

The whole goal in learning biology started with just wanting to heal himself better if the time ever came that he needed it. Maybe learn how to be the cleric of the party and be the god of first-aid for everyone else, too. He hit a bit of a snag on that last bit, though.

Shuri got a papercut once. One that she didn't even notice, as absorbed in her work as she was, and this was directly after Nathan had fully figured out the structure of the dermal layer of tissue. So, naturally, he slinked some of his energy towards the girl in an attempt to fuse it back together. He'd done the same for himself to test it just before that, so he had no reason to believe it wouldn't work. However his energy didn't sink into her like he was expecting it to; like it had for every other material he had come across.

After testing it on some rats and other critters, he came to a conclusion that he should have totally figured out way before this.

His Celestial Energy could only affect something other than himself that didn't have active Chi. Everything that lived had active Chi. Meaning that he would have to drain any given wounded area of it before he could piece the cells back together. This in of itself wasn't impossible, but it was a bit far out of his current abilities, as he would have to hold back another person's inner flame, which would effectively kill the drained cells in the first place, while rebuilding them structurally. Then, he would have to slowly guide the other's Chi back into the affected area, so as not to oversaturate the still dead cells with pure life force.

He did that once with a rat. It got cancer.

Anyway, he went into this just wanting to not die, but then he remembered something; or rather, someone.

Wolverine.

Nathan was able to create and change matter at a whim. Small scale, currently, but he could essentially create or change anything given enough time. OK, yeah, with the exception of other living things, for the moment, but it didn't stop him from being able to change himself.

Alright, so what would be the potential problems of this? What were the problems that Wolverine faced? Magneto was probably the biggest, but what about the biological problems? Metal bones would prevent growth. OK, that's not particularly good, but if he spent an hour or so every week to stimulate said growth, revitalize the cells in his body, and manually grow his own bones, the harmful effects of that can be mitigated.

What next? Weight. Metal was heavier than bone. Would his tendons, ligaments, and other connective tissue be able to support it? Well, yeah, probably. Obviously, he would be doing this with Vibranium, and that particular metal was about as heavy as Titanium, which has been used in bone-related surgeries for a while. He would have to beef up his muscles a bit to help support the extra weight… OK, that just opened up some other bullshit doors. Could he artificially boost his muscle structure to get stronger?

OK, next. Bone marrow is what produces the blood in the body, so that has to be retained. If he remembered right, there were a few different explanations for how Wolverine's bones had been grafted with Adamantium. The first was full-on replacement with a solid structure. That's not possible, so no. Next was super-tiny concentric 'rings' of the metal that just coated the surface of the bone, while allowing the porous structure to secrete blood into the system correctly. That works, but seems a bit flimsy, comparatively. Good fallback plan.

Finally, there was a bit of a play on the first option. Something he remembered reading was called 'Adamantium Beta.' Basically, they performed the first operation on wolverine; completely fusing the metal into his system. However, Wolverine being himself, and his regeneration ability being total bullshit, the blood in his marrow slowly bored through the nigh indestructible metal, creating the exact same porous nature of natural bone, but with the sturdiness of Adamantium.

Alright, last problem. Wolverine suffered from something called Adamantium poisoning, where even with his regeneration ability, it was slowly killing him. Held back almost indefinitely as it was, it was still a real threat. There aren't too many metals that can safely interact with the inner bits of the human body in large amounts. That's not to say that there are none, but was Vibranium one of them?

This is why we have lab rats.

A/N

So, first thing's first: I've joined a Discord server for writers. We bounce ideas around and have some fun with it all. There's not just writers though. A few lurkers, readers that just want to see what goes on in my/our head(s), or potential betas and artists. It's mainly weebs, and unabashed degenerates, but I'm there now, so... yeah. If you feel like giving it a shot, link's below. Just take out the spaces.

discord . g g / V54pcwA

Perspectives:
1) Romanda - Sorry if her bit sounds weird. I was trying to play with the speech patters that they use, and I'm not sure if I got it right.
2) ? - She's going to be fun. Can you guess who it is?

In alternate, slightly heretical news, I am attempting to summon a demon. Just to tack my name onto the shit we have to put up with in 2020. I have purchased a number of historical texts that might lead me in the right direction, as well as using a number of my college professors and colleagues as resources, but if anyone has experience with the super ancient occult, let me know. Actually, let's call this 'research', so I can write a better magic caster. Nathan will impart the true knowledge.

I don't need a new asshole. The one I have works just fine, so please don't rip me a new one with your crappy insults. However if you have actual constructive criticism, I will gladly accept it. If you don't know the difference, you don't have to say anything at all.

Please review! Even if it's just a word or two, I would like to know what you think.