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buckybarnestales · 3 months ago

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{African Storm}

The hour was approaching mid-afternoon when Steve and Selina made their way towards the edge of the forest. The thick canopy of trees shielded them from the wrath of the sun. The dip in temperature, however, alerted them to the fact they were closing in on the lake; on the Gorilla Tribe that had not only devastated a peaceful Wakandan village, but also had taken the one person that mattered the most to them. Steve marched through the thickets and trees with a stoic look, his once calm and soft features now worn and battle-hardened after two years of living as a nomad and outlaw. His uniform that he once proudly wore as a symbol of liberty and peace with red, white and blue colors was now nothing but a faded shell. He was shield-less, but in no way unprepared as he felt the assault rifle shift against his back.

He spared a withered glance at his unlikely partner who moved with graceful steps, sporting a remarkable new set of vibranium gear that accommodated her cat-like aesthetic. "We're close. They won't hand him over unless we have them cornered." He said to her suddenly, quietly as their steps became methodical over a creek that led to a hill.

"This isn't my first rodeo, soldier boy," Selina gritted snarkily, as she effortlessly lowered down into a crouching stance with smooth traction of her tactical boots, conveying her acrobatic prowess; her dark coffee irises gleamed unwaveringly with brazen fire as the maddening dissonance of throaty barks and grunts ferally erupted from a parked convoy of South African military trucks, obviously stolen. She detected the parasitic stink of HYDRA wafting in the humid breeze-knowing that a serpent's nest had been disinterred. This was merely child's play of snatch and grab, a deviant smirked waltzed over the voluminous swell of her crimson lips, as she was prepared to engage the crosshairs, fully saddled down with an arsenal consisting of a Glock 19, Uzi submachine gun, and two of Bucky's Gerber blades and a flash grenade.

This was a hot spot for Black Market commerce, outside of Wakanda's outposts-including high-risk counterterror operations and execution grounds. Right now, they were remaining idle against the combustive war-zone. "These bastards are looking for a high pay grade, once the top seller enters their little circle, we move in and get Bucky to the clear, no exceptions…"

Steve was silently impressed with the Gothamite's strategic mind. From the stories Bucky had shared with him in the past, he knew that Selina Kyle was more than just a highly-skilled thief, but also cunning and highly dangerous given her alluring beauty and sharp cunning. His experienced mind couldn't help but draw comparison towards Selina and a certain spider he'd fought with for the past six years. In many ways, Selina and Natasha were alike given their acrobatic skill and dark past, but while Natasha was more reserved when it came to wearing her emotions; Selina used them as masks to deceive her enemies. It both fascinated Steve and made him wary as he found himself entering the field with her for the first time.

"Sounds like you've dealt with situations like this before?" He asked off-handedly as they slowly trekked their way up the hill; beyond the shrug of tears the gray of the cloudy skies became clearer. A gust of cool wind blew at them, ruffling their hair across their temples as they took cover. "But I'm guessing you're not used to having a partner, ma'am."

Hearing the sheepish resonance boyishly catch against his masculine timbre, Selina coiled the sleekness of her shoulders tensely."Let's make one thing clear, drop the damn boy scout act," she hissed back scatchingly, feeling a torrent of revulsion surge through her veins. Steve's unshakable vigilance was forthright, the hawkish intensity of his cool azure irises blazingly captured glimmers of the casting light over the becalmed river, as he clenched his bearded jaw, tellingly with the semblance of steeled defiance.

His lengthy tousled golden-blonde hair draped over his thickened nape; giving him a disheveled visage of untamed, ragged stallion—not reined by a master of command. She arrested him with an ireful glare before her intent focus piercingly returned to caravan vehicles. "I've never had much use for someone watching my back since I was the one that stabbed some in the dark, but that's how you survive in the shadows…" she murmured ruefully. "It's the only way to beat the dodge."

"There's strength in being united," Steve inserted with a dismal sigh. The weight of the Civil War still hung over his shoulders each time his thoughts reminded him of how fractured—how diminishing it felt to no longer have a united front against the forces of evil and corruption that threatened the world. There was a time his words had a profound feeling when he first told them to Tony, but now they tasted like bitter pills he had to swallow. He steeled himself from the skeptical look the brunette sent his way and remained unfazed despite her combative reception towards him. "Being in the shadows will only get you so far before you need to step into the open. When you do, you're gonna want to have someone beside you." He smiled tightly watching as she shrugged at his response. Team building was never easy, but he had dealt with more surly individuals back in his day. He and Selina were united if only in their common goal to save the man they both cared for.

"So what do you say? Are you ready to step into the light?" He gestured towards the area below them. Two meters ahead, there was an aura of dread surrounding a military encampment of South African mercenaries. Over two dozen men, highly armed and several of which wore furs shed from apes. Many of them traversed the encampment as they easily blended into the shrubs like predators laying in wait. Their camp resided near the shores of the lake, and in the distance, the unmistakable image of a cargo vessel was steering towards the docks.

Despite that, she understood the measured grounds of honor and loyalty, Selina preferred keeping her distance from Steve's virtuous-saintly proximity, he was chastened to his mortal threads; never trudging on the dark tracks of mayhem and insanity where rewakened demons highjacked the engine of fate-derailing your soul. He didn't face himself in the mirror, washing smears of blood that surged with discarded rage-or drown out nightmarish apparitions with a raw swig of whiskey-that slow burn was a satisfying paralytic. Scores of vengeance always had a high cost, when odds were stacked up; the only way to escape the inevitable crosshairs was to pull the trigger first. She needed to show him the ropes on how to become a gun in the shadow crossings undetected and explosive.

With a fluid twist of her delicate wrist, Selina daringly handed Bucky's unsheathed combat blade to him, her coffee irises held a speculative gleam against his palpable hesitance. She couldn't harbor on sentiment, not when their open window of chance of freeing Bucky was closing. Keeping herself balanced firmly on her haunches, her cool poise was defensive as she clenched her jaw, conveying her reined emotions. HYDRA wouldn't indulge in their victory of obtaining Bucky inside their sorcerous tentacles of docile conjuring; despite that, she was only a hairbreadth away from losing her shadow wolf.

The ground beneath her was faltering, and Steve was her convenient anchor of stability."You need to improve on your backyard toys if you want to play in the dark with me, Rogers," she purred coolly, the huskiness in her sultry undertone was heatedly laced with a terse challenge."Besides you're a jungle renegade now, it's time for a new style."

There was a moment of hesitation that crossed Steve's normally sure exterior. His azure gaze focused on the proffered weapon being insisted upon him as if he were being handed a bomb to utilize that could blow up at any minute. He was a soldier, one who fought with discipline and valor utilizing only his fists, shield and the occasional firearm. Knives were more personal when it came to spilling blood, stealthy and secretive; in a way they reflected the spirit of their wielders. Weapons of an assassin. Even as far back as he could remember during the War, Steve had never wielded a blade. When he led the Commandos on search and destroy missions against high-valued Hydra targets, it through Bucky's very own stealth and agility that saw a copious amount of those missions having succeeded.

Bucky took the missions that he couldn't. Captain America was a portrait of valor, honor, liberty and patriotism. America couldn't have its Golden Boy getting his hands dirty. Steve didn't realize till now that despite the passage of time, he still in a way avoided doing so when he had Natasha at his side. The Black Widow was just as deadly and efficient as his best friend and would rather add more red to her ledger than let a drop fall into Steve's. Selina Kyle wouldn't extend him that courtesy, and Steve couldn't fault her as she dangled the knife towards him. Too much was at stake, and he couldn't let his own timidness get the better of him.

"Jungle-renegade huh? Does that make me the lion and you the cat?" He asked with an amused twinkle in his eyes as he takes the knife, testing it in his grip. "Not really my style, but I'm a fast learner." He gives the knife a twirl between his fingers, feeling mildly assured when it smoothly returns to his grip. "Hakuna matada, then." He shrugged, watching as Selina's eyebrows raised at him, amused or just shocked he knew that reference.

Keeping herself impassively low under clusters of jungle verdure, a cast of annoyance flitted over the sleekness of her elfin features, unnervingly, Selina clenched her delicate jaw, her dark irises shimmered against the bordering shadow of her domino mask with the intensity of liquid bronze as she leveled him a trenchant glare, regardless. She had to compromise with impalpable trust–to some extent. In this present reality, the beast machine she loved was robbed of his humanity and barred inside an electrified crate–HYDRA's calamitous tantamount for servitude was becoming parasitic to scrape off, they had weaponized sorcerous elements to punish their captives–a nefarious rebirth–Bucky had been the first victim. She wouldn't abandon him. 'Hang in there, handsome…'

The decorous gap between her and Steve evoked unwarranted-raw tension as she unstintingly recognized the boyish pitch against the adamant resonance of his deep, masculine timbre. "If you're trying to impress a girl, lion boy. Yeah, it's not working…" she murmured irately with a hint of tease, conscious of her bridled sassiness. An onrush of adrenaline didn't ebb. It was her diesel to rev up the lethal ferocity she harbored against engage the kill zone. Merchants of the Black Market sought caged animals for profitable assets for the dealing rings.

"Those bastards are to going to haul Bucky's furry ass out of here if we don't crash their little dock party …" She gestured a leather gloved hand smoothly towards the direction of the guarded shipping port. "I'm going to break our sniper wolf out and you need to find a dance partner…"

"We need to take out their sentries first. The moment they spot us, they'll raise the alarm, and we'll lose the element of surprise." Steve shrugged as his keen eyes observed the camp below. The Gorilla Tribe were an unsavory lot that once ruled a vast portion of Wakandan territory before they engaged the Panther Tribe in a long bloody war that saw the latter tribe victorious. The Gorilla tribesmen were stripped of their lands and wealth but hadn't changed their plundering ways as they frequently preyed upon the surrounding villages.

Though ruled by greed and power like most common mercenary factions, they practiced a militant ideology that bellied the belief that only through war could mankind evolve. It, of course, attracted them to the likes of Hydra, AIM, Leviathan; every evil entity that sought to destabilize the world, so they could control it. Bucky was just another tool to them to utilize, but also something they would not give up easily.

"If T'Challa's info is accurate, and I'm betting it is. They'll have stragglers hiding in the bushes just outside of those two outposts. I'll take them down, you get to the overseers, so they won't raise the alarm." He gestured his finger towards the two crude looking watch-towers that were no more than fifteen feet high. The guards idled about with assault rifles in hand keeping a lookout, but there was a blind-spot to their three-o-clocks where Selina could easily surprise them from. "We should have a clearer path to Bucky and it'll buy us time before they try to rush him to that freighter closing in."

"Then we better hurry," Selina echoed back coaxingly the husky smokiness of her undertone breached Steve's ears as his azure irises flashed down at the Glock cradled effortlessly in her rigid clutch; with a devious pulse riding through her veins, her lithesome weight shifted balletically on chrome stiletto heels, the sleekness of tone muscle underneath her neoprene layers coiled that he instantly recognized as controlled poise of leashed ferocity. They had the umbrae of long-leaves surrounding the dock to stealthily conceal their advancing momentum."Keep yourself low in the dark spots …" she frostily mirrored his leveled stare under blonde tresses with the clashing intensity of a lightning strike. "Don't even think about playing nice with these armed brawlers, Brooklyn boy…."

"Like you said, Miss Kyle, "this isn't my first rodeo"." He reminded with a friendly quip. In a matter of seconds, the gentle gleam in his eyes was replaced by a harder intensity. His jaw tightened beneath the patches of bearded stubble and he was every inch the Captain he was born to be. The anticipation of the rescue mission they were undertaking hadn't wavered and it allowed him to keep a close observation on both the lower patrol moving through the shrugs and the sentries on the guard tower. Both assortments had become momentarily taken by the noise of the approaching freighter, which left them effectively blind. "They're distracted. Move out." Steve gave her a curt nod before he turned on his feet and crept through the field, disappearing into the thicket of trees and bushes without a sound.

He found his first hostile no more than fifty feet inbound; a Gorilla Trible mercenary carrying an old AK-47 assault rifle with practically no body-armor on his proud athletic form. Steve had a hand wrapped over the mercenary's mouth and the second driving a vicious fist into the man's head with unrestrained might. He was out in an instant, the rifle and his body falling into Steve's arms. If there was one advantage he counted in his and Selina's favor, it was that these Gorilla Tribe warriors apparently didn't have access to Wakandan technology. No vibranium weapons, nor equipment. They were on an even level, but Steve still counted the element of surprise in his and Selina's favor.

"Well, I guess it's time to spoil their fun with Shuri's new toy," Selina murmured coolly, rolling her thumb deftly over a Kimoyo bead chain fastened securely over her wrist. She owned the feisty and ingenious Wakandian princess immeasurably for recalibrating the cerebral scourage of HYDRA's lobotomic and coercive methods that vitiated Bucky's traumatized-destructive subconscious. For a month after he awoke from a cryo-induced sleep, Bucky was given a free pass to indulge in life again without the hostile urges of the Winter Soldier ghosting with his heartbeat before HYDRA once again wrenched his humanity away.

As she remained poised on her haunches, Selina defensively braced herself against a voltaic thrum chasing her pulse as kinetic purplish energy haloed over her lense eared goggles with ultrasonic waves, in seconds the activated nanites converged over the sleek edges over her alabaster cheeks and curved under her delicate jaw, sheathing her kittenish-elfin features into a protective layering of black vibranium that formed into a feline mask-a panther's head.

"The princess knows how to treat a girl," Selina quipped snarkily, impressed by the practical effects of her new combative attire of modified neoprene- redesigned with the upgraded tactility of Shuri's innovative flare-bi weaved Kevlar meshed with vibranium to absorbed every nano pulsation of retrieved energy that contrasted over the sleekness of charcoal-black material. It was prototype tactical suit—distinct from the Panther Habit that King T'Challa wore-a feminine variant of the Black Panther. With a tensed flex of her gloved hand, razor-edged alloy claws reactively extracted out from her Kevlar fingertips, as she cunningly fixed her lethal intent on the convoy vehicles.

With a resurge of desperate momentum to free her captive sniper-wolf from the damn cage before he was loaded onto the docking cargo vessel; leaflets slashed over her mask, as Selina quickly edged underneath the dense underbrush with her balletic advances while registering a masculine grunt as Steve explosively delivered powerful roundhouse kick directly into the mid-drift of a Gorilla mercenary. It was time for a test run with her new feline ensemble. They had to obstruct the sorcerous-occultic raid of HYDRA before more lives underwent their merciless vivisection of humanity."Let's see how well it can dance..."

"Fourth hostile down," Steve whispered into his com-unit as he rose to his full height over the dispatched mercenary. He acted quickly to turn off his radio; if his tribe leader checked in, his unanswered transmission would no doubt reveal the location of the downed mercenaries. Steve mentally counted the total remaining hostiles in the area as he made his way further towards the clearing where the guard tower loomed ahead. Just beyond was a small encampment with equipment and cargo being assembled. The gated enclosure wouldn't be a problem to get past, but the same couldn't be said of the two sentries posted at the top of the towers. They'd see him coming a mile away, even with his enhanced speed. "I've got a visual on the sentries and the last patrol guard. Are you in position?" He spoke quietly, hidden in the shrub of weeds as he waited for Selina to eliminate the two sentries.

"I'm where I need to be, soldier boy," Selina retorted staunchly, keeping herself low-undetectable as she advanced gracefully closer to wooden cross beams of the tower's lower structure, gripping onto the edge with a subtle drag of her vibranium claws, as she fluidly with practiced ease, hoisted her svelte weight up with balletic momentum and elegant precision of her innate feline graces; locking her shoulders until she half-flipped onto a support beam and effortlessly started her climb.

The resurge of raw adrenaline was electrifyingly lethal in her veins, as kinetic energy reactively traced every shift of movement, converging with the flexibility of her enhanced neoprene suit. Arching her ample chest swiftly, she became honed like an unwavering blade and executed a front aerial flip as her sleek-tone legs scissored in unison with acrobatic trajectory without breaking her cadence of stealth until her "sneaker" boots grounded her into a feline crouch on the wooden barrier of the tower's lookout deck."Now, do you expect me to keep my claws out of the dance?" she purred teasingly, poising her gloved hand with intent to slash her marked target."I can only play nice up here for so long..."

In a conscious reaction of heightened sense in the wake of an octane rush, with a semblance of fierce ease, Selina torqued up her slender abdomen with a slow arc, daringly, the curves of her hips tilted to deliver an explosively propelling high- crescent kick mercenary's padded torso as he reeled back with a pinched grimace etched over his dark features.

"I'm sure it must be getting dull," Steve couldn't help but chuckle dryly at that as he watched the two sentries become overcome by an invisible force in rapid succession. In the years he'd known Bucky and Natasha, he'd heard many stories about the way Selina Kyle worked in the field, and the former captain couldn't help but find her banter, wit, and efficiency to be an oddly refreshing experience. Somehow, he knew he shouldn't expect anything routine when working with her. In a way, it felt like getting into a heap of bad trouble with a younger friend or sibling. It had been a long time since he'd felt like that.

"Keep a look out and tell me if you got eyes on Bucky." He panted worriedly from his hiding place. He kept a close eye on the last guard circling the perimeter just in front of the makeshift security gate the mercenaries had erected. He appeared oblivious to Selina's intrusion until a glare from the sun forced him to avert his attention towards the west-end of the encampment. A moment passed before the guard appeared to realize the other patrols weren't making their rounds.

Steve calculated the odds of the guard's next move as if they were his own, and that would be to reach for his radio. "I think the guard just got spooked. I'm moving in." Steve rushed across the perimeter with break-neck speed, a small gust of dirt kicking up on the wind as his steps carried him fast across the area. The guard spotted him just as he received a crushing fist to the skull. "Last one down."

Vaulting quickly over the railing with predatory grace channeling through her veins, without a stalled breath, Selina landed on her boots without breaking her grounded stance. In a fluid pivot of her measured footing, she drove her gaze searchingly under the mask lens, fixing all intent on shipping crates aligned close to the dock's edge-a convergence point. Harnessing restraint over her impulsive urges of blinding speed, she remained impassive, using elemental instincts to unerringly steer her into the right direction of her captive beast machine. Then, she found a tarp draped over a smaller crate on a flatbed trailer. "There you are, handsome..."

The rush of adrenaline Steve carried coupled with his enhanced agility was enough for him to vault over the fifteen-foot-high fence and land gracefully on his feet just beside Selina. He half-expected an alarm to sound due to the hastiness of their sudden arrival. He was instead stricken by an increase of surprise and wariness as he watched a large portion of the Gorilla Tribe aimlessly carry on with loading shipping crates full of what he assumed to be smuggled weapons and captured specimens from the jungles to be used as experiments. His soldier-instincts took him to a safe enclosure, hidden behind a patrol jeep while Selina suddenly phased into visibility right beside him. Steve had to control himself not to flinch with surprise at her sudden appearance.

"Do you see him?" He asked her quietly, noting the stricken and focused look on her normally nonchalant features. She meant business and there could only be one reason for that.

"Now that's the million dollar question isn't," Selina derided snarkily, her impassive whole countenance beneath the mask shifted darkly like a twist of a knife in shadow, keen and attuned slash- she was utilizing her guarded sentiments for charades-playing without missing a beat in those variant contrasts.

She watched him reactively set his bearded jaw into a stern clench, evident to the determined ferocity of his azure irises-echoes of steeled conviction that valiantly gleamed with raw intensity. He didn't waver against her challenging intent as clashing gazes held, she practically felt the innate heat lancing through her veins; it was surprisingly arresting to discard. Tactfully, she gazed at the mercenaries-their faces operationally concealed beneath balaclavas as they hitched up chains over the bolted hooks on the crates that housed sedated animals. She recognized the banking intent to race into the crosshairs-to mirror the same cadence of an impulse of delivering a storm.

During her latest infiltration stint in Moscow, Selina had acquired the familiarity of HYDRA's underground deal-trading of military powered ammunition-full metal jacket caliber rounds of AK-47 sniper rifles and a stockpile of bulletproof vehicles deceptively adorned with the facade of nonmilitary models. Now, the serpents were targeting various animal breeds for high-profit sectors, testing biochemical infusions laced with contagious phages or measuring the blast range of their enhanced designed weapons.

Their escalating avarice for control was unstoppable to derail-Bucky was a hostage of amorphic sorcery, just a victimized slave for them to expose of once his reluctant usefulness was served for HYDRA to regain a foothold of world order. She didn't want the blood of these barred animals-souls to shed in the venomous tentacles of the demonic phalanx of wartime extremists. Wakanda was a black-site of nanotechnology to harvest out, to invent pernicious technology-nanophages wielded to destroy lives under a hailstorm of mass-hysteria.

Clenching her jaw, derisively, Selina gestured a clawed hand to the flatbed truck's unguarded direction."They're keeping our moody sniper wolf in that one, we have to break him out before he gets stacked in with the others..."

Tension coiled in Steve's shoulders, an invisible weight settling onto him that came with the burden of choice and consequence in the field of battle. In times past, he had to prioritize the rescue of civilians and high-valued military personnel. The safety of those fighting with him would always remain at the forefront of his mind, regardless of the mission orders and directives. Selina appeared unconcerned about the how tactically outnumbered they were. Her sole focus was on the cage that held the man they both cared for. Alone or with a force backing her, there would be nothing stopping her from moving across that field and freeing Bucky. Steve knew how she felt, this, after all, wouldn't be the first time he rushed into the Lion's Den to rescue his best friend.

"Okay, here's what we'll do." Steve panted as a tactical plan formed in his strategic mind. It wasn't an ideal approach, nor the best one, but it would have to do given their limited numbers and how little time they had to improvise. His steel blue eyes focused in on the dock-crew loading the crates with air-hole that undoubtedly held captured animals. At least a half-dozen with only two armed guards standing at the deck. "The outer perimeter is stocked with shipping containers which would make a two-pronged assault effective, and give the illusion of greater numbers. I'll lead them further out towards the vessel, giving you a clear path to Bucky while they're distracted. See those fuel drums near the deck?" He gestured his chin towards the rusted barrels that sported biohazard symbols.

"All I need is one stray shot to ignite the deck. If you find a shot, take it."

The semblance of command that was edging in his sonorous, adamant timbre felt unwaveringly intrusive, Steve was a steel-hearted warrior incarnate; virtuous and indomitable to engage the crosshairs with no visage of stunted resilence in the unstoppable momentum of his advancing stride. Harboring true grit anchored him to stow back his breaching emotions, Steve emanated a fierce aura of valor, since he was dismantled from his uniform-shield-everything felt exceedingly stacked against him by the extension of a grievous choice that was forged on the chilled floor in the Siberian missile silo.

He ultimately chose to walk away with Bucky slumped against him, never looking back at his distant reflection in the red-tinted alloy. The Sentinal of Liberty was a discarded memory of hope-freedom blighted and axed down by the Accords. Princess Shuri told him that was living in a half-spirit existence, straying in shadowed depths of regret and unwarranted heartbreak. Selina understood the measured extent of his irrevisable choice of throwing down his shield; it was the cost of friendship-brotherly love that stoked him to give everything up for Bucky. Nodding with deft compliance to his order, she easily removed the trigger guard on her Glock and returned, deviously to her intent. "Now those are words I can follow, soldier boy..."

Relief that they were on the same page helped to put Steve at ease despite the tingles of anticipation that still covered him. The freighter was already pulling into the docks. He wasn't certain what sizeable force was stationed on it, or how well equipped they were. But they couldn't afford to let Bucky slip through their fingers. If they let him get taken onto that ship, they ran the risk of never seeing him again—of Bucky being turned into something even deadlier than The Winter Soldier was. The terror Steve felt at that possibility threatened to overwhelm his discipline, but he stowed it away with a determined look. After everything he lost and sacrificed to save his friend, he wouldn't lost him—not again. Giving Selina a resolute nod, he shuffles towards the edge of their jeep.

"Let's get our Bucky back," he said loud enough for her to hear, and for himself to leap into action. His quick steps and long legs carried him a far distance across the camp until he disappeared into a maze of containers.

"I guess that's my cue," Selina tersely quipped with an instinctive response of her feline momentum, she gunned her pacing stealthy advances closer to the flatbed chained trailer; the odorous stench of corrosive rust invaded her nostrils. An irate hiss threatened to breach her taut crimson lips under the mask; grounding her tactical stiletto heels into a half-crouch, she ducked low, her vibrainium claws extracted out, flexed to vicious slash at the bars caging the bulky, dark chestnut furred dire wolf-Bucky.

Doing her utmost to compose herself against a host of unwarranted emotions, Selina's lithe, curvaceous form surged up with cautious grace as the thunderous—percussive echoes of shipping crates tilting over adjacent from her position effectively disrupted the air-Steve was making a clear path for them. With balletic ease fueling in her attentive stance, her palm quickly clutched the edge of the trailer; feeling an electric pulse thrumming over her gloved hand. She recognized the raveled copper wiring that hazardously charged with a deadman's switch to deliver an instant stun to she brazenly slipped her hand through to that breach of reachable contact.

"Having fun in there, handsome," she murmured teasingly, the purring cadence of her husky undertone was intimately beckoning the unconscious captive to respond. Her white, purple- tinted lenses captured the heartbreaking reflection of a torn blanket draped over a laden massive canine form. She felt subtly unhinged from grappling onto measures of her innate control.

Her playful words were met with silence for a moment in the gloomy isolation of the shipping container. The interior was dark and lit only by the pale daylight entering through her point of entry. From what she could see, the floor was covered with electrical conduits that ran along the wall and towards the rear of the cage holding the massive wolf inside. The cinder-furred wolf groaned as he rose his head from off the floor, feeling the world spin around him as he struggled to regain his focus amidst the raging ache in his head. Stinging pain registered along his back, hind paw and frontal shoulder, the grievous reminder of his earlier attempt to attack the bars that held him caged and the consequence he paid for it. Somewhere through the murky waters that made up his dreams, he was able to latch onto that familiar voice that beckoned him from outside his cage.

"S-Selina?" He whined with a weak tone. His luminous blue eyes opened and gazed at a strangely clad female standing in front of his cage. For a moment, he thought he'd mistook T'Challa for her and felt embarrassment and confusion move through him. That was until he saw the saucy smirk curl across the exposed mouth of the cat-mask the woman wore. He wasn't dreaming, Selina had come for him. "Darlin' is that you?"

The grogginess tamped in his raspy timbre felt grated against her ears, Selina eagerly watched him slackly writhe underneath the blanket, his fore-paws brushed over the length of his canine muzzle, revealing the gleam of his fanged incisors as faint sconces of sunlight caressed his unkempt dark fur. After being tortuously separated-detached from each other since he was seized out of her reach...She craved for this moment, despite that he wasn't human-her Bucky.

An errant glide of tears strayed down the delicate edge of her cheek as kinetic energy pulsed to remove the vibrainium nanites sheathed over her alabaster features; her dark coffee irises gazed heatedly at him. Teeth gritted, Selina conveyed her bridled fury as she mirrored the dazed intensity of his blearing glacial orbs were staring up at her questioningly. "Yeah, I had a few upgrades with my style thanks to your royal friend..." she played to him, ardently.

The sedated wolf was mesmerizingly beautiful in the contrasts of light; dark menace and allure radiated over his thickened coat of chestnut with smoky cinder tinted the expanse powerful shoulders, his tousled mane had roguishly merged with his broad neck. His luminous orbs arrestingly gleamed a hypnotic fusion of ultramarine and crescent silver.

That depth was banking with feral intensity, amplified hostility was slaked down as his pointed ears flattened-a rush of visceral desire clashed between them, Bucky was tellingly urging to affectionately nudge Selina's lithe palm with his canine muzzle with a reverent caress, but the high voltage bars prevented that anchoring connection. She listened to him emitting out a soul-knifing whimper, pinching his eyes shut, he lowered his canine head sulkily over the heap of blankets."Do you want to get out of here, handsome..." she imploringly rasped.

"You both have good taste," Bucky complimented with sparkling blue eyes as he took in her new suit. Shuri was a heck of a tailor and no one wore that cat aesthetic better than his kitten. "I hope you got a plan darlin', because these guys won't go down easy. Their boss especially." Despite how much he wanted to sit still and appreciate Selina's new look, he knew they couldn't afford to. Not when they were still a hot-zone and the caged wolf couldn't help but wonder how she'd manage to sneak in here so far without being detected. "This cage they have me in, the bars are electrified. There's no way I'm getting out unless the generator its hooked up to is shut-down." He warned before she could get too close to the bars. His muscles trembled with anxiety, still feeling a phantom sting of pain that lingered after suffering against those bars so much until he learned to keep his distance from them.

"Let me worry about that, handsome," Selina played out slyly, with a smooth ease of nonchalance, she lifted her gloved hand up to the hazardous level the high voltage bars; the fluidic steadiness of her palm unwaveringly balanced the Kimoyo bead that captured into the glacial depth of Bucky's almond-slanted eyes, the kinetic pulse reflected in his black spaded pupils, as his furrowed brow instinctively conveyed tense awareness of her next move; inexorably time was running out on the knife-edge of desperation in warring unison. That fusion was tanking into something—explosive.

Incessant volumes of clamorous rapid-fire left concessive friction in the moggy air, she caught a fleeting glimpse of jungle fatigued clad bodies careening over stacked crates akin to ragdolls-crash test dummies; a dissonance of maniacal screams in Wakandian breached her impassive resolve as Bucky's pointed ears instantly spurred up to the direction of the ramming momentum of an unstoppable pace colliding into steel walls. A quirk of a kittenish smirk deviously traced over the voluminous swell of her carmine lips, this convenient partnership was being utilized seemingly well, as the crescendoing storm of combat ensued around them. "Besides, I have a powerful friend watching my back..."

"What…" Incredulous by what sounded like a small war occurring outside of the shipping container, Bucky was briefly left to wonder what she was talking about and who was powerful enough to put the Gorilla Tribe mercenaries on the ropes and down for the count. A familiar spectacle occurred as an armed hostile was sent flying into view from the opened door and landed flat on his back, his attacker unseen until someone came charging inside of the container like a quarter-back running for a touchdown. The dark blue uniform was a give away even if not for the dark blonde tresses that right now made his savior looks like a disheveled lion. "Steve?" The wolf whined with surprise. He knew it shouldn't have come as one, but it like always Steve never failed to impress. "And I thought I could make an entrance."

"Hey Buck," Steve panted offering his friend a warm smile as he came into step beside Selina. It was a fleeting gesture before the hardened exterior of The Captain morphed over his stubbled features. "We don't have a lot of time. They're confused and scrambling. We need to slip through while we can." With that, Steve marched over to the cage and wrapped his hands on the bars. Sure enough, the generator powering the electricity had been destroyed, making the task of Steve prying the steel bars open look as effortless as holding open a regular door.

Gravity was clashing increasingly between them, with her feline senses cunningly honed, with a flash of adrenaline imploding through her veins, bracing herself, painstakingly Selina clutched the Glock with the reactive firmness of her gloved hand; she felt subtle vibrations of encroaching boot steps of a bestial opponent-a predator that evaded their assault.

Balletically, Selina pivoted the traction of her heels, keeping her stance-poise guarded with, possessive tension evident in her sleek, toned muscles; she remained impassive in front of Bucky's opened cage. She needed to dredge up her instincts, not allow a pulse of reluctance to spawn through her-she was pinned down in a war zone, every combative -acrobatic tactic she cunningly harnessed was vital for to the extent of their survival.

A distinct vestige of fresh blood assailed the humid breeze, as her disheveled mahogany tresses flitted over her clenching jaw. Snarling under his breath, Bucky scrunched his canine muzzle up ferally, as Steve's hawkish azure irises unwaveringly chased a hulking shadow looming around the stacked crates. A rogue Jabari tribe warrior-T'challa had warned them about betrayal in the alliances, King M'baku had furiously exiled a few of his defilers after the venomous scourge of baseness tainted his mountain domain. They were about to engage the one called -Silver Back.

"Well, boys it looks like our dance isn't over," Selina deadpanned snarkily as her finger unerringly curled over the Glock's trigger lock at the fringe of a second, she registered the barking mantra viciously deafened against her ears akin to a challenging resonance of an aggressive gorilla.

"They're regrouping. We need move quickly before they realize we're short on numbers." Steve shrugged, forcing the cage open further until there was enough room for two people to enter. He felt no fear nor hesitation as he entered the closed space where the massive direwolf was chained to the floor. For his size and stature, Bucky appeared half bear and half wolf and were it not for the cool look in the canine's familiar blue eyes, Steve would've never guessed who he was. A pit of remorse formed in his belly as he noted the singed patches of fur coating his friend's back where he had no doubt been electrocuted. "You good to do some runnin', Bucky? You look a little frazzled." He asked with a calm look, yet his voice was full of concern.

At that, the wolf released a snort and slapped his tail against Steve's hand playfully.

"I've had worse than this Steve. Just as soon as you get me outta of these chains, I'll race you to the nearest coast. We'll see who's frazzled then." Bucky grunted back challengingly. The small levity was enough to reassure Steve, who smiled despite himself.

"Fair enough. Let's get you out of here."

A dark implosion of unbridled fury careened through Selina in a tempestuous wake, her dark bronze irises gleamingly intensified with liquid heat as she heartbreakingly gazed at the eroded chains that fastened her shadow wolf to remain immobilized. The murderous intent to force one of those Jabari brutes to choke on a bullet while the Glock's nozzle stole breath was becoming relentlessly unhinge.

Steve crouched down on his haunches with tentative ease in his grounded balance, as his leather gloved palm glided over the clunky rings, in a variant of seconds, he gnashed his teeth against the warring pulse of his enhanced strength in rapid unison, he fiercely yanked the chains off Bucky's slack furred limbs-giving the groggy dire wolf a clean break of escaping the crate. The ambient guttural roars of the advancing mercenaries blared like an earshot. "Move your ass, Barnes," Selina yelled bluntly, the huskiness of her tone was edging with a gritted seethe.

The moment he felt himself free of the shackles, Bucky lunge out of the cage at top speed. Steve and Selina were given no time to react before the direwolf launched himself up towards Selina and fervently began to nuzzle and lick her exposed cheek. It shouldn't have come as a surprise, but it was all the same an endearing sight as the wolf released soft whines and growls of affection. "Selina." His tail wagged excitedly, life and vigor returning to him with full force after what felt months of absence. Every waking moment of grueling torture and mistreatment was assuaged only with a belief that he would one day get to see his kitten again, and bask in her warm embrace. "Missed you."

Steve smirked good-naturedly at the scene, and Selina's reaction.

The underlying of the amorous resonance of his growly timbre became unnervingly irresistible for her discard, in a blurring rush, Selina desperately kneaded her gloved fingers over his thickened chestnut fur, tensely she forced back a breath. "James-" Snarling feverishly, Bucky instantly angled the heavy bulkiness of his canine form against the voluptuous swell of her chest, his massive fore- paws braced rampantly on her sleek thighs as she felt the ardent lapping of his tongue chasing her pulse until she was inadvertently floored by his thrashing weight-he evoked unrestrained -fiercer intimacy for them to ride out. Urgency strengthened in a crescendo. He was out of control. Gripping his mane with a rigid clutch, the arrowing precision of his long muzzle tangled her mahogany whorls, she effectively thrust him off with a taming flex of her palm."Settle down, handsome..."

"Sorry, Lina." The wolf grunted, yet the exuberant gleam in his eyes was enough to tell that he would do it again if they weren't so pressed for time and in hostile surroundings. Months of being caged and deprived of her company had increased the strength of his yearning for her and his irrepressible desire to maim and thrash the mercenaries that had taken him from her. "Guessin' we can catch up better later once we're outta here." At that, the wolf sent a pointed look towards Steve who beckoned them to follow with a wave of his hand towards the opened door. "You got a plan, Steve?"

"Yeah, I'll distract them and you and Selina run for safety." The former Captain said easily as if it were the most easy solution available despite the risk it posed to himself.

"And I thought I took all the stupid with me," The wolf snarked with a disapproving growl, unwilling to see his best friend risk himself so he could once again jump out of the fire.

"I'm sure there's more than enough to go 'round, Buck. Just follow my lead, we'll make it out of this." Steve huffed, squaring his posture as he sees a darkened shadow passing outside of the container. His bearded jaw clenched while his eyes turned to ice. In one fell swing, he slammed the opened door against a force of two mercenaries, sending them flying backward into the air. "Let's go!"

With a lightning-fast pulse of a raring heartbeat, Selina grudgingly followed the First Avenger's cacophonous lead with equal vehemence blazing her coffee depths, she bolted out of the shipping crate with Bucky dogging her fervent paces with changeable prowess in his paw-steps.

Aware of the drugging effects of the injected hypodermic paralytic that had been infused through his veins; turning her neck, Selina intensely gazed at the bulky dark wolf with echoes of anchoring urgency as his glacial orbs chillingly reflected feral light and steered him away from the clamorous staccatos of rapid gunfire as hailing bullets pitted over the metal crates they passed.

Selina promptly reactivated the kinetic energy of her vibranium stealth ensemble while they made their swift advance towards an array of stacked barrels. They needed to get out of the crossfire. Snarling grumpily, Bucky jutted his incisor fangs, scrunching his muzzle as he recklessly urged to gun his predatory speed towards his best friend. "Don't even think about, Bucko, you're not going Howling Commando on my watch..." she derided, knowingly.

Adjacent to their relatively concealed reposition, Steve's adamant-valorous measures of hinged restraint had inexorably morphed into a breakneck wake of animalistic rampage-ferocity with an unprecedented momentum of his combative graces against the guerrilla mercenaries barricading his reengaged path. The tumultuous raid of his enhanced-whipcord caliber was indomitable against the barbarity of the tribe's intent, fur hooded ripped and semiautomatics knocked out of hands as he slammed the edge of his own hand into a mercenary's throat like a blurring shadow before a revolver fired point-blank.

He was unstoppable was a raging bull, relentlessly driven by restoked aggressiveness with every intake of his breath; his clenched fists drove powerful-knuckled blows into armored Kevlar vests before explosively grappled down his dazed opponents, as his forearm hammer-locked one of their exposed necks. He astonishingly delivered a reckoning of pain that wouldn't ebb under the cast of his fleeting shadow as he propelled a haymaker sweep against an emptied crate; nothing was stowed back.

The mercenaries closed in on their small group like a swarm seeking to devour their prey. Steve was relentless in his defensive maneuvers, using the environment to his advantage as he kicked a jeep towards a flanking unit looking to gun them down. The impact had the desired effect and the former Captain did his utmost to ignore the screams that came with pain and loss of life. War was never without casualties and he would be remiss to think his hands would remain clean out here. His tactical thoughts played out their hazardous situation as if he were in a game of chess.

His focused honed in on an assault rifle coming perilously close to gunning down the distracted feline who was trading shots with her own opponents across the field. Without thinking, Steve struck the mercenary with a vicious upper-cut, disarmed him only to widen his eyes with surprise when a bestial roar shook the field. The mercenary screamed with horror as a five hundred plus pound Dire Wolf pounced on him and lashed at him with its paws.

"We have to get to the tree-line," Bucky growled, coming down from his kill though malice still dripped from his mouth with crimson drops from his kill.

The resiliently of Bucky's predatory attack of his undeterred reaction, his massive paws were cunningly poised to rear up his canine form with feral momentum onto a fur-garbed torso of his prey; threateningly brandishing a vicious semblance of unhinged menace, his curved fangs barred outward as his long muzzle dauntingly stretched to pierce into flesh-bone of unprotected shoulder. The incongruous assonance of bloodlust predominated in his stoking veins, Bucky readied to impel the extent of his slaying intent onto the advancing mercenary arrested in his sniper vision-this was only the first wave of tactical assault.

"Babulale(Kill them)... Mabavumele bazizwe amandla esizwe sentaba (Let them feel the might of the mountain tribe."

For a concussive moment as the Jabari mantra amplified into grunting of unison against another hailstorm of bullets ricocheting off the crates, gnashing his teeth, Steve single-handedly wrenched back a seized arm with a jerking twist as his forearm arced quickly to deliver an elbow strike into the mercenary's throat before he brutally grappled his opponent down with a swift under-hook flip and subdued him while ramming his fist into the guerrilla's skull-he was taking the fight to ground level.

In a measure of that rapid distance that was accelerating in clamorous volume, Bucky was vacuously drifting into a soporose thrall of the curse, his luminous ultramarine orbs flashed electrifyingly akin to a glint of lightning reflective on a drawn blade, those piercingly spaded depths pulsed livid hostility.

Knowing that her shadow wolf would cut loose to the inducement of aggression, Selina effectively squeezed the Glock's trigger back and executed a clear headshot with no grip of hesitance was prevalent in her gloved clutch, that ensued the wake of crimson mizzling out of reddening bead gouged into a wide-eyed mercenary's dark forehead. In a painstaking second, the armored guerrilla lifelessly collided with the ground in a jarring thud against the heaviness of his final descent.

Involuntarily arching her shoulders with feline poise, the sutures of her black vibranium suit highlighted kinetic purple, absorbing the straying pulses of energy, Seline rolled a Kimoyo bead towards a mercenary's furred garbed boot."Can't let you have all the fun here, Barnes..." she played out, kittenishly, anchoring the bulky dark wolf from the possessive convergence he was fringing into. "Besides when do I ever back out of a dance..."

Bucky would have responded with his own quip were it not for the blaring sound of an alarm being triggered near the port where the cargo ship was docked. The noise had its expected outcome. Over the chaotic mess they had found themselves in, the direwolf could see a dozen more mercenaries pouring off the freighter with high-caliber weapons. The Gorilla mercenaries were an exiled tribe, disgraced and separated from the old ways that their forefather practiced for generations. They looted and plundered from their own kind and sought to take control of the vibranium mines. King T'Chaka had been merciless when he cast them out into the wilderness where they had become mercenaries for hire, using a more archaic weaponry compared to the more advanced kind Wakandans were known for.

"We have company. A lot of em." The wolf growled, steeling himself as he, Steve and Selina fall back-to-back near a container that used as cover from a hail of gunfire. Steve appeared mildly winded yet overall unharmed as his eyes observed the numbers coming towards them.

"Kyle, you got a shot?" He gestured towards the barrels of fuel stacked near a wide array of cargo supplies at the docks. Their last chance to cause heavy damage and slip-away.

They were becoming outnumbered- the infectious aura of virulence was emanating from the Jabari brutes, chalky-white painted streaks of claw marks adorned over their corded expanse of bulging dark muscles; Selina's coffee irises painstakingly caught a glint of black iron projectile sailing over a crate with vicious force-a Kota blade— a tribal armament that she instantly recognized from a previous infiltration-thieving- stint within the British Museum. It was an ancestral blade designed like a raven's skull, aimed to pierce a throat in a scope of a targeted distance of a heartbeat.

As Steve's deep timbre of vigilant command faded out against onrushing torrents of adrenaline, with the fluidic swiftness of her practiced evades, Selina dipped low behind a corroded barrel as projected blade flitted the air with cleaving intent. Her choice of a hiding spot was being compromised. Tension around them was evolving-they couldn't risk another moment of formulating another strategy for triangulating a rapid exit-thrillingly racing into the enfilade blind was a breakneck gamble to stake.

The rendezvous point where Princess Shuri had stationed Wakadian's innovative aerial transport: Talon Flyer. As a mercenary wearing a carved gorilla mask, armed with an Uzi submachine gun came into their view, Selina deviously smirked. The crystalline intensity of Steve's azure irises held the chivalric surely of his unshakable promise for their limited escape as if they were positioned in trenches within a HYDRA minefield rigged to detonate under their feet."I guess these jungle boys want to have more fun, huh..." she purred, slyly.

As the grunting ceaselessly echoed, Selina lifted her Glock with smooth ease, bracing her forearm on her taut knee, her index finger readily curled over the trigger lock. Affectionately, with a measured pace in his encroaching paw-steps, Bucky shadowed behind her, with a smooth thrust, his canine muzzle lowered over her toned shoulder delivering tentative pressure while his incisor fangs deftly nipped errant mahogany tresses, brushing them off her feverish cheek, as she became suddenly jostled by the prick of his whiskers needling in her skin. The infusion of his thermal heat left a phantom wake of urgency. Damn, even as a snarky dire wolf, Bucky was still a charmingly defiant Brooklyn boy by instinctive contrast. "Ready to make some fireworks..."

"Take cover," Steve yelled the instant a shot went off from the barrel of Selina's Glock. A millisecond later, the impact and detonation of 40 gallons of HFO went off in a fiery explosion that shook the ground they stood on. The explosion it appeared was much more potent than they estimated as it set off a large quantity of ammunition crates that contained grenades. The wails and screams of mercenaries rang loudly in the vicinity, many of them were sent flying in multiple directions from the epic center of the blast. Steve watched as several of them fell to the ground dead from the impact of being pierced by shrapnel or other sharp objects in the area. The unlucky ones were running around, covered in fire and wailing in agony before they stumbled to the ground dead. The sound of gunfire slowly died out in the background of the encampment and Steve, Selina and Bucky felt a small measure of relief at the fact they might have just opened a window of opportunity.

"That's our cue," Bucky growled, the stench of sulfur and death made him feel nothing short of disgust as he viewed the carnage left by Selina's gunshot. He glanced over at his kitten to gauge her reaction. She appeared impassive and cool, a mask to disguise any signs of remorse that might linger beneath the surface.

The explosion deafened concussively with thunderous volume, blinding flashes converged whooshing plumes of ashy smoke into a thrusting firestorm; careening shards of metal descended around them. Breathlessly, while balanced on her haunches, Selina reeled back against an intense rush of heat as another ear-splitting blast ensued in the grating- sulphurous wake of barrels skyrocketing over the idling freighter.

Wet driblets of feverish heat glistened over her alabaster features, Selina remained crouched low, blinking out the faint smudge of crimson blearing her vision. Every lethal pulse of her forefinger, she fired spastically with blindfolded accuracy into the mass of smoke, doors blew up there hinges forcing Bucky jerkily lunged back as splinters of debris and shredded Kevlar rained over his brunette fur. A high pitch whimper distressingly resonated from the ensorcelled wolf as his furred ears drew back, Bucky thrashed fiercely against a container, his bushy tail curved low between his hind legs, conveying his unhinged instinct towards piercing sounds that gouged his enhanced hearing-everything was overwhelming to him. "Urgh..."

It was time to run.

Lifting his armored knee with straight-edge momentum, as errant blond tresses messily clung over the reddened gashes of his bruised temple, nodding with an urgent glint in his azure depths, Steve quickly executed a push-kick, hurling an obstructing crate into arcing flames-giving them a clear direction to run for the underbrush. With a tentative graze of her lithe palm, Selina threaded her clawed fingers in coaxing ministrations through Bucky's disheveled chestnut mane, steadying him down. "Let's see how far you can chase me, Barnes..." she beckoned, enticingly.

"Careful darlin'... This big bad wolf has missed his kitten, and he won't go easy if he catches her." The cinder direwolf said with a husky growl to his deep tone. His frightful reaction to the immense explosion appeared to have briskly melted away the moment he listened to Selina's coaxing words. His fangs glistened with small streaks of light, both silvery and crimson from his recent kill, but in his eyes there gleamed a mischievous intensity, a primal desire to rush through the trees and embrace the call of the wild. It was a primordial code imbedded in his DNA, ancient and powerful, he felt raw strength and courage flourish through him as he faced down a small string of spear-armed mercenaries rushing towards them.

"But we need a clear way ahead first," His posture became deadly and intense, his massive paws digging into the Earth with mounting strength before he launched himself towards the mercenaries, his paws swatting their spears aside mid-leap before crushing them with his weight.

"Eyes up!" Steve yelled, stomping on a metal plate from a ruined car-door. Once he caught it, he spun and launched it with graceful precision. The metal soared through the air and struck a sniper that was preparing to fire on them. His blue eyes were unblinking and focused, watching as slowly but surely, the trickle of mercenaries was beginning to increase after the short respite they'd bought themselves. "Get to the trees, go!" Steve yelled.

The straining urgency in Steve's resonance became a prevalent force that she couldn't discard; Selina felt the sweltering air rush over her cheeks as she hastily vaulted over an unhinged metal door, evading the stampeding vibrations of undeterred bootsteps were advancing towards their barricaded position, the moment was intensifying around them, the cadence was hauntingly akin to a tribal drumbeat- daring a suicide run was the only tactical alternative to breach the underbrush.

Against a blearing haze of her vision, she feverishly watched Bucky lunge astonishingly on top of an unoccupied crate with phantom grace, cementing his massive bulk on dented steel as his long muzzle angled upwards. She didn't stint her paces as tumultuous barking erupted anew from behind her. "Keep going, handsome," she implored fiercely, against gritted teeth. "Don't look back..."

"Fine. Let's go." Bucky's resolve to continue fighting was as strong as those who had come to save him. But he knew that to stick around and be unrelenting in his bloodlust would be to risk his freedom and the safety of Steve and Selina, which would make this all for nothing. The number of Gorilla tribe mercenaries was steadily increasing in the encampment and it wouldn't be long before they were overwhelmed. The aggression pumping through his veins demanded swift action, and rather than focus on finishing off a wounded hostile on the ground in front of him, he forced himself to steer it towards escaping. His lethal snarl was unshakable and would haunt the dreams and fears of any survivors, and that was enough to give him an edge as he pushed his way through an uncollected bunch on the ground.

Steve watched Selina and Bucky make good on their head-start just as he finished incapacitating a merc with a forearm bashed to his temple. Before he could follow them, he found himself cornered by a larger hostile, a few inches taller than himself and with incredible strength evident by his hulking arms. He had a shotgun ready to aim at his retreating friends, but Steve was quick to catch the barrel and redirect the shot to a nearby crate. What followed was a brief tug-of-war that saw the unrelenting mercenary try to force the barrel towards Steve's chest. Gritting his teeth, Steve saw nothing but cold murder in the man's dark eyes. "Once I kill you, your mutt and his b*** are next." The mercenary sneered.

'I don't want to kill anyone.' Steve once said to a good man. 'But I don't like bullies…'

A cold resolve filled Steve as he used his superior strength to twist the mercenary's arms, surprising him before he redirected the barrel to the man's chest. With one harsh pull, a hole exploded out of the man's back, spewing flesh and gore all over the ground. Steve panted, eyes wild as droplets of blood splashed on his dirtied face.

"Steve?!" Bucky called out in horror, realizing his friend wasn't following them.

Shaking himself from his stupor, Steve reacted quickly in time to fend off another gunman aiming towards him with a leaping kick. "Don't stop, Bucky. Go!"

Morbid elation crescendoed into a deep-throated grunt, as a massive hand adorned with a sheath of white-grayish fur delivered a hammering blow against the crate door in the anticipated wake of the Gorilla ringleader's emergence. The potent stench of blood wafted sickeningly off his dark corded flesh painted with faded streaks. His thickened chin was dusted with powdery lines of white as he sneeringly curved his full lips into with the animalistic intent that swiftly morphed into untamed mania as he bared his teeth.

"Ukukhutshwa(Release)..." he roared lividly to his stationed warriors. In that split second, grating-incessant echoes of a hunter's cage that ominously hung above by a mechanized crane descent had ensued. The sudden force of entrapping metal impaled Selina's conscious reaction, she dropped into a low crouch with Bucky at her side, blindingly gripping onto his dark fur with her clawed fingers.

"No." Steve grunted through his struggle as he dispatched a third hostile attempting to skewer him with a spear. His instincts were running rampant through the heat of combat as he dodged and maneuvered himself through constant adversaries and narrowly escaping their lethal attacks. The serum in his veins was pumping in overdrive and the super-soldier felt as if he were fighting an unending battle that would eventually fall out of his favor. The moment his sharp eyes saw a hidden cage descend on his friends, he knew that he was fighting what had quickly become a downhill battle. "Damn it." He kicked a mercenary hard in the gut, pouring frustration through his strength that the effect sent the hostile sailing a good 10 feet through the air before he landed on a flaming piece of rubble.

His screams were white noise to Steve whose hearing was deafened by both the sound of his blood pumping in his ears, and the Gorilla war-chants being issued from the number of mercenaries gathering around him in a large circle. They didn't attack, despite the fact they had greater numbers and armed weapons. They knew they had him trapped along with his friends even though he was still on his feet fighting what could be his last stand. The sweat pouring off his brow obscured his vision and Steve felt the bruising force of a hard weight colliding against his back. He was on the ground instantly, a heavy weight forcing him down followed swiftly by another. Two hostiles piled over him as if he were a mattress and kept him pinned.

Their strength and weight was a considerable force and the super-soldier serum in his veins could only grant him so much power to contend with. "No…" Steve said defiantly, unwilling to give up, unwilling to believe this was how it would end for them. A hard fist against the back of his head left him winded and dazed, knocking the world around him into a blurry mirage of colors.

"Get the hell off him...!" A piercingly vicious gnarl explosively clamored within Bucky, seething out heavy pants, he thrust his canine muzzle against the steel bars, his curved incisor fangs slashed with beastly ferocity. He lost all regard of harnessing control over the rapidly stoking aggression—he was menace incarnate on the hairbreadth to become unleashed.

Shockingly, he became honed to the assonance of carnage wavering savagely around him; every arrowing sensation was growing cold-bloodedly rabid. The predatory vitality of the wolf had taken him captive. The clutch of Selina's tensing hand over his fur exceedingly grappled him out of the feral stupor. Unebbed rage lanced through him-senses were rioting as he immediately recognized spectral-mantic energy clashing with the humid air. That nauseous pulse of sorcery had become nidorous—edging to infect his kitten and best friend. 'Oh no...'

The frantic sway of his bushy tail revealed volatile intent, Bucky flashed his steel-aquamarine orbs with a whitened glint in contrast of his spaded pupils. Fueled by the soul-driven brotherly instinct to protect-little Stevie—he thrashed his powerful weight, bruisingly arching his back to shoulder against the bars with every colliding bash of his reckless momentum, aware that his claws were gouging over the vibranium neoprene of Selina's thigh with uncontrollable lashes. The kinetic pulse form a deflective barrier as nanites instantly weaved back together. "Grah...C'mon ..." he railed bitingly, trying to wedge his head through spaces of the bars. "I gotta get out..."

The sound of Bucky's furious growls was loud enough for Steve to register despite the chorus of yells and Gorilla chants ringing in his immediate vicinity. Every ounce of effort he utilized to overpower their combined strength won him only a winding fist to the gut and another to the face. The world spun on its axis like he was a top. A hot stinging sensation at his temple told him he was cut and bleeding. Blearily, he wondered how they might execute him. A firing squad? Hanging? He couldn't rule out the possibility of a more gruesome and painful end given the Gorilla Tribe's penchant for brutality. As a soldier, Steve was always prepared for that probable fate, but he could only hope Bucky would not have to witness it. Gazing at the restless direwolf engaged across from him, he attempted a small bit of reassurance. "It's all right, Bucky…"

He knew it wouldn't be, maybe not for him, but the last thing he'd do is go out without a show of defiance. "That all you got?" He remarked to one of the hostiles standing in front of him; every bit of his Brooklyn spirit was shining in his toothy smirk that summed up his defiance. "I thought you guys had more clout than this." Unless he was mistaken, many of the Gorilla Tribe warriors shared a knowing smirk with each other, foreboding and cruel. They resumed their barking chant that sounded ironically enough, like the hooting of an ape. Steve shuddered in confusion as he felt small tremors in the ground. Something, or someone was making their way towards him.

"Steve get outta of the way..." Bucky rented out, desperately, the continuous mantras of riotous barking amplified in volume, as carved zebra-wood lances arced tp a level of reverence in militant unison; within the cage's bars, snarling ferally, Bucky recoiled back, keeping his fangs bared, his luminous glacial orbs glaringly chased a hulking-egregious shape of dark bands of corded- bulging muscle, white Jabari tribal sigils of the gorilla deity-Ghekre -adorned over grayish furred rimmed biceps that held smears of fresh blood, undoubtingly from the slain dwarf goats they recently collected from the Border Tribe's outpost village-a scare tactic of retaliation.

The cemented alliance with Golden Tribe-the panthers-discarded ritualistic traditions of hostile conquering and bloodshed. The mighty fists of the mountain Gorillas no longer wielded unmerciful strength of crushing the stealthy panther's backs-King M'baku had forged a dynastic brotherhood with T'challa; allowing rapacious outsiders-pigs-to deceptively penetrated their inviolable domains. The fugitive -maimed warrior that pulsed tainted blood 'White Ingcuka' had been the first prey of a telestic -morphic onslaught of archaic sorcery generated from the damnable essence of the phantsi komhlaba (underworld).

The elusive, massively towering orchestrator of the mercenary rebels had finally emerged to ram his new prey into the grounds of defeat. Indulgently, a manic sneer widened his painted lips, as Selina ingeniously gazed at the distinctive snowy furred mantle that was stripped from a massacred gorilla during an occultic feast; he ruthlessly gorged the beast's gutted out heart, believing Ghekre would bequeath him immensity of soul-harnessing power to declare a harvesting wake of expulsion to the sired Black Panther mantle . Aggressively he channeled that undeterred vow to the extreme levels of unrelenting warfare.

"Ngoko inkomo encinane isilwe kuye(So the little wolf still has fight in him)..."

Approaching the secured cage with imposing prowess, Man-Ape tauntingly dragged the spaded edge of his clutched spear against the bars, his impassive stance bespoke carnal intent as Bucky with a breakneck thrust, reared his muzzle up quicker than a cobra strike, warningly, his jutted fangs became locked for tearing gorilla fur into shreds.

Feverish snarls were straining out with ragged pants, triggering intolerable aggression to viciously bury his muzzle into slackening-detached limbs smeared from geysers of blood that jetted from his ravished victims. He needed to quash that violent impulse down-submitting to the wolf spirit would infinitely shackle him forever into the curse's rhapsodized thralls of predatory appetite. "Enough!" he gnarred , menacingly, the explosive depth was arrestingly resonant to his flattened down ears. Breath strafed over his stretched tongue as his incisor-fangs pinched a graze, underlying his blinding need to attack. "Aaargh-Steve knock him down..."

"Way ahead of you, handsome," Selina murmured hushedly against an irate breath, evicting the feline impulse to curve her gloved hand like a "panther paw" to deliver a quick-strike into Man-Ape's exposed knee, regardless, she lowered her palm with fluid motion, an EMP bead that would energize a taser pulse deceptively rolled through the bars; activated to swiftly incapacitate the tyrannous defiler of the Hunuman-Ilu Inaki kingdom once his tactical boot rubbed against the bead. "Let's see if you can land on your feet, big boy..."

The towering mountain of a man adorned in stark-white animal furs was a hulking frame of muscle and scarred flesh as he stood over Steve and beside the cage containing Selina and Bucky. He was middle-aged, or at least close to it by Steve's estimation, and his eyes carried within them nothing but cold fury that reminded Steve of an icy wasteland. Ironic for an African Tribal-leader. He was the exiled Gorilla Tribe Chieftain they had heard about. Bhalisa The Merciless. After M'Baku had made peace with King T'Challa, several of the Gorilla Tribe members planned a revolt against their chief's decision and planned to overthrow him. It was only with the help of the Dora Milaje that M'Baku was able to wipe out the insurrection and scatter the survivors out of Wakanda.

Naturally, the exiled Tribe members had rallied behind a new leader despite having been driven so far from their home and the old ways of their people. Bhalisa's lips pressed into a hard-line as he observed Steve; every indicator of his motives hidden behind his poker-face expression. Steve stared up at him fearlessly from his restrained position, prepared for whatever brand of punishment the war-chief planned for him.

"Captain Steve Rogers," He spoke, his deep Nigerian accent sounding slightly Ghanaian. His eyes betrayed no emotion but the hard coils of his exposed muscles indicated a forcible restraint. Like a true Gorilla observing a foe and waiting to unleash his brute strength. "You are a far from home, white boy. You and your friends believed to have journeyed into a land of paradise and prosperity, but instead you find yourself at the gates of hell. Neither strength nor TRICKS CAN SAVE YOU!" In a sudden display of sharpness, the Man-Ape spun on his heel with shocking agility for a man of his size, and kicks Selina's concealed weapon out of her hand before she could stun him with it. The beads fly out of the surprised thief's hand and into the grip of one of Bhalisa's men.

"You are in my domain now, Outsiders. False kings nor their lapdogs will find their way here." He sneered with furious eyes focused on the direwolf in the cage who snarled up at him with venom. "It appears you weren't as tamed as we had believed…Sergeant Barnes."

Those barbarous volumes held sharp-edged mordacity sailing through his ears, ignited a new rip-tide of aggression through Bucky, he was conscious of the deception rivaling against him-Bhalisa was a bloodthirsty, virulent scourge over his adopted home-Wakanda-the impious treachery of the Gorilla tribe was escalating with a phalanx of radical mercenaries who transported women and children of unprotected farming hamlets near the Sambisa Forest; hauling them off inside convoy vehicles; bartering innocent lives for the replenishment of their unsated voracity towards harvesting ancient sorcery as weaponized energy to stake a widespread profit from Black Market rats nests-this assault was intended for collecting two more unwilling victims to cage within the morphing thralls if that damn incantation was uttered.

Gnarring aggressively under a seething hiss, Bucky knew the harrowing extension of the curse-the unspeakable, soul-wrenching agony that cruelly remade his humanity into a vessel of canine fur. He was unprepared to ignite his combative instincts when Bhalisa raided his village, the intrusive attack was lightning quick, Pygmy dwarf goats bleated frantically in alarm, blood sprayed over the high-grass, and palm-leaf rooftops of the huts were set ablaze. Before he could gun up his momentum to fight, a paralytic dart arrowed in his neck and he instantly had fallen unconscious next to the bloodied forms of the slain goats.

Now, he wouldn't give the Man-Ape the pleasure of being subdued as he towered abreast from the cage. With an innate effort of steeled Brooklyn defiance, Bucky tilted his muzzle up, and sneeringly flashed the Gorilla brute a fanged smirk, as he knowingly recognized the measured gravity of Steve's adamant stance."M' not the one you should be worried about tamin'..." he snarked, challengingly as exhaustion involuntarily wormed through his veins-the sedative was still in effect, dousing out remnants of his underlying ferocity. He felt thrown off-balance on his wobbly paws, strength was deadening into grogginess, as his drawl wavered. Damnit. "He's not gonna quit..."

"Bold words that will make no difference. The spirit may be willing, but the flesh is battered and bruised," Bhalisa retorted as he set his harsh stare on Steve who was panting for breath. A drip of blood flowed down the blonde's right temple from the harsh blow dealt against him. "I had hoped for King T'Challa to claw his way into my encampment, but it appears I will have to settle for his friends." The Man-Ape sneered with contempt. His opinion of the outside world was one mired in disgust. Wakanda was once a united people that together prospered and held slavers and raiders at bay. That all changed when the Panther tribe used their vibranium to advance themselves and drive all others under-foot. Now that Outsiders were being welcomed into his very homeland, bound to corrupts its soil with their corrupt ideals set the Man-Ape into primal rage. "But make no mistake, he and M'Baku will receive their just punishment for dealing with the likes of you!"

"You're Bhalisa. Exiled honor guard for the Gorilla Tribe. Now you're parading around as its Chief?" Steve pointed.

"I AM MAN-APE, YOU WORM!" A thunderous right hook connected with Steve's temple, setting his world into a spinning blur as pain overwhelmed him. "I AM WHAT M'BAKU SHOULD HAVE BEEN, UNTIL HE BETRAYED US!" The incensed Bhalisa continued to rain down hard hits on Steve who could barely keep his head up. Once he was satisfied, the Man-Ape paused to collect himself, yet the murderous intensity of his eyes was undiminished. "Now it is I who will take back what is ours, make Wakanda into the paradise it once was. For that, I must first deal with snakes to strengthen my war-machines." He directed to the Hydra freighter sitting at the docks.

"Well I'd better start looking for more guns to hire, Gorilla boy," Selina interjected sleekly, her undertone sardonically betrayed a fringe of terseness; as her voluminous crimson lips brazenly sassed a quirk of a devilish smirk. The angles of the mission were unhinged- she knew how to play them to her favor-use a daring tactic at the right moment before things got violently unpleasant. Her impassive countenance shifted deceptively with feline allure, nonchalant ease that Bucky innately recognized as he tamped down a growl; her coffee irises gleamed thievishly—a lethal charade that held Bhalisa's unmerciful regard into a sudden deathlock."That little ball I rolled out is an EMP bead, which means all your hardware is useless to play with..." she teasingly pouted with a devious glint. "Sorry for ruining your party..."

There was a moment of sheer uncomfortable silence as the Man-Ape slowly turned his stare for the first time onto the vibranium clad woman. The penetrating depth of his glare would've spelled fear of death into the hearts of the weaker willed, but Selina neither wilted nor trembled beneath its intensity. If words could be surmised from his expression, it plainly spoke "how dare you,". The Gorilla tribe mercenaries shifted as many of them began inspecting the exposed crates of their cargo and sure enough, confirmed Selina's taunts to be fact. Their weapons were now useless and damaged. "She is telling the truth, Your Excellency." One of the mercenaries said with a note of unease.

"You are a bold one, Outsider." Indignation and outrage were the least devastating emotions that morphed across the Man-Ape's features as he turned his focus towards Selina. Wrath and fury were added to the potent mix, he was a time-bomb ready to explode and wreak havoc on the ones who had infiltrated his camp and ruined his cargo. In an eerie display, his infuriated glare evaporated into a taut grimace that became a rough-smile. Selina was unmoved but mentally preparing herself for a sudden attack, even if she was inside a cage.

"But also an incredibly foolish one." In a swift action that alarmed everyone present, Bhalisma reached into the cage with a swift hand that locked around the Dire-wolf's throat. A painful yelp escaped Bucky as a knife was held to his throat by the Chieftain. His strength and speed were a frightening display that none could have anticipated. The smile on Bhalisma's features became vicious and cruel as his glare remained fixed on Selina. "Now you'll watch as I strangle and eviscerate this creature you have come to save."

"No!" Steve yelled out only to receive a winding blow to the back of the head.

Gritting her teeth against an edging snarl, Selina's lethal resolve became obstructed sickeningly by a rancid whiff of viper blood that was smeared over Bhalisma's tribal knife was ghosting a breadth across Bucky's furred throat-the prevailing odor was extremely venomous in the motion of violent thrust of his clutched hand, undeterred the Man-Ape yanked at Bucky's mane, viciously forcing him to bash his canine muzzle bruisingly against the bars. A whimpery yelp resonated instantly from the seized wolf as his eyes pinched against the white-hot flash of spawned agony that pierced his reeling senses. "Argh..."

With her cool poise against the rather daunting breach of a massive hand possessively snaking around Bucky's thickened neck to evoke another ragged cadence of breathless submission; Selina with deceptive grace of innate balletic precision, she lifted her sleek leg up to the brute's exposed forearm and nicked his dark flesh with a bloodied slice of her boot's serrated heel, stealing his truculent glower. "You like to spoil yourself with pain, huh, supersize," she purred daringly, arching an eyebrow with a slow quirk of her voluminous crimson lips, rattling his murderous intent. "Then, let's see how well you can take it..."

"Is that a challenge, woman?" Rather than be amused if not incensed by Selina's lethal quip and the sting of the cut on his arm, Bhalisma appeared genuinely curious as he took a moment to openly observe her from head-to-toe. The stoic façade of the Man-Ape was pinched with deep concentration as he took in the unique material of her cat-suit. It shimmered exotically in the light of the sun and emanated a glowing purple aura along the hem. Vibranium, the bane of Wakanda and the hubris of the Panther-tribe. Indignation and anger coursed through him at the slight against him, but it was tempered by a deeply ingrained emotion that was both primal and raw; desire.

"You wield the Panther-tribe's technology, but it is a blight upon this land." He spat, stepping towards the cage to gaze at her intently through the mask she wore. "You may think us savages, but we are merely reclaimers that seek to restore this land to its true earthly-beauty. And like the sun, you have descended upon us to guide the way. Tell me, what is your name?"

"She not givin' you anythin'..." Bucky snarled warningly against a choke of breath, instantly reacting the Man-Ape's blisteringly intent steering towards his beautiful kitten with a rapacious grip that his massive fist was molding to gorge down the feline vitality that innately channeled through Selina's veins. The gravity of the captive onslaught felt seemingly unevaded, increasing a tenfold as his possessive need to defend her from the traitorous barbarian's clutch was inevitably rioting up stokes of his bestial aggression.

A cast of a deadly calm, he jutted out his long muzzle lethally fast through spaces of the metal bars-holding his unshakeable ground as his furred bulk pressed harshly against Selina, despite sensing the impending double-end dagger, wielded to ghost over his throat again. He didn't care if Bhalisma mercilessly butchered him into a wolf fur pelt to adorn to convey his victorious conquest of destabilizing Wakanda's barriers. Selina was damn worth every fighting breath, fueling his heartbeat of prevailed defiance. "You're not gonna have her..."

The infinite conjuring of dominance hung over Selina like a phantom blade as she registered the ferine cadence raggedly emanating from her bulky sniper-wolf; Bucky 's resistance was collapsing in raw descent, the retraceable visages of his latent humanity being disturbingly towed into a vacuous stupor as his bushy tail remained tucked between his furred hind legs, evident to his pinned-down ears. He wanted the Hunuman brute to be on the receiving end of his vicious bite as Bhalisa resumed to stare down at Selina, covetously with no variation in his unquenchable-carnal intent of leashing her into submission under his bone-crushing grip. A throttling gnarl ripped out of Bucky, with a fevered strain. His curved incisors where only a breadth from impaling into a pulsing vein that flashed near his muzzle, as he drawled, aggressively. "You want her, then you're gonna have to go through me..."

"The little cat is no longer your concern, you lowly mutt..." Bhalisma sneered at Bucky through the corner of his eye. The Man-Ape's every waking impulse was to reach into the cage, choke the life out of the impudent wolf before slitting his throat. "Open your mouth once more, and I will cut out your tongue and feed it to crocodiles. Then your friend's as well." He spared a glance over his shoulder at Steve who glared at him with unyielding defiance. The Outsiders were as stubborn as the Panther Tribe warriors who did not know when to quit. Umbaku and his Jabari were now no different. The White Gorilla Tribe had long sought to restore Wakanda to its purer state, and as his focus lingered on the woman in front of him, he felt intrigued at the possibility.

She possessed a beguiling beauty that would lead the weak to an obsession. The further his curiosity ventured as he felt a powerful aura emanate from her. The scolding intensity of her brown eyes were like hot coals behind the mask that accentuated her alluring beauty. Her fair skin, what little of it that was exposed, reflected the sun in a radiant glow that made him desire to see her fully unmasked. And yet, he was daunted at the thought. The power—the spirit—he sensed inside of her was old, in a state of dormancy that would require an equally powerful hand to guide to its transcendence.

"I will ask you again, Outsider. What is your name?" He pressed.

"Now that would be telling, supersize..." Selina coyly deflected with a scoff, feeling his malicious appetite waging in his darkened gaze, smeared with tribal white paint as the intensity of his irises mirrored an unwavering promise of subduing her into the cage of his massive arms. The edge of his resolve was splintering-as his heated breath gusted a possessive breach against her cheek. Beneath her domino mask, her coffee depths grew fervently alight, she kept her poised guardedly armed as his penetrating intent wickedly sailed over the voluptuous swell of her garbed breasts, the delectable heaviness cloaked sleekly in vibranium. With a deceptive raise for her gloved hand, fluidly she ghosted her clawed fingers over his thickened wrist, luring him into her seductive thrall. "If you want me then you're going to have to get closer..." Her sultriest tone purred dangerously.

"There is nothing more dangerous than a cornered animal, my dear. Beguiling beauty alone will not afford you an advantage here." Bhalisa smirked dangerously though his eyes held no trace of amusement as he detected the sultry deception in her coaxing words. She was a siren just as much as she was a cunning feline in the shape of a woman. The shape of her athletic form told him she was a lethal practitioner who utilized every weapon at her disposal to achieve her goals. Though he felt angry that she refused to divulge her identity to him, he had long been accustomed to such an answer in the company of mercenaries who stole, killed and lied every day of their lives. The woman in front of him, despite the strength of spirit she possessed, was no different in her line of work, he surmised.

"You wear the Panther Tribe's technology, but you do not fight like a warrior. The skills you have demonstrated tell me you are a creature of shadow and deception. What is your trade? Thief? Spy?" He demanded, though not fully expecting her to respond as he paced in front of the cage. "The elusiveness of a cat, but with the cunning of a snake. You intrigue me…Perhaps we can come to an agreement?" He offered, his tactical mind already formulating ways in which she could be of use to him and the White Gorilla Tribe.

The arcane spoils of Wakanda were invaluable for her thieving caliber, she wouldn't double-cross the eminence of T'challa's altruistic spirit, not when he generously offered her sniper wolf an isolated harbor of solace and reparation within the bordering outposts of the mountain, straying from that grounded trust would be measured by her betrayal- unabated sense of unease gripped her veins as she realized the stakes would put her on the high-road. Caressing Bucky's tensing chestnut fur, she made the extent of her practical choice become reality in her smoky undertone. "Sorry, big boy, I'm not selling out on friends..."

"Is that so…" The glare the Man-Ape sent her could wither the very forests. Rejection did not sit well with Bhalisa, especially in the eyes of his men who looked on with varying degrees of anticipation. The Jabari were weak and submitted to the Panther cub. The Gorillas were kings and they would trample any who dared to challenge their might. It was a practice since the dawn of creation. The strong ruled through fear and in order to make others submit, examples needed to be made

. A cruel smile formed across his lips; mirthless and cold. He looked between Selina and the Direwolf beside her who appeared every bit as intent on shedding blood and leaping to her defense should the Man-Ape make a move. "Such a pity. I had hoped to gain your loyalty without resorting to…unsavory methods. But now you leave me no choice." Turning, Bhalisa picked up his ceremonial Chieftain staff in a battle-ready posture. "Let him up."

Steve felt the mercenaries release their hold on him suddenly. Confusion lasted a second before he jumped to his feet, ignoring the bruising aches that throbbed with the action. There was no time to lose as he prepared to resume his assault. Teeth clenched in aggression, he directed an empowering right hook towards the Man-Ape's torso, only to have it stopped cold by Bhalisa's gargantuan-sized hand. "Hmph! You draw your strength from science. Mine comes from the spirit of the Gorilla. A power you cannot hope to match!" With that, Bhalisa delivered a thundering headbutt to Steve's head. Stars and white-hot pain exploded across the blonde's brow. The world spun, too fast for him to grasp as he fell back to his knees. "Get up!" Bhalisa barked, his men joining in his ramble as they slammed their weapons against metal surfaces, creating a battle-drum.

"Grah...Get up, punk," Heaving out a breathless drawl in a snarling pitch, Bucky sensed that inevitable odds stacked against coming to urgent fruition. This was a damn war zone, the naked depth of unbeatable gleam defiance flashed in Steve's hawkish azure irises, the super-soldier braced his palms rigidly on the ground, rising up with grimacing ease as Bhalisa's bludgeoning momentum refueled another monstrous bullrush. His pointed ears speared up against the disruptive volume of heavy stomping until Steve was crushingly slammed shoulder-first.

A gut-wrenching cadence of Steve's heavy bulk ensued as he collided dizzyingly into a shipping crate, the brutal dissonance of metal contorting around him distorted against the full acceleration of his body's careening force."C'mon Steve, show em' what a kid from Brooklyn does," Bucky railed out, desperately thrusting his jutted muzzle against the bars, staring at blood smearing over Steve's beard roughen jaw-it was killing ground of the jungle. "Take em' down..."

The effect of Man Ape's punch was not as devastating as being punched by the Hulk, but it was still winding enough to make Steve feel disoriented. His unrelenting spirit kept him on his feet, fists at the ready like a dazed boxer unwilling to go down for the count. It appeared to amuse Bhalisa who stared him down as if he were a rabbit about to be squashed. "I can do this all day," Steve muttered. In truth, he probably couldn't, but he wasn't about to give up. He'd stood up to bullies his entire life, and he wasn't about to stop now. Bhalisa snorted at his open show of defiance. His fists clenched at his sides, the curling of his lip revealed a snarl of aggression.

A war cry bellowed from his mouth as he charged with inhumane speed. In an act that stunned the chanting mercenaries, Steve snapped out of his dazed stupor and dodged the incoming attack with the grace and efficiency of a leopard. Bouncing on the balls of his feet, Steve leapt and executed a spinning roundhouse kick that connected his boot to Bhalisa's chin. The Man-Ape didn't have a chance to be surprised before Steve was on him, delivering hard-hitting punches to every sensitive spot he could see from the Man-Ape's stomach to his knees. It was like trying to topple a building by attacking its pressure points, and not so shockingly, it also felt like hitting one. Man-Ape's flesh was rock-hard and it gave him the advantage of being able to fend off Steve's attack.

"Enough!" He roared, headbutting Steve viciously before sending him toppling to the ground with a shoving kick.

Indulging on his reigned supremacy, Bhalisa prowled in front of the crate with terrifying speed, his measured stance of bestial intimation tauntingly betrayed no contrast of tolerance, the hulking mass of his armored form eclipsed over Steve's lucent azure irises, roguish blond tresses draped tacky over his feverish temples, a wet trek of blood painstakingly hiked from the split gash on the bruised swell of his underlip. Jack-knifing up his momentum with a slow arch of his Kevlar weaved abdomen, gnashing his teeth, Steve effectively scissored his legs over the Gorilla brute's exposed calves, locking him into a constrictive position-trying to induce a distraction while Selina blindingly lashed her vibranium claws over the cage's bolted lock.

As the metal panels separated against a kinetic pulse in the fleeting wake of her gloved hand, Bucky remained mechanically impassive on his paws, tilting his muzzle upwards by a command of wolfish instinct as he sniffed the muggy air- an execrable taint of vaporous sorcery was alterity infinite. The Hunuman relic would divest Steve's humanity into a dormant vessel unrelentingly fashioned within thralls of weakness. A rumbling growl arrowed up his throat, warningly. "If you try to use that damn jungle rock on Steve..." he drawled out in a snarly breath, tensely underlying his brotherly defiance. "Hell, you're gonna be sorry..."

"It is time you Outsiders learned to become one with the nature of these lands. The cradle of civilization beckons you towards a new beginning; a new infancy." The glowing stone in Bhalisa's hands glowed with an ominous green aura, mystical and otherworldly. Steve knew it was bad news the moment he saw it. Before he could pick himself up to mount some form of retreat, he felt himself thrown back by a pulse of the sorcerous energy that emitted from the glowing rock. A strangled cry came from his throat, feeling as if icy shards were piercing every nerve of his body, making him completely numb. The overbearing scent of magic smothered him to the point he could scarcely breathe, scarcely think. His eyes closed tight, teeth bared in a war of pain and defiance. His fists clenched as he forced himself to a sitting position. Eyes glaring furiously at the Man-Ape who in turned raised an impressed eyebrow.

"You are strong-willed, Rogers. More than your friend anyway." He cast a scornful look towards Bucky and Selina who now just managed to break free from their cage. "Do not let them interfere!" Bhalisa roared, forcing a strong wave of sorcery to overcome Steve, just as his men rushed to engage Selina and Bucky.

Arcing her claws up to deliver a vicious slash at a guerrilla's throat, with an implosion of tension, attempting to vault over a barrel, Selina became stunted by a rhapsodic cantata echoing over the dock in feral volumes; a dark raze of cosmic vitality became unknowingly conjured, the Bashenga mountain radiated as the carved eyes of giant monolith Panther-the granite visage of Bast hauntingly glowed with luminous bluish energy.

A rift in the heart of Wakanda was being cleaved apart by a maniacal command as a flash of lightning strike became mirrored in Steve's blearing azure depths as his widened pupils morphically slit in feral contrast of razor-edge sharpness against pestiferous gravity cementing him down to a hinged level of sorcerous defeat. A telestic rebirth was commencing as Bhalisa's grating resonance of harsh Xhosa, venomously uttered out 'Panther ti wura (Gold Panther)'.

In those alarming upheavals of animorphic convergence, the vibranium shield gauntlet fastened over Steve's left wrist became abandoned as his braced forearm sickeningly wrenched back in the motion of a violent thrust. Lengthy-tousled blonde tresses flitted over his rugged features as he turned to look up at the dire wolf and Selina, naked urgency gleamed unwaveringly potent in his tigerish azure depth—a predatory fusion lanced through his veins in rapid succession of chanting in unison.

Vaporous tendrils of greenish energy overwhelmingly coasted over Steve's powerful bulk as a shoving boot bruisingly rammed him down onto his back with a bone-jerking stomp hammering into his ribs. A concussive blow stole a heaving pant of breath as his bruised lips were stretching torturously wide against the surging pull of inexorable agony. His unrivaled semblance of enhanced invincibility was fracturing against the constant throbbing pressure, drilling with agonized traction into his unhinged jaw bone. The smoothness of his boyish angular features hollowed as he gnashed his teeth into a hard clench, watery dribbles of blood oozed against seething breaths. "Argh..."

"Get outta here!" he roared in guttural pitch, slurringly his masculine timbre raw in strained depth, as his leather-sheathed hand slashed deliriously the air in direction of the unguarded tree-line. Bhalisa shadowed thirstily behind him, like a dark scourge readying to harvest out every visage of his mortality. The insurmountable barrages of clamorous pain mounted as Steve thrashed erratically on his knees until he crumpled on his side into a fetal curl, his forearms crossed over the corded width of his chest, revealing a damp swatch of golden-blonde fur underneath navy blue Kevlar. A feverish rush was overheating in his veins in a nauseated wake.Gritting his resharpened teeth, bitingly, Steve felt the suspended extent of bone-raw anguish shifting in his lengthened jaw, broad planes of muscle, and hawkish contours of bone deformed into an extended mass that appeared distinctive of a thickened feline muzzle. "D-Don't quit runnin'-

In the midst of their aggressive retaliation, Bucky and Selina had both caught sight of the horrific scene that began to unfold as Steve's body was twisted and reformed by Bhalisa's magical relic. The swirling tendrils of green sorcery where ominous and devastating as they turn Steve's manly adonis form into a contorting mass of beastial fur. Selina couldn't bring herself to watch as she shied her gaze. For Bucky, it was more than just a harrowing reality but a dreadful reminder of what he had been put through not too long ago by the White Gorilla Tribe.

Unlike the Panther Tribe, they relied on actual sorcery and relics to defeat their enemies and subject them to a fate worse than death. They had taken Bucky's humanity from him and now he watched as they began to do the same to his best friend. The sounds of ripping clothes and Steve's distorted cries was like a knife to Bucky's pounding heart that constantly twisted. Logic and discipline abandoned him as fear and desperation took hold.

"No, Steve!" He barked as he charged at the Man-Ape. Selina called out to him in protest but his ears could barely register it beneath the pounding of his pulse. He couldn't leave Steve, not like this! Before his body could thrash itself into Bhalisa's, one of his lieutenants step in the way and caught the Dire-wolf in his arms. Overcome with malice and impatience, Bucky snarled ruthlessly before wrapped his jaws around the mercenary's neck. A strangled cry and a spray of blood later, Bucky found himself on the ground with the dead body beneath him. The sudden drop brought his hind leg crushing against a rock.

A sickening crack moved through Bucky's limb and he yelped with pain, favoring his frontal limb that had become hot with pain. A broken or dislocated limb, just his luck.

"Come to watch your friend share your fate, Barnes?" Bhalisa taunted as he lowered the glowing rock and the vestiges of magic slowly dissipated. "Watch as the man you knew as Steven Rogers becomes no more!" Before Bucky's wide luminous eyes, a cat-like growl ripped from the tangled mess of shredded clothing that once belonged to Captain America. Two enormous paws tore free from the mass followed by two lengthy incisors. A coat of golden fur glowed in the daylight in an enchanting spectacle before the creatures stood up on four paws before them with piercing blue eyes.

"...Steve?"

Staggeringly with overlapping grogginess in the fruition of his grounded mobility, the massive jungle feline braced his furred paws over discarded remnants of the dark navy blue Kevlar-the frayed mantle of Captain America; grayish-blonde layers of coarse fur sheathed rigid expanses of corded muscle as blemished rosettes. With cobra ease poised with lethal stillness, the male leopard instinctively reared his head to the infinite direction of pervading scent of draining blood wafting off a Jabari corpse, left in the wake of Bucky's ferocious breakneck attack-visage of insatiable macabre was beckoning him to engage his lifeless prey.

As the graveled resonance of the chestnut furred dire wolf's urgency breached his rounded ears with invading pitch in a rush of unrepentant trajectory, luminous-crystalline azure spheres hauntingly flashed with predatory -maniacal intent. The hunger-madness was unquenchable, fueling through his veins with a murderous command that echoed in his unblinking slitted pupils. A niveous cast of white frosted vacantly over the raw intensity of his feline orbs-a devoid of Steve's valorous-indomitable spirit was cleaved dauntingly into sapid awareness infused within the leopard's unwavering gaze.

Reflexively, the length of his white-tuffed tail arced off the ground as the incursion of bloodthirst didn't avail. With a stretch of his large feline muzzle parting in unhinged reaction, he disturbingly emitted a racking snarl that explosively arrested Bucky's heartbeat with soul-gouging depth. Sniffing the moggy air, the leopard detected a virile scent of earthy sandalwood close in his kill zone; for a stalled moment of recognition, he reeled back on his paws, mirroring the brunette wolf's dismal aqueous depths tellingly urging him to fight with a gleam brotherly light-a harboring echo of Brooklyn."Buck..."

The voice that responded wasn't the smooth baritone with a distinct Brooklyn dialect that he was familiar with. It was deeper than a dark well, raspy as a graveled road, but it was Steve. His best friend and partner was now nothing but an unrecognizable animal meant to be caged and enslaved by the monstrous fiends that surrounded them. "Oh no…" The direwolf whined, feeling as if his heart was being crushed by the enormity of guilt weighing over it. This was all his fault. Everything. His best friend and the Earth's greatest hero was now a fully transformed leopard and it was because of him. "You bastards…" Bucky growled at Bhalisa who merely smirked at him with a cruel look.

The direwolf stood at equal height to his blonde counterpart who slowly trekked towards him. Their gazes locked as if assessing each other. The power emanating off the trio was akin to a storm brewing that could explode at any moment. "I'm…I'm—" A jolt of electricity shot through Bucky before he could find the right words to speak to his friend. A prong of wires were latched onto his side, a taser gun being utilized by one of the mercenaries. "Down you go."

"No!" Steve growled. Until now, he had been trapped in a fog of disbelief the moment he became aware of his new body. The threat of impending death always hung over him, it was a consequence in living the life of a soldier. But nothing had prepared him to being subjected to this form of punishment. His body was unhinged and felt like tank he had no idea how to maneuver. The moment he watched his best friend fall and cry amidst an electrical onslaught, he turned his livid gaze onto Bhalisa and rushed to engage the Man-Ape.

Against a slow recede of vertiginous fever, momentarily Selina felt the deafening growls of the leopard's feral resonance spearing through the jungle's ambiance; unrivaled momentum ensued in those heart-pounding moments as unrelentingly Steve launched up frontally onto his opponent with feline agility-predatory grace infused in his veins with rabid savagery. A massive fore paw slashed with violent blur, as extracted claws viciously ribboned over dark flesh, leaving bloodied gashes in the wake of his venting aggression. No palpable measure of stacked resistance held him back; a guttural rawness exploded up his throat as the unbreakable vitality of Brooklyn flatline against a cacophonous immersion of bestial ferocity.

Shifting her coffee irises at her transformed beast machine, favoring an injured paw, Selina removed a Kimoyo bead set to pulse a tasering volt from the seam of her boot without Bhalisa's ravening gaze detecting her ingenious tactic. She had to destabilize Steve's murderous intent for attack before Gorilla blood smeared his muzzle. The Gorilla tyrant violently struck his massive hand down in clawing motion, fisting Bucky's lengthy chestnut fur into subdued position as the sniper wolf intimidatingly thrashed his bulked weight against fur-armored calves. A breathless snarl careened painstakingly from Bucky's throat as he slammed into a crate as high-pitched yelp ensued.

"This better work," she murmured in a terse breath, effortlessly tossing the vibranium bead until it grounded in front of the hunching-enhanced leopard.

Stark awareness reflected back mesmerizingly within the hypnotic Steve's luminous azure spheres as his claws gouged into the leveled ground. The arc of his tail swiftly conveyed a tamed effort of apparent control as a guttural cadence shredded feverishly against panting breaths. In seconds the kinetic pulse infinitely radiated off the bead in rippling shockwaves; enraged, Steve lunged back against the crate, viciously slashing a fore-paw at the rolling bead.

She waited with a baited breath, wondering if the revered Wakandan technology decides to fail her at such a crucial point in the field. And sure enough, the kimoyo bead finally unleashed its fury to the closest in its proximity which happened to be the very incensed leopard. The Gorilla Tribe mercenaries recoiled but most remained unaffected as they watched the creature groan and knock-out. Bucky who laid sprawled out, trembled in the aftermath of the electroshocks and watched as his best friend was mercifully put out of commission. This wasn't a fight they could win. Not like this. The pit of dread that formed in his gut became ever wider to the point it would swallow him into despair. There was no getting out of this camp of enslavement. Both he and Steve were unmade and reformed into animals that stood no chance against the perilous odds that surrounded him. And Selina….

His heart pounded with fear and anticipation as he watched that sadistic brute approach her with an appraising attitude.

"You are full of surprise it would seem, Outsider. Or perhaps it is cunning?" Bhalisa regarded Selina who was flanked and surrounded by a dozen guns belonging to his mercenaries. She showed no hint of fear nor of hostilities which kept the Man-Ape on a neutral front as he considered his options for her. With utter certainty, he believed the power of a goddess lurked within her; one if honed could lead him and his tribe to a golden era of prosperity…and conquest. The desire to have her by his side was as fierce as a growing wildfire. But the cold part of himself that responded only to logic snuffed out his baser instincts as he considered her worth to him in a more conventional means. "Your friends are less than what they were. You are surrounded and outgunned. Resisting me would be unwise."

Luridly against the kinetic backbeat of the energy pulse that sailed the dockyard, the militant intent was grisly etched into Bhalisa's vitreous sneer as bloodied rows of teeth were swiped with a revolting glide of his tongue. The flex of dark corded muscle dauntingly bespoke aura of intimidation. The hulking width of his hand waved the air like a shark fin, cutting a breadth closer with an orgasmic gleam avidly in his onyx irises to churlish intensity; he grunted roughly while his mercenaries teemed around the staggering dire wolf-her Bucky with his new weaponized arsenal of Isipho (vibranuim) sonic spears that were unmistakably plundered from Princess Shuri's lab.

All it would take is one commanding gesture of his hand to deliver a penetrative stun of lancing voltage through Bucky's heart. "Well somebody had fun shopping for new hardware," Selina played out sleekly in a kittenish flair, the edge collective poise was brandished readily on her alabaster features as her gaze flashed over a gripped spear edging over Bucky's slackened girth."I kinda get the feeling you want something more powerful to play within the jungle, huh, big boy...?"

A feral scrunch of his long muzzle conveyed no visage of restraint; snarling a vicious cadence of wolfish aggression, Bucky recoiled his canine head back against the graze of a sonic spear, his massive jaw quickly clamped over the vibrainum pole as he rabidly yanked the weapon out of the stunned mercenary's tensing grip.

His grounded adaptability to condition himself against the clamorous-nascent bloodthirst encompassingly riding through his stoked veins was steeping. It was morphic ecstasy, heralded by the soldierly command to protect his mate-love. Rearing up the muscled bulk of his furred mass with a jerking thrust, Bucky favored his throbbing leg, barring his incisor fangs with lethal poise to tear into Bhalisa's dark flesh. Parting his long muzzle with a daunting flash of dagger-ivory, conveying a destructive- tempestuous ferocity, Bucky glaringly impaled his unwavering focus on the Gorilla brute's thickened jugular vein- an exposed spot of vulnerability. "Touch her and M' gonna kill you..." he sneeringly threatened with a ragged snarl.

The suffusing gravity around them was knifepoint tension, effective countermeasures of defense had been stilted into a deadlock, Selina was nosediving inevitably deep into uncharted waters of sorcerous reality. There was no prevalent ground to utilized for a harbor. If she didn't flip a card fast of practical deception; her bulky sniper wolf and the adamantly valorous leopard would become an auctioned off stock to the underground Black Market trading circuits.

As she registered a throated yelp escaping from the seized dire wolf, in the wake of visceral distress, Selina blindingly slashed her clawed digits against the razed dirt, stealing Bhalisa's inexorable resolve with a seething hiss. "If you so ever brush his fur with that damn big hand, I'll show you what this girl is like uncaged, Supersize..." she railed out explosively.

The circulating noises of chaos surrounding him was like a torturous alarm clock that would never stop ringing. Steve had grown ever accustomed to its devastation and meaning after living a lifetime of war. His memory was like a ship barely managing to stay afloat along a storming tide that sought to drown him in ignorance. He willed himself to stay above, to not lose sight of himself. The higher he rose, the sharper his instincts began to flare. Everything was different and yet so familiar. The air was thick with the stench of fire, blood and magic. It revolted him to an aggressive mindset against those responsible. His hearing took in the different voices and the shuffling of steps surrounding them.

At least a dozen still remained. His blurry vision had focused into razor-sharp focus as his glowing azure orbs took in the sight of Bhalisa taunting the creature that was his best friend, and backing Selina towards a corner where she couldn't hope to elude his wrath. What came next was pure instinct guided fueled by aggression.

"Bhalisa! We're not done yet!" The booming depth of his voice was the equivalent of a volcanic eruption that stole the attention of every mercenary in the vicinity. Bhalisa felt a chill move down his spine as he turned just in time to see the great fearsome snow leopard lunge over 20 feet across the air with his razor-sharp claws extended, his toothy jaws opened with fire burning in his eyes. "Get away from her!"

Against the ferocious maelstrom of undeterred aggression that convulsed into deafening volumes; Selina unblinkingly watched the male leopard's predatory momentum take combative ascent in feral succession, he unerringly vaulted over the abandoned cage at a breakneck pace. A firestorm erupted within him-a euphonic pulse amplified into a manic cadence. He was on the murderous fringe for the kill.

Emitting a snarl that frighteningly cut through Selina's veins akin to a buzzsaw, and with a shifting thrust of feline agility and instinctive balance of his long tail, Steve launched up, frontally aligned with Bhalisa's muscled chest as his white-furred paws became sharply poised with retractable intent to viciously gouge into Bhalisha's throat. A riotous unity had infectiously overtaken him, every furred sheathed muscle flexed accord to the warring sync against the raging impulse to devour his marked prey. Lifting her gloved hand coaxingly up with a fluid twist of her wrist, Selina aimed to delay his untrammeled resolve of bloodthirst. "You're better than this, Soldier boy," she whispered smokily, not reeling back as his tail swayed readily over a barrel while Bucky was on the breadth of descending into paralytic throes of a stun-induced blackout. "Don't let him own you..."

Through the haze of his primal bloodlust, Steve felt an invisible snare wrap itself around him and bring him to a sudden forceful pause. The familiar brunette-Selina, her name was Selina. She stood between him and the towering gorilla-sized man he had marked as his prey. Her words resonated in his mind like an echo travelling into the deep recesses of his thoughts. His muscles coiled in a warring fashion between action and inaction as he flicked his gaze between them. "S-S-Still here…" The growl that escaped him could set a chill to the rainforest nearby. The pupils of his blue eyes dilated to a normal focused size, his humanity intact. "Still fightin', can't stop fightin'. We can't…" The sorrow and desperation in his voice spoke of a soldier facing impossible odds but was willing to surrender to defeat.

Bhalisa chuckled evilly as he watched the leopard visibly struggle with himself. "Even with all that primal majestic strength, you are still weak, Rogers."

The resurrection of a bloodied maelstrom was harrowingly impending, Bhalisa's massive fisting hand was tauntingly brandished to crack the leopard's skull with the barbarous force of Gorilla vitality. Selina fixed her roving gaze on runic sigils of Ghekre that were etched on his dark-skinned forearms began to glow; a possessive unity of tribal-Jabari-alliance. It was a variant of fanatical savageness to the utmost of limit, each flex of dark corded muscle was invested with destructive intent as he attempted to grapple Steve's neck into a choke-hold.

Reality was hitting against her at point-blank, she needed to effectively invent a distraction. Narrowing her coffee irises down with a fleeting glint, she caught a shivered flash of Bucky's combat blade discarded in the heap of torn blue Kevlar, and with a blur of her gloved hand and quickly clutched the hilt with a reserve grip. There was no break of distance as she aimed the knife with a sweeping arc, the delicate bones of her wrist were poised to deliver a careening throw—brazen finesse be damned. "Hey supersize," she yelled out bluntly as Bhalisa whipped his murderous focus away from Steve's exposed neck. "Ever play catch the knife..."

Bhalisa had a moment to react before Selina pitched the knife towards his head with all the strength and speed of a star-pitcher. His enhanced dexterity and reflexes availed him just barely, but the Man-Ape still recoiled the moment he caught the knife a breath away from his face. The sting of white-hot pain lashed at him with mind-numbing realization but he didn't cry out. Rather he sported a deadly furious look at Selina even as a trickle of blood dripped from the graze on his cheek. "You will regret that, woman." With all-consuming rage, the Man-Ape drove the knife into the fur of Bucky's paw. A painful how ripped from Bucky's throat as he teetered at the edge of consciousness, unable to move as the blade embedded his paw and the ground beneath.

Steve reacted with all the primal aggression that came with his new form but the mercenaries were quick to move in and begin shocking him with stun-batons. "Do I have your attention now?!" Bhalisa yelled at Selina.

A depth charge imploded through her core as everything had slammed like a hammer blow into a nauseous tumult; gnashing her teeth into a vicious clench, Selina unleashed the stemming ferocity, in spring-loaded reaction, she defensively launched her explosive momentum off her haunches with a blinding drag of her claws to balance her feline agility. A sync-wave of kinetic energy ghosted over the sleekness of her vibrainium neoprene that she absorbed when her lithesome form urgently chased the massive shadow of his fisting hand, the knife was leveled over Bucky's furred neck. "No..." A full-throated scream careened out of her as she breathlessly delivered a high crescent kick, trying to lance her spiked heel into the Gorilla's exposed chest, only to become slammed into an oil barrel by the thrusting force of his unremitting strength.

"You will submit to my demands, or you will watch as I skin your beloved pet and feed him to the crows." The Man-Ape pressed on the imbedded knife, just barely managing to keep himself out of the thrashing range of Bucky's paws and razor-sharp fangs. The howls that erupted within the camp could ignite the chill of death in most stout individual. The mercenaries were shaken and held their weapons uneasily, but the Jabari tribal leader remained stone-faced and unrelenting in his aggressive tactic to force Selina to adhere to his wishes. The remainder of his men had by now cattle-prodded the incensed leopard into a weakened state. As he watched her grimace and glare murderously at him, he knew the balance of power had once again shifted in his favor.

"You cost me an ample sum of money by attacking these docks. All for your precious white-boy who already paid the price for his trespass. But you. You are proven to be an exceptional warrior and thief. Aren't you, Miss Kyle?"

There was no evading this pernicious moment, she needed to remain cool-headed as her coffee irises searchingly watched the broad cut of his dark features rapt with phantom malice; a wetted ooze of blood painstakingly trek out Bucky's leaden forepaw-he was a hostage for a torturous negotiation of striking an irrevocable price. She wouldn't betray T'challa or Shuri-Wakanda's mountain outposts had become a harboring point of redemption- measures of humanity that revitalized the Brooklyn spirit that Armin Zola had surgically extracted out of Bucky-she couldn't sell out friends. "Sorry, but I'm not for hire..." she razzed back cagily, tilting her bruised jaw with unfaltering poise. Wakanda forever..."

"I see the Panther has deluded you with his propaganda. Wakanda has not been a united tribe since the days the gods roamed these lands. You wear the Panther's technology with pride and arrogance. The same technology that has corrupted this nation-weakened it!" The hidden rage beneath the Man-Ape's cool facade began to show. His ideology was one preached throughout the world that Selina was familiar with. The rampant flow of technology and science ruining the natural beauty of the world and its animal inhabitants all for greed and ambition. As ideal as it would be to fight to preserve the natural beauty of the Earth, Bhalisa's motives in doing so were clearly not for benign reasons.

"But now that same technology will be used to help me revitalize this nation." And there it was. That smug and superior look every would-be despot would wear when they believed they held all the cards and expected their opponent to fold. His hand was a bloody promise of death and ruin as he brandished a knife from his belt. The steel was chrome-based titanium; military-issued. He held the blade beneath Bucky's throat and cast a sneer in Selina's direction. "YOU WILL help me. Unless your beloved Barnes here means nothing to you."

The straining volumes of Bucky's noncommittal whimpers agonizingly impelled a shunting lance of immobilizing white-heat through her thudding heart; gritting her teeth harshly Selina dragged the edges of her retractive vibrainium claws a breadth from the Ilu Inaki radical's goat-skinned boots, the gravity of his unmoveable stance belied a taunting measure of amusement as his knuckles covetously grazed over her enchanted, hunky wolf's seized throat.

A flash of clamorous bloodthirst gleamed alight in Bhalish's dark irises, as the flexing pressure of his massive palm tightly clamped over wolf's silvered foreleg, squeezing every drop of blood to painstakingly intimate her-testing all visceral measures of worth that defined the soul-driven price of her love. A protesting gnarl emitted breathless urgency out of the captive Direwolf, thrashing his canine head away in wrenching jerks from Bhalish's thuggish clutch, Bucky tried reaching for her with a telltale stretch of heartbreaking momentum. "Lina..." he urged in jaggier cadence, scratchily, gnarling out stifled pants. "M' not worth it.."

The rabid echoes of barbarity wouldn't become impeded-this was treacherous scum of the highest order. He was an insatiable parasite that would hollow out a trek of greed into Wakanda; his Gorilla convoys were decked out with heavy-power arsenals undoubtingly orchestrated by a 'behind the scenes' HYDRA player- an underground viper idling to strike down the panther who slashed his nest. This instrumental alliance was calibrated by designs of vengeance. One slip of vehement deception and her beast machine-James-would be torturously slaughtered into a Hunuman mantle of stitched up wolf fur.

Giving the hulking mercenary leader a scathing glower, while keeping the resilence of her deft balance grounded in a braced crouch, Selina blindingly arced her claws up with defensive ease, a hairbreadth when an eroded barrel, the amethyst skeins interweaved in her neoprene layers grew explosively voltaic, a sonic pulse was emanating to discharge a reactive flux of containable energy.

In warring fruition as blearing onsets of tears nakedly infused feverish intensity in her coffee irises-a stark echo of bone-raw surrender. "I'll do it..." she raspily choked off, knowing that her descent of soul-arresting betrayal would be savagely weaponized against the spirited people of Wakanda. Activating a Kimoyo bead off the bracelet fastened around her delicate wrist, the sync pulse of kinetic nanonites morphed into Wakandian sigils as she unerringly rolled it between stacked barrels. "J-Just let him go..."

"Not yet. First you must complete your task." He watched as she wilted and cast a vexed look at him. Her facade of defeat was enough to sate Bhalisa's sadistic lust as he grinned at her apparent surrender. In the face of Bucky's perpetual slaughter, he would manipulate her like a puppet on strings to do his bidding. With the wolf fairly subdued along with the leopard, the Man-Ape rose to his full height and began to pace while brandishing the knife with lazy twirls in his over-sized hands.

"Give me cause to suspect duplicity and I will skin your wolf-lover before your eyes. Fail in this endeavor and you will watch as my men hunt him for sport and feed his remains to the crows. Am I making myself clear, Selina Kyle?" Asserting himself he stood towering over her with a harsh glower that would've struck fear of death into lesser men. Selina, however, appeared as unimpressed as a professional watching rookies trip over each other.

With inscrutable poise Selina unflinchingly tilted her jaw up, curving the lushier fullness of her crimson lips deviously which only annexed his broiling aggression."You know for vengeful brutes, you're pretty bad at cutting the deals," she murmured out banteringly in a sultry rasp, evident to her quirking brow. With practiced ease of fluid seduction of casualness, she brashly came off her haunches, and slide a clawed finger with painstaking circles lazily over the barrel's lid. "I only know what I want, but since you played the cards with a cheaters hand, I guess playing the game will make us both winners..."

"We shall see." Despite their opposition and the chaos they had just wrought, Bhalisa felt a begrudging respect for her skill and tenacity in the face of what should be impossible odds. She was either an overconfident fool or a master at deceiving others into believing she was. No matter the case, he would ensure she cooperated by threatening the one thing in the world she held far more precious than jewels. However, he would be a fool himself not to try and add more incentive to his proposition. "Your task is one worthy of your skills. The Panther Tribe holds a wealth of secrets lost to time. But not to those who value our true beginnings."

The Gorilla Tribe warriors bowed with deference, acknowledging their leader's claim; one they held sacred. Noticing Selina's unmoved expression, the Man-Ape explained.

"Millennia ago, before the Vibranium comet descended upon these lands, the gods walked among us. They taught us the skills and knowledge we would need to live and thrive as one people. Bast sheltered us while Sekhmet defended us against the outsiders. We were pure as were these lands, until the comet came and defiled it-defiled us. The power it offered divided us as a people as it did Bast and Sekhmet. The Panther Tribe lorded their precious vibranium and forgot the true value of our homeland." He sneered, his chest heaving with every word that fueled his rage.

"Before the gods departed, they left behind relics that embodied their power. One such treasure we called The Eye of Bast. A mystical gemstone, forged from the very cosmos. Its wielder could reshape the land to their desire. Purge the corruption and its source from its very roots. With The Eye of Bast, I can restore Wakanda to its true beauty, and wipe out the filth of the Panther Tribe forever." It was an empowering and therapeutic thought that brought a semblance of peace to Man-Ape's face as he envision it.

The shamanistic obsession of the pharaonic-Egyptian relic harbored no reservations against demolishing the jungle utopia-the spirits of Wakanda's ancestors pervaded through auras of kinetic energy-all the bordering villages were united with echoes channeling hope-mantles of command had been altered by a rebirth of past alliances within the tribal domain.

Vibranium couldn't become forged into demonic weapons to gore out the hearts of eternal resistance. She had walked through crosshairs of instrumental mania before when the League of Shadows had deceptively infiltrated Gotham for -the rogue mercenary Bane unleashed his savage deadliness for a terror reign, holding lives of desolated citizens on the edge of his fist. Tactical dominance had obstructed harbors-refuge stations. Bane had cleansed the streets from aristocratic elite, driving them underground like vermin, if Bhalisa utilized the relic as his weaponized sword to lance into the soul of Wakanda; there would be no deterrent obstructing his vengeful path of bloodthirsting conquest.

In stilted reaction, impassively Selina understood the stacked measures: the price of her knife-edged betrayal. She had studied deific texts while engaging a museum stint in Cario; instruments of occultic sorcery were infused with plaguing scourges by the high priests if the Eye of Bast was excavated for covetous intent of thieving hands. A breach of the Underworld's gateways would ultimately gorge all the mortal vitality of the Golden Tribe, heralding the ruinous emergence of an apocalyptic tempest of soul-harvesting carnage.

She couldn't lose Bucky-not her beast machine to insuperable, morphic throes of the unremitting-divested curse. For an errant moment of disarmingly staring into bulky chestnut wolf's cool aquamarine irises that bleared tearily with beckoning urgency; Selina curbed down the hot implosion of bone-searing fury. She was prepared to raise the stakes higher."I'll bring your damn treasure back," she hissed, gratingly, steering her coffee irises at the snow-leopard Avenger being cautiously hoisted onto the back of a convoy vehicle-Steve appeared frighteningly unresponsive, she keenly gazed at warred tension pulsing underneath his shorn grayish-blonde fur, a gleam of claws extracted out with a lethal flex. The invincible-unbeatable vitality of Captain America's spirit wasn't dormant against the variations of caged submission. "...but I'm not walking the jungle alone."

"S-Selina, don't…" Bucky groaned dizzyingly. The pain lancing through his paw and body had paralyzed him but he had listened to her agreement with the Man-Ape with growing apprehension. He could feel Selina's consoling gaze on him but other than that, his plea had gone unacknowledged as his lover and captor stared each other down challengingly. At that, Bhalisa scoffed with derision.

"And here I thought an esteemed thief such as yourself had no need of a partner in her line-of-work." The mercenaries chuckled at their tribe leader's taunt. Selina stood unimpressed which caused Bhalisa's mood to quickly sober and he shrugged at her apparent stubbornness. "This is no game, Ms. Kyle. Do not intend to cheat me, or you know the consequences. As for walking alone into the jungle, you need not worry. I have no need of a second hostage, and I can see it appropriate to return the partner you attacked this camp with."

Barking an order in his foreign tongue, the Man-Ape gestured for his men to clear the way the subdued snow-leopard who stood on unsteady paws. Steve had listened to the exchange in deep thought and like Bucky, felt apprehensive given the stakes. Wakanda would be doomed if they succeeded, Bucky would die if they didn't. The most difficult choices laid bare for a soldier in the field were between duty and the heart. Gazing sharply at the Man-Ape, he growled low without feeling the need to snark openly with defiance. Instead, he looked at Selina and gave her a slow nod.

"Together, we can do this."

Eternity stretched around here when damning-paralyzing awareness of being detached from her sniper-wolf gripped her with bone-crushing force; with readied practice of fluidic traction of rapid instinct, Selina braced the sleek planes of her garbed back against the barrels, tamping down her volcanic momentum that was running on high-voltage, threatening to release depth charges of a firestorm.

With blearing her dark irises melting acidily into sweltered venom, with unwavering intent, she thrusted her gloved hand out in a heart-drive attempt to reach for Bucky as he was draggingly loaded inside a tarped convoy jeep. Edging tears surged for release at the unwarranted extent of heartache that increasingly deafened against his throaty snarl ricocheting throughout the smoke-laden dockyard in rapid tenfold. A tranq-induced gleam of his coolish sapphire irises frostily cut her deep as their blurring gazes echoed back straying tears. In a space of a naked second, his darkened pupils alarmingly slit, thinning into silhouetted crescents, phantom edges of robbed humanity. "James-"

The measured gravity of salvaged hope became calamitous as Steve rented out a snarling breath, quelling down feral variances against the fringe of battle-tested survival. He remained instinctively poised on the defensive edge, his whiskered muzzle clenched as venting upsurges of aggression rigged warringly through his veins. 'C'mon Rogers, ride it out...'

Every throb of adrenaline felt mechanized. He couldn't wade against the evolving—unstable volumes; a stampeding mantra to lunge his feline dexterity of knife-point attack. Thrashing his bushy tail up in a reactive arch to regain his adamant footing, he viscerally recognized the heartbeat of fatal deception, a ravenous echo of unquenchable hunger carnally strumming in Bhalisa's hulking-warrior mass. The whimpering, deadened squeaks resonating from his wolfy best friend-Bucky- prevalently channeled a racking stoke of bestial ferocity.

Evicting the headlong rush to tackle at his prey with a vicious slash of blinding -stark menace, the snow-leopard involuntarily brandished a reeling semblance of enforced caution, igniting his assuage of desperate restraint as his parted his fanged jaws and surprisingly emitted a cobra-like hiss. A shifting, elemental power of had diverged with his valorous spirit in feral strain, the piercing rawness of his lucent azure orbs dauntingly contracted back into hawkish sight when he gazed a pair of Jabari mercenaries quickly fastening a leather sheath over Bucky's canine muzzle. The deal was staked against his heart: there was no going back. It was time to face the ascent of a new Wakandian resistance---dawn.

-------------

After she crossed the opened grasslands, Selina had entered the murky red zone of the dense forest that bordered against the mountain pass, a perpetual labyrinth of tropical floral and fanned-out canopies of massive palm leaves that overhung against thickened gnarled branches. The cacophonous noises of hidden insects echoed maddeningly within heavy leaflets; the ambiance converged an unfriendly greeting to advance within the unventured carnivorous domain: there was no clear path.

Guardingly, Selina with a fluidic effort against the escalated humidity, braced her gloved hand over a knotty arching root, as thorned vines loosely grazed the sleekness of her neoprene shoulders, driving reactive tension. Lowering on her haunches with a rush of fluid combative ease, she collectively ignored a tangy reek of cleaved apart mango-unsettling evidence that nesting gorillas had made passage earlier. This new-cancerous- alliance with Baron Zemo would become lethal hailstorms-collecting scores of innocence in the destructive wake of vengeful Hunuman conquering. They would usher an eclipsing shadow of destabilizing malice over Wakanda's horizon: a weaponized-demonic valance of arcane sorcery.

With her core resilence being overhauled to her chagrin, Selina utilized tacks of stealth in her feline prowess, evading the gurgling morasses that were swarm infested, she hastily cut through misty overgrowth, tousled mahogany wavelets askew over her feverish temples; she couldn't allow bone-seated torrents of exhaustion to derail her pace. The staked price against her was invaluable against her practical safeguards-this wasn't an easy score to drop-off, there were no switchbacks if she failed to deliver the sacred relic of Bast it the hands of fanatical traitors.

She was trapped in the Wakandian crosshairs like a rogue deviant and the hope of restoring Bucky's humanity-soul was threadbare against her granite heart. "This isn't a walk in the park," she quipped out, with a cool rasp, trying to brush off a red-shelled beetle unnervingly trekking up her garbed forearm.

With unfeigned disgust, Selina listened to a snow-leopard Avenger's growl hauntingly resonating from a creeper branch."While she was on the ground level for their tactical advance, Steve was impressively testing his predatory agility, with effortless high vaults of scaled momentum-feline grace that invested in his rigid-corded muscles, as his grayish-blonde fur blended with the cover of leaves."It would be nice if the princess had jungle-proofed this new style..."

The irritated aggression pouring off of Selina in a way fueled the fire brewing inside of the snow leopard that was Steve Rogers. His steel blue eyes stared at her with unblinking fixation that was both unfriendly and unamused. Frustration crawled across his coat of fur and forced him to dig his paws into the Earth beneath him. "Walk it off, Kyle. This isn't easy for me either. At least you still have two limbs to walk on," he growled before resuming his predatory canter across the path in front of them. The mission had failed in the most epically disastrous way imaginable. Not only had they failed to save Bucky and destroy the White Gorilla Tribe's agenda, but they had also become unwilling pawns in his grander scheme to destroy the very country that gave them asylum.

The anger of the mission had surprisingly begun to get the better of him. His human body gave him discipline and restraint, but being turned into such a predatory animal and shattered all those qualities.

Against the ominous contrast shrouding thickly over them with every cautious traction, Selina felt a galvanic aura raiding through him; unyieldingly with heightened vigilance, Steve advanced with a tactical measure in his prowling steps. Raw prevalent spawns of unwarranted tension began pulsed over the ancestral domain that merged with chimeric veins of energy, rapidly gripping him down to become an extension in the forest masses. His stowed resistance-Brooklyn spirit- wasn't deterred by coupled impulses to lunge up a high branch with a teeming rush of whipcord adrenaline; he needed to become combat ready.

Sniffing the arraying murkiness wavering in the humid breeze, Steve's whiskered muzzle tilted up while Selina remained impassively nonplussed against the swift- evident reaction of his bulky feline body posing in a defensive crouch. "Soldier boy..." she murmured raspily with a coaxing pitch, gazing at his fore-claws flexing over a heap of palm leaves, vicious snick dug in the moss sheathed branch. That disturbing volume captured her stlited awareness —with tentative effort cemented in her balletic poise, Selina coolly watched the valiant snow-leopard ferally arched his muscled back with an infusion of mechanical poise. "Rogers, you need to turn it off..."

Her chiding tone carried the phantom sting of the stun-rods he'd been prattled with at the docks. The jolts of electricity had sent excruciating pain through every nerve of his body it was a wonder how he had managed to stay conscious for so long, but through the pain came a burning defiance that made the beast within eager to lunge and exact bloody retribution. It was disconcerting and something that Steve Rogers was in no way capable of feeling. But the snow-leopard was an unstable mixture of man and beast. Steve's memories and conscience-driven by primal instincts the farther he trotted through the green wilderness that surrounded them with his human partner.

"There's no turning back now, Kyle. No turning anything off until we see this through," he growled. His blue eyes wandered and took in the creeping hills where sharp boulders rose high like jagged teeth. "And when we do, Bhalisa's gonna pay for what he's done."

"Just keep those claws locked in until Supersize opens his damn hand," Selina ruefully groused, her undertone razored with vehemence as she brushed off sweat-drenched strands of her flushed brow, a turbulent raze of electricity penetrated through her veins. She was balancing on the highwire of anchoring trust with him. "Look I'm not happy about this whole thing, it seems like a sick joke that keeps on playing back on us, but your furred ass needs to stay grounded for Bucky..." she urged pointedly, clasping her lips tight against a hitching breath. "I don't want to see him caged..."

The snow leopard released a disgruntled noise but Selina deduced it was the equivalence of a shrug. Steve knew she was right. If he still had control over his instincts and discipline he'd be giving himself the same lecture he'd preached hundreds of times in the field. He had to stay sharp and keep himself in-control, not just for both their sakes. "Then that makes two of us," he grunted as he leaped over a toppled log and padded through a small creek. The water soothed his aching paws and for a moment he was tempted to stand-still and let relief wash over him like a balm. But that was until his sense of smell was triggered by a pungent stench of moss and withered stone beyond the tree-line.

"I think I smell something up ahead," he rumbled. Not waiting for her response, he jumped and easily climbed the branches of a tree. The enormous branches easily supported his massive weight as he crept silently towards an overwatch position that gave him a clear view of the area ahead. A concealed plateau, shrouded with trees and littered with old ruins. So old that the earth had already begun to reclaim it due to the numerous veins wrapped around the old battered columns. "I got eyes on the site."

Acidic vapors of rotted flesh stiflingly pervaded a carious intrusion of death-a potent warning that she couldn't discard. Edging her tactical boots closer to the leopard's unwavering position near granite obelisks that mirrored like a gateway, Selina's dark coffee irises flittedly narrowed at skeletal remains garbed in tribal armor, unmistakably Wakandian tomb-raiders who poorly tried to claim the Eye of Bast for their own desirous spoil.

Registering the ambient pulse of sacrilege energy; with a swipe of her gloved hand, readily she unholstered a Glock strapped conveniently over her curvaceous thigh, and clutched the carbon-steel with deft ease against lethal resolve. Emitting a growly response, with his lucent azure orbs steelity fixed on the ancestral gateway; Steve agilely leaped off an out-stretched branch and amped his tigerish-grace over collapsed remnants of notched stone.

Using his long bushy tail for an instinctive thrust of momentum, he tautly landed on his furred hind-paws without a falter in his unshakeable poise. A sepulchral aura was dangerously entombed beyond the parallel obelisks-a beckoning force of ethereal assonance-a sirens call that was ghoulishly deceptive ."Whatever has been shoved in there tight doesn't like to play fair," Selina quipped sardonically, breaching another painstaking step closer to the pillared edifices. A worming vibration of energy tunneled movingly beneath her 'sneaker' boots-spiking up alarm. "Block out the white-noise, soldier-boy..."

Somewhere at the back of his rushing thoughts, Steve could hear Selina's words of concern that tried to steer him from the maelstrom of primitive aggression that was being provoked by a foreign presence. His muscles coiled and tensed beneath his fur. The unseen struggle forced a visceral growl from him that would've struck fear into the hearts of many predators lurking through the jungles. "C-Can't. You don't hear that?" He asked her with a strained voice. His senses began to go haywire in the face of an confusion. The closer he and Selina made their way to the Hidden Temple, the more foggy and dense the jungle seemed to become. The trees were so cramped around them they were like wooden sentinels that blinded the way back and forward. The skies were dimmed and the pale sunlight touched down on them through the thickets. He wanted space. He needed a clear head. He needed...He needed.

A shriveling screech echoed on the winds and the leopard snapped his head towards the heavens and roared with bestial ferocity. Something was out there, calling them, beckoning them.

A miasmatic obscurant encompassed over them; a chasmal force that excreted from the archaic obelisks. The sweltering humid air became infused with a metallic haze against her vision-angling her jaw down with a gritted clench, Selina panted heavily, it felt akin to a smoke grenade detonating against her fevered senses. Thrusting her gloved hand up in blinding precision over a runic stone, draping gnarled vines disturbingly slashed a eeling contrast against the sleekness of her black neoprene garb-like a viper's coiling scales."Please tell me that was your furry tail against my back..." she murmured tensely, not making a controlled effort to fleetingly glance over her shoulder.

"We need to keep moving. Now!" Was Steve's only response. The beast inside was confused over the ominous state of the jungle, but the man inside knew from experience that it meant there was something dangerous lurking in the vicinity and if they stayed still too long, it would rain disaster on them. With increased speed, he charged his way across the maze of trees and shrubs. The vibrations in the ground told him that Selina was right behind him. The vibranium suit not only allowed her maximum durability but increased stamina as it absorbed the impact of her racing steps. The jungle reacted to their panic and the trees began to howl as if they were sleeping entities being roused from a long slumber. The panic the leopard felt increased ten-fold when he saw a small stampede of panthers, giraffes and leopards moving across the watery creek that cut a sleuth through the maze of trees. "Jump!" Steve roared, effortlessly leaping over the waters and landing on the otherside.

Selina followed swiftly. Their muscles were burning up but they didn't slow down. Not until they reached the ruins of toppled stones and entangled vines. "I think we made it," Steve growled, panting for breath, staring up at the vanguard of trees and blocked the ancient remains of a temple wall.

Saddling the bulky leopard with a pointed glare, Selina with undeterred caution, deftly brushed her gloved palm over the etchings of Wakaidan sigils that radiated with bluish-amethyst; a kinetic pulse of vibrainum that was creepily rooted within the Ancestral domain of the panther goddess Bast. With the assuage of her thieving caliber, her dark irises roved unblinkingly over the runes as she deciphered the apparent warning against their urgent intrusion of crossing reverent ground; the roused aura that would propel headlong them into a cimmerian reality- it was a do or die risk. Flexing his muzzle reactively against the slight tremors beneath them, Steve was vigilantly adamant, bracing on his massive paws, his bushy tail arced, evident to the lithe, predatory grace that fringed over his impassive stance. "Ready to crash a supernatural party," Selina nonchalantly, deadpanned, readily arming herself to engage a cavalcade of shadowy denizens waiting for their unwelcomed breach. "Keep your tail tucked in and follow my lead..."

"We gotta keep moving," Steve ground out with a deep bellow. He could sense the magic in this area that was as noxious as a tear-gas being thrown into the vicinity. To any other human nothing would have been amiss, but after being turned into a creature native to the land, with magic no-less, Steve's senses had begun to go haywire in a way he hadn't anticipated. But it didn't matter to him right now. "Bucky's counting on us," he breathed, wagging his head as if to rid himself of a daze of confusion. He wouldn't fail Bucky. They'd find this Eye of Bast and from there they'd find a way to contact T'Challa so they could take down Bhalisa together. "Just keep your eyes open. I'm not sure I can trust mine right now." He growled to her meaningfully.

It was almost as if he was looking at the ruined temple through a set of binoculars hit by the most intense and colorful lens-flare that was blinding. Vibranium was all over the place. In the ruined stones that hadn't withered, to the vines shrouding the walls to even the dirt beneath their feet. The ground hummed with each step that took them forward, the wind whistled a foreboding tune to accompany them on their trek. "Up here." He directs her as he effortlessly climbs a toppled tree and races up the trunk that led to the top of a broken wall.

Acrobatic precision was brandished in the corded resilence of his bulked mass, in a whooshing vault of feline agility that was combative-hone in stark tempo, Steve leaped over an upended obelisk of a gunned cadence in breakneck pace, the masculine intensity of his untamed graces felt rip-roaring against the safe distance that was measured between them. Growling in low cadence, his azure orbs steered instinctively staddled onto a high branch-a diseased pulse channeled in the gnarled roots as he composed himself adamantly, scenting for detectable potency of noxious vapors. "We better hurry," he urged, throatily with an edge of command in his rumbling timbre. "I can't shake the feeling that we're gonna somebody's breakfast soon..." A telltale gleam of his incisor fangs jutted out, ferally, he stretched open his whiskered muzzle against the moggy haze wafting over them. "Seeing that M' still learning the ropes of havin' big paws, we need to move fast..."

An earthen stench of mortal decay-a carious miasma that warningly oozed from skeletal remains discarded near the forbidden tomb. The heightened prowess of his stalking advances was unimpeded, Steve effortlessly scaled up a rocky shaft, the shivery furred muscles of his lithe shoulders instantly coiled back with a lethal command of menacing poise as he prowled determinedly towards an overhanging palm leaflet.

A raw tightness scrapingly arrowed down Selina's throat when an electrified aura of incandescent tendrils possessively eclipsed over the runic slabs of fractured granite. Instincts starkly flared as she unwaveringly gazed at the length of the snow-leopard's bushy tail frisking passively, conveying his soldiery measures of unbendable vigilance. "Let's keep the pace on ground level, Soldier boy..." she jauntily played out, consciously reeling in traction against the faltering quake that amplified under her. "I have a feeling we're going to have some unpleasant company..."

When the two had successfully scaled the ruined wall and touched down on the opposite side, a chill of unease moved through them. They stood in what used to be a ceremonial courtyard where withered statues of Wakandan warriors stood parallel along the tattered walls. Broken columns were ensared by poison ivy and shrubs. The sky was blotted out by the towering trees, the ancient vines and roots cracked the stone surface beneath their feet as the Earth fought to reclaim itself. Steve and Selina stood still, feeling as if they had unknowingly entered a lion's den. The sounds of jungle had vanished leaving them in a foreboding silence where neither the chirping of birds nor the whistle of the wind against the leaves could be heard. Steve's eyes wandered until they landed on the monument ahead that encompassed the vastness of the ruined courtyard. A statue of a majestic feline that stood gazing towards the northern horizon. The smoothness of the vibranium carved idol stood the test of time and the snow leopard felt an unconscious pull towards it. "Is that her?" He asked Selina warily.

As she tactfully edged a breadth closer to the vibrainium panther monolith of Bast-the Egyptian goddess of Wakanda, Selina felt a reverent pulse of purplish energy mirroring her footing—staving off thrumming reluctance in her veins, with brazen evades, she breached the desolated courtyard. Shivered bones of discarded feline skulls were mounted on wooden javelins—a daunting visage to frighteningly ward off voracious invaders—outsiders. She needed to purchase safe ground as the reality of death chased her heartbeat. The sporadic gravity downshifted as she advanced closer to the temple's barricaded passage. Fluidly, she crouched down when a subtle noise of dragging vine reached her ears. Gesturing a gloved hand up, she coolly urged Steve to stall in his prowling steps. "Jump in front of me right now..."

Snapping himself from the awe and primal distraction, Steve's senses screamed at him towards an unseen danger. The hairs all over his body rose on end as if the temperature had vastly dropped. The sounds of the jungle were absent, but in place a more ominous and foreboding noise crept on them. The wind howled and the shuffling scurrying of something digging through the Earth, up towards them. Steve did what Selina commanded and leapt to her front just as a vine was propelled from the Earth seeking to ensnare her. Steve reacted on instinct and wrapped his maw around the animated appendage and wrestled it to the ground.

Dodging the viperous slash branching towards her, Selina effortlessly performed a high vault in against the blurring momentum of the possessed vine, her palm unwaveringly braced the litheness of her weight up as she utilized her balletic precision, tucking her knees against the cushioned swells of her garbed breasts as she flexibly eased into a grounded backflip. Landing back into a mid-crouch on her sleek haunches, her dark irises glaringly became fixed on the thrashing vine caught into the piercing grip of Steve's incisor fangs. A guttural snarl ripped out of his throat as his cool azure orbs alarmingly eclipsed against a melding variance apparent to bestial ferocity. Taken back by the vicious siege of unhinged aggression, Selina urgently called out to him. "Rogers-Steve..."

"Stay sharp," Steve growled out. In a cohesive moment, the man and the animal within were on common ground and worked as a singular entity. The vine that lashed out brought dreaded memories of Gotham City back to Selina who thought of a certain Botanist/Ecoterrorist that would've made a jungle like this her home. Steve grounded himself as he backed towards Selina. His muzzle sniffed the ground and released a scathing snarl as he detected the scent of vibranium fused with the vines along with a familiar energy signature he knew to be magic. A groaning shift of debris stole their attention and they watched with mounting suspense as the ground vibrated and ominous m*** entered the courtyard.

"Looks like we walked into a trap." Steve shrugged. Both he and Selina knew getting to the Eye would be no picnic. It wasn't until now they took notice of the dozens of withered skeletons that were buried beneath clumps of debris and shrouded greenery. How many had died in pursuit of the Eye? "And a graveyard."

"Well, I'm not waiting here to find out," Selina quipped back incredulously, sliding the hammer back on her clutched Glock to reload while aiming to blindingly squeeze off a stray round shot with straight-arm precision. Errant pulses of lurid-amaranthine skeins veined over desiccated skeletal remains; a plaguing blight cast around them into a sorcerous convergence-a rapid beckoning to assemble a ghoulish phalanx came into a cacophonic wake of tribal mantra chanting that deafeningly blared like Klaxon sirens.

It was unmistakable assonance of an impending resurrection- the atmospheric rapture of enwombed carnage that would infect the sacred earth. Involuntarily, Selina felt a reactive tremor fissuring in the ground, pockets were imploding as detached-hollowed out skulls of deceased -ancestral warriors of Bast eldritchly glowed with ruinous arcs of interred vibranium.

Growling under his breath, noncommittally, with a measure of instinctive haste, Steve defensively braced himself against the sleek neoprene of her toned calves, readying for the phantom assault. Their intrusion had been detected. They were on the razor-edge of a kill zone as Selina kept her Glock painstakingly leveled onto a skeletal hand spider-crawling towards a severed torso-they couldn't make a break for distance. "Now would be a really great time to use those claws, Soldier Boy," she urged raspily, in brusque pitch as she drew in a tight breath, with the periphery of her coffee irises, she fixed an unblinking cast heatedly on the mobilizing ghoulish skeleton lurching out shudderingly of the quaking ground with frantic jerks-a pulse of resurrection. "Unless you're waiting for a bigger target to play with..."

Thrusting his feline muzzle up with combative ease, readily, Steve detected vibranium skeins of energy incandescently dissecting through the granite obelisks; the humidity became acidic as the carrion-ghoulish wake of skeletal bodies felt eruptive over the gouging rifts surrounding the tomb's barricaded gateway."Looks like they don't want us to break through," The hitching sternness of his rumbling timbre was warringly fringed with a sawing growl. "M' guessin' that whatever energy is controlling em', it's gonna sway us off our feet-paws..."

Involuntarily he shifted on his braced paws in battle-ready stance, arcing his bushy tail as a guttural resonance aggressively strained out of him. Everything had imploded at the point-break reaction-the edge of the fight that beckoned a fiercer variance that inexorably captured the depth that melded with his soldiery intent. The chivalrous valance of Captain America's unbeatable vitality was on a breadth of becoming dismantled, as his fore-claws tellingly snikked out by a mechanical-predatory impulse that he couldn't stave off.

The whole temple came had come to life in an awfully resplendent way that left Steve feeling shaken and trapped. His senses were at their peaks as he relied on sheer instinct and animalistic savagery to combat the reanimated soldiers that attacked with their ancient weapons. All of them made of vibranium, all of them nigh indestructible as they wielded them. Their only advantage was many of the dead were shriveled corpses that possessed neither the form nor stamina to match their prey. Steve and Selina tore through their ranks in a hailstorm of bullets and swiping paws. It was like driving a suped-up car at over 100mph for the humble human who struggled to remain in control and not veer off into a reckless spiral. The adrenaline in his veins fueled him and the song of violence invigorated him as he wrapped his maw around the shield of a warrior and ripped it loose.

"Eaads uhhh!" He growled at Selina with blazing intense eyes. She caught on quickly as she ducked low just as the leopard threw the shield like a buzzsaw that proceeded to tear through the heads of a half-dozen reanimated warriors before imbedding itself in the stone wall. A nostalgic grin formed across the feline's toothy jaw. "Just like old times."

"Yeah except these guys have the same moves as dancers from Thriller," Selina retorted breathlessly in terse snark, half-crouching as her gloved hand splayed over the metallic teeth necklace that was more than a Wakanda accessory. The reactive pulse of kinetic sync contrastingly interweaved through vibranium-sheathed neoprene as a detached skeletal limb crawled with spidery motion inches from her exposed wrist, the meshed reactivated nanites surged over her shapely-toned muscles, fusing into a protective layer as the Kevlar tribal skeins of the feminine Panther Habit radiated amethyst veins of arcing energy that suffused through her skin.

Yanking off her thieving googles that landed in the underbrush, as mahogany wavelets slickly draped over her poised shoulders, Selina angled her jaw up, allowing nanites to trek over her delicate-elfin features, dauntingly morphing the kittenish sleekness of her sirenic visage into a panther's mantle, accented with metallic-curved edges that were etched under silvery lenses. "Now we can really step on their undead toes, Soldier boy..."

Steve was stricken with surprise and awe that made him feel increasingly like a kid watching a display of magic for the first time. "Bet Bucky would love to see you fighting in that," the feline grunted as he charged through a phalanx of vibranium spearmen and sent many of them rolling off of his back. Releasing a bestial roar, he threw himself against a ruined pillar and sent the old structure teetering over and smashing the undead spearmen to pieces. "Catch!" He yelled to Selina. He charged a towering giant of a corpse wielding an ancient war-hammer. His strength and momentum were enough to send the undead warrior flying in the air, leaving him easy pickings for Selina who wields the vibranium nanites into what appeared to be a matador's whip.

She caught the giant around the neck and pulled, bringing it crashing to the stone ground and breaking its skull. "Nice one," the feline grunted before facing his next opponent. He didn't need to spare a glance over his shoulder to know the Selina was handling herself with frightening efficiency. It felt good to have a partner who could not only keep up with him but give him a run for his money. As minutes passed and the number of dead climbed closer to triple digits, Steve and Selina began to feel a degree of mental exhaustion as the numbers seemed to keep on coming. "We can't keep this up. Either whatever is controlling them keeps reanimating them, or there's just too many dead here than we thought. We gotta get inside the temple!" He growled.

The onrushing wake of carrion warriors from the gouging rift of Ancestral plane-Djalia-became disturbingly synchronized in battlemented tread; arid limbs crackled in unison as jaw bone unhinged demonically into ghoulish sneers that stretched gaping-wide. Evading the vicious thrust of a javelin, Selina drove all momentum of her balletic graces and hammering her booted feet with a bruising-slam against obelisk as she blurringly rebounded above a throng of skeletal denizens with a predatory rush, arcing every lithe curve of her body into high-diving a back handspring without breaking the stance of her agility.

Bracing her gloved palms over a decayed sentry's armored shoulders, she locked the bony cervix into a possessive choke-hold to her fluid advantage; with an inventive play of tactical caliber, she explosively back flipped the withering heap with her, sending a clang of vibranium armor and vaporous dust careening into the temple's barricaded wall.

"We've just knocked on the door..." Selina urged pressingly against gnashed teeth, gesturing the snow-cat to rival her pace as he breathlessly sprang up into a frontal pounce with his paws slicing the air reacting a skeletal hand thrusting out to grapple him down, and dropped a roll- over flip onto a spaded granite rock- Steve landed on his furred girth to evade another vicious under-sweep of the ghoul's hand as he vaulted and grounded himself back at her side while they were riding on full-force adrenaline. "Now let's go kick it down, shall we?"

"Ready when you are," Steve returned with an exuberance to match her own. Somewhere in the midst of their struggle, the two unlikely partners realized just how well they worked together since they first began. With the undead warriors stalled by the massive overturned pieces of debris, it enabled Steve and Selina to charge into the ominously dark entrance that led into the Temple of Bast. "The door!" Steve growled. Thrusting his weight against a crank nearby, the door to the temple closed with a slam. The roars of the dead followed but they were effectively drowned out as their passage was sealed off. Steve and Selina were quickly left in smothering darkness. Their enemy was cut off, but now they found themselves entering the unknown with only each other to depend on.

Advancing through a vacuum of tenebrous dark that felt like a labyrinth of eternity, the tribal weaved sigils in her vibranium -neoprene tattoo resonated into a whiteish blue, with feline-honed prowess of harnessed stealth in her footing, Selina deftly glided a Kimoyo bead with rotating precision over ridges etched into a deific wall of granite that Steve had unconsciously bolstered his furred bulky mass against, scanning pharaonic hieroglyphics with a pulse of nano-wavelengths.

Utilizing steadiness in her wrist, hologram imagery appeared with a decoding variant of encryptions were immediately deciphered the ankh glyphs that vividly spelled high-risk caution. The Eye of Bast was their only bargaining chip to stake a deal with the crackpot Jarbi extremists-if she didn't deliver the expectant score, Bhalisa would indulgently massacre her hunky sniper wolf into a throw rug. That fixed reality was hard for her to digest.

Flexing his muzzle with vigilant ease against the prick of his whiskers, Steve brushed his large feline head subtly over the wall's gunky surface, purring in low resonance as he tellingly became gripped into a placid stupor maddeningly like an oversized pampered house-cat. A sulphurous raze of manic heat chased her pulse---a defensive vapour that was inexorably fashioned to neutralize detected intruders. "The sooner we swipe the Gorilla's spoil out of this damn place..." Breath was growing chokingly feverish up her throat, as Selina inadvertently coaxed the leopard with a derisive undertone, scratchily. "We'll be able to breathe again."

-----------------------------------------------

The stench of blood was unmistakably prevalent over billowing tarps that were roped down over the vehicle's backend; incessant flashes of lightning flittingly strobed over thickened underbrush, the dissonance of thunderous echoes blaringly caromed the darkening sky overhead of the Jabari convoy that mowed through Wakanda's jungle. Listlessly Bucky was leashed down by grogginess that had been penetrated into his veins to subdue him after he viciously attempted to gnash his barred fangs into mercenary's exposed wrist.

The injected hypodermic tranquilizer deadened his reserves of enhanced strength, evoking a feverish onslaught that he couldn't wage against-robbing his thrust of adrenaline. The manic gravity around him was congested; Bucky he felt a viscid trek of blood slickly meandering out of a stacked up corpse of a dispatched Jabari that was collected from the blown-out shipyard.

He was being transported out of Wakanda's borders, a riot of unknown scents assailed over his nostrils as he made a straining effort to orient himself with practiced ease. A neasous sweat drenched his unkempt chestnut undercoat, unwarranted pulses of agony relentlessly forked through his laden muscles as he furrowed his brow into a grimacing pinch, against a concussive pressure that felt akin to a hammer bashing inside his skull. "Urgh...What the hell-"

Choking on heaves of panted breath, raggedly, Bucky reared his canine muzzle up against an oil drum's rusted surface, enwreathing fumes of gasoline emissions was suffocatingly potent as the truck accelerated speed into a downshift. Feigning a rapt of warred alarm, flashing his cool aqueous orbs with steered precision at the barrel, Bucky thrashed a massive fore-paw forcibly up, feeling a harsh tug of the blood-soaked ropes straining over his silvered fur-the bloodthirsty-homicidal- Man-Ape had caged him into stuporous exhaustion, sluggishly dragging him into an unconscious thrall.

A throated groan was tensely evident to the hard-edge scrunch of his long muzzle. Bucky felt heavier than deadweight to the extent of intolerable vulnerability. The bone-searing throb left by a sonic spear-the effective design from the spunky princess's lab- razed his fur; his vision blurringly lapped against the racking shift of his subdued canine body. "Lina...Punk...Where are ya..." he rasped in a slurring, thready pitch, groggily, as the decadent -feminine allure of heady lavender evocatively ghosted over his furred leg arrested his muzzy senses. "kotenok ..."

His worried thoughts kept him on edge despite his weakened condition. He knew that whatever the cost, he had to find a way to rescue himself in case things went bad. As he tried to make another attempt at breaching his restraints, he was disrupted by the suddenness of the convoy truck coming to a halt. His anxiety increased with the thought that the Jabari had a change in plan that consisted of hunting him for sport inside of the jungle. That fear was mercifully squashed as he listened to the chatter and rustling occurring outside of the truck where he saw multiple shadows moving around the canopy.

"Their trail ends here. They must have crossed the creek somehow. There's no way we can get across the traveling like this!" One of the mercenaries yelled out in frustration much to the anger of the looming shape that was undoubtedly their leader.

"Do I have to make you push Barnes' cage across, D'Jal? I do not care what you have to do. You will find us a way across. I will not entrust the fate of The Eye to a notorious thief and a self-righteously stubborn soldier!" Bhalisa growled heatedly, sending a glare to every member of his tribe. "Build a bridge. Get Barnes off the truck. We are crossing this creek now!"

Jutting up his muzzle scowlingly in a vicious angle, Bucky felt a mutative aggression banking-a denotated reaction that he couldn't wade through. Cold torrents of repressed fury clamorously morphed white-hot against a long-drawn-out snarl. He wouldn't abandon the rapidity of the undeterred ferocity, throttling pants revved out of him as he became aware of the bestial implosion- an unpalpable menace that drove his incisor fangs to curve under the ropes with a thrashing yank. No one could leash up a wolf.

"M' bailing' your damn truck..." Bucky gnarled in retching cadence, the acidic slosh of bile coasted up his throat. Seething out, breathlessly, with an unhinged succession of feral echoes, he shredded a looped rope off his fore-paw, tossing frayed remnants over the rancid corpse of a Jarbri trafficker-a discarded victim from Bhalisa's infinite machine of war-craft that would converge of a hailstorm of resurrected-infectious carnage over tribal borders of Wakanda.

The Gorilla ravager had staked claim to his kitten's life-Selina was risking everything to retract a visage of humanity back to him and Steve-a damn price of devoted severance. Bhalisa had weaponized desperation against her; being shoved into a truck left Bucky to feel downright useless to fight on the sidelines for her while she breached death's arcane proximity. "S'it's my fault, darlin'..." he murmured sulkily in aching hitches, errant tears slipped down his muzzle- a surrendered extension of soul-gouging heartache. "M'not worth this fight..."

As the barking demands of Bhalisa's rabid cadence deafened his ears, blood rush in his veins dauntingly spawned a mind-paralyzing rapture—a convulsive raid of vengeful hunger. "Argh..." The razored intensity of glacial irises slitted with a lethal edge as Bucky gazed blearingly the bulked silhouettes of Hunuman Gorillas' as they alter their impassive stances with reeling traction of disarmed unease when a pulsing electromagnetic charge of a thrown vibrainium EMP bead destabilized the convoy truck's engine. His bushy tail swayed when he registered the ultrasonic energy spearing the forested area: the Black Panther was ready to hunt.

The gravity pulsation of a Royal Talon Flyer hovered above with a variant of cloaking transparency; as Bucky felt the vibrating thump of descent colliding into the idle truck's hood. The radical denizens of the Gorilla tribe harbored parasitic tantamount of corrupting sacred traditions of ancestral law. King M'baku forged a brotherhood- an insuperable alliance with T'challa to answer the Golden City's beckoning call of mortal combat when invaders dared to breach Wakanda's outposts. Bhalisa was a prevailing force of unquenchable bloodthirst-a slaughterer of Wakandian vitality. He was a bridge-burner of peace. There was no tactic of grounded compromise to stilt his conquering spirit.

After receiving the swamp location of a microdot nano- tag left on a Jabari vest, T'challa stealthily engaged the rescue mission to bring the groggy White Wolf back to a secured extension of Shuri's lab. With a contrast monarchic ease of predatory, warrior-honed poise invested in his crouching stance; T'challa kept his forearms crossed over the sleek muscular breadth of his vibrainium-sheathed chest, strobes of lightning were captured in metallic striations that highlighted over his panther visage etched within black gusset mesh that revealed Okavango tribal Wakandian sigils interweaved into black gusset layered in his Panther Habit. "Shuri, I found the location our friend, James Barnes..." he relayed back with belied calmness suffused in his passive undertone. "No sign of Captain Rogers or Selina Kyle..."

"I'm picking up a disturbance from Barnes' snarky ikati's (cat) Kimoyo bead," Shuri addressed, testily against a melodious pitch, revealingly dragging out in an irate huff; electronic-synth backbeats of her techno music, under the mask. Knowingly T'challa felt a quirking tug ghost over his lips, as he listened her construct another vibrainium -weaponized design for their vast armory."Only a high range of kinetic energy can destabilize my technology, brother..."

"If my suspicions are correct, and they often are," he said with a small degree of playfulness only his younger sibling could appreciate. "Bhalisa has gained the upper-hand against our friends, but not without enduring heavy losses. His tribe numbers are fewer, and their cargo appears greatly reduced compared to the reports we received many weeks ago." T'Challa noted as he watched the numerous mercenaries and tribal warriors move through the thicket of trees. Their forms were highlighted through his HUD and he took a mental tally of their numbers and the best strategy to neutralize all of them before focusing his efforts on their chieftain; the Man-Ape.

"I suppose we have Ms. Kyle and Captain Rogers to thank for that. But if Bhalisa remains mobile, it would appear he holds something of great importance over their heads. I see no hostages in the caravans...only an imprisoned creature who appears to be in great distress." He noted darkly with an edge to his normally composed voice.

"Hold on, I'm picking up strong vitals that appears to be canine," Shuri cautioned back to him, grudgingly. Bracing the svelte curves of her body against the edge of her work station within Mount Bashenga; the princess's dark umber irises rove collective intensity over a sonographic hologram projecting from a remote kimoyo bead anchored on her wrist-revealing the captured-extrinsic beast inside the convoy truck wasn't a rangy desert jackal that got sideswiped for easy profit.

The rapid intrusion of poaching in Wakanda's jungle was pestilential-ruinous. Errors of past tribal alliances needed to be severed; with Shuri's trenchant determination, she created safeguard protocols, using kinetic deflector obelisks to form energy barriers over the River Tribe's wildlife reserves. So many orphaned panther cubs were left to die in the jungle after covetous outsiders mercilessly gunned down their mothers. It was a never-ending war to fight: a test of survival and restraint when engaging the crosshairs of vulturous-roughneck poachers, relentlessly steered by contagious indulgence to obtain quick payoffs for skinned-furred pelts.

A torrent of curiously banked in Shuri's widened gaze, elation ramped as if she discovered a variant of proton fusion to splice: a blindsiding revelation that an Ingcuka (wolf) was stealthily prowling in the forested borders of Wakanda. "Brother, if you still want to know what I want for my birthday..." she drove on the request, sassily. "For research purposes..."

"You know most young women your age ask for a new car as their birthday gift." T'Challa responded with a wry quip. He could practically sense the exact moment she rolled her eyes to that. Of course, his little sister was already a well-skilled driver by the time she was 12 and had her own small collection of custom vehicles he designed as if they were child's play. "But I suppose a Princess of Wakanda deserves her own special request. It would be rude of her King to refuse." He conceded while sporting a small smirk from behind his mask. Their playful banter eased his composure in a way only she could.

Focusing his gaze on the scene ahead of him, T'Challa watched the distraught creature within with a degree of suspicion. Wolves were majestic creatures that known to traverse woodlands, where game was plentiful and where other predators such as mountain bears were scarce. Some preferring cooler climates close to water. What was one doing in Wakanda-the Land of the Panther? "Something is odd about this creature. Wolves are not known to enter Wakanda and this one Bhalisa is taking great lengths to guard and restrain." T'Challa liked to think of himself as a sound strategist and detective in his own right.

Criminology was one of the many courses he studied abroad. If there was one thing that he could discern from this his lessons was to know the mind of the criminal. Bhalisa and the Jabari were desperate to destroy Wakanda and revert the land to its old ways. Rumors of them beginning to practice sorcery had reported months ago. Bhalisa held the wolf because it was a bargaining chip. Selina and Steve Rogers were nowhere to be found...and neither was James Barnes. It was in that moment, his eyes caught sight of light reflecting off of a metal object.

Narrowing his enhanced sight on Bhalisa's belt, the answer to his question was delivered by a view of a pair of GI dog-tags hanging from the Man-Ape's waist. They sported a familiar name. "I have a grave suspicion, sister." He said with dread.

A trepidatious pinch fringed against T'challa's brotherly cadence, registering that disquieting stall underlying in his pensive timbre, Shuri unblinkingly narrowed her dark gaze with rampant intensity at projecting kimoyo bead; the holographic scan of the digital wartime dog tags that revealed a vivid G1 service number on twined metallic plates: JAMES B BARNES 32557038 T42.

An infinite rake of pervasive numbness knifing through her veins; the unprecedented—overriding mantra of unevicted panic amplified in tenfold as Shuri unconsciously faltered a step back from her station, her cherished and charmingly valorous friend of Brooklyn-Sergent Barnes was a leashed hostage spawn of Bhalisa's unendurable curse of bestial rebirth. The Mountain Tribe's ravagers had left a wake of the massacre-goat blood was smeared on the desolated huts-a blighted mark of insatiable carnage.

The Jabari slavers punishingly wielded a sorcerous extension of Ghekre's infernal strife over Wakanda, cosmic energy drawn from the astral gateways. The exhumed relic was utilized to cleave an invincible spirit into a divesting vacuum, surgically morphing visages of humanity into an untamed vessel that would surrender to the jungle. Repelled by the arcane conjury of torture used against her friend, Shuri hammered her delicate achingly fist over a vibranium spade gauntlet. "By Bast, we must not waste any more time..." she urged with a distressing pitch, ardently, enabling the Talon Flyer to hover on telekinetic autopilot. "I won't allow that Gorilla brute steal Barnes away from us, brother..."

The scraping noise of metal clamps unhinging evinced predatory impulses, a primeval divergence of feral-wolfish strength that felt alarmingly denotative; rearing his canine head with a vicious wrench of breakneck momentum, Bucky snapped his barred fangs against a heave of snarling breath, feeling his enhanced bulk underneath his unkempt sweat-drenched chestnut fur becoming rigid as carbon steel.

He was attuned to the apparitional cadence of soul-ravaging hostility—unhampered bloodlust murderously arrowing through him with possessive—unremitting traction of a white-hot knife. Every throb of taut muscle in his canine body warred in feral succession; he was on the breadth of verging into halcyon fury. The motions of vengeance echoed in Bhalisa's boot-thumping advances; Bucky's steel- aquamarine irises glaringly blazed at the hulking shadow of advancing intimidation-the wanton stride of a warmongering executioner. "Aragh..." A full-throated growl ricocheted out of him, lurchingly, Bucky thrusted back on his hind-paws, his steepened resistance was careening as his long muzzle stretched gapingly to bite a rush of muggy air, ravingly. "Gonna kill em'..."

Outside the truck, Bhalisa felt something akin to a disturbance. Though his senses weren't as augmented as the kings of panther tribe, the Jabari chieftain could discern when trouble was afoot by listening to the jungle. The birds were quiet, and so were the crickets. Nature never held her silence unless trouble was afoot. His men dutifully continued to build a make-shift bridge by laying out boarding ramps across the ravine while he observed his surroundings. His enormous muscles coiled with anticipated as a familiar suspicion entered his thoughts. "D'Jal, get Barnes off the tru-"

Before his order could be fully delivered, there was a chilling woosh through the jungle as a sharp wind blew through their midst. One of his men screamed before a sickening thud was heard and he collapsed to the ground unconscious. "No…" Bhalisa growled with realization. Another scream, two of them this time, close to the ravine where one of his men was sent crashing into the tide and the other laid slashed and unconscious on the ground. "It's the Panther! Open FIRE!" The Man-Ape roared. All at once, the Jabari mercenaries began to unload their weapons into the trees. Their attention on the truck forgotten, they fail to notice a struggling canopy as a paw begins ripping through for freedom.

"T-T'challa get the hell out of here..." Bucky heaved out raspily, pinching his furred brows into a taut furrow, against a fever-blur headrush that induced explosive nothing- to- lose momentum as he frighteningly launched out of the truck like a careening blade, phantom throbs crimson agonizingly pulsed over his laser-edged vision as concussive pressure mounted in his canine skull-he was running blind.

Thrusting his long muzzle outwards, bushy tail slashed up, conveying a defensive reaction at the flash of second his sniper periphery intermittently caught the grappling shadow of zebra fur-cuffed hand, viperously reaching to steal his breath into a grounded chokehold; inexorably Bucky lunged over an extension of a gnarled branch at the moment rushing heat bodily clashed over his thickened, grungy fur. He wouldn't rein up clamorous aggression if Jabari blood smeared his muzzle, a wolf's fangs gouged with no vestige of mercy. Every cut of fur-sheathed muscle became defined -poised to deliver a throat-ripping strike.

The Wakandan King sat perched safely a top of a branch to a tree, concealed by the thick leaves and shrubs as he watched the carnage unfold below him through his thermal vision. So much blood and wrath. The deep rumbling voice that urged him to run was unfamiliar in its cadence but he knew with certainty that the words belonged to James Buchanan Barnes. "Sergeant Barnes, what have they done to you?" The Black Panther said remorsefully. Though he was far from fearful of the wolf's ferocity, T'Challa chose to allow him to have free reign over the Jabari mercenaries while he set his sights on their Chieftain. "Where are you Bhalisa?"

Squaring his gaze, the Panther could see no sign of the enormous ape-furred wearing mountain of muscle and cruelty. The Man-Ape had turned tail and fled! "Damn it." T'Challa growled into his COM. "Shuri, Bhalisa has fled the jungle. You must send Okoye and the others to collect Sergeant Barnes while I pursue his trail."

"Careful brother," Shuri genuinely admonished back. "I won't have a tight ass panther stalking around my lab..."

Bracing his forepaws crushingly on the armored chest of a decked mercenary, locked into an impassive stupor, Bucky felt a possessive jut of his serrated fangs knife-grazing over the dark flesh of exposed pulse-point, the rhythmic-onrushing echoes of a frantic heartbeat were on the hairbreadth of fatal silence. The Jarbari spawn was disposable in the contrasts of bloodthirst.

Gnashing his fangs, Bucky quashed the carnal assonance of rabidity-it was too damn easy to abandon harbored restraint. White-hot lances of feverish heat razed under his fur, siring an unhinged entity of predatory malice. Choking on a panting breath, Bucky's glacial orbs unblinkingly widened as the spaded razors of his pupils captured his prey's stunned expression. "No..." he gasped in a thready stammer, his muzzle stretched blindingly open to the point-first command of bloodlust resonating within. "I-I gotta stop..."

"Sergeant Barnes!" The voice of the Panther cut through the lethal silence that lingered in the aftermath of the wolf's carnage. From behind a shrub of trees, the Black Panther emerged at a slow pace, his broad stature relaxed and non-threatening as he took in the devastation that surrounded him. Numerous dead Jabari mercenaries laying in gory heaps, their blood staining the Earth beneath his feet. The cinder-furred wolf carried a bloodied muzzle and a distant unblinking look in his eyes. Bloodlust and intoxication. T'Challa knew the dangerous allure could be the man's undoing unless he was brought back from the brink of the primal abyss.

"It is over. You can rest now. I am a friend." The Panther mask peeled away to reveal T'Challa's cool assuring features as he stared at the massive wolf that stood nearly equal his height. His hands held out in front of him with the claws retracted as he made every effort to appear non-threatening and benign. "The fight is over. Reach inside and muster control over this allure." Sitting on his haunches, T'Challa held his hand out, a sign of trust as he beckoned the wolf to approach and see him as his friend. "Come, Bucky. Your friends need you."

The knifing pressure in his blood-slick fangs felt akin to a hammer-grip of a knife; the brackish trek of viscous fluid became corrosive acid that made him chokingly suffocate as flavorous blood clotted his throat. A ferocious torrent of blinding ecstasy drove him to morph into a remorseless—catatonic thrall of execution, his sanity was fringing on a perpetual mantra that deafened into a bestial resurgence of cadency in amorphous fruition as his muzzle stretched open in a vicious flex of rapt tension, poised to drag his fangs with puncturing traction into a mercenary's jugular vein. A rogue shot grazed a branch shadowing him—Bhalisa's Gorilla legion was commanded to hunt them for blood-sport in an effusive cadence of resurrected mayhem.

Angling his drenched muzzle down, sulkily, Bucky registered full measured urgency in the young Wakandian king's reserved timbre, that beckoning placid volume deadened him like a throbbing shunt of morphine. His canine head wrenched back on recoil as his jaw startingly released a shredded piece of Kevlar that he unconsciously ripped off an ammo vest. A teeming succession of incendiary aggression became an eruptive-amplified tempo against the riotous wake of his lethal-vicious assault. Bucky felt ragingly straddled down by the menacing scourge of the curse-a divide from humanity. 'Oh no...'

Reality cannoned through Bucky with soul-jarring force, as he vented out a throaty snarl, confusingly. "Wait...I didn't mean..." he whimpered shivery, disarmingly brushing his fore-paw over the length of his drenched muzzle: more blood to wipe off. "T'challa..." His steel-aquamarine irises fiercely careened a blank glint of awareness to a visceral direction of T'challa's gloved hand, reaching out for him to cross the bridge of trust again.

"Forget about me..." he gnarred out croakily, as the murderous onslaught diffused around the discarded convoy, Bucky tilted his muzzle up at the percussive moment amethyst flashes of lightning arced harrowingly overhead the dense mountain pass. It wasn't an extension of a jungle storm- the infinite breach of the netherworld. The high-intensity range evoked a tectonic pulse under his paws, faltering with seismic quakes that stilted his mobility. "Damnit...That can't be good..." Bucky murmurously quipped, half-torquing back, involuntarily his hind paws collided into an Uzi semiautomatic rifle-that was still operational. 'Hell, if a talkin' space raccoon can pull the trigger, why not a wolf...'

"Wait, brother..." Shuri warned pressingly, sensing an electronic disruption amping in the kinetic current on the maglev train rails; an incredulous pinch over her dark, impish features betrayed a semblance of calm efficiency- an undetected virus had penetrated through her stabilizer towers- vibrainium surges were revving to an uncontainable level. Sliding off her stool with blinding ease, Shuri paced fluidly to the glass barrier, her floored umber irises unflinchingly caught the spastic flashes of bluish energy hopscotching over the rocky notches of the mountain's interior."T'challa, the mine is pulsing like a tasered heartbeat, my lab is being compromised..."

"One thing at a time, sister." T'Challa remarked with a cool look. Inwardly his nerves were being wracked with concern over this foreboding development. If the vibranium mines were reacting on such a cataclysmic level, then it was no doubt due to a high energy source being triggered so close to its origin. The King of Wakanda needed to see to this event that could affect his whole nation, but the man, T'Challa had a duty to see to his friend who needed his help. "We must first get Sergeant Barnes the help he needs." The king now stood closer to the enormous wolf now, so close to smell the reek of blood on his breath. The wolf, lost amidst the warring sensations occurring around him, had little time to process things until he heard T'Challa say. "Forgive me, my friend." Quick as a shadow, T'Challa moved and pinched the wolf's pressure points on his muscled-furred neck with great force.

Bucky whined and collapsed almost instantly at his feet. T'Challa released a sigh. "Shuri, Sergeant Barnes is subdued. Do what you must to help him and find out what is disrupting the vibranium mines."

"Why do I have a feeling that you're going to chase down the Gorilla defiler, brother," Shuri imperatively snarked, in fluidic ease of undeterred pace as she moved towards her curative station, as her bluish - ancestral nsibidi sigil on her kimoyo bead luminously radiated over converging nanonites of that assembled into a stylish medical board fused in kinetic sync. With a variant of command deftly invested within practiced motion of her lithe hand, a digitized pulse activated a control module that rose from sifting accord of vibranium nites. "If there's an energy synthesis that can be counteracted, I might be able to reverse this sorcerous infusion over Sergeant Barnes..." she heartily assured, in a blithe hitch, steely. "Or else Okoye will have our Snarky Wolf chasing down the Border Tribe's rhinos..."

"I can think of worse fates, but none so as vexing for our dear friend here." T'Challa lightly joked. If there was anyone that could help Sergeant Barnes become the man he used to be, it would be Shuri who had helped restore to him once before. "Watch over him, sister; do what you can for him" The Black Panther rose to his feet and left the unconscious wolf beneath a canopy of leaves where he would be safe until found. His focus was steered towards the greater threat that lingered on the horizon and loomed ever closer as he felt the ground beneath his feet begin to vibrate. Along the creek, he watched as the waters rumbled giving an ill omen of what awaited ahead not just for his friends but all of Wakanda. "Because if what I suspect is true, we will need Sergeant Barnes now more than ever." Taking off at breakneck-speed, the Black Panther charged through the jungles in pursuit of his new battle.

------

The empyreal reckoning of Wakanda promised the assonance of carnage against the destructive warcraft that ravaged the lands. Shimming her way through shadowed myriads of arched tunnel passages, Selina felt a diseased mutation pulsing over runic granite walls of encased vibranium; a succession of pharaonic hieroglyphs of inked jackals and half- crescent moons became exposed against the iridescent sconces of veined energy; prowling beside with measured adamance, Steve impelled motion in his paw-steps, his bushy tail caressed over abandoned heaps of arcane skeletal remains that were garbed in torn Egyptian silk and leather-wooden spokes of battlemented chariots poking out jagged rocks.

A sulfurous vapor chased their vigilant stride as they passed remnants of Middle-age history in sync of a cautious vigil. Each deformed-boney finger that gripped a Khopesh sword was prevalent memory of expendable sacrifice and loyalty to Bast-a warrior division of impregnable command to defend the sacral tomb with every drop of valorous blood. Involuntarily, with practical intent stoking her thieving resolve, as stray mahogany tresses webbed over the sleekness of her delicate jaw, Selina crouched on her shapely-tone haunches, edging her clawed hand towards a sickle-curved blade that she could lethally utilize during another resurrected ambush."If we're going to play in dark, soldier boy, we need to accessorize..." she pointedly gritted against a tight breath, clutching the blade's hilt that had impaled through a bronze-plated thorax. "Bucky would love to have a swing with this..."

"I'm gonna have to pass on the accessories unless these guys are carrying something equipped for an overgrown cat." Steve rumbled as he prowled across the ancient dusty enclosure. His paws were soundless and graceful as they moved over the skeleton remains of deceased warriors and their discarded weapons. The few that he saw were rusted beyond imagination while very few shone like freshly forged steel. Vibranium weapons. The most versatile metal on the planet with incredible longevity. The inside of the circular room they found themselves in was dimly lit by the pale sunlight seeping through the cracks in the ceiling. Dust was thick in the air but the way ahead appeared clear as the moved through a columned hall with pictographs carved in the stone surface.

As the snow leopard prowled, he noticed Selina beside him admiring the numerous old relics and statues. "Just remember, we're not here to sightsee." He growled, knowing her reputation as a famed tomb raider and jewel hunter.

Giving the snow-leopard a sidelong glance, convincingly, Selina trudged over the phalanx desiccated of Egyptian soldiers barricading a pillared gateway; carved panther heads of granite jutted over a reflective dormant pool of incandescent- violaceous sequins that were melded gemstones. Her coffee irises blankly gazed down at the untouchable masses, a hypnotic pulse emanated with ancestral defense; she unconsciously was edging closer in a thieving rush, her gloved hand shakily poised to breach through fountaining cascades, pouring out the mirroring panther busts fanged mouths. "I-I just need one..." she purred in listless pitch, her advances driven by a phantom- covetous urge that infected her resolve.

"Stay sharp, Selina. We can't lose focus right now!" The leopard warned. Her sudden fixation on the ancient artifacts surrounding them went from curious to hypnotic in quick order. He didn't need to be a grown feline with a sixth sense to know that something was off here. His soldier's intuition yelled at him to be attentive on only the path ahead and nothing around them. The more he forced himself to focus on that concept, the sooner he began to realize there was a strange echo in the air. He watched as Selina lifted a rusted old mirror framed with gold and jewels, admiring its design. "Selina?!" He roared at her.

His instincts yelled at him to pounce and swat the object from her hand, forcing her to look away from it. But he knew that he might hurt her in doing so. He was over 500 lbs of muscle and fat and he had only just begun to grown used to his new body to risk underestimating his strength. The echo he heard continued, it was low and female in its timbre that resonated something foreboding and continuous. Like a mantra. A spell? "Damn it." Steve grumbled with realization. Left with no other choice he pounced towards Selina and hit the mirror out of her hand, watching it fall and shatter on the ground. Her reaction was like that of someone waking from a nightmare with a gasp. Rubbing his head against her hand, Steve beckoned. "You still with me?"

A gracing wake of telltale urgency painstakingly arced through Selina against the runic starkness, earthen-tribal clamor echoed in arrays of rippling extensions disturbing the vitreous relic horde. Staving back tense resistance against the vacuous onslaught that fringed over her rebelling pulse, impassively Selina flitted her coffee irises down at the bulky snow-cat who braced on his furred paws trustingly at her side; harboring unshakeable aura of a brotherly spirit.

"W-What happened..." An incoherent rasp dragged against her breathless thready undertone, staggering back to purchase her footing, Selina registered the fissionable pulse -a resurrected heartbeat as nascent gravity exponentially downshifted. Their intrusive proximity had rigged detection. Catching the pillowy swell of her underlip with a drag of her teeth, she felt disarmingly violated by an unwarranted fringe of betrayal-the hunkily defiant sniper wolf that she loved was being cast into a bestial divergence of a sorcerous maelstrom-one more damn slip-up would inevitably hammer the apocalyptic gauntlet of endgame over Wakanda.

Rearing his feline head, Steve thrusted his whiskered muzzle up, in successive reaction against careening salvos of white-heat effusing out of hollowed eye-sockets of decapitated skulls amassed over a cleft of extended granite steps. They need to forbiddingly wade through another carious stockade. "I dunno how long I can keep my head level above this water, Miss Kyle..." he drawled weightily, the apparent sternness of his grating timbre, the oceanic azure of his crystalline spheres became ferally razored to spaded dark; a conjuring revelation that the leopard spirit grippingly racking him was revving to unleashed full-blooded hostility. Lowering his head, rapidly, Steve clenched his fangs, as his bushy tail swept over a misshapen skull."W-Whatever your call, M' gonna see you through it..."

"You really trust me with that," Selina questioned him ruefully, a definite conviction was guardingly tamped down by a terse play of malevolence, evident to a jaunty curve, smirkily half-quirking up her sheening voluminous lips, as she vehemently drove her vibranium 'sneaker' boot with bone-crushing force over a skeletal corpse. Regardless of the clash of infinite heartache that gouging into her like knifepoint, she didn't want to pitch an emotional grenade at valiant snowy-leopard, as they explicitly fostered onto phantom resilence. Bhaslia had rigged the deck against her and the ground under her feet was becoming tenuous. She wouldn't bend or falter back-not when Bucky was latching on a visage of unstinted hope against the caliginous barrage of Gorilla reign. "Look, I know what's being held against us," she gritted out, seethingly, blinking against an errant sting, as wetted treks gleamed revealingly down her alabaster cheek. "I know what I have to steal back..."

The snow leopard could practically feel the heartache wafting off of her. The grief he harbored for his best friend kept him on a sure path of determination to see this mission through but his tactical mind worked continuously to figure a way to thwart their mutual enemy that held him prisoner. And it didn't change the grim sense of foreboding that permeated his entire being. It told him that if they proceeded forward, Bhalisa would be the least of their worries. The temple they stood in was ancient and cursed to repel all intruders that sought out this Eye the heart so many things about. Such security measures meant that what they were after was far more dangerous than what they'd been led to believe.

"I got your six," the leopard nodded his head while emitting a low growl. "We need to keep moving forward. Not sure how much longer I can keep myself in check," he warned. He knew his own self-control was slipping and it wouldn't be long until he turned from partner to obstacle. "Lead the way." He beckoned her towards the chamber up ahead.

The scratchiness of his growly timbre was fringed in stark-unwarranted desperation, Steve tactlessly gnashed his incisor fangs against a murderous pulse, gearing up the predatory variance of his muscled feline body; he was being inexorably saddled down into a vulnerable position that infinitely ushered him onto scourging breadth of morphic oblivion. His soldiery-Brooklyn resistance was straying against the infectious tumult -the naked gleam of his spaded pupils ringed azure was evident to dismal clench of his whiskered muzzle-he knew the high cost of the Jabari tyrant's demand of wielding the relic to induce massacring sterilization over the united tribes of Wakanda. That access to eradicative power needed to be obstructed. He wouldn't become shaken-deferred by this. 'Whatever it takes...'

Refusing to let the Avenger snow-cat abandon the beckoning promise of ignited deliverance, Selina became collectively attuned that clamorous volume he soulfully emitted in purring resonance-this palpable gravity of unimpeded dependence felt viscerally akin to a sibling connection. With smooth ease of her balletic-hone footing, Selina crouched to his level, feigning assuage of her coaxing touch as she kneaded his grayish-blonde fur in ministrations of tacit delicacy.

"Hey, we're going to swipe this damn thing for Bucky," Selina tersely promised, shifting her dark brandy irises keenly at incandescent slants of vitreous light ghosting ethereally over a granite-carved altar infused with skeins of vibranium that melded into pharaonic runes. "They always make it look easy," she deadpanned, scoffingly, bracing the archaic sword against the curvaceous length of her neoprene-clad thigh, not wavering in her poise against demonical clangor of the ghoulish masses around them. A devious quirk of a smirk frisked her lips, vixenishly. "Looks like we're about to crash the afterparty..."

"You get used to it," Steve would've sighed if he were capable. The rough breath he exhaled was enough indicator about how uneasy he felt. The altar was polished and looked strikingly free of dust despite being unattended to for centuries. "We can't turn back now." He urged her with a bob of his head. The visceral intensity of his eyes was alarming as they glowed in the dim light of the chamber. Selina would've felt perturbed had she not possessed nerves of steel. Too much weighed on this decision. They had come farther than any others that came before. The chance to save Bucky coincided with the possibility of endangering all of life in Wakanda and perhaps beyond. But they knew if they do this now, Bhalisa wouldn't stop until he got the Eye and would send someone else after them. They had to stay a step ahead of him.

"Let's get the Eye and take it back to Shuri. Maybe they can create a replica that will be enough to fool Bhalisa long enough for us to save Buck." Steve offered.

The arceous pulse of astral energy channeled hauntingly over the etched granite of panther heads-a soul cast of abandoned vitality-the altar began to shift in a circular motion, detecting apparent flexion of her stealth-honed advances. Stereophonic volumes of tribal drumbeats herald a visitant emergence that arrowed out of the netherworld -phantsi komhlaba gateway.

With a controlled drag of tensing breath, Selina breached the obsidian remnants of skulls that were fused into stone-damned suckers who fell against the receiving end of an unwelcome convergence. A miasmatic heat rushed over her neoprene garb, as the vibranium sigils of the steps reactively glowed an eternal amethyst, emitting an intimate beckon- an evocative tempo, driving her paces towards the deific altar while tremoring contractions underneath became an elevating succession of the center notching up until her gloved palm aligned possessively over runic glyph of Bast's panther visage.

It was an opening to the Ancestral Plane-the empyreal dimension where collected mortality of Wakanda existed within infinite barriers. She was being used like a reluctant harbinger of feline incarnate, that would soon unleash phantom wrath-a rabid gale of soul-cleaving death. "Stay back..." she warned the snowy-leopard, breathlessly, not betraying a shift of resistance traction in her impassive poise. "It might be rigged..."

Steve kept his sharp eyes on the elaborate designs and mechanisms connected to the altar in search of a trap. He wasn't an engineer but he had combed through many hidden lairs in his life-time to know that the best laid traps were unseen. His intuition yelled at him to pull back, both him and Selina, before the unseen threat reared its head in. But he felt a different pull now. The same one he had felt only moments ago when Selina had become entranced by the objects and architecture outside of the room. A luring whisper spoke in a language he didn't understand. Not at first. But like a pleasant old song heard on the radio, Steve was in awe and unable to stop listening to its tune, especially as the words began to make more sense.

'Wakanda's secret may is lost, for harmony has come with a cost. Nature weeps in the spanning of years. But as I awaken from sleep, there will be no tears. Fear not the what you may hear; rejoice my child, for your mother draws near.'

Steve didn't realize he had been growling in a trilling pattern until he heard the shifting of plates and watched as Selina began to claim the relic upon the altar. Everything suddenly became so clear to him in the span of so few seconds. The Eye was alive.

"Selina-WAIT!" He growled as he lunged towards the altar, just as she took the object in hand, and a shockwave blew him across the room.

The explosive intensity of kinetic fusion was blindingly searing, a phosphorus-white razed over the skeletal horde as Selina clutched a palm-sized amulet that was lazurite-blue, adorned with mirrored golden scarab beetles at the jewel's edges-a forbidden weapon that spider-crawled in kneading rotation sync as the nanites swept up her forearm, a clawed mechanism throbbingly fastened onto the delicate bones of her in paralyzing fruition. In that concussive moment, the tigerish decadence of her coffee irises went chillingly blank-a listless depth of reverent surrender. Blood trekked slickly over the lush bow of her voluminous lip. She was tragically becoming an immobilized vessel-the earthen heartbeat of Bast.

A morphic spawn of the astral- telestic entity was overwhelmingly infecting her bone-deep. Bracing herself against the deadening onslaught arresting her mobility, Selina felt her veins physically heightening to the carrion volumes against inexpressible anguish that stole her warring pulse. A vertiginous gravity forced her warred momentum to collapse as she alarmingly bruised her cheek over a granite step, voicelessly screaming against smothered breaths as parasitical arcs of incendiary energy haloed over her. A suffusing mythic essence horrifyingly raided through her-a dark cleansing. "No..."

Steve felt the world spin on its axis while he remained still and unable to follow its rotation. His head throbbed with an intrusion of pain; his vision became blurred and his hearing was deafened by a loud ringing that shredded all cohesive thoughts. He couldn't think beyond the impulsive desire to lash out blindly at the sounds that were unrelentingly painful. His muscles were brittle with restraint, unable to cope with the surge of adrenaline coursing through him at an alarming rate. He needed to roar-to scream so loud that the walls trembled by the sound. The song that haunted him was no longer a dull whisper but a chiming anthem with a chorus of Wakandian chants that instilled a sense of obedience within him.

Second by second, the man known as Steve Rogers vanished into a dark realm and something raw and primordial took his place. When the leopard opened his eyes, his pupils had narrowed to cat-like slits. His feral gaze saw the world surrounding him in a new light. Everything sparkled with vibranium light, but nothing glowed more luminous than the curvy and slender form that stepped down from the altar, bathed in an astral light.

'The deliverance of our reckoning will make the mortal sun never touch defiled grounds of our Wakanda, my cub...'

The goddess Bast had returned.

-------------------------------------------

Ingcuka...

Reality became stilted against the upheaval of arcane-deific conjury to usher a chimeric assession of mortality from the Djalia; keeping herself a breadth of enforced caution, Shuri neared a the restorative station that was apart of the palace's medical division, the sanctuary of her lab was compromised; she couldn't breach the safeguard protocol grid and return to her designs. Staving off her unabated vexations, the spunky princess efficiently brandished steeled poise, edging her cautious pace towards a laden fore-paw draped slackly over the curative pad's edge.

A guttural resonance imposingly chased panted breath against a clash of seductive-induced exhaustion, a deadly visage of calmness felt unstable as the hefty beast-wolf rested on his furred side, his incisor fangs menacingly arced over his underlip. Easing her attentive focus, Shuri didn't alter her distance, the gungy-nauseous stench wafted off Bucky's unkempt, smoky charcoal and dark chestnut fur, as she daringly breached for pacifying convergence of trust rioting against grogginess.

Corded strength under the sniper wolf's disheveled fur rapt with hostile aura-the intensifying measure of the gravity between them was explosive as reluctance contracted. A breathy groan was suppressedly evident as in blinded effort, Bucky shifted his long muzzle involuntarily against the white vibranium nanites of the medi-pad. With her resolve unfractured in errant contrasts of reaction, against a hard-won moment of reckless intent, Shuri placidly braced herself with assessing ease, and stationed taser kimoyo beads that pivoted around his impassive bulked form-he was still gripped under a lethargic stupor. "Don't you even think up snapping those lethal jaws at me, Sergent Barnes..." she jokingly rasped, shadowing tentative heat narrowingly over his canine muzzle, her phantom touch was invested with elemental grace, reacting to his whiskers pricking against her lithe palm. "By Bast, my good friend, I will not abandon you..."

"S-Shuri!" A growl erupted from the wolf's twitching maw. Raw and bestial aggression had enveloped him as he sensed a change in the atmosphere. The lingering bloodlust from his rampage had waned considerably since T'Challa had subdued him, but he couldn't quell the sudden inexplicable feeling of impending doom. "S-Somethin's happening!" He whined, feeling as if the walls were closing in around them by and they were about to be crushed by something or SOMEONE that they were unprepared for. The instruments and objects around Shuri's lab began to vibrate in an ominous precursor to what lay ahead. The skies above Wakanda had become enveloped by storm clouds that blotted out the sun. The animals of the jungles stampeded across the plains as if they were running from something. Bucky could feel them. Their fear, their awe, and their rejoicing.

"I know, Sergent Barnes..." Shuri whispered in somber pitch, blinding salvos of energy funneled electrifying over the forested outpost of the mountain crest; a tempestuously daunting rebirth of arrestive- cataclysmal wrath careened across the Golden City- the humid breeze was becoming acrid as vaporous plumes of smoke bankingly enwreathed over incandescent-metallic roots of vibranium assailing from quaking earth, morphing violently into spear-pointed appendages lancing destructively into cargo Talon Flyers in the wake of sacrificial ascension. The extraction protocol was under the stoic command of General Okoye. Pacing towards the glass barrier of the palace's lab, in a reserved measure of definite heartache, Shuri felt a visceral pulse of tragic surrender -a soul being possessively cleaved out of the mortal existence. "This is no Wakandian storm..."

"Shuri..." An urgent command was evident in Queen Ramonda's motherly cadence as she advanced towards her daughter in regal haste. The passive intensity of raven irises flitted a regarding glance vitally down at Bucky's leaden, predatory-canine form, that belied impotent defiance.

Rearing his long muzzle up in traction of strenuous ease, the dismal cast of his razored aquamarine depths unblinkingly caught strobing flashes of fissiparous electricity-they were on the irrevocable fringe of nether oblivion. Every arcing salvo gouged the indefensible utopia into eruptive trenches-everything was being ravaged with a sorcerous eclipse on unleashed vengeance.

Tamping down a wolfish yelp, against an infectious drag of palpable exhaustion, Bucky angled his twitching muzzle up, reactively sniffing the cavalcade of putrescent flesh- a ghoulish armada was mobilizing at the Border Tribe's river hamlets. "P-Princess..." he rasped out croakily in graveled timbre, distressing tension violated him to achingly emit a high-pitch squeak. "Company s'comin'..."

Clutching her hand into a evident fist, Ramonda did her utmost to rein back a surge of edging tears that dampened her steel-gray dreadlocked braids, her polished dark features rapt stirringly with telltale ache that betrayed her warriorlike countenance as she alarmingly registered a demonic chimera mephitically fostering an eternal rebirth- an infinite shift of the netherworld planes. Vibranium was becoming poisonous-the reckoning of Bast would conduct a -carnage harvesting tempest against Wakanda's mortality. "The Eye of Bast has been found and I fear, my daughter, the astral ritual as taken the beloved hand that willingly lifted it..."

"L-Lina...No…" The wolf whined against heart-throbbing realization. Selina and Steve had found the artifact that Bhalisa had coerced them into finding and had unknowingly released disaster upon the nation of Wakanda and perhaps the world as waves of energy that expelled from the epicenter of the magical anomaly slammed into him repeatedly. He called onto his mental fortitude to keep himself centered, to focus on his discipline and identity and to resist the call of the wild. The Call of Bast. "They're in trouble, Shuri. I can feel it." The wolf angled his head to look at her. The depths of his blue eyes were no longer feral, but there was a desperation in them that was gut-wrenching as he shed tears.

"She's calling me. I have to fight her. I have to save em'." He urged, watching the young girl who in ways was like a little sister to him, begin to tear up as she watched her friend suffer and her homeland begin to tremble beneath the resurgence of their patron goddess. "We're all in danger. Us, T'Challa, Steve...Selina. I need you to help me get to them. Please."

A slurring tenor of restoked anguish rushed out him, immediately, Shuri kneaded chaste pressure of tactile delicacy invested in her sweeping palm over his unkempt chestnut fur, the aggressive glint in his glacial irises fringed stormier while the Queen Mother's hand tensely reached to wrench hers back against retractive distance. Bracingly in a successive motion of innate feistiness, she clutched Bucky's silvered fore-paw to anchor her at the medical pad's edge.

"I won't let our Wakanda fall," she gritted breathlessly, surges of variegated energy amplified-chaotic havoc was razing beneath them. She needed to utilize all technological divergences and unfailingly compose an effective incantation that would douse Bhalisa's sorcerous phage out of her Snarky wolf-protocol defenses needed to be reactivated, but she felt the urgent strain of agonized heartbreak feverishly racking from Bucky's canine vassal-if she didn't move fast-the intoxicating vitality of Selina Maria Kyle would become a grievous extension of the astral plane-she wouldn't lose that deviously brazen kitten.

"I never sonically harbored this wavelength of energy before, if that defiler brute used it on you, I might be able to isolate the morphic effects..." Shuri testingly added, half-smirking at furrowing pinch evident on the crescent patches of cindery fur on hefty menacing wolf's brow."I'm sure there will probably be some discomfort, but we'll get your swag back."

"Do whatever it takes, Shuri. Just get me back off the ropes and back on two legs." The wolf squirmed and did his utmost to relax. Bast's call was like an alarm that wouldn't stop ringing. The only way to get it to stop was to seek her out. He refused through gritted teeth, whimpering and shuddering like a frail creature that wasn't a 400lb+ wolf. He watched as Shuri nodded and went to work. The walls of the lab shuddered as another shockwave went loose. The Queen held the table and gasped, terror in her eyes clear for her children and her homeland. "Its gonna be all right, your Majesty." Bucky found himself saying as he felt Shuri's incantation begin to work its magic. "Brooklyn boys never stay down."

----------------------

The wildlife of Wakanda were in a state of turmoil as several native creatures answered Bast's Call while the others too terrified rushed in the opposite direction of their brethren. The gray skies rumbled at early noon, giving the foreboding sense of a storm upon the horizon. Harsh winds blew through the reeds and trees. Elephants, giraffes and apes stormed away from the jungles in sheer mounting terror while a stampede of lions and cheetahs ran towards them. If the sight of the Wakandan wildlife charging in opposite directions wasn't odd enough, the sight of a single solitary force-a man-charging with the pack of feline predators towards the jungle would've been a shocking sight.

Dirt and grass kicked off the ground in wake of Bucky's racing footsteps. The feeling of running with two legs would've been a feeling to celebrate were it not for the dread festering in his stomach. He was himself again-but at the same time he wasn't. Power and speed coursed through his veins the likes of which he never felt, even with Zola's serum. He felt aggressive, unrelenting like a predator chasing prey. The pinch of discomfort in his jaws reminded him of why as he ran his tongue over his sharp canines; the residual trace of his transformation.

The wolf-blood inside of him howled as he ran alongside the other animals, both as one of them and not. The jungle sped through his eyes as if he were on a rollercoaster ride, and but he navigated the landscape with sharp eyes. The animals, like him, were being called to the temple where Bast awaited them-where his friends-his kitten waited for him.

'M' comin' Lina...

-------------------------------------------

After purchasing an extent of feline-graces over rocky edifice, T'challa quashed down the exhilarative-dynamical rush as he snicked his vibranium claws, altering his stance into a predatory crouch with his weight readily braced on his nano-sheathed forearm, the sliver crystalline lens of his Panther Habit's mask hauntingly blazed against voltaic flashes of heat, as inhuman resonance echoed over the decimated grounds, a constant pulse jackhammered through him-a dark intimacy was becoming superfetated out of the Ancestral Plane-the Djalia. Contrasts of lush viridity morphed into barren husks-gnarled branches against skeins of kinetic energy. An empyrean unity hailed blood-lusting degeneracy over the outland vistas- infinite damnation was resurrected by the ravening- tyrannical conquest of Jabari extremists. "It has begun..." he murmured under breath, composedly.

Using a neural incapacitant -a destabilizing powder over the skeletal horde below; T'challa felt the warrior-honed resilence of the virile sleekness of his whip-corded muscles cunningly flex on a defensive accord; he was being marked down by a demonic vision of possessed masses of shriveled flesh-a phalanx of Bast that unremittingly was engaged to deliver kill-strikes. Any subtle movement would undeviatingly betray his obscured position.

T'Challa knew disaster was quickly encroaching upon his kingdom. One that he should've anticipated and taken a more direct means of subverting before things had progressed this far. The old temple was forbidden and used as a bedtime story for young boys and girls to both cautioned and intrigue them. He had only visited it once from afar in his boyhood years when his father began the task of grooming him to become the next king. As he now stood within the walls of the old courtyard where countless armed corpses belonging to warriors long past, the King of Wakanda felt his childhood nightmares had become a reality. When the dead rose to defend the temple, it meant someone had breached its defenses and were now inside.

The rampage of crushed bodies told him his adversary had arrived only moments ago and was now ahead of him. But the fact had not changed that the path ahead was blocked by a score of decayed horrors wielding ancient vibranium weapons. "I am T'Challa, King of Wakanda and the Black Panther. Return to your slumber!" He yelled with a commanding tone. The ghouls and revenants continued to stalk towards him. "Was worth an attempt," he mused wrly. His panther claws were drawn the next moment and the Black Panther rushed into battle.

The feral impulse was overwhelmingly infectious, he detected telltale vibrations of intrusion over his domain, arcing his bushy tail in a variance of existential stealth, the male snow-leopard unwaveringly calculated stalking thread of his phantom advance. In a headlong measure of swift ease waged by a fiercer- honed communion of soul rigging instinct-a breadth of prevalent surrender, the snow-leopard panted raggedly in bestial mantra; without echoes of apparent hesitance.

The connective palpableness that Steve vigilantly registered beckoning him felt deceptive-corrupted. He intimidatingly braced his massive paws over a gnarled branch; panting out a deep-throated cadence of visceral aggression, his thick grayish-blonde fur melded against shadowing palm leaves as he increased tactical momentum with feline prowess down a slanted obelisk, his lucent azure orbs piercingly caught a heated —pulsing aura of his marked prey-T'challa. His whiskered muzzle rapt into a stoic clench, as he growly sniffed a toxicant miasma leaching from gouged-out trenches of Bast's pantheon arcade. 'Not this time..."

The Black Panther moved and danced around the undead as if he were leaf in the wind, impossible to catch. But as he watched the numbers surrounding him begin to increase, he knew that he could not keep this up forever. Eventually, he would be overwhelmed or forced to retreat. The latter was not an option for him. Not when so much was at stake. So he increased the strength and speed of his efforts, flaying and maiming the armor of all the sorcerous constructs that were overwhelming him, all the while an inkling of dread increased in the pit of his stomach as they got closer and closer to him. "I will not yield, monsters!" He cried, crossing his forearms only to slash them at the throat of an enemy and watched as its head came off its shoulders. That was when his senses screamed at him of something incoming.

The sunlight disappeared as a massive shadow loomed over him. The earth rumbled and a massive weight descended from the skies ontop of him. Acting on sheer automatic reflex, T'Challa leaped away just in time to avoid being crushed by the pouncing weight of an enormous and imposing snow leopard. The creature was large; much too large for an average member of his kind. Hard muscles rippled beneath the silk of its fur, and its eyes glowed a luminous and haunting blue as they glared daggers at him.

In a bolstered measure of grounded ease, the snow-leopard retracted out his fore-claws, penetrating the diseased earth with a raking glide against eruptive cadency; the azure depth of his feline spheres became ardently intense-a bestial heat that lasered with sirenic allure. Hard cords of bulked muscle flexed tensely under grayish-roseset fur, channeling a manic aura of revved possession.

Glaringly, he chased T'challa's evasive movements of acrobatic poise, with a swift deflect on his massive paws, he blindingly vaulted over thrusting precision of a javelin spear that dropped out of a sentry's viscid clutch with prowling graces. An errant pulse of lethal tension stoked in elemental unison, as he impassively mirrored the Black Panther's deceptive low-crouch. Panting against a fanged grimace that stretched his muzzle, he murmured out daringly. "I can do this all day..."

"...Captain Rogers?" T'Challa was stricken and in shock, recognizing that voice and those words anywhere. They belonged to the only man on Earth that could face him toe-to-toe in combat, the only Avenger he truly respected. Steve Rogers had become both an ally and friend, and as the Black Panther gazed at the malicious leopard in front of him, he found himself pinched with remorse over what has become of him. "I am truly sorry this happened to you, Steve. But for the sake of all Wakanda, and all the world, I will not stand down. I will go through you if I must." T'Challa extended his claws to punctuate his point. The atmosphere was heavy with anticipation. The Panther knew his odds of survival, let alone success, had drastically fallen. The ancestral plane beckoned but he would refuse the call for as long as he could.

Then, just as the leopard began to make his move, there was a rumbling vibration across the Earth that shook the courtyard. It felt as if a stampede were closing in. Seconds passed and sure enough, T'Challa and the leopard watched as pack of lions and tigers charged over the walls in a roaring frenzy. The snow leopard was suddenly tackled by black and silver blur, sending him crashing and rolling across the ground as if he were hit by a train. "Sorry, Steve. But this is one fight you don't want to be a part of." T'Challa watched with mild relief as Bucky Barnes, The White Wolf-The Winter Soldier-rose to his feet and stared down the transformed leopard.

"Argh..." Thrashing his head viciously against the hammer-shock collision of cybernetic vibrainium that bodily careening him off defensive poise with bone-ramming force, the snow-leopard rapidly attempted to lunge in predatory tact, astral crimson fringed over his razored-slit pupils, reactively evident to carved amethyst glyphs on the twined granite obelisks ethereally irradiated ghoulish energy over the zombied skeletal denizens flanking around them.

The penetrative resurgence of Bast's spirit infinitely evolved into weaponized energy that converged, grappling Bucky down onto the sorcerous breadth of a lycan thrall as the leopard's snarling resonance manically arrested the naked sheen of banking tears in his grayish-aquamarine depths-a brotherly resolve that was paralyzed by the unwarrantable extension of contractive heartache that devastatingly silted his mobility, in a jutting clench of his bristled jaw, tautly Bucky barred his canine incisors, deterring a throated sob. "Punk..."

Reeling back in defensive traction, grimacingly on his paratrooper boots, the Brooklyn sniper momentarily lost his grip on controlled restraint; he wouldn't deliver his best friend into a choke-hold of neutralized submission. The snow leopard exponentially detected his stemming hesitance and arced a fore-paw with slashing motion, edging toward's the Kevlar material of Bucky's garbed calf in knifing accord. For a stalled momentum of a rampageous heartbeat, the forepaw eased unwaveringly up as Bucky with rivaled fluidity, sidestepped with a viscerous drag of tactical-honed footing. "Get away from here..." A panty- guttural warning of a ragged-aggressive timbre sonorously became clamorous in urgent volume. "Leave now..."

The leopard was warring with the force that was beckoning all wildlife towards the goddess' side. The temple rumbled from within, sending tremors and vibrations in the grown beneath their feet. Bucky and T'Challa share a worried glance with each other, both knowing that what awaited them ahead was something they were not only ill-equipped for, but hopefully outnumbered. That much was clear as they watched a number of predators leap over the courtyard and begin to make their way towards the opening that lead into the temple. "We can't do that, Steve. You know that. Not until the mission is over. Not until both you and Selina are back home safe and sound. And whatever genie we let out of the bottle is crammed back in." Bucky adamantly stated.

"Sergeant Barnes," T'challa urged pressingly, as he slashed his vibrainum claws with a dissecting thrust into maggoty flesh of gaping-mouth Wakandian spearsman, ragingly hacking the skeletal arm off as the ghoulish warrior jerkily liquified into a disintegrating mass of inky sludge, viscid remanents leaching from plated armor. Not catching a break, he rotated like lithe dark silk, delivering a high roundhouse into the dislocated ribs of flanking denizen his trapped foot lanced through with bone-splintering force. "Captain Rogers-Steve is now an extension of Bast's power..."

Catching a razored snarl, tearingly denotative aggression strummed through him as hs piercing azureous orbs whiplashed murderous intensity at Bucky, rearing back on his paws with conscious traction of retractive momentum akin to a poised cobra, in a practiced motion, Steve arced his bushy tail up, hunching low on his furred girth. The defeating assonant of Bast implosively commanded for disposable termination.

His breathing gutturally echoed a resonance of infinite compliance-nothing would abate. He was riding out tumults of convulsive bloodlust. Jutting out his incisor fangs, evident to the snick of his claws, Steve was inexplicably blinded to rabid awareness, seeing only veined pulses of detected heat-blood -channeling through his best friend. 'Buck...'

Errant glide of wetness trekked down the bristled knife-edge curve of Bucky's jaw, that naked relevance of Brooklyn was straining to overrun Bast's stuporous thrall, he stared up at the navy-blue Kevlar-clad invader for a definite -rebelling moment as Bucky shakily quirked his shapely-wide lips into a brotherly smirk half-heartedly, coaxing strayed hope back into him.

Alarming to Bucky's tenacious regard, the possessive depth of his azure orbs lucidly flashed vitric amethyst against clangorous vibrations emanated from the breached temple-aroused sentient of virulent wrath. "Gotta leave..." Steve rasped out, in chokingly pitch, thrashing his fanged muzzle down with a throated strain of visceral betrayal-Bast had enrooted a pulse of arrestingly command through him. "I don't wanna do this..."

"We must make haste, Bucky." T'Challa urged with a desperate look towards the entrance to the temple where several of the wildlife predators were thrashing their weight to break through the sealed opening. Bucky stood his ground as the leopard that was now his best friend hovered close to him-so close he could feel the heat of his breath and see the lethal reflection of his sharpened incisors parched with thirst-thirst for wrath. The eyes told a tale of struggle, a pure and disciplined soul within warring with his mind for control of the body.

"We can do this, Steve. Just let us past. Please, buddy. Selina needs us, and we need you." Bucky didn't want to attack his best-friend, even if he was now a full-grown and vicious snow-leopard being tormented by Bast's mind-controlling influence.

Dragging his fore-claws with stark traction painstakingly over a flailing skeletal corpse, Steve caught the panting resonance teeming in his breath, trying his damnedest to fight with of modicum of urgent resistance, he wouldn't lose his grip-not today. Rancid blood misted over the obstructed entrance passage against clashing prevalent aggression. They wouldn't break through as twined lioness slashed down a bucking zebra with claw-gouging force. It was a suicidal run that Bucky was unavailingly hellbent to kickstart. Growling to convey his fleeting alliance, Steve gestured a massive paw at a vibrainum tribal shield propped for Bucky's cybertronic reach. Parting his fanged muzzle, he drawled throatily, in grating pitch."I'll give you way in and whatever happens, you take it..."

"Then let us begin," T'Challa extended his claws and like a true panther, he pounced towards the entrance. Bucky reacted sharply by slamming his boot on top of the edge, popping the shield into the air like a catapulted lance.

"Steve, catch!" Bucky throws the shield towards the leopard who, not missing a beat, caught the ancient vibranium weapon between his teeth and began barrelling towards the pack of predators assembled in front of the entrance. As a leopard, Steve was much bigger and stronger than the others gathered. His size could be compared to an elephant among sheep. His powerful muscles rippled beneath his fur as he charged and collided with titanic force through the pack of lions and tigers, sending them rolling across the courtyard as if they had been struck by a train. Bucky and T'Challa had no time to appreciate the awe-inspiring sight before they made a quick dash into the temple, trusting Steve to watch their backs while the greater threat loomed ahead of them.

In a rushing wake of lethal momentum, releasing his grip on the shield as he rammed into protruding girth, Steve blindingly arced a fore-paw with a knifing strike into the furred back of a sister-lioness; a spray of crimson became a marker of his rampaging assault, his incisors pierced into pliant muscles as he forcibly grappled her down in tempo of a vicious yank that was distinctly effective to a Judo chokehold. Right at the moment of tasting blood's coppery trek smearing his locked muzzle, Steve knew he was the fringe of devolving into a monstrous level. He was becoming a dangerous opponent-the resurging cadence of deviant bloodlust overwhelmingly exhilarated him. "Buck-" He yelled in explosive hitching, as frantic zebra herds barricaded their anchoring distance. His soldiery resistance was dauntingly capsizing into hostile fusion."Go save your best girl..."

Bucky never considered himself to be the leading type among soldiers. He was good at following orders and defering to the command of a superior officer. So he had no problem allowing T'Challa to lead them through the gloomy ancient corridors of the Wakandan temple. The smell of dust and moss permeated the air, magnified ten-fold whenever they came through a room where plant-life was creeping through the cracked flooring and walls. They were both unarmed except for their power and determination to see them through whatever obstacles they might face. Bucky felt a grim-foreboding the further they traveled. The walls of the ancient structure sent chills across Bucky's skin, almost as if they were vibrating some sort of frequency...or message.

"Do you hear that?" He asked T'Challa when he could no longer shrug off the feeling of pins and needles as if something or someone was whispering into his ear.

"I do." T'Challa said with a degree of trepidation that was unkingly. "The vibranium is Wakanda, and Wakanda was created by Bast. Through it she speaks through us all." The Black Panther felt as if he were venturing into the most dangerous yet humbling encounter a Wakandan King could ever face. Tales of Bast told of a benevolent deity among the Egyptians who loved the natives of his homeland and sheltered them from the outside world. Bast was said to be just and righteous, but like any feline, she could be wrathful when provoked. "Tread carefully, Bucky. You may not like what we find in the altar-room, and Bast may manipulate that."

"Mortal warriors I sense the intent that channels through you..." An ethereal resonance of feminine depth malevolently reigned over the vaporous ambiance of the chamber, obsidian skulls flaringly radiated in phantasmic unison; miasmatic sync pulsing against celestial vitality. Standing temptingly poised with a galvanic aura of deceptive regalness, the bodily host of Bast's resurrected spirit remained on the granite steps, pearlescence of ivory-white flesh stunningly became haloed with veined bluish energy, the sleekness of tactical neoprene-vibranium delineated over a curvaceous feline silhouette, as nanites deactivated in a kinetic volition."T'challa, the Panther heir of degradation of my Wakanda and the outsider jackal who hunts by death's command, the one that my foolish incarnate vassal beckons to receive mercy for my friend over there..."

Bucky and T'Challa stood at the grand-entrance to the altar-room where they were halted by the intruding voice. It was deep, feminine and most alarmingly of all, it was otherworldly. The decibels increased and the voice echoed off the vibaranium walls. The chamber shone brilliantly in the pale light breaching through the cracks of the structure, bathing the gardens of plants and herbs that circulated the dome-like interior. It resembled a futuristic paradise, technology and nature becoming one without one eclipsing the other. As spell-binding as the sight was, nothing could compare to the alarming shocking sight of what lay at the center of the room.

Seated on a high-throne on a raised dais, Selina sat. Except it wasn't Selina. Bucky's eyes bulged at the strange sight of the woman he loved, still garbed in her vibranium-weaved suit, but one look in into her eyes, and he knew then his worst fears had been confirmed; this was not his Selina. "Oh no," Bucky breathed knowingly, his somber blue eyes gazing up at the stoic-faced beauty that wore the face of the woman he loved, and feeling his heart twist in his chest. "Lina...Kitten…" He stood shell-shocked, feeling as if his world was coming apart and he hadn't the faintest idea of how to put it back together.

T'Challa stood grim-faced as he gazed up at the familiar face of one Selina Kyle, but could see past the vessel and into the jeweled-eyes of the being beneath. He ignored the Man-Ape who stood beside Bast's throne like an immobile puppet waiting for his strings to be pulled. If this were another would-be conqueror seeking to harm his homeland, T'Challa would take a more aggressive stance in confronting them. But this was no would-be conqueror. This was his patron goddess; the very being who gave life and purpose to his people for thousands of years. His first reaction came instinctively as the Black Panther slowly sank to one knee and bowed his head.

"Hail Bast. Wakanda's mother and protector, keeper of our way of life. I humbly beseech your understanding, goddess." His father and grandfather taught him to show respect to their gods, but the Black Panther within him grimly prepared and strategized a course of action should his show of humility be met with a wave of indifference.

A wicked play of a smirk jauntily quirked the fullness of her voluminous lips, black skeins of kohl were embellished on the delicate alabaster edges of her satiny elfish features, against the darkened contrast of her tousled mahogany whorls curtaining over toned-resilience of her lithe shoulders. Every curve over her face was seductively honed with lethal poise as she flaringly glared down at the young king with unhinged malice as her irises blazed crystalline lazurite of astral heat-phantom depth that belied a powder-keg of venting ferocity.

"You voice stale reverence, young corruptor, T'challa, proffering my lifeblood to the outsiders-" She raised her garbed arm, splaying her fingers over neoprene possessive kneading ministrations, deviously purring out a sultry undertone, while T'challa dark gaze became fixedly intrigued by the golden scarab amulet clasped around her bruised wrist. The astral nexus was irrevocably channeling soul-deep; Bast was graspingly harvesting on Selina's mortality.

A vacant cast of predatory-feline- light impaled through Bucky, as she glared ragingly at the navy-blue tactical Kevlar of his uniform; his robotic arm of vibrainum charcoal plating embellished with golden skeins. This verminous outsider's forged weaponry defiled her essence to Wakanda; he deserved a scourge of morphic punishment. "With her beautiful form as my wielded incarnate, I will unleash my reckoning over your defiling borders of Wakanda, and the blood of your misguided tribes will be purged into the rivers of the Duat. "

"Wakanda thrived by elder generations of blinded resistance..." T'challa voiced in defensive reverence keeping his demeanor brandished with regal coolness; his dark irises sorrily leveled at the masses of desiccated corpses of ancestral warriors- honorable men who fell at death's lancing command to protect his nation. Now the revitalized spirit of Bast was a fringe of rampant execution-using Bucky's love as her instrument to usher a cleansing wake of bloodshed. "The errors of my father's choice will not stake a price against the lives of my people..." Conveying his eternal devotion to Wakanda, T'challa raised his clawed hand, gesturing a steeled challenge at the Egyptian avatar."Outsiders like my friend, Sergeant Barnes define their life by not turning back from their sins..."

Arrestingly paralyzed by the heartbreaking revelation that his kotenok's fiery soul was excised by the panther goddess-Bast; in voiceless heaves, Bucky choked back a throated sob as his shapely lips jutted gapingly wide-naked rawness of thrashing agony racked through him, breathless in traction he staggered back, forcing himself evade the fissionable overture of a soul-cleaving nightmare. 'Chto, chert voz'mi, ty sdelal s ney? (What the hell have you done to her?)" he belted in aggressive pitch, demandingly, his grated tenor of Russian banked in seething cadence. Gnashing the length of his canine incisors in fierce strain, Bucky dragged his tactical boot, he propelled vicious momentum crushingly into an exiccated skull. "Answer me!"

Bucky held no fear of whatever entity lurked inside of his lover's body. While he respected the beliefs of others, being born and raised Roman Catholic, he believed in only one true God, and last he checked, God didn't need to take a human body to strike fear into the hearts of humans. "Give her back to me now! I don't care what issue you have with Wakanda or the world as a whole. Selina has nothing to do with this!" He cried with a broken expression. He felt helpless and right now all he could do was scream at the stone-faced entity wearing Selina's face and hope that something might give. That Selina was still inside and that she would reach out and throw Bast into a cage where she belonged. Spending the past few years in Wakanda gave Bucky time to research the country's history and culture, and the more he thought about it, the more dreadful the idea became that a cat-goddess would choose Selina as her vessel. "Please..." He tried once more, his voice softer and pleading. "Just let her go. I won't fight you..." Not unless he had to.

Tilting her neck up with manic poise in taunting contrast, sneeringly Bast heralded a detonative barrage of galvanic heartache to possessively arrow through Bucky's veins in electrifying anguish that shivery echoed in a wetted slip of tears, amethyst skeins of Wakandian glyphs etched over the delicate sleekness of alabaster-untouchable for him to desperately reach."This beautiful mortal vessel that you achingly desire belongs to my incarnate essence..." she blazoned in hissing pitch, venomously."Once the scourge of Wakanda's impure blood is cleansed with deserving carnage," she flashed a lightning-quick glance at T'challa, leveling with promising-murderous intent."I will reign over all craven souls..."

"The world has changed since your time, Bast. Humanity is now strong enough to defend itself from threats that come from the stars. They will fight you if they must. I beseech you, one last time...Do not bring ruin upon the world, upon your people." T'Challa urged, hoping and trying one last time to diffuse this situation. He had no desire to be remembered as the Wakandan King who fought his patron goddess. Besides, given their short numbers, he had little reassurance that they would pose a chance against her.

As Bast laughed at him in a scolding manner, T'Challa and Bucky squared themselves, giving a wide-berth until they watched as Bhalisa came beside Bast in a humbled stride, exalting in her power. "This is the insolence of modern men, goddess. They no longer respect the gods. They are arrogant, self-serving and pollute the very lands you gifted to us." The Man-Ape sneered at the Black Panther.

"It looks like they want to fight, your Highness." Bucky quipped as he exchanged a look with T'Challa. One look at him told Bucky who he selected to be his dance partner. Bucky, in turn, shifted his stare to Selin...Bast. Even now, he was stricken with turmoil, gazing at the beautiful face that belonged to Selina, painted with black eye-shadow and lipstick. Her eyes were cold and unforgiving, and he knew there would be no more talking. If Selina had a say in this outcome, she'd tell him to do what he had to do-to fight. "It always ends in a fight."

Emitting a sultry laugh of malevolence, entrancingly, in a defensive stance, Bast crouched low in a variant of seductive ease as her gloved palms grazed over granite stone with a painstaking dare evident in the blaze purplish embers stoking in her white-hot irises. A brazen smirk viciously played on the lush fullness of her lips as she detected a visceral pulse of reluctance in Bucky's quaking heartbeat. "Remember if blood draws from these veins, it's hers..." she warned spitefully, while the predatory litheness of her svelte form tigerishly conveyed a visage of feline hostility. "I suppose it will be so grievous for you to wound this beloved by your defective hands..."

Bucky ignored the stab of heartache that assaulted him at the thought. He and Selina had fought each other before. Nothing in the life or death serious fashion, but Selina had always been adamant about him not-pulling his punches, despite his unwillingness. But this wasn't Selina he was standing up against. It was an ancient goddess hellbent on destroying Wakanda and subjugating the world while using Selina's body to do it. Selina would kick his a** if he let her get away with it because he was afraid to hurt her body. So with so and measured steps, Bucky dared to approach the powerful woman who stood at an equal height of 5'10, and stared deep and unflinching into her brown eyes. A dry smile curled his lips and his hands balled into fists at his side.

"If Selina had a say in all this, she'd be the first to tell me to kick your pretty a**." And with that, Bucky took the first swing, the digits of his vibranium arm curled into an indomitable fist aimed for the face of the woman he loved. At the same time, T'Challa roared as his Black Panther mask formed across his face and he and Bhalisa charged each other.

An errant smirk of a nocuous play curved her full-bow lips, snarlingly Bast reeled from a granite step as raw -bestial adrenaline jetted in Bucky's veins as he relentlessly delivered a blinding haymaker in a combative succession of robotic-whirring sync. His leather-sheathed metallic fist deafeningly cannoned a breadth over delicate contours of her jaw with vicious momentum in hammering effort to induce 'knockout' paralysis against the crescendoing fusion of lethal tenor-the hostile edge of a fight.

Registering the aura of Bucky's warring hesitation, with a deceptive variance of her feline grace, Bast viperously slashed her lithe fingers at his bristled throat, like a cobra-strike forcing him to disarmingly choke back a breathless gasp. "You attempt to defy me by wielding the essence I have bestowed to Wakanda..." she roared out manically, yanking a clutching fistful of his disheveled tresses with a breakneck jerk as his stubbled jaw reared up. "Let's see if you harbor strength without your blighted arm, outsider-"

Emerging from a collapsed pillared archway in a valiant stride of prowling momentum, the snow leopard's massive-furred paws edged over a granite slab veined with the iridescence of amethyst runes that bridged him a measured distance from the altar. "Hang on, Buck-" he roared out growingly which ignited a reactive pulse of kinetic unison ghosting over ancestral Egyptian corpses. Leathery remains of decayed flesh jutted out twistingly from discarded weaponry-the incarnate feline entity was mobilizing her ghoulish reckoning.

Panting heavily against a grimace, Steve felt a straining throb mounting in his bloodied incisor fangs as vapory crimson tendrils forming into panther totems evocatively snaked over his furred bulk-immobilizing his urgent advances. The inevitable stakes were reaching the high bar-they were on the mortal fringe of losing Selina to the astral plane. "Go for the fancy bracelet..." he urged raspingly in fevered-pitch heaves, his azure irises captured the blinding glint T'challa's vibrainum claws arcing to slash over brutish Jabari chieftain's gorilla furred chest, while Bucky aggressively thrashed under Bast's clutching hand. "Get it off her ..."

Bucky figured he should have known better than to rely foremost on the strength that came with his cybernetic appendage. A limb he'd used to kill and brutalize countless people over the years until it was destroyed and replaced with a vibranium shell. But the moment he swung his infamous fist at ancient Wakandan panther goddess, he knew he had jumped chin first into the much and ran the risk of drowning. Especially when said, goddess caught his fist with frightening ease, reminding him too much of that time at the airport in Germany where a Spider-Kid had surprised him with incredible strength. But this wasn't incredible. This was a frightening spectacle made apparent by an ancient supernatural force wearing the face of his lover Selina.

The look on Selina's-Basts'-face, as she held his fist, was one of tranquil fury that would have unsettled even the most stalwart of soldiers.

"Oh hell," was all Bucky managed to say before the goddess grinned a predatory smile, all-teeth, and then twisted-hard. Bucky had felt pain before, but nothing as excruciating as the feeling of his prosthetic limb being ripped from his shoulder as if it were made of paper. The cry that erupted from his throat was piercing, the grueling sight alarmed the Wakandan King who watched in horror.

"No!" T'Challa cried, ready to move in and assist his friend. That was until Bhalisa moved in and began his own assault. The Panther unsheathed his claws and met the Man-Ape in a brutal exchanged of fists and razor-sharp swipes. Bucky collapsed on his knees, dizzy and feeling the world spin on its axis. Sweat dripped off his brow in profuse rivulets while a vein throbbed in his forehead. He could barely breathe let alone see, but what he could make out was the shape of Bast standing over him, holding his torn vibranium arm before chucking it aside.

"S-Selina..." He tried with a painfilled groan. "S-Stop...you gotta fight..."

A telltale-damnable register of naked desperation starkly resonated in Bucky's guttural-raspy timbre, evidently with a tracery of a choking sob, rapidly he braced his leather-sheathed palm on a granite edge, gnashing his canine incisors that stingingly pierced the underswell of his jutting lip, bleedingly conveying a visage of resilience against her gut-wrenching onslaught.

A contractive heartbeat of surrender echoed in straying tears, dampening his bristled jaw as he quiveringly dragged back a tremulous breath, under grungy chestnut tresses, his grayish-aquamarine irises became tearily fixed with unwavering intensity on the scarab bracelet latched over the delicateness of her lithe wrist, melding into Selina's bones with pulses of astral energy-the possessive device that resurrected souls from the Ancestral Plane. Quashing down unwarrantable agony that stoked infinite heartache, Bucky forcibly thrust his gloved hand up, doing his utmost to reach for her wrist, in vicious reaction Bast seethingly jabbed the edge of her palm into his throat, robbing him from breath. "Your foolish mortal, what you crave to return will never echo back..." In a mocking tactic, Bast curved her lush pillowy lips unremittingly into a wicked sneer. "I purge your beloved's spirit into the depths of the underworld..."

Her words were like a poison that seeped into his nerves, attacking root and stem, undoing him from within and leaving him in a quaking mess of sorrow and disbelief. "No..." he was near to weeping at the harrowing thought Selina, his kitten, was beyond his reach. That her beautiful vivacious spirit was sent somewhere she shouldn't be and now a malicious entity possessed what remained behind. The pain he felt at having his arm ripped off didn't compare to the blinding agony from the bombshell just dropped on him. "Lina..." He shed tears and fell forward, his head rest against the dusty ground. Whatever strength he had retained was being drained away. The world was a distorted blur of sound and colors. He could hear T'Challa fighting Bhalisa in the background. Their war-cries bellowed throughout the temple and the ground shook with the vibrations of their combat. A dazed Bucky knew he should be stowing away the pain and grief he was feeling-to keep fighting and help his ally. But a dark part of him wanted to give into the despair that beckoned him with cold comfort. To give up.

But there would be no rest. For him. Never again.

His blue eyes dilated and something dangerous awoke inside of him. Blind, savage and angry. He gazed up at the evil, deluded deity and knew that he had to keep fighting. Selina would never want him to give up, and not to show hesitation if her safety were in danger. "You're lying," he seethed up at her while struggling to rise. "I don't believe it."

T'Challa dodged and weaved his way around his much larger adversary. Bhalisa had not become the chieftain of the Jabari and White Gorilla Tribes by being merely proud boasting. His strength and stamina would rival that of an actual primate but his cunning mind was his most dangerous weapon. "You will not see the end of this day, Pretender! The goddess' strength spreads, soon all those you love and care for will be brought under foot and beholden to her glory!" T'Challa narrowly dodged a right hook that swung at his head. "Wakanda will be reborn from the ashes!"

Bhalisa's fist broke through the stone wall-trim without him so much as grimacing in pain. T'Challa back-peddled then leapt high, executing a pouncing kick that propelled him off the Man-Ape's chest, sending his foe tumbling backwards against the wall. "Blind loyalty, blind faith, has never suited me, Bhalisa. It will not avail any of us. Bast's new world will have no place for either of us!" he tried to reason with the chieftain, however futile it might be. "You are nothing but a pawn to her. She will discard you at the speed of thought!"

Enraged, Man-Ape charged and tackled T'Challa towards the wall. The Black Panther groaned and cried as his back hit the surface, the vibranium suit absorbing much of the impact that would've been sure to fracture his spine. "Watch as your dreaded White Wolf becomes the first to crumble to her power." Bhalisa sneered.

Hearing throaty sob amplifying into clamorous volume-echoes of a bleeding heart, Bast's dark irises pulsingly morphed into livid crescents of vampirish white-heat, the prevalent defiance that clashed exceedingly against ravaged heartache convulsed in Bucky's veins in blood-rushing unison. As his shapely-wide lips painstakingly gaped to emit a hitching resonance of unbidden anguish, gritting against rapid seethes of harsh breath, he bracingly dragged his bloodied palm over a desiccated skull, in a conscious glide of unerring instinct to seize a reachable weapon.

Against that resurging visage of telltale-undying reverence that was harbored for his stolen love; Bast cravingly desired to impale him into a lengthened javelin, relish in his thrashing agony as she viperously leveled her fisting palm to knife-edge curve of his stubbled jaw, in an effort of injecting a sorcerous raid through him: a divesting condemnation for defying her. "I was set to deliver your mortal soul to the black rivers of Anubis..." she murmured silkily, fostering a vixenish purr in her undertone to imitate Selina's melodic voice. "I will bestow your mortality with new birth and since you were a forgiven stray in Wakanda, you will become an infant pup, weak and blind to reach a cradle of salvation..."

Realization dawned on T'Challa's face as he watched Bast extend her talon-digited fingers towards Bucky who laid sprawled on his knees. Wakandan and Egyptian mythology portrayed Bast as a paragon among a pantheon of cold deities who saved a nation and gave them the tools needed to protect themselves from the outside world. Few spoke of the horrors she was capable of, like all her kin. Bucky gazed up at Bast with an unflinching look, but his posture showed his unease while he cradled his stump, knowing that what came next he couldn't fight against. T'Challa tried to cry out to tell him to run, but Bhalisa secured his gargantuan hand around his throat, reminding him of their fight.

Bucky had no time to comprehend what Bast was talking about or what form of death she had in store for him. It didn't matter to him. The fight was snuffed out along with the flame that was Selina's life. He stared up into the face that belonged to her, but resembled nothing like the woman he loves. "Do your worst, Kitty. This is one Brooklyn boy who won't stay down." Showing his act of defiance, Bucky jumped to his feet and used his remaining strength to charge Bast and tackle her. The goddess saw his move coming but was nevertheless surprised by his unrelenting spirit. True to her animal avatar, she spun from the momentum and landed with cat-like grace upon her feet. The body she used was in prime condition and had performed such acts of agility before, giving her greater control.

It enabled her to shake off the surprise and jump up to face Bucky who had rushed in to deliver another ill-fated punch. Summoning her godly energies, Bast slammed her opened palm against Bucky's chest. A curse spewed past her lips as the collision reacted like a shockwave of purple sorcery. Bucky was enveloped from head to toe as the air was effectively blown out of his lungs. He landed hard on his side, rolling across the floor until he landed against an overturned statue of an ancient Wakandan king bearing a vibranium spear. Bast smirked the effects of her attack instantly began to unfold. "What did you-AAH!" Bucky cried out.

He trembled and shook on the ground, feeling as if claws were digging into his skin, pulling his flesh and planting dark seeds into his blood. He felt fire. He felt itchy, he felt something bestial clawing to escape from within.

In her rapturous moment of decadent indulgence, impassively Bast crouched down on her curvaceous vibranium-clad hunches in a seductive contrast of poise; extending out her gloved hand until her lithe fingers sickeningly brushed phantom heat over the sensuous bow of his upper lip, arresting his defective reaction with a feathery caress that increasingly forced his incisor-fangs to jut out in morphic volition with errant traction against the soporific wake razing within him.

Barring his canine fangs against a rapt grimace, achingly Bucky dragged out the mutative cadence of a shuddering whimper-the wolfish utterance of a sulking pup. Groaning with coupling heaves of breath, his glacial aquamarine irises blankly widened as the dark opals of his pupils inexorably razored into crescent slits against deadened intensity, feral contrasts of voltaic heat, menacingly evident to furred edges of the deformed length of his bestial ears.

In a stilted reaction to that head-splitting awareness, keeping himself bolstered on his tactical-clad knees, Bucky heart-wrenchingly felt the astral convergence rush over the virile smoothness his sweat-drenched flesh; that incarnate-enslaved reality careened exponentially down with apparitional momentum of a demonic sledgehammer. He was infinitely devolving back into a furred extension of Wakanda; every bone-lancing pulse of venous conjured energy heralded the spliced infancy of his wolven rebirth. "No-Not again..."

He panted heavily in frantic succession, convulsively arching the muscles planes of his garbed back up as supple-boyish- pudginess bloatedly layered over the knife-edge cut of his graven cheekbones, akin to baby flab. "Do you hear the assonance of Wakanda calling for your voice..." Bast raveningly snickered with a deviant glint melding her tigerish irises as she wedged brutal pressure of her nanite boot throbbingly into the laden, hard- etched contours of his straining mid-drift. "Let me hear you howl for your beloved Selina Kyle, you useless whelp..."

Certain defeat loomed over Bucky like a tidal-wave preparing to wash him away. He trembled beneath the goddess' merciless gaze, refusing to succumb to the tendrils of magic that weren't just twisting his body, but also reaching to ensnare his mind. It was like being pulled into a vacuum. No matter how hard he tried to resist, the pressure grew stronger and his will began to grow numb. As he teetered on the brink of total oblivion, his mind nearly shattered until he watched as the goddess was thrown back across the room when an unexpected force collided against her.

A breathtaking coat of shimmering blonde covering hard muscles. Beastial yet majestic, it wielded an ancient vibranium spear held between two rows of sharpend teeth. It landed on the floor in front of him like a guardian angel ready to defend him from evil. When it spoke, the voice was familiar and gave new strength to him.

"Not today. You want my friend? You're gonna have to go through me!" Steve cried with a squared posture, all ferocity and untamed aggressiveness as his azure eyes glared challengingly at the panther goddess.

"You all belong to me...Children of Wakanda..." A demented cast of banking viciousness alarmingly reigned over Selina's elvish features, her nose scrunched up against repulsive stench of defiance reekingly wafted off the snow-leopard, no vestigial of betrayal resonated in his adamant stance, gnarring under breath against the surging cavalcade of skeletal fingers unremittingly gripping the bushy length of his feline tail in ghoulish unison.

Blearily with a visage of impassive intent, Steve roved his crystalline azure spheres undeviatingly with tactical precision of hawkish light at the vacant altar; mirroring granite monolithic panther sentinels were revealingly concealed underneath gnarled vines that outstretched over a barricaded archway. If the altar was destroyed into heaps of rubble, maybe the astral resurrection of Bast's parasitic essence would be deterred-maybe the cataclysmic expurgation of the hailed reaping of Wakanda's souls would inevitably become an echo in the wake of the receding nightmare. "I will relish taming you, little cub, once your caged mortality withers by my command..."

T'Challa grunted as he narrowly dodged a blow from the Man-Ape meant to crush his abdomen. The increasing adrenaline had him reacting solely on instinct but somewhere at the back of his mind, Bast's words registered and triggered a very feral-very feline-frustration in him as he roared and sank his claws into Bhalisa's chest. With one fell swipe, he dragged his claws downward and spewed blood upon the ground while his enemy's screams echoed through the chamber. T'Challa shook away the shock of his own brutality as he hit Bhalisa with a hard front-kick, sending the larger man crashing against a ruined column. The top of the column broke like a twig, bringing the ton of weight smashing down on Man Ape's prone body. His massive form trembled and spasmed violently before going completely still.

"Wakanda is no longer yours to command! Not so long as I, King T'Challa, son of T'Chaka, draw breath!" Black Panther roared, his mask receding to reveal a very withered, very angry young man who was likewise teetering at the edge of humanity and the primal abyss that awaited. "Stand down, goddess. Or face the might of the Avengers."

Brandishing a charade of deceptive nonchalance, evocatively in a measure of seductive poise, Bast crouched down with painstaking traction, flashing a glare teasingly at Bucky who uttered out a whimpery cadence of throated strain as his muscled thighs stretched readily accord with dwarfing length against every angle of sorcerous penetration; in moments he would pathetically morph into a slightness-pudgy- infant pup-easy to squeeze vitality out of under her thieving clutch. Smirking with devious hunger, Bast once again virulently conjured up the decadent huskiness of Selina's lyrical undertone, breathily murmuring out an indignant challenge fixedly pinned on the young -wasteful- royal. "Now where's the fun in that, handsome..."

"Lina..." Bucky groaned. His voice was deeper, the gentle cadence of a charming boy from Brooklyn was replaced by a heavy growl. The wolf within was emerging as his skin began sprouting dark pelts of fur. His stump was enveloped by the feeling of a phantom limb stretching to a brutish length. Steve and T'Challa watched the daunting experience but maintained a cool posture as they formed a battle-line within the chamber. Bucky fought the beast within with every fiber of his being. His will and constitution had been challenged over the years, bested by technology and sheering pain.

But he had grown stronger since then. Ever since Shuri had cleansed his mind and helped him to create strong mental barriers that enabled him to remain in control of his actions. His breathing was deep and heavy as he glared at Bast with defiance. She had taken his kitten, thrown her into a cage so that she could use her body to inflict pain and misery. Now she wanted to do the same to him. He wouldn't. He couldn't! Brooklyn boys never quit-never stay down.

"You with us, Buck?" The snow leopard asked with a c*** of his furry head. Bucky glanced at Steve, his stare intense and sure of himself despite the struggle within feeling like he was in a tug of war with a beast. His teeth bared into a mute hiss, his gleaming incisors extending to daunting lengths.

"Y-Yeah...Still here..." His furry muscles coil as he rose to his full height. Torn clothing clung to his body as the transformation continued but at a much slower pace than before. His luminous blue eyes fixed on Bast and a growl finally escaped him as he sneered. "And now I'm...upset. You messed with the man, and you picked the wrong woman."

"Avengers..." Steve growled, preparing himself into a battle-stance while Bucky and T'Challa did the same. "Assemble!" A trio of roars bellowed throughout the chamber as the three allies charged at the goddess as one.

Stretching the litheness of her vibrainium sheathed arms wide in predatory sync, Bast conducted a raze of arcing white-heat, as granite spires cacophonously thrusted out of the quaking ground, arrays of skeletal corpses were impaled against the galvanic wake of her destructive conjury. A kinetic shockwave of voltaic amethyst disrupted the phantom gravity as T'challa blindingly careened his acrobatic grace into the ghoulish phalanx ; isolating himself from the battlefront charge, the warrior king bruisingly slammed his clawed fist with gouging momentum that ignited a concussing force; keeping his combative poise voluntarily attuned with an errant variance of controlled feline agility, he distractingly crouched a braced stance near a pulsating spire that extended from a step.

Enforcing his undetailed advance of steely determination, the snow leopard propelled a high vault over a blockade of lancing javelins in a manic succession of breakneck urgency invested in his reined strength. In an irate motion of her gloved hand, viperishly with a lethal flex, Bast clutched a discarded spear, while demonically infusing a candescent surge of assailing malice over the seized vibrainium armament. Glaring down through silken mahogany whorls at T'challa with a heart-stealing promise of vengeful thirst, her dark irises hellishly blazed into an explosive astral fire -a stoked nova of celestial fusion. "You recklessly try to oppose me..." A snarl rented out of her gnashing teeth fringed with pillowy crimson, sneeringly, with a jaunty crackle of possessive mania, Bast swiftly twirled the spear to deliver an executing onrush at him. "You were bred from the kingmaker's womb to serve the one who sired the blood to resurrect Wakanda's guardian panther..."

"I serve the Wakandan people!" T'Challa roared defensively, narrowly dodging the goddess' attack as he fell into a retreat and landed on his back heels. "The very people you now threaten with extinction. My side has been chosen." The Black Panther pounced towards a broken column and used it to leap off higher into the air. Using his claws, he swiped at a dangling piece of debris over that came falling low. Bast rolled her eyes as she merely used her power to telekinetically slap the tons of debris away as if they were made of paper.

Bucky rushed towards her and tackled her around her waist, trying and struggling to use his newfound beastial strength to restrain the goddess in an arm-bar hold. His heartache when he caught the familiar allure of Selina's scent. For a moment, he found his determination to be challenged with the thought of hurting her. He couldn't…

"You can't hurt me, can you? Not when I wear her body," Bast sneered at him. She threw her head back hit Bucky's wolfish head, making him growl and tumble backwards. He glared at her luminous blue eyes and bared his teeth into a snarl.

"You're certainly making it easier to. If I know my Selina, she'd kick my a** for I pulled my punches." With that, Bucky charged with frightening speed and landed a hard punch to Bast's ribcage. 'Not Selina' he reminded himself forcibly. The punch barely seemed to faze her as she took a swipe at him only to be tackled to the ground by a leopard.

"I don't think outgunning her is gonna work here, Your Highness." Steve grunted as he used the shield between his teeth to repel a shard of spikes that were sent lancing in his direction. He was forced to retreat from Bast as the shards continued to come. The thuds against the service made his teeth vibrate and the leopard threw weapon back towards the goddess. "She's probably as strong as Thor if not stronger," he grunted ran up a ledge to a guard-rail and then leapt towards Bast. She merely smirked at him as she gracefully danced backwards like a true feline. "And just as fast."

"New plan then," Bucky snarled as he picked up a discarded vibranium spear. Hesitation gnawed at him as he watched Selina...Bast fight off his friends with scary efficiency that almost seemed as if she were toying with them. She probably was. How long until she got bored? When her intense eyes glared at T'Challa and she proceeded to punch and slash at him, he knew her patience was wearing out quickly.

"You're risking everything for an irredeemable thief who is beyond saving in this rancid existence..." Bast chaffed derisively with knifing volume that mephitically scythed through Bucky's veins, arresting his heartbeat with razored numbness, at the same unpalpable moment, she lithely caught the corded muscle of T'challa's vibrainium-weaved forearm, clutching with bone-splintering pressure to deactivate the nanite convergence, wrenching his fisting hand back as the alloy claws strenuously fringed a hairbreadth from the pharaonic -scarab-bracelet. "Tell me is this mortal deviant who stole blood just to sate a dark thrill worth a trade of your soul?" she played out, giving no vestige of ease on her neutralizing grip. "There's nothing left to engage for, I will use this perfect body to condemn all defilers into the netherworld..."

In that moment, Bucky knew true rage as both man and beast within howled at the brazen taunt and insult to the woman he loves. But he also found clarity in the most sudden of instances when his eyes landed on the altar at the center of the chamber. The same altar Bast had used to enter their world from wherever it was that she came from. Maybe it could be used to send her back? He didn't have the faintest idea of what magic entailed, but as he felt the tendrils of sorcery continue to swim in his veins, morph and twist his shape into the predatory beast that Bast saw him as, Bucky knew that he was teetering at the edge of a cliff himself.

'Nothing to lose…not anymore.'

"Steve, T'Challa. Keep her busy!" Bucky yelled tossing the spear to the wounded Panther who caught it effortlessly. Man and leopard glanced at him with concern, but one look into his eyes they saw the unshakable conviction that told them he had a plan he would see through regardless of the cost.

"On me, T'Challa," Steve roared. He charged at the goddess, surprising her with his speed enhanced by both the serum in his veins and the power of her magic. T'Challa's suit was ripped and torn in an act he thought impossible, but it didn't stop him from charging into battle with Steve. With Bast distracted, Bucky charged towards the altar. His pace was fast as a bullet, his muscles burned as if he were running up a mountain.

But he didn't stop. His thoughts haunted thoughts showed him only Selina, locked in a cage inside of her own body with an enormous feline goddess prowling on the outside, keeping her locked in. He could hear the echo of the battle as if he were farther away. Bast's roars of aggression, Steve growls of defiance, T'Challa cries of courage, and the beating of his pulse in his ears. He could see the altar at the top of the steps, pristine and glowing an eerie shade of purple.

"Come back to me, Lina!"

"NO!" Bast cried out, realizing what Bucky was about to do. Before she could charge up after him, T'Challa used the vibranium spear to impale the back of her torn clothing into the floor, pinning her. Bucky closed his eyes with his hand balled into a fist, and struck the altar. The shockwave was unearthly and was felt all across Wakanda.

An eruptive resonance of demonic pandemonium clangorously deafened over the reverent ground; in a gasping seethe, Bast, reeled jerkingly back from the demolished remnants of obsidian granite, as vitric sigils of deific conjury etched over the archway, heralding eldritch tentacles to grapple onto her wrists, a white-hot implosion deadening energy flashed at the breach of paralyzing contrast. She was being exceedingly towed back into the astral rift, suffusing her pearlescent flesh to dissect her noxious vitality—calamitous malice being irrevocably purged into the dimensional synergy of the Dark Verse. Angeling her head up with malevolent ease, Bast venomously mirrored the stark glacial rawness of Bucky's grayish-aqueous irises, the mesmeric intensity of feral-desperate- heat stormily banking against a blearing onrush of unshed tears-naked throb of knife-lancing heartache that fed her septic resolve to deliver a damning revelation that his kitten would never return to him.

Thrusting her lithe hand up against convulsive jerks, Bast sneerily reached for a javelin spearhead that arced out a step with vicious intent, and unwaveringly leveling a soul-stealing glare directly at Bucky while edging the archaic vibrainum to painstakingly slash her throat as the lazurite amulet detached off her wrist as the golden beetles viscidly overturned into a tarry ooze, luridly evident to a sheening release of blood slickly trek over the delicate curve of Selina's jaw, the spear carved haltingly into sleek alabaster flesh with lethal ardency of deceptive penetration. "Let's see if you can still chase her soul in oblivion, Bucky Barnes..."

"NO!" Bucky's cried out in sheer terror. Time slowed to a crawl as he ran down the steps. He had barely had time to register what was happening after the shockwave had thrown him off his feet, along with Steve and T'Challa on the ground-floor. But somehow, Bast's words cut through the roaring sounds of an astral rift opening within the chamber. Fear and horror encompassed his mind and soul in a way he had never fathomed once he realized what she planned to do. Steve and T'Challa were incapacitated after the blast, and there was no one to stop the goddess from carrying out her last bitter act of vengeance against him. So Bucky ran-harder and faster than he ever ran in his life.

...But he was still too late. Selina's bloodied body fell into his arms while Bast's astral form was ripped from her body. The visage of a feline panther roared and thrashed but was unable to pull herself from the vacuum that sucked her back into the astral plane.

Against a soul-entrenching voltage of Bast's amorphous descent, as vapory aster ghosted an iridescence of crimson ethereally over the collapsing altar; the infective pressure of leaching energy that contracted within his silvery-gold furred rigidity ebbed against a visceral surge. Groaning lowly in a throated cadence, with an instinctive flex of his girth, vertiginously, Steve braced himself on his fore-paws over inanimate skulls that had been rousingly commanded by a sorcerous maelstrom. With a controlled measure of availing strength, he lifted the enhanced heaviness of his feline bulk, despite that he felt warringly cemented to a bestial reality.

Feigning a rapt grimace over his fanged-muzzle, Steve consciously swayed his bushy tail accord with urgent strain, inextricably feeling the cool sleekness of the nano-weaved vibrainuim of T'challa's Panther Habit reactively pulse in the wake of his leaden proximity. "Your Highness..." He murmured gratingly against breathless pants, his deep timbre, underlying rampant exhaustion. "I-I think we won..."

With fluid ease of an upright motion as his crossed arms braced over the breadth of his chest, T'challa felt the athletic slenderness of his muscled bulk flex in an errant variant of instinctive tension; the enmeshing nanites of his panther visage receded as the dark contrast of his passive-honed features as his lips coolly half-quirked to answer the valorous snow-leopard. "It would seem so, Captain..." he rasped out placidly in a brotherly cadence, splaying his clawed palm with tracery of unfeigned reverence over weaponized remnants of cleaved vibrainuim, absorbing phantom tendrils of celestial energy. "Wakanda is back on safe ground again..."

Wordlessly Steve raised his paw and watched as the furry expanse of his limbs began to recede and reveal human flesh. Bast's magic was evaporating and he could feel humanity and control seeping back into his pores. But none of it mattered as both he and T'Challa watched the scene in front of them with heartbreak. "At a high cost," the snow leopard said quietly, tears glistening in his eyes in a sudden onrush of sympathy while T'Challa bowed his head in silence. None of them said a word as they hung back. The world was saved but at the cost of a great man's own personal heaven.

Bucky felt like he was falling. From heaven-from the world and into a dark and empty hell where nothing mattered. His nightmares couldn't compare to the very real horror that Selina laid lifeless in his arms. The pain he felt in his injuries over the years were nothing like the sheer pain that surreal fact brought to him. He sat on trembling knees, his blue eyes wide, unseeing and filled with tears that spilled down his cheeks like a ruptured dam. He could do nothing-nothing except hold her closer and cry out from the depths of his soul.

His scream was primal-so raw and terrifying-it was a combination of man and beast. The pain wouldn't go away, no matter how hard he cried. "Lina…" he wept and dissolved into choking sobs. He buried his face against the crook of her bloodied neck, his body shaking with each mournful breath that escaped him. He held her smaller form close, rocking her as if she were the most precious thing in the entire world. "Come back...come back…" he whimpered and sniffled, brushing his lips to her brow as his tears spilled onto her face.

Evicting a throb of desperate unison, T'challa undeviatingly in cautious tack, approached the twined granite monoliths etched with ankh sigils-the pharaonic gateway of Afterlife plane-the Netherworld. The soul-ripping anguish infusing within his friend-the White Wolf- had rigged atomic into explosive throes of contractive-gouging heartbreak.

Listening to Bucky choke suffocatingly on heaves of sobbing breaths, T'challa quashed down the unwarranted urge to release a blearing sting of tears and drove his rivalrous momentum at the breaching second a flashpoint of astral heat lanced through vibrainium layers of his Panther Habit, as he outstretched his clawed hand, acting as a grounded conductor against the electrifying divergence of ethereal amethyst fierily melded in his veins. "There might be a way to bring Miss Kyle back..." he yelled out, blaringly, knowing that Shuri would enhance the assailing telestic energy within the medical division to usher back a kinetic pulse of life-a surgical unity of Wakanda's mined essence. "Barnes, carry her outside and wait for my Flyer-"

A bestial roar alarmingly bellowed throughout the chamber. Bucky's eyes blazed with ire and sorrow as he stared at T'Challa. His heart fluttered with a dangerous feeling that men like him were afraid to grasp; hope. Selina was gone, he had failed. The thought of never seeing her again made him feel empty and hollow. But T'Challa's words promised hope, something he was afraid to lose. In the background, Steve growled as he trotted next to Bucky, still on four paws.

"She gone, Steve..." Bucky sniffled.

"Do what he says, Buck. I know how dangerous it is to hope. But for Selina's sake, we gotta try," Steve encouraged. His leopard visage was fading slowly but one look into his azure eyes, Bucky found a clarity he'd needed and a sense of reassurance came over him. He looked back towards T'Challa, seeing

Flicking his gaze down at Selina, Bucky felt his resolve become threatened as he noticed how cold she was already becoming. Her pale beauty was marred by specs of crimson, but she only appeared to be sleeping. He had to try. "This better work," he growled. Carefully, he lifted her up and followed Steve.

As Bucky rushed down the razing steps in a rapid-fire succession of breakneck haste, T'challa's dark irises disarmingly flitted down at Selina's lifeless-barren form, the feminine delicateness of her kittenish elfin features increasingly grew ashen-bloodless as her slack jaw coldly pillowed over the tactical kevlar of Bucky's muscled forearm. The mortal vitality of Selina was prevalent on the Multiverse bridge that extended to the Ancestral plane, T'challa wouldn't surrender to the spawning reality of a grievous tragedy, a nascent tension gripped him as he commandingly beckoned for his vivacious baby sister with a breathless tenor of urgency that strained up his throat.

"Shuri, prepare the lab, our friend Miss Kyle needs to come back to us..."

The walkout of the temple felt like a death march to Bucky as he carried Selina out. Steve had fully returned to his human form, dressing in only shredded pants with his disheveled beard and longer hair wildly untamed. Were it any other day, Bucky would've jumped at the opportunity to tease him about looking like a cave-man. But his sense of humor had been thoroughly sucked out of him, leaving him feeling like a walking zombie, hollow, cold and pins-and-needles.

They came across a number of wandering wildlife animals such as lions, panthers, zebras and small elephants. With Bast no longer manipulating their will, the animals were confused but curious as they quietly explored their surroundings.

"The jet is waiting for us. Come!" T'Challa urged them forward as he led the way out. Steve looked at his friend worriedly as he did nothing but stare at Selina's pale, motionless face the entire time they moved out. Bucky snapped his gaze towards the beams of daylight up ahead and sure enough, his canine enhanced ears picked up the noise of their extraction.

"Bucky?" Steve called to his friend, noticing how still and quiet he was. Bucky met his stare and the resolve in his eyes told Steve enough.

"I'm bringing her back, Steve. I don't care what it takes. If I have to go into that spirit world where Bast went, I'm going in after her." He said as he picked up speed. "I'm not gonna lose her." T'Challa and Shuri could revive Selina's body, but it wouldn't mean anything if they could bring back her spirit.

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that. Come on, man." Steve urged him. Together the two friends raced out into the ruined ancient courtyard they'd previous battled scores of undead warriors. T'Challa still watching as his jet settled into a landing formation and began its descent. They emerged into the daylight and almost immediately, Bucky felt as if he were being assailed by some kind of unseen danger.

His hearing was deafening to the engines of the jet, T'Challa's transmissioned orders, and the roaring of the winds. His steel-blue eyes were focused intently on Selina, watching how her pale flesh appeared to glow in the light of the midday sun. Her colorless flesh took on a warm pigmentation, specs of light emanated from her being. It was an awe-inspiring sight but also a foreboding one. "No…" Bucky whispered, fear tugging at his heart. "No, no no!" NO!" He cried, alarming Steve and T'Challa who whipped their heads back at him.

The two men were speechless as they watched Selina's body glow then dissolved into glowing specs of energy in his Bucky's arms. Bucky held his empty arms open, watching as the body of the woman he loves vanished before his eyes. It was like watching her die all over again, whisked away into the ether, leaving him with nothing but despair. The last of Bastet's magic faded from his body, leaving him as a withered, armless shell of a man with a blank look in his eyes. He didn't cry, he didn't scream. His soul had been carved out with her.

"Bucky!" Steve rushed to his friend's side, catching him as he fell to his knees, watching the energy particles dance in the wind before vanishing all-together. "I'm so sorry," Steve whispered, teary-eyed. T'Challa hung his head, defeat, and sorrow hanging over him.

An earthen mantra of cacophonic assonance hauntingly resonated over the deific grounds, the malodorous aura of the ghoulish horde receded against a sorcerous contrast; with the stoking awareness of defensive instinct that he assuaged, T'challa vigilantly thrusted his clawed hand, bracing the corded rigidity of his back onto an archaic obelisk; as ancestral blood of elder warrior kings-the Panthers-jetted thrashingly in his veins, he wouldn't accept the injurious-definite revelation of unbidden failure: this wouldn't be the endgame.

Remaining shakily crouched on his haunches, Bucky appeared disturbingly shell-shocked into catatonic thralls of listless vulnerability as he unleashed a throat-ripping cry; heated wetness of feverish tears pinched his vision; the disheveled length of his wolfish brunette tresses become drenched against the blurring onslaught. Standing behind him, comfortingly Steve graced deft pressure of his battle-roughen hand over torn navy blue Kevlar, steadily anchoring him on the hairbreadth of vengeful—destructive oblivion.

Around them carrion masses of skeletal warriors became ominously encompassed with a lucid pulse of demonic crimson, sifting limbs into ash as the concussive volume of unstable havoc earsplittingly quaked beneath, rapidly arresting T'challa's mobility with phantom restraint; a chasmic force was ravenously emerging out of the shadow realm-the netherworld. "It's not over..."

Steve wondered just how much more they would have to deal with today before officially confirming the threat to be neutralized. Whatever he was expecting didn't prepare them for the alarming sight of a vortex opening up beneath the Earth and consuming all in its path. The ancient remains, the statues, the weapons-all were being sucked into what could only be described as a mystical blackhole growing larger by the second.

"Fall back!" Steve cried out. "C'mon, Bucky!" Steve had to practically lift Bucky off the ground in order to get him to follow them. His friend was in a frozen state of shock which had nothing to do with this cataclysmic spectacle unfolding in front of them. Bucky was lost in his grief but somehow his body managed to work on autopilot and he began to groggily follow into step beside Steve. T'Challa had disappeared somewhere behind a column.

"We're not gonna make it, Steve." Bucky said with a resigned voice as the ground beneath them shook.

"Stow it! Just keep running," Steve urged him. Bucky felt tired, his muscles refusing to carry him further after losing his arm, being turned into a wolf and back, and then losing the love of his life. But his feet continued to carry him over a set of toppled columns that would lead a clear path to the outer walls.

"Steve wait," Bucky said, coming to a pause. He took a moment to glance at the vortex over his shoulder and felt an inkling of familiarity set-in as he took in the purplish hue of the mystical energies swirling around the inky blackness. This wasn't a black-hole. "Its a portal to the astral-plane…" A way back to Selina.

"Bucky, don't do it, man. It's too dangerous." Steve said with growing dread once he realized what his friend was thinking. He knew what love could make a man do, especially when trying to reunite with a loved one. "Buck…" He reached out his hand for his friend's shoulder. He had to talk him down from taking a one-way trip to the other side. Selina wouldn't want this for him. Bucky met his best friend's eyes with a remorseful look.

"You should go, Steve. Run, punk."

"Not without you," Steve shook his head, refusing to let his friend risk his life like this.

Indecision weighed heavily on Bucky as the portal grew stronger. Soon the gravitational pull became too heavy and the column beneath his feet gave away. "NO!" Steve cried. He gave no thought as he leapt off the column and slid down a rocky slope after his friend. That was until he felt panther claws wrap around his ankle. T'Challa stood as an anchor, one hand wrapped around a block of stone and the other holding Steve from plummeting further into the abyss. "BUCKY!"

"S'orry, Steve." Bucky whispered, closing his eyes and waiting for the end to come-hoping to be met by loving brown eyes on the other side.

The break-off point was unremittingly imploding against dimensional surges, as Bucky readily edged his tactical boots with daring traction, serpentine tentacles melded with decayed flesh reacting to the cadence of fissionable desperation throbbingy emanating from him with knifing heartache-it was a suicidal rush that would careen his offering spirit into nether-realm. As he caught a drag of heavy breath, Bucky narrowed his grayish-aquamarine irises tearily into the infinite funnel of chaotic energy-a hellstorm.

'Whatever it takes, kitten...'

In that unbearable wake of surrendering his expandable life-his soul into the demonic trenches, a lithesome, curvaceous feline silhouette blindingly arrowed with undeterred momentum of aggressive precision, bodily colliding into his rigid solidity with propelling force of a sledgehammer that joltingly knocked the breath out him. A whiplash of a long-furred tail racked over his thickly muscled calf with intimate contrast, while fore-claws unerringly poised on the grappling edge of soul-deep urgency, tellingly evident to the grated smokiness of a husky feminine murmur. "Not so fast, handsome-"

For a moment he thought he was falling into the total darkness of death. The lights flashing were memories of his life that were sometimes too fast to grasp. But that voice-HER voice. It rang clear and true as day, taking him back to the warm comfort of their bedroom where she would wake up at the dawn of each morning. His heart hammered in his chest, but he felt no fear. No. He felt hope. It grew stronger as he felt a familiar brush of contact against his leg, traveling up his torso until reaching his cheek. It was feather-light, almost phantom in its intensity. But there was no mistaking the alluring scent of lavender that came with it.

He was alive...and so was she.

"Selina…" He said with a choked sob, tears spilling from his eyes. The pain that lanced through his chest was momentary, but also invigorating in a sense that it filled with a humming warmth that spread throughout his body. Magic-astral magic. As he opened his eyes he could see his body was glowing with the energy. The portal to the netherworld had closed, but it left behind the enchanting sight of a glowing feline hovering over him, peering at him with tender eyes. "Is it you?" He whispered to her.

The fevered -nauseous reek of blood wafted seductively off his tactical garb, bracing her svelte bulk with balletic resilence, the she-panther felt her fore-paws bretrayingly sinking into the marred dirt on either side of his head, against a clash of amorous heat, his sweat-drenched chestnut tresses messily fanned over vacant armor that he tactlessly collapsed on after she brazenly careened into him.

"I'm not her anymore, Bucky..." gritted out ruefully, with conscious ease, lifted her fore-paw to caressingly eclipse the bristled edge of his cheek to capture an errant glide of wetness. It was too damn painful -addictive to shadowily feel the roguish hunkiness of his virile beauty under her massive paw; to stare into the mesmeric heat of his steely blue irises tempestuously coaxing her-not when she was damningly chastened to predatory command Wakanda's drumbeats. A naked surge of tears mistily echoed within the feral intensity of her bronze orbs as she angled her feline muzzle to the forested passage behind the temple, preparing to abandon him. "I-I can't change back, James, that's the damn deal with this resurrection of being a jungle kitty..."

Bucky couldn't fathom what was happening, nor how Selina had found her way out of the astral-plane and was now a glowing bright panther. All he knew was that his kitten was alive and had found her way back to him. His spellbound silence created an tense atmosphere as he stared long and hard into the panther's eyes, seeing that familiar shade of dark brown that reminded him of warm coffee in the morning, and delectable chocolate at night. Her coat of fur shimmered like silk in the light of the sun; mahogany and unblemished. Her body was lithe but there was the noticeable ripple of muscles beneath her fur.

She was beautiful-as she always would be to him.

As she stared at him remorseful eyes, anticipating his reaction, it was in that moment he found a clarity he'd been searching for ever since he thought he'd lost her. That clarity was that no matter what happened, she would always be apart of him, and he would always be with her. "Its okay, Lina." He licked his dry lips as he rose to his knees and sat up in front of her. "I'm with you. If you're tellin' me this is the new you, then you can bet this is gonna be the new me."

He could sense the hesitation in her at his words, knowing what he'd meant. Their bodies were still glowing, almost as if they were two parts in close proximity waiting to be made whole. Bucky glanced towards Steve who gave him an encouraging nod. Teary-eyed, Bucky reached out and caressed the feline's furry cheek, listening to her softly purr and droop her head into his touch. "That's what love is darlin'. Sacrifice, so long as we're together."

The gravelly drawl of his murmurous timbre was throatily igniting an evocative shiver that decadently racked through her akin to cool velvet, the palpable awareness of his definite choice arced with blazoning heat as as she burningly registered the virile devotion-reverence invested in the kneading ministrations of his bruised fingers tracing a sensuous glide cravingly over the sanity mahogany of her exquisite fur, the alluring tautness of her svelte feminine curves with heart-stopping tentativeness of a beckoning-sweet demand as he graspingly caught the untamed-exotic rhythm.

"M'not losin' you again," he sobbingly drawled in a croaky pitch, his right arm shifted underneath her lithe girth, enhanced muscles flexing in headier accord like steel while holding the she-panther longingly against him.

The mirrored cadence of rivaled surrender held them on visceral edge against the readiness of the arrestive moment; their unwavering gazes of grayish aquamarine and thievish brandy clashed searchingly driven with painstaking-reined heat, as Selina lifted her fore-paw up for his half-gloved palm to cherishingly secure the reverent-eternal promise under the gentled flexion of his amorous clutch, grounding her against false escape. Staring into her bronze depths with heavy-lidded intent, Bucky shakily quirked his shapely-wide lips into a breathless smirk of virile radiance that made his crow-lines etch deeper under tear-dampened tresses. "Wakanda forever, right kitten...?"

The cataclysmic storm-front of Man-Ape-Bhalisa's tyrannic wrath-bloodthirst against the Golden Tribe ebbed with the floored gravity of mortal defeat; Selina was no longer a controlled- tethered vessel of the incarnate extension fueled with Bast's celestial aura. When her detached spirit had been transcendentally careened into the Ansercal Plane- Great Veldt,; the astral elysian of the Dark Verse, she was greeted welcomingly by shadowy feline denizens that morphed into panthers-the Kings of Wakanda-ushering her through a paradisiac realm of nova vistas of cosmic amethyst as her vitality converged with the empyrean fusion, becoming a phantom shade fastened on a high branch of an acacia tree; waiting for echoes of mortality to call her back-desperate volumes of lovers knell that piercingly scythe into the gateways.

There was no turning back onto the road of humanity-she belonged to Wakanda. "You don't owe me this, Bucky," she breathily seethed, clenching her fanged jaw, against the razoring trek of inadvertent pain that she couldn't ride out. "I can't let you give everything up for a damn tail..."

Bucky knew in his heart this was the only decision he could make. But it didn't change the fact others he cared about might be affected by it. He glanced again at his best friend and saw the understanding and acceptance in his eyes. He would later recall the therapeutic discussion he would have with Steve about his decision.

They would share a mutual farewell in the same vein of their former lives as two reckless youths in Brooklyn, looking to find their place in the world. "Don't do anything stupid while I'm gone," Bucky said. "How could I? You're taking all the stupid with you," Steve would cheekily reply. The hug they shared conveyed that this wasn't the end of the line for either of them, but the start of a new beginning.

Looking at Selina, the beautiful mahogany furred feline that he fought with his heart and soul to save, he knew she was his new beginning. T'Challa and Steve said nothing as they watched the one-armed broken man shuffle on his knees towards the majestic panther in front of him. Neither pause nor grit in his stride but a growing sense of salvation. His one hand reached out and caressed her cheek, coaxing her towards him. The light emanating from them was radiant and spell-binding, it was like looking into the sun.

As Bucky embraced the panther, their brows touching, there was only light and warmth cascading over the terrain as two parts were finally made whole. The brilliant rays softened to reveal two felines locked in an intimate embrace, gazing lovingly into each other's eyes.

"Think they'll be okay?" Steve asked T'Challa; teary-eyed as they both watched the two felines wander across the courtyard together.

"As long as they are together, I have no doubt." T'Challa patted his back with an assuring smile. Together they walked after their friends, heading back.

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10 months later...

The immeasurable cost of votive sacrifice felt penetrative against the tribal assonance of Wakanda, the futuristic utopia strived with the elemental rhythm across the outland savanna- planes; stationed on the grounds of Border Tribe's village-a harbor point of isolation, Natasha guardedly enforced casual poise while registering the infectious ache of raw detachment that wouldn't be evicted. The reality that Steve punishingly trudged against felt defective-the invincible brotherly cadence of Brooklyn defiance had become white-noise in the despondent volumes of unbidden heartache that he stowed for Bucky Barnes-Steve needed his best friend back.

Edging the collective traction of her tactical boots, in her graceful prowess, Natasha consciously approached the lake bordered with dense forest, amber sconces of twilight were radiantly captured in the ripples, a tantalized contrast to her braided copper-platinum tresses, the chasteness of peace felt welcoming against stacked anguish that radiated off the super-soldier as he remained in passive vigil. The azureous intensity of his hawkish irises bleared heatedly against the muggy breeze; adapting on a high measure of genuine trust in the validity of T'challa's promise that sashaying cinder-furred male panther would return before the rainfall season, hammered restlessly against his heart.

Clutching a vibrainum kimoyo bead that Shuri charitably invented for tracking down the sync proximity of the elusive panther mates, tensely, Steve kept his adamant stance tellingly bolstered with impassive-soldiery vigilance, still looking infinitely directionless with his warring resolve. The openness of the predatory killing field was uncharted to breach, the jungle ambiance thrummed with dysphoric-carnivorous bedlams that wouldn't be tuned out by safeguard mechanisms of innate caution.

A morphic unity of Ancestral Plane shielded over Wakanda, after returning to the Golden City with the winged-Avenger Sam Wilson; Natasha engaged off-grid missions, deterring human trafficking extensions conducted by insurgent Hunuman war dogs-the radical installation of underground warfare, and delivered a firestorm within HYDRA viper nests while evading General Thunderbolt Ross's contingency strategies of the Accords, marking the Avengers as vermined selloffs-deviations-the extent of a sterilized world that eliminated the utility of resistance.

She had turned her back on Stark's egotistic odyssey of mechanized peace- believing measures of trust-friendship was expandable when everyone in Germany regarded them like a damn circus act of loose cannons. Being a defector operative-a rogue sleeper agent, she weaved up charades of deception to breach her unforgiving past at the Red Room Adcemny of being a lethal marionette of honed seduction. Nothing was staunch out. Right now, garbed in her neoprene tactical layers, Natasha needed to be with Steve instead of chasing traitorous demons, as they both waited for the sniper-panther's expected homecoming.

"Enjoying the view, Rogers," Natasha jauntily rasped in a husky undertone, fringing a tactile measure of errant distance between them-point-blank tension was gripping Steve, as he sternly clenched his beard-roughen jaw into a taut grimace; evident to the heavy-corded muscles bands delineated underneath a stark white Under-Armor shirt that flexed with Spartan resilience. He shifted his battle-tested footing with telltale urgency, not straying his gaze from the lake. "It's nice out here..." she coolly quipped with a breath of terse snark, the sirenlike coolness of her grayish-teal irises knowingly flashed with a teasing quirk subtly playing on the plushness of her full-bow lips. "If you like climbing trees, which you already did with a furry tail, right?"

"I'm still not used to the quiet out here." He said after a lengthy pause while keeping a stoic vigil on the horizon. He stood taller, with a broader sculpt of muscle pressing against the tightness of his shirt. He carried a thicker beard now, trimmed and neat with thick, longer locks now a more golden brown with streaks of blonde. To unfamiliar eyes he would appear like a grisly lumberjack but to those who knew him better, they'd see a more relaxed man in place of a downtrodden soldier.

Steve Rogers' once troubled features were carven into his pale flesh after years of sorrow and chaos. Now they appeared smoothed and unblemished. His blue eyes gazed yonder but his senses told him when he was no longer alone. The familiar scent that reminded him of a bouquet of roses made his chest grow warm and his skin tingled with anticipation. He knew she was listening, waiting just as he was for what lay ahead.

"Growing up in a big city, moving from one battle-field to the next, you get used to the noise." He continued. "It's like a constant presence that never goes away, but keeps you distracted. Alert of to next big threat coming our way. For a long time I used it as a shield-to not think about what might happen when the noises stop. But now that they have…The quiet rings louder than any gun I heard go off. Now the quiet is a storm…"

Gazing at the dampened fringe of his lashes that dimmed a silvery glint of phantom turbulence in frosted azure, disarmingly Natasha saw a release of naked agony-an emotional undertow pulling him on a crest of unreachable fathoms, every throb of soul-razing anguish-failure- that Steve tenaciously combated against; unadulteratedly triggered a deep-seated maelstrom of her own unhampered penitence- remorse that she harbored. Nothing was hard-core to weaponize into a temperate charade. The surgical methods of the Red Room excised her soul into barren sterilization-a swan without grace that performed to the symphonic volumes of Tchaikovsky-a Russian death song."I used to enjoy the silence when I was a trade-off orphan," she raspily admitted in a threated hitch of pained breath."It wasn't a comfort of luxury but it kept me from falling in too deep before they pushed me..."

Steve closed his eyes, shuttering himself from the offset of remorse for the things his friend and partner had been through long before he had awoken from ice. Things he couldn't change, but vowed to prevent others from suffering just the same. Natasha had been through more pain and suffering than he could know, but she had endured like steel and somehow still managed to retain her connection to humanity. Steve himself saw her as his anchor in the past number of years that kept him grounded to the reality of the world they now lived in.

Without her, he had felt lost. Pivoting on his heels, he turned to face her with a searching look. "They pushed you, you pushed back. Now you've found your way back here...with me. I've missed you, Nat…" He smiled softly as he gazed at her, mesmerized by how her coppery locks looked like fire in the light of the setting sun. Her pale unblemished features were cool and her teal eyes shimmered as they stared back at him. "More than you probably think. I don't think I'd have a place in this future without you."

A tactive rush of imploding heat compromisingly suffused her with beckoning demand of ardent risk, detonating resistance as she ultimately felt the sheen lushness of her voluminous lips part on fevered volition. With a controlled breach, tentatively Natasha angled her the delicate curve of her chin with intimate abandon, unknotted platinum-blonde tresses feathered silkily over broad planes of his bearded jaw, as her lithe fingers kneaded a wanton caress through his unkempt-tousled mane, headily easing him into a blinding thrall of the possessive glide of arcing her svelte form as the garbed suppleness of her breasts delectably cushioned against the heavy-bands of rigid muscle on sensuous accord. The escalating reality of feminine vitality for him to wondrously orchestrate in dueling tenor of his banking arousal. "Well, let's try and keep ourselves on the edge of tomorrow, Steve..." she urged smokily, feeling the dimples etched in her alabaster cheeks stretch against a teasing smirk. "Even if we only have a minute..."

"We'll make it count." With that, he wrapped his arms around her and guided her towards him until his lips brushed across hers. Their first kiss many years ago was chaste and used to divert suspicion from enemy eyes. This one was different. Steve had kissed women in his life, even before having met Peggy Carter. He had been timid and uncertain of himself and of the woman he was kissing. But with Natasha, he was neither.

Their lips enveloped each others in an outpour of warmth and passion, a melding fusion of wet heat that became shiveringly ignitable to slake in addictive reverence, as their dragging breaths were feverishly captured against the shifting pressure of their kiss-bruised lips. Moaning in breathless cadence, Natasha felt the corded tautness of his chest flex like hard-edged steel, as the kiss ragingly altered into rapturous havoc-conveying the sum of their latent feelings that were finally being brought into the open. It was passionate, it was dizzying-it was real.

His heart hammered in his chest and Steve felt his closed eyes glisten with emotion. Holding Natasha in his arms, feeling the brush of her affection on his lips, it made him feel, he never felt closer to home before than now.

Approaching the isolated clay-stone hut engagingly with a suave coolness invested in his voguish footing of leather sandals that were shadowed by the embroiled length of his black djellaba; the young King of Wakanda greeted subtly them with a half-smirk. "Captain Rogers our friend Barnes has requested this subtle meeting," T'challa coolly uttered with a formal cadence, and steadied his dark irises fixedly on the glimmering scones casting an ethereal radiance over the lake."Shuri was very much eager to tell me the news..."

Steve was only surprised for a moment by the sudden arrival of the Wakandan king and the news he brought about Bucky's whereabouts. He shared a look with Natasha, seeing the smirk on her lips that told him she knew more than she let on. His body was left tingling with heat in the aftermath of their kiss, but now his nerves were brimming with anticipation. "It's about time." He said as he made to follow T'Challa towards the edge of the lake where. That was until he realized what his friend had mentioned. "What news does Shuri have?"

Fringing a breadth near the tropical underbrush, stealthily with a methodical strut of his gunned paces, the roguishly enchanted panther felt a palmed leaf shiveringly graze the muscular curves of his arching back, his velvety-cinder fur was blemished with grayish rosettes as he intimidatingly prowled in menacing succession against defensive tension that rigged through the virile sleekness of his bulked mass; stiltedly variance of telltale hesitation rapt as Bucky registered vestigial-rugged masculine scent of that arrested his dredged up heartbeat-an unshakeable echo of Brooklyn.

"Steve..." A breathless drawl edged whisperingly against his incisor fangs, readily Bucky thrust his feline muzzle up with tampered caution in his feral poise; keeping himself painstakingly distant as his alighted glacial aquamarine opals smolderingly roved over the placid lake before he nonchalantly eased onto his furred haunches-waiting for Steve to call him back. "S'it's good to see you, pal..."

Natasha followed into step beside Steve. Up ahead they could see the young teenage princess dressed in a ceremonial outfit similar to T'Challa's. There was a breathtaking view of the lake and the horizon ahead. But that wasn't what captured Steve's attention. It was the majestic sight of a nature that one would expect to exist only in cinematic movies. He watched as a cinder-furred feline stood on its hind legs and playfully nipped and tickled a baby cub that laid on its back, tiny paws dangling in the air. "Bucky?" Steve eyes wide with awe.

Bucky was here, and most surprising of all; he had a baby cub. His child.

Whatever news Steve was expecting, it certainly wasn't a surprise as pleasant as this. A soft smile broke across his face as he gazed long and deep into the feline's eyes and could see his best friend staring back at him as if he were still human. "It's good to see you too…" He flicked his eyes to the small cub still playing and rolling along the soft patch of grassy earth beneath Bucky's feet. Small, almost volley-ball sized with a thin coat of cinder fur. The tiny muzzle opened and a soft meow could be heard. Steve felt his heart swell with warmth. "Looks like you've been busy. Gonna introduce me to your little friend?" He beamed with a grin.

Giving his best friend a fanged smirk toothily, with underlying fatherly grace, against the register of an irresistible contrast, Bucky instinctively felt the mahogany furred baby cub wedge her delicate weight stumblingly against the solidity of his silvered fore-paw; nothing detracted his protective resolve as he stunningly angelic baby girl with reeling lurch on her dainty paws, adorably tucked her silken pudgy form into his muscled girth.

Being only a few weeks old, the fussy infant cub was dozily clinging onto him, nuzzling her daintier muzzle over his cindery-burnette fur as his whiskered jaw unabashedly stretched a broadened smile-a vibrant ease of boyish radiance that Steve hearteningly mirrored with a dopey grin tugging at his lips in visceral-brotherly unison that enduringly clashed in their soulful gazes of Brooklyn light. They both needed this victorious moment of grounded relevance. "T-This is my little darlin' Madison..." he drawled raspily with a choking hitch, angling his large feline head for Steve to embracingly reach. "S'just can't believe you're here, punk..."

"Likewise, jerk. Its about time." Steve grinned brightly as he wrapped his arm around Bucky's thickened neck and hugged him close and patting his back. Months spent picking up the pieces of his life meant that he and Bucky were no longer at a crossroads. The mantle Captain America having been passed onto the Falcon with the leadership of the Avengers falling to Captain Marvel. Steve was nothing if not a free man in deserved retirement, surrounded by the people he loves and cares about. He worried day and night about Bucky and Selina as they undertook a new beginning out in the African wilds. But now that his best friend had returned, with a small newborn treasure, it lightened the burden on Steve's shoulders tremendously.

"Was beginning to worry. Your little girl...she's beautiful." Steve said, marveling down at the baby cub that was peering up at him with startling brown eyes that looked human. "Suppose we can thank Miss Kyle for that." Steve joked. "Where is Selina by the way?"

Achingly conscious of feeling the invincible aura emanating off Steve, the young panther alpha's head lowered coaxingly to nudge his baby cub-little Mattie, throatily rumbling out a tactful chuckle as he caught her rebellious pulse while ushering her paralyzed kittenish form soothingly closer to his best friend. "Lina's back there with other two..." he smirkily rasped in whisper-soft timbre, as Shuri impishly mouthed 'little sneakers' while gazing at the dumbfounded pinch that sheepishly etched over Steve's beard-roughened features; Bucky tactfully edged his feline muzzle with deft ease, gliding Mattie a hairbreadth toward's Steve's opened palm with measured effort. "They love puttin' her on the ropes..."

"Two more?" Steve looked astonished at the news but also mildly relieved. He exchanged with Shuri and T'Challa, both of whom nodded with equally elated looks. He guessed they already met the other two and were thrilled new panthers were flourishing throughout their homeland. "You always wanted a big family, Buck. Its what we both always wanted," Steve reminisced as he gently held his finger over Mattie, watching as she touched nuzzled and playfully bit him.

The gravity of the unstinted moment was euphorically indescribable to brace against, Bucky's ultramarine irises beamingly flashed down at his spunky angelic little cub mewling out soft chirps against Steve's fingers as he graced her downy fur with a featherlike caress of infinite tenderness; he dynamically sensed the mutative-bestial raid of a warring chimera, racking inextricably in Steve's veins-a viscerous divergence of an untamed longing that wouldn't be caged.

With an errant lift of his fore-paw, Bucky ghosted the extracted length of his poised claws over taut flesh of Steve's garbed shoulder, quirking up his muzzle, heartily, as Steve affectionately kneaded the baby cub's satiny fur with a chaste tracery in the precision of his tactile caresses; feeling her reaction pulse with beckoning echoes of rapid ferocity that implosively waged bestial-feline resilence in the effusive wake of the morphic extension of the astral drift-a new Elysian of an irreversible unity of Wakanda incarnate.

Sharing the feline existence of a hunky sleek panther with his snarkily beautiful kitten-his baby cubs was more than just rebirth-it was soul deliverance. He knew Steve needed a chance to live again-trudge away from the battlefield-the mission.

Thrusting his muzzle up in coaxing measure, with a vitreous depth of cool white silverily melding against his slitted pupils like frosted sapphire, Bucky gazed urgingly at Steve, emitting a low chuffing purr. "Livin' as a big jungle cat isn't easy a stretch, pal, but when you see em' for the first time..." He gazed down tearily at his little Mattie, driven by a soul- fueling revelation that freedom: home was never meant to stake down in Brooklyn. "Hell, it's damn worth it...If you're ready to strike it home on these paws..."

"I know what you mean." Steve sensed the hidden meaning in Bucky's insightful words as his blood raced with heat and his muscles brimming with unspent energy that made him feel as if he could chase the setting sun on the horizon and never lose sight of it. He gently touched Bucky and Mattie on their heads with endearing affection. The former noticed how the hair on Steve's hands bristled upon contact and appeared an edge thicker. T'Challa and Shuri glanced at one another knowingly. In the months since Bastet's defeat, Steve had felt connected to the land of Wakanda in a way he hadn't before.

He understood the wildlife and how they thrived. His azure blue eyes gaze upon the horizon and he felt Natasha beside him, her hand slipping into his own. A warm smile was exchanged between them and she arched an eyebrow when she noticed how his iris' took on the shape of a feline. "With all of you here beside me. I think I'm ready for anything." The storm on the horizon drew closer, but together, Bucky and Steve never felt more safe than ever in their new home.

The End.

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