The Deep ☼ SHURI UDAKU

☼ Chapter Ten ☼

The Snap

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Shuri sighs when she sees Nerissa putting on the armor she designed for her. Nerissa sighs as well. "I am just preparing for a fight." She taps a button and it disappears, waiting to be summoned again, ignoring the shake of Shuri's head.

Shuri braids Nerissa's hair, making sure everything is fully braided so there's no pieces of hair left out.

They walk to the main room hand in hand, Nerissa's skirt flowing and the top Shuri made for her shining, pearls dangling from everything, swinging with her braid.

She has her sword holstered on the side Shuri isn't on, making sure to be alert.

They introduce her to some of the Avengers and then Shuri moves to Vision, scanning him with her beads. The man introduced as Bruce stares at her technology in awe. "Woah."

Shuri opens her palm and looks at it "The structure is polymorphic?" Bruce puts his glasses on further "Right, we had to attach each neuron non-sequentially." Shuri smiles, looking over at Nerissa to mock them.

"Why didn't you just reprogram the synapses to work collectively?"

Nerissa chuckles a bit, turning away from everyone as she catches Shuri's sly smile, both knowing that she's smarter than these grown men. They glance at Nerissa before turning back to Shuri.

"Because.. we didn't.. think of it." Bruce sounds nearly embarrassed saying that, looking between Vision and Shuri.

"I'm sure you did your best." Nerissa smiles, walking forward to stand beside Shuri, her hand caressing hers. Wanda breathes in, something only Nerissa could catch. "Can you do it?"

Nerissa can almost feel the worry coming from her, the fear of her most loved one dying. Nerissa grips Shuri's hand, glancing down at Vision.

"Yes, but there are more than two trillion neurons here. One misalignment could cause a cascade of circuit failures," she turns to T'Challa "it will take time, brother." He nods, standing at the front, looking down with Okoye beside him.

"How long?" Steve says, fingers intertwined.

"As long as you can give me."

A beeping noise comes from Okoye's beads. She immediately opens it, trills of warning sounding throughout the room. "Something has entered the atmosphere."

Nerissa gasps softly when she feels pulses through the air, the humming of machines far distant as she walks forward to look out beside T'Challa, focusing on the sounds. She sees big pieces of metal planted into the ground, vibrations flowing out from the contact.

She sighs, readying herself for a fight, stepping back to Shuri to gather strength.

She's helping Vision sit up as he says "It's too late. We need to destroy the stone now." Nerissa holds Shuri's hand in hers, watching as Natasha's head whips back "Vision, get your ass back on the table." She says, walking to him.

T'Challa moves forward. "We will hold them off." He motions for Nerissa to follow so she does, kissing Shuri's forward, holding Shuri close to her, begging the Goddess to keep her out of harms way.

Nerissa jogs off with T'Challa and the Dora Milaje, repeating her brothers words to herself, calling out for his strength to be within her. To help protect this land.

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Nerissa stands beside T'Challa, facing the barrier as two alien people walk up to it. T'Challa tells her to stay put while he goes off with Steve and Natasha. She nods, moving to be beside M'Baku.

She strains her ears to hear their conversation.

"Where's your friend?" Natasha asks and it seems like she's smirking. "You will pay for his life with yours. Thanos will have that stone." The alien woman speaks, a monotonous voice. "That's not gonna happen." Steve says.

T'Challa decides to speak "You are in Wakanda now. Thanos will have nothing but blood and dust." Nerissa smiles softly, knowing that Wakanda will always be strong.

"We have blood to spare." She grunts, holding up a knife sort of weapon, the ships behind her moving on her command. They let out hundreds of alien dogs, a new sort of twisted breed.

"Yibambe!" T'Challa shouts, the Wakandans returning the cry.

Nerissa unholsters her sword, twisting it to get a feel for it. The border tribe creates a shield around them, chanting out in Xhosa. T'Challa opens the border and they all pool in, a sea of alien dogs.

Nerissa shouts, running to fight. They come at her from every direction but her sword slices through them each time. The tension rises as more aliens pile in, new faces and new breeds. She's covered in their blue blood, a disgusting stickiness to it.

She sees Wanda come down from the lab and frowns. She was meant to be protecting Shuri and Vision. Nerissa is overtaken by aliens during her thoughts so she groans and holsters her sword, holding out her arms to throw them back with water, snake heads forming as she manipulates the water to do as she commands, the fangs snapping down to take the kill.

Natasha looks at her "You've been holding out this entire time?" Nerissa smiles softly, wiping out a few more before dropping the water, running back to get to the lab so she check on Shuri.

She gets stuck in fights along the way, dogs jumping on her back, different species growling in her face.

When she runs up, she panics when she sees broken glass, jogging down to see Shuri unconscious on the ground, one leg lifted on the platform indicating she fell from higher above.

Nerissa gasps, running to her side.

Nerissa shakes her, moving fallen braids from Shuri's face. "Shuri! Wake up! Wake, my love!" Nerissa touches the small amount of blood from the back of Shuri's head, beginning to cry.

When Shuri finally comes to, Nerissa pulls her to her chest, crying out. Shuri holds onto Nerissa, rubbing her back. "Are you all right, sthandwa?" Nerissa nods, pressing their foreheads together.

Shuri whimpers, a low tone. "Nerissa... I think-" She's cut off by Nerissa's gasp of pain, pieces of her soul being chipped away. Nerissa looks down, seeing Shuri's legs slowly disappearing, crumbling into dust.

Shuri chuckles as a tear falls from her eye. "This is so dramatic- I kinda love it" Nerissa laughs, trying not to absolutely lose her shit, Shuri's hands running over her waist.

Soon Shuri's hands are no longer touching her.

"Kiss me." Shuri mutters, a last wish.

Nerissa obliges, pressing her lips to Shuri's. Nerissa's entire bosy is shaking, pain spreading throughout her body as Shuri disappears.

In a second, Nerissa's lips touch nothing.

And all Shuri is is dust.

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The reason this is so short is because I wanted a chapter dedicated to infinity war and shuri going away. So yeah. This is kinda sad but anyways. moving on.

-Re