Chapter Text
“- and she’s coming to our school? Our school?”
“Ned. I’m not kidding.”
“Tell me this isn’t like the time in eighth grade when -”
“No, I swear to God, it’s not like the time you ate your own eraser.”
“You said that you’d switched out one of my things for candy and it just looked so -”
MJ folded her arms, sank down in her seat on the bus, and tried to tune out the conversation Peter and Ned were having in front of her.
“I said that because I thought you’d guess , not just pick something up and chew on it…”
She closed her eyes, and pictured her desk back at home: and there they were - her headphones, sitting on top of her laptop. Exactly where she’d left them, trudging past in an early-morning haze on her way out of the door; their wire curled up in an enticing beckon, promising bass thick enough to drown out whatever was going on in front of her.
“No, no, seriously,” Peter was saying. “I swear, she’s actually coming to our school.”
MJ’s head was aching. Last night had held an accidental Wikipedia binge, hopping from article to article, reading all the new tech pages that were springing up like weeds on the sidewalk; Kimoyo Beads. Ring Blades. Vibranium Strike Gauntlets. The details were sparse and there wasn’t a lot to go on - but over the course of the six hours MJ had spent lost down the rabbit hole, at least two of the articles had already grown extra subsections. New information was flooding in.
It had made MJ’s heart thud as she sat bathed in the blueish light of her laptop at three in the morning, on the night before the first day of junior year.
And it was only now, as she sat on the bus and tried desperately to convince her body that closing her eyes constituted more sleep, that she felt even the slightest twinge of regret. Watching this stuff happen was once-in-a-lifetime.
“Hey, MJ.” Ned’s voice, loud enough to be heard clearly over the roar of the bus, made MJ frown. “MJ.”
“Mmm.” She did her best impression of a person who was extremely asleep.
“EM JAY.”
She slit her eyes open, making sure that her stare encompassed the exact right ratio of tiredness, irritation, lack of investment, and sheer dead-eyed scariness as possible. Ned hitched on a grin in the face of it, clearly not appreciating the artistry that went into the expression’s careful emotional makeup.
“Did you know about this?” he said, gesturing with one hand towards Peter. The bus rattled onto the school grounds, stop-starting to avoid the students running across the path. MJ glanced from Ned to Peter’s profile and back again, making sure to look completely disinterested.
“Know about what,” she said flatly.
“Who’s joining the school this year?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Really?” Peter spun completely in his seat to look at her. MJ’s eyes flicked over to him - his brown hair a slight mess, as usual, though she could see that there had been some attempts to school it into a definite style. He, too, looked tired, though MJ could concede in the privacy of her own head that he wore it with better humour than she did herself. “How’d you know?”
“Because we’re best friends already,” MJ said.
“You what?”
“Oh, yeah. Me and my dear friend Please Shut Up go way back.” She glared at the pair of them, and then shut her eyes.
“What’s up with you?” she heard Ned say. “Late night?”
“You really wanna know?”
“Uh… yeah, I gue-”
“I was hanging out with Please Shut Up. Having a ton of good times.”
“You’re mean.”
MJ snorted. The bus came to a complete stop, and the doors sighed open; MJ kept her eyes tightly closed for a few seconds longer, trying to enjoy the feeling as much as she possibly could while everyone around her scrambled for their bags and began to pile out into the parking lot.
“Ding ding,” she heard Ned say. “This is our stop.”
“Ugh.”
Rolling her eyes behind closed lids, she grabbed for her backpack on the empty seat beside her, and slouched off the bus behind Ned and Peter. She winced against the sunlight, sleeplessness watering everything around her down to a kind of liquid surreality. She yawned - but even as she did so, even as most of her mind was dedicated to wishing that she was back in her bed with her head on a soft pillow and her comforter pulled all the way up to her chin, even as she blinked slowly and sleepily - she realised that there was some kind of commotion happening across on the other side of the parking lot.
“Oh my god,” Ned said, punching Peter - surprisingly hard, MJ thought, but Peter didn’t seem to really feel it. “Oh, my god, it’s happening. It is happening.”
The words what’s happening were on the tip of MJ’s tongue; an image of Ned’s smug face rose up in front of her, how happy he’d be at knowing something she didn’t after she’d been rude on the bus, and she bit back her questions. Instead, she started to head quickly towards the school - directly away from the crowd. There were a few odd looks thrown her way by all the people heading in the opposite direction, but she paid them no attention whatsoever.
The growing melee surged behind her as she walked through the school gates, not meeting anyone’s eye. Instead of going inside, though, she took a quick right, heading for a conveniently placed wall that started low and slowly sloped upwards; climbing up, she walked her way to higher ground, peering over the heads of the crowd in the parking lot.
She was too far away to see what was really happening, except that there were four sleek black cars all parked side by side, and some women in red standing absolutely still and eyeing the general ruckus of students. They seemed to be keeping some kind of peace just by looking vaguely ready to kill anyone who looked at them.
MJ stared, wishing she could so effortlessly channel that kind of energy.
The clothes they were wearing… she narrowed her eyes. She knew that armour, she knew those patterns. They all had shaved heads, too - no hair for anyone to grab onto in a fight.
She blinked. Surely, it wasn’t possible. She’d just spent all night reading about these exact women and their country and their weapons and their technology, and now she was sleep deprived, and seeing things. These could not be the Dora Milaje.
MJ wasn’t even completely clear on how that was pronounced, let alone being prepared to see them in her school’s parking lot.
And then, out of one of the cars, stepped a girl.
MJ felt her breath leave her, before she’d even fully registered who she was looking at. Dressed in lowkey, casual clothes - just jeans, a t-shirt, and a black and white jacket, with her hair tied up at the back of her head - was a person MJ knew by sight, instantly. Someone she’d read about; someone she followed on Twitter; someone she’d seen on the news, announcing the arrival of new outreach buildings across the country. Someone she’d actually considered getting Snapchat for, just to see her stories and selfies.
Shuri, Princess of Wakanda.
The crowd around Shuri were going wild, yelling and waving. The Dora Milaje were looking, somehow, even more stern as they kept the tide of teenage enthusiasm at bay. Shuri offered them all a grin, and MJ felt her heart flip in her chest.
With a little nod of her head, Shuri began to walk towards the school. Like a flock of seagulls, the students all around her shuffled and squawked at each other, following along; Shuri seemed unfazed, not ignoring them, but just smiling around and occasionally laughing.
She must be used to this by now, MJ thought.
“I told my brother,” she heard the Princess say as she headed through the gates. “I told him, I wanted to take the bus! The big cars will only make it worse! Tomorrow I’m taking the bus here and there’s nothing he can do about it…”
MJ shifted, almost falling off the wall. Shuri was going to be here - not just for one day, but for two?
The suddenness of her movement must have caught Shuri’s eye. Down below, the Princess jerked her head up - frowning, her eyes drifted upwards too - and quite suddenly, MJ found herself meeting the gaze of the Princess of Wakanda.
MJ froze.
Shuri’s eyebrows raised slightly, and her mouth crooked into a smile - a small one, genuine, not for show - as she took in MJ standing atop the wall. MJ swallowed. Before there was time to smile politely, or wave, or do anything at all, the moment was over. Shuri had walked into the school, her eyes sliding away.
When the swirling wave of students chasing after her had washed inside with her, MJ hopped down off the wall. She leaned back against it; she could still feel her heart pounding.
Shuri had smiled.
And MJ hadn’t even tried to tame her hair this morning, beyond shoving it into a bun at the back of her head. Not that she expected someone as smart as Shuri to be making judgements about someone based on how many flyaways they had going on, hair-wise, or how beat-up their shoes looked, or how probably vacant and awestruck their expression was…
MJ breathed out. But Shuri had smiled.
She found herself half-smiling down at the ground, just thinking about it.
“So, how did you enjoy meeting Princess Please Shut Up ?”she heard a voice say. She looked up, blinking away her mind’s looped replaying of the moment that had just happened.
Ned was smiling at her smugly, while Peter stared up the steps after Shuri.
MJ considered using words to reply, and then decided a simple gesture would do the trick.
“Aw, come on. That’s not nice.”
They headed inside as a reluctant, ragged trio.
“So… she’s here because…” MJ said, unable to resist fishing for information any longer.
“To go to school,” Ned finished for her. “Something about community outreach or whatever.” MJ tried to keep walking normally, tried to keep breathing. Shuri. The Princess of Wakanda - a title so grandiose that it sounded ridiculous even to think it - that Shuri. Was going to be here every day? Was going to take classes? Was going to join band or the cheer squad, was going to go to parties, was going to - to go to high school?
“But she’s, like… a genius,” MJ said, sounding stupid to herself. “Like… she doesn’t need high school.”
Ned shrugged, while Peter looked thoughtful.
“Peter, does she even know about -” Ned began.
“Don’t know,” Peter said shortly, with a pointed look, before seeming to sink back into his thoughts. MJ narrowed her eyes at the pair of them, before shrugging it off.
Whatever. Those guys were losers.
And Shuri had smiled.