Chapter 380: Wakanda Has Fallen
T'Challa was on Roosevelt Island -- the same place where he and Batman had first met.
By the time Batman arrived, T'Challa looked nothing like the man he remembered.
Half his face was badly swollen. His hair was matted with mud and bits of dried grass. The clothes on his back were not the embroidered diplomatic suit he had worn at their first meeting -- they were an oversized women's dress shirt, collected from somewhere unknown. In the chill of a New York October, it was the only thing he had on -- thin, wrinkled, filthy, torn, and carrying a smell that told the full story. A strip of chewing gum stuck to the hem completed the picture. T'Challa had almost certainly pulled this shirt from a trash can.
Batman found him huddled at the base of a tree, arms drawn in, shivering.
"Come with me." Batman stood over him and extended a hand.
T'Challa looked up. He opened his mouth as though something needed to be said first, then closed it and took the hand in silence, using it to push himself to his feet.
Batman didn't take him to Bat Island. He brought him to a nondescript apartment -- one of several in a building Batman had quietly purchased somewhere in Manhattan.
A change of clothes. A shower. A meal.
The same routine that had once been necessary for Dane Whitman was necessary again here. An hour later, Batman and T'Challa sat across a table from each other.
"Tell me what happened," Batman said.
T'Challa looked around the room first, something cautious in it.
"Don't worry. I own this building -- the whole building, privately. Nothing you say here goes anywhere." Batman said.
T'Challa nodded. He had changed into a set of black clothes and was pressing an ice pack against the swollen side of his face.
"Two weeks ago, a group of international mercenaries found Wakanda. They appear to have conducted specific research into Vibranium -- they had developed a sonic weapon, and they used it to kill my father, King T'Chaka."
King T'Chaka of Wakanda -- killed.
Batman kept his expression steady. A father's death would devastate anyone. But he already knew that wasn't what had reduced T'Challa to this.
"They joined forces with my uncle M'Baku to seize the Wakandan throne. They've been mining the Vibranium aggressively ever since. Their goal is to build a super-army."
"M'Baku was my father's friend -- or so I believed. I didn't know until afterward that he doesn't worship the Panther God. He worships the White Gorilla God -- the Panther God's opposite. With the mercenaries' help, he killed a white gorilla and claimed its power. He calls himself Man-Ape now."
"I was imprisoned for seven days before I managed to escape."
Batman gave a small nod and slid a glass of water across the table.
"I watched what M'Baku became after the White Gorilla God's power took him. I watched him work alongside those mercenaries. I watched them brutalizing Wakanda's people -- whipping them, grinding them down -- and turning a nation that had been at peace with itself and the world into something I don't have a word for."
T'Challa drained the glass in one motion. When he set it down, Batman could see two lines moving down his face.
He had described his own ordeal without pausing on it. When he spoke of what was being done to Wakanda's people, something in his composure came apart.
"I've thought through every option, Batman. You are the only one I can think of who might be able to help me."
"What do you need?" Batman asked, his voice unchanged.
"A suit. Weapons. Food." T'Challa said. "I had nothing to eat for all seven days I was imprisoned. I have to restore myself first -- and then I'm going back to Wakanda."
"You're planning to challenge the entire country alone." Batman said. "You won't make it."
"I have to." T'Challa's hand tightened around the empty glass, a faint tremor in it. He wiped his face with the back of his other hand. "If I don't go back for Wakanda's people, who will? Do they simply live under this forever?"
He looked at Batman, something close to pleading in it now.
"Help me. A suit and some weapons -- that's all I'm asking. If I can survive what comes next--"
He stopped. He knew exactly what his survival odds were.
The reality of Wakanda right now: M'Baku and the international mercenaries held joint power. They had Vibranium weapons and sonic weapons. They had the nation's existing defensive infrastructure. And M'Baku himself was no longer a normal man.
T'Challa's father had been killed before T'Challa could be formally confirmed as the new king -- which meant he had never had the right to consume the Heart-Shaped Herb and receive the Black Panther's enhanced abilities. He was a man without powers walking into that situation. The best case he could honestly construct for himself was dying well enough that Wakanda's people found something in it to rise up against.
"You have to stay alive to be useful, T'Challa." Batman said. "Do you know who these mercenaries are?"
"Do you remember what I told you last time we met? About the stolen Vibranium?"
"You said the loss was a failure of your guards' vigilance. You said you hadn't pursued recovery immediately -- you were using the theft as bait to track whoever took it." Batman said.
"I didn't expect you to simply buy it." T'Challa gave a short, tired sound that was almost a laugh. "The man who stole it and the mercenaries who invaded Wakanda are the same people. Their leader's name is--"
Batman said it before T'Challa could finish.
"Ulysses Klaue."
T'Challa paused. He didn't know how Batman knew that name, but it didn't slow him down.
"Yes. Klaue. He came to Wakanda years ago posing as a geologist on an academic exchange. He's been planning this ever since."
"If he came prepared enough to kill your father and take the throne, his preparation for this operation was thorough." Batman said. "Your odds of success go lower."
"I don't have another option." T'Challa said.
Batman looked at him and said nothing.
T'Challa's brow pulled together. He turned the problem over -- and kept coming up empty. Then he looked up and met Batman's eyes, and understood.
Batman wasn't just going to provide equipment and support from a distance.
He was going to Wakanda himself.
T'Challa got to his feet. His lips moved, trying to shape words that wouldn't come. Instead he brought both fists together and crossed them over his chest, then bowed deeply.
"None of that." Batman steadied him by the shoulder. "If the situation were reversed -- if everything that had happened to you had happened to me -- I believe you would make the same choice."