They stayed in Wakanda another three days. T'Challa, despite being "only" a prince, carried a number of ongoing responsibilities that required proper handover before he could leave.
Three days later, the group departed through a back route: Daisy, Storm, T'Challa, Batroc, and the still-unconscious Juggernaut — five people in total.
Daisy rode the rhino at the front of the column. The cheetah had shrunk itself to the size of a housecat and draped itself across her shoulder. Juggernaut and Batroc were trussed up and dragged behind the rhino like a pair of dead weights.
Not far behind, T'Challa and Storm were murmuring to each other — the queen had delivered yet another lecture to the two of them just before departure, and Storm had kept her temper with visible effort. She'd been simmering the entire way out.
With a rhino in the party, most conventional transport was out of the question. Not that it mattered — they had time to burn, and the group ambled along through the landscape at an unhurried pace.
Daisy spent the journey examining the cloak. The color, the cut, the silhouette, the fit — none of it really suited her. It was a regift, after all; the old king had almost certainly pulled it straight from Border Tribe stores, tossed it in a box, and called it done. The result was a cloak that was at least two sizes too large, and when she wrapped it around herself she looked more or less like she was wearing a tent.
The awful fit meant she'd have to alter it herself — except she didn't have the faintest idea how to sew. In that respect, she reflected, she was behind most of the Marvel heroes. Say what you liked about Tony Stark — according to legend the man had come into the world clutching a welding torch, and he'd maxed out every mechanical engineering skill tree there was. Logan, whom she'd actually met, was a grandmaster of practical life skills: masonry, roofing, logging — there was nothing he couldn't do with his hands. Even Deadpool, of all people, could operate a sewing machine.
Daisy could do none of these things. And the cloak had only come from a rank-and-file Border Tribe soldier's kit anyway — she didn't exactly need the extra armor rating.
After thinking it over, she decided to give the cloak to Maki when she got home. Japanese women all learned basic needlework — as an ordinary person, her attendant could use the protection, and at least someone would get use out of it.
The farther they got from Wakanda's borders, the more T'Challa and Storm seemed to shed the last of their restraint. Once they'd cleared the national boundary entirely, the two of them were practically glowing with happiness — and the secondhand embarrassment practically radiated in Daisy's direction.
Daisy had no intention of walking all the way to Kenya. She gave the rhino a pat and, without a word, brought it to a halt. Her rudimentary telepathy was still rough-edged when applied to humans, but with animals she had a natural touch. Three days of shared travel had been more than enough to build an understanding with this particular rhino; a single gesture was all it took.
T'Challa and Storm caught up, puzzled by the sudden stop.
"Are we really just walking to Kenya?" Daisy asked. She genuinely couldn't fathom how they weren't exhausted — she was tired, and she was riding.
T'Challa crossed mountain and jungle like he was on a morning stroll, utterly unperturbed. Storm understood immediately. "Do you want me to contact the Professor? He could send the jet."
Daisy was curious about the X-Men's Blackbird — who wouldn't be — but that was about as far as it went. She guessed it was roughly on par with the Quinjet, and she'd rather call in her own backup.
A Level 7 agent could requisition a transport aircraft without breaking a sweat.
While they waited for the jet, she had one more errand to run: she was going to make off with a lion cub.
The Panther Goddess, once informed of the plan, indicated she wished to accompany her.
Two quick jumps brought Daisy back to the spot where she'd first encountered the male lion. A couple of low passes through the air and she located the family — except it wasn't quite a family of three.
The male had three mates. And eight cubs. A full, thriving pride.
With that many cubs to go around, surely you won't miss one, Daisy reasoned, attempting to open a dialogue with the lion.
The male had been gathering himself for a warning roar — until he saw the Panther Goddess. The sound died in his throat. The lionesses and cubs were even less composed: they pressed themselves flat against the ground, trembling.
"They're that afraid of you?" Daisy asked.
The Panther Goddess gave a dignified, somewhat self-satisfied nod. Don't underestimate what I am.
With the goddess serving as a rather persuasive backdrop, Daisy's "request" to adopt one of the cubs was not something the lion was in any position to refuse.
She gathered up the specific cub she'd spotted on her first visit, left a promise that she'd bring the whole family somewhere nicer once she had more space, and teleported back to the others.
T'Challa and Storm had nothing to say about the addition of a lion cub. As for whether a city like New York would permit someone to keep a wild predator as a pet — none of them gave it a second thought.
The cub, suddenly yanked from everything familiar, was plainly terrified. It swiveled its head this way and that, looking for an escape route, finding none. T'Challa and Storm, standing nearby, at least didn't smell like hunters — but of the three, Daisy was clearly the least frightening. The cub crept over and pressed itself against her feet, unhappy and uncertain.
The lioness was somewhere between one and two years old, and when she stood fully upright she nearly matched Daisy's height. For now she was huddled low at Daisy's feet, and Daisy stroked her fur absentmindedly while she waited for the S.H.I.E.L.D. jet.
The jet had departed from Egypt and arrived quickly. The crew were competent — though they clearly found a living rhinoceros and an unconscious Juggernaut somewhat outside their usual transport brief, they said nothing, loaded the rhino into the aircraft with considerable effort, and the group flew direct to New York.
During the flight, Daisy handled the preliminary calls to Nick Fury about T'Challa's Oxford enrollment.
This wasn't like applying to primary school. No matter how well-connected Fury was, he couldn't sort it out with a single phone call. It would require follow-up legwork: Oxford would want to assess T'Challa directly — recommending someone inadequate would embarrass even the most influential patron — and there would need to be a financial arrangement, since he would effectively be joining mid-program as an irregular student.
Wakanda had money, theoretically — except that statement wasn't entirely accurate. Their wealth was essentially locked up in vibranium, and the metal was something they guarded with almost religious jealousy. Asking them to put it on the open market at a listed price was, at this stage, completely out of the question.
Which made their so-called wealth more notional than real — like a stock that can't be sold. Daisy vaguely remembered claims from her borrowed memories of the future: vibranium trading at astronomical prices per gram, the Black Panther's royal family wealthier than Tony Stark. She was skeptical of all of it. Value depended on scarcity, and vibranium was only "scarce" because Wakanda refused to sell any. In reality, the mines held enough to last thousands of years of uninterrupted extraction.
The combination of vibranium's unique properties and Wakanda's unwillingness to trade had created the illusion of an impossible-to-obtain miracle metal. Daisy had a strong suspicion that the whole narrative of the Black Panther being richer than Iron Man was something Tony Stark himself had floated — a calculated move to redirect envy away from himself.
Wakanda's one genuinely impressive asset was its technology. But technology was the foundation of a nation's sovereignty, and that was even less for sale than the vibranium.
So T'Challa, in practical terms, didn't have much in the way of liquid cash. American dollars in particular.
Fortunately, Storm had money. Daisy made appropriately helpless noises about being a modest, underpaid government agent, and Storm handed over a bank card loaded with five million dollars without much discussion. Beyond Oxford, Storm also asked Daisy to find them a flat in England.
The group settled on a rough plan during the flight: T'Challa would base himself in New York first, waiting while Daisy worked on the Oxford arrangement, while simultaneously pursuing the investigation into how Wakanda's location had been leaked — and, in the meantime, enjoying a few days of actual privacy with Storm.
He would be keeping Batroc; the man was the only one with firsthand knowledge of the operation.
Juggernaut, however, neither T'Challa nor Storm was willing to take. Storm's reasoning was straightforward: the Professor's school was an educational institution, not a prison. Someone that dangerous should be handed to S.H.I.E.L.D. and locked somewhere remote and off the grid.