"Should we bow?" Bruce turned to Rhodey.
"Yeah, he's a king." Rhodey said and Liam behind them hid his smirk behind his hand.
"Seems like I'm always thanking you for something." Steve and T'challa shook hands and Bruce bowed when the king turned to them.
"What are you doing?" Rhodey asked Bruce and the doctor turned at him with betrayal.
"Uh, we don't do that here." T'challa dissuades with a motion of his hand. "So how big of an assault can we expect?"
"Uh, sir, I think you can expect quite a big assault."
"How we looking?" Steve asked.
"You will have my King's Guard, the Border Tribe, the Dora Milaje, and...:"
"A semi-stable, 100-year-old man." Bucky says as he emerges from behind the guards
"How you been, Buck?"
"Uh, not bad, for the end of the world." He sighs and gives Steve a hug.
"Liam." The called man turned around and was met with the beaming face of his younger brother.
"Jack! How have you been?" Liam laughs and hugs him.
"It's been great but college is hard." The youngest Mills groans. Liam chuckles.
***
"Whoa. The structure is polymorphic." Princess Shuri hums as she examines Vision.
"Right, we had to attach each neuron non-sequentially." Bruce explained.
"Why didn't you just reprogram the synapses to work collectively?" Liam almost snorted when everyone who had no idea what the two were talking about looked at Bruce with a look that basically said: Yea, why didn't you?
"Because... we didn't think of it."
"I'm sure you did your best."
"Can you do it?" Wanda looks at the princess with desperation.
"Yes, but there are more than two trillion neurons here. One misalignment could cause a cascade of circuit failures. It will take time, brother." She looks at T'challa.
"How long?"
"As long as you can give me."
"Something's entered the atmosphere." Okoye suddenly announced.
"Hey, Cap, we got a situation here." Sam said over the comms from where he and Bucky were standing outside. Something huge slammed into the shield over Wakanda. The team watched in awe as the pieces of the foreign object slid down the defense barrier.
"Yeah, don't start celebrating yet, guys. We got more incoming outside the dome."
"It's too late. We need to destroy the stone now." Vision said and looked at Wanda.
"Vision, get your ass back on the table." Natasha commanded.
"We will hold them off." T'challa nodded to his sister.
Wanda, as soon as the stone's out of his head... you blow it to hell."
"I will."
"I'll stay here as well. I think I'll be more helpful here." Liam announced.
"Evacuate the city. Engage all defense procedures." T'challa commanded his guards and then pointed at Steve. "And get this man a shield."
"Jack, Pietro," Shuri spoke as she started to pull up all the holograms. The younger Mills and his boyfriend stopped to look at her. "show him the thing. He might need it." She smirked and the two grinned before pulling Liam along to the room on the left of the main lab. Pietro went a bit ahead and grabbed a corner of a fabric draped over something big.
"Prepare yourself, my future brother-in-law." The silver head smirked and pulled the fabric off.
"Holy shit!" Liam's mouth fell open as he saw the beauty in front of him. Futuristic looking motorcycle stood before him in all its glory.
"From the sound of it I'm guessing he likes it?!" Shuri shouted from the other room with an amused tone.
"Looks like it!" Pietro shouted back.
"We took inspiration from Disney's Tron's Light Cycles and we worked on it with Shuri." Jack said, basically vibrating next to his brother as he took in his reaction.
"What?! That's amazing! Wha- You guys did this?!" Liam's eyes sparkled as he turned from Pietro to Jack and back.
"W-well, Shuri helped a lot, so..." Jack blushed at the praise.
"He designed the AI for this thing." Pietro said and Jack shot him a look, his boyfriend, however, only smiled wider.
"You said college was hard and here you are, designing AIs?!" Liam looked at his brother with pure admiration.
"H-hey! Pietro did all of the design and even made a matching nano-tech suit for it!" Jack fired back. This time, it was Pietro's turn to blush and look down as Liam turned to him with wide eyes.
"I-it's not that amazing..."
"Are you kidding me?! Look at that thing!"
"Touch it. With your powers, I mean... meet her." Jack encouraged Liam and the older Mills stepped closer and put his hand on the machine.
"Hello Liam." It spoke with a familiar voice.
"That's..." Liam felt tears sting in his eyes.
"Mom." Finished Jack. "Took a while with the voice generator to get it to have her, sort of deep edge her voice had but... I think it worked. Her voice is the only thing I remember clearly and-" He was cut off as Liam pulled both him and Pietro into a tight hug.
"I'm so fucking proud of you two." Liam whispered. And it meant more to them than he could ever imagine.
This chapter... made me cry a little. As someone who never got much praise in my childhood, I just wrote what I wished someone would tell me then. I hope it's not too over the top. Thanks for reading!
P.S.: Harry Shum Jr. at the Oscars? *chef's kiss*