When the princess opens her eyes, she’s no longer on the plain. She props herself up on her elbows to look around … and finds herself in her bed.

Was that whole thing a dream?

Her bedroom door opens.

“Ah! You’re awake!” Nakia says, walking over to place a cup of water on the princess’s bedside table.

“Uhhh … what day is it?” Shuri says.

At this, Nakia laughs. “It’s only been a few hours, Your Majesty.”

“Oh. A few hours since … what precisely?”

“Ehh, nothing major,” the Msingi replies with a smirk. “Just you freeing one hundred and eighty-three Wakandans from their alien captors, and subsequently suctioning what looked like a giant oil spill up into the belly of your Panther aircraft.”

Shuri’s head whips left and she locks eyes with her favorite Dora. “You mean it was all real?”

Nakia laughs again. “As real as the black eye your brother acquired in the mass brawl.”

For the next who-knows-how-many-minutes, the beautiful warrior sits by Shuri’s side, recounting all that transpired after Shuri’s personal symbiote detached from her body and she fell unconscious. And she apparently wasn’t the only one: “It was the strangest thing I have ever seen,” Nakia says. “These black blobs vibrating like mad and then flying off their various hosts … who all looked around, very clearly confused, before collapsing the same way you did.”

Medical personnel were dispatched and Nakia assures Shuri that the other hosts—who came from all over the nation—are perfectly fine, if not disoriented and convinced they were dreaming.

“You saved countless lives today, Your Majesty,” Nakia continues. “You stepped out in courage and took a major risk, and it paid off. Again.”

Spider-Miles, as it turns out, was whisked away almost as soon as the fight was over. “The American spider hero received quite the royal transport treatment: T’Challa sent him home in the stealth jet.”

“Wow,” Shuri replies. T’Challa doesn’t even allow her onto the stealth jet, and she’s the one who invented it.

Nakia gives a brief recap of landing the Predator as instructed, using the remote that Shuri gave her.

But just before the princess can ask if a thermal scan was run on the cargo hold to make sure all (but one) of the symbiotes were gone, Nakia’s bracelet rings.

When she taps the bead to accept the call, a silhouette of the queen mother’s upper half appears in midair above her wrist. “Ah, the princess is awake, I see!” she says. Overenthusiastically. “Delightful! Nakia, please escort my daughter to the throne room as soon as possible. She has a visitor.”

Shuri barely has the energy to keep her feet moving, let alone ponder over who this visitor might be …

But when she steps into the throne room and sees who is sitting beside Mother, the princess’s mouth goes bone dry.

“We meet again!” M’Baku bellows. From the grin on his face, Shuri can tell he’s up to no good … for her at least.

“Uhhhhh …” is all she can muster to say.

“M’Baku was kind enough to return this.” Mother holds up one of the earrings that were gifted to the princess during her Tayari—the three-day rite of passage ceremony Wakandan girls go through at age twelve. Shuri’s hands go to her earlobes … the left one is woefully empty.

“I sure hope all the gadgets you snuck into my domain were helpful in your ‘conversation’ with our Henbane. He is feeling much better, by the way.” M’Baku glowers in Shuri’s direction.

“Now, while I can appreciate your work in ridding our nation of those bizarre extraterrestrial invaders, and I cannot reprimand your Msingi for permitting you to embark on such a dangerous quest behind my back—again,” Mother continues, “now that I know you visited the Jabari-Lands and violated their tech prohibition—”

“Let me guess,” Shuri says, completely unfazed about cutting her mother off. (It’s not as though the princess has anything to lose now, does she?) “I’m grounded.”

Queen Ramonda smiles. “I am so glad we understand each other, Shuri.”