Daisy couldn't figure out why Hill was drawing life lessons from a dinosaur movie, but she thought about it anyway. "Depends," she said. "If it's someone I know, I'd take it hard. A stranger? I'd probably just say I was sorry and move on."
Before Hill could follow up, Daisy cut her off: "You're overthinking it. Let me flip it around — if Director Fury and I both fell into a body of water at the same time, who would you save first?"
Hill clearly didn't know the joke. She blinked, pale blue eyes working through the question as though searching for a hidden catch.
"Neither of us can swim," Daisy added.
Hill appeared to run a quick calculation. "You, probably. We're friends. And the Director almost certainly has a backup escape plan. Your self-rescue skills, on the other hand, are..." She trailed off diplomatically.
Daisy could only press her palm to her face. Culture gap: confirmed.
Still, she pushed her argument forward. "Which is exactly why your question doesn't apply in the real world. Trained operatives always have contingencies — even climbing a live fence, they wouldn't be as reckless as the people in this film. And regular civilians? They don't go climbing electric fences for fun. They avoid danger naturally. The ones who end up in those situations are trained professionals. Your worry is misplaced."
Hill considered this, and seemed to find it reasonable.
Daisy quickly redirected her attention back to the screen. The pacing was tight — within minutes, Hill had been pulled back in.
When the credits finally rolled, Hill let out a long breath.
"Not bad," she said, already moving into tactical assessment mode. "There really isn't much a regular person can do against dinosaurs. But if they knew basic survival techniques — setting traps, reading terrain — they could've..."
She continued, unpacking her detailed theory of optimal dinosaur-hunting strategy.
Daisy stared at her, momentarily speechless. Is that why SHIELD people are so lukewarm about films? They watch a T-Rex chase scene and immediately start planning countermeasures?
The operators might not be impressed, but the public clearly was. Strong word-of-mouth combined with favorable scheduling pushed the box office into an upward trajectory.
Some time later, during one of her private sessions with Hill, something clicked for Daisy.
She'd been fixating on high-tier power sources. But plenty of street-level heroes weren't weak — and the catalysts behind their abilities were, in principle, accessible to her too.
The problem was that most of those origin stories involved luck: radioactive exposure, industrial chemical accidents, uncontrolled biological experiments. She could only select from options that didn't require a roll of the dice, and that wouldn't interfere with the direction she was already developing in.
Do it now.
She picked up her phone and called the Puerto Rico Police.
It was her third time contacting them. The first had been to find an underground temple. The second had been for the film rollout. The local chief had taken her first call and, the moment she rattled off her FBI badge number, his tone had shifted immediately to something much more cooperative. They were practically old acquaintances by now.
Daisy made small talk in Spanish for a moment, then slipped in what she needed: "Do you have a record on someone named Hector Ayala?"
A brief pause on the other end. The chief relayed the request to someone nearby, and ten minutes later a fax arrived with the profile of a young man.
She thanked him and spread the papers out.
Hector Ayala was currently a student who'd come from Puerto Rico to study in the States. Because he was actively working through immigration processing, the local precinct's file on him was unusually thorough — home address, family contacts, social security number, driver's license, medical history, all of it.
"Yeah, that's him."
She remembered the broad strokes. Hector was the original White Tiger — a street-level hero who'd stumbled onto the White Tiger Amulet by accident. His ending hadn't been kind: shot to death outside a courthouse. After his death, the amulet passed to his niece, who became the second White Tiger — and she'd also met a bad end, killed by a certain assassin in the original timeline. The same assassin who currently worked as Daisy's personal handmaiden.
The amulet itself was clean — put it on, gain the enhancement; take it off, lose it. No side effects. No complications.
Per his police file, Hector was already in New York, enrolled at Empire State University. Daisy calculated that the timing of him finding the amulet was approaching.
She started searching the web for the amulet's original owners. Her memory was hazy here — she'd only ever known the broad strokes of older comics, not the character names. She'd triple-checked Hector's name. The peripheral figures she could barely recall.
What she did remember was that the amulet had originally belonged to a group called the Sons of the Tiger — an Eastern member holding the tiger head, and two Westerners holding the claws, together forming a three-person hero team.
She ran the data analysis, used Hector as her anchor point, mapped his activity radius, narrowed the range, then cross-referenced by ethnicity. Eventually, three names surfaced.
Lin Sun. Bob Diamond. Abe Brown.
Take it by force, or wait?
She chose to wait. If they were going to throw the pieces away on their own, why should she be the villain?
The amulet had Eastern origins, and she wanted to respect that. She'd rather not look like she was snatching it.
The three-person team didn't keep her waiting long. A woman came between them, and the friction between Lin Sun and Bob escalated steadily until, one night about a week later, it exploded.
Bob, out of patience, threw the first punch.
Abe tried to play peacemaker. The woman panicked. Hidden in the shadows, Daisy watched with mild contempt. These three were barely above standard street muscle. Calling them heroes was generous. Even all three together wouldn't be any trouble.
She wondered briefly whether the three amulet pieces combined might be more formidable. But looking at what she was seeing, the answer wasn't worth pursuing. Even if she had no use for them herself, she could always pass them to Hill. So she stayed patient.
The brawl wrapped up. All three went their separate ways — Lin Sun got the girl, but the team was finished. The tiger head and tiger claws were left lying in the street. Everyone walked off.
Daisy stepped out of the shadows and picked them up without a hint of embarrassment. The golden tiger head was exquisitely carved — vivid, almost alive. The claws were still razor-edged. Whoever had made them, centuries ago, had been a master.
A shape moved in the distance — Hector, drawn by the noise. Daisy launched herself up, caught the second-floor railing, vaulted over the far side, and vanished into the dark.
Back in her room, she laid out all three pieces and examined them carefully.
Individually, the enhancement from each piece was subtle. But assembled — tiger head and both claws together — the combined effect was measurable. The wearer moved as though there were a real tiger living inside them: strength amplified, speed sharpened, endurance boosted, predator instincts fully engaged.