Their arms locked together like twisted rope — each woman trying to snap the other's limb, Daisy weaving shockwaves into the grapple, refusing to let Madame Gao settle. Even at the absolute peak of her art, Madame Gao couldn't gain the upper hand.
Viper hadn't been idle, either. Watching Daisy throw herself into the fight, she set aside her hesitation and waded back in.
Two exchanges alongside Viper were all Daisy needed to read the situation: the woman had almost no combat talent. Against a normal person, sure — she'd win easily. But against Madame Gao, she'd last maybe three moves before being put down. Daisy was going to have to keep half her attention on keeping this shaky alliance alive.
In a gap between clashes, Daisy shifted her angle, raised her gun, and shot the two guards standing over Yashida Shingen. The middle-aged man was free in an instant. He scooped up a fallen enemy's sword, and with two clean cuts, took out the guards holding Mariko.
Mariko's hands flew over the controls, and the metal restraint chair released Logan.
"Logan — Yashida-dono — we need help up here!" Madame Gao was too much. Daisy called it out.
The fight was moving too fast for the newcomers to process. Logan didn't know Viper. But Shingen and Mariko did — she'd been the Yashida family's personal physician for years. What was she doing here?
It wasn't until Daisy was clearly fighting against Madame Gao that all three of them finally sorted out which side was which.
Logan extended his claws and charged in.
He was immediately sent flying by a single palm strike. But adamantium bones meant Madame Gao hadn't done a thing to him. Logan got up and went straight back in — because of course he did.
His involvement changed everything.
Logan's combat profile had no "evasion" entry. Against Madame Gao's mountain-splitting palm techniques, he didn't dodge. He didn't weave. He took the hits with his body and answered with claws. That meant Madame Gao had to dodge — she wasn't putting her old arms and legs in the path of adamantium. And the moment she was forced to move away from Logan, Daisy and Viper, who'd been getting pressed hard, found their openings.
Madame Gao tried to create a breakthrough by eliminating someone — but Viper's ability to retreat bordered on supernatural, and Daisy's animal instincts let her slip every killing blow. Every one of those lethal strikes landed on Logan.
Daisy's "heart-crushing palm" was a performance. Madame Gao's was not. Each strike rang out like cannon fire. Each blow would have killed anyone else on that floor — even most enhanced fighters would be dodging, not absorbing. Only Logan stood there and took it.
Bang. Bang. The sound of qi-loaded strikes hammering against living steel filled the room. Continuous qi-fueled combat was burning Madame Gao's reserves. Her speed and power began to fall.
Shingen raised his sword and joined the fight.
The man had more flaws than could be listed — selfish, cowardly, purely transactional, no concept of loyalty whatsoever — but his swordsmanship was undeniable. It put Colleen Wing to shame. Blade after blade, every cut aimed at a vital point, no wasted movement. In this room, only Madame Gao stood above him with a weapon in hand.
Handling four attackers at once, even her centuries of training weren't enough to hold the line. Her qi was draining too fast. Her speed and strength were falling across the board.
"Die." Strange as it was, Daisy was the only one in the room who actually had a personal score to settle. The others were just caught up in it. She was the one who wanted this.
Logan's claws drove Madame Gao back a step. Daisy was already there — she'd jumped the instant he attacked, materializing just behind the old woman at point-blank range. She threw a horizontal punch, and the air itself seemed to crack from the impact of the shockwave.
Madame Gao took it clean. The force hit her from the wrong direction — compression instead of impact — and her shriveled spine creaked audibly. Her qi stuttered, just for a moment. The ghostlike speed she'd maintained through the entire fight dropped sharply.
The others didn't miss it.
Shingen's blade opened a gash across Madame Gao's cheek. Logan — with absolutely no regard for age — punched three clean holes through her abdomen.
Viper struck hardest of all. She'd been holding this back, waiting. The moment she saw Madame Gao's guard crack, she leaned forward and spat a cloud of green mist directly into the old woman's face.
The corrosive venom hit like acid. Madame Gao reeled — the left side of her face half-stripped, white bone visible through the ruin of her cheek, one eye gone completely.
She was still dangerous. Blinded, without thinking, she threw a palm in front of her.
It caught Viper dead center — square in the lower abdomen. The woman was launched over thirty feet and crashed into the floor. She tried to rise, twitched twice, and went still.
Daisy ran over. She checked her quickly — not critical, just unconscious — and told Mariko to keep an eye on her before plunging back into the fight.
Today, she was going to finish this.
Madame Gao wasn't suicidal. Wounded this badly, she turned and ran.
"There's nowhere to go!" Daisy was fast — faster than Logan and Shingen both. She closed to about ten feet and launched another shockwave at Madame Gao's back.
This time, Madame Gao was ready. She twisted in the air, changing direction mid-step, and let the wave pass.
Before Daisy could press the advantage, an alarm fired in the back of her skull. Pure threat. She pulled up short.
Logan felt it too. He grabbed Shingen by the collar and yanked him back.
A massive blade dropped from the air, slamming into the floor directly where the three of them had been about to step. The weapon was almost five feet long, its silver body crackling with some kind of energy conversion system — the edge glowing red-hot with energy. Even from several feet away, Daisy felt the heat rolling off it.
The blade's owner emerged slowly from the shadows, watching them sidestep his loaded strike without much visible reaction.
Eight feet tall. A full suit of silver-white armor, every joint sealed, a crescent moon motif on the helmet — very Japanese in design. Its footsteps were heavy enough to feel through the floor. Impossible to tell whether there was a person inside or a machine.
Did old man Yashida survive? The thought surfaced in Daisy's mind. She couldn't be sure — no X-ray vision meant no way to know who was wearing that suit.
"The Silver Samurai." Shingen's voice had gone quiet. Every Yashida child knew the legend — the armor that passed from generation to generation, written in the family's oldest records. Seeing it standing in front of him, alive and real, he understood some things he hadn't before. That suit was all adamantium. Every piece of it.
Daisy raised her gun and fired a shockwave directly at the Silver Samurai's visor.
The wave never reached whoever was inside. The armor stopped it cold — the shockwave couldn't even cut through a third of the outer plating before the adamantium killed its momentum entirely.
"He's yours." Daisy teleported behind the Silver Samurai in the same breath, found Madame Gao's escape route by the blood trail, and went after her.