There were more records tracking the supply chain, of course — she'd only opened three. After all, she was the kind of exemplary agent who "reported immediately upon discovery," so a few gaps were entirely natural. Fury could dig through the rest himself.
And dig he clearly intended to. He stared at the screen for a long moment.
Surviving Nazis. Hiding in Antarctica.
"Agent Johnson." He straightened. "Good work. Wrap up your business here in Japan and report back to HQ immediately. I'll need you involved in the follow-up."
He copied every file, reboarded the helicopter, and was gone.
Following the Director's instructions, Daisy ran her own "cleanup pass" — in other words, she encrypted everything a second time. Technically, the data still belonged to Yashida Industries. They'd invested significant resources in this research, and knowledge was an asset like any other. Private property was sacred. S.H.I.E.L.D. had no legal authority to simply take it.
The data was still there. Whether the Yashida family could actually access it after her "cleanup" was, unfortunately, unclear. If they had concerns, they were welcome to file a complaint with S.H.I.E.L.D. A response would be provided within fifteen business days.
That handled, she went to find Logan and the others.
The man who'd been ready to resume wandering had been completely defeated — not by any opponent, but by Mariko. She was crying hard enough to make up for everyone else in the room, arms locked around his, absolutely refusing to let him walk out the door. Yukio wasn't far behind. Under the combined weight of both women's tears, Logan had agreed to stay in Japan a little longer.
Daisy decided she'd technically completed Professor Xavier's request. Whether Logan was being used as a pawn inside the castle or outside it barely mattered — the point was he'd have company, and as a man who'd spent most of his life alone, that wasn't nothing.
Old man Yashida was pulled from the suit, and they buried him on the grounds. Only Mariko and Yukio had anything approaching grief. Daisy and Logan watched with neutral expressions.
A S.H.I.E.L.D. jet touched down at the Yashida estate shortly after.
Daisy boarded with the others and the Silver Samurai's complete adamantium shell, and they flew back to Tokyo.
The city was already in motion. The Hand's other four fingers were moving to absorb Madame Gao's territory. Viper was making her push on Yashida Industries. Behind her, a cluster of junior HYDRA operators were also jostling for position.
Shingen was busy — meetings all day with every major faction, barely stopping to breathe. He found one window in the evening to sit down with Daisy over dinner.
He had no interest in the Samurai armor. In exchange for Daisy's assurance that S.H.I.E.L.D. would provide him with limited support and occasional intelligence going forward, he sold it to her at a price so low that it was almost insulting — fifty years of his grandfather's obsessive engineering, handed over for next to nothing.
Daisy said her goodbyes to Logan, Mariko, and Yukio, and caught a flight back to S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ that same night.
She kept the Samurai's two arm pieces and the long blade for herself, citing "combat damage" and listing them as lost. The rest — the torso, the legs — she handed over to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s science division. Paid for with organizational funds, after all.
Between those pieces and the shipment Shingen had already sent her, she had enough adamantium to outfit herself properly.
Back at HQ, she went to see her boss first.
Fury's office was, as always, aggressively air-conditioned. She braced against the cold the moment she walked in.
He gestured for her to sit.
She ran through the Japan wrap-up briefly, then got to the thing that actually mattered.
"Do we have enough to move on? Should we go now?"
She wasn't going to pretend she wasn't eager. Espionage produced a lot of results that couldn't be acknowledged publicly, but hunting down Nazis was one of the rare assignments that was both genuinely good and looked good. A clean win on every level.
Nick Fury was quiet for a few seconds, then shook his head slightly. "Keep this contained for now. The war ended over sixty years ago — the public doesn't need to know, and neither do regular agents. I want to see it for myself before I decide how to move."
Daisy felt a flicker of unease. Then Fury continued:
"Your teleportation ability — I've heard good things. Come with me. We go in person."
She stared at him. A whole colony of Nazis — reportedly several thousand strong, infantry-grade or not — and he was suggesting two people?
As it turned out, Fury wasn't quite that impulsive. He didn't mean two people. He meant four.
Natasha Romanoff — a defector who'd burned her bridges long ago and had nowhere left to go — was exactly the kind of operative you brought for reconnaissance and extraction. Fury wanted her.
Clint Barton had a wife, had kids; the odds of him flipping were minimal. Also trusted.
Daisy — the one who'd found the lead, and who happened to be able to teleport anyone anywhere — obviously had to come.
Two men, two women. Four people. A quick prep cycle, and they left HQ.
Normally there'd be decoy vehicles, route changes, surveillance countermeasures. Daisy skipped all of it. She jumped them directly to Clint's safe house in Washington, and from there the four of them boarded a S.H.I.E.L.D. jet bound for Antarctica.
"Is this your ability?" Natasha asked during the flight, keeping her voice low. It was a bit forward — asking directly about someone's powers — but she and Daisy had enough of a rapport, so it landed within acceptable range. "There seems to be a distance limit. And the experience itself is... strange. Like being flicked by something. I can't quite describe it."
Daisy walked her through the basics. Framed the right way, her vibration ability sounded like minimal-upside, low-development potential — a glorified party trick.
Nobody believed her, but nobody pushed it.
Same with Clint's vision — sharper than any normal human's, everyone knew it, and no one asked how it happened. Some things you just didn't ask.
On the flight, all four reviewed the mission. Fury had pulled an all-nighter after getting back, cross-referencing the Yashida research data against Antarctic magnetic anomaly reports and restricted-airspace records. The result was a confirmed irregularity — something was down there, and it hadn't been there by accident.
That was why he was going in person. He needed to see it with his own eyes. Who was down there. What they were doing.
What Daisy had surfaced from the Yashida files was only part of the picture. A group that size, operating for decades, would leave traces no matter how careful they were. Fury had his own sources. Between the two threads, he'd found a lot.
"It may be a surviving Nazi contingent." His tone was heavy — but the weight was mixed with something that was clearly, quietly, excited. He hadn't found this himself, technically, but the credit would still accrue to his name.
S.H.I.E.L.D. locating Nazi remnants was a historic result. It would go a long way toward improving his standing with the World Security Council, which had been running out of patience after certain irregularities involving certain funds he may have accepted.
He glanced over at Daisy with something resembling approval.
Whatever her real capabilities, he thought, this one brings good luck.
Find one Nazi cell and you had a career-defining accomplishment. Parade them out in public. History books. The chapter where Nick Fury dismantled the last Nazi remnant — completing what Howard Stark, Peggy Carter, and an entire generation of heroes before him had never managed to finish.
He wasn't being naive, though. The scale of those supply purchases alone told him the headcount was significant, and the base had achieved self-sufficiency over the years. Four people taking down an entire installation was not a realistic scenario.
Daisy and Fury each had their own read on the mission. Clint and Natasha, for their part, had been conscripted and barely understood why until they were already in the air. Now they were being told: Nazis.
Neither of them could quite believe it.