"—RAAAGH!"
Just as Batroc's footwork started to falter and the pressure on him mounted visibly, a roar tore through the treeline. Then came the footfalls — heavy, rhythmic — and the splintering crack of trunks giving way.
There was no finesse, no tactics — just mass and momentum. Juggernaut ignored the terrain entirely and began accelerating through the forest.
As he ran, his muscles swelled another degree, straining against the half-plate armor. The rounded metal helmet that encased his head made his eyes look disproportionately small in comparison. He burst from the trees without slowing, if anything picking up speed, locking his savage gaze onto Storm with the focused intent of something that wanted to reduce her to powder.
Eight hundred kilograms moving at speed — the momentum behind that was like a freight train hitting full speed.
"Get out of the way!" Storm hadn't encountered Juggernaut before, had no frame of reference for what Cyttorak's power actually felt like up close. What she felt was a wave of demonic energy that turned her stomach. She reached into her power, combined her weather-manipulation with her internal reserves, and called down a bolt from the cloud layer above — a column of lightning the width of a barrel, blazing a searing line through the air with a crack that wiped out everyone's hearing and vision momentarily.
When the spots cleared, Juggernaut hadn't even slowed — there wasn't a mark on him. If anything, his speed had ticked up.
Storm's offense was real — nobody doubted that. But she was a glass cannon: enormous output, paper-thin defense, and a wind-up time that left no room for close-quarters emergencies. Against something coming at her like a collapsing mountain — nearly four meters of apparent bulk in full sprint — she realized too late that she was at the wrong altitude. She scrambled to pull higher, but switching from lightning control back to wind manipulation mid-panic wasn't something she could do in the next two seconds.
Daisy caught her. One more second and Storm would have been flattened so thoroughly that even Professor X wouldn't have recognized her — not the best outcome for Daisy's plan.
She'd been tracking Juggernaut with a low-frequency sense the moment he'd entered the fight. Her original plan had been to protect T'Challa — this was an improvisation. She sprinted, closed the distance in two steps, grabbed Storm, and lunged sideways.
A year of working with teleportation calculations had quietly sharpened her spatial math. She judged the angles cleanly — bled off just enough of her own momentum to clear the direct line of impact and let Juggernaut's mass thunder past, missing them by centimeters.
The shockwave still hit.
Storm had no real physical resilience — a single bullet could put her down on a bad day. She'd been pulled clear of the direct impact, but the residual force caught her anyway. She spat a mouthful of blood and went limp.
Daisy, for her part, had made a deliberate choice not to protect herself. The shockwave hit her clean. She let it. For the Heart-Shaped Herb to work out the way she needed, Wakanda had to want to save her. Inviting the hit was easier than fabricating an injury afterward.
The reason she'd grabbed Storm in the first place: she needed the insurance. As T'Challa's childhood friend, the future queen, the queen's chosen daughter-in-law — they couldn't very well let Storm die. And since she was already holding Storm when the shockwave hit, it would only be natural to bring them both in.
First she'd borrowed goodwill from Fury. Then from Obama. Now Storm's status as T'Challa's closest companion had added a third layer. With all three working in her favor, and positioning herself as a bridge between Wakanda and the outside world at a critical moment — the odds that T'Challa would leave her to die were effectively zero. If he somehow still refused, she'd take the Heart-Shaped Herb by force. Less elegant, but it was there as a last resort.
She and Storm were built very differently. Storm was genuinely close to death. Daisy would be fine after lying still for a while — Juggernaut's shockwave, measured against the kinetic experiments she'd been running for over a year, didn't rank that high on her personal scale. But she needed it to look real. So she deliberately fractured a few of her own ribs, matched Storm's position on the ground, coughed up blood of her own, and went limp.
T'Challa's shout came from somewhere nearby. Then Juggernaut's footsteps, still rolling forward with unstoppable inertia. Two of the royal guard broke off toward the two downed women.
Daisy kept her grip on Storm. Even in her "unconscious" state, her arms stayed locked. The guards stared at that grip, clearly moved by the sheer show of friendship, and ended up carrying them out together.
What followed was more earth-shaking — T'Challa had clearly decided not to solve Juggernaut with his own hands. He called in Wakanda's air support, and precision weapons drove the behemoth back. Then the whole group fell back toward Wakanda, carrying their casualties.
Daisy maintained her act the entire way — she'd suppressed most of her senses and tamped down her brainwave activity until she registered as someone on the immediate edge of death.
Storm was on that edge for real. Daisy was only pretending.
The aircraft put down urgently at the palace. The royal physicians examined them, and then delivered the verdict: injuries too severe, no conventional treatment could help, minutes remaining at most.
Daisy lay still and waited for T'Challa's decision.
She'd read him right. He was a good man. There was no visible internal struggle — he waved off the physicians, ordered the guards to carry both women, and moved.
They went around the back of the palace by a narrow path, heading for the mountain behind it.
On the way, Daisy caught the sound of resistance — voices invoking royal tradition, the queen's orders. T'Challa silenced each one without breaking stride.
Mother-in-law problems, it turned out, were a universal affliction.
Daisy had worried briefly about being caught up in the fallout, but T'Challa had principles. He ignored his mother's commands entirely and brought the two of them into a chamber carved into the mountain's interior.
The old king was nowhere in sight, from beginning to end. Daisy was absolutely certain he knew exactly what was happening. Her limited grasp of politics suggested he was creating deniability — staying out of sight so that if things went badly, it was his son's decision and his son's responsibility.
She didn't particularly mind. Pretending not to know was, in its own way, a form of support.
"Bring the Heart-Shaped Herb. Two herbs."
T'Challa's voice was sharp as they entered the chamber. In Wakandan, directed at the priests inside.
She'd caught that. Two herbs. Daisy felt a rush of triumph. When the guards set them down and stepped back, she deliberately went slack — arms falling open as though her muscles had finally given out.
The priests, reading the moment, scrambled without waiting to be told. Two Heart-Shaped Herbs were retrieved and pressed into T'Challa's hands.