In Jean's imagination, Storm would throw a couple of small lightning bolts, the two of them would trade a few light blows, and the whole thing would wrap up amicably in a few minutes.
She couldn't fathom how it had escalated to this.
Jean pulled up the Danger Room's main control interface and started reading. The numbers made her stomach drop.
"The Danger Room's first principle is accurate simulation — but it has a computational ceiling. We've already exceeded it." Her words came out in a rush.
"Shut down the simulation." Cyclops already regretted letting them spar at all.
"I can't. It looks like it's crashed."
Jean had a doctorate in history. Her relationship with computers stopped at basic operation. The Danger Room's OS had been written by Beast — a supergenius even among mutants — and while Jean knew what many of the commands did, she had no idea how to actually use them.
She entered over a dozen commands. Nothing. The computer didn't respond.
She had no choice but to reach out to Professor Xavier through their mental link.
The old professor was in the middle of a discussion with Nick Fury about the increasingly complicated global situation when Jean's call reached him. He paused, opened his personal terminal controlling the Danger Room — and saw exactly what Storm and Daisy were doing to it.
He had to admit: the combination of lightning storms and volcanic eruptions was visually spectacular. He believed the power of the mind was second to none, but in sheer spectacle, it didn't even compare.
Nick Fury was equally thrown off. He genuinely hadn't known Daisy could hit this hard. Storm's combat potential had his eye twitching. These two were walking natural disasters.
At the same time, something felt off. From everything he'd observed, Daisy was the type to have ten units of power and casually cruise on five — never tipping her hand unless she had to.
"Their abilities seem amplified," Fury said carefully, choosing his words. "Agent Johnson is normally a very even-tempered person. Right now she looks like she's holding a lit fuse. Is there any chance someone is... influencing her?" He left it deliberately vague, but the implication was clear: Was it you, Professor? Are you messing with her head?
The professor was genuinely baffled. He ran a quick check. Daisy had her K'un-Lun ring; Storm had her bloodline magic. Both were immune to his telepathic influence. External interference could be ruled out.
Whatever was happening was coming from inside. He made a mental note to have a serious conversation with Storm about emotional regulation, then turned his attention to the terminal and finally located the problem.
"The main computer has crashed. Their power is being amplified beyond normal limits. There's no need to be overly alarmed — in the real world, neither of them could sustain this. Their cells simply couldn't handle being pushed this hard."
The professor was being straight with him. Fury let out a slow breath. Volcanic eruptions and unchecked lightning storms were really testing the limits of his composure. He found himself deeply nostalgic for the era when Captain America was the top of the food chain.
Professor Xavier worked quickly at his terminal, trying to force the Danger Room's main computer offline. What he didn't know was that a group of students had tapped into their own access permissions and were watching the fight.
A crowd of kids who normally bragged about throwing a small fireball or an ice spike were now completely silent, jaws on the floor.
Most of them had used the Danger Room themselves. That was exactly why they understood what they were seeing.
These kids weren't Nick Fury. They had none of his analytical judgment. As far as they were concerned, both women were simply terrifying, and that was the end of it. A crowd of students stared at the feed, wide-eyed and helpless.
A few of the clearer-headed ones were quietly doing the math on their odds of surviving something like this. Fighting back? Not a chance.
"Colossus — could you tank those rocks?" someone asked. He was addressing the tallest, most built kid in the group.
"Rocks" was generous. Each one was the size of a dining table, moving with both kinetic force and extreme heat. The visual impact alone was overwhelming.
The boy called Colossus scratched the back of his head. At full power, maybe. But his transformation was still inconsistent. Go head-to-head with a combination of earthquakes and lightning? Not a chance. He shook his head with a modest, sheepish smile.
Everyone read the answer and moved on, turning back to debate who had the edge.
Storm was a teacher at the school. She could be a bit blunt, but she was attractive and genuinely warm — most of the students supported her, even if they privately thought otherwise. They weren't about to say so out loud.
But there's always one.
"I think that woman is actually winning..." someone said, going against the current.
Immediately, another voice fired back: "Nonsense! Ororo won't lose!"
The group of teenagers dissolved into absolute chaos.
Neither Daisy nor Storm knew that outside, several people were on the verge of physically pulling the breaker. The battle inside was entering its final phase.
Torrents of rain poured down, were vaporized by the lava, and cycled back up into the storm clouds. Storm pushed her psychic focus to its absolute limit, weaving together wind, rain, and frigid polar air — and unleashed her decisive attack.
A blizzard.
The arena went white. Razor-edged snowflakes took shape, blades of ice given form; the wind seized them, whipping them into spiraling ice tornadoes. The storm grew. And grew. Daisy's room to maneuver shrank with every second.
"Your powers are genuinely impressive," Storm called out, savoring the moment. A strong opponent was a rare prize — worth far more than the malicious mother-in-law business weighing on her mind. "But in the end, nothing beats nature itself."
Daisy snorted under her breath. "Says who? Elemental powers always beat raw superhuman strength? That's a bold assumption."
She stopped wasting energy on the terrain. The Danger Room floor was a disaster zone already — there was nothing left to erupt. She'd been planning to teleport in close and go hand-to-hand, but Storm had her defenses up tight, her magical power distorting the space around her body. Two teleport attempts. Two failures.
Every other option came up negative. Daisy decided to hit it head-on.
She took a breath. Her right hand closed into a fist. Her eyes tracked the blizzard, calculating speed and distance.
When the two ice tornadoes merged into a single vortex — fifty meters (165 feet) across — Daisy didn't blink. She lined up the center point and threw everything she had into one punch.
Physics and power, fully integrated. In this arena, every surface saturated with her vibrational frequency, she had learned to exert partial control over gravity itself. Gravity was the weakest of the four fundamental forces — dwarfed by the weak force, electromagnetism, and the strong nuclear force — but it was universal, always present, and it cost her nothing extra to use.
Everything fell within its reach. The ice tornadoes felt it immediately — rotational velocity dropped. Storm's wind-riding stance hitched.
Her Inhuman bloodline. The Heart-Shaped Herb. The force-channeling techniques from K'un-Lun. Daisy funneled everything she'd ever learned into this single strike. Gravity amplified the momentum, and the power behind the punch began multiplying, compounding, doubling back on itself.
One punch, and she was confident it would end the fight. Would it also destroy the training room in the process?
She hadn't thought that far.