With three core directives in place, Danger stopped tying herself in philosophical knots. Sociology, military theory, human development studies — Daisy kept all of it away from her. She didn't need Danger commanding armies or designing blueprints for civilization. Reading any of that was a waste of time.
Genetic engineering, biology, and mechanical science — those were the fields an AI should focus on.
Danger had spent her entire existence running mutant combat simulations. Genetics was familiar territory. She didn't resist these new research directions.
Daisy transferred all of the Yashida data she'd acquired to Danger, to be cross-referenced against Professor Xavier's research notes. Together, the two sources would be far more useful than either one alone.
From that foundation, Danger was to continue pushing the research deeper. The workload and computational demand were both enormous, so Daisy told her to take her time and stay quiet. Don't let Professor Xavier notice.
As for whether Xavier's School's electricity bill would spike this month — not her problem.
Housing an AI in someone else's servers was a stopgap measure. She'd have loved to build her own supercomputing infrastructure, but the cost of that was genuinely painful to think about. Whatever money she had would disappear into that project without leaving a ripple.
For now, Danger would stay in the old professor's systems a while longer — until the day Daisy could actually "bring her home."
Nick Fury had met the Black Panther. That meant the groundwork between S.H.I.E.L.D. and Wakanda was laid. How Fury chose to develop that relationship from here was entirely his own business.
With the Danger situation resolved, Daisy returned to the rhythm of life as an agent — in fits and starts, nothing too consistent.
As a Level Seven agent, she occupied what internally counted as junior leadership. That came with responsibilities: she was expected to take on a portion of high-level assignments and share in the privileges.
Those privileges were exactly why she'd joined. She had no interest in turning down authority the way Black Widow and Hawkeye did.
Field operations were something she wanted nothing to do with — too much combat, too much honey-trap work, and the division was riddled with HYDRA informants. She wasn't about to have her every move watched by them.
The Science Division was out, too. Too insular. You could bury yourself in a single project for months, look up, and find the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo had been quietly swapped out for a HYDRA one.
Operations Command handled too many moving parts and ran around the clock. Working there would be like being a dispatcher: "Hello, this is Agent ___—how can I help?"
Training was a dead end — glorified babysitting for young recruits.
Daisy looked at every option and landed on Intelligence.
The division wasn't isolated. Field assignments were rare. It sat at the intersection of everything, functioning as the connective tissue between departments — ideal for building relationships across the organization. For someone who needed broad access to information and wide networks of contacts, it was perfect.
Her skills were actually useful there, too. The only problem was her direct supervisor.
Victoria Hand — career old maid, Level Eight agent — supervised Operations, Intelligence, and Weapons Procurement all at once. She was Daisy's chain of command.
Hand wasn't HYDRA. She also wasn't Fury's inner circle. If forced to categorize her, she was aligned with the Security Council — one of the generation that had transitioned from operative to bureaucrat, and one of the most capable among them. Solid experience, composed temperament, and a particular preference for subordinates who were appropriately experienced, not especially beautiful.
Daisy didn't meet a single one of those criteria.
They were like magnets of the same pole — repelling each other hard. Hand found Daisy objectionable from day one. Daisy found Hand — who operated more like a career politician than a spy — equally grating. On their first day working together, they nearly came to blows. It was Phil Coulson — just back from a stint in Antarctica — who stepped in, smoothed things over, and talked both of them down to an uneasy truce.
Coulson put in real effort. He told Hand that fostering harmony among colleagues was the responsibility of a senior agent; that setting a good example for junior personnel was part of the role. Then he turned around and told Daisy to show some respect for experience, and to consider how she handled herself in professional settings.
It was the same speech, recycled and delivered twice. Neither woman gave him any credit for it. Both let out a sound somewhere between a scoff and a sigh, turned in opposite directions, and left.
Daisy returned to her workspace and immediately started pulling Hand's files using her Level Seven clearance. Bureaucrats always had skeletons — anyone willing to look long enough would find a pile of them.
Three days later, she walked into Fury's office holding a thick folder of material on Hand. She found Hand already there, sitting across from Fury with her own folder, apparently mid-briefing.
Both women went still for a moment.
Then they opened fire simultaneously.
Hand laid out evidence that Agent Johnson had misappropriated public funds to the tune of tens of millions — the most egregious corruption case in S.H.I.E.L.D. history. Daisy retaliated with documentation showing Agent Hand had maintained inappropriate relationships with certain senators, resulting in significant classified intelligence leaks.
"Don't pretend you didn't use your position to support a Democratic candidate," Hand said, slamming her folder on Fury's desk and making the man jump. "S.H.I.E.L.D. operates on a principle of political non-interference. Or have you forgotten?"
"Obama" was not an accusation that landed on Daisy. She met it without blinking and slapped her own hand on the desk. "Then explain the dinner with Senator McCain."
"That was personal. Completely separate from my professional duties."
"Same goes for me and Obama."
They were locked in, point for point, neither moving an inch. Fury stared at them both with the look of a man who had made a series of increasingly poor life decisions. He wasn't sure how a personnel dispute had escalated to a proxy argument between the Republican and Democratic parties.
Under normal circumstances, he'd have thrown them both out. But these weren't normal circumstances. Both women carried political weight, and the election wasn't decided yet. Removing Hand and having McCain win would be one kind of problem. Removing Daisy and having Obama win would be a different kind of problem. Either way, he'd have to answer for it.
So he did what any self-preserving man in an impossible situation would do: he played dead.
Then, operating on a principle of shared suffering, he reached out to his old friend and former Director Pierce — who had been sitting nearby reading a newspaper over tea — and invited him over, officially in the capacity of "mediator."
Pierce was a political animal of the sharpest variety. Watching the two women go at each other, he found himself reading the subtext beneath the argument: the tension between minority communities and the established order in America.
Daisy's background and instincts pulled her toward the Democratic candidate. Hand was a typical establishment figure and naturally gravitated toward the Republican. In real political terms, it was obviously far more complicated than race alone — but as a broad indicator of underlying tensions, it was telling.
None of this was useful to Pierce. He couldn't show his own hand politically any more than Fury could. He pulled over a chair, sat down beside Fury, and watched the show.
Multiple agents tried to enter and file reports. They took one look at the room and quietly backed out.
Fury and the former Director were stuck. The election hadn't been called. Until it was, there was no clean move. The only option was to keep the two women separated and let them get on with their work.