Lei Kung's voice rang out like struck iron. Having said his piece, he turned and walked away without further explanation.
Pretentious bastard, Daisy cursed silently, keeping up her mute act.
In her past life as a struggling web novelist, she'd spent every day trying to match her personal knowledge base against the collective knowledge of her entire readership: astronomy, geography, medicine, divination, glassmaking and gunpowder, politics and economics, culture and folklore. Over the years she'd absorbed a whole grab-bag of trivia.
So she knew exactly what "the hour of the Rabbit" meant. Dawn. Roughly five to seven in the morning.
She took stock of her "temporary lodging." The man had been clear enough about his meaning: temporary meant she hadn't passed yet, and they could still kick her out.
She'd waved her hand three times along the way, and she still didn't know whether the Thunderer had seen the K'un-Lun Elder Ring on her finger.
Her guess: he'd seen it and pretended not to. The little house she was standing in front of wasn't even as big as the bathroom in her own villa, but at least it was clean, with no rowdy communal sleeping arrangement. Probably the ring had bought her that much courtesy.
The man in blue had filled in his own elaborate version of the prophecy. Daisy fit several of the conditions he'd mentioned in passing, and she couldn't quite tell whether she was actually the prophecy's true protagonist, or just an interloper who'd accidentally walked into someone else's story.
She had time. She decided to size up the situation before making any moves.
She set down her pack. The bed looked clean enough. She lay down on it fully clothed, and a moment later realized something was off. K'un-Lun was playing a deeper game than she'd thought. She'd nearly fallen for it.
She got up and searched the room. In a wooden cabinet she found a set of white training robes and a red sash.
The robes looked a lot like what those "sorcerers" at Kamar-Taj wore, with similar fabric, even. Kamar-Taj favored grey; here it was white.
Daisy thought, uncharitably, that maybe both places ordered from the same supplier. When in Rome. Walking around in a T-shirt and jeans would basically be a billboard advertising her outsider status. She changed quickly and tied the sash.
The hemp was rough. Wearing it against her skin made her grit her teeth, but she pushed through it. She rummaged for a while looking for shoes. Did these people not wear any? Eventually she found something like foot wraps. Call them socks? They tied on. Call them shoes? They had no sole.
To avoid messing up her plans for the morning training, she just pulled them straight onto her feet.
She paced the room a couple of times. Not too uncomfortable, actually. Lying back down, a new worry hit her: was "the hour of the Rabbit" here the same as the hour of the Rabbit outside? What if they meant the hour of the Ox, or the hour of the Tiger?
She turned it over and over. Lei Kung had given her too little to work with; she couldn't read his preferences. Trusting her own mental fortitude, she gave up on sleep entirely, closing her eyes only halfway and tuning her senses to the sounds outside.
When the first stir of movement reached her, she sat bolt upright.
Figuring that as the supposed "protagonist" of the prophecy they probably wouldn't steal her gear, Daisy left her sword, shield, and armor in the room. She brought only her Vibranium bracers and the Atomic Cutter, and pushed the door open.
Her dwelling was set well apart from the training ground. A quick sweep of her surroundings confirmed she was the only resident in this little compound.
She walked the corridor toward the courtyard. The hemp robe was uncomfortable. She didn't have the talent some classical heroines had for binding herself with a strip of white cloth; she had to wear a bra. Thankfully, the fabric was thick enough that her pale sports bra didn't show through.
The foot wraps were also less than ideal on the stone paving. She had to adjust her gait and rhythm, taking care not to push off too hard and poke her toes through the thin cloth.
By the time she'd found a workable cadence, she had reached the center of the courtyard.
The yard was enormous and empty. The flagstones gave the space a weighty, solemn feel. The Thunderer she'd met yesterday was standing dead center, a ring-pommel saber slung across his back, arms folded, waiting in silence for everyone to arrive for the morning lesson.
When Daisy entered, several young disciples were already there. Without exception, they were shaven-headed, bare-chested, dressed in cloth trousers and barefoot. Each one sat cross-legged with eyes closed.
From a distance she might have mistaken the place for Shaolin Temple.
Three people sat at uneven intervals from north to south, in what was clearly a strict formation. She couldn't just plop down wherever she liked.
She didn't know any of them. She was a total transfer student here. Or maybe a self-appointed transfer elder?
Sitting cross-legged would look undignified. Kneeling would feel demeaning. Daisy glanced around. A large tree stood not far off. She launched herself up in a single leap, settling on a thick branch, and waited to see what the Thunderer would teach.
A few of the shaven-headed disciples noticed the newcomer in the tree, but Lei Kung said nothing, so they pretended not to see either.
A low murmur went around among the disciples who knew one another.
"Who's that woman?"
"Never seen her before."
Some assumed she was a new disciple, since she was wearing training robes. Others figured she was filling in for Lei Kung as instructor, since she was up in the tree.
Among a crowd of Asian faces, one figure caught Daisy's eye: a Western boy. Young, but already with the first hint of a beard, curly hair, not particularly tall.
Surrounded by burly disciples of sixteen or seventeen, he looked slight by comparison. His features, his upbringing, his language: every one of those things had clearly built a wall between him and the others.
So this was the next Iron Fist. Daisy knew him. Danny Rand, heir to Rand Enterprises. His family had been on a vacation when an avalanche took everyone except him.
By now Rand Enterprises had been quietly seized by The Hand, and Danny himself had reached the point of having a home he couldn't return to.
You could read his whole future just from what came next. Tagging along behind Spider-Man. Dead weight on the Defenders. In the eyes of Cyclops and the White Queen, he didn't even rate as cannon fodder. Danny Rand had a backstory that rhymed with Batman's, but none of Batman's brains. He was the weakest Iron Fist in history, hands down.
Before long, all the disciples had arrived. Daisy thought it over and decided not to come down. The training robes were her way of signaling she was willing to learn. Since this was a two-way selection, she also wanted to see exactly how strong Lei Kung was, and whether he was worth her time.
She was a little let down.
Lei Kung led the group through training that wouldn't have looked out of place at a martial arts school in a certain unmentionable country. Horse stance. Straight punches. Stand like a crane, leap like a leopard. Nothing here was worth Daisy's effort.
The shouting was thunderous. The reality? Setting aside Lei Kung himself, Daisy could put down all thirty disciples with one hand.
That man in the blue robe—she was almost certain he was the head of K'un-Lun, the one called Yu-Ti, the August Personage of Jade. What exactly did he want her to learn from Lei Kung? To replicate the previous female Iron Fist's path? To become the current Iron Fist and face down the Phoenix?
Daisy didn't speak the language, and she couldn't quite parse how they'd set things up. She watched for a while, lost interest, locked her hands behind her head, crossed one leg over the other, and sprawled out along the tree branch to think.
The disciples' battle cries had a strangely soothing rhythm. Half-listening to them, she actually started to feel drowsy. Catching herself—this is not the place for a nap—she shoved the drowsiness away. But she couldn't quite suppress the yawn.