Kitty navigated Frank's skull with her phasing ability until she found the bullet. She activated the power again, phased the slug, and withdrew along the same path she'd entered.
She presented it to Daisy like an offering—a deformed, flattened lump of metal.
A distracted pat on the girl's head. Another check of the monitors. Still nothing irregular. It was done.
A procedure that would have been near-impossible for conventional medicine—finished in under a minute, no incision, no recovery period. Mutant powers were something else entirely.
"That's it. I'll take you shopping. Thank you for your help today." Daisy ruffled Kitty's round-cheeked hair.
Kitty's face broke into a full beam. "Thank you, Daisy-sis!"
Right—a little bribery, and Daisy's status in Kitty's internal rankings had jumped from "random stranger" straight to "sis." Money was something else.
She left Baldy and Frank to their private conversation, took Kitty on a laptop-acquisition expedition, and afterward dropped an absolutely ecstatic girl back at Xavier's school. By the time Daisy returned to the villa, both old soldiers had already left. She didn't take it personally. Frank Castle didn't say thank you to anyone, and she wasn't interested in the performance.
---
One day later. A S.H.I.E.L.D. field team located Mystique and Rogue in Georgia. Both looked worn. In the surveillance feed, they were traveling south by car—Rogue at the wheel, Mystique beside her with an almost indulgent hand in the younger woman's hair. Captor and captive? That dynamic was nowhere in evidence. Daisy watched their oddly warm interaction with genuine surprise.
Stockholm syndrome? Didn't fit the profile. Wolverine was still on their trail—though Daisy wasn't optimistic about Logan pulling this particular extraction off.
In the footage, Rogue's world-shaking abilities were entirely gone. She registered as perfectly ordinary.
Daisy had been running the numbers through Danger's analysis. She understood how the ability transfer had worked, and she knew Rogue had briefly copied a fragment of her Eternal gene. Cross-referencing the data, she'd arrived at a figure.
Ten months. In ten months, her Eternal gene would break through—new life on the other side.
Not a short wait, not an impossible one. Eternals could absorb cosmic energy, survive vacuum exposure, came with a full suite of physical enhancements. Danger's star-chart calculations would also need time. She could afford to be patient.
The weekend brought a different obligation: Lorna's school was holding a parent information session, and Daisy's status as legal guardian meant she had to attend. She'd mentally filed it under "glorified parent-teacher meeting" and done her best to prepare.
She couldn't show up in her usual wardrobe. And no amount of makeup would make her look forty, let alone the age of anyone's actual parent. She settled on a black blazer, white shirt, oversized frames. Conservative, neutral, unremarkable.
Scanning the classroom: manageable. Parents in this bracket ran mostly in their thirties and forties—Daisy's look fit the range well enough, if young. The large glasses did reasonable work softening her sharper edges.
"Hello. You're Ms. Johnson? We've met before, I think." A gray-haired man with glasses and a quietly severe manner offered a greeting.
She recognized Ben Parker immediately. She'd exchanged a few words with him when she'd recruited young Peter for a film shoot. But Ben had aged noticeably—two years had put four or five more on him. Daisy, by contrast, looked slightly younger than their first meeting. Several rounds of enhancement would do that.
"Mr. Parker. It's been a while."
They exchanged a few words. Ben aired the standard complaints—Peter was too playful, not serious enough about his studies—while the subtext of every comment read as fond pride. This kid is bright enough that a little focus could earn him a straight-A record. You know how it is with the gifted ones.
Daisy murmured appropriately. The other parents had noticed her by now—hard to avoid, even with the disguise. Age and appearance don't evaporate behind a pair of frames.
The interrogation that followed had all the texture of a neighborhood association inquest: What do you do? Where do you work? New York costs a fortune, dear—can you really manage it at your age?
Daisy kept her expression politely neutral. Competitive parenting was apparently a universal constant.
She couldn't say she was in the missile business. (Justin Hammer's ex-wife's finest warheads—yours for just $998! Come on down! She couldn't imagine saying that in this room.)
Fortunately, her connection with Emma Frost had yielded a useful title: Vice President, Frost International.
She produced her card case. The handbag in her hand was a Frost International product—sable, retail forty thousand dollars, soft and precise in the hand. She distributed a few business cards.
That bag alone silenced the more aggressive competitors in the room. When those same people then watched Daisy make easy small talk with Principal Coulson, the remaining skepticism evaporated entirely.
The meeting itself was unremarkable. The agenda: a national high school science competition in Washington, D.C. the following December. Internal selection for participants would begin soon. Peter Parker, Lorna, and their cohort—currently entering the high school track—would be eligible to compete.
Daisy leaned toward Coulson and kept her voice low. "Nick Fury is planning to put Captain America under periodic surveillance."
"I have no objections whatsoever," Coulson said immediately. His voice was perfectly steady, his expression perfectly composed.
He had said that very fast. Daisy had seen his face when Steve Rogers' motorcycle gift came up—heard him say Captain America is my idol; I care about the spirit, not the man. She didn't comment on the gap between those two statements.
For her own part, she wasn't sure what made an ideal. Without the Super-Soldier Serum, Steve Rogers would have been unknown outside his own era—maybe he'd have become a cartoonist, and that would have been the full extent of it. But that was a private thought.
Her obligations here discharged, Daisy teleported to Washington to clear her backlog.
Sharon Carter was waiting in her office. They embraced—the relaxed greeting of old friends—and then the pleasantries gave way to business.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't trust Captain America anymore?" Sharon's tone was careful. No one else in the room. She said it plainly. "I always assumed you'd push back on this."