"I ran my clearance on this place—pristine ecosystem, no human presence, no threat indicators." Daisy kept the briefing simple. The group had spent enough time in glass and steel that even Stark, still half-convinced this was a covert operation, took one look at Pepper's face and decided a vacation might actually be acceptable.
The teenagers were barely containing themselves. Even Harry Osborn—who normally carried himself with the composed energy of a forty-year-old in a teenager's body—looked ready to sprint into the undergrowth and find something prehistoric.
The adults stepped off first.
The island met its billing: dense, lush vegetation, compact at three to four square kilometers (roughly 1.2 to 1.5 square miles), beaches that had never once registered a footprint. Waves moved against the sand with casual elegance. The forest interior murmured with birds none of them could name. A corner the world had simply set down and forgotten.
Daisy's brow creased slightly.
"Something wrong?" Hill asked.
She scanned left and right. For just a beat she'd felt the quality of attention—something looking at her—and then it was gone. No alarm signal anywhere in her sensory range. Nothing she could actually lock onto.
The Eternal gene in its dormancy period was running unstable; her sensory threshold fluctuated day to day. She'd been picking up signals that went nowhere. An occupational hazard of growing into something new.
"Probably just nerves. Let's look around." This many people on-site—whatever was here, they could handle it. If there was anything at all, it would just be entertainment.
Out of professional diligence, the agents split up to sweep the perimeter. Black Widow took the eastern shoreline westward; Hawkeye took west to east. Daisy looped through the forest interior twice. Nothing.
She'd been jumping at shadows since the Mystique situation, she concluded. That wasn't healthy. Time to recalibrate.
With the all-clear announced, the group organized themselves. Food came off the plane, gear was sorted, and eventually the Jeep emerged from Zephyr's cargo bay.
Standing rule for the kids: beach only, no forest.
The city kids were barely coherent with excitement. Even Harry—raised with every privilege, apparently denied the specific joy of beach chaos—hit the sand running alongside Peter like a puppy let off a leash.
The group spread across the available space: a volleyball net went up, some people headed directly for the water, others wanted to try surfing. Zephyr One served as the base of operations, comprehensively stocked.
The men's display was relatively uneventful—board shorts, sandals, all reasonably athletic. The single point of interest was Happy, whose midsection appeared to be doing the work of two people, making any visual comparison between him and Stark a matter of genuine comedy. Which of them was the bodyguard remained an open question.
The women were more competitive. Natural consequence of the assembly.
Daisy had changed into a floral bikini with a sun hat, and settled into a folding chair to conduct a professional assessment of the field.
Three agents and two professional fighters in the mix—dedicated training metabolism, lean muscle, zero wasted fat. Black Widow led the rankings, Elektra second, Hill a close third. Maki and Sharon came in somewhere after.
The non-combatant contingent—Pepper, Audrey, Laura—skewed rounder and softer, visibly better-fed than the people whose careers consisted of running from things.
Hill, who normally dressed like she was preparing to submit evidence in a formal proceeding, was unusually bold today. Her top tied with minimal coverage, the bottom held together by thin straps and several palm-sized patches of fabric that were doing significant structural work. She approached Daisy with her sunscreen and a look of perfect composure.
"Can you do my back?"
Maki and Lorna performed a synchronized eyeroll.
The younger contingent made their entrance shortly after. Daisy looked them over and had to admit: good nutrition showed. Lorna—a little thin when she'd arrived—had filled out properly under Daisy's care, moving with new confidence. Dagger had curves that would have read as two years older on anyone. Mary Jane was decent. Jessica Jones, the narrator noted with purely academic neutrality, remained very much in the developmental phase.
The groups fell into their respective activities. Coulson organized a beach volleyball four with Pepper, Audrey, and Stark. The agents settled in with drinks.
Maki's law textbook sat abandoned on a chair. Elektra picked it up, flipped to the middle, and discovered a BL magazine nested inside the legal text like contraband. A chase ensued immediately.
That left the water—Daisy's element.
Her swimming was in a category of its own. She moved with the waves rather than through them, riding the swells as they built and releasing with the pull, launching upward on the surge and descending without weight, her body as comfortable in the ocean as most people were on land. She rotated cleanly through full turns on the water's surface, surfaced on the crest, and slid back down the other side like she was conducting a conversation with the sea.
She came up for air and showed off without apology. "Not bad, right? I'd like to see anyone else try."
"Watch." Hawkeye jogged back to Zephyr, returned with a purpose-built surfboard, spent thirty seconds reading the wave patterns, and went in.
His technique was genuinely excellent—precise, balanced, instinctively attuned. But the gap between board-assisted and board-free, between surface skill and total environmental fluency, was visible.
"What ability is that, exactly?" He stuck a run of four rotations and still came up second by a clear margin.
Director Johnson laughed—a real one, pleased and unguarded. No ability. That was what peak body control looked like.
She floated for another while, then came ashore for cards with Hill and Sharon.
Evening: barbecue on the sand, the fire throwing long shadows across the beach. In a collective burst of inspiration, the teenagers found two forked branches, balanced a stick across them, and declared a limbo competition.
Tyrone went first, clearing the bar with room to spare. Stark followed, more limber than expected. The rest of the kids came through easily enough.
Daisy, feeling competitive, stepped up.
Lorna gave her chest a pointed look. You won't make it.
She'd been accumulating too much ambient energy lately—an occupational side effect of the Eternal gene's development phase, and one that had, for better or worse, bumped certain measurements up a size. She'd never paid that particular metric much attention.
Lorna's prediction proved accurate. Daisy had underestimated. She was masterful at body control—knees bent, back flattened, slowly sliding under the bar. Half her body through, no problem at all.
Then she stopped.
For reasons that defied polite description, the first attempt ended in failure.
She didn't comment on this. She reset her center of gravity with the focus of someone who'd spent years learning to vibrate at every frequency the universe offered, and went again.
She cleared it with room to spare.