[Yashida Castle, Shikoku Island, Japan]
Although Japan wasn't Madame Gao's official base, she'd operated on and off in the country for centuries. She believed she had roots deep enough to crack bedrock and wasn't about to be bullied off the soil—not by the Viper, anyway.
At least not by Viper's combat skills.
"Viper," Gao called out in crisp Mandarin from behind the pillar, "how about I give you half of the Yashida family's estate, and we both walk away?"
A melodic but biting voice shouted back from behind a carved wooden pillar. "Old hag, you're far too ancient to be making deals. How about you hand over everything, and I promise to take good care of it for you?"
Daisy blinked from the shadows. Wait. Viper speaks Mandarin? And fluently? She watched the woman flex her neck like a bored cat stretching in the sun. Of course, she was multilingual. Dangerous fashion sense, poison expertise, and now linguistic agility.
Viper gestured subtly to her forces. Her mercenaries and ninjas advanced like flowing green ink, pressing their advantage. Unbeknownst to Gao, Viper had already pre-poisoned a number of Gao's foot soldiers. The old woman's forces were thinning faster than her patience.
As for fighting one to one? Viper had no such idea at all, and it would be best if Gao could be shot to death.
A Nordic-looking mercenary hefted a rocket launcher like it was a toy and aimed straight at Gao's hiding spot. With a thunderous whoosh, the missile tore across the battlefield with a crimson tail.
Seeing that words could not resolve the conflict, Madame Gao no longer hesitated. Gao didn't waste breath yelling. She moved.
She gathered all her energy as her chi surged. Her originally frail body seemed to have grown several inches taller. Her hunched back straightened and her feet stomped the ground quickly, like a sharp arrow shot from a bow, she launched herself towards Viper.
Behind her the rocket blast the pillar she was hiding before to smithereens. And the shockwave from the blast also helped to increase her speed.
Three green-clad ninjas tried to block her path. They might as well have tried to stop a hurricane. One unfortunate soul took a hit to the chest so powerful his ribcage caved in midair. He didn't even get a death scream. Another took her fist to neck and his neck cracked. Last one took kick to his face, his nose broke and he lose consciousness. In three effortless strikes, two were dead and one left bleeding on the floor.
Viper's smug grin disappeared. She licked her nails and stepped forward, talons raised.
"Hmph," Gao scoffed, "Westerners and your theatrical fighting, you just don't understand the grandeur and magnificence of martial arts. Your style is like a child throwing tantrums."
She had every right to be arrogant. She had integrated all kinds of martial arts from the East and the West and practiced hard for four hundred years. Her body was a library of pain and precision. She wasn't going to lose to someone who looked like a poisoned Instagram model.
Viper swiped at her, claws glowing green. Gao caught the attack with one hand and try to deliver a thunderous backhand. Viper slipped to the side, narrowly avoiding a cracked skull, then used her longer reach to counter with a swipe aimed at Gao's face.
The old woman flinched—not from the force, but the poison.
Viper's subordinates surged forward. Two well-trained mercs and a pair of overly dramatic ninjas joined the fray. But Gao didn't flinch. In her eyes, they were just moving practice dummies.
One green-clad ninja clung to her legs, trying to anchor her. Gao's chi-infused punch turned him into a sack of broken bones. His arms bent in ways that would horrify chiropractors. His neck twisted like a broken corkscrew. He died in eerie silence.
Relying on the desperate efforts of her men, Viper and Gao clashed again. Poisonous claw met chi-infused fist. They exchanged several moves. The tension in the air thickened.
Viper heart was getting heavier and heavier. Where is Daisy? The ones who were sacrificed now were all her subordinates who were willing to die for her. Charm was a skill, a psychology that played to one's own strengths, not a spell. She felt bad when so many of her loyal subordinates died.
From her vantage point, Daisy watched the exchange with clinical clarity. Viper was putting up a fight, but it was clear—she couldn't win alone, she was no match for Gao.
If she continued to wait, she might be able to find a good opportunity to surprise attack on Gao, but she didn't dare to take the risk.
The foundation of trust between her and Viper was very shallow, and it would be inappropriate if Viper thought that she was going to take advantage of her. This alliance was as fragile as a soap bubble floating through a knife factory.
Daisy calculated the distance and angles in her head. Then—pop—she teleported.
One blink later, she was behind Madame Gao, gun raised, aimed for the back of her skull.
Bang!
Gao twisted her head, narrowly dodging. She turned, her eyes gleaming with calculated malice.
"You two… working together?" she hissed.
Daisy tilted her head slightly, giving her a faux-innocent smirk. "What gave us away? Matching sarcasm?"
How the hell Daisy get involved with Hydra? Gao thought. She forced herself to hold back the words that came to her lips. Hydra is still in its dormant period. If they want to show up themselves, then everything will be fine. But if the news leaks out from her mouth, she will be in big trouble. She had no intention of being the reason the hornet's nest got kicked early.
Such a huge organization will be trying to kill her, and she couldn't defend herself no matter how skilled she was in martial arts. She had seen the Winter Soldier with her own eyes. She wasn't afraid of an open fight, but she still had a lingering fear of assassination, especially since Hydra was best at assassination.
Viper gave Gao a look that translated to: Don't drag hydra into your personal soap opera. Daisy pretended she hadn't noticed.
Bang! Another shot—this one a feint—aimed at Gao's foot placement. The old woman dodged again, instinctively adjusting her stance.
That was the opening.
Daisy raised her hand and launched a compact, concentrated, translucent shockwave straight for Gao's heart.
Gao reacted fast, palm extended. Chi against vibration. Ancient versus evolved.
The wave hit.
She didn't fully block it. The chi from her palm was directly dispersed, and she could not withstand the remaining shockwaves. She raised and hugged her arms, and used a force-dissipating method that looked very much like Tai Chi, trying to divert the remaining shockwaves, but some of it punched through.
Her internal defenses scrambled.
She winced. For the first time, she felt the rhythm of Daisy's power—vibration, controlled chaos, honed destruction.
Daisy had previously hidden her vibration powers by using only the gun and teleportation in order to catch Gao by surprise. So that Gao wouldn't know that her energy could be released this way, so this attack completely took her by surprise.
Eastern martial arts had a concept of "shock" too. But this wasn't internal force. This was something alien. New.
Daisy noted how Gao used one hand soft, one hard, trying to deflect and absorb. That level of skill was… disturbing.
"She's better than we thought," Daisy muttered, partly to herself. "Agent May would last two minutes against her. Maybe."
And May was good in eastern martial arts.
Seeing that Viper stepped away from the fight to take a moment of breathe.
Daisy adjusted her gloves. No more playing.
Without continuing to show off her Marvel version of Flying Thunder God Jutsu, Daisy stroked her wrist and activated the White Tiger Amulet.
A subtle, ethereal roar vibrated through the space. Power surged through her limbs. Not brute strength—instinct. The pure, tactical awareness of a hunter. Her muscles didn't swell, but every inch of her felt ready to kill.
Her hands flexed into claws, fingers tipped with supernatural sharpness.
"White Tiger?" Gao sneered. "You brought children's toys to this fight?"
As a former elder of K'un-Lun, she knew the artifact. But she didn't take it seriously.
They clashed. Fast. Brutal. Tiger claw to chi-infused claw.
Madame Gao's palm streaked forward like a spear toward Daisy's midsection.
Daisy sidestepped, graceful as a dancer and swift as a bullet. Gao's strike whistled through empty air, her sleeve fluttering with wasted momentum.
"Close," Daisy quip, pivoting on her heel. "But I'd rather keep my organs where they are."
In the same breath, she unleashed a snap-kick aimed at Gao's thigh. The older woman blocked it with her knee, shifting her stance with preternatural precision.
Gao stepped in with a spinning backhand, but Daisy ducked under it, flowing low like water. She swept her leg in a wide arc. Gao jumped, flipping mid-air and twisting into a heel drop aimed at Daisy's shoulder.
Daisy leaned backward in a matrix-like dodge, then rolled away, flipping to her feet with feline ease. "You're surprisingly spry for someone who hid behind curtains for centuries."
Gao narrowed her eyes. "You talk too much."
"I fight better."
Their limbs blurred in a tempest of parries and strikes — elbows, knees, open-hand slaps that could shatter bone. Daisy twisted around a wrist lock, flipping Gao over her shoulder, but the older woman landed on her feet like a seasoned monk.
They circled again. Gao's eyes glittered. Daisy's lips curled.
Neither had gained the upper hand.
Gao was... relentless. Her technique was ancient, honed over centuries — chi-infused strikes, deceptive footwork, brutal efficiency.
Daisy, by contrast, was poetry in motion — equal parts elegance and lethality, the product of wars fought in shadows and thrones taken by force. Her instincts were carved not just from training, but survival. From blood.
Seraphina D'Angelo didn't earn her crown by stitching embroidery.
Daisy's claws shimmered and her fingertips gleam with a faint metallic gleam. With a sudden slash, she went for Gao's face — a clean, arcing swipe meant to draw blood.
But Gao leaned back a step, calm and calculated. With her left palm, she fired a golden chi blast toward Daisy's ribs.
The air cracked as it flew.
Daisy flipped sideways, body folding mid-air in a fluid motion as the chi beam passed inches from her side. The marble where she had stood sizzled with spiritual energy.
Landing in a crouch, Daisy extended one hand — a ripple of soft-blue vibration energy forming in her palm.
She flicked it.
A shockwave burst forth like thunder, straight toward Gao. The older woman rolled away, robes fluttering, but Daisy was already moving again.
Her boots glowed faintly — her soles humming with vibration energy. With a violent stomp, the floor cracked, and she launched forward at impossible speed, turning into a blur of motion.
Mid-air, she flipped forward, her legs glowing with pulsing blue vibration energy. Like a guided missile, she came down in a dropkick aimed straight at Gao's torso.
Gao barely had time to cross her arms and form a hasty chi barrier — a transparent golden shell enveloping her just as Daisy's legs collided with it.
The impact was deafening.
The barrier shattered.
Gao flew backward like a ragdoll, slamming into the far wall with a thunderous BAMM! Cracks spiderwebbed through the concrete. Dust rained from the ceiling.
A lesser opponent would've crumbled. But Gao's hand trembled as she pushed herself up. Her eyes, normally calm as still water, now burned with fury.
"You dare," she seethed, her voice like stone grinding against steel.
"Oh, I do more than dare," Daisy said, standing tall, brushing invisible dust from her jacket sleeve. "I kick ancient ass, apparently."
Gao roared — yes, roared — and launched herself forward, her fist outstretched, glowing with a swirling, golden-yellow chi.
Daisy responded in kind. Her own hand shimmered with translucent blue light, laced with vibration power, her knuckles charged with enough force to shatter steel.
They collided at the center of the room — fists meeting with the force of tectonic plates.
The hall exploded with light.
The shockwave blasted outward, rattling chandeliers, splintering wooden beams. Windows cracked. Dust billowed out in rings from the impact point. Onlookers gasped. A few ducked for cover.
Daisy and Gao each staggered back a step, boots skidding across the floor — but neither fell. The pressure in the air was palpable, like the moment before a storm rips through a city.
Then silence.
Then, they moved again.
It was close combat with claws and contempt.
Neither was willing to back down. Neither believed the other should still be breathing.
Daisy's style had the elegance of a ballerina and the threat of a panther. Seraphina's influence showed in her poise—every move was a calculated dance of death.
Gao gritted her teeth. This wasn't going to be easy.
To Be Continued...
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[POWER STONES AND REVIEWS PLS]