[ Forest outside Yashida Castle, Shikoku Island, Japan]
The ring on Daisy's finger glowed faintly, pulsing with stored energy—not just any kind, but frequency-based energy. With enough of it, constructing a mental shield wasn't merely possible; it was inevitable. An artifact from another dimension had its perks, especially when it came with cloaking benefits. No one could sense its speciality, so no one could try to steal it.
"Good stuff," Daisy muttered, admiring the craftsmanship with an approving smirk. "Really damn good."
She didn't linger in admiration. With one final glance at the lifeless Madame Gao, she picked up Viper's dagger, its curved edge still wet. Nausea flickered briefly at the back of her throat, but she silenced it with cold efficiency. One precise swing and the old woman's head was severed cleanly. No ceremony. No honor. Just clean-up.
A portal cracked open nearby—random coordinates, random dump site. She tossed the head in like it was yesterday's garbage. The Hand loved to play resurrection games, but with the head and body separated, Daisy figured it'd be a real stretch this time.
To drive the message home, she stabbed the corpse twice in the heart with Viper's dagger and followed up with slashes from both hands, layering the body in signature wounds. A forensic trail meant to scream: 'Viper did this.' Whether the Hand believed it or not? Irrelevant. Let them stew in confusion.
After triple-checking the scene for any loose ends, Daisy sprinted back to the castle.
The chaos there was winding down. The mercenaries belonging to Viper and Madame Gao retreated. The two groups of ninjas stopped fighting when they saw that one of their masters was unconscious and the other had escaped.
Except for Wolverine. The man was still brawling like a berserker against the Silver Samurai.
Or rather, the shiny oversized toaster with a sword that glowed like it had been baptized in Hellfire.
The Silver Samurai's moves were very rigid, he just kept cutting horizontally and chopping vertically. The blade sizzled through furniture and steel beams like butter.
Wolverine was dodging with uncharacteristic frequency, forced back again and again by the sheer power of each strike.
Uncle Wolf's claws? They barely made scratches on the armor—three sad little lines like a kitten had taken offense.
Shingen Yashida watched helplessly from the sidelines. His swordsmanship might've been impressive against businessmen or honor duels, but against a tank in a tin suit? Decorative at best.
Daisy surged in with a flurry of attacks, elegant and precise. Her style—cold, sharp, clinical. But the armor was thick, built like an indestructible beetle. Every strike landed with finesse, yet bounced off without consequence.
She narrowed her eyes. Fine. If she couldn't break it, she'd break its footing. Calculating the timing with ruthless precision, she created a micro-quake under the Samurai's next step. The earth trembled, just enough.
The towering figure staggered.
Wolverine saw his moment. He pounced like a tiger, claws slipping into the narrow groove in the helmet . With a guttural snarl, he tore the helmet clean off.
What stared back at them was no mechanical operator. It was a man. A pale, wrinkled face covered in liver spots, his eyes bloodshot and wild.
"You're still alive?" Logan blinked, more annoyed than shocked.
Shingen's face darkened. Mariko, however, just stood frozen.
Daisy tilted her head. So this was the infamous old devil—the patriarch who'd rather become a science experiment than let death claim him. Vibrationally, the man already felt like a corpse. The only thing keeping him from decomposing was a cocktail of life-support tech and whatever experimental poison he'd been fed.
But that poison wasn't Viper's—it was Gao's. And Gao's recipe was clearly flawed.
And Gao's poison level was obviously not as good as Viper's. Her poison made the old devil lose his mind.
The old man mumbled incoherently, his eyes rolling back, the madness overtaking him. He babbled nonsense like a malfunctioning AI.
Wolverine didn't have to do much. The life-support system in the armor cracked under pressure, shorted, sparked. The old man spasmed and collapsed.
Thirty seconds later, he was dead.
The billion-dollar armor? Scrap metal. Shingen's inheritance drama? Just got lighter.
"Rise and shine," Daisy murmured as she approached Viper, who lay nearby playing dead—or just being lazy.
She gave the woman's smooth back a light tap. "I believe this dagger belongs to you."
Viper sat up slowly, unbothered by her exposed position. Calm, composed, almost amused.
"Are they all dead?" she asked lightly.
"Every single one of them," Daisy confirmed. "The board's clear. Their territory and money? Free for the taking. It depends on how much you can eat. If you're hungry."
Viper smiled, slow and venomous. "I'm very good with men. I'm leaving first and I'll contact you later."
And with that, she vanished into the night like a slithering shadow in heels.
Shingen was next. The man had found a new spring in life—maybe not redemption, but certainly opportunity. He left for Tokyo to claim the throne of Yashida Enterprises.
He told Mariko to return on her own and called in favors with the Kochi Prefecture police. Turns out, when you're the head of the Yashida family, you can summon a helicopter with just a phone call.
Mariko had her own problems to handle. First on the list: rescuing Yukio from the dungeon.
The red-haired mutant with prediction powers was speechless, her eyes wide in disbelief. "I... I don't understand. None of this was in my prediction."
"Logan... grandfather?" Mariko murmured, staring at the silver samurai corpse. She recognized him now—barely. The memory stung.
Logan scratched his head. Awkward didn't even begin to cover it. He wasn't exactly known for diplomacy, and now he'd unknowingly impaled someone's granddad.
Yukio stared daggers at him, clearly not a fan of the growing tension between Mariko and Logan.
Daisy, meanwhile, had bigger fish to fry.
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[Yashida Castle, Shikoku Island, Japan] [ Some Time Later ]
Daisy found a hidden lab in Yashida castle after scanning the whole castle with her power. She fried the electronic security lock on the lab door and enter the lab. She checked the computer for gathering research data but it was password locked.
So she hacked into the Yashida internal network like it was a puzzle made for children. The treasure trove of genetic research was massive. Fifty years of experiments, mainly centered on mutants. Names popped up—Wolverine and Sebastian Shaw.
Daisy skimmed. Countless logs. Logan's blood was everywhere. Understandable. The man shed it like glitter.
What surprised her was how much Shaw's blood they had. That wasn't casual sampling. That was a deal. Likely something made with America's less-than-saintly elite.
She didn't trust anyone with mutant genetics—especially not normies with a god complex. But that didn't mean she couldn't use the research.
She encrypted the data, uploaded it to her private server, then carefully packaged every vial of mutant blood from the lab. The shipment went straight to a quiet house she'd rented near Kochi Prefecture in advance. Her maid would pick it up, no questions asked, and fly it back to New York.
Then came the real prize—the Nazi documents Viper had mentioned. She found them on this lab server.
Two layers of encryption, disguised to look like it is already crack to the arrogant but easily fooled. Daisy read through them meticulously.
Everything checked out.
Time for a call.
She sent a top-level encrypted message to Nick Fury. Only a few minutes passed before the familiar sound of rotor blades echoed through the sky. The man really didn't like keeping her waiting.
Daisy met him on the landing pad of the castle.
"What kind of intel makes you have to use an emergency call, Daisy?" Fury asked, eye narrowed.
"See for yourself, Director," she replied, stepping aside and presenting the screen.
He skimmed. Then read. Then read again.
The deeper he got into the files, the darker his expression grew.
Daisy scrolled through several attached reports. "Remember how Shingen mentioned massive funds disappearing from Yashida Enterprises? Well, they didn't vanish. They were funneled into something very specific."
She pointed to the final document.
"A secret Nazi base."
Fury blinked. "Where?"
She tapped the glowing line of coordinates.
"Antarctica."
To Be Continued...
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[POWER STONES AND REVIEWS PLS]