Daisy burst through the door of her rental, threw herself onto the bed, and lay there like a rag doll after a washing machine spin cycle. Her limbs were jelly, her brain a smoothie of adrenaline and panic.
Playing double agent against a real SHIELD operative? That wasn't in her street-hustler-slash-small-time-hacker starter pack. Sure, she'd faced pop quizzes and public Wi-Fi security before, but this? This was new.
Now that the high had worn off, reality came knocking—and it wasn't polite. She stared at her reflection in the mirror and sighed. Once a solid 8 out of 10, she looked like a sleep-deprived alley cat with a caffeine addiction. Makeup? Styling? Wardrobe coordination? The original Daisy barely had anything for these luxury.
Most isekai heroines got the deluxe package: summoned by a goddess, greeted by loyal maids, or woken by a dagger at their throat. Daisy? She was awakened by... her own scent. The delicate, rare kind—the natural body fragrance type.
The original Daisy had grown up bouncing between four foster homes after leaving the orphanage at ten. No love, no drama—just cold transactions: tuition for government checks. Her only big-ticket item? A second-hand laptop, purchased after years of penny-pinching. Perfume? Unaffordable luxury. In addition, the church school was very strict on perfume inspections. That fragrance she woke up to? Yeah, turns out that was just her.
She learned to live with it. The scent faded from memory like cheap cologne. The real issue now? Survival.
And she was surviving—thriving, even! She'd nabbed the obelisk. The bald brother Sitwell—her unwitting sidekick in this heist—was off daydreaming about promotions and fancy suits. Life was... okay?
Taking a sip of water, Daisy cracked open her backpack. There it was: the obelisk, all mysterious and alien-tech looking. One touch from a regular person could turn them to stone. Daisy had a theory—no, a hunch—that she wasn't regular.
But what if she was wrong?
She laid out a towel, bit down hard, and hovered her pinky finger over the obelisk. Ten centimeters. Five. One. Tap.
Nothing.
She went all in—grabbing it with her whole hand.
Still nothing.
The obelisk felt a little warm. Definitely reacting—but not in a "turn-your-bones-to-gravel" way.
"I knew it!" she hissed into her pillow, flopping face-first in celebration. She had alien blood, baby!
A wave of relief swept over her. She was genetically special. And with that confirmation came the next step: activate the powers.
In Kree tradition, only the most genetically badass individuals received Terrigen powers. The better your genes, the better your powers. But there was a catch—sometimes, the activation left a bit of a genetic mess behind.
What about her future self—Quake? Any gene defects? None that she remembered. She comforted herself with that and leaned into the idea that maybe she was just built different.
As for timing? She was years ahead of canon. Tony Stark was still demoing Jericho missiles. SHIELD hadn't even clocked the Puerto Rican underground city yet. This was the prequel era.
The downside? No allies. No Coulson. No Skye-squad. Just her, her hoodie, and a dream.
She had to make it to Puerto Rico solo. But this wasn't some Instagram travel adventure. This was "carry-alien-tech-to-another-country" type of trip. She needed protection—and not the pepper spray kind.
She checked her funds. After bribing, bluffing, and playing bald-brother bait, she was down to $900. So much for a quick trip.
Forget hacking banks—that was a one-way ticket to FBI Fan Club. But coding? That she could do.
She picked up freelance work designing a database system. Days were for lectures, nights for caffeine-fueled coding. Seven grueling days later, she'd banked $3,000.
First stop? A gun shop.
Rifles and shotguns? Easy to buy with ID—New York allowed long guns at 18. But pistols? Nope. She was still three years shy of the magic number.
Flying to Puerto Rico with a rifle in tow? Not happening. TSA had less chill than HYDRA.
She'd need to buy protection locally. But in the meantime, she could learn how to use one.
Gun shops had shooting ranges. Some had VIP packages that turned gun newbies into semi-competent action heroes in a week. Daisy signed up, rented a pistol, bought two boxes of ammo, grabbed some target sheets, and—after much soul searching—paid $68 for a one-hour lesson with a guy named Frank who looked like he used to wrestle bears.
Over two weeks, she became... decent. She wasn't John Wick, but she could hit a dinner plate. Her reflexes, eyesight, and coordination were above average. Maybe it was the alien blood talking. Or maybe it was that stubborn will to not die in a foreign alley.
After spending about $300 on practice, Daisy took the obelisk to a borrowed X-ray machine in a sketchy warehouse. As expected, the thing didn't even show up on the scan. Like it was cloaked in cosmic invisibility.
Satisfied, she packed up.
She put on a travel outfit—hoodie, cap, sunglasses—and told her roommate she was off to track down her birth parents. The school, perhaps charmed by the wholesome lie, granted her a one-month leave without a second thought.
Four hours and a bumpy descent later, Daisy landed at San Juan International Airport in Puerto Rico. It was warm, sunny, suspiciously cheerful. Spanish was everywhere, but English signs helped. She booked the safest hotel she could find, which probably meant it had locks on the windows.
The hunt for the underground city had officially begun.