[ Yashida Mansion, Tokyo, Japan ] [ Night Time ]
She could feel the change in the air before she saw it. A soft rustle. A deliberate step. The scent of perfume too smooth for an ordinary intruder.
Her senses sharpened instantly. The coat was gone. Whoever it was had taken it off and was walking—no, prowling—slowly toward her.
Not Mariko. Not Yukio. Not the elusive lady of the manor.
There was only one person who fit this profile, one venomous vixen who could slither into a room without a sound and leave bodies in her wake.
Madame Viper.
The infamous green widow herself. The poison queen of Hydra. And, apparently, Daisy's uninvited midnight guest.
What the hell is she doing here? Daisy thought, confused and mildly annoyed. Shouldn't she be off somewhere trying to kill Wolverine or monologuing into a glass of snake wine?
Unbeknownst to her, Daisy Johnson had made it onto Hydra's hit list. As Daisy has never realized her importance in Nick Fury's eyes.. Right up there with claws-for-hands himself.
And so, Daisy walked blind into this trap.
But this was no helpless little lamb tiptoeing into the lion's den.
Oh no.
She was a lamb who knew how to bite, kick, and vibrate things until they exploded.
She had two choices: sit up and throw hands like a bad-tempered cat, or let Viper get close enough to think she'd won and then flip the script.
Daisy grinned internally. Second option it was.
The other woman might have poison, but Daisy had a little something else. A trump card.
Let's just say, after some very scientific experimentation on an overly nosy maid (purely for research purposes), Daisy had discovered that her powers could... affect women.
Profoundly.
In the most chaotic way possible.
Madame Viper thought she was seducing a fresh-faced S.H.I.E.L.D. rookie.
She was about to realize she was wrestling a succubus with seismic shockwaves.
Silken fingers brushed against Daisy's bare shoulder. Their bodies pressed close—far too close. Viper leaned in, lips parting, a wisp of sickly green smoke curling toward Daisy's face.
Just as the kiss closed in—the signature, lethal kind that made Viper's name legendary—Daisy struck.
Palm to abdomen. Direct contact.
Viper had stripped down to her signature seduction attire: underwear and killer intent. Perfect. Fewer layers to get through.
Daisy activated her power.
Not too fast. She wasn't trying to turn Viper into pudding. Just enough to cause a very intense reaction.
Madame Viper's body jerked as if someone had plugged her into an unstable socket. Her lips froze. Her pupils dilated. A choked gasp escaped—and she inhaled her own poisonous mist.
"Oops," Daisy murmured, voice like honey over knives.
Without waiting, she pounced.
One hand clamped around the woman's elegant, swanlike neck, the other still humming with controlled vibrations against her stomach.
Viper's eyes were wide, unfocused, the look of a predator caught in a trap she hadn't even seen coming.
And damn, she was attractive. Black hair cascading over bare shoulders, high cheekbones, full red lips with that single beauty mark—a living painting dipped in venom.
But charm bounced off Daisy like bullets off on Captain America's shield.
She had one job. Extract intel if possible. Kill if not.
She ramped up the vibrations. From gentle nudges to internal tremors.
Viper's organs began dancing a disjointed tango.
Then came the warning.
The White Tiger Amulet, calm until now, suddenly screamed at her like a smoke detector in a burning house.
Danger.
Not just danger. Cosmic-level, realm-wrecking, don't-you-dare danger.
Daisy paused, frowning. What now?
She reached out with her senses and found it—a thread. Invisible, tight, and impossibly strong, tied to Viper's very soul.
It wasn't magic. It was madness. Ancient, crawling madness.
Chthon.
The name hit like a sledgehammer to her consciousness.
Daisy blinked.
Well, crap.
She'd read about that guy in the comics. Old God. Chaos incarnate. A being so terrifying that even Dormammu would file a restraining order.
"So this is your sugar daddy, huh?" she muttered.
And Chthon... noticed her.
Just a flicker of awareness, a whisper of teeth and shadows. But enough to let her know: kill Viper, and Tokyo gets turned into a crater.
Daisy let out a slow, resigned sigh. "I hate politics."
She couldn't kill her. Not now. Not with a cosmic psycho watching through magical CCTV.
But she wasn't about to let the snake slither away either.
So she kept going.
Vibrations shifted from fatal to paralyzing. Frequencies rose and dipped, sometimes smooth like jazz, other times erratic like punk rock. A living metronome of discomfort.
Madame Viper realized, far too late, that she had walked into a hurricane wrapped in lipstick.
She tried to resist, to channel her years of discipline and dark arts. But Daisy was relentless.
Waves of force crashed over her, again and again. Her brain short-circuited from the overload. Hormones betrayed her. Instincts turned to mush.
Daisy wasn't just attacking her body.
She was rewiring her soul.
Fragrance and heat filled the air. Daisy's skin tingled uncomfortably, and her breath hitched despite herself.
She powered through.
She had endured worse. Like Sitwell's breath. The Bald Brother seriously needed to invest in mints.
Focus, Daisy.
Finally, with one last tremor, Viper's strength collapsed. Her eyes rolled back, and her body went limp, crashing into unconsciousness like a corrupted server.
Daisy let go slowly, her fingers twitching with leftover power.
"Well," she said, standing over the fallen femme fatale, "that escalated vibrationally."
She looked down at the unconscious queen of venom.
"Sleep tight, Cobra Queen. And next time you think of poisoning someone, maybe wear pants."
To be continued...
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