The quake grew in scale as Daisy's enhancement progressed. Cracks spidered across the mountainside and opened further in the earth, reaching deeper. Across Wakanda, every structure that hadn't been reinforced with Vibranium began to shake — the Vibranium-hardened royal buildings and the underground mining excavations were the only things holding steady.
Livestock panicked. Caught without warning, they bolted and crashed into everything, frantic and directionless.
Wakanda's ordinary citizens had no idea how to handle something like this. They poured into open spaces, grabbing each other's arms, asking no one in particular what was happening.
Inside the sacred mountain, the tremors were worst. The priests stumbled, went to their knees, and began to pray. They'd barely gotten two lines out when all of them stopped simultaneously. They stared at each other.
Divine message received: Nothing serious. Don't bother the Goddess about it.
If the Goddess said nothing serious, then it was nothing serious. Their faith was rock-solid — and they'd just caught a steadying breath when something considerably worse began.
Storm was receiving her blessing too.
Outside the mountain, the sky went dark within seconds. An enormous bank of energy gathered above Wakanda, almost visible from below. Thunder rolled through the cloud layer, and the storm began to form: wind, pelting rain, and a sharp drop in temperature as the system grew.
Daisy and Storm looked like a coordinated disaster unfolding in tandem.
Earthquake underneath. Lightning and gale above. The mountainside was already structurally compromised from below; now the tempest hammered it from above. Under that combined assault, the entire mass of the sacred mountain began to tilt — slowly, inexorably — toward the northwest.
The rivers encircling Wakanda responded to the geological disruption and the accumulated seismic energy. They began to shift their courses. In places, the surge was so violent that the current appeared to reverse entirely.
The priests stared. Perhaps the Goddess had made an error in her assessment.
Beyond the mountain, Wakanda's citizens — battered by a catastrophic earthquake and a storm that had materialized from nothing — had no explanation for what was happening. Natural disaster on this scale meant something. Did it mean the king had failed in his duties? Was Wakanda being judged? Groups gathered in the pouring rain, kneeling in the mud, directing their prayers at ancestors and gods.
"Wake up!" T'Challa could see the connection — two people's powers, running out of control, causing this. He'd never heard any vows about mountains crumbling or the sky and earth colliding invoked in a context quite like this. He only knew that his problems had just become significantly larger — the political fallout and the loss of public trust were now on him to repair. He was too committed to his principles to feel resentful about it — he just needed them to come around. He called out again, louder.
His luck held. Daisy's enhancement was in its final stage. She heard him.
The last phase of the process was completing. She eased back into her body, re-established control, and steadied herself. She didn't need her senses to gauge the situation — the vibrations outside were already telling her everything. Unless Wakanda had somehow produced another vibration-manipulating powered person in the last five minutes, this earthquake had her name on it. At least half of it.
She sat with the discomfort of that thought for a moment.
She wanted to stop immediately, but earthquakes didn't respond to willpower. The energy that had set the rivers changing course had accumulated over time — to stop it, she had to let it finish releasing, not try to cork it.
So she waited. When the last tremor faded, she opened her eyes and sat up.
Uncomfortable. She looked down. Her body was encased in a layer of fine sand, packed around her the way it had been the first time, when she'd been embedded in rock. Without thinking, she activated her power and shook the sand off.
She flexed her hand, felt the muscles respond, and gauged her strength.
Her vibration ability's core limitation was still there — that was intrinsic, not something any herb could fix. But the resonance damage she took from her own power had decreased substantially. If she ran into those giant insects from the Costa Rican island again, she was confident she could put them down cleanly, one hit each.
The enhancement's emphasis had landed, predictably, on agility. She could feel it in her legs most of all — a charged, coiled readiness that hadn't been there before. Her burst speed had previously peaked around 700 km/h (435 mph). She suspected that if she fully committed to a short sprint now, she could break the sound barrier.
The animal instinct she'd acquired from the White Tiger Amulet — that reactive, predatory awareness she'd been borrowing as an external tool — had finally folded itself into her own body and become hers.
Daisy suddenly realized she was in her underwear.
Her clothes had been folded neatly a short distance away. She raised one finger, gave a small, precise flick, and let the vibration create a localized spatial distortion — a subtle pinch in the air that pulled the clothes into her hand.
She dressed, and then began a systematic inventory of the changes.
Her skin: different. Finer, more elastic, with a surface sheen she'd never had before. She could have done a skincare ad looking like this.
Her waistline: noticeably narrower. She'd always been trim enough, but trim and slim weren't quite the same thing. The difference was clear now — she could reach one arm around her back and touch her navel without effort.
And then there was Bast's gift. In her resting state, her nails looked completely ordinary. But in combat, they could extend into claws — sharpness scaling with her overall physical conditioning. She had plans for that. Plans that involved certain palm-strike techniques she'd been developing. She was a step closer.
She tried it. Her nails shifted, extended, and she raked them across the wall with both hands in quick alternating strokes. A shower of debris. Ten clean parallel gouges appeared in the stone, crisp and even.
The priests stared with visibly suppressed outrage.
Daisy registered that she was still in someone else's sacred space, pulled the claws back with something like embarrassment, and examined the gouges for a few seconds. She was satisfied with the depth.
She checked her chest, then asked one of the guards to look at her back. No tiger-head markings. No panther sigil. No brand of any kind. She exhaled with relief.
"Thank you. I want you to know — I will always be a friend to Wakanda." She turned to T'Challa with genuine warmth in her voice. She'd gotten what she came for, and it cost her nothing to mean it. She was careful with promises made to gods; promises made to people were a different matter.
T'Challa looked at her with something between respect and curiosity. "Was the earthquake yours? Are you a mutant, like Ororo?"
Not this conversation again. Daisy had lost count of how many times she'd had to explain this. She denied it flatly: not a mutant. Just a human with an ability.
"With that kind of power," T'Challa said, and there was no hiding the faint envy in it.
Daisy gave a self-deprecating smile. "My ability has a flaw — serious self-damage over time. How is Ororo?" She named the problem lightly, clearly enough that any perceptive person would understand, but without making it into a demand — and certainly without shouting that she wanted Vibranium. These morally-minded types would naturally want to help. She shifted the topic toward Storm — still buried in sand on the other side of the pit.
T'Challa's worry came through. "There's no precedent for someone with an ability receiving the herb. I don't know what to expect."
"She'll be fine."
"Thank you."
A brief exchange, and then quiet. Daisy sat and waited.
Ten minutes passed. Storm still hadn't moved.
The earthquake was gone. But the weather outside was getting worse. Freezing rain was driving down on gale-force wind, the temperature falling fast — and it had the shape of something not stopping. A blizzard was forming over Wakanda, a place where no living person had ever seen so much as a flurry of snow.