Snow swirled and wind howled. T'Challa's expression darkened. Did every Enhanced person have to put on some kind of weather show when they woke up? Having powers didn't make them better than everyone else! The royal family had gone through the same enhancement ritual and simply sat up afterward — no dramatic atmospheric display required.
With a thunderous whoosh, a cyclone erupted from Storm's body, blasting sand in every direction. T'Challa, standing too close, caught a faceful of grit. Daisy moved fast, ducking behind a stone pillar before the wave hit.
When she emerged, Storm was still floating horizontally in midair, eyes closed.
Unlike Daisy's conservative gear, Ororo was dressed in something far more daring — a sheer halter bra that barely covered anything, and a G-string. This woman wasn't just wild with her powers; apparently she was wild in general.
Daisy noted it with mild curiosity and moved on. Sorcerer-type mutants could get away with that kind of outfit. Agents who worked in close combat couldn't — not a matter of preference, just practicality.
While she was still observing, the hurricanes outside the mountain range began to take shape. They seemed drawn toward Storm, with several funnels converging and surging toward Wakanda's sacred peak.
"Stop those hurricanes!" T'Challa shouted, but their weapons were useless against wind. Vibranium, for all its strength, had no purchase on something formless.
"Ororo! Wake up!" He could only keep calling out to her.
Daisy quickly calculated the hurricanes' speed and decided she could handle them. She stepped forward.
"Back off!" she bellowed, drawing her right fist back and driving it forward into the path of the oncoming storm.
Tons of force were channeled through a single strike, transmitted along a precise vibrational frequency until it reached the hurricane's leading edge — then detonated.
The translucent shockwave collided with open air. The force shattered the atmospheric pressure across the entire zone like a fist through glass.
There was no sound. But everyone who witnessed it could have sworn they heard something crack.
With no air to sustain it, the hurricane tore itself apart. The unstoppable had been stopped — by something more violent still.
"Keep calling her." Daisy had no time to acknowledge the ordinary Wakandans below who had dropped to their knees in awe. She turned to T'Challa with urgency, because another funnel was already forming on the horizon.
Daisy sprinted the perimeter of the sacred mountain, shattering three more hurricanes and then a lightning bolt. Using her powers this intensely and this continuously, her arms felt only faintly numb. The bone-deep agony she used to endure was completely gone. The thrill of it hit her hard. The genetic defect couldn't be reversed, but the path of strengthening her body had clearly been the right call.
After she shattered one final lightning bolt, the black clouds finally began to break apart. Storm opened her eyes.
By the time Daisy returned to the peak, she found that T'Challa's mother — the queen, still wearing her chef hat — had arrived on the scene. The woman had abandoned all royal composure and was unleashing a torrent of abuse directly at Storm.
Daisy's Wakandan was functional at best, and a lot of the queen's slang flew over her head. But from the tone and the gestures, it was clearly the classic "home-wrecking hussy, disaster to the kingdom" lecture.
Standing beside the chef-hat queen was a young woman — seemingly T'Challa's girlfriend from the original film timeline, though Daisy wasn't entirely certain given how quickly things had diverged.
The queen hailed from the River Tribe, one of the five great clans. Her weapons of choice were two energy rings. The River Tribe's current chief was the eccentric man from the films — the one with the lip plate — and he was her brother. As a member of the royal circle, the queen had long hoped to unite her son with her niece, preserving the royal bloodline.
And now this vixen Storm had ruined everything. Watching her throw the sacred mountain into absolute chaos, the queen had charged out to deliver her verdict.
Daisy had zero interest in inserting herself into someone else's mother-in-law drama. She subtly adjusted her own vibration frequency and did her best to become invisible.
Unfortunately, her complexion stood out against the crowd around her. The chef-hat queen spotted her immediately and redirected some of her fire in Daisy's direction.
The woman rattled off a few more lines. Daisy's eyebrow twitched. This old woman was a piece of work — three sentences of abuse aimed at Storm, then a sidebar insult at Daisy. The gist: outsiders are all trash.
T'Challa grabbed his mother and hauled her away. Daisy, professional that she was, had the patience to absorb it. Storm was another story. As a holy woman of a Kenyan lineage stretching back a thousand years, and as the X-Men's second-in-command, she had no such tolerance. Ice formed across her expression. Outside, the clouds that had just begun to clear were already threatening to regroup.
T'Challa privately regarded Daisy and Ororo as two walking nuclear warheads. One earthquake, one superstorm — if either of them lost their temper, Wakanda was finished. He practically dragged his mother off the peak by force. The queen's young cousin — the same young woman Daisy had noticed earlier — lingered, apparently wanting to explain herself to Storm, but one look at that frozen expression sent her retreating without a word.
Storm wasn't as conservative as Daisy, but a few scraps of fabric weren't warm enough even for her. She pulled her clothes back on.
Compared to Daisy, Storm's enhancement had been a rougher journey — but the results were solid. Her formerly fragile physical constitution had been reinforced, and her control had improved dramatically. A subtle current of air lifted her effortlessly into the sky. She drifted to Daisy's side, her movements utterly effortless.
"Thank you for risking your life to save me," she said. Her gratitude was completely sincere.
"Don't mention it."
Daisy accepted it. Whatever her original motives had been, pulling Storm out of Juggernaut's reach was a fact. The two of them had quietly crossed a line — from acquaintances to something more like friends.
The priests scrambled to clean up the devastation around them. Between the shockwaves and the windstorm, what had once been a sacred site now looked like it had been ransacked.
The floor could be swept. The ritual objects could be rearranged. But the cracks splitting the mountainside? Those weren't going anywhere. Everyone in the vicinity was eyeing Daisy with an expression she couldn't quite read.
"That wasn't me, was it?" Storm stared blankly at the fracture lines running up the rock face, wondering if her lightning had done it.
Daisy very much wanted to pass the blame. But there had been too many witnesses. She accepted responsibility.
"Oh? I was already curious when you caught my lightning bolt earlier — what kind of ability do you have?"
Storm had wanted to ask before, but the rapport hadn't been there yet. Talking about abilities was considered somewhat private. Now that they'd survived something together, the question was fair.
"Vibration, I think. All kinds of vibration — that's basically what I do."
Storm immediately asked for a demonstration.
Daisy raised one hand — then realized her power wasn't exactly easy to show off in a dignified setting. Shake the ground again? These priests would eat her alive. Punching the sky didn't look like much. And demonstrating therapeutic massage techniques was wildly inappropriate at a sacred site. She was briefly at a loss for words.