They landed slightly off target. Daisy had deliberately avoided teleporting directly in front of Professor Xavier — no sense giving the old man a heart attack.
They found themselves on the school's sports field. A handful of younger mutants had been playing nearby, and they stopped what they were doing to stare at the unexpected arrivals — a tall, imposing Black man and a young woman, appearing out of nowhere in the middle of their afternoon.
Fury had been here twice before. He got his bearings, then headed toward the main building.
Professor Charles Xavier had technically never held a job in his life. He'd spent sixty years as a homebody — but a thoroughly comfortable one, an old American money type who'd wanted for nothing. While his best friend Magneto had been taking beatings in a concentration camp, Xavier had been living pleasantly in the United States.
Exceptional circumstances plus exceptional abilities — by the time he was twenty, Charles Xavier had accomplished more than most people manage in a lifetime. With nothing left to prove, he'd turned his attention to his fellow mutants and quietly dedicated the rest of his life to a cause that showed no signs of resolution.
The school itself had begun as the Xavier family estate. It had since been converted into a campus.
The children here were well protected by the Professor — perhaps too well protected, Daisy thought as she walked through the grounds. She saw no one practicing their abilities in any serious way. Everyone was playing.
She knew from personal experience what happened when you neglected power development — it stayed decorative. The Daisy Johnson of the original timeline had one trick: vibration waves. The rest of the time she'd been running around after Coulson, never investing a single hour in actually developing what she could do.
Take Iceman — in the comics, he was supposedly one of the most powerful mutants alive, capable of generating ice from nothing and ignoring physics at will. In practice? He threw icicles in a fight and called it a day. He hadn't even mastered his own baseline abilities, let alone explored what they could become. His potential was enormous. His actualization was not.
Potential doesn't win fights. Results do.
"You made good time," Storm said, dropping from the sky to meet them. "The Professor's expecting you." She led them inside.
"Is T'Challa staying at the school?" Daisy asked. "I thought you two had found somewhere else."
Storm didn't seem bothered by the question. "We were going to stay off-campus, but the Professor offered a room, so — here we are."
Daisy made a noncommittal sound and let the subject drop.
She understood the subtext well enough. Xavier was keeping Black Panther close — a polite, gracious form of surveillance. Both a chance to build mutual understanding and a quiet reminder of what lived in this building.
Surrounded by a houseful of powered people. That must have been a sobering welcome.
Inside the manor, she took in the decor as they walked the corridor. Oil paintings in saturated colors, a blue-and-white dragon-pattern porcelain vase standing half a person's height every few meters — giving the place an antique, scholarly atmosphere. Students navigated past the vases with exaggerated care, slowing down, keeping their distance, visibly afraid of knocking anything over.
Daisy almost laughed. Clever old man. A collection of convincing fakes, lined up along the corridor to teach restless students patience and attentiveness through nothing but anxiety.
Because genuine Ming or Qing blue-and-white pieces didn't grow to half a person's height. One that had survived intact to the present day would be among the rarest objects on earth — not something you'd leave in a hallway for teenagers to walk past. Which meant the oils were probably reproductions too.
"Colonel Fury, Miss Johnson — welcome to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters."
At the end of the corridor, a man with an air of quiet warmth and scholarly refinement sat in a wheelchair, smiling at them. He wore a suit and tie, and would have been quite striking — if not for the complete absence of hair.
Daisy kept her senses carefully trained on herself and the Kunlun ring. Nothing unusual. No intrusion, no sensation of anything shifting.
She let out a quiet breath of relief.
Two people stood behind Xavier. The first was tall, composed, with a noticeable bearing — wearing a pair of deep-red tinted glasses. This was Cyclops: Scott Summers. His power connected his eyes to another dimension entirely; in combat, those eyes projected a focused crimson beam capable of leveling most things in its path. He was Xavier's most trusted deputy, field leader of the X-Men, and would eventually become the rallying point for mutantkind as a whole.
Beside him, in a red dress and heels, stood a dark-haired woman whose intelligent composure made her immediately striking. This was Jean Grey — the current host of the Phoenix Force. Even with it suppressed, she still carried an array of abilities: telepathy, telekinesis, and several others layered on top.
Scott stood with his hands clasped behind his back, watching Fury and Daisy with a hint of something unreadable in his expression. Jean stood behind Xavier's wheelchair with one hand resting on it — unnecessary, since it moved on its own, but she wanted to do something.
Daisy already knew how this was going to go. Fury would want a private conversation with Xavier first, then a separate meeting with Black Panther. She stopped at the threshold.
The other three young people stopped with her.
"Would you like a tour of the school?" Storm offered — she knew Daisy best among the group and had taken it upon herself to play host.
Daisy had nothing better to do. She said yes immediately.
Scott Summers and Jean Grey exchanged a glance, then decided to join them.
The estate was large, but a large house is still a house. Half an hour covered all the floors.
The two leaders were still talking.
"Would you be interested in our training room?" Storm had wanted a match with Daisy for a while. There hadn't been an opening until now.
In a world that ran on power, you earned respect by demonstrating power. Daisy had no reason to say no. If Storm wanted a fight, she was in.
They agreed to meet at the training room entrance. Storm headed off to change, buzzing with energy. Scott hesitated, then decided he'd go change too.
Daisy noticed Jean hadn't moved.
"I'm not much of a fighter," Jean said with a polite smile. "I'll sit this one out."
Daisy was acutely careful around this one. Jean Grey, the Phoenix Force's most perfect host, even with it suppressed — was not someone you wanted to accidentally unsettle. One wrong word and the woman went dark side and took the planet with her.
Time for the agent skill set: low-stakes small talk, calibrated to build rapport.
"Running the school must cost a fortune."
"It does. More mutants every year, all of them dependent on the Professor's funding…"
They started from the mundane and worked their way toward something warmer.
It didn't take long before Storm and Cyclops returned and the Danger Room opened before them — the X-Men's legendary holographic simulation chamber.
Daisy remembered vaguely that this system, along with Xavier's neural amplification device, eventually got repurposed into an artificial intelligence. The Professor's habit of puttering around at home had an unfortunate track record: he'd release something clever into the world, and it would end up causing a catastrophe among ordinary people. A less powerful version of a certain problematic old man throwing his toys around.
Jean declined to participate, choosing to watch from outside. Scott, seeing this, stayed out with her.
That left Daisy and Storm stepping into the simulation chamber alone.