Calling Iron Man the Mandarin's nemesis was honestly giving Stark too much credit. The Mandarin possessed ten high-tech rings, every one of them alien artifacts. Their abilities were a grab bag: shockwaves, mind control, magnetic manipulation, matter rearrangement, absolute zero, and more.
To put it in character terms, imagine taking ten powered individuals — someone like Daisy, Magneto, Professor Xavier, Iceman — and condensing their abilities into rings worn on one person's fingers.
One man wielding the combined powers of ten mutants or Inhumans.
If Madame Gao was a martial arts grandmaster who'd honed her craft over four hundred years, then the Mandarin was a cultivator straight out of a xianxia novel.
Facing Rhodey, Daisy couldn't exactly explain alien rings or cultivation. She pinned it on mutants instead.
"Trust my years of field experience — there's an incredibly powerful mutant in there." The excuse was flimsy, but it was all she could say.
The vehicles tore northward at full throttle. Daisy leaned out the back, watching the road behind them.
Her grim expression and furrowed brows half-convinced Rhodey.
The regular soldiers didn't know what Daisy was worried about. After they'd covered well over fifty kilometers (about 31 miles), their tension began to ease, and a few started whispering among themselves.
"Don't slow down. Keep going. We're heading straight back to Bagram Air Base," Daisy barked over the radio.
The soldiers grumbled, but the prospect of returning to base kept their complaints in check. Faces dark, they accelerated toward home.
Bagram was just a carrot she was dangling. Daisy had an overwhelming premonition that their pursuer had detected them and was closing in. The Panther Goddess's bestial instincts were screaming this at her.
Bagram Air Base housed over ten thousand American troops. In theory, the Mandarin wouldn't go head-to-head with that kind of modern firepower. But they were currently in southern Kunar Province, while Bagram was in eastern Parwan Province. At top speed in a straight line, the drive would take two days under normal conditions. Nothing about their current situation was normal.
Southern Afghanistan had minimal troop presence. Some "bases" had only a few dozen to a hundred personnel — more like outposts than anything. Daisy wasn't about to lead these people to their pointless deaths. The best she could hope for now was reaching Kandahar first, hiding in the city, and trying to lose the Mandarin in the crowd.
She'd considered breaking away on her own, but she was afraid that the energy signatures from high-speed flight or teleportation would register on the Mandarin's senses. If he locked onto her signature and she could neither fight nor run — she'd be in deep trouble.
Better to keep a low profile and travel with the convoy. Maybe she could slip past unnoticed.
She also hoped her instincts were wrong — that there was no powerful enemy, no pursuit.
Unfortunately, this world had a little thing called Murphy's Law. Good luck never showed up, but the moment trouble reared its head, it always came knocking.
"Who are ye?" Three hours into their frantic retreat, the Mandarin caught up with them.
His speech had an archaic, theatrical cadence — drawn out and sing-song, like something from a Chinese opera.
Black hair streaming in the wind, the Mandarin wore a dark green silk robe, hands clasped behind his back. His bearing was regal, his features ancient and austere.
Under normal circumstances, Rhodey might have debated whether to kick a man like this or help him up, depending on his mood. But right now, he had no such luxury. He and every soldier and agent stared upward in stunned disbelief at this elderly Asian man who'd arrived riding the wind, seemingly faster than the speed of sound.
This man could fly without any mechanical aid whatsoever. The Mandarin's entrance left every soldier and agent present thoroughly shaken.
Rhodey sneaked a glance at Daisy. Is this the threat you were talking about?
Daisy gave the faintest nod, simultaneously signaling everyone to prepare for combat.
She pulled in her external vibration frequency, dampening her presence. She was acutely sensitive to oscillations and could feel one of the rings — on the Mandarin's right index finger — continuously emitting microwaves. The frequency was different from Daisy's own abilities, and also different from the Mandarin's personal energy. It belonged to the ring itself.
The two wave patterns touched and parted. Daisy found this curious. It seemed the Mandarin could only access the rings' basic functions — raw, unrefined, like how she'd only been able to produce shockwaves when she first manifested. Could it be that the rings lacked derived abilities?
A theory formed. The Mandarin's threat level in her mind dropped by half a grade. But even without derived abilities, his innate power combined with ten rings was more than enough to destroy her.
Unlike Madame Gao, the Mandarin's ten rings made him virtually flawless. Mind control, shockwaves, absolute zero, flame blasts, lightning storms, matter rearrangement — this arsenal of offensive and defensive capabilities left almost no weakness.
Ten rings in hand, augmented by his own mastery, the Mandarin was unquestionably among the most powerful beings on Earth.
The Ancient One at full power with Dormammu's complete backing might manage a fifty-fifty fight. Beyond that, excluding the Skyfather-tier deities, perhaps only the Dark Phoenix could defeat the Mandarin.
In short: this was an enemy who could only be described as terrifying.
The soldiers exchanged uneasy glances. Daisy knew she had to be the one to respond. She was the commanding officer, her appearance was somewhat East Asian, and — most critically — the Mandarin's operatic speech was actually Mandarin Chinese. The American soldiers couldn't understand a word of it, let alone reply.
Daisy rubbed her stiff cheeks and produced a textbook Coulson-grade diplomatic smile. At the same time, she adjusted her own frequency to make herself seem as friendly and harmless as possible.
She waved cheerfully, as if greeting a long-lost countryman. "Sir! We're coming from Maiwand, heading to Kandahar — for his cousin's wedding!" She pointed at Rhodey beside her, indicating it was his cousin getting married.
She'd never have tried something this ridiculous on a normal person. But after careful observation, she'd noticed something was seriously off about this Mandarin. A long period of isolated cultivation was part of it. The other part was his eyes — they kept shifting between savage intensity and vacant confusion.
It reminded Daisy of a crucial detail: the ten rings weren't merely equipment. They had their own consciousness, and they periodically used the Mandarin as a conduit to communicate with each other.
The Mandarin's mental fortitude had to be off the charts. But having ten voices constantly chattering in your head — no amount of willpower could withstand that indefinitely, could it?
Daisy was banking on his compromised mental state, throwing out nonsense to bluff her way through. Otherwise, what kind of wedding guests showed up carrying assault rifles?
If he challenged her, she'd say it was wartime Afghanistan. If he didn't — well, that would confirm his mind wasn't all there.
The Mandarin, for all his ethereal grandeur, was not charmed by her act. He frowned and studied her for a moment, seemingly displeased by her mixed heritage. But surrounded by all these "outsiders" — especially with Rhodey's dark complexion providing contrast — Daisy's East Asian features suddenly seemed almost precious by comparison.