Running back to her rented room and lying on her bed, Daisy felt as if she were about to collapse from exhaustion.
Playing an Agent for a fool was an experience neither the former failed web novelist nor the original hacker soul had ever had. The adrenaline surge she felt at the time had now turned into a lingering sense of dread.
Once the tension eased, fatigue washed over her. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, she couldn't help but sigh. She was clearly an eye-catching beauty with a score of over eighty, but after several days of neglect, she probably looked like a sixty at best.
Truth be told, she really didn't know how to dress herself up, and there wasn't much in the original Daisy's memories to use as a reference.
Other transmigrators were woken up by a slap, a beautiful maid, or the sound of battle. Not her; she was woken up by a fragrance—the scent of her own body.
The original Daisy was an orphan who left the orphanage at ten and went through four consecutive foster families. Each family received a government subsidy for her every month and covered her tuition in return. Both parties got what they needed, but the relationships were as cold as those between strangers.
Daisy had been destitute and had lived frugally for years just to buy a second-hand laptop. She had no extra money to pamper herself, and since the church school was very strict about perfume, an indisputable fact lay before her: the scent that woke her up was her natural body fragrance... Fortunately, it wasn't strong, and her nose gradually grew accustomed to it.
Faced with immense pressure to survive, Daisy had to ensure she stayed alive first. She could worry about those trivial matters later when she had time.
The most difficult step was complete: the obelisk was in her hands. The only witness, the bald Honduran guy, had also gone home to wait for his promotion and raise so he could marry a rich, beautiful girl!
Taking a sip of water to steady her emotions, she opened her backpack. The obelisk was lying quietly inside.
Without Inhumans blood, the obelisk would turn any intelligent life form that touched it into stone. Daisy knew the time had come to test whether she truly was an Inhuman.
Although she believed there was a more than fifty percent chance she was, what if she wasn't? Turning into stone was not her goal.
Taking a small knife in her hand, she prepared to cut off her pinky finger the moment any petrification began.
She stuffed a towel into her mouth to prevent herself from screaming out loud later.
"I can do this! Nothing should go wrong!" She kept psyching herself up for a full ten minutes before finally making up her mind.
The pinky finger of her left hand reached tremblingly toward the obelisk—ten centimeters, five centimeters, one centimeter.
Her finger and the obelisk were only a hair's breadth away from touching.
Hardening her heart, she pressed her finger down firmly.
Her eyes went wide, staring unblinkingly at the obelisk and her finger. There was no petrification; the obelisk only seemed to grow slightly warm.
Still not entirely convinced, she grabbed it with her entire left hand.
The obelisk remained unchanged, and she herself felt no different.
"I knew I could do it!" Overjoyed and afraid of waking her Roommate, she buried her face in her pillow and basked in her delight for a long time.
Stroking her chest, it took quite a while for her excited heart to calm down.
Having confirmed her true lineage and with the obelisk in hand, she still needed a ritual to activate her Superpower. The selection standards of ancient Inhumans for their kin were incredibly harsh; they believed only those with the best genes could obtain Superpowers. The better the genes, the stronger the ability, though the strength of the power would also cause some damage to the original genes.
What genetic defect did the Quake of the original timeline have? She really couldn't tell, so she comforted herself by thinking her genes might just be exceptionally robust!
Currently, Tony Stark was still selling his Missiles. It was at least four years before Quake would place the obelisk in the Puerto Rico Underground City as seen in the TV show. She had accelerated her own life trajectory.
The consequence of not following the original script was that she was now all alone without a single helper. Using a powerful reputation to bluff once was enough; she didn't want to engage in more battles of wits and courage with those Agents.
She needed to set out alone with the obelisk, head to Puerto Rico, find that Underground City, and awaken her bloodline.
Going to Puerto Rico, thousands of miles away, relying only on a self-defense stun gun...
No matter how you looked at it, it didn't seem reliable.
Her looks, which combined softness with a touch of heroism, didn't quite fit the local aesthetic, and her lack of fashion sense was a further drawback. However, she still had to be on guard; drunks and racists were everywhere.
Although Puerto Rico was constantly clamoring to become the fifty-first state of the United States, the locals were dirt poor, and public safety could not be guaranteed.
She had to have self-defense skills, and firearms became her primary objective.
Counting her savings, she only had nine hundred dollars left after spending money to fool the bald guy these past few days. She temporarily abandoned her plans for the long journey.
No matter what she did next, she had to get some money. Daisy's hacking skills were decent, but unfortunately, the golden age of hackers had passed.
Tampering with the banking system was pure suicide.
Fortunately, she was also very good at programming.
A day later, she took a freelance job designing a database entry system for a company. By day, she just went through the motions in class, and by night, she burned the midnight oil working as a programmer—a job with little future.
After seven days of hard work, she earned three thousand dollars. Daisy first went to a gun shop to take a look around.
Rifles, hunting rifles, and shotguns were relatively easy to buy. These guns had been adjusted to semi-automatic mode, and their magazine capacities were reduced accordingly. One could buy them with just an ID.
Because they were easy to carry, the handguns she was more interested in had much stricter purchase requirements, needing a prior application and waiting for approval.
New York law allowed eighteen-year-olds to possess long guns, but the purchase age for handguns was twenty-one. Since Daisy had just turned eighteen this year, she couldn't exactly carry a rifle to Puerto Rico on her back.
Moreover, whether traveling by plane or boat, carrying guns was not allowed. Her transmigration perks didn't include any spatial Space either. Even if she bought one here, she couldn't take it with her; she could only find a way once she arrived locally.
Buying a gun was hard, but practicing and learning how to use one wasn't. Major chain gun stores had practice ranges, and there were more professional shooting clubs that provided one-stop services from gun selection to instruction and mastery.
Of course, a customer only needed to prepare money and have a brain that wasn't too stupid.
She found a large chain gun store, showed her ID, filled out the forms, and finally rented a handgun, bought two boxes of ammunition, two target papers, and rented a shooting lane. The handgun rental was ten dollars, ammunition was thirty-two dollars, target paper was one dollar, and the lane rental was eighteen dollars.
After a final hesitation, she hired a professional coach for sixty-eight dollars an hour.
Making full use of her spare time, she practiced for a full half-month. It had to be said that there was a reason the future Quake could become the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.... Her physical fitness was slightly better than an average person's, her vision was sharper, and her reactions were faster. With advantages accumulating in every aspect, her starting point was higher than that of ordinary people, and that was without even accounting for her Superpower and Inhuman physical enhancements.
The practice cost a total of three hundred dollars, mainly due to ammunition consumption. She couldn't claim to be a sharpshooter, but she felt it was enough to deal with average people. She found a small factory and borrowed their X-ray equipment. The obelisk's dominance was evident; it didn't show up at all under X-rays, appearing just like a patch of air. Daisy was completely relieved.
Changing into travel clothes and carrying a backpack, she wore a baseball cap and sunglasses and said goodbye to her roommate. The reason she gave the school for her leave of absence was to search for her long-lost parents, and the school happily granted her a month's leave.
After a four-hour flight, the plane finally landed at Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
She first looked for a place to stay. This Caribbean island nation primarily spoke Spanish, but in its quest to embrace the U.S., English was also an official language. Daisy soon checked into a local hotel that claimed to be the safest.