The Juggernaut, whom she hadn't seen in ages, had passed entirely beyond human proportions—grown another half a meter, a full 3.5 m (11.5 ft) of him.
Beyond his usual crude red tank top, a pair of golden wristbands had appeared on Juggernaut out of nowhere, flickering faintly with a sinister, soul-stealing light.
Once a charging, human-rhinoceros wrecking ball, Juggernaut now held a golden hammer shaped like a hoe—the whole thing radiating wrongness.
He wanted to reach a crowded place to spread panic, but the base agents were no slouches. Bullets came down on him like a downpour, and the instant he crouched to leap, they hit him with rockets and other heavy ordnance.
The effect was immediate, but so were the casualties. Daisy had spent half a minute suiting up and traveling; by the time she arrived, a third of the agents had already fallen.
In Daisy's eyes, having lost his charging ability and now wielding a so-called hammer that was really more of a hoe, Juggernaut was actually weaker, not stronger. The powers of the World Serpent and Cyttorak didn't add up to one-plus-one—they'd subtracted from each other.
Right now, Juggernaut was just swinging a hoe on brute strength. Honestly not all that impressive.
"Everyone clear out—leave him to me!" She bellowed it, and these off-the-books S.H.I.E.L.D. agents seemed to have received an order, because they pulled back in unison.
Planning to take on Juggernaut, she didn't use her lasso—precisely to avoid being seen by that demon-god Cyttorak. Out of the same wariness toward the demon, she also held off on her killing tool, the cutting ring, for the moment.
The World Serpent's hammer had left Juggernaut covered in dense runic script—words like conquest, fear, destruction.
The Juggernaut was now utterly the hammer's puppet. Mouthing obscure incantations, he wound up the hammer and brought it crashing down at Daisy's head.
Still so slow! Daisy leapt clear of the strike, stamped down on the haft from the side with one foot, and kicked at Juggernaut with the other.
Even with all her strength behind it, the kick only made him sway a little. The gap in power and size between them was considerable, and ignoring Daisy's weight entirely, Juggernaut heaved with both arms, lifting the hammer to fling her off.
Snap, snap—Daisy flicked her index finger twice, sending two bolts of flame like bullets at Juggernaut's eyes.
On pure instinct, Juggernaut threw up a hand to block.
Daisy seized the opening. With a shout, she gathered the fiery chi through her whole body and slammed a punch square into the middle of the hammer at her feet.
Searing, unbearable heat paired with all-pervading vibration drove straight into the hammer's interior. At the atomic level, every time her power shook open a crack, the flame seeped in like a maggot in the bone, impossible to dislodge, wrecking the structure while absorbing its essence to swell the flame's might.
The flame fed the vibration with energy; the vibration in turn wrought more destruction, stoking the fire's burn. It was a vicious cycle, nearly impossible to break.
The World Serpent's hammer might be a magical artifact, but at its core it was still Asgardian metal—and anything metal could be shattered by vibration.
"RAAAGH—!" Bound to the hammer's fate, Juggernaut let out a roar, dropped his head, and rammed straight at Daisy.
"Oh? Still got a bit of your old memory in there? Interesting." Daisy had no interest in brawling with the big lug. After one punch she already knew she could destroy the hammer, and from every angle these things were no match for Skadi's Hammer.
Since she could break it, why bother beating up Juggernaut?
"Second punch—!" Her skills still fell short of K'un-Lun's Thunderer and the Yu-Ti, but Daisy had at least trained at K'un-Lun for three months, and through constant exposure her techniques were far more refined than before.
Two feints, weaving the real and the false, slipped right past Juggernaut. Spotting an opening, her second punch landed flush on the face of that hoe-like hammer.
The first hit's damage hadn't healed before the second dealt the hammer a heavy blow.
The smooth, even hammer face was stamped with a charred black fist-print. Compared with those musclebound brutes' fists the size of clay pots, hers was practically the dictionary definition of dainty—but force and fist size aren't necessarily linked, and her punch had nearly driven clean through the hammer face.
Spiderweb cracks spread everywhere. A close look would have revealed the hammer's interior shaken to mush, hair-fine flames threading through all of it.
Burn the enemy, grow yourself—right or wrong, this was Daisy's Way of Fire.
Battered by repeated blows, the hammer's grip on Juggernaut couldn't help but slip.
Juggernaut might be a thug, but he still had a sense of self. With some outside consciousness commandeering his body out of nowhere, of course he fought back.
His resistance wasn't strong—Juggernaut's addiction to power left his willpower weak—but even that faint resistance handed Daisy a heaven-sent opening.
"Third punch!" The air shook violently, flame coursing through it; visible to the naked eye, ribbons of fiery cyclones danced to some hidden rhythm. Dazzling red light flashed across Daisy's fist as she marshaled all her chi and threw the third punch.
The crack-riddled hammer face shattered outright. The divine power inside tried to mend it, only to be routed by the flames that came hard on its heels.
With a crisp clang, the hammer head—glowing red as if it had sat in a furnace for ages—was smashed head-on by Daisy. The hammer that had seemed to hold boundless power became a lump of scrap, dropping into the dust, its luster gone.
"Ugh..." Robbed of its controller, Juggernaut let out a mournful groan, as if mourning the hammer—or perhaps in relief at slipping free of the World Serpent, only to fall back under Cyttorak's control. His wits flickered back for a single instant, then his brain went numb and tingling, and the mountain of flesh crashed to the ground.
"You all handle the rest." Three punches were Daisy's limit. She caught her breath where she stood for several seconds before she recovered basic mobility. She didn't take the shattered hammer pieces directly; instead she had agents find a box, pack the fragments inside, and bring them back to S.H.I.E.L.D.
Back at the Operations Information Department, four minutes total, she asked Baldy, "Were we exposed?"
Baldy indicated everything was firmly under control. Daisy just smiled and said nothing.
Reports from every front gradually converged on the Information Department, and she scanned through them one by one.
Professor Charles's side had indeed been fierce. Colossus's abnormal state was spotted at once; before the students even grasped what was happening, Professor Charles had teamed with Jean to subdue him.
It was pure psychic domination—then Wolverine, Beast, and the others piled in with fists and feet and knocked Colossus out cold.
They had no means of destroying the hammer—Jean couldn't manage it without transforming, at least—so Professor Charles set up a mental prison inside Colossus's mind. His consciousness wouldn't be getting out for at least ten days to half a month; and with no consciousness driving it, all the bodily strength in the world was useless.
Apart from Professor Charles's side and the Juggernaut Daisy had handled, the other fronts were a bit of a deadlock.
Stark had Blonsky suppressed, but securing the win would take a little more time.
The Fantastic Three, plus the Asgardian quartet who'd arrived aboard a S.H.I.E.L.D. jet—seven of them—had the Thing barely pinned down. But they couldn't use lethal force, which tied their hands for the time being.