"Impressive—truly the Inhuman King. Now let's see you take one of mine!" She shook out her wrist, which had gone numb and sore.
She drew her right fist to her waist, knees slightly bent, driving power up from her hips. The motion was graceful yet loaded with force—slow-looking but blindingly fast. The air compressed violently as Daisy poured every ounce of her strength into a single punch aimed at Black Bolt.
The Phoenix Force's cry didn't dim in the slightest just because they were deep underground. Roaring flames rode a translucent vibrational shockwave, tearing through the air and sweeping toward Black Bolt and Supergiant.
The underground laboratory—already half-destroyed, its walls forged from ultra-hard alloy—took another brutal beating.
If Black Bolt's quasi-sonic scream was an ocean wave, then Daisy's flame-laced vibrational shockwave was a hurricane. It scattered everything in its path; countless bits of debris were sucked into the vortex, pulverized in an instant, and folded into the storm's own force.
"Good God—is she some kind of super-Inhuman too?!" In the split second it took Gorgon and Medusa to emerge from behind the shield of her hair, they saw an unscratched Daisy swinging her fist at their king.
They couldn't gauge what lay beneath the surface, but on looks alone, that punch was barely a step below Black Bolt's own.
The two of them had assumed they were crucial reinforcements. Now it seemed their presence or absence hardly made a difference.
Black Bolt was under mind control, his thoughts forcibly wrenched around by Loki's Scepter. Even so, he had no wish to fight Daisy; his own consciousness resisted the foreign will the entire time. But faced with her all-out strike, he could only plant himself in front of Supergiant and open his mouth once more.
The two evenly matched forces collided head-on—a pure quasi-sonic scream slamming into the flame-laced shockwave, each rapidly devouring the other. Just as the hastily-loosed scream began to run out of steam, Black Bolt twisted his waist and threw a punch, and through sheer physical strength he shattered what remained of the shockwave outright.
"Hmph." Daisy's nose crinkled. Godslayer in one hand, she tapped her toe against the ground and launched herself forward, the blade sweeping sideways toward his neck. He twisted aside to dodge and, in that razor-thin margin, drove a punch at her wrist.
The blow was fast and vicious—no energy behind the fist, just raw physical force. As far as Daisy could tell, Black Bolt's strength was no less than the Thing's or Namor's.
Daisy threw her whole body into it, flicking her wrist to angle the blade straight at his fist. Black Bolt reacted just as fast; expressionless, he opened his hand and pinched the blade between three fingers, trying to drag her toward him.
She switched tactics again, Godslayer flickering around Black Bolt from every angle—up, down, left, right. Both moved fast. Daisy held a slight edge in agility, Black Bolt the clear edge in power; one meant to win with speed, the other to overwhelm with force, and after four or five exchanges neither had gained a thing.
Gorgon shot Medusa a quick glance, asking the queen's read on the fight. She gave a small shake of her head. "Our king is being controlled—he hasn't fought at full strength. Even so, this sister from Earth is strong enough, I'll grant her that…"
With a sharp crack, Black Bolt opened his mouth again. This time it caught Daisy off guard and sent her flying more than twenty meters. Striking a rather stylish pose, she reversed her grip and drove Godslayer one-handed into the ground, arresting her backward slide.
Huh? The moment she steadied herself, she thrust out her left hand—toward the Tesseract. Now that Supergiant, Loki, and Black Bolt had all arrived on Earth, the Tesseract had lost its fixed-in-place property. Still, Daisy didn't dare grab it with her bare hand; she chose to reel it in with gravity manipulation instead.
The Tesseract couldn't very well teleport the whole planet away, could it? And if it did—fine, she'd just have to accept it.
As it turned out, Mjolnir might not answer to gravity, but the Tesseract had no such pride. It obediently let the pull carry it flying toward Daisy.
"Stop her—everything you've got!" Supergiant was livid. Coming to Earth for the Tesseract was supposed to be a simple grab-and-go. If she couldn't manage a job this easy, wouldn't that bring shame on Lord Thanos?
Loki, taking the order, whirled Loki's Scepter like a great war-glaive, loosing a rapid string of golden-yellow energy blasts. Daisy didn't meet them head-on; she gave ground, backpedaling several paces while cranking up the gravitational pull.
And just as the cube was about to reach her, Black Bolt cut loose.
This time he showed no mercy—not to his wife, not to his general. His mouth stretched to its widest, every muscle swelling; he sucked in a fast breath and let it out in a violent burst, hurling a silver-white shockwave straight ahead with everything he had.
Thor, ever the stand-up type, figured Daisy couldn't take the hit, so he swung his hammer and threw himself into the front line like a living shield.
Unfortunately, he'd underestimated Black Bolt. In the future Thor would surpass him, but for now the gap was wide. The instant his thunder collided with the silver shockwave, the thunder shattered. The wave rolled on without pause, all fangs and claws like a rampaging dragon, and knocked Thor clean aside. The poor God of Thunder, face twisted with pain, was flung dozens of meters and buried deep in a wall.
Thanks to hammer-boy's timely sacrifice, Daisy finally had a beat to react. She darted clear of the wave's path and threw up her Vibranium Bracers.
"Don't—we're underground!" Medusa and Gorgon's warning shouts came only now.
Daisy didn't even have time to swear. Even the backwash of the attack sent her flying over a hundred meters, snapping four or five load-bearing columns on the way. Still not spent, she hit a wall with a thunderous bang—then punched clean through the solid metal.
Her body was far less resilient than Thor's. In an instant she was seeing stars, arms weak and aching, mind wiped blank.
The underground space could take no more of their destruction. Massive slabs of stone rained down, clattering and crashing.
The Tesseract was still jamming her teleportation, so Daisy pushed her magnetic manipulation to the limit, raising a magnetic field to shield herself.
By the time the others grasped the danger, it was already too late; all any of them could do was scramble to save their own skins however they could.
Daisy caught a glimpse of the Inhuman Queen, not far off, raising her hair to protect herself once more—then a landslide of rubble blotted out her view.
The underground facility caved in fast. She faintly heard Supergiant's furious shout and Thor's startled cry, and then—nothing at all.
Countless boulders bore down. Gritting her teeth, Daisy held the magnetic field, carving out a wide-enough pocket around herself.
The weight kept mounting until she had to shrink that pocket—from standing, to a half-crouch, and at last curled into a ball. The endless roar of the collapse thundered in her ears, so loud she had to shut off part of her hearing just to keep from losing focus.
Wasn't Odin supposed to be watching? So where was he? Don't tell me watching is all he's got the strength left for.
She griped inwardly, trying several times to teleport out—only for the Tesseract to jam her every time.
Wasn't a single one of these idiots going to move the Tesseract out of the way? So much for the ever-so-devoted Supergiant. Wasn't she supposed to be the one busting her hump to finish Thanos's mission?!