Daisy cleared her throat. "How about this? You train Tangbao. It's gotten way too fat and needs a lot more exercise!"
When Lorna realized she was not being ordered to join the "hell training" herself but was being made an instructor instead, she relaxed. Comfortable living conditions had made her much lazier too. She had once practiced magnetism diligently; now her training was sporadic at best.
Daisy, who had a slightly devious streak, naturally did not tell her that running while using magnetism to pull a metal hoop was training too. She had only given Lorna the title of instructor to preserve the girl's dignity. In Daisy's eyes, Lorna, Wanda, and Tangbao were all in roughly the same category: every one of them needed to work hard and exercise.
Tangbao still had a decent foundation. Seeing that Daisy was determined, it reluctantly began jumping through the hoop, while Lorna had to control the flaming ring and run ahead of it.
"Stay where I can see you. Just run laps around the pool." After warning Lorna to be careful, Daisy took Wanda into the water and began teaching her to swim.
Sorcerers truly did not have much control over their bodies. Daisy explained the motions again and again, but Wanda still could not get the hang of them.
Wanda insisted that the problem was her posture and that she had failed to learn because the motions were not precise enough. Daisy could only use gravity manipulation to hold her in the air and let Wanda flail through the swimming motions above the ground.
"Hahaha! I'm dying! Sorry, sorry..." Watching Wanda kick and paddle in midair like a huge frog, Lorna laughed until tears came out. She involuntarily slowed down for a moment, almost causing Tangbao to run straight into the flaming hoop.
She hurriedly comforted the resentful-looking Tangbao while forcing herself not to look at Wanda, who was still maintaining an utterly serious expression.
Apparently realizing that her posture looked ridiculous, Wanda asked Daisy to put her down and sat awkwardly at the edge of the pool.
"Look, posture actually isn't that important. The key is... the key is not being afraid of the water, then learning to breathe naturally. Any stroke can work. You should imagine that you're a piece of wood floating on the surface."
Wanda stared at her blankly.
"Here. I'll hold you. Pay close attention to how it feels."
Daisy had known how to swim in her previous life, and in the Marvel world it was even easier. Teaching someone else was the difficult part. For a moment, she had no idea where to begin, so she could only rely on muscle memory.
She pulled Wanda into the water. Before Wanda could panic, Daisy wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her along while Wanda kicked her legs, moving them forward through the water.
"Pay close attention to my movements. Feel how the water flows around us... Why are you touching my leg?" To help Wanda learn as quickly as possible, Daisy used no powers at all and swam exactly like an ordinary person. One arm held Wanda around the waist while the other stroked through the water.
At first Wanda behaved herself and genuinely followed Daisy's instructions, carefully feeling the changes in the current while combining them with the motions she had practiced in the air for five minutes. But after half a lap, she discovered an awkward problem.
Daisy was on Wanda's left side, which meant Wanda could not properly use her left arm. She considered wrapping that arm around Daisy's waist in return, hesitated twice, and still did not dare. She dared even less to touch Daisy's backside, so her hand eventually landed on Daisy's thigh.
Faced with Daisy's questioning look, Wanda could not admit that she was so nervous she had no idea where to put her hand. Instead, she forced out an explanation and claimed that she wanted to understand how Daisy's leg muscles generated force.
"If you wanted to feel that, you should be touching my calf. Move your hand away. I'll take you around two more laps." Daisy's tone left no room for argument. Wanda quickly murmured an acknowledgment and obediently continued learning.
Once her fear of the water disappeared, swimming became much easier. By the end, even without Daisy holding her, Wanda could manage a few clumsy strokes on her own.
Running in the morning, jumping rope at noon, swimming in the evening. Every so often Daisy also tossed over a few unfortunate snakes, calling it "courage training" and practice for handling unexpected situations.
After finishing an entire day of training, Wanda barely managed to take a shower. She did not even watch her beloved Tom and Jerry. Instead, she sprawled flat on the bed with her limbs spread wide, eyes unfocused. All she wanted now was sleep.
Unfortunately, Daisy still had no intention of letting her off.
"What? You want to learn magic?" Wanda had no idea how she felt about Daisy suddenly barging into her room, but when she heard the actual request, she finally relaxed.
"Yeah. Someone told me I can't learn it, but what if they were wrong? Maybe she just wasn't good at teaching. Why don't you teach me?"
The idea that she could teach Daisy delighted Wanda. Ignoring her physical exhaustion, she forced herself to sit up and began explaining her own understanding of magic.
There was no helping it. Wanda herself had been trained informally. Agatha Harkness only answered questions. Whenever Wanda encountered a problem, Daisy had her write it on paper, then sent someone to deliver it to the old witch like a courier.
The teaching method was extremely crude. Wanda survived it only because her talent was exceptional and Chaos Magic was not exactly a delicate, meticulously structured discipline. If a Kamar-Taj sorcerer had trained this way, they probably would have trained themselves to death long ago.
Wanda held nothing back. She explained her experience and insights in what she believed was the simplest, clearest language possible.
Daisy listened with complete concentration, carefully memorizing every word Wanda said.
The Ancient One had told Daisy that she had tried teaching her dozens of times across the timeline and Daisy had failed every single time. Daisy, however, suspected the problem might have been the Ancient One's teaching. Just look at her disciples. Being powerful did not necessarily make someone a good teacher.
Now Daisy had her own personal sorcerer. Even if it took a little more time, surely she could learn eventually.
Reality proved that Daisy had been thinking too optimistically. She believed she understood the explanations about elemental shaping, psychic guidance, extracting magical energy, and the other steps. But when they reached the very first stage of actual practice—sensing magic—she hit a wall.
She could not sense any magical power at all. Frequency, psychic perception, tactile sensation through the skin—none of them produced the slightest response.
Could her talent actually be worse than Wong's?
Wanda flipped through a book, tilted her head in thought for a while, and finally took Daisy's hands in hers to teach her how to sense the existence of magic.
Chaos Magic and ordinary magic differed in nature, but their fundamentals were still connected. At least the first step was the same.
By the time Wanda was sweating heavily from the effort, Daisy had no choice but to accept the truth. She really had no talent for magic. She might as well focus on being a warrior from now on.
"A magical constitution is very unusual and extremely rare. Maybe you just aren't suited to it..." Wanda chose her words carefully, afraid of discouraging her.
Daisy was somewhat dejected, but she still nodded to show that she was fine. She told Wanda to get a good rest and left the room.
For the next half month, Daisy spent most of her time at the villa urging these lazybones to exercise.
Outside, after pressure from many different sides, Stark finally slowed the market rollout of his clean-energy technology. However, he insisted that New York City had to adopt the new energy source.
At S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters, Daisy, Nick Fury, and Maria Hill discussed Stark's condition. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s medical team had secretly conducted a psychological evaluation of him, and the results were very poor. Tony Stark was suffering from a severe anxiety disorder, with signs that his chronic anxiety was progressing toward acute anxiety.