After dropping Lorna at school, Daisy drove straight to Stark Industries. Her ownership stake had already crossed the 1% threshold and she was still accumulating—she estimated she could reach 1.5%.
This was a conglomerate that had been valued at close to $500 billion at its peak. Even battered as it currently was, the market cap was still above $80 billion. Her $800 million had bought her 1.5% only because of the fear premium the Doom Industries collapse had injected into the market.
She knew the building well enough to walk straight to Pepper's office. Pepper greeted her with her usual warmth, though inwardly she was less pleased. She'd been working hard to keep Daisy and Tony from meeting—and now this woman had gone and bought her way into being a shareholder.
Of all the places to put money, Pepper thought. Why here? Why not Hammer Industries? Why couldn't you invest in literally anyone else?
But she couldn't say any of that, so she smiled and made small talk.
It was during this visit that Daisy learned Pepper was about to be named president of Stark Industries. The office had been Obadiah's—Daisy hadn't recognized it at first after the renovations.
"Congratulations. You're probably the youngest person to hold that title right now."
Daisy had always thought Pepper had unusually good luck. A personal assistant with no prior executive experience at a major corporation, elevated straight to president in one step? You'd think the existing vice president didn't matter.
"Don't congratulate me yet. The pressure is absolutely crushing. I can already imagine exactly what the press is going to say." Pepper checked that her assistant wasn't nearby and let herself vent freely.
"My instinct is that you'll come through fine."
And Daisy was certain of it. Under normal circumstances Pepper would have been absolutely savaged in the press—but today's news cycle had been completely consumed by the Fantastic Four. The Stark Industries story was buried. Pepper was probably going to skate right through, and she had Johnny Stone's talent for commandeering cameras to thank for it.
After ten minutes of mutual flattery, they got to the point. Pepper looked slightly uncomfortable. "Daisy—your stake is still fairly small. Under our rules, you'd need to clear 5% and get multiple board members to sign off before you could have a formal board seat. So..."
Daisy waved it off. "I know. No need to disclose publicly. Keep it as is. As long as you and Tony know I'm in your corner—if anything changes on the board, that's enough."
It was perfectly worded. Pepper thanked her and agreed to use her position to quietly suppress any disclosure of Daisy's stake for the time being.
Daisy understood her own situation well. The origin of the funds was murky. Everything was held in her personal name, scattered across multiple accounts. She badly needed a large, reputable entity that could launder it into legitimate income.
The Fantastic Four story was still rolling through the public consciousness. Fury, who had made the monitoring of powered individuals his personal mandate, immediately convened a meeting of his senior agents to discuss whether the four could be recruited into S.H.I.E.L.D.
"Nick, I know Reed. He's not going to play spy for anyone—he values his freedom too much. As for the others..." The head of the science division pointed at Johnny Stone on the briefing room screen, and his tone said everything. "You think this person is spy material?"
The room went quiet. The speaker was Old Robert—a senior agent with a full head of white hair, Level 7 clearance, no meaningful rank, and the kind of accumulated credibility that made people listen when he finally opened his mouth. He rarely competed for anything. His relationships across the organization ran deep. When someone like that finally spoke, nobody interrupted.
The reason he'd spoken first, before anyone else, was that he'd briefly taught Reed Richards—without Reed ever knowing he was an intelligence operative. He understood Reed's personality from the inside: a pure scientist, through and through.
In terms of career priorities, Reed Richards was first a scientist, second an adventurer, and a distant third a superhero.
Daisy kept her mouth shut. She'd interacted with Reed, yes—but Reed hadn't fallen from the sky, and she wasn't the only one. Right here in this room there was a former teacher and two former classmates, one of whom had visited Reed in the hospital not long ago. Those were all Level 7 and above. Among Level 5 and 6 agents alone, the number who had some personal connection to Reed Richards was probably in the hundreds.
The agents traded details and collectively assembled a fairly complete personality profile.
"So everyone agrees—Reed Richards is unrecruitable?" Fury asked the room.
Daisy stayed quiet. The rest of the room agreed.
"All right. Dismissed. Daisy—stay."
When she'd stayed behind, expecting more Fantastic Four discussion, Fury switched subjects entirely.
"Tony Stark is still resisting our overtures. What do you make of that?" He filed the Fantastic Four paperwork off to the side and turned to face her with full attention.
That small gesture told her something: Fury didn't actually care that much about the Fantastic Four. His attention had never moved. It was always Tony Stark.
"With Stark Industries in such a precarious state, what terms did you offer him?"
"Special consultant. Two days a week, or sixteen hours per week."
Daisy almost laughed. "Sir, Stark isn't going to accept those terms. For one thing they're too demanding, and for another, what we're offering him in exchange isn't worth that kind of labor."
Fury's eye went wide. "How can you say that? I'm shielding him from pressure on every front. I'm protecting a conglomerate worth hundreds of billions. After everything we're doing for him, he can't serve as a consultant?"
This time Daisy didn't hide her smile. "Sir, you come from the military. You don't understand economics—or at least not how modern corporations operate."
She wasn't mocking him without evidence. She pulled up the Skye Data analysis on her tablet and switched to a line graph to walk him through it.
"Stark's market cap being in the hundreds of billions—that's a valuation, not cash. My firm is part of the Stark advisory group, so I have access to some internal figures. Despite announcing the closure of the weapons division—which happened this year—last year's domestic annual profit was roughly $8 billion. Including overseas operations, annual profit was somewhere around $10 billion."
"Looking at the first three months of filings this year, there's going to be a significant contraction. Analysts and major research houses are all bearish. But look at this." She pointed to a run of numbers.
"The market's response to Stark being Iron Man has been supportive. Retail investors love him. The stock has already seen a small rebound on that sentiment alone. High-tech stocks have always had a loyal following—if Stark floats a new idea and executes on it, the stock will recover to its previous highs. Once he has that public support base, the political pressure on him softens considerably."
She gave him the short version: Tony Stark had a survivor's grit that defied all odds. He'd gotten himself out of Afghanistan with nothing. He'd get through this with the same stubbornness.
S.H.I.E.L.D.'s help was welcome if it was on offer. Without it, he'd grit his teeth and manage anyway. Trying to get Stark to work for free with a handful of small favors? Completely pointless.