The first attempt was a complete failure.
Like trying to grasp the moon reflected in water. The Eternal genome was too stubborn and too sparse—she couldn't touch it in any meaningful way, not on this timescale.
"I can't do it, CRISIS. The genetics just won't respond. I'll keep thinking about whether there's a shortcut—put it in the long-term research queue on your end too. For now, let's get back to the existing protocol."
The Eternals were a distant problem. She had more immediate ones to focus on. One practical benefit of the transformation ability was that she could shift into Kree form periodically to give CRISIS fresh blood draws for the ongoing Inhuman bloodline purification work.
With practice, she got the three-way switching down to something fluid.
Inhuman form: peak combat performance, no question. The other two weren't worthless, exactly—in baseline human form, her rudimentary telepathic sensitivity actually strengthened. In Kree form, her resistance to temperature extremes was higher than either of the other two.
Whether there were other latent abilities still buried in those alternate forms, she couldn't say. Nothing else had surfaced yet.
Three days after the incident, Maki woke up.
Daisy spent time with her going over ability fundamentals, and CRISIS ran several simulation drills. Maki took to it quickly. By the end of the sessions, she had her new power fully under control.
The same ability as in the original timeline: smoke transformation.
Maki could dissolve her entire body into a transparent, diffuse smoke state, or go partially smoky at will. Physical attacks passed through her almost entirely. It was an exceptionally high-ceiling ability.
She had the same problem as Invisible Woman—smoke form meant no clothes, and anyone with functioning eyes could spot a visible ** drifting through the smoke and know something was off.
But Maki was lucky. During the transformation trials, she discovered that the Wakandan cloak Daisy had given her as a gift absorbed energy—specifically, if she pre-loaded the fabric with smoke energy, she could phase the cloak along with herself. No bare-exposure problem.
She was also a gifted seamstress. She sat down with the cloak and reshaped it into something that looked closer to a fitted combat underlayer and a sword scabbard. Daisy, in celebration of the milestone, requisitioned a small quantity of adamantium from the S.H.I.E.L.D. armory and had it worked into a blade—a katana sharp enough to part steel without effort.
The katana could be stored in the cloak-scabbard, phasing with Maki when she went smoke.
Her assassination capabilities had, essentially, gone through the roof.
Getting the ability had changed her. The barely-contained killing intent that used to press against the surface of her expression had settled somewhere deeper and quieter. She seemed warmer now—composed, polite, genuinely easy to be around. Like she'd become again the ordinary person who had once crossed an ocean chasing a dream. The sharpness was still there, but you only caught glimpses of it, in small unguarded moments.
Maki headed back to work. Daisy stayed home and kept at the new ability.
"Miss Johnson," CRISIS interrupted, cutting into Daisy's closed-eye practice. "Agent Natasha Romanoff is at the door."
Black Widow, coming here in broad daylight? She couldn't think of what the woman could want, but she told the house staff to let her in.
"Nice place," Natasha said, looking around with genuine appreciation as she came inside. Today she wasn't in her tactical suit—she'd come in a red dress with a thigh-high slit, a small handbag, and sunglasses. The total effect was deliberate and excessive. "Looks like business has been good."
Daisy's expression went complicated. "Natasha, please tell me you're not here on assignment."
The Black Widow's poise flickered—a very faint, very rare thing—and she let out a small sigh. "The Director sent me to make contact with Stark. To win him over emotionally." She paused. "Apparently that was your idea? What kind of terrible suggestion is that?"
Daisy laughed. There was a running joke inside S.H.I.E.L.D. by now—the Stark Curse. Everyone who got assigned to Stark came away worse for it. Her own extraction mission had taken heavy casualties. Coulson's liaison work had been a disaster. And now Black Widow was getting a turn—and in Daisy's view, would probably be doomed too.
The future battle at Stark's facility would see plenty of casualties too, and Black Widow wasn't far from being singled out for criticism by the whole organization.
She'd thought about taking out Ivan Vanko before any of it happened—quietly, while he was still nobody, hiding somewhere in Siberia—but she had no way to find him. Vanko was off the grid, buried under a false identity, and she had nothing to work with.
Natasha complained for a few minutes before getting to the actual point. She needed a way into Stark Industries' legal department. S.H.I.E.L.D. could fabricate credentials without breaking a sweat—the problem was that Stark had been paranoid since the kidnapping and ran background checks that weren't purely about paperwork. You couldn't just show up claiming to be a corporate attorney. Stark had connections in the legal world, and a name nobody in those circles had heard of was a red flag he'd catch in a day.
Natasha needed a warm introduction. Someone already known and respected in New York legal circles who could vouch for a new face.
Maki, as it turned out, was essentially untouchable in that world.
It wasn't a complicated ask. Maki made a few calls, and Natasha had her introduction. Getting handpicked by the lecherous Stark as his personal assistant was, at that point, more or less inevitable.
Daisy escorted Natasha over to Maki's office—they came through the teleporter—and then, with nothing more pressing on her schedule, slipped out to take a walk.
Maki had her own car now—a Toyota, because she was patriotic about it. The old S.H.I.E.L.D. Chevrolet had defaulted back to Daisy, and it was still sitting in the building's underground garage. She figured she might as well drive it back to the villa while she had the time.
She was heading down to the parking level when she turned a corner and something came straight at her.
"What the—" Her right hand shot out on reflex and caught hold of something that should not have been there.
She blinked. Then looked at what she was holding.
"Again?"
Last time it had been the right side. This time it seemed to be the left. Her precise spatial awareness had caught the difference.
Susan Stone was not having a good day. She'd come out alone to clear her head, and two blocks into the walk the sidewalk had turned into a crowd of people staring at her like she was something from a zoo. When the phones came out, she'd panicked and bolted, stripping her clothes off while she ran and activating her ability simultaneously.
And had run directly into Daisy.
A disembodied head appeared in midair. Susan looked down at where Daisy's hand had ended up and went red, somewhere between mortified and furious—and then the crowd from half a block back was catching up.
Daisy let go immediately. Susan re-activated her ability, trying to finish the vanishing act.
Then Daisy's jaw dropped.
She'd genuinely never had her eyes that wide open before. Susan's body went invisible—she confirmed that—but the part Daisy had just been holding did not. For reasons that probably had something to do with bioelectric fields, or light refraction at a specific frequency, or any number of other technical explanations that were honestly beside the point—the point was that a single very recognizable body part was hovering in midair, unaccompanied, shaking slightly as it fled down the street toward the far end of the block.