Daisy stared at the course list and let the headache settle in properly.
Neither version of herself — the previous life or this one — had ever liked studying. But in this world, ignorance had costs that couldn't be deferred.
Look at anyone who had carved out a real position in the Marvel universe: Iron Man, the Hulk, Professor X, Mr. Fantastic — every one of them held at minimum a doctorate. Even Black Panther, with an entire kingdom's worth of responsibilities, had apparently found the time to earn a PhD in physics from Oxford. The villains followed the same pattern. Doctor Doom. Doctor Octopus. And Madame Gao, recently driven off, claimed fluency in every language ever spoken — a genuine scholar if the legend held any weight.
The pattern was consistent: knowledge was armor here.
Daisy's powers were still significantly underdeveloped, limited by the gaps in her foundational understanding. She'd originally planned to focus on the science track — but scanning the full catalog changed that calculation. Disguise techniques. Personal combat systems. Electronics operation. Hacking methodologies she'd never encountered through conventional channels. These weren't skills available in books or on the internet. Letting them pass felt like a waste she couldn't justify.
Two voices argued in her head. One said: Keep it simple. Learn enough, lean on your powers, deal with the rest as it comes. The other said: You know what's out there. One of these skills will save your life someday. You won't know which one until the moment arrives.
She turned to Sharon. "Taking this many courses at once — does the pressure get to you?"
Sharon hadn't expected the scope of the question. She'd been trained from childhood inside a system calibrated specifically for her, her development mapped by people who understood where she was heading. That was a fundamentally different baseline from someone entering the program late, mid-journey. She caught herself — her earlier encouragement might have pointed in the wrong direction.
She thought for a moment before answering. "The pressure is real. You have to assess your own starting point honestly. And the fees add up."
Sharon had noticed: no jewelry, no makeup, the understated presentation that sometimes indicated a tight budget. She offered the financial angle as a gentle way to scale back expectations.
Quietly cash-strapped — someone who spent freely on the surface while running close to zero — Daisy was, in fact, not wealthy. But Fury had told her the tuition was covered. When a director made a commitment like that, she was inclined to take it at face value. The man wasn't charming, but he was consistent.
With money off the table, the only real question was whether she could carry the load.
She made her decision.
She slid her enrollment card across the desk. "All of them."
On the walk back to their corridor, Sharon seemed quietly uncomfortable, as if she'd inadvertently set someone up to fail.
"If your marksmanship and close-quarters skills are strong enough," she offered, "you can test out of the foundational modules. That frees your time for the advanced coursework."
Daisy raised an eyebrow. She hadn't realized the Academy ran placement exemptions.
She didn't want to claim anything. She'd put down three armed opponents with four shots not long ago, but announcing that seemed like the wrong move. She said, simply, that she was probably average at both.
Sharon didn't look fully convinced. Newer trainees tended to lag on raw firearms metrics and close-quarters benchmarks, and Daisy — unlike Sharon's longer, more athletic build — didn't carry herself like someone with obvious physical strength.
She wanted to give this new neighbor an accurate picture. She made a quiet decision and steered them toward the underground range.
Daisy caught the corner of a hallway as they passed — the cafeteria. She watched it disappear behind them as they descended. She could have cried.
For the sake of not being remembered as someone who couldn't stop thinking about food, she swallowed her hunger and kept pace.
People here have such a strange idea of bonding, she thought. A table, good food, conversation — that's how you get to know someone. But apparently the answer is a gun range.
There was no graceful way out. She ignored the hollow feeling and kept walking.
"What's your handgun of choice?" Sharon asked once they were inside.
Without the feedback complications that normally made larger calibers tricky, Daisy could have operated anything — a heavy-framed revolver, a large-bore semi-auto. But there was no reason to say that. She selected a Glock 17 in 9×19mm, a solid full-size platform that generally suited smaller hands.
Looking at the pistol, she registered something she'd been postponing: she needed a dedicated sidearm of her own. The Beretta 92F she'd taken off a gangster weeks ago was functionally mediocre. Heavy-frame weapons had always appealed to her — she'd seen Harley Quinn's Chiappa Rhino 60DS revolver in a neighboring universe and found it spectacular. Maybe she'd work on a custom build when the opportunity arose.
While Daisy was still choosing her lane, Sharon had already settled into position with eye protection and ear muffs on, raised her pistol, and sent ten rounds downrange.
All tens.
"Impressive," Daisy said, and meant it. Precision like that came from years of repetition, not raw talent alone.
She wasn't intimidated. She geared up, stepped into her lane, and let the rhythm come back — the hours she'd spent in a shooting gallery not long after arriving in this world — and fired ten rounds.
All tens.
Sharon blinked.
She had walked in here intending to deliver a gentle, honest assessment. Instead she was standing next to someone who had matched her score cold, without a warm-up round.
It wasn't stunning — field agents and even support staff could shoot reasonably well — but it was notable.
"Try the dynamic target scenario?" she asked, keeping her tone neutral.
Daisy desperately wanted to redirect them toward the cafeteria. She looked at the anticipation in Sharon's expression and kept her grip on the pistol instead.
She scanned the range. A handful of other trainees were running drills, most of them with impressive consistency. Without her powers becoming obvious, there wasn't a lot of room to get creative. Making a bullet change direction mid-air would probably prompt some questions.
"Let's go," she said.
The format wasn't unusual — silhouettes representing criminals and hostages rising on timed sequences — but the pattern was nothing like the slow, predictable sweeps of a standard range. Computer-controlled, fully irregular: acceleration, deceleration, reversals with no advance signal. Sometimes the hostage cut directly in front of the shooter's line just before the trigger broke.
Sharon went first and demonstrated. Whatever number of reps she'd run through this course of fire, it showed — ten kills, clean, without hesitation.
For Daisy, the raw challenge was steeper. Her technique had gaps that experience couldn't fill overnight. What compensated was reaction speed that tracked slightly above average and a threat-recognition sense that helped bridge the difference. Ten shots. Ten kills.
At that point, Sharon had fully revised her read on her new neighbor. Daisy had introduced herself as an ordinary person from New York with nothing particularly notable in her background. What she had just done in this range was not consistent with that description.
If regular New Yorkers shoot like this, Sharon thought wryly, the city is a stranger place than I knew.
She didn't believe the modest self-presentation for a second. In her reading, the administration had placed them across the hall from each other deliberately. Daisy Johnson was here with a purpose.
That conclusion had crossed Daisy's mind the moment she first heard the surname Carter. Which was, ultimately, the real reason she'd spent the past hour in a basement gun range instead of eating dinner.