"Miss Daisy Johnson? I've reviewed your application." Coulson was all warmth and professionalism, extending his hand as if he'd never met her in his life. "On behalf of the school, we're delighted to welcome your ward as a student. Our mission, if I may—we've received the following distinctions over the years..."
He was off. A full institutional presentation, delivered with complete sincerity.
She hadn't actually submitted any application, and Coulson's "I've reviewed it" was clearly fiction—but watching the man this enthusiastic, she couldn't exactly say we were just in the neighborhood, feel free to ignore us. That would be unconscionable. They were S.H.I.E.L.D. colleagues. You didn't do that to colleagues.
Daisy settled into the role of attentive audience, nodding at the appropriate intervals.
It made sense, once she thought about it. Agents often maintained civilian covers. She ran a company, made films, ran the ice bucket challenge—none of that conflicted with the work. Coulson had always wanted to teach. As an active agent, sustained classroom work wasn't possible. A principalship, on the other hand—that was something you could make work. And if it gave him the school environment he'd always wanted, more power to him.
Lorna was perceptive, but she didn't catch the undercurrent between the two adults. What she did notice was that this principal—reliable-looking face, unhurried manner, the kind of calm authority that felt genuine rather than performed—struck her as more trustworthy than the principals she'd met before with her mother and stepfather.
Her first impression of the school wasn't bad at all.
"Since she likes it, let her sit in on a class. And if anyone gives you trouble—" Daisy made a point of demonstrating a fist in Lorna's direction. Powers might take years to develop, but the simplified combat curriculum she'd adapted from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s tactical training manual was already in Lorna's muscle memory. She wasn't going to be invincible, but she could handle herself against a middle schooler.
In the original timeline, Lorna Dane had no hand-to-hand training at all—she'd gotten badly beaten in prison for acting tough. Daisy wasn't going to let that happen.
Lorna, who'd been eating considerably more protein lately and looked just slightly less like a strong wind could carry her off, matched the gesture and bumped her fist back. The school visit had come up suddenly, but she'd learned to expect that from Daisy. Her guardian operated on spontaneous instinct. This wasn't new. And sooner or later, going back to school was inevitable—whether it happened today or a month from now made no real difference.
She was a decisive person. She nodded, and headed off with the teacher who'd come to collect her.
"Your educational philosophy is... distinctive," Coulson remarked, watching her go with an expression of mild bemusement. There were no other observers now.
"When I was little, the bigger kids always had the advantage. Some basic self-defense is just common sense." Daisy took his chair without ceremony and looked out the window at a group of kids running a basketball drill. "Have you been here the whole time? Since you got back from Antarctica?"
"The whole time. I like kids. Watching them grow up—it's my greatest pleasure." They both stood looking out over the school grounds.
The warmth on Coulson's face was real. He meant it—he genuinely loved this work, and he loved the life he had now.
Not everyone likes the life of an agent. Coulson was living proof. He'd stepped up for the sake of the world and sacrificed his dream, sacrificed even his love—and in the end, what had he gotten in return? Nothing.
She put a hand on his shoulder. "If you like kids, have some of your own. I heard things are going well with the cellist—stop stalling and get married."
She didn't give him a chance to say anything that might jinx it. She was out the door before he could respond.
To make sure Lorna wasn't going to have any social problems at school, Daisy assigned two of her security detail and a driver to the daily routine. Morning pickup from Long Island, afternoon drop-off. Manhattan to Long Island wasn't far, and there were certain things that money made simple: nobody with sense picked on a kid who arrived in a private car with security.
At dinner that evening, Lorna had a lot to say.
Daisy had been planning to ask about the curriculum. Then Lorna picked up her fork and launched into an animated account of how she'd knocked a chubby girl flat on the ground, and Daisy quietly let the academics question go. Fine. It's basically recess. She'll get to the books eventually.
As she listened, Daisy caught a few names from Lorna's running commentary on her classmates. The more she heard, the more unsettled she felt.
Peter Parker. Harry Osborn. Mary Jane Watson. Flash Thompson. Those four she could handle. But a girl still going by Jessica Campbell? Tracy Walker? Where had she come from?
Why were so many "elites" gathered in one class?
She called Coulson that evening.
"Many of these children have exceptional qualities that adults tend to overlook," Coulson said, with the air of someone who had thought about this at length. "I believe proximity benefits all of them."
Daisy could only describe her regard for the man's judgment as immense and unrelenting. Either Phil Coulson was also a transmigrator—or he possessed a genuine, almost supernatural ability to identify future potential in teenagers. Under any rational explanation, that kind of foresight was extraordinary.
For Lorna, the change of environment had been good for her. She'd been confined to the estate, playing alone for months. Back among peers now, she might not have her powers yet, but she'd been absorbing habits from Daisy for long enough—daily combat drills, shooting practice, the general orientation toward competence—that her baseline already put her at the top among kids her age. Even Harry Osborn, from a wealthy family with rigorous private tutoring, didn't casually run drills with firearms in his spare time.
Oh, I'm actually pretty good at this.
The realization hit Lorna with the force of genuine self-discovery. Around a classroom full of other kids, her confidence swelled like never before.
Within three days, she'd made a friend: Mary Jane Watson. Red hair. They'd found common ground quickly—similar life histories, different coping mechanisms. Mary Jane's father had been a violent man; he'd hit his wife and his daughter until the day her mother packed them up and left for good. But where Lorna had gone quiet and watchful, Mary Jane had gone the other direction—she defaulted to jokes, to laughter, to making people comfortable.
"Daisy, Mary says she wants to be a journalist. Do you think I should be a journalist too?"
Lorna raised this at dinner one evening, and Daisy nearly choked on her beer. The particular brand of recklessness that attached itself to female reporter characters in comics was not something she was eager to encourage. But thinking about Lorna's actual abilities—when they finally came in—most people weren't going to be capable of seriously threatening her. She was small now, and Daisy let it go.
When it became clear that school was not, in fact, going to handle Lorna's intellectual development for her, Daisy took over that side of things directly. Danger compiled a full supplementary curriculum. You're doing this, Daisy announced. And if you fall behind, I'm pulling your school privileges. This was Daisy's management style in its purest form.
With the Ring decryption complete, Daisy loaded Danger up with a new task list. Tutoring Lorna was just a footnote—a minor item among much larger priorities.
Two assignments stood out above the rest: the first was to begin modeling interstellar teleportation mechanics; the second was to investigate whether further refinement of Daisy's bloodline was actually possible.