The Science Division pulled its best people for the integration effort. Fitz, Simmons—everyone in that caliber was drafted. Even so, progress crawled.
Daisy had no choice but to call in reinforcements.
"Hey, Potts—is Tony around?" She dialed Stark's number. For an engineering problem like this, the man with the bottomless wallet was the obvious call. If Stark couldn't solve it, no human scientist would crack it within twenty years.
She hadn't expected Pepper to pick up.
Pepper Potts was having a rough time. Going from personal assistant to CEO of Stark Industries overnight should have been thrilling, but she'd discovered that after her departure, a devastatingly attractive new assistant had appeared at Tony Stark's side. That did not sit well.
To make matters worse, now Daisy was calling, breezing right past her to ask for "Tony" like they were old friends. Pepper's composure held—her manners were impeccable, and she and Stark hadn't formally defined their relationship. She had no standing to block other women from contacting him.
She asked politely, "He's here. May I ask what this is regarding?"
Daisy was so buried in work she'd completely forgotten that Black Widow had been sent to get close to Stark through "emotional" channels. She was hopelessly oblivious to interpersonal maneuvering between women and missed Pepper's keep-your-distance tone entirely.
"It's an aerodynamics question," she said casually.
Pepper was speechless. She had a business degree. What was she supposed to do with aerodynamics?
Knowing she couldn't refuse, Pepper came clean. "We're in Monaco. Tony's phone is with me."
The implication: Stark wasn't available to take calls right now.
Monaco already? Daisy's problem needed a tech genius to solve, urgently. Old Pym hadn't been feeling well lately—best not to bother him, and besides, he'd never liked S.H.I.E.L.D. Reed was still deep in his anti-cosmic ray research, trying to restore the Thing to normal, so busy he barely had time for Susan. Daisy didn't think her own pull outranked Susan's.
Secrecy protocols and the mutant issue ruled out contacting Beast.
Tony Stark was one of her few remaining options.
She decided a face-to-face discussion would be more productive. As for Ivan Vanko—if she ran into him, she'd swat him while she was at it.
She got Pepper's address. They were at the Hotel de Paris in Monaco.
"I'll be back!" She dropped the Terminator's signature line, said a quick goodbye to Fitz, Simmons, and the rest of her team, then left the underground facility.
Normally she would have just teleported straight there, but today a thought kept tugging at the back of her mind. She could ignore her appearance around engineers, but facing so-called "high society" maybe warranted a little effort?
The thought arrived so naturally it didn't feel intrusive at all. Daisy teleported back to her villa.
She took a quick shower, tossed the lion cub aside when it came sprinting at the sound of her arrival—no time to play right now—and picked up an eyebrow pencil.
She stared at it. This was a specialized skill she absolutely did not possess.
She looked around. The Maid wasn't home. That was normal—these days the woman was either in court or on her way to court, every bit as busy as Daisy. Calling her back wasn't realistic. Fortunately, Daisy's vibration sense detected Lorna watching TV in her room.
"How come you're not at school today?" Daisy asked with full parental authority.
"Not feeling well!" Lorna had been dragged out of her room and wasn't happy about it.
Daisy frowned slightly. "What's wrong?"
The girl fixed her with a dead-fish stare for a long moment, then muttered, "Clueless."
It took Daisy two full mental rotations before she understood. Fine—skip school, then.
The reason she'd summoned Lorna was simple: the Maid was out, Daisy couldn't do her own makeup, and a twelve-year-old girl had to know at least the basics of getting presentable, right?
"Lorna, come do my hair!" She issued the command like an empress dowager.
Lorna's face was a portrait of resignation. Did this count as child labor exploitation? She'd never heard of a kid doing an adult's hair. This kind of thing only happened in fairy tales—like Cinderella's stepmother or something.
The girl was ordered around like a handmaid: from hair to makeup, all the way through outfit, jewelry, and shoe selection.
It wasn't a formal event, so Daisy didn't push too hard. Hair up, light makeup, a couple of accessories, a red off-the-shoulder dress, and a pair of peep-toe heels.
"I'm off! Next time I'll take you out for a spin." Back to looking like a solid nine out of ten, she tossed out a thoroughly insincere promise, then teleported away under Lorna's withering glare.
Nearly seven thousand kilometers. Long-range teleportation was becoming routine by now. Two jumps brought her to Icelandic airspace, one course correction later, and she arrived in Monaco.
Shower, makeup, teleportation, plus the final stretch of flight—she was standing in front of Pepper within twenty minutes.
The first two items had eaten fifteen of those minutes, so from Pepper's perspective, Daisy's arrival didn't seem particularly rushed.
"Where's Tony? Oh—Happy's here too. And you... you are?" Daisy blew in like a whirlwind. She found Pepper quickly enough, but she hadn't expected the heavyset bodyguard, and Black Widow was there too.
That last part threw her. Should she know Natasha or not? Technically, yes—they'd met. But publicly, they shouldn't have. Then again, Natasha had used the Maid's connections to break into New York's legal circles, so pretending they were strangers wasn't exactly right either. By the end of that train of thought, Daisy had no idea whether she knew Black Widow or not.
Credit to Natasha's years of deep-cover experience. Her expression betrayed nothing. She greeted Daisy with perfect composure. "Miss Johnson, I've heard so much about you. Mr. Stark is—oh! Oh my God!"
Even Natasha's composure cracked at the end, because Tony Stark had just appeared on the live TV broadcast. Five minutes ago, he'd been right there with them.
A woman's intuition told her this mission was probably doomed too.
Pepper and Happy were stunned. Stark appearing on television was normal—the day he didn't show up on TV would be the anomaly. The problem was that this was Monaco, and Stark was on screen wearing a racing suit, sitting on the Monte Carlo circuit starting grid.
No wonder these people had low life expectancy.
The Monte Carlo track was notoriously narrow—terrible for racing, really. The tight layout made overtaking extremely difficult, but drivers chasing victory forced the issue anyway. The skilled ones won glory; far more often, it ended in wrecks and death. The circuit's driver fatality rate was among the highest in motorsport.
Given Tony Stark's personality, the idea of him sitting behind another car eating exhaust fumes was laughable. He would attempt to overtake. One hundred and twenty percent guaranteed. And that made the situation very dangerous indeed.