[ S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters, Washington D.C. – Director's Office – Night ]
The lights in the S.H.I.E.L.D. director's office were dimmed just enough to project authority without sacrificing subtle intimidation. Everything about the place screamed classified elegance—mahogany desk, bulletproof windows, and an air system likely smarter than most agents.
Phil Coulson walked in, shoulders straight, lips pressed in that bureaucratic grimace he'd mastered over years of dealing with alien discovery, ancient artifacts, and now, apparently, rogue ghost hackers.
Behind the desk sat Nick Fury, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., the man with more secrets than the Vatican and less patience than a caffeine-deprived sniper. He didn't look up as Coulson entered. His pen scratched against a classified file like it owed him money.
Coulson cleared his throat. "We've got a situation out of Eastern Europe."
Fury didn't blink. "When don't we?"
"The Belarusian syndicate was seeking a polymorphic malware script designed to bypass NATO-grade firewalls. They almost pulled it off."
That earned him a glance. One-eyed, piercing, unimpressed. "Almost?"
"Our agents intercepted. Barely. We stopped the transaction, but the malware was already in their system. Would've burned half the Belarusian intelligence web if we'd been five minutes late."
Fury leaned back. "And where did they get it?"
"That's the thing," Coulson said, tapping the file. "We don't know. The script was handcrafted. Expert-level obfuscation, recursive shell layers, self-erasing metadata. Every digital trace? Scrubbed. This isn't a teenager in a basement. This is ghost-class, sir. We're talking hacker deity."
Fury grunted. "And our best techs?"
"Chasing shadows."
Silence brewed. The type that curdles tempers.
Fury finally said, "Find them. Whoever this is, they're dangerous. But if they're that good, I want them. S.H.I.E.L.D. could use a ghost or two."
Coulson nodded. "Understood."
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[ Puerto Rico– Hotel Room– Night ]
Seraphina —officially Daisy Johnson, now reincarnated as the Queen of the Underworld with a doctoral flair for destruction—was sprawled across a bed like a bored heiress.
She'd traded ancient ruins and cosmic terrigenesis for soft pillows and half-rate room service. A predictable downgrade, but her standards had survived assassination attempts. Not even carpet patterns this ugly could kill them.
She stared at the ceiling like it had personally offended her.
"Alright," she muttered, "let's make sense of my very inconvenient, very explosive glow-up."
One hand rose. A twitch of her fingers, and the empty wine glass on the nightstand began to hum. Not hover. Not shatter. Just…vibrate like it owed her a secret.
She sighed.
Her power had bloomed with flair and finesse, sure—but the physics behind it? Dark magic. Or worse, high school-level physics.
"Frequency, amplitude, oscillation," she muttered. "Sounds like the ingredients to a bad Euro club mix."
To be fair, her academic credentials were stacked—PhDs in software, poisons, and mechanical engineering—but vibrations? That was a blind spot. Her younger self spent more time memorizing Revelations than reading about resonant frequencies.
Her old church school taught theology like it was prepping saints for sainthood. Science, meanwhile, was treated like a divorced cousin no one invited to the baptism.
She opened her laptop with the kind of hesitancy reserved for bomb diffusal.
Google Search: "how not to blow up your lungs using harmonic resonance."
She skimmed through articles, whitepapers, and a YouTube tutorial by someone with 47 views and a guinea pig. Halfway through, her eyes glazed like a doughnut.
"If I wanted to suffer through quantum mechanics," she grumbled, "I'd marry a physicist with abandonment issues."
The problem wasn't just the science. It was the feedback. Her powers didn't come with a manual—or an off switch. Like Black Bolt with less hair and worse PR, she couldn't fully shut the vibrations off. Too much use, and the tremors crawled back into her bones like arthritic regrets.
But unlike her original timeline, this version of her body had leveled up. Stronger bones. Faster reflexes. Recoil dampening that made Glocks feel like Nerf toys.
Precision was her new religion.
Seraphina discovered she could feel people through vibrations. Emotional frequencies. A sort of sixth sense meets lie detector. Happiness buzzed like champagne bubbles. Anger felt like low thunder. And those too-good-to-be-true types? They vibrated like silence before a car bomb.
Add that to her combat instincts and she had a cocktail more dangerous than cyanide in a wine glass.
Her phone buzzed. A notification from the delivery desk.
"Ma'am, your requested materials have arrived."
Seraphina arched an eyebrow. "Lovely."
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[ Hotel Parking Basement – Night ]
The bellboy looked terrified.
Rightfully so.
Metal slabs, iron rods, and reinforced weight plates were stacked in neat rows like offerings to a goddess of destruction. Which, let's be honest, wasn't far off.
"Should I… uh… bring these up?" he stammered.
Seraphina smiled sweetly, the way a lioness might before a pounce.
"No need. I'll handle them."
"B-but… ma'am, they're heavy."
She tilted her head. "Darling, so is destiny."
The moment he left, Seraphina got to work. She needed a safe place to test her powers without turning her hotel suite into post-apocalyptic chic. The underground parking lot would do.
She placed one metal slab on the concrete. Then, focusing on her palm, she released a vibration—gentle at first. Controlled. The metal quivered like a heartbeat.
Then she amped it.
The slab split with a shriek of tearing steel.
She smiled.
"Still got it."
She continued the process—testing frequency thresholds, stress tolerances, bone-to-metal feedback ratios. Each destroyed slab was hauled discreetly to a rented U-Haul truck she'd parked herself. No cameras. No witnesses.
By the end of the night, she'd reduced 1,000 pounds of reinforced steel into modern art.
Disposal? Simple. Paid off a local scrapyard manager with a thick envelope and a forged EPA document. In any place, cash and confidence could turn a crime into a civic service.
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[ New York Apartment – Late Morning ]
Seraphina returned to her apartment, smelling faintly of iron and triumph.
Angela—her glitter-fueled roommate—was at the kitchen table, practicing eyeliner like she was trying to summon a demon.
"You look like you just lost custody of a makeup palette," Seraphina drawled.
Angela looked up, startled. "Seraphina! Where've you been?"
"Assassinating fashion sense across the city. Your lip gloss was the first casualty."
Angela blinked. "I missed you."
"I missed indoor plumbing."
Angela grinned, then hesitated. "Uh… things have been weird. School might shut down."
Seraphina paused. "Explain."
"Budget cuts."
"Charming. The nation's future held hostage by accountants."
Angela looked worried. "What do we do?"
Seraphina tapped her chin. "We adapt. Or we burn down the Board of Education. Either works."
Angela laughed nervously.
Seraphina smiled. It wasn't a joke.
To be continued...
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[ POWER STONES AND REVIEWS PLS ]