Daisy scratched her head in exasperation. Now what?
Little Lorna had no idea what was happening. Daisy didn't know how to explain it either.
Through her senses, she could tell Lorna was being jostled by an "unknown" force. The poor girl was sweating bullets—emerald hair plastered to her forehead, face flushed crimson—and she couldn't wrestle her power under control at all.
Daisy racked her brain but couldn't find a way to neutralize the "interference." The only real option was to wait for the quake energy to dissipate on its own.
But that wasn't realistic. Gravity was inherently weaker than magnetism. Combined with the toll of her consecutive battle against Stark, both her stamina and her powers were running on fumes. Two more minutes—that was her ceiling before she buckled entirely.
In a flash of desperation, she hit on an idea.
"Listen to me—don't panic. I'll absorb some of that force pushing you… You just focus on pulling your power inward. Shrink its range. Reel it back in, bit by bit."
She'd once helped Viper shoulder the burden of a vicious flu. The same principle applied—use her psychic link to siphon off part of the "push."
You start the mess, you clean it up—tears and all. That about summed up her situation.
Her words had an effect. Lorna felt the pushing sensation weaken noticeably. Following Daisy's instructions, she began drawing her power inward. Daisy sensed the surrounding magnetic field start to fade. Within ten seconds, Stark's repulsors returned to normal. He immediately threw everything into his thrusters and took over the burden of holding the plane aloft.
As Lorna continued to contract her magnetic field, Daisy neutralized the residual magnetism, and Stark supported the aircraft. The three of them scrambled through a clumsy, improvised relay that lasted nearly ten minutes before the plane finally touched down safely on solid ground.
"Don't leave… I'm so scared…" Little Lorna was genuinely smart. Despite being the one caught up in all of this, she'd instinctively figured out telepathic communication. With the plane about to land and reality about to reassert itself, fear and helplessness surged together, and she called out desperately to Daisy—the one person who felt like one of her own.
"I shouldn't be seen here, but I promise—I'll come back soon." Daisy wasn't ready to appear in public with her powers on display. The public could accept Iron Man, but a powered individual who looked suspiciously like a mutant? That was a different story. Only after an alien invasion would people begin to accept extraordinary abilities.
"I'm going to change clothes. There's a little girl on this plane—if anyone gives her trouble, step in for me." She turned to Stark with the request, used her gravity to retrieve her dagger, opened a portal, and vanished.
Stark wanted to say something but ultimately held his tongue. He figured Daisy was probably bound by some kind of espionage confidentiality agreement. Not his concern. They'd saved all these people—Yinsen's trust and sacrifice hadn't been in vain. What he was doing felt meaningful. He flew toward the aircraft to help the crew open the doors.
Passengers surged out in a frenzy. Stark nearly got bowled over and had to take to the air just to avoid the stampede.
Feet on the ground at last, the survivors wore every shade of relief.
Some shook with emotion. Others dissolved into tears. A few rounded on the flight crew—cursing the pilots for incompetence, cursing the iron-suited rescuer for not arriving sooner and making them sweat. Eventually, all that collective rage funneled toward the root cause of the incident: little Lorna.
The blonde hair the passengers remembered was now unmistakably emerald-green—a textbook sign of mutant manifestation, impossible to miss. Fresh off a brush with death, the crowd channeled every last ounce of fear and resentment onto the twelve-year-old girl.
The ring of people around Lorna grew tighter. It escalated until even the entire flight crew was hurling abuse at her.
Meanwhile, the mother who should have been her shield was held back by her stepfather. She struggled twice, then turned away and stopped looking.
Stark stepped in to defend the girl, but the mob's blood was up and no one was listening.
"Back off—everyone back off!" Stark planted himself in front of Lorna, repulsors raised but withheld, and forced four or five men brandishing improvised clubs to retreat.
"Don't be afraid of him—he's just a playboy!" A middle-aged man in a suit and tie, the picture of polished success, shouted over the crowd. His previously refined features were twisted with raw hostility; his hatred for mutants had boiled past the point of restraint.
His words re-ignited the mob. Most of the crowd began pressing forward again.
Stark had no choice but to fire a warning shot into the ground ahead of them—which only exposed how thin his hand really was.
"He wouldn't dare shoot us—he's a gutless playboy!"
"Congress is investigating him—we've got nothing to worry about!"
Stark watched the circle tighten and seethed. Every word they said was true. Right now, he was under enormous pressure from every direction.
The Congressional inquiry. The military coveting his suit. His own company needing a complete overhaul of its internal relationships. And then there were the casualties from his battle against Iron Monger.
A thousand threads, all tangled. At this stage, Stark held nowhere near the social standing his wealth should have commanded—and thanks to enemies on multiple fronts, plenty of people were eager to tear him down and carve off a piece of Stark Industries while it bled.
For self-preservation, he'd already begun entertaining S.H.I.E.L.D.'s olive branch, hoping the massive intelligence organization could help him weather the storm.
With his own position so precarious, he had precious little leverage over a crowd of people who'd just escaped death.
Fortunately, the standoff didn't last long. The tiebreaker arrived.
"Out of the way—FBI! Anyone who doesn't want trouble, step aside!" The person who never missed a chance to burnish the Bureau's name was, naturally, Daisy Johnson.
Daisy had gone back and changed. The Ice Bucket Challenge had boosted her visibility, but she was still far from a household face.
Americans' ability to recognize people was a mystery in itself. Captain America—a figure literally enshrined in textbooks and museums—could throw on a T-shirt and a baseball cap and walk through a crowd unnoticed. Yet the Fantastic Four couldn't stroll down the street without getting mobbed.
Unable to figure out what criteria the public actually used, Daisy opted for a disguise: a white stand-collar blouse, black women's blazer and slacks, hair down, and a pair of clear-lens glasses.
She teleported back to the scene—high up and slightly off to the side—assessed Stark's predicament from a comfortable distance, then circled around and approached on foot from afar.
The FBI badge scared every last one of them. For ordinary civilians, few things carried more weight. Daisy also identified two off-duty NYPD officers among the passengers, made one phone call to Director Stacy, and the two cops instantly defected to her side as impromptu assistants.
"Everyone calm down. The FBI will investigate this thoroughly. If you have questions, you're welcome to visit the field office—there'll be someone to help you." She delivered the line with zero sincerity.
American civilians were famously bold, but even boldness had its limits. Nobody in their right mind voluntarily walked into an FBI office to ask questions. Most people couldn't run away fast enough.