Daisy had an edge over the Hulk in that she could fly, and she wore a full suit of gear, giving her a bit more protection than the bare-chested Hulk. Even so, she was knocked around badly, fighting and falling back, alternating gravity and magnetism, grinding down several hundred Chitauri chariots in a back-and-forth war of attrition. By the time she made it back to the ruins, she found the Chitauri had already set up their defensive line.
Wonder Woman had appeared before the public for the first time. Only a handful knew this was one of her alter egos; most civilians and soldiers didn't, and figured yet another new superhero had shown up.
Realizing that killing them herself was simply too much of a slog, she called in Black Widow, Spider-Woman, and Hawkeye, plus a large body of troops, to help fight.
First she carpeted the area with missiles, then swept the enemy again with incendiary rounds. Her idea was simple: You want to dig up the cube? Then come and get it.
The Chitauri kept funneling reinforcements toward the ruins, and Daisy directed her people to conserve their strength and let the enemy wear themselves out, strangling each wave of Chitauri support and easing the pressure on the rest of the city.
Partway through she destroyed another Leviathan with the Atomic Cut, and the fighting settled into a stalemate.
Thirty minutes in, everything was going to plan. As long as they annihilated the enemy and held the Tesseract, it would count as victory.
Switching back to her original identity, Daisy returned to Stark Tower to go on directing and coordinating.
"Why do you keep coming to my building? I haven't seen any letter from the Defense Department requisitioning Stark Tower as a command post," Stark grumbled.
"Your place is taller."
"The Hammer Industries building is tall too! You're doing this on purpose." Before he could finish, Daisy cut off his comm request unilaterally. There was a war on! Who had time to chat with him?
Information from every quarter flowed rapidly to her, and she made new assignments.
"Captain, you've already captured Rumlow? Well done. One street over from you, a lot of civilians are trapped in a hospital parking lot. They need your support."
"Understood."
"Hill, take a team and clear the enemy out of Central Park."
"Copy that."
"Major Eli, I need you to set up a defensive position with your unit at the 15th Street intersection. I'll send two robot soldiers to assist you."
"Roger."
"All combat units, report your losses to me."
Daisy commanded and coordinated the whole picture methodically, while the Chitauri launched wave after wave of fierce assaults.
Bang, bang. Boom. Gunfire never let up, threaded with the odd muffled explosion. After one Chitauri chariot crashed into a subway tunnel and blew it open, the crowds of civilians hiding inside were exposed.
Swarms of Chitauri poured through the breach and began slaughtering the ordinary people.
Coulson and May fell back step by step, fighting as they went, the students in tow.
"How's Peter doing?" Coulson asked, a little anxious. Something had gone wrong with Peter Parker; an hour after entering the tunnel he'd suddenly passed out, and now his "good buddy" Flash Thompson was carrying him as they fled.
"Same as before!" Thompson looked down on Peter; "bookworm" and "coward" were among the names he'd stuck him with. The two got on terribly, to put it mildly, but no matter how bad things got, he wasn't going to stand by and watch Peter get killed by aliens. This whole time he'd been the one carrying Peter along as they retreated with the main group.
"Keep him safe. As long as I've got breath in me, I won't give up on a single student." Coulson kept firing behind them, covering the students' retreat.
Lorna kept Daisy's warning firmly in mind and didn't use large-scale magnetic control, but bending a few bullets along curving trajectories was no trouble at all. It was subtle enough; the lighting in the tunnel was poor, and no one paid any attention to where her bullets went.
Under her magnetic control, "curving trajectory" was putting it modestly. Her bullets could not only turn corners but, shamelessly, even fly in reverse.
Many a Chitauri was left baffled: they'd clearly dodged these Earthlings' primitive weapons, so why were they getting hit anyway?
Dagger held nothing back with her powers, hurling light daggers without pause, killing what they struck and wounding what they grazed.
With the two girls' powers plus Coulson and May's support, the students were reasonably safe. Their formidable fighting strength naturally drew more ordinary people to join, and as the little group grew larger, it drew more Chitauri as well.
The Chitauri attacked in relentless waves. Coulson gauged their position and quickly made up his mind: the tunnel couldn't hold, and their only chance was to get back to the surface.
He led the big crowd of students and civilians fighting their way out of the tunnel and into a run-down bar just up the street.
Looking at a room full of drunken, hulking men, the half-grown kids had no idea why they'd been brought here.
Luckily Coulson did. In a measured but firm way, he came to an understanding with the bar's owner, a man who went by Weasel, and prepared to use the place as a strongpoint to hold off the Chitauri assault.
"Remember, you're paying for every bit of damage today!" Bespectacled and mouthy, Weasel pulled a Remington shotgun out from behind the bar and racked it fast.
Coulson gave a thin smile. "Of course. Our deputy director is very rich. She'll cover all your losses."
What Lorna saw next left her stunned: the drunks in that little bar met the Chitauri without the slightest panic, big guns and small alike opening up together, and a dozen-odd Chitauri were riddled full of holes.
Many of the drunks' weapons were custom-made, high penetration and heavy firepower, and every one of them was a crack shot. At their head was a handsome man named Wade Wilson, a blade in one hand and a gun in the other, cutting back and forth wherever he pleased, sweeping all before him. His marksmanship was precise, his knifework even sharper; the Chitauri had no way to fight back.
The mercenaries cut down the enemy like slicing melons and chopping vegetables, and this time they didn't go back to drinking and bragging. Once they learned someone would be footing the bill for all the damage, they threw up a simple set of fortifications in front of the bar and a few run-down buildings nearby.
If the Chitauri came in small numbers, they'd gun them down; if they came in force, the mercs would pull back into the bar and the shabby streets around it, using the terrain they knew to split the enemy up and pick them off. Either way, if something got wrecked, somebody else was paying!
Lorna watched the handsome guy named Wade Wilson and the somewhat sleazy bar owner Weasel off to the side, secretly tallying up the damages. Neither man wore a grim expression in the slightest; they kept snickering, eyes shining with a manic glee, something like the delight of spotting a fat sheep ripe for the fleecing.
It was an expression Lorna knew fairly well: usually the one Daisy wore after conning a big chunk of funding out of Nick Fury.
She pulled Coulson aside and asked quietly, "You're planning to have Daisy pay for this?"
Coulson looked genuinely puzzled. "You expect me to pay? I've just got my base salary. She's the big boss, an arms tycoon."
Lorna rubbed the back of her head, at a loss for words. She didn't know how to explain her guardian's stingy streak. On the surface Daisy really did look like a warm, generous, ninety-five-out-of-a-hundred beauty, but once you got to know her better, you'd find it was nothing of the sort.
As far as Lorna could tell, Daisy would absolutely never pay. At least not under her own name.