"...we know where Sheath is."
Gwen jumped back towards Lockjaw and as soon as she touched him, they both teleported back to where they had been just a minute or two earlier.
The ceiling was gone, making it a two story hallway, or room might be more accurate since the walls on both sides of the hallway were mostly gone as well. What little was left of the room was covered in soot and ash.
"Whow, this place has changed."
"You knew it would when you left." Daisy said.
"True, but I didn't expect all the fire. Oh hey inferno." She waved to their teammate. "Try not to kill anyone with that."
"I was burning Fume's fumes."
"Are we just repeating ourselves now, ourselves now?"
"Save the banter for the bad-guy Ghost-Spider," Daisy said, but she was smiling so Gwen had no intention of stopping. "Sheath's that way if you still want her."
"You know you're the only one I want." she said. Mumbled? Either way she sort of hoped no one had actually heard her, especially Daisy. She'd been teased once already and if her crush had actually heard that she might never hear the end of it.
"Lockjaw, Tippy, try to find people in the wreckage, I'm going after Jack." Daisy said running after Gwen.
"So Jack is this way too?"
"He's going to back Sheath up, so we're following him."
"Cool." "Gwen was faster than Daisy or: she could be but right then she kept pace with the sounds of running in front of them, keeping her distance would be best if she wanted him to lead her to Sheath.
Gwen had read up on Exiles new posse once she got back on the team. She read , not skimmed, all they had on them, not just their criminal record and S.H.I.E.L.D. files. That meant she vaguely knew a lot of useless details, but it also meant that she hadn't missed anything like she'd done with the Wrecking crew.
The most important thing she'd learned was a list of all the people the authorities knew they were close to: family and non-criminal friends had mostly been redacted but not the people they had teamed up with, cell mates, other inhumans who'd been imprisoned in the same prison at the same time as them...
There wasn't a guarantee they'd know every inhuman that'd been locked up with them but since Exile wanted to make an inhuman army for the Kree even a tangentially related inhuman was a possible recruit.
She also knew about their powers: Furball seemed to have strength and durability with little else, Fume breathed out a noxious gas that was also an explosive, and Hollow could go intangible. He was particularly hard to contain, even compared to others with intangibility powers since he could pass through Adamantium without issues but he couldn't pass through electric currents, which was how they'd been able to contain him in the past.
Jack, the last new member of Exiles crew, could use the dark force which, like most magic, wasn't really something people understood . They at least knew that using it could be like any other superpower, unlike most other forms of magic where you'd need to dedicate your life to it for years before you could do just about anything with it. But it was like a magic in that just about anyone could learn it even without a specific power.
In Jack's particular case using the Darkforce meant summoning magical unbreakable chains that packed quite a punch when used as a whip as well as either some form of healing or durability, the records weren't clear on it. Nothing too fancy, and not as dangerous as when Exile used it to become a giant monster, but nothing to scoff at either.
Ahead of her she heard Jack slow down, then stop. Gwen's 'costume' didn't have any hard parts to make sound, and she changed the soles of her feet to be even softer to further dampen her footsteps, but there was a limit to how silent Daisy could get with her boots.
They snuck closer. At every corner she peeked ahead to see if they had reached Sheath and Jack yet, before walking ahead when they weren't there. Until they were. Sheath wasn't paying much attention to her teammate, choosing instead to play with her energy daggers.
After Daisy took a peak they charged. Sheath was standing further down the hall than Jack, but Gwen didn't let that slow her down. She fainted low, went high, higher than Jack had expected when she crawled on the ceiling for about a second, maybe he hadn't been briefed on her?
She jumped down a bit short of having Sheath in dropkick range, the swiped her feet but had to back off when Sheath's energy daggers came flying.
Her Spider-Sense told her to watch out for the wall to her right but nothing came of it.
Sheath took advantage of her split attention to attack her, swiping with her knife in melee range putting Gwen on the defensive. If they had been normal knives she'd disarm her opponent easily but with energy daggers that was impossible, not to mention ineffective since she could always make more.
Gwen and Sheath danced around for a short bit, with Gwen landing a few hits but never with enough power to knock her opponent down, but dodging enough to still call it winning.
The wall kept pestering her, now on her left, with its presence, somehow posing a threat, but she dismissed it, nothing had come of it so far.
In a moments distraction Sheath nicked Gwen's right arm, draining her of energy. If she landed maybe ten more of those, or one serious stab, Gwen would actually loose. She lobbed a series of jabs at Sheath, in the kidneys, solar plexus, and face, weak enough to keep her fighting, strong enough to hurt .
As she darted around her opponent, dodging the following swipes she noticed Daisy struggling against Jack as he furiously swung his chains around him. He moved in a strange way, not just keeping Daisy away from himself. Maybe something else?
Sheath wasn't acting that way; her focus was entirely on Gwen, who earned another nick, this time on her cheek, for looking at Daisy.
If Gwen handled Sheath quickly she could assist Daisy. She fought more seriously, using webs to try binding her enemy, but Sheath seemed to have learned at least the basics of how to fight while in prison, which made it a lot harder for Gwen than it used to be.
Daisy took a step to her right and Jack moved to intercept. Intercept what? The wall? The dangerous wall, something was up.
Daisy was many times more confident in her ability to handle Sheath than Jack, because Sheath didn't attack continuously, there were gaps. Jack on the other hand fought like a maniac, which meant he had no technique but he had comparatively short gaps between attacks and had further reach than anything Sheath could do besides throwing her daggers.
If Daisy had a good way to attack from a distance the fight would be a lot simpler, but as it was she couldn't land a hit.
She knew the base they were in hadn't expected any combat, there wasn't anything worth pissing S.H.I.E.L.D. off in it so security had been pretty lax, but if there was anybody left in a fighting condition they'd have gone to back up either her team or her by then. Most likely was that only two remained when they got there. Other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents would arrive soon though.
Gwen jumped back several meters, away from Sheath, for a breather. She easily dodged Sheath's knives then charged. Just a moment before they clashed Gwen dodged to her left, and pulled Sheath, using her webs, in an arc into the wall.
Jack got startled, turning to see what happened. Daisy used the opportunity to get closer but her feral opponent realized too soon, and she had to abort to get out of his range. Even after the initial shock had worn off, Jack kept glancing behind him at the fight.
She was more to the left of Jack than before, and took the opportunity to get around him. She was surprised when she realized he wasn't trying to stop her.
Earlier when Daisy had tried to go around him he hadn't let her but this time Jack had given her an almost free pass to get to the other side of him, by moving closer to the wall. The same wall he hadn't let her get close to the last time around, the same wall he kept glancing at!
Daisy retreated and initially Jack didn't pursue, but when she went close to the wall, and began dismantling it with her powers he immediately lashed out at her. She threw herself to the ground, as the Darkforce chains lodged themselves in the wall. She got up again and, before Jack could get his chains out of the wall, she'd made a big enough hole and stepped through.
On the other side was a server room. As far as she could tell it was empty but there must have been a reason why they'd try to keep her from it, why Sheath and Jack had been placed outside of the room with no apparent objective.
Hollow was the only known member of Exiles group not accounted for so odds were that he was somewhere in there, trying to access S.H.I.E.L.D.'s classified data, but as far as Daisy knew nothing important was on those servers.
Daisy made a hole in the wall, and in the process crushed Jack's chains under the rubble, but even that wouldn't delay him for long. Even Sheath, who until then had been focused exclusively on Gwen, split her focus between the heroine and the hole in the wall.
Jack freed his chains just as Sheath made a break for it, placing himself between Gwen and her enemy, giving Sheath an open path to attack Daisy!
Gwen shot webs at him, but Jack barely slowed down as he lashed his chains around, so she tried something different. She made a web shield out of webs that weren't necessarily the strongest, but all the stickier for it, and advanced.
The chains slammed into her shield, tearing it apart but getting the whole thing stuck on it as a result, and then stuck to the floor. Gwen rushed in on Jack and delivered an uppercut that might have been slightly too strong before chasing after Sheath.
Inside Sheath had Daisy on the run, but wasn't throwing any of her daggers. Gwen went after her prey, silently, ready to take her down the instant she was in reach.
She shot a web-line at her foot and pulled, tripping up Sheath, and then pounced.
She punched Sheath's head, repeatedly, threw a knuckle at her ribs to lower her guard, then kept punching. Kept attacking . She needed to eliminate the threat.
"Stop!"
Gwen looked up to see Daisy staring at her, wide eyed. "Are you safe? Any injuries?" Gwen asked as went to check her over.
She stopped when Daisy took a step back.
"What's wrong?"
"You almost killed Sheath just now."
Gwen looked back, seeing the bloody beat up form of the villain lying on the floor. "She was going after you, and you needed help so I..."
"I wasn't in any danger, Gwen. I was looking for Hollow. Whatever they're here for, it's in here, and it's his job to get it."
She smiled, relieved. "That's good. I was really worried just now."
"Is that why you almost killed Sheath?" Daisy was keeping her chin down, expecting a fight?
"Yes." Why else would she have done it? "Or, well... I was holding back before, when I got worried I stopped holding back."
"That didn't look like you just stopped holding back."
Gwen looked at Sheath again. She hadn't stopped hitting just because Sheath stopped moving, which was probably where she'd gone wrong, but it was Sheath , one of the worst people in the world. Maybe not objectively , by any metric, but on a personal level.
If it had been anybody else, other than Murderdock or the Jackal, she was sure she would have stopped. "Maybe... I don't know, maybe she deserved it?" She looked to Daisy, hoping for some validation, but all she saw was shock and disappointment. "I mean it's Sheath! I didn't want to kill her, but come on. I..."
The more she talked the worse it sounded. She hadn't meant to almost kill her, but she also wouldn't feel bad about it if she did and maybe that was bad enough. She wanted to be a hero, like her father had been for all of Gwendolyn's life, and he'd have never done something like that.
"I'm sorry."
Daisy slowly bent down and cuffed Sheath, all without looking away from Gwen. The obvious lack of trust stung.
She heard footsteps at the back of the room.
"Shit!" Daisy said as they both ran that way, but whoever it was had disappeared before they got there. Gwen hurried out into the hallway, Jack was getting up and Hollow was getting close to him.
She wanted to earn Daisy's trust back, didn't ever want to see her looking at her that way, and the first step to doing that would be to stop Hollow.
Her mind was racing and she didn't have time to recall exactly what they'd used to contain him but the word 'electricity' came to mind. She jumped to the ceiling then punched out a light and, reaching inside, grabbed and pulled on the cables.
Bellow her Exile, Fume, and Furball appeared. They hadn't gone for Sheath yet, but she was running out of time. She jumped down with the cables to fry, if not Hollow, the hard drive he was holding. If she could just do that...
She passed through Hollow then the room changed.