[ Afghanistan ]
Two F-22 Raptors took off from the Kandahar U.S. military base and screamed across the Afghan skies, piercing clouds with sonic booms that cracked open the silence of the battlefield. Back at Kandahar base, the brass leaned in closer to their monitors—curious, almost eager, to see what a man could do against a war god in the age of machines.
The sonic tremors drew Mandarin's attention. Daisy exhaled, sharp and measured. She ordered the convoy to push ahead at maximum speed, the roaring jets buying them distance—if not salvation.
She didn't spare a second for the pilots. Prayer was the most she could offer. Whether they lived or died was no longer hers to control.
The two pilots arrived under strict orders, confusion laced through their voices. There were murmurs, questions, doubts—but orders were orders.
The F-22 lead and wingman swept low, scanning the barren terrain per protocol. Frustrated, the lead pilot squinted through the dust-blown haze. "Nothing on the ground."
"Daniel! He's above you!" The wingman's cry shattered the pilot's assumptions. He climbed hard, banking sharp. What he saw made his blood turn cold. The generals monitoring the live feed saw it too.
A man, ancient and unbound by gravity, stood motionless in the air. Cloaked in green silk, he regarded them with curiosity, as if inspecting curios behind glass.
The ring on his left thumb glowed pale white. The 40-ton warplane—weaponized perfection—lurched like a puppet yanked by its strings, dragged toward the floating man.
If Daisy were present, she'd recognize the physics for what they were—manipulated gravity. But the pilot, Daniel, understood none of it. All he knew was that his controls were useless, and death had a face.
"Request to fire—requesting immediate permission to fire!" His voice broke protocol but clung to procedure. He was still trying to follow the manual in a war that had already left it behind.
The order from command came through cold and clinical—do not engage. The pilot's blood ran colder. They wanted the flying target intact for study, concerned even bullets might compromise their "sample."
He tried to follow protocol, but when Mandarin's fingers began to glow and sliced through the aircraft's nose like wet paper, fear took the controls. No superior, divine or otherwise, could override instinct. He pulled the trigger.
Gunfire erupted, a desperate storm of lead aimed at Mandarin's position. The pilot tugged the control stick, hoping to claw free from the invisible grip holding the plane midair.
Nothing responded. The fighter hung there, pinned like an insect. Forward, up—every axis was locked. The machine might as well have been dead.
"What the hell is this thing?" he shouted, panic cracking his voice. The hail of bullets vanished into an icy shimmer—Mandarin's crystalline shield. A Sidewinder missile followed, but even that was swallowed.
Alien? Mutant? Super soldier? The pilot had no time to finish the thought. The Mandarin's eyes darkened, irritated more by the inconvenience than the assault. Shield upon shield layered over him—air, earth, frost—stacked like armor.
Mandarin didn't bother identifying the plane. His eyes burned, and from his left index finger curled a dragon of fire. It unfurled in the wind, alive with heat and hunger, and twisted toward the craft.
The flames wrapped around the jet. The pilot, Daniel, in a last bid for survival, pulled the ejection lever. But heat beat him to it. He never made it out as he was vaporized. The fighter exploded in the sky, its bones scattering like ash.
The wingman froze for a beat too long. His orders had been to stand by, but watching his lead vaporized broke his discipline. He fired—two Sidewinders in quick succession, defying command.
Mandarin didn't bother to take it head-on like before. Instead, with a flick of electric blue from his left middle finger lit the sky, snapping both missiles midair. The bolts didn't stop there—they arced, swift and unnatural, chasing the fighter.
Distance gave the pilot seconds, barely enough. He climbed, straining everything to escape the electric net. He almost made it.
But then came the black mist, thick and oily, swallowing the aircraft whole. A silver beam, silent and exact, streaked from Mandarin's right hand's ring finger. The decomposition ring activated. There was no second chance.
The Raptor vanished, unraveled to atoms in the sky. In the base command center, two generals stood stiff, hollowed by the truth. Against powers like this, their ranks and ribbons meant nothing.
When technology failed, so did ego. The air was full of stunned silence. Their bluster collapsed into dread. They called Daisy—not to lead, but to follow.
Despite the guilt, Daisy didn't waste the sacrifice. The dogfight bought them minutes, and she used every second to reach Kandahar. The base swallowed them, shaken but intact.
...
[ U.S. Military Base, Kandahar, Afghanistan ]
She expected the Mandarin to follow—to descend like divine wrath—but he didn't. Her prediction missed. For now, he held back.
The base sirens wailed. Troops scrambled with weapons drawn and helmets unfastened. Daisy stayed quiet, watching the gates.
She didn't ease her vigilance just because they'd reached base. The threat hadn't disappeared—it had merely gone quiet. In her mind, the situation resembled pulling a feral, apex predator straight into a novice village without backup. And now, everyone was pretending they were safe.
The warning blared again, monotone and mechanical: "This is not a drill, all combat units enter the preset battlefield." As if summoned by the siren itself, a young messenger approached her briskly. The general wanted a word. She nodded once, expression unreadable. She had stirred a hornet's nest and dropped it on their doorstep—explaining was no longer optional.
She followed without protest. Responsibility came with command, and she'd never been the type to avoid consequence. The Kandahar base was built like a fortress beneath the earth, its thick concrete skeleton designed for worst-case scenarios. Nuclear detonation, full-scale assault—it didn't matter. The architecture whispered one thing: survival. Even for someone like her, it would take extreme effort to collapse this bunker.
The soldiers here were another matter. Unlike the cobbled-together "elite" squads she'd been saddled with earlier, these were forged in combat—disciplined, scarred, and deadly. The kind that didn't flinch under pressure. They didn't gawk. They didn't mumble. They just stared at her as she passed, weighing her like a new variable in an already complex equation.
Once inside the operations room, Daisy absorbed the facts quickly. Both F-22s had gone down. One pilot died instantly. The other—captured. Satellite imagery had picked up signs of interrogation, which in this context meant one thing: a psychic dissection. The Mandarin had rifled through his memories like a thief. Daisy suspected the pilot didn't even know what had been taken.
She knew that feeling all too well. Memory intrusion wasn't neat. When she had brushed Viper's mind, it left her nauseous and shaking. Human cognition wasn't meant to absorb raw mental data. Even Professor Charles, with decades of psychic expertise, stressed that memory reading was a delicate, selective art. But the Mandarin wasn't delicate—he was chaos in silk robes.
And that chaos had cost him. By indiscriminately consuming memories—from irrelevant childhood trauma to adult instincts—the Mandarin had likely overloaded himself. That disarray, ironically, had bought Daisy time. Time to reach base. Time to regroup. The only question was how long that delay would last.
Seven or eight senior officers occupied the command center. Each wore the steel-cut stiffness of combat command. Two stood out—an Air Force major general, eyes hard as obsidian, and a lieutenant general from the Army who looked like he hadn't blinked since 9/11. Their expressions said it all: she had their attention, and they were waiting for answers.
To Be Continued...
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[POWER STONES AND REVIEWS PLS]