Rescue

Unlike Daisy, who was just drifting through life, Black Girl's parents had plans for her future. The main reason she had come to this godforsaken church school was its close relationship with Yale University.

These prestigious universities had all been connected to the church in their early days. Getting good grades at a church school, or a recommendation with enough weight behind it, would be a great help when applying to elite universities.

Now, however, everything seemed to have gained a few new variables.

"Why are they closing the school?" Daisy had no love for singing hymns, but this was currently her only place to stay. Without any plans for the future, it was still very important to her.

Black Girl thought for a moment. "I heard some company wants to buy up all the land in Hell's Kitchen, tear everything down, and rebuild the whole area."

Daisy pulled out her laptop, connected to the internet, and quickly searched for information. She soon found the answer. "United Construction Company is funding the acquisition of several nearby properties."

She was somewhat puzzled. Was United Construction Company already laying the groundwork in Hell's Kitchen this early?

Kingpin stood behind United Construction Company. At this point, Kingpin was still far from the peak of his life. Swallowing Hell's Kitchen whole was beyond his capabilities, so he had joined forces with several parties and created the United Construction Company as a front.

But Daisy clearly remembered that they were supposed to start buying land only after the Avengers fought the Chitauri. That was still years away!

Over the next few days, she returned to school. Everyone was uneasy. The teachers no longer taught seriously, while the students were left to their own devices.

The only people happy about it were several school trustees. Kingpin did not want to provoke an organization like a church school—one that looked shabby but actually had extensive connections—so the demolition compensation was extremely generous.

Daisy saw Kingpin's assistant, James Wesley, at the school with her own eyes. The well-dressed man managed Kingpin's criminal empire for him. The trustees waited on this walking fortune with extreme humility, terrified of slighting him in any way.

Negotiations between the two sides progressed rapidly.

No matter how unhappy she was about it, the school's closure had become a fact. Daisy now had two choices before her: make a living on her own, or find another school to finish high school before going to college.

Daisy was confident. With her powers, two lifetimes of experience, and insight from the future, making some money would not be difficult.

But deciding which side to join in the future was a problem.

Joining the underworld was immediately ruled out. As a failed webnovel author, she was fundamentally still a law-abiding good person. She had no interest in selling drugs, trafficking organs, or dealing weapons.

It was ten times harder for a woman than a man to build a thriving criminal organization. If she did not rely on men, every newly initiated hothead would definitely challenge her first. Showing off and slapping faces once or twice was fine, but fighting every day would be annoying as hell.

She had never heard of any woman making a resounding name for herself in the underworld, either. That path was not for her.

Running a legitimate business meant following many rules. Once it developed to a certain extent, S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra would certainly turn their attention toward her.

The former would be manageable. The latter would be far more troublesome.

In the movies, Hydra had always lurked within S.H.I.E.L.D., making it seem as though the two sides were roughly equal in strength.

That was not the case at all. Hydra was an enormous organization, and its structure could be divided into four parts.

The first was multinational corporations, using legal activities to conceal illegal ones. The Typhon Group, for example, had two hundred and fifty thousand employees, and its board of directors was entirely controlled by Hydra. Its businesses covered everything from food and medicine to arms and aerospace materials.

The second was government agencies in various countries: the Treasury Department, the FBI, the NSA, CSIS, and so on. In some of these departments, an important figure—or even the top leader outright—was Hydra.

The third was international criminal organizations. A.I.M., Pioneer Technology, which had dealt with Iron Man, was one of their representatives.

Only the fourth was intelligence agencies, and S.H.I.E.L.D. was merely one of them—just a "relatively important asset" within Hydra's vast organization.

Hydra had hundreds of billions of dollars in assets available for deployment at any time. Its elite trained soldiers were spread across bases around the world, totaling at least a hundred thousand.

Facing such a massive organization, Daisy truly did not think she had what it took to fight them.

She could only focus on what was in front of her. A painful problem revealed itself: she was broke again!

Easy marks like the last one were hard to find. She needed to get some spending money.

Black Girl urged her to work part-time at a convenience store with her, but Daisy rejected the idea without a second thought. What a joke. She, the mighty Quake, was supposed to become a shop clerk? If Stark was willing to scrub toilets, then she would become a shop clerk!

What could she do? She rented a car and drove around Manhattan for a day. She could not get into major corporations like Stark Industries, Osborn Enterprises, or Rand Corporation, while she had no interest in working for smaller places.

She passed the famous Central Park and was about to go in for a stroll, but the area was cordoned off by a large number of police officers. She watched from afar for a while and heard the onlookers discussing what seemed to have been a gang shootout. Dozens of bodies had been carried out. Since it had nothing to do with her, she simply turned back.

When she opened the car door, she found a man covered in blood lying facedown in the back seat. Her enhanced senses told her that he still had an extremely faint breath.

She hurriedly backed away, preparing to call out to the police in the distance.

"Huh?" She casually sensed him through vibration frequencies and made an unexpected discovery. He was a good man—at least better than most people. Upright, brave, fearless; according to her frequency perception, he seemed to possess all these qualities.

She swallowed the words she had been about to shout. There were too few good people in this world. It was rare to encounter one, so she would help if she could. Besides, the Central Park shooting had given her a few guesses.

The man still retained a trace of consciousness. When he saw her approach, he seemed to think of something and immediately passed out.

"Wake up, wake up! What kind of sense does it make for you to pass out the moment you see me?" Daisy shut the car door and struggled a little as she turned him over. He was heavy. Even with her enhanced strength, she found him difficult to move. In plain terms, the guy was huge.

The man looked to be in his thirties. He wore a casual shirt and jeans, and had no weapons on him, but the three bloody holes in his chest and abdomen looked terrifying.

One of them was slightly above his heart. Though he had not died on the spot, his life was about to reach its end.

Daisy pulled an ID from his pocket and glanced at it.

"Frank Castle? This guy..." Daisy immediately fell silent. So it really was him. This guy was the future Punisher, whom many people jokingly called Punisher.

The Central Park shooting had caused Frank's once happy family to die tragically. Afterward, he would take mad revenge on gangsters and swear to find the true culprit behind the incident.