Atlantis wasn’t exactly the safest place in the world at the moment, but a girl had to get to work and, besides, Daisy felt pretty confident she could handle herself. She had some moves, she had her powers and the Centipede Serum. She’d faced some pretty damn powerful opponents; she could handle a vampire, especially one who seemed more interested in hearing himself brag than anything else.
Okay, maybe she shouldn’t have underestimated him.
Stefan was hungry. After his altercation with the Strigoi, he’d found himself awake and with a powerful need to eat someone. All of his old instincts had kicked back into high gear and it seemed all too appropriate to let them fly without much in the way of consideration for, well. Anything. He’d worked his way through a few woodland beasts just to make it easier to think straight. But after taunting his comrades via the network, it ultimately felt right to make good on his threats.
And if there was one place that Stefan (the human) was familiar with, it was the base. And with Daisy Johnson’s words buzzing in his brain, he decided the first person he should eat would be her. The path to the base was pretty well-worn and he simply had to wait in one of the alleys. As soon as he saw her, he let that old speed he’d missed so badly fly. She was well within reach and so vital. His eyes, bloodshot and red, were set. And he was ravenous.
She was almost to the base when he grabbed her without warning. Some other people might have frozen in fear, but Daisy had too much training for that, she’d been through too many other situations that should have meant certain death. She was the damn destroyer of worlds and she wasn’t going down without a fight. It was probably really, really lucky he didn’t have the right angle to compel her and Daisy used that of her advantage along with enough enhanced strength to pull herself away from him. It hurt like a bitch as his fangs definitely tore some flesh from the base of her neck where he’d bitten her at just that moment.
Stefan paused then, his eyes narrowing as he tilted his head and smiled at her. “Daisy, you taste really weird. In a good way. You’ve got a lot of stuff in there, don’t you?”
“Oh, you have no idea,” she smirked, despite the extremely precarious position she was in.
Her training and strength against his speed and supernatural strength might have made this a pretty even match, but Daisy had super powers and she wasn’t afraid to use them. They’d both gotten some good hits in at this point when she reached out her hands and used her ability to manipulate the vibrations in the air to blast him away from her. He almost looked dazed when her hit a brick wall with a force that probably would have killed a human being. She also saw that moment where it clicked for him that sticking around probably wasn’t going to end well for him and whether that was because she’d just quaked him into a brick wall or because he heard someone else coming, Daisy sank slowly to the ground in relief as she watched him speed away in a blur. She couldn’t stay there long, but she’d taken enough of a beating to need just a moment to just sit there before she could make her way to medical.
All Tony saw was a figure disappear in front of his eyes - not quite literally disappear, but whoever the fuck it was had moved fast enough and had started to move before Tony had ran over to see what the commotion was, his hand already pressing to the nanosuit attachment to give himself some protection, some semblance of being able to fight back. His mind went straight to the vampire attacks but it was bright out, so he’d been under the happy, oblivious assumption that they were safe.
No dice. The helmet melted back into his suit when he saw Daisy slumped against a wall, an open wound on her neck and from the angle Tony approached, what looked to be no signs of life - his blood ran cold before she shifted slightly and he let out a sigh of relief, jogging forwards with the suit’s boots clinking on the ground as he reached her position, looking around to see if her attacker planned on returning to finish the job. “Hey. You with me right now?” he crouched down, very carefully moving the suit cover away from his hand as he placed it on her shoulder.
“Yeah,” Daisy managed weakly as she turned her head to look at her boss. She offered a weak smile and falling back on her usual defense mechanisms added, “you should see the other guy.” She knew she needed to get up and get moving, but she’d lost enough blood from the wound at her neck that she was really damn tired. Walking to medical just seemed like a lot and she wouldn’t admit it out loud, but she was kind of glad Tony was here.
The blood was a pretty alarming sight, even for somebody who’d seen multiple wargrounds in various states of disarray and other horrors of the world - while Tony wasn’t a doctor, he was fully aware that that much blood was never a positive thing and he knew instinctively she needed to see a doctor. First and foremost, though, he lifted his hand, the repulsor on his palm lighting the area up as he tried to find the attacker. With that cleared up, the nanotech suit melted from his hand so he could put pressure on the wound in her neck, glancing up. “Can you walk, or do you need an assist?”
“I think I can walk.” Daisy wasn’t 100% sure of that fact and she definitely felt a little shaky, so maybe she would need a little help, but she didn’t think she needed to be carried or anything crazy like that. She just might maybe need someone to lean on while they walked to medical.
“It was Stefan,” she said as she slowly got to her feet. “Probably shouldn’t have poked the psycho vamp so hard.”
Tony put an arm behind her just in case she faltered, not particularly willing to let somebody get even more hurt out of their own pride. He knew that all too damn well. “Psycho vamp,” he repeated, a slightly incredulous tone to his voice. The reminder that vampires existed in this place was oddly sobering now he realised that the vampires they’d been living with were actively dangerous, something that he hadn’t personally encountered before. “Sorry, I thought everybody here was relatively cool with each other? As in, not prone to ‘psycho’ rages that make them attack?” he lifted his hand to check the marks, grimacing a little as he pushed back down. “Either way, I’m not sticking around to find out if he’s coming back for seconds. I’ve got you.”
Daisy gave him a look, wondering if he’d just not been looking at the network or hadn’t gotten the memo about Stefan not being the cuddly care bear he usually was. She’d definitely got it and had almost definitely poked at him a little too hard on the network, but she guessed maybe not everyone had seen it.
“Stefan,” she clarified. “Usually a good guy. Something happened and now he’s all no humanity super jerk tries to snack on his friends Stefan.” She was pretty sure command had a team on tracking him and trying to fix him or something, but her head was a little fuzzy right now.
“No humanity,” Tony murmured, more to himself than to Daisy. He wasn’t the most social, nor was he someone easily taken away from his work. “There’s been a lot of vampire attacks all of a sudden. I guess I didn’t put two and two together until just now. Been working all day, so I only really glance over shit,” he murmured as he looked around again. “FRIDAY, keep a scan on the local area. Warn me if anything gets within twenty feet,” he informed the AI in his suit, hoping to hell that they wouldn’t run into anything even worse on the way out of here.