The restaurant two blocks from the Fraternity was quiet enough for a real conversation. Smith and Tony had taken a corner table, and the flatscreen mounted above the bar was cycling through promotional clips for The Paragons — training montages, action highlights, carefully staged candid shots of the members in civilian settings that somehow managed to look both authentic and completely manufactured.
Tony watched a slow-motion sequence of one of the members leaping off a building with his arms spread wide, the camera catching the exact angle to make it look effortless.
"Eddie's doing good work," he said, "but why do they look like they're debuting a K-pop group?"
"That's his strategy," Smith said. "He pitched it at the first operations meeting. Public engagement, brand identity, media saturation."
Tony turned to look at him. "And you agreed to that."
"I did."
"That's genuinely disturbing." He picked up his coffee. "Let's hope the Avengers never end up with a merchandise line."
"The Paragons are a different operation," Smith said. "Different purpose. And for what it's worth, Eddie's already in talks with three major studios. He's basically living in Hollywood at this point."
Tony stared at him. "He actually did it."
"He actually did it."
Tony set down his cup and dropped the subject. He hadn't come here to talk about Eddie Brock's entertainment career.
"The Mandarin," he said. "Ten Rings branding, nine explosions so far, three confirmed in the news cycle. No bomb casings recovered at any of the sites, which means no conventional device. Someone is producing these blasts clean." He pulled out his phone and slid it across the table, the saved video already queued. "Tell me what you know."
Smith watched the video. The masked figure, the deliberate theatrics, the Ten Rings iconography deployed like a flag. He hadn't been tracking this closely — his read of the timeline had shifted after his conversation with the Ancient One, and the Mandarin had fallen below the threshold of his immediate attention.
But the explosions without casings meant one thing clearly enough. Extremis. The program was already running somewhere.
"Wenwu handed operational control of the Ten Rings to Xialing when he came on with us," Smith said. "Six months ago. If this is coming from inside the organization, she'd know." He was already dialing.
The call connected on the second ring.
"Wenwu. There's a situation. Someone's been broadcasting under the Ten Rings name — calls himself the Mandarin. Nine explosions attributed to him, three public. Claims to be the organization's leader."
Across the line, there was a brief silence. In the background, Smith could just make out Ying Li's voice — they'd apparently been in the middle of a conversation.
"Boss," Wenwu said, his tone measured, "I think there's been a misunderstanding. Xialing has been running a clean operation. That direction came from both of us. And I'll tell you plainly — I never had a senior commander called the Mandarin. Not one."
Tony, sitting across from Smith with the call on speaker, raised an eyebrow.
"I'll contact Xialing and—"
"Don't," Smith said. "I'll call her directly. Stand by."
He ended the call.
Wenwu set the phone down and looked at Ying Li, who had gone still beside him.
"Xialing wouldn't do this," she said. It wasn't a question.
"No," Wenwu agreed. "She wouldn't. Not with Shang-Chi in The Paragons, not with me in the Fraternity. She's not stupid, and she's not reckless." He thought for a moment. "Someone is using the name. We'll know more once the boss reaches her."
He sat back, and the weight of the Dragon Balls' revival — which they'd been discussing before the call — settled differently now, competing for attention with something that felt like a warning.
Xu Xialing had been running the Ten Rings, and the organization looked nothing like what her father had left her.
That was intentional. She'd spent the first two months removing people who couldn't adapt to the new direction, reorganizing the command structure around loyalty to the mission rather than loyalty to the old hierarchy, and establishing clear lines between what the Ten Rings would do and what it would not. The work was grinding and political and occasionally required the kind of direct persuasion that left bruises, but the result was an organization she could actually run without looking over her shoulder.
She was in the operations center now, scrolling through her brother's latest promotional material on a secondary monitor. Shang-Chi's first solo showcase was coming up through The Paragons' media channel — slick production, good angles, the dragon-scale suit catching light in ways that made it look almost alive. She watched thirty seconds of it and felt a dull, familiar weight settle in her chest.
She didn't begrudge him the powers. That wasn't it. What she felt was more specific than that — the particular frustration of someone who had worked twice as hard for half the recognition, and now watched the gap widen not because of effort or skill, but because of something as arbitrary as bloodline expression.
The Heart of the Dragon had chosen him. It hadn't chosen her. That was the whole of it.
Her phone lit up. Smith Doyle.
She straightened and answered immediately.
And somewhere behind her, barely noticed, the person from Ta Lo village who'd attached himself to her operation three weeks ago looked up from his work and went quietly back to pretending he wasn't listening.
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