The Domo slid back into the stratosphere, its celestial cloaking field rippling like disturbed water as it settled into a high-orbit holding pattern. Inside the monolithic, gold-veined observation deck, Makkari's hands flew in a frantic, vibrating blur. Her synthesizer translated the silent report into a flat, damning monotone that echoed off the ancient walls.
Ajak listened to the silence that followed, her expression heavy with millennia of burden. She called the meeting.
The full roster of ten Eternals gathered in the ship's central chamber. Ajak laid the reality of the board out with clinical precision: all the tournament tickets had been distributed, the competition was beginning at this exact moment, and Smith Doyle had casually detected their cloaked vessel by some terrifying means none of them possessed a mathematical model for.
Thena leaned back against a celestial pillar and smiled softly at the vaulted ceiling. "A few more years is nothing," the goddess of war murmured, completely unbothered. "We've waited a thousand."
"The math has changed," Ajak said, her voice dropping, carrying the suffocating weight of the Emergence. "Before, waiting was viable. Now there is a clock running that I cannot ignore."
She looked around the room, meeting the eyes of her family one by one.
Ikaris uncrossed his arms, his posture radiating raw, unyielding kinetic power. He spread his hands, the solution obvious to him. "So we take what we need."
Ajak looked at him, her gaze a physical wall. "Does that thought have a next sentence, Ikaris, or is that the entirety of your strategy?"
Ikaris's jaw tightened. He said nothing.
"Smith Doyle knows every significant power on Earth," Ajak continued, her tone brooking no argument. "He released the Dragon Balls openly. That means he has the strength to back it up. Violence is not the reliable path here."
She turned her attention to the master inventor. "Phastos. I heard that Vanko Industries has been entirely unable to acquire vibranium or secondary adamantium through normal human channels. Universal Capsule has the exact same supply chain problem."
Phastos nodded slowly, rubbing his beard as the gears of his mind began to turn.
Ajak looked at Sersi. The empathic Eternal was watching the glowing holographic display of Earth. "Could you produce a viable quantity?"
"If I've seen the material," Sersi said quietly, running her fingertips over the edge of the console, "I can convert matter into it. Small batches aren't prohibitively costly for me."
"Then that is our opening with Smith," Ajak declared. "We offer Sersi's conversion ability in exchange for a Dragon Ball and a tournament slot. If that's too much, we negotiate down. There is something we can give him that no one else on this planet can." She stood up, her golden robes shifting. "After this cycle concludes, I will go to him directly."
Kingo raised his hand, his brow furrowed in frustration. "Can we at least watch from the ship? Remote observation?"
Makkari shook her head vehemently, her hands signing a rapid explanation.
"The island is heavily shielded," Phastos translated, his voice grim. "Universal Capsule modified the global satellite coverage. There's a total blackout over those coordinates. That's why I sent Makkari to the site physically—there was absolutely no other way to get current information. We can't observe remotely."
Gilgamesh offered a heavy, rumbling shrug, clapping a massive hand onto Kingo's shoulder. "Then we wait for the next one. We plan early this time—one year out, minimum."
Ajak nodded in agreement and closed the meeting.
None of them knew it was the last.
Five aircraft arrived at the Pacific island in rapid, deafening sequence, their VTOL thrusters tearing through the heavy ocean wind.
Contestants and spectators were directed through a ruthlessly efficient processing flow. Armed, silent staff met them at the ramps, confirmed biometric identities, and walked everyone up the sweeping ramps to the arena seating.
The island's infrastructure had been violently overhauled since the previous cycle. The mountain's entire upper face had been engineered perfectly flat. The arena itself had expanded massively, the old stone replaced entirely by the matte, cold expanse of secondary adamantium. It was a completely different venue in all but geographic location.
Steve Rogers found his seat in the tiered audience section and immediately scanned his perimeter.
Nick Fury was seated two rows back. So were senior S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel, Maria Hill sitting perfectly rigid among them. Higher up, Steve spotted two severe, tailored faces he recognized from deep-cover files—the upper echelon of the World Security Council. The shadow government had come to watch the gods bleed.
Steve leaned toward Coulson, pitching his voice under the ambient roar of the wind. "Someone else from S.H.I.E.L.D. has a Dragon Ball."
"Jessica Jones," Coulson replied, not turning his head.
Steve looked across the vast expanse of the stadium seating and found her. She was slouched in a reinforced chair, looking profoundly hungover and terrifyingly alert. She caught his eye. Two soldiers drafted into Fury's shadow war. She gave him a small, cynical nod. He returned it with solemn respect.
As the last groups settled into their designated sectors, the harsh stadium lighting suddenly shifted, plunging the audience into shadow while illuminating the center of the indestructible ring.
A blond man walked confidently onto the stage, a microphone in hand. He was composed, perfectly tailored, and moved with the particular, unshakeable ease of someone who had worked roaring crowds for years.
It was not Eddie Brock.
In the VIP audience section, Eddie watched the man take the stage. His knuckles turned white against the padded armrest. Under his tailored shirt, a mass of black alien muscle coiled in agitated sympathy. He said nothing for a long, vibrating moment.
Anne's hand found his, her grip grounding and sharp. "You run the Red Ribbon Group," she murmured, leaning in close. "Stop eyeing someone else's microphone."
"You don't understand what hosting this event means," Eddie whispered, his voice thick with suppressed resentment.
"I understand you already have a job."
Eddie accepted the statement, swallowing the bile, without fully agreeing with a single word of it.
The host's voice, rich and perfectly modulated, boomed through the arena's invisible sound system.
"Welcome to the third Dragon Ball Tournament. Six contestants. One wish. Let me introduce them."
The massive, holographic screen suspended above the ring flared to life.
"First: Lorelei of Asgard. Known across the Nine Realms as the Banshee."
A blinding white spotlight snapped down, finding Lorelei in a section of the audience that had been deliberately, tactically cleared of all personnel around her.
Under the light, every man in the stadium who looked toward her felt reality violently shift.
It wasn't a sound. It was a pressure. A sudden, narcotic sweetness that flooded the air, bypassing the optic nerve and sinking directly into the brain stem. It was a pull with no obvious physical source, a sudden, overwhelming awareness of her presence that completely bypassed normal human attention. The effect was instantaneous, indiscriminate, and utterly terrifying.
Harley Keener, sitting beside Tony, suddenly slumped forward. His eyes glazed over. He said, to no one in particular, "She seems really nice. I kind of want to go say hi."
Tony Stark blinked. His pupils dilated. His analytical mind violently registered the biological hijack—heart rate spiking, dopamine flooding, structural anomaly detected—but his body still tried to lean forward.
Pepper's manicured hand dug ruthlessly into his ribs, the sharp pain shattering the spell.
"There's something happening with that woman that isn't normal attraction," Tony gasped quietly, his arc reactor humming as he forced his eyes rigidly forward, away from the Asgardian.
"I know," Pepper hissed. "I'm working on it."
Two rows back, Coulson gripped his knees, forcing his breathing to slow. He glanced at Steve. "Remarkable."
Steve had looked once, felt the psychic pressure wash over his mind, and found it utterly hollow. It couldn't find purchase. His soul was anchored entirely to a dance in 1945. He pulled his attention back to the ring without breaking a sweat. "She's striking," Steve said plainly. "But I'm only thinking about one person."
Coulson looked back at the stage, desperately thinking about his girlfriend in Portland, focusing on the cello music to drown out the supernatural static.
Across the arena, Natasha Romanoff watched the male audience members physically recalibrate around her and filed the phenomenon as a catastrophic operational variable. Jessica Jones simply noted that the effect had completely bypassed her, confirming her working theory about the magic's specific biological mechanics.
In the S.H.I.E.L.D. section, Fury and Alexander Pierce sat with expressions that had gone terrifyingly flat in a professional, lethal way.
"Asgard is more dangerous than the files suggest," Fury muttered, his single eye locked on the stadium floor.
Pierce didn't blink. "Any power we can't screen for or counter is a threat by definition. And we can't screen for this."
The Fraternity members in attendance had been heavily briefed in advance. Most had kept their eyes glued strictly to the virtual image on the screen rather than Lorelei herself—Bulma's testing had confirmed that digital photographs carried no magical payload. The charm required a direct line of sight to the subject's actual physical presence, and sustained proximity to break anyone with significant willpower. Knowing the mechanics didn't eliminate the narcotic pull for the men who had carelessly looked directly at her before they understood what they were looking at, but it kept them in their seats.
Mercifully, the spotlight cut out.
The collective male audience exhaled, steadying itself as the psychic pressure vanished.
The screen above the ring changed.
"Second: Steve Rogers. Super-soldier. Frozen during World War II to save New York. Currently the only man alive who can make that sentence factually accurate."
The spotlight snapped down, illuminating Steve in his full Captain America tactical suit, the iconic shield propped solidly beside his boots.
Across the stadium, Ivan Vanko's dark eyes instantly locked onto the shield, and stayed there. He didn't care about the serum or the legend. He cared about the metallurgy. Vibranium composite. Single production run. No known duplicates. The way the disc had reportedly absorbed and deflected Chitauri energy weapons in the S.H.I.E.L.D. field reports suggested a kinetic absorption profile unlike anything currently existing in commercial or military supply chains. Ivan stared at it, his mind violently tearing the structure apart, wanting to understand the molecular bonds.
In her isolated seating block, Lorelei looked at Steve with mild, aristocratic professional interest. A mortal enhanced by mortal chemistry. He was clearly the lowest-threat name on the bracket. She made a mental note of his physical parameters and dismissed him entirely.
The other contestants around the arena, looking at the man out of time, felt a sudden wave of relief. Watching his introduction, they all found quiet, internal reasons to feel very comfortable about their own odds of survival.
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