The illusion took Steve in the exact microscopic fraction of a second between his left boot leaving the adamantium and his right boot striking it.
One moment, he was a three-hundred-pound super-soldier driving his indestructible shield toward a witch, his ears filled with the howling Pacific wind and the roar of a chaotic battlefield.
The next, the wind died. The ring simply ceased to exist.
Steve stumbled, his heavy combat boots suddenly gliding smoothly over polished hardwood. The deafening roar of the arena was instantly replaced by the warm, crackling brass of a 1940s big band bleeding through an analog phonograph. The biting scent of ozone and ocean salt vanished, overpowered by the heady fragrance of expensive perfume and stale cigarette smoke. The walls were draped in victory bunting. The lighting was impossibly warm, catching the brass buttons of his perfectly pressed Class A uniform.
And Peggy Carter was there.
She stood right in front of him, young, radiant, the red of her lipstick sharp against her pale skin. She was smiling that knowing, heart-stopping smile, her hand gracefully extended toward him.
Something was wrong. Steve's tactical mind was screaming, a blaring, frantic alarm echoing underneath the music. The lighting was too perfect. The transition was physically impossible. He was in a fight for the fate of the world.
But Peggy was right there. Her eyes were soft, and her hand was outstretched, waiting for the dance he had promised her before the ice took him.
Steve Rogers lowered his guard, and took her hand.
They danced.
Back in the brutal reality of the Pacific arena, his physical body simply stopped.
Mid-stride, Captain America froze like a glitching hologram. His momentum vanished entirely. His eyes glassed over, staring blindly at empty space, his posture slackening as the phantom music played only for him.
Wanda didn't even drop into a defensive stance. She simply exhaled, walked casually up to the paralyzed super-soldier, and effortlessly lifted the heavy vibranium shield right off his unresisting arm.
The stadium crowd went utterly, profoundly quiet. And then, it erupted in a chaotic, terrified wave of noise.
"What did she do?" a five-star general demanded, gripping the railing.
"He was moving, he was right on top of her, and then he just—stopped!"
"He's Captain America. His willpower is documented. If she can do that to him without even touching him—"
The Kamar-Taj sorcerers sitting in the VIP section understood the mechanics of a mental breach. Everyone else in the stadium was working from sheer, panicked guesswork.
Jessica Jones went completely still. Her jaw set like granite. Her mind ruthlessly ran the tape backward—the scarlet barrage, Steve's tactical approach, the exact millisecond his eyes went dead. Was it physical proximity that triggered the hijack? Or had one of the earlier kinetic blasts carried a psychic payload she had missed in the chaos?
"Lasher," Jessica whispered, her lips barely moving. "If she gets into my head during our match—take over the nervous system. Wake me up."
Already planned, Lasher answered. The voice resonated from the dark fluid pooling at the base of her skull—a wet, metallic vibration carrying the lethal confidence of an apex predator. You have my word. Jessica's situation with her alien symbiote was absolutely nothing like the desperate, parasitic hostage negotiation Eddie Brock endured. She held the dominant initiative, they had a shared objective, and they both intimately knew it.
Across the arena, Lorelei's emerald eyes swept analytically over the platform. She intimately knew the architecture of illusion work. She possessed her own ancient, brutal methods for breaking a mind's grip. What she truly wanted, however, was for a male contestant to violently remove Wanda from the bracket before the chaotic witch became her direct problem.
Kaecilius watched the stage unblinking and said nothing. The scarlet magical structure was completely, fundamentally alien to anything housed in Kamar-Taj's sprawling libraries. It possessed no geometric logic, no anchored mandalas. He was still turning the impossible physics of it over in his mind. He didn't know yet that Smith Doyle fully intended to send this terrifying young woman to the Library—that Wanda was, in a cosmic sense, the junior sister he hadn't yet met.
On the platform, holding the heavy disc in her hands, Wanda pushed.
She flooded the vibranium with a massive, concentrated spike of raw chaos magic, searching for its breaking point.
The ambient magical pressure in the stadium spiked so violently it altered the barometric pressure. Every single S.H.I.E.L.D. Scouter in the arena went off simultaneously.
POP. CRACK. HISS.
Lenses shattered. Internal circuitry melted. A cascade of detonating, smoking components rippled up and down the intelligence section. The S.H.I.E.L.D. contingent tore the burning hardware from their faces, staring blindly at a collective, multi-million-dollar hardware loss that would require its own dedicated congressional line item. The veteran agents who had attended previous tournaments had arrogantly assumed their upgraded equipment could handle the power scaling this time.
It couldn't.
"She's completely off the charts," an analyst gasped, rubbing his smoking eye. "Rogers has absolutely no chance."
The shield didn't break.
Wanda turned the indestructible disc over in her hands, tracing the unmarred silver star. Rather than frustration at her failure to shatter it, the expression that crossed her face was far closer to cold, calculating satisfaction. Whatever this impossible material actually was, it was exactly what Pietro needed.
Deep inside the illusion, Steve let go of the shield.
The instant the physical tether was broken in the real world, the ballroom violently collapsed. The swing music warped into a terrifying, discordant screech. The bunting, the polished floors, the laughing guests, and Peggy herself—all of it was ripped away simultaneously, leaving Steve floating in a suffocating, blank white void. He couldn't find an edge. He pushed his boots against nothing and got nowhere. The beautiful scene had instantly dissolved the moment Wanda's attention shifted elsewhere, and the empty, neglected room of his mind became its own inescapable trap.
In reality, Wanda casually tossed a thick, glowing thread of red chaos magic around the super-soldier's waist. With a lazy flick of her wrist, she threw a two-hundred-and-forty-pound man completely off the adamantium platform.
Steve hit the ground outside the ring boundary with a heavy, bone-rattling thud.
The physical impact shattered the white void like glass. Steve blinked rapidly, his lungs pulling in the sharp, salty Pacific air. He scrambled to his knees, looking up, desperately trying to reorient himself to the arena, the screaming crowd, and the raised ring looming above him.
The vibranium shield came sailing down from the sky. He caught it on instinct, the familiar weight anchoring him back to reality.
From the edge of the platform, Wanda looked down at him, her scarlet energy fading.
"Steve," Wanda called out, her voice echoing clearly over the stunned crowd. "After the tournament—introduce me to Howard. I want him to build a weapon."
Steve stood up slowly, brushing the dust from his tactical suit. He looked up at the young woman. He hadn't expected to be eliminated this fast. He hadn't expected the fight to end before he threw a single punch. The heavy, crushing disappointment of losing his chance to save Peggy sat like lead in his chest.
But he answered her, his voice carrying the tragic, exhausted weight of a man out of time.
"I'd like to help with that," Steve said quietly. "But Howard's been dead for years."
Wanda blinked, her cold confidence faltering into genuine, jarring surprise.
In the VIP section, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents absorbed the exchange in dead silence. Tony Stark's expression didn't change a fraction of an inch, but a microscopic shift twitched at the corner of his mouth. She had just asked a dead man for a commission.
Tony looked past Wanda, his eyes locking onto the vibranium shield strapped to Steve's arm, and turned a massive, terrifying thought over in his brilliant mind.
The material had held. It had taken a point-blank, concentrated barrage of reality-warping chaos magic, and it had survived completely clean. Even his newly acquired secondary adamantium wouldn't have done that without structural compromise.
If he won this tournament—when he won this tournament—his father was coming back. And if Howard Stark was breathing again, he could tell Tony exactly what went into that impossible alloy. The exact forging ratios, the obscure elemental composite structure, all of it. The shield had vanished with Steve into the Arctic ice and only resurfaced during the Battle of New York, and Tony had never actually looked at it as a serious engineering challenge.
He was looking now.
The host climbed briskly onto the platform, his microphone already raised to his lips, breaking the tension.
"Congratulations to Wanda Maximoff—winner of the first match!"
A delayed, thunderous wave of applause rolled through the arena as the crowd finally processed the absolute, terrifying dominance they had just witnessed.
"Contestants, please return to the rest area," the host boomed, his voice carrying an electric charge. "The second match begins now!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing takes time, coffee, and a lot of love.If you'd like to support my work, join me at [email protected]/GoldenGaruda
You'll get early access to over 50 chapters, selection on new series, and the satisfaction of knowing your support directly fuels more stories.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~