The cold, brutal logic of the Mark armor's secondary adamantium shell formed the absolute core of Tony Stark's strategy.
Inside the helmet, the HUD painted the world in tactical blue overlays. The math was entirely asymmetrical. If he saturated the ring with high-yield explosives and repulsor blasts, the resulting shrapnel and concussive shockwaves wouldn't even scratch his paint. But Wanda Maximoff, despite her terrifying, reality-warping output, was still trapped inside a fragile, human body.
That fundamental asymmetry was the entire game plan. Keep maximum distance. Flood the empty space between them with overwhelming, unrelenting firepower. Keep her entirely on the defensive, and absolutely do not give her the microscopic opening required to weave an illusion into his mind.
But Wanda was only the semi-final. Lorelei was the infinitely harder puzzle.
Tony blinked, bringing up the localized recording on his visor. He ran the horrifying footage of the third match again. He watched Kaecilius—a master of the mystic arts, a man who had trained for months specifically to survive this crucible—simply lose the fundamental will to fight the exact millisecond the Asgardian stepped into his line of sight. It hadn't required physical contact. The biological hijack had engaged before she even crossed the ring.
If Tony arrogant walked onto that platform assuming his sheer willpower could withstand a mythic succubus, JARVIS would be forced to execute a perfect tactical plan against an empty, compromised suit. Tony knew his own psychological profile better than anyone; a man with his heavily documented, lifelong history with women was the ultimate soft target.
"JARVIS," Tony said, his voice clipped and serious. "The Seraph. Deployment time?"
"Twenty minutes to position directly above the arena at current satellite orbital speed, sir," the AI responded smoothly.
"Do it. Full orbital drop deployment. I want it combat-ready the absolute moment they're in range. You have full operational and weapons authority." Tony paused, staring at the frozen image of Lorelei smiling on his HUD. "And for the Lorelei match specifically—if I stop aggressively engaging, or if I attempt to concede, do not wait for verbal instructions. Mute my internal audio feed, lock me out of the motor controls, take over the suit entirely, and knock her out of bounds."
If Kaecilius could be casually walked off a ring he had bled to reach, Tony absolutely wasn't betting on his own stubbornness as a primary defense. JARVIS didn't possess hormones. JARVIS didn't have complicated, lingering feelings about Asgardian charm. JARVIS would just process the parameters and win.
Tony reached up, the pneumatic seals hissing as he pulled his helmet off. The biting sea breeze hit his sweat-dampened face. He allowed himself to physically relax into the padded collar of the armor for the first time since round one ended.
"I'm getting that wish this time."
Down in the S.H.I.E.L.D. VIP section, Steve Rogers sat with his heavy, useless hands clasped tightly together.
He was doing the kind of agonizing, desperate arithmetic that no one ever wants to do. He was out. The vibranium shield resting against his knee felt like a tombstone. Miles away, in a sterile, white room, Peggy Carter was sitting in a care facility, her mind slipping a little further into the fog every single day.
The next tournament cycle—if there even was a next cycle, given the apocalyptic stakes—was an entirely unknown, unpredictable timeline. And Dragon Balls were not something you casually stumbled onto twice in one lifetime. Steve had literally tripped over his artifact by sheer, cosmic accident.
He looked up toward the floating VIP platform. He could swallow his pride and ask Smith Doyle. They had fought side by side. They had bled together. But even Tony Stark, a billionaire who possessed a closer, more entangled relationship with the Inspector General than almost anyone breathing, was currently sitting in these bleachers, forced to collect the Dragon Balls the long, bloody way. Steve had far less standing with the Fraternity, not more.
He stared blankly at the bright, digital tournament bracket hovering above the ring, and found absolutely no salvation written in the lights.
Elsewhere in the stands, the harsh glow of an encrypted S.H.I.E.L.D. tablet illuminated Nick Fury's single, unblinking eye.
A junior analyst had just rushed the device up the stairs. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s facial recognition algorithms had finally pulled a definitive database match on the chaos witch.
Wanda Maximoff. Born in Sokovia. Parents deceased—collateral damage during local civil unrest. Raised alongside her twin brother, Pietro, by sympathetic neighbors. There were no institutional records beyond primary school enrollment and basic, impoverished civil registration. It was exactly the kind of tragically thin, ghost-like file that meant absolutely nobody on the global stage had been paying any attention to them.
"Sokovia," Fury muttered quietly, the gears of his geopolitical map violently shifting. "Didn't expect that."
He handed the heavy tablet back to the waiting agent without looking away from the ring. "Get a covert team on the ground there immediately. I want the full, unfiltered picture."
Alexander Pierce, sitting casually beside him, watched the exchange with mild, predatory interest. "You're recruiting?"
"Superhumans are S.H.I.E.L.D.'s explicit jurisdiction," Fury replied, his voice a low, even gravel. "I want to know if the twin brother possesses abilities too, and whether his physical parameters differ from hers." He kept his expression entirely neutral, masking the tactical hunger. "A natural-born mage crawling out of the Sokovian rubble is an asset worth fundamentally understanding."
S.H.I.E.L.D. had not yet connected either scarred sibling to Smith Doyle's sprawling Fraternity. From where Fury sat in the bleachers, the twins were incredibly dangerous, unaffiliated extraordinaries—exactly the kind of strategic nuclear assets worth mapping and acquiring before a rival intelligence agency got there first.
In the isolated, sound-dampened competitor's lounge beneath the arena, Lorelei was quietly, efficiently extracting every single drop of knowledge Kaecilius possessed.
The sorcerer sat on a plush sofa, his head resting adoringly against her emerald coat, whispering the most guarded secrets of the mystic arts with a blissful, glassy-eyed smile. He gave her Kamar-Taj. He gave her the Ancient One. He gave her the sprawling, hidden architecture of Earth's entire magical community.
What caught the Asgardian's sharp attention the most was the specific provenance of the Dragon Balls. The Sorcerer Supreme had willingly gifted these god-tier artifacts to her students across two consecutive cycles, apparently without a shred of personal, hoarding ambition attached. That kind of cosmic power, wielded with that kind of terrifying restraint, was absolutely not a master Lorelei ever wanted to antagonize. Fortunately, her objective was simply the tournament championship, not conquering Kamar-Taj's dimensional territory.
Tony Stark would fall effortlessly—she was absolutely certain of that. A mortal man with his heavily documented, tabloid-plastered history of impulsive indulgence was not a difficult psychological target.
Wanda Maximoff, however, was the real, unpredictable variable.
The biological charm was inherently useless against other women, and winning a ring battle required her opponent to actually, physically go down. Lorelei desperately hoped the Iron Man would heavily rough the witch up before she had to face her in the finals. She also desperately hoped Wanda was significantly less physically formidable than Lady Sif.
She needed to win this. The memory of the freezing, damp stone of Asgard's subterranean cells crawled up her spine. Odin's prison only opened one way, and she was never going back.
The thirty-minute intermission expired.
"Second round, third Dragon Ball Tournament!" The host's booming voice rang across the arena, snapping the crowd's attention back to the indestructible platform. "First match—Wanda Maximoff and Tony Stark!"
Tony didn't walk to the ring. The heavy repulsors ignited, and the Mark armor tore through the air, dropping onto the secondary adamantium with a heavy, metallic clang.
Wanda rose on a column of undulating scarlet chaos energy, drifting over the barricades and touching down almost simultaneously, her boots making no sound at all.
The instant the referee signaled, Tony didn't advance. He immediately fired his thrusters and backed up rapidly toward the far edge of the platform, his boots scraping loudly against the metal, deliberately putting the absolute maximum geometric distance between them.
Wanda stood perfectly still in the dead center of the ring. The red mist began to bleed from her fingertips, swirling into the ocean wind.
She looked at the heavily armored billionaire cowering at the perimeter, and felt a quiet, dark amusement settle deep in her chest.
He thinks distance will save him, Wanda thought, the chaotic energy humming in her veins.
How innocent.