The match had ended even faster than Steve Rogers' bout, but the stadium crowd didn't mind. They were entirely too busy processing the terrifying spectacle they had just witnessed—scarlet chaos energy detonating across an entire indestructible ring surface, and a psychic illusion swallowing Tony Stark whole before he could even fire a second shot.
High above the platform, Smith Doyle recognized the moment immediately.
He watched the way Wanda had driven the raw energy directly into the floor and let it violently spread. It was a faint, localized echo of Westview. It wasn't anywhere close to that apocalyptic scale, but the fundamental shape of it was already there—the dark, reality-warping instinct to reshape the physical space around her rather than simply launch attacks through it. Under the brutal crucible of the Fraternity's training, the Wanda Maximoff of this universe was already significantly past where she had been in any other timeline he had observed. Where her ceiling ultimately sat was an open question that Smith found genuinely, deeply interesting.
In the VIP stands, Nick Fury's expression had settled into the kind of terrifying, statuesque stillness that meant his mind was doing rapid, catastrophic reassessments.
"Note the term 'chaos magic,'" Fury muttered to the intelligence agent beside him, his single eye tracking the witch. "I want a full database sweep the second we're back in the Trident. Mythology, deep-cover classified files, ancient histories—everything."
"Yes, sir."
What was fundamentally bothering the spymaster wasn't the raw, kinetic power he'd just seen; it was the chilling mechanics of the delivery. Fury had listened to Steve's debriefing during the intermission: a hallucination, Peggy Carter, a ballroom dance. All of it had been single-target, strictly triggered at close physical range. Fury had comfortably filed the threat as a proximity spell.
But what he had just watched Tony Stark confidently walk into was something else entirely. The red energy had blanketed the entire massive platform in under a second. Extreme range, blinding speed, and absolutely no minimum distance required. That wasn't a targeted, surgical illusion. That was area coverage.
Fury didn't know the outer limit of that spell's radius, and not knowing that particular, lethal number made his skin crawl.
In the competitor's staging area, Lorelei's devastating smile had faded into something entirely serious.
She had expected high-level difficulty in this tournament. She had not expected that. Her newly acquired puppet, Kaecilius, had given her absolutely zero intelligence on chaos magic—Kamar-Taj had simply never encountered it in their recorded history. If she advanced, she would be walking into a finals match against the witch completely blind, without a tactical map.
But first things first.
Tony Stark was still standing ringside. And Tony Stark—arrogant, brilliant, and notoriously easily distracted—was exactly the kind of vulnerable target she had been wrapping around her finger since before Midgard had even discovered electricity.
Odin's cold warning suddenly sat heavy at the back of her mind. She hadn't forgotten the All-Father's words. Smith Doyle was strictly off-limits. She had carefully noted the way the Inspector General had looked at her when she dropped her veil earlier. She had felt absolutely nothing come back from him—no narcotic response, no psychic tether, not even the faint, suppressed flicker of interest she routinely extracted from extremely disciplined mortal men. Whatever Smith Doyle actually was, he existed entirely outside her biological range of effect.
She filed that terrifying anomaly away and wisely left it alone.
The host's amplified voice cut across the murmuring arena. "Mr. Stark—do you require your allotted time before the second match begins?"
Tony had already climbed back to his feet, the grass blowing around him as his boot thrusters flared. He shot back up into the sky. "Save the rest period," Tony's voice snapped over the PA. "Let's go."
The instant his heavy metal boots touched the secondary adamantium surface of the ring, Tony closed his eyes inside the helmet.
"JARVIS. You have absolute, full control of the suit from this exact point forward. One objective: win. Shut down all external audio and visual communications to my internal feed. Don't let a single thing in."
"Understood, sir," the AI replied instantly.
Tony went perfectly quiet inside the suffocating dark of the armor, locking himself in a sensory deprivation tank, and let JARVIS take the wheel.
"Second match of round two," the host boomed, his enthusiasm untouched by the previous violence. "Please welcome Lorelei!"
She walked out of the spectator stands slowly. The psychic effect moved through the male section of the arena like a heavy, narcotic tide coming in. Men who had been watching the ring calmly only a moment before suddenly found themselves leaning over the barricades, their pupils blown wide. Some muttered desperate, embarrassing things out loud.
Lorelei stepped gracefully onto the platform and watched Smith Doyle materialize in the center. She let her emerald eyes purposefully linger on him for a fraction of a second.
Odin said don't. She immediately pulled her gaze away.
Smith Doyle delivered the strict loss conditions without even acknowledging the look, and vanished.
Lorelei turned her attention to the silent, unmoving suit of armor standing across from her.
You think steel keeps you safe from me.
She opened her charm to its absolute, suffocating maximum capacity and aimed it directly at the arena.
The psychic shockwave hit the VIP stands in seconds. Happy Hogan's normally stern, protective expression instantly melted into something distant and blissfully pleasant. Beside him, twelve-year-old Harley Keener nodded to himself with the profound, solemn appreciation of a monk encountering a divine truth.
"She's incredible," Happy sighed, his voice completely devoid of its usual gruffness. "I can't handle this at all."
Harley nodded eagerly, completely agreeing.
Pepper Potts looked at both of them, let out a long, exhausted breath, and forcefully pressed her palm against her forehead.
Down in the ring, Lorelei took a measured step forward.
"Incredible superhero of Midgard," Lorelei's voice flowed, warm, unhurried, and pitched with flawless acoustic precision directly at the Iron Man suit. "Your legend reached Asgard after the Chitauri invasion. I've always deeply admired men who fight to protect their people." She took another slow, swaying step. "Can we be friends, Mr. Stark?"
Up in the stands, Pepper's jaw tightened so hard her teeth ached. "That's the exact same play she ran on Kaecilius," she hissed.
She looked down at the silver armor, standing perfectly, eerily motionless on the indestructible ring.
"I don't know if Tony can hold it together."