Pepper Potts stood with her arms crossed, staring deadpan at the gently snoring billionaire slumped inside the open mechanical shell. "His grand, tactical solution to fighting an immortal succubus was to take a nap."
A few seats away, Xu Xialing slowly tilted her head, considering the brutal pragmatism of it. "It's actually a brilliant tactical circumvention," the martial artist noted, her voice carrying genuine respect. "You cannot psychically charm a mind that is unconscious. The obvious logistical bottleneck is that you need an advanced, weaponized artificial intelligence capable of physically beating a god half to death while you sleep." She paused, her dark eyes scanning the smoking secondary adamantium platform. "Not many people on Earth have that option."
The roaring sounds of the bewildered arena finally breached the open panels of the Mark armor. Tony surfaced with a sharp inhale, blinking groggily against the bright Pacific sun. He took in the stunned audience section, the smoking craters on the ring, and Pepper's deeply exasperated expression.
He rubbed his eyes. "Did I win?"
"Flawlessly, sir," JARVIS's crisp voice echoed from the helmet resting on his knee.
Tony raised an eyebrow, his trademark arrogance smoothly slipping back into place. "Naturally. The Wanda match was an embarrassing failure of preparation. This one I handled correctly." He climbed stiffly out of the armor, his joints popping as he stretched his arms over his head. He looked down at the empty suit, a profound, terrifying new thought crystallizing in his genius mind.
"If JARVIS can win a tournament match against an Asgardian entirely unsupervised," Tony murmured, his eyes narrowing in calculation, "I wonder what a fully automated, global Iron Legion could do for the planet on a permanent basis."
He filed that dangerous seed away for later.
The wider stadium crowd had absolutely no idea Tony had been sleeping through his own victory. From outside the impenetrable silver suit, the match had looked like an exercise in cold, methodical, iron-willed destruction. The women in the VIP stands were currently trying to furiously work out how the most heavily documented playboy on the planet had simply walked away from Lorelei's mythic biological hijack without a single scratch on his psyche. None of them arrived at the correct, hilariously mundane answer.
Across the stands, Pietro Maximoff leaned in toward his sister. "That's your next opponent after this break. Don't underestimate her. Lorelei took a sustained, building-level bombardment from Stark and stayed on her feet significantly longer than most enhanced people would have."
"Her durability is real," Wanda agreed, her eyes tracking the cleanup crews on the ring. "It's better than almost any baseline enhanced human S.H.I.E.L.D. has on file. If those exact same kinetic hits landed on a standard power-track superhuman, maybe two or three of them actually survive it."
She casually flicked her wrist, a tiny, compressed spark of scarlet energy dancing across her knuckles. "But her primary charm ability does absolutely nothing to my biology. And my chaos magic hits just as hard as those artillery rounds when I push it."
The ancient Cat Sage—Korin—hadn't bothered teaching her the fundamental manipulation of ki. What the immortal feline had given her during her grueling training was something infinitely more dangerous and immediately useful: a terrifying, structural understanding of her own magic's native mechanics.
Compression for devastating mass and armor penetration. Volume for unavoidable area coverage. Telepathic illusions entirely unrestricted by the target's gender or willpower. Kinetic shields that extended outward to cover allies. Wanda Maximoff now possessed a complete, god-tier toolkit, and she finally knew exactly how to use all of it without tearing herself apart.
Pietro smiled, leaning back in his chair with absolute confidence. "My money's on Wanda for tournament champion."
Wanda glanced up toward the sky, catching a glimpse of Smith Doyle floating above the arena, and let herself offer a small, dangerous smile back.
The hour intermission officially dissolved. The host's booming voice returned, crackling with electricity.
"The break is over! Welcome back to the second round. Our third match—Lorelei and Wanda Maximoff!"
Lorelei walked gracefully out of the competitor's tunnel and stepped onto the secondary adamantium ring.
The crowd's reaction was immediate, visceral, and profoundly confused.
"That's not physically possible," a high-ranking military official muttered in the front row, dropping his binoculars.
"She was covered in her own blood an hour ago. She had third-degree burns and a shattered arm!"
"Is that an inherent Asgardian healing factor, or does the tournament organizer have access to something we haven't seen yet?"
Steve Rogers turned sharply in his seat, his brow deeply furrowed. He looked at Phil Coulson. "Is there a superhuman healer here? Someone on their staff?"
Coulson shook his head slowly, his eyes locked on the Asgardian's flawless, unblemished skin. "Nothing in our intelligence records. S.H.I.E.L.D. has absolutely no documented superhuman asset capable of external, instantaneous cellular healing on that scale." He paused, his tactical mind whirring. "The Fraternity runs their proprietary wax baths for their assassins—but the standard treatment cycle for critical trauma is a minimum of twelve hours. Yet, Happy Hogan took critical, fatal injuries at the Chinese Theatre explosion and was walking around the very next morning with completely unscarred tissue."
Coulson kept his voice rigidly neutral, masking the deep institutional envy. "We suspect they have something infinitely faster hidden in their architecture. Medical treatment pods, possibly extraterrestrial in origin."
Steve looked back at the arena and thought, not for the first time, about the staggering, terrifying distance between what the entirety of the United States government could offer its soldiers, and what Smith Doyle casually kept in a back room as a standard tournament amenity.
Behind them, Pepper Potts's CEO brain had already ruthlessly done the geopolitical math. "If that cellular recovery speed implies advanced regenerative treatment pods... you're looking at three hundred million dollars minimum in R&D and manufacturing per unit. And this tournament has never charged a single dime for admission or global broadcast rights." She shook her head, thoroughly disturbed. "He just completely absorbs the astronomical cost."
"Stop thinking about it like a standard corporate budget line, Pep," Tony interjected quietly, his eyes fixed on the ring. "Smith released a new miracle drug yesterday. He just solved all terrestrial disease. Human money stopped being a real, structural constraint for him a very long time ago."
Pepper nodded slowly. He wasn't wrong. They were officially operating in a post-scarcity framework, and Smith Doyle owned the keys.
Down in the VIP section, Wanda offered a final, casual wave to Pietro. She didn't use the stairs. She rose on a thick column of undulating chaos energy, drifting effortlessly over the barricades, and touched down perfectly on the adamantium platform across from the Asgardian.
The two women looked at each other across the thirty feet of indestructible metal. One an ancient, immortal goddess of manipulation; the other a human born from rubble, wielding the localized power to rewrite reality itself.
Smith Doyle materialized directly between them, his heavy coat snapping in the wind.
"Submission. Loss of combat ability. Ten seconds on the ground, or forced out of bounds," Smith stated, his voice a low, echoing rumble that demanded absolute compliance. "Those are the loss conditions."
He looked at the Asgardian. He looked at the witch.
"Second round, third match. Begin."
He vanished, leaving the ring entirely to them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~