The conference room was full in a way it hadn't been in some time.
The Fraternity's senior council occupied their usual seats — Fox at Smith's right, the elder council members along the near wall, Bulma with a tablet already open, Xu Wenwu with the composed patience of someone who had sat in rooms like this for a thousand years and could wait out another hour with no difficulty. Ivan Vanko had come up from his lab, which meant someone had told him this was worth the commute. Eddie Brock was present in his capacity as Red Ribbon's CEO, seated across from Wesley and the others who'd returned from their various assignments. The room had the particular density of an assembly where everyone understood something consequential was being announced.
Smith let the room settle. Then he stood.
"I said during the last Dragon Ball battle that it would be the last one." He looked around the table. "I meant it. That format is done. What comes next is different."
He let a beat pass.
"The World Martial Arts Tournament."
The room's attention sharpened — not surprise, exactly, since most people in this room had heard him reference it in passing. But the weight of a formal announcement landed differently than an offhand mention.
"The Dragon Ball format had a hard limit," Smith said. "Seven spots. Seven people with a real shot at a wish. Everyone else watches." He shook his head. "The World Martial Arts Tournament is open entry. Anyone with a combat power reading of 8 or above can register. Eventually the field will extend beyond Earth. For now, we start here."
Fox tilted his head. "What's the structure?"
"Qualification first. Every entrant gets screened by scouter. Anyone below 8 is eliminated at registration — no bracket, no charity rounds. From the qualified pool, we divide into eight regional zones. Each zone runs a challenge format to identify its top finisher. Those eight meet in the finals. Finals determine the champion and runner-up."
He paused.
"Prizes. Top eight finishers: fifty million each. Runner-up: five hundred million." Another pause, letting the number land. "Champion: one billion in cash, and one reasonable wish granted by the organizers." He kept his expression even. "Everyone in this room understands what that means in practice. The phrasing stays clean."
No one at the table pretended they hadn't understood.
"There's one additional item for the champion," Smith said. "A sparring session with me."
The room processed this. Ivan's eyebrows went up slightly. Eddie Brock's expression shifted in the direction of someone doing private calculations about whether his current power level put him anywhere near a bracket.
Wesley raised his hand. "Boss. Eight is a fairly low floor. Most enhanced individuals who've trained seriously are well above that by now. You could set it at fifty without losing much of the talent pool."
"I could," Smith said. "I'm not going to." He looked at Wesley directly. "This isn't just a showcase for the top tier. The tournament has to mean something to people who've been training for two years with a scouter reading in the teens. Eight gets them in the door. The bracket handles the rest — a PL-12 entrant from a regional qualifier doesn't reach the finals. They don't need to. They need to know they had a legitimate shot." He looked around the room. "We're not running an invitational. We're running the world's tournament."
Wesley nodded and sat back.
Ivan Vanko cleared his throat. "Boss. The eight-point minimum — Tony and I both depend on our suits. Without a suit, neither of us clears the threshold unassisted."
"I know." Smith had anticipated this. "Suit-users get an exception on the base reading, but there's a restriction: one suit per competitor, for the entire tournament. No mid-bracket swaps. No remote reinforcements. No deploying additional units during a match." He looked at Ivan. "The era of changing into a fresh suit every three rounds is over. You pick your best suit and you fight the whole tournament in it."
Ivan absorbed this. "Understood. Thank you, Boss."
"Anything else?"
Eddie raised his hand. "Can people in this room enter? Or is it external-only?"
"Open entry means open. If you qualify, you're in." Smith looked at Eddie. "Red Ribbon, Universal Capsule, and Vanko Industries will co-organize. Global live broadcast, ticketing, the full production. I want everyone on the planet to know this is happening well before it starts. Every enhanced individual on Earth should hear about this and have enough time to train." He looked at Fox, Eddie, and Ivan in sequence. "I need all three organizations fully committed to the promotional operation. Not partially. Fully."
Fox, Eddie, and Ivan exchanged a brief look.
"No problem," Fox said.
"One more thing." Smith straightened slightly. "The Dragon Balls are retired from public competition. They stay with me. The wish offered as the champion's prize will be fulfilled through the same channels — the result is the same for the winner. But we're done broadcasting the existence of the balls every cycle. The tournament is its own institution from here forward."
The room was quiet for a moment — not resistance, just absorption.
Then Xu Wenwu said, mildly: "I assume the combat power ceiling for serious contenders has risen somewhat since the last event."
"Somewhat," Smith said.
Xu Wenwu nodded once, with the equanimity of a man who had spent a millennium recalibrating what strong meant and was content to recalibrate again.
"Then I look forward to it," he said.
The Bus's lab section smelled of antiseptic and old coffee, and Ward was sitting on an examination table with medical monitors attached to his chest, looking at the ceiling with the expression of a man being held somewhere against his will by someone he couldn't reasonably argue with.
Simmons had the physiological readout in one hand and a stylus in the other and was recording findings with the focused efficiency of someone who had decided this was happening regardless of the subject's cooperation level.
"You can stop watching the ceiling," she said.
"I'm not watching it. I'm ignoring you while looking in its direction."
"Your resting heart rate is elevated by fourteen beats per minute from your baseline."
"I went through something unusual. It'll regulate."
Donnie Gill was leaning against the far wall with his arms crossed, watching Ward with the specific concern of someone who had watched him get picked up off a corridor floor twenty minutes ago and had questions. "The power output right before you lost consciousness," he said. "That wasn't your normal range."
"I know."
"The staff did something."
"I'm aware."
Fitz spoke up from his workstation without turning around. "The last recorded thing before your comm went down was the spectral reading on the staff section. The Asgardian signature is consistent with emotional amplification properties. There's documented precedent in the mythology for berserker artifacts producing involuntary memory immersion—"
"Fitz," Ward said.
"—in which case the physical response you experienced is consistent with a trauma-linked neurological cascade triggered by—"
"Fitz."
Fitz turned around.
"What was the last thing you remembered?" Simmons asked. Her voice had lost its clinical edge and replaced it with something quieter.
Ward looked at her for a moment.
Donnie Gill caught something in the room's quality and said, carefully, "We don't have to—"
"Something I hadn't thought about in a long time," Ward said. Short. Final. He pulled the monitoring leads off his chest with a single sweep of his arm and stood. "That's all that needs to go in the report."
The monitor beside him immediately registered the disconnection with a soft series of beeps.
"That was still running," Simmons said.
"I know." He was already looking at the secondary screen mounted to the lab wall, which was displaying the live feed from the room where Coulson was talking to Randolph. "Turn the sound up."
Simmons crossed her arms. "Your cortisol levels are—"
"Turn it up, Simmons."
She turned it up.
On screen, Randolph sat at the table with his hands cuffed in front of him, meeting Coulson's gaze with a steadiness that Ward found, from his current position and mood, genuinely irritating.
"My people are hurt and the staff sections are gone," Coulson said. His voice on the feed was flat and professional, which in Coulson's register meant he was running close to something. "Walk me through your reasoning."
"I didn't intend for anyone to get hurt." Randolph looked at the table, then back up. "I wanted to get to the section before anyone else could use it. Study it properly. Confirm — definitively — that berserkers were actually here. That this isn't mythology. That this is history." His jaw tightened slightly. "The academic community has spent decades treating everything I know to be true as folklore. I wanted proof that I could hold in my hands."
"So you took it."
"I retrieved it, yes."
"And then lost it immediately to two people who had already activated a separate section and were operating at significantly enhanced capacity."
Randolph was quiet.
"That's how I'd summarize it," Coulson said.
Ward's vitals on Simmons' disconnected monitor were spiking toward a reading that would have concerned her if she'd been watching it. She reached across and tapped the screen off.
"Hey—"
"Your adrenaline just redlined," she said. "You need to sit."
"I need to hear what he—"
"Sit down, Ward."
He stood there for a moment, jaw tight, and then sat down.
Fitz and Donnie Gill both looked at separate parts of the ceiling simultaneously, which was as close to tact as the three of them could manage collectively.