The biting wind whipping across the Stark Tower landing pad did nothing to disturb Fox's impeccably tailored suit or the absolute, looming stillness of John Wick standing beside her. They had arrived to collect Tony Stark, but the group assembled on the reinforced concrete was not the standard corporate entourage.
Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan stood close to Tony, as expected. But flanking them were three anomalies. Harley Keener slouched casually against a stack of specialized Stark Industries crates, idly tossing a modified repulsor coil from hand to hand. A few paces away, Shang-Chi and Xialing stood with the terrifying, synchronized stillness of master martial artists, their breathing perfectly even, their eyes taking in the Fraternity assassins without a trace of intimidation. Tony had secured two spectator spots for the siblings at Rose Manor, and he was cashing them in.
Fox let her dark eyes sweep over the group, calculating threat levels and logistical weight in a fraction of a second. "I expected Happy and Pepper. The rest is a surprise."
"Variety," Tony said. He adjusted his tinted sunglasses, flashing a smirk that didn't quite reach his eyes.
They boarded the Fraternity VTOL aircraft. The interior was a masterpiece of lethal luxury, all matte black leather and brushed steel. As the engines whined to life, Fox stood at the head of the cabin and ran through the tournament rules. Her voice was entirely devoid of inflection. One-on-one. Win a match, take the token. Lose, you're out. Collect all seven to summon the dragon.
It was the exact same format as the previous cycle. No mid-game rule changes. Tony absorbed the parameters, his face an unreadable mask as he stared out the window at the plunging Manhattan skyline. Beside him, Harley sank deeper into his leather seat, watching the legendary assassins across the aisle with the calm, profound curiosity of a twelve-year-old who had long ago decided that billionaire superheroes and shadow syndicates were perfectly normal Tuesday occurrences.
Upstate, the morning fog still clung to the Avengers compound tarmac. Steve Rogers stood like a marble statue in his heavy leather jacket, flanked by his full, ten-person allocation.
When the Fraternity aircraft descended from the clouds, displacing the fog with a deafening roar, Alexei and Wesley walked down the heavy metal ramp.
Steve's spectator roster was heavy with S.H.I.E.L.D. brass. Coulson, Fitz, Simmons, and Maria Hill stood at the front. Behind them loomed Jasper Sitwell, Brock Rumlow, and a hand-picked selection of the tactical upper echelon.
Coulson narrowed his eyes against the exhaust backwash, studying the sleek, radar-absorbent hull. He glanced sideways at Fitz. "Almost identical to ours."
Fitz practically vibrated with nervous, analytical energy, his eyes tracking the pivoting thrusters. "Different paint," the engineer muttered. "But the VTOL system looks the same. The thrust-to-weight ratio must be—"
"They have Bulma," Hill interrupted, not bothering to look up from the encrypted data stream on her tablet. Her voice was ice. "VTOL is the easy part."
They boarded. The interior had been meticulously configured for high-end transit comfort—a dining section, a sprawling lounge, and enough room for eleven people to spread out without encroaching on each other's operational space. Once they were airborne, Wesley stood. The symbiote under his skin seemed to absorb the ambient light as he recited the brutal tournament mechanics.
Hill kept her expression entirely neutral, but her tactical mind was running a thousand simulations a second. She had read the full competitor briefing before boarding. Steve Rogers was an icon, but he was not the candidate Nick Fury had built his geopolitical strategy around. The allocation reflected that harsh reality—Steve carried only one Dragon Ball, and his ten spectator slots skewed heavily toward high-level S.H.I.E.L.D. observers rather than a dedicated medical or combat support staff. If Fury believed Steve's odds of winning the god-tier wish were serious, he would have assigned him drastically different resources.
A few seats down, Coulson sat with a different, heavier question gnawing at him. Three alien symbiotes remained locked in deep S.H.I.E.L.D. subterranean containment. Steve Rogers had been offered none of them. The ruthless logic wasn't hard to follow once you mapped Fury's mind: Steve's wish was deeply personal. He wanted a life with Peggy. Fury had kept the cosmic parasites reserved strictly for assets whose wishes served the organization's expansion.
Sitwell pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose, leaning forward. "Are there seven contestants this tournament?"
Wesley stopped speaking. He turned his head slowly. The silence that fell over the cabin was so sudden and absolute it felt like the air pressure had dropped. Wesley's dead, dark eyes locked onto Sitwell, making it terrifyingly clear that audience questions were not in his brief, and that his patience for S.H.I.E.L.D. bureaucrats was nonexistent.
Alexei, sensing the impending violence, stepped in smoothly before the silence became fatal. "Audience members don't have question privileges," the massive Russian rumbled, leaning back and resting his thick arms on the seats. "Wesley's already gone beyond the standard briefing. You'll have full context when you arrive."
Sitwell touched his nose, his arrogant posture wilting instantly, and looked away out the window.
Steve caught the awkward, heavy pause and stepped into the gap, leveraging the absolute, unquestionable authority of Captain America. "I'm also curious about the number of participants."
Wesley shifted his gaze from Sitwell to Steve. The lethal tension evaporated, replaced by cold professionalism. "Six total."
In Hell's Kitchen, Wenwu and Michael arrived at Jessica Jones's designated pickup point to find a circus.
The sidewalk was completely choked. There were considerably more than eleven people waiting. A full, heavily armed contingent of S.H.I.E.L.D. security personnel had established a perimeter, while agency photographers and additional tactical agents milled around the confirmed group, holding clipboards and equipment cases.
Wenwu didn't break stride. He stopped at the base of the ramp, an immortal warlord looking at a swarm of gnats.
"Jessica Jones and ten spectators," Wenwu commanded, his voice barely above a whisper but carrying the crushing resonance of a collapsing mountain. "Board now. We're departing."
Standing near the back of the S.H.I.E.L.D. cluster, Alexander Pierce offered a thin, aristocratic smile. He looked at Nick Fury. "Told you."
"We had to try," Fury muttered, his single eye tracking the immortal's immovable stance. If he could have snuck a surveillance team aboard, he would have. Fury turned to the sprawling group and brought down the axe cleanly. "Those with confirmed spots—board."
Ten spectators immediately peeled out of the larger group, falling in line behind a thoroughly hungover-looking Jessica Jones, and marched up the metal ramp. The rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel stayed frozen on the cracked sidewalk. The heavy doors hissed closed, and the aircraft tore into the sky.
Once seated, the massive werewolf Michael moved down the aisle to deliver the rules briefing to Jessica.
A few rows away, Pierce sat in a plush leather seat, letting the violent rules of the tournament wash over him while his mind ran a far darker set of calculations. Yesterday's Universal Capsule launch had done something terrifyingly clarifying for the HYDRA leader. Smith Doyle's organization was no longer a rising, dangerous asset that HYDRA might eventually co-opt or leverage from the shadows. It had crossed an invisible threshold. The universal capsule alone represented a fundamental, world-breaking shift in global logistics and infrastructure. The Fraternity behind it was something else entirely. It was an apex predator that simply could not be absorbed.
"Which competitor has two Dragon Balls?" Jessica asked, cutting through Michael's recitation.
Michael looked down at her. He saw no tactical reason to withhold the information. "Tony Stark."
Jessica let out a harsh, cynical breath, leaning her head against the reinforced window. "He's genuinely lucky."
A few seats back, Fury offered a slow, deliberate nod. He'd been wondering since the conclusion of the last cycle whether Tony had secretly developed a technological detection method for the artifacts. Two cycles. Two double holdings. The probability math was becoming astronomically, impossibly interesting.
Selene and Melina's aircraft was an exercise in lethal, silent efficiency. There was no male crew. Every single position on the jet—from the pilot in the cockpit to the cabin staff monitoring the telemetry—had been staffed entirely from the former Red Room roster. The Black Widows moved with liquid, ghost-like grace.
Lorelei boarded alone. She wore a sweeping, emerald-green coat that contrasted sharply with the tactical black of the assassins surrounding her. She brought no charmed retinue. No adoring traveling companions to carry her bags. She settled gracefully into her leather seat, crossing her long legs, and accepted the utter isolation with the cool pragmatism of an immortal who understood that this quarantine was a testament to her own terrifying power, rather than a personal slight.
Melina stood at the front of the cabin, her voice clinical and detached as she finished the rules briefing.
Lorelei offered a single, elegant nod. "Same as last cycle."
Heimdall's golden eyes had already peered across the cosmos, his voice echoing in her mind to walk her through the format days ago. But she had still expected modifications. Two consecutive cycles with identical, brutal rules suggested either a supreme, unshakeable confidence on the part of the organizer, or a deliberate, calculated consistency meant to lull competitors into a false sense of security. Either way, it was valuable information.
She turned her impossibly beautiful face toward the window, watching the clouds part, and waited for the bloodletting to begin.
Of the six active contestants, only Kaecilius remained uncollected.
Smith Doyle had saved that specific pickup entirely for himself.
He didn't use radar to find the ship. He found it by sense. Makkari's vessel, the Domo, was genuinely, utterly invisible to conventional detection. Bulma's current, state-of-the-art scanning equipment couldn't touch it, and the celestial stealth system possessed no obvious thermal or energetic seam to exploit.
But the Eternals inside it registered to Smith's cosmic awareness the exact same way a lit window registers to a man standing in a pitch-black forest. He felt the ancient, humming density of their existence.
Smith brought his aircraft down onto the vast, empty expanse of the newly constructed secondary adamantium arena platform. The sea wind immediately tore at his long coat as he stepped down the ramp. He walked to the exact center of the ring, tilted his head back, and looked up at the empty, cloudless coordinates where the massive ship absolutely wasn't.
Inside the cloaked Domo, Makkari stood at the celestial viewing screen. She watched the Inspector General staring directly into her eyes through a hull he shouldn't be able to see. She signed rapidly to Kingo, considering the probabilities: Coincidence, or detection?
Down on the platform, Smith clasped his hands behind his back.
"Friends," Smith said clearly, his voice carrying effortlessly upward into the empty air, "parking your ship directly on the arena floor isn't particularly polite."
Inside the ship, Makkari sighed and triggered the console. She dropped the cloak.
The triangular vessel materialized directly above the flattened mountain top—a massive, monolithic slab of silent, ancient engineering blotting out the sun.
On the platform below, the Fraternity crew looked up in stunned silence. Beside Smith, Bulma slowly pushed her sunglasses up into her bright blue hair. She tilted her head back, her brilliant eyes wide with a sudden, ravenous scientific hunger as she stared at the celestial engine.