Tony sat up in the dark and looked at what he'd done.
Mark 42's components were on the floor — gauntlet, forearm plate, chest section, scattered where they'd fallen when he cut power. Pepper was pressed against the headboard with her hand at her throat, breathing hard, the wrist that the suit had grabbed held against her chest.
"I must have triggered it in the dream," he said. It came out quieter than he intended. "The neural sensors read distress and it responded. I'll recalibrate — this won't happen again."
Pepper looked at him for a long moment. Then she got up.
"Pepper—"
"I'm sleeping downstairs." She picked up her robe from the chair. "Take your time. Fix it."
She left without looking back.
Tony lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. The armor pieces were still on the floor. He didn't move to collect them.
He knew what this was. He'd known for a while.
Happy had not been planning on getting into a fight on Christmas Eve.
He was outside the Chinese Theatre waiting for a show, trying on sunglasses at a street vendor's cart, when he spotted her — the assistant who had come to Stark Industries with Killian that afternoon, the one without a badge who'd sat on the lobby sofa like she owned it. She was crossing the square with purpose, moving toward a man on a bench, and she handed him something before turning and walking away.
Happy put the sunglasses down.
He crossed the square at a casual pace, timed a collision with the man on the bench, and went down to one knee to help collect the spilled contents. When he stood up, one item had transferred from the man's belongings to his own pocket without either of them acknowledging it.
"Sorry about that, man." He straightened and moved off.
He'd made it ten steps before someone walked into him from behind.
He turned. Eric Seven, Killian's assistant — driver, he'd thought, but the way this one moved said something different.
"Out alone on Christmas Eve?" Eric said. "Date night? Favorite movie?"
"Action film," Happy said. "Yours and your boss's." He held up the item he'd taken. "Great seats."
Eric's expression closed down. He reached for it.
Happy grabbed his wrist instead, pivoted, and threw a left cross at his face. Eric moved, just barely, and the punch clipped instead of landing clean. Eric broke the wrist grip and came back with a shoulder throw that put Happy across the vendor's cart, scattering its contents across the pavement.
Happy hit the ground, rolled, and came up. His ribs were complaining.
Eric's nose had been broken in the exchange. Happy had seen it happen — the crunch, the angle. But as he watched, the nose straightened. The bruising faded. In the space of five seconds, Eric Seven's face returned to unmarked.
Happy filed that under problems and stayed focused.
On the bench across the square, the man who'd received the package had opened it. He was inhaling whatever was inside.
Then he screamed.
The temperature change was visible — the air around him distorted, heat rising from his skin, his hands, his face. He looked at Eric with an expression that was past fear. "Seven—"
The explosion was immediate and total. The square in front of the theater went white, then orange, then a pressure wave rolled outward that knocked Happy off his feet and flattened the vendor's cart entirely. Glass shattered in every direction. The sound hit like something physical.
When the light cleared, the man was gone. Not dead in any conventional sense — just gone, a dark outline scorched onto the wall behind where he'd been sitting.
Several people in the immediate radius were down. Others were running. Screaming moved through the square in waves.
Eric Seven, already on his feet and recovering from injuries that should have kept him down, was moving through the chaos and away from the scene at a pace that said he'd planned for this exit.
Happy was on the ground. His ears were ringing. Something in his side was wrong in a way that made breathing complicated.
He stayed there while the sirens started.
Xu Xialing knocked on Shang-Chi's door at nine in the evening and didn't wait to be properly invited before walking in.
Shang-Chi had been lying on the bed with his tablet, watching his own promotional clips with the particular expression of someone who found the experience both flattering and slightly surreal. He sat up.
"I didn't expect you tonight. Thought you'd be with—"
"Do you have anything to drink?" Xialing sat on the sofa and looked at the room with the expression of someone assessing inadequate resources.
"Bourbon."
"Of course it's bourbon." She held out her hand anyway.
He poured her a glass. She drank it in one go and set the glass down.
"There's someone impersonating the Ten Rings Gang," she said. "Calling himself the Mandarin. Nine bombings. He put out a broadcast claiming to be our leader."
Shang-Chi's tablet was already in his hand. He pulled up the video within thirty seconds — the three incidents the news had covered, the masked figure, the Ten Rings iconography used like a stolen flag.
"I've never heard this name," he said.
"Neither has anyone in our actual organization. Because he's not from us." Xialing turned the empty glass in her fingers. "Smith called me personally. Tony Stark had the explosion data. I've got teams at all nine sites right now, which is where I should be spending Christmas instead of babysitting a problem someone else created." She paused. "I have a media appointment tomorrow. Public statement — the Mandarin is a fabrication, the Ten Rings disavows every word of it."
"Is that a good idea? Going public?"
Xialing looked at her brother with the expression she used when she was trying to be patient. "I've been running a legitimate operation for six months. Yes, it's appropriate to publicly deny being a terrorist organization."
Shang-Chi accepted that and moved on. "I'll bring it up at The Paragons meeting tomorrow. Eddie will want to know."
Xialing nodded. Then, because it was Christmas and she was on his sofa and the bourbon was mediocre but present: "What are you going to do about the Dragon Balls?"
Shang-Chi set down his tablet. He'd been thinking about this since the stones woke up. He'd seen what the Chitauri invasion had left behind — not the buildings, those were being repaired, but the other thing. The people standing outside the Red Cross centers with photographs. The quiet of someone who had lost something they wouldn't get back.
"I want Dad to try to wim," he said. "And if he gets the wish — I want to use it to bring back the people who died in the invasion."
Xialing was quiet for a long moment.
"Life as a hero really does change a person," she said finally. She put her hand on his shoulder. "It's a good wish. I'll talk to Dad."
Shang-Chi nodded. He thought about T'Challa, who had gone back to Wakanda for the holiday — not to rest, anyone paying attention could see that. The Dragon Balls being active again meant everyone with knowledge and capability was already moving. He and Xialing were late to it.
Xialing reached over and poured herself a second glass. She poured one for him too.
"Merry Christmas," she said, raising it. "To you. Our family's superhero."
Shang-Chi picked up his glass and touched it to hers.
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