The host scrambled onto the adamantium platform before the thick, black smoke of the ruined Iron Legion had even fully cleared.
"Contestant down!" his voice boomed over the crackling flames. "Ten-second countdown!"
He raised his hand, marking the seconds.
"Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven..."
Wanda didn't move a muscle.
"...Three. Two. One. Tony Stark is the champion of the third Dragon Ball Tournament!"
The applause from the stadium came up fast and deafeningly loud. Most people in the VIP stands had quietly favored the reality-warping witch going into the final, sudden-death match. Tony had answered that cosmic threat with a literal robot army and three minutes of uninterrupted, apocalyptic aerial bombardment, and the tournament rules had done the rest. The brutal, logistical result was what it was, and everyone clapped for the victor.
Pietro was on the ring before the host even finished the sentence. A blur of silver-blue, and suddenly he was kneeling beside his sister.
He frantically checked Wanda's pulse and her breathing, his hands running quickly over her shoulders and neck to assess any physical trauma. Nothing structural. She had simply burned through her massive mystical reserves completely and gone under—her physical body's desperate way of forcing a hard neurological shutdown before she killed herself. Her magic would naturally restore itself. She would wake up on her own.
Pietro exhaled a long, shaky breath and sat back on his heels.
High above, the remaining five pristine secondary adamantium suits descended from altitude, touching down heavily around the platform. The compact, fortress-like defensive configuration Tony had locked himself into during the bombardment hissed and smoothly disengaged, the heavy plates sliding back into their standard humanoid form.
The ring itself was completely untouched. Secondary adamantium subjected to thirty heavy conventional bombs had not sustained a single microscopic scratch.
Around it, however, was a graveyard. The twisted, smoking wreckage of thirty destroyed gold-titanium suits was scattered across the platform and the cratered earth beyond the boundary line.
In the intelligence sections, people were quietly doing the grim arithmetic. Each Mark suit carried an estimated baseline build cost of around three hundred million dollars. Secondary adamantium, on top of that base, ran roughly a hundred thousand dollars per gram. Seven suits forged entirely in secondary adamantium easily exceeded five billion dollars each, depending on the thickness of the coverage. The total, staggering financial figure for this single match, including the deployed ordnance, was somewhere in the tens of billions.
Someone in the civilian stands muttered exactly what everyone else was thinking: "Only he could afford to fight like this."
Phil Coulson didn't disagree. He had automatically started the S.H.I.E.L.D. budget calculation in his head and simply stopped when the number got profoundly uncomfortable to think about.
Smith Doyle materialized in the dead center of the ring.
"The third Dragon Ball Tournament is concluded," Smith rumbled, his voice projecting without a microphone, carrying the weight of a god. "Tony Stark is the champion and will receive the wish."
He slowly looked across the remaining, exhausted crowd. "The event is over. All participants and spectators, excepting Tony Stark and his immediate guests, will now be escorted off the island. My staff will direct you to your transport."
The massive stands immediately began to empty. No one argued. Even the stubborn S.H.I.E.L.D. contingent moved toward the exits without requiring a verbal suggestion. Nick Fury had deeply wanted to stay and observe the mechanics of the cosmic wish, but he had known since the first tournament that the organizer strictly forbade an audience for the dragon. He would get the heavily redacted confirmation from Tony afterward and work his geopolitical strategy from there.
Xu Wenwu watched Tony's battered group celebrate from the aisle and smiled quietly to himself. The arrogant American had actually learned from his previous, humiliating losses and ruthlessly corrected every single tactical mistake. It was a clean, masterful execution.
Within minutes, the island cleared.
Down on the ring, Tony's silver visor snapped up.
He blinked against the bright, open sky, breathed in actual, unfiltered ocean air for the first time in an hour, and looked around at the pristine ring, the billions of dollars of smoking wreckage, and his people rushing toward the platform.
"I'm back," Tony exhaled, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "Am I the champion?"
Smith Doyle's utterly deadpan expression conveyed his exact opinion of that question without requiring a single syllable.
Harley Keener answered from Tony's left, grinning ear to ear. "You won. I mean, it looked a whole lot like sleeping, but you won."
Tony let out a sharp, genuine laugh. He pulled Pepper into a tight, grounding hug first, burying his face in her shoulder. Then Happy Hogan, slapping the big man on the back. He paused respectfully in front of Xialing and Wenwu for a moment, acknowledging their silent support, before turning back to where Harley had both arms opened wide in smug expectation.
Tony grabbed the kid under the arms and hoisted him up. "I didn't forget you, kid. You've been waiting for this since that freezing garage in Tennessee."
Harley nodded with complete, shining sincerity. This tournament had violently exceeded every single expectation he had arrived with.
Smith Doyle snapped his fingers.
Puar came forward from the shadows. It carried a velvet-lined silver tray. Seven Dragon Balls sat on it, all finally gathered, pulsing with a deep, rhythmic golden light.
"Tony," Smith said, his voice dropping the tournament persona and returning to the quiet authority of the man who ran the world from the shadows. "I need to confirm your wish."
Tony slowly set Harley down.
The billionaire levity instantly dropped off his face, completely evaporating in the ocean breeze. Something much older, heavier, and profoundly considered replaced it. He stood quietly in front of the glowing orbs for a long moment, staring at his reflection in the amber glass.
"My father," Tony whispered, the words meant mostly for himself. "Or my mother. Which one first?"
He had deliberately, stubbornly put the agonizing question off for months. There had been absolutely no point in tearing himself apart thinking about the impossible choice before he had actually won the right to make it. But now, the dragon was waiting. He had to answer it.
Pepper stepped up beside him, resting a gentle hand on his armored shoulder. "This is yours to decide, Tony. We can't help you with it."
Smith Doyle looked at the man's fractured grief and spoke.
"It's not complicated, Tony. If your parents died in the exact same event, at the exact same time, you can simply frame the wish around the event itself. Both of them come back."
Tony went completely, utterly still.
The breath hitched in his chest. And then, abandoning all decorum, the invincible Iron Man lunged forward, grabbed the terrifying Inspector General of the Fraternity by the shoulders, and pulled him into a desperate, crushing hug.
Smith endured it with the stoic patience of a stone wall.
A few feet away, Shang-Chi had gone very, very quiet.
The martial artist's sharp mind was rapidly running that exact same, terrifying cosmic logic forward. One singular event. Multiple deaths. A single, sweeping wish. The Battle of New York.
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