Pietro exited the ring, twirling a colored pencil between two fingers. He strolled back into the Zone 1 waiting area with the casual ease of a man returning from a minor errand.
Wanda waited for him.
"You had no respect for him," she said, her voice low.
Pietro pocketed the pencil. "I didn't hurt him. It was a joke."
"It was a humiliation in front of three hundred thousand people and a global broadcast." She held his gaze. "Pietro. We have been through situations that could have gone the other way. I know you remember that. So why are you treating this like a game?"
The easy confidence slipped from Pietro's face. Only a fraction, but enough to register.
"You're right," he said. "That was careless. It won't happen again."
Wanda exhaled and nodded.
Jessica Jones stepped up to Pietro's shoulder. "Congratulations on the win."
"Clean result," Steve Rogers added. His tone conveyed genuine assessment, not praise.
"I got lucky with the draw," Pietro said. "He wasn't a lightweight. Just slower than me."
"Your pranks are going to get you targeted," Jessica said. "People are watching the replays. They are going to study your patterns before you meet them."
"My sister already told me not to do it again."
"Smart sister."
From the VIP box above, Smith watched the exchange. Wanda looked up. He gave her a single nod. She returned it.
In the Zone 3 waiting area, Quill delivered the pre-match speech he had been constructing since the ferry ride over.
"This is it. The moment we came back for." He stared at the ring. "I am going to win this tournament. Championship. Wish. Done."
Rocket sat nearby, methodically checking the condition of his permitted equipment, restricted for the competition to his armored jacket and a single sidearm. He did not look up.
"Use your divine power sparingly," Rocket said. "You haven't had it long enough for it to be reliable under pressure. Don't spend it on early-round opponents when you don't have to."
"I know."
"I am saying it because you have a history of using everything you have immediately."
"I know that too."
Mantis stood beside Drax. Her antennae rose slightly, an involuntary micro-expression indicating she was absorbing ambient emotional states and finding the volume stressful.
"There are so many people here," she murmured. "Their emotions are very loud." She looked down at her hands. "My abilities require physical contact. If the opponent stays at range, I will have nothing to work with. I will probably be eliminated early."
"You are here to compete," Quill told her. "See what happens. Nobody knows your abilities going in. Use that window. Make them regret underestimating you."
"I want to win this tournament," Drax announced. "I do not want to be knocked out of the ring." He paused. "Both are possible. I accept this."
This represented Drax at his most optimistic.
Yondu had stood behind Quill throughout the exchange. He clamped a hand onto the back of Quill's neck. The grip was firm, lacking gentleness but devoid of malice.
"Listen to me," Yondu said, his voice dropping low. "Earth is not what I expected. The people here are not the soft targets you knew when you left. Somebody already broke the combat detector just trying to register. Do not assume your position simply because you flew in from space."
"I know."
"I'm not sure you do." Yondu released him. "Go."
Selene, the Zone 3 official, stepped to the edge of the ring. Her dark-robed composure remained entirely unaffected by the noise and the massive crowd.
"Zone 3, opening match. Contestants ninety-three and ninety-four, please approach."
"That's me," Quill said. He rolled his neck, stepped back, took three running paces, and launched himself toward the ring. A twelve-meter horizontal leap, an impossible distance for a baseline human, ending in a perfectly smooth landing on the platform.
The section of the audience focused on Zone 3 produced an audible, collective reaction.
In the lower tier of general seating, John Wick sat with his arm around his wife. They watched the Zone 3 screen together.
She leaned in close. "That one is called Daredevil. Did you notice that?"
Wick watched the screen. A man wearing sunglasses and carrying a white cane carefully navigated the ring steps.
"I noticed."
"Your old nickname. Just one character different."
Wick offered a slight smile at the monitor. "Close enough."
On the ring, Quill stared at his opponent and blinked.
Daredevil stood across from him. Dark suit, sunglasses, white cane. The complete composition.
"Is this..." Quill lowered his voice. "Is this supposed to be a high-level qualifying tournament?"
From the front row, a dedicated section of supporters produced enough volume to answer the question regarding Daredevil's fan infrastructure.
Daredevil. Daredevil. Daredevil.
Quill stared at the audience section, genuinely surprised. "He has fans."
Selene spoke. "Match duration, thirty minutes. No killing. Out of bounds or inability to continue, loss. Timer decides if no winner. Begin."
The cane folded inward. Two billy clubs extended from either end. Daredevil moved.
He was not slow. Not by any standard existing prior to the era of super soldier serums and enhanced individuals. His footwork was precise, angling his approach to avoid Quill's forward reach. The first strike targeted Quill's right knee, aiming directly for the nerve cluster below the cap.
Quill sidestepped. The clubs swept past him.
He looked at the clubs. He looked at Daredevil. He concluded this constituted a reasonable occasion to deploy the divine power. He channeled it into his right arm.
The arm transformed into solid stone. The cellular structure restructured, hardened, and shifted to a dense granite-gray. The mass tripled. He threw a heavy hook that would have cratered standard construction materials.
Daredevil heard the shift in air displacement. Stone moves through the air differently than flesh and bone. He threw himself sideways into a tight roll. The granite fist sailed harmlessly over him.
Quill's foot came down hard. He drove divine-enhanced output straight downward to anchor his stance.
The ring surface held.
It did not give. It did not bend. It did not fracture. It held, entirely undamaged. The resulting shockwave traveled straight back up Quill's leg. He stumbled backward, his foot considerably less cooperative than a moment ago.
What kind of metal is this floor?
Secondary adamantium. Bulma had specified the material for the second tournament explicitly because the first event had produced multiple unplanned ring-surface incidents. The call proved correct.
Daredevil used Quill's momentary distraction to return to a standing position. He swung a billy club at Quill's shin, targeting the exposed point just below the concentration of divine power. He aimed with an anatomical precision Quill's enhanced body radar had failed to flag as a threat.
The club struck the shin. It bent.
Daredevil's expression, usually fixed in the calm calculation of a tactician, shifted. It became the look of a man processing a severely worse-than-expected data point.
Quill looked at him.
He lashed out with a fast kick. Right leg, knee slightly bent for optimal range. Divine power coursed from his hip to his heel, glowing a faint blue at the point of contact. Daredevil threw his arms up in a guard. He lacked the time for any other maneuver.
The impact launched Daredevil backward across the ring. He slammed into the reinforced padding on the far wall. Both forearms absorbed the primary shock. Both forearms produced sharp, ugly sounds indicating structural failure. He slid down the padding and slumped onto the floor, cleanly out of bounds.
Selene checked his position against the boundary line.
"Contestant ninety-three, Peter Quill. Winner."
Two medical staff were already running. Daredevil pushed himself up onto one knee. Medical staff tend to move faster for fighters who try to stand. Daredevil offered a sharp nod. He knew the procedure. The wax bath. He allowed them to guide him away.
On the ring, Quill executed a brief hip thrust, an awkward mixture of performance and genuine relief. He walked off the platform, maintaining the measured composure of a man who had secured a victory but endured a highly unpleasant interaction with a solid floor.
In the audience tier, Coulson lowered his tablet.
He had run a combat reading on Peter Quill months ago. The number had been 8. Barely clearing the entry threshold. The assessment read: ordinary human male, extended off-planet residence. The fight he had just recorded was not executed by an ordinary human male.
Rock transformation. Divine energy visible at the point of force application. Impact output registering in the high hundreds, minimum.
Coulson considered what S.H.I.E.L.D. actually knew regarding the Ego Planet encounter. Almost nothing. Smith had filed zero reports detailing the events there.
What did you go through in a few months to become that?
Coulson logged a note and continued watching.
Zones 2 and 4 progressed through their opening matches without presenting Steve Rogers or Jessica Jones with any genuine challenges. Steve dismantled his bracket methodically. Shield up, defense prioritized, waiting patiently for the opening. He fought with the discipline of a man who had trained specifically for this event for a solid year. Jessica operated with considerably less patience, equally trained but entirely uninterested in prolonging her matches.
Both advanced.
Smith's attention locked onto Zone 6 the moment the match board refreshed.
The young man in the full-coverage blue-gray suit approached the ring. His breathing remained controlled. The mark of a fighter successfully managing his nerves. He stretched once at the edge, stepped onto the platform, and faced his opponent. A compact man possessing the dense, settled musculature of a long-term strength mutation. The type of build where a casual punch cracks solid concrete.
The man threw a punch.
The young man caught it on his forearm.
It was not a defensive block. It was a clean catch. The forearm held firm. The arm did not compress backward. The expression visible above the suit's collar indicated the young man registered the force and found it more interesting than alarming.
"Nice arm tattoo, by the way," the young man said. "What is that, a dragon?"
The man stared at him. "What—" He shifted his grip and snapped a kick forward.
The young man stepped laterally, slipping past the strike with loose-jointed fluidity. The movement relied on instincts that operated slightly outside normal human physics.
"I'm just asking. You don't have to answer." He circled to the man's opposite side. "I was going to say it looked good, but now you're making it weird."
"You masked freak—"
"Spider-Man," the young man corrected, his tone carrying the specific patience reserved for addressing factual errors. "I'm Spider-Man."
He delivered a punch with his right hand. Compact, direct, targeting the solar plexus.
The man folded inward. His hands clamped involuntarily over his stomach. His knees buckled. He dropped to the floor with the slow, complete collapse of a body receiving an unarguable physical signal.
Spider-Man stared down at his own fist, a slight frown creasing his mask.
"I actually don't think that was full strength," he muttered.
Chen Haoran, the Zone 6 official, stepped to the center of the ring and initiated the count.
At one, the man's hands remained locked on his stomach.
At ten, he had not moved.
Two medical staff arrived with a stretcher. The man departed, conscious but deeply unhappy regarding the situation.
Chen Haoran raised his hand.
"Contestant one hundred and ninety-eight. Spider-Man. Winner."
The name flashed across the Zone 6 screen alongside its registration designation. In the contestant waiting area, multiple fighters cross-referenced the name against the available registration files. They found nothing. No prior entries. No affiliated organizations. No scouter reading on record. The instrument had apparently registered a technical objection to Spider-Man during processing.
Spider-Man utilized that specific name to sidestep any questions regarding his actual identity. The tournament mandated no legal identification. Management had realized early on that a significant percentage of their most compelling participants required anonymity to compete. The registration rules reflected that practical reality.
Somewhere in Queens, Aunt May watched a different channel.
As the day progressed, a clear pattern emerged among the smaller stories. Mantis secured two victories, surprising opponents with unanticipated empathic contact and weaponizing their own emotional states against them. In her third match, an opponent who had studied the replays maintained strict distance and targeted her from range. She stepped out of bounds and suffered elimination. Rocket won a single technical fight where his weapon restrictions failed to entirely neutralize his tactical advantage. He then faced an opponent lacking an exploitable ranged weakness and lost.
The eight zones ground down to their final matches as the afternoon light shifted across the island.
The screens cleared. The bracket grids compiled. The host's voice echoed simultaneously from every speaker in the stadium.
Sixteen names materialized across eight screens in perfectly synchronized text.
Scott Lang. Hope van Dyne. Spider-Man. Carol Danvers. Ikaris. Pietro. Wanda. Yondu. Peter Quill. Kang Yuna. Heimdall. Drax. Agatha Harkness. Jessica Jones. Steve Rogers. Carl Creel.
The reaction erupted within the stadium and rippled instantly outward across every device connected to the global broadcast. Sixteen trending topics dominated social platforms within minutes. Fan accounts dedicated to each contestant exploded from hundreds of followers to tens of thousands before the final bracket graphic even finished rendering. Eight languages filled the digital space with analysis, speculation, and fierce argument.
For the eliminated contestants remaining on the island, the next six hours presented a different type of competition. Recruitment officers from S.H.I.E.L.D., SWORD, the CIA, four international intelligence services, and numerous unnamed private organizations worked the common areas, handing out cards and delivering direct pitches. Wealthy individuals, attending specifically to scout personal security talent, moved through the same crowds. They offered significantly more money and carried far fewer constraints regarding its source.
By nightfall, the island remained intensely active.
In the Wakandan delegation's private box, Shuri waited for a moment of quiet.
"You didn't register," she noted.
T'Challa dragged both hands down his face.
"Stop."
"I am just noting—"
"Shuri." He lowered his hands. "Steve Rogers almost didn't make the top sixteen. The man is a super soldier who trained specifically for this tournament for a full year. If that is the necessary margin..." He gestured toward the massive screens displaying the bracket. "What exactly would I contribute? I would be a very expensive punching bag."
Shuri pressed her lips into a thin line. The statement was entirely accurate. It offered no viable counter-argument.
T'Chaka placed a heavy hand on his son's shoulder. "You made the correct decision." He looked at the bracket. "And the Dragon Balls are not going anywhere. The tournament will run again." He paused, letting the silence hold. "How much longer are you planning to stay with the Paragons?"
T'Challa shook his head slowly. "Father, you are healthy. You will sit on the throne for decades. This is not an urgent question." He looked down at the arena floor, where the final sixteen were being sorted into their quarterfinal brackets. "The Paragons matter. A superhero who is publicly accountable, publicly present, doing the actual work. That matters in ways that are not easy to quantify from inside Wakanda." He paused again. "I want to do it for as long as it means something."
T'Chaka offered no response. He had learned over the years that certain arguments were best conducted through silence and patience.
Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows of the private box, the island's administrative section processed another immigration document request. It was one of several generated that evening by newly eliminated international contestants receiving employment offers requiring permanent legal residency. Under Secretary Ross's recent administrative framework, the legal pathways operated with unprecedented efficiency. Documented. Taxable. Traceable. Whatever contributed, contributed. What didn't, didn't. The paperwork moved forward.
T'Challa stared at the sixteen names illuminating the screens. He considered what he was building with the Paragons. He wondered if it would still matter in ten years. He decided that question did not require an immediate answer.