As the smoke cleared, Tina stood revealed.
Her spear was gone, replaced by twin shields. Smoke curled off her body, blackened by the earlier blasts. She had absorbed the mini-missile barrage directly, only throwing up a two-handed shield in time to block Tony's chest beam.
The crowd gasped. Aside from looking a little scorched, she was unharmed. Truly worthy of the title "goddess of war"—even micro-missiles couldn't break her.
The shields vanished. In her hands appeared a sword and an axe—
—but at that very instant, a heavy rotary cannon unfolded from Tony's back.
The Zeus-mod.
Ratatatatatata!
A hundred thousand rounds a minute tore through the air, turning the ring into a storm of steel.
Tina halted her charge. Too late to swap back to a shield, she dropped her weapons and crossed her arms before her face.
Sparks erupted as the bullets flattened and fell away from her body. Even her Eternal-forged frame staggered under the sheer kinetic onslaught.
Venom unfurled over Eddie in the stands, intercepting stray rounds before they could cut into the audience.
Still, the rain of metal drove Tina back step by step. And then—
Tony's chest reactor flared again. While the minigun thundered, he poured sixty percent of his remaining energy into a single chest beam.
Boom!
The beam slammed Tina point-blank. She had blocked her vision with her arms, never even saw it coming. The blast hurled her across the ring, smashing her into the far edge.
Smoke trailed from her arms where the energy had scorched through. For the first time in eons, she felt the sting of human technology.
"You've drawn my blood," Tina admitted, looking down at her arms. "For a mortal man to wound me… you should be proud."
"But this ends—"
Her words froze.
Her eyes clouded white.
Her curse—the Mahd Wy'ry—had struck without warning.
Tony frowned, not understanding why she suddenly froze mid-sentence. He smirked anyway. "So even Olympians bleed red. Same as Asgardians. That means you can die like the rest."
But Tina didn't react at all. She just stood there, blank.
In the Eternal's section, Gilgamesh leapt to his feet. "No… her madness has returned!"
Kingo hissed, "But she only has one Dragon Ball left! If she loses, it's over for her."
Ikaris muttered, "Should I intervene?"
Sersi snapped, "Don't! If you step in now, she'll lose her chance forever."
The family fell silent.
Tony, meanwhile, tested a theory. He fired a repulsor not at Tina, but at the floor beside her. She didn't even flinch.
"Jarvis," Tony said quickly, "calculate how much output I need to blow out the floor under her feet and dump her outside the ring."
The AI responded at once: a thirty-percent chest blast, angled precisely, would collapse that section of the titanium alloy stage and toss her clear.
Tony grimaced at the energy cost—he only had forty percent left—but nodded. "Do it."
Whummm—BOOM!
The floor under Tina's boots erupted. The shockwave flipped her stiff, unresisting body into the air and dumped her straight out of bounds.
The arena erupted in confusion. To the crowd, it looked like she had just… given up.
"Was that a fix?" someone muttered. "Did they cut a deal backstage?"
Even Xu Xialing narrowed her eyes. "Father… was that a throw?"
Wenwu shook his head. "No. Something happened to her body. Otherwise Stark could never have won." His gaze sharpened. "But that means it's just him and me left. Yinglee… we'll meet again soon."
The audience buzzed louder and louder. From the stands it reeked of a rigged fight. Some shouted angrily, demanding a refund like cheated gamblers in Geneva.
But Smith Dole ignored them. He appeared at Tony's side, raising his hand.
"The winner—Tony Stark!"
The crowd roared, though not all in approval. The match was over, fair or not.
(End of Chapter)
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