Killian's legs were already past burning — the heat was structural now, bone-deep, the Extremis metabolizing everything it touched. The trousers below his knees had long since turned to ash.
When the plasma chain came for him again, he kicked into it. The links dissolved on contact, vaporized against his skin temperature before they could find purchase. Without breaking stride, he pivoted and sent a column of fire rolling across the courtyard toward the Winter Soldier closing from his left flank. The operative twisted away just in time, the flame washing the stone behind him black.
That bought Killian three seconds. He'd been buying seconds for the last ten minutes. The math was not improving.
Above the courtyard, Tony descended from the air and landed beside Xialing in a crunch of stressed metal — the right thruster still wasn't right.
Xialing glanced at him. "What's the situation with the Dragon Ball?"
It wasn't that she cared about the Dragon Ball for its own sake. Shang-Chi had laid out his grand plan on the flight over — resurrect everyone who died in the Battle of New York, fix the broken pieces of a broken world. She'd listened. She'd also been honest with herself: she was a fighter, a capable one, but this field had drawn in players at a completely different level. She wasn't walking away with Killian's Dragon Ball through combat alone.
She'd already tested the other option. She'd called her father from the plane. Wenwu had been direct: "Xialing, your assignment was the Mandarin who surfaced first. The Dragon Ball situation has moved beyond your reach. If Shang-Chi wants his wish badly enough, he can earn it himself. I can request observation access for you, but everything is subject to the leader's rules."
End of conversation. So that avenue was closed.
Tony said, "I need that Dragon Ball."
Xialing gave him a flat look. Who didn't?
"I'll step back from the ball. What's it worth to you?"
Tony didn't flinch. "Forty million, and I need your people to help me take it from him."
Xialing absorbed that number. The fact that Tony Stark would agree to pay forty million for a Dragon Ball he hadn't even secured yet told her everything about how fast these things were appreciating in value. She filed that away.
"If you actually get it," she said, "I need two spectator spots for the Dragon Ball battle. Whatever tournament comes next."
Tony looked at her, then nodded. "Done."
Simple math — one Dragon Ball came with ten spectator spots, and if he got this one he'd have twenty total. He was bringing Pepper and Happy at most. Two spots to Xialing cost him nothing.
With that settled, they both turned back to Killian.
The four Extremis operatives he'd arrived with were already dead — the Winter Soldiers had worked through them methodically. Killian himself was still standing, still burning, but the four remaining operatives had him boxed in from every angle. Even with his regeneration running at maximum capacity, with his skin glowing dull orange like cooling metal, the damage was accumulating faster than it was clearing.
Tony didn't wait. He cut across the courtyard at a low altitude and fired a palm cannon, center mass. The shot blasted Killian sideways, breaking him out of the encirclement in a spray of heat shimmer and shattered tile.
The Winter Soldiers stopped. Assessed.
Bucky and the tallest of the four broke off to pursue Killian. The remaining three turned toward Tony.
Tony settled into a fighting stance as they approached. JARVIS' voice came through his earpiece immediately. "Sir, the right thruster is still down. We cannot achieve sustained flight at this time."
"Now? You're telling me this now?" Tony muttered. He'd nearly gone down earlier on his first approach to the manor — the thruster had cut out and caught at the last second. He'd assumed it was fixed. Apparently he'd assumed wrong.
No altitude advantage meant no room to manage range. He was going to have to do this standing still.
"Bang. Bang. Bang."
It went about as well as expected. Tony's close-quarters fighting was competent by most standards. It was not remotely competitive against operatives who had been running wet work for decades inside a conditioning program designed to produce the most efficient killers on the planet. The three of them hit him in overlapping sequences — one drawing his guard, another landing, the third following through — and Tony went down.
He pulled himself back up and immediately changed approach. "JARVIS — scan their movement patterns. You're handling the close combat."
He'd learned this the hard way once before. His brain could read a fight. JARVIS could calculate one. In a brawl with trained killers, the distinction mattered.
Death Dealer appeared at Xialing's side. "Chief. Do we assist?"
He'd heard the terms of the arrangement. The question was practical.
Xialing watched Iron Man absorb another combination and felt a low flicker of regret. Tony's performance right now was a far cry from what she'd seen in the Dragon Ball tournament footage. Still — a deal was a deal.
"Send a squad to support Stark. He's in the suit, so our weapons won't damage him. The fire might keep them off him long enough for JARVIS to calibrate."
Death Dealer acknowledged and moved. Within seconds, a group of Ten Rings operatives opened up on the three Winter Soldiers flanking Tony, rifles cracking across the courtyard in controlled bursts.
The Winter Soldiers were fast. The first burst caught two of them still repositioning — they twisted clear, the rounds skipping off the flagstone. The others held position behind ballistic vests that took the hits and kept them standing.
Several rounds sparked off Tony's suit instead.
"Hey!" Tony's voice came sharp and irritated over the general chaos. "Watch your aim — you're shooting me."
Xialing allowed herself a small smile. "You're wearing the suit. What are you worried about? Consider it covering fire."
Tony didn't have a comeback for that. The burst had done its job — the three Winter Soldiers stepped back, reassessing their angles, and that was enough space for JARVIS to start working.
The rounds that had hit the armor had flattened clean against the gold-titanium plating and dropped to the ground in a scatter of deformed copper. Whatever else was going wrong with the Mark 42 tonight, the hull was holding.
At the far side of the courtyard, a door burst open.
T'Challa came through it at a full sprint, four Paragons members at his back, all of them moving with the focused economy of people who had already cleared the building and knew exactly what they were running toward.
T'Challa's voice cut across the noise.
"Killian. Hand over the Dragon Ball."