Smith reviewed the four options and worked the decision down from both ends.
The Dimensional Dragon came off the list first. Multiverse transit was a genuine strategic capability, but it was situational in a way the other options weren't — useful in specific crisis scenarios, not broadly applicable to the daily math of this universe's problems. He'd have other opportunities if the Dragon evolved again. Marvel's magical traditions already provided some multiverse access. Set it aside.
The Ultimate Dragon came off next. The planet-destruction failure condition was the same problem he'd rejected when it came up as the Super Dragon Ball option. He'd made that calculation before and hadn't found a new reason to revisit it. Having a more convenient path to the same catastrophic failure mode wasn't an improvement.
Three wishes versus one, with the negative energy accumulation — or one wish with combat capability and no confirmed side effects.
He didn't need wishes the way some people did. He'd given one up this cycle without significant consequence. The evil dragon side effect from the GT configuration was manageable in theory but was a structural debt that compounded with every use.
The Demon Dragon had no accumulation problem. It had escalating combat power that scaled with his own development. It required only three Dragon Balls to summon.
The tradeoff was clear and acceptable.
He confirmed the selection.
The system presented one additional question: Shenron's appearance and Dragon Ball count. Confirm or modify?
The Red Porunga design from Dragon Ball Daima was distinctive. He'd seen it, appreciated it in context, and had no particular desire to see it materialize over Earth and cause the kind of confusion that a blood-red demonic dragon would produce in the population that had just gotten comfortable with the standard green one. Four times through the summoning, people had adjusted to the sky going dark and Shenron appearing. That adjustment was worth preserving.
Keep current appearance. Keep seven Dragon Balls.
Confirmed.
He exited the system space and returned to the dead planet's surface, resumed his training position, and began working on the Super Saiyan trigger response time.
Below and behind him, in the solar system he'd left, things were escalating.
Coulson's plane was running in stealth mode at thirty thousand feet, cross-referencing the movement patterns of individual Kree craft against the city surveillance network below.
Fitz had the analysis instrument in both hands and was watching the readings with the focused attention of someone who had been working a problem for three hours and was close to an answer.
"The individual craft aren't stealthy," he said. "They have no shielding at all — once they fire, every camera in range picks them up. But their origin points — where they first appear — there's a pattern in the approach vectors."
He pulled the trajectories up on the display. Sixty separate incidents, all within the last four hours, each one showing an approach from the same general quadrant of upper airspace. Not from a fixed point — the points of origin moved — but all consistent with something operating at high altitude on a consistent heading.
"Something large," Fitz said. "Moving slowly. Releasing the individual craft as it goes."
Coulson looked at the pattern. "A carrier."
"Has to be."
May said, from the pilot's seat, "We're not going to see it on any standard sensor package."
"We don't need to see it," Coulson said. "We need to find it." He looked at Fitz. "The energy cannon. They reverse-engineered the Tesseract discharge profile for that weapon. If there's a stealth field involved, a Tesseract-derived energy pulse might interact with it differently than standard radar."
Fitz worked through the logic. "It's worth trying. If the field has any dimensional component, the energy burst would create a visible scatter point even if the field holds."
May pulled up the weapons panel.
"Target the center of mass projection based on the approach vectors," Coulson said. "Single shot. If we get confirmation, we go stealth immediately."
May locked in the firing solution. The deck panel above the plane's fuselage opened, and the energy cannon's barrel extended into the airspace. The charge cycle ran — orange light building at the muzzle, the weapon drawing from the stored Tesseract-derived power cell.
She fired.
The shot connected with something invisible at altitude and produced exactly the scatter Fitz had theorized — not a detonation, not penetration, but the visual signature of energy interacting with a stealth field that wasn't designed to handle this specific frequency.
The Dark Aster appeared.
The scale of it registered for several seconds before anyone spoke. Coulson's aircraft was not small. The Dark Aster made it look like a bird.
"Stealth, now," Coulson said. "And get the footage to Fury."
May was already moving. The plane went dark, the stealth systems cycling up, and the transmission went out to the Triskelion simultaneously.
The Dark Aster's response came before the stealth cycle completed.
The shot that hit Coulson's aircraft wasn't a precision strike. It was a point-defense response to an identified threat coordinate, and it was enough. The aircraft came apart at the midsection. The rear section separated from the forward section, both halves now in uncontrolled descent, wind screaming through the exposed cabin interior.
Coulson didn't spend time on the problem analysis. "Everyone — garage. Move."
Donnie Gill was already moving before Coulson finished the sentence. He hit the garage compartment first, got the door open, and was cycling Lola's engine before the others had cleared the doorway. The red car — modified for flight, maintained with the particular devotion that Coulson extended to everything that mattered to him — dropped out of the disintegrating aircraft's undercarriage and caught clean air.
May took the controls. The aircraft's two broken halves fell past them on either side and hit the ground below at intervals.
The fireball that rose afterward was visible for miles.
Coulson watched it from the flying car's window and said nothing for a moment.
"Transmit the Dark Aster footage as soon as we have signal," he said. "Fury needs that position data."
Donnie Gill looked at the fireball. He'd been half a second from being in it.
New York had changed character.
The individual Kree craft phase — targeted strikes, single vehicles moving methodically through the tournament participant list — had transitioned into something different. The Dark Aster had repositioned toward the city, and the craft it was releasing now weren't coming in ones and twos. They were coming in formation, dozens per wave, converting the organized targeting operation into something closer to a siege.
Even the Abomination, moving through lower Manhattan in his transformed state, was being managed. Not hurt — the laser weapons weren't penetrating to meaningful damage levels — but pushed back, staggered, kept from controlling space. The saturation was the point.
Vanko Industries' warehouse roof opened.
Fifty Kree craft found out what a coordinated automated weapons response from an aerospace engineer who had been anticipating this category of problem looked like. The exchange favored Vanko's side in the efficiency calculation, if not in the numbers.
Tony Stark's robot deployment was smaller and more intelligent. Forty-seven Iron Man units under JARVIS's simultaneous control, each one operating with the full weapons suite of a Stark suit, coordinated by a system that could process faster than any pilot. They moved in from the east and hit the formation's flank while Vanko's units held the center.
In the Stark suit he was flying himself, Tony fired a missile salvo, watched three Kree craft come apart, and said into the comms channel: "Update. Enemy numbers are still climbing. Anyone reached Smith Doyle yet?"
Natasha's voice from street level: "Fraternity is sending people. They're en route."
Steve Rogers said, "Some of the Kree are stronger than standard troopers. Stay alert on the ground."
Jessica Jones, from somewhere west of the main engagement: "I've got a mix down here. The baseline soldiers aren't much, but the elite units — they can take and give real punishment. Watch your backs."
Hawkeye had found a position on the twenty-second floor of a building overlooking the main approach corridor and was working through his specialized ammunition methodically. Two Kree craft had targeted his building in response, and both had hit structurally nonessential sections. He'd moved within the building after each hit.
The Hulk was covering the bridge approach from the south, which was the most direct ground corridor into the central combat zone. He'd destroyed seventeen craft. He'd also created approximately two hundred thousand dollars in pavement damage, which was going to be in someone's budget discussion before the week was out.
Natasha was behind an overturned vehicle when the Kree she'd engaged proved faster than his profile suggested. The energy discharge from his weapon shredded the vehicle she'd been using for cover, and he already had a laser weapon pointed at her position when the air beside her moved.
Pietro Maximoff appeared, grabbed her arm, and deposited her thirty meters further down the street in approximately the time it takes to blink.
Then he appeared in front of the Kree.
The adamantium blade went through cleanly. The Kree fell.
Pietro looked at Natasha across the distance and said, "You owe me one."
Natasha assessed herself for injuries, found none, and said, "Evacuate the civilians. The maintenance robots can't reach everyone, and most people don't have them."
Pietro was already gone before she finished the sentence.
He worked through the evacuation corridors in blue-white streaks, pulling people out of doorways and away from burning vehicles, moving faster than the targeting systems of the Kree craft could adjust for. The people he was moving experienced approximately two seconds of disorientation and then found themselves three blocks further from the engagement zone than they'd been before.
Natasha pressed her earpiece. " Fraternity is on the ground. Brotherhood's here."
Behind her, from the direction of the Brotherhood compound, the first of the Fraternity's senior operatives who had spent the last several years in ki training reached the outer edge of the engagement zone.
The Kree craft that had been suppressing the western approach found out what a concentrated ki blast from a practitioner who had trained in the shadow of Korin Tower looked like in aerial application. The answer was: a contained explosion at the impact point, no shrapnel, precise application of force.
Three craft went down in quick succession as more Brotherhood operatives reached the line.
The battle's character shifted again.