Back in his office, Fury set Pierce's briefcase on his desk and stood there for a moment looking at it.
Pierce had walked him out with a handshake and a brief, measured advisory: do your best, don't feel pressured, use this to build toward future victories, and — almost as an afterthought — make sure S.H.I.E.L.D.'s super-soldier research program was getting adequate resources. The world was getting more complicated and the organization needed more capability to defend it.
Fury had nodded at each point with the expression of a man receiving useful guidance from a thoughtful superior. He'd been making that face for thirty years and had gotten very good at it.
He sat down and thought about the actual problem.
Seven Dragon Balls total. Tony Stark held two. The ball Steve Rogers had found made three confirmed, plus Pierce's ball made four — both now under S.H.I.E.L.D.'s nominal control, which translated to two competitor slots and a combined spectator allocation of twenty. The five operatives at Rose Manor had been moving toward a Dragon Ball, which suggested whoever deployed them had one, though whether they'd secured it was still unclear from the intelligence picture. That accounted for five, potentially. Two unconfirmed locations.
Kamar-Taj had been involved before. The Asgardian arrival that Coulson was investigating implied Odin was moving assets again. The Eternals had participated in the previous tournament and had clear motivation to be in this one.
The field was going to be deep.
Fury let his mind run through the roster of people under his operational sphere who had any realistic chance of competing at that level.
Steve Rogers: Peak human conditioning, exceptional tactical intelligence, no realistic path through the top of the bracket. He'd assigned himself the Steve slot by keeping his own ball, which was fine — the man had a wish he wanted to fulfill and the right to try. But Fury wasn't betting the house on that outcome.
Jessica Jones: Stronger than Steve, less experience with large-scale enhanced combat. A reasonable midfield competitor.
Chen Haoran: currently embedded in the Paragons, which created a exposure problem. If he competed under S.H.I.E.L.D.'s banner, that relationship became complicated fast. And if the Extremis enhancement came through from the Rose Manor samples before the tournament opened, his ceiling might be meaningfully higher. The question was whether pushing that timeline was worth the operational cost.
Donnie Gill: similar base to Chen Haoran, but the thermal/cryo interaction with a potential Extremis enhancement was unpredictable. Not worth the risk.
Bruce Banner.
Fury picked up his phone.
"Natasha. Where's Banner right now?"
"Avengers base." A pause. "Betty's visit is working. He's been stable — even in Hulk form, he's responsive. The irritability is down significantly."
Fury thought about what he'd seen in New York: the Hulk, on a helicarrier, choosing not to transform under provocation. The calculation that implied. "Bring him to headquarters when Banner's available. I want to talk to him."
He ended the call and sat back.
The Betty approach had been a good call — good enough that Fury had assumed it was Natasha's instinct until the debrief, when Natasha had mentioned almost in passing that Smith Doyle had suggested it during one of her regular status reports. Which tracked. Smith had been watching Banner since at least the New York engagement, and he understood leverage in the non-coercive sense better than most people Fury had ever worked with.
Fury filed that away, as he filed away most things involving Smith, under a mental heading that had expanded considerably over the past two years.
At the Fraternity, Smith sat in his office with the Dragon Ball perspective still faintly active and worked through what it had just shown him.
Pierce handing the ball to Fury had been unexpected in its directness. He'd known HYDRA had a Dragon Ball. But watching Pierce set a briefcase on a desk and walk his own Dragon Ball across the room to Nick Fury, framed as selfless institutional service — that was a move that required some thinking.
Pierce was maneuvering S.H.I.E.L.D. into the tournament while maintaining a plausible public distance from the outcome. If S.H.I.E.L.D.'s competitor won, HYDRA benefited through Pierce's spectator access and intelligence gain. If they lost, Pierce had positioned himself as the reasonable senior statesman who did the right thing and handed over an asset he couldn't use. No downside for him. Clean.
Smith noted it and moved on.
All seven Dragon Balls had owners. The collection phase was complete.
He pulled up the communication interface. "Friday — send meeting invitations to everyone from the previous Dragon Ball planning sessions. Tomorrow morning, ten o'clock." He thought for a moment. "Add Wenwu, Pietro, and Wanda."
"Done," said Friday, the AI in the system. "Invitations delivered."
At Red Ribbon Group's offices, four separate phones registered the notification within seconds of each other. Selene, Wesley, Alexei, and Michael all read it, confirmed their attendance internally, and went back to whatever they'd been doing. None of them needed to discuss it. When Smith called a meeting about Dragon Balls, you attended.
At Universal Capsule Company, Bulma was mid-sentence explaining a product launch timeline to Fox when her phone buzzed. She looked at it.
Fox's buzzed half a second later. Fox read it, looked at Bulma, and said, "Looks like the tournament is starting."
Bulma put her phone down with more precision than the gesture required. "He told me the new product launch came first. He specifically said that."
"And you believe he won't keep that commitment?"
"I believe him." Bulma's expression was precise. "I'm just making sure I stay on record as having said it clearly." She picked up the phone again and went back to the launch documents. "The product launch happens on schedule."
Fox watched her and said nothing, which was sometimes the most useful contribution available.
In the residential wing, Wanda saw the notification and felt something shift in her chest — not quite excitement, but adjacent to it. She read it twice.
"This is the meeting he mentioned," she said.
Pietro was already pulling up the calendar. "Tomorrow morning."
Wanda looked at the Dragon Ball on her desk. She thought about what wishes meant to a person, and what she would say if Smith's review process asked her directly why she wanted what she wanted.
She didn't have an answer yet that she was satisfied with.
Across the compound, Wenwu read the notification, exchanged a brief look with Ying Li, and felt the familiar pull of a tournament approaching.
He was curious about the field. He was curious about what had changed.
Tomorrow, he'd find out.