30 million.
Smith turned the number over on the walk back through the portal. It wasn't arbitrary. In the Dragon Ball power framework, three hundred million was the floor — the minimum baseline a Saiyan needed before the Super Saiyan threshold became physically achievable. Below that, the transformation simply wasn't accessible, regardless of emotional trigger or intent. The biology had to be ready before the breakthrough could happen.
He was standing at the door now. Not through it yet, but at it.
With ten times Kaioken stacked on top, his output ceiling sat at 300 million. Comparable to Frieza operating at roughly a quarter of his full transformed power. That was a meaningful benchmark — not comfortable, not sufficient for what was coming further down the line, but meaningful.
Dende had made this possible. Without on-site healing capable of pulling him back from genuine near-death states repeatedly, the Zenkai methodology was impractical. The Saiyan biology needed repeated stress-and-recovery cycles, not a single dramatic near-death moment. Dende had given him the ability to run that process properly.
Back at Brotherhood HQ, Smith checked the system space for any notification of a Dragon Ball evolution. He found nothing. One million combat power had triggered nothing. Neither had three hundred million, apparently. The previous evolution had triggered when his power approached ten thousand. The next threshold might require tens of millions, or hundreds of millions, or something else entirely — the pattern wasn't linear enough to project with confidence.
He then attempted the Super Saiyan transformation.
Nothing happened. The internal conditions weren't there yet — he was at the floor of the range, not through it. He filed this without frustration and returned to Earth.
The next morning, Smith arranged Dende's living situation.
Korin Tower was the obvious answer — the Cat Sage's domain, already established, already functioning as a cultivation and training support base. Dende wasn't a combatant and didn't need combat infrastructure. He needed a quiet space, access to materials for Dragon Ball creation, and proximity to Smith when training sessions were scheduled. The tower covered all of it.
Smith walked Dende through the upper level, introduced him to Korin with minimal ceremony, and left them to each other. Two support-type supernatural entities in the same facility. It would either work seamlessly or produce interesting complications. Either way, not his immediate problem.
The question of a Kami's Lookout equivalent — the elevated sanctuary that the Earth Guardian traditionally occupied — was one he'd been considering. The Red House aerial base existed as a reference point, and Bulma had demonstrated more than enough engineering range to build a mechanical analogue of the Lookout if given the specifications. It wasn't a priority draw from the item lottery — he'd rather pull a Tree of Might sapling than a structure he could commission. Bulma could handle the structure. The sapling was irreplaceable.
Fox found him in the common room shortly after.
"While you were away, several people came looking for you. We used the seclusion story. It held." She opened the file. "Commander Hill called — wanted to discuss the Asgard diplomatic situation. Ajak of the Eternals has been in New York the entire time. Currently in a hotel on the next block, waiting for you to be available. She mentioned it was important." A pause. "Tony Stark came by in person to check whether you were on Earth. He also asked to borrow Loki's scepter for research. Bulma declined and told him it was your call."
"Other than that — the Asgard-Earth diplomatic announcement was the headline event. And a new superhero team surfaced while you were gone. They're calling themselves Afterlife."
Smith processed this in sequence.
Asgard establishing formal diplomatic relations with Earth and planting an embassy in New York — the motivation wasn't hard to identify. The Dragon Balls. Every move Asgard had made over the past two cycles had pointed the same direction. Lorelei in New York, Heimdall's guard detail, the whole formalized structure of it — all designed to create easier access to the next tournament cycle.
The problem, from their perspective, was that there wasn't going to be a next tournament cycle. The format was done. What there would be was a World Martial Arts Tournament — a legitimate martial arts competition without wish stakes, probably a month or two before the Dragon Balls revived — to keep the competitive infrastructure warm and give people something to focus on.
"Asgard's read on this situation is predictable," Smith said. "They'll figure out the format change eventually. For now, let them settle in." He looked at Fox. "Contact Ajak. Tell her I'm available today."
Fox noted it.
Smith had a reasonable picture of what the Eternals wanted. Ajak's priorities hadn't changed since her last visit — Thena's condition, and the Celestial question underneath everything else. The Tiamut problem. The fact that a new Celestial was gestating in Earth's core and the standard protocol was that the planet died when it emerged. Ajak had been developing reservations about that protocol for years. Her relationship with humanity had complicated what should have been a simple operational directive.
He'd be interested to hear how far her thinking had moved.
"The scepter — Tony didn't mention it at the party last night." Smith sat down. "If he wants it for research, he'll bring it up himself. Don't lend it out until he does."
The question of why Tony wanted the Mind Stone was the more interesting one. Months had passed since the Battle of New York, and Tony had shown no particular interest in studying either the Tesseract or the scepter during that time. Something had shifted his attention toward it now.
Smith knew where that thread led in the source material. The Mind Stone was the catalyst — the piece of the puzzle that made Ultron possible. In one timeline, Tony had used it to seed an artificial intelligence with the stone's processing architecture, and the result had developed its own agenda and nearly ended human civilization. In another timeline, a different version of the same intelligence had somehow defeated a fully-armed Thanos in a single exchange, which Smith had always found implausible even by the loose standards of hypothetical universe physics.
Either way, the Mind Stone research was a path that ended badly more often than not.
He'd block it quietly. Not dramatically — just ensure the scepter stayed unavailable for that particular application.
"Tell me about Afterlife," he said.
Fox pulled up a file with photographs. "Three members so far. Lincoln Campbell — electrokinetic, can generate and direct electrical charge, maximum output not yet measured. Alyssa — creates physical duplicates of herself, each one functionally identical, can operate independently and simultaneously. Current maximum number of duplicates unknown. Yoyo — high-speed movement, upper limit unknown."
Three Inhumans. From Jiaying's community, almost certainly — the name alone confirmed it. Jiaying had kept her people isolated and off the radar for years, suppressing any impulse toward public exposure with the same calculus she applied to everything: S.H.I.E.L.D. was dangerous, the outside world was dangerous, and visibility was the fastest path to becoming someone else's problem.
But the world had changed. The NY resurrection, the tournament, the demonstrated reality that enhanced individuals were now a recognized category rather than an anomaly — it had shifted the risk calculation for people like Jiaying. If you couldn't isolate completely, you could at least control the exposure on your own terms, with your own team, under conditions you'd vetted.
Sending three members out was a significant departure from her previous position.
Smith thought about Skye, still somewhere in New York with her binoculars and her encrypted drives and her growing suspicion that something interesting was happening with spherical stones and dark web listings. In another life — in the life she'd had before the system had diverged this timeline — she'd eventually become something extraordinary. The kind of enhanced that changed the shape of a conflict just by being present.
She didn't know that yet.
Probably better that way, for now.