Nick Fury stood on the tarmac of the Slingshot facility and looked at the Bus.
The Bus had, until approximately six days ago, been a fully refurbished state-of-the-art aircraft. It was now a fully refurbished state-of-the-art aircraft that had been partially destroyed and was currently being held together by scaffolding and the evident willpower of Fitz's repair team.
Fury turned to Coulson.
"Are you kidding me."
Coulson, to his credit, maintained complete composure. "Camilla activated the 0-8-4 while we were in transit. The weapon's output was—"
"Don't tell me it was powerful, Coulson. I know it was powerful. That's why it was classified 0-8-4." Fury walked a slow perimeter of the damage, jaw tight. "Do you have any idea what this aircraft costs?" He stopped in front of Coulson and held the silence for two full seconds. "Fix it. Restore it exactly to original spec. And when I say exactly, I mean Fitz does not get to improve anything. No modifications. No upgrades. No projects. No fish tanks."
"Yes, sir."
Fury looked at him for another beat. Then he looked at the interior through the damaged hull, where the bar installation was visible. His expression shifted by approximately two millimeters in the direction of tolerance.
"The bar is acceptable."
He pulled a file from inside his jacket and handed it over as he walked. "New mission. Rising Tide is active again in New York — three videos dropped overnight, all trending across dark web and public platforms. Our systems flagged them immediately. Find whoever made them."
Coulson took the file without breaking stride.
Behind him, after Fury's vehicle had cleared the gate, he pressed his earpiece.
"The fish tank is scrubbed," he murmured, "but the bar got approved."
The Eternals had departed, and Smith stood at the base of Korin Tower looking at it.
The problem — if it could be called a problem — was that Sersi had gotten somewhat absorbed in the work.
She'd begun with the planned surface deposits on either side of the tower's base: a practical volume of vibranium and primary adamantium, laid out in a surface-accessible pattern that could be mined without disturbing the underground structure. She'd done that portion correctly and well. Then she'd turned her attention to the foundation reinforcement, embedding primary adamantium into the base structure to anchor the tower more securely.
And then, at some point during the foundation work, the conversion had extended upward.
The entire tower was now primary adamantium.
Every stone block, every constructed surface, the full three-thousand-meter structure — all of it had been quietly and thoroughly transformed while Sersi was in flow and hadn't noticed where the boundary of her work was.
She'd caught herself, stepped back, looked at what she'd done, and apologized with the specific expression of someone who knows that "I can put it back" is technically true but may not be the relevant point.
Smith had looked at the tower for a long moment. Then he'd told her to leave it.
Now he stood with Bulma and Fox, all three of them looking up at what Korin now lived in.
"On the positive side," Bulma said, "secondary adamantium runs about a hundred thousand dollars per gram at military procurement rates. Primary adamantium is considerably rarer." She looked at the full height of the tower. "Smith. You have an entire three-thousand-meter column of it."
Fox said, "Korin's training ground just became one of the most materially valuable structures on the planet."
"We're not demolishing it," Smith said.
"Obviously not," Bulma agreed. "But the point stands. The Eternals' ability is genuinely monstrous — she didn't even notice she'd done it."
"Between the tower and the deposits on either side, we have enough material to work with for the foreseeable future." Smith turned away from the tower. "Ivan has been waiting on vibranium-grade materials for his next armor configuration. Pietro's suit needs upgrading. Work through the roster — figure out what each person needs, what the upgrade path looks like."
Fox was already making notes. "I'd suggest a merit-based allocation rather than a flat distribution. Creates incentive, makes the materials mean something."
"Set it up however you think works. It's yours to manage."
Fox nodded.
Smith turned to Bulma. "One more thing. I want to build a floating structure — a dedicated facility, elevated, separate from the main compound." He pulled up the reference image he'd prepared: the Kami's Lookout from the Dragon Ball source material, the circular platform with its distinctive architecture suspended in the upper atmosphere, the Korin Tower connector running up to meet it from below.
Bulma studied the diagram. Her expression went through several phases — initial interest, technical assessment, concern about specific engineering requirements, and the particular look she got when she was already running calculations but didn't want to commit to a timeline.
"Floating," she said. "Indefinitely? Or periodically repositioned?"
"Stationary, above the tower. The tower is supposed to have a connector running up to it — I haven't drawn that yet, so treat the float mechanism as the primary challenge for now."
"Sustained lift at that altitude, with structural integrity, means multiple new reactor configurations. It's doable. But I have a queue." She counted on her fingers. "The Mind Stone scepter, the Saiyan spacecraft reverse engineering, and now this." She looked at him. "This one goes at the end."
"Understood. No urgency."
"Good." She pocketed the diagram. "I'll get to it."
"One other thing — we have a new member of the support team. His name is Dende. I've set him up at the top of Korin Tower with Korin. He has immediate full-restoration healing capability — comparable to a Senzu Bean, usable repeatedly. If anyone in the inner circle is in critical condition and the medical pods aren't accessible, Dende is the option." He looked at Fox. "Make sure the field teams know the protocol."
Bulma's interest sharpened at the description. A healing ability of that consistency, available on demand — the applications were significant, and she was already thinking about what near-death training methodology had just become viable.
Fox made a note to visit Dende directly and assess the capability firsthand.
The three of them walked back toward the main compound, the tower rising at their backs, three thousand meters of incidental primary adamantium gleaming quietly in the afternoon light.
Coulson spread the mission documents across the conference room table.
"Rising Tide dropped three videos overnight. All trending across every major platform and several dark web channels simultaneously." He brought up the playback on the wall screen. "Take a look."
The team watched in sequence.
The first video covered Smith's Broadway landing — the spacecraft, the S.H.I.E.L.D. cordon, the footage of Smith stepping out. Solid investigative work, well edited, synthesized audio covering the source.
The second video connected the Sky Curtain events across three years to the resurrection phenomenon, raising the pointed question of what had happened in the previous two cycles that hadn't been publicly disclosed.
The third video was about the stones. And the Dragon Balls.
When the third video finished, the room was quiet.
Everyone present understood what they were looking at. The Dragon Ball information — purchase prices, transaction history, the photograph of an actual ball — was not the kind of thing that should be circulating on trending channels. The operational security around the Dragon Ball cycles had been maintained carefully for three years. One competent investigator with a dark web connection and three weeks in New York had punched a visible hole in it.
Ward broke the silence first. "Rising Tide again. They have no concept of what they're setting in motion."
"Headquarters traced the upload origin to New York," Coulson said. "Exact location unknown — the signal was routed. We need to find the source." He looked around the table. "We're also looking for someone specific. The investigative pattern, the technical competence, the editing style — this isn't committee work. This is one person."
He thought, briefly, of a young woman in a truck in a Los Angeles alley, handling encryption tied to GPS coordinates and producing clean investigative content under pressure.
He kept that thought to himself for now.
"Let's get to work."