"An internal Asgardian matter is about to become a global incident," the Leader stated. "If a town in the United States is incinerated by a magical alien robot, the political fallout will be catastrophic. It could shatter the public's trust in the Federation."
"This 'Destroyer'," Namor said, using the designation T'Challa had provided, "sounds formidable."
"We cannot allow that confrontation to happen as T'Challa foresaw it," Aryan declared. "Not in a populated area. We will control the battlefield."
The sheer impossibility of what they had just witnessed was pushed aside by the overwhelming reality of the threat.
The council snapped back into focus, their awe and confusion channeled into a professional urgency.
The plan they formulated next was complex, and built upon a foundation of intelligence so perfect it felt like prophecy.
"The bridge of light... the Bifrost," Tony said. "Okay, so a rainbow bridge from a magical space kingdom is about to punch a hole in our atmosphere. The physics of that are probably messy."
He looked at the council. "Let's assume this thing is a controlled wormhole, a stable Einstein Rosen bridge. We can't stop it. Trying to block it would be like trying to block a lightning strike with a piece of paper, the energy differential would be catastrophic. We'd probably end up wiping New Mexico off the map ourselves."
"So, we won't stop it. We contain it. We build a bottle around the lightning strike. The good news is, we have time before the real threat arrives. But this first arrival... this is our opening move."
He turned his intense gaze to T'Challa, the only person in the room who could give him the one variable he couldn't calculate. "Your vision. Give me a timeline. The attack on the prince... how long until that happens?"
T'Challa closed his eyes, his expression becoming distant and serene. He was sifting through the lingering echoes of the vision.
"The attack is not the first event," he said, his eyes opening. "There is a delay. The attack itself... it feels a matter of days away. Perhaps a week."
"A week," Tony repeated. "A week is an eternity. We can build a city in a week."
He then leaned forward. "But the first arrival? The prince?"
T'Challa's expression became more urgent. "That has a temporal signature of extreme immediacy. It is a matter of hours."
"Hours until first contact, days until the big fight," Tony said, rubbing his hands together.
He loved this. It was a complex problem with a clear timeline. "Okay. Hours it is. I can work for hours."
His fingers flew across the holographic console at the center of the table. The image of the Earth was suddenly overlaid with a glowing lattice… the real time orbital tracks of every single Stark satellite in orbit.
There were hundreds of them: communication arrays, weather monitors, and, most importantly, the new planetary defense satellites he had been quietly deploying for the past year.
"I'm tasking every Stark V satellite with a directed energy array to focus on the target coordinates," he announced.
A cascade of authentication requests and encrypted orders streamed from the console.
Satellites over the Pacific, Europe, and Asia began to re-angle, their powerful magnetic gyroscopes whining as they shifted their orientation.
"We're going to create a multi-layered electromagnetic containment field. Think of it like a magnetic bottle, but on a planetary scale. We only need to hold it for a few seconds, but it needs to be perfect."
He brought up a simulation, the holographic Earth now showing dozens of beams of focused energy converging on a single point above New Mexico.
"The outer layer will be a wide spectrum dispersal field," he explained, "designed to absorb and scatter the ambient exotic particles… the tachyons, the chronitons… that are going to bleed off the edges of this thing. That'll keep it from showing up on every university's deep space telescope and prevent a global panic."
He traced another pattern with his finger. "The inner layer is the brute force. A series of high energy plasma fields. We're going to wrap the impact zone in a temporary magnetic bubble. The goal is to smother the energy discharge the moment the Bifrost touches down. It will prevent the atmospheric detonation, minimize the seismic shockwave, and hopefully, keep it off the global sensor networks entirely."
"The power requirements for such a sustained field will be immense, even for your orbital reactors," T'Challa pointed out.
"Which is why it won't be a sustained field," Tony shot back. "It'll be a powerful burst timed for the exact moment of impact. We get one shot at this."
He looked at T'Challa. "Your thoughts on reinforcement?"
T'Challa studied the simulation. "Your field will not contain it all. You need to account for harmonic resonance. The Bifrost energy may react unpredictably with your plasma fields."
He tapped the console, and a new layer of complex Wakandan geometry overlaid Tony's design. "If you modulate the frequency of your emitters to this pattern, it should create a 'standing wave' effect. It will channel the energy, causing it to fold back in on itself and cancel out a significant portion of the discharge."
Tony stared at the pattern for a solid ten seconds. "That's... that's beautiful. You're teaching it how to absorb the cannonball. Shuri's work?"
"Yes," T'Challa replied with a slight smile.