The explosions rippled across the evening sky in cascading blooms of fire and smoke. Every missile detonated harmlessly in midair, intercepted by Smith's ki blasts with surgical precision. The shockwaves rolled across the water's surface, creating concentric rings that spread outward like ripples on a pond.
From her safe distance, Bulma watched with wide-eyed amazement. She'd known Smith was enhanced, you didn't fly without mechanical assistance unless you were, but this display went far beyond her expectations. The raw power, the precision, the casual way he swatted military-grade ordnance from the sky like annoying insects. It challenged everything she thought she knew about human limitations.
Inside the Mark III, Tony's HUD flashed with failure notifications.
"Sir," JARVIS reported with his usual unflappable calm, "all offensive measures have been neutralized."
Tony's jaw clenched behind his faceplate. He'd known Smith was extraordinary, you didn't earn the nickname "Predator Killer" in the assassin community without serious capabilities, but seeing it demonstrated so casually was something else entirely. Those were micro-missiles, sophisticated weapons designed to penetrate armored vehicles and fortified positions. Smith had destroyed them with glowing balls of energy fired from his hands.
No decoys, no electronic countermeasures, no clever deflection. Just raw power meeting explosive force and winning decisively.
"Come on, Tony!" Smith called out, his voice carrying clearly across the water. "Is that all you've got? I'm barely warmed up here."
The teasing tone sparked something competitive in Tony's chest. Fine. If missiles weren't enough, he'd escalate.
Tony raised both hands, repulsors powering up with a high-pitched whine. "Let's see if you're faster than light itself."
The repulsor beams lanced outward, twin streams of concentrated energy capable of cutting through steel. But Tony's targeting was compromised by his own inexperience with the suit, he telegraphed the attack with his stance, his arms rising in an obvious windup that gave Smith all the warning he needed.
To Smith's enhanced perceptions, trained by years of Fraternity conditioning and augmented by his template, the attack might as well have been in slow motion. He could have dodged with a casual lean. Instead, curiosity got the better of him. How much could his ki-enhanced durability withstand?
He stayed perfectly still, arms crossed, and let the repulsor beams hit him square in the chest.
The energy struck with tremendous force, the impact creating a concussive boom that echoed across the water. Smoke billowed around Smith's position, obscuring him from view.
When it cleared, his suit jacket and dress shirt had been blown apart, shredded fabric floating away on the ocean breeze. But underneath, his torso was completely unmarked, not even a red spot where the beams had struck. His skin might as well have been forged from the same gold-titanium alloy as Tony's armor.
"So handsome," Bulma breathed, her voice barely audible over the Mark II's comm system. The defined musculature, the complete lack of damage, the casual confidence, it was impressive in more ways than one.
"Sir," JARVIS observed, "it appears our offensive capabilities are insufficient to penetrate Mr. Smith's defenses. To use gaming terminology, we're not breaking his armor rating."
"I can see that, JARVIS," Tony muttered, frustration seeping into his voice. He'd built the Mark III to be the pinnacle of personal combat technology, and Smith was shrugging off its weapons like they were water guns.
Time for the big gun.
"JARVIS, divert all power to the chest beam. Maximum output."
"Sir, that will drain the arc reactor to critical levels."
"Do it."
The reactor in Tony's chest began to glow with increasing intensity, light bleeding through the armor's seams as energy accumulated. This wasn't just a repulsor blast, this was the uni-beam, every watt of power the arc reactor could generate focused into a single devastating lance of destruction. The same attack that had once melted through the Winter Soldier's cybernetic arm.
The beam erupted with blinding intensity, a column of pure white energy that turned night into day. It screamed through the air, the very atmosphere ionizing in its wake.
Smith's eyes widened fractionally. That was serious firepower. This time, he moved.
He dropped like a stone, diving toward the water's surface. The uni-beam passed through the space where he'd been hovering a split-second before, the residual heat enough to create a column of steam where it touched the ocean.
"My turn," Smith said, and vanished.
One instant he was thirty yards away. The next, he was right in front of Tony, fist already in motion. The punch crashed into the Mark III's chest plate with the sound of a hammer striking an anvil.
Tony rocketed backward, the impact overloading his inertial dampeners. His HUD filled with red warnings.
"Warning: Armor integrity compromised. Damage at twenty percent."
Before Tony could stabilize, Smith appeared again, moving so fast he seemed to teleport. An uppercut slammed into the armor's abdomen, and suddenly Tony was airborne, hurtling upward with enough force to make his vision gray at the edges.
"Warning: Damage at thirty percent."
Tony's world spun as he tumbled through the air, trying desperately to regain control. Then something blocked out the stars above him, Smith, somehow already positioned overhead, his hand descending in a casual-looking chop.
The blow connected with Tony's helmet like a volleyball spike. Direction reversed instantly. Tony plummeted toward the ocean, accelerating so rapidly that vapor cones formed around his armor, visible Mach rings indicating he'd exceeded the speed of sound.
He hit the water like a meteor. The impact created a geyser that towered into the sky, spray catching the last light of sunset in shimmering curtains. Underwater, Tony tumbled end-over-end, completely disoriented.
"Warning: Damage at fifty percent."
"Warning: Flight system offline."
"Warning: Multiple system failures, "
The HUD flickered and died. The comforting glow of holographic displays vanished, plunging Tony into darkness. Even JARVIS's voice cut out mid-word, leaving only the sound of Tony's own ragged breathing and the ominous creaking of stressed metal.
The armor was dead weight now, pulling him down into the black depths. Tony's hands scrambled at the manual release catches, but water pressure had warped the damaged plates. They wouldn't open.
Panic touched the edges of his mind. The Mark III, his greatest achievement, had become an iron coffin carrying him to the bottom of the Pacific.
Above the surface, Smith floated in place, admiring his handiwork with satisfaction. He'd just executed one of Goku's techniques, the childishly-named but devastatingly effective Rock-Paper-Scissors Rush. Three hits in rapid succession from different angles, each one delivered with enough force to overwhelm defensive reactions. Simple in concept, brutal in execution.
First time he'd used it in actual combat. The results spoke for themselves.
The Mark II approached, JARVIS guiding Bulma closer. "Brother Smith!" Her voice carried an edge of worry. "JARVIS says Tony's armor suffered catastrophic damage. He's lost all communication with Tony."
Smith's satisfied expression evaporated. He replayed the last few seconds in his mind, Tony hitting the water, the armor taking substantial damage, flight systems failing...
Oh. Oh shit.
He'd just knocked Tony Stark unconscious into the ocean while wearing a several-hundred-pound suit of inoperative armor. Without functional repulsors, Tony was currently sinking like an anchor.
Smith didn't waste time cursing himself. He inverted and dove, slicing into the water with barely a splash. His ki sight activated, letting him perceive energy signatures through the murky depths. There, the arc reactor's glow, faint but present, descending steadily into the abyss.
He reached Tony within seconds, grabbing the armor's arm and reversing direction. His ki flared, propelling them both upward through the water column and back into open air.
They broke the surface in a spray of foam. Smith kept them airborne, hovering a few feet above the waves. He grabbed Tony's faceplate with his free hand and yanked, the damaged mechanism giving way with a screech of tortured metal.
Tony's face emerged, pale and gasping, water streaming from his goatee. His eyes fixed on Smith with an expression somewhere between relief and exasperation.
"Buddy," Tony wheezed, "I'm going to need a ride home. You kind of demolished my transportation."
Despite the situation, there was no real anger in his voice, just rueful acceptance. This was the risk you took when you challenged someone to a fight. Sometimes you lost, and sometimes you lost hard enough to need rescuing from drowning.
"Sorry," Smith said, genuinely chagrined. "Got a bit carried away."
"You think?"
Smith adjusted his grip and began flying them back toward the villa, Tony's dead armor dangling from his grasp. Behind them, Bulma followed in the Mark II, JARVIS maintaining a stable flight path.
Inside the villa, Smith sat in the living room wearing one of Tony's spare shirts and slacks, custom tailored and expensive enough that the price tag would have made a normal person faint. Tony had an entire wardrobe of unworn designer clothes, apparently buying things on impulse and forgetting about them.
Bulma occupied the seat beside him, the two of them chatting easily while Tony changed out of his own water-logged clothes in the other room.
When Tony finally emerged, dry, dressed in a Black Sabbath t-shirt and jeans, hair still damp, he dropped into an armchair across from them and studied Smith with open curiosity.
"So," Tony said without preamble, "with strength like that, you must be the most powerful person on Earth right now. Right?"
Smith paused mid-conversation with Bulma, considering the question seriously. His mind catalogued threats he knew existed in this universe, entities that would treat him like an insect if they took notice.
Cosmic beings like the Celestials, Observers, the Living Tribunal. Abstract entities like Death and Eternity. In a single universe, Odin wielded the Odinforce, Thanos pursued the Infinity Stones, the Celestials passed judgment on entire species.
And that was just the cosmic scale. On Earth alone, the list of beings more powerful than him was disturbingly long: the Ancient One guarding reality from her position in Kamar-Taj, an embryonic Celestial gestating in Earth's core, the gods of Wakanda and Egypt who could manifest through chosen champions, the Eternals with their cosmic power sets, Wenwu and his Ten Rings, whoever the current iteration of the Hulk was...
The list went on. And those were just the threats he knew about from his previous life's memories. Who knew what other dangers lurked in this version of the Marvel Universe?
"You might not believe this," Smith said slowly, "but I wouldn't even make the top ten rankings of Earth's most powerful beings."
Tony blinked, his expression shifting from confident to incredulous in the span of a heartbeat. "Come on, man. False modesty is just another form of arrogance."
He leaned forward, gesturing emphatically. "Before you, the strongest person I'd ever heard of was Steve Rogers, Captain America. The man could survive concentrated machine gun fire as long as he had his shield, could bench press a motorcycle, run thirty miles without breaking a sweat. He was literally the peak of human potential."
Tony's hands spread wide. "And you just tanked a uni-beam that could vaporize a tank. You flew without any visible propulsion system. You punched my armor hard enough to create sonic booms. And you're telling me there are people more powerful than you?"