Wenwu reached the top of the tower first.
The Ten Rings had carried him up in a controlled arc, faster than climbing and more direct than any other approach available to the field. He extended his hand toward the highest gift package on the exterior platform.
Red energy hit him from the side.
He caught the tower railing with both hands and arrested the fall before it started, swinging wide and then pulling himself back. Wanda hovered fifteen meters below him, chaos energy curling at her fingers, expression unapologetic.
"Smith didn't say no fighting," she said.
Wenwu looked at her for a moment. Then he released one of the rings and sent it at her in a flat trajectory.
The ring hit the chaos energy field around her and dispersed it cleanly, the way a stone parts water — the Ten Rings had been cutting through supernatural resistance for a thousand years, and Wanda's power, however real, was still early stage. She dropped. Not far — she stabilized herself within twenty meters — but far enough.
While the two of them were occupied with each other, Selene passed them both.
She didn't climb. She moved the way she always moved in velocity mode — frictionless, efficient, reality treating her speed as a suggestion rather than a constraint. She reached the top package, had it in hand, and was already descending before Wenwu had fully reoriented.
He watched her go and accepted it. He turned to the second-highest package and took it.
Wanda, having recovered her altitude, scanned the remaining positions and claimed one from the third row.
Below them, the tower's exterior had become a complicated negotiation. People who had reached a height they felt good about were peeling off with whatever gift was in reach. A few who had made it only a hundred meters decided the view wasn't worth the risk of going higher with Wenwu and Wanda still exchanging attacks above and simply dropped.
Michael, strengthened by the super divine water from months ago, moved with the extra power that enhancement had given him and secured a package from the second row. Eddie, Wesley, and John came away with gifts from the third and fourth rows. Alexei made steady and experienced progress — he'd done this climb before — and landed in the fourth row alongside William and Marcus.
The lower courtyard was already open boxes and noise.
"Second-gen scouter! And it's mine!"
"Five-carat diamond. I'm not even upset about the climb anymore."
"Medical pod session — I've been on the waiting list for two months."
Ordinary members who hadn't attempted the tower proper were working through the stacked gift boxes at the base, and the results were moving through the crowd in waves of reaction.
Selene reached the ground and opened her package with the composed curiosity of someone who never showed excitement but occasionally felt it. Inside the outer box was a smaller transparent case. Inside that, a single bean — green, unremarkable in size, suspended in what looked like a standard preservation seal.
She read the label.
She looked at it for another moment.
"Lucky," she said quietly, to no one in particular.
If Wanda and Wenwu hadn't been fighting at the top, she would have taken the second-row package. Instead, she had the one above it.
Wenwu came down and crossed directly to Ying Li, who had not attempted the tower and was holding a Baymax unit box she'd collected from the base stack with the expression of someone who had made a reasonable choice.
"For you," he said, and handed her the gift he'd taken.
She opened it. A crystal bottle, sealed. A small card inside with the description printed clearly — super divine water, potential amplification, warning against use when potential was already exhausted.
Ying Li read it aloud, then looked at her husband.
"We shouldn't take it ourselves," Wenwu said. "We've both been fighting for a very long time. I'm not certain how much room is left." He considered for a moment. "Shang-Chi. The Dragon Heart just awakened in him. His ceiling is genuinely unknown."
Ying Li nodded slowly. "And Xialing?"
The word sat between them for a moment.
"Without the Dragon Heart, I don't know what this would do to her." He put his arm around her. "I've handed her the organization. If there's a path to enhancement for her, I'll find it."
Ying Li leaned into him and said nothing, which meant she accepted it.
The gift results settled across the compound as the evening continued. Wanda opened her package last, having expected something from Korin given that Smith hadn't mentioned personal training sessions in his announcement. What she found instead was a coaching opportunity from Smith himself.
She read the note twice.
Pietro found her a few minutes later and she showed him without saying much. He looked at it, then at her, and his expression did something complicated that resolved into genuine happiness for her.
He had his bottle of super divine water already in his pocket. He didn't mention it.
The base stayed lit and loud for hours. The Korin Tower, strung from base to summit, burned amber and white against the night sky, and somewhere near the top, Korin sat on his platform and watched the lights and decided it had been a reasonable evening.
Tony fell asleep with Pepper close beside him, and the dream came the way it always came now — not announced, just already in progress.
The portal above Manhattan was open. Chitauri were coming through in numbers that didn't end, and Tony was fighting them the way he'd been fighting them for the past months in his waking hours, in his lab, in his head. But in the dream, Smith wasn't there. The Avengers weren't there. It was just Tony and the armor and the gap in the sky, and the gap kept producing more.
On the bed beside him, Pepper felt his body go rigid. She watched his hands clench and his breathing change — not sleep, something else entirely — and she put her hand on his shoulder.
"Tony."
Mark 42 activated.
The suit had been resting disassembled in the lab below. The neural sensor registered distress. The components responded to the only protocol they had — protect — and they came through the door, through the bedroom, and the gauntlet closed around Pepper's wrist before either of them understood what was happening.
She screamed.
Tony woke up with the sound still in the air, the suit's grip releasing the moment his conscious mind reconnected to it, Pepper scrambling back against the headboard with her heart going at twice its normal speed.
He sat up and looked at what he'd done.