One million Galactic Credits for a serving of Combicha Ten burritos, a meal worthy of the Champion of the Universe.

It was enough money to buy a personal star-yacht, and yet hadn’t entailed any truly rare components or materials to justify such money.

Dealer promptly had to rearrange and expand her restaurant again to accommodate those coming in for the killer spices, and those who just wanted a good filling meal.

Combicha To Ten was the name of the newer place, and if the prices were extraordinary, well, Geo and Plasmic sapients being able to feel The Burn meant there was absolutely no shortage of customers. Champion actually allocated several of his students there to police the crowd trying to get in for some gastrointestinal distress, and I Ate Combicha II! and such souvenir t-shirts were soon flying out the door.

Good thing there were cheap textile materializers around. Ritually burning your old t-shirt if you moved up to a new rank also quickly became a thing.

It turned out that my commentary had been recorded during the footage of the meal (la la la), and it went intergalactic. Just the sight of Champion undergoing The Burn sold everything. The video instantly eclipsed everything else coming out from the tournament combined, and then some.

Which meant more revenue. The galactic price of Terran spices skyrocketed... and if they were alchemically treated?

I was sure Sama and Briggs were laughing all the way to the bank. The Tribal Nations and Alliance grew more spices than anyone, and Russia had more alchemists than anyone else.

Exporting renewable resources was a nice way to get out into the universe and build some capital...

------

“She addicted him to combicha at Ten. Damn!” muttered Sama, watching the holo in some disbelief. “What a wicked play...”

“The way to a warrior’s heart is through his belly,” Briggs mused, stifling his own laughter. “How long’s it been since you tried it at Ten?”

“Forty-three years. I really don’t like not being able to taste anything else for a bloody month and having to repaint everything, you know?” Sama shook her dark hair.

“He probably thinks he can build up a tolerance to it,” Briggs remarked, shaking his head. Combicha grew more intense depending on who ate it. At Ten, there was basically no limit; the alchemy of it just grew right with you.

It could probably give Galactus Himself The Burn! An Elder of the Universe had no chance of outgrowing it. Neither he nor Sama had ‘adapted’ to it, it was a fool’s errand to try.

“That’s also Twenty Ranks in Cooking and Alchemy,” Sama pointed out. “She did it perfectly. QL at least 45.”

“If I recall correctly, Dynamo basically calls herself an Alchemist, and works with her. The odds she isn’t equally as good are non-existent.”

“And they just ensured that’s there’s going to be an endless market for high-end Alchemists.” Sama tapped a finger which could punch through steel lightly yet loudly on the wooden table in the booth they were sharing, right up next to the Arena as guests of the highest honor. Indeed, they could move the booth to any location around the Arena, bumping anyone out of the way that they wanted to.

Only Champion’s personal floating observation booth could get better personal views. All the best fights were scheduled around the perimeter, while routine fights were buried among the dozens of Rings in the middle, and you had to go searching for holo-views on them. Those who earned more views were moved to the perimeter, and as the number of fights dwindled, the arena area would shrink quickly, bringing everyone in closer to the combatants.

“All the non-fighting stuff is so much more interesting than the fighting,” Briggs admitted, another /beep attracting his attention. “Oh, fucking wonderful...”

“The Grandmaster?” Sama sneered, baring her canines. “Go play cards against him, Briggs. If he’s scheming something, step on him.”

“He won’t break up Champion’s event. He’s scouting out the planet for entertainment potential,” Briggs reasoned with a deep growl. There was another /beep. “Isn’t this a fucking party...” His Rus accent made his curses particularly weighty.

“I can handle the Collector. Both of us need a Baneskull of Elders of the Universe.” Her voice was low and very dangerous. “I’ll ask him if he’s interested in adding to my collection.”

“I think I’ll just loom on En Dwi Gast. He’ll probably visit Dealer’s casino for the new card games, if nothing else. I think she’s too smart to let him play against the house, so I guess it’s time for some poker,” Briggs said thoughtfully.

“Remember to make some time for Ben Parker to come over. We need to chat a bit with him and his wife.”

Briggs nodded agreement with that. “Having him take a good look at stuff around the Elders should be instructive. They bend reality with their very existence.”

“Sterile sexless bastards,” sniffed Sama. “I’ll be so happy to make them not the last of their kind anymore.”

Briggs smirked at the suggestive line. Champion, for instance, was known to be virile as far as performing, but his status as an Elder meant he could not have children. Otherwise, with their lifespans, entire galaxies would be filled with the descendants of the Elders!

==============

I was here to fight, and not much else. I broke up my downtime to fit in between major periods of fights, but really, I was there to fight, and so, staying true to form, I accepted a lot of challenges.

Utterly bored with discussions between the mystics and totally unwilling to put up with Stark for that long, Wanda sought me out and decided to take up position as my manager. She started digging up information on the aliens who were enthusiastically signing up to spar with me, hoping to play the odds and win some extra bank with some luck, as someone who fought a lot was easiest to study and prepare for.

Unfortunately for them, brains were my thing, as was analysis. I didn’t have to change up my style a lot, I just had to change it some.

----

“Miss Beaubier,” I greeted her, hand over fist politely. She looked pretty svelte in her black and white uniform with the starburst on its hip, even looking somewhat serious as she stared up at me. She was actually taller than I would be normally, and a world-class beauty... especially with the pointed ears.

Dunno why she was with Langkowski. Whatever, wasn’t my sex life.

“You seem very good at taking on the strong men,” she told me, raising her chin as she spoke in a faint Quebecois accent. “How much experience do you have with speed?” she challenged me.

“Oh. I school Quicksilver all the time, and I’ve run into Speed Demon, the Answer, and Whirlwind. Nova’s pretty fast, but it’s not combat speed,” I replied casually, my eyes never leaving hers.

The confidence drained out of her blue eyes suddenly. “Oh,” she said in a small voice, but she raised her hands nonetheless. “Are they as fast as me?” she had to ask.

“Why don’t you show me and I’ll tell you?” I replied agreeably.

“FIGHT!” the referee shouted, and my first match of the day was on.

She promptly accelerated, her eyes staying on mine as I easily followed her every move. She clearly wasn’t too used to staying attached to the ground as she moved, but she still tried to circle around me and hit me from all directions.

I couldn’t match her movement speed, of course, but I could track her Kirlian Aura this close to me effortlessly, and after about two seconds of going around me fifty times, she backed off, a pained expression on her face from where her palms, knuckles, and wrists kept slamming into my elbows, arms, hands, forehead, shoulders, and knees, taking her hits without much problem. It was quite clear to her I was blocking her, and if I couldn’t move as fast as she could, I could move fast enough to disrupt what she was trying to do.

“Quicksilver does that better, but I’ve been giving him more reason to do so,” I informed her, as she flexed her hands and grimaced. She had probably busted a knuckle, although the Mercy would fix it soon enough.

“I see. How about this!” She zipped in and promptly machine-gunned my abs.

One blow every hundredth of a second slammed into my gut at a few hundred miles an hour. Individually they were nothing, but layered up like that, they could get through my DR by inches.

I used Stalwart, flexing slightly with every impact, sending the force out my feet.

She started to pull back, and I grabbed her arm, shocking her with my hand speed.

She started to vibrate, shouted in pain, and stopped that as I dragged her closer effortlessly. “Stop that, or you’ll rip your arm off,” I warned her, and she could do nothing as I clamped my hand over her face, locked on, and squeezed ever so slightly as she stared at me between my fingers, feeling her skull creaking.

“Now, I want you to remember something.” I gestured at my biceps, and she belatedly realized they weren’t lit up. “My name is Dynamo, not Musclebound Lady Tank.” Arcs of lightning began to play over me. “In a real fight, the first time you hit me, you would’ve eaten ten thousand volts, AND you would have been stuck to me while you danced in neural paralysis. A tenth of a second later you would have been unconscious or dead on the ground.” My voice was reverbing with the lightning. “I was nice to you here. I let you vent. In reality, you would have gotten one punch off, stuck to me, and I would have leveled you. Our fight would have been over in a fiftieth of a second, even faster than your man went down.

“Now, you will yield, or you will get to feel what it’s like to go down with a cracked skull.”

Utterly terrified by my calm dominance of her, she swallowed and exclaimed, “I yield! I yield!”

I nodded at her. “Go challenge Quicksilver. He’s an arrogant shit and a speedster, and a woman who is faster than him will just annoy him to no end. You are faster than him, but he’s better than you. Work him over, and I’ll buy you a drink.”

“Yield and match to Dynamo!” the ref called out. I noted he was the same one from yesterday, and given the hundreds of refs available, it wasn’t an accident. He was putting away the credits for being in my vids!

I let her go, and she zipped off the field in under a second. She and her brother Northstar were flying speedsters, but still speedsters even if they couldn’t fly.

“Any need to rest, Lady Dynamo?” the green-scaled ref asked, with his species’ approximation of a smile.

“From those little girlie punches?” I hadn’t even moved from my starting position. “Start bringing them in.”

-------

Wonder Man eyed the red hide of the big turtlish Transkordian getting hauled off by his friends, the shattered plates on his frontal carapace particularly obvious.

He’d seen enough of my fights to know that he couldn’t possibly equal my speed, and I could hit murderously hard.

“I have the feeling I should have gone over to the Baxter Building for more than Grimm’s card games,” he spoke up as he put away his glasses, revealing the roiling red energy of his ionic eyes.

He was still a couple inches taller than the Buffed me, but the reach didn’t matter. I glanced over him up and down. He had nothing special in the way of equipment at all, even on his hands. I didn’t have my Fists on, but nothing said I couldn’t use adamantium gauntlets to pound into psychically-reinforced carapaces and hides, or the fellows who wore armor. They were also available for blocking, and I’d been very polite not to block Aurora with them, or she would have broken her hands within ten punches.

“It’s a violent business, and you don’t really have the mindset for it, Mr. Williams,” I said. “Why are you even sticking around the Avengers?”

“FIGHT!” the ref exclaimed.