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The Sage of the Mind

Chapter 90 : FUN UNCLE TONY!
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 90 [May 2011]

Manhattan

–Axle Riddle–


It was nice to see Tony trying to get little Bellina's attention who was doing her best not to let her focus waver from the piece of pizza that Tony was dangling in front of her. Now, normally, doing that would be frowned upon, since babies can't exactly digest processed cheese or he should say, shouldn't digest processed cheese.

But the thing with Bellina was that she wasn't exactly a normal kid. Even at just over six months old, her development was comparable to that of 4 year olds, when it came to walking, talking, understanding stuff, etc.

But if one looks inside, they would find something totally alien. It was an entirely new biology set that has baffled more than one scientist. In fact, Dr.Cho was going to set up a permanent laboratory here in Manhattan, just for the chance to study Bellina, non invasively, ofcourse.

If anything even came close to hurting her, well then, he would be the first one to shred anybody who did that, to pieces, but by chance, if he missed (which he wouldn't), Tony would come swooping down, not just in his regular armours but in his "FUNUNCLE" armour, something that he built with extra space to house Bellina, just in case something happened.

It was quite cute, Tony trying to be the fun but equally responsible uncle, and Pepper's encouragement of that was a message in and of itself that Tony should probably get the act going faster.

Then there were the parents of little Bellina, Bruce, and Betty, both of whom were capable of individually wrecking apart cars with their bare hands, Betty with less screaming and shouting.

It was quite a chaotic delivery which he, unfortunately, was witness to, as little Bellina came into the world screaming, to make sure every person in the six block radius knew that she was born. It was so loud that a PSA had to be made the next day, telling the city about Bellina, which was quite a shocker, he had to be honest.

It was equal parts shocking and hilarious to see Betty just pulverize Bruce's hands during the delivery and to see Bruce actively control himself from Hulking out, which was only partially successful because Bruce's body continued to bulge and bubble with green mass but he never let his hand change, even if it must have been extremely painful to let Betty hold his already destroyed hand.

After all, Bruce could heal from pretty much everything and he did but the next day, he asked Dr.Cho, if Vasectomy was something that his body could regenerate from. Dr.Cho's reaction was equally funny as well.

After that, it was as if a switch had been flipped in their life, turning them from a couple who didn't see the sun for days at a time to a couple that went to two different public group activities in a day. Bruce built himself a small laboratory, with Tony being a personal investor and Betty occasionally worked there as well.

Last he heard, both of them were going to move into one of the floors into the Stark Tower once it was finished, as Tony had promised them lab space along with personal living arrangements, with special accomodation for Bellina and her very public status.

Oh yeah, Bellina was a social icon of America. Cute videos of her were made and circulated all over the internet in droves by her fans.

It was equal parts adorable and equal parts disturbing because social media was being used as a weapon right in front of his eyes in ways that the normal person wouldn't even understand.

He wouldn't even let his children be in the public domain in the first place.

He had not expected Bruce and Betty to have such a public facing attitude when it came to their daughter and the fact that they did so just because of the trust they placed in the Invisible Man just melted his heart.

It was actually Tony's idea and thus, a dedicated social media team came once a week with ideas that Bruce and Betty either approved or rejected with Bellina required to be in Manhattan at all times, so that nothing untoward would happen to her.

Now, the entire world knew who Bellina was, her super strength, her absurd physical and mental growth with her ability to cry so loudly, that it would echo into the other part of the city, even though she would be far gentler with animals who somehow are attracted to her as if she was a disney princess.

And she might actually be one, because of the sheer light focused aura that she puts out at every moment. Due to the circumstances of her birth, Bellina constantly releases a stream of low powered CHI that helps with stress. Long Term exposure will lead to most health related issues being cleared, atleast that is what the Ancient One told him and Bruce.

Yeah, obviously, he had the little angel checked out by the Ancient One who told him that, even without any training or tapping into her father's lineage, she would grow up to become stronger than all the previous Iron Fists, which was not much of a compliment if one thought of the realm of power the Hulk usually operated in, but it was something that cemented something in his mind.

Bellina was born as an evolved human. Her body could be used as a blueprint to see what the next evolution in human genetics will be. Her body was a "work of art" according to Dr.Cho and Tony because Bellina had some redundant organs, two hearts, a stronger nervous system, and an overly fortified spine. Some organs were doubled while some were outright missing.

It was quite bizarre if one didn't know the truth about her conception.

Betty's body had not really evolved per se, it was only enhanced because she was already fully grown when the CHI infusion happened.

"Alright, little Bellina, it's time to go home." His paper avatar muttered as Bellina continued to giggle as she flew around in the air, donning the Superman pose while he used his phenomenal cosmic powers to entertain a child.

Sigh, what has his life come to?

She began laughing even more once he created a small air bubble around her and sped her directly to the incoming Banner and Ross couple who were holding a couple of shopping bags while on their way to their penthouse apartment.

Oh yeah, the couple had come a long way from their bank accounts frozen days.

They were raking in handsome paychecks from Stark Industries because of the work they were doing with Toyn on advanced sensors and life sciences, and the penthouse was a gift to them by What's-his-face Russian Billionaire once it became abundantly clear to him that the Invisible Man was much closer to this couple for some reason.

"Oh! Hi, Baby!" They didn't so much as flinch as Betty flung the ocean of bags she had in her hand on poor Bruce's body as she stepped forward to catch the missile that was her baby.

It was a common scene now, him pulling babysitter duties while the couple went on dates, worked on new technologies, made new friends, or just roamed around the city that they had begun to call home.

It was heartening to witness.

Which is why he rejected SHIELD's request for an extended medical scan of Bellina for the tenth time this month itself. There was no way in hell that he was going to let it fly and Fury probably knew that, that is why he must have green lit the request.

Probably was being oppressed by the World Security Council for it because previously, it was just about one Hulk, who, while powerful, could not be controlled.

Now though? It was about Betty, who was a very strong, bulletproof person who looked and thought just like a baseline human, which was basically a stronger super soldier, the wet dream of the American Military.

Not to mention Bellina, who would surely grow up to surpass even Betty, Tony had said so himself. Bellina was probably much easier to brainwash as well.

After all, they needed something to show for their contribution to the whole Betty pregnancy situation.

The Vibranium fibres, when they were pulled out of Betty after the pregnancy was done, came out blackened and then simply withered away after the operation, dashing many people's dreams about reusing them.

He still had a meeting with Wakanda over that. They must be curious about their invincible metal breaking apart at the seams.

He looked at his computer, sitting in his office, and thought, things would be very different in about a year or so.

2012 was fast approaching and he was ready.


If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my
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Chapter 91 : ugh! TMI!
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 91 [May 2011]

Manhattan

–Axle Riddle–


Okay. So this was odd.

He was, in real time, able to see how Steve Rogers, THE Super Soldier's body worked because Fury, in his infinite wisdom had seen it fit to bring Steve into Manhattan, and unconscious to boot as well.

IT really rubbed him the wrong way when it was revealed in the movies that Fury had kept Steve in a small base in the middle of Manhattan, with Times Square just in walking distance because really, he should have been held in a tightly guarded base with nowhere to go, otherwise how else could you hope to contain an actual super soldier, much less the heartthrob of the American Military.

Then again, it made sense that storing the Captain in any military base would just result in unnecessary chaos.

In his situation, in this timeline, he could understand because Steve needed to be kept safe, not just from outside forces but insider forces as well and what better place to keep him safe than Manhattan? The safest place in the world.

Still, he should have a talk with Fury about this.

"Um, Excuse me? What are you guys doing? I am pretty sure that carrying a dead body sealed in a container is against some law, I just have to find the law." His paper avatar said as it manifested in its chibi form in the middle of the car, where Coulson, the ever unflappable Coulson was sitting, right alongside the casket like structure which was probably responsible for keeping Cap under.

It was kinda creepy that Coulson looked very happy to just be present in the moment, with the Captain America sleeping right beside him as a sleeping beauty.

Coulson didn't scream out loud and aside from a minute flinching, there was no indication that he was surprised.

"I hope there won't be any kissing involved, Agent Coulson because I will call the cops on you," He snickered at the insinuation, and then slowly sat his paper avatar down on the casket while Coulson merely deadpanned at him.

"Need I remind you that you are currently sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of medical equipment, housing someone who is literally priceless," Coulson said as he took a magazine, rolled it up, and tried to swat away his paper avatar.

Ofcourse, it was moot since the magazine was just stopped a mere cm away from his chibi avatar but the sentiment remained. You don't just swat away his emissary while being in his city.

If it were anyone else, there would have been severe repercussions.

"Alright, not that this has not been entertaining, can you tell me where you found the still alive Captain America? Or were you guys just keeping him in the basement? Waiting for the right time to unleash him into the world?" He asked Coulson because he had to maintain the facade of not knowing anything.

He was aware of the fact that his tussle with the One BElow All had not gone unnoticed and there were probably hundreds, thousands of pictures taken of his floating self back then, from all angles and devices.

Hundreds of analysts must be on the case, to figure out the identity of the Invisible Man, so he was not going to take any chances and bring any suspicion on himself.

"That is classified. What I can tell you is this, Director Fury believes that Captain America will be safest in Manhattan, where no outside entity has any influence." Coulson reminded him and he had to agree.

It was true, he didn't even let NYPD run any of their agendas in the city, let alone Feds or SHIELD or HYDRA, or as he likes to call it, SHIELDRA.

"So, how are you planning to wake him up? Where will he live? Who will be his handler? What is he supposed to do? Will he live a civilian's life? What is Fury's goal here?" he asked all the reasonable questions in rapid fire, leaving Coulson no time to reply.

"I am afraid all of that is classified. I am not at liberty to speak. Director Fury will be the one who will be debriefing you about the whole situation."

Very well.

"Alright, but please tell me you guys are not going to use that tacky hospital setup to fake the 40s?" He asked Coulson who cringed at the mention.

"You are! Oh my god, that is hilarious. Who suggested the idea?"

"Look, it was the best way we could get Captain Rogers awake as soon as possible and into your domain as soon as possible."

Yeah, that made sense.

"Alright, just make sure that he doesn't threaten everyone around him. I'll make sure that he is safe, as I always do. Don't kiss him, Coulson," he took one last parting shot and left the SUV, the shredded papers conveniently falling in Coulson's hair and staying there.

"So, Bruce, how was the latest scan from Betty?" He asked Bruce, who didn't even flinch at the arrival of the chibi paper avatar, right on his dining table as he was having his lunch, some sort of Chicken salad, if he was seeing correctly.

"Hmm? Oh, that, we just scanned her yesterday and we found traces of unknown metals in her body. I was scared at first but the metal refused to show up on scans, absorbing all energy projected within, so we realised that it was just Vibraniumi." Bruce forgot about the lunch and immediately began explaining animatedly to him.

Most of it went above his head but he understood one thing. Betty still had trace amounts of that Vibranium fibres in her body, not enough to extract them in any meaningful way but enough that her body was still getting affected by the CHI, so she was still getting stronger.

He was unfortunate enough to witness one of their bedroom bouts, now that both of them had shed their mortal coils to evolve into greater, stronger lifeforms, they were free to break their beds as many times as they wanted, and their walls, and even their flooring.

Yeah, it was a lesson well learned, to respect their privacy, so he created a designated zone for them and just told them to do their business in that zone only. He couldn't just block out their entire apartment because Bellina was there and she needed to be protected.

"So, all good, then?" He asked Bruce who blinked and realised that he had just given him a six minute lecture on Vibranium and how it seemingly perfectly fused with the Human body, to enhance it completely.

He was sure to bring that up during his meeting with the Wakandan embassy next week. It was going to be nice, to let them be the ones who were clueless for one.

"And how is the SCIENCE! Life treating you, Dr.Banner?" He asked Bruce even though he knew the answer to that question.

Bruce was just awarded his latest PhD, along with Betty as well, on their revolutionary work on Gamma Radiation and its effects on biochemistry, something that was just there when they looked into the data Stark had gathered for them, during Betty's pregnancy.

Now, while the entire world probabl;y knew about Bellina by now, they didn't know if Betty was superpowered or not, because she had never used her powers publicly.

Privately? Bruce's bones had been broken more times than he could count, only for his body to flash green and heal all the damage.

Bruce was somehow finding a middle ground in the process of turning into the Hulk. Even if, say, a hole was ripped into Bruce's heart, he would then turn green and by the time he was the giant Hulk, all his injuries would be gone.

He was triggering that sequence of early healing but not letting the transformation reach its final stage. It was quite clever and the experiments he did to reach that level were not something he could envision the canon Bruce doing.

So, even without doing much, they now had a much stronger and clearer in mind Bruce, which should translate into a much meaner killing machine Hulk, a strong Betty who should be at par or even stronger than Luke Cage, a smarter Tony who had a taste of Vibranium and probably will have something built by the time 2012 rolled around.

All the while, he continued to grow into his powers, creating safe pockets where people could be stashed during the invasion, all the while the Chitauri had no idea what was about to hit them.

Or what they were about to hit.



If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon or Ko-fi, for upto 5 extra chapters.
 
Chapter 92 : Sigh.....
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 92 [December 2011]

Manhattan

–Axle Riddle–


He was so busy with his usual activities over the past six months that he didn't even notice that it had been over 5 years since he had arrived in this reality. Sure, the time didn't really create much of a personal life for him, aside from a friend he made, named Joey who really liked to eat good food and play basketball.

But even then, Joey was just a weekend acquaintance. Going to play basketball together against players much younger but taller than them, and then going to all you can eat buffets to recharge was awesome but the feeling of being truly exhausted could not be replicated, not with his body being way too powerful for normal sports.

One of these days, he was going to have to juggle with the Asgardians, normal ones, not the Royal ones, to get his body through a nice workout.

Even the ones he subjected his body through the use of telekinesis did not cut it anymore because it just felt plain artificial. Even still, he made sure that he was ready for any nasty surprises from people like the Guy Below. He really needed to work on his mystical defenses but according to the Ancient One, who reiterated it, he had zilch talent for Sorcery but an overwhelming talent for anything involving psionics.

Which was when she had given him the book about Spiritual contracts for dummies and so far, he had made use of it only once.

He did have the idea of creating bonded familiars of sorts, collecting animals and making them stronger but there was a hard limit on what regular animals with no mystical ancestry running through them could reach.

Now where was he going to find mystical animals?

So, he dropped that idea.

He chose to just focus on the basics, getting his powers refined, getting his allies together and more importantly, more powerful together. It was a masterstroke on fate's part to let Bruce and Betty come together and have that baby because he had never seen Bruce so at peace but also determined to train with the Hulk.

He had created multiple caves underground that bore marks of the Hulk and Bruce trying to come together to an understanding. It helped that both of them loved Betty, loved Bellina, and were generally averse to killing people, even if the Hulk did get pretty loose with that once he was angry enough.

Still, seeing the progress they were making was enough for him. If not partners, they were turning into unwitting allies by agreeing to protect Betty and Bellina together. Something that would happen once the Chitauri came knocking.

Then there was Betty. That was where Frank Castle had come to play. Sure, he had long since stopped going to the Castle Dojo, mostly because Frank was getting too suspicious about him and also because he didn't feel like he had much more that he could learn from Frank, not unless it was an actual life and death scenario.

Betty was also getting the training that she needed, with the tonnes of weight that was being pressed down on her from all sides, so that Frank wouldn't think that she was an enhanced person. She was also learning everything pretty fast, and he was hopeful that by the time the Invasion rolled around, she would atleast be as strong and mobile as Spiderman. Even if she acted strictly as a rescue person, it would be more than enough.

He had not scanned any Luke Cage in the city yet, which was a bummer but maybe things had butterflied away and they would not be getting the same badass person anymore.

All in all, he had quite a spread of allies. Combined with Thor, they would tear the Chitauri apart.

Speaking of allies, he had one Steve Rogers going through the motions, getting milk, and newspaper of all things while heading back to his apartment, which was safe and secure, thanks to yours truly.

The Captain was a figure in the equation that didn't make much sense to him. Sure, he was all strong and muscly but there were stronger people on the team and if it came to leading, he was sure that Jarvis could do a much better job, with all his procession power but he supposed that it was just his inexperience talking.

There must be something in the Captain for him to be revered by so many people, even now, something beyond all the propaganda that was pushed with his name on top.

Welp, aside from a very outgoing nature and a sunny disposition, there was not much he was sensing but even so, he was doing it from afar and not in a warzone. Maybe Steve Rogers shined his brightest when he had a team to rally around him.

Well, be that as it may, he watched as Steve went into a bar, talked with the bartender, got himself a drink, paid for it and left right back for his apartment. The luxury apartment building had a world class gym in the building itself but for some reason, Steve liked the old rusty feeling of a gym nearby.

Steve knocked on the door of his next door neighbour, waking up Random Watch Person1, who was supposed to keep an eye on the good Captain. Steve then took both of them to the gym where they began working out.

Well, mainly Steve working out and Random Watch Person1 trying to keep up.

With the snowfall, it fell on him to make sure that snow didn't pile up on the streets and also to make sure that everyone had heating and didn't freeze to their deaths. That meant hundreds of blankets being distributed daily, along with the meals they were already handing out. This time of the year, even the gang activity went down in the neighboring boroughs.

So, he didn't really have much to do. Bruce and Betty were hosting their own Christmas party, now in the much bigger Penthouse apartment that came as a perk of being a Stark Industries Research Scientist, something that happened over the past few months as Tony bought the small company that Bruce and Betty had set up for their research for a little over 20 million dollars.

A huge sum for Bruce and Betty, which almost guaranteed a cozy retirement but chump change for Tony, especially if he got two world class scientists in his company for that amount.

Not to mention, the friendship that came with it. It was nice to see Tony finally make friends with someone who could truly understand what was going through his mind and actually keep up with him intellectually.

Something like that was rare and he wagered that Tony thought 20mil for the chance to be with his friends for longer was a price not even worth mentioning.

The penthouse was nice, really nice, more than enough to host a small party. He had helped with the decoration and babysitting of Bellina whenever required while Betty did all the heavy lifting.

Randall and Co. were coming, Tony along with Pepper were coming, Dr.Cho was coming, and a few of the SHIELD scientists that Bruce got along with were invited as well.

Sadly, while he did have the invitation, he could not really go.

It was not really time for him to reveal his face to someone, especially without the dome enclosing around him gone. No, it would just create a prison around him that people could exploit if they knew his face and knew that he couldn't leave Manhattan.

So, he watched, Melancholy, as the entire party had drinks, food, watched a movie, laughed and then left, late in the night.

While he? He was left patrolling the city, metaphorically of course, and drinking enough booze to leave a grown man without his liver, feeling particularly numb about the situation.

It was as if he was just going through the motions, not even caring one bit about anything.

It was hard, being alone.

But oh well, life wasn't meant to be fair, was it?

At Least he was not some chup living alone with a nice cushy job while having no friends, families, or loved ones to talk to, now was he?

No, he was just a chump with none of the above but the only difference was that he had powers.

Powers that seemed so awesome and yet, made him so lonely at such times.

"Stupid ROB…" He muttered as he drank yet another bottle of Whiskey without even feeling anything, a collection of bottles lying at his feet as he sat on the balcony, looking at the pretty Christmas lights all around.



If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon or Ko-fi, for upto 5 extra chapters.
 
Chapter 93 : Le Bruce "BEHOLD! Alcohol that WORKS!"
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 93 [December 2011]

Manhattan

–Axle Riddle–


"Hmm?" his late night pity drinking fest was cancelled because he felt something in his range, or rather multiple someones. His eyes cleared immediately as he felt hundreds, no, thousands, of creatures suddenly come into his range, from below.

Yeah, he had checked and his circle of influence was more like an eclipse that also had a limitation when it came to the downward direction.

So, his mind was jerked back into awareness as he watched the creatures, with pointy claws, small brains, and absurdly dense muscles just dig their way to the top. They were advancing very fast, as if there was no dense rock and mud between them and the surface. They were digging through everything as if it was just another Tuesday for them.

The biggest of them were like the vanguards, digging through everything with their claws, leaving behind paths that their, still much bigger than a human, but relatively smaller creature brethren used to advance to the top.

His brows furrowed as they shredded through the bedrock as if it wasn't there at all. They were still not in his Manhattan sphere of influence, just at the periphery of it. He could act on it but he wanted to see just what was happening here.

He scanned them as much as he could but aside from weird biology along with denser, well, everything, including their tiny brains, he could not find anything that he had seen before.

Could they be the deviants? His mind wandered off as he thought of the alien villains that fought the Eternals but they were not as many and why would they be targeting New York of all places? He was sure that no Eternal actually lived here since he made sure to regularly scan the biologies of all the people that lived in his range.

A gross violation of privacy? Sure but nothing that the government doesn't do on a daily basis.

The monsters, he was going to call them monsters because they were only snarling and roaring as they advanced with no care for any injury that might have happened to any one of them, because he had tried doing so and the only response was that the particular creature was crushed completely by the onslaught of his fellow creatures, rushing to the surface.

Thankfully, the biggest of them all, the size of three storey buildings, who were about to claw their way through another layer of rocks, hit something that could not be destroyed by them.

His TK.

He watched as they tried, again and again, without even flinching as their claws broke upon contact, even as hundreds of the below creatures began pressing on the giant ones who were now smushed against his TK barrier.

That was not…ideal.

He could foresee their deaths without him even doing anything. The rabid rush from below would ensure their deaths.

Still, he would like to not cause senseless death, so he created a small hole in his barrier for them to enter, making sure that only a single row went in but then he confusion only increased as the entire horde that he could sense, turned their heads straight to the hole in his barrier, as if they could sense it all, even through thick stone and dirt.

Interesting.

He was about to get one of them in and try to communicate with them, or atleast analyse them further to see if he could recognise them from any of the meta knowledge he had but before that could happen, the entire horde stilled abruptly, including the one he held in his TK grip.

And it was not just their bodies externally that froze, no, it was as if someone who had supreme control over their entire being made sure that even their heartbeat, their blood flow, and even their expressions were tampered with, so as to present an identical showing.

He held onto the one specimen, largest of them all that it was, and then plugged the gap in the TK barrier.

He was extremely curious as to what this was, especially since he didn't exactly have much else to do.

He was wondering what to do when, abruptly, every single one of those creatures began rushing back, right back through the holes that they made to get up. He tried to stop them but they were soon out of his range and the ones he did manage to tag, they struggled so violently to get into the ground that they left behind entire limbs or even tore themselves apart as they resisted his TK.

Even the one he had in his grasp, he had to sever every tendon, to make sure that it remained in its place. Eventually, he had to methodically sever the spine as well which finally stopped all its thrashing around, and even made it sleep, if the heart rate and the lack of activity was any indication.

He made sure to do one more thorough scan of the entire area around him, to check if he had missed anything but nothing pinged to his senses, aside from the leftover blood from the creatures that was sizzling.

Hmm. Interesting.

"I suppose that this will be a Christman party to remember," He muttered to himself as he felt Bruce and Betty sleeping but Randall and Co. were still awake and playing beer ping pong.

Tony was fast asleep as well, in his Tower.

No worries, they will know it in the morning then. There was a reason that the warehouse research place was still kept as is. Mostly because it had been bought by Bruce in the name of his company, which was then bought by Tony who was gracious enough to lease it to Randall for a period of 99 years, effectively, giving them a legitimate base of operations.

Not that they were ever going to use it for anything serious, knowing Tony's penchant for dangerous curiosity. Hell, the man tried to bargain for the CHI liquid from the Ancient One in exchange for complete secrecy as well as the warehouse, which was mostly a joke but Tony's quest to buy that life blood was very much real.

Creating a small barrier around the creature, he brought it back to the surface, to be dumped right into their base below the Earth, to make sure it was safe before it could be brought to Tony's attention.

That man might just get more ideas to make greater armours from this creature, and..actually, that wasn't that bad of a thing, considering the invasion they had on their horizon.

_____xx____

"Hicc..Hey, guys, I told you we should not have asked Dr.Banner to make us industrial alcohol for consumption. Now, look at you guys," he couldn't help but point out to the room as he watched all six of his brothers laughing and giggling while doing drunken stuff, which the house was not built for.

As a result of that, they now had six more man shaped holes in the wall. Actually, they one had two, because Leny somehow stumbled and threw himself into a wall but then, once the others saw the shape of the wall, they all thought it was funny.

And then, they decided to create comical poses while jumping through the walls, creating human shapes with their limbs contorted, creating an even bigger ruckus.

As a result, he had five more holes in the wall before he could bring it to a stop.

"Sigh, I should get it rebuilt to a much tougher standard," He muttered to himself, mostly sober but the kick of the alcohol given to them still fresh in his mind.

Dr.Banner had really outdone himself, mostly because his wife had given him an ultimatum as well because Dr.Betty Ross also could not get drunk on the pedestrian alcohol they could buy off the market.

Still, he was about to herd everyone back into their bedrooms and make sure everyone was asleep before heading to bed himself when he was pinged.

Yup, not his phone, not his computer but he was pinged and there was only one person on the planet, as far as he knew, that could ping people remotely.

The Invisible Man.

Almost immediately abandoning his brothers, he jumped into the basement and into the tunnel that slid right into his personal laboratory. It was a fun and quick way of getting to his workspace.

His brothers tried once and wrecked things in his lab so he had to create an energy identifier that reversed the flow of air in the tunnel, throwing people out if they were not him.

No sooner had he booted up his computer, one of the tunnels that led even further down from his lab opened up on its own, and what could only be described as an alien floated out of the tunnel.

"Randall, I want you to take a look at it. It is still alive but I have severed its spine. Also, its blood is acidic. That is all I know. Look for any brain anomalies because I am pretty sure these guys have a Hive Mind."

That was all the Invisible Man, their official employer told him before the voice receded.

Well, this was nice.

Couldn't it have waited for him to get a nice sleep before, though?

He shrugged and got back to work.

It wouldn't do to skimp on work given directly by the Invisible Man. Might just become a matter of alien invasion or not someday.


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Chapter 94: The One with the MUAHAHAHA!
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 94 [December 2011]

Research Warehouse 1, Manhattan

–Axle Riddle–


"Alright, ladies, let's get in line," Tony hollered at the seven brothers who had all gathered around curiously a table that now held the still form of the alien he had captured. It would be wrong to call them aliens though because they were coming from underneath and their numbers suggested some sort of expanded population living below the Earth.

"Alright, Bruce, would you do the honors," Tony asked Bruce dramatically who rolled his eyes at Tony's actions but still complied since they were SCIENCE! Bros, after all.

Bruce tapped a switch on his holo display and a forcefield appeared all around the table which held the very heavy, multi ton body of the digger, a tentative name that had been decided for the ones who were leading the digging charge, with heavier, denser claws and extremely large musculature around the arms and legs for better digging and jumping.

The forcefield flickered a bit as a small repulsor blast from an immobile drone from within the forcefield struck it with a small repulsor blast.

"Just testing. Now, let me show you all something interesting," Tony muttered as he controlled a joystick on his holo display and aimed the repulsors at the body below. As far as he knew, the digger was still awake and completely conscious, with no human drugs working on sedating it, but with its spines, and tendons severed and re-severed because they were starting to heal rapidly, the only way to keep it sedated was to forcefully reduce the flow of blood or whatever equivalent they had in their body.

That was the only reason they were able to conduct such painful tests. Well, painful in the sense….

BOOM!

Yup, just like that.

The small arm drone had smoke coming out of its repulsor output because irt was probably not built to the same standard as the Iron Man suit ones but it still outputted a decent amount of energy and despite that, there was nothing. No mark whatsoever on the skin of the alien.

"There you have it, folks. A biological skin equivalency to Vibranium," His gaze turned serious at Tony's words. If it was true, that could change things.

"You know that is not true, Tony. It is just something that we think might be the answer. Its biology is so tough that anything short of an energised alloy scalpel will not get through. We had to rely on IM's powers just so we could get the acidic sample," Bruce interjected as he continued to log in the creature's powers.

"Yeah yeah, I know but look into the possibilities Bruce. The skin can absorb blunt force, direct kinetic damage, repulsor output, plain old heat, Gamma Energy, and more. Why shouldn't I call it the Vibranium of biology," Tony said as he slung his arm around Bruce's shoulder who deadpanned at Tony.

"Because for one, it is not unbreakable. Because, it would be unethical to label its skin something even close to Vibranium because that would mean that the entire species would soon be hunted to extinction and despite their, less than savoury, actions, they don't deserve genocide," Bruce, ever the forward thinker explained to Tony who gained a thoughtful look at that.

Well, would you look at that, already Bruce was reigning in some of Tony's expressly reckless ways of doing SCIENCE!

"Dr.Banner is right. Plus, we still have a ton of testing to do. Please, Invisible Man, can you get us some more of these?" Randall asked him and that gave him a pause.

Huh, should he really get more of these? So far, the Invasion, if it could even be called that, was laughably small, so much so that he could stop it in his sleep, without even breaking concentration on the city around him.

But what if the next one turned out to be much bigger than the previous one?

"Well, Randall, I can't reach their current location. We can only wait for the next wave to emerge so that I can snag another one. Until then, where does SHIELD stand on this?" He asked Tony who had already informed Fury about this and he was not happy about it, well, no one would be, to see Fury's face first thing in the morning and then inform Fury that they had an alien living body that they were experimenting on, without the express consent of the government.

Ah, trolling Fury, once again, quite fun.

"What more can you tell me about it, aside from what I already gleaned from my scans," He asked Tony and the SCIENCE! Bros but aside from their DNA being carbon based and very close to Sea Horses for some reason, there was not much additional info there.

"I see. Okay, please keep working on this. Tony, I am sure the Hangover has receded by now. Bruce and Randall don't suffer from that issue so they are fine. In the meantime, I want you to figure out something that can exterminate them en masse,"

Bruce whirled around on the paper avatar, no doubt to admonish him about talking of extermination but it was just for precaution.

"Bruce, they were in the thousands and they were crushing each other to get to the top, even when I created the forcefield in their way. It is quite possible that it is an HIVE mind connected to everyone and please, make sure that this specimen can't hear what we are talking about." He informed them and dispelled his paper avatar.

The structure of the body, its purpose, and its origin pointed him to one thing: Moloids.

A species originally created by the Deviants to be a slave class or a working without pay class, but were later regressed into unthinking brutes because of massive inbreeding, allowing someone like the Mole Man to usurp command of the entire race, allowing him to become a very powerful person since the Moloids, while not smart, were overwhelmingly powerful, capable of overwhelming even the likes of Luke Cage and Spider Man with their sheer numbers.

They mostly lived in the subterranean levels though so the only reason they could be so organised and rushing for the surface would be, if someone was controlling them.

Good Lord, he had a supervillain on his hands.

Well, let him come then. There was nothing he could do at the moment, aside from letting Tony and Bruce come up with ways of creating something to counter a species that had acidic blood, an HIVE mind, and high physical characteristics who did not flinch from pain.

Sound familiar?

Oh yeah, the Chitauri were not going to realise what hit them, when Tony and Bruce whip out their countermeasures, designed for the Moloids in mind, but worked just fine for the Chitaur as well.

Dance, little puppets, Dance!

MUAHAHAHA!

Meanwhile, he would sit back and relax, and fly little Bellina around as she giggled in happiness.


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Chapter 95: Board Meetings, Arcs, and Telepathy! Finally!!!
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 95 [March 2012]

Manhattan

–Axle Riddle–


So, there he was, in a board meeting of the Wu enterprises, smiling and nodding along as the Board clapped themselves on the back for the phenomenal performance they were having year on year, especially their investments which were already netting them returns that they thought impossible a year ago.

Due to his stake in Stark Industries, Wu enterprises had finally been able to break into the heavy energy sector and start building parts that were now required for the Arc Reactor. Somehow, without him even doing anything about it, Tony had given some concessions to the Wu enterprises firm and was now allowing them to be the only offshore supplier of the rings that were necessary for the safe functioning of the Arc Reactor.

That's right, Tony was building the world's first commercial Arc Reactor, right here, in Manhattan.

Getting past the red tape was tough but with Tony's money and his supernatural favours, they were able to get past everything and get a site cleared for a test situation. ONce the reactor runs safely for a month, the city will then begin the process of hooking it up to the city's grid.

New York might not be the best place to start with an Arc Reactor. There were much more remote places that worked on just fossil fuels that would have benefited immensely from round the clock clean energy but the thing was, he had no influence on those things. He could just get things approved here.

So, aside from the Arc Reactor already installed in Stark Tower, Tony was going to be building another one, one with much lower throughout so that it can comply with some of the bare minimum safety standards that the government imposed on them.

In fact, if he looked outside the hotel conference room they were in, he would be able to see the building, once it was finished. The thing about the Arc Reactor was that it did not have a fixed orientation.

It was just a fusion core that gave out direct electricity. No need to convert the heat into steam to run a turbine to generate electricity. No, it was straight up electrons moving juice coming out of the reactor.

So, the requirements for the structure of it were very loose. As such, Tony had decided to build a huge building to house the Arc Reactor, something like a skyscraper. It would house everything obviously including the office staff.

It was going to be manned by the personnel from the government, obviously, but the construction and maintenance will be in the hands of Tony, at least for the first plant. They might have allowed Tony to build it, they were not going to allow him to run it, at all. Oh, he will get the profits but profits were not what Tony was after, in this particular situation.

He was looking at this as a proof of concept.

"Mr.Riddle? Mr.Riddle? Are you listening?"

"Hmm??" he looked back to see a bunch of old fogies looking at him with mildly hidden annoyance and anger. That was to be understood. After all, he was the sole reason they were having this meeting in New York in a hotel.

That's right, he had made all the board members of one of the largest companies in China, come all the way to New York, just so he could participate in the meeting and then was not paying attention at all to what they were saying or what they wanted to do.

Frankly, most of it was nonsense anyway so he did not regret it but he should have done a better job at masking it. Now, the old fogies were all upset and would go back home and cry and whine to the older fogie who would then call upon him.

Ugh. What a drag.

So, he bowed at them, apologised, smiled, and then left the meeting, with nothing to add from his side.

What more could he do?

He had already given them over 5 billion dollars in order just this year, their shares were rising, and enquires came flowing in, not just from the global private sector but also from the CCP who were interested in the company, Master Wu and his relationship with the rising American Superhero.

Not his problem, not his circus.

"Ah! That's the stuff," He exited the five star hotel and went into the closest coffee store he could find, getting the sweet sweet iced coffee shot that literally melted all his troubles away.

Done with his coffee, he gave the Barista a hefty tip since it was not a franchise and the employees actually worked hard on making sure that his order was well made, and went right back to his apartment.

Oh yeah, he got a new apartment as well.

Flexing his money, he was able to get himself a penthouse suite with breathtaking views that were certainly popular with the ladies, and most importantly, had the now almost finished Stark Tower right in his field of view.

He could sense that most of the tower was done, save for a few basement floors' being integrated properly and the defense mechanisms not being installed in the top few floors.

Oh yeah, Tony, knowing that New York suffered through spontaneous alien invasions that are sometimes stopped in time (Moloids) and sometimes are stopped only after they have done a certain amount of damage to their surroundings (The Guy Below), he had chosen to take matters into his own hands and make his building a veritable fortress, with repulsor weaponry installed in such a way that every corner of the building was covered.

If he was not wrong, the inauguration date was set to be sometime in July, which he felt bad for because the Chitauri Invasion happened right before the building was supposed to be inaugurated, probably sometime around May.

The preparations for the attack were in swing and he had a hunch that the INvasion was going to be pretty anticlimactic, which was good but he was worried that it might just set the wrong perception in the minds of the common populace, underscoring the threats of future alien invasions, with the aliens being much stronger and way less in number.

In fact, if he was not wrong, one such invasion was already underway, with the Skrulls.

He had them in the back of his mind when he first began scanning every single human he met, down to the tiniest detail but he had yet to meet someone whose genetic structure varied so much from a normal human's.

Vampires were different because they were essentially dead, with their heart beating at almost 1 bpm, allowing him to identify and exterminate them with ease.

Skrulls were going to be an issue, he could tell.

Thankfully, he had another way of reading people now.

He sat down on the sofa, and leaned back, closing his eyes and letting his mind…expand.

Almost instantly, he was assaulted by a cacophony of thoughts, too jumbled to make any sense of but the thoughts were there.

He was rather limited in his range at the moment, since it was a new ability he had just unlocked, after three months of hard practice and it was proving to be rather difficult in terms of training and growing it.

TK was easy, lift big heavy stuff, lift multiple big heavy stuff, lift thousands of tiny stuff. It was easy to get different exercises going for strength, dexterity, stamina and more, when it came to his TK.

His spatial awareness fed on his TK strength so that was a non issue.

It was telepathy that was giving him a tough time. But slowly, he was making progress.

Maybe not remotely but if could atleast touch a Skrull, he would be able to identify if the person was human or not. Atelast that much he could do.

Unfortunately, he had never met anyone with his real body.

He swore as he felt a particular emotion bleed through the telepathy and had to cut it off because it was getting annoying.

Sigh.

He just sprawled himself on the sofa as his mind wandered as to what he would do about the Chitauri. It was clear that they needed to go and he would be able to do that even before Loki had a chance to set things up.

Unfortunately, that ruined the agreement he had where he had to let the Invasion happen. Probably because the world needed to know and this was probably a bad way to get the shock across, but a very effective one.

One that could not be hidden by the governments or by SHIELD.

No, he had to create an impact, probably some property damage while he evacuated everyone to the tunnel below Manhattan or to the Central Park and safeguard them from all the damage, allowing the news to broadcast everything in real time.

That should make sure that the threat of aliens gets across to the public, who should, in turn vote for people who will address their concerns.

Then again, he did not want a warmongering xenophobic person to be elected just because people were afraid.

Options. Options.

Ah, this is all so complicated.


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Chapter 96 : Noose, Skin Grafts and the Weaponisation of anything and everything
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 96 [March 2012]

Manhattan [Time till Chitauri Invasion - 2 months]

–Axle Riddle–


He was in his room, practising his telepathy by concentrating on the thoughts and dreams of the young couple that lived just upstairs, all the while he worked with his TK to reconfigure the tunnel below and stop crime in the city. It was a strenuous activity for his mind but he was not bothered by that, doing that was how his mind would grow and he needed that growth, especially since lately, he had been feeling as if some noose had been tightening around his neck.

It was 2012 already, and despite all the preparations he had done, he found his hands sometimes clammy with sweat as he thought of the various ominous "what-ifs" that wandered into his mind from time to time.

What if Loki found him somehow and then used the Mind Stone on him?

What if the portal didn't open in Manhattan, limiting his ability to use his powers on the Chitauri?

What if he couldn't actually sense Loki with his illusion magic? What if something happened to the evacuation and controlled invasion that he was trying to enact, resulting in grave tragedies?

He shook his head violently, trying to banish the thoughts but doing so with meditation was next to impossible so he gave up on telepathy practice for the day. Instead, he stood up, and floated right into his bedroom with his clothing for the day all ironed and ready for him to wear, floating mid air.

He had to do something to get rid of the restless energy he seemed to have and meditation was not the proper way to do it. Unfortunately, building a gym for the superpowered was very much on Tony Stark's list of capabilities but for that, he would have to expose his identity and that was not something he was willing to do right now.

The night of Christmas and New York was still fresh in his mind. Man, the amount of alcohol he had consumed that day would have killed multiple men with ease, an amount that barely seemed to affect his system. At the time, he was resentful of that fact but right now, he was grateful because he couldn't even begin to imagine the unmitigated disaster that a drunk him with all his powers, would be.

Thankfully, he had one major thing to focus on today.

A meeting at the Wakanda Embassy. Well, the new Wakandan Embassy that they built right in the heart of Manhattan, for some reason. It was totally pedestrian with no advanced anything in the embassy save for a hardline fiber connection straight to their Embassy on the outskirts of the city but aside from that, it had nothing of note.

It must have raised some eyebrows when Wakanda, a third world African country, with barely any forex reserves, opened not one but two Embassies in the Big Apple in less than a year. Their reasoning? Only they knew.

He had the meeting in about two hours and he was already done for the day. His telepathy, atleast the focused version of it, would leave him feeling pretty drained throughout the day, not something he wanted to feel while talking with the Wakandans. They were mentally draining enough on their own.

It was about the Vibranium fibers they had utilized and how and why they had withered into nothingness when the operation was done. It must have spooked them to go through that particular recording when they hacked into Stark's or SHIELD's database. Vibranium was their sacred metal and his being able to destroy Vibranium of all things must have set off alarm bells in their mind.

That was why they had been trying to set up this meeting for months but he had been blowing them off. A bit petty but hey, he had to make them know somehow that he didn't really like them and their policies all that much, especially their policy to outright kill the scientists that came too close to their technological superiority.

That rubbed him all kinds of wrong ways, and he just hoped that the rise of T'Challa to becoming King of Wakanda would stop that practice.

Why was an advanced technocratic, self-sufficient, and borderline utopian society run by a monarchy anyway? What kind of backward ass thinking was that?

Hold a tournament, examine the candidates, choose the one most suited for strategies to lead, choose the most physically dominating to be Black Panther, and then have some sort of elected cabinet, directly or indirectly, and then have them make informed decisions.

That way might be slow but it was not as if Wakanda was making any phenomenal world changing progress right now. They were completely stagnant and while changing anything would demand nothing less than a bloody revolution, he still hoped that sometime in the future, when humanity inevitably expanded to the stars, decentralization of powers happened in Wakanda.

But then again, he was neither Wakandan nor invested in their internal politics, so what right did he have to comment on their ruling style?

As long as they didn't export that to the rest of the world and didn't impede normal efforts to advance humanity, it would be fine in his books. After all, they were not even a hundred million, if he was remembering correctly, and the world's population had just crossed the 6 billion mark.

Wakanda must be strict on population control because they had all the resources when they were growing as a country or rather, they observed the developed country phenomenon of falling birth rates much earlier because they were a developed country when the rest of the world ran on steam engines.

"Thank you. Keep the change," He insisted to the Barista, one of the many small sized coffee shops that had popped up in this place that he loved to explore, smiled back as he sipped on the heavenly drink, with six shots of espresso, being just enough to rouse him a bit.

He was on his way to the office while the appointment with the Wakandans had already passed about 20 minutes ago.

What? It was a power move to let them stew for an hour and also, who was going to do all the fake paperwork in his office, if not him?

In the meantime, Tony and Bruce had already figured out the specific frequency of repulsors needed to peel open the skin of the probable Moloid that he had captured. Ofcouse, they were not going to vivisect it. They were not savages.

They made sure that the Moloid had a painless death and then were conducting experiments on its body to figure out how it ticked. So far, Dr.Cho had been the one with the most excitement to join the project and had already begun forming her own thesis based on the skin samples she had received from the Moloid.

According to her, the skin could be used as the base for an artificial skin graft, virtually indistinguishable from normal skin, but just built differently, in his own words.

It would have blunt resistance, fire resistance, cold resistance, and even puncture resistance if used properly, creating natural skin armor for people.

Something that he was quick to warn her about. The skin might not make them as strong as the Moloid, you would need the underlying muscles as well as the bones to make that happen but if something even remotely enhancing was invented by Dr.Cho and it reached the ears of the military, well, it would be used in wars.

So, he just told her to tread carefully. And she took that advice and went to Tony, who was the certifiable current expert on military grade commercial activities.

A questionable choice but the best she could have made considering the circumstances and the sheer ease of access to Tony.

So, he let them be and would only pipe in if Tony tried to shaft Cho and not in a sexual way, the chances of that happening were pretty low but he would still maintain a close eye on that.

Wouldn't want mini Moloids popping up, attracting Deviants and Eternals to the city. That was the last thing he wanted, especially with the Invasion just on the horizon.

"Alright, get the latest financial reports," He pressed a button on the intercom and ordered in his authoritative voice.

At the same time, a series of papers stuck together before being shredded to form a small human, with a phone flying out of nowhere into its head.

Let's see who he would have the pleasure of meeting because the last time he went to a Wakanda Embassy, he met a pretty trained woman who was not a part of the Dora Milaje because she had hair on her head. This time though, he could not sense the same woman being in his entire range, so it must be someone different.

His paper avatar then began floating high up in the sky before it deformed and began rocketing toward the Wakandan Embassy.

If they wanted him to be discreet, they should not have built an Embassy in Manhattan then.



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Chapter 97 : The One with the Old Nosy People
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 97 [March 2012]

Wakanda [Time till Chitauri Invasion - 2 months]

–T'Chaka–


He sat in front of the Royal Council, waiting for the same thing that they were waiting for, desperately, for over 3 months now.

When the news had first reached them about Vibranium being used by the Invisible Man, they were not that shocked, since the man had practically demanded the proper methods to mould Vibranium from them.

It was also not that shocking to know what the Vibranium was going to be used for. What was shocking was the ease with which their scientists adapted to methods that had been refined over centuries and built some of the most accurate Vibranium fibres they had ever seen, well, if you took into consideration the primitive technology that they had access to.

The scientists at the Royal lab had gone over their plans dozens of times before presenting their conclusion to them.

Betty Ross would not survive the child's birth, and he had been, not quite devastated, but sad that a mother's life had to be traded for her child's, something that he knew that most mothers would do in a heartbeat.

Bearing the child of Dr.Banner, someone who was so strong that the Royal Lab theorized the Shield surrounding Wakanda to be the only option for reliably stopping him, was not something that could be done lightly, and yet, the couple had decided to go through with it.

The Vibranium fibres were a nice enough option if they just wanted to stop the Gamma Radiation from poisoning her systems. But that was not the only complication that Ms.Ross had at that point.

The baby's energy would be so bright, so strong that the internal organs of Ms.Ross would be damaged even before delivery and even more during the delivery. The amount of energy the baby must have consumed from his mother meant that Ms.Ross' body would be running itself ragged, as was evident by the quite frankly, abnormal, amount of food that Ms.Ross consumed on a daily basis.

They could not risk getting in depth scans aside from what they could take from their databases, because they were all under the umbrella of the Invisible Man but even from that data, his scientists were all but sure that the baby would be born, it would be hard for such a resilient creature to die, but the mother would not survive the operation.

Imagine his surprise when something out of the blue happened. Tony Stark somehow chanced upon a liquid that when he put on the Vibranium fibres and re-processed them using the sonic frequency formula that Wakanda had given to the Invisible Man, created fibres that did not look like natural Vibranium.

No, they were all glowing with white and yellow lights, the glow brightening and dimming.

His council had all but ordered the sample to be confiscated when the results of Dr.Cho's experiments with animals were revealed to them but he had silenced them all with one question.

"How?"

How indeed. That had silenced them all. After all, who wouldn't want to have something that could heal everything, even limb loss could be healed by the fibres at that point.

He was sorely tempted, as was every single old person in the room with him, but he was also realistic. What was the point in antagonising someone who was, very soon, not going to be limited to just one small part of the world, and could most certainly bypass all their shields?

The Invisible Man's conversation with the President of America had been most enlightening in that regard. He could just imagine the scrambling that the government and all their shady organisations were doing in preparation for what would most certainly be their end if the invisible Man chanced upon their activities.

Then, the operation happened. His agents had already been pulled out of Manhattan by that point because there was no point in endangering the WarDogs in an area that might sono turn into a warzone if Dr.Banner began rampaging.

They had been daring and had hijacked every single packet of data that came out of Manhattan at that point, by tapping into the satellites as well as the undersea cables. It was risky and bold but he wanted, no, needed to see the fibres in action.

And see in action, he did.

It was eye opening, what had happened that day.

With his own two eyes, he had seen someone turn from a normal baseline human into someone that not even the Black Panther could defeat. He also made the mistake of letting the Council be with him when the footage was being relayed.

That had almost caused a rebellion as the Council now deemed those fibres an important Wakandan artefact that had to be rescued immediately. And he would have agreed but once again, not possible for them, especially now since they knew that Ms.Ross had survived and was now capable of throwing around T'Challa and himself as if they were misbehaving kids.

The detailed reports had come in a month later and he could only lament at the events as it was stated that Ms.Ross would be mostly immune to the standard blasters they used on their raptors, along with bulletproof. She would also be impossibly fast and receptive to changes around her, so ambushing her was out of the question.

And without even taking into consideration the above facts, the most important fact was that they still lived in Manhattan, albeit they were much more outgoing now.

The live footage of the Fibres being all blackened when they were pulled out of Ms.Ross and then withering into thin air, not even dust, into thin air, was what finally calmed the Council down.

Further investigation revealed that the Invisible Man had a teacher who had given the liquid to Tony Stark at the Invisible Man's request, something that had put him right on the edge of a heart attack.

So, he had declared Invisible Man and Manhattan at large, a no activity zone. No Wakandan activity would be carried out in that city without his express permission.

Still, they had to know, the Lab had to know just how and why the Vibranium had withered as if it was rusted metal and not the strongest metal in existence.

So, they had been hounding the Invisible Man, almost begging for a meeting with the man personally so that they could discuss the incident and also, to see if the liquid could be procured at any cost.

Something like that could be like a second life given to the Black Panther whenever needed, even if it was a one use item.

Unfortunately, the man had been non responsive, even if they went through the so-called congregation that worshipped the man and manned his initiatives throughout the city.

It was the building of a whole new embassy in Manhattan and the rather sizable anonymous donation of over a 100 million dollars to his food safety initiatives that had the man finally responding to their calls.

He was sure that the new embassy would increase the scrutiny on their country but that was a risk he was willing to take, especially if he could secure something that might just make someone stronger than even the Black Panther.

And that was what they were gathered here to watch. He was supposed to have arrived 30 minutes ago but he was sure that the meeting would not be blown off.

"My King," He was brought out of his ruminations as the screen finally showed a paper avatar appearing on top of the Wakandan embassy flag. The paper then shredded itself and arrived in the office of the only person present in the building.

They had many questions and he had already forwarded them to the most capable negotiator they had on hand, something of a rarity since Wakanda did not negotiate with anyone.

It was simply not needed before.

If they could not get the liquid, which was most probable, he alteast needed some information regarding the Invisible Man and his future plans.

He was even willing to let the man visit Brinin Zana if he proved to be amicable.

T'Chalal would surely benefit from the support and benefit of such a person in the future.


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Chapter 98 : Jitters, Military Sales, and Fear
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 98 [April 2012]

Manhattan [Time till Chitauri Invasion - 1 month]

–Axle Riddle–


He was getting jittery, he realised that. After the meeting with Wakanda, wherein he so gleefully reminded them that Vibranium was the strongest metal on Earth, not in existence. There were also plenty of beings in the universe capable of breaking apart Vibranium and some of them even resided on Earth.

They were definitely skeptical but after seeing definite proof of this statement, they had little reason to doubt him. T'Chaka in particular was quite shaken, as were the delegates he had assigned to talk to him.

Aside from that, Fury had come knocking on the doors of the safehouse where RBA resided, to inquire about the supposed alien corpse they had on hand and what can be done to transfer the custody of that corpse to the government.

Tony and Bruce had openly scoffed at that demand when he had just washed his hands off the matter and told Fury that if Tony and Bruce agreed with him, he could take the Moloid away for further experimentation. It was safe to say that the Moiloid would not be leaving Manhattan until Tony's and Bruce's curiosities were fulfilled.

The US Government was going to get the data regardless of who did the experimentation anyway so they were not a significant hurdle in the matter. Fury had come to a compromise by stationing Jemma Simmons at the base to help with the study.

Dr.Cho had come in the initial phases but after taking her skin tissue samples, along with all the subdermal layers, she had retreated to her designated floor in Stark Tower and had been working on that specific part of her project.

She had already been working on skin grafts, enhanced skin grafts based on her observations of Betty's skin evolving and strengthening in real time and she, along with Bruce's help, were going to use the Moloid skin as its base and then create advanced skin grafts capable of tanking all but the largest of bullets without outright puncturing.

Something that had Fury's attention as well as the military's but Tony had promised them if they did not wish to sell it to the Military, they could sell it to emergency services across the country, like the Police and the firefighters. The Moloid skin was plenty fire resistant.

In the end, Bruce had agreed to sell it to the military but only if all the operations were done on Stark owned sites and the recipients could not be private contractors or anything, they had to be official military personnel.

Which meant no bulletproof soldiers for SHIELD. Well, according to the latest results of her testing, not all the body could be made bulletproof but over 70% along with the head and the heart covered was a pretty solid covering in his book.

Aside from that, he had begun subtly working on the underground tunnel that ran across the city. Creating more and more entry points with just the last entry point above the surface left unfinished, which would be opened the second the blue portal opens.

Creating conduits for clean water storage, packaged food, and even sterilised rooms for emergency medical services to work on.

He had also added Randall to the plan, not about the invasion but about the tunnel and the plan to use it as a Refuge area for any emergency, natural or alien that may occur above New York. Randall had gotten right to work, installing independent power lines across the entirety of the tunnel, powered by multiple redundant Arc Reactors, to make sure every sq. ft. of it was properly lit.

He then went a step above his water tank idea and installed water lines extending into the water, from both sides of the tunnel, align with redundant Arc reactor powered water filtration systems, capable of churning out enough water to keep thousands of people fed, for a long time.

Then there came the medic areas, huge rectangular blocks, lined with solid metal plating, along with enough sterilisation material and hospital supplies to, well, run a huge hospital for months.

Randall also told him that they had to account for the possibility of him not being available for anything if an actual attack happened on the city and the Invisible Man had to focus completely on the invasion and nothing else.

It was a fair point so they had also created multiple entry and exit hatches, going deep into the ground and coming out into the other boroughs, with customised vehicles capable of using the Repulsor tech to haul hundreds of people within minutes. Randall had already begun work on the production type cars with two prototypes being built according to his specs.

He hadn't even thought of the fact that if it was some other extremely strong entity, he would have to focus all his attention on the fight and would not be able to help the people with mass entry or exit, a rookie mistake in hindsight.

Also, Randall proposed creating areas with heavy reinforcement, mostly metal based right now but he was working on high application force fields that could work using the same muon base that Repulsors used. If that was ready in time, they could use the force fields to line the entirety of the tunnel, creating a very large safe haven.

He knew that it was all overkill for the Chitauri because in the movies, it was a tragedy sure but the overwhelming damage was done to the property and all in the first few minutes where the Avegners hadn't yet drawn the entirety of the Chitauri's fleet's attention on themselves, so he was not really worried all that much.

But still, it was his first Invasion and he both couldn't wait for it to be done and dreaded it coming all the same.

He had taken an extended sabbatical from the office, for over 2 months, all paid vacation because he just could not be still in the office for long periods of time. It was quite a perk, especially because it had been approved without someone batting an eye, leading him to believe that the old monster Master Wu had created some sort of reputation for himself in the company, allowing Axle Riddle to do as he pleased, as long as the profits came rolling in.

He used the time to work on his body, and work on his telepathy, which was working well but not as well as he had hoped to be. He still had to work on the telepathic feedback and reducing the emotional bleed out that happened every time he tried to connect to multiple minds all at once.

For now, he was just working on reading minds, not manipulating them but even the supposedly simple part was tough going, especially since he realised that not all minds are the same, even if they are the minds of not enhanced people.

He didn't touch Bruce's mind and he would not do so with a hundred foot vibranium pole, because, hello, Avatar of Rage, and all that stuff but he had tried to tap into the mind of Frank, and that had been all but impossible in the beginning.

Even now, he could barely hear snippets of thoughts from Frank. The minds of teenagers were the easiest, even more so than children, but that was somewhat disgusting to him because of the majority of the thoughts that dominated their hormonal bodies, mainly due to puberty.

Cops and Firefighters were a little tougher than the normal majority crowd but still doable for his fledgling abilities. Children were very thought because the emotional bleed out from kids was the worst. It would hit him with the force of a sledgehammer, completely disorienting him for seconds before he could focus his telepathy on something else.

But all of the above was fine. Because he was finally learning something new, something that might turn out to be useful even during the fight. To be honest, he has quite a fear of being mind controlled by Loki even for the fight, something that gave him nightmares, because what if Loki was given some sort of skill that allowed him to find the strongest mind in his vicinity, leading him straight to the Invisible Man whose mind, formidable as it might be, was no match for the fucking Infinity Stone in his grasp.

Allowing himself to fall under the control of Loki would quite literally spell the end of the planet, because the moment the Blue Portal opened up, he would be free. Free to wreak havoc on any part of the planet.

And sure, the Ancient One could probably stop him but that battle would not be quiet and outing Kamar Taj to the rest of the world would do the world no good, especially right on the heels of an alien Invasion.

No, the second Loki arrived on Earth, he was going to bunker up. Flood his presence in the surroundings and make sure that every current of air was monitored, so that Loki does not approach him while invisible.

Part of him felt silly for being afraid of Loki while the image of him being thrashed by the Hulk repeated in his mind but another part of him remembered, the sheer ugliness Loki held within his soul and what could happen when that same part was amplified by Thanos and the Mind Stone.

No, he was right in being cautious.

The second the portal opens up, he will evacuate everyone, let the Chitauri through, thrash Loki to an inch of his life, bury that sceptre so deep in the ground that no one would be able to find it, and once the appropriate response comes from the WSC, which it will come, he was sure of that, let the Nuke through and then use the sceptre to plug the hole.

All the while making sure that the world knows that while there are scary things in the deep darkness of space, they were not helpless, that they were not alone.

Because the point of letting the Invasion happen was not to let the world know about the aliens and their might, not to scare them but to make them aware of the dangers and also to let them know that they had defenders that would protect them from the dangers.

Something that was supposed to be done by SHIELD but whatever.








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Chapter 99 : The One with the Flying Car!
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 99 [April 2012]

Manhattan [Time till Chitauri Invasion - 1 month]

–Tony Stark–


Well, that cements it, something absolutely fishy is going on and he was not in on it. That would just not stand by him, now would it?

"Jarvis? Get me our flying car, would you?" He ordered Jarvis while finishing his drink in a hurry, a protein shake, not alcohol. It was noon, he was not an animal. Well, it depends if you counted being a party animal but that mode of his was reserved for only when it was dark outside, and he was feeling particularly cheery.

"Certainly, sir. However, I must remind you that I have been advised by multiple concerned parties not to let Sir drive the car alone." Jarvis sassily reminded him and he just waved off those worries. There was no reason he could not drive the car, it was perfectly safe. He built the repulsor system into the car, he knew just how it worked.

"Bah! They worry too much, Jarvis. Just get the car out on the penthouse roof and please, get a new flavor for the protein shake. Plain Vanilla gets boring after a while,"

"Yes, sir," Jarvis said and he gleefully rubbed his hands as he came out of the elevator and saw the car in all its glory.

It was based on an old Porsche Vintage car, with nothing about it being vintage except its external looks. It still had four wheels but they were merely decorations, placeholders for the muon repulsion system that would take its place once the vehicle was activated.

It was a thing of beauty, sleek silver, and chromium, with no gold and red highlights though. What a bummer. But it was a unanimous decision between all the people that contributed to the project that the car would remain as is and any personalisations could be done on later versions of the flying car, something he agreed on so no use pouting over lost opportunities.

Finally, his dad's promise to the world that he made in the first Stark Expo would be fulfilled. A flying car!

The car slowly floated on top of the penthouse, with its doors facing him, and he grinned as the light forcefields came to life. This was another project he was working on, creation of force fields with strengths dependent on the amount of Arc Energy being supplied to the generators.

So far, he could make force fields that could not just tank but contain the explosion from a Jericho missile, the strongest weapon that the Military still had. That was quite impressive but not even close to the required rating if he wanted something like the Hulk or the Invisible Man to be contained.

To be fair, how would he even go about trying to contain the Invisible Man? He had searched high and low and aside from some partial matches that just did not make any sense, he had not found anything about the elusive telekinetic.

He slowly took a step on the forcefield ladder that had been created for him and smiled as railings simultaneously appeared on the sides of the ladder, allowing him to cover the steep climb with ease.

Once inside, he smiled once more, seeing no buttons at all. While some people really loved the tactical feedback of buttons, he liked them to be digital, so that they could be tucked away, especially since he had a very reliable digital assistant who could not just understand his commands perfectly but also sometimes execute them before he could even say them out loud.

Case in point, the railings on the ladder.

Satisfied with the novel experience, he put his hands on the steering, which was more of a plane steering than a car steering, and was about to put the car on Drive, when the screen flashed red.

"Insufficient permission? What?"

"Unfortunately, Mr.Stark, when the car was programmed to stay in storage until the next one was to be made, it was programmed to only have automatic functionality unless all three key members were present. For you to drive the car manually, you will need the immediate presence of Dr.Banner and Mr.Randall," Jarvis reminded him of that stupid thing that he agreed to.

"But, you can bypass it, right? I made you, Jarvis, I know you can do it,"

"It would be possible if only Dr.Banner had not installed a physical sensor requirement which would not be fulfilled if his unique energy signature was not recorded, reportedly, after repeated insistence from both Ms.Ross and Ms.Potts,"

Oh, so the missuses were worried then. Alright then, they win. He shouldn't really be doing this anyway. The only reason it would even be legal was because there was no such license category for flying cars, allowing him to exploit a small legal loophole that would probably be plugged by the time he was done with his personal car.

Fiinee.

"To the SHARED LAB!" He always wanted to say that, as Jarvis took control of the car and he whooped as the car immediately picked up speed, the repulsor systems allowing it to access most of its torque in the early phases.

The car slowly came to a halt, the inertial dampeners working as he barely felt any impact, as the car slowly landed on top of the warehouse, the top of which opened, and then the car landed on the ground, the top closing on its own.

He looked around, as the various teams of scientists worked together in this lab. A small team from SHIELD, led by Jemma Simmons, worked on one side, mostly on the skin tissue and the defense tech that Dr.Cho was leading, Bruce and Betty both worked on, well, their own bodies, essentially.

They still had yet to conclude the studies on the stem cells frozen, and the various goo that was left behind from little Bellina's delivery. It was apparently worth its weight in gold because the cells, even after so long, were still alive.

There was a small Stark Industries team here but they were mostly here to install the various doodads they had made over the months to secure this place. Randall was nowhere to be seen, and neither was his merry band of brothers.

He liked the brothers, they were…not as smart as Randall was, who could easily keep up with him and Bruce, but they were really loyal and more importantly, really strong.

Together, they could probably hold off even Bruce in his em[powered form if they wanted to. They didn't get injured, not by any weapon he used anyway and they were freakishly tenacious.

Randall had some weapons tuned to their bodies so that they could be used to hurt them, if necessary but even after being bloodied by those weapons, all the brothers seemed to come back for more. It was as if their bodies were being tempered by damage, allowing them to grow stronger in a controlled environment.

Lately, that part of their training has been increased for some reason, both in terms of intensity and frequency. Randall was also busy in some other project given to him specifically by the Invisible Man.

He wondered what they were up to.

"Bruce!"

"Hi, Tony/ Hello, Dr.Stark," The couple greeted him but before Bruce could go back to working with his paramour, he dragged him a bit away.

"Hi, do you have any idea what Randall is working on? Because I know they have a secret base in the subterranean levels and for the past few weeks, I am getting some really strong energy readings, along with disturbances recorded across Manhattan," He was hoping Bruce would have some idea because, being fellow Hulks, they shared a much deeper bond than he did.

Bruce looked unamused, "I don't know, Tony. The last I heard, he had some personal work from the Invisible Man that was also interesting. If you'll excuse me, I still have to compile that report by the end of the day,"

Yeah, to your boss, which was him, he wanted to say that but he didn't say it out loud. He just nodded and thanked Bruce.

"Jarvis, access the data points for the entry point of the underground Tunnel that he built and take me there," He ordered Jarvis who complied and he tapped on his smartwatch, and ordered a suit to come meet him at the entry point.

It was time to see just what was going on below the city, under the watch of the Invisible Man.

Hmm, he was strangely excited as if he was about to bust someone's completely harmless operation but finding joy in doing it nonetheless.



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Chapter 100 : The One with Randall Yapping..... New
A/N - Sorry guys for the inactivity for the past few weeks. IRL seasonal change hit me hard. Regular seasonal Cold, Cough and fever evolved into something more sinister due to my immune system's inability to fight it properly, leading to hospitalisation.
Anyways, double release today! Woohoo!
On a serious note, will try to get back to a regular schedule but let's see. Thanks for reading.


Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 100[April 2012]

Tunnel Under Manhattan, the Refuge Zone [Time till Chitauri Invasion - 1 month]

–Randall–


"Urgh," With a grunt, he pushed the final part into the entire assembly, which created a clicking sound as the systems came to life with a whine, the Arc Energy pulsing through every single node that he had installed in the miles long tunnel that the Invisible Man had built, as a makeshift emergency center for the entire centre to huddle into.

When he was first approached with this concept, he was very much giddy to be given the opportunity to work on something like this, a giant panic room, with free reign and essentially unlimited resources to do whatever he wanted to create what was essentially a small temporary fortified city, by the Invisible Man.

He was confused at first because all the entry and exit points were either too small or inaccessible without the help of the Invisible Man. When he explained that along with some other problems to the Invisible Man, he was promptly handed the control over the entire project to him, as if he was the authority here.

And yet, over the past month that he had been working on this place, it had been very fast paced and just plain cool to work. According to the Invisible Man, he feared a large-scale invasion of aliens with no place for the citizens to huddle down, until the Invisible Man took care of the threat. It was understandable, and he had even refined the concept further as well.

Building multiple train routes, going deeper underground, and emerging into other boroughs, with the trains capable of carrying thousands of people at once, at lightning speeds to the other boroughs, so that they can get away from the epicentre, while the Invisible Man worked on containing the threat to Manhattan.

That was another oddity, he noticed. The Invisible Man seemed to be sure that the attack would happen on Manhattan, the home field of the Invisible Man, where he was the strongest, the absolutely undisputed powerhouse, and yet, he seemed almost certain that as long as the native population of Manhattan was safely evacuated to the other boroughs, they would be mostly fine.

He thought long and hard about that but the only thing that made sense to him was the notion that the Invisible Man was preparing for some sort of attack on him personally, with the damage to the city being just collateral damage as a result of the fight between the Invisible Man and whoever the third party was.

He soon abandoned that train of thought and worked on doing what he knew best. Tech.

Ah, it was so freeing, so have essentially unlimited budget, what with the babble of Billionaires just waiting to get some sort of command from the Invisible Man, to throw their wealth at someone who was giving them something that all the money in the world would not have been able to buy otherwise.

Security, but not just security. No, money could buy them absolute security in a deep dark bunker in some remote corner of the world with a private military protecting them. That could be bought with money but not what the Invisible Man was giving them right now.

Security in a mundane environment.

Being able to get out on their own, with no stuffy security or no feeling of danger, no fear of being hurt by breathing fresh air, was something that no amount of money could buy for these people.

As such, he had been able to blow through over a hundred million dollars worth of stuff in the past month alone with no sight of the people hesitating to hand over even more money for whatever reason.

The best water purifiers, with enough stored air and supplied to last days at a a time. He was really proud as to how far this had come. When he had taken over, it was just a tunnel with some lights and a couple of reinforced steel rooms built into the corners for any emergency services to use. The Invisible Man had resorted to building giant water tanks and pressured air tankers for use by the people who would take refuge in the area.

While that was practical for someone of his powers, they had to build something that would not require his attention, at all. Something that would run by itself, without any attention required from the Invisible Man since he would be busy fighting the alien or monster or whatever it is that attacked Manhattan. Attacks that would force the entirety of the city to be evacuated would presumably also be potent enough that the Invisible Man would need to focus entirety on the enemy.

With the last part finally installed, he had done it.

His first large scale forcefield installation. He hadn't yet tested the system yet and there were a couple of checks in the tunnel integrity to be done before he could think of turning on the force fields but the generator was installed and more than half of the does were showing ready but still, for his peace of mind, he would check everything once again before hitting the ON switch.

He was about to go up to the city to get a sandwich or pizza but his watch began buzzing with a specific coded alarm.

He sighed, as he realised what the code was for. It was an alarm specifically coded into his systems to warn him if Tony Stark or one of his Iron Men suits were coming any closer to designated special sites, like their subterranean base as well as this tunnel now.

He opened the display and yup, Tony Stark himself was on his way right here, after discovering the closest unfinished entrance to the tunnel. How he found the entrance which was still about 50 ft from the surface, in the underground sewer, was another question he would have to ask the eccentric billionaire, after answering a thousand other questions from the Billionaire, obviously.

He sat down, not on a normal chair but on a forcefield chair, something that he did just so he could flex on Tony when he arrived and saw his awesome creation.

Now, granted, it would not have worked nearly as flawlessly without Arc Energy, energy that was taken straight from the Arc Reactor housing without any refinement and imputed straight into the forcefield cluster he had built for the tunnel.

Great for forcefield applications but it burns out the Arc Reactor far faster than usual.

Well, something to improve in the next iteration then, he thought to himself while deliberately sitting right in front of the point of entry into the tunnel that TOny was using, reading a digital magazine.

Presentation was important and he was a bit of a drama queen.

He didn't have to wait long before the sound of repulsors being fired reached his ears, the subtle whine easily audible to his enhanced senses.

Tony could have easily done away with any noise made by the repulsor systems, with ease but for some reason, he continued to have them in his newer suits as well. Admittedly, it was a nice sound, very futuristic to hear but it was a sound that had no place in the battlefield.

Such were his thoughts when he watched, through the translucent digital magazine, Tony land in the tunnel, with his signature three point landing.

He lowered the magazine, took one look at Tony, and…

"Get off my Lawn!" He grumbled as he stood up, his chair and the magazine dissipating.

"Ha. ha. So funny, Randall," Tony's modulated voice came through the suit before the mask slid off and Tony's obnoxious smug face was revealed to him as he looked around the tunnel, with multiple smaller drones ejecting from his suit.

"So? What you got down here, Randall? Some newer alien? Come on, tell me," Tony asked him, following in his footsteps as he began walking towards the makeshift office he had built for himself in the tunnel, all with a direct line to his systems in the subterranean base, something that he deactivated as soon as Tony set his sights on the system.

"This, Mr.Stark, is a refuge tunnel, being built, to house hundreds of thousands of people, in case an attack of a caliber that hit us recently ever happens again. It has everything, from clean water, and air, to enough storage space to keep food and more importantly, people safe from whatever happens above ground.

"Uh-huh. So a glorified bunker then. I get it. What I want– Is that a force field generator? Oh, that's a clever way to use the Muon bleedout. Hmm," And there he went, Tony in his own world as he snapped his fingers, and summoned one of the drones which flew right into the ceiling and began taking extensive scans of the forcefield node that he had built into the roof, and the floor of the tunnel, cross the entire length of the tunnel.

"Wow, it never occurred to me that the pure muon, something that will fry most electronics could be used to do this. It makes sense, though." Tony began muttering to himself as he floated to the top of the tunnel and reached towards the node and then.....

"Hey!" He found himself shouting and launching himself straight at the floating Iron Man as Tony just ripped out the forcefield node, shutting down the entire network as a precautionary measure he had built into the systems.

Tony flew away but he snatched the node right out of his hands.

Landing on the ground with a thud, he exclaimed, "Come on, Man! Now, I have to repopulate every single one of the nodes into the system, again."

Tony floated down, "That's great. You can show me how then." The smugness in his voice deserved only a single response.

Showing Tony the finger, he stomped with the node in hand, back to his office, to begin the tedious process of repopulating the system with nodes, one by one.

Tony's suits followed behind as they walked to his office, hopefully, Tony had some ideas about the software and what can be done to improve it.

It was not as if he was averse with sharing his technology. It was what the Invisible Man had told him to do, only to be careful to whom it was shared which was fair enough.



If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon or Ko-fi, for upto 5 extra chapters.
 
Chapter 101 : Prelude to Showdown New
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 101[May 2012]

Manhattan

–Axle Riddle–


"Alright, let's do this," he muttered to himself as he sat cross legged in his room and dove deep into his mind, all other outside thoughts forgotten, and even the patrolling and watch over New York stopped for a moment.

When he opened his eyes, he found himself standing in front of a large blue half circle, which was the shield that surrounded his mind. Yeah, it was a cliche, surrounding one's mind with an indestructible barrier but hey, why change what works?

Especially since he had a multitude of others, just as deadly traps laid down for anyone trying to enter his mind. But he was not here to examine his defenses, no, he was here to check on the mechanism he had built for himself.

His form slowly floated into the shield, bypassing the shield as it wasn't there, and came face to face with a small clock like device, which did not serve the function of a clock. No, it was his last resort, an emergency fail-safe measure just in case he found himself under the tender mercies of Loki, and the Mind Stone he had in his possession, however weakened it might be due to the sceptre.

Right after the barrier was the clock, which would detect if any foreign surge of mental energy was breaking through his shields and trying to breach his mind or not. He didn't know exactly how the Mind Stone or the particular brand of mind control that Loki used but he could take some educated guesses. For one, Loki himself, while capable of some mind control magic, was nowhere near strong enough to breach his defenses, atleast not the current rendition of Loki.

Loki Season 2 might have won but Chitauri Invasion Loki? That bitch would get slapped the second he entered his TK range.

He had set up the mental construct in his mind with one goal and one goal only. Total and utter deletion of memories, of his past life just in case something unstoppable knocked on the doors of his mental shields. It also had a manual trigger, it was quite hard to create, especially since he did not have much time to make both the defenses and the mental trigger.

Just in case, he felt something off and felt as if his mind was about to be destroyed, the mental construct would flip a switch, and the most protected ball of memories at the centre of his mind palace would rip itself apart, rendering his mind catatonic, until it eventually healed itself, just without the memories part.

That served two functions. One, denying Loki, and by extension, Thanos any kind of future knowledge, and two, it would incapacitate him completely. That would reduce Loki's chances of winning in any meaningful manner.

Honestly, it was kind of an extreme measure but he had this thought ever since Randall told him that the tunnel needs to be completely independent of the influence of the Invisible Man, just in case he was busy fighting their foe, and Randall was right. So, they made the tunnel completely independent of any effort required on the Invisible Man's part.

It was also a ploy on his part to let Tony enter the tunnel and do as he pleases, especially since he had given both of them a pretty strict 1 month timeline. He lied to them about getting some intel from his so called teacher about a possible attack in a month, which was not untrue but he didn't specify if the attack was coming from below or from above.

They assumed another attack from the Moloids which spurred them to reinforce the tunnel to such an extent that should a small Nuke, like in canon, hit Manhattan above ground, the tunnel would be affected, yes, but not destroyed and most of the people would live past the blast, only to die a few years later of radiation poisoning but that was something that can be treated later on, especially if he was able to get some artificial CHI up and running.

Lots to do but no time to do it. So, he prioritised the mind defenses and the suicide mechanism built into his mind. He thought that it would have stopped his progress in telepathy but as it turns out, having a calm, stable, and more importantly, organised mind increased his telepathy range by leaps and bounds.

Now, he could read the thoughts of people, faintly, at least in a 500 metre radius. That was progress but he didn't have much time celebrating that because he was busy thinking and overthinking, and thinking anxiously about Loki and the Mind Stone. It was funny that he ignored the Chitauri as an enemy and was only focused on Loki and more importantly, on the Mind Stone itself.

He had to get the Stone for himself, he realised one day. No way was he going to let the freaking Mind Stone, something that could just elevate him to planetary status, get away from his hands.

Once the Invasion was done, he could ambush the SHIELD convoy and take the sceptre for himself. That should be fairly easy, stopping Wanda's awakening, avoiding another threat in the process.

He kept checking up on his mechanisms and built multiple dense tungsten plates with words literally carved onto them, detailing the memories and some clues sprinkled in for future him to read just in case he had to activate the fail safe and essentially, kill himself for the greater good.

God, he was such a wuss. He couldn't even guarantee a win against the lowest tier of army that Thanos had under his command and he had dreams of defeating Thanos himself.

It was just that he didn't have confirmation if his powers could sense Loki or not. He tried with some of the masters who would talk to him but they admitted to not being experts in illusions and what little they did know, he was able to make out their body structure and if not their bodies, he was able to sense the disturbance in the air around him, and locate them that way.

He felt fairly confident in defeating Loki if Loki chose to reveal himself even a second earlier but he was not taking any chances.

He was also keeping a close eye on the Stark Tower, and the SHIELD safehouse in the distance. The second he heard of Loki arriving on the planet, he would hole himself deep underground, even deeper than the Refuge tunnel, with ample food, water, and air, so that he could get the entire Invasion done without ever having to worry about Loki sneaking up on him.

He also had kind of a costume ready, fabric custom made by one of the many cosplaying tailors that lived within the city who were more than happy to get the opportunity to make the official costume for the Invisible Man. He didn;t need much reinforcement but the mad lad was somehow able to learn how to use Kevlar in the suit and then after being supplied the necessary ingredients, was able to make one for him.

Ofcourse, he was compensated fairly, he was not a monster.

He took a deep breath and opened his eyes, noticing that only 2 seconds had passed in his mental world while he had all that internal monologue. His mind was immediately assaulted by the visions of the city, of crimes being committed, or people almost dying due to collisions, all in the span of 2 seconds.

Good Lord, he didn't know what the city would do if he left. He had to do something to prepare them, otherwise the entire city might just collapse when he left. No, he had to make sure that, at the very least, the city was left in somewhat better economic condition than before his debut.

Sure, the Billionaire exodus will happen but he could at least make sure that it was a stable transition. With Randall and Co. here, with his plans to permanently enhance Frank and Daredevil, once he became active, it should help keep the crime low in the city.

Bruce's situation was complex, as he would never leave Bellina out of his sight, and it was true that Bellina was in constant danger, unless she was in the range of the Invisible Man.

So far, he had already stopped 2 dozen attempts by various people from various nationalities from trying to get closer to Bellina, from spying on Bellina, and from trying to get DNA samples from Bellina.

He didn't stop them from doing anything else but once it came to little Bellina, he came down on them like the hammer of justice and after breaking one or two bones, depending on the severity of their actions, tossed them outside the city, right in the impound lot, purpose built for such people, who would randomly be tossed into it, at any time of the day, by the Invisible Man.

He would also pen a report of their actions and deposit it into the nearest Precinct, which filed it as evidence.

Apparently, even with his god like powers, he could not escape the evil that is Bureaucracy.



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Chapter 102 : Maximus Defensus! New
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 102[May 2012]

Manhattan

–Axle Riddle–


Breathe In. Breathe Out. In and Out. He repeated the cycle, trying to mold his vast psionic energy into something usable when it came to his telepathy. Being prepared to essentially kill himself just in case Loki got his hands on the strongest Telekinetic on the planet, he was now trying to advance his telepathy.

He was hoping that even if he could not read Loki's mind since the minds of even moderately strong people like Captain America were out of his reach, he could sense his mind. Sense that there was a mind present in his range, even if it was vastly more protected than the normal human's.

Because when it came to Steve Rogers, while he could not read his thoughts, he could, faintly make out his emotions and also could tell that there was a mind present there, it was just not in his capability to read, less said about controlling his mind the better.

For some reason, the controlling aspect doesn't come to him, not even at all. He couldn't even insert some benign suggestions in the minds of people, fairly weak minded people as well. He was hoping to insert a suggestion to STUDY HARD in a random kid's mind but that just seemed like something that would backfire on him and then ruin that kid's life. Maybe he was destined to be a sports star? Or someone who doesn't need to study all that much, like an actor? Or a Musician?

Yes, extensive study is required to become an expert in any field but that would not be STUDYING that schools provide. No, that would be a specific study and he did not want to do anything to affect innocent people's minds. That was going a step too far, in his opinion.

So, he sought out the criminals of the city. Turns out, there weren't many. Not in the process of actively committing a crime anyway. While he was sure that most of the Russian variety of Billionaires in the city had hundreds of crimes to their name, none of them were done in his purview and he had yet to see an arrest warrant for any of them.

He had received dozens of arrest warrants from multiple authorities of the US government and after minimal consultation with the Mayor and the local authorities, he made sure that the person against whom a legitimate arrest warrant had been issued, was safely put into the respective authorities' custody.

The Government was worried in the beginning that he would not respect the law but aside from Bruce's situation, he had not yet openly flouted any law. Well, aside from ALL the privacy laws that the US government might have but then again, the government flouts it as well, so who would police him in that regard?

At the moment, he was trying his best to increase his telepathic range, something that was so very hard because while he did have vast amounts of psionic energy, it was getting harder and harder to manipulate said energy into something useful. It was easy to strengthen his TK. Use it over and over, over and over again until his tank was completely depleted.

The thing here was that the tank was so absurdly large and the hose was so freaking small, that it was all but impossible for him to put any meaningful dent in the tank. So, there he was, stuck in his apartment, trying to do something to get the jitters off. It had been a week since the tunnel was completed, with everything he could think of and more. Dedicated hospitals had been built in that place, which would mostly be unnecessary because he would keep a close eye on everything but then again, Randall's idea of self sufficiency was correct.

It had all the supplies needed, along with multiple large water tanks, with the filtration plants connected directly to the river water. They were all powered by a giant Arc Reactor which provided centralised power and then, each unit had another smaller Arc Reactor just in case the bigger one failed for some reason.

It was quite an intricate design. Randall and Tony working together were able to build the forcefield much faster than just Randall working on it. They had even tested the forcefield and theoretically, he was able to focus about 10% of his total strength on a single point on the forcefield before it burst apart, destroying some nodes and one of the Arc Reactors.

That was…great. It might have broken at his 10% but there were not many things that could exert that much pressure in such a small area. He was sure that even one of the Leviathans crashing on the forcefield would not destroy it because the weight would be much more distributed.

Seeing the effectiveness of the shields, Tony had the idea to install some of them in his tower as well. Well, that worked out exactly as he planned it to work out. So far, he could see partial installation being done on the penthouse floors.

The end of the month was in sight and there were still no signs of Loki arriving. He couldn't even subtly inquire about the Tesseract or anything. Fury wouldn't tell him anything anyway.

All he could do was focus on the city, do his job, strengthen his telepathy, something that he should have done ages ago, and then wait.

…..



Okay, where the fuck was Loki? He thought to himself, frustrated at the lack of any action. He was getting more and more anxious as the days went by. There were now only 5 days left in the month of May and if his memory was correct, The New York invasion happened in the month of May itself.

In the meantime, there had been another development. A new company, with Stark Industries being a minority shareholder and Bruce and Dr.Cho being the majority shareholders, had been created, headquartered right in Manhattan.

It was aptly named Maximus Defensus Pvt. Ltd.

Bruce had asked him for a name and with no way of backing out of his absurd suggestion, Bruce watched helplessly as his first company, his first corporate endeavour was named something so silly. In his defense, it was just a way to get rid of some of the stress he was accumulating.

Already, he could see many people pointing at the name on the building and whispering amongst themselves. It was not to the point of outright laughing but it certainly was odd.

As for what the company did, well, it created skin grafts. The strongest skin grafts that any company did. Fury and the US military, having known about it beforehand, had already booked all the available slots. Extensive testing had been done by basically all the branches of the military and it would be safe to say that the company was now basically drowning in money, as the government threw whatever they asked at them, just to get their soldiers bulletproof.

And it wasn't even completely bulletproof either. Sure, it was stronger than Kevlar but they couldn't do the skin grafts on any part of the body. Most extremities were covered obviously, but a bullet to the back of the head will still put them down, just like any normal human.

Even then, the military was jumping at the chance to get their soldiers enhanced in quantities ranging in the hundreds, with no horrible side effects or fancy super soldier serums.

SHIELD had gotten their cut as well, as was discussed in the deal they had with Tony and the Invisible Man as the witnesses, to make sure that Bruce was not ripped off.

It was safe to say that little Bellina… wouldn't have to worry about money, at all, in the future.

Bruce expressed some concerns about going into the military industrial complex but Tony was the one who explained to him that he was not creating stuff to kill people, just defend people better.

Plus, Bruce had strictly put 40% of all the available slots to be used for civilians only, out of which most of them would be free anyway. THe skin grafts also had a very low rejection rate so people across the country would soon be pouring in to get their grafts for free, subsidised by the revenue coming in from the military, obviously.

NYPD was getting some of them as well, on his suggestion, just in case.

As all these thoughts ran through his mind, his mind still ended up going to the root question of all.

WHERE.THE.FUCK.WAS.LOKI??!!


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P*treon or Ko-fi, for upto 5 extra chapters.
 
Chapter 103 : WSC takes centre stage New
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 103[May 2012]

Manhattan

–Phil Coulson–


"Agent Coulson, you are ordered to stand down, under direct orders from the WSC. Please refrain from making any overt moves while we process your defection," He maintained the same placid smile on his face, even as the people he proudly called colleagues pointed their guns at him.

"An entire STRIKE team, just for me?" He couldn't help but shout, as he pressed a few buttons on the dashboard of the car he was sitting in, turning it into a veritable fortress capable of taking punishment far above what any pedestrian car could take.

Jasper Sitwell, one of the people who graduated the same time as him through the SHIELD academy shook his head, regret clear on his face, "You know as well as I do that I am not the one giving orders right now. It is out of my hands. Please, just come with me and we won't have any more problems,"

He shook his head at that. No, they were far beyond that point now. Director Fury was dead. Project Pegasus was shut down, the Tesseract was in the wind and they were no closer to doing anything than they were 24 hours ago, when the entire base in NewMexico imploded on itself, leaving behind just a handful of survivors, recently promoted Deputy Director Hill being one of them.

As for him? Well, he smiled as the logo on the dashboard finally finished loading. There was a reason he was in a car, instead of a ship or a container where hiding would have been infinitely easier. He had received clear, precise instructions from Director Fury, instructions that had been recorded before his death and to be handed over to him, just in case.

He was now the proud keeper of secrets that he would rather now know, at all. It was not fair, Director Fury should have been able to evacuate in time but apparently, Loki's mind control was so heavy that Barton shot the Director straight in the head.

"Agent Sitwell, I am sure you were just following orders and for what it's worth so am I," with his words spoken, he slammed his foot on the accelerator, making the car whine with a particular sound. A sound that was most probably heralded by the arrival of a man in a suit.

He could hear the dings of bullets hitting the underbody of the car as it floated, straight to New York City. He had to make sure that Invisible Man was aware of the threat that Loki and the Tesseract posed to the world.

The system was very rough and very prototype phase so it was a rough ride in the beginning but it soon smoothed out. His mind flashed back to the message he received, in the middle of the night.

For some reason, all of SHIELD was put on a high red alert but no one seemed to know what was going on or if the emergency was even real or not. He wouldn't put it past the the taskmasters that were the emergency readiness team at SHIELD to manufacture multiple emergencies to prove that SHIELD agents are the best the country has.

Unfortunately, even after hours of no confirmation, he was getting jittery and that was when he received the data packets. A series of coordinates, container multiple secure caches, an emergency toolkit just in case Director Fury died due to a traitor, and could not inform anyone before dying.

That had jolted him into awareness and he had spent the next few hours securing the data caches and this car, with SHIELD already having revoked all his accesses, declaring him as a deserter, and had made chasing him down one of their priorities. Fortunately, this car was very stealthy and the only reason he was found was because he stepped out for nature's call, something that his car already had in the third row of seats, about which he did not know then.

Soon, it was only a few hundred miles before he reached the boundary of New York and entered the official domain of the Invisible Man. SHIELD had so far not made any moves in the New York division and had not even informed most of them about anything, probably to make sure that nothing of the literal WORLD ENDING situation reached the ears of the Invisible Man.

He shook his head in disgust at the sheer politics of it all. The WSC was confident that ordinary agents, normal unenhanced humans would be able to go after Loki, an Asgardian? No chance in hell.

He winced as a bird hit the windshield and promptly exploded into pieces, which were immediately cleaned by the wipers.

He sighed as the exhaustion of the past 24 hours began setting in. He still had Alpha Level access to SHIELD's databases, something that only the Director and the Secretary were supposed to have but then again, when did Fury ever do anything half asses?

He half laughed, half grimaced as he activated the cruise control, along with the stealth mode, something that reduced the top speed to half of what it was capable of but he didn't have it in him to care all that much. He climbed back into the rear seat and just tried to get some shut-eye, before he had to deal with this huge clusterfuck that was Loki's attack.

Barton was reportedly under Loki's mind control. Romanoff had been pulled back from a mission. Captain was still in New York so SHIELD had refrained from calling him back but he could see them trying to get him on board when things inevitably got too heavy for them.

ETA - 2 hours. He read it on the roof of the car, which also had a screen somehow and then drifted to sleep.

He was awoken by a gentle beeping noise that only half awoke him as he began searching for the alarm. Then the beeping intensified and his eyes snapped open as she realised where he was.

The car was floating right above the Staten Island, Manhattan visible in the distance. He was sure that The Invisible Man was probably seeing him right now. As much as the stealth systems of this car were touted, they did come with a built in warning that the Invisible Man did not rely on any of the conventional senses that the car dampened.

Rubbing his face, he entered the driving seat and slowly began floating straight to Manhattan. He was only halfway through when a voice spoke up all around him, jolting him, nearly throwing the car off course.

"Hello Agent Coulson," He never thought that the eerie voice of the invisible Man speaking right into one's ears would make him feel so much relief.

Then he realised that he was wasting time, so he immediately began speaking,

"Invisible Man, the Director is Dead. SHIELD has been compromised. The World Security Council has taken over. Loki, brother of Thor, has invaded the planet and taken a very important artefact. He is suspected to possess Mind Controlling abilities along with a myriad of other powers, not to mention the sheer number of advantages that probably come from being a so-called Asgardian. We have to…"

"Coulson," That single word, accompanied by a sudden surge of pressure, along with the feeling of the car being catapulted to a certain location, silenced him completely. He let the Invisible Man do his thing while he continued to monitor the SHIELD database for any new entries and aside from letting their respective nations know that a nuclear-like weapon was on the loose in the hands of a rogue entity, they hadn't done anything new.

Nothing has been assigned to Raomnoff as of yet.

There were no new orders for any members of the New York branch.

Also, the international warning for all the global superpowers held the face of Clint instead of Loki. They were trying to downplay the threat posed by Loki.

This would help no one.

Still, he was in New York now, in the territory of the strongest man on the planet, someone who has a direct line even to the President. He was sure that they would win.

Such were his thoughts as the car finally came to a halt, showcasing water on all sides to him before, to his shock, the car was dumped into the icy cold waters. He was about to shout when the car was enveloped in a bubble of air as it rapidly traversed the water, entering the sea bed, going through twists and turns, million year old socks folding and bending for the car as it were putty, until finally, the car stopped and they emerged out of the war, into what could only be called a futuristic lab and bunker.

"Agent Coulson, meet Randall. Randall, make sure that he is healthy, and rested. We will have an all hands on meeting in an hour. Give him the vitality shot," He heard the Invisible Man say before the door was ripped open, and the face of Randall was revealed to him.


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Chapter 104 : Fastest transport service in Manahttan! New
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 104[May 2012]

Manhattan

–Axle Riddle–


Welp, there it was. He knew something was wrong when even nearing the end of the month, he hadn't heard anything about the invasion. Now, Coulson had come flying, actually, in a car, into Manhattan, a car that was almost completely battered and full of tech that should have been proprietary.

He was wondering what had gone wrong because Coulson's body was run ragged for some reason and then Coulson opened his mouth and rambled on information about just what had happened in the past 24 hours. He needed more information but more importantly, he needed to make sure that all the critical people were fine.

"Tony? We need to talk," His voice boomed right next to Tony's ears as he was doing something in his workshop.

"Jesus. How many times have I told you not to do that?" Tony said while patting his chest.

"Now is not the time, Tony. Be ready in 15 minutes. I will pull you out in 15,"

"Bruce, be ready in 15,"

He obviously excluded Betty and Bellina but he already had plans for them to be completely covered in a metallic shell with enough resources to last them a month with ease. He couldn't really risk either of them, Brucve might destroy Manhattan as a result.

The brothers were already assembled in the lab and were just waiting for the others to arrive before sliding into the tunnel below. Randall had given Coulson a booster shot, something that Bruce and Betty had developed after studying the stem cells and whatnot of Bellina and the overall body processes of Betty.

He was asleep for now but when he woke up, he would be very much healed and energised.

He scanned every single thing in New York, as far as his range could get and yet, could not find any anomaly. Even the SHIELD agents in New York showed no anomalies, as if an emergency has not been declared for the entire planet right now. They were being kept out of the loop, he realised.

The WSC.

Shaking his head, he chose to focus on the one thing that mattered the most, the one thing that would dictate whether Loki would be able to open a portal in New York or not. He took a giant risk doing this but times were such that he couldn't exactly give much of a fuck, as his form was wrapped in so many dark clothes, that he must have looked like a caterpillar, with even his eyes closed since he saw so much better with his senses.

With his powers, he was able to get himself to the edge of the barreri in seconds, the orange curtain still present, a reminder of the nerf that was placed on him, for some reason. He slowly lifted his arm and pressed against the curtain.

He sighed when the curtain barely budged.

Well, there goes the plan then.

He blasted away from the curtain, into the waters, and from there, right back into his apartment within a minute. Well, he won't be able to help much since Loki is still outside Manhattan.

"Alright, everyone, as of 24 hours ago, Loki attacked and killed Director Fury, and took along with him a certain artifact-"

"The Tesseract," He interrupted Coulson who looked surprised at his knowledge but didn't deny it.

"The tesseract is a source of unlimited fucking energy. SHIELD must be using it to create WMDs and Loki somehow found it. Now, we have a Norse God loose on the planet, with mind control capabilities, capable of turning our best men into yes men." He informed everyone.

"Now, Tony, Dr.Banner, Coulson has access to all SHIELD databases. There must be something about the energy signature of the Tesseract in SHIELD's books. It gives out trace amounts of gamma radiation. I want you both to figure out a way to track it down. In the meantime, Randall, piggyback on SHIELD's facial recognition systems and see if any improvements can be made to the process."

He could tell Tony and Bruce had a lot of questions but they didn't have a lot of time so they complied and went away, into deeper sections of the base, to work on their tasks. For the time being, for everyone's safety, he had mandated stay in the subterranean base, with Pepper and Betty keeping Bellina company.

"Randall, I believe we have a hotline directly to the President?" He asked Randall who immediately began setting things up, with data being thrown around in so many different directions and into all the undersea fibre cables, making it impossible for them to track them down.

The call rang for a few moments before it was picked up by the President, "hello? Is this the Invisible Man?"

"Yes, Mr. president. We have something very important to inform you. I assume you have already been informed about Director Fury's death and the subsequent takeover of SHIELD?"

"Yes, it is indeed regrettable. I assume you are here to tell me about the terrorist attack?"

Those bastards. They didn't tell him about Loki?

"Um, sir. The Tesseract, it was stolen. Not by some terrorist but by Loki, brother of Thor, the one who arrived on Earth a while ago."

"What, that's nonsense. How did you come to know about the Tesseract anyway? That is only for the President's eyes and ears."

"That doesn't matter, Mr.President. I want you to call Pierce and ask him calmly, where is the Tesseract and get all the details about Loki's attack on the planet. In the meantime, also prepare the military for attacks at key locations. I would suggest you either bunker down or come to Manhattan. Either way, please go underground."

"Why? What does this Loki have that has you so worried, Invisible Man? With your powers, you should be able to easily handle him."

"It is not just about power, Mr.President. Loki can control minds. He has taken control of some SHIELD agents with startling ease. We don't know anything about that particularly dangerous ability, so I would, once again, advise you to stay isolated and stay safe. Please, make sure that every agency is informed to be prepared."

The President nodded, too shaken and pale after being told that someone with mind control powers might be aiming for him.

Alright, with that out of the way, he had to figure out how to break the news to the Captain, or if he even wanted to break the news to him. He didn't have his shield with him. He was just now getting into a regular routine with Peggy's niece being his handler.

Pierce couldn't move either of them without tipping him off which is probably why they would be much safer here.

"We have a hit," Randall shouted.

"We have an 80% match in Stuttgart, Germany."

"Get Stark, tell him to use the Jet he has been building in secret. Take Bruce with you guys. I can't leave Manhattan yet. Make sure that you use ranged attacks first and at the first sign of mind control, unload all ordinance and leave. Alright?"

Randall nodded and ran to the labs.

In the meantime, he was making sure that the underground tunnel was in perfect condition, with no irregularities on the surface of the road. It was made completely of concrete, but they had mats in regular intervals for people to relax in. He just hoped that it was used by the elderly, the pregnant, the children instead of the entitled.

Something to think about later on.

Tony and Bruce, along with Randall, were express transported to the basement levels of the Stark Tower within seconds by the fastest transport service in all of Manhattan, i.e., by yours truly.

They should be up in the air in less than 30 minutes and then about 2 hours in Tony's new repulsor tech jet.

Hopefully, Loki will still be there by then.


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Chapter 105 : Le Loki - Sandbagging New
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 105[May 2012]

Manhattan

–Axle Riddle–


Randall, Bruce, Tony, and all the other Hulks under his employ.

Quite a formidable lineup for someone like Loki. It was also quite a risk because he was not quite sure if Loki would sandbag himself just like he did in canon but that was why they were going in the Stark Jet and not the OG Quinjet.

The Quinjet, while advanced according to the standards of the military, was nowhere near as powerful as the Stark Jet. It had all the long range weapons they would need and once the civilians were cleared out from the impact zone, Stark could turn the entire block into a large crater without even using a substantial amount of the ordinance he had packed into the Jet.

Also, he had localised repulsor targeted lasers so shooting Loki from the sky should be fairly simple. He had also given them express orders that subduing Loki is the secondary priority, the primary mission is to deprive Loki of his mind control capabilities, and from the footage and reports they had access to, from SHIELD's servers, they knew that the staff or the sceptre was more likely to be the source of said mind control abilities.

So, he was quite hopeful as the Jet streaked across the sky at maximum speed towards Loki.

On the other screen, he could see Loki just hanging out, in the background of the event, drinking wine and looking at everything with his narrowed gaze. Having access to SHIELD's alpha tier meant that they had access to everything that SHIELD did, which was most of the digital world.

SHIELD was much closer though and he could see Romanoff with a STRIKE team headed straight for Loki in another Quinjet. No Captain America to back them up right now.

He debated getting Cap involved but it was too late for that anyway and it would have taken time to get him up to speed, time that they did not have. Maybe once the INvasion began, the Captain could help. He had already stocked everything that he could in the underground tunnels.

The SHIELD agents in New York were still going through the motions, with no signs of any panic or anomaly.

Romanoff was slower but they were much closer so they would be reaching Loki about 10 minutes earlier than Stark would. Bruce must be nervous but he should be fine considering that Little Bellina and Betty were both very safe here in Manhattan.

He was still, out in the open, in his apartment but once Loki was captured, he would be going underground, subterranean, in fact, and would do everything from long distance.

He still hadn't decided if he wanted Loki to get away with SHIELD because he couldn't trust SHIELD as of now, and if Thor became involved with the current rendition of SHIELD which would not wait for Loki to be tortured, things could become so much more complicated than they had any right to be.

"Tony, I want you to not clash with SHIELD anymore than we have to," He typed his message across the specialised keyboard made for him in the Lab.

"What?"

"SHIELD will reach there first and if they manage to subdue Loki on their own or if they claim jurisdiction, I want you to let them take Loki. Just follow them on their way to their HQ."

"But didn't you say that Loki is an Asgardian? There is no way these guys can defeat Loki, right?" Bruce asked him and he was right, if only Loki was fighting to win.

"No, something is wrong here. Loki showing himself out in the open like this. It smells fishy. I want you all to engage from a long distance only and once SHIELD has him, follow their Quinjet."

"If you say so, Boss," Tony muttered as the Quinjet finally reached the venue.

Loki seemed to have sensed that because, just a minute prior to that, the man did something that created a huge green fog in the venue. The guests were surprised at first, expecting it to be some sort of performance but something happened that made them all run around like headless chickens.

He sighed, the man with the access to Iridium was probably already dead now.

On the specialised holo monitors, he could see Loki, along with seven of his illusions, clad in his traditional Asgardian armour, emerge out of the hall and stop amidst the panicking people.

Tony was 5 mins away and SHIELD had just reached the location. Romanoff did not seem to be the mission command for this because the STRIKE team just dropped down on a nearby building and Rumlow ordered Romanoff to go ahead and draw Loki's attention on the Quinjet.

Loki's attention was drawn alright, to the very loud Quinjet.

The next exchange was quite literally the definition of sandbagging on the side of Loki because somehow, the STRIKE team managed to hit Loki, all the Loki's with sniper rounds. Sniper rounds that somehow dispelled all the illusions and made the original Loki who was now standing all alone, stagger back as if the sniper round did any damage worth mentioning.

Then Romanoff opened the machine guns on the Quinjet and fired right in front of Loki's feet, carving out the marble in front of him. Loki had not even held the people hostage, something that would have increased his chances of escape enormously.

Another Sniper round hit him dead center and he fell down, with dozens of red dots appearing on his body. Getting the hint, Loki raised his hands and dropped the sceptre.

Good Lord, how could the SHIELD agents be so stupid? He thought to himself as they were now approaching Loki on their own, with the spectre within Loki's reach.

"Tony, zap Loki with the strongest repulsor array you have. Knock him out, right now." He ordered Stark who was on the scene as well but was in complete stealth mode.

"Aye aye, Captain," Tony shouted, with too much glee as, with a small whining sound, Loki was stuck in the chest with a blue laser, creating a small explosion on impact, which knocked back all the STRIKE team members who were slowly approaching Loki.

The laser also removed the stealth of the Stark Jet but that was fine for now. All the sensors aboard the StarkJet indicated Loki being severely injured, and unconscious with the Sceptre being knocked away from him.

"Ah, Romanoff. It's so nice to see your beautiful face once again," Tony said over the hacked comms as the SHIELD team received new orders from Pierce to secure Loki and bring Stark with them as well.

Stark was all too eager to comply.

"Randall, maintain a secure distance with the Quinjet. Make sure that you don't make any hasty decisions. If the situation changes, wait for my orders,"

"Ookay. You are being awfully forbidding, Invisible Man."

He didn't have any answer to that because his mind was still a mess from thinking of all the possible outcomes of this entire thing.

He had to make sure that the New York Invasion happened. He also wanted to make sure that the Avengers were formed and that they had SHIELD's complete support during the Invasion.

All of that went up in flames when Fury went and died, letting Pierce take complete command of the organisation. Now, he couldn't let Piercfe get ahold of Loki, the sceptre, or even Thor who was no doubt on his way to rescue his brother.

In the meantime, "Coulson, are you sure this plan will work?"

"Trust me, Invisible Man, I am not about to let someone else get hold of the Shield." Coulson said with an oddly determined look on his face as he dialed in on his contacts, his extensive contacts within SHIELD.

Apparently, Coulson was making sure that his childhood hero, who was now living in Manhattan, had his signature weapon, i.e, the Vibranium shield. He didn';t know how Coulson was going to get that item out of SHIELD custody but Coulson wanted to feel useful and this was something that he swore he could do.

So, he let the man do what he wanted. He was still shaken from Fury;s death and the no doubt vast responsibility that Fury had dumped on his shoulders.

He scanned all of Manhattan, once again, for safety but could not find any anomalies of any kind.

Bellina, Betty, and Cho were all safe and secure in the subterranean base. Frank was warned about possible attackers and while Frank was not yet a complete member of the team, he had allowed Frank to keep the frankly absurd armour that he kept in his house, enough to outfit a small military team with all the weapons they might need.

"So, who is coming, Invisible Man?" Tony asked him, the ever perceptive one.

"It's Thor, isn't it?" Bruce was the one who answered since he was buried in the SHIELD databases ever since Coulson gave them all the metaphorical keys to the kingdom.


If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon or Ko-fi, for upto 5 extra chapters.
 
Chapter 106 : Nat POV New
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 106[May 2012]

Manhattan

–Axle Riddle–


"I have reasons to believe that Thor Odinson will make an attempt to rescue Loki from SHIELD's clutches."

"But why? According to the reports I have here, Thor is definitely on the morally good category and Loki's actions in the past two days should definitely disgust Thor," Bruce interrupted even as the Stark Jet continued to maintain a safe distance from the Quinjet, but in non Stealth mode so the higher ups at SHIELD probably knew that they were being tailed by the Stark Jet.

"Asgardian Culture is fundamentally different from ours, Dr.Banner. We can't predict Thor's response but what I can predict, with near certainty, is that the Asgardian Royal Pride would never let Thor or Odin keep Loki in someone else's custody," He tried to explain to them that to a normal Asgardian, the lives of a 100 mortal would fall short to a single Asgardian life. Such was their culture and there was not much that could be done to change it, given their warlike ways.

"Okay, if what you are telling us is correct, then we should be seeing the Teleportation device that Asgardians seem to have any time now, right?" Tony asked with glee even as he could see Tony doing something to the Stark Jet.

"Oh," Bruce breathed out in realization. "That is correct, this could be a rare opportunity to monitor the bridge that the Asgardians use to teleport between planets."

"Guys, please! Focus. We are here to make sure that Loki doesn't succeed in his plans and more importantly, we don't even know his plans. So, why don't we just focus on getting information out of Loki before we try to research something that is so far out of our reach that it might as well be magic?" His pleas fell on deaf ears as even Randall was very much on board with scanning everything in their surroundings to help understand how interplanetary teleportation works.

Never mind the fact that Odin was not using the Bifrost this time. He was using Dark Energy of some sort to manipulate space itself and send a single emissary, Thor to Earth to retrieve Loki.

"Alright, guys, I have all the sensors exposed. Good thing we don't need stealth mode to be active because it would be impossible as of now. I hacked into the Quinjet and they are headed to a place called the "Hub", which is still hours away so we should have plenty of time to witness an Asgardian alien in action," Tony's voice was tinged with excitement as all of the scientists on board took positions on their battle stations while the other six, less academically inclined Hulks lounged on the lower level, emptying the fridge that Stark had outfitted into the lounge area of the Stark Jet.

It wouldn't be Tony if he didn't do things in style, now would it?

"Alright, then. Since you guys are so focused on that, please do so but Tony, make sure that the Jet is prepped to handle flight in adverse weather conditions," He warned them because realistically there was not much he could do, all the way from Manhattan.

"Huh? What adverse weather conditions? We are clear to go----Uh, Bruce? What's happening?" Tony's words trailed off as the sound of Thunder rang in the background.

He couldn't help but say in a smug voice, "I told you so, Tony. Now, brace for impact,"

"Impact? This ship is built with the latest advances in alloy structures. It is even stronger than my armour. I don't think we need to worry about a little lightning and a man with a Hammeeeeee---" The voice glitched out as a large gong resounded in the background.

"What the hell? Jaaarvis?" he could hear Tony shout for Jarvis as the Jet apparently tumbled out of the sky.

Well, let it not be said that Thor ODinson did not know how to make a thunderous landing.

_______xx_____

--Natasha Romanoff—

Things had not been going well for her the past few days. First Fury had to go and die, and Clint had to go and get mind controlled by an Alien God. Loki stole something important from SHIELD that SHIELD desperately wants back.

Now, she would have thought that those two back to back tragedies would be the worst of it but noooo. Apparently, Secretary Pierce had unilaterally decided that he was going to take charge of SHIELD since his "dear friend" Nick was gone and he didn't trust anyone else to take charge of the behemoth of an organization on such short notice.

The biggest load of bull she had ever heard in recent years.

The first thing she noticed was the fact that she was kept isolated. Isolated in terms of information and isolated in terms of keeping her away from the small group of people that Fury trusted. As far as she had heard, the orders had come straight from Secretary Pierce, ordering the transfer of several high level agents to locations of minute importance.

Then came the new faces. She hadn't even known that there were these many Level 7 agents in SHIELD that she did not know about and she was right. These agents, whoever they were, were very new and no one in her contacts had seen half of them.

It was as if they popped up out of nowhere and were inserted into positions of high importance by Pierce.

She was starting to think that Pierce was going to be the biggest of her problems from now on. And she was proven correct when instead of giving her adequate information or setting her on the path to retrieve Clint, she was instead kept in the dark about almost everything.

A communication blackout.

Hell, she hadn't even heard from Coulson despite her blasting a message across all the mediums that she knew of, even the secret ones that Fury had developed and given to Clint, with express orders to never share it with Romanoff, since she was still considered a flight risk back then.

Then, out of the blue, she was told that Loki was spotted in Germany and she was supposed to go with the SHIELD Strike team there, with Rumlow being the leader of the mission, despite her authority vastly surpassing his.

But it would seem that Pierce's words were law because there she was, flying the Quinjet, acting as nothing more than an over glorified pilot.

The fight with Loki, if it could even be called that, was uneventful because of Stark's arrival and for once, he was not in his suit. No, he had arrived in a sleek Jet that managed to output lasers that stopped Loki in his tracks, prompting him to surrender.

She was not given any orders but she had a hunch that the Strike team were given some orders regarding Stark and the shiny new Jet he was hanging in front of SHIELD and more importantly, SHIELd that was under the control of Pierce.

Stark didn't make any moves to detain Loki, instead spending the time to flirt with her, typical of him really, so the STRIKE team moved in and detained Loki with some high tech Cuffs that the boys in the Lab cooked up, designed for high Brute level strength. Despite that, she had doubts about the cuffs holding Loki because his enhanced strength did not seem to be his greatest power.

No, his illusions, teleportation, mind control, and magic seemed to be his signature moves. Despite that, there was not much she could do because Rumlow was not going to listen to her and Stark was not taking a stand in the situation, something that he should have done ages ago, according to the profile she had on hand about him.

The Quinjet was then diverted from its original destination, which was the Helicarrier, to the Hub, where they performed maintenance on the aircraft carriers. She didn't question the new orders, mostly because it was not the time to show her rebellious side.

She was sure that Rumlow was given orders to just eliminate her if the need arose and she was not going to go down without figuring out the truth about Pierce and whatever the hell was going on in SHIELD.

They were only a couple hours away from the Hub when things took a turn for the worse. Thunder rumbled all around them as the sensors in the Quinjet began giving out scrambled readings.

She was about to contact Stark to see if he had any updates through his shiny new Jet but all she got was static and when she used the on board camera to see, she saw one side of the Jet smoking and the Jet spiraling down in a barely controlled manner.

Then her eyes widened as she felt another impact on the Quinjet. She looked back towards the bay which was giving out tortured noise as the bay door was forcibly yanked open.

And through the light of the lightning all around them, she saw him. Thor, the God of Thunder and the strongest alien SHIELD had ever encountered, now that the Invisible Man was confirmed to be human.

She was about to warn Rumlow and the others but they opened fire before Thor could do anything. Of course, the bullets did nothing as Thor simply raised his hand to defend his eyes from the shower of bullets.

"Stop!" She shouted in a vain attempt to stop them from riling up the God of Thunder any further.

Getting such an aggressive response, Thor simply waved his hammer, creating such strong gusts of wind that all the agents were ragdolled within the Jet. One of the agents simply fell out of the Jet, falling to his death.

Thor looked at the fallen agent and then simply ripped Loki out of his restraints and flew out of the Jet.

The damage done to the Jet meant she had to do an emergency landing nearby. Thankfully, the exit of Thor meant that the weather around them went from absurdly bad to somewhat bad, allowing her to barely control the Quinjet to perform a controlled landing.





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Chapter 107 : Banner of the Bruces! New
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 107[May 2012]

Germany

–Tony Stark–


Things were spiraling out of control, that much was clear to him. While the entire Loki thing came on all of a sudden to most of them, the Invisible Man, whoever he was, seemed to know about it, all in advance. It was just that the Man himself couldn't do much about it because he was geo bound to the city of New York.

That was why he had sent them ahead. It was clear that the Invisible Man had some scary accurate information about Loki, his brother, and their civilization and he had a hunch that even the future was something that the Invisible Man knew about.

And yet, even as the things that the Invisible Man said came to be true, he knew that there was at least something that was not in his calculations, hence the mild panicking he could hear in the man. The Invisible Man had now begun ordering him around, knowing that he was very much averse to that.

Alas, the hours of very expensive therapy had proven to work because he had set aside his petty thoughts because of the very real world ending emergency in front of him. They had captured, or rather, helped SHIELD capture Loki without much fuss and without even leaving the Jet, just as the Invisible Man had ordered them to, but that was when things began spiralling.

The Invisible Man warned them that Thor, Asgardian Crown Prince and the brother of Loki was sure to arrive to rescue his brother because, in his own words, Loki was the former Prince of Asgard and no other civilisation can be allowed to judge Loki other than Asgard. Doing so would be a huge affront to Asgard's honor, despite Loki killing over a hundred people ever since he set foot on the planet.

He and Bruce had been very excited to finally see actual, real life teleportation in action so he let the sealed state of the Jet go and pointed all the sensors that he could, at the Quinjet in front of him, in hopes that they could gather as much data as possible when Thor inevitable teleported to his brother.

Unfortunately, Thor's arrival was not without its effect on the weather around them. Thunder, lightning, clouds, and more accumulated all around them within seconds, heralding the arrival of the so called God of Thunder. Now, normally, that would have been fine, the Jet was more than capable of handling even space operations for a limited amount of time so a little bit of lightning and rain was not going to be an issue. But this lightning was not normal, and he had let go of most of the protections of the Jet in favour of setting the sensors on the outside of the body of the Jet so that they could get the most accurate readings.

That, combined with the surge in an unknown energy that somehow resonated with the Arc Energy led to a brief power loss, which should have been immediately restored by the backup Arc Reactors that he had installed in the Jet as redundancy but unfortunately, that energy surge reset all the Arc Reactors on the Jet, so he had to resort to Battery power, like a 20th century peasant.

The battery only helped them see where they were going to crash and not how to stop the crash because the Reactors were going to take another minute to reboot, according to his calculations. He would have done something but there was no time.

Fortunately, even as all the occupants of the Jet strapped in their emergency seats, bracing for impact, the Arc Reactors came online and the Jet stopped barely a dozen feet from the ground with the help of the Repulsors.

Slowly, the other, smaller Arc Reactors came online and finally, they had full functionality back. Unfortunately, the moment the wide angle HUD came back online, they saw the Quinjet, smoking, crash land right in front of them. It seemed to be a controlled landing so they were mostly fine.

He controlled the urge to get out of the Jet and do something because according to what he had seen in the database, even as brief as his time was with it, he was not so sure about SHIELD being the good guys, especially so after Fury died.

This Pierce guy was giving him the creeps. The database was a godsend because they now knew which one of the guys were Pierce's and which ones were the good eggs, because he knew, in his guts, that after all of this Loki's matter was done and dusted with, the President would have to be informed about SHIELD's actions and Pierce's actions and a massive culling operation would have to be launched to either cleanse SHIELD and reduce its size, or destroy it altogether.

Either way, he was not really interested in associating any further with SHIELD and its mooks, so after confirming that Romanoff was fine and not in any danger, he let the Jet gain altitude, before following the area with the most lightning and thunder. With all the other areas of the sky being clear, it was very easy to find the God of Thunder.

"Tony? Whatever you do, do not engage the Crown Prince in direct Combat. Trust me when I say this that even the Hulk will find it difficult to best Thor," The warning from the Invisible Man came right on time and was duly noted but he could not let his curiosity not be sated, right?

Within a minute, they were upon the Asgardian brothers. The advanced sensors on board projected a picture as well as flaky audio for them to hear. He could see one of the brothers being completely indifferent to the passionate pleas of the Crown Prince of Asgard.

Thor was trying to convince Loki to come back and Loki was not having it.

"Tony, whatever you do, do not fire the first salvo," The warning came once again and he rolled his eyes at that. The Invisible Man was not the boss of him but he was keeping all his loved ones safe and sound at the moment so he replied.

"Yes yes, I know. Don't provoke the scary blonde who can flatten me like a paste,"

The line was silent after that.

He continued to eavesdrop on their conversation and was enlightened to many things.

Loki was not the invasion party. He was the Vanguard.

He shared horrified looks with Bruce and Randall. If Loki was the vanguard, who was the army? And how terrifying must the army be?

"An army from outer space? That is…." Randall was speechless as they heard more of the conversation even as Jarvis filed away most of it and processed it, trying to find more and more clarity to the conversation that was happening hundreds of feet away in this very turbulent weather.

"Huh, what do you know, ET, in this case, looks just like us. I suppose the green Martian theory was way off then," He quipped, as he did when the stress of any particular situation became too much for him.

"The Chitauri will not win you this planet, brother. They will de…s… it. You must come home, brother," Thor's words did not fill any of them with confidence.

"Okay, I'm going in. They are talking about my planet," He declared and pulled the jet out of stealth mode and slowly, very noticeably, let the Jet descend near Thor's location.

The reaction was immediate, as the sensors recorded an increased lightning and thunder in the skies above them as Thor held his hammer in one hand and held on to his brother's collar with the other, looking straight up at him.

A shiver went up his spine at that. "Jarvis? Keep the suits ready, will you?"

He had never felt this much danger before. Damn, the Invisible Man was right, this man was dangerous, with a capital D.

"Affirmative, sir," Jarvis' reply came with a reassuring whine and thunk of armours as they lined up at the back of the Jet's cabin, ready to leap in and defend him at a moment's notice.

Thor didn't take any action, even as the Jet landed, without any of its weapons visible, obviously. Loki, on the other hand, looked quite interested when he, in his armour, and Bruce and Randall came out of the Jet's bay.

Loki and Thor both kept an eye on the armour that flew up in the sky but not for long, as they were finally within striking range of each other. He had taken an executive decision and ordered Jarvis to take possession of the sceptre.

He was not really comfortable with any government or government organisation having access to mind control artefacts. So, he was going to figure out a way to destroy that sceptre as soon as he could get it back to Stark Tower.

"Greetings, Asgardians. We are part of the team that was supposed to apprehend Loki," He said and almost immediately backpedaled when thunder rumbled and lightning gathered on top of Thor's hammer.

Bruce immediately took charge, as he should have in the beginning itself and stepped forward with his hands raised up, "We mean you or Loki no harm."

They all ignored Loki's scoff and eye rolling at the harm part, as if they could not harm him at all, even if they wanted to.

"We are just worried about what we heard. The Chitauri? An Invasion of Earth? We may not have the authority to interfere in Asgardian Royal Family matters but if there is going to be an Invasion happening on Earth, we need to know about it. Can we…just talk about it?" Bruce gestured to the very open bay of Stark Jet.

Thor mulled over it for a moment before replying, "Loki stays in my sight at all times."

"That is what we would prefer. Currently, we have no feasible way of countering his illusions and would prefer if you could keep a close eye on him, for our safety,"

Smart. Bruce presented himself as the lower, powerless party, partly to appease the Crown Prince's obviously sky high Ego, and yes, the irony of Sky High Egos was not lost on him, Mr.Tower with his name on it.

"Very well, lead the way…"

"Banner. Bruce Banner,"

"Very well, lead the way, Banner of the Bruces,"

Bruce wisely didn't correct the man with the scary hammer, because if the readings he was getting were correct, that hammer held more energy in it than all the Arc Reactors he had built in his lifetime, combined.



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Chapter 108 : Narcissits and Perfectly Sculpted Asses..... New
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 108[May 2012]

Germany

–Natasha Romanoff–


"Romanoff, you are under arrest for conspiring with known criminals and possibly, aliens to try and harm SHIELD's interests," She rolled her eyes as the STRIKE team finally turned on her, the moment they were all safe and sound, with the barely controlled emergency landing.

Probably someone higher up lost their patience with her and was not willing to take any more risks with her, probably discovering her attempts to contact Coulson.

"Get on with it, Rumlow," She drawled, half relaxed, even as her mind connected the dots and her heart sank as she realised that she had no feasible way of getting out of the encirclement, not alive anyway. She was not a supersoldier and she also did not have any armour on her, so it would seem that her run with SHIELD had come to an end.

Well, at least she could go down taking Rumlow with her. He seemed to be the favourite attack dog of the shady part of the higher ups of SHIELD. It was no wonder that Fury barely used the STRIKE team, preferring to send in a small team of his trusted agents to deal with critical missions.

The thought of Clint brought yet another pang to her chest but now was not the time for that. First, she had to save her own ass and then she could go around the world, searching for him and then smack some sense in him. What would she say to Laura?

Well, dying here was much better than that.

Oh, well.

"Oh, please," Rumlow scoffed as he walked towards her, his gun pointed straight at her head, "We all know you are the last one left who was in Fury's inner circle. Coulson is MIA, declared a defector, Hill is sent on administrative leave, Barton is mind controlled, allegedly, and there's you, purposefully crash landing a Quinjet so that you could let Loki, a very dangerous criminal, escape SHIELD's custody,"

She hummed at that. So that was their game. That was how they were going to spin it, the death of the legendary Black Widow, due to treason.

How Ironic.

Rumlow, in the process of delivering his monologue, had come close enough that she could probably make it if she lunged for his gun but she was also aware of the seven other guns that were probably just itching to perforate her body.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

She was just about to fuck it and try to atleast kill one or two of them but then everyone in the clearing stopped as they heard something, a slight whining noise.

She stopped for a moment to think and then relaxed as she smiled, recognising both the jet noise as well as the whining noise. If she was not wrong, then in 3,2,1…

"There we go," She muttered as two repulsors were blasted just a few inches to her left and right. She flinched minutely but then immediately lunged towards the nearest person, in the midst of the dust and dirt raised by the attack, which was Rumlow. She took hold of his gun and didn't even hesitate as she dumped two in his forehead.

His look of shock was hilarious as she turned around and clocked two others before Tony crashed on the ground and disarmed everyone. He then looked at the three dead bodies surrounding her. She was expecting some judgement but not much since Tony was not some saint but she didn't expect the voice that came out of the suit.

"Agent Romanoff, sir has tasked me with retrieving the sceptre but I saw your predicament and couldn't help but intervene," Yeah, that was Jarvis.

"Yeah, alright," She sighed and then sat her ass down. This was all so very stressful for her. Despite having more close shaves with death than her age, this one was particularly nerve wracking because she finally realised something that she should have realised ages ago.

SHIELD was not the good guys, at least not in its entirety. She knew that on some level but since the top commander was someone good like Fury, she was alright with that and somehow managed to turn a blind eye to all the darkness within SHIELD but now that Fury was gone, she could see the overwhelmingly darkness within SHIELD that was barely being held back by Fury.

She could also see the sheer delight in Rumlow's eyes when it became clear that she was going to be arrested. And for a woman of her beauty, that was more than enough clues as to what was going through RUmlow's head.

So, she popped a bullet in his head. And then the others were just acceptable collateral damage since she could see that all of the STRIKE team members who were surrounding her were quite trigger happy, and she could also see two other STRIKE team members, dead, shot in the chest and head. Probably by these asshole traitors.

"Please stay here, there are no threats nearby. I will be back momentarily," Jarvis said before the suit flew off, and she collapsed on the ground, looking at the moon, trusting Jarvis and his sensors to know if any threat actually remained nearby.

From the direction Jarvis was going, he was probably going to the crash landed helicopter to recover the sceptre.

Ah, this was going to suck so much.

Not the defection part. She had done that before and she could do it again, no big deal. She already had a couple of identities ready and multiple escape routes of the country ready. She could have and probably should have taken that option when Clint was mind controlled but she thought that staying with SHIELD would give her the best chances of finding and bringing Clint back.

What a fool she was.

Now? Now she was going to have to go to Stark, and he was the worst. Good Lord, she was going to have to listen to him, at least until she finally reached Manhattan and got amnesty under the infamous Invisible Man.

God, she hoped Coulson reached somewhere safe, if not Manhattan, the safest city on the planet. She knew for a fact that not even SHIELD and the despicable higher ups would not dare move against the city and the city's protector, not if they wanted their positions of power to remain.

All because of the power of one man. The man's powers might be limited to a small city, in the grand scheme of things but the sheer utility the man provides in the same city meant that the world's elites resided there. There were even talks of the President making sure that Manhattan remained untouched by the higher politics, all because of the sheer economic output of that city. They had not seen such numbers in the last 30 or so years, so high was the money being poured into the city, and consequently, into the Country's coffers.

It was honestly mind boggling, the powers he wielded and she only cursed at their luck that Loki landed somewhere remote and not in Manhattan. From what she had seen, the fucker would have been identified, subdued, and ready for Thor to take home whenever he came to Manhattan as well.

It was their bad luck that they now had to deal with the biggest threat to humanity in recent times, without the support of their greatest powers.

She did not have to wait long as the familiar thumping noise brought her attention to the empty suit, now holding onto the sceptre.

"Please, keep that away from me," She warned Jarvis as he came closer. JArvis paused and then the suit's hand broke apart from the main body and floated to one side as he came closer and offered a small harness to her.

That was…..new.

"Mr.Stark has ordered me to escort you to the Stark Jet, Agent Romanoff," Jarvis helpfully supplied as she got the harness tied around her, and then clipped onto the suit's back.

She rolled her eyes at that. Leave it to someone like Stark who would name a phenomenal, probably several generations ahead Jet, StarkJet.

Eccentric Billionaire, her perfectly sculpted ass. He was just a narcissist.


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Chapter 109 : Blueberries, Flying LOLA, and the Simping of THE CAPTAIN! New
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 109[May 2012]

StarkJet

–Randall–


Now, this was quite the conundrum on his hands. They were still in the Stark Jet but it was effectively only flying in circles, with no fixed destination on hand. They had not received any new orders from the Invisible Man but he was sure that Tony and Bruce were going to interrogate or atleast try to interrogate Loki about what he had been doing ever since he came to Earth.

More importantly…"You said something about an Invasion of Earth? Care to Elaborate?" He asked Thor who was sitting on a sofa, with his right hand firmly placed on Loki's shoulder, who had a metal mask sitting on his face, something that Thor had brought as a precaution of some sort.

Thor looked up at him, from his pensive thinking, "Aye, the Chitauri. They are a race of bloodthirsty, unfeeling, relentless species of warmongers who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals, even if it means certain death. Loki, through some means, has gained their loyalty and means to bring them to Earth,"

"How?" Bruce asked as all of them were seated around a large sofa, as was customary when it came to anything that Stark did or built.

"That, I do not know but I am sure the Tesseract comes into play with whatever scheme he has planned," Thor replied, face stuck in confusion.

"Oh. Okay. So we know that the Tesseract is involved and we also know that Loki took the Tesseract. So, either it is with him, which I doubt unless he has some extra dimensional storage space attached to him?" Tony asked Thor who replied.

"Aye, he does have such magicks but the Tesseract is unique, it cannot be stowed away like that,"

"Okay, then it is with his lackeys, the one he mind controlled with the sceptre. The sceptre which should be on its way back. Now, we just need the location of the Tesseract. If we secure the Tesseract, then it's game over, right?"

Thor nodded at that, "Aye, but do remember that my mission on Earth is not just to retrieve Loki but also the Tesseract because it was kept here to hide it from the rest of the cosmos. Your experiments have sent signals across the galaxy that there is something on Earth and Midgard is not ready for that type of warfare,"

"Hey-Whoa, it was not me who experimented on it but sure, it's your property and more importantly, it just seems more hassle than it is worth so feel free," Tony shrugged and turned around when he heard a double beep. All of them followed his gaze to the door, and were promptly confused when Agent Romanoff was standing there, with a suit standing right beside her, holding the sceptre in one hand.

He kept Loki in his vision at all times, which was just common sense and he could sense nothing from the guy, which was obvious since the man was a thousand year old alien God, but the fact that his gaze lingered on the sceptre more than he would be comfortable with, told him one thing and one thing only.

"Tony, can you please get the sceptre to Manhattan, ASAP?" He said out loud, keeping his gaze fixed on Loki and he was pleased to find the slightest hint of irritation on his face at that.

Tony gave him a look at that, "Okay. That was the plan anyway. So, should we get the plane to Manhattan then?"

"Manhattan is the domain of the Newest psionic master of Midgard, am I correct?" Thor asked all of them.

"If you are talking about the Invisible Man, then, yes, Manhattan is currently the safest place on the planet, and believe me, Loki will not be able to escape that man's gaze. He is everywhere,"

Thor just nodded at that, oddly quiet.

"Alright, Jarvis, secure the Sceptre, please show Ms.Romanoff to her guest quarters and make sure she doesn't "wander off" anywhere," Tony clapped his hands and stood up, rapidly ordering Jarvis to set course to Manhattan.

"I think it would be safer to continue this conversation when we are under the umbrella of the all seeing Invisible Man," Tony snarked and went out of the room.

"Jarvis, I remember telling you to get just the sceptre. Then, why, pray tell, is a SHIELD agent.." Tony's voice faded out as the door closed.

He shared a look with Bruce and exited the place as well, leaving the two brothers alone.

"Jarvis, seal the room and be ready with the oxygen suppressors. As far as we can tell, both of them need to breathe," He ordered Jarvis before heading to the captain's deck with Bruce.

"I don't like this," Bruce muttered at his side.

"Huh?"

Bruce turned to him, his eyes wide in realisation, "Loki. He has the ability to cast multiple illusions, all at once, practically indistinguishable from whatever tech we have. He could have easily cast another illusion on himself and escaped. So, why did he expose himself to us? The only reason he drew attention to himself was because he was the–"

"A distraction," He finished for Bruce.

"Dr.Banner, you might be correct because I am getting reports of stolen Iridium, from the vaults whose access codes were with the single casualty of the Stuttgart incident," Jarvis piped up in between.

"Why would he need the Iridium?" He asked Bruce.

"I don't know but that's just another clue we have to trace the Tesseract. Jarvis, inform Tony. ETA to Manhattan?"

"2:23, sir,"

"Great. Nothing should happen in the meantime. And Jarvis, please maintain full stealth, we can't risk getting attacked in between, either by SHIELD or by Loki's mind controlled lackeys," He said as they finally reached the captain's deck, where Tony was snacking on….

"Blueberries?" Tony offered them.

_____xx____

Manhattan

–Axle Riddle (Invisible Man)–


"Whoa, this is so cool," He resisted the urge to groan as he had to keep his attention on COulson, who was riding in the prototype flying car that Randall had made and had kept as a display piece in the lower levels of the base which were mostly just empty caves with high ceilings with power and lightning installed everywhere, just in case Randall needed it for another one of his experiments.

"Okay, I will give you my life's savings if you can install this system into my car," The car finally landed on the ground and Coulson came out of it, breathless, smiling, and markedly less tense about the whole Fury dying situation than before.

He didn't even think that tough son of a bitch was dead. Fury dying this early in the timeline was not likely. It was probably some green bitch who was impersonating him, and was much less badass that died.

Further evaluation was impossible because Fury's body was right next to the epicenter of the explosion, which most likely vaporised everything around it.

"Oh please, SHIELD agents aren't paid that much. Most of it goes into the fancy toys you waved around,"

Coulson deflated at that, "That's true."

"Hey, what about the request I made earlier about-"

"No."

"But he can-"

"No."

"You don't understand. If only he came for-"

"Coulson. I said NO. We are not involving him unless absolutely necessary. The man has earned his retirement a hundred times over. We don't need to bother him with a situation that he has no control over,"

"But he can do so much! If only he came forward and told everyone the truth, then-"

"Then, we will lose SHIELD as a whole and then it will be divided like a pie with most of it going to the US military, which we all know is a shining beacon of morality. No, COulson, this has to be handled properly. WSC has to go, but SHIELD gets to stay, and once the dust settles down, I have the perfect candidate in mind,"

Coulson's eyes widened in shock before he frantically waved his hands around, "No. No, I am not suited to be the Director. I don't know the first thing about--"

"Don't worry about that. It will come to you in time. Plus, we can have the Captain as part of SHIELD under your tenure,"

Coulson looked really thoughtful at that, his mind probably imagining the scenario.

"Anyway, your playtime is done. The team will be here soon with Loki and Thor. Get ready because you are the only one here with any interrogate experience, Agent Coulson,"

"Yeah. Alright. Interrogating a thousand-year-old Godly being? No pressure." Coulson muttered to himself as he went to the lift.

Sigh. Even the most serious of agents can become children when confronted with their most wanted Toys.



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Chapter 110 : Safe zones, Eureka and Enlightenment! New
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 110[May 2012]

StarkJet

–Randall–


He looked at the huge holographic screen that was also the windshield of the StarkJet, which showed the ETA for their arrival being an hour into the huge yellow circle that was the Invisible Man's estimated area of influence and another 2 minutes until they entered the green zone, the area of absolute power that the Invisible Man maintained, i.e., Manhattan.

Once they were in the yellow zone, they were safe-ish but in the green zone, they could sunbathe on top of one of the many skyscrapers in Manhattan, and watch as an alien invasion happened and was repelled by someone with Invisible Hands, probably.

Okay, it might not be that exaggerated since the Invisible Man was also human and he must have some limits because if he did not, then it was just ridiculous. But he had a hunch that if an Invasion happened, the capability of the Invisible Man to handle both the invaders and the evacuation of the people in the surrounding area would depend, mostly on the relative strength of the Intruders.

For example, even three of those giant tentacled monsters had forced the Invisible Man to come out in person to battle and dismantle those things. But if an invading force of a million came out in droves but had the strength of say, only elephants, then the Invisible Man could take care of it with ease.

Such thoughts ran through his mind as he waited, impatiently for them to reach the green zone with the important cargo and prisoner they had on board. The Invisible Man, his boss, had made it clear, in no uncertain terms that NO experimentation was to happen to the sceptre, just to him ofcourse because if Tony heard NO then he was most definitely going to do the thing, mainly because the sceptre messed with minds and his boss definitely did not want the minds of anyone present in the jet messed with.

That would be a…disaster.

"So, nothing? They are just sitting there? Not even speaking to each other?" Tony asked everyone in the room, which was just him and Bruce, as they watched another feed on the holo screen, the captain's seat empty since Jarivs was the one who was remotely piloting everything anyway.

"Nope. Just sitting there. Though, Thor has kept constant watch over Loki, as requested," He shook his head at that. Something about this whole encounter did not sit right with him.

"Alright, no clues there. What have we got about the stolen Iridium then? Why did they raid the sixth largest singular store of Iridium on the planet? Why would they need that much Iridium?" Tony asked them and once again, they had no clues.

Without any underlying data as to how the Tesseract worked, how the portal making ability of it worked, how the portal in New Mexico explo–

"Wait a minute!" He had an Eureka moment.

"The portal. In New Mexico, it was unstable, right?"

"So they need the Iridum to stabilise the portal? So that it doesn't collapse on their own invading forces? That's a possibility but then again, we don't have the slightest clue as to how they are going to make their portal machine. For all we know, Iridium could be used to make some new alloy to cool their machine," Bruce replied and he almost scoffed at that.

Iridium, for cooling? Doubtful.

But his point stood. They did not have the whole parts list and how the procedure was going to happen.

"Alright, they have Iridium and they need it to power their portal machine. Let's see what they had in that base when Loki shot out of the Tesseract's portal," Tony said as he accessed the SHIELD database, through his computer in the base and was met with a deadpan from Tony when he couldn't get his authentication through.

He sheepishly apologised, "Sorry. Standard Security Protocol. Everything remote shuts down within a few minutes of inactivity," He then entered his credentials and then verified his gamma signature, and then manually set the lockdown time to indefinite.

He would change it after the whole Invasion thing was over. One could never be too trustful of Tony Stark and his boundless curiosity.

"Alright, so they had energy constantly being rerouted from a nearby nuclear power plant, along with energy from the grid, on top of the power plants they had on base to power their entire experiment, all so Selvig could test if the housing of the Tesseract could absorb that much energy and remain intact. Spoiler alert, it did stay intact," Tony speed read through the entire thing, like the genius he was.

They all had copies running in front of them, about the Tesseract and the experiments they ran on the thing for two whole years. Anything from energy transference, to energy overload, to one time almost frying the grid because of the energy backlash from the Tesseract. They had done it all, except make a portal of any kind. Or if they did make one, it was so tiny that it did not register on any of their sensors.

Unlikely.

"So they have batteries filled with energy from the Tesseract but no viable way to use it beyond as a bomb, which did not have much in the way of yield or blast radius because all of the bombs act in different ways, but result in the same thing. Complete matter disintegration."

"Damn," Bruce swore uncharacteristically as they watched an unfortunate agent, disintegrate because one of the cubes of energy on the large pellets fell off and created a huge hole in the ground, and took the agent with them. The agent didn't even register anything before he was gone in a cloud of blue.

"Hey, Wait! Look at the footage again," He ordered Jarvis to enhance the footage as much as he could and then replay it frame by frame.

"Look at the edge of the cloud and then compare it with the edge of the cloud of the portal that Loki came from,"

All their screens disappeared as Jarvis did his magic and a single large video playback appeared in front of them. It compared everything, from width, to energy bleed, to light bleed.

It matched, in every single way.

"Damn. So the Tesseract's energy is capable of creating portals. Only the stored energy ones create a portal somewhere that we cannot trace, but is strong enough to suck in matter at incredible speeds so it is no different than disintegration to us," Tony muttered.

"So, this means that the Tesseract's energy's main function is to open portals, to somewhere. The energy output is just the byproduct. The only question remained, what more do they need to create a sustained portal because none of what we have seen is even remotely close to sustained," Bruce said as they began going through the list of components, most of which were hand made by Selvig, and see if they could find something that could lead them to the mind controlled agents of Loki.

"Jarivs, search for any theft reports or break ins at facilities that house any Nuclear fission material. Also, keep a lookout for the peripheral surveillance points of all nearby Nuclear Power Plants. I am reasonably certain that they will target one of our cities but cast a wider net just in case,"

"Affirmative, Sir," Jarvis replied as all the screens shut down and the ETA was once again, back on screen. It was a comforting 32 minutes only.

'Alright, gentlemen, let's get some rest before our "boss" sends us on another errand," Tony snarked before going to his personal chambers while he and Bruce retreated to the remote lab they had on hand. Seriously, the lack of any Jet engine, or any supporting equipment meant that the Jet was mostly hollow and had no lack of space.

______xx_____

Meanwhile, Somewhere in Germany

–Clint Barton [E̸̟̮̹͛n̸͖̄l̷͉͗̔į̸̇̓̎g̶̭̲͂̕ḧ̷͍͍̻͗t̷͇̝̀ë̸̺͙́̿̃n̴̻͌͛e̸̙̙̖͊̂̇d̸͎̈́]--


"Are you sure this will work? This doesn't seem like something that should work, even if my mind is telling me that the math is correct, which doesn't make any sense," He rolled his eyes at the Doctor, whose mind was expanded, more than the rest of them, unfortunately.

The Doctor's weak mind could not handle the extra knowledge they had dumped in his brain, so that he could build things out of the world, to their freedom.

"Yes, it will work. He said so, and it has to," He reassured the doctor before signalling one of the mercenaries to take the doctor towards the machine that he was supposed to build next.

They couldn't have him run out of brain juice before they were done filling their ruler's wishes.

He looked at the small rectangular machine, holding onto the Blue Tesseract in the center with a small vial of red blood right above it, just waiting to be dumped on the cube.

"Alright, load it up," The boys loaded it into one of the Jets they had stolen from the US Military.

Once they were all strapped in, the Jet took off and reached maximum speed. They were untraceable by local radars because he had enlisted the help of someone who could do miracles like that.

Tech, was the only name they went by and they owed him a favour.

"Alright, here goes nothing," he took a baton he had bought for this express purpose and slammed it down on the top of the machine, breaking the vial of blood and dropping it on the Tesseract, making it sizzle and then the machine glow blue.

The glow increased until it became unbearable to look at.

With a slight whomp noise, they heard a slight grunt and a thud as the glow died down and the Tesseract which had melted through the machine was collected by a hardened alloy made specifically for that.

Once the Tesseract was secured, he looked to the side and there he was, their Lord and Saviour.

"Make sure he is fine and buckled in. Adam, take us back,"

"Roger that."

"And Tech. Thanks for your help," he muttered in his radio, which he was sure was being hijacked by Tech.


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Chapter 111 : Tick Tock! The Count till freedom! New
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 111[May 2012]

StarkJet

–Randall–


He didn't need as much rest as Tony or even Bruce did in his base form because he was permanently enhanced. So, when the alarm rang, he immediately sprang into action, sprinting from his quarters, straight to Tony and Bruce's rooms, worried that someone had targeted them.

Tony was quite vulnerable, being the most squishy member on the Jet, and Bruce would be fine but his transformation would wreck the plane, which would make all of them…not fine.

"Jarvis, talk to me," He snapped as he walked through door after door, in curves, as Tony had built the chambers around a huge central block that housed the conference room and their labs.

"Sir, I am detecting an unusual energy surge in the conference room, with light interference blocking all sensors including cameras, sir."

"Shit," He muttered as he changed course and ran back towards the entrance of the conference room, which was on the lower floors. The alarms were still blaring and he was sure that everyone was up by now, even Agent Romanoff but she was basically on house arrest so she should be safe in her quarters.

The question remained, just what in the hell was Thor doing? He assured them that Loki would not be able to do anything with Thor keeping an eye on him. He slid to a halt and opened the door, and had to immediately shield his eyes from the intense light that assaulted his eyes.

"Urgh,"

The light subsided after a moment but before he could recover his vision, he heard Thor curse and grunt. He rapidly blinked his eyes as his healing factor went to work, restoring his vision from what was essentially a flashbang on steroids.

What he saw was just Thor standing around, looking around with Mjolnir in his hand, surveying the area warily.

"What happened? He asked Thor as he entered the room cautiously, looking for Loki but it was as he had feared.

"What in the world?" Bruce and Tony followed through, entering the room and joining him in examining the blue dust that was left near the sofa, where Thor and Loki had sat.

"One moment, Loki was right beside me, and the next, my hand burned with a searing heat unlike anything I have ever experienced. And then, Loki was gone," Thor informed them and his heart sank as he realised that Loki had successfully escaped from them, and more importantly, if he could do it now, it meant that he could do it again.

Being able to teleport and escape from any custody meant that there was effectively no way of containing Loki, even for the Invisible Man, because it did not seem like the teleportation was activated from Loki's side.

"Aye, Loki seemed surprised as well because I felt his body seize before it burned my hand," Thor said as he shook his left hand, which was still discoloured but was rapidly healing, right in front of their eyes.

"So, we have someone on Loki's side who can just teleport him out of trouble from their end? Great. That's just fantastic," TOY said and stalked out of the conference room, Bruce following suit. They were probably on their way to see if they got any useful data from the myriad of sensors that were installed in and around the conference room.

"Don't mind him. We will find Loki, it is just a matter of time." He tried to console Thor who replied.

"No, I am not worried about Loki. He will surface, he has to. I am worried about the Invasion. If they have machines capable of doing this, then, we don't know what else they might have in store," Thor said, seemingly half to himself.

His eyes widened as he scrambled out of the room and back to the lab, hoping that they had some sort of trail they could track Loki with, if not, they were going to be in big trouble.

He reached the lab, to see Tony and Bruce discussing animatedly about what had just happened, all the while the ETA- 12 minutes was displayed on the side screen.

"Okay, so, we know they used teleportation now, which means they used the Tesseract. Jarvis, see if you find any unusual dips in Grid energy across the planet."

"Nothing on the reports sir although I must inform you that we simply don't have the most accurate grid data of various developing countries,"

"Yeah, I was afraid of that," Tony muttered as he went over the various energy readings, most of which were completely nonsensical, as their sensors were simply not built to scan energies of that level.

"That dust withered soon after, leaving no trace whatsoever,"

"Which means our theory of the Tesseract energy being just a portal opener was right. It also means that–"

"Wait. Do we know that if the inertia of the object is nullified while travelling through the Tesseract?" Bruce interrupted Tony and both of them looked at Bruce for a moment, then they exploded in motion.

"Jarvis, track for any high speed projectile on Earth or in the air, mostly in the air, around remote areas with speeds matching ours," Tony informed JAvis who immediately began pulling up radar records from all over the world, and began laying filters.

"Dismiss nothing, Jarvis. We don't know if activities that seemed planned on paper were actually orchestrated or not. This Loki guy really does know how to plan in advance," Tony commented.

Then, alarms began blaring once again, but this time, they were yellow.

"Sir, Mr.Thor is trying to force his way out of the conference room."

"What? No, keep him there. Tell him that he will come out to meet the Invisible Man soon enough,"

Unfortunately, his enhanced senses picked up on the groaning of metal before a loud impact was heard, which should have been obvious to them, considering the sheer strength of Thor.

"He has breached the door, sir." Jarvis helpfully reminded them.

"Don't worry about it. I will bring him here, don't worry, the Invisible Man has told me that he can be trusted implicitly in the current scenario"

Saying so, he ran out of the lab. Damn, this was so not going how he pictured it to go.

_____xx_____

Manhattan

–Axle Riddle–


What in the fuck?

His mind ran a mile a minute, as he tried to reconcile the reports he was getting. Loki fled? No, that was not the right term. Loki was extracted from the Jet by the use of the Tesseract.

But who could do that? Loki came to Earth alone and there was no way that any human could perform such a targeted application of the portal properties of the Tesseract, especially since Loki was moving at such high speeds.

He sighed and groaned, as he waited for some reply from the President. Last he had spoken, he had warned POTUS about the impending threat from Loki and how PIerce was hiding everything from him, putting the entire country and potentially, the world in danger.

As a result of that, a member of the Secret Service was stationed in Manhattan, who would relay POTUS' words to him and vice versa. That was days ago and so far, he had not heard anything.

He knew, from SHIELD's live updating database that militaries across the world, major ones anyway, were gearing up for action but he needed to know the President's stance on SHIELD and this tense atmosphere was the perfect time to get his true opinion on it.

Damn, his mind was running in a million different directions. He was much stronger than when the Guy Below attacked and he knew that neither the Chitauri nor Loki were much of a threat, especially once he had confirmation about Loki's illusions but even then, he was going to be hidden and safe, away from Loki and his sceptre so he was not worried about that.

What he was getting anxious about, was that curtain. He was getting excited, afraid, and worried, all at the same time, about the curtain and whether it would be lifted or not.

He absolutely could not live in Manhattan all his life, even though it is a perfectly fine city that was made even better due to his presence in it.

The StarkJet, along with Thor and Romanoff should be here soon. Once that was done, he was immediately going to whisk them away into the subterranean base and then establish contact with POTUS, to tell him that they had alien royalty with them and that Thor was going to help them apprehend Loki, which seemed more and more difficult due to the new abilities that just keep popping up.

Loki most certainly did not have someone or something that could do this in canon. It complicated things though he was sure that doing that again was going to be almost certainly impossible, considering they did not have the oomph required to create a portal, like they did in the movies.

Argh, when will that damned portal open and he will be free?


If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon or Ko-fi, for upto 5 extra chapters.
 
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