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The Sage of the Mind

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This is the story of an ordinary person kcking the bucket in his world and then, after having a brief encounter with a shady ROB masquerading as a company, he finds himself in the MCU. His arrival in that particular universe was not without bumps. As a direct consequence of the bumpy ride, he found himself being shackled with a unique condition.
This is the story of Axle Riddle, an incomplete Avatar of the Sage Force.

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Chapter 1
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    • IdleMuse0307

    Not too sore, are you?
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    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 1

    –?--

    "Argh…" The world came back into focus as his vision cleared from being blurry to being clear. Unfortunately, that didn't change much because previously he was staring at a mass of blurry white and now he was staring at a much clearer but still a mass of white, i.e., snow. He had somehow found himself face down ass up in the middle of someplace that was covered with snow.

    Yup, there went his face. It was numb now. With a pained grunt, he pushed himself up to make sure that he didn't frostbite from all the snow he was in. There he was, on all fours, looking at his surroundings, the snow filled surroundings and he had just a single thing to say to the asshole who had sent him here, to this deathworld of an universe camouflaged as a happy go camping universe where the heroes always win and the villains always lose and the rare scenario where there happens to be a grey person, he always, always, turns to the good side, ensuring a happy ending once and for all.

    "Fuck you!" He roared at the sky, hoping that his message would reach the asshole ROB.

    But that was in the movies. He knew that things like that didn't happen in the real world. He was sure that with his luck, he would end up being an example for all the other reincarnators who might end up in any version of the MCU. Atleast, that was what that ROB had told him. That it was his job to process thousands of such applications, like his own and then send them on their randomized way.

    "Huff," He huffed as he began lumbering towards a direction he chose randomly. He had gotten no clue of his current location aside from it being in the middle of nowhere. Coincidentally, that middle of nowhere was also snowing heavily and he was dressed in a T-shirt and Jeans. That bastard couldn't even be bothered to give him weather appropriate clothing. Well, atleast, he was not comp-letley without help.

    He did have his sweet sweet powers package after all. He had multiple choices to choose from which were also customisable so he had chosen the Sage Force package but with the full package, he would have had to go to Worm to balance out the options. So, he had modified the option to become an incomplete avatar of the Sage. Instead of becoming the all powerful avatar of a cosmic force that would have gone on to enhance his intelligence to untold levels all the while granting him powers like telepathy, telekinesis and a host of other sub psionic energies while also enhancing his body to such a level that he would have been able to easily defeat even the strongest of normal humans with ease, he chose the option to have the power of telekinesis (on par with what he would have had if he had become the full avatar) and the physical enhancements that would have been awarded to him. That was enough of a drawback apparently that he could choose his home universe to be MCU instead of Worm.

    So, despite his current conditions that would have most certainly been deadly for anybody else, they were more of an annoyance to someone of his powers. Speaking of powers, he raised his hands, palms pointed at a particularly annoying tree in his way and just pushed with his mind.

    To his amazement, with a muted thud sound, the moderately large tree fell on another tree like it was being pushed by an invisible hand, which, in a way, it was. He looked at his hands in amazement as he looked at the tree and this time, without any hand gestures, pulled. He had to back up a few steps as the tree ended up falling in his direction this time but just at the last moment, as it was about to hit the ground, he halted the tree in its tracks, with just his mind. He knew that he had the powers of telekinesis but knowing and seeing the actual results of that was a whole other thing.

    If he was correct, which he thought he was, the upper limit of his telekinetic powers would basically be the limit of his mind and what his body can handle. Conversely, the Sage Force actually continuously enhances the body of its avatar so that the avatar can access even more of its powers, creating a loop that is wonderful for him. Judging from the ease with which he uprooted a tree that had a pretty extensive and strong root system, he was pretty strong as he was now and he would only grow stronger. The mere thought of that filled him with excitement. Now, all he had to do was find out where he was and figure out his way back to the nearest civilization. On that note, he began trudging his way through the snow in the same direction as before.

    As he was walking, his form froze before he immediately pulled the tree and then jumped on it. He then pulled his arm in front of him and then made a pulling gesture which lifted the tree off the ground. He held on to the tree with his powers as he lifted the tree and found his mood worsening as he saw a white wasteland as far as his gaze could go. He growled under his breath and pushed the tree to go towards the mountains. An aspect of his telekinesis was that it allowed him to create a radar of sorts that gave him a rough idea of the matter around him in a very vast area. Ofcourse, he could not yet use his powers on matter in that vast range because the farther he was from the area being affected, the weaker his powers would be and as he was now, his powers would only work well in roughly a hundred meters in every direction.

    As such, he had noticed something odd about that mountain. He continued to speed up the tree as he weathered the harsh cold dry winds that whipped his face, his enhanced constitution allowing him to weather them.

    His ears perked up as he heard the sound of metal clashing and men screaming and grunting. He was confused so he slowed down his speed and chose to gain more altitude before passing over the mountain. His confusion increased when he heard some words that sounded more like gibberish and nothing like any modern language he had ever heard of. His confusion turned into wide eyed horror when he saw what was happening at the base of the mountain.

    Somehow, there was a fort constructed on the side of the mountain and people were fighting outside the gates of the fort. People were wearing medieval armour and were fighting with spears and swords instead of guns and bombs.

    As far as he could see, the people defending the fort were losing but they were putting up a very hard fight. HE could see men falling down left, right and centre and yet, he could not find anything around the fort or even in the distance that could indicate where he was other than somewhere around the Poles? He was not very good at geography.

    He was about to lower down the tree and at least stop that senseless loss of life but the moment he tried to go down, his tree felt like it had hit something and bounced back, almost making him fall off from a height of hundreds of feet.

    "Wha-" He muttered, disoriented, as his neck whipped around, trying to look for the culprit. Upon finding nobody and nothing, he once again tried to lower the tree but he was stopped the same as last time.

    Okay, this was getting a little serious, he thought to himself as he gained altitude and tried to look for the person or thing that was responsible for stopping him. He was about to turn around and go back when his entire body froze in its tracks as he spotted someone floating in front of him.
    The person was wearing robes that were very loose and was floating seemingly unaided on thin air. Both of his hands were in his sleeves as an ominous feeling entered his mind. Something in his mind was screaming at him to get away from this person and considering that he was, even if incomplete, an avatar of the Sage Force, he complied with that feeling and pulled the tree away from the person as hard as he could. That might have been a bad decision considering he had no idea how fast the tree would go and if he could hold on to it or not but before any of those things could happen, he felt as if the very space surrounding him was pressing him from all sides, effectively immobilizing him. He could not even move a finger and even breathing was becoming harder and harder as time went on. His vision began blurring as the figure in front of him didn't even move before he found himself being captured with contemptuous ease.

    He was the avatar of the Sage Force and was going to do great things with his powers. Get all the money and all the supermodel girls that were totally out of his league in his previous life. Earn so much money and donate so much that it would make many people's lives easier, all the while living a life of luxury as well. He had also hoped to tap that sweet Black Widow ass but before any of his juvenile dreams could come true, he found himself being suffocated by someone he didn't see the face of.

    Avatar of the Sage Force. What a joke!


    Those were the last thoughts that went through his mind before darkness overtook his vision and he succumbed to darkness.


    This is the story of Axle Riddle….
     
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    The Sage of the Mind : Chapter 2

    –?--

    He sighed in exhaustion and part pain as his joints continued to flare up whenever he made any elaborate movements. "Ah, thank the Vishanti for this spell," He murmured to himself as his body was covered in a green glow that alleviated the chronic pain he was inflicted with ever since he was hit by one of Dormammu's spells. Only this time, instead of increasing his lifespan, he was aged almost instantly before he could have dispelled the spell.

    He looked at the unconscious body of the person he was warned about by the Vishanti themselves. Apparently, that boy was some sort of fulcrum in the story that was being woven in the heart of the omniverse. A place where the multiverses collide and the Vishanti wanted him to be captured before he could gain a foothold of any sort. Somehow, he could not feel the boy becoming some sort of villain that would threaten the multiverse but the Vishanti were technically his bosses and he was not so stupid so as to believe that they had multiple agents beside him who could have just as easily done that same job.

    It wasn't even hard, the boy didn't even notice when he had been pushed into the mirror dimension, allowing him to easily pressure his body from all sides by manipulating the space around him and then once he was unconscious, let the pressure off. He wasn't going to kill the boy after all. He looked quite young for someone with enough powers to uplift an entire stone building with ease.

    To his eyes, it was quite evident that the boy was untrained and was nowhere near his current limit, let alone his full potential but even then, he had more than enough power to threaten and even kill most of the sorcerers of Kamar Taj and even some of the more research oriented Masters of Kamar Taj. Not all of them had to be master combatants to be MAsters, after all. IT was written in the bylaws by Agomotto himself that becoming a Master was the sign of being sufficiently advanced in the field of sorcery while being acknowledged by their peers.

    "So troublesome," He said to himself before flicking his arms, creating multiple tongs of eldritch energy to appear over the prone form of the boy and lift him up only before the tongs could touch the boy, some sort of force appeared out of the body and disintegrated the tongs. He tensed, multiple eldritch constructs in the shape of arms appearing from his back. One of them created a shield and the other arm glowed a sickly green as it readied a spell. The other arms were reared back, creating an orb of energy that was pulling everything around it, even the air.

    The boy's body began glowing blue before it began floating in air, all the while the aura around the boy was increasing, creating shockwaves of air around him due to the sheer pressure exuded by the entity possessing the boy.

    "Identify yourself," He said and took a step forward, even as the air around them began picking up hurricane level speeds.

    The boy's prone body jerked before the boy came to stand on his own two feet and yet, he could confirm that the boy was not piloting his body. Someone, something else was using his body to do this and he couldn't figure out how. In the mirror dimension, he was more powerful than most beings on the planet, let alone some untrained body. "Hello, Sorcerer Supreme. May I ask why you have stopped us?"

    Yao, the current Sorcerer Supreme of this earth, jerked as the voice was directly transmitted into his mind, as if it had ignored mental shields that had been built after decades of painstaking cultivation.

    "May I ask who you are? As the sorcerer Supreme, it is my duty to defend my realm from outer threats and this boy was definitely not born here," He intoned in a calm voice , trying to suppress his fears from appearing on his face. It had been decades since anyone had breached his mental shields without him even knowing about it. The voice was also very different from normal ones. It felt as if hundreds of different voices were speaking into his ear at the same time. The voice was also accompanied with a jarring effect, disoriented him briefly before he was able to gather his bearings.

    "Who we are is of no concern to you. We have a deal with the higher gods of this realm and as such, do no understand why our avatar has been stopped before he reaches his intended destination," The voice had taken a different tone this time, rambling something about outer gods but before he could say anything, his body jerked as he felt a bast otherworldly presence enter his mind. He could do nothing but watch in horror as his body was taken over by Agomotto himself.He would have questioned the need of such a drastic move if he wasn't in so much disbelief over the fact that his carefully crafted defenses which were never down had been breached effortlessly by two different entities in a matter of hours. He was then put to sleep by Agomotto before he could hear anything of their conversation.

    When he opened his eyes, it was to a strange portal that had opened up in front of them with the boy's body hovering in front of him, even as his eyes remained closed and his body was covered in that strange blue glow, indicating that the entity possessing him had not left yet. He was unsure of what to do but before he could do or say anything, the boy's body entered the portal which was made up with energies that were hard to look at. The event horizon was also not the normal orange flame when a sorcerer portal was opened. Instead, it was colored in different colours, sometimes green and sometimes blue, it switched between those colours.
    He could only watch with his mouth agape as his hands were pointed in the position to open a portal but the moment the portal closed, he hissed as he hastily removed his sling ring and dumped it on the snow below.

    The snow immediately melted and the water vaporised as the sling ring glowed hot red due to the sheer heat. It then melted the ground it was on and continued to sink in the ground, creating a red lava like area around it.

    He looked at his hand as it continued to throb in pain. He was about to cast a spell before his body seized up in pain for some reason. He soon realised the reason. His body had been overdrafted in terms of its mystic ability and coupled with the curse's effect on his body, his body was shutting down, rather painfully at that.

    "Huh, so this is how it feels," He muttered as his eyes rolled up and he collapsed on the ground, finally being on the same side as his enemies who had been betrayed by their patron deities at the last moment. Somehow, Agomotto doing that to him felt more like a betrayal than he had thought.

    He knew that he was not destined for a peaceful end but this was so unfair. Being killed by the backlash of a spell that he did not even cast?

    So lame….






    If you want to read ahead, you can head to my P*treon
     
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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 3

    –Axle Riddle–

    Okay, what the fuck was going on. He had fainted by some sneak attack by some yellow-robed bastard before he had even spent a day in his new universe. He did not know if he was even alive or not. The space he was currently in, looked awfully similar to the one he had been in when he had died and was sent to the MCU with his powers. Nowhere in the fine print, it was written that he would encounter someone way out of his league in the hours he would be there nor was it written that he would be thrown into that world when the people were still fighting wars with swords and spears, not guns and mortar.

    He, in his soul form, continued to pace around in the black-and-white space for a seemingly long time, muttering profanities against the ROB who sent him here with such an early ending. He was cheated out of it too. He was promised that the world would not deviate even a little bit from the canon MCU timeline up to the point he was inserted into it. He was also promised that while life and death could not be guaranteed in the MCU, he would most likely get enough time to prepare for foes beyond his ken. He had been placated with that as the Sage FOrce was powerful enough, at least according to him. If he needed more of it, he could have asked the Ancient One to teach him.

    "Sorry for that," He whipped around to glare at the new entry into this mind space.

    "What the fuck just happened out there? I didn't even get a chance to say a word before I was out," He hissed out at the offending light even though looking straight at the light hurt his eyes for some reason.

    The light placatingly said, "Calm down. Don't worry about this situation. Some third parties interfered in your placement into your designated universe. That situation is solved now so don't worry about it for now. You will now wake up in an alley in the 21st Century."

    He sighed in relief at that piece of information. He was not keen on living in the medieval age, bereft of all the modern amenities he was so used to. What was the point of having all this power if he couldn't even live the life he wanted to live and by the time some modernities came back into his life, he would be too old to even enjoy them, making his second life a major waste of his karmic points that he had accrued somehow. He did not even know what he had done to collect those karmic points but he was glad that something he had done in his lifetime had helped him, even if it meant that he had died very young.

    His relief was cut short when the white light continued, "Well, there has been a slight complication in your scenario,"

    He tensed at that, "WHAT?"

    "There were problems with your release. The VIshanti of the MCU have taken an interest in you for some reason and were adamant in making sure that you were under their thumb or at least in their sphere of influence. We have obviously stopped them from doing that but in exchange for leaving you alone, they have certain conditions that, unfortunately, we had to agree to," The voice seemed regretful about that as it sighed as well.

    "Just spit it out," He shouted at the light, his voice trembling, the day going nothing like he had imagined when he had been first told that he was going to be reincarnated.

    "In exchange for a non-interference clause, they have made us geo-lock your location until a few conditions are met. You will be bound to the island of Manhattan until the New York Invasion of Chitauri happens. After the invasion is done, you will be free to move about the universe. I suggest you do everything you can in the meantime to improve upon your powers," The light said in a single breath.

    There was pin-drop silence as even his breathing, as much as his soul form could breathe, had stopped.

    Being trapped on Manhattan Island? That didn't seem that bad until you realised that every single major bad event could be traced back to that place. Also, suppose he gained enough power that he could easily prevent the invasion from happening. He didn't know about everything else but he could, with practice, knock out Loki and his forces once they arrived at Stark Tower to open the portal, thus preventing the Chitauri INvasion at the last moment.

    But that would mean that he would be constrained to that island for the rest of his life. Even if he grew strong enough to beat Thanos at that point, it would be very hard to create a scenario where he could confront Thanos with his powers. No, he would be lucky to have some sort of sway in that fight if he was trapped in that place.

    No, he would have to get out of that place and gain his freedom. Speaking of freedom, he turned to the light,

    "Any limits on my power?"

    "No, as a trade-off for the geo-restrictions, the ceiling on your telekinesis and spatial awareness has been removed. With a couple of years of practice, you will have more than enough power to influence things on the entire island of Manhattan with ease. You will also gain extra-dimensional sensory powers so you can easily cover the entirety of the state of NYC with your powers, just remember that the longer the distance, the weaker the powers,"

    He sighed at that. In the comics, he had read that having the Sage Force meant having access to powers that could one day be enough to cover the entirety of the planet in awareness and then some. He would definitely grow strong enough to stop the Invasion then.

    He would make sure the Invasion happened on time but there was no major fallout from that battle, ensuring that he had the moral high ground for essentially facilitating the INvasion.

    "Okay. I am ready. I just hope that there are no more problems from your side,"

    The light brightened a little bit at that, "You have my word. In exchange, you will get a starter's pack so you can survive without using your powers for a bit,"

    That was the last thing he heard before his vision darkened once again as he felt his body going through a series of tunnels before being roughly dropped on something hard.

    New York Sanctum

    –Ancient One–

    She was deep into her meditation, verifying the timeline she had plucked out of millions of other possibilities when her entire magical system went haywire for a moment as she was pulled out of her visions and back into her body.

    She gasped as she tried to stop the violent beatings of her heart. Somehow, something had happened inside the shield on the planet that had pulled her back from her meditation. It was an old spell that somebody had tied to the post of the Sorcerer Supreme. She just never thought that the conditions for triggering it would ever happen.

    She pulled her Astral Form and flew out of the New York Sanctum and her entire astral body froze in sheer terror as she looked at the multi-colored barrier that surrounded the island of Manhattan. The sheer power those symbols were emitting was enough to discourage her from going anywhere close to that. She pulled her Astral Form back into her body and called for an emergency in Kamar Taj, ensuring that the Sanctums were protected.

    She then went towards the curtain that covered Manhattan, hoping to uncover who or what placed it there for what reason.

    For some reason, she found her throat becoming dry as the power of that barrier meant that someone even stronger than Dormammu or even the Vishanti had placed it there. This was way out of her league yet at the end of the day, she was the Sorcerer Supreme and this was her sworn duty.






    If you want to read ahead, you can head to my P*treon
     
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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 4

    A shady Alley, Manhattan, NYC

    –Axle Riddle–

    "Urgh," A groan escaped his lips as he lifted his smushed face that was stuck on gravel and dirt. He blinked the spots out of his vision as he tried to get back feeling to most of his extremities. When his vision finally cleared up, he looked at his surroundings and then at the adjoining street where he could see people with phones in their hands, headphones on, and modern cars zipping around and then, promptly collapsed back on the ground.

    "Fucking finally," He muttered to himself as he could see that he had actually returned to the modern world this time, not some medieval world where he would not even get easy access to soap let alone the various entertainment types that he had grown accustomed to.

    He then sat upright and saw that he was dressed properly this time and he also had something sticking out from his pant's back pocket. Wiggling a bit, he reached into the pocket awkwardly and removed it, revealing a small black box that was akin to a ring box. He then gingerly opened that box and promptly yelped as the box spewed out a number of things. Hoping nobody saw that, he reached out to the contents and was delighted to find a wallet that had a number of things, the principle between them was cash and an identity. He never thought he would cry at the sight of a Social Security Card. He hurriedly went through the rest of the wallet and found multiple other important identification documents, such as a driving license along with a rental agreement of some sort for the next 11 months. Well, that was certainly helpful.

    "Let's go get me some hot food," He muttered to himself before standing up and dusting his rear. He looked around to check if there were any residues from his entry and after being satisfied that there was nothing out of the ordinary there, he whistled and began walking into the city life merrily.

    "Taxi!" He hailed a cab and then just showed him the address in the rental agreement. The driver looked at him weirdly for a moment but then shrugged when he showed that he did have the cash to pay him. The ride did not take long. In 20 minutes, they were standing in front of a building that looked old enough to be of a sturdy nature but not so old that it would fall over at any moment.

    "Thank you," He paid the driver and looked at the apartment number. He also apparently did have a key to it and it was sitting in his front pockets. He sadly did not have a phone yet so he would have to procure that. Then again, it would not be hard to procure a burner phone here in America.

    He nodded at the doorman and went up to his apartment and opened it using the very old-style key that was given to him. He didn't know what he expected from the apartment but it was all very…normal. It was a standard 2-bedroom apartment. The rent was already paid for the rest of the year. He might have to start looking for a job to sustain himself but from the looks of it, he had everything he could need for at least an entire month. Well, he was still not sure of the time period he had landed in and for that, he had just the right thing to check. He looked at his feet where a couple of newspapers were lying around, apparently having been slipped through the door every day. At least, it told him that people still read newspapers which meant that he was still aways from the 2010s.

    "Let's see," He picked up the newspapers and was shocked to see the news of two jets being shot down by the US military, their goal being the World Trade Centre. That newspaper was over a week old. He went through all of them and saw that the latest newspaper was on 20th September 2006. God, he hoped that it was right because it meant that he still had over 5 years to hone his powers to an acceptable level.

    "Well, let's get to work, shall we?" He asked himself as he let his powers loose. Ever since he had woken up here, his powers seemed as if they were just dying to bubble forth. He had been keeping a tight leash on them in fear of somebody seeing something they shouldn't see but now that he was in his, relatively, safe haven, he let go of the lid he kept on his powers.

    Instantly, as if a switch had been lit, his awareness exploded. He could feel what was happening in the entire building and then some. He could pinpoint the location of every single human in the building. He could see that most of them were moving about, working in their houses.

    He could also feel two couples three floors above him engaging in carnal activities, together. He could feel the water moving through the pipes and he just knew that he could stop that flow of water if he so wished. Honestly, the influence he could wield in that area of awareness was incredible. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the rooftop. He could feel various items just strewn about on the rooftop. Most of it was long rectangular bars of some metal. Steel bars probably were just kept there and forgotten. He reached out with his mind to one of the bars and tried to lift it. To his surprise, there was hardly any effort required to lift that steel bar, though to be fair, it was just six floors above him. He then floated it to the side of the building, reoriented it, and then slowly, carefully floated it down, right up until it was visible from his window.

    Careful to not show any reaction in case anyone was watching, he let the bar go down until it fell down on the curb with a clanging sound.

    He would have loved to experiment more but his stomach chose that exact moment to growl in hunger. Right, he had forgotten that he had not eaten anything and he was feeling awfully hungry. Hopping over to the kitchen, he could see multiple flyers for Chinese takeout places but he had no phone to call them so he was just about to head out when he saw something very ancient. Something that would have looked very out of place in the time period he was in but was still in use in the current era, it would seem.

    He saw a landline connection. He made his way over excitedly and dialed the number for the takeout and with the stereotypical ringing sound, the place picked up. He recited the address to them after placing his order and hung up.

    "Huh, neat," He commented and placed down the phone.

    "Next order of business," He muttered to himself as he closed all the blinds and then sat down cross-legged in the living room. He then focused on his powers and his senses. He could feel his body and then his apartment, then the building but after that, there seemed to be some sort of wall that hindered his senses. It was as if he had not unlocked that part of the map yet.

    He focused on that wall and tried to break it if that made any amount of sense. He went at it for quite a while and it did yield some success because he could feel the wall becoming less "opaque" somehow. He could feel the buildings on the other side of the wall after some time but they were still very blurry and not at all like the accurate awareness he could gain after focusing on just the building and the curb outside the building.

    Case in point, he could feel the building's super and doorman just standing there on the curb, looking at the bar of steel in confusion because it just sat there. At the height it had fallen from, it should have either drilled a hole in the curb or just broken apart due to all the rust it had accumulated. Instead, it fell gently on the ground as if it had been gently dropped from a very nominal height.

    He snickered at their confusion and looked at the other occupants of the building. He knew that it was a violation of their privacy but honestly? They were living in America, the land of the free. They knew that they were under 24/7 surveillance anyway. In some cases, the people signed away their right to privacy just for some entertainment and a really convenient way to communicate with people.

    His brows furrowed as he looked at the couple who lived on the top floor penthouse. It was really big and luxurious, judging from the number of heavy items he could sense in their house. He could also feel them fighting and each of them throwing things at each other. One of them was running around and throwing stuff at the other person and the other person was running after them with a knife?!

    He immediately reached out with his powers and to his horror, the person did seem to be holding a very sharp metallic object. He had to do something to stop them but he couldn't just go up and do that. How could he justify him being there and if the person tried to attack him as well, he might have to expose his powers?

    Oh, OH! He could just stop them from here. He focused on the knife first and just yanked it out of the man's hand and threw it at the wall with such force that it buried itself to the hilt. There, now that the knife was out of the play, he could focus on the people.

    Slowly, carefully, he imagined two hands and wrapped them around both of their throats. He gently began applying force. He could feel them clawing at their throats in an effort to pry the invisible hands off but there was nothing they could do. He then banged their heads together with minimal force. It took him three more times before he could feel both of them passing out from either the head trauma or the suffocation, either one was not very good.

    He should have tried to knock them out from the neck but he had neither the finesse nor the know-how of doing that. He might as well have chopped their necks clean off so he had to resort to this.

    He sighed in resignation. Now, what could he do? He sensed a phone in their apartment and slowly floated it down to his window. With his eyes, he pressed 911 and then left it in the apartment. He made sure to create some noise that could indicate a fight happening but that was the extent of it.

    He would have to figure out how to non-lethally subdue people using his powers because he could foresee this happening a lot as his awareness range increased.

    The ringing bell and the announcement of "Delivery!" brought solace to his soul as he rushed to the door and sighed in happiness once the delicious fragrance of Chinese food reached his nose.

    He would deal with that situation later. First food then a murder attempt.





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    • Chapter 5 : A stroll in Manhattan
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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 5

    Upper West Side, Manhattan [21st Sept. 2006]

    –Axle Riddle–

    Ugh. So many rich people.

    The mere sight of them was enough to find out he had landed in the rich neighborhood which was fine. It was always assuring to have filthy rich people in your neighborhood. Better protection, better schools, less noise, better traffic, and overall, a place where crime is reduced is what is the result of having filthy rich people in your neighborhood, especially if they are white. What it also created was an underbelly of illicit and illegal activities that he made no particular effort to stop. Having rich white people in the neighborhood just meant that the government services that should be equal for everyone, are just plain better for this neighborhood. It was unfair but that was how it worked in some parts of the world. He had known that in the back of his mind but seeing that just hit the fact home.

    In the walk he had taken to get a bagel early in the morning, he had encountered no less than a dozen different dealers selling drugs to people who had plenty of cash to spare. He had also stopped 2 more homicides from occurring in the exact same way he did yesterday. He thought that creating a MO like that should help create his name.

    He hoped to expand his sensory range and help stop even more crimes but for the time being, he was fine with the way things were. It didn't help his confidence in human beings that for every block he crossed, he sensed some sort of crime happening to someone. Sure, some of them were petty crimes and he had no intention of stopping them but some of them were violent crimes or at least had the intention of doing violent crimes. Why else would that nondescript yellow taxi be carrying a dozen automatic rifles in their trunk? He subtly destroyed their triggers as well as bent their muzzles slightly so that the guns were no longer usable.

    He had found this morning that his sensory range had expanded a bit on its own. The fog that was there just past the building and the curb now expanded to cover multiple buildings around his own building, allowing him to find the numerous crimes that were happening in each of those buildings. God, just from a sample of about 5000 people, he had stopped almost a dozen violent crimes from happening. What would the rest of New York be? What would the high-crime zones be like?

    No wonder the Police are overrun with cases. Well, that and bureaucratic nonsense coupled with corruption meant that no matter how high the budget the police might get, getting rid of crime was not a job for their profile.

    For that, they needed someone who worked outside the framework. And that someone might just, someday, be him. He had over 5 years to hone his powers in preparation for D-Day. He had taken to calling the CHitauri Invasion as D-Day. It was kinda tacky but he liked it.

    He was sure that 5 years would be more than enough time to become able to secure the sceptre once it was just lying down, having fallen from Loki's grasp and then jamming it straight into the cube, after guiding the nuke into the portal, of course. He did not want to turn into ash because of a stupid decision that a handful of people sitting in their bunkers made. He also literally could not get out of Manhattan if he wanted to. The condition was that he would gain his freedom after the INvasion but he did not know exactly when.

    Would it be right after the portal opened?

    Would it be after the portal was closed and every Chitauri was taken care of?

    He did not know and that scared him a bit. It was not as if he could go to someone for guidance. According to that ROB, he had been accosted by the agents of the Vishanti for some reason and they had dragged him from his destination universe into some other universe for their own purposes. Of course, it was stopped but the ROB had no other way to send him to his destination other than taking the help of the VIshanti who paid some sort of heavy price to open a universal portal to send him here. That increased his paranoia and vigilance towards Kamar-Taj. From all the fanfics he had read in his free and not-so-free time when he should have been working, going to Kamar Taj to gain both power and knowledge was almost surely the best way to gain a foothold in the Marvel world. Thinking about it, it was true. Kamar Taj provided for all of your necessities along with giving a safe learning environment where literal magic was taught. You were also given the option to gain your own relic, a literal magical superweapon of sorts. Then, there was the guidance of the Ancient One who was so old that she had actually forgotten her name. Or maybe, she sacrificed it for power, he didn't exactly know.

    So, he had taken the decision to expressly avoid them, at least until he was sufficiently powerful. For the time being, his focus was on finding a job and then becoming self-sustaining. That was going to be a little tough because he had an English degree in this world. He did have the identity part set up though so it won't be hard to find a job that is above board but getting one will be hard….enough.

    "Shit," He silently exclaimed to himself mid-bite as he remembered something. He didn't need some cushy job where he would always stay indoors and then make minimum wage. He had the benefits of a thoroughly enhanced body. There were always construction jobs going on in New York. He just had to find some in Manhattan and do the hard labour. With his body, he should have more than enough physical strength to do the job. Of course, he won't do that forever, wouldn't be fair to the people who really need that job but just as a starter job?

    Nah, he did not like taking jobs from actual hard-working people. That would not be fair. Then what should he do to sustain himself?

    The rent was paid off for another 6 months. He just had to worry about food and utilities until then. Judging from the stacks of cash he could sense on every drug dealer once they were done dealing, he could easily survive for a month by taking one day's income from a drug dealer. That would be illegal, sure but not unethical. Most of their customers were rich brats and judging by their conditions, they had been doing that for a long time. He was not a medical genius by any sort so depriving them of their drugs could have led them to more dangerous areas.

    He did stop the dealing when he could see that the person was new to drugs or was trying drugs for the first time due to peer pressure or something. His powers were incredible in that regard, he could even sense people's heartbeats and then judging from that, he helped them trip up or knock the dealer unconscious or just spill the drugs on the street in front of everyone so that the dealer ran away and then flinging that merchandise straight into the sewers.

    Come to think of it, he could become a very great drug dealer if he wanted to. Just deal with everything remotely but then again, what would he even do with all that money?

    Maybe he could do some vigilante justice and then distribute the cash he would raid from the dealers and then distribute it dollar by dollar to the poor. Some sort of modern-day Robin Hood?

    No, that would not hurt the true rollers of drugs and it would take an incredible amount of time and effort on his side that he could dedicate somewhere else.

    "Hmm," He hummed to himself as he crushed the bullet in the muzzle itself of a gunman who was about to shoot some poor shopkeeper just 3 blocks south of his position. He then promptly made the shelf behind the gunman fall on him, HARD. He may or may not have also given the robber a couple of blows using his powers so he would not wake up anytime soon. If the shopkeeper was smart, he would be calling 911 anytime soon. The sound of sirens ringing in the background a couple minutes later confirmed that for him.

    "Now, what?" He mumbled to himself as he headed back to his apartment with a generous serving of Mac and Cheese for lunch. He would have to look into cooking for himself because someday, this food might just catch up with him. He then remembered the physical advantages that were granted to him and then chuckled to himself. That made him realise that he was officially off the guilt-ridden binge eating he subjected himself to back in his previous life. He could now safely eat whatever he wanted until he felt full without any worry of calories. Honestly, life was better when he didn't know what calories and what a deficit was and he would like to return to that phase of his life. It was glorious.

    He nodded at the doorman and went back to his apartment, passing a couple of policemen who must have come back for evidence of some sort. The couple on the upper floors had both been arrested for running some sort of organised crime racket. He was surprised to find that the woman was not just some innocent lady in danger. In a way, she was the danger as well.

    "Now, to work," He said as he sat, cross-legged on a yoga mat he had found in one of the closets. "Time to make this work," He said as he attacked the fog at the end of his awareness range with renewed energy. The extra awareness meant that he would be able to work with longer distances and would not have to linger in places doing nothing. That would be suspicious as hell. His current power levels were more than enough since he had found out this morning where he had lifted the garbage truck that had come to collect the trash, just a couple millimeters off the ground but the ease with which he had done that had cemented it in his mind. He was very powerful, at least in the context of normal people. He just needed the control to harness his powers properly and not end up, you know, tearing people in half instead of just pushing them gently away from a speeding car.
     
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    • Chapter 6 : Halloween comes near!
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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 6

    Axle's Apartment, [30th October, 2006]

    –Axle Riddle–

    He never really got people's obsession with Halloween, he thought to himself as he looked out his apartment window and saw the numerous people already on their way somewhere in their costumes. The whole tradition was nice and all but the way it was commercialised and then slutified by the young generation was not something he was happy about. Of course, that might also be because he himself never really got the chance to indulge in the "slutty" part of the Halloween that college students celebrated. He may still be a little bit salty about him being a nerd in his college days. In his defense though, being a nerd is what got him the job with the highest offer, well, save for Stacy but her dad owned the firm so that did not count in his mind. Look at him now. He was now over 6ft of chiseled muscle and he didn't even workout all that much. Now, his main focus was on his mind and the prowess he could squeeze out of his telekinetic powers. That didn't mean that he neglected his body though. Though vastly diminished, he had realised that there was some effect on his body when he continued to eat vast amounts of fast food but it was so negligible that he could have continued that lifestyle, provided he also ate food that had actual nutrients in them and exercised. His focus was on his mind so he just cooked at home with all the nutrition he could possibly need just like he used to do before he was brought here.

    Speaking of his mind, he had made astounding progress in the past couple of weeks with complete focus on his telekinesis. So far, his spatial awareness had expanded to roughly 1 mile in every direction so that was a big jump. He had also gotten a sense that his lifting capacity had grown stronger but he didn't know by how much. He had not checked his previous limit so he didn't have a frame of reference but just as an experiment, he tried to lift something really heavy right at the edge of his awareness range and found himself struggling to lift a small sedan that was parked on the side of the road. He did it at night so nobody would realise anything but even after struggling with all his might, he was barely able to lift the rear of the car, which was not much since most of the weight of the car was in the front. He was not disappointed though. It just meant that he would have to be creative when exercising his powers at the end of his awareness range.

    In his direct visual line, he could probably lift cranes with ease because stopping lifting multiple cars and then bringing them back down while also destroying the car's internals was like child's play for him. He had figured that out when last week, he had been drinking coffee in the morning while sitting by his window when a car chase was happening right on his street which was odd since, usually, the traffic took care of such car chases in their infancy. He had then just looked at the car and nearly spilled his coffee when he realised the amount of money they had looted was kept in the trunk and in the bags they kept with themselves. Those guys probably had looted a bank so like a good citizen, he just lifted the car with his mind and then, after scrambling the transmission and removing two of the four tires, he safely deposited the robbers to the police who were gawking at the flying car. Of course, he also completely crushed their guns before doing so. He did not want a shootout to happen because the police felt threatened.

    That was the beginning of his public debut, as he liked to call it that way. After that, he made sure to make overt rescues wherein people would recognise that something was happening and the world at large would recognise him. He had already gotten himself a job and it was awesome. Apparently, this cute couple a couple blocks down had a bakery that served the best croissant in this neighbourhood and were looking to hire someone who spoke English well because both of them were retired immigrants who spoke broken English and were well aware of the discrimination. So, he had just waltzed into their bakery and after a very short interview, he was hired. He was paid more than minimum wage, which was all he needed to hear before he signed up for it.

    It had been over a week since he joined Mrs.Sanchez in her bakery at 5 in the morning to help in the kitchen. She was a little old Spanish lady who loved to feed him with so much food that if it were not for his constitution, he probably would have turned into an obese person in a couple of months.

    His daily routine was so sorted now. He woke up early in the morning, at 4 AM, and then went for a short job, while practicing his powers at the same time. He had a bout of inspiration one day and decided to exert some pressure on himself while running so he could finish his workout faster. The first attempt, well, let's just say that one should not be exerting that much pressure anywhere near their spine and he found out about it the hard way. Thankfully, as soon as he felt pain, his focus wavered and his powers deactivated, otherwise he probably would have been crippled by his own actions.

    How embarrassing would that have been?

    He then decided to mimic some weights that he had seen people put on their bodies while running. So far, he could do 2 miles while putting all that weight on his ankles and chest. It was a pretty good workout because he was done in 20 minutes and he was also able to get a deeper scan of the area under his spatial awareness.

    There must be some sort of connection between his powers growing and his body growing stronger because, at the beginning, he could barely do a mile before his body gave out but now he could do 2 miles with relative ease. He resolved to check that out sometime later on.

    So far, even while working, he had stopped 2 murders, and 5 muggings while closing the bakery, and broken up a fight between 5 people by just separating them and keeping them suspended in thin air. He knew that it was risky for him to do something like this, in public, because there was a chance that he could be tracked down, especially by the likes of SHIELD or by someone who was sufficiently advanced but also curious, like Tony Stark but he had been assured by the ROB that he would not be emitting psionic energy like most telekinetics and thus would appear as a normal human with an enhanced body to all of their scanners, shielding him from someone who might want to track him.

    He was getting traction, as far as he could see, because the photo of the cars being lifted and the 5 people being suspended in thin air had gone viral, prompting some of the locals to think about some sort of supernatural entity that resided in Manhattan.

    Of course, with the good, came the bad. There were outcries and exorcism regimes being done right around the block to exorcise the bad spirit that lingered on in the mortal world.

    He scoffed at them and then went back to work. He was the single employee at the front and that was fine because he was more than capable of multitasking and handling anybody, on top of being confident because of his powers. Most of the time, Mrs.Sanchez's goods were purchased by the nearby hotels instead of regular customers so for the afternoon at least, the bakery was pretty much empty. There was some rush in the evening but the bakery was pretty chill for most of the day and he liked that very much. It was calming even though his mind could sense every bit of the mayhem that was happening outside.

    "Here's your paycheck, sweetie. There are sweets in the fridge already packed for you, don't forget those. Good night Axle," Mrs.Sanchez, as usual a whirlwind, handed him his paycheck, patted him on the cheek, reminded him about his daily dose of goodies, and left the store through the back. Yeah, the retired couple didn't stay up until 7 so they pretty much left the bakery at 3 in the afternoon. He also closes up shop pretty early, around 7 so that was fine for him. After that, he goes home and cooks a nice slow dinner for himself and after eating that, he just drifts off to sleep.

    Apparently, he did not have the problem that he expected to have. He did not have any trouble in just switching off his powers, somehow. He had thought that he would be plagued by the feedback of sensing everything that would happen in his awareness range but apparently, the same fog that limited his range was also very helpful in that regard. Before sleeping, he just pulled the fog closer to him, for lack of a better term. He pulled it so close that his powers were limited to just his bedroom. He was paranoid about it at first but now, he was fine with it, after not sensing anything abnormal happening for the first two weeks.

    Tomorrow was Halloween and he knew that there was some truth to the walls between the dimensions weakening on this day and spirits and demons coming to Earth so he was pretty psyched to see if his powers worked on them as well. He was also looking to see if he could find some way to gain the portal ability of those Sorcerers. If he could just get that, he could open a portal to some location and then expand his spatial awareness through that portal. He probably could have knocked on the New York Sanctum but his last experience with the Vishanti had left him pretty scarred, mentally.

    He did not want to feel that powerless ever again. So, he practiced his powers almost every waking hour and he could feel the tangible difference. If he could go on at the same pace, he would have enough spatial awareness range to cover the entire island of Manhattan in a year. That was pretty exciting because Manhattan is very huge and being able to exert his influence on an area that huge was already making him have a power complex of some sort. Then, he remembered the true movers and shakers of the universe, and then his ego was promptly shattered into pieces.

    "Alright, time to lock up," He blinked as his phone alarm rang at 6:45 PM. Apparently, there was not a single customer all evening and since he was pretty much lost in thought and in his powers, he didn't even feel the passage of time. So, he locked up the store which was very easy since he made generous use of his powers in that regard, after confirming the lack of cameras, of course, and then went on his way home.

    He had done the grocery haul for the week and couldn't wait for the clock to strike midnight. He was going to go on a spirit hunt tonight.

    Let's just hope that the demons give him some trouble, at least.


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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 7

    Axle's Apartment, [31th October, 2006]

    –Axle Riddle–

    Hmm, this was getting a little exhausting. He had been at the shop all day, waiting for something to happen but aside from a mugging that was about to go wrong, he had not seen anything special happening.

    Maybe, it was happening but he just could not sense it. He mused to himself as he took a break in the break room that Mrs.Sanchez provided for him. It was just a small storage room that had been turned into a nap room of sorts with a small bathroom and a bed, already making it better than the 500$ studio apartments he had seen around the block. He was so lucky that his building was rent-controlled and the ROB had somehow negotiated a very low rent when he had moved in, allowing him the opportunity to pay rent and groceries without having to resort to a second job or stealing from drug dealers. Beginning

    "Alright, let's try this," He said as he sat cross-legged on the makeshift bed and focused on his range. The fog was ever present at the edge of his awareness but he could see that his range was growing day by day. But that was not the focus of this meditation session. He was trying to see if he could sense anything different using his spatial awareness senses. He had figured out that his telekinesis and spatial awareness were two different powers and so, he had to train both of them separately, although training one made it easier to train the other one, something about expanding his mind, he was sure.

    He had seen some disturbances in thin air that had occurred in some of the alleys nearby the shop but when he had focused on that area, he had gotten an intense headache and had to cut short his powers. He had a feeling that he would have been discovered had he kept using his powers which was terrifying to think about because he was being powered, at least partially, by a power that encompassed an entire multiverse. He had also felt similar disturbances twice more in his range but at that time, he had been able to find those disturbances but he had only managed to catch on the tail end of a portal closing.

    That had made him shut down his powers and pull the fog so close to his body that he could not sense the door of the shop. He had then figured out that the disturbances had something to do with either sorcery or the effects of a sorcerer doing god knows what, he did not know and he did not dare find out either.

    Today, he was trying to see if similar effects could be found under the street, in the subterranean floors because if lore was to be believed, Vampires and spirits only came out at night but it was not as if they spawned out of nowhere. No, they hid for most of the day, away from the sunlight that would burn them away. That place was mostly underground so he had chosen to try and scan the underground.

    It was a novel experience because so far, subconsciously, his powers had ignored the area underneath the visible earth. So far, he had only scanned through the areas above ground level, even if his powers could ignore the existence of walls or dirt. He focused his powers below and extended his awareness as far as he could see. He did not know how far he went but he had a feeling that he was not going as far as he could.

    Right beneath him, he could sense the plumbing of the shops and then the nearby shops as well, as well as the massive amount of sewage flowing right under the streets. Then came the area under the sewage lines. He could sense some individuals moving at speeds way too fast for normal humans. He could also see that most of them were "not solid" in some way. He did not know how to explain that but it felt as if the individuals below were not as real feeling like the humans he could feel. Something about them felt odd. He tried to focus more on them exactly and tune out the rest of the white noise and was startled to find that all of them had paused running and were looking around, searching for something. Then, he realised that they did not have legs at all. They were floating on thin air.

    "Shit!" He exclaimed as he realised what they were. Spirits and souls who had hidden themselves in the sewers below. His hunch had been correct then. He focused on them and tried to imagine a hand punching the biggest spirit right in the head with all his might. The other two spirits, as he called them, leaped away from the biggest spirit as he somehow(?) became even more ethereal for a moment before reforming as if nothing had happened. The bigger spirit then promptly fled the area, the other smaller two spirits following nearby. Only this time, he could see all of them floating at much slower speeds as they looked at their surroundings.

    Soon, they exited his awareness range and he let them. Not that he could do anything about them at all because he had seen that physical blows had no effect on them. The first spirit had just reformed after a moment and he had no way of knowing if doing so multiple times could actually "kill" him or not. He also could not "take hold" of the spirits for some reason, as if they were not solid objects at all. Makes sense if they were spirits and souls instead of flesh and bones. Now, if the same were vampires, he could have just as easily taken hold of him, broken all of the vampire's bones, and then punted him straight into the streets above, exposing them to the sun and killing them with ease.

    Well, as if life would ever be that easy in real….life.

    His eyes widened as he felt yet another signature entering his awareness range. This one felt just as solid as normal humans. He focused on the vampire and once again, he felt that headache feeling when he tried to spy on the sorcerers but it was much weaker this time so he was able to push past whatever protection it was and focus properly on this person.

    He focused even more on the internals of this person and was slightly disappointed when he found that it was just a regular human, just fitter than the average human he could sense. Well, that was nothing of interest to him so he was about to retract his awareness when he heard or rather, felt something being spoken to him.

    "Please wait, O' great Spirit!" He saw the person before bowing to thin air as his mouth moved. He could sense the person was the one who had spoken those words to him.

    His jaw hung agape as he realised that this sorcerer had managed to trace him. How else would he have known where to send the message? He immediately prepared for an altercation as he took hold of the entire sewer around the man, ready to collapse the tunnel on that person and crush him underneath all the rubble. It might be ruthless but he could not afford for some sorcerer to find his location. Who knows what those sorcerers would do this time? He could not risk it so he was about to do it when he paused as he realised the person was prostrating to thin air, trembling in apparent fear.

    "Hmm, maybe I can use this?" He mused to himself even though he didn't take his hold off the tunnel. Maybe this person could be of use to him. He still made sure to search the entire area in his awareness range and found nothing out of the ordinary and yet, his mind could not reconcile with his instincts telling him to take advantage of this opportunity that had fallen into his lap.

    "Here goes nothing," He breathed out and manipulated a piece of stone that he then broke up into thin particles. He then manipulated those small stones to form a pattern in the form of a question mark and then after seeing that the person was still prostrating, nudged him to stand upright and then shoved the question mark in his face.

    The person apparently saw the stones because his eyes widened immediately.

    "Uh, spirit, sir?"

    He rolled his eyes at the slowness of it all and then after making the question mark bigger, shoved it once again right next to his face, making him lean back slightly. The man then apparently got his message and then cleared his throat and spoke.

    "Uh, did you see three spirits running through this area? I am supposed to be hunting them but so far, they have proven to be very hard to catch," The spirit hunter apparently said and he paused to ponder on how to better take advantage of this situation. He had only dreamt of the level of control it would take to manipulate the air around a person and then vibrate it in a specific pattern to create a sound and that too a specific sound from far away. It would make an excellent control practice once he was done with his current one anyway.

    He then rolled the small stones to find an arrow directing him to the tunnel the spirits ran through.

    "Thank you so much, spirit, sir. If you need anything, feel free to contact this lowly one," Saying so, the spirit hunter gently dropped something right underneath the arrow mark and skedaddled away.

    Now, he had question marks right on top of his head as he looked at the running away spirit hunter. HE had so many questions to ask him but his inability to manipulate sound and fear of meeting in real life meant that it was all he could do for the time being.

    Maybe, he could get lucky and then encounter a vampire that he could just toss in the air and then gather the dust off? He would love to experiment on something like that but his job, power practice, and then the overall urge to have at least a semblance of a normal life took most of his day, leaving him no free time to do anything else, even though he barely needed 3 hours of sleep every night to feel fully refreshed. He could make do with even 1 with ease, not that he would recommend doing that since feeling exhausted throughout the day was not a nice feeling, especially since he would punish himself for not sleeping adequately by carrying out the same routine he would if he was fully rested. That taught himself to sleep properly and at the right time instead of reading through the books he had checked out of the local library.

    Man, public libraries are the best. He would even go so far as to say that the Public Libraries and National Parks were the best advantage that America had over other developed countries.

    He took on the badge that the person had left behind and after scanning it thoroughly for something else, he swiftly made it come out of the sewers and then stowed it away in a place he knew only he had access to. In the inside of a chimney where he had hollowed out a part of the bricks surrounding it. He deposited the badge and then closed the area right away to see if someone would come and check up on it or not.

    It was also the chimney of an old-style hotel that routinely had hundreds of customers daily so he doubted the people behind would be able to track every single one of the suspects.

    He would check the area every day for at least a week to see if someone tracked it down and in the meantime, he would have to figure out some way of communicating in his awareness range. Since he had no telepathy, he would have to compensate somehow.

    "Well, there goes my weekend," He muttered to himself as he stood up from the bed and stretched, his short break over and his shift resumed now that Mrs.Sanchez was going home for the day.

    Honestly, that woman was such a stereotypical oldie.

    "Sleeping at 7?" He scoffed and then began wearing his apron to prepare for his shift.

    You can read upto 5 extra chapters on my P*treon. It is the same name as my username,
     
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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 8

    Axle's Apartment, [2nd November, 2006]

    –Axle Riddle–

    "Ha, so exhausting," He muttered to himself as he lay on the couch in a lackadaisical manner. Figuring out a way to communicate over long distances was very hard. The problem was getting messages from the other side. He could very easily send messages from his side by taking in rocks or pieces of something nearby, crushing them, and then rearranging them to form letters that form sentences. He could sense many things down to very minute details with his powers and through that, he could also sense the way people's mouths moved but he could not get any idea of what they were saying. It was not as if he knew lip reading and even if he did, doing that with his eyes and doing so with his powers were two different things. It was not as if he could get a course somewhere where he could find lip reading techniques for the extra sensory perception people.

    So, there he was, having spent the weekend roaming around Manhattan and then spending it in his apartment at night. He had not made much progress in the communication area and his regular surveillance over that chimney also revealed that nobody had come looking for that badge so, probably, it was fine and there was no tracking spell on it. Still, he did not want to risk it in any way so he had refrained from going there. His main motive for using that badge was fulfilled anyhow. He had taken the metro one day and roamed the entirety of Manhattan and found that no less than 100 spirits were active the day after Halloween. None of them were doing anything harmful though so he let them be.

    From his apartment's sensing range, he had found almost six spirits with the same ghost-like constitution but they also did not do much in the night, other than roaming around and scaring off some people so he did not feel like intervening in that.

    Also, by the time 2nd November rolled around, all of those 100 spirits had disappeared, as if their time on earth had come to an end. It was weird and he would have loved to ask the people knowledgeable about the phenomenon but unfortunately, that territory was kinda out of his safe zone for the moment. He would try again once the New York Sanctum was in his awareness range but he had a feeling that they have some sort of protection against that sort of vision as well.

    The real highlight of his weekend came in the evening yesterday as he was just drinking some coffee and reading the magazines that had been delivered to his door like a regular person was expected to in this time period. He did have a phone and wifi in his apartment with a crappy second-hand laptop he got for cheap but he could not use it for anything more than entertainment since he was sure that this world had more levels of surveillance than his old world ever did. Just searching for Black Widow or SHIELD would put him on some sort of international spy watch list that would not end well, both for him and them since he would, well, kick their asses and he would have to go into hiding. It also complicated things that his range would be just Manhattan. He could see them, the huge curtain that surrounded the entirety of Manhattan. The good thing was that it was much higher than he had expected so he could probably go hundreds of meters in the sky before he would touch the curtains but he did not want to know what would happen if he touched those. Maybe just a shock? Or just a feeling of hitting a wall? OR he could just die by touching those curtains. He did not know and finding out scared him so much that he never even went near the borders.

    Oh yeah, there were those two vampires he had found hurting someone, just two blocks from his place. He had not flagged them before because they were just talking, all three of them when, suddenly, two of them began fighting each other while both of them stopped the third one from leaving. Due to the peculiarity of the situation, he had looked more into them and to his surprise, found out their fangs, their advanced biology, and the slow flow of their blood along with the reduced beating of their heart. Even then, he had not taken any action because all of them were alive and he did want to see if anything could come of the situation but unfortunately, one of those vampires was weaker than the other and was soon subdued by the stronger one by inserting some sort of stake into the weaker vampire.

    The effects were near instantaneous as he could sense the heart no longer beating in that vampire but she had a sense that he was not dead because, according to what he knew about Marvel vampires, they were supposed to turn to dust immediately. The stronger vampire then began advancing on the woman who was a human, he had checked beforehand. Her heart rate, trembling body, and the smile on the Vampire's face as his fangs came out told him only one story and he would not let it play out the way the vampire wanted it to.

    So, he took hold of the entire alley. Oh yeah, he had figured out how to flood his powers in an area, allowing him to create a small domain where he could focus his powers and do things that would otherwise require more effort. The effect was immediately visible as he could now sense everything in that alley and that also included the way people's mouths moved but he was still unable to read lips so that was a bust.

    However, the situation was fairly simple for him to read. Two vampires, arrived with a girl in tow, most probably manipulated her into doing that, vampires do have that ability, then they fought over who gets to drink her blood, The stronger one won and was now about to cash in his meal voucher in the form of a clearly terrified human.

    That seemed to be the gist of it and thus, he enveloped the stronger vampire in a fist, well, an imaginary one, and squeezed. The vampire started screaming immediately but that too was cut short because the vampire kind of just….exploded.

    Yeah, as it turned out, he miscalculated the strength he would need for that and just made a vampire paste in that alley. Some of it landed on that girl but she was too unconscious to care about that. The weaker vampire was immobile so he carefully removed the stake and had to catch the vampire because he immediately started making a run for it. He was babbling something but to him, it was just white noise so he ignored that and gave him the same past treatment but after a few moments, he was amazed to see that all the remains of the vampire, even the blood on that girl's face, disappeared into thin air. So, that was true then. Vampires, upon death, do disintegrate. Good to know.

    He saw that the girl did not have a phone on her to call 911 so he just found the nearest police officer and then immediately lifted him up in the air.

    "AAAAA!" Was what he imagined the police officer to be screaming as he was brought back two blocks by floating and then promptly dropped at the entrance of the alley. The screaming had stopped since but he just looked around and did not enter the alley so he had to give him a small nudge in the back. The effect was….not what he was expecting. The officer just turned around and shot two bullets in thin air. He had to take hold of those bullets lest they hurt some bystander.

    The officer took one look at the two crushed bullets floating in thin air, his eyes rolling back in his sockets as he promptly keeled over.

    He too rolled his eyes back in his apartment and searched for another police officer who could help two victims now. Hopefully, this one turns out to be competent and not trigger-happy like the last one. However, in his defense, he was seemingly targeted by the vengeful spirit that lives in that area.

    In the meantime, he floated over a couple of croissants he had from the kitchen to go with the coffee. No way he was going to leave his cozy spot for something that was someone else's job. In the first place, wasn't it Kamar Taj's responsibility to regulate the vampires or something? Maybe he was wrong or maybe they could not find those two. In any case, he was doing their job and they should thank him for that.

    Now, if only he could find a competent police officer who would do his job.

    ____xx___

    Meanwhile, at SHIELD NYC HQ

    –Random Analyst–

    "Are you sure, Random Analyst 1?"

    "Yes sir, Random Senior Analyst 1. I have multiple recorded incidents of a strange force acting in that 5-mile radius. We have recorded multiple testimonies and it would seem that so far, the force had acted only to save people. I think this is a level 5 Enhanced at the very least, judging by the weights lifted. Lifting a two-tonne car hundreds of feet in the air means they have some serious firepower behind them, Random Senior Analyst, sir,"

    "Hmm, I'll fire this up the chain. Good work, Random Analyst 1,"

    "Thank you, sir!"

    "Dismissed,"



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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 8

    Axle's Apartment, [10th November, 2006]

    –Axle Riddle–

    It had been a week since that incident with the vampires. After that incident was brought to light and the woman's interview went viral on TV, he had sensed no other vampires, even at night. He had thought that the vampires would have some sort of pull with the authorities to make the case disappear or to silence the witness but to his shock, nothing of the sort happened at all. She was put on the list of the protective watch and was let go from the police station as soon as her statement was taken. He had also sensed the NYPD doing their job and keeping watch over her apartment for the past week. Somehow, despite being alive for thousands of years, the covens of vampires do not have the necessary power to make this case disappear before it could reach the common man's ears OR do they just not care about it all?

    It could be plausible enough that they thought that there was no evidence of this incident aside from the floating police officers being brought onto the scene. Yeah, that was also the unfortunate side effect of not being able to communicate over vast distances. Apparently, the unexorcised spirit, i.e. He was being blamed for the woman's incident as well, even though she clearly stated in the short interview that it was two men who had assaulted her, not some invisible entity.

    Still, there he was, J. Jonah Jameson, doing his job. The job was to flame the rumours and generate hate all day long but hey, he was good at what he did and figured out how to earn money through it, so…Respect.

    That brought him back to square one. His effective spatial range was somewhere between 2-2.5 miles in every direction so that was pretty good going. His strength was also very high, judging from the vampire paste he made last week. He was struggling with control. He had nobody to teach him about this stuff and every time, he thought that he had some baseline level of control, it all got shot to hell soon enough because his powers were increasing rapidly.

    Just last month, the amount of effort required for him to lift the garbage truck just enough for it to be noticeable had him lifting it almost a foot in the air. He had to figure out some way to clearly control his powers. Unfortunately, he did not know who to turn to, in that regard. Kamar Taj would be the best option and yet he did not trust them enough and honestly, it would be best for him if he grew his powers enough so that he could enter anybody's home without having to fear for his life. Stupid, he knew but it was the best he could come up with, considering the situation.

    He was not blessed with the intelligence aspect of the Sage Force. He had just the telekinesis and the body to show for it. Speaking of body, he had grown strong enough to throw around everybody's PR around him at the gym. He had stopped going after only 2 days, despite paying for the entire month (RIP his hard-earned money) because he was starting to gain the wrong kind of attention. The gym owner had actually approached him about some sort of underground fight club where he could earn money. While that would have been attractive had he not had a stable job, identity, and a place to live, he had all of that now and was more than happy to stay in the same place.

    "So, what to do?" He mumbled to himself even as there was the sound of utensils being washed in the kitchen. Ah, it was so nice to have powers like this. He was able to multitask with ease, which made household chores a breeze. Cooking? Done. Cleaning? Done. Deep Clean? Not necessary because he used his powers and got the dust and grime out of every single corner of the house. It helped that it was not that big of an apartment anyway, considering it was Manhattan but his powers definitely did come in handy. Speaking of his apartment, the couple's apartment had been auctioned and the buyer was some investment firm he did not know about. They had conducted a survey of some sort, approaching every single owner if they wanted to sell it to the firm at 20% above market rate for some reason but he just told them he had only dealt with the management firm of the owner and never the owner directly. He got some bad vibes from them because why would the sales team of an investment firm be walking around with enough weapons in the trunk of their cars to shoot up a block or two? Nevertheless, he did not investigate further because he was late for his shift that day.

    Today though, it was a holiday because Mrs.Sanchez and her husband had gone on a vacation and he was also given a break for the week because Mrs.Sanchez thought that he was working himself too hard even though the working hours were absolutely normal for the service industry, let alone for someone like him, who could now maintain optimal performance without sleep for almost an entire week before he started feeling some effects like a dull headache.

    So, he can now choose to not sleep at all, for an entire week. He did not do that though, for obvious reasons. He loved sleeping. Even though he barely required 4 hours of sleep every day to wake up fully refreshed, he slept more than that because leaving his bed was so hard in the morning, especially with his powers and he can stay cozy in his bed and have already started his chores for the morning. Of course, that didn't help in increasing the strength of his body so he would have to go on runs frequently all the while his powers pressed down on his body so that it would get exhausted far often.

    That plan had hit a snag though. He was running around at 5 in the morning, as usual, when he stepped on a pavement that was already in bad shape and the added weight of him on top of his powers just broke that, making a big hole on the sidewalk. The noise it had made was very loud and he had been startled so much that he had fallen down with a very manly yelp. That had made him realise that he was probably stomping around with huge weights on his body. The stronger his body got, the more weight he would have to put on his body and the more likely he was to break the ground he was running on.

    For that, he would probably have to look for a natural running track but even that had its own set of risks so for the time being, he had suspended running in the morning. The added effect was the extra sleepy time he got in the morning but his darned body would not let him sleep more.

    That was why he was in his bed, thinking all these things instead of just getting up and doing something. He had the entire week off, might as well make something productive out of it.

    He had a lot of things to do on his to-do list but all of those were long-term goals. Today, he was going to do something that he had never tried before. He was going to the edge of his prison and see if his range actually extended out of his prison. If true, it would be a massive help since he calculated that by the time Loki would turn up in New York, his range would be around a hundred miles instead of the measly 2 miles it was now. If that range continued to expand outside the limits of his prison, he could do a lot of stuff.

    "Alright, time to get going," He muttered to himself as he woke up, the toothbrush, already washed and topped up with toothpaste, floating out of the bathroom into his waiting hand. Huh, he really was using his powers like they were a part of his life. Like it was a limb and not a supernatural power that most people would kill to have.

    He would have to be more careful in the future when the proliferation of cameras would skyrocket to untold levels. IT would be wise to assume that one was under constant video surveillance and act accordingly. Today though, he was going to figure out another aspect of his powers so he was psyched up for that.

    *Whistle*

    He whistled a merry tune as he walked up to the edge of the railing. He could see the huge orange curtain ending just a few feet away from him. Being so close to the curtain, he could feel its powers and it was heart-chilling. If it was something else, he might have had some hope of breaking the barrier and then not letting the CHitauri INvasion happen but feeling the sheer power wash over his skin, he could say with confidence that not even mastering the entirety of the Sage Force could have helped him break his curtain before its purpose was satisfied. He had his spatial awareness tightly wound up around his body only as he looked at the majestic power of the curtain and the way it was hidden from all the common people.

    Speaking of the curtain, could other people sense it? Probably all the beings who were mystically attuned should be able to sense something so overpowering on its surroundings. Probably the Ancient One could sense it with ease. Wait. Was the curtain the reason he had not encountered any mystical beings on his side? Including any high-ranking vampires or spirits?

    No. he was getting off-topic. He shook his head and looked at the curtain that was his prison for the next 5 years and let his powers loose. Almost immediately, as if an umbrella had been opened, the fog receded and his awareness range exploded, reaching for the curtain. He winced in preparation for some sort of pain but none came. He opened his eyes to see his awareness range had extended the curtain. He could sense the fish in the water below.

    He tried lifting one of them and almost immediately stopped as he felt a spike of pain in his head.

    *huff*

    "So that's how it is," He mumbled to himself as he staggered back and sat on the bench, understanding the limits of the curtain. It would not hinder his spatial awareness range but the power he could exert out of it was severely limited. Combined with the natural weakness of his power being the weaker force being exerted the longer the distance, yeah, he could not do much outside the curtain. Maybe lift a car or two once 2012 rolled around the corner but that's it.

    Sighing, he put his hands in his coat and turned away, heading to his favourite pizza place. He needed some of that sweet sweet gluten and cheese to soothe his ego.



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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 10

    77A Bleecker Street, [31st December, 2006]

    –Axle Riddle–

    Well, he had both good news and bad news. The good news was that his range had now expanded to 4 miles in every direction and the control with which he could wield them has improved significantly as well. Now, he could manipulate individual droplets of water when it rains. It took a lot out of him and left him completely defenseless as every ounce of his mental faculties were focused on that task but yeah, he could do it now. You see, when he had the image of a telekinetic in his mind, it was always the scene of stopping bullets or raindrops or snowflakes, basically any scenario where multiple small things are all stopped at once, and when he was just a nobody looking at a screen, he thought to himself, how hard could it be? Not knowing that it was the single hardest thing to do. You had to split your focus on hundreds of different objects that are now supposed to be completely suspended in your grip, oh but wait, you also have to make sure all the different objects with varying sizes and shapes are held in a grip that is relatively gentle yet firm, for ALL particles. That was a headache and a half to get right. So, yeah, good news was that he figured out a way to get some practice on his control and was already pretty decent at it. On the day of the Chitauri INvasion, he hoped to pull off the badass stunt of just raising his fingers and stopping every single Chitauri in its tracks. Haaa, how awesome would that be? Plus, that would totally make every politician watching shit their pants as they tried to scramble up a response to him.

    Oh yeah, bad news as well. Well, bad news was that he had gotten a little bit of a power boost in his head. So yeah, apparently, he was going to ride that confidence boost straight into Bleecker Street, i.e. The New York Sanctum. Surprisingly, it was also in Manhattan. Hmm, he had come to the conclusion that almost everything of significance in NYC occurred in Manhattan or the areas surrounding it. He had been sitting at a coffee shop right across from the building where the seal of Vishanti was clearly on the windows. For almost an hour, he had tried to expand his awareness range into the Sanctum and so far, aside from figuring out some of the more rudimentary protective measures, he had not gotten far. His powers felt as if they were being stopped by a layer of sticky fluid that trapped most of his awareness in it, only letting through a fraction of it and even that fraction does not go far. He had gotten weird looks from the waitress when he had gulped down a dozen double espresso shots like water but it was nothing his body could not handle. In fact, it was a good thing since it helped keep his mind in focus on the task at hand.

    He had come up with a brilliant idea to bypass the restrictions laid down on him. Even if he personally could not cross the boundary area, what if he could just extend his awareness through a portal? It was a long shot but he was running out of options and he had a feeling that just winging through on the development of his powers was not going to cut it in the long term.

    Against common thieves and criminals? Sure, he was golden there as they would not be able to do much as he knocked them out from a distance (Just like a robber he just knocked out in a pharmacy at the edge of his range right now,) but enhanced criminals would be much harder to fight against. He had no idea who to approach to properly use his powers. The Masters of the Mystic Arts had a long history and he was sure that they could even develop minor psychic powers like Telekinesis or mild telepathy using their spells so he figured they were the next best thing to going to the source itself for knowledge. He had assumed that becoming the avatar of the Sage FOrce meant that he would get a handbook for everything, that he would not have to bumble around but then he realised it. An essential component of becoming the Avatar of the Sage Force was the added intelligence boost that catapulted the person to become one of the smartest people in their world. That intelligence must play a crucial role in ensuring that their powers are properly trained, utilised, and explored upon.

    He had none of that. Just mind over-matter powers on a scale the world had never seen before. The building itself was very weird. No matter how hard he tried, he could not get a "grip" on the building. In his case, he doesn't just "lift" stuff. He creates imaginary appendages that grip the buildings and then do the lifting. He is of the opinion that it was due to his simple-minded nature and thus, his powers are expressed in that simple form, his brain trying to comprehend and manipulate something that is like a limb but is so much more than that.

    So, when he tried to grab onto anything on the building, his powers just flowed over them, not hitting anything. It was as if the entire Sanctum was one huge solid block that just looked like a building from the outside. No matter, he tried to lift the entire building as well, but it felt as if he was trying to lift the entire Earth instead of just a building. For reference, he was pretty sure he could just knock out the support pillars of any decent-sized building and bring the whole thing down. The Sanctum barely had two floors from the outside so he did not understand what was bringing in the extra mass. Maybe the spatially expanded floors added to the overall weight?

    "That is a fascinating theory, Mr.Riddle. I would love to discuss it over tea. I am sure you are rather done with coffee for the day?"

    He turned around, "Yeah, it is starting to taste like tar to me now but hey, if it…helps," His words slowed down as he looked at a very amused-looking Ancient One with her signature bald head staring down at him with her hands tucked into her suit. Jacket? Onesie? Whatever it was.

    "Ah!" He yelled as he jumped away from her, his powers allowing him to jump very far. He looked at the cafe only to see that it was just an empty cafe. The sound of traffic was absent as well as he looked at the now completely empty block.

    Shit! "The Mirror Dimension," He mumbled to himself.

    "That is correct, Mr.Riddle. Now, instead of trying to compromise the integrity of one of the three monuments that are responsible for Earth's safety, why don't we talk over a nice cup of tea? I assure you I mean you no harm," The Ancient One said as he kept her hands to her sides to show she wasn't doing anything.

    His heart hammering inside, he nodded with difficulty. It was not as if he could do anything, especially in a place he literally could not escape from, even with all his powers. The silver lining was that he had a backup in place if he never made it out of here alive. Admittedly, it was a little scorched earth of him but damn it, if he died, he was going to take them down with him. All the information he could remember about the Mystic Arts, neatly sitting in an email that was timed to send information to every single interested party he could think of, if he didn't personally shut it down in 12 hours. He just hoped that she hadn't anticipated that.

    She opened a portal that led to a small dining room with a table set for two people already. He looked around and could not identify anything though he was reasonably certain that they were still in Manhattan, so this was probably one of the many rooms of the New York Sanctum.

    "I assume we are still in–"

    "Manhattan? Yes, we are. I assure you, nobody in this universe is anywhere near powerful enough to bypass that barrier that somebody put around Manhattan just to contain you," She surmised his entire situation with a placid smile and then went back to the tea preparation ceremony. He was a complete novice at that so he did not know what she was doing, at all.

    "I thought portals might do the trick?"

    She scoffed, "Please, our portals are only as strong as the people wielding them. I can create portals capable of cutting out body parts of Demon Avatars and you think the same portals can be opened by the initiates who just learned how to create them? No, Mr.Riddle, there is no Mystic Art user on the planet who has the power to create a portal to bypass something as fundamentally carved into reality as that barrier. I am afraid you will have to wait for it to naturally dissipate." She offered him tea and the sweet calming taste of honey in it did nothing to assuage his immense disappointment in the situation.

    At least, she was not outright attacking him so that was good.

    "So, Mr.Riddle, why were you incessantly knocking on our door today?"

    He looked at her and thought, why the hell not?

    "I am looking for help in regard to my powers. I need to achieve mastery in them and you are the only person who can help,"

    There, he laid down all his cards. Despite his earlier misgivings, this Ancient One was not giving him the same bad vibes as that previous Sorcerer in that other universe was. So, he decided to trust his gut feeling and told her everything.

    "I was hoping you would say that. Welcome to Kamar Taj," She declared and snapped her fingers, causing a book to appear on the table between them.

    It had some scribbling on top of it that he did not recognise. He looked at her in confusion and she snapped her fingers once again, making two more books appear. His eyes widened as he read the two books. They were the Latin to Sansrkit and Sanskrit to English translation books.

    He looked up at her with a deadpan stare, "Really?"

    "Every person who wants to learn in Kamar Taj has to go through the same ritual, Mr.Riddle and despite your peculiar situation, you will have to follow the same procedure,"

    "Fiine," He groaned but decided to enjoy the tea which seemed to refill on its own.

    Neat.


    ____________xx____________


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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 11

    77A Bleecker Street, [1st February, 2007]

    –Axle Riddle–

    Huh. You learn something new about this place every day, he thought to himself as his powers detected yet another room in the vast hallway that kept every single non-sorcerer away from the precious artifacts that littered this room. It was a neat little enchantment that was nearly impossible to break unless was intimately familiar with the codes of the spell. In the month he had been at the Sanctum, he did go home occasionally but for all purposes, this had been his home for the past month.

    Mrs.Sanchez was very sad to see him go but wished him good luck in his future endeavours along with giving him a ton of sweets after making him promise that he would make sure to visit her more often. Only then did that old adorable monster let him out of her freakishly strong grip. They also gave him some money that conveniently found itself back in the cash register. He also looked into the person they hired after him and found him to be trustworthy enough. Even then, he continued to check up on the bakery from time to time to see how things were going on. His apartment was cleaned by him when he went there on the weekends.

    Unfortunately, he was not able to employ the coolest mode of transport that almost everyone in Kamar Taj enjoyed. The portals.

    As a direct consequence of being an Avatar of a force that flows through his body, he is unable to make pacts with other extra-dimensional entities and use their energy to cast spells. He was stuck with the energy that suffused his entire being and that was a type of energy that was slightly different from the energy that most psionics in this universe used. Nevertheless, according to the Ancient One, it was not the type of energy that was used that mattered but the applications of it.

    And his powerset was best suited for any type of telekinetic application. Most telekinetics had some sort of limit on them in terms of range, application, strength, and so on and so forth. His powers were suited for all of them so he had a host of books to refer to.

    After consultation with the Ancient One, she had commented on his training methods and had confirmed that his growth would be good even with those methods, even if it would take longer than normal to reach the peak. With the books he had in hand, the Ancient One predicted that he would reach the strength required to destroy entire cities with just his mind, within a scant 10 years.

    Just imagining the ability to recreate Pain's "Shinra Tensei" on his own just by pushing down on the city, was so exhilarating that he doubled his efforts to complete the training fast enough, which in hindsight was not good because he soon found himself bleeding from his nose and then fainting. The bad news was that he was forbidden from using his powers for a couple of days after that which felt like such a sudden jolt to his system like he had just lost the use of a limb and his brain was still trying to figure out why. The good news was that his body had healed in such a way that it would take much higher levels of overloading on his mind before he would pass out. The thought of doing that again had crossed his mind but he then immediately got out of the masochist training thoughts and focused on his controlled training which was proven to have the best results in the longer term.

    His current focus was on control and that was why, he was using his spatial awareness to control 100 different brooms to clean a hundred different rooms in the hallway of artifacts. At the same time, he had a litany of napkins responsible for cleaning the glass containers of artifacts that were deemed too dangerous to keep in the open.

    Doing all that multitasking has expanded his ability to apply his vast powers in minute quantities to hundreds of different tasks. As a direct result of that, he has been able to do his "vigilante" activities much better around the city. He could now finally hear some solid rumours about something weird going on in the city as criminals of every kind found themselves being stopped by an invisible entity once they entered a circle where he was active.

    It had been about 6 months since he had arrived in this world and that was enough time for people to start noticing. For different organisations to start noticing and that was why, he was looking at a black hooded SUV passing through the street where the Sanctum was located, as he sipped on the heavenly coffee the cafe next door still served. Apparently, the Sanctum Masters also liked this coffee upon his recommendation and he could not have been happier that his words had helped a small business.

    The SUVs were completely nondescript but that was where it stood out. He had already scanned the insides of the car and aside from the alarming number of weapons they had on board, the car itself was fairly standard. He had expected something more high-tech from the cars of SHIELD. Or at least HYDRA that was masquerading as SHIELD.

    Because if he was not wrong here and he very rarely was, in this regard, that was some Sitwell guy, a pretty high-ranking member of HYDRA as well as SHIELD.

    Hmm, so he has caught their attention as well. He still has not gotten the lip reading part down so he was not sure what they were talking about but it would be safe to assume that they were here for him. He watched them go and then his brows furrowed in confusion as Sitwell's car separated from them to stand a bit ahead of a bank and the rest of the cars stopped right in front of the nearest bank.

    His heckles rose as he saw every single person in the three cars that had stopped behind, don masks and automatic rifles. He watched on, flabbergasted as they alighted the vehicle, opened the trunk, and took out even more heavy artillery as some of them started to open fire on the people.

    "Shit!" He realised what they were doing. They were trying to draw him out or rather, force him to reveal himself in hopes that heavy weaponry would be too much for him to handle.

    Aside from a slight tremble in his hands, nothing changed on the outside, but inside, his powers had already taken stock of all the bullets and the people that would be stuck by them. His mind went into overdrive as a 3d map formed in his mind. He flooded the entire area around the bank with his mind, allowing him extra leeway to manipulate the surroundings. It was a little risky to do that for such a large area but stopping hundreds of bullets at the same time was no small matter.

    People started panicking at the sound of bullets and he had to work even more to stop more bullets as people, in their panic, inadvertently found themselves running in the direction those bullets were taking. He stopped the dozen or so bullets that had already pierced the glass doors and then just slammed a telekinetic barrier down on the area behind the door, stopping all the bullets that were about to go in.

    Unfortunately, somebody got shot before he could do anything about it. It was not someone inside the bank where he had focused the bulk of his powers. It was someone who was about to enter the bank and had witnessed the entire thing. They had shot him once in the chest and once he was down, assumed that he was dead and moved on to their main target of seemingly looting a bank. However, that was not the case because he had stopped the bullet from going too far inside his ribcage. It was now only on the surface of his ribcage and could easily be removed, without any risk of the person dying. Though there was blood, that person would be fine as long as he was removed from the scene, which is exactly what he did when he floated his body and placed it safely on the top of the rooftop.

    Now that the people were safe behind the barrier and even the grenades these animals had launched at them had not done anything but heat up in the internal surroundings, he couldn't exactly stop thermal energy from taking its natural course, he could finally focus on HYDRA's goons.

    First off, the cars had to go so he just simply…crushed them. One second, they were taking out even more ammo from the trunks of the car, the second moment the cars were simply scrapped. Also, two people had already lost their arms because their hands were in the way when he crushed those cars.

    Then, he focused on the people. One by one, every single gun they had started exploding in their hands as he simply bent their muzzles beyond repair and then floated all of them a hundred feet in the air. He could see Sitwell looking at a screen of some sort, very calm even though his men were about to get severely injured.

    What a ruthless monster.

    He then simply dropped the attackers and just shy of them hitting the curb and dying, he softened the blow and simply knocked them out. Before he could do anything to Sitwell, though, he found him to have left the surroundings. He crossed his range before he could do anything and he did not want to chase after him.

    So, all he did was make sure that all the guns and grenades were accounted for, made a huge pile of the scrap that they now were, thanks to yours truly and let the people come out.

    He rolled his eyes as only now did the NYPD come out of their hidey holes and reach the scene. HYDRA and their meddling in everything.

    "Excuse me, sir? SIR?"

    "huh-Yes?" He asked the waitress who was looking at him in concern…for some reason.

    "Are you alright? You are…bleeding from your nose."

    He immediately put a hand to his nose and yup…he was bleeding. Guess the strain of manipulating those hundreds of bullets was not exactly light then. It was a good thing that he was not unconscious.

    "No, it's fine. A regular occurrence, I assure you. Now, thank you for the coffee," He set down a 20$ bill and left the cafe, hobbling towards the New York Sanctum as his head began hurting like a bitch.

    Damn HYDRA.

    He would get his payback. He might have to be more careful with his activities because Sitwell getting out of his range just as he was done with his goons could not have been a coincidence.



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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 12

    New York Sanctum Sanctorum [1st February, 2007]

    –Axle Riddle–

    "You're cleaning that," He opened his eyes blearily to see Wong's face looming over him. He must have passed out right there in the Sanctum after coming back from that horrible headache. Not just that, it felt like something had clicked in his mind during the battle but he was just too distracted to realise what it was. When he began hobbling towards the Sanctum, that was when he realised that something was wrong with his body as well.

    It was not just the blood flowing from his nose intermittently, probably due to the strain, it was his entire being. He tried to scan himself with his spatial awareness but that had never worked out before. All he got was a blurry mess when he tried to look inward.

    For a time, he had thought that he was not even human but he still bled red, looked like one, and thought like one, so he had not dwelled on that issue much.

    "Wh-what?" He asked him as he sat up, grunting in discomfort as his muscles protested at the moment.

    "That," Wong pointed behind him and he made the big mistake of looking behind him, only to see the once pristine carpet, that he made sure to clean so much that it shone at the end of it, was now caked in vomit.

    Ugh, he felt so sick just looking at that.

    "Bleurgh," He immediately emptied the contents of his stomach, right at Wong's feet.

    He was feeling awful at that moment but later on, he took great pleasure in making the great unfeeling Wong sigh in frustration.

    He tried to make heads and tails of what had happened but that just made his head hurt even more. So, he concentrated on the simple task at the moment. Getting to his bedroom.

    The Sanctum usually only housed the Sanctum Master and occasional guests if required but as his case was unique, he was given part of the dwelling on a semi-permanent basis. That meant that he had quite a luxury apartment to go to in the Sanctum. Along with spatial runes, it meant that he practically lived in a penthouse, despite being just a student here.

    Life was good. At least, that was what he would have said had you asked him a scant few hours before. Now, getting to the bedroom, which was on the top floor, was beginning to feel like a huge chore. The kind of chore that your mom assigns to you when you are fresh out of the shower after an exhausting game outside and your bedroom is just primed for one of the best naps of your life.

    With that kind of exhaustion, he was dragging himself up the stairs. Wong, bastard that he was, had not offered to help at all. In his defense though, his shoes were covered in….don't think about it. DO NOT think about it.

    He usually would have cleared the stairs in a single jump with his body or just floated himself up there with his powers but both of them were unreliable at the moment. He would have to look into that because if stopping just a couple of cars, hundreds of bullets, and about 4 grenades meant that he was going to be out of commission for long, it would mean that he wouldn't even be able to help with the NYC Invasion.

    In that case, he should just prevent it outright because what would be the point in him regaining his freedom if he would not be able to make a difference with his powers?

    Oh well, that was a question for the Axle that woke up from the nap. Not the one who is having a migraine at the moment.


    ______xx_____

    –Jasper Sitwell–

    "Did you find the person responsible?"

    He wiped the sweat off his brows as he looked at the map displaying a circle around Manhattan and his current location being far away from that circle of influence.

    "Uh-no. No, sir," he replied to Secretary Pierce.

    They had been tasked to create a huge disturbance, preferably with civilian casualties, to provoke the person fighting crime in that particular neighbourhood of Manhattan using some sort of technology that was invisible or the far more likely answer, someone with powers.

    He had been ordered by Secretary Pierce to figure out who that was and get to them before SHIELD did with their index. They usually let SHIELD get the useless ones because all they needed from those people was data and they had access to all of SHIELD's data anyway. But this person was special.

    "Figure it out, Sitwell. Having someone of that calibre would make even the Winter Soldier look obsolete."

    "Yes, sir. Hail Hydra!"

    "Hail Hydra!"

    He sighed in relief as the call was cut from the other side. He loosened the knot of his tie as he looked at the footage of the supposed heist.

    His men were arrested but that was fine. They would be out soon anyway. Two of them were out of commission because their hands were crushed in the vehicles.

    Idiots.

    Still, though, he wondered why that fellow did not chase him even though he was right there. He even made a show of coming in with the same convoy before waiting at the edge of the street to come after him.

    They had multiple theories as to what the guy could be and he was undoubtedly risking his life there but orders were orders and these orders specifically came from the top, so he was in no position to decline or even negotiate anything.

    After all, cut off one head, two more shall take its place, was true even for the subordinates, reminding them of their disposableness. He just never thought that he would have to experience that as well, being a high-ranking member of HYDRA as well as SHIELD, which insulated him from the worst of punishments because he was, essentially, a public figure, and a very useful public figure at that.

    Now that they had some useful data from the first contact, they could tackle this problem from a renewed perspective.

    First of all, whoever it was, their power was awe-inspiring. If the Hulk's power was pure brute strength, this person's powers were cold precise calculations. The ability to stop bullets and then even create an invisible curtain at the entrance to stop the bullets and even the shrapnel from the grenades from going inside was marvelous.

    As was the ability to simply crush cars that had been reinforced many times, surpassing even the SHIELD's standard for wartime delivery vehicles.

    If he could make someone else float, he could probably make himself float as well, so there went possible flight into his powers list.

    Honestly, there should have been no reason someone of this caliber could not hunt him down. The only reason must be that his powers must have some downsides.

    You can't have everything and there must be some weakness that they could exploit when it comes to this person. Maybe something like a cooldown period? Or they could not use their powers for too long? Something like a weight limit? Or maybe a range issue?

    He did not know but he will figure it out. It was an assignment from both SHIELD and HYDRA. If they could harness this power on their side, well, let's just say that many people would die but HYDRA would rise, and with it, Peace.

    Now, all he had to do was orchestrate more and more crimes in the given circle so that he could eventually pinpoint the approximate location of the freak. The boys at the lab had cooked up software, to help him triangulate the possible locations based on an assumed range limit and possible encounters.

    The more crimes he stopped, the more data points they would have until eventually, they could track him.


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    • Chapter 13 : Bulletproof! (Well Kinda)
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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 13

    New York Sanctum Sanctorum [3rd February, 2007]

    –Ancient One–

    Hmm, this is a very peculiar situation, she thought to herself as she examined young Axle as he lay on his table, snoring peacefully until suddenly, his entire body started giving off blue fumes that seemed harmless as they dissipated into the atmosphere.

    As for how harmful they truly were. One would know by her reaction as she had leaned far away from the toxic blue fumes that Axle's body was intermittently emitting, at random intervals. Somehow, Axle had overused his powers, and that had caused some sort of reaction in his body that resulted in him falling unconscious and then his body emitting such toxic blue fumes.

    The blue fumes were not exactly fumes, more like energy in a mist form that naturally dissipated into the Astral Realm. The fumes were consolidated psionic energy that became so dense that it manifested into the real world before returning back to its natural form as part of the Astral Realm. The energy of the Astral Realm was inherently poisoning to the physical energy and as such, it was incredibly concerning that such energy was coming from Axle's body.

    From what she had been able to gather, Axle had intervened in an armed robbery that looked more like a military assault, and after presumably overusing his powers, found himself falling unconscious inside the New York Sanctum.

    Wong was the one who found him and was currently healing as well as he was the first to suffer from exposure to the strange blue energy that Axle just burped out once more.

    Her diagnostic spells were throwing out error after error, telling her contradicting information every single time she dispelled one and cast another one. She had no idea what was happening but the good news was that the amount of pure liquified Astral energy being emitted by Axle was reducing in quantity.

    First, his entire body gave off that energy and now, he was only burping out small quantities. Soon, she hoped, that he would have stopped burping the energy and returned to consciousness.

    She had some idea as to what was happening to him but no concrete conclusion could be given unless he woke up and she could scan him properly without all the psionic energy disrupting all her spells.

    The thing was that she could have very easily disrupted the flow of psionic energy inside his body but considering what Axle's powers were, she exercised caution and did not disturb that flow of energy. His powers were so intrinsically tied to his mind and soul that disturbing it at this crucial stage would be akin to killing or severely hurting him.

    Finding the person for whom such tremendous arrangements had been made was a stroke of luck, or rather, a stroke of luck that one of her future selves had in her timeline and that event was so significant that her future self chose to, despite all the risks associated with it, send that message back in time to her, jolting her out of her meditation.

    Never in a hundred years, she had thought that someone had expended that much energy to constrain someone who was not even strong enough to defeat her. Then, it came to her. She realised the wellspring of power and potential he held within.

    Somehow, this boy, in front of her, was holding together the psionic consciousness of something that was akin to an entire multiverse for her. She did not know how but she knew that the person in front of her would be the eventual lynchpin that would either make or break the universe as they knew it.

    Still, it was good that they found each other when he was still in the budding stages of his power. This way, she could make sure that he did not develop untoward tendencies and abuse his powers. It also helped him because he did not have to bumble his way around his powers anymore.

    Kamar Taj may have been primarily a sorcery-oriented organisation but that did not mean they did not have data on people wielding psionic energy like it was just another limb for them. Her predecessors had gotten into a lot of trouble with species from alternate dimensions and had religiously written everything down, for the perusal of any future Sorcerer Supremes.

    She had gone through them and she could count no less than 6 species who wielded psionic energy to devastating effect, just like Axle did. The only difference was that their energy was finite, limited. She had encountered one of their emissaries when he had come to Kamar Taj to renew the agreement with the current Sorcerer Supreme about the non-interference pact and she found them…lacking. Compared to Axle, whose mind felt like the sun, especially if she was observing him from the Astral Realm, the Onephemian emissary felt akin to a light bulb, even though both of them were roughly on the same level, as of now.

    She was sure that once Axle woke up from whatever was happening to him, he would be vastly stronger than he was before. His body did not show any negative signs and his mind, when observed from the Astral Realm, was a whirlwind of activity so dense it made her dizzy to even look at him.

    "Ugh…" Her gaze snapped to Axle as he burped out some more of that toxic energy and groaned, signalling his return to consciousness.

    She hurriedly cast another plethora of diagnostic spells and sighed in relief once she found that his body was not damaged in any way. She also paused as she found his body to be particularly hardy, almost as tough as a normal Asgardian foot soldier, which was a lot when compared to regular humans.

    She knew his powers had a physical enhancement component to them but she had expected it to be a minor one, not this. Now, with his body alone, he was capable of taking down a small squad of soldiers, he would just need the training for it.

    "Welcome back to the land of the living, Mr.Riddle. For a moment there, I thought that you would return to the Astral Realm," She said as she sat on her favourite chair and sipped on a cup of freshly brewed tea that she kept in stasis.

    "...Ugh, what hit me? No loud sounds please," Axle said as he sat upright and began rubbing his forehead, probably trying to stave off a headache.

    "Here, water," She offered.

    "Ugh, once again, too loud," Axle said but he took the glass of water and guzzled it down. In doing so, she saw the underside of his wrist, where some sort of mark was branded. It was only visible for a moment before it flashed blue and orange, then it disappeared.

    Hmm, something to check out later on. The curtain outside Manhattan also consisted of the exact same shade of orange so maybe it had something to do with that?


    __________xx_____

    "What is going on? What happened to me?" Axle said after he had finally gathered his bearings.

    One thing after another had left him very disoriented. He had first fought off HYDRA's goons and then found himself bleeding from his nose, which was only supposed to happen when he had overextended his powers and he had not done anything of the sort when he had used them but somehow, he found his body weakening by the second.

    It was a good thing the Sanctum was right around the corner from the cafe so he luckily managed to hobble his way in but then, he found himself unconscious and facing Wong who woke him up.

    But then, he fell unconscious once again and woke up in front of Ancient One with a killer headache and an aching body.

    "I am not sure exactly but it seems to be a byproduct of a natural evolution process of your powers. Congratulations, you now have the same physical abilities of a normal Asgardian."

    What? His gaze snapped to her and seeing that she was not kidding, back to his hands as he clenched them. He did not feel any different, aside from his vision being sharper and his senses being way too enhanced for his current state but nothing that would indicate him becoming bulletproof.

    Oh, this was going to be fun.

    But before that, he turned his senses outwards and gasped in astonishment as he found his effective range being more than double of what it was.

    At this rate, he would soon be able to cover the entirety of Manhattan, much sooner than expected. He tried to gauge his powers using a method that the Ancient One had devised for him. There was a relic in the Sanctum that had the only function of measuring the lifting strength of someone. In this case, him. It could only measure it in relativistic terms and as such, when he lifted it with all his strength, first off, a spike of pain ran through his head and secondly, the relic lit up with the number 2.

    Which meant that he had effectively doubled his capacity with his powers. That would mean that he was finally ready now.

    "I assume you would want more free time in your schedule now?" The Ancient One asked him and he gave her the most hopeful look at that. His hopes were shattered when she leveled a flat look at him and said,

    "Denied. If anything, your training will now include hand-to-hand combat as well…with me,"

    Oh god, anything but that. She was a slave driver on a whole other level. But it made sense because she was probably the only one in the Order who would have fought an Asgardian and lived to tell the tale.

    "Fiiineee," He groaned as he laid down on his bed again.

    "Rest for the day. We'll begin your training tomorrow," She said and left the room, the smell of tea still prevalent in the room.

    That was relaxing at first but now that he had been smelling the same thing for over a month, he was over it.

    He carefully spread out his awareness and tried to find out if Sitwell was still in the city but nope, he could not find any trace of him or his goons. Apparently, they were not in any of the police stations nearby so maybe they had been transferred or something.

    Either way, he had to take this more seriously now. HYDRA was looking for him and well, he was glad to find an opponent on whom he could go all out.

    After all, Nazis were not deserving of mercy, not in this world and not in his previous world.





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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 15

    Manhattan [August 2008]

    —Axle Riddle–

    Oh, he was so bored. He was done with all that Kamar Taj could teach him with respect to TK and Extra sensory 360-degree spatial awareness so they had promptly kicked him out of the New York Sanctum although he tried to bribe the Sanctum Master with free coffee and croissants from the cafe down the street to no avail.

    They had revoked not just his building access but also his WIFI access, wifi! Who does that? Even breakups would not have been this thorough in terms of shutting down all the bridges.

    Anywho, he was now back on the job market and was now employed by the company of a Master who lived permanently in Kamar Taj, or rather, the company his descendants ran.

    It was actually fairly successful in what they do, i.e, building rail lines. Somehow, a tiny Asian company had managed to gain a foothold and a decent market share in the rail-building industry of America.

    Apparently, the Master did not interfere much, aside from stopping any supernatural entity from interfering of course, but that was to be expected. He had just mentioned off-handedly when Master Wu had come to visit him, growing curious about the happenings as he heard from the Sanctum Master about his wondrous abilities, and voila! He had an appointment letter in his hand the next day.

    He was now the assistant deputy Digital Prophet of Wu Rail-Cons Pvt. Ltd. Now, that was a job title that was completely made up.

    He only had to go to the office two times a week to report to his superior, who was actually one of the many family members of the Wu joint family. His superior was very respectful and even reverent to him sometimes and as such, he could choose to report or not, to the office. When he does go to the office, however, he has his own personal cabin, with his personal bathroom and everything. All he had to do was sign a bunch of documents and send a couple of messages to all the team members at the location, completing his job for the day.

    Or, he could type in the messages for the next month or so, and not show up at all.

    It was awesome!

    It allowed him to concentrate more on his other civic duties, mainly maintaining deep surveillance over a million people who lived in his awareness radius and through a deep violation of their fundamental rights, stopping any crime that could happen to them, or from them. Once, he had stopped a crime from happening on both ends. Somebody tried to mug an Italian dude, not knowing that he was carrying three different guns on his person and was more than willing to shoot the poor mugger in the head without even flinching, as was evidenced by the two bullets that floated in front of the mugger's forehead.

    He had to knock both of them out to sort out the situation while cackling like a madman in his cabin. He got more than a few weird looks on his way out that day, especially since he was leaving the office during lunch hours.

    Ah, he loved his job. Plus, it was fun to stay in his air-conditioned cabin while doing his other job, thankless as it was. He also made sure to work on his side project with Chris but apparently, one of the club members had pointed out the legal hurdles they would have to cross to make that viable and upon finding out the time and money that would be involved in making sure that the road could be opened anytime soon, they had promptly given up on and he had also obliged, more than willing to make sure that nobody knew of the emergency evacuation space he had built under the city.

    You see, he had a plan. Using his abilities, which would grow considerably by 2012, he could rip out the upper sections of the streets to expose the way down to the highway, making sure that people were safe and secure from the bomb blasts. Even in the movies, they had people huddling down into the subway for protection from any stray blasts.

    Then, once the people were brought into the safe space, either by themselves or by him throwing them inside, he would close down the entry, cutting off Loki's access from civilian hostages.

    It would greatly benefit them as then, the Avengers could freely exert all of their powers in the city. He too, would be rest assured that even though he let something as horrible as that happen, at least he made sure that not many people became victims. Of course, he would try to ensure that nobody died but he was not God. He could not guarantee that, at all.

    Currently, he was sitting in his cabin and looking at the news while reclining on this ridiculously comfortable chair. He smiled upon hearing about the zero crime rates and thriving business in the city because of the new 24/7 business zone declaration. Apparently, the Mayor had gone all out and even had tours declared of the city, to see him in action.

    Of course, people being the curious bunch that they were, flocked in masses to see the Invisible Man in action.

    SHIELD allowed it because they wanted to catch him and having more opportunities to see his powers in action meant that they could create a more thorough way to deal with him.

    His smile dimmed as he realised that the crime syndicates had also figured out his trick. They now knew that he did not act beyond the borders of Manhattan. They did not know why but that had probably relieved them as they just shifted their base elsewhere. There had been intense gang wars as gangs found rival gangs encroaching and settling in their "territory" so to speak.

    Well, once the invasion happened, he would be more than free to deal with the scum of the highest order but he had a feeling that he would have to tone it down. There would be a massive uproar if it came to public knowledge that he was capable of conducting mass surveillance over an entire city and then acting on it, without anybody being able to hold him accountable.

    He might still use his powers for the worst of the crimes but for the most part, he would probably get a restraining order from the President or something, to tone down his activities.

    "Sir, your coffee," He looked up as the door opened and his beautiful PA walked in, a cup of hot coffee in her hands. The same coffee from the cafe down the New York Sanctum was brought to him from 4 blocks away. Ah, once again, how he loved his current job and life.

    The perks, the salary, and the existentially zero workload made it great but the Eye Candy made it even more attractive.

    "Careful, it's very hot," She said and smiled as she tucked her hair behind her ear.

    "Thank you, Helen," He smiled as he took the coffee and dismissed her, her smile dimming a bit for some reason.

    What? Just because he was her boss and she was the beautiful, young, curvaceous blonde secretary, he was not going to fool around with her. That would be the epitome of foolishness.

    Well, not in the office anyway, he smirked to himself as he drank the scalding hot coffee, his enhanced constitution making the probably second-degree burn marks into just a slight stinge.

    Oh yeah, Dear Helen had found herself being subjected to rigorous exercises in multiple positions, in his apartment of course. He was anything but professional in his conduct in the office. It was also made explicitly clear to Helen that he was not involved in her promotion whatsoever but that had not deterred the blond woman.

    After all that, if he had refused, well there might have even been allegations of not being straight then. He couldn't have that, could he?

    Anyway, aside from Helen and their regular exercise sessions, he had been busy with his other pursuits as well. Procuring enough food, water, and medical necessities for the evacuation zone underneath the city was a very challenging task because accumulating the supplies slowly was not the problem. The problem was making them last and making them accessible for the required people.

    The emergency support people would be transported by him personally and even if he couldn't do that himself, he would open up a couple of pathways that should ideally be protected and hidden, known only to the Captain who would then relay that information to the first responders, making his job even easier.

    Fresh air would be taken care of by the ends and the forced circulation systems he would eventually install, once he found some big enough to be useful in that scenario. Aside from that, once the Invasion started, he planned to create huge openings at both ends of the highway, and then personally protect those entry points.

    "This just in, Tony Stark's convoy in Afghanistan was attacked by rebel forces. As of this moment, his whereabouts are unknown. Please stay tuned as we…."

    He swivelled his chair to look at the TV on the side which showed Tony Stark's face.

    Well, he smirked to himself, It had begun then.


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    • Chapter 14 : RAH! A Super HIGHWAY!
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    • Author Note - Sorry for the mix up. I totally forgot to post this chapter and I just skipped to the 15th one. Teehee!
    Anywho, enjoy!

    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 14

    –Manhattan– [July 2008]

    "Thank you, Invisible Man," A little girl smiled cheerfully and waved at the sky as her balloon which had flown off was grabbed by something and brought back to her. The scenario might have looked unnatural to other people but for the people living in Manhattan, it was a daily occurrence.

    The "Invisible Man" as the news had taken to call him now, was someone who was nearly omnipresent on the island of Manhattan. Property rates had shot up everywhere, even in the historically worse-off areas of Manhattan as the presence of the Invisible Man was felt everywhere. Well-off people from across the city began moving to Manhattan in hopes of taking advantage of the safe environment that the Invisible Man had created.

    It was also primarily due to the sheer brutality that which the Invisible Man dealt with child offenders. Normally, if somebody crashed their cars or had a fight with each other, the Invisible Man would just pick them up, like unruly kids, and separate them, waiting for the police to sort it out. BUT, if it involved a kid, let's just say that the punishment deterred most criminals from even thinking of touching children in Manhattan.

    It has gotten so safe that people somehow leave their kids out in the open these days. Young moms walking with their children late at night with their families was a common occurrence. A scant few years back, the presence of robbers, muggers, and overall criminals would have scared any loving mother back into her home by the time it turned dark outside but now?

    Now due to the presence and security that the Invisible Man brought to the city, it was safer than ever to just take a walk in the city at night. Millionaires from across the city had taken their stuff and moved to Manhattan for the reason of safety and it had clearly paid off.

    Crime rates in Manhattan had fallen to near zero in the year that the Invisible Man had been active. Business was booming as the city had officially declared Manhattan to be a 24/7 business zone because of the way people were out and about at that hour anyway.

    Of course, it was not all hunky dory. The reduction in crime on Manhattan Island meant that the crime had to go somewhere else.

    For some bizarre reason, the Invisible Man cannot act outside the island of Manhattan. It had been extensively recorded by various social media handles when criminals managed to get out of the island and then commit a crime. Of course, that didn't work well because the Invisible Man just grabbed something that was inside Manhattan and then chucked it at the criminal, usually knocking him out.

    Officially, though, the Invisible Man was a criminal, for many many counts. Taking the law into their own hands, breach of privacy, destruction of private property, assault, and more. The man was charged with a litany of charges and yet, nobody could get a hold of him to actually arrest him and even if they did, how would they even go about arresting him?

    The man, or woman, or whoever he was, was capable of lifting semi trucks as if they were just paper cars and chucking them around. It had been very evident when multiple semis had blocked the freeway when he had just lifted the dozen different semis and placed them safely outside the gridlocked area.

    There had been multiple attempts by the authorities to find out who he really was, including multiple specialised teams from SHIELD as well as the US Military but every single one of them had to go home.

    But what did he have to worry about? He thought to himself as he read his newspaper sitting on a bench in Central Park as the sun had just begun setting. Something like this would have been impossible to think of a few years ago. But now? As he ate his bagel and read the newspaper peacefully, he could admit that if they truly ever did catch the Invisible Man, he would be the first in line to get him reduced.

    For he had his, J.Jonah Jameson's gratitude for saving his son from this city which only sought to take take take from him.

    _______xx_______

    –Axle Riddle–

    Hmm. J.Jonah Jameson was smirking at something but it was just empty in front of him. That was…creepy.

    He refocused his attention on the underground labyrinth he had dug out that began from one end of the island to the other. He had been in contact with a couple of engineering grads from NYU.

    Oh, yeah, he had finally figured out how to communicate over very long distances. It was something that had previously crossed his mind but it was simply not possible, with the powers he had at that time.

    You see, after he had fallen unconscious last year and woken up, he had found his powers, both physical and of the mind, having gone through a huge upgrade. His range had shot up to double of what it was previously and his body had become bulletproof, to an extent. He was no Luke Cage but normal pistols would no longer have the ability to puncture his skin, only leave a bruise and excruciating pain behind. Don't ask how he knew, he wasn't proud of that moment.

    That range extension also came with finer upgrades which allowed him to easily read the lips of people. He had then taken a course that allowed him to learn lip reading. The course itself was very basic but he had been able to pick it up and after plenty of practice, he was now able to communicate over long distances with ease.

    Coming to the point, he was collaborating with a bunch of Engineering grads to build something that would be very helpful for both the city as a whole and to the people who might want to use something to alleviate the traffic load in Manhattan.

    "Alright, IM, that's enough. If we go too far, we might just end up flooding the tunnel, again," Chris, the resident nerd, civil engineer major, said in his room as he looked at a real time 3D map of the subterranean levels of the city as he moved the earth along with it.

    Oh yeah, they were building a long highway under the city, with all the protections it might need. It also would have multiple entrances to the surface which people, hopefully, would use to evacuate the streets with haste as the Chitauri would descend on the city. As for how he met Chris?

    It was a few months ago, he was doing routine sweeps of the city to stop the small amount of crimes that did occur, when his attention was drawn to a young man, kneeling in front of an elaborate pattern, right in the middle of Central Park, at midnight.

    Now, with his presence, it was much safer but that was still no time to be out and about, especially, not the time to perform some kind of…ritual?

    He focused on him only to see him chanting "Invisible Man!" over and over again.

    He had been amused by the situation and focused on him, then moved over a small clump of dirt and then induced friction in them, making them glow red in the darkness of the park. He had then asked him what he was doing and then they had spent the entire night, communicating back and forth about Chris and his life.

    Apparently, he had lost a bet and was dared to bring the attention of the Invisible Man to their club. It was apparently a condition for him to join the "Cool" Highways and Bridges club in his department. Well, Academic pursuits and all, so he obliged and just lifted the man, along with the grass underneath him, and then floated him straight to his dorm room, where the people in the club were waiting for him.

    They had certainly not expected Chris to succeed, shocking them all into silence as Chris continued to look at them smugly, although the look's effect was diminished as Chris held on to the piece of land he was standing on, for dear life.

    Apparently, Chris was afraid of heights from that day onwards.

    They had gotten to talking all night and they had maintained healthy correspondence ever since. It was nice to have people to talk to…even though all the talking you did was through scribble words.

    Chris and his club were the one who proposed the entire thing and he was all too happy to help anyway.

    Ever since his powers exploded in power, he didn't need to expend as much energy to do the same things. Even the crime-stopping was now done almost subconsciously by him.

    So, there he was, digging a very large tunnel underneath the city, which would then be presented to the city by him and him alone. After all, he knew that SHIELD, HYDRA, and a number of other three-letter organisations were still out there, looking for him and he could not slip up, giving them an opportunity to blackmail.

    Only 4 more years and he would be….free.

    Ah, he couldn't wait.

    "Wait, wait! That was not the correct route. I have some adjustments." Chris exclaimed in his room.

    Sigh. Well, so much for the future engineers of this country.



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    • Chapter 16 : Buy the Dip Bro!
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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 16

    Manhattan [August 2008]

    –Axle Riddle–

    Well, this sucked.

    There was nothing he could do aside from waiting for Stark to come back from his imprisonment in Afghanistan and even then, he was not sure when Tony would start the construction of Stark Tower though considering the size of that building in the movies, realistically it should have begun by now. Of Course, there was no guarantee that people could not build such huge skyscrapers in less than 4 years in this universe. They did have access to vastly more advanced bullshit than they did in his home universe.

    Meanwhile, he continued to buy the dip in SI Stock, which would make for a good little nest for him once Tony returned triumphantly, escaping from the jaws of death by the skin of his teeth.

    Anywho, he had made multiple trips around Manhattan and had yet to find any building that looked like Stark Tower in the movies. So, it meant that Tony didn't just buy an existing building and repurpose it. No, that madlad did build his very own Tower Castle.

    In the meantime, he watched his portfolio go into red as he continued to buy Stark Industries' Stocks even as people continued to sell them in panic. This much was nothing, he planned on taking a loan from Master Wu, who was loaded apparently, to buy the stock once Tony returned and disbanded the weapons division. Oh, how the Stock would fall then.

    He was looking forward to it. Ah, this was such a rush, knowing that your money would grow even as people all around you sold their stocks.

    "Sir, are you sure?" He looked up from his phone at Helen as she sat on a chair in front of him, working on her tasks, which was nothing as far as he knew. Maybe something to do with scheduling his message deliveries?

    He didn't care much but after hearing her question, he smirked at her and replied, "Oh dear Helen, you don't have to take my word for it. All will be revealed once Stark returns from captivity,"

    "...Okay," She replied and went back to her laptop, humming cheerfully.

    In the back of his mind, he noted an uptick in crime but that happened in the evening anyway. It was currently 7 PM and he did not feel like going home today because the Air Conditioning was busted and he did not like that.

    Apparently, despite having a body that was vastly more suited for extreme temperatures was also very susceptible to falling into the throes of comfort. He could now much more easily identify the quality of a mattress, pillows, and blankets because of the increased sensitivity of his body. That meant that he had become extremely picky in terms of necessary items in his house. That meant that most of the joining bonus he had received from the company went up in flames once he found the correct luxury brand that would sell perfect quality bedding

    Anywho, the reason he was bored was because there was quite literally nothing to do. His range extension meant that there was little to no crime happening with him being active for half the day. The rest of the night was somewhat active but even then, once enough noise was made or if he got up to drink water in the night, all the crime in his surroundings was promptly crushed without even him trying.

    Somehow, the process of concentrating on areas, looking for crimes that are happening, stopping car accidents, and more had turned into a subconscious activity for his brain.

    He had a theory that continuous use of his powers had somehow evolved his brain, along with the episode back when he fell unconscious for three days and woke up with a chiseled muscled body that would not fall short when compared to a professional award-winning bodybuilder.

    Now, he had not gotten any medical testing done because, well, he was not that stupid, but he had a hunch that it was not just his body that had been improved. His brain must have been improved drastically to allow such a thing to happen.

    Oh, there you go, another car crash averted. Dumbass was watching something on his phone and failed to see the garbage truck in front of him. It was good he did that because not only would that have placed additional expense on the local budget, it would have totally destroyed the dumbass' car and potentially injured him severely. God, people were such fools, he thought to himself as he stopped the car and then bonked the man on the head.

    He was sure that he would call 911 himself to report the incident because he…just removed all of the wheels of his car and placed him there.

    Ah, yes, the trend of reporting his actions. Apparently, every single agency had gotten so desperate to track him down, that they had made the Mayor announce a reward. It was small for now. Even if somebody just saw his powers in action, they were to report that as well and would get a few dollars in exchange. Nothing life-changing but enough that people would just record anything they could and submit that grainy footage to the police who would write them a check.

    It was honestly…very stupid but it got people money so who was he to deny them?

    Ah, yes, SHIELD and HYDRA had struck the city multiple times, fake robbing in the case of SHIELD and real shootouts in the case of HYDRA but he had foiled their plans each and every time.

    He had taken precautions this time, unlike the last time when he just subdued the HYDRA personnel, this time, he just severed their tendons and pulverized their knee and shoulder joints, rendering them disabled or at least, unemployable for the foreseeable future.

    As for the SHIELD personnel, he had started communicating with them through the nearby debris and after heating them up so they would glow red, he always gave them the same messages, "NICE TRY FED!"

    Ah, the disappointment on their faces once they saw that was very satisfying to feel. He also did the same for their temporary bases in Manhattan, they had at least two hidden in the city, stocked to the brim with supplies, if their agents needed it or not. Their real HQ was probably outside of his range and even if it was not previously, they must have realised the limitations of his powers and moved it outside the island anyway.

    Ah, he was sure that most of them were now sure about his power limitations and would not be worried much about him, assuming that he was limited to the city for some reason. Of Course, they wouldn't stop searching for him. No, if he could not get out into a warzone to be used as a foot soldier, they could figure out how his powers worked and then try and replicate that on a soldier who would.

    Well, that was cute but even Hand, the immortal ninja cult could not make heads or tails about his powers, he had no hope in SHIELD or HYDRA, not that they would ever get their grubby hands on him.

    Speaking of HAND, he had killed Madam Gao three times now as she came to negotiate with him a safe passage for her goods to pass and distribute in his city.

    Well, it was safe to say that neither HAND nor any big criminal enterprise would be able to set up shop as long as he was in the city, which meant at least until 2012. Once the invasion happened, he would move out and start making moves, for his continued survival.

    Speaking of moves, what would they even be?

    He did not want to risk his body by injecting himself with untested or even tested serums. Wakanda's Heart Shaped Herb was the closest thing to a natural super soldier serum and he did not even want that. Not just because of Bast but because he was already much stronger than the Black Panther.

    Extremis could help. Instant regeneration, even when the person is unconscious, would help a lot but once again, untested technology.

    Plus, he was sure his powers would grow to reach the peak anyway but even then, he was unsure if it would be enough to stop Thanos. No, what he needed were allies.

    Powerful allies who would help in the fight against Thanos. Not the ones who would fight Thanos anyway.

    No, he needed to look for powerful people who would have otherwise not been in the fight against Thanos.

    Villains, misguided heroes, Villains made out of necessity and so many others, could have been put to greater use in the fight against Thanos and his forces if only the people in the know knew about Thanos and his crusade.

    Well, he knew so he would have to gather them. The most obvious would be the Inhumans.

    Not the Inhumans on the moon, those were still too powerful and well-organised for him to go after. No, he was thinking of the smaller Inhuman settlement in Asia.

    Jiaying would be one of the first to go obviously. Not just because of her mentality of killing humans and her past trauma but also because she would just incite her people against him and attack him. Also, her powers would not help her in any way since she needed physical contact to absorb the life force of people. He didn't know if her powers worked only on Inhumans or humans or even on any living being.

    Hmm, more information was necessary for the decision. Even if he did secure her cooperation, he would have to be careful because the woman was willing to kill her own daughter to advance her agenda, which would have resulted in pandemonium across the planet.

    What would happen if she absorbed the life force of vastly more powerful beings than herself? She had absorbed the life force of multiple Inhumans who willingly sacrificed themselves for her, brainwashed as they were but that only led to her maintaining her youth and nothing more.

    She might just explode if she tried to use her powers on Hulk or Thor, so no. She was not really useful and she would be infinitely more troublesome as a thorn in his path to secure powerful combatants. Even support-oriented powers like healing or teleportation would be more than useful in the fight against Thanos.

    The next best candidates were the Eternals but they would not lift their hands for something like this, well, not all of them anyway and the ones who would help would do so at the drop of a hat so he would approach them later on.

    That left him with….nothing. The MCU did not have many enclaves of enhanced people. He would have to work with what he had.

    "Sigh, so much work and no time to do it," He mumbled to himself, looking at the TV, channel surfing as he reclined on his chair, all alone in his cabin.



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    • Chapter 17 : BREAKING NEWS!
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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 17

    Manhattan [October 2008]

    –Axle Riddle–

    Welp, it's been three months now. On the date.

    Yet, still no news of Stark. Even most of the news channels had stopped reporting on his absence and he had all but been declared dead. The thing was that Stark was not just an ordinary Billionaire weapons manufacturer. If he had been, the government would have abandoned him and started dealing with the next snake that took his place.

    No, it was not Justin Hammer who was abducted by terrorists. No, it was Tony Stark. The one man capable of creating weaponry so fart ahead of the rest of the world that it was not even funny.

    So, until the government had definitive proof of him being dead, they would not stop looking. In that direction, they had taken multiple steps, foregoing most of the standard procedure in the process.

    Thus far, the news had leaked that they had destroyed over a dozen insurgent bases but had yet to find any intel on Stark. Probably killed many civilians in the process as well but for them, Stark was more important than the combined lives of civilians in that entire region, so they kept looking.

    It was probably this aggressive approach that led to the Ten Rings, well, the remnants of it anyway, going deeper into their hole and hiding from the military, at least until Tony built them the Jericho missile and once they extracted the know-how from him, they would dispose of the American and start the war anew with the forces stationed there.

    He did not know exactly where Tony was being kept and when he would break out of his imprisonment but he did remember that it was somewhere around the three months mark so he had been waiting. It had been 3 months and 3 days since Stark was kidnapped and so far, the SI Stock that he had been buying wholesale, had stopped dropping and had now stabilised, more or less, at the lowest valuation it had been in since Tony Stark took over.

    Master Wu had been hesitant to give him over 100 million dollars to bet on Tony Stark's return but after assuring him that Tony Stark would return and he had guaranteed intel, Master Wu relented. It would seem that he had pretty deep pockets considering he didn't have to think much or take more time to arrange that amount of money.

    He spoke to Master Wu yesterday and today he had the money, which he then promptly poured into the stock. Sure, he was nowhere near a majority shareholder but if he played his cards right, he might just get a meet-and-greet from the man himself.

    So far, all he had done was expand his range to the edge of his prison. Which had surely left the analysts at SHIELD scratching their heads as they looked for him. He was sure they must have had some outrageous ideas like interrogating everyone or looking for the blood samples for the entire population and they might just have been successful had the mayor not been cunning. He realised that Manhattan was currently the golden goose it was because of his existence.

    Otherwise, it would have been rich, sure, but also infested with crime, drugs, murders, gang wars, etc. Now though, it was as if every Billionaire and multi-hundred millionaire in New York lived in Manhattan, under the umbrella of his protection.

    Cops somehow sought transfers to Manhattan because they knew the workload would be less and the danger would be almost zero.

    Anywho, he was currently in his apartment, practising his powers. Not his TK, no, that was not the focus of his current exercise. Currently, he was practising his spatial awareness. He had recently crossed his range over the barrier that surrounded Manhattan in a meaningful way. Now, he could actually focus on the people and the objects there and affect them to a degree.

    He could not use his full strength beyond the curtain, obviously but he could use it to some degree. In the absence of overwhelming force, he had to get creative. Applying just enough force at the foot of a person to make them either stumble or outright fall on their face.

    Shove someone with enough force to push them a couple of steps ahead until they regain their balance or make them fall down immediately.

    Take hold of a small rock and then float it far above in the sky and then drop it so that it would gain high velocity when it impacts something, thereby increasing the damage.

    Sadly, he could not do much about the bullets or even knives as the force behind humans was too much for his powers to stop completely. Knives could be deflected and he could always apply the entirety of his available powers at the crotch of people to disarm them but that did not always work.

    He even had to resort to stashing tools in secure corners and then using them on thugs in his range. The news must have spread fast in the underground crime rings because after a few times, he had stopped crimes, gangs stopped coming to the edge of his range.

    From then on, he had worked on increasing his range, mainly because there was not much crime happening in Manhattan and the amount that was happening was being easily handled by his subconscious. It was ridiculous that the evolution of his powers led to a second "mind" of sorts that he could assign tasks to, even while he was asleep.

    So, now he was in charge of the protection of the city 24/7 and that..did not help one bit. The number of traumatic events he had witnessed were far beyond the norm.

    The amount of attempted murders, rapes, Overdoses, and much more had dropped drastically ever since he took over. He could not even imagine the scenario on the other islands.

    So, he had been hard at work, expanding his awareness range to the max. In the beginning, his awareness expanded very smoothly but once it crossed the curtain around the city, it crawled to a halt. It was as if it had turned into a very viscous fluid and moving it felt like a herculean task, if he was being honest with himself.

    Many times, he found himself bleeding from his nose but apparently, the boost he got to his body helped in that regard as well because, after weeks of trying and exerting both his mind and body, he no longer bled after overusing his powers.

    The good news was that the effects of trying so hard with his spatial awareness had paid dividends even inside the curtain of the city. Now, he could even predict if a portal was about to be opened in a certain area. His awareness, while still unable to penetrate the wards of the Sanctum, was now able to tell him that the Sanctum was present in that place and the wards did exist on that building.

    He could see the wordings but the meaning of them still eluded his mind. He had hoped to understand and maybe someday use the Mystic Arts but apparently, his body and soul were not exactly the ideal specimens for becoming a practitioner. Also, forcefully practising them might have hurt his original abilities and that was a big no-no.

    So, here he was, practising the only tool in his arsenal, hoping to bring them to greater heights so that one day, when his prison collapsed, he could go out and assemble the most badass backup for the Avengers once Thanos came knocking.

    ……

    …..

    …..

    "Breaking NEWS! Tony Stark has been found and rescued by the US Military. Details on his rescue have been scarce although the news has created waves in the financial markets, prompting analysts to update their predictions for Stark International's Stock prices.

    Stay tuned for more details."

    He smiled as his phone began ringing, probably from Master Wu's great-grandson who ran the company these days. They bet a 100 million dollars on this and now, now it was time to cash in.


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    • Chapter 18 : Key to my Fortune!
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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 18

    Manhattan [October 2008]

    –Axle Riddle–

    "How did you know?"

    He rolled his eyes as the CEO of the company asked him the same question for the umpteenth time. They were already up 16% on their profit in just a few days that it had taken Stark to be rescued from Afghanistan and him being cleared to come back on US soil.

    He wagered that there were quite a few nervous US generals, waiting to see if Stark had given sensitive information or worse, weapons technology, to the terrorists so he was probably held up in the interrogation.

    The other thing must be his overall health. Probably very dehydrated and starved, among other things as he was kept in that base for well over three months.

    "I just knew, Mr.Wu, and as I have repeated it a dozen times before, no, we will not exit at this time,"

    "What! Why?"

    Well, because it was going to tank even more but he was not going to say that to the man's face. The man was already pretty much depressed when he was told that pretty much the entire free fortune of the entire family was being pulled out of all their holdings and put into the falling stocks of Stark Industries on the word of a single person, who up until a few months ago, was a complete unknown to them. The same person was also getting a decent salary for doing essentially nothing.

    Anybody would be suspicious of this but alas, the word of Master Wu was final in their company and so, there they were, in the CEO's office who was trying to convince him to offload all of their stock from SI.

    "The things Tony will do in the future will eclipse all of his previous achievements. It will be beneficial for us to hold everything for the long term. Don't worry, I will explain my reasonings to Master Wu,"

    There, that clinched it. The man was about to object but the second Master Wu's name came in the concentration, his jaw clicked shut as he nodded with a strained smile.

    Somehow, Master Wu had maintained an ironclad control on the family and none of their members even went so far as to raise any question, even if Master Wu was taking such risky bets that their entire family fortune might just be lost in that bet.

    "Well, I have work to do. I'll see you when Stark does his first interview,"

    Saying so, he turned out and headed straight out of the office. He was craving an iced coffee and thanks to his powers, he didn't have to save for pesky things like a down payment for the house or a car payment. No, that might eat into the things that he actually liked, like drinking coffee, eating fancy (good) food, and generally doing as his heart pleased.

    Of course, looking at the orange curtain surrounding the city, his mood soured a bit because that limited his ideal life to only a small island but he tried to uplift himself by reminding himself that it could have been far worse.

    He could have been stuck on an uninhabited island, doomed not to have human contact until the set period was up. Or be stuck someplace where modern amenities were absent. WIthout human contact, he might have really gone insane, and thinking about someone going insane with his powerset was enough to make even him shudder.

    No, this was for the better. He was stuck sure, but on an island that had all the amenities he could think of, at a place that was sure to have some of the world's most influential people originate from.

    Well, one of the legendary heroes that would emerge from New York would be Spider-Man, Peter Parker. Sure, it was still almost a decade before Spider-Man would show up in the original timeline so he must still be a toddler at best but he was excited even now for him to turn up.

    Hah, things had gotten so boring recently. Even his training to expand his spatial awareness reach had hit somewhat of a roadblock after extending barely a mile out of Manhattan.

    The force he could exert outside his sphere of influence was less than even 200 pounds at the edge of his range. Now, that was still enough for him to stop crimes using increasingly creative ways but when it was a car crash involving cars going above the speed limit, the best he could do was cushion the blow for the passengers, and even then, it was not enough as the whiplash was enough to break their necks, spines or other bones, leaving them either crippled or dead.

    Those were the worst as he had to deal with not just them being injured on his watch but also taking them out of the wreckage of cars that could go up in flames at any point in time.

    Now, it was the weekend and he hoped that Tony would come back to the States to give that damned interview so they could buy up even more of SI stock. Apparently, there were more old fossils in Kamar Taj whose families had proposed beyond the norm, making immense wealth for their families.

    Master Wu was also somewhat of a tattle mouth, as he had informed his group of old fogies that he had increased their fortune in a matter of months and he had predicted the future when it came to Stark's rescue, something that only the Ancient One could do.

    That ability, the ability to peer into a possible future, more than anything made them come running after his ass, all trying to get a piece of the action. Apparently, the old fogies were plenty powerful but had retired because the Ancient One was so much more powerful than the threats that usually arrived on the planet. Nowadays, all they were useful for was the opportunity to find a talented junior and then impart all their knowledge to him.

    They didn't even do that. All they did was hole up in their cave up in the Himalayas and wait for their deaths while looking for interesting stories. Apparently, there was a graveyard shift to clean that cave that was thrust upon whoever was the newbie at that point in time and that young apprentice was accosted by dozens of old powerful fogies capable of bending reality to their will, and forced to tell them the tales of the outside world.

    It all sounded pretty hunky dory to him but apparently, the old fogies were not exactly living up in the caves voluntarily. Apparently, before the time he came into Kamar Taj, there used to be a council of Masters, that was responsible for appointing new Sanctum Masters, as well as supervising the orders of the Sorcerer Supreme. While the role's name suggested that they had free reign over Kamar Taj, Agamotto had predicted that and made the Master Council to balance their powers.

    The Master Council could also question the Sorcerer Supreme about their actions and decisions and they were bound to answer to them, provided they were not in a state of active war.

    The thing was that before the Ancient One's reign, which was the longest recorded one, Kamar Taj used to always be in a state of emergency, and as such, the Master Council had never gotten the chance to flaunt their authority.

    Ancient One, with her seeming immortality, changed that. Nowadays, most of the extradimensional threats knew that Earth was guarded by a human who was unaging, and unchanging for centuries. So the attacks had abated a bit but never stopped.

    He was sure they were just waiting for her to kick the bucket before sending in the heavy hitters. That meant that for the first time in millennia, Kamar Taj was in a state of prolonged peace.

    This meant that the Master Council could finally focus on things other than fighting constantly and that led to them discovering their powers. They then, in their infinite wisdom, decided to question the Ancient ONe on her decisions.

    While the Ancient One must have humoured them at first but the moment they started questioning her about her immortality, she shut them down. Hard.

    They tried to protest but apparently, she was not nearly as patient with them as she was with Stephen Strange in the future. He was the epitome of assholeness and yet, she made a proper Sorcerer Supreme out of him.

    That was how the exiled Master Council approached him and offered to give him almost 2 billion dollars to invest as he pleased and he was not going to let that opportunity go. After all, after intense negotiations, conducted remotely, they had finalised a 5% commission on their overall profits, which was….huge.

    It was to the tune of almost a hundred million if he played his cards correctly, that is.

    Also, it might just be beneficial for him and the Masters to just leave that money as is and influence the workings of Stark Industries. He, for one, would immediately push for an aggressive approach when it came to clean energy from the Arc Reactor.

    In the movie timeline, Tony did not push Arc Reactor as much as he should have, probably because of the still strong influence of Big Oil and Coal companies from the United States.

    Leaving that aside, he shut down that process of thought and focused on his powers as he opened the door to his apartment and lit it up.

    He smiled in exhaustion as he looked at the brightly lit, very well-furnished, cozy but…lonely apartment of his.

    "Ha, well, so much for the glamorous life of a superhero. When will it be my turn?" He mused to himself as the groceries put themselves into their place as his body seemingly floated straight to the bathtub, his clothes removed by his powers, the bathwater already at the optimal temperature with all the bath salts in it.

    He looked at the awaiting bath with so much love as his form was slowly dropped into the bathtub.

    "Ah, I hope someone loves me as much as I love this bathtub right now," He closed his eyes in satisfaction as the exhaustion just melted away.

    God, life is good right now. It could be better, but it was good right now.

    Now, if only 2012 came quicker.


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    • Chapter 19 : The Weak Link
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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 19

    Seattle [October 2008]

    –Chris Turner–

    Whistling, he entered his bedroom, ready to have the nap of his lifetime, especially after his social battery was drained by his best friends whom he hadn't met in forever, after moving to NYU for his studies.

    "Ah, that's the stuff," he sighed in contentment as the warm water in the bathtub soothed away the tension in his body. Ah, he loved his best friends but it was sometimes so draining to be with them all day.

    He always feels the same way every time. The first few days after coming home are a whirlwind as he meets with every single friend, family friend, relative, extended family, and so on and so forth. Then, he gets the time to hang out with his old school friends and reminisce about simpler times, all the while getting drunk out of their minds and driving around town with no destination in mind.

    Those two events happened exclusively to each other, of course. He did not want another lecture from the Invisible Man about the responsibilities of youth.

    Huh. Invisible Man. What a dumb name, he snickered to himself but then he burped.

    Ah, too much soda then.

    Honestly, he loved the Invisible Man, not in that way, but the way he was so approachable. He had never thought that doing that stupid dare would lead to him coming into contact with a superhero.

    Because that's who he was— a superhero. Invisible Man had probably already saved thousands of lives and must be in the process of saving even more, as he soaked in the bathtub.

    It helped that they had some outrageous ideas that the Invisible Man could test, all at the cost of zero dollars. Their underground highway plan didn't work out because, well for one, the subway already existed. Secondly, the road was built by a mysterious person capable of moving matter with a thought. No matter how strong it was, it would never pass any audit of the government, forever entangling that project in red tape.

    Oh yeah, the Invisible Man naming scheme was stupid because it was not an Invisible Man who did the work manually. No, they had seen with their own eyes the proof for that. A crime being stopped halfway across the city at the same time as he was interacting with them using the scribble letters that they had bought for him.

    And the scale at which he operated was mind-boggling as well. Raw power combined with impeccable control, what a nightmarish combination, for his enemies that is.

    For someone like him who had always dreamed of building huge structures with his own hands, starting with the treehouse in his backyard, well those powers would have been a dream come true.

    Although, he was not sure if he could handle the burden of all of that. Having that much power and using that, not for personal benefit (that he knew of) but for the welfare of the society spoke to the Invisible Man's morals.

    Well, he wouldn't lie and say that the thought of opening up about his powers to the rest of the world, confident in his abilities to stop anybody from harming him, and then becoming the most sought after bachelor for every single hot girl in the city, had never crossed his mind or dreams, but that was what every red-blooded late teen thought of anyway.

    Okay, that was enough time in the bathtub, he thought to himself as he dried himself up and entered his PJs.

    "Ah, so comfy," Somehow, the PJs he left at home, despite them being years old, were more comfortable than the vastly more expensive ones that he brought into the city.

    "I am afraid that your comfortable session with your bed might be delayed a bit. I am truly sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause you,"

    He froze in his tracks and mechanically turned his neck in the direction of the voice and found his voice stuck in his throat as the most stereotypical of suits sat on his chair in front of the door, right beside his closet.

    "Uh–Eh?" Chris.exe had stopped working.

    "Um, who are you? What do you want?" He stammered out as he looked out of the window and was relieved to see that there was not a squad of armed suits waiting outside his home, ready to take him to some black site, from where he would never hear of, ever again.

    "Well, Mr.Chris Turner, I am Agent Coulson from the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division and I have some questions that I am sure you have the answers to," The man said with the most genial smile on his face but at that moment, it looked more like the devil's smile to him.

    "Uh, yeah, sure," He stammered out as he sat on the bed, facing the scary agent.

    He didn't look all that muscular or anything but somehow, that only added to his intimidating stature.

    "So, I am sure you know what this is about but let me refresh your memory. It is about the Invisible Man. We have credible intel that you and your friends have been in contact with him for an extended period of time, months if I am not wrong?" The suit man rattled off as he started reading through a stack of powers he had brought with him.

    "Uh–yeah but look, we haven't done anything wrong. I have rights, you can't just make me disappear. The Invisible Man will know and he will come to find–"

    "Stop Stop. Let me stop you right there. We are not here to make you disappear, as you put it. Besides, if we did want to kidnap you, we would not be having this conversation in the comfort of your home,"

    "Ehh," He let out a muffled scream, NOT like a little girl.

    "Now, we have suspicions that the Invisible Man is practically omnipresent in the city of Manhattan and the surrounding areas as well. You are the only one of the group who lived so far away, across the country actually, so you are the only one we can ask about him."

    So that's why they were targeting him. Well, the decision to get away from his family and enroll in the farthest possible good school had backfired on him in an utterly unexpected spectacular way.

    "Y-You are right in that. He knows everything that happens in the city, at all times. It is like he is everywhere at once," He admitted out loud. He was surprised by that move. He never thought he would betray the Invisible Man's trust but fear was a healthy motivator. But even then…

    "Look, I will say it upfront. I do now know who he really is or if it is even a "he". What I do know is that he is very powerful but he does not use that power for bad purposes. We did communicate over long distances but that was limited to academic purposes. It all began with a stupid dare but then he became interested in our stupid projects and to us, he was the only shot at bringing out ideas into reality so we just told him where and when to do stuff and he did it. At first, I was really surprised and scared as well because…"

    He continued to rattle on, unheeding of the fact that the suit man had snapped his fingers, which caused another suit person to come in and point a camera at him, and then even after that, they started taking notes.

    He sweated as he somehow began babbling on and on about everything despite the suit man not asking him anything more than the bare minimum.

    God, he was such a wuss.


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    • Chapter 20 : Son of Coul
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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 20

    Seattle [October 2008]

    –Phil Coulson–

    "That will be all, Mr.Turner. If we have any more questions, we'll be sure to contact you during your stay here. Also, if you remember something that you might want to inform us of, call this number. Have a Good Day, Mr.Turner, and stay out of trouble," Saying so, he handed Chris his card and turned around, and left the house, his agents following behind.

    God, today had been such a rollercoaster ride that he did not know what to think about.

    Everybody, from the janitor at the Triskelion who only spoke Russian, to the World Security Council, knew about the Invisible Man as the media had dubbed the mystery savior of Manhattan. Of course, SHIELD was worried about the implications of such a powerful enhanced roaming free in the world, doing as he pleased but seeing that he was on the side of good right now, they had backed off.

    Backed off, in the sense of overt legal moves. Their agents continued to monitor every single aspect of Manhattan and the way the man's powers worked. They were prudent in their caution because imagining someone capable of crushing a car to bits and rescuing a cat from a tree at the same time was bone-chilling.

    If he was that worried, imagine the state of Director Fury. He was very much fuming because, apparently, they had found a single link in all the time that the Invisible Man had operated in Manhattan but they could not actually approach the link in any meaningful way.

    Why? Because the link was a small group of civil engineering students playing a club at their university who happened to be acquaintances of the Invisible Man, so much so that they had regular conversations with him, not face to face of course but through clever use of his powers.

    Unfortunately, Manhattan was, for them at least, the Invisible Man's fief, and going there with hostile intent was a surefire way of getting knocked out and waking up in police custody. Things had evolved to such a level that even the Mayor and NYPD Commissioner would refuse to lift their hand against him.

    The reasons were twofold. The 24-hour Business zone instated in Manhattan that brought in so much revenue that it practically dwarfed all other Boroughs combined and secondly, the vastly safer working environment that he had created for any emergency services.

    The Boys in Blue would most likely defend the Invisible Man because of the sheer deterrence he represented. Gangs now avoided Manhattan and its surrounding areas like the plague and the men in blue were very grateful for that.

    Of course, in the short term, all that criminal activity had to go somewhere, so the gangs had begun intruding on other gangs' territories, and shootouts and gang wars had increased a bit but going by SHIELD analysts' words, it was just a temporary uptick and things would soon turn to normal.

    So, interrogating, even a softer subtler one, would have been very risky to do in Manhattan, no matter how hard they tried to figure out ways to block his sight. They had tried everything, from lead to copper, to high energy frequency blocking to plain old jammers. Nothing seemed to work and it was clear that without having direct access to the enhanced himself, they would not be able to create a countermeasure for him.

    So, they had to resort to this. A fully paid-for vacation for both his parents that made sure that his parents were out of town and a fully paid-for trip home from a competition they ran at his university.

    Of course, they would not be able to make him "disappear" as Mr.Turner put it so aptly because that would just antagonise the most powerful enhanced they had ever encountered.

    As far as he knew, nothing, aside from that one person he met in the 90s, could beat him and even she would have a hard time considering her specialty was just punching through things, and as far as anybody knew, there was nothing to punch.

    They had been laser-focused on Manhattan for the better part of a year now and they had figured out nothing. No energy signature that would indicate activation of enhanced powers. Nothing.

    There should have been something but it was as if they were blind to it. Better sensors, better satellites, better computers, they tried it all. But still, they were as blind as they were in the beginning.

    It was as if the man had an Invisible hold on the city, and was capable of processing that vast amount of information and acting on it, in real-time. He didn't understand how the hundreds of rich people who had now taken residence in the city did so without caring about their privacy that much.

    Essentially, the man was everywhere and yet nowhere to be seen.

    The only thing they were able to find was that while the man himself was very strong, he was not really that smart or he was just playing around with a bunch of grad students.

    After all, who would make an island-spanning highway underneath the island, deeper even than the subway, just because a bunch of students suggested that it might relieve the traffic situation?

    Yeah, as if they needed one more lane to reduce traffic. Like that has ever worked out for anyone anywhere, ever.

    But they had sent a couple of drones after digging in a way and what they found had boggled their analysts' minds. That discovery was part of the reason they were ordered not to make any overt moves with respect to him.

    He had seen the footage and the terrifying fact was that he knew that all of it was done solely by that man. There was no indication anywhere that any type of tool was used to make that tunnel, not that he could do so without it coming to their attention.

    They had gone through the plans of the students and seen that the tunnel was built to scale, very accurately. The amount of earth moved for that project while also maintaining the integrity of the tunnel at the same time…the numbers alone made it so that Director Fury himself forbade anyone from approaching him at all.

    Then, he had appointed him to interrogate the student to see if they could find any new information that they didn't already have from their hacked devices. It was seriously getting easier and easier to spy on people without even assigning people to them.

    Just turn on the mic, assign a few keywords, and then voila, you have a mass surveillance system ready at your fingertips.

    From Chris, they had confirmed what they already knew. The Invisible Man's range extended beyond the island of Manhattan, that was certain but, the way in which he exerted his influence mattered a lot.

    See, on the island of Manhattan, the Invisible Man was like a god. He could perform a dozen different things, all at once, without stuttering. He could stop bullets, asphyxiate fires, hold entire houses together, lift trucks, etc.

    Outside the boundary of Manhattan, however, was where things got a little interesting. They had noticed that his power did not extend very far out of Manhattan but enough to cover all of its periphery. Whereas inside Manhattan, the Invisible Man used enough brute force to shame even Captain America in terms of power, outside Manhattan, he used creativity to solve the problems.

    In Manhattan, he used his powers to just float any cars that were about to crash and then after bleeding their inertia, deposited them back on the ground. Outside Manhattan however, he could not do much in terms of a car crash aside from taking control of the steering and trying to take it away safely.

    Same when it came to apprehending criminals. Brute force knockout or just dropping heavy things on just the right stop to knock them out.

    He had power, in spades, that much they knew but building that tunnel and manipulating something as small as Scrabble from far away distances meant that he had impeccable control as well.

    That type of expertise doesn't just come automatically. From all their research on the enhanced people, they knew that powers were just like another skill that you had access to. It was unique and tied to you, nobody aside from you could learn it, but it was just something that people needed to practice to get better at.

    Somebody had practiced with their powers, likely for years on end, to reach this level of skill with their innate powers. He knew that having stronger powers meant a loss of control, at least in the initial stage.

    Weaker powers were just easier to control.

    Thinking of the tunnel, this person had probably been going at his powers for a decade, there is no other explanation for it. Well, aside from him having this level of proficiency instantly which was just impossible, even in the messed up logic of Enhanced people.

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    • Chapter 21 : Brucie seeks Refuge!
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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 21

    Triskelion [November 2008]

    –Phil Coulson–

    He was wrong.

    The Invisible Man was not the strongest person on the planet, not now. Not by a long shot. Watching as the Hulk grew bigger with each new gamma radiation spike, along with an increased ability to smash things and throw stuff, he was forced to eat his previous words.

    The Invisible Man might be able to exert force over a large area with astonishing precision but the Hulk? The Hulk was a whole other force of nature.

    He could somehow punch and create sonic booms in the aftermath, leaving behind just broken bodies and vehicles.

    "...Um, Director? Is it just me or should we stop General Ross from making this even more of a mess?" He couldn't help asking the Director as they watched the paperwork pile up on the screen, showing the sheer amount of government resources that the, in his opinion, Mad General was about to use and waste on a cross-country hunt because he could not get a hint and was salty about his daughter getting a boyfriend.

    Well, those were his private thoughts and not something that could be proven in a court of law but he was pretty sure that had it been anybody other than Bruce Banner who had become that hulking green monstrosity, the obsession that General Ross had, would have been much more…tamed.

    "...Sir? Aren't we going to do anything? Banner clearly seems to be headed to Manhattan. Are we not worried about two very powerful forces meeting there?" He voiced his concerns as they looked at a series of reports that showed Bruce's destination. Sure, he tried to throw people off by booking a bunch of tickets going the other way and then travelling to Manhattan on foot or on public transport but to their legion of SHIELD analysts, it was easy work to figure out that Banner would seek the safety of the Invisible Man long before he tried to flee the country.

    "...Hmm?' The Director said as he came out of his introspection and then, after taking a look at him, looked at the screen that showed the prediction reports and just pressed the delete button.

    What?

    The confusion must have been very evident on his face as the Director chuckled, "We never knew that Banner was headed to Manhattan, Coulson. If we knew, we would have been obligated to stop him before he reached such a sensitive zone but oh well, we had no idea and thus, were unsuccessful in stopping Banner, a declared fugitive, from entering a safe zone,"

    The smirk on Director Fury's face was very disconcerting. Even for him.

    "...I see," He was nothing if not adaptable to such changes in the situation. That was probably for the best anyway because imagining the lives lost in an altercation with the Hulk was not encouraging plus the invisible man maintained an ironclad hold on the city and if the Hulk started rampaging out, he could just…pick him up and throw him in the river to cool down.

    They did not know the upper limits of both the Invisible Man and the Hulk but the way his powers worked, the Invisible Man was uniquely positioned to contain the Hulk with ease, or rather, transport him out of the city such that no large-scale damage occurred to the city, something that General Ross could not boast about.

    "Should I head out to the city HQ then? In preparation for a visit by General Ross himself?"

    He received a deadpan stare in exchange for his question and then nodded to himself, receiving his answer. He then promptly turned on his heel to leave Director Fury's office.

    "..Coulson," He stopped at Director Fury's words, "Take the STRIKE team, you might need them,"

    His words made him raise an eyebrow but additional firepower never hurt anyone….unless somebody used it.

    "Very well," He muttered and stepped out, somewhat cautious of the General now that DIrector Fury gave him the supposedly best ops team of SHIELD. Maybe the General was even more crazy than he had given him credit for?

    Only time will tell, he thought to himself as he prepared himself for a long assignment.

    Manhattan [November 2008]

    –Bruce Banner (THE HULK)--

    His heart pounded as he covered himself in a grey hoodie, wearing sunglasses as he kept looking at the roads in a bid to calm his hammering heart.

    Fat load of good that did when he saw police cars at every fucking intersection. His hands were bone white as he clenched them after every single turn of the bus, his heart rate shooting up as flashes of green intermingled with his normal vision.

    He tried, he tried really hard to just..not become him but the first chance he gets, he gets out immediately, and rather violently at that. It was not something he could control and yet, he was foolish on his way to a residential area with a major civilian population.

    Ideally, he would have left the country and settled in some remote part of Canada, that is, until Ross would have eventually tracked him down and then he would have had to move again, after…killing those soldiers.

    God, it made him retch anytime he thought of the casualties that came from his hand. The people he killed, were people who were just following orders, who had families at home waiting for them.

    And for what? Just so Ross could cage him back and then use him to make an army of the same monster he had become.

    No.

    He will not become a tool for the Army and yet, he knew what fate awaited him if he did become a recluse somewhere in a remote corner of the world. No human contact? No research? No way to figure out how to remove the monster from him, allowing him to live a semblance of a normal life?

    No, he cannot accept that. And that is why, he is going to the one place that housed a monster beyond even the one that was within him.

    Someone who possessed powers beyond even him and yet, used them in a safe controlled manner to help people, without ever having to worry about people hunting him down. It helped that should he ever turn into that monster permanently, the Invisible Man, as the media dubbed him, was the best chance he would have of getting out of the city in a non-violent manner and then being imprisoned later on.

    He had also heard that the Invisible Man helps everyone and even sometimes listens in on people's conversation if his name is called out. He couldn't even begin to imagine the processing power required to be essentially omnipresent in a city with almost a million people living in that space, but he also could not understand how he turned himself into that 10-foot monstrosity.

    So, there he was, waiting for the bus to cross the bridge and finally enter Manhattan, the promised land of New York City.

    The entire time, his body was on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop but as soon as they entered Manhattan, his entire body went limp, as if the strings holding it fell apart.

    He must have looked very weird to passersby and originally, his anxiety would have shot up but he didn't exactly care much now. Not with him finally being in a safe space, away from The Military, away from Ross, and even away from…..Betty.

    Oh god, Betty! She must be so worried but he couldn't contact her, not with her father looking for him.

    He sighed and rubbed his face, getting off the bus and looking at the hustle and bustle on the streets.

    It seemed like a different world to him. People minding their business, not even arguing or making loud noises.

    Cars running in an orderly manner, even without the constant presence of the NYPD to deter them from breaking any laws.

    After all, the Invisible Man was the law here, and breaking his law meant that the punishment was just as inevitable as it was swift.

    "E=Excuse me, can you tell me where the congregation of Problems, happens?" He asked an old lady passing by, a much safer option to talk to, because they were very detached from the news, statistically.

    "Oh, you must be new in the city then. It happens by the park. You'll see when you get there, it is impossible to miss. Bye now, dear," The very helpful lady pointed out and then he set out, on foot, because he could.

    He could finally remain out in the open without the threat of some sniper trying to shoot his head off because that hadn't been tried a hundred times by the soldiers who were killed by the monster in him.

    No Ross, No Military, and no monster to worry about.

    Ah, he could live here forever, even if he had to be homeless for it. After all, he could forget ever using any of his bank accounts, considering he must already be a declared fugitive with his assets frozen.

    Even if he did miraculously find them functioning, it would just be a ruse to track him down.

    No, he would first have a talk with the Invisible Man, be honest and open about his problems, and then…see what happens.

    See, he had a plan but that plan only went as far as to enter Manhattan without being captured.

    He could only hope that he was accepted into the city, being the massive security risk that he was. He literally had no other options and he had already exhausted his cash reserves for booking a couple of flight and train tickets to try to throw the Military off his trail.

    That should have bought him at least a couple of days.

    Now, where was the congregation? He had an Invisible Person to talk to.

    Oh, he knew that the invisible Man was no deity and he himself confirmed as such using his powers but the people needed something to rationalise his existence.

    The existence of someone so far above them that it made them…not human.

    He knew that feeling.


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    • Chapter 22 : The One With the Cult!
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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 22

    Manhattan [November 2008]

    –Axle Riddle–

    Ah, this was so frustrating, he thought to himself as he angrily munched on the most delicious sandwich he could find, drawing looks from the passersby, not that he cared one bit about them.

    He had recently learned about something concerning. It was a cult named the Congregation of Problems.

    Ah! What a corny name. It was something of a cult that gathered around a set location in Central Park. Even the Mayor had tacitly agreed, leaving them alone despite them creating a huge ruckus every single day.

    The premise was that people had noticed that he would listen in on people's conversations if he was called enough times. Now that was simply not true.

    His second brain, as he had taken to call it now, was scanning the entirety of the city and the people at all times which meant that whenever there was an issue happening that needed his attention, his name automatically came to people's mouths. Coincidentally that issue also immediately catches his attention so that he can solve it post haste.

    Now, people somehow got the idea from that, that if they gathered in a specific spot and narrated their problems, he would listen and respond, by solving their problems for them. As if he was their god and they were his believers, for whom he was obligated to solve some of their pains.

    Obviously, he had rejected the earlier claims of that being his official church and him being a god, rather Violently at that but…

    But people could not rationalise his existence without liking him as something like either a god or a devil. Somehow, he had surpassed the realm of humans in the minds of the vast majority of people and that was how the Congregation of Problems came to be.

    People came, people narrated their problems, and he scratched his metaphorical brain, as to how to convince those people that he could not make his girlfriend or boyfriend to come take him back. His powers did not work like that.

    That was how it had been happening for the past two weeks. Then the worst thing happened at one of the early morning congregations when an elderly gentleman collapsed while taking his grandson out for a walk.

    He had been focused on the congregation when he sensed that happening so he immediately flagged the location to the nearby 911 call centre.

    Oh yeah, they had come up with a creative system for him to warn the authorities for emergency services at whatever location he wanted to call them to, without him exposing anything of note at all. They had installed a giant life-sized model of Manhattan in a call centre nearby.

    Then all he had to do was concentrate on the model and then pin the specific location and the pins were of different make as well. He had then pinned the location with the ambulance model and set about trying to keep that grandpa alive.

    With his limited knowledge, he saw that the grandpa's heart had stopped beating somehow, and not knowing what to do in that situation, he had just manually made it beat. That was apparently the right thing to do because, after a few moments of him doing it manually, the heart began doing it automatically.

    The pained breathing attempts also stopped but he kept watch on the grandpa until the medics arrived and wheeled him away. He had resisted the urge to just move the grandpa straight to the hospital because he had seen the ambulance charges that hospitals charge to patients but the grandpa was wearing a Rolex and diamond rings so he let them go as the paramedics were more knowledgeable than him in that regard.

    Now, that incident was averted and that old man woke up to live another day, he had checked, but the thing was that the entire thing was observed by the cult that had begun harassing him. It didn't help matters that the paramedic was far too chatty for her own good and just blurted out the system he had negotiated with the city administration to better get emergency services to places they needed to be.

    So far, he has saved over 30 different people from strokes, heart attacks, and concussions in he either took them straight to the hospital or brought the paramedics to them, depending on the severity and his know-how. He had to resort to reading elementary medicine books to learn how to keep people alive until help arrived, which was thankfully, not far away, and even if it was, he just lifted the entire ambulance and brought them straight to his location.

    Ironically, one of the drivers just fainted and he had to check in on him as well, to see if he too had a heart attack due to the sudden change of transport lane.

    Anywho, that act of saving someone cemented this idea in the brains of the people looking to him for support, that he was some sort of being higher up on the chain than humans. That had been a particularly hard pill to swallow.

    He was very wary of something like that blowing up out of proportion, complicating things even further. Religion was something that was always a very sensitive and personal issue and that was something he was not going to touch with a ten-foot pole made up of pure Vibranium.

    No, sir.

    He was just here to grow strong, save his skin, save a couple of people along the way, and then retire to a nice countryside farm where nobody knew him. That's the dream.

    He tried to shut that thing down without hurting people's feelings by complaining to the Mayor about the public nuisance they were creating and as it turns out, the Mayor was totally on board with anything that could create tourism, as if there was any dearth of those.

    The Mayor was a capitalist buffoon and he could not be blamed for that. It was bringing in good revenue for the city but it felt….wrong. To take advantage of people who he would have helped anyway.

    Since he could not turn those people away and he was indirectly bringing in a ton of revenue for the city, he had made a deal with the Mayor.

    He had always felt the hunger and diseased state of the homeless population of the city. It was a problem but also a symptom of a much larger problem that could not be tackled at just a city level so, he had always hoped to at least reduce their pain and do something so that they get the adequate care that they so direly needed.

    So, as part of the deal made with the Mayor, six kitchens, all on the periphery of Manhattan, since the real estate here had become so expensive, were established to cater to the poor. Completely free, 24/7, open all year round, serving hot food to anybody who would come.

    Also offering basic medicine along with primary care sponsored by something that had funds "donated" from the various illicit businesses that still happened around the city.

    See, he had made sure that hard drugs like cocaine were completely eradicated from the city. He had made sure to remember the texture and looks of it on a nanoscale, allowing his second brain to automatically filter that out. But he had let drugs that appeared in nature continue to appear in the city.

    So, things like weed, alcohol, and cigarettes were still commonplace. Of course, that didn't mean that he would allow rampant distribution of that as well. And obviously, the first sign of violence would have all the parties violently ejected from the city and straight into police custody.

    Sometimes, it meant that rich people were stopped right in their tracks, as they sometimes carried hard drugs. He had to actively train his second brain to distinguish between drugs in the pocket of a person in a car and drugs being carried in a bag that a person was carrying while walking in his street.

    That was one of the things that he had discovered about his powers. His second mind, as he had come to call it, didn't always have the necessary context that he did. So, he had to actively nudge it sometimes, so it made the right decisions.

    "Hah, troublesome," He muttered to himself as he kicked a stone as he walked back to his apartment. Damn, when will this end? He didn't want to become some sort of deity to these people.

    In the first place, he was going to hightail it out of society the first chance he gets, once the Invasion is done.

    What would happen when he disappeared? He didn't want such a public-facing role all his life.

    No, he had dreams of having his own private island where he would farm and do all sorts of stuff that he would figure out then, preferably with a shit ton of money. IT would be heavenly to enjoy that money with his loved ones, whoever they may be.

    Whistling, he put his hands in his pockets as he hailed a cab. "Taxi!"

    He smiled as he saw one of the cabbies spotting and stopping for him. He put his arm down and was about to step down from the curb when something entered his range.

    Something strong.


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    • Chapter 23 : The One with the Grown Man Crying.
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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 23

    Manhattan [November 2008]

    –Axle Riddle–

    What was this? He had never felt something so strongly before, he thought to himself as he used his powers to stop his face from hitting the road, slowly pulling himself back as his mind continued to zero in on that strong feeling.

    "Ah! Be careful, man. Good thing the Invisible Man saved you, right? Where do you wanna go?" The driver asked him but his mind was already lost to the sensory input he was getting from his powers as he had begun walking subconsciously.

    "Hey! Hey! I am talking to you,"

    The voice of the driver faded in the background as his powers closed in on the strong input he was getting.

    See, he had always been able to distinguish between normal vanilla humans and enhanced ones. The thing with sorcerers was that in spite of having powers beyond the imagination of normal people, they didn't always have a large amount of dimensional energy flowing through them so for the majority of the time he could sense them, they appeared only slightly above the normal people in terms of energy responses.

    He had sensed a couple of vampires and vampire hunters, along with spirits that descended during Halloween and those were immediately visible to his powers, as they were different from regular humans.

    While he did always get a ping of sorts as a somewhat heavy presence entered his range, it was never this pronounced.

    The presence he felt right now was the strongest he had ever felt. It also felt hot somehow, like it was completely molten red and was just restrained by a flimsy layer that was somehow able to stop the hot energy from overflowing.

    Shit!

    That was the only thing his mind could muster up in the face of Bruce fucking Banner in his city. From the looks of it, he was heading straight to an old lady for some reason.

    He tensed, his mind ready to intervene at the slightest sign of him turning into the Jolly Green Giant but somehow, Bruce seemed far calmer than he had expected him to be.

    He groaned in frustration when he realised that Bruce was asking about the congregation stuff and just seemed to glow up as the old lady told him where to find it.

    "Why ROB, WHY!" He muttered to himself, drawing odd looks from a passerby but he didn't care much about that. Now he had to do something about that before Bruce actually went to the congregation and he was forced to do something that would deepen their faith in him, drawing forth another wave of believers.

    He didn't believe, not even for a second, the potential damage this so called "Congregation" could cause in the name of their patron saint. He had seen enough examples in history to know what that would lead to, especially since he would not be living in this city after 2012.

    He had not made any inroads into how he would announce his exit but he was sure that doing so with any overt gestures would lead to the congregation just increasing around him.

    On the other hand, his dying in combat in service of humanity might just turn him into a martyr in their eyes and raise his standing even more.

    Argh! What to do!

    He thought to himself as he entered a cafe and ordered a triple shot of espresso and sat down, thinking of ways how to handle this.

    For one, he could let Bruce get to the congregation and answer him there but that had a lot of ways it could go wrong. No, that would just be needlessly risky. So that option was out.

    He would not just suddenly hoist Bruce using his powers and bring him somewhere isolated. No, that would just make him turn into the Hulk as his body's fight or flight response would get activated and then, he didn't know if he could even fight someone of the Hulk's caliber with his powers. Though, if it did turn into a fight, he didn't have much to worry about because while he might not be capable of matching Bruce blow for blow, he was more than capable of lifting the Hulk, no matter how dense and heavy he might be, and then simply….fling him into the ocean.

    To cool him down, you see.

    Well, let's just do this, then.

    Bruce was walking to Central Park, looking around and…smiling…for some reason.

    Maybe he had gone a little bit mad because of the back-to-back shocks that he had received ever since he became the Hulk.

    Anyway, he flooded the block where Bruce was walking, with his presence. Oh, yeah. He can do that now. Earlier he was restricted to an area the size of a small alley but now he can effectively create a domain surrounding a large enough area.

    As soon as he did that, however, Bruce paused in his steps, somehow sensing that something was wrong. As if a switch had been flipped, his entire demeanour changed as he became more withdrawn as his posture became very guarded.

    He now looked around shiftily as he walked.

    Well, so much for being stealthy and non-threatening.

    Still, this could be salvaged. He collected a small amount of debris and overheated it, then pushed Bruce lightly, into the entrance of an alley.

    Bruce stumbled and looked at the alley where just a single word was waiting for him, floating in thin air - "HELLO"

    Bruce looked flabbergasted before he took a deep breath and replied in kind.

    "Uh-Hello. Are you the Invisible Man?" He asked as he looked around the alley, probably waiting for the other shoe to drop.

    "Yes. Why have you come here, Bruce Banner?"

    "Uh, how do you know my name? Anyway, I have come here to seek help. I am on the run from the mili-"

    "General Ross, I presume?"

    "Whaa, How could you possibly-"

    "I know a lot of things, Dr.Banner. I also know that you are being hunted down for no fault of your own. I assume you came here in hopes that I will help you from being arrested wrongfully?"

    "Y-yes. And I assure you, this is just temporary. Once I have a lab, I can cure myself of the Other Guy. I just need a little time and…resources but I can handle the resources part. I just need you to stop them from whisking me away in the night."

    "Yes, I can do that. Besides, it is not as if they will succeed, right Dr.Banner?"

    Bruce just seemed to wilt at the last statement as he muttered a defeated, "Yeah…"

    Oh, well that backfired spectacularly.

    It would seem that particular wound was still a little too raw to make jokes about then.

    "Very well, Dr.Banner, I, Invisible Man *Insert Eye-roll* hereby promise you that as long as you remain in Manhattan, I will make sure that nobody infringes on your right and tries to arrest you."

    "O-Oh thank you so much!"

    Oh, well seeing a grown man almost break down was never a pretty sight, especially if that was happening because of circumstances he had no control over.

    The sound of the debris overheating brought Bruce's attention back.

    "I assume you wouldn't want to use your original identity to stay in the city? It would make things a lot easier but if you are uncomfortable with that, I can house you in a place where nobody would disturb you, and provide you with all the necessities without ever coming into contact with another human being. At least, until you have made your miracle cure that is,"

    Bruce had his mouth open as he read the long sentences being arranged in front of him. It was a nice thing that the alley had a lot of broken-down rocks and cement he could use to make the long ass sentence. God, he wished he had telepathy of some sort, even if it was just two-way communication with no hope of ever-expanding into mind-reading territory but even that was out of reach for him.

    "I–I can do that? Live as me here, without any hiding?" Bruce stuttered and god the tears made him feel so bad.

    Unfortunately….

    "You can live with your own identity out in the open but are you sure you can handle that? I am not saying that you will have to handle the military but what about…regular people? You might get panic attacks and we both know what happens then. So, here is what I propose."

    Bruce's face had wilted from the reality that was thrown in his face but he continued to read ahead, in hopes that something might be done for him.

    "I will get you housed in a safe location for the time being. Nobody will be able to trace you, I will ensure that. All your daily necessities will be delivered to you, free of cost, of course. We will then work on your powers, and ensure you can maintain calm even in the face of chaos and panic. I have someone who might be able to help you but it might take time for that person to reach you. So, I suggest you follow my directions, it will take you to what will be your house for the next few days,"

    "...Okay."

    Alright then, he dropped all of the debris and then nudged Bruce lightly in the direction he wanted him to go. Bruce understood the signal and nodded, turning around to get out of the alley.

    Well, it was a good thing he knew a Billionaire that owed him a favour. And one that he couldn't refuse in any way.

    Also, time to contact the Ancient One once again.

    Ha, he hated dealing with her cryptic bullshit.




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    • Chapter 24 : The One with Bruce in an Apartment
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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 24

    Manhattan [December 2008]

    –Bruce Banner–

    His eyes snapped open as he sat up from the ridiculously comfortable bedding he was provided with, at least compared with the ones he used before he was chased away from everything he ever knew by the Military.

    He sighed and sat on the bed, his head hung low as he thought of everything that had happened in the past two weeks. It flashed through his mind at speeds that normal people would struggle to comprehend.

    He had always been blessed. He didn't really understand how children his age didn't derive Newton's laws just from idle observation, hence the ostracism he faced as a child and even as a teenager in high school.

    He would like to think that they were just intimidated by his intelligence but the truth was that he was a…nerd. Yes, he was a quintessential nerd representing the qualities that attracted Jocks as if they were bees and he was pollen.

    But he trudged on. He endured the bullying and the taunts until he finally reached college, having graduated high school early. That was when he finally met people who could somewhat understand him and his thoughts. He had been elated beyond measure and after that, he worked on his master's, then his Phd, and then another Phd.

    He engrossed himself in academia until he met her. Betty Ross.

    How could someone like Ross ever fathered someone like Betty Ross was beyond him, something that could not ever be explained by science. And yet, there she was, working on something that required his expertise and he had been more than happy to help her.

    He hadn't really expected for it to turn into anything else, other than a perfectly normal joint research project but somewhere along the way, as their research collaboration deepened, feelings sprouted in both of their hearts.

    Well, he had fallen for her much earlier than she did but he was elated that it finally happened. He vowed to himself that he wouldn't let anything happen to their relationship and then…..

    He rubbed his face and stood up, looking at the massive empty bedroom along with the equally massive living room that he knew was empty as well.

    It was part of the accommodations that the Invisible Man had arranged for him.

    When he was told that he would be given a safe place to live, along with all the necessities, he had nearly broken down in relief. For someone like him, a complete and utter civilian, to have lived the life of a fugitive for weeks, was so much mental pressure that he didn't know how he didn't kill himself long before.

    'I know why' he thought to himself darkly before he banished those thoughts. Now was not the time for that.

    For the past two weeks, he had been staying in this cozy apartment that came with everything paid for, along with groceries that arrived every other day for him, courtesy of the Invisible Man directly.

    He had stayed away from open windows and devices with cameras and made sure that he never came out of his apartment as was instructed by the Invisible Man because he had some things to arrange before Bruce could come out in the open.

    But now that he had some time to think about it, he didn't really know what to do with that option.

    On one hand, it would be his right to live freely, with his own identity, out in the open, without the threat of military imprisonment and experimentation hanging over his head but on the other hand…last week had been nice.

    He didn't get to go out but he had a TV and a computer he could use to browse the general internet, he didn't want to set off any alarms by searching for highly specific information. Cat Videos were something that amused him incredibly, making the boring lunches he could make for himself that much more tolerable.

    Eventually, he had looked for recipes online and started making better food for himself other than plain sandwiches and meatloaf. Now, he could make pizza, mashed potatoes, turkey, chicken, salads, bread, and whatnot.

    It was nice…..to do things slowly, without a sense of urgency in every single action he performed.

    He slowly brushed his teeth, looking at his unkempt self. To be honest, he didn't really have the wish to shave at all. He felt lethargic most of the time.

    IT got incredibly boring to watch movies and TV series after the first few days because most of the movies could be categorised into finite sections and even guessing which movie would go into which category got boring after the first couple of tries.

    The internet access definitely helped but it would get very hard to control himself from looking at stuff that would definitely be flagged, so he refrained from using that much.

    He had a gym in the apartment that he tried to use but it was actually nearly useless to him. Ever since he got his powers, apart from stress, his heart rate never really went up, even if he performed strenuous exercises for long periods of time.

    It was one such bonus of the other guy, he thought to himself.

    He had met a grand total of one person in the past two weeks and that was the doorman who came to drop off the groceries at the door. That was it.

    The Invisible Man had promised him resources to help look for a cure but that had not arrived but he did not want to bother him, so he had not said anything about that.

    Anyway, he had been meditating a lot in the time he had been alone and that had helped him sort out the jumbled mess of thoughts that had plagued his mind ever since the other Guy came into his life.

    After getting ready, he sat down on the dining table, munching on an apple, as he watched his scribblings from last night's research session. Not having the luxury of typing anything in the digital world, he had resorted to writing with pen and paper.

    His brain had been buzzing with ideas ever since it realised that he was in a safe space, so he had been just writing endlessly in his free time, which was all the time since he only had to cook twice a day. That much was enough to sustain him.

    He had a washer-dryer combo in the apartment itself so he didn't have to go anywhere for the laundry.

    "*Sigh* What has my life come to," he mumbled to himself as he once again began writing, on the fourth such notebook in the past two weeks alone.

    They were a list of ideas through which he could try and cure himself of his affliction. However, calling it an affliction and not a curse would be doing it a disservice.

    He had a nightmare the first night he slept here and woke up to find his arm almost green and had to concentrate really hard on the fact that he was safe, in the domain of the Invisible Man, and only after a tense minute or two, did the green glow recede slowly, painfully slowly.

    That was the last time he had turned green, even partially. Ever since then, he made sure to get in a nice workout, even though he didn't feel tired the thought counts, and then a nice heavy dinner with a bout of meditation before sleeping, not before turning on whale sound for better sleep.

    And it worked, like a charm. He could not believe that the internet guide for sleeping better worked on him as well but he was grateful for that.

    He had an idea but once again, that idea required equipment that he simply didn't have.

    "Um, uh, Hey, Invisible Man?" He looked up at the ceiling, feeling stupid immediately when he heard the pencil's scratching voice.

    He looked down and chuckled as the word "Yes?" was written on one of his spare notebooks, though looking at it, he was running dangerously low on notebooks.

    "Um, not that I am not grateful for all this, I am, really. But when will the equipment be ready? I understand if there are some problems. Just a timeline will do. I am already burdening you-"

    "...Stop. I have someone who can solve most of your problems. That person is currently unavailable. As soon as that happens, I will let you know. Now, I know it is not the ideal scenario but the moment you come into outside contact, they might trace you back." The pen furiously scribbled as he read the words.

    His shoulders slumped as he realised that the invisible Man was right.

    "Although I could take care of any retaliation they could send your way, the mere sight of so many armed people might send you and your alter ego into a frenzy, something we can't have in a civilian population. I have my limitations as well, otherwise I would have sent you to the person directly. Just wait a few more days, alright?"

    "...Okay," He muttered and watched as the notebook and the pencil both dropped from mid-air, on the study table.

    Okay, so the Invisible Man had someone who could help.

    Who could it be?

    Someone with extraordinary powers like himself? Or a scientist who could help him?

    What did he mean by his "alter ego"?

    The Other guy was the Other Guy and he was him. There was no connection between them.

    The Other guy was just a mass of rage, hate, destruction, and power while he was just..Bruce Banner. Someone with non-existential muscles and a big head.

    There was no way that the Other Guy was some part of his own mind.

    Right? Right?



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    • Chapter 25 : The one with the Random Beautiful Agent 1
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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 25

    Manhattan [December 2008]

    –Axle Riddle–

    He watched on, with his mental eye, what two weeks of complete isolation had done to Bruce.

    *Sigh* Yeah, he wished he could do something but the truth was, unless Bruce wanted to come out into the open and then be hounded by law enforcement and then by the public because they were too curious as to why law enforcement was here, there was not much he could do.

    Chances were that Bruce could someday, hope to contain himself when exposed to chaos and people, shouting people, along with the possibility of violence, but that day was not today.

    So, he had gone to the one person who probably knew the most about the human mind on the planet. The older-than-dirt Ancient One.

    And yet, when he went to the New York Sanctum to ask for her, Master Drumm had informed him that she was on an expedition, one of her long-time duties as the Sorcerer Supreme and she would not be back for another two weeks.

    Well, that was the first time he had heard about an expedition of sorts but the movies never really went into the depth of what Kamar Taj actually does aside from zapping monsters, bisecting demons, etc. etc.

    So, he had watched over Bruce and the city as usual. Delivering groceries and making sure that he was not spotted was very easily done.

    The apartment came from one of the many Billionaires that lived in Manhattan and owed him favours in that regard. Well, he hadn't done anything noteworthy for them but apparently, just the mere protection he provided to the city had made them grateful enough to offer him a free-handed favour.

    Of course, he had made sure that it did not come with any strings attached and after confirming that, he had stashed Bruce in one of those buildings.

    Now, was he certain that SHIELD was aware of where Bruce was? Yes.

    But does that mean that Ross was aware of it? No.

    That worked out perfectly for him because if SHIELD was tattling on him, Ross would have been here with a military tank in days, rather than weeks. This meant that SHIELD also did not want Ross to get his hands, or rather try to get his hands on Banner. For all his buster, Ross was never going to capture Bruce unless he came along willingly, it just wasn't possible.

    The Hulk wouldn't allow it.

    He had made sure to drill it into Bruce's mind to maintain a minimal online presence and to stay away from the windows but he didn't know how long Bruce could take that anymore.

    Sure, the Gym and the books along with the TV helped but he could see that Bruce was not getting tired from the workouts at all. The books, he blazed through them at mind-boggling speeds and TV just gets boring after a while.

    He could understand that so he watched on, as Bruce filled notebook after notebook with stuff he couldn't even begin to understand. Something related to radiation therapy along with a serum that would destroy the Gamma energy within him.

    Oh no, no. He was not going to allow Bruce to do that, obviously but he couldn't just go and tell him that. It will break him, to know the truth of his situation. To know that the Hulk was just another part of him that could not be cured because he was not another disease to be cured.

    The Hulk was just another part of his psyche.

    He had let that one little tidbit out at the end of their conversation and he could see, in real time, how Bruce was processing it and it was…not good.

    He was just looking blankly ahead, staring at nothing in particular as he sat on a chair.

    Yeesh, that was a huge reaction.

    Yeah, he had to do something for Bruce. His story was filled with tragedies, one after the other. He would not have been able to help him when he was out of his range but now that he was in his domain, there was nothing that could come between him helping Bruce.

    In the first place, he didn't have the faintest clue as to Bruce coming here, in the city. The only time Bruce was in New York, as far as he knew, was when he and Abomination had that huge fight that broke Harlem. Which would not happen now, he would make sure of it.

    Butterfly effect and all that.

    If he had known that Bruce was making his way here, he could have made preparations. He had still not made official contact with SHIELD yet, so he could have done that beforehand and made sure that Ross kept his hands off.

    He would have to do that now as well. Honestly, aside from Kamar Taj and the Ancient One, there was no other person and place he would trust Bruce to be in, aside from Manhattan.

    Making sure that Bruce lived, out in the open, in a bustling part of the city would mean that he would have to become a lot more stable, mentally, than he was now. He couldn't have him hulking out in the middle of the farmer's market, for example.

    No, he would have to talk with the Ancient One about this but she would probably agree with him. She would help Bruce get better and then he would make sure that he has a place to stay in Manhattan.

    That would work out for the best, it would seem.

    Now, the Ancient One's busy timetable was not in his hands but making sure that Bruce had a legit place to stay was.

    With that in mind, he searched for the two SHIELD safehouses they kept stocked to the brim in Manhattan. They were not used in all the time he had been active, probably owing to privacy concerns but they were stocked up and kept up to date all the same.

    He found only a single agent, lounging on the sofa, reading a magazine whilst also munching on an apple.

    He quirked an eyebrow at that, what a harmless-looking agent, probably a ploy on SHIELD's part to try and honeypot him after trying all the possible strategies in their playbook.

    Well, he just needed to pass along a message, it doesn't matter if the agent is drop-dead gorgeous or not.

    _______xx________

    SHIELD Safehouse Number 1, Manhattan

    –Random Beautiful Agent 1–

    Ah, man, this sucks. She knew that she was mainly hired for this gig because she was young and inexperienced, in everything that counted and she was the most expendable asset at the New York HQ, and she understood but still. This sucked.

    On one hand, having to do nothing but look pretty while getting paid while living in a kitted-out apartment in Manhattan would sound like a dream come true for most girls with dreams of making it big in the showbiz but she was not one of those girls. Okay, she might have been once upon a time but not anymore.

    Now, she was all about the good fight. Being a super spy agent.

    Unfortunately, the only spy stuff she had been ordered to do, was a small stakeout out of the city, which turned out to be a bust anyway.

    She was technically on duty but it was not as if anybody came to check up on her. The logistics guys came once a week to restock everything but other than that, she had basically no human interaction.

    Everything was done on her SHIELD-issued phone, which was made to be very secure and nearly unhackable but it also meant that she could not log in on her MySpace account.

    Things were made worse because she was technically on duty, ALL THE TIME, so she was not given her personal phone. She was so going to lose most of her follo-

    Her entire thought process came to a screeching halt as she looked at the coffee table. On top of the coffee table, a notebook was floating and a pen was currently writing something on it.

    It eventually said the one word, "Hello"

    She screamed as her vision went swimming towards the coffee table itself.

    Oh crap, she was going to faceplant on the coffee table. She was fainting.

    So much for her first serious gig……



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    • Chapter 26 : Ah! A good ol shitshow
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    The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 26

    Somewhere in the cosmos

    –Ancient One–

    Mediating between faes and their numerous enemies was always a chore, always has been and always will be, one that Agomotto took upon himself and then thrust onto the role of the Sorcerer Supreme.

    While the work itself was very menial, it was in regular intervals and also required one to have a patience and calm attitude, one that could only be gained by having their minds subjected to the flow of time thousands of times by using the powers of the Eye of Agamotto.

    Every 26 years, she had to come to this realm, to negotiate a deal of non-interference between the fae and the people they had passed off in their long existence. Time didn't really mean anything to the fae since they were essentially entirely conceptual in nature and thus, had no risk of dying until the eventual heat death of the universe.

    Killing the fae in their own realm was impossible and they rarely ventured out, so it made addressing grievances that much more difficult. But the fae did, sometimes, venture out for various reasons. Entertainment, boredom, to kill themselves.

    Oh yeah, some of the fae do eventually get content or frustrated or bored with their lives and seek to end their existence by venturing out of their safe abode and into the dangerous maw of the universe. The thing was that they could not really have that happening.

    As mentioned, Fae was entirely conceptual in nature, and providing a conceptual snack to a demon lord, or a hell lord, or Vishanti forbid, Dormammu, would mean that they were just adding to the arsenal of their enemies.

    Thus, the treaty of non-interference, allowing the Fae to move around in a safe environment, whilst limiting the number of deals that the Fae could make with the ones from the other realms. That was how the Fae had been safely withdrawn from Earth and kept in a small artificial dimension where they could do all the stuff they wanted, without the risk of empowering a demon lord, or making a deal with a ruler and then prompting him to slaughter the people under his rule. Stuff like that.

    Unfortunately, this stuff was important. More so than killing yet another demon that had slipped through the nets or hunting down another rogue sorcerer because if the Fae were ever to be allowed to make deals with humans. Well, she knew what humans were like and the results would not be good.

    Every time she tried to see into that future, it was so terrible that she had to erase part of her memory, to function properly, because apparently, Fae's empowered avatars' influence could travel back through time as well. If she had not cut the connection at the right time, her soul might have been damaged a bit.

    "I suppose that marks the end of this summit, then?" She stood up and looked down at all the creatures that had assembled here. They all looked comically small in comparison but that was only because of the rules imposed on this dimension. As the rule enforcer, she was exempt of course but the rest of the species were not. Even the Dragons, known to reach sizes rivaling some small countries back on Earth, were not spared and turned into sizes that would more be suited for a 2-year-old kid rather than a hundred thousand-year-old Dragon Elder.

    The deal was the same as before, nothing much changed in it except the date for the next summit, which, thankfully, she would not have to attend. The mere thought of it brought back a muted flash of happiness before that too, was dulled by her mind. See, for centuries, more if the time spent lost in the timestream was counted, she had not really felt anything.

    No pain, no happiness, no sadness, and no grief. Nothing. It was as if, for the vast powers she had gained through looking through millions of timelines with the Eye of Agamotto, she had to sacrifice something.

    She had to sacrifice her name, her feelings, and even her sense of time because even today, she had to use specifically calibrated temporal anchors to help her ascertain whether this was the reality or just another temporal simulation she was seeing using the Eye of Agamotto.

    She smiled as she thought of one such temporal anchor, one who came into the timestream very recently.

    Axle Riddle.

    Somehow, in the vast multiverse of timelines she was able to witness, he was not there in anyone, aside from this one. The chances of his existence were so low that it would have been better to call them zero, and that was coming from her, who knew that even the infinitesimal possibility had the potential to become true, overcoming all odds set against it.

    And that was why she had decided. When she would go back to the New York Sanctum she would—

    Hmm? What was this?

    She hastily exited the summit after greeting the Queen Fae, and as soon as she was out of the artificial dimension, she swiftly took out an artefact from her personal storage.

    Communication within alternate dimensions was tricky at best if you didn't have a portal open between the two places. So, for one side to contact the other, you needed the help of artifacts forged from the broken parts of smaller dimensions, allowing them some leeway in skirting the rules regarding interdimensional communication.

    One such artefact was the one in her hand. It was unnamed, because the moment somebody tried to name it, it stopped working for them so they figured that it did have a name, they just didn't know it yet. It was primarily used by Kamar Taj to ascertain the threats that any Sanctum could be facing at any given moment in time.

    Right now, the threat rating was at the deepest red, something that hadn't happened in the past few centuries. And the Sanctum was the New York Sanctum.

    Well, that complicated things.

    She would have to make haste, lest Axle pick a fight with some demon who could shrug off his powers, however unlikely as that may be.

    _________xx_______

    –Axle Riddle–

    Ah, this was so amusing.

    The girl must have been completely unprepared for something like this if she fainted at the mere sight of a pen and paper, confirming that his attention was on her.

    To be honest, she wasn't really dressed as an agent either. Clad in comfy pajamas and fluffy slippers, she looked the epitome of lounge material as she had just face-planted on the coffee table.

    He had not intervened for two reasons.

    One, it was hilarious, how her head thunked on the table and had yet to come back, meaning that she truly had fallen unconscious.

    Secondly, he didn't want to make it look like he did anything to her. Non-interference and all that. The last thing he wanted was for Fury to come hound him for supposedly tampering with an agent.

    Ah, there they were, he thought to himself as he saw or rather felt the three blacked-out SUVs hauling ass, burning rubber, as they rushed to the safehouse, probably worried about their agent.

    He could not recognise anyone in the cars, so it was some agent with high enough clearance to interact with him but not important enough to be mentioned in the MCU. They were also packing in some serious firepower.

    Sheesh, it was as if they expected him to attack them and if he did attack them, they expected those toys to do anything to him. What a bunch of fools.

    Did they learn nothing after all this time?

    He once again inspected the safehouse and found cameras at every angle. All of them were currently pointed at the unconscious agent and the floating pen and paper.

    Soon, the SUVs reached the safehouse building, and judging by the way the doorman just slid the door open, not even pausing to blink as heavily armed men entered the building he was supposed to guard, he might be in on the whole safehouse thing as well.

    He looked at the pen and paper and thought of the new trick he had learned in the spare time he now had because of his second mind thingy.

    That was how once the agents cautiously opened the blast door and entered in, just the one unarmed agent, he noticed, he saw a bizarre sight of an unconscious agent in a vulnerable position and a floating bobblehead, composed entirely of torn paper shaped into a vague replica of a human face.

    And for the extra dramatic effect, he had a bunch of rubber bands inside the floating paper bobblehead. Once he made the rubbers vibrate at the specific frequency he wanted to…

    "Greetings, SHIELD,"

    A very robotic, unnatural, and slow voice sounded out in the room.

    Up until that point, Agent Ross was the perfect picture of calm and wary, as was written in the SHIELD handbooks about handling such situations. The second that creepy sound was made in the room, his face warped in terror as he pulled out his service weapon and fired two rounds into the floating white nightmare-inducing head.

    The sound of gunfire brought the agents that were on standby, into the safehouse, who then proceeded to unload their magazines into the bobblehead, with one of the agents scrambling to get the now very awake and scared Random Beautiful Agent 1.

    All the while, he laughed back in his apartment.

    Ah, what a shitshow!



    If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
     
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    • Chapter 27 : Anticipation!
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    • 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 27

    SHIELD Safehouse, Manhattan

    –Axle Riddle–

    Okay, now it is getting a bit ridiculous. They had stopped firing, which was good but were on their way downstairs, evacuating the honeypot trap while continuously calling for more backup since he had evidently "attacked" them or something.

    Seriously, how afraid can someone be of just a white ghastly head bobbing around and then speaking in a guttural tone? Right? That must be normal for SHIELD agents, right?

    He sighed as he realised the mistake in his actions. Anywho, time to correct them now.

    He flooded his presence in the building, hijacking it essentially, in its entirety. Once he had flooded his presence in something, he was the de facto GOD of that place, allowing him to control every little aspect of that singular location.

    In this case, he used it to freeze every single agent that was running on their way down, took their guns, moulded the nozzles in front of their wide terrified eyes, and then brought them back up to the safe house. He had to assume that the only reason the neighbours had not come out was because this was a SHIELD safehouse building and the neighbours must be trained as well.

    Though, he could see that all of them had left the building for one reason or another. Some were grocery shopping, some were at a cafe eating cake, some were on a bagel run, etc.

    With all the 20 agents placed in the same safehouse, it had become a bit cramped but nothing these agents were not trained for, right?

    Oh well.

    He watched on as another set of SUVs, 6 this time, burned rubber as they hauled ass to the safehouse building. Also filled with armed people, apparently ready to burst down the door with guns swinging.

    Okay, this is just ridiculous now.

    He unfroze the lead agent and immediately regretted it because the man just refused to stop blabbering. It was as if he had put the fear of god in them.

    He did the same for the others but none of them showed any signs of listening to him. All they did was look around frantically in fear until the Random Beautiful Agent 1 once again fainted in fear.

    That would have been amusing had it not been for the faint smell of urine in the air.

    Just what was happening? He thought to himself as he watched grown hardened men tremble in fear.

    Back in his apartment, his eyes narrowed as he tried to look deeper into the issue. Something was wrong here and he did not know what. For the time being though, he would have to get his message across so he tore apart a page from the diary on the table, which also had a few bullet holes in it, wrote his message in, and after folding it, placed it into the front pocket of Agent Ross.

    All the while Agent Ross kept praying to his deity to save him or something.

    Just what the hell was wrong with them?

    He nevertheless withdrew his presence and left behind a note for the arriving officers as well, explaining that he didn't even do anything to them. The CCTV should confirm that as well but he didn't want to take any risks.

    He watched as the next round of agents burst into the safehouse, expecting something, he didn't know what they were expecting but a bunch of hardened agents crying was not it.

    He saw the second lead agent look at the note that was stuck in Agent Ross' hand as he clutched it as if his life depended on it and after securing the footage, ordered a complete withdrawal.

    He watched as they left his awareness range and saw that they all simultaneously sighed in relief once they left Manhattan, confident in their ability to now remain safe because they were out of the Invisible Man's range.

    Just what the hell happened back there?

    He just flooded the area with his presence and somehow they all began peeing themselves in fear?

    He reached out with his TK and "knocked" on the New York Sanctum's wards for a lack of a better word. He had learned how to do that ever since his spatial awareness began showing him the ward structure of the sanctum.

    He still couldn't read worth a damn but it was a start and someday, hopefully, he hoped to do magic with it. I mean, it was magic. Who doesn't dream of wielding magic?

    The doors opened on their own and once Master Drumm saw that there was no one on the front door, he sighed in disappointment and went back inside, to the drawing book he had left for him.

    Once he saw the question he had pre-scribbled for him, he sighed once again and scribbled something next to his question.

    "No," Was the answer to the question was - Has the Ancient One returned?

    Oh well, he thought to himself while delivering another round of groceries to Bruce's apartment. She had to come back soon because he could see Bruce fraying at the edges, the longer he lived all alone in that apartment. He could not afford a Hulk incident in a civilian area, that would just be disastrous for everyone involved.

    Maybe he could try and move Bruce to the underground tunnel.

    Nah, he couldn't do that now, not after having him moved to a cozy apartment, that could kill the man. Plus, it was not fair to do that to him.

    He expected SHIELD to reach out to him soon enough, once they got over their fear that he was somehow terrorizing their agents for fun.

    That conversation was going to be very awkward, considering he did make over a dozen of their agents tremble in fear of him.

    He would have to negotiate with them the terms of Bruce's arrest because there was no way Ross was going to let this go and once he came into the city for Bruce, guns blazing, he would have all the grounds to just bend his guns and evict him from his city, consequences be damned.

    He would have to make preparations for that eventuality as well because—

    His thoughts came to a halt as he sensed something truly interesting.

    Betty fucking Ross was in a cab, coming into the city. Judging by the distressed look on her face, she was probably here looking for Bruce but how did she find him anyway?

    Maybe Ross tracked Bruce before he could be hidden?

    Either way, he needed faster responses from people, dammit.

    Either from the Ancient One or Fury because things were about to turn a lot more hectic and more importantly….fun.

    Ah, it had been so boring without some action and as much as he loathed the idea of collateral damage, he also had no entertainment these past year or so.

    He would make sure that Bruce is out of the city the second he starts turning Green but the drama from SHIELD and Ross coming from Bruce would be oh so worth it.


    If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
     
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    • Chapter 28 : The One with Fury's POV
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    • 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 28

    NYC HQ

    –Nick Fury–

    Breathing in the crisp cold air, he alighted from the helicopter and entered the New York HQ through the roof. He had hoped to delay this meeting but recent developments had forced his hands, especially since some agents had leaked information to the WSC and they had expressly ordered him to get here and sort this out with the so-called Invisible Man.

    He scoffed internally at the name. It was clear for anyone with a brain cell to rub that the man was obviously something else, certainly not a Man because that implied that he was a single human being.

    The amount of actions he takes across the city simultaneously boggles the mind and tells everyone that he is probably someone with psychic powers that span over an area of an entire city, and also an expert in multitasking.

    "Tell me everything," He said as he walked with Coulson, who had arrived here ahead of time to compile a report that he could trust. Somehow, he could not trust his own agents in this palace, not just because they could be compromised by the Invisible Man but also because they might just leak the information to unrelated parties at the moment and that was the last thing he wanted to happen.

    "Yes, sir. Earlier Yesterday, The Invisible Man made contact with Random Beautiful Agent 1 but the mode of contact apparently spooked her so much that she fainted immediately."

    He rolled his eyes at that. He never really liked this idea of picking up agents just based on their appearance but the concept worked sometimes so he could not just abolish the practice without having to answer to his overlords, in the form of the World Security Council.

    "Following that, the analysts raised an alarm as they saw everything happening through the surveillance cameras. Two teams were immediately sent to the safe house to secure the Random Beautiful Agent 1 along with Agent Ross, a level 7 agent, to initiate a conversation with the Invisible Man,"

    That checks out. Ross was the highest-ranking agent on site and protocol dictated that he be the first in line when something of this magnitude occurred on his turf. This was also the first time that the subject had made contact with any SHIELD asset from his side, making it a golden opportunity to make a favourable impression.

    "After she fell unconscious, the Invisible Man chose to, I don't know how to put this, but he chose to manifest an avatar or something. Papers from a nearby notebook were ripped apart and then molded to form a face floating in mid-air. The face didn't perturb Agent Ross but the guttural voice that came out of that mask startled him into…"

    "Into putting two shots in the face of someone who is the closest we have ever come to finding an ever-present god-like entity?" he finishes the sentence for Coulson, his patience riding thin because of this incident and how they wasted a golden opportunity to gain an ally or at least establish some sort of working relationship with the target.

    "....Ah, yes…Sir," Coulson said as he handed him the tablet, showing the rest of the footage.

    It would not be wrong to call it a complete and utter shit show.

    "Have Agent Ross and his team transferred to the Arctic Belt for a year long stint," He ordered as they entered his office, one that is reserved for him in every HQ building SHIELD had ever built.

    "Also, no casualties, that's good. Any evidence from all the sensors we have installed in various parts of the city over the months he has been active?"

    Coulson shook his head in negative as he watched the second team arrive and then leave after securing the first team. God, they were horribly untrained and unprepared for something like this.

    "How does one even fight something like that?" He mumbled to himself as he read over the reports that the analysts had drawn up on short notice. It was mostly assumptions and the same old recommendation as before - Do not engage with hostile intentions. Like he would forget the way the man can toss around semis and help cats off of trees at the same time.

    "Do we have to?"

    He looked up at Coulson who had asked him the question with a conflicting look on his face.

    "Is it necessary that we have to fight with him? He could be a force for good. A very strong force. And he has done a lot of good already,"

    "In one city, Coulson. There are billions more that need protecting and as strong as he is, he has for some reason, limited himself to a single borough of New York City, which might I remind you is not even in the top 10 most populous cities of the world,"

    He said and went back to reading the reports they had compiled for him in preparation for his visit, incomplete and inaccurate as they might be.

    However, what Coulson said did keep ringing in his mind. Having Someone of that calibre on call would mean that most crises would be solved as soon as he arrived on the spot. He would not have to worry about some pesky insurgents using the terrain to their advantage because, well, for someone who can rip apart buildings can most likely take care of some dirt and rocks with ease. The man also had some sort of hyper awareness powers that helped him know everything that was happening in a large area with complete accuracy.

    So much so that he could even read words off of paper. That was just mind boggling, both to him and the boys in the lab. According to them, this could only be done by deploying an energy field across a large swathe of area, so sensitive that it detected even the slightest change in matter. Ofcourse, they had yet to find any evidence of that but the theory remained.

    "Alright, Coulson. We will do it your way this time. What do you suggest? Going straight to him?"

    Coulson smiled, "No, sir. That would not be in compliance with your safety policies. I would suggest–"

    "Oh hell with the safety policies. I am asking you, would you trust him enough to take me into his domain?" He asked Coulson, point blank to see what his thoughts were on the matter. He trusted Coulson and if taking a risk could get them a chance of having someone as uber powerful as this person on their team, then he was more than willing to take the chances.

    "I trust him, sir. He has not done a single thing out of line ever since he became active. But there is also the matter regarding Dr.Banner, sir,"

    Ah, the Hulk shitshow. Another one on his pile of problems then.

    Last they had seen him, he was on his way to Manhattan. It didn't take a genius as to why he would do that. Protection of somebody like that was worth its weight in gold, as was reflected in the real estate prices of Manhattan. Most locals had already sold their homes and moved out of the city, to retirement probably, such was the surge in home prices here. Most of the billionaire class of NYC was probably already living here.

    In that sensitive zone, Banner had entered into the city.

    Judging by the lack of location on his file, it had already meant that he was either successful in cutting a deal with the Invisible Man or he had, once again, dropped from their radar. Despite the hits his agency had been taking, there was no way an untrained civilian could escape their surveillance.

    This meant that Bruce Banner, The Hulk, number one on General Ross' hit list, was also being provided with protection and cover in Manhattan, by possibly the strongest being in the world. In the most populous city of the United States, in the middle of a residential zone housing the richest people of the city.

    This would go swimmingly.

    "Coulson, set up a meeting. I think it's time we meet this Invisible Man,"

    "...Affirmative, sir,"


    If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
     
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    • Chapter 29 : Paper go brrr....
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    • A/N - Hello my dear peeps! I come with good tidings, in the form of this chapter. Anywho, aside from delivering this important chapter to you, I also wanted to deliver an explanation to yall.

    You might have noticed my updates being on point from Monday to Thursday before faltering throughout the weekend, despite me being off from work for the weekend.

    Well, here's the story for that.[TLDR at end]

    You see, Monday to Thursday, I have a regular 10 hour work shift. On Fridays, however, I am on call so that translates to a roughly 15-16 hour shift for the day. Yeah, it is pretty brutal so I am pretty much out of it for the majority of Saturday and sometimes, on Sunday as well.

    That is why I am unable to maintain the glorious grind of pushing out chapters day by day because my eyes start to water if I so much as look at a screen after that harrowing shift.


    TLDR - Huge ass work shift on Friday so brain go slow on weekends, explaining the lack of content on weekends.

    _____________xx___________

    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 29 [December 2008]

    –Axle Riddle–

    "Uh-huh. Yes, I know that the stock is falling now. Yes, I know we only cashed out about half of our investment but you know that even that turned out a decent profit for you…..Yes, I know that we are once again funneling money back into SI. Yes, I know the stock is free falling and I am telling you once again, I don't CARE!"

    He slammed his phone shut at the last statement. Those old fogies were getting on his nerves now. Despite making a profit on their investment, they were still trying to advise him about it. Yes, he had no idea about the stock market but he knew one thing. Tony Stark was not a quitter and once the world came to know about Iron Man, the stock would only rise and rise and…rise.

    Huh, slamming the telephone shut was an oddly satisfying feeling. He kinda wanted to do it again.

    *RING* Ah, speak of the devil.

    "Hello, Axle speaking,"

    He immediately took the phone away from his ear as another tirade of old fogies was coming from the speaker. Okay, he had it with these rich old fogies. They had all the control of their money. If they truly wanted to end their partnership with him, they could have taken out their money on their own without ever telling him about it.

    But noooo, they wanted to talk his ear off doing it as well.

    "Hey, look, Master Wu, if you really want to end this, just do it, alright? I have a dozen other billionaires on speed dial, just waiting to take the deal, alright? So if you're out, you're out, don't yap at me about it. If you are in, then just shut up for a while. You'll see the results in a few months," He said after slamming down the phone once again, once again feeling that pleasant feeling.

    It had been over a few hours ever since he had that horrible encounter with those SHIELD agents, forcing him to reassess his strategy for establishing a cooperative relationship with them.

    He wanted to see if Bruce could get a pardon from the President if he could prove that Bruce was in control of the Hulk and could be useful, not as a weapon, god no, Bruce would never agree to that. But having him on board as a scientific expert and as a major deterrent alone would be invaluable.

    He was sure that Fury would agree to it if only to get another player on board for the Avengers Initiative. It was the others he was worried about. Mostly General Ross and his connections in the White House, which might convince the president that instead of having a single non-combative Hulk, it would be better to have hordes of super soldiers who would do the country's bidding.

    That possibility could not be taken out of play here. General Ross was one of those foolhardy people who climbed his way up in the Military, rising up to command a position of extreme influence.

    It was not as if others in the Military were unaware of his actions and his tendency to go overboard when dealing with certain threats but what was the US military if not the very definition of Overkill?

    The higher-ups were probably also aware of Banner and the illegal experiments that led to that outcome but just let him be, hoping to milk him for any advantages that might come by from the experiment and if not, just throw him under the bus if it ever came to light.

    Plausible Deniability and all that.

    The US Government might be a little slow but it was not incompetent, especially not on matters relating to super soldiers. Ross should have never even gotten to see the blood sample of Steve Rogers, let alone get the authority to use it for human experimentations.

    He sighed once again, in his fully air-conditioned office, as he realised the probable reason as to why the government was tacitly supporting this hair-brained venture of Ross. It was because of his very existence.

    He had never really thought of it that way, mostly because he thought that the handicap that never really let him get out of Manhattan would be enough to placate the people in power, at least until he left New York City. He had hoped for them to be rational about it and see that he was not some villain that they had to worry about.

    Apparently, he expected too much from politicians.

    Welp, nothing he could do about that. Well, maybe Fury could do something if Fury trusted him but knowing what he knew about Fury and his infamous Paranoia, there was little chance that Fury would ever endorse him.

    Hell, SHIELD was probably already scrambling for countermeasures against him, not that they would succeed. He had already been pushing his powers to their limits, not the TK but his spatial awareness. He didn't know how to train his TK anymore but spatial awareness was really easy to do.

    He could now feasibly exert his powers up to a mile outside the Imprisoning curtain, that was what he had taken to calling the orange curtain around Manhattan. He could not exert more power even after gaining more distance in his spatial awareness but that was probably another limitation imposed on him.

    He could see that Bruce was now doing Yoga, having found some tutorials on the internet and while the image of Bruce Banner doing clumsy yoga would forever be imprinted in his mind, he was more concerned with the way Bruce was bending in ways that would have been more realistic for an Olympic Gymnast, without any visible effort, like…at all.

    It would seem that becoming the Hulk did grant him some benefits in his non-transformed state as well. He had witnessed his gym sessions as well and aside from some light sweating, he had not struggled even after lifting all the weights he had access to, despite never being one for physical stuff in university.

    So, slightly enhanced strength and flexibility, even in his base form. Good to know. Maybe he could train to alter between both states as a powered and a less powered state. Something to tell him once the Ancient One finally comes back from wherever the hell she went to.

    Apparently, it was one of her few obligations that she had to fulfill and even Demon Lords abide by it as the attacks cease this time of the year. He was curious about it but he knew that not having any aptitude for Sorcery would mean that he would be pretty unaware of most things in that space.

    Hmm. His attention was perked as he once again sensed a convoy of blacked-out SUVs heading his way. He peered deeper into the car and…

    "Well well well, look who's coming to meet little ol' me," He whistled out loud as the stoic face of one Nick one-eyed Fury came to him through his powers.

    Damn, he was hoping to meet Coulson at best, not the head honcho himself. Well, no time like the present then.

    He was curious as to how they would talk. He sure as hell was not going to go there personally. He was not stupid.

    Probably to the SHIELD safehouse then?

    Apparently not, he thought to himself as he watched Fury enter the biggest precinct nearby. Apparently, they were all informed about it because the precinct was nearly empty, save for some detective who, after handing over the keys to Coulson, fled from the scene as well.

    Now that he focused, he found that the entire building had been evacuated completely.

    Well, there was no need to do that. They could have communicated over long distances, even in his car if need be.

    But now that he had done all this, it would be remiss on his part if he didn't give Fury something of a show as well.

    He watched, after ordering lunch ofcourse (Chinese today), as Fury entered the precinct and after standing in the middle of a bunch of tables that had all signs of being hastily arranged, he put his hand on his waist as he turned around and kept looking at Coulson with an eyebrow raised.

    In return, Coulson just kept looking at him with the same placid smile plastered on his face. Fury sighed and took a seat, Coulson choosing to stand.

    Fury's team, meanwhile, spread far through the building and even perched on top of the nearby buildings, armed with snipers.

    "Oooh, scary," he scoffed to himself as he chose to finally make an appearance, metaphorically speaking.

    Right outside the building, a huge stack of paper rims was dropped, right in front of an agent standing guarding on the curb, completely startling him. He yelped as he pulled his gun and after finding that it was just paper, he looked up and around, speaking furiously in his comms.

    In his office, he giggled after seeing the scare they experienced from just…paper. It was hilarious.

    Even more was the reaction the agent made when the stack of paper seemingly exploded, flinging shredded pieces of paper in every direction. He yelped as he drew his firearm and actually shot paper!

    He could see every member of Fury's team furiously looking for something, someone. Well, he gave them one.

    The shredded paper that had been strewn all around seemingly came back to life as it all began accumulating right in front of the precinct door. Slowly, bit by bit, all the shredded paper was gathered until a distinctly human-shaped man, made of paper, was standing right at the door.

    In the middle of the chaos that was snipers taking aim at, once again, paper, they had not noticed a small phone he had slipped into the headpiece of his paper avatar. That was programmed with text-to-speech software.

    All he had to do was type in the required text using his powers, from a distance, so that the blunder from his previous encounter with SHIELD agents doesn't happen again.

    The noise he made using his powers was horrendous to even listen to and that made him feel a little guilty when he thought that agent to be a coward for being so afraid of mere paper.

    The scene of a paper head giving out that voice, especially since the words would have been somewhat legible, would have sent anyone packing.

    Although…

    He made the show of looking around and waving at all the snipers and agents stationed around since they were not taking any overt actions against him. Of Course, the snipers were still completely aimed at him but the triggers were not yet pressed, so he counted that as a win.

    It would seem that someone from the inside had ordered everyone else to stand down for the moment, probably Coulson.

    After waving at the sixth sniper located two buildings away, he turned around and walked straight through the door, as if it didn't exist at all. He did so by having the pieces of paper slide through the gaps underneath and on the sides of the door before reforming on the other side.

    Almost immediately, he came face to face with Coulson who was obviously wearing his signature smile.

    "Welcome. Would it be safe to assume that it is not the real you and just a puppet?"

    He inclined the puppet's head and said, through the phone of course, which too had slid through the slit below the door. Somehow, the door had that big of a gap between them for some reason.

    "Yes, Agent Coulson. It would hardly be wise to come here personally. After all, I am quite aware of SHIELD's reputation,"

    "Oh, really?" Came an amused voice from behind Coulson.

    Coulson neatly slid out of his way and after nodding politely at Coulson, "he" made his way over to Fury who was sitting on a chair with a small plastic table in front of him.

    "Of Course. I might not know much but I do know that SHIELD is definitely not to be trifled with," he said as his paper avatar slowly sat on the chair. He made the avatar cross his legs as he looked at Fury who maintained a stoic glare at the paper avatar.

    Meanwhile, back in his office, he was laughing, clutching his stomach as he saw that all these people were on edge, simply because of…paper.

    Man, he was hilarious. It was too bad that they simply weren't able to appreciate or understand his supreme sense of humour.

    "And the US Army? Are they not on your list of not being trifled with? After all, you are harboring a fugitive of theirs. Quite an important fugitive too,"

    "Allegedly, Director Fury. All allegedly. You have no proof and more importantly, no real person to convict," He said airily as he made the paper man lean back into the chair.

    Let's see what Fury has to say for him.







    If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.

    A/N - I saw the Deadpool movie and hot damn, what a movie!

    I hope that the execs at Disney see the success this movie brought them and finally give the team the creative freedom to do as they see fit.

    I mean, half a billion in the opening weekend!

    This feels like much more of a comeback for the MCU than RDJ's supposed comeback.

    Thanks for reading!

    Peace out!
     
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    • Chapter 30 : Inklings of Deal Made!
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    • 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 30 [December 2008]

    Evacuated Police precinct

    –Axle Riddle–

    It was quite funny to see Fury narrow his one eye and gnash his teeth as he bluntly threw all of his cards right into the dustbin. What he was saying was true. There was no real proof that he had been the one responsible for hiding away Banner and more importantly, they didn't even know who he was.

    Basically, they were trying to pin a crime that they could not trace on a person they knew they couldn't find, not without said person giving themselves up voluntarily. That was not going to happen.

    Visibly gathering his thoughts, then Fury spat out, "What do you want, then? You contacted us for a reason and I still haven't thanked you for the treatment you gave my agents,"

    Ah, he snickered internally as Fury emphasizes the word thanked, so much so that he believed his gum had grown weaker simply due to the current gnashing session.

    He then went to work, typing on the phone screen. He was sure by now that Fury and Coulson had caught onto the fact that text-to-voice speech software was being used here, and a very crappy one at that, but it was not like he cared one bit about that.

    "Ah, that. You see, Fury, say, hypothetically, I was harboring a fugitive wanted by someone high up in the Army. How would I go about getting a pardon for the wronged fellow? Wronged green fellow,"

    "So he is with you," Fury said as he shook his head and leaned back in his chair, finally having something to pin down on the Invisible Man. "Look, the matter has reached up to the President and Ross has somehow convinced him that he will bring back Banner without any bloodshed, which is a fat load of bullshit, everyone knows that. But the President cares about the results and since he has deniability now, he has given Ross blanket approval to use whatever resources he can to reel in Banner,"

    Uh-oh. That did not bode well, for anybody.

    "Those resources are not just limited to government resources, by the way. I have credible information that Ross is monitoring all communications with his daughter. I am sure he won't hesitate to use her as well. So, be careful about her. Now…" Fury said as he leaned forward, his eyepatch creating a small shadow-esque effect on his face, which was very cool if he was being honest.

    "I want to ask you one thing. Are you an alien?" Fury asked him.

    Wha- He reeled back in shock at his apartment and after a moment, so did his paper avatar as Fury accused him of being an alien.

    "What? God no, Fury. I am a human, born a human, and will still remain a human until the day I die, at which point I will turn into a pixie and haunt you for the rest of your days on God's green Earth,"

    Ha, it was funny to see vein after vein pop up on Fury's forehead as the phone spoke out the things he had typed in. Especially, after the Pixie part, Fury looked just about ready to strangle him. Well, this has been fun but he still had some work to do.

    After all, he was the one who had made first contact, and also, SHIELD was a ridiculously useful ally, at least until it went kaput due to HYDRA's schemes.

    'Alright, let's be serious for a moment," His paper avatar said as the very air in the precinct changed for a bit. Coulson was dragged much closer to the table. He took that sudden change remarkably well as he fluidly sat down on the chair that was also dragged in.

    All the curtains and doors closed off on their own. For a moment, all Fury and Coulson must have heard was the sound of a high pitched wind movement before it all went…silent.

    After that, dozens of bugs, planted all over the precinct, the chairs and tables, some from Coulson's and Fury's suits were brought in front of them, floating on top of the table before they were crushed into fine powder.

    "Now, we can talk without the risk of anybody else listening in," He said as his paper avatar leaned forward on the table, the table groaning in protest due to the sudden weight he applied on it, from a distance. In his opinion, it helped showcase the seriousness of the situation.

    "What did you do?" Coulson asked calmly even though he could see his gaze swivelling from one side to the other, trying to make sense of the sudden bout of silence they were plunged into.

    "Well, Agent Coulson, this is the curtain of silence. It's something I learned to do rather early in my career. It is a way of creating a soundproof barrier, such that no sound can come in or out. I do it by manipulating the very air around us. Anyway, that is not the main topic for the day,"

    "Fury," He pinned Fury with a look who glared back defiantly, "Yes, Dr.Bruce Robert Banner, is under my protection. Not just because of the litany of crimes that have been committed in bringing him to heel but also because of the sheer damage it would cause if Ross got his hands on him. You, of all people, should know what Ross is planning to do and what the President is tacitly allowing,"

    "Yes, I am aware that Ross wants his own little army of Hulks and that is not going to end well for anybody but the matter stands, Banner is a fugitive and Ross will come for him. He believes that-"

    "Let him come, then,"

    "What?" Fury's confused Pikachu face was cute, if you could consider a 50 year old man with a permanent scowl on his face…cute.

    "Let Ross come then. He can come with all the weapons he can get but let me make one thing very clear, he will not be seeing Bruce Banner, green skin or not. I will obliterate his forces the moment they step foot in my city."

    It was quite clear for everybody to see that his words rang true in that sense. Nothing that Ross could bring forth would be able to stand in his way. Besides, what was the President going to do? Authorise The Army to bring military grade ordinance into a heavily populated residential area, where billionaires and millionaires resided aplenty?

    His rating would tank so hard, that he would be scrambling to make amends.

    "Threat of military warfare and possible treason charges aside, what do you want us to do? We are quite aware of your strength but even you must realise that fighting should be the absolute last option," Coulson interjected, seeing that Fury was about to explode on the spot.

    "Ah, you would be right, Agent Coulson. I want nothing but peace but Ross wants Banner and that is not something I can permit to happen, in the name of continued peace, of course. So, I scheduled this meeting in hopes that you get help get Ross off Banner's back, and in return, we could come up with some sort of deal that would be mutually beneficial,"

    Fury jumped in here, "Assuming we even do something about Ross, what sort of deal are we talking about here?"

    He rolled his eyes from far away. Trust Fury to jump onto that part almost immediately.

    "Look Fury, I am sure your analysts already told you this but I am very limited in the areas I can act in. So, anything that I would have to do, would have to be in NYC. In the future, my range might increase but as of now, I am limited in this area. So, keeping that in mind, what sort of deal can you cut me here?"

    "We are quite aware of that. For now, we will see what we can do about Ross at the moment. As for the deal…." Coulson said and then turned to Fury, throwing the ball in his court.

    Fury mulled it over for a moment before saying, "Fine. I can't make any promises, not without anything tangible to show to POTUS but once we have something solid, I can see about that pardon. For the moment, Coulson will be your primary contact. He will contact you once we have any update about the situation,"

    Fury stood up, as did Coulson. He also made his paper avatar stand up and snap his fingers, dispelling the curtain of silence and opening up all the windows and doors, revealing the veritable storm of crushed bullets that the agents outside must have peppered the doors with.

    Fury and Coulson looked incensed as he simply made the paper avatar wave at them before it was dispelled in a shower of paper spaghetti, revealing the primitive phone used to generate the speech.

    Back in his office, he thought about the meeting that had happened just now. He was hoping to get something concrete from Fury but it made sense, he hadn't given them anything to work on, so far.

    He would have to–

    His thoughts screeched to a halt as he felt the wards around the New York Sanctum pulse before the form of Ancient One, standing on the rooftop, tending to the garden was made visible to his spatial awareness.

    Well, it was about damn time.


    If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
     
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