The Sage of the Mind

[IdleMuse0307]

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 120[May 2012]

Zurich, Switzerland

–Loki Odinson Laufeyson–

He grinned under the illusion he had cast over the machine. It was very hard for his magic to latch onto the machine because it was so suffused with energy from the Tesseract but with some light energy cleansing work, he was able to get his lightest illusion spell working which was just a visible illusion. He would still be visible and detectable to other means, far from his magnum opus which would slip his body in between spaces to make sure that he remained undetected.

The very heavy impact on his brain, when he had been rescued from the mortals, had been enough to dislodge the parasitic spell that was implanted in him. Now that he was clear in his mind, it was also very clear to him that the sceptre was only partially there to use as a weapon. It was most likely used as a link between him and the Other who would use it to reinforce the spell if needed.

That was where the overwhelming fear came from, he was sure. Nothing to do with the torture he experienced under them, he was sure of that.

Now that he had no Master commanding him, he could have done away with the Invasion but it was still true that he needed to conquer a realm, to become King, to show Odin that he was not some failure, not someone who is not worthy.

So, there he was, making sure that the machine worked as best as it could. He had dismissed all the thralls he made under the Sceptre's control and told them to go where they would be arrested with ease, and fight back. He grinned deliciously at the sheer amount of chaos it would cause.

But that was neither here nor there. No, the reason he was continuing this invasion was because he needed to make sure that Midgard remained weak. Despite his earlier notions about mortals, they had grown a lot since he last came here. They also had champions who were much stronger than he had anticipated.

The Genus Loci in the city called Manhattan alone gave him chills. The only reason the machine had reached that godforsaken place was because it was the default location set by Eric Selwig, something about the city being the optimum place for the most damage, to both people as well as their morale.

He did not agree and as such, after dumping a small squad of Chitauri, he jumped out of that place so fast. He then jumped on to the next location, which was usually some city population by the ants he was going to crush and then rule, to bring them into a new age of prosperity, away from the needless genocide they committed against one another.

It was so wasteful. He had watched a few of the documentaries, wherein they documented the crimes they committed against their own kind and he had been beyond repulsed. Even the Fire Demons, which were mostly cannibals, were better since they didn't know any better. They had no conscious thoughts.

These humans, they had empathy, and enough intelligence to realise what they were doing but they continued to do so anyway, and not just that, they had the audacity to come up with new and better ways to kill one another.

One such thing was the nukes. He shuddered as he undid the illusion on himself, and jammed his hand near the cube's barrier, where the button was. He winced as his skin was singed by the Tesseract's energy but that was a small price to pay, as he watched a blue hole appear in the sky and droves of Chitauri fly down. The only reason he was doing this one by one, with only a few Chitauri soldiers was because, one, he wanted the Other to expend his forces needlessly, and two, he wanted to whittle down Earth's defenses, slowly.

He didn't want to create a super large invasion force and then force their leaders to send in the nukes. Those were weapons that contained the power of the sun and would destroy even him, with ease. The Tesseract will be fine but he will be fine mist, even with all his power.

Hell, he reckoned that not even Thor would survive one of those attacks.

These damn mortals, how did they even come up with a way to contain the power of the sun, he would never know. Then again, if it were only the nukes he had to worry about, it would be fine. No, it was more than that. Midgard had hidden defenses in most major cities.

In some of the cities he attacked, he witnessed multiple champions emerging out of nowhere to defend the city, even though they were not really successful. He made sure that large buildings were the first ones to be toppled before he left for a new city. Even so, when he was in the city called Mumbai, one of the champions who could fly on his own, had almost collided with him before he had retreated from that zone.

He could have easily dealt with that mortal since he knew that despite their various abilities, almost all of them were vulnerable to attacks from the Chitauri but he couldn't enter the fray himself, mainly because he was still connected to the machine.

When the machine was being built, he had asked the resident Doctor a few questions, and that had elicited a couple of very interesting answers to him. So, he had changed some parameters from the original design which meant that now, instead of the portal being controlled by the Other who would prefer it to be open in a stationary location with endless droves of Chitauri arriving and destroying everything in sight, the control was held in his hands, literally.

His blood was used to control the Tesseract's portal location and as soon as his hands left the machine, it would cease to function. Activating it was no simple matter and he knew that the mortals would not let that happen again.

So, he had to make this one chance count. He could not let Thor or the champions defeat him but he could not let the Chitauri destroy everything. This was supposed to be his kingdom now.

He sighed and closed the portal above this Zurich City. It was one of the smaller cities but if he recalled correctly, it held significance in the sense that the country it belonged to, didn't enter any World War that the humans had in the last century.

He was about to leave but then his senses prickled, as he felt someone watching him. Which was supposed to be impossible because he was cloaked in his illusion and far away from the original portal location.

His neck swiveled around as he tried to look for the stalker, only to find himself face to face with a mortal, flying, looking straight at him.

He immediately backpedaled, his first instinct to get away from this place but reality around him rippled and he fled right into the woman's open palm.

__xx__

Zurich,

–Ancient One–

"Hmm, this is concerning," She mused as she withdrew her spell from Loki's mind and destroyed his memories of their encounter. She could have defeated him herself and confiscated the Tesseract, she was well within her rights but this was not going to be her era for long.

It was time for the future generation to step up and do their part, especially since the crutch everyone was lingering on, Axle, was now comatose.

Then again, it was not like she couldn't give the soon to be Avengers a helping hand, her mouth quirked into a small smile as she cast a subtle compulsion on Loki's mind, one that would unravel in a few hours but that would be more than enough time for Stark to make his move.

____xx___

–Loki–

He came to consciousness with a gasp, a feeling of terror in his heart for some reason, even though he was cloaked, perfectly safe, with the mortals in front of him scrambling to defeat the small squad of Chitaur.

He chuckled to himself. Pathetic, these mortals were.

They didn't even have any champions to protect them. He would be that champion, and once their cities were ashes, they would learn to accept him as their patron God.


If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon or Ko-fi, for upto 5 extra chapters.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

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 121[May 2012]

US Airspace

–Tony Stark–

"What do you mean, we can't leave the United States airspace, are they mad? This is our chance to lure Loki into a location of our choosing instead of chasing him around the planet, which has turned out wonderful for all of us," He couldn't help but shout at their liaison with the White House who had outright denied their request to leave the States to some deserted location elsewhere, where they would be zero chances of Loki hurting anyone, well, aside from them that is.

He was thinking some desert with no people for hundreds of miles in any direction. The ocean would have been the perfect choice but not all of their fighters were flyers and he didn't want to risk the chance of death by drowning just because his suit got bunged up in the battle and he couldn't find a replacement in time.

He was really not good at swimming. The best swimming he had done, according to his humble opinion, would be the swim to become the prime zygote.

"Then what else do you want us to do? We need to bring Loki to our terms. If we continued chasing him around the world, the death toll will continue to rise because Loki is going to continue targeting major cities and not every city is as fortunate as New York," Randall stomped forward and snarled at their liaison who didn't even flinch at that, and that must be impressive because they had all seen Randall and his brothers in action at the California battle.

They were savage and very well coordinated. It was as if the brothers shared a psychic link. Thor seemed to get along exceptionally well with all of them.

"Mr.Randall and Mr.Stark, the President has declared a national emergency and you, as a team, are the single most valuable resource we have to defend the country. Under no circumstances, can we allow all of you to leave the country. If the other countries cannot defend themselves without your intervention, then I am sorry to say but there is nothing we can do but pray for their safety," Saying so, the woman cut the call.

"Good Lord," Bruce whispered as he looked at a screen, which held the current casualty counter, traced by Jarvis himself, so it should be pretty accurate.

"A quarter million dead, huh?" He muttered to himself as he stormed out of the Lab, to the storage area where all the new suits had arrived, from his various production facilities in the States.

Once upon a time, that would have been just a number to him, something that would be the end result of his weapons being fired at a population centre. Sure, the numbers never reached those numbers at a time, but he was sure that the Stark name that was printed on all of their weapons, held the blood of more than a quarter million who were now dead because of Loki's invasion.

He had a plan, and Thor agreed that it would work, not to mention that it was their only plan that had any chances of working and yet, due to stupid old people and their fear of death, they were constrained to a single country.

Sighing, he rubbed his face in defeat, "Jarvis, find the most suitable area in the Continental United States please?"

If they were not going to let them leave the country and not going to tell him which area to lead Loki to, then he might just have to choose one himself.

"Also, look for an area that can be bought up quickly," He reminded Jarvis because he knew that the only reason the President was not allotting him an area was because he was a politician and then he would have to answer why he destroyed that area and not some other deserted area because frankly, the United States was full of empty areas and yet, had some of the highest cost of home ownership in the world, wonderful capitalistic phenomenon.

"Alright, gentlemen, let's hope this works otherwise the world will soon become a Nuclear wasteland," Then, he remembered something and quickly asked Jarvis, "Open a line to Thor,"

"Yes, sir."

"Thor, suppose we catch Loki, do you have any way of making sure that he cannot escape because he escaped last time," He quickly reminded Thor because even after going through hell, if they couldn't keep Loki imprisoned, it was all going to be a waste of time, effort and most probably, lives.

A small part in him reminded him that he was the most squishy member around. Bruce, the Hulk brothers, and Thor, they were all very bulletproof and mostly invulnerable to everything, except nukes that is but he was the one who would die with a well placed laser from even the Chitauri foot soldiers.

"Jarvis, prep all the suits. Bring more from the fabrication facilities. We will need everything for this. Also, contact some of the newer enhanced people that have emerged out of the ground to defend their countries. See if they can be convinced to fight Loki,"

"Affirmative, sir. Location found. The Utah Salt Flats,"

He sighed at that. He was afraid of something like this.

"But that is a protected region. Tony, we cannot just destroy a natural wonder like that," Bruce was the one who argued against the location but a single sentence from Randall shut down any incoming arguments.

Randall chuckled, "Well, we can either let Loki destroy our artificial wonders and then move on to these natural wonders or we can take the fight to him, sacrificing one of our natural wonders and stop him, once and for all,"

He agreed with that, "Jarvis. Prep the suits. Select that location and broadcast it to any enhanced we have in range, or is willing to come by. Put out an SOS for any nearby people, tell them it's a national emergency or something and lastly, check in on Axle. Is he awake yet?"

"No sir, his brain scans show an astonishing amount of activity which seems to increase with every passing moment but all vital signs are normal,"

He sighed in relief and disappointment at that. They would have won this war with contemptuous ease if Axle were awake but if they did win this war, with extreme losses, he would be very much relieved if Axle were on their side, because if an Alien invasion can occur once, it can happen again and he would very much like their juggernaut to be with them for the next one.

He already had ideas on how to improve basically everything when it came to his defense protocols, because so far, all he had focussed on was the US, his company, his home, and some key high violence zones.

Nothing that would span the globe. He might have to change that, after this, and who knows, if the rest of the world could cooperate on this, then he might just have a chance of seeing something happen that he never thought would happen.

Global Cooperation or Unification for a single cause.

Something like that would be necessary to have a planetary defense system, like a suit of armour around the world.

"Randall, tell everyone to be ready. We will call on Loki in an hour and since he can get there instantly, we will ambush him as soon as he arrives." He deflated after Randall left the lab, suddenly feeling all the bruises from the last fight.

It had been a very high speed, high tension time ever since they entered the Stark Jet to go get Loki. He hadn't had a good sleep since then. He was sure that he was going to crash for a week after this battle was–

"Get some sleep," He looked up at Bruce who was looking at him, concerned.

"We all have some powers but you don't. You can't fight on an empty tank. I've already informed Jarvis to get you an easily digestible smoothie and get the bed ready. I'll wake you up in an hour."

He was about to argue but then his eyes grew heavy and he began yawning. "Okay," he nodded and left the lab.



A/N - I realise that the fic has been somewhat serious for the past few chapters, a departure from the crack-ish vibe I was going for. All I can say is that we will return to the goofy vibe in the next few chapters.

Toodles!

If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon or Ko-fi, for upto 5 extra chapters.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

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 122[May 2012]

Zurich

–Loki Laufeyson Odinson–

It was odd. He shook his head as if trying to get rid of a particularly persistent migraine, the ones he had whenever he drank something called the "Romulan Ale" that flooded the black market a few centuries back and he had bought some from the Kree Black Markets, just as an experiment, and ended up in "compromising circumstances" with a "Quadrupedal land mammal of the genus Equus commonly domesticated by humans for transportation, agricultural labor, and recreational activities, distinguished by its elongated head, flowing mane, and swift locomotive capabilities".

Just then, he was about to take out a handy invention that humans made, a device holding tiny runes that held so much information and was also connected to all the other devices across the planet. Thankfully, the tracking feature of the machine was removed by the Good Doctor before he had ordered his minions to dispose of him.

The man was probably already gone because of the magnitude of information that was forcibly stuffed in his mind. Mortals were not supposed to have access to that level of information.

Then again, he thought to himself as he looked at the immaculate construction of the portal machine, mortals can do good work, if they were properly motivated. Imagining armies being capable of not just instantaneous one side transport but also troops capable of localised movement throughout the battlefield made him shiver in excitement.

Sure, the mortals were squishy but as the handful of champions had so handily reminded him, they could be tough and if not, there was always the armour that the mortal known as Stark touted about.

Once he was King, there would be nothing to worry about. Pesky things like Intellectual Property, trademarks, and more would become a thing of the past. He always wondered why things like Intellectual rights evolved exactly the same across all of the universe, that he knew of, and then realised that the ability to safeguard materialistic things will always be the virtue of mortal species with sentience, bare as it was.

He looked through the list of cities and their location on Midgard's map, which allowed him to feed the data to the Tesseract which instantly transported him to that location, all at a paltry cost of some magic that he would never really use because of the Tesseract and his ability to call on unending hordes of Chitauri.

Well, Shanghai sounds like an Ancient city name.

Looking at the map, imaging it in his mind, he shoved the device back in his pocket, because he couldn't afford to waste his magic in opening and closing his storage space, and then shoved his hands near the sphere that covered the Tesseract. Wincing once again at the pain, despite the magic coating his hands, he shoved the image from his mind into the Tesseract and immediately pulled his hands away from the Tesseract, as his surroundings changed.

Swiftly casting a stealth spell on him, he looked around and was satisfied to see a bustling city with a proper amount of people. Huge artificial metal abominations littered the skyline, no doubt filled with people already.

Good, this was a place worthy of being called a city, for the mortals that is. Some of the previous cities he attacked barely had any people worth mentioning.

Just as he was about to open the portal to the Chitauri, he heard an annoying voice. His hands paused as he instead looked all around him, at the hundreds of shining lights that had turned black and were buzzing at a very frequency, something that affected him but didn't seem to deter any of the humans.

He sneered at that. Inferior beings with their inferior senses.

"Um, hello? Mic Check? Working? Okay. Good," His neck snapped up as he glared at the black boards that now projected the face of Stark, the one mortal who could match up to him, in his weakened form of course. The rest were clearly no mortals.

The Genus Loci of Manhattan could have posed a threat but he was not going to touch that city, not without having the rest of the world under his thumb. Let that spirit act as the guardian host, the last haven of Midgard and then let the rest of the Midgardians watch as he crushes their last stronghold, finally breaking the spirit, both literal and metaphorical, finally completing his invasion and conquest of Midgard.

"Um, hi? Everyone, as you know, we are suffering from a terrible crisis at the moment. The reason for that crisis is just one small coward, jumping from place to place because he is afraid that we will catch up to him. Now, I don't want to say that he is compensating for something with those giant ass whales but what do I know? "

His nostrils flared as he felt a white hot spike of rage at Stark, at the drivel he was spouting. Bereft of his sceptre, he could not fire any energy blasts, not ones that wouldn't deplete his already meagre mana pool but by the Allfather, he wished he had the sceptre that could burn a hole in Stark's pea sized brain.

"Anyway, Loki Laufeyson-" He growled at that, he was no Frost Giant,"--You can come to these coordinates. If that is too complicated for you, this is a picture since I am sure you cannot read and write properly, your brother's words, not mine!"

"See you there, bitch!" Stark said before the large screens turned to their black states, with the pathetic mortals scrambling beneath him. HE smirked at their patheticness, panicking at such a small crisis.

He would have to whip that out of them when he became their King. It might take a few generations to whip them into discipline and obedience but they were mortals anyway, a few generations would pass without him even noticing anything about it.

Now, to the pest problem that he hoped to push until later on but…

"Stark!" He growled and uncaring of the pain, he thrust his hand into the Tesseract and conveyed the location. Feeling the change, he found himself in a vast land that was white in colour.

Choosing not to dwell on that oddity, he surveyed his surroundings and found them bereft of Stark and his ilk. He sneered internally, typical mortals. Too cowardly to face their superi—

His senses blared at him as he hurriedly dropped the spell holding the machine up in the air and dropped a few feet, only to be ragdolled by the shockwave of whatever it was that passed him. Desperately holding on to the machine, his hand brushed against the sphere of energy, triggering the portal.

As a result, the ragdolling ceased instantly as the machine stabilised itself, him barely holding on to the machine. His neck on a swivel, he looked at where Stark's suit should be but his eyes narrowed as he found an explosion looking back at him.

His shoulders tensed as he realised that he barely avoided death just now. In his current mana depleted state, he would not be able to cast a shield spell and if he managed to survive that, his body would be in no condition to heal itself or keep him alive long enough for Thor to arrive.

That stupid naive fool would still try to save—

He looked up abruptly as he saw thunder right up above him heralding the arrival of his brother. He squinted as he saw the glowing form of his brother, arcs of lightning surrounding his body as Thor raced straight at him.

His jaw hung agape as Thor seemed to be in no hurry to slow down. He barely had the sense to hunch right behind the machine as Thor, clad in lightning, struck the machine and him with it.

The last thing he remembered was a white flash of pain on the back of his neck before darkness claimed his vision.



If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon or Ko-fi, for upto 5 extra chapters.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

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 123[May 2012]

Utah Salt Flats

–Tony Stark–

With their plan in motion, they stayed put, thousands of feet above the place where they had just goaded Loki into coming. The atmosphere aboard the Stark jet was very stifling, everybody held their breath because there was a chance that Loki would just ignore them and not even think of coming into such an obvious trap.

They were also currently ignoring all calls from all government entities, even as he saw Jarvis tracking multiple fighter jet departures from all the nearby military bases, converging directly at their current location. He knew that the President couldn't give a direct order himself because his position was quite strenuous at the moment, but choosing a mostly empty location such as this was also going to generate a lot of backlash, especially from the environmentally maniac people.

He has dealt with them before, but that was about protests about his personal property, like the Arc Reactor or his many other weapons but this was different. He had just effectively declared an entire zone that was thousands of acres, a no mans land.

Jarvis was doing all he could to buy up everything at double, triple the price but he knew that he would need to burn a lot of favors to avoid jail time after this, since it was his face that was all over the world, practically inviting Loki to destroy a precious natural phenome–

Sirens began beeping as Jarvis tracked a heavy energy arrival in their area.

This was it, "Jarvis! Prep it and as soon as you have a lock, go in full throttle."

"Affirmative, sir. Project Big Sh*t activated,"

He expertly ignored everyone's looks when Jarvis uttered the original name of the project, something that he had cooked up during one of his many drunken tinkering sessions back when he was in college.

"Thor, can you hit the machine with your strongest attack? Preferably a physical attack since energy attacks don't seem to work?" He asked Thor since he was the only one, aside from the Hulk, who could hit with a strength that would destroy most things on the planet.

Also, The Hulk couldn't fly. He tried to tell Bruce about the foot repulsor units he could fix up but Bruce was confident that the Hulk would not care for those and would rather destroy them himself instead.

"Aye, Friend Stark. I will need a few moments to gather the lightning but I can hit the machine with all my might,"

"What about your brother?" Everyone looked at Randall who continued to type on his workstation, trying to work on something to interfere with the workings of the machine while also simultaneously recording everything so that they could detect such portal openings to the last meter, in the future, should the need arise.

Randall then stopped and turned to face Thor fully, with an intense look in his eyes, "What if you hold back at the last moment? How can we be sure that you will not destroy our one chance at stopping Loki?"

He was taken aback at that. He didn't expect Randall to be so straightforward, especially since his patron, The Invisible Man was still comatose, something that should create many problems for them from the government but Randall was…fine.

Thor opened his mouth to speak but Randall beat him to it, "820,000 people are dead, Crown Prince Thor."

Thor winced at the reminder of his brother's borderline genocide. The worst disaster to hit the world in terms of human death count in the 21st century.

"I will admit that my brother has erred and he deserves to face full justice for his crimes. Facing the full brunt of my attacks can kill Loki, I acknowledge that but know this, I will never, never hold back because the lives of thousands of more mortals hang in the balance. I, Thor Odinson, vow on my powers that I will not go easy on Loki just because he is my brother,"

He looked around as the words reverbed all around the jet, even though the sound isolation in the Jet was supposed to be top-notch. Some magical bullshit then.

Randall's face didn't change one bit but he had a hunch that THor had just done some significant thing which basically guaranteed what he just said.

"Portal confirmed," Jarvis' reminder put everyone on high alert as Thor left for the hangar bay, which was opened, just in case Thor needed to rocket out of the jet. Jarvis had also increased the thrust on all the repulsors to increase the stability of the Jet, couldn't have the Stark Jet tumble out of the sky just because the God of Thunder jumped out of it.

"Alright, ladies!" He looked at the gatherings of their team, their faces set in excitement, anger, and even some fear as they prepared themselves for a very hard fight. The fight of their lives even, and honestly? He mirrored that sentiment but he couldn't let it show on the outside now, could he?

"It's showtime," With his words, a screen appeared in the centre, showing the energy blob that was the TEsseract;s location. Sure, they couldn't get a visual on Loki but that was due to Loki's illusions, something that was just a fancy way of bending light.

"3..2….1" And with that, he saw one of the Stark Industries' satellites that he'd put up in space a year back, spit out a projectile, a missile but it didn't have any thrusters on it. It was just a missile that he had hastily installed in the Satellite because he hadn't installed the hyper dense tungsten projectile that he was going to install because he felt that holding an Orbital Canon over everyone's head would be wrong.

As it turns out, it would have been illegal and treasonous but it would have been the perfect thing for such an occasion.

Instead, they had this.

On the screen, as soon as the missile was dropped out of the satellite, two different suits of his appeared on the screen, and their hands, which were not really hands but devices made to latch onto the circular body of the missile appeared.

"Alright, let's go," He muttered as he suited up in the Stark Jet, ready to get to the battlefield, if it didn't work as were everyone else but they couldn't risk going in early because Loki might sense them and flee the place.

The cameras on the suits along with a handy map on the screen showed the missile, its speed, and its ETA to hit Loki.

It was already going way faster than anything that Earth had ever built, including Rockets for orbital launches. He also knew that the President tacitly approved his actions because he was yet to see any response from the no doubt hundreds of missile silos that would activate almost instantly if any missile of unknown origin was approaching US soil at such breakneck speeds.

His decision to stay in the jet was proven correct when just as the missile was about to breach the clouds and enter Loki's vision and destroy him, Loki's head snapped up and he immediately ducked down, dropping a couple dozen feet, and then immediately flying up high, his body very much wobbly because of the shockwave. Loki struggled to hold onto the portal machine even as the air around him continued to ragdoll the machine as well as Loki.

It would seem that without the portal being active, the machine didn't have any way of stabilising itself.

That single move saved his ass as the missile exploded on the salt flat and since the yield of the makeshift missile was not as high as he wanted it to be, the impact was not significant, either on the Salt Plains or on Loki.

"Alright, move OUT!" He shouted as the entire floor moved to create a circular hole, through which he jumped. Even as he was going through the tunnel, he felt the entire Jet jerk to one side, as his head hit the wall of the narrow tunnel.

"Damn it, THor!" He cursed as he exited the Jet and saw the rapidly flying form of Thor.

Then the idiot went ahead and did something that stabilised the machine but also activated the blue portal from Hell right above them, this one being the largest one ever recorded.

"Unusual Meteorological activity detected," Jarvis' warning was unnecessary because he saw, in real time, the darkening of clouds and the buildup of lighting in the atmosphere, seemingly following THor's flight trajectory.

He followed suit, making sure to remain at a distance because he did not want his suit to be damaged by friendly fire. He wasn't sure if his energy redirectors and the Arc Reactor itself along with the wiring, could hold on to the total energy amount of an actual lightning bolt.

Those things were scary, actually.

Apparently, Thor didn;t get that memo because instead of going straight down, Thor just jerked up, right into the middle of the biggest thundercloud Jarvis had ever recorded on this side of the planet.

He was about to continue on his path to Loki when Jarvis' warning came in the form of the suit being thrown back by the repulsor thrusters as he saw, in slow motion, as Thor, wreathed in crackling white light, flew straight down, towards Loki.

Thor's hammer in particular was just white now, with no hint of its previous grey in sight.

In just a second, he saw all this unfolding and then he took control, following after Thor, activating the extra shields he had on the back, just in case some friendly fire did occur in this game.

The world's most dangerous, high stakes, high pressure, and crappy story game.

……

….

His jaw hung agape as Thor, seemingly not taking into consideration the safety of his brother, continued on his path, and stuck the machine.

The cameras in the ruined suits underneath Loki and on the Jet, the satellites as well as the suit he was wearing could not see what was happening because the machine was just a blur of white, with a blue beam sticking out of the mass of blue.

"Shit!" He shook his head as he moved onto the horde of Chitauri coming out of the portal now. After pulling off a move like that, even Thor must be tired.

They couldn't let the CHitauri spill out because these guys were nasty AF and did not care about harming children, women, or the elderly. For them, everyone else was a target.

"Alright team, keep an eye on the situation. I'll deal the first round," He announced before a series of micro missiles ejected his suit as well as the two almost ruined suits on the ground, heading straight for the horde of Chitaur.

"Jarvis! Any updates?"

"The energy storm around the machine continues to persist, with no possible way of calculating the energy levels in the sphere, I can't calculate a precise ETA,"

"Then get me rough figures!" He shouted as he shoulder checked one of the chariots, making it swerve and crash into another Chariot.




If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon or Ko-fi, for upto 5 extra chapters.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

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 123[May 2012]

Utah Salt Flats [2 hours after Loki was detained]

–Tony Stark–

"Please stay still, Mr.Stark," He resisted the urge to snap at the nurse who was nursing his wounds. Wounds that he had sustained in the hour long non stop fight that he was a part of, destroying Chitauri Chariots left and right, before the cavalry showed up.

It was official, Thor was powerful. Uber powerful one could say if they calculated even a tenth of the energy in Thor's hammer when he hit the machine with his big fuck you attack, and then they would have to weep in despair because even that didn't kill the machine, the machine somehow being protected by the pure energy barrier around the Tesseract.

THey had nothing in their arsenal capable of closing that whole thing down. They'd tried everything at this point and the only thing that would surpass Thor's sheer energy attack was a nuclear strike and he had been in a very heated argument with POTUS, Defense Secretaries and some analysts as to why that was a very bad idea.

A fucking stu[pid idea if there ever was one.

Good news, Loki was contained, if with some limbs missing, but Thor assured them that Loki would live. He was being held in a specialised cell, with Thor being very clear as to what would happen to Earth if anything happened to his brother while Loki was in the custody of the US military.

He waved off the nurse who wanted to give him a painkiller. Sure, it would help with the pain but it would also take the edge off and he was not sure if he would remain standing if the pain was not there to remind him of the current events.

God, he was so very tired.

Loki was taken into custody, which was fine. The Tesseract was right in front of them, going nowhere, which was good. But the damned thing was just out of reach for everyone save for Loki who somehow was touching the damned thing when he was taken out by Thor.

He was certain that had Thor hit Loki head on, with that level of power, not even ashes of Loki would have remained. IT would seem that the Crown Prince took his vows, especially the ones taken magically, very seriously. The attack legit would have killed his brother and Thor was willing to do it because Thor knew that if he held back then, hundreds of thousands of more lives would have been lost.

Speaking of lost lives, they had a zero casualty count in the military forces that had arrived here and that was only because of the scenery at the portal.

He grinned, hobbling towards where Thor and the less tech savvy members of the Hulk brotherhood were standing, looking at the greatest fireworks festival Earth had ever seen.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" He asked everyone as he watched the near continuous rain of missiles that was happening at the mouth of the portal. The machine was floating mid air as well but as they had learned in the previous two hours, no amount of explosions was going to dislodge the portal machine so right now, they were focused on making sure that the enemies didn't make it past a certain perimeter around the portal.

He looked up as fighter jets continued to roam the skies.

"Mr.Stark!" he looked back to see a trooper running towards him with a satellite phone in his hand, "POTUS is on the line,"

Great. He had to deal with politics even now. He would have thought that now of all time humanity would come together and try to solve this together but nooo. Somehow, the United States of America was still dragging their feet in granting clearances to other countries' militaries to help them contain this threat.

"Stark, how long until your Jericho missiles are back in stock?"

He sighed at the question. Honestly, that was one of the harder things he had done in this invasion and he had personally weathered laser blasts and had dislocated both his shoulders during the fight, relying on JArvis to pilot the suit because there was no way he was backing down until backup got to them.

Restarting the production of weapons that he had sworn to never do again, was akin to throwing away all the progress he'd made in the past years. Pepper was fully supportive of him and had told him, in no uncertain terms, that she would rather fight the government on this than let Tony make a decision he would regret.

And that had been the thing, wasn't it? Regret. He would have regretted any single person dying just because the government had been forced to turn to a substandard weapons supplier. Oh heaven forbid, they went to Hammer?

They would all die then.

"Mr.President, I have repurposed some of my facilities but it will take time. My people are working on it. The first missile should reach the nearest military bases in about 3 more hours. That's the best I can do. Also, we have redesigned them for the portal's purpose so they can target a much narrower target,"

"Alright. Any word from our prisoner?"

He sighed once again, glancing at Thor from the corner of his eyes, who still sported some cuts, and scuffs on his armour from the massive dogfight he had been in when two of the Chitauri space whales had descended on him, judging him to be the bigger threat of the bunch, which was a mistake because Hulk had proceeded to absolutely gut another space whale, and roar at the Chitauri which made every one pause.

"No, Mr.President. Loki is pretty bunged up from Thor's attack and I don't think he will be waking up anytime soon. We are on our own for this. Any words from the recovered mind control victims?" He made sure to emphasise on the word "victim" because he knew that this was wartime and the US government performed enough human rights transgressions as is, he couldn't imagine what they would do in wartime.

He was making sure that the agents recovered were just that, victims of Loki's crimes and nothing more.

"No, Stark. The victims are all still in a coma apparently. Analysts say that they were given orders to surrendered to the closest authority, and after that, their minds shut down,"

He closed his eyes at that. So chances of permanent brain damage after being subjected to extensive time periods of mind control.

"Mr.President, is Congress still dragging its feet with the permission to have foreign militaries on our soil? I seem to remember the President having unprecedented powers during wartime," He reminded the older man, knowing that having coordination from other militaries was best.

Plus, while the US military looked like they had the situation handled, they didn't. The US was vast and if the entire war machine was mobilised, it would have been another thing but the President was a weak minded simpleton who did not want to step on anyone's toes, so he was only mobilising forces as the situation demanded.

There was a sigh on the other side, "Tony, son, look, it's not that simple. I can't create a precedent for something like this. It makes us look weak. Plus, we have more than enough reserves to last weeks of sustained battle, if the numbers I am seeing are correct. In the meantime, we can always produce more, and with your–"

"Mr.President, you and I both know that this is not going to be resolved with just missiles and nukes. We need the enhanced, the hidden people who jumped out of their hidey holes during the invasion. We need explicit permission to make sure that they would not be prosecuted by the government for simply helping in a human crisis. Hell, that girl, with the intangibility powers alone would be very helpful if she could somehow lodge the Tesseract out of the machine,"

It would seem that his words were going above the man's head because the next words came out very hastily, "Great! Then we can have her to your location within the day, I will personally write her VISA so she does not suffer from any consequences,"

He sighed, and went along with the drivel, despite knowing that there was no way any law enforcement agency was going to be able to catch her, especially since she seems to be extremely adept at hiding from everyone and everything, including Jarvis and since it was India, she did not have as much of a digital footprint as an Average American.

Also, the President was missing the point entirely. He needed to create a precedent so that he could create America enhanced friendly, just like it becoming Immigrant friendly made it the economic powerhouse it was today.

They couldn't generate that many enhanced but they sure as hell could bring them to the greatest nation in the world and employ their services, and something like that wasn't going to happen with a one time return VISA, wherein she would likely be ambushed during her return trip if she somehow survived the battle at all.

Times like these were what SHIELD was for but as soon as he heard Fury was dead, he knew the reason why the agency was nowhere near this invasion and was instead being actively sidelined by the President in every matter that was significant.

He flinched a bit as a particular loud keening noise was heard, closing his eyes. He opened them when a squelching noise was heard, as yet another Space Whale was killed or burned alive in the explosives that were now staining the atmosphere around the portal.

The now dead space whale landed on a pile of already dead Chitauri, with their blood pooling around the space, the salt plains and staining everything, also likely poisoning everything as well.

Good Lord, this was going to be an environmental disaster of epic proportions.

"Jarvis, any updates?" He asked Jarvis the one question that he had been asking for hours now, a question that was probably in the minds of most of the people in the government and all the people in the team.

Just when will the fucking Invisible Man wake up?


If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon or Ko-fi, for upto 5 extra chapters.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

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 123[May 2012]

Manhattan [3 hours after Loki's detention and Portal Invasion in Utah]

–Frank Castle–

"That's the last of 'em," He grunted as he hefted yet another pair of Chitauri soldiers and dumped them on the growing pile of waste that he and the Captain had created after the Invasion was over.

"You sure? I think I can still smell them, everywhere," The Captain, huffing and puffing, asked him. The picture was ridiculous for him. The Captain was dragging, with him, two of those Chariot type things while talking to him. Sure, it made him exert his strength but he couldn't even move one of those damn things if he didn't have this armour on him.

"Yeah, Jarvis says so, so it should be pretty accurate," In the time he had spent as part of the invasion counter force, he had come to respect Jarvis as an information provider.

"You still think we should stay here? With the fight still happening in Utah?"

And that was probably half the reason why Jarvis was keeping them down here, doing grunt work instead of having his probable army of drones do it for them.

"Yes, Captain. You've seen the aliens, there is not much you could do in a fight of that level. Plus, the fight is happening in a totally controlled area, with no civilians." That had been a major selling point to placate the anxious captain who just had to jump in and help people whenever he could.

Ah, the Perfect Boy Scout.

"Mr.Castle," Jarvis' words were accompanied by the suit's faceplate slamming shut and a small visual appearing on the HUD. "What am I seeing, Jarvis?"

The visual increased in size to fill his vision and all he saw was some sort of line, and hundreds, no thousands of dots heading straight to the line.

"Mr.Castle, I am detecting a full scale invasion of the Mole People. We need to prepare for their arrival. I have already extended the stay in the Tunnel and have informed the Mayor of funnelling all the people either out of state or into the Tunnel," Oh. Oh, Hell Naw, not this shit again! Weren't the Giant Space whales enough?

Just as Jarvis finished speaking, there was a thudding sound right behind him. He turned around, and saw that the Captain's armour had arrived.

"Captain, we need to go," He said to the Captain who didn't question anything and entered the armour. His form rocketed up in the air.

"Jarvis, you said Mole People? What intel do you have on them? Also, can we funnel their entry into a single point?" He asked Jarvis as various entry points on the HUD were being marked as they crossed over the entire borough, with his heart sinking as he realised that they were going to enter Manhattan, through everywhere.

"The Mole people are a subterranean species, capable of burrowing through hard soil and stone with ease. They are bulletproof and their blood is acidic enough to melt concrete. Their main weaknesses are their brains which are protected by bulletproof skulls. They can also not tolerate bright lights as much as we can but that is not something we can rely on to kill them, only temporarily stun them,"

"Great! Bring out the big lights then!"

"Already on it. ETA - 4 mins,"

"...And ETA on the Mole guys?"

"...2 mins.."

He cursed as he raced through the sky, followed by the Captain along with a dozen other drones being piloted by Jarvis, spreading throughout the burrow.

"Jarvis, plot the entry points with the most Mole people that have the largest concentration of people around them. Target those first and then spread out from there. Inform all the law enforcement people around us, inform them that they only use high calibre rounds, normal rounds won't help, even if they targeted the eyes." Apparently, that was something that Stark and his team had tested way before, because the Invisible Man was able to easily repel their previous attempt and also secure a fresh corpse for the scientists to study.

The document held dozens of pages with all sorts of information, leading from the composition of their claws, to the size of their brains being small because they didn't have as much sensory information to process, being buried so deep underground, with only heat and pressure to temper and accompany them.

"Captain, are you seeing this?"

"Seeing? Yes. Still working on believing," Came the reply as the Captain continued to usher in the people who were still out into the various entry points of the Tunnel that they had blasted open because the invisible Man was counting on himself being available to do the job anyway.

"Jarvis, where is the Invisible Man?" Something didn't add in this situation and if he was being honest, if the situation was this bad and the Invisible Man still hadn't arrived, it would probably mean the end of the road for the Invisible Man because public opinion would surely turn against him or at least made to turn against him because a lot of powerful people were after him, who wouldn't hesitate to turn the city into a warzone to get to him, if the Invisible Man showed even the slightest hint of a weakness.

"That is classified information. I am not authorized to disseminate that information. I have marked the areas of high volatile activity." Well, that was to be expected.

"Jarvis, we can't use any of our weaponry that you built for the Invasion, can we?" He asked the question that popped into his mind when he thought of ways to mitigate the damage from this invasion as well.

Wasn't one enough, these people had to pop up today only?

"Unfortunately, aside from the Class 2 drones alongside the Shields mounted in the Tunnel as well as the Stark Tower, precise weaponry capable of sniping down single mole units is not something we have."

"Okay, can you create a perimeter around the Stark Tower and give people access to the safer floors? I assume that power will not be an issue with the Arc Reactor you have in the building?"

"Affirmative. Designated safe zone created: Stark Tower. I've informed the relevant authorities about it and have changed the repulsor outputs. No mole people should be able to breach the perimeter there,"

He sighed in relief. At Least they had something other than shoving people in a tunnel.

"Okay. Make sure that the TUnnel entry points are not clogged, either by people or by these Mole People."

"ETA - 30 seconds,"

He and Captain, both were floating right in between a series of high rises, which unfortunately still held a bunch of people who had not evacuated at the right time. The ground seemed to shake with each passing second, with people nervous peeping through their windows, doors and what not. He kept an eye on the countdown while also looking at the movement of the Mole People.

There!

"Captain, head to the Empire State Building, a bunch of them just split apart," He told the Captain as Jarvis had asked him to assume command of the entire operation, Jarvis' protocols not allowing him to dictate everything, something that the military followed as well. Computers could not replace the commanding capabilities of an experienced soldier.

Captain's suit, blue with stripes, rocketed towards the building, the wreckage of the Chitauri lying a few hundred metres away from the Empire State Building.

Just then, as if the ground itself was boiling and frothing, the pavement, the roads, and even some of the nearby stores which had thankfully all been evacuated, burst apart as giant humanoid figures with brown skin and hunched backs emerged from the ground and immediately began attacking and destroying everything in sight.

His suit, now the battle version, not the rescue model, held enough firepower to flatten the entire area and even that was not enough so he had to ration the missiles and draw their attention away from civilians, and more importantly, from high density zones to open areas where their main weapons could take care of the Mole People, once and for all.

With a single missile that blew apart a single Mole Person, he drew the attention of every single invader in sight, of him. A chill ran down his spine as they roared and as if the earth itself was responding, more and more of the Mole People erupted out of the ground, including something that was creating an even bigger ruckus than normal Mole People.

He had already flown quite a big high up but was still using his weapons to kill one Mole person at a time, which was proving to be quite tedious because as of this second, Jarvis counted 3,491 Mole people above surface and just above double of that, below the surface, waiting for something.

The continued assault had the Mole People climbing buildings, scaling concrete walls by digging giant holes in concrete with their claws as if the walls were made of paper. He hastily rose even further up, dodging a few that came alarmingly close, and pushed back most of them with the repulsor lasers but even then, the Mole People simply shook their heads and got up, ready to begin the assault anew.

"Jarvis, a little help here?" He asked Jarvis, his inexperience with the suit showing. Jarvis had informed him earlier that the suits were using an outdated version of the Arc Reactor and thus the suit could not sustain the repulsor firepower required to punch a hole in the Mole People, without burning out the suit's electricals.

And then help came.

A giant blue beam just about grazed him and slammed right into the center of the street, aiming for the giant hole that was only enlarging as something was about to come out and he did not want to be the one to confront it.

A large roar resounded throughout the block as the beam crashed into the ground and despite the beam, out came a hand. Heavily burned and bleeding but a hand came out that was taking the beam and surviving. The hand then slammed on the road, grabbed the road itself and then chucked a huge piece of concrete at the drones which were using the repulsor beams at speeds that generated gusts of wind in the block.

As expected, the repulsor array made by 4 different drones was disrupted and the hand pulled its body out of the ground.

He immediately scanned it and pulled even further up, not so much that their attention would be distracted but just enough that he had time to react if a repeat of the concrete bullet happened.

This was a Big Boy.

It was over 20 feet tall, along with a tail that created craters as it slammed seemingly lightly on the ground.

This was….not good. As if this wasn't wasn't enough.

"Steve here, requesting backup. I have three unusually large mole people with none of my weapons capable of killing them. I have drawn their attention to me but I don't know how long until they get annoyed and move on."

Great.


If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon or Ko-fi, for upto 5 extra chapters.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

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 126[May 2012]

Utah Salt Plains

–Randall–

"What?" he heard Tony exclaim all the way from his tent so he rushed over to see what was wrong since he was in the Military tent, trying to get an idea of how much the military could do to sustain this whole firepower thing. As far as the military was concerned, they could do this for weeks, with ease.

Also, the military industrial complex had already been fired up, ready to supply weaponry until the end of all time. So, they clearly had time but the longer this went on, the more damage to their surroundings, and that was something everyone clearly wanted to avoid, especially Stark since this was not an officially sanctioned operation.

The state of Utah is probably going to ask for a bankrupting amount of compensation for destroying one of their natural wonders after the invasion but that was something to deal with later on. The case can be made in the Supreme Court for there was no other alternative that could be arranged on short notice, especially with a terrain that wouldn't be hostile to them, otherwise, they could have just used some small part of the Great Basin Desert.

"What? What happe–" his words were stuck in his mouth as he watched the hologram in front of Tony. It was a warning from Jarvis and he knew very well what those red dots and the blue line represented.

"The Mole people.." he whispered, horrified at the realisation.

Tony looked at him, despondent, with bags under his eyes, "Yeah. The freaking Mole people have decided that this was the perfect time for them to invade Manhattan."

A chill ran down his spine as he saw the ETA for them to breach the surface being mere minutes, with very few resources in Manhattan equipped to deal with them.

"Tony, they have nothing, nothing, that can help them deal with the Mole People. They are relatively small, they can hide in buildings, travel through the roads. They won't be able to–"

"Yeah, the railguns are useless as are the large scale repulsors. I have already rerouted the completed suits to Manhattan, and Frank Castle has already ordered Jarvis to create the Stark Tower as a designated safe zone," Tony said, his shoulders slumping as the light left his eyes.

He was not even trying to work, to find some sort of solution and that was bad, very very bad. As much as he liked to tinker and think of himself as a smart person, he knew that he was hilariously and hopelessly outclassed when it came to Tony Stark. The man was a genius and that was the only superpower he needed. If there was anyone who could bring them out of this crisis, it was Tony Stark.

"Tony, please! Don't lose hope. We will get out of this," He tried to console TOY while trying to find something in his large list of weapons prototypes that could help Jarvis or Frank deal with this.

Hey, look! Captain was being enlisted as well and Jarvis used his prototype Captain America suit to help the Captain since the Mole people were way out of his league. Bulletproof, heat resistant, capable of scaling buildings, and more.

The mole people were, in a way, even better foot soldiers than the low quality ones that the Chitauri seem to have. It was only that the mole people did not have the sheer quantity that the Chitauri had thrown at them.

Speaking of the Chitauri, another keening noise was heard as yet another Space Whale was killed by the combined efforts of all the branches of the military. Well, not the Navy since Utah was landlocked but the Navy was already as close as it could get, with multiple aircraft carriers locked and loaded on the coast.

This was an all out emergency situation and none of the politicians were risking anything so anything that the military asked for, was granted. Billions had already been used up in the continuous bombing spree near the portal, so much so that in every breath, he could smell the gunpowder and even taste it on his lips.

If this went on for any longer, the people here would have to wear masks to even survive properly. Tony was already exhausted and despite being the weakest physical member of their team, he had kept up with all of them.

"Tony, why don't you get some shut eye? I will see what can be done about the situation. Hopefully, most of the people have already left the city and the rest can be corralled into the safe zones."

Tony didn't even respond as he gestured to one of the military guys to take TOY to the resting quarters. They were not comfortable by any stretch of the imagination but they did have beds, and Tony would probably pass out the moment he laid down.

"Alright, how to do this," he opened his personal dashboard and saw all the assets they had, something that he had spent years building, using the unlimited resources from the Russian oligarchs who enjoyed the protection that the Invisible Man provided.

"Rubber Ducky, gone. Captain America suit, gone. Hulk's mace, destroyed," Oh yeah, the Hulk had apparently destroyed his face when he one shot a Space Whale, caving its skull in with a single smash. That was when he had gotten particularly angry and frustrated with the continuous onslaught.

Right now, he was still Hulk because he refused to let Banner out for some reason. Even Betty trying to convince him didn't work because Hulk felt Banner was safer if Hulk was out, which was true but they needed Banner's intelligence as well.

With Tony out of the picture, that just left him as the brains of the operation. The military had some people but he couldn't exactly trust them and they were not really that exceptional anyway.

"Okay. Jarvis?"

"Yes, sir."

"I am granting you full access. Use anything you can. Make sure that the panic rooms are all stuffed full of resources because we do not want Bellina to be in any danger. Also, make sure that the Protector Titan suits are not all being used. Make sure that at least three, one for each person surround the Panic room, alright?"

"Browsing Class 3 resources. Lists updated. Parameters updated." The screen showcased Jarvis going through a number of resources before he saw the ejection sequences at the bottom of the bay being activated and dozens of uber powerful suits being ejected out, to hopefully reduce the casualty figures.

The current counter was at 800,000 which was a very high figure but the rise in numbers had stopped ever since they detained Loki. Now, all they had to do was figure out how to stop that portal and also how to kill all those Mole people because they did not have enough sentience in them for negotiation.

Wait…

He instantly logged into the Stark satellite portfolio, "Jarvis, activate all the long range ones and search for a specific signal that is common between all the Mole People. I think I know how to stop that invasion. There must be someone controlling them if the majority of them are still below the surface and are waiting for something,"

"Affirmative. ETA for Satellite positioning - 12 minutes."

Okay. That was one problem semi resolved, at the moment.

The other one was the problem with the Tesseract. The good news was that they no longer had to rely on Coulson's database access to get information about the Tesseract since the President had ordered for SHIELD to stay away from the site and as much as the WSC liked to think they were above their respective countries, they were not, at least not yet.

They had been continuously scanning the damned thing but all they were getting was a single constant reading, despite the numerous bombardments done on the Cube. The only time it spiked was when the Portal was opened and it had remained there until now.

He opened the footage they had of Loki with the Portal machine captured by numerous cameras situated all around him, giving him a pretty good view of the man and the machine.

He could see that Loki's hands were stained red, either by the blood of someone or maybe due to some injury but that was odd because Loki had never entered the fray in any of the invasions, choosing to stay invisible rather than fight himself.

His primary weapon, the sceptre…..

Oh shit!

"Jarvis! Where's the sceptre? Scan the sceptre. Also, I want it prepped for transport," He ordered Jarvis before he looked at the image once again. It was being continuously refined and while the military had software that could refine it more, he already had what he needed.

"Thor!" he called out as he exited the tent assigned to their team after shutting down everything. He had a hunch that they could try before the sceptre got here. If he was correct, they might just close the portal down all at the tiny cost of some injuries on Thor's hands that would heal soon enough anyway.


If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon or Ko-fi, for upto 5 extra chapters.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

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 127[May 2012]

Manhattan [Inside Axle's Mind]

–Axle Riddle [Ặ̸̧̨͈̙̳͈̐̅̎̂͝͝w̴̡̬̹̣̭͖̥̞̞͉̮̙̬̎́̏̃̇̓̐͒̓̄̂͑̚͘͝͠ä̵͚̼̟̜͕̯̖̥̲͍͙́͗̿̈́́͗͜k̷̢̞̬̱͎̳͍̞̱̜͕̠̺̱̲͆̑̍͋ë̵̪̱̩̩̣̩̬͚̲̺̥̤͎̻̝̙͚̊̆̎͐̌͑̚͝͝͝͝n̶̢̧̢̜͙̜̖͕̭̟̦̝͎̭̻̔̈͜ę̵̡̨̮̫̬̫͎͔̥̹̅̈́̄̃͂̅͑̓̒̍̐͝ḑ̴̟̟͕̙̼͔͎̠̬̭̃̇͆̏̀̆̈́̍̽͋̕]–

Huh. So this is what it felt like to have the Sage Force, the complete Sage Force, Axle thought to himself as he floated in what felt like space but he couldn't really confirm anything. All he knew was that his entire memory base was being scanned, optimised, and torn down once again, for new defenses to take their place.

He could feel the Sage Force, he could feel its connection to his body, a body that was becoming increasingly feeble compared to the mind it was housing.

Despite the significant boost that the Sage Force gave to its bearers to allow their bodies to continue functioning despite housing a vastly more powerful mind, his body was not up to par, certainly not with the mind he currently had.

He sighed in resignation. Once again, he would be shackled, only this time he would have to do it of his own volition. He couldn't feel anything beyond his body but he knew that he was currently on a cold hard surface, with the smell of the hospital wafting through. Combined with the periodical beeping of the equipment around him, he knew that he was in some sort of hospital.

Which could be both good or bad, depending on where he was. The New York Invasion meant that hospitals would be overburdened with patients and that could affect the ICU ward that he was undoubtedly in, because he was certainly declared comatose on top of that building.

There was also a very real threat to his identity being discovered and him being kidnapped but judging by the lack of sedatives in his bloodstream and chains on his body, he knew that he was not in hostile company.

Regardless, that limited his options vastly. He knew that New York was under attack because why else would the curtain break and embed itself in his body? A fact that he was still getting used to because as it turned out, that curtain, that thing that was keeping him locked down in Manhattan and was stopping his powers from working properly outside a certain range, that curtain was what was left of his connection to the Sage Force.

It was just sitting there, encapsulating him, slowly gathering energy, from the universe, from his broken connection, and from everywhere it could, all so that by the time came, that entire energy could be dumped straight into him, turning him from an incomplete Sage Force avatar into a complete one.

Somewhere along the way, something was lost in translation, he had a feeling because he was not just going from an incomplete avatar to a complete one. He was going from an incomplete Sage Force Avatar into a fully realised Avatar. The difference between both of them was so immense that his body was buckling under the pressure of housing his mind.

Already, he could feel his hard earned muscles atrophying because the body was rerouting precious energy to the brain which was also struggling to hold onto the sheer weight of his power. This could not go on, he could tell. In this struggle, only he would be the loser but despite having all this power, he couldn't exactly control any of it.

It was all a raging ocean with multiple massive earthquakes going off under the ocean at all times, and he was trying to jostle that energy back into something that resembled calm. He was trying since what seemed like forever but the ocean refused to budge and why would it?

He was just a tiny speck in comparison. It was just flowing through him, nourishing his soul, mind and body as well but the body aspect was just not happening as fast as it should because of some reason.

His mind was fine somehow but as far as he knew, it was only because his mind had already been prepared. It was as if someone had left behind a set of instructions and had already stretched his mind, for a lack of a better term, beforehand, so that it would have no problems adjusting to the very real power that coursed through his mind.

He sighed and was about to try again when a light bulb appeared above him. No, an actual light bulb did appear because it was his soul scape and anything he wished could be manifested. He looked at the odd bulb for a moment before it smoked out like a cartoon, dropping a scroll on his head.

He fumbled to grab it lest it fall into the endless void he was falling into and be lost to him. He also looked up to see that the smoke from the bulb had formed the word "EUREKA" right above him, before that too dissipated slowly.

He shook his head and unfurled the scroll.

"Hello Dumbass, although since you are me, I guess we are both dumbasses. Do you have ANY idea how embarrassing it was to see you bumbling around? You are literal cosmic power given form and I had to hear you whining about not having telepathy. GROW UP!

He leaned back as the HELLO DUMBASS resounded in his very being and then his eyes widened as he read more and more of the scroll…..

__xx__

Utah

–Randall–

"Thor, how close can you get to the machine?" He asked Thor, coordinating the missile strikes so that there would be a lull in the invading forces, allowing THor some time to do what he thought could end this battle.

"Very. I can reach the machine with ease, these lizards are no match for the Mighty Mjolnir," Thor did the perfect rendition of an overexcited Viking as he raised his hammer to the sky, with the rest of the military personel ducking around him as lighting thundered in the sky.

"Okay, alright. Great, what I want you to do Thor is to try and get past the barriers with your hands," He slowly asked THor of what he was sure was going to sound outrageous but he had a hunch that they were going about this whole thing in the wrong manner.

The Tesseract was an object of unexplainable origins and unexplainable properties. Something that could literally not be explained and anyone who touched it found themselves dying or with their hands melted due to the sheer energy output of the damned thing.

Maybe, just maybe, the Tesseract was not supposed to be just part of a machine that could open portals.

That maybe it was something that could also be used by a person. More specifically, someone who could handle holding onto the Tesseract long enough to actually wield it as a weapon. Someone strong enough to resist the effects and not end up with melted hands or as just ash.

He had a theory that Loki did the same but his hands were reddened and injured because he was probably trying to do the entire thing manually, which made sense because the portal was not stationary, in a single place like it is now. No, it was moving, dumping Chitauri in places before moving on to the next population centre.

That had to require some finessing because the Tessertact, strapped to a machine could not possible do all of that, or maybe it could, and he was wrong and they were all doomed to fight them until the Invisible Man came along, and held the portal open and clear for long enough for them to dump Earth's entire nuclear payload into the damned portal as humanity's last "Fuck you"

He took a deep breath, coming out of his morbid thoughts as he looked at Thor who had gone utterly still at his words. Before he could say something and defend his hypothesis, thunder rumbled as Thor hugged him, lifting him off the ground in doing so.

He could only take it, as Thor said, "Yes! That is perfect. How could I forget? When the Bifrost was not being used, my Father used the Tesseract with his bare hands to devastating effects."

His eyes widened as hope surged within his heart. Thor's next words dimmed it a bit… "Although I am not as proficient as my father in the arts of Seidr, it was always Loki's expertise, I can try to stop the portal. It should be easy enough, Loki could do it,"

What the hell, despite that hope dimming, at least that there was some hope now. They weren't just waiting for their Lord and Savior to come and save them, sitting around like ducks.

Now, all that was left was, "Clark!" He beckoned the junior most analyst that was assigned to them as a clear snub because the military did not like clearly enhanced people running their operation. He'd heard more than one general mutter "freaks" whenever the Generals were in sight.

Clark scrambled over, his tablet held tightly, "Yes, sir?"

"Get me a status update on the Mole invasion of Manhattan. Hulk should be arriving shortly along with two of my brothers, so the urban areas should be secured soon enough. Also, relay these missile patterns to the High Command. I want these precise paths followed by the missiles in an hour or so. Tell them it is non negotiable, or I will have to call the President,"

Clark clearly went pale at that, having to face the daunting task of convincing his clearly biased superiors or risk having the President called on them, who everyone knew was favouring the team of supers who were risking their lives for free.

"Go!"

"Yes sir!" Clark saluted and ran away with shaky legs. God, how did that man ever get into the upper echelons of the analysts in the army was a mystery to 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 or Ko-fi, for upto 5 extra chapters.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

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 128[May 2012]

Utah

–Randall–

So, they had a tentative plan. The military would come in hot and fast, creating a temporary reprieve for Thor, a small window for him to try and touch the machine, or the sphere of pure energy that surrounded the Tesseract. It was a long shot but he hoped that Thor's "limited skill" in the arts of Seidr, which was just sorcery, would help them because Loki had manually controlled the TEsseract, albeit at a steep cost to himself.

That must be part of the reason why Loki was so easily captured. He could not fathom why Loki had been so easily defeated. It could also be that Thor had really amped up his attacks and Loki had been surprised to find his brother coming at him with lethal intent.

Either way, Loki was in custody but was still unconscious and he knew that Loki would not talk either way. The sceptre was on its way as well. SOmething about the energy signatures of both the things bugged him the wrong way and if he was correct, there was a shroud of pure energy around the crown of the sceptre as well.

IF they could somehow bring both the spheres of pure energy together and see if they could cancel each other out, they could finally stop this Invasion. Already, the Jericho missiles had been deployed, damaging their surroundings even more. The smell of gunpowder in the air had still not faded and now they were using high energy weapons.

"Okay, Clark? Are they ready?"

Clark stumbled to reply, even though the man was standing in a single place. He was now the primary mode of communication between them and the generals stationed both here and around the bases which were being used as a hopping point for all the Jets nearby.

The Military was being cooperative but not nearly as much as they should have had it been the Invisible Man here. Axle Riddle, huh?

He shook his head at that. He couldn't believe they were being ordered around and not just ordered around, afraid of someone who was a decade younger than him. Sure, age didn't matter when the man could lift a building and throw it at them but still, it felt kind of bizarre.

He wondered how constipated these generals would feel if they knew that their brass was deathly afraid of someone who they wouldn't even deign to look at in their normal lives.

It was…amusing.

"Uh, yeah. Sir, they have approved the flight paths and are ready to go at your word. Uh, sir." Clark, once again, stumbled over his words.

He looked at Thor who held Mjolnir tightly in his hand, nodding at his unasked question. He turned to Clark, "Do it."

Clark nodded as well and then pressed a button on his tablet. "Uh-the first missile volley should be here in about 2 minutes so if you could–uh-please get in position?" Clark asked Thor and wow, was that actual courage he was gathering before he spoke to Thor?

Thor, thankfully, didn't make fun of him for any of it and simply readied himself.

….

..

Right on time, a high pitched whine filled the air, forcing him to look in the sky. His eyes widened as he saw Missiles coming in from two different directions, converging straight on the portal which was still clogged by the Leviathans, with not a single moment of inactivity. He had hoped that the Chitauri would learn something and stop sending their troops to die in a meat grinder but he supposed that they had more than enough troops to sacrifice and not have to worry.

His mind supplied him with what would allow something like this to happen. He knew that most of the Chitauri soldiers had very little in terms of brain activity and capacity. So, they probably had some sort of cybernetic implants that allowed them to coordinate everything. IN that aspect, they were little more than animals.

Also, the Chitauri were not in the most optimal states, despite their large stature. A thought flashed through his mind and his face turned ugly at that. Judging by the size and power of the Chitauri, it would not be wrong to assume they probably had some planets specifically reserved to breed these Chitauri and if they didn't need to actually train them, they could just forcefully grow them into vats, hand them their weapons and send them on their merry way, to die in some battlefield.

"Uh," lark's words brought him back to the present, "We didn't have enough Jericho missiles in a single base for the first volley so we had to send them from two different laughing pads but that is fine, I have triple checked everything," Clark hastily handed him the tablet and yup, the math checked out.

As the missiles passed overhead, Thor tensed and threw Mjolnir forward, matching the missiles for speed, as his target was the portal machine right beneath the Leviathan. He just hoped that it worked because he had seen a Leviathan corpse landing on the portal machine and the machine just made a hole in the thing, which then promptly slid off the sphere of pure energy.

He shuddered and hoped that nothing of the sort happened to Thor. Thankfully, he had Mjolnir which was also supposedly unbreakable, so that probably helped in the clash.

The winds buffeted the grounds, rocking a few tables back as Thor became a figure wreathed in lightning. Thor was not really supposed to hit the portal so much as touch it and try to see if there was any feedback in it. There was a chance that THor was either too bad at the magic thing or that Loki had built in some safety mechanism that made sure that the machine did not accept commands without authentication but they couldn't know anything without trying.

A feed appeared in front of him that showed Thor flying straight to the portal. His eyesight could only show him so much, especially since he was the least physically combat inclined out of all of his siblings, even more so than Leny who abhorred direct physical combat and was the weakest out of all of them, despite being the most deadly due to his stealth capabilities.

The missiles did their work as the Chitauri were outright vapourized in the ensuing explosion, giving Thor free reign to do his thing. Thor jerked Mjolnir back, halting his flight, and then rotated it above his head, allowing him to float in one place. If he was not wrong, even a single hand should be enough since magic was just about having energy, being capable of using said energy, and then having the intent imbued in the energy.

Thro had the first two parts nailed down. He was just worried about the third one. Thor was not really…well, let's just say that Thor was not the thinking Prince of Asgard. He was more along the brawns, at least at this point in time. He was sure that life would certainly teach him how to be more alert and mindful.

That was coming from someone who was approaching middle aged despite not looking a day over 25, courtesy of Hulk powers.

In the feed, Thor carefully extended his left hand towards the sphere of pure energy, Mjolnir still crackling with blue lightning. All of them leaned forward, curious and hopeful in equal measure.

Multiple drones captured the footage of Thor from multiple angles, the background flashing white sometimes due to the Jericho missiles. Tony was still completely out at the moment and he had made the decision not to wake him up, since he was the most exhausted out of all of them.

Arcs of lightning came out of Thor's outstretched hand, the energy readings jumping across the board. A smile graced his face as he saw a spike in the Tesseract's energy, something that hadn't happened until now, no matter what they did.

So, they could do something. That joy was short lived as arcs of blue energy, much darker than Thor's own, began appearing all over the sphere of energy. His eyes widened as his screen began flashing red, the energy readings soon surpassing anything that their sensors could measure.

Thor's face was captured as his eyes widened in alarm. "Get aw–" He barely managed to get one word out before the feed turned white, and a huge shockwave blew away all the smoke and smog that had accumulated all around the portal.

The screens all glitched in front of him as he looked towards the Tesseract machine, only to get another shock as lightning seemed to come out of nowhere and struck the machine once again. He almost fell down and had to steady Clark as well, as he looked at the screen which was showing once again the energy readings of Thor's lightning to be unreadable.

A roar resounded in the air, one that he recognised to be Thor, as a thick bolt of lightning emerged from the Portal machine and struck the ground. "Go!"

He ordered as Bolton, clad in his suit, rocketed towards the portal machine, which was now regularly sending the bolts of lightning right below, which held the Chitauri corpses, filling the air with scent of burnt meat.

He could barely see Bolton as his vision struggled to adjust to the white flash that appeared every 10 seconds.

"I have him!" Bolton's comms crackled to life as a feed appeared from his suit. His heart sank as he saw Thor's condition. Mjolnir was fine, as was his right hand but his left hand, it was burned beyond recognition.

"Everyone! Get the medics. Somebody get me the President on the line." He screamed as his mind went into disarray. Even Thor couldn't do it, which meant Hulk would be out as well even though Hulk's ability to take damage was much higher than Thor's.

___xx___

Deep below the Crust

–?--

For millennia, he had slumbered, taking advantage of the inherent fighting instinct of his species, only coming up to ambush the weakened members, who had some iota of power that could be plundered by him.

After millenia of the same, he had rid his race of all the powerful members, leaving only him. Any opposition was swiftly dealt with, in the easiest possible way, by taking their energy.

The last time he awoke was when he had to move the base of his entire species after the pesky dolls had come far too close to his colony. He had been so frustrated he had killed off an entire line of his species.

But now?

His mind snapped awake, his body stretching upright as he sensed something. Something that should be impossible.

Cosmic energy. And how plentiful... he could almost taste it.

His eyes narrowed as he sensed more and more of the cosmic energy, hitting the ground, as if trying to burrow through the Earth to reach him.

He grinned at that. Howling, he summoned what was left of his species. Yellow eyes snapped open in the thousands in the massive cavern he had dug with his own claws. Howls filled the cavern as they began digging through the Earth.

Maybe, after all this time, he could finally accumulate enough energy to kill and take the energy of one of those dolls.

The mere thought of it filled him with ecstasy.


If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon or Ko-fi, for upto 5 extra chapters.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

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 129[May 2012]

Mumbai [An hour after the Mumbai Chitauri Invasion]

–?–

Shit. Shit. Shit.

She never intended for it to go this far.

Sat alone in her apartment, she sighed as she laid down on her bed, her gaze unfocused as she thought of her actions and what it might lead to. She was not really worried about anyone else, having these powers meant that she hadn't maintained any credible relations with anyone, even though the others tried.

She chuckled sardonically at that. God, her college friends tried hard to keep in touch but then again, once they hit their 30s, everyone either got married, moved abroad, had kids, or even got divorced. In the meantime, she got her MD and started her practice, in the wealthiest city of India.

Sure, it got her all the money she could have wanted but seeing that number in the bank got stale real quick. She tried everything that she possibly could.

Hiking. Gym. Marathons. Philanthropy. Free Clinics and more.

And yet, it could never give her the same level of happiness as using her powers gave her. At this point, she had her powers for the better part of 3 decades. God, that was a long time to remain isolated from everyone else, to hide her deepest darkest secret, never having the courage to trust anyone fully. She knew that it took a toll on her relationships, well the ones that held any meaning anyway.

Dating was out of the way, especially since the dating pool for women in their 40s, especially in India was basically creeps and the odd divorcee, that's it. Their conservative culture meant that most girls got married off the moment they turned 25, sometimes even earlier, and guys could sometimes stretch it to 28, or 29 but even these scenarios were very rare.

It was only recently that education levels rose in even rural areas, allowing women to get educated about their rights, lifting the average marriage age, in both men and women. And yet, this was not her era.

During the time when she was undergoing puberty, when she was lucky enough to be raised by her extended relatives after her parents had died in a bus accident, all she had were books. Books about everything that happened in the world. The world as a whole was much more conservative back then, let alone her then family, which was the epitome of conservative, as were most families in the neighbourhood.

She had always been smarter than most kids her age, which prompted her parents to get her all the books she asked for. In their opinion, rightfully so, education was the way forward and they were actually ecstatic that their sole daughter, which was another rarity since everyone wanted sons back then, was enthusiastic about education.

She had overheard them talking, more than once, about saving for her higher education. That money was taken by her relatives, and she honestly had no issues with that since they did cloth, house and feed her for over 5 years before she went away for studies and never went back.

She was 14 when her parents died. She was 14 when she was whisked away by the authorities to her extended family, whose existence was a surprise to her. Barely a teenager when her life as she knew it, ended and she was thrust into the house of complete strangers, who barely acknowledged her existence, let alone comfort her, or try to make sure she was fine, beyond the occasional "How are you?", providing her hot meals three times a day and making appropriate provisions for her continued education.

14 when she got her powers. She hesitated to call them blessings but that was what they were, 14 year old her just didn't know any better. She suppressed her powers for over 5 years, deathly terrified of being found out and ousted from all that was left of her life. So, she hid them right up until she went out for her education.

It was all completely paid for, partially by the government and partially by a private scholarship she managed to snag by scoring exceptional marks in their exams.

That was when she finally got the space to explore her powers, and that was how her story began.

It took her a while to figure them out but her powers but when she did, she was over the roof.

Enhanced healing, strength, speed, and intelligence. Intangibility, the ability to choose when and where to interact with the material world, with the only real limit being her ability to hold her breath. That was why she took up swimming and that was honestly the one thing, aside from her practice, that she practiced regularly, even now.

As a result of that regular practice and her powers, she looked much younger than she actually was. That was probably also one of the reasons why none of her female classmates tried contacting her after school.

Oh well, none of that mattered, she thought to herself as she just lay there, in her bed, with a bottle of vodka lying empty at her feet. It had been extremely stressful, putting on that silly costume and going out to fight the aliens. She once debated donning that costume and going out at night to fight crime but once it came down to it, she figured that the logistics of doing so just didn't make any sense.

She didn't have any overarching delusions about what she could do on her lonesome, despite her awesome powers. Her intangibility also allowed her to fly, somehow. She had studied her powers extensively and to this day, she had not idea how her powers worked.

Even the costume, it was only a recent thing. All she had done so far had practised a lot in her apartment, a very large one for a single person but she used it to sometimes use her powers so that single reason justified the spending. Besides, what was she going to do with all that money?

She was a neurosurgeon, with accolades from all over the country, having worked in various hospitals, under various expert doctors. There were a lot of rich people that were more than happy to throw money at the hospital which employed her.

So, when word of the Invisible Man operating in New York finally reached her ears, she was ecstatic, finally hearing about another person with powers, someone who was different. She would have gone there personally to meet him but, well….

It had been harrowing, to watch a blue hole appear in the sky, with monsters straight from fantasy coming out, raining down lasers on buildings and everything else in sight. She hadn't even hesitated for a moment, donning her uniform, and floating into a nearby hardware store and picking up all the nails that she could, out of sight.

Then, she had floated right up in the air, holding sharp nails in her hand and just left them in the brains of all the monsters, or where she approximated their brains to be. The first death only emboldened her as she single handedly slaughtered the entire invasion force. She only snapped out of it when she subconsciously landed on the ground and saw hordes of people cheering for her. Her fear of being discovered reared its ugly head as she fled from the scene, straight into her home.

And now, there she was, laying on her bed, having drunk an entire bottle in one go. Despite her enhanced physique, she knew that she would feel it tomorrow, what with having eaten nothing before downing that bottle, but then again, she needed that liquid courage if she was going to face what was coming her way.

She had no delusions that she was not tracked all the way to her home. When she first got her powers, it was the 80s, and it was rural India, so the chances of digital surveillance were almost non-existent. But now? In the 21st century, in the era of Stark Phones in every other hand? Surveillance was everywhere and in everyone's hands. Everyone gladly carried tools of mass surveillance, even paying for it themselves.

That was why she went out of her way to strip her apartment of all things digital, including her phone which went into a small box designated for it, right next to the shoe cabinet, right at the entrance of her apartment.

"Open up!"

And there they were. She signed once again, knowing what was coming. She had thought it through and had come to a decision. She knew that the invasions were a global phenomenon and they were only looking for her so she could help defend more places against the Chitauri because Mumbai was the only place that had defended their cities without a single casualty.

It was all in the news, which she could hear from her downstairs neighbour who had a TV in her bedroom, which was just below hers. Enhanced senses, sometimes a blessing, sometimes a curse.

She stood up, emptying yet another beer bottle, which did nothing to her physique, and walked out of her bedroom, a skip in her step as she basically abandoned all caution to the wind.

Realistically thinking, what did she have to lose?

Nothing, that's what.

She passed the Kitchen and was about to step foot into the living room when…

"Ah!" She yelped as her feet found no purchase, instead falling into a hole of some sort.

……

…

Good Ol' US of A

"Good Evening, Ms.Priya, how would you like to help save the world?" She looked up, barely managing to stand upright, looking at a weirdly dressed monk of some sort.

Ah, what the hell. She knew she shouldn't have drunk that expired bottle of vodka.


If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon or Ko-fi, for upto 5 extra chapters.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

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 130[May 2012]

Utah

–Randall–

He stared blankly at the screen, showing the projections for the area. It was their luck that no new variant of Chitauri had emerged from the portal because he had no idea how they were going to close that portal. Thor was their best bet because he assumed that Loki did some Asgardian magic on the portal to use it.

It was his mistake in assuming that Thor would know everything that Loki did. It could have been something that Loki learned recently, or something else entirely, it mattered not.

At Least there was one piece of good news. The situation in New York had stabilised somewhat, with Stark Tower and the Bunker below acting as safe havens while Hulk, Frank, Captain America, and his brothers worked on clearing the entire city of Mole People. He was sure that it must have been disturbing for anyone watching for hordes of Mole People to just die en masse, due to the Hulk's penchant for using stray cars as bowling balls to just crush all the Mole People in some streets.

Hulk had also taken care of all the Big Mole People that had emerged out of the ground, with ease.

There had also been a video clip that has gone viral about a particularly small Mole Person who was dodging Hulk's attempt at smashing it with a car's bonnet, while it burrowed into the ground and popped out right next to its previous spot, making a hilarious Whack-a-Mole moment in an otherwise tragic event in modern human history.

He shook his head, and focused on the problems he had on hand. The gigantic lightning strike along with the continuous stream of blue energy beams that were striking the ground had created enough noise that Tony woke up, and got right back to worry. The situation in Manhattan was stabilised enough but even then, the casualty count went up by the hundreds before the Mole People could be stopped.

More accurately, Frank Castle, Captain America and a couple of new faces managed to draw the attention of the Mole People on themselves, drawing them away from population centres long enough for the heavy cavalry to arrive and decimate the remaining forces.

It was also confirmed that the Mole People which were waiting just below the surface, numbering in the thousands, had retreated hastily once it was clear that the Hulk was waiting for them on the surface and he had no scruples with smashing them into pulps of acidic blood that only seemed to tickle the Green Giant.

There was still the matter of the Mole People that were scattered throughout the city in buildings, in subway stations, in the sewers, and more but for now, the people were safely evacuated and Jarvis had suits and sensors monitoring every single exit that the Mole People could take out of Manhattan.

Tony, awake with renewed vigor, seemed to ignore the Mole People problem since it was semi stabilised and got to working on the Tesseract, or more importantly, on the new problem that the Tesseract had created.

See, before Thor tested his theory, the Tesseract was only sending energy one way, right up into the air. Now? Now it was sending not the same but some sort of energy right into the Earth.

Creating holes in the sky from which giant space whales came out? Terrifying for the most part but manageable if only all the people in power got their heads out of their asses. The same energy burrowing through the Earth, potentially causing harm to the Earth itself?

Now that was pants shitting terrifying. It was sobering how he could be credited with turning an event that was being managed, right up until the Invisible Man woke up whose Mental activity was actually lowering from his all time high, which should be a good sign, he didn't know yet. Now, he had accidentally created something that could potentially destroy the planet itself, instead of the aliens wiping out the dominant species and taking hold of the planet.

"Fuck! What is it now!? AAAAAh!" He heard Tony scream and promptly went through the tent, and right into the adjacent one where Tony was working on something and found him manically shouting, grabbing anything in sight, and throwing it at the holo display which flickered a bit at the matter disruption, and then returned to its original state.

His eyes narrowed as he saw something that made his blood run cold.

"I-Is that? Are those?" He stammered as he couldn't believe his shitty luck.

Tony, having regained his calm, now that a suit had torn through the tent's roof and was in the process of assembling around him, replied, "Yup. That is most probably the alien wave coming from the ground, or something else entirely. Either way, I am done letting it dictate my actions,"

Having said his piece, the faceplate slid over Tony's face as he rocketed straight up, right into a giant hexagonal construct that floated above them. The machine lit up in the signature Blue colour of the Arc Reactor before flying away, in the direction of the Tesseract.

In the backdrop, he could see multiple volleys of the Jericho missile coming as well. God Help them all.

"Welp, Clark, tell the Military that another wave is coming from the ground. We'll see what we can do but be ready just in case," Clark went deathly pale at that and seemed rooted on the spot, his tablet held in a white knuckled grip. He sympathetically tapped his shoulder, and left the tent, to go to the storage section, where he kept his flying suit.

Well, he called it suit but it was just repulsor units with a back unit for stabilised flight. He had three of them and he was going to need all of them for now. Until the army can facilitate even more volleys of missiles, they were going to have to deal with the intruders coming from below as well, while the Military dealt with the ones coming from above. Without Thor or Hulk. Damn, this was not going to be pretty.

His enhanced senses picked up on abrupt hasty movements within the camp, probably evacuation sequences since they were not that far off from the Tesseract now.

As he flew towards the Tesseract, Tony's completely grey hexagonal platform now visible to him, one thing he was thankful for was the Tesseract's white beam of energy that was impacting the Earth straight down. It had completely vaporise all the corpses of the space whales that had accumulated right below it. Some blood and bits of flesh probably remained but he was thankful that they wouldn't have to worry about some broken and dangerous piece of technology winding up in the hands of weapons manufacturers who wouldn't hesitate to label it safe and sell it to the Military for a handsome upmark in price.

He chuckled bitterly as he realised something. It was a true sign of apocalypse when something that Tony built, which was clearly supposed to be a flagship grade piece of technology, but didn't have his signature red and gold colour scheme. The Hexagon, while absolutely decked out and shining with repulsor arrays, did not have a single piece coloured, to match the badass style of Tony Stark.

Presentation was important but when they had the time for it. The machine probably slid off the fabrication lines and came straight to them.

He floated right beside the platform, and looked at the white beam of light impacting the ground, with the smell of burned meat in the air.

"It doesn't seem to be doing anything. No displaced Earth whatsoever," He commented, knowing that Tony was listening.

"You're right but it could also mean that the energy is just disintegrating everything that comes into contact. The energy density meant that my sensors aren't picking up on as much data as they should," His comms crackled to life.

That was true as well.

"Here they come," he heard Tony say before he saw the ground itself shudder for a bit. The area all around the white beam was bubbling as if something was about to burst out of it. He readied all his weapons, as did his brothers and Tony…

Well, if there was ever a need to say "too many weapons and repulsors" in a single suit, it would be now as he counted no less than six of those giant repulsor arrays installed in the weapons platform, along with multiple smaller missile silos, combined with regular repulsor arrays as well.

That was a floating tank and he was glad that it was. They were going to need it.

With a squelching sound and a shower of dirt and stone, an eight feet tall monstrosity of a creature jumped out of the hole in the Earth. Before it could even fall on the ground from the giant leap it had taken, he heard a slight whining sound before a giant blue beam flashed in his vision, cutting itself off after a second, leaving behind a smoking repulsor array.

He looked at the creature only to see a big hole in the middle, with the creature with yellow eyes somehow managing to convey hatred to them, before it slumped back, clearly dead.

He didn't expect Tony to immediately switch to lethal mode, especially since they were clearly not Chitauri or at least not the regular Chitauri they dealt with but after the first one came out, it was as if a Chain reaction occurred as hundreds of holes filled the ground, with hundreds of these monsters coming out and immediately leaping high up in the air, reaching for them.

He did not want to take any chances with those sharp claws and those giant long limbs which drew holes in the ground by simply standing on it. They took one look at the dead body of the monster and…..

He barely resisted the urge to hurl as a number of similar looking monsters dimply converged on the dead body and tore it apart, eating it, leaving behind nothing but the little bit of blood that had pooled beneath it.

"Dear Lord," He heard Samuel whisper, horrified at what they were seeing. He was too but they didn't have a moment of respite because he felt Tony's platform float up in the air before the whining noise was repeated, this time much louder than before.

The creatures before did as well, indicating that they had enhanced senses as well, as they began jumping over themselves, to reach the weapons platform.

He flinched minutely, as did his brothers, as his vision was filled with white and blue. The resounding impact reached his ears before he could blink the spots out of his eyes. They recovered quickly and when he looked at the landscape, his jaw hung agape.

There was nothing left. Just a giant crater, with the blood of those monsters at the edge of the crater. He could even see a monster with its lower half and two of its six limbs vaporised, crawling out of the hole.

Good Lord, Tony was scary when he was angry.


If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon or Ko-fi, for upto 5 extra chapters.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

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 131[May 2012]

Utah

–Randall–

There was a lull in the battlefield, with only the sounds of the Chitauri being slaughtered from above, and the faint sounds of truck engines running at full speed as the camps were evacuated, with all of their equipment being taken away to safety. After all, they had recorded hours worth of important data and that was probably more important than the lives of some of the soldiers here.

There was a giant crater, which was carved in one direction, vaporising almost all of the yellow eyed giants that had jumped out of the hole. The energy storm around the Tesseract was subsiding as well, with the intensity of its blasts into the ground reducing at a measurable pace. It would still be absolutely lethal to go anywhere near that beam of energy but at least it would soon be gone. Taking advantage of their disoriented states, his brother's dove in to finish off the rest of those creatures, with him providing support in the form of repulsor shots from afar.

He also had to see if Tony's weapons platform could do another strike like that because the platform was now smoking in various places. Thor's vitals were alright and his skin was visibly healing after all the nutrient solutions were being pumped directly into his body, something that would not be advisable for normal humans but apparently worked just fine for Asgardians.

That meant that until Hulk got here, after resolving the Mole People situation, which was still not resolved as there were still dozens of different moles sighted by Jarvis in the city, hurting people before fleeing as they somehow sensed Hulk and the others converging on their location. None of Jarvis' suits or even Hulk could navigate underground like the Mole People could so they were locked in a stalemate right now, with no side winning definitively, the situation would not get better.

They need heavy artillery to deal with these people, just like with the Chitauri. At Least these ones were vulnerable to physical attacks and did not have any fliers that could take potshots at them.

He slammed the hull of the weapons platform, which held Tony inside, "Tony, you alright?"

Tony's muffled voice came, which meant that the outside speakers were now dud. He figured that with that level of energy output coursing through the thing, anything that was connected with wires was probably dead. It was a wonder the thing was even floating, though he could see that it was only floating upright, with none of the stabilisation it had previously, evidenced by the slight wobbling of the thing when he lightly knocked on the metal. "Yeah, just some energy overload. It should reboot soon,"

Well, he hoped it did, because there was no way that this was the end of it. He saw many more red dots when he came here. It was probably the shock of seeing so many dead, all at once, that temporarily stopped the bubbling of the land.

He was tense, waiting for the shoe to drop. Hell, this was the third shoe that was about to drop on their heads. A giant, heavy, dense metal shoe falling on the vulnerable chicken neck that was Earth.

The Chitauri.

The Mole People.

And now these yellow eyed monsters. Why couldn't they catch a freaking break?

And there it was, the bubbling of the ground.

His brothers floated back up, and he called upon all the remote weaponry modules he had on hand, to float right behind him just in case one of them needed backup or heavy bombardment. It should not be needed because as far as he could tell, none of those monsters possessed anything that could pierce their skins but he could not rule out any esoteric so long range attacks was the best way to go right now.

Speaking of long range attacks. "Tony, we could really use that Fuck YOu laser from before?"

Tony's response did not fill him with confidence, "That might take a while." His voice was distracted which meant that he was working on something, which was good.

What was not good was the bubbling of the ground, which had increased in radius since the last wave of them.

"Uh, Jarvis?" His HUD lit up as Jarvis' sensors, scarce as they were here, worked their magic, and showed him that this time, the number of those monsters was more than quadrupled, with an area covering thrice of what they were covering before. He relayed that information and Tony flew behind them, away from the Tesseract portal, while he got ready to be the first defender this time. HE had plenty of weapons that needed testing on armoured creatures but he spent most of them during the two Chitauri fights he was part of.

Right now, he barely had some explosive weaponry, and some exotic bombs, along with repulsor arrays powered by the second generation Arc Reactor. Tony was really stingy in giving him the latest generation Arcs, which was fine, it was his property but it was really coming to bite them all back in the ass right now. His repulsor arrays could not work quite as fast and at quite the strength with which TOny could use them, simply because his power source was not strong enough to power them all.

"Well, here goes nothing," he increased the power output on everything and hoped to the high heavens that he did not die because he got monster rabies because one of these yellow eyed freaks scratched him, and got through his skin.

With yet another roar, the ground beneath them buckled as hundreds of those creatures came jumping through, brandishing their six claws straight at their airborne forms. He let loose a volley of repulsors, punting most of the closer monsters back on the ground, as the rest of the Monsters set their sight on the flying suits and started digging chunks of the ground.

He yelped as a rock went sailing right above them, nearly hitting Tony's platform as he was busy firing repulsor after repulsor at the monsters below. He could hear Tony shouting at them to protect him but he probably saw the situation and retreated, far above even the Chitauri portal.

"Shit!" He exclaimed as he felt the repulsor arrays on his arms getting heated up. Any more and they would break down, leaving him with only a single dimensional repulsion control. He would not be able to move properly if his arm repulsors were dud.

The same was true with his brothers as well. They exchanged glances and came to the same decision. At the same time, all three of them dove into the mass of monsters, and smashed into anything that came into sight, using the increased thrust from the foot repulsors to give them that extra oomph, when it came to smashing stuff.

It was all going well, they realised that the deviants could not hurt their hard tissue like the arms and everything else. He made sure that their soft tissue, like ears and stuff, was well protected and they never stayed in one place long enough to get dogpilled like these monsters were trying to do.

Ofcourse, that was when things had to go to shit.

Without any warning, he heard Samuel scream in his comms. This jolted him as he ripped apart one of those monsters and saw his brother falling down, with his repulsor array smoking and his arm…

He had one arm missing, he realised as he hastily went after his brother, which turned out to be a mistake, as he heard yet another scream. He looked to the side but he couldn't see anything past the sea of monsters that were converging on them.

"TONY!" HE screamed into the comms as he dove and caught his brother, but instead of heading straight up, he doubled down and dove straight for the ground, knowing what was about to come.

He cradled his younger brother close to him as he spread what little armour he had around him, around his back, and braced himself. IT came not a moment later. The extreme heat managed to make even him scream as he felt his back burning, even though the beam was not directly hitting him.

He crashed into the ground, riddled with back burns but still conscious. Samuel on the other hand. He carefully placed Samuel down on the ground, relieved to find that he was still alive, but his hand.

His hand was cut off, with claw marks on his repulsors. He heard a thud, and watched as a suit landed and took Samuel in its arms, nodded at him and flew away. From the corner of his eyes, he saw another suit do the same.

"Tony?"

"Light Rescue grade models with no weapons functionality. They will take them to the Military medics who are waiting for them."

Thank god.

Now, for the low life that dared hurt his brother, he turned around and saw a clear divide in the ground, a deep and long trench dug in the ground, with most of the monsters on the other side, with a couple of them on his side, whom he swiftly crushed with his hands, all the while maintaining eye contact with their apparent leader.

Their leader was surprisingly more human looking. Still hunched and on more four legs with two claws in the air but its size was much smaller than the other monsters yet he knew what those exact claws had done, with the hand of his brother laid down at the monster's feet.

"Tony?"

"Working on it. The platform is mostly dead for now but new parts are on their way. We just need to figure out a way to sta–" That was all he heard before his breath hitched, as did Tony's.

Because, right in front of their eyes, the monster took his brother's hand and was…chewing on it.

He saw red.

"Randall, wait!"

He had never been one to get angry in his life. Even when subjected to multiple injustices, betrayals, and maintaining a lifestyle with a group of people who were more frat boy animals than civilised gentlemen, he did not get rage like other people did.

He couldn't really understand why people would rage specifically. He did get angry but not to that level. All his brothers had no problem in expressing that specific emotion but for some reason, instead of choosing confrontation, he chose to solve the problem, choosing to get out of anger rather than diving deeper into rage.

Now? Now he could understand. His brothers had all told him they got more powerful as they tapped into their inherent rage.

All of them had pent up rage against the world, from their nomadic days, from the days they were betrayed and used, only to be spit out and aimed at someone who was so hilariously out of their league, it was not even funny.

He felt his body heat up, wisps of blue energy leaking out of his body as he jumped. He jumped, with his fist cocked back, straight at the motherf*cker who dared hurt his brothers, his family, because he saw the claw marks on the repulsor arrays. They were smaller, much smaller than the normal claws.

The smaller monster threw his brother's arm out of his mouth and grinned at him. He crossed the trench in a single leap, his anger amplifying his strength as he aimed to punch the monster in his stupid face.

Only that never happened. All he felt was a blow to his stomach and then his face as he was kicked back, his vision blurring. Even then, he felt the dozen shallow cuts that appeared all around his body.

That bastard was playing with him. Somehow that filled him with more rage. He scrambled back upright only to see a giant repulsor beam, much larger than his repulsor arrays but much smaller than the giant beam slam right into that stupid face, throwing the monster back, as Tony landed right beside him.

"Are you alright?"

He coughed out spittle and stood up straight, "Yeah."

"Yeah, I don't think we are equipped to handle that monster." Tony said and he was probably right. He was never the stronger of his brothers, just the smartest one. Also, that monster just tanked Tony's UniBeam and got up, without even a scratch on him.

"Any weaknesses?" He asked Tony since he was the only one with a full sensor suite on him right now, his entire exoskeleton having been damaged by Tony's attack earlier and then completely dismantled in the attack he just sustained.

"Aside from his eyes and soft tissue inside his mouth? No."

He was worried about that. The monster had also stopped all of the Invading members from doing any more damage but conversely, the monster itself was more than capable of harming them immensely.

His gaze never left the monster so he was understandably worried when the monster's neck snapped behind them, with its face twisted in some expression he could not recognise. His ears registered a faint whining sound before he was jerked to one side as Tony tackled him right up, took hold of him, and then rocketed off, right up in the air.

"Tony?!"

"Missile Strike,"

Oh. Oooh.

That was a much better choice than to bet on his mediocre combat skills. He would have to rectify that as soon as possible. He saw as multiple missiles flew over them, right in the direction of that monster.

He grinned as he felt the heat of that missile attack, and the ensuing shockwave. Tony stopped and turned around, looking at the attack, which had created a giant mushroom cloud, thankfully not from nuclear fission though. They were still not authorised to do that and he was thankful for that.

At Least the President had the sense that if it turned into a Nuclear war, the land would be unsalvageable. At Least right now, they could do something to repair it.

"What? How?" He heard Tony whisper before they flew closer to the explosion, his heart sinking at the news.

"What? Did he survive?" He asked Tony but the answer became visible to him on its own.

There, surrounded by the corpses of its brethren, stood the smaller monster, injured but doing something completely bizarre. The monster only had three claws instead of six, its face was half burned off and its body was completely blackened, and yet…

"Shit!" Tony swore as its body was visible healing, as the monster ate its own kind.

Tony fired multiple repulsors at the monster, even as he was dropped to the ground, his injuries flaring up but he grit his teeth and stomped towards the monster, ready to kill him before he could heal.

Alas, the monster stayed in the same spot, tanking Tony's admitted weaker repulsors and continued eating the monster corpses all around him, and by the time he was within reach, his claws had turned from 3 to 5, allowing the monster to lash out at him, carving a shallow wound on his forearm as he was pushed back.

"Tony! Missiles?" He roared at Tony as he jumped back in the fray as Tony's repulsors managed to just push him back. The monster was grinning at them, toying with both of them as it continued to crunch on its own species, healing itself back to its prime.

Already, its torso had returned to its greyish colour from before.


If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon or Ko-fi, for upto 5 extra chapters.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

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 132[May 2012]

Utah

–Randall–

He felt his nose crunch as another one of that bastard's punches connected with his face, throwing him back and disorienting him momentarily, though the noise and the flash of light that entered his blurry vision told him that Tony had not been idle.

Granted, there was no opening in that monster's body but they had to try. The Military, ironically, was in a missile shortage.

No, not the actual missiles but the ways the missiles can be launched. Jets can't do close fly bys because they didn't have the capacity to get Jericho missiles installed. They needed land based launchers and the Military just went and aimed all of their launchers at the portal which was still churning out the Chitauri by droves.

Seriously, just how many of these bastards did they have that they could just afford to waste so many of these flying Whales? While those bastards did have seemingly endless forces to waste, they did not have an endless amount of launchers.

So, the missiles locking onto the monster's form were rather limited and the next volley was still 3 minutes away, at least that was what his HUD told him before it was smashed to pieces by that bastard's claws.

His vision finally cleared, as he punched the ground in frustration, seeing Tony's suit flying back above him with a worrying amount of gashes on the outside. He roared as he once again joined the fray, having no other choice than to fight and fight.

His brothers were out of commission, and that led to no small amount of fury between the others.

Still, he had put his foot down, being the oldest one who was conscious, and had ordered all the others to stay put, until the suits arrived for them. The heavy duty ones, the Titans that had been deployed in Manhattan. Now that the Hulk was the most effective deterrent in that place, the Titans could be redeployed and they would be here in less than 10 minutes, again putting them at a slight advantage, if the current stats of the monster in front of them were to be believed.

He had almost fully healed now, only the hole in his skull was left, with its eye somehow regaining its yellow luster slowly, but surely. He couldn't believe that this was the third different species to invade the surface world, showing humanity that it was not alone, not even on Earth let alone through the vastness of space.

He barked out a laugh as he felt his skin glow before he punched the claw that the monster waved in front of him, denting the claw in exchange for creating a bloody hole in his hand. He laughed through the pain as the angrier he got, the more he glowed blue, and the more his attacks worked.

And somehow, he found out today, that laughing, even in the middle of his rage, was enough to kickstart his powers, powers that he believed would never manifest.

He heard the familiar launch of a repulsor that was tanked with the combination of two claws, that did succeed in pushing back the monster but that was the extent of the damage. Tony's suit was clearly damaged and exhausted as the beam fizzled out after a few seconds of sustained fire, leaving the claws smoking hot but nevertheless, still in fighting condition.

He too panted, as he picked up a piece of rock and lobbed it at the monster, showering him in rubble as his claws broke through the entire thing. He hunched over in exhaustion, ready to redo the party trick when he heard a squelching sound, followed by a small boom.

He looked up, eyes wide as he saw the monster. The same monster that had toyed with them, missing a part of its torso. He saw a wispy shadow behind the monster, as the monster finally, finally staggered back, swiping ineffectively at the shadowy wisps behind it. The fuzzy mass that was vaguely humanoid lunged at the monster, drifting through the monster's body, coming out the other side, all the while ignoring the monster's claws, as yet another part of the monster bubbled before exploding in a spectacular shower of gore.

The shadow was now floating towards them. Tony landed beside him, his foot repulsors making him wobble in his landing, "Do we know her?"

He looked at Tony, "Uh-oh yeah. She is the one who killed all the CHitauri in Mumbai."

The shadow reached them and then promptly fell down, revealing herself to be a woman of average height, breathing heavily, coughing in between.

Tony immediately let loose a volley of repulsors, the ones he could sustain anyway at the monster who was once again, eating through his brethren.

"N–Need.." he looked down at the woman who had a mask on her face, "Need to breathe." She coughed a bit, her face regaining a bit of colour then she spoke, "Can't breathe in shadow form,"

Oh, that made sense. He nodded at her in understanding. He also noticed the slew of grenades latched onto her belt, two of the six were missing.

"So, its insides are much weaker than its outside?" Tony said out loud as he concentrated on blasting away the corpses, as the monster staggered, clearly disoriented from the loss of much of its body mass in a spectacularly explosive way.

"Seems so," He said as he took yet another piece of rock and threw it at the monster, succeeding in distracting him as Tony blew up yet another corpse.

Between the missile strikes, Tony's repulsors, and his rampage, all that was left that could move in front of them was the monster, who hadn't done a single thing to save its brethren for some reason.

He felt footsteps beside him as the woman stood in front of him, apparently already recovered. "You good?"

"Yeah, going through the ground was not a great idea in hindsight. Uh, Can you just throw me at him? Would make things a lot easier."

On that, he did agree. He nodded at her. She took a deep breath and then gestured at him. He picked her up and threw her straight at the monster, headfirst.

The monster let out a roar of rage, as its gaze finally landed on the shadow that was headed his way. The second roar somehow felt like a shriek as it locked on to something that could most definitely kill him.

Then the monster did something that none of them expected it to do, it jumped.

His eyes widened as the shadow girl managed to meet only air as the monster jumped as high as it could.

"No!" Tony roared as they both realised, all at once, where the monster was headed for. The Tesseract.

Between the time it could took Tony to realise it and aim his repulsors at them, the Monster had already reached the machine and had plunged his claws towards the Tesseract.

The resulting light show would have blinded him had he not already turned around, knowing what was to come. Honestly? He just hoped that the monster bit off more than it could chew and blast itself to kingdom come.

That would just make things easier at this point.

But no, that was not what he heard. The sound, the chittering, the roar which then gradually turned into genuine human laughter, would forever haunt his dreams as the light subsided and he got a good look at the machine.

Tony's hands fell slack as he looked at the monster, which was no longer a monster but a large human with grey and silver skin, which was glowing with blue veins as the monster's hand was plunged into the sphere of energy around the Tesseract. Yes, hands not claws. Apparently, as part of the package of whatever he got, his claws were converted to two hands and two legs, somehow evolving to become humanoid.

The shadow girl had returned to their position, and even though he could see her shadowy form, it was jittery, as if she was afraid of uncertainty. He understood her, the monster was just laughing at this point, with energy levels no doubt off the charts.

That did not bode well for them.

The monster then abruptly stopped laughing. The lull in the battlefield, supplemented only by the regular bombardment, meant that a chill ran down his spine.

"RUN!" He shouted as he picked up the shadowy girl or at least tried to, as his hands simply went through her, Tony retreating as well.

This was over, there was nothing they could do. He had already jumped over, so by the time he looked back, the shadow was already floating with them but benign way far behind. Tony was ahead of him but he had already resolved to turn back once he landed but the choice was taken out of him.

Out of the corner of his vision, he saw blue headed right for them. It was too late when he realised that it was headed for the shadowy girl. "Watc–" Was all he could get out in terms of warning before the beam collided with her shadowy form, and went straight through the shadow.

The beam fizzled out immediately as he immediately jumped back, carefully cradling the bloody figure of the shadow girl, and jumped again, this time with as much strength as he could muster.

THis was over, nothing they could do would help them at this point,. They had tried everything and even if they did have free access to the machine, they couldn't';t stop the portal, let alone now when they had a vengeful monster holding onto the machine like it was his precious.

It was……over.

____xx____

Manhattan [Subterranean base]

It was an atmosphere of tension. The entire base was silent, save for the occasional sound of some robot moving. The panic room was sealed tight, with Coulson and Romanoff in a different bunker, a lower priority one than the one where Pepper, Belina, and Betty were present. The Titan bots kept guard over them while the base was a haunted place of silence.

The only other place in the base with a human presence was the Medic ROom, which was not as developed as Randall would have liked it to be, being the de facto custodian of the entire base simply because there was no reason until now to design, develop or otherwise order high level medical equipment.

It was because none of them simply got hurt. They had mostly enhanced staff and all they did was operate in a place where it would be hard for a 100 year old to get accidentally injured, let alone people who were downright bulletproof.

It had seemed less important to Randall to invest his time into that, instead choosing to build what he called weapons but were more like toys, just supercharged to work with enhanced brutes. Those same weapons were used in the earlier invasion battle, dealing significant damage to the enemies before being destroyed in the battle.

In the Medic Wing, rested Axle Riddle, also known as the Invisible Man, with nothing but three different Rescue bots being operated solely by Jarvis. The rescue bots, while not as powerful, were much more maneuverable and were thus used to monitor the condition of the one person who could help humanity turn the tide.

Jarivis was continuously monitoring the condition of Axle Riddle, whilst simultaneously doing a mountain of other things. In the first time since it began operation, Jarvis relegated the Stark Mansion, the primary Stark Residence, as secondary in importance simply because Jarvis was stretched too thin.

Jarvis was monitored the vitals of Invisible Man and aside from some stress in the beginning, they were fine. Axle's brain waves were the main issue which were sky high but were also beginning to lower down.

……

….

On the other side of the battlefield, as soon as Kro managed to grievously wound Priya, the entire subterranean base began shaking. The robots paused, as Jarvis worked on resolving this anomaly, his sensors and processors working overtime.

……

….

–Axle Riddle–

"Come on, Come on," He muttered to himself, tense as he watched a literal loading screen in front of him. The scroll that past him had left for himself was rather…crass. Enlightening but he could have used less swear words.

Then again, in his own words, he had been quite a dumbass.

'It was so embarrassing watching myself bumbling around like a fool as if we didn't have any intelligence of our own. As if stripping the intelligence boost of the Sage Force sapped away ours as well or the more humiliating one, that we didn't have any to begin with.'

The scroll was filled with many such tidbits, criticising himself, at every turn. It was honestly humbling, anger inducing and embarrassing all on its own. A ball of second hand embarrassment also followed when he was hit in the face with a literal book by the Ancient One with detailed instructions on how to use it but he only used it to form contracts with Randall and then return it.

'You fucking IDIOT! God! It's like watching a Zombie walk around. What was the deal with waiting around, you fucktard? You couldn't do anything else except create a bunker? OH, I AM GONNA BUILD A SUPER TUNNEL THAT WOULD NEED MY EXPLICIT ATTENTION TO FUNCTION PROPERLY SO THAT PEOPLE COULD BE SAFE DURING THE INVASION, HOW COULD THAT GO WRONG? Think! Idiot, THINK!'

Alright, that was enough of that. It was not good for his ego, bruised as it was. Thinking back, he did get quite reliant on his meta knowledge and did fum,kble with some stuff but he was not a backwards looking guy. Let's look forward.

So, he sat there, floating cross legged as he had to wait for the gamer-esque loading screen to finish. It would have been comical had it not been for the literal world ending situation going on outside.

He didn't know if the WSC would just nuke the whole place, even with the string of billionaires and powerful people present in the city, presumably. Tony should be able to redirect the whole thing but all of that was contingent on him finding out how much time he had spent as the Sleeping Beauty.

He couldn't believe it, the one thing that he prepared for years, he was spending asleep. It must be so infuriating to the people(viewers *wink wink*) to see that the person who protected them from gangbangers, skedaddle when it came to actual global threats.

With the help of the handy dandy counter, he saw the progress bar inch closer to completion. It was already at 99% and anytime soon now, he would be waking up, powered up, not as much as he would have liked to, but enough so that anything short of Infinity Stone powered Thanos would be bitchslapped into oblivion.

…..

"Come on, just one more percent left," he psyched himself up, stretching his metaphysical form, knowing that it would not help, at all.

……[99%]

……[99%]

……[99%]

……[99%]

……[99%]

"Nooooooo!" He roared despairingly as the Gamer loading screen glitched at the mother of all bad times. He stood up and glared at the bar, blurting out any and all obscenities that came to his mind, "You Mother–BLEEP, You Cocks—BLEEP, PILE OF—BLEEP"

[INSERT FITGIRL REPACK SONG]

He stopped mid tirade as a horrendous sound filled the space. He blinked in shock at the progress bar.

"Yes!" He cheered with his hands up in the air, as the progress bar had finally reached 100%, then began showing a bunch of progress reports. He briefly saw a command terminal opened up but that was fine, right?

It was not like it was just a computer that could be replaced but a human brain of the wielder of the Sage Force, capable of devastating the planet if it felt like it.

God Help them all.



If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon or Ko-fi, for upto 5 extra chapters.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

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 133[May 2012]

Manhattan [Subterranean base]

–Axle Riddle–

"DO YOU WISH TO PROCEED WITH THE AWAKENING?" He jumped with all his might and body slammed the YES button as whatever the loading screen was made up of, broke apart. He looked back from his jump and saw everything, everything that was this infinite space breaking apart, with blue cracks appearing everywhere in sight.

In fact, he turned around to see himself healing into one such crack, "AAAAH!"

One moment, he was seeing the blue, feeling the blue, tasting the blue, the next his mind expanded.

He awoke with a gasp, his eyes seeing sterile white ceilings, his ears noting the beeps of the machine next to him, his skin noting the coldness of the bed but above all of that, above every single one of the sensations granted to him by his mortal body, was the feedback from his mind.

He took in a deep breath, closed his eyes and floated. His mind ran at a speed previously unthought of, covering Manhattan in an instant, taking hold of the entire city that he had come to love and adore.

He instantly took control over all the Moles hiding in the buildings and even in the Subways, breaking their necks and transporting all of the Mole People, dead and alive, into a large pile in Central Park, one of them had even escaped the borough. Thankfully, he was not the same as before.

He then took a breath, and then as if a switch had been flipped, he was assaulted by the voices of millions of minds, all in distress, all in some kind of panic.

PANIC. HURT. PAIN. HELP. CRY.

"Ahhh!" He screamed as he worked his mind overtime on resolving the issues. Hundreds of people were rescued from the rubble. His mind panicking at the sight of so much pain and suffering in his extra sensory vision.

His mind fell back on the one thing that worked with his powers. So, one moment he was overwhelmed with the sight of these many emotions, the next it was all gone, dumped onto his second mind, which then began using his powers to sort through everything and everyone, limiting itself to Manhattan for now.

Buildings on the verge of falling were turned into dust, or repaired wherever possible. But more importantly…

"Woah!" He exclaimed as he tore out of the base, blasting through rock and Earth as if it wasn't even there, reaching the stratosphere in an instant.

"Ha.." It started with a small chuckle, which soon turned into a full laughter, "Hahahahaha!"

Then, his mind sobered up as he realised that there was still work to be done. He read the minds of the people and had come to the startling realisation that his mere presence in this world had changed things, enough so that Loki had done something that had somehow, in a roundabout way, fulfilled the condition for his release from the Dome but also made the situation worse, by targeting the world as a whole.

Within less than a minute, he was done with Manhattan, with hundreds of doctors and entire hospitals' worth of stuff being transported to Central Park. He noted the astonishing efficiency of his mind, as the doctors were all on break, not on emergency surgeries or were on Vacation.

His second mind, usually reserved for jobs with less mental strain, had somehow scanned all the doctors' minds, read some hospital reports, and had brought them to Manhattan, all within a minute. It was all way too advanced for him.

Manhattan was still a big ball of Red to his telepathic senses, an area filled with negative emotions so he was going to refrain from using that ability to its fullest right now, especially since he did not have the time to get accustomed to his newest ability, or more specifically, an ability that he always had but never had the brains to pursue more.

It had been 1 minute 22 seconds since he had awoken, and only then did he realise that he was feeling a draft on his bare ass. Deadpanning at the situation, he instantly ripped apart a fashionable outfit from a nearly destroyed store, and clothed himself, the threads of the clothing splitting apart to fit him before it was all sewn back together, in an instant.

"Huh, handy." he grinned at that, then, his smile disappeared as he looked inside his mind, where time slowed down to a crawl. Horus could pass inside while only seconds would have passed in the real world, all the while maintaining his extrasensory perception.

He could see his mind, which had expanded so much it was unbelievable. He could feel his range now. He dared not use it all at once, to get all that information at once would be suicide, even for him but he had a hunch that with enough practice, he could get either surface level information or something that would help reduce the influx of information in his mind, NOT turning him into a catatonic vegetable.

Solving the Mole People crisis was somewhat easy, mainly because his extended range easily reached the lair of the Mole People, instantly mapping the subterranean layers, and finding the lair of the Mole Man.

A quite pathetic specimen of a failed human who somehow managed to build a device that controlled all the Mole People. With a thought, the Mole Man slumped over his desk, overlooking multiple monitors that probably gave him the lay of the land in Manhattan.

Hijacking the mental signal of the device was easy enough once he cross referenced it across all the still active Mole People, disabling all the active ones lurking below the surface. He couldn't kill them outright because they number in thousands and it would amount to genocide. Ordering all of them to go back to their homes, he made sure that the Mole Man's device was buried deep, and his chambers were sealed tight, along with all the tunnels to his burrow collapsed.

That should keep him occupied for a while. Once all of this was over, he could decide if he wanted to hand the petty man over to the government for attacking Humanity during a time of crisis, nonetheless.

It had been 2 minutes since he had awoken. The streets were safe, the buildings were safe, the partially collapsed entry points to the Tunnel below were all cleared out. All of the security checks had been done at blistering speeds. All the healing he could do was done, mental surface scans were done, with multiple heavily criminal mindsets spread to a separate part of the tunnel, something that he and Randall had built into the design of the Tunnel.

His second mind continued to work in overdrive, with his main one acting as a supervisor as it continued to unearth newer minds, finding damage, and repairing damage.

It scanned the entirety of Manhattan, then started going around in a circle, slowly increasing its radius. He would have loved to watch but he had a lot of other stuff to do, like saving Randall and Tony's ass since both of them were absent from Manhattan, with Bruce being here.

He could sense the Sanctum, inside of it as well. He could sense Master Drumm and he was about to ask for his help with a direct portal to Utah once he was done with New York as a whole, something which should be done in less than 10 seconds of real time.

He was about to exit his mind, and travel to the Sanctum when he froze. He concentrated in his second mind and found, to his amazement as his second mind sensed an abnormal mind, something that moved at far greater speeds than an average human. Hell, even faster than the current him.

Opening up a link, "Hello Jarvis! This is me," he sent as a greeting message.

The link opened up instantly, "Mr.Axle! This is an unusual way of communication."

He was about to say more when he received a data packet from Jarvis detailing the entire battlefield situation.

He froze, his second mind freezing abruptly as well. Even inside his mind, he could feel it freezing and cracking almost as he absorbed what Jarvis had told him.

"Mr.Riddle?" Jarvis' voice sounded distant to his ears. Tony and Randall were fighting for their lives against a…Deviant?

"809000?" He whispered to himself as he felt his mind, once a lush green landscape, shake and crack as he processed that number. So many people, dead!

Gritting his teeth, he exited his mind, almost violently, absentmindedly noticing that everything around him was shaking, his entire body covered in a corona of blue light. He looked to the West, knowing the direction of the battlefield, and with a single step, disappeared.

—Random Beautiful Agent–

This sucked. Not the invasion, even though that was arguably more sucky but the situation as a whole. When she was told to report back to base so that she could be escorted to WASHINGTON, she knew that something was wrong, so she absconded from her post, and went around from place to place, helping people, because that was what she was trained to do.

No, what sucked was the whole SHIELD being sidelined thing. She had to rip off all the logos on her uniform and even wear a jacket to hide who she really was so that people in law enforcement would let her help them. She knew that while some people were shady, most of the people she met during her time at the agency were pretty nice.

Then again, the thing that sucked the most was the absence of the Invisible Man. With the return of the Hulk, the Mole People situation was pretty much resolved with people told to stay indoors so that the last remaining few could be rounded up. She was out and about with a radio on her so she could report any anomalies to the police who would then send the Hulk to her location who would then play a game of Whack A Mole with the Moles.

She was about to report her area as clear and report back to the Police as a volunteer when she felt something pass through the ground. She looked up only to see a small blur in the air. She ran over to a smoking hole in the ground and was startled to find that it had closed completely.

She whirled around, her gun in her hands as she heard the signature noise of the Mole People but then the voice was abruptly silenced. She was about to call it in since she was in an all but deserted complex, but then her eyes widened, her words stuck in her mouth as she saw something that she never thought she would see again.

Floating People in the air.

Her hands above her mouth, she barely choked back a sob as she saw the sky filled with Mole People, being transported in the direction of Central Park. She collapsed to her knees, her strength leaving her as she finally realised that she was safe, once more.

Sniffing, she wiped her tears and took her radio, "Do you see that, Detective?" Her happiness was clear in her voice as she walked back to her back, ready to go to Central Park to see the spectacle that would no doubt be waiting for her.

The radio crackled to life, Detective Santiago no doubt wanting to snark something back when an Earthquake hit them, her bike almost falling on her.

The shaking barely lasted a few moments before she regained her footing. Her radio cracked life to life but she ignored it, her eyes glued to the massive blue cloud in the air before that too disappeared.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

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 134[May 2012]

–Axle Riddle–

809000.

That was the number that kept repeating in his mind as he disappeared, appearing at the edge of his range through teleportation. Oh yeah, somehow, he could do that as well, good to know.

As he appeared, the blue shroud around him disappeared, his rage simmering down but never truly going away. He scanned the surface thoughts of the people around him and found that he was somewhere in Iowa.

His eyes widened minutely, as he calculated his range to be about 1000 miles. If it was a complete radius or if it was in a single line, he did not know but he was somewhere in Iowa.

He set his sights, closed his eyes, concentrated, and with little more than a pop which drained him somewhat, he appeared in…Utah.

His mind immediately latched onto the situation in the Salt Basins, flooding the entire area as he halted everyone, or at least tried to.

Breaking Mach speeds, he arrived on the battlefield and the sight made his insides churn. Hundreds, maybe thousands of corpses littered the battlefield, of both the CHitauri and some other species.

His finger twitched as he lifted Randall, Tony, and some other girl, Priya, if her thoughts were anything to go by, and brought them to the Military convoy with a hospital about 200 miles away. He could sense a barely conscious Thor trying to force his way out and knocked him out as well.

His mind was weird, well different than normal humans slim[ply because it was much denser and therefore, much harder to read. He did not mean it because THor was stupid but because it was [probably an Asgardian thing. Knocking him out was well within his abilities, especially since Thor was already weakened.

His mind expanded, somehow interfacing with all the devices in the area, contacting Jarvis through them, which was very very handy. He also noticed that he was not wearing a mask or anything that could hide his identity, which should be stupid but right now, he was not worried about that.

"Jarvis, Transmit this. Around the world," HE ordered as he looked at the Chitauri portal. The portal was blue, as was in the original timeline but everything other than that was different.

"Who….are….you?" He didn't let his gaze stray from the portal even as his senses registered the Deviant, the only one alive and also the one with the most energy dense body, with a barely humanoid appearance, glaring straight at him.

He didn't deign that question with a reply, waiting for something. "Connection established. Multi angle feeds restored," He smiled slightly at that as he sensed multiple drones buzzing all around the battlefield recording and transmitting everything.

This….This could not be something that he could solve with a wave of his hand, go back to the people, and tell them 'Don't worry about it, I resolved it. Trust me'. How could he? When he had fallen asleep, like the freaking Snow White.

Even in this barren land, he could sense the overall mood, and the motions of the people in his range. They were all in the negative, and while it would naturally improve once the threat was gone, that did not sit right with him.

So, here goes…..

With a raised hand, he stopped the incoming missiles from both directions. Jericho missiles, if he was correct, letting the CHitauri come in unfettered. He could not fathom what was going through the Other's mind when he let so many Chitauri Leviathans come through the portal to their deaths. He could see no less than 11 corpses of the massive leviathans right beneath the Tesseract, with most of them in pieces.

The Deviant whose mind he could not read, not without doing a deeper dive, was looking straight at him, with one of his hands on the Barrier, his other hand, releasing a blue wave that was carving through the Chitauri Leviathans like butter and then digging a hole in the Earth.

That monster must be the one who can absorb the cosmic energy from the Eternals and then evolve to become more and more humanoid, not to mention stronger. Evolution of the highest order. His gaze then slid to the Tesseract, the biggest source of cosmic power on the planet currently.

It was their misfortune that Tony chose this place for their final battle. The deviants must have been living underground, right below this place and the massive Cosmic energy right above them must have alerted them to the delicious snack waiting just above them.

His link with Jarvis was still established, allowing him to see the coverage of the feed. Jarvis was using the same reach that he had cultivated when Tony gave him blanket permission to hack most of the world, to telecast him floating strong in front of the portal.

The Military had received their messages and had stopped the missile launches, instead launching jets that were due to arrive at his location soon enough. First off….

He looked straight at the Leviathans that came out of the portal and with a thought, atomized them. It was incredibly easy as well, turning two Leviathans, what would normally be a city destroying force, into dust with just a thought.

With another thought patches of Earth all around him were ripped out of the ground and floated right at his level. Another twitch of his fingers turned them into spikes, another twitch had them rotating at speeds that turned the sand red.

Looking straight at one of the drones, he smiled and did the only thing he knew that had an absolute chance of drawing hope, and strength in trying times.

"Have no fear–" He waved his hand up, lifting an sq.km worth of land around him and also sending the superheated spikes straight into the portal, "Because I AM HERE!"

The next second, his hand came up, stopping the beam of the blue just as it was about to hit his palm as if some invisible force was holding it in place. He locked eyes with Kro, and the next second, he hit Kro, the Deviant born with a mutation, allowing him to absorb cosmic energy and evolve, to become smarter and stronger than his brother, with enough force to rip him from the Tesseract.

His left hand was still embedded into the sphere of pure energy surrounding the Tesseract, but the rest of the body was blown apart in a spectacular shower of golden lights. Lowering his hand, the problem resolved for now, he waited for Jarvis to arrive.

Randall was in the right direction but he didn't have a concrete idea as to how the Portal machine could be stopped. Jarvis was on his way with the Sceptre, the one thing that would totally shut this machine down. In the meantime, despite the losses sustained by the Chitauri, he could still sense dozens of Chitauri Leviathan crowding the area on the other side of the portal, waiting to come through.

He borrowed one of the universal comms from the Military base and patched himself through, "Randall?"

There was a brief static before he heard Randall's relieved voice, tinged with exhaustion, "Oh thank God! Keep an eye on that monster, he can heal himself by–"

"--Eating the remnants of his species, I know. But I hit him with so much force that there is nothing left of him, save for his hand in the Tesseract portal which is not doing much. Still, I will destroy it once the portal is closed."

He could tell that Randall was not happy, mainly because he believed that Kro was a much bigger threat due to his ability to touch and use the energy from the Tesseract. While he was not wrong, Kro had turned into a very evolved version of himself, he could sense everything in his range and there was nothing left of him.

"Patch me to the President."

He didn't receive an answer but a slight static before the panicked, tired, and frankly desperate voice of the old President reached his ears.

He smiled and in a reassuring voice, told him that he was back and he would be taking care of the entire problem, once and for all.

He raised his left hand, as the Sceptre came flying through, in an otherwise perfect imitation of Thor and Mjolnir. With the cameras still on him, he flew close to the machine but waited a bit before looking straight up, ripping apart the leviathans and seeing the dozens more that were on their way from the main mothership.

He sighed, shook his head, and jabbed the crown of the sceptre into the Tesseract. He encountered some resistance but the portal was finally closed, the machine breaking down around the Tesseract.

He atomised the hand as well, leaving no trace behind.

He could hear and feel the faint cheers of the military around him as well as the thunderous applause as Jarvis was still connected to him and provided him, in a controlled manner, with information from all around the world.

His task done, he ripped the Earth apart, placed the Tesseract and the Sceptre in it, and compressed it, turning it into a very hard prison for the two Infinity Stones.

"Mr.President, I will be back in about two hours, give or take." he said and disappeared from his position, the crude container transported in the military convoy, right in front of Randall who just received mental instructions on how to better handle the whole thing.

Meanwhile, he had a couple of Chitauri all around the world that needed to be turned to Dust.

Heh, he smirked to himself, turned to Dust. He smiled at the internal Joke.

Then, he disappeared.