The Sage of the Mind

[Hyperionthetitan]

Its not enchantress is it?

 

[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 112[May 2012]

Manhattan, Subterranean base

–Axle Riddle–

"Welcome to Midgard, Prince Thor," He greeted Thor who was just getting alighted from the Stark Jet, which he had immediately rerouted into the river and then straight into the base because he could take no further risks anymore.

"Greetings, Invisible Man. I was told that that was the moniker you assume,"

"That is correct, Prince Thor."

He had informed the Secret Service agent that Loki had been whisked away by a targeted application of the Tesseract, and also provided the video footage so Pierce should not be able to make too much of a ruckus. By now, Pierce had realised that his plan to keep the Invisible Man unaware of everything by keeping everything in New York quiet had gone up in shitters, so he had started moving his personnel in New York as well, at least right up until he put a stop to it, with the President's help of course.

Wouldn't want to do anything illegal after all. POTUS had issued written orders that no changes, nothing of the sort that Pierce was aiming for, would be allowed to happen in Manhattan because it was an area of special interest and the harmony could be disturbed because of the rapid changes in personnel that Pierce was proposing, which was mostly just him filling in his HYDRA goons in important positions, something that the President had probably realised by now.

So, that was halted but there was yet another problem that had appeared on his plate, other than Loki and the Chitauri.

The Mole people.

They had once again started sending, not entire waves of molemen but scouts, smaller, much faster mole people who were sniffing around the artificial boundary he had created last time and while they were barely even worth a mention, due to their low prowess, their numbers could not be underestimated and if they mounted a full fledged invasion during the Chitauri Invasion, that could be problematic.

"Prince Thor, we are on the verge of a planetary invasion but thankfully, the invasion will come through a portal which will prove to be a bottleneck for them. Now, for the Invasion itself, we might be able to handle it but so far, Loki has proven to be far more slippery than we could have imagined. Can we trust you to handle Loki in that case?" He asked Thor, because he would rather not deal with Loki at all.

"Aye, Loki's ways are strange and illusory. I will handle it, that is why I was sent here but Loki and the Tesseract–"

"Goes with you, I understand. You have my word that both of them will be with you when you leave for Asgard," He assured the Prince. He didn't want the Tesseract or even the sceptre in the hands of the government anyway, so this was the best option.

The sceptre would be broken down, obviously, and he would have to consult with the Ancient One on how to get rid of the small primitive but very much evil intelligence that was programmed on the Mind Stone by the Other before he could try and use the Mind Stone to augment himself.

But then again, he might not even feel the need to use the Mind Stone unless Thanos himself came in front of him or if he had to lift a continent, because the second the curtain fell, he had a hunch that his overall power levels would shoot through the roof, not in terms of power, but in terms of range and the level of fine control he could exert.

"So, we know that Loki would have the inertia of the fastest Jet on the planet and even if he is an Asgardian and essentially bulletproof, he would still be paste if he went from that speed to a sudden stop," Randall said, as he came down from the Jet along with Tony and Bruce, and went right into Randall's lab.

"That's right. So, no point in summoning Loki if you are just going to paste him anyway. So, we have to search for ways they could have bled off that momentum and made sure that Loki reached them alive," Tony said and then they went out of the huge space that he was going to label as the Hangar from now on because this was the place where both the Flying Car and the Stark Jet was kept.

"Prince Thor, please get comfortable. It could be a while before we get any leads on your brother. In the meantime, we have some people who are very excited to challenge you to a spar," He informed Thor who looked confused and lost at the prospect of mere mortals challenging the God of Thunder to a spar.

"They are not ordinary humans, if that's what you are wondering," He helpfully informed Thor and then nudged him towards the guest chambers he already made sure that Randall had prepared using his giant 3D printed, so that if anything breaks, it could be replaced within moments.

He also informed Michael, Harvey, and Leny about Thor's arrival because these three were the most excited to catch hands with Thor, despite Leny's shy behavior.

He then moved on to the SCIENCE! Section of the base. "Gentlemen, any luck?"

"No. We have not found any unscheduled Jet launches. The fastest Jets are all accounted for. Dropping Loki from a height also does not make sense because at that velocity, even if he dropped on water, it might as well be concrete,"

"So, they have something that can nullify the momentum then?" He asked the trio, because that was something that could be built, even with human tech, as was evidenced by Future Tony.

"Yeah, it looks like it. Anyway, let's move on to the parts list. Jarvis is actively monitoring power dips around the world. Iridium can be used to stabilise high energy fluctuations, to the point that minor fluctuations would be invisible to all known apparatus,"

"So they need it as a stabilising agent."

"Correct."

He left the eggheads to their job and shifted his attention to Manhattan as a whole, because he couldn't discount Loki already having ordered his men to infiltrate the city. Worse, the brainwashing meant that they could be anybody, even Coul–

Shit.

He immediately seized Coulsin in a soft grip, knocked him out, and ordered Randall to create a cell for short term detention, something that was easy since they had created all quarters with the intention of being able to quarantine someone with the push of a button. Randall was startled but immediately guided him to the nearest cell, as he dumped Coulson in the cell, and made sure that Coulson was kept in the cell until Loki was found and rendered inert.

Damn, that was a close call.

He couldn't believe how foolish he'd been, trusting someone so implicitly just because he knew that in canon, nothing happened to Coulson.

"Randall, check if Coulson ever came into a hundred mile radius of Loki's known sightings and also check his location when the New Mexico base collapsed,"

That was a close one. He should have been more careful, even if Coulson was innocent.

It had been two days, and he had not slept ever since. Despite his body being more than capable of going weeks without sleep, he had never been this high strung before and it was beginning to show its tool.

So, with a final sweep of the city, he catalogued all the weapons, tools that could be used as weapons, people who were in possession of such tools, people who had newly moved in, and more.

Especially people who lived close to Stark Tower, which was not difficult since all the Stark Tower employees lived close by, in a cluster of skyscrapers with leases that had been directly negotiated by Stark Industries.

He then did a mental sweep of his entire range, still finding nothing out of the ordinary, he sighed in relief.

Ordering Randall to just call for him once he finds something, he snuggled deeper into his blanket, in his bed, and tried to sleep.

Hopefully, when he woke up, the Portal would not be too far away.

___xx___

Undisclosed Location

–Loki Laufeyson–

"You prove yourself incompetent, Pinceling," He grit his teeth at the insolence but bore it with the grace of a ruler.

"The defenders have proven to be more resistant than expected," He tried to justify the emergency rescue, which sent yet another signal out in the cosmos, about the Tesseract.

"Which is why we gave you the sceptre, princeling. We smelled your weakness ages ago. My Master does not like losing his prized possessions. Retrieve the Sceptre, Get us the Tesseract or elsssee," He jerked back, the connection breaking as he punched the ground, the bruise already on his hand worsening on impact but that physical pain was nothing to the sheer anger he felt at his treatment at the hands of the Other.

His Master…

He shuddered in fear as his back was drenched in cold sweat at the thought of facing the Other's Master. No, he could not afford to fail, he had to win.

He ignored the voice that asked him about his master as well. No, he was no one's pawn or slave. He was his own master.


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.

 

[Hyperionthetitan]

The Mole people.

They had once again started sending, not entire waves of molemen but scouts, smaller, much faster mole people who were sniffing around the artificial boundary he had created last time and while they were barely even worth a mention, due to their low prowess, their numbers could not be underestimated and if they mounted a full fledged invasion during the Chitauri Invasion, that could be problematic.

Click to shrink...

So yeet mole people through the portal ,got it

 

[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 113[May 2012]

Manhattan, Subterranean base

–Axle Riddle–

With a start, he came back online. He spread his senses outward in an instant and was satisfied to see that the small localised mind he had created for simple crime recognition had done its job. He then dispelled that mind with ease, absorbing that energy back into his main mind partition.

That was another ability that he had in his hand now, something that he was not able to confirm because he had literally not slept for a few days.

He stretched, feeling the joints pop, despite him not doing his usual workout regime ever since a certain Asgardian disgraced Prince touched the soil on his planet. Damn, why was he being so afraid of a villain that would not even reach his peak until later in his life?

His senses picked up on Tony sleeping, with Pepper and Betty along with Bellina being in the same bunker as Tony. Tony still had three armours of his in the subterranean base, with Jarvis keeping watch over everything. Usually, Randall was pretty territorial when it came to his networks but this time, he made an exception for Jarvis to run in his networks in a supervised, limited capacity, which they all knew was a lie because Tony would not be able to keep his hands to himself, or resist ordering Jarvis to snoop around the obviously forbidden digital space that was so tantalizingly dangled in front of him.

"Randall, any status updates?" He asked Randall, even as he spotted two new Scouts trying to see if the Invisible line he had set against the Mole People, had dissolved or not. That was another headache that had come at the worst possible timing.

It was good that the Mole Men were not really that strong. Hulk could wipe them all out, if given time but they were bulletproof, and could destroy city blocks within minutes if not interrupted.

So, no exposing them to the local PD. Especially the Police department in Manhattan because the NYPD had gotten very lax in their armoury purchase, mainly because they couldn't justify all that money being poured into acquiring more guns and ammo because they hadn't even used 1% of what they used to need before the Invisible Man showed up.

Gunshot wounds had reduced drastically at every ER and even gang members now refused to use guns because being in possession of a gun automatically meant a more thorough scrutiny from the guy above and once found something criminal, immediate breaking of a single or all limbs, depending on the severity of the crime.

"No. We are searching for two things at the moment - Things that they would require to build a portal machine, something that Thor was no help with. And two, the energy they would need to get the portal machine running,"

"So, you are sure that the Tesseract cannot be used as the power source to open portals?"

"No. The Tesseract will be the thing that opens portals. It's just that for the Tesseract to open stable portals, you will need something to tether the Tesseract to something, and that would require tons of energy, yes."

"Okay. Got it. So, monitoring of all known Nuclear power plants, then?" He asked Randall, even though he was sure where Loki was going to show up.

"Yup. Jarvis has hacked into all that he could and the rest, we are monitoring through SHIELD's access codes,"

Ah, SHIELD's database. The biggest advantage that Coulson gave them all. Direct, uninterrupted access to the core central database of the largest Spy agency in the world. He was sure that it would be multiple counts of treason right then and there.

And yet, that allowed him to understand the true reach of SHIELD and just how deep their hands went, in the digital surveillance systems of the world.

He was still uncertain if Coulson could be trusted but the base was shielded from all outside communications, save for hard fibre going in and out of the base. Plus, there was no way that Loki could communicate with his mind control victims telepathically, at least not without the sceptre being in his hands.

The sceptre was immediately requisitioned by him as soon as it had come in his range, despite Tony's protests that he wanted to research. He had just allowed Bruce to get a single deep Gamma scan and use that as a base to look for the Tesseract, something that he remembered from the movies.

Bruce had immediately set to work but not having SHIELD's deep reach, he had reached out to POTUS who had immediately ordered every lab in the United States to hand over control to Bruce, and even some of the allies that responded quickly.

The rest had to be strong armed by Tony and the word of the Invisible Man. Still, they were nowhere near the reach that SHIELD would have given them, something that was still impossible because Pierce was the Director of SHIELD now and according to POTUS, removing him, at such a critical juncture, would be all but impossible given the bureaucracy involved.

Basically, POTUS was telling him that without any sky high treason charge with proof, he could not remove Pierce, just reprimand or limit his access.

Coward.

His senses were still in the city, which naturally, involved the New York Sanctum. While he could not get a look inside the Sanctum, due to the protections involved, he could see everything on the outside, even the so called wards that protected the Sanctums, and then even stretched beyond the Sanctum's walls.

That was why a chill ran down his spine when he saw the Ancient One herself, looking straight at him, walking on the rooftop, tending to the plants in the rooftop garden.

"Randall, issue a red alert. The INvasion is imminent. Get ready everyone, we are about to get some very nasty guests. The Invasion will be in Manhattan, inform everyone, and once the portal opens, blast the emergency message across every known frequency, secured and unsecured,"

He then withdrew his senses, even as he felt Randall scrambling to fulfill his orders and then slowly stretched his body, getting ready to confront the Chitauri, and then…annihilate them.

He was about to have a talk with the Ancient One but before he could do that, he heard Bruce calling for him.

"California. The Tesseract is in California!" Bruce shouted. He faltered as he flooded his presence in the lab, something that Bruce felt because he jerked in alarm.

"What? Are you sure?" He faltered as a sinking feeling entered his mind.

"Yes, I have triple checked it. The Tesseract is in California. We will have a much more accurate location in a few minutes."

"Any nuclear power plants nearby?" He asked Bruce, even as he made sure that the Jet was ready and the brothers were all geared up in their combat suits.

"Yes, just the one," Bruce replied.

"Okay, get ready everyone, we are leaving for California. Get everything you might need. Prepare for extreme–"

That was when all hell went loose.

Alarms began blaring in the base as something appeared on the screen, something that made his blood run cold.

A portal.

In California.

Fuck.

"Shit!" Bruce swore as he scrambled to get to the Hangar floor.

He was about to do something, talk to the Ancient One, and ask her why it was happening elsewhere when he felt it.

Hell, he was sure that every mystic worth his salt in all of the State felt it.

The Curtain.

He held his breath, desperate for the curtain to break and irrationally afraid that he might do something to stop it.

He got out of his apartment and went to the rooftop, something that was restricted but he just broke the lock apart, wanting to see everything with a clear view.

His jaw hung agape as he saw the curtain, but not through his extra senses. No, the curtain was now visible to him, as to everyone else because he could see people in the streets, getting out of their cars and filming everything.

Good Lord, what is happening?

Then, with a horrendous sound, the cracks began spreading across the curtain and he made sure to keep his powers tightly wound around himself only, to make sure that nothing untoward happened during the process.

Then, with an even more thunderous noise, that was probably heard across the city and made many people deaf, the curtain…broke apart.

His momentary relief was turned into horror as all the broken pieces? INstead of dissipating into motes of energy, turned as if guided by an Invisible Hand and then rushed straight to him.

He immediately ducked and went inside the building, somehow knowing that his powers wouldn't help but he still tried. Empty cars rose from the ground, along with anything he could get his hands on, to get and stop the horribly sharp pieces of cracked energy from reaching him but they passed through the things as if passing through butter.

He was still subconsciously limiting his powers around himself when the first energy shard reached him, and then just sunk in his body.

He could feel his energy increasing with that shard, which was manageable but then came the next, and the next, and the next.

And then, he blacked out.


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.

 

[Hyperionthetitan]

He could feel his energy increasing with that shard, which was manageable but then came the next, and the next, and the next.

And then, he blacked out.

Click to shrink...

So its like an egg,once larvae is hatched it become nutrition for said larvae

 

[highfist]

So its like an egg,once larvae is hatched it become nutrition for said larvae

Click to shrink...

Or it was his own power that got sectioned off and used to confine him

 

[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 114[May 2012]

Manhattan, Subterranean base

–Randall–

"Shit! Shit!" he couldn't stop swearing as he saw the video blaring on every screen around him. It was one of complete and utter chaos.

A portal, a blue portal tearing a hole in the atmosphere, through which hellish creatures and space whales continued to fly out, terrorizing the world completely.

"Jarvis, get everything," Somehow, Tony's ominous sounding words didn't fill him with much confidence as they ran straight towards the Hangar, which was unfortunately, on the deeper levels and for some godforsaken reason, they were unable to contact the one person who would have been able to guide them properly and would have also yanked them into the Hangar within seconds.

"Calm down, Randall. We can do this. Bruce said that he was in contact with the Invisible Man before all contact was shut off, and that was when both of them saw the California invasion. So, have trust in him and hope that he is doing something about that, like making some slingshot or something," Tony muttered the last part under his breath because they all knew that the Invisible Man, for some reason or other, could not leave New York, with Manhattan being his home turf, where he was the strongest.

And right now, Earth needed its strongest in California and that onus was now on them, because, undoubtedly, at the moment, they were the strongest Earth had to offer, and thank god for the Stark Jet because it would be able to take them to the site in less than half hour, so hopefully, not much damage would be done by then.

"Alert! Alert! Mr.Stark, protocol Sleeping Guardian activated," Jarvis' warning ran in everybody's ears and he noticed how Stark faltered immediately upon hearing that.

"What? What happened? What is Sleeping…"

Oh.

"It is too early to say anything but I developed a series of algorithms that continuously monitor the areas that the Invisible Man is heavily involved in. Drug confiscation, weapon confiscation, subway cleaning, traffic monitoring, everything. And according to what Jarvis just told me, the patterns are shifting, reverting to what they would be if an Invisible Hand was not guiding them, to the perfect solution,"

Shit!

Tony's words just filled him with more dread. It was just like last time when the Invisible Man was unavailable, but back then, they just had to handle a small city, with the occasional crime boss who thought himself too big to fail, and even then, they knew when the Big Bad of the city was going to come back.

Now?

"Bruce has reached the Hangar, so have the brothers. Thor is being escorted by Jarvis and Romanoff and Coulson have been advised to stay on base," He informed Tony who just nodded. It was logical, baseline humans would have no place in a battlefield of that level, unless they were enhanced in some way or had an extremely advanced "prosthetic" that was weaponized to the high heavens.

"Great, tell Bruce to dump everything non weaponry and load it with all the weapons from the crates I had transported here,"

Well, that was reassuring though not as much as having that invisible support on their heads.

They were just about to jump into the utility hole that went straight down to the lowest level, with Levy and Bolton poised to catch them midway when another alarm rang, with the highest possible setting, even higher than the one that rang when the Invasion occurred.

He and Tony looked at each other, as Jarvis' warning came once again.

He immediately activated every holo display in the vicinity and what he saw just jerked him more into the realm of fear.

A huge orange barrier? Curtain?

"What the fuck is that?"

"It is emitting energy levels unheard of. I can't even measure it and I have measured the output of a fucking cold fusion reactor, multiple times over," Tony muttered under his breath as he furiously typed on his keyboard.

"Jarvis? Can you tell me anything?"

"Sir, the curtain appeared a moment ago and has shown no volatility in energy levels with no adverse effects on the surrounding,"

That was odd, he thought to himself as his algorithm kept on searching for something in that barrier to help them. They couldn't leave Manhattan without going through that barrier because according to his scans, it went underground as well, very deep.

"Tony, can you see if any of your remote repulsor arrays, does anything to–"

He stopped mid way and collapsed to his knees as a loud cracking noise entered the base, disorienting him completely. He saw, from the corner of his vision, that Tony was just knocked out, with his holo keyboard still active.

"Jarvis? What happened?" His own words sounded slurred to him, his head throbbing as he fought to gain his balance and strength to stand up.

In the background, he heard a roar and his blood chilled as he realised that whatever damage that sound had done to Bruce, it had forced him into the Hulk.

Shit.

"Sir, the curtain just cracked and the cracked parts are now floating–No, they have begun moving, aligning themselves to target something. Calculating,"

JArvis showed him a live feed, as he gave up on standing and just sat down on the ground, which showed a very cracked scene in the sky, with pieces of orange filling the camera's feed.

Then the cracks, very sharp ones, he noticed, angle themselves towards a certain direction, all of them.

"Jarvis?"

"The shards are realigning themselves minutely in response to something. Calculating now,"

And that's when he saw it. The shards were aligned towards a building, more accurately, the rooftop of a building, where a single man was standing and looking at the shards as well.

"Subject named: Axle Riddle, second largest individual shareholder in Stark Industries and a current Board Member of Wu Enterprises, the largest privately held company in all of Asia,"

What the hell? He is so young, that was the first thing that came to his mind and the next got stuck mid way as he watched the shards flying towards their target, rapidly.

The man scrambled to get out of the rooftop as….

His eyes widened as cars, rebar, pieces of road, and more flew out of the street below and placed themselves right in the path of the shards but the shards cut through everything like butter and even through the walls and then, something happened.

Something that made all that stuff fall down in free fall, as if the strings holding them together were cut apart.

"Holy shit! That is the Invisible Man. I have been taking orders from a man so young," He exclaimed, temporarily having forgotten his crippling headache.

"Jarvis, take a suit and rescue him. I now give you authority to use any of the base's Class 2 resources, to secure and protect the individual known as Axle Riddle. Alright?"

"Access Granted. Optimum solution found : taking rescue bot designated "Rubber Ducky" for the operation," He nodded at Jarvis' reply and after throwing Stark on his shoulder like a sack, he went on his way down to the Hangar.

The Hulk roar had only happened once but that was another mess he had to deal with, especially since he knew some of his brothers and they would not hesitate to just brawl with the Hulk.

He wasn't worried about those jugheads. No, he was worried that they might damage the Stark Jet, their one way of reaching the Invasion on time. Without it, they would never arrive on time.

"Military response has begun," Jarvis' alert came to him as a display followed him to the Hangar. He was in no shape to jump through the utility hole and there was no guarantee the jugheads downstairs would catch him or not, so he was going the regular way.

The ultrafast Elevators, which was still slow because their base was…huge.

He saw that fighter Jets launched heaps of missiles at the flying whales but only at the edges.

Oh. "Current military orders are for them to target the fringe ones and contain the enemies until a better solution can be reached,"

Oh. He chuckled bitterly, as he realised that they were going to be the better solution.

A bunch of disoriented Hulks, the Hulk, Iron Man. That's it. That was going to be Humanity's solution to an Alien Invasion.

How pathetic.

"Individual Axle Riddle secured. Bringing back to base now,"

"Okay. Once he is back and we have left, make sure that everybody, including Coulson and Romanoff, are in the core zone, the one designated as the panic room and then detonate all the explosives so the entry and exit zones are buried completely. We can't risk anything coming in or out. There are enough resources and power for them to last years, so no worries in that department."

"Affirmative, sir. Good Luck."

"Thanks, buddy. We are going to need it," He grinned as the Hangar finally came into view, with the Stark Jet in one piece.

"Thank God." He sighed and dumped Tony on the ground.

"Somebody wake this Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist up, and get every piece of weapon and armour you can get your hands on," He shouted as a series of racks came out of the ground, filled with weapons he made in his spare time, some of them being too dangerous to allow use in normal situations.

But this was not a normal situation, was it?

It was actually the Hulk who grinned, savagely, and took the biggest mace he had built in his tinkering phase. He grinned as well. That was just a mace, with no technology in it, just a dense, tough mace that was impossible to be wielded, even by the likes of his brother, and the Hulk just swung it around, creating literal gusts of winds in the Hangar.

Oh yeah, they were going to crush this.

……

…..

Watching the news as they were en route to California, only a single thought ran through his mind.

No, they were most certainly not going to crush this Invasion.

Damn Loki!


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.

 

[Hyperionthetitan]

Oh well he gonna get hound by a lot of people if the shard thing is visible to the naked eyes . At least dude had a lot of backing

 

[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 115[May 2012]

Manhattan

–Frank Castle–

For years, he had known peace. Peace from the back stabbings from his unit, peace from having to worry about money, peace from having to worry about his family and their continued safety, and peace from all the things that went bump in the dark.

"Honey, Breakfast's ready,"

"Coming!"

Years of having a nice home to come to, with a loving family with whom he had daily breakfasts, which was honestly the highlight of his day. Schooling was expensive, but the education for his kids was worth it and to be honest, he would have paid the same for even crappy education if it meant that his kids would remain in the purview of the Invisible Man at all times.

He chuckled to himself at that, endorsing who was arguably the biggest stalker in all of America and entrusting said stalker with the safety of his kids. Then again, the Invisible Man had proven his mettle for years, safeguarding Manhattan from literally everything.

From gangsters, drugs, and corruption to even literal monsters out of science fiction. Only once did the Invisible Man fail in his duties, and even then, he had some sort of backup team to help protect the city until he came back. Ofcourse, nobody could perfectly replace the Invisible Man but that small team of seven people was bulletproof, could bend steel, and was capable of cratering city blocks on their own.

So, they were an adequate deterrent until the Invisible Man came back. And then, things went back to normal.

Or so everyone thought but not him. His years of paranoia came clawing back to the forefront of his mind as he imagined the consequences of the Invisible Man just up and disappearing from the city. Then, Manhattan would turn from the safest city on the planet to a No Man's Land within days.

It would also be unsafe to transport his family out of the city during that period. So, he had taken measures.

Measures to make sure that his home remained the most defensible location in all of New York City, even more so than the police precincts, now that they had removed most of their advanced military gear, because they couldn't justify the expenses now that someone was doing their job for them, for free, and with much better efficiency than they could ever hope to achieve.

It was good that the Invisible Man was willing to cooperate with the cops, otherwise they would have had a riot from the Police Unions on their hands.

He pressed his thumb against an innocuous looking wall. Nothing happened for a few moments, then the entire wall slid inside and then to the side, revealing a walkway that led even below the basement levels.

It was one of the reasons why he had bought this building. It was a renovated old building that had multiple sub levels that he had sealed once they had moved in. After that, it was just a matter of time and effort to get it all installed.

He was going to do it all by himself but then the weirdest thing happened. The Invisible Man helped him, for everything. The basement installation, power for the entire thing.

He still didn't know where the power was coming from but the Invisible Man had brought a single industrial grade power cable from the ground and that had worked splendidly so far, even if he kept every single machine he had in the basement active at all times.

He stepped into the stairs and the door slid shut behind him, another perk of knowing the Invisible Man who built this entire installation, dismantled it, brought it in his house and then installed it for him, for free.

His vision adjusted to the sudden light when the door opened and he found himself standing right in front of what could only be called the armoury of a small military unit.

That was another thing he found odd because for every single person in all of Manhattan, they were outright forbidden to bear arms, something that infringed on the 2nd Amendment but who was going to take the Invisible Man to court? So he was allowed to stop anyone from bearing arms in Manhattan, a relatively small place compared to all of America so the political overlords let him be.

Only the cops could have guns and even they could not just use it willy nilly. He had seen, with his own eyes, a rookie being airlifted when he pulled a gun on a suspected drug dealer who was just dealing in Weed, nothing hardcore.

So, by law, Weed was illegal so if the cops found them, they could arrest them but the Invisible Man apparently did not think that weed was that harmful so he let the dealers be, as long as they didn't sell to minors, that is. He could see the logic in that, if adults could be allowed to consume alcohol and cigars in absurd amounts, things that are infinitely more damaging to the body, then why would weeds be stopped?

Still, he didn't stop the cops from doing their jobs but if anyone got trigger happy, they were punted into the air and kept there for a while, scared out of their minds as they were suspended mid air.

"Honey!" he heard Maria shout again, so he hastily shut everything down and went up to have breakfast with his family. One of the two meals that they shared everyday. The kids were mostly busy throughout the day, with their extracurriculars, academics, and their hobbies, so lunch was delivered through a special service that made perfectly curated meals that had a tie up with their school.

Dinner was once again, with the entire family. It had become a tradition of sorts and he was going to make sure that this tradition continued as long as he drew breath, or realistically, when one of his kids wants to go away for college or god forbid, marriage.

"So, I heard you had a tough math exam today?" He asked Lisa, his elder daughter.

She didn't even look up from her pancakes as she replied, "Yeah but I am prepared. I'll pass,"

And he didn't even have the heart to tell her to work hard because for him, all that mattered was that they were safe, healthy and mentally sound. Because Lord knows their daddy was not all three of them when he was their age.

Academics can come later on. Baby steps at a time.

He was about to say more when it sounded like a grenade had burst right next to him. His head throbbed, stars flashing in his vision as he tried to get up, only to stumble back.

With no other choice, he crawled and brought the kids to his side, trying to get his bearings. He saw his wife trying to do the same to his son. He looked up and saw that everything else was fine, his vision still blurry but the lights were still on and the table was still standing.

So no Earthquake.

No explosion.

Something else then?

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of his daughter shivering in his arms, he felt his head throb less. He slowly looked all around him, saw his wife and son alright, made sure that his daughter didn't have a concussion or any other injuries, and sighed in relief.

"Get up, come on, we have to go," He managed to say to his wife who was still too shaken to do anything else. He got them out of the kitchen and was about to take them to the basement when something he heard from the TV stopped him.

He gave Lisa to Maria and then stumbled towards the living room and saw what was on the news.

His blood chilled as he saw the harrowing scene. An orange wave, all around the city, breaking and going somewhere, and then, an Invasion in California, with aliens and monsters pouring in en masse.

What the fuck?

He scrambled back and got everyone into the basement and then into the secured bunker he's built, separate from the armoury bunker, another courtesy from the Invisible Man.

"Wait! When did you do this?" Marias asked him as she finally came to her senses. He looked at her tear stricken face and at his two children who were clinging to their mother and was about to stay in the Panic room with them, when his vision shifted, to the small TV installed inside the panic room.

His eyes widened as he immediately turned the TV off, and kissed Maria on her forehead, "I'll be right back,"

Pressing the emergency lock button, he turned around and ignored her desperate cries as he entered the armoury bunker.

Ignoring the rows of guns, machine guns, bombs, and more, he went straight towards the computer setup.

Logging in with his credentials, he activated the experimental sniper mode.

On the screen, a rooftop view could be seen. Suddenly, multiple tiles just slid into the floor and a huge cannon with electrified blue lights on all sides on it came out, with its barrel being over 2 meters long.

Hitting the energize button, he watched as his rooftop was suddenly filled with electrifying arcs of energy that were being drawn from the single cable that came from nowhere.

Once it was energized to the full, he looked at his locked target, "Get off my planet."

With those words, he pressed X on the keyboard, letting the small tungsten projectile loose, and watched with satisfaction as the damned space whale was bisected into two.

With that single shot, the entire Invasion force froze and then he had to suppress a shiver as he saw the entire fleet of aliens lock onto his building.

His hand hovered above another button and then, after taking a deep breath, he slammed that button as well.

That dropped the panic room, straight down, into a safe space that the INvisible Man had built for situations just like this, with ample food, water and medical resources for thousands of people to last for months.

Even as he used the guns and technology given to him by the Invisible Man, his mind was fixated on one question and one question only.

Where the fuck was the Invisible Man?!



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.

 

[Hyperionthetitan]

oh frank , now you will have no rest anymore

 

[ArsMagna1337]

Where the fuck was the Invisible Man?!

Click to shrink...

Ascending to become the Invisible Man-Emperor of Mankind.

 

[Mastersgt]

So... The aliens invaded California, but are already over Manhatten?

 

[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 115[May 2012]

Manhattan

–Chris Lang [From Chapter 66]–

This morning could not have gone more to shitters, he thought to himself as he tried to wrestle the kids into getting ready for school, a school that he paid a small fortune for but noooo, his father told them about their trip and now the kids wanted to tag along as well.

He had specifically warned his mother not to tell anyone about their trip to the farm because if the kids found out about it, he would have to deal with it but his father was a whole other beast that was even more difficult to wrangle than the feral kids currently playing a game of tag with him in the kitchen.

"Aha! Got you!" He cried out triumphantly and then tickled the unfortunate soul who was now in his grasp.

"N-No, St–Stop!" She tried to squirm out of his grip but he was relentless. Ah, he was actually having fun in this. Eh, maybe they can miss a week of school. Sure, the school teacher had cried out at the mere thought of missing a week of school as if they were going to miss out on sacred knowledge coming straight from the wise mind of the Invisible Man but what do they know? He was their father and if he said so, he was going to take his kids to see their grandparents, ridiculously priced private school be damned.

"They're not going to listen, are they?" He looked up, to see his wife, his beautiful beautiful wife entering the kitchen with a fond and exasperated look on her face.

"What do you think?" He asked her and lifted the little gremlin who had the audacity to smile at her mom, who all but melted at the site. For all her acting to be the tough mom, Anna was always the one who folded first, no matter the issue.

"Great, I've already packed their bags. I've told Robert to get the car out, we should be ready in about 10 mins, right Pumpkin?" Anna smiled and it was as if the entire world was lit up in front of him.

"Yay!" In his momentary bedazzlement, the gremlin squirmed out of his grip and ran up the stairs as if the devil itself was on her tail.

He was about to get up when a horrible keening noise slammed right into his senses, making his vision blackout for a moment. What felt like an eternity passed when his vision returned, all blurry and splotchy as he tried to get up, only to fall back down on his ass.

"Anna?" His own voice sounded blurry to him as he tried to get up using the kitchen island as support but his body felt like it was filled with lead, no strength to do anything. Finally, after what felt like monumental struggle, he finally lifted himself into an upright position and his vision finally cleared enough that he saw Anna already on her way up the stairs, to look at the kids.

He sighed in relief at that. Thank god she was able to get up. His body felt like it would break apart the moment he took another step. Even so, he had to find out what happened. They had a balcony for the kitchen as well, as he trudged painfully toward the balcony, getting support from any odd item that was within reach, until finally, the doors opened on their own, thank god for smart home stuff, and he saw what was outside.

His breath hitched as he saw a scene straight from the science fiction stuff his kids loved to watch. A blue hole in the sky, from which monsters were pouring out in droves.

"Anna! Anna! Get down here!" He shouted as he scrambled his mind to map the optimum route to get out of this situation. They had a state of the art panic room installed but it was built with robbers and humans in mind, not monsters who were raining down lasers.

Unfortunately, the shortest way to get out of Manhattan was directly underneath that blue hole. He was about to head up, however slow it might be, when—

A high pitch noise entered his senses as he looked to the right, his eyes widening as he saw a white glow appear on top of a small building. He recognised that building, it was the Castle martial Arts Dojo, something the girls wanted to join but were too young to do so right now.

He squinted his eyes, trying to figure out what that was when, with a thunderous boom, the white energy coalesced into a ball and escaped his field of vision. All of a sudden, there was complete silence in the city.

Even past the sirens, car horns and people shouting, there was the sound of the monsters, roaring or blasting lasers but all that noise was suddenly silenced.

He looked towards the monsters and his jaw hung agape as one of the huge whale-like things was torn into two pieces and was currently dropping down on the ground.

He winced as it landed on top of two buildings but thankfully, they stayed upright despite the humongous load on top of them.

"A Railgun, huh?" he murmured to himself as he looked at the rooftop of the building, which was now sure to be the target of the monsters.

Right then, with a WHOOP! Sound, the blue hole disappeared from the sky, but it left the monsters in the city.

He recognised the weapon used but that did not make him useful. Damn, if only Scott was here, they could have done something to make sure that at the very least, his family was safe and sound. Scott was always his favourite cousin.

"It's like Nana always said, we Scotts may not be the most athletic but we age gracefully and are wicked smart." He muttered to himself, mostly because he was out of it and also because he wished he was athletic enough to recover quicker.

Unfortunately, he did age very gracefully and he was smart, smart enough to retire as one of the head honchos in an industry that spit out freshers as if it were a churning mill.

"Anna! Get down to the basement!" He shouted, hoping she would hear him.

____xx____

—Frank Castle–

His eyes narrowed as he saw the blue portal disappear. As soon as the hole had appeared on top of Manhattan, a data file had become accessible to him on the computer that was given to him b y the Invisible Man.

He speed read through the whole thing and then one thing became increasingly clear to him. THe Invisible Man knew about the whole thing, about the Invasion and who would invade and what their weaknesses were.

A beep brought his attention back to the screen as the railgun was charged completely once more. He grinned and let the railgun loose once again.

The space whale tried to manoeuvre out of the way of the death ball but its sheer size made it impossible to do so. Another space whale out of the game but it was not lost on him that doing so, in the middle of the city meant that it was crashing on top of buildings which meant casualties.

He steeled his heart and hoped that they were fine because no building had collapsed yet. He could not let them free reign in the city, it would be disastrous.

He braced for impact because the aliens were now on a warpath straight towards him.

"Just like old times," He said to himself as he activated every single strangle contraption that the Invisible Man had installed in his house, something that he was against, at first but now he was the most grateful.

Another railgun appeared on the rooftop, partially charged, and by the time the third whale, the only one they had on hand, came into the view of the railgun, it was completely charged.

With another launch, their third space whale was gone as well, their mobile Base of operations gone. It also took out almost half of the infantry as well because they foolishly tried to shield the whale and ended up vaporising as a result.

The others, he did not have anything precision based for that but he apparently didn't need to do anything, because, something shot at the forces with utter precision and power, leaving behind a charred mess.

The computer automatically calculated everything and showed him the Stark Tower. It also had hundreds of black installations on the side of the building which was now targeting every single alien that had appeared in the sky, very successfully.

He could see it did not have the sheer energy to go through the space whales but the smaller units were easily handled by it.

He sighed in relief and slumped in his seat, knowing that the building, their home was fine when another screen appeared on the computer, making him jerk back into alertness.

What now?

His eyes narrowed as a series of video reports appeared on the screen.

His mouth twisted as a bitter feeling settled in his stomach, watching the blue portal appear in the skies, spit out nearly invincible Space whales and then disappear, only to reappear in the skies above another major city.

So far, it has appeared in California, Manhattan, Paris, Auckland, and Sydney.

"He is going to destroy the planet," He could not believe it but the short lived feeling of victory was feeling very bitter right now.

These cities had no protector, who could prepare for something like this. Nobody to help defend them.

No one to–

"Greetings, I am Jarvis. Am I speaking to Lieutenant Frank Castle?" A voice spoke from the computer.

"Not anymore, I am not. Yes, I am Frank Castle," He confirmed, mostly because he was very desperate to help in any way he could.

There was also the looming threat of the portal circling back and attacking them once again. The Railguns could only fire a dozen shots each before they melted down from the strain.

With the portal jumping around the world like that, nowhere was safe. He was sure that the White House must be shitting their pants at this predicament and calling for the Invisible Man to do something.

"Thank you for the assist, Mr.Castle. You have been listed as a Class 2 resource in the database of the Invisible Man's team. Can I count on you to further participate in the defense of the city?"

Class 2 Resource?

"Damn right you can. My family lives here."

"Thank you, Mr.Castle. Please await further instructions. Further control of all weaponry in your house will be taken over so please get ready for field combat. We also have another Class 2 resource that will need debriefing that you are better suited for."

"Debriefing? What the hell do I know to debrief someone?" He asked this Jarvis person and suddenly, everything appeared on the screen.

"A carrier will be at your location soon. In the meantime, please read through this as it will be crucial to obtain the cooperation of this asset,"

Saying so, the voice left. It was all very confusing but he did what he was taught to do in the military.

Follow the orders.

He ignored the part that whispered 'As long as your gut tells you to'


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.

 

[Mastersgt]

I'm just wondering... where is the energy Shield?

 

[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 115[May 2012]

Manhattan

–Steve Rogers–

"Son of a bitch," He couldn't believe it. Monsters, aliens, real aliens pouring out of a hole in the sky, flying whales the size of the largest buildings he had seen in this city.

"Language!" He did a double take as an old man hobbling along the road, with a package in his hand, as if the chaos all around them was not happening and he had nothing to do with it, shouted at him without even turning around to face him.

Shaking his head, he did what he did best, even before he became a Super Soldier, try to help people, in any way he could.

"This way, please!" "Don't push!" "Hey! Leave! Now."

It was hard, being unable to do anything but being essentially a slightly stronger cop, who were actually thankful for his intervention because more than once, he had to disarm the more easily excited person who was understandably panicked and afraid of the situation.

He himself was not any better but somewhere, in a deep dark ugly part of himself, he thought that maybe this wouldn't be the worst place to die, in his hometown, even though it looked worlds apart from when he last saw it.

To die in the place where it all began, where he became the Super Soldier, where he met Peggy, and where he hoped to retire, with Peggy and have a family with her, should he get the chance.

While his mind accepted his death, with his life feeling more and more meaningless as the days went by, his body moved on autopilot, helping bystanders, moving more than one car as it was blocking the road.

The way he moved and/or lifted some of the lighter cars had the police nearby gawking at him but they had seen weirder stuff in their life so they didn't comment much on it, especially not in the current turbulent times.

His mind ran as he ran and helped the older, more vulnerable people get out, in the opposite direction. Once he got a hold of a big truck, he used it as a battering ram and made sure that all the roads were cleared up, so that people can use the buses, trucks and the odd minivans to get away. Away from the madness that was occurring behind them.

Thankfully, they were far away from the blue hole in the air but he could see that all of the monsters were capable of movement and it would only be a matter of time before they spread all across the city, and his enhanced brain told him that not even a quarter of the city's population could be evacuated, sometimes he hated how his brain told him with the cold logic of inevitability.

"I'll see if they need more help," Hefting a motorcycle up from where it was abandoned on the side of the road, for what reason he did not know since it was actually easily manoeuvrable on the roads, not without bumping into people though.

"Be Careful," He waved off the worries of one of the police officers. He smiled at the thought of people genuinely helping each other, even in times of adversity, it reminded him of the war torn villages they had liberated sometimes but then again, this situation was quite different from what he and the Howling Commandos were used to.

The thought of his old team wiped the smile off his face as he thought of their deaths, all of them dead before their age. All that was left was Peggy.

It was kind of concerning how none of his team mates had ever made it to old age, except Peggy, including Howard and his wife, who had died in a freak accident, and he had hoped to investigate it but his handlers at SHIELD had made it very clear that he could not leave Manhattan, for his own safety.

It was an odd feeling, to live under the umbrella of an all seeing eye. That was the closest thing he could attribute to the Invisible Man who, effectively, ran the entire city, and yet, during the city's most trying time, he was nowhere to be seen.

That was part of the reason why none of the people were prepared for something like this.

"Move! Move! MOVE!" He shouted at the people who seemed to be waiting for their lord and Saviour invisible Man to come and save them, which was not happening because he had seen the feats of power of the all seeing eye and it should have been able to easily move the aliens, or atleast dismantle the small flyers who were attacking the nearby buildings.

The screams, wails, and sobs were especially trying on him due to his enhanced senses, making him feel as if he was back on the battlefield, fighting Nazis and HYDRA. It also made him churn in shame and guilt as he thought about his feeling of leaving this world, a world that did not need him anymore because there were no more wars to fight.

THe world was a different place, a vastly different place and the only thing that he had done that made him feel even remotely useful was today, when he had helped some people move along, moved some cars and disarmed a dozen robbers and some people with guns who were just panicked and afraid of the entire situation, thinking that the entire world was about to end.

"No, no, no, NO! This is not the time and place to pray. M'am, please Move," He had to physically pry the woman from the church walls as she was frozen in fear, unable to move or comprehend the sight in front of her, constantly chanting the Lord's name in hopes that the Lord or someone in his name would come to save her.

"Please! Take her," He pleaded to the stranger with a minivan, already full of elderly people, who nodded and took her gently. He hoped that he had not aided in a kidnapping but anything was better than being stuck in what he was sure was going to be the blast zone soon enough.

He was about to head on deeper, into the deeper areas, which was mostly evacuated by the people who could get out but he was sure that there were plenty of people still stuck in the buildings, subway stations and more, that might need help, when a buzzing noise took his attention.

The noise then turned into a high pitched whining, making him flinch a bit as he heard something of an explosion, which then reverbed near him as well.

He looked up and his eyes widened as he saw a clean cut, glowing red and molten on the space whale. Something had cut straight through that thing, at extremely high speeds. The projectile could be small enough if the speed was high enough.

But then… "Shit!"

"Language!" He did a double take, once again, as out of nowhere, that same old man, wearing a uniform, holding on to some parcel, walked past him, admonishing for his language while not even looking back. His face, one of utter confusion, he turned to look at the slowly dropping pieces of the whale and then turned around to run back, hoping to help anyone in the way that he had not seen, including that old man, only to see no sign of anyone around him.

"What the.." he muttered as he heard yet another buzzing sound before another shot fired through the air, making him look back, almost making him stumble on a pothole.

Another whale down. That seemed to set them off something fierce in the swarm of aliens because all of them began flying in a certain direction, away from him. He slowed down to a halt, as he noticed that sometime during his confusion, the blue portal had closed on its own.

He counted three whales when they first entered his vision and he was sure that they had not deviated from their original place so much that there could be another whale, not that it would be possible to hide something of that size.

So, that meant that only a single whale remained with their entry point gone.

His shoulders slumped as he sighed in relief, running back towards the mass of people he could see. It was fine now, even if the Invisible Man didn't turn up.

The damage would be much higher but the military was more than capable of taking down one of those things.

Maybe those previous attacks were from the military as well? It didn't seem like it because the response was very fast and as far as he knew, the current militaries still used fighter jets, just ones that could fly very fast and very far but still jets were the primary method of attack in all military operations.

Drones were coming up but he read that they were still too expensive and unreliable to be deployed en masse for all operations around the world, even in challenging terrains.

His mind ran down another path as he began helping the police officers in any way he can, hefting a trash can as a crude rendition of his shield. He thought of the Invisible Man and how dependent the city had become on one man.

That was not how it should be.

It felt like the city was one step away from being crippled, and he did not like it, not about his home.

He felt that change was needed but he couldn't do anything about it, not by himself because the SHIELD handlers, his official caretakers would just tell him to work out more, read more, and stay in civilian life.

No, this cannot be done by Steve Rogers. Politics was not his forte but in the current climate, he would be able to make far more change with his words and face, than his fists.

It would seem that Captain America would soon have to come out of hiding then.


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.

 

[Hyperionthetitan]

Lets hope there is no bat fleck type of bs rising up . That might start a crusade war with IM cult

 

[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 118[May 2012]

Manhattan

–Frank Castle–

He could honestly say that this was the weirdest day of his life, even more so than the first time he saw cars and trucks being lifted into the air, suspended by nothing, just in an attempt to clear the traffic after a fire had broken out of the oil container and had spread to the nearest car.

It was also kind of amusing to watch grown men get ejected out of the car and then flung back to the ground, with the fire put out by the same invisible hands. Then, there was the wave of cleaning that happened on the subway, it was as if a wave of cleanliness swept through the subway every morning. It was visible with how the grime, dirt, and whatever else gross stuff, was eviscerated by the Invisible Hand of the Invisible Man whenever the subway trains entered Manhattan and left Manhattan spanking clean.

While he didn't let his kids out of Manhattan, at all and never left Maria out of Manhattan without him being there as company, he himself had travelled all over New York and even out of State ot handle some business permanently, content in the knowledge that his family was safe and with the property they held in Manhattan, would be safe and want for nothing for most of their lives.

That assurance was worth more than anything and the will to be there, to watch all of them grow up and grow old with them was what helped him lower his pride and finally ask for help, ensuring that his past life, legal and grey legal, did not come to haunt him, or his family in their current happy lives.

Though, as he followed the voice's instructions and came to the rooftop of his building, which now housed railguns that were positively smoking, he thought of the current state of the city, his building, the expense of repairing it, and how the city or even the world would never be the same after today, considering the sheer amount of damage that was happening to major cities around the world, even now as he followed the instruction of the voice.

He turned around and aimed his gun at the sudden sound of something heavy hitting the ground, and saw a humanoid blue suit landing on his rooftop.

"Greetings, Mr.Castle, I'm afraid we don't have much time. Can you please get inside this suit?" The voice spoke from the suit as well as his phone and he relaxed minutely, but still didn't let go of the safety on his gun.

"Alright, but where are we going and what the hell is going on? And if you spoke from the assets that the Invisible Man gave me, then do you have any idea where the fuck he has gone?" He asked the suit even as he stepped forward and entered the suit.

Darkness filled his vision briefly before a series of complex diagrams and images filled his vision as he felt the suit jerk for a brief moment, probably from the suit taking flight, before an orange circle appeared in the bottom right corner of his vision, pulsing slightly.

"Mr.Castle, we are to approach a Class 2 Resource, such as yourself. His name is Steve Rogers,"

With that, a series of pictures appeared on the big screen, even as he felt the suit jerk minutely in various directions, probably because the suit was taking turns. His eyes widened as he read through the texts and saw the pictures, some taken with current timestamps.

"Son of a–"

"Yes, that is Captain America. To be brief, Captain America was frozen in ice in suspended animation. He has been rescued recently and has been living a normal life in Manhattan. We are to explain the current situation to him and gain his assistance. I believe you to be best suited due to your shared background and also because interacting with artificial intelligence for a man who has yet to figure out a toaster can be a bit disturbing,"

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, counted to three and then opened them once again, only to glare at the details in front of him. The gist of it was that they were currently under an Invasion by some alien God known as Loki, yes, from the Norse Gods, and he has an army of aliens just waiting to invade Earth through a portal.

Now, that portal machine is capable of not just opening portals to transport aliens through it, but also capable of transporting itself to any part of the planet instantly, making sure that even if they did defeat the aliens that came out of the portal, unless they managed to catch and deactivate that machine, they would be back to square one because according to the limited intel they have, this Loki guys has enough of those aliens to take over the entire planet.

"Good Lord. Jarvis, was it? Do you know the status of my family?"

"Yes. Would you like to talk to them?" A feed opened on the screen and he smiled fondly as he saw Maria, his sweet beautiful Maria helping people in what seemed to be a huge hall of some kind, filled with people who were currently confused and panicking, crying but more importantly, safe.

"Where is this?"

"That is the tunnel, reinforced with the best tech that we could build. It will be safe even in the event of a thermonuclear device exploding above Manhattan. So be rest assured that your family will be safe." Jarvis replied.

"Alright, let's go meet the sleeping beauty."

____xx____

Stark Jet

–Tony Stark–

"What are we supposed to do?"

He didn't answer Coulson's question since they were just coming back after making sure that all the aliens in California were taken care of and was also working on something that might help them at least get some victory in this fight. It was a nightmare to deal with, especially the Space Whales. He had nothing in his arsenal capable of taking down one of them.

Thor managed to take out two of them and the seven brothers took down another one, by going inside the Whales and then attaching multiple high yield bombs inside it.

Bruce took down another 2 and all he managed to do was take out the stragglers, the one who were shot out of the whales and were peppering the surrounding areas with laser fires.

They had taken and scanned as much of the weaponry they could and it was nothing advanced. He has built much more advanced stuff but the problem was the sheer quantity. According to Thor, Loki had practically unlimited troops and they would just keep coming.

He turned around and saw Bruce stumbling into the lab, his eyes red and his clothes in disarray but time was of the essence so they had no time for lab etiquettes as Bruce promptly sat down on his workstation and began working on the data they pilfered from the Reactor before he had to shut it down, and seal the entire thing, rendering it inert and destroying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property.

"Jarvis, relay all the information with Level 2 clearance to Coulson and Romanoff and make sure that they don't get out of their quarters,"

"No! Wait, Stark, you can't–" He swiped down and closed the call. He didn't have time for this. The President was breathing down his neck.

"Jarvis?"

"We have the railguns active at full capacity and I have expedited the manufacturing processes at both the bases. We should have an ample amount of weaponry produced in the next two hours, in case another Entry portal opens above New York," Jarivs helpfully informed him as Randall and Bruce worked tirelessly on the data they got from the reactor, including any video footage.

Most of it was scrambled beyond repair, mainly due to the wave of pure energy released from the machine that damaged all nearby electronics. Thankfully, this particular reactor was decades old and its protection systems relied mainly on plain old mechanical mechanisms that worked on time and disabled everything in the reactor..

"Got it!" Randall yelled and he immediately whirled around, suppressing a wince as he felt the bruise on his shoulder when one of the laser speedos clipped him on the shoulder, the sheer onslaught of them being intense enough that not even Jarvis could protect him from everything.

The suit he had used in the fight was being repaired as well as multiple suits were on their way to the Stark Jet, because he was not going to take any chances.

"They used the reactor's energy to jumpstart the machine, just like we suspected but they didn't just jumpstart the machine, they overpowered it. Look," Randall pointed at a series of graphs including video footage that showed the machine being activated in two stages.

The first activation created a blue halo around the machine, as if it was a shield, burning all the wires and equipment all around it, making it float mid air. For the Second activation, his eyes narrowed as he saw Loki holding onto two wires in both his hands and after doing something at them, his hands began shimmering in green before he thrust both the wires, including his hands at the blue glow surrounding the portal machine.

All of them winced as Loki's hands turned red but the wires stuck to the glow, including Loki. Loki's face was twisted in pain but he managed to say something before the green glow around his hand increased in intensity, blinding the camera before it all receded and all that was left in the facility were unconscious men, a barely standing Loki who dragged himself to the machine and stood atop a groove that was built beforehand.

And then, the feed cut off because of the portal creation.

"Shit."

Shit indeed.

"So, Loki can take the portal anywhere he wants to? He can use the machine to get anywhere on the planet or is there a pattern somewhere there?" Bruce asked as he got back to his workstation, the information being nearly useless to them because they knew that the portal machine was being transported to all the major cities on the planet.

Only now they knew that Loki was in the machine as well, guiding it.

"Wait! We can use this," he caught the attention of Bruce and Randall as he rushed back to his station.

"Jarvis, how quick can you get me access to every single radio, TV, as well as satellite frequency on the planet? Hack everything. Activate Protocol Omega, energy burnout be damned."

"I have certain orders standing in place to remind you sir that this might result in extensive backlash for the company."

"And this is not the time to worry about that. Look at the counter, we have already crossed a hundred thousand casualties. Hurry,"

"Affirmative, sir. Protocol Omega activated. ETA until complete digital takeover - 13 minutes,"

HE heaved a sigh of relief and opened the direct line to POTUS.

"Stark! What have you been doing? Any updates on where the portal might open next? My analysts say that there is a delay of 6 minutes between the portal closing and the next portal opening. The pattern is completely random, except they are targeting major cities, irrespective of their population or population density," He leaned back at the rapid fire question and data vomit that came out of the feed.

"Sir, I am already aware of that, and we are working on mitigating the damage. Thankfully, unexpected parties have risen up in multiple locations to combat the invaders but we can't just keep fighting the dregs, we will be burnt out sooner than them, according to the intel that we have. We need to drag the battlefield to a location of our choice and keep it there. We are working on it but for that, we need access to every single digital device on the planet, anything with a speaker and a display, I need access to. How soon can I get that?"

"Done. Get him everything he needs. Tony, make sure that we don't lose," Saying so, the feed cut off. He grumbled internally, it was not as if he intended to lose or anything.

"Tony, what are you planning?" Randall asked him and he turned around, grinning a bit.

"Well, what else? How else would you bait a narcissistic asshole? By using another narcissistic asshole as bait, ofcourse!" He grinned as he got to work on getting his message across to Loki.

That might just work.

In the corner of his workstation, there was a small red glowing symbol which indicated the activity of the Invisible Man, i.e, Axle Riddle.

He couldn't believe it, the bastard had been in front of him all this time, buying up his company.

"Well, we will have all the time in the world to have a nice conversation once he is awake and all of this is behind us," He muttered to himself as he worked on something that might just help knock Loki off the machine.

The pure energy barrier was off-bar, no matter how powerful his weapons would get, they would not breach through an energy barrier with a power source that is effectively unlimited, but getting Loki off the machine should be simple enough because the barrier was now only surrounding the cube and not the machine.

Damaging the machine or dislodging Loki off the machine, anything was a viable outcome.

They just had to get it done somehow.


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.

 

[Hyperionthetitan]

Shit escslated huh?

 

[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 119[May 2012]

Manhattan

–Frank Castle–

This was somehow his life now. A scant few hours ago, he was just a regular old Martial Arts Dojo instructor with a dubious background that would not hold up to any background checks made by any half decent company.

Now? Now, here he was, in an advanced suit capable of taking down small militant units on its own, flying to meet Captain America.

"Damn, this is weird," He muttered as he landed, gently, in front of the Captain America. Some part of him wanted to fanboy at meeting the OG Soldier, the role model that the military thrust upon every single recruit, the one every single red blooded American soldier wanted to be like.

Steve Rogers, Captain America, technically, the highest rated soldier in the army since he was given that title posthumously, with supreme authority but they never expected him to be alive, now, did they?

He wondered if the Captain could use his title now.

He got out of the suit, with dignity this time, and said, "Hello, Captain. It's good to see that you are well, I am Frank Castle. I am part of the group that shot down the small batch of aliens that came here."

"Greetings, Soldier. Are you from SHIELD?" Captain asked him and he had to shake his head in negative at that. Before he could waste any more time, the single beep sound from the suit behind him and the -phone in his pocket reminded him of the time crunch.

"Uh, look, Captain. I would love to sit down, chat, and explain everything to you but time is of the essence here. We need to be ready, just in case they come back to New York because—"

"And what of the others?" Captain interrupted him.

"Excuse me?"

"What of the other cities? Who is protecting them?"

He caught something from the corner of his eyes and then thrust his chin forward, "See for yourself,"

Captain looked confused for a second before he turned around and looked at the series of TVs displayed on the side of a store, showcasing newscasters that were very much flustered and were barely reported coherently about the alien Invasion and how different protectors had risen up to help defend their cities.

He had been surprised as well but seeing the various avatars rising up to protect various cities has been very reassuring for him, because it meant that it was not just Invisible Man in the world, who could make a difference using his powers.

Others could do it as well.

But even then, there were many cities or even countries without any protectors of their own, and there were already talks of where Iron Man was, and he knew the answer as to why Tony and the others were not rushing to help the other countries, even if they could make it in time to save Vancouver, or the other neighboring cities.

The President.

It was an official order that came from high above that mandated the entire team that had fought in California to get rid of the aliens and also stop the reactor from melting down, had been ordered to stay put.

They were essentially ordered to not leave US airspace until this entire fiasco was behind them, which meant that Tony and the others, all the other heavy hitters, were now stuck on US soil, and while the Invisible Man could reasonably ignore orders from the President, the people on that Jet could not, especially Stark since he was the most invested in the country and also the most vulnerable to a strike from the government, be it on his business, on his technology, or even on his loved one.

But he could not tell the Captain that because, according to Jarvis, that would invite a drastic response and they couldn;t afford that at the moment. Jarvis had informed him that Tony had a plan right now, even if the others were not convinced about it but atleast they had something, so he didn't have to lie directly to the Captain's face.

"That is why I am here, Captain Rogers. People are already working on a plan to isolate and then put a stop to the Invasion but in the meantime, we need to make sure that we are prepared, just in case."

Catapin nodded at that and then took a step back as he looked behind him, in the air. He turned around and squinted as another shadow was cast over them, revealing a giant black box that floated in the air before it abruptly slammed down on the ground, destroying the road but eh, it was more potholes at this point anyway.

"What is that?" He turned around to see the Captain holding on to a gun and in a defensive posture, ready to jump behind the bench if need be. He snorted internally at that, as if something mundane could provide protection against the suits.

"I don't know. Jarvis?"

"Captain Steve Rogers, this is your equipment. Please use it wisely," Jarvis replied, and then the black box opened up, revealing…

"Wow. Which fanboy designed this?" He deadpanned at the open suit that held Jarvis. The black box held a monstrosity of a suit, colored in the colors of their flag, and held a shield and a gun in the other hand, and more importantly, was a hulking unit, atleast 3 times as big as his smaller suit.

"The design is irrelevant. The suit is designed to be used by the captain himself and so has many intuitive design choices. Captain, if you will?"

The Captain looked at him and he nodded, and saw the Captain being swallowed up by the suit before it lit up. Seeing that the Captain was getting used to having an entire armour around himself, he turned to the suit which was still open, "Why do I get a small one?"

There was only the sound of crickets in the background, so he sighed and entered the suit. There must be something else that Jarvis wanted him to do before the portal opened up once again.

And, speaking of the devil…..

Alarms began blaring through the suit as well as through Captain's suit as he instinctively looked up and found…nothing?

He was about to ask Jarvis what was happening before, with another jerk, he felt the suit rocket up in the air, Captain's suit following suit momentarily.

Up in the air, he could see on the HUD, the aliens, and their attacks. His eyes narrowed as the suit dived down rapidly, into the streets. He was horrified to find that this time, the portal was not opened vertically, but horizontally, and heaps of the land units were pouring out, firing at anything that moved in their vision.

With a crunching sound, his suit landed right on top of a foot soldier, killing him before the arms were raised and his suit began blasting apart the foot soldiers, while he cursed internally at their situation.

Their strongest weapons, the railguns, were now unusable because the invaders had gotten smart, choosing to fight in the streets. He could see that JArvis was scrambling resources and they should be here in a minute at best but his suit was already being peppered with lasers and he didn't know how long it could sustain that because he was already feeling pretty bruised on the inside.

"Jarvis? I am not feeling safe here,"

His pleas were answered in the form of a missile landing on the street, in between a squad of foot soldiers and then he grinned as he watched them all burst apart.

"Yeah, baby! Second Amendment for the win!" He just regretted the Invasion not being in a redneck state. They would only need to deal with the whales while these foot soldiers would be taken care of by the civilians.

He could just imagine the rednecks, arming themselves even more, bunkering down in their mini fortresses and just itching to fight an alien with the weapons that were their birthright. With how things were going, the rednecks might just get a chance.

The Captain's suit then unleashed a barrage of lasers that were noticeably thicker than his own and eviscerated the small squad before moving on to the next one.

"Well, I am definitely Jealous," He muttered as he followed the captain, providing support though it was definitely unneeded.

__xx___

Stark Jet

–Tony Stark–

"Sir, Partial Digital Takeover complete," he looked up from the small shut eye he was taking in between tasks because his eyes had pretty much begun watering the moment he looked at the holo screen now. Despite his many many advances in display tech, the eyes still remained a limiting factor.

"What do you mean, Partial? Omega Protocol as well as the President's access codes should have given you complete control over anything that had an internet connection." Bruce interjected as he came forward, from his own workstation where he was working on a way to fire a Gamma Wave straight at Loki, which should provide enough of a disruption to his systems as well as any machine holding on to him so that they could get Loki off the portal machine and onto his ass.

"It would seem that there is a block in East Africa that has firewalls stronger than anything recorded. ETA to break their firewalls using Omega Protocol - 7 years,"

He and Bruce traded looks at that. That was….not good.

He sighed, "Alright. Jarvis, in terms of percentages?"

"98.1% devices connected to the web hijacked,"

He took a deep breath at that. "Okay, open up a direct link, bypass everything, make sure that anyone within reach can hear me,"

He shook his head. Alright, no biggie. All he had to was goad an alien warlord into bringing his nigh infinite, absurdly resilient army to him, to a pre chosen location for a final showdown, where there was a non zero chance of death, of not just his death but the death of everyone on this Jet and then everyone he ever knew.

Because the goddamned freaking Axle Riddle had to go into a coma at this moment.

He took in deep breaths once again, just thinking of that bastard put him in a bad mood.


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.

 

[Mastersgt]

The MC is honestly feeling like a side character.

 

[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.

 

[Hyperionthetitan]

–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.

Click to shrink...

ancient one pulling fanon!dumbledore kind of shenanigans lol

 

[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.

 

[Spearow]

So, its over? I hope that was the last time the mc was unconscious during a big battle

 

[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.

 

[Hyperionthetitan]

Should have just use mjonir as a bullet instead of a missiles

 

[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.