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The Sage of the Mind
- Thread starter IdleMuse0307
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- #self insert fanfic marvel saga
Chapter 20 : Son of Coul
IdleMuse0307
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2021
- Messages
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Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.
The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 20
Seattle [October 2008]
–Phil Coulson–
"That will be all, Mr.Turner. If we have any more questions, we'll be sure to contact you during your stay here. Also, if you remember something that you might want to inform us of, call this number. Have a Good Day, Mr.Turner, and stay out of trouble," Saying so, he handed Chris his card and turned around, and left the house, his agents following behind.
God, today had been such a rollercoaster ride that he did not know what to think about.
Everybody, from the janitor at the Triskelion who only spoke Russian, to the World Security Council, knew about the Invisible Man as the media had dubbed the mystery savior of Manhattan. Of course, SHIELD was worried about the implications of such a powerful enhanced roaming free in the world, doing as he pleased but seeing that he was on the side of good right now, they had backed off.
Backed off, in the sense of overt legal moves. Their agents continued to monitor every single aspect of Manhattan and the way the man's powers worked. They were prudent in their caution because imagining someone capable of crushing a car to bits and rescuing a cat from a tree at the same time was bone-chilling.
If he was that worried, imagine the state of Director Fury. He was very much fuming because, apparently, they had found a single link in all the time that the Invisible Man had operated in Manhattan but they could not actually approach the link in any meaningful way.
Why? Because the link was a small group of civil engineering students playing a club at their university who happened to be acquaintances of the Invisible Man, so much so that they had regular conversations with him, not face to face of course but through clever use of his powers.
Unfortunately, Manhattan was, for them at least, the Invisible Man's fief, and going there with hostile intent was a surefire way of getting knocked out and waking up in police custody. Things had evolved to such a level that even the Mayor and NYPD Commissioner would refuse to lift their hand against him.
The reasons were twofold. The 24-hour Business zone instated in Manhattan that brought in so much revenue that it practically dwarfed all other Boroughs combined and secondly, the vastly safer working environment that he had created for any emergency services.
The Boys in Blue would most likely defend the Invisible Man because of the sheer deterrence he represented. Gangs now avoided Manhattan and its surrounding areas like the plague and the men in blue were very grateful for that.
Of course, in the short term, all that criminal activity had to go somewhere, so the gangs had begun intruding on other gangs' territories, and shootouts and gang wars had increased a bit but going by SHIELD analysts' words, it was just a temporary uptick and things would soon turn to normal.
So, interrogating, even a softer subtler one, would have been very risky to do in Manhattan, no matter how hard they tried to figure out ways to block his sight. They had tried everything, from lead to copper, to high energy frequency blocking to plain old jammers. Nothing seemed to work and it was clear that without having direct access to the enhanced himself, they would not be able to create a countermeasure for him.
So, they had to resort to this. A fully paid-for vacation for both his parents that made sure that his parents were out of town and a fully paid-for trip home from a competition they ran at his university.
Of course, they would not be able to make him "disappear" as Mr.Turner put it so aptly because that would just antagonise the most powerful enhanced they had ever encountered.
As far as he knew, nothing, aside from that one person he met in the 90s, could beat him and even she would have a hard time considering her specialty was just punching through things, and as far as anybody knew, there was nothing to punch.
They had been laser-focused on Manhattan for the better part of a year now and they had figured out nothing. No energy signature that would indicate activation of enhanced powers. Nothing.
There should have been something but it was as if they were blind to it. Better sensors, better satellites, better computers, they tried it all. But still, they were as blind as they were in the beginning.
It was as if the man had an Invisible hold on the city, and was capable of processing that vast amount of information and acting on it, in real-time. He didn't understand how the hundreds of rich people who had now taken residence in the city did so without caring about their privacy that much.
Essentially, the man was everywhere and yet nowhere to be seen.
The only thing they were able to find was that while the man himself was very strong, he was not really that smart or he was just playing around with a bunch of grad students.
After all, who would make an island-spanning highway underneath the island, deeper even than the subway, just because a bunch of students suggested that it might relieve the traffic situation?
Yeah, as if they needed one more lane to reduce traffic. Like that has ever worked out for anyone anywhere, ever.
But they had sent a couple of drones after digging in a way and what they found had boggled their analysts' minds. That discovery was part of the reason they were ordered not to make any overt moves with respect to him.
He had seen the footage and the terrifying fact was that he knew that all of it was done solely by that man. There was no indication anywhere that any type of tool was used to make that tunnel, not that he could do so without it coming to their attention.
They had gone through the plans of the students and seen that the tunnel was built to scale, very accurately. The amount of earth moved for that project while also maintaining the integrity of the tunnel at the same time…the numbers alone made it so that Director Fury himself forbade anyone from approaching him at all.
Then, he had appointed him to interrogate the student to see if they could find any new information that they didn't already have from their hacked devices. It was seriously getting easier and easier to spy on people without even assigning people to them.
Just turn on the mic, assign a few keywords, and then voila, you have a mass surveillance system ready at your fingertips.
From Chris, they had confirmed what they already knew. The Invisible Man's range extended beyond the island of Manhattan, that was certain but, the way in which he exerted his influence mattered a lot.
See, on the island of Manhattan, the Invisible Man was like a god. He could perform a dozen different things, all at once, without stuttering. He could stop bullets, asphyxiate fires, hold entire houses together, lift trucks, etc.
Outside the boundary of Manhattan, however, was where things got a little interesting. They had noticed that his power did not extend very far out of Manhattan but enough to cover all of its periphery. Whereas inside Manhattan, the Invisible Man used enough brute force to shame even Captain America in terms of power, outside Manhattan, he used creativity to solve the problems.
In Manhattan, he used his powers to just float any cars that were about to crash and then after bleeding their inertia, deposited them back on the ground. Outside Manhattan however, he could not do much in terms of a car crash aside from taking control of the steering and trying to take it away safely.
Same when it came to apprehending criminals. Brute force knockout or just dropping heavy things on just the right stop to knock them out.
He had power, in spades, that much they knew but building that tunnel and manipulating something as small as Scrabble from far away distances meant that he had impeccable control as well.
That type of expertise doesn't just come automatically. From all their research on the enhanced people, they knew that powers were just like another skill that you had access to. It was unique and tied to you, nobody aside from you could learn it, but it was just something that people needed to practice to get better at.
Somebody had practiced with their powers, likely for years on end, to reach this level of skill with their innate powers. He knew that having stronger powers meant a loss of control, at least in the initial stage.
Weaker powers were just easier to control.
Thinking of the tunnel, this person had probably been going at his powers for a decade, there is no other explanation for it. Well, aside from him having this level of proficiency instantly which was just impossible, even in the messed up logic of Enhanced people.
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 20
Seattle [October 2008]
–Phil Coulson–
"That will be all, Mr.Turner. If we have any more questions, we'll be sure to contact you during your stay here. Also, if you remember something that you might want to inform us of, call this number. Have a Good Day, Mr.Turner, and stay out of trouble," Saying so, he handed Chris his card and turned around, and left the house, his agents following behind.
God, today had been such a rollercoaster ride that he did not know what to think about.
Everybody, from the janitor at the Triskelion who only spoke Russian, to the World Security Council, knew about the Invisible Man as the media had dubbed the mystery savior of Manhattan. Of course, SHIELD was worried about the implications of such a powerful enhanced roaming free in the world, doing as he pleased but seeing that he was on the side of good right now, they had backed off.
Backed off, in the sense of overt legal moves. Their agents continued to monitor every single aspect of Manhattan and the way the man's powers worked. They were prudent in their caution because imagining someone capable of crushing a car to bits and rescuing a cat from a tree at the same time was bone-chilling.
If he was that worried, imagine the state of Director Fury. He was very much fuming because, apparently, they had found a single link in all the time that the Invisible Man had operated in Manhattan but they could not actually approach the link in any meaningful way.
Why? Because the link was a small group of civil engineering students playing a club at their university who happened to be acquaintances of the Invisible Man, so much so that they had regular conversations with him, not face to face of course but through clever use of his powers.
Unfortunately, Manhattan was, for them at least, the Invisible Man's fief, and going there with hostile intent was a surefire way of getting knocked out and waking up in police custody. Things had evolved to such a level that even the Mayor and NYPD Commissioner would refuse to lift their hand against him.
The reasons were twofold. The 24-hour Business zone instated in Manhattan that brought in so much revenue that it practically dwarfed all other Boroughs combined and secondly, the vastly safer working environment that he had created for any emergency services.
The Boys in Blue would most likely defend the Invisible Man because of the sheer deterrence he represented. Gangs now avoided Manhattan and its surrounding areas like the plague and the men in blue were very grateful for that.
Of course, in the short term, all that criminal activity had to go somewhere, so the gangs had begun intruding on other gangs' territories, and shootouts and gang wars had increased a bit but going by SHIELD analysts' words, it was just a temporary uptick and things would soon turn to normal.
So, interrogating, even a softer subtler one, would have been very risky to do in Manhattan, no matter how hard they tried to figure out ways to block his sight. They had tried everything, from lead to copper, to high energy frequency blocking to plain old jammers. Nothing seemed to work and it was clear that without having direct access to the enhanced himself, they would not be able to create a countermeasure for him.
So, they had to resort to this. A fully paid-for vacation for both his parents that made sure that his parents were out of town and a fully paid-for trip home from a competition they ran at his university.
Of course, they would not be able to make him "disappear" as Mr.Turner put it so aptly because that would just antagonise the most powerful enhanced they had ever encountered.
As far as he knew, nothing, aside from that one person he met in the 90s, could beat him and even she would have a hard time considering her specialty was just punching through things, and as far as anybody knew, there was nothing to punch.
They had been laser-focused on Manhattan for the better part of a year now and they had figured out nothing. No energy signature that would indicate activation of enhanced powers. Nothing.
There should have been something but it was as if they were blind to it. Better sensors, better satellites, better computers, they tried it all. But still, they were as blind as they were in the beginning.
It was as if the man had an Invisible hold on the city, and was capable of processing that vast amount of information and acting on it, in real-time. He didn't understand how the hundreds of rich people who had now taken residence in the city did so without caring about their privacy that much.
Essentially, the man was everywhere and yet nowhere to be seen.
The only thing they were able to find was that while the man himself was very strong, he was not really that smart or he was just playing around with a bunch of grad students.
After all, who would make an island-spanning highway underneath the island, deeper even than the subway, just because a bunch of students suggested that it might relieve the traffic situation?
Yeah, as if they needed one more lane to reduce traffic. Like that has ever worked out for anyone anywhere, ever.
But they had sent a couple of drones after digging in a way and what they found had boggled their analysts' minds. That discovery was part of the reason they were ordered not to make any overt moves with respect to him.
He had seen the footage and the terrifying fact was that he knew that all of it was done solely by that man. There was no indication anywhere that any type of tool was used to make that tunnel, not that he could do so without it coming to their attention.
They had gone through the plans of the students and seen that the tunnel was built to scale, very accurately. The amount of earth moved for that project while also maintaining the integrity of the tunnel at the same time…the numbers alone made it so that Director Fury himself forbade anyone from approaching him at all.
Then, he had appointed him to interrogate the student to see if they could find any new information that they didn't already have from their hacked devices. It was seriously getting easier and easier to spy on people without even assigning people to them.
Just turn on the mic, assign a few keywords, and then voila, you have a mass surveillance system ready at your fingertips.
From Chris, they had confirmed what they already knew. The Invisible Man's range extended beyond the island of Manhattan, that was certain but, the way in which he exerted his influence mattered a lot.
See, on the island of Manhattan, the Invisible Man was like a god. He could perform a dozen different things, all at once, without stuttering. He could stop bullets, asphyxiate fires, hold entire houses together, lift trucks, etc.
Outside the boundary of Manhattan, however, was where things got a little interesting. They had noticed that his power did not extend very far out of Manhattan but enough to cover all of its periphery. Whereas inside Manhattan, the Invisible Man used enough brute force to shame even Captain America in terms of power, outside Manhattan, he used creativity to solve the problems.
In Manhattan, he used his powers to just float any cars that were about to crash and then after bleeding their inertia, deposited them back on the ground. Outside Manhattan however, he could not do much in terms of a car crash aside from taking control of the steering and trying to take it away safely.
Same when it came to apprehending criminals. Brute force knockout or just dropping heavy things on just the right stop to knock them out.
He had power, in spades, that much they knew but building that tunnel and manipulating something as small as Scrabble from far away distances meant that he had impeccable control as well.
That type of expertise doesn't just come automatically. From all their research on the enhanced people, they knew that powers were just like another skill that you had access to. It was unique and tied to you, nobody aside from you could learn it, but it was just something that people needed to practice to get better at.
Somebody had practiced with their powers, likely for years on end, to reach this level of skill with their innate powers. He knew that having stronger powers meant a loss of control, at least in the initial stage.
Weaker powers were just easier to control.
Thinking of the tunnel, this person had probably been going at his powers for a decade, there is no other explanation for it. Well, aside from him having this level of proficiency instantly which was just impossible, even in the messed up logic of Enhanced people.
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
Erebos_03_
Know what you're doing yet?
- Joined
- May 2, 2023
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- Likes received
- 1,726
This is the story of an ordinary person k*i*cking the bucket
Chapter 21 : Brucie seeks Refuge!
IdleMuse0307
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2021
- Messages
- 362
- Likes received
- 10,011
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 21
Triskelion [November 2008]
–Phil Coulson–
He was wrong.
The Invisible Man was not the strongest person on the planet, not now. Not by a long shot. Watching as the Hulk grew bigger with each new gamma radiation spike, along with an increased ability to smash things and throw stuff, he was forced to eat his previous words.
The Invisible Man might be able to exert force over a large area with astonishing precision but the Hulk? The Hulk was a whole other force of nature.
He could somehow punch and create sonic booms in the aftermath, leaving behind just broken bodies and vehicles.
"...Um, Director? Is it just me or should we stop General Ross from making this even more of a mess?" He couldn't help asking the Director as they watched the paperwork pile up on the screen, showing the sheer amount of government resources that the, in his opinion, Mad General was about to use and waste on a cross-country hunt because he could not get a hint and was salty about his daughter getting a boyfriend.
Well, those were his private thoughts and not something that could be proven in a court of law but he was pretty sure that had it been anybody other than Bruce Banner who had become that hulking green monstrosity, the obsession that General Ross had, would have been much more…tamed.
"...Sir? Aren't we going to do anything? Banner clearly seems to be headed to Manhattan. Are we not worried about two very powerful forces meeting there?" He voiced his concerns as they looked at a series of reports that showed Bruce's destination. Sure, he tried to throw people off by booking a bunch of tickets going the other way and then travelling to Manhattan on foot or on public transport but to their legion of SHIELD analysts, it was easy work to figure out that Banner would seek the safety of the Invisible Man long before he tried to flee the country.
"...Hmm?' The Director said as he came out of his introspection and then, after taking a look at him, looked at the screen that showed the prediction reports and just pressed the delete button.
What?
The confusion must have been very evident on his face as the Director chuckled, "We never knew that Banner was headed to Manhattan, Coulson. If we knew, we would have been obligated to stop him before he reached such a sensitive zone but oh well, we had no idea and thus, were unsuccessful in stopping Banner, a declared fugitive, from entering a safe zone,"
The smirk on Director Fury's face was very disconcerting. Even for him.
"...I see," He was nothing if not adaptable to such changes in the situation. That was probably for the best anyway because imagining the lives lost in an altercation with the Hulk was not encouraging plus the invisible man maintained an ironclad hold on the city and if the Hulk started rampaging out, he could just…pick him up and throw him in the river to cool down.
They did not know the upper limits of both the Invisible Man and the Hulk but the way his powers worked, the Invisible Man was uniquely positioned to contain the Hulk with ease, or rather, transport him out of the city such that no large-scale damage occurred to the city, something that General Ross could not boast about.
"Should I head out to the city HQ then? In preparation for a visit by General Ross himself?"
He received a deadpan stare in exchange for his question and then nodded to himself, receiving his answer. He then promptly turned on his heel to leave Director Fury's office.
"..Coulson," He stopped at Director Fury's words, "Take the STRIKE team, you might need them,"
His words made him raise an eyebrow but additional firepower never hurt anyone….unless somebody used it.
"Very well," He muttered and stepped out, somewhat cautious of the General now that DIrector Fury gave him the supposedly best ops team of SHIELD. Maybe the General was even more crazy than he had given him credit for?
Only time will tell, he thought to himself as he prepared himself for a long assignment.
Manhattan [November 2008]
–Bruce Banner (THE HULK)--
His heart pounded as he covered himself in a grey hoodie, wearing sunglasses as he kept looking at the roads in a bid to calm his hammering heart.
Fat load of good that did when he saw police cars at every fucking intersection. His hands were bone white as he clenched them after every single turn of the bus, his heart rate shooting up as flashes of green intermingled with his normal vision.
He tried, he tried really hard to just..not become him but the first chance he gets, he gets out immediately, and rather violently at that. It was not something he could control and yet, he was foolish on his way to a residential area with a major civilian population.
Ideally, he would have left the country and settled in some remote part of Canada, that is, until Ross would have eventually tracked him down and then he would have had to move again, after…killing those soldiers.
God, it made him retch anytime he thought of the casualties that came from his hand. The people he killed, were people who were just following orders, who had families at home waiting for them.
And for what? Just so Ross could cage him back and then use him to make an army of the same monster he had become.
No.
He will not become a tool for the Army and yet, he knew what fate awaited him if he did become a recluse somewhere in a remote corner of the world. No human contact? No research? No way to figure out how to remove the monster from him, allowing him to live a semblance of a normal life?
No, he cannot accept that. And that is why, he is going to the one place that housed a monster beyond even the one that was within him.
Someone who possessed powers beyond even him and yet, used them in a safe controlled manner to help people, without ever having to worry about people hunting him down. It helped that should he ever turn into that monster permanently, the Invisible Man, as the media dubbed him, was the best chance he would have of getting out of the city in a non-violent manner and then being imprisoned later on.
He had also heard that the Invisible Man helps everyone and even sometimes listens in on people's conversation if his name is called out. He couldn't even begin to imagine the processing power required to be essentially omnipresent in a city with almost a million people living in that space, but he also could not understand how he turned himself into that 10-foot monstrosity.
So, there he was, waiting for the bus to cross the bridge and finally enter Manhattan, the promised land of New York City.
The entire time, his body was on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop but as soon as they entered Manhattan, his entire body went limp, as if the strings holding it fell apart.
He must have looked very weird to passersby and originally, his anxiety would have shot up but he didn't exactly care much now. Not with him finally being in a safe space, away from The Military, away from Ross, and even away from…..Betty.
Oh god, Betty! She must be so worried but he couldn't contact her, not with her father looking for him.
He sighed and rubbed his face, getting off the bus and looking at the hustle and bustle on the streets.
It seemed like a different world to him. People minding their business, not even arguing or making loud noises.
Cars running in an orderly manner, even without the constant presence of the NYPD to deter them from breaking any laws.
After all, the Invisible Man was the law here, and breaking his law meant that the punishment was just as inevitable as it was swift.
"E=Excuse me, can you tell me where the congregation of Problems, happens?" He asked an old lady passing by, a much safer option to talk to, because they were very detached from the news, statistically.
"Oh, you must be new in the city then. It happens by the park. You'll see when you get there, it is impossible to miss. Bye now, dear," The very helpful lady pointed out and then he set out, on foot, because he could.
He could finally remain out in the open without the threat of some sniper trying to shoot his head off because that hadn't been tried a hundred times by the soldiers who were killed by the monster in him.
No Ross, No Military, and no monster to worry about.
Ah, he could live here forever, even if he had to be homeless for it. After all, he could forget ever using any of his bank accounts, considering he must already be a declared fugitive with his assets frozen.
Even if he did miraculously find them functioning, it would just be a ruse to track him down.
No, he would first have a talk with the Invisible Man, be honest and open about his problems, and then…see what happens.
See, he had a plan but that plan only went as far as to enter Manhattan without being captured.
He could only hope that he was accepted into the city, being the massive security risk that he was. He literally had no other options and he had already exhausted his cash reserves for booking a couple of flight and train tickets to try to throw the Military off his trail.
That should have bought him at least a couple of days.
Now, where was the congregation? He had an Invisible Person to talk to.
Oh, he knew that the invisible Man was no deity and he himself confirmed as such using his powers but the people needed something to rationalise his existence.
The existence of someone so far above them that it made them…not human.
He knew that feeling.
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 21
Triskelion [November 2008]
–Phil Coulson–
He was wrong.
The Invisible Man was not the strongest person on the planet, not now. Not by a long shot. Watching as the Hulk grew bigger with each new gamma radiation spike, along with an increased ability to smash things and throw stuff, he was forced to eat his previous words.
The Invisible Man might be able to exert force over a large area with astonishing precision but the Hulk? The Hulk was a whole other force of nature.
He could somehow punch and create sonic booms in the aftermath, leaving behind just broken bodies and vehicles.
"...Um, Director? Is it just me or should we stop General Ross from making this even more of a mess?" He couldn't help asking the Director as they watched the paperwork pile up on the screen, showing the sheer amount of government resources that the, in his opinion, Mad General was about to use and waste on a cross-country hunt because he could not get a hint and was salty about his daughter getting a boyfriend.
Well, those were his private thoughts and not something that could be proven in a court of law but he was pretty sure that had it been anybody other than Bruce Banner who had become that hulking green monstrosity, the obsession that General Ross had, would have been much more…tamed.
"...Sir? Aren't we going to do anything? Banner clearly seems to be headed to Manhattan. Are we not worried about two very powerful forces meeting there?" He voiced his concerns as they looked at a series of reports that showed Bruce's destination. Sure, he tried to throw people off by booking a bunch of tickets going the other way and then travelling to Manhattan on foot or on public transport but to their legion of SHIELD analysts, it was easy work to figure out that Banner would seek the safety of the Invisible Man long before he tried to flee the country.
"...Hmm?' The Director said as he came out of his introspection and then, after taking a look at him, looked at the screen that showed the prediction reports and just pressed the delete button.
What?
The confusion must have been very evident on his face as the Director chuckled, "We never knew that Banner was headed to Manhattan, Coulson. If we knew, we would have been obligated to stop him before he reached such a sensitive zone but oh well, we had no idea and thus, were unsuccessful in stopping Banner, a declared fugitive, from entering a safe zone,"
The smirk on Director Fury's face was very disconcerting. Even for him.
"...I see," He was nothing if not adaptable to such changes in the situation. That was probably for the best anyway because imagining the lives lost in an altercation with the Hulk was not encouraging plus the invisible man maintained an ironclad hold on the city and if the Hulk started rampaging out, he could just…pick him up and throw him in the river to cool down.
They did not know the upper limits of both the Invisible Man and the Hulk but the way his powers worked, the Invisible Man was uniquely positioned to contain the Hulk with ease, or rather, transport him out of the city such that no large-scale damage occurred to the city, something that General Ross could not boast about.
"Should I head out to the city HQ then? In preparation for a visit by General Ross himself?"
He received a deadpan stare in exchange for his question and then nodded to himself, receiving his answer. He then promptly turned on his heel to leave Director Fury's office.
"..Coulson," He stopped at Director Fury's words, "Take the STRIKE team, you might need them,"
His words made him raise an eyebrow but additional firepower never hurt anyone….unless somebody used it.
"Very well," He muttered and stepped out, somewhat cautious of the General now that DIrector Fury gave him the supposedly best ops team of SHIELD. Maybe the General was even more crazy than he had given him credit for?
Only time will tell, he thought to himself as he prepared himself for a long assignment.
Manhattan [November 2008]
–Bruce Banner (THE HULK)--
His heart pounded as he covered himself in a grey hoodie, wearing sunglasses as he kept looking at the roads in a bid to calm his hammering heart.
Fat load of good that did when he saw police cars at every fucking intersection. His hands were bone white as he clenched them after every single turn of the bus, his heart rate shooting up as flashes of green intermingled with his normal vision.
He tried, he tried really hard to just..not become him but the first chance he gets, he gets out immediately, and rather violently at that. It was not something he could control and yet, he was foolish on his way to a residential area with a major civilian population.
Ideally, he would have left the country and settled in some remote part of Canada, that is, until Ross would have eventually tracked him down and then he would have had to move again, after…killing those soldiers.
God, it made him retch anytime he thought of the casualties that came from his hand. The people he killed, were people who were just following orders, who had families at home waiting for them.
And for what? Just so Ross could cage him back and then use him to make an army of the same monster he had become.
No.
He will not become a tool for the Army and yet, he knew what fate awaited him if he did become a recluse somewhere in a remote corner of the world. No human contact? No research? No way to figure out how to remove the monster from him, allowing him to live a semblance of a normal life?
No, he cannot accept that. And that is why, he is going to the one place that housed a monster beyond even the one that was within him.
Someone who possessed powers beyond even him and yet, used them in a safe controlled manner to help people, without ever having to worry about people hunting him down. It helped that should he ever turn into that monster permanently, the Invisible Man, as the media dubbed him, was the best chance he would have of getting out of the city in a non-violent manner and then being imprisoned later on.
He had also heard that the Invisible Man helps everyone and even sometimes listens in on people's conversation if his name is called out. He couldn't even begin to imagine the processing power required to be essentially omnipresent in a city with almost a million people living in that space, but he also could not understand how he turned himself into that 10-foot monstrosity.
So, there he was, waiting for the bus to cross the bridge and finally enter Manhattan, the promised land of New York City.
The entire time, his body was on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop but as soon as they entered Manhattan, his entire body went limp, as if the strings holding it fell apart.
He must have looked very weird to passersby and originally, his anxiety would have shot up but he didn't exactly care much now. Not with him finally being in a safe space, away from The Military, away from Ross, and even away from…..Betty.
Oh god, Betty! She must be so worried but he couldn't contact her, not with her father looking for him.
He sighed and rubbed his face, getting off the bus and looking at the hustle and bustle on the streets.
It seemed like a different world to him. People minding their business, not even arguing or making loud noises.
Cars running in an orderly manner, even without the constant presence of the NYPD to deter them from breaking any laws.
After all, the Invisible Man was the law here, and breaking his law meant that the punishment was just as inevitable as it was swift.
"E=Excuse me, can you tell me where the congregation of Problems, happens?" He asked an old lady passing by, a much safer option to talk to, because they were very detached from the news, statistically.
"Oh, you must be new in the city then. It happens by the park. You'll see when you get there, it is impossible to miss. Bye now, dear," The very helpful lady pointed out and then he set out, on foot, because he could.
He could finally remain out in the open without the threat of some sniper trying to shoot his head off because that hadn't been tried a hundred times by the soldiers who were killed by the monster in him.
No Ross, No Military, and no monster to worry about.
Ah, he could live here forever, even if he had to be homeless for it. After all, he could forget ever using any of his bank accounts, considering he must already be a declared fugitive with his assets frozen.
Even if he did miraculously find them functioning, it would just be a ruse to track him down.
No, he would first have a talk with the Invisible Man, be honest and open about his problems, and then…see what happens.
See, he had a plan but that plan only went as far as to enter Manhattan without being captured.
He could only hope that he was accepted into the city, being the massive security risk that he was. He literally had no other options and he had already exhausted his cash reserves for booking a couple of flight and train tickets to try to throw the Military off his trail.
That should have bought him at least a couple of days.
Now, where was the congregation? He had an Invisible Person to talk to.
Oh, he knew that the invisible Man was no deity and he himself confirmed as such using his powers but the people needed something to rationalise his existence.
The existence of someone so far above them that it made them…not human.
He knew that feeling.
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
Chapter 22 : The One With the Cult!
IdleMuse0307
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2021
- Messages
- 362
- Likes received
- 10,011
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 22
Manhattan [November 2008]
–Axle Riddle–
Ah, this was so frustrating, he thought to himself as he angrily munched on the most delicious sandwich he could find, drawing looks from the passersby, not that he cared one bit about them.
He had recently learned about something concerning. It was a cult named the Congregation of Problems.
Ah! What a corny name. It was something of a cult that gathered around a set location in Central Park. Even the Mayor had tacitly agreed, leaving them alone despite them creating a huge ruckus every single day.
The premise was that people had noticed that he would listen in on people's conversations if he was called enough times. Now that was simply not true.
His second brain, as he had taken to call it now, was scanning the entirety of the city and the people at all times which meant that whenever there was an issue happening that needed his attention, his name automatically came to people's mouths. Coincidentally that issue also immediately catches his attention so that he can solve it post haste.
Now, people somehow got the idea from that, that if they gathered in a specific spot and narrated their problems, he would listen and respond, by solving their problems for them. As if he was their god and they were his believers, for whom he was obligated to solve some of their pains.
Obviously, he had rejected the earlier claims of that being his official church and him being a god, rather Violently at that but…
But people could not rationalise his existence without liking him as something like either a god or a devil. Somehow, he had surpassed the realm of humans in the minds of the vast majority of people and that was how the Congregation of Problems came to be.
People came, people narrated their problems, and he scratched his metaphorical brain, as to how to convince those people that he could not make his girlfriend or boyfriend to come take him back. His powers did not work like that.
That was how it had been happening for the past two weeks. Then the worst thing happened at one of the early morning congregations when an elderly gentleman collapsed while taking his grandson out for a walk.
He had been focused on the congregation when he sensed that happening so he immediately flagged the location to the nearby 911 call centre.
Oh yeah, they had come up with a creative system for him to warn the authorities for emergency services at whatever location he wanted to call them to, without him exposing anything of note at all. They had installed a giant life-sized model of Manhattan in a call centre nearby.
Then all he had to do was concentrate on the model and then pin the specific location and the pins were of different make as well. He had then pinned the location with the ambulance model and set about trying to keep that grandpa alive.
With his limited knowledge, he saw that the grandpa's heart had stopped beating somehow, and not knowing what to do in that situation, he had just manually made it beat. That was apparently the right thing to do because, after a few moments of him doing it manually, the heart began doing it automatically.
The pained breathing attempts also stopped but he kept watch on the grandpa until the medics arrived and wheeled him away. He had resisted the urge to just move the grandpa straight to the hospital because he had seen the ambulance charges that hospitals charge to patients but the grandpa was wearing a Rolex and diamond rings so he let them go as the paramedics were more knowledgeable than him in that regard.
Now, that incident was averted and that old man woke up to live another day, he had checked, but the thing was that the entire thing was observed by the cult that had begun harassing him. It didn't help matters that the paramedic was far too chatty for her own good and just blurted out the system he had negotiated with the city administration to better get emergency services to places they needed to be.
So far, he has saved over 30 different people from strokes, heart attacks, and concussions in he either took them straight to the hospital or brought the paramedics to them, depending on the severity and his know-how. He had to resort to reading elementary medicine books to learn how to keep people alive until help arrived, which was thankfully, not far away, and even if it was, he just lifted the entire ambulance and brought them straight to his location.
Ironically, one of the drivers just fainted and he had to check in on him as well, to see if he too had a heart attack due to the sudden change of transport lane.
Anywho, that act of saving someone cemented this idea in the brains of the people looking to him for support, that he was some sort of being higher up on the chain than humans. That had been a particularly hard pill to swallow.
He was very wary of something like that blowing up out of proportion, complicating things even further. Religion was something that was always a very sensitive and personal issue and that was something he was not going to touch with a ten-foot pole made up of pure Vibranium.
No, sir.
He was just here to grow strong, save his skin, save a couple of people along the way, and then retire to a nice countryside farm where nobody knew him. That's the dream.
He tried to shut that thing down without hurting people's feelings by complaining to the Mayor about the public nuisance they were creating and as it turns out, the Mayor was totally on board with anything that could create tourism, as if there was any dearth of those.
The Mayor was a capitalist buffoon and he could not be blamed for that. It was bringing in good revenue for the city but it felt….wrong. To take advantage of people who he would have helped anyway.
Since he could not turn those people away and he was indirectly bringing in a ton of revenue for the city, he had made a deal with the Mayor.
He had always felt the hunger and diseased state of the homeless population of the city. It was a problem but also a symptom of a much larger problem that could not be tackled at just a city level so, he had always hoped to at least reduce their pain and do something so that they get the adequate care that they so direly needed.
So, as part of the deal made with the Mayor, six kitchens, all on the periphery of Manhattan, since the real estate here had become so expensive, were established to cater to the poor. Completely free, 24/7, open all year round, serving hot food to anybody who would come.
Also offering basic medicine along with primary care sponsored by something that had funds "donated" from the various illicit businesses that still happened around the city.
See, he had made sure that hard drugs like cocaine were completely eradicated from the city. He had made sure to remember the texture and looks of it on a nanoscale, allowing his second brain to automatically filter that out. But he had let drugs that appeared in nature continue to appear in the city.
So, things like weed, alcohol, and cigarettes were still commonplace. Of course, that didn't mean that he would allow rampant distribution of that as well. And obviously, the first sign of violence would have all the parties violently ejected from the city and straight into police custody.
Sometimes, it meant that rich people were stopped right in their tracks, as they sometimes carried hard drugs. He had to actively train his second brain to distinguish between drugs in the pocket of a person in a car and drugs being carried in a bag that a person was carrying while walking in his street.
That was one of the things that he had discovered about his powers. His second mind, as he had come to call it, didn't always have the necessary context that he did. So, he had to actively nudge it sometimes, so it made the right decisions.
"Hah, troublesome," He muttered to himself as he kicked a stone as he walked back to his apartment. Damn, when will this end? He didn't want to become some sort of deity to these people.
In the first place, he was going to hightail it out of society the first chance he gets, once the Invasion is done.
What would happen when he disappeared? He didn't want such a public-facing role all his life.
No, he had dreams of having his own private island where he would farm and do all sorts of stuff that he would figure out then, preferably with a shit ton of money. IT would be heavenly to enjoy that money with his loved ones, whoever they may be.
Whistling, he put his hands in his pockets as he hailed a cab. "Taxi!"
He smiled as he saw one of the cabbies spotting and stopping for him. He put his arm down and was about to step down from the curb when something entered his range.
Something strong.
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 22
Manhattan [November 2008]
–Axle Riddle–
Ah, this was so frustrating, he thought to himself as he angrily munched on the most delicious sandwich he could find, drawing looks from the passersby, not that he cared one bit about them.
He had recently learned about something concerning. It was a cult named the Congregation of Problems.
Ah! What a corny name. It was something of a cult that gathered around a set location in Central Park. Even the Mayor had tacitly agreed, leaving them alone despite them creating a huge ruckus every single day.
The premise was that people had noticed that he would listen in on people's conversations if he was called enough times. Now that was simply not true.
His second brain, as he had taken to call it now, was scanning the entirety of the city and the people at all times which meant that whenever there was an issue happening that needed his attention, his name automatically came to people's mouths. Coincidentally that issue also immediately catches his attention so that he can solve it post haste.
Now, people somehow got the idea from that, that if they gathered in a specific spot and narrated their problems, he would listen and respond, by solving their problems for them. As if he was their god and they were his believers, for whom he was obligated to solve some of their pains.
Obviously, he had rejected the earlier claims of that being his official church and him being a god, rather Violently at that but…
But people could not rationalise his existence without liking him as something like either a god or a devil. Somehow, he had surpassed the realm of humans in the minds of the vast majority of people and that was how the Congregation of Problems came to be.
People came, people narrated their problems, and he scratched his metaphorical brain, as to how to convince those people that he could not make his girlfriend or boyfriend to come take him back. His powers did not work like that.
That was how it had been happening for the past two weeks. Then the worst thing happened at one of the early morning congregations when an elderly gentleman collapsed while taking his grandson out for a walk.
He had been focused on the congregation when he sensed that happening so he immediately flagged the location to the nearby 911 call centre.
Oh yeah, they had come up with a creative system for him to warn the authorities for emergency services at whatever location he wanted to call them to, without him exposing anything of note at all. They had installed a giant life-sized model of Manhattan in a call centre nearby.
Then all he had to do was concentrate on the model and then pin the specific location and the pins were of different make as well. He had then pinned the location with the ambulance model and set about trying to keep that grandpa alive.
With his limited knowledge, he saw that the grandpa's heart had stopped beating somehow, and not knowing what to do in that situation, he had just manually made it beat. That was apparently the right thing to do because, after a few moments of him doing it manually, the heart began doing it automatically.
The pained breathing attempts also stopped but he kept watch on the grandpa until the medics arrived and wheeled him away. He had resisted the urge to just move the grandpa straight to the hospital because he had seen the ambulance charges that hospitals charge to patients but the grandpa was wearing a Rolex and diamond rings so he let them go as the paramedics were more knowledgeable than him in that regard.
Now, that incident was averted and that old man woke up to live another day, he had checked, but the thing was that the entire thing was observed by the cult that had begun harassing him. It didn't help matters that the paramedic was far too chatty for her own good and just blurted out the system he had negotiated with the city administration to better get emergency services to places they needed to be.
So far, he has saved over 30 different people from strokes, heart attacks, and concussions in he either took them straight to the hospital or brought the paramedics to them, depending on the severity and his know-how. He had to resort to reading elementary medicine books to learn how to keep people alive until help arrived, which was thankfully, not far away, and even if it was, he just lifted the entire ambulance and brought them straight to his location.
Ironically, one of the drivers just fainted and he had to check in on him as well, to see if he too had a heart attack due to the sudden change of transport lane.
Anywho, that act of saving someone cemented this idea in the brains of the people looking to him for support, that he was some sort of being higher up on the chain than humans. That had been a particularly hard pill to swallow.
He was very wary of something like that blowing up out of proportion, complicating things even further. Religion was something that was always a very sensitive and personal issue and that was something he was not going to touch with a ten-foot pole made up of pure Vibranium.
No, sir.
He was just here to grow strong, save his skin, save a couple of people along the way, and then retire to a nice countryside farm where nobody knew him. That's the dream.
He tried to shut that thing down without hurting people's feelings by complaining to the Mayor about the public nuisance they were creating and as it turns out, the Mayor was totally on board with anything that could create tourism, as if there was any dearth of those.
The Mayor was a capitalist buffoon and he could not be blamed for that. It was bringing in good revenue for the city but it felt….wrong. To take advantage of people who he would have helped anyway.
Since he could not turn those people away and he was indirectly bringing in a ton of revenue for the city, he had made a deal with the Mayor.
He had always felt the hunger and diseased state of the homeless population of the city. It was a problem but also a symptom of a much larger problem that could not be tackled at just a city level so, he had always hoped to at least reduce their pain and do something so that they get the adequate care that they so direly needed.
So, as part of the deal made with the Mayor, six kitchens, all on the periphery of Manhattan, since the real estate here had become so expensive, were established to cater to the poor. Completely free, 24/7, open all year round, serving hot food to anybody who would come.
Also offering basic medicine along with primary care sponsored by something that had funds "donated" from the various illicit businesses that still happened around the city.
See, he had made sure that hard drugs like cocaine were completely eradicated from the city. He had made sure to remember the texture and looks of it on a nanoscale, allowing his second brain to automatically filter that out. But he had let drugs that appeared in nature continue to appear in the city.
So, things like weed, alcohol, and cigarettes were still commonplace. Of course, that didn't mean that he would allow rampant distribution of that as well. And obviously, the first sign of violence would have all the parties violently ejected from the city and straight into police custody.
Sometimes, it meant that rich people were stopped right in their tracks, as they sometimes carried hard drugs. He had to actively train his second brain to distinguish between drugs in the pocket of a person in a car and drugs being carried in a bag that a person was carrying while walking in his street.
That was one of the things that he had discovered about his powers. His second mind, as he had come to call it, didn't always have the necessary context that he did. So, he had to actively nudge it sometimes, so it made the right decisions.
"Hah, troublesome," He muttered to himself as he kicked a stone as he walked back to his apartment. Damn, when will this end? He didn't want to become some sort of deity to these people.
In the first place, he was going to hightail it out of society the first chance he gets, once the Invasion is done.
What would happen when he disappeared? He didn't want such a public-facing role all his life.
No, he had dreams of having his own private island where he would farm and do all sorts of stuff that he would figure out then, preferably with a shit ton of money. IT would be heavenly to enjoy that money with his loved ones, whoever they may be.
Whistling, he put his hands in his pockets as he hailed a cab. "Taxi!"
He smiled as he saw one of the cabbies spotting and stopping for him. He put his arm down and was about to step down from the curb when something entered his range.
Something strong.
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
Spearow
Respect the bird
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2022
- Messages
- 1,534
- Likes received
- 17,720
A demi plane, a place independent of the multiverse nonsense that happens in marvel, a place form him and his things, to be kept safe regardless of cosmic villain of the week trying to end the universe.
That is a neat goal to work for
Chapter 23 : The One with the Grown Man Crying.
IdleMuse0307
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2021
- Messages
- 362
- Likes received
- 10,011
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 23
Manhattan [November 2008]
–Axle Riddle–
What was this? He had never felt something so strongly before, he thought to himself as he used his powers to stop his face from hitting the road, slowly pulling himself back as his mind continued to zero in on that strong feeling.
"Ah! Be careful, man. Good thing the Invisible Man saved you, right? Where do you wanna go?" The driver asked him but his mind was already lost to the sensory input he was getting from his powers as he had begun walking subconsciously.
"Hey! Hey! I am talking to you,"
The voice of the driver faded in the background as his powers closed in on the strong input he was getting.
See, he had always been able to distinguish between normal vanilla humans and enhanced ones. The thing with sorcerers was that in spite of having powers beyond the imagination of normal people, they didn't always have a large amount of dimensional energy flowing through them so for the majority of the time he could sense them, they appeared only slightly above the normal people in terms of energy responses.
He had sensed a couple of vampires and vampire hunters, along with spirits that descended during Halloween and those were immediately visible to his powers, as they were different from regular humans.
While he did always get a ping of sorts as a somewhat heavy presence entered his range, it was never this pronounced.
The presence he felt right now was the strongest he had ever felt. It also felt hot somehow, like it was completely molten red and was just restrained by a flimsy layer that was somehow able to stop the hot energy from overflowing.
Shit!
That was the only thing his mind could muster up in the face of Bruce fucking Banner in his city. From the looks of it, he was heading straight to an old lady for some reason.
He tensed, his mind ready to intervene at the slightest sign of him turning into the Jolly Green Giant but somehow, Bruce seemed far calmer than he had expected him to be.
He groaned in frustration when he realised that Bruce was asking about the congregation stuff and just seemed to glow up as the old lady told him where to find it.
"Why ROB, WHY!" He muttered to himself, drawing odd looks from a passerby but he didn't care much about that. Now he had to do something about that before Bruce actually went to the congregation and he was forced to do something that would deepen their faith in him, drawing forth another wave of believers.
He didn't believe, not even for a second, the potential damage this so called "Congregation" could cause in the name of their patron saint. He had seen enough examples in history to know what that would lead to, especially since he would not be living in this city after 2012.
He had not made any inroads into how he would announce his exit but he was sure that doing so with any overt gestures would lead to the congregation just increasing around him.
On the other hand, his dying in combat in service of humanity might just turn him into a martyr in their eyes and raise his standing even more.
Argh! What to do!
He thought to himself as he entered a cafe and ordered a triple shot of espresso and sat down, thinking of ways how to handle this.
For one, he could let Bruce get to the congregation and answer him there but that had a lot of ways it could go wrong. No, that would just be needlessly risky. So that option was out.
He would not just suddenly hoist Bruce using his powers and bring him somewhere isolated. No, that would just make him turn into the Hulk as his body's fight or flight response would get activated and then, he didn't know if he could even fight someone of the Hulk's caliber with his powers. Though, if it did turn into a fight, he didn't have much to worry about because while he might not be capable of matching Bruce blow for blow, he was more than capable of lifting the Hulk, no matter how dense and heavy he might be, and then simply….fling him into the ocean.
To cool him down, you see.
Well, let's just do this, then.
Bruce was walking to Central Park, looking around and…smiling…for some reason.
Maybe he had gone a little bit mad because of the back-to-back shocks that he had received ever since he became the Hulk.
Anyway, he flooded the block where Bruce was walking, with his presence. Oh, yeah. He can do that now. Earlier he was restricted to an area the size of a small alley but now he can effectively create a domain surrounding a large enough area.
As soon as he did that, however, Bruce paused in his steps, somehow sensing that something was wrong. As if a switch had been flipped, his entire demeanour changed as he became more withdrawn as his posture became very guarded.
He now looked around shiftily as he walked.
Well, so much for being stealthy and non-threatening.
Still, this could be salvaged. He collected a small amount of debris and overheated it, then pushed Bruce lightly, into the entrance of an alley.
Bruce stumbled and looked at the alley where just a single word was waiting for him, floating in thin air - "HELLO"
Bruce looked flabbergasted before he took a deep breath and replied in kind.
"Uh-Hello. Are you the Invisible Man?" He asked as he looked around the alley, probably waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"Yes. Why have you come here, Bruce Banner?"
"Uh, how do you know my name? Anyway, I have come here to seek help. I am on the run from the mili-"
"General Ross, I presume?"
"Whaa, How could you possibly-"
"I know a lot of things, Dr.Banner. I also know that you are being hunted down for no fault of your own. I assume you came here in hopes that I will help you from being arrested wrongfully?"
"Y-yes. And I assure you, this is just temporary. Once I have a lab, I can cure myself of the Other Guy. I just need a little time and…resources but I can handle the resources part. I just need you to stop them from whisking me away in the night."
"Yes, I can do that. Besides, it is not as if they will succeed, right Dr.Banner?"
Bruce just seemed to wilt at the last statement as he muttered a defeated, "Yeah…"
Oh, well that backfired spectacularly.
It would seem that particular wound was still a little too raw to make jokes about then.
"Very well, Dr.Banner, I, Invisible Man *Insert Eye-roll* hereby promise you that as long as you remain in Manhattan, I will make sure that nobody infringes on your right and tries to arrest you."
"O-Oh thank you so much!"
Oh, well seeing a grown man almost break down was never a pretty sight, especially if that was happening because of circumstances he had no control over.
The sound of the debris overheating brought Bruce's attention back.
"I assume you wouldn't want to use your original identity to stay in the city? It would make things a lot easier but if you are uncomfortable with that, I can house you in a place where nobody would disturb you, and provide you with all the necessities without ever coming into contact with another human being. At least, until you have made your miracle cure that is,"
Bruce had his mouth open as he read the long sentences being arranged in front of him. It was a nice thing that the alley had a lot of broken-down rocks and cement he could use to make the long ass sentence. God, he wished he had telepathy of some sort, even if it was just two-way communication with no hope of ever-expanding into mind-reading territory but even that was out of reach for him.
"I–I can do that? Live as me here, without any hiding?" Bruce stuttered and god the tears made him feel so bad.
Unfortunately….
"You can live with your own identity out in the open but are you sure you can handle that? I am not saying that you will have to handle the military but what about…regular people? You might get panic attacks and we both know what happens then. So, here is what I propose."
Bruce's face had wilted from the reality that was thrown in his face but he continued to read ahead, in hopes that something might be done for him.
"I will get you housed in a safe location for the time being. Nobody will be able to trace you, I will ensure that. All your daily necessities will be delivered to you, free of cost, of course. We will then work on your powers, and ensure you can maintain calm even in the face of chaos and panic. I have someone who might be able to help you but it might take time for that person to reach you. So, I suggest you follow my directions, it will take you to what will be your house for the next few days,"
"...Okay."
Alright then, he dropped all of the debris and then nudged Bruce lightly in the direction he wanted him to go. Bruce understood the signal and nodded, turning around to get out of the alley.
Well, it was a good thing he knew a Billionaire that owed him a favour. And one that he couldn't refuse in any way.
Also, time to contact the Ancient One once again.
Ha, he hated dealing with her cryptic bullshit.
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 23
Manhattan [November 2008]
–Axle Riddle–
What was this? He had never felt something so strongly before, he thought to himself as he used his powers to stop his face from hitting the road, slowly pulling himself back as his mind continued to zero in on that strong feeling.
"Ah! Be careful, man. Good thing the Invisible Man saved you, right? Where do you wanna go?" The driver asked him but his mind was already lost to the sensory input he was getting from his powers as he had begun walking subconsciously.
"Hey! Hey! I am talking to you,"
The voice of the driver faded in the background as his powers closed in on the strong input he was getting.
See, he had always been able to distinguish between normal vanilla humans and enhanced ones. The thing with sorcerers was that in spite of having powers beyond the imagination of normal people, they didn't always have a large amount of dimensional energy flowing through them so for the majority of the time he could sense them, they appeared only slightly above the normal people in terms of energy responses.
He had sensed a couple of vampires and vampire hunters, along with spirits that descended during Halloween and those were immediately visible to his powers, as they were different from regular humans.
While he did always get a ping of sorts as a somewhat heavy presence entered his range, it was never this pronounced.
The presence he felt right now was the strongest he had ever felt. It also felt hot somehow, like it was completely molten red and was just restrained by a flimsy layer that was somehow able to stop the hot energy from overflowing.
Shit!
That was the only thing his mind could muster up in the face of Bruce fucking Banner in his city. From the looks of it, he was heading straight to an old lady for some reason.
He tensed, his mind ready to intervene at the slightest sign of him turning into the Jolly Green Giant but somehow, Bruce seemed far calmer than he had expected him to be.
He groaned in frustration when he realised that Bruce was asking about the congregation stuff and just seemed to glow up as the old lady told him where to find it.
"Why ROB, WHY!" He muttered to himself, drawing odd looks from a passerby but he didn't care much about that. Now he had to do something about that before Bruce actually went to the congregation and he was forced to do something that would deepen their faith in him, drawing forth another wave of believers.
He didn't believe, not even for a second, the potential damage this so called "Congregation" could cause in the name of their patron saint. He had seen enough examples in history to know what that would lead to, especially since he would not be living in this city after 2012.
He had not made any inroads into how he would announce his exit but he was sure that doing so with any overt gestures would lead to the congregation just increasing around him.
On the other hand, his dying in combat in service of humanity might just turn him into a martyr in their eyes and raise his standing even more.
Argh! What to do!
He thought to himself as he entered a cafe and ordered a triple shot of espresso and sat down, thinking of ways how to handle this.
For one, he could let Bruce get to the congregation and answer him there but that had a lot of ways it could go wrong. No, that would just be needlessly risky. So that option was out.
He would not just suddenly hoist Bruce using his powers and bring him somewhere isolated. No, that would just make him turn into the Hulk as his body's fight or flight response would get activated and then, he didn't know if he could even fight someone of the Hulk's caliber with his powers. Though, if it did turn into a fight, he didn't have much to worry about because while he might not be capable of matching Bruce blow for blow, he was more than capable of lifting the Hulk, no matter how dense and heavy he might be, and then simply….fling him into the ocean.
To cool him down, you see.
Well, let's just do this, then.
Bruce was walking to Central Park, looking around and…smiling…for some reason.
Maybe he had gone a little bit mad because of the back-to-back shocks that he had received ever since he became the Hulk.
Anyway, he flooded the block where Bruce was walking, with his presence. Oh, yeah. He can do that now. Earlier he was restricted to an area the size of a small alley but now he can effectively create a domain surrounding a large enough area.
As soon as he did that, however, Bruce paused in his steps, somehow sensing that something was wrong. As if a switch had been flipped, his entire demeanour changed as he became more withdrawn as his posture became very guarded.
He now looked around shiftily as he walked.
Well, so much for being stealthy and non-threatening.
Still, this could be salvaged. He collected a small amount of debris and overheated it, then pushed Bruce lightly, into the entrance of an alley.
Bruce stumbled and looked at the alley where just a single word was waiting for him, floating in thin air - "HELLO"
Bruce looked flabbergasted before he took a deep breath and replied in kind.
"Uh-Hello. Are you the Invisible Man?" He asked as he looked around the alley, probably waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"Yes. Why have you come here, Bruce Banner?"
"Uh, how do you know my name? Anyway, I have come here to seek help. I am on the run from the mili-"
"General Ross, I presume?"
"Whaa, How could you possibly-"
"I know a lot of things, Dr.Banner. I also know that you are being hunted down for no fault of your own. I assume you came here in hopes that I will help you from being arrested wrongfully?"
"Y-yes. And I assure you, this is just temporary. Once I have a lab, I can cure myself of the Other Guy. I just need a little time and…resources but I can handle the resources part. I just need you to stop them from whisking me away in the night."
"Yes, I can do that. Besides, it is not as if they will succeed, right Dr.Banner?"
Bruce just seemed to wilt at the last statement as he muttered a defeated, "Yeah…"
Oh, well that backfired spectacularly.
It would seem that particular wound was still a little too raw to make jokes about then.
"Very well, Dr.Banner, I, Invisible Man *Insert Eye-roll* hereby promise you that as long as you remain in Manhattan, I will make sure that nobody infringes on your right and tries to arrest you."
"O-Oh thank you so much!"
Oh, well seeing a grown man almost break down was never a pretty sight, especially if that was happening because of circumstances he had no control over.
The sound of the debris overheating brought Bruce's attention back.
"I assume you wouldn't want to use your original identity to stay in the city? It would make things a lot easier but if you are uncomfortable with that, I can house you in a place where nobody would disturb you, and provide you with all the necessities without ever coming into contact with another human being. At least, until you have made your miracle cure that is,"
Bruce had his mouth open as he read the long sentences being arranged in front of him. It was a nice thing that the alley had a lot of broken-down rocks and cement he could use to make the long ass sentence. God, he wished he had telepathy of some sort, even if it was just two-way communication with no hope of ever-expanding into mind-reading territory but even that was out of reach for him.
"I–I can do that? Live as me here, without any hiding?" Bruce stuttered and god the tears made him feel so bad.
Unfortunately….
"You can live with your own identity out in the open but are you sure you can handle that? I am not saying that you will have to handle the military but what about…regular people? You might get panic attacks and we both know what happens then. So, here is what I propose."
Bruce's face had wilted from the reality that was thrown in his face but he continued to read ahead, in hopes that something might be done for him.
"I will get you housed in a safe location for the time being. Nobody will be able to trace you, I will ensure that. All your daily necessities will be delivered to you, free of cost, of course. We will then work on your powers, and ensure you can maintain calm even in the face of chaos and panic. I have someone who might be able to help you but it might take time for that person to reach you. So, I suggest you follow my directions, it will take you to what will be your house for the next few days,"
"...Okay."
Alright then, he dropped all of the debris and then nudged Bruce lightly in the direction he wanted him to go. Bruce understood the signal and nodded, turning around to get out of the alley.
Well, it was a good thing he knew a Billionaire that owed him a favour. And one that he couldn't refuse in any way.
Also, time to contact the Ancient One once again.
Ha, he hated dealing with her cryptic bullshit.
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
Chapter 24 : The One with Bruce in an Apartment
IdleMuse0307
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2021
- Messages
- 362
- Likes received
- 10,011
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 24
Manhattan [December 2008]
–Bruce Banner–
His eyes snapped open as he sat up from the ridiculously comfortable bedding he was provided with, at least compared with the ones he used before he was chased away from everything he ever knew by the Military.
He sighed and sat on the bed, his head hung low as he thought of everything that had happened in the past two weeks. It flashed through his mind at speeds that normal people would struggle to comprehend.
He had always been blessed. He didn't really understand how children his age didn't derive Newton's laws just from idle observation, hence the ostracism he faced as a child and even as a teenager in high school.
He would like to think that they were just intimidated by his intelligence but the truth was that he was a…nerd. Yes, he was a quintessential nerd representing the qualities that attracted Jocks as if they were bees and he was pollen.
But he trudged on. He endured the bullying and the taunts until he finally reached college, having graduated high school early. That was when he finally met people who could somewhat understand him and his thoughts. He had been elated beyond measure and after that, he worked on his master's, then his Phd, and then another Phd.
He engrossed himself in academia until he met her. Betty Ross.
How could someone like Ross ever fathered someone like Betty Ross was beyond him, something that could not ever be explained by science. And yet, there she was, working on something that required his expertise and he had been more than happy to help her.
He hadn't really expected for it to turn into anything else, other than a perfectly normal joint research project but somewhere along the way, as their research collaboration deepened, feelings sprouted in both of their hearts.
Well, he had fallen for her much earlier than she did but he was elated that it finally happened. He vowed to himself that he wouldn't let anything happen to their relationship and then…..
He rubbed his face and stood up, looking at the massive empty bedroom along with the equally massive living room that he knew was empty as well.
It was part of the accommodations that the Invisible Man had arranged for him.
When he was told that he would be given a safe place to live, along with all the necessities, he had nearly broken down in relief. For someone like him, a complete and utter civilian, to have lived the life of a fugitive for weeks, was so much mental pressure that he didn't know how he didn't kill himself long before.
'I know why' he thought to himself darkly before he banished those thoughts. Now was not the time for that.
For the past two weeks, he had been staying in this cozy apartment that came with everything paid for, along with groceries that arrived every other day for him, courtesy of the Invisible Man directly.
He had stayed away from open windows and devices with cameras and made sure that he never came out of his apartment as was instructed by the Invisible Man because he had some things to arrange before Bruce could come out in the open.
But now that he had some time to think about it, he didn't really know what to do with that option.
On one hand, it would be his right to live freely, with his own identity, out in the open, without the threat of military imprisonment and experimentation hanging over his head but on the other hand…last week had been nice.
He didn't get to go out but he had a TV and a computer he could use to browse the general internet, he didn't want to set off any alarms by searching for highly specific information. Cat Videos were something that amused him incredibly, making the boring lunches he could make for himself that much more tolerable.
Eventually, he had looked for recipes online and started making better food for himself other than plain sandwiches and meatloaf. Now, he could make pizza, mashed potatoes, turkey, chicken, salads, bread, and whatnot.
It was nice…..to do things slowly, without a sense of urgency in every single action he performed.
He slowly brushed his teeth, looking at his unkempt self. To be honest, he didn't really have the wish to shave at all. He felt lethargic most of the time.
IT got incredibly boring to watch movies and TV series after the first few days because most of the movies could be categorised into finite sections and even guessing which movie would go into which category got boring after the first couple of tries.
The internet access definitely helped but it would get very hard to control himself from looking at stuff that would definitely be flagged, so he refrained from using that much.
He had a gym in the apartment that he tried to use but it was actually nearly useless to him. Ever since he got his powers, apart from stress, his heart rate never really went up, even if he performed strenuous exercises for long periods of time.
It was one such bonus of the other guy, he thought to himself.
He had met a grand total of one person in the past two weeks and that was the doorman who came to drop off the groceries at the door. That was it.
The Invisible Man had promised him resources to help look for a cure but that had not arrived but he did not want to bother him, so he had not said anything about that.
Anyway, he had been meditating a lot in the time he had been alone and that had helped him sort out the jumbled mess of thoughts that had plagued his mind ever since the other Guy came into his life.
After getting ready, he sat down on the dining table, munching on an apple, as he watched his scribblings from last night's research session. Not having the luxury of typing anything in the digital world, he had resorted to writing with pen and paper.
His brain had been buzzing with ideas ever since it realised that he was in a safe space, so he had been just writing endlessly in his free time, which was all the time since he only had to cook twice a day. That much was enough to sustain him.
He had a washer-dryer combo in the apartment itself so he didn't have to go anywhere for the laundry.
"*Sigh* What has my life come to," he mumbled to himself as he once again began writing, on the fourth such notebook in the past two weeks alone.
They were a list of ideas through which he could try and cure himself of his affliction. However, calling it an affliction and not a curse would be doing it a disservice.
He had a nightmare the first night he slept here and woke up to find his arm almost green and had to concentrate really hard on the fact that he was safe, in the domain of the Invisible Man, and only after a tense minute or two, did the green glow recede slowly, painfully slowly.
That was the last time he had turned green, even partially. Ever since then, he made sure to get in a nice workout, even though he didn't feel tired the thought counts, and then a nice heavy dinner with a bout of meditation before sleeping, not before turning on whale sound for better sleep.
And it worked, like a charm. He could not believe that the internet guide for sleeping better worked on him as well but he was grateful for that.
He had an idea but once again, that idea required equipment that he simply didn't have.
"Um, uh, Hey, Invisible Man?" He looked up at the ceiling, feeling stupid immediately when he heard the pencil's scratching voice.
He looked down and chuckled as the word "Yes?" was written on one of his spare notebooks, though looking at it, he was running dangerously low on notebooks.
"Um, not that I am not grateful for all this, I am, really. But when will the equipment be ready? I understand if there are some problems. Just a timeline will do. I am already burdening you-"
"...Stop. I have someone who can solve most of your problems. That person is currently unavailable. As soon as that happens, I will let you know. Now, I know it is not the ideal scenario but the moment you come into outside contact, they might trace you back." The pen furiously scribbled as he read the words.
His shoulders slumped as he realised that the invisible Man was right.
"Although I could take care of any retaliation they could send your way, the mere sight of so many armed people might send you and your alter ego into a frenzy, something we can't have in a civilian population. I have my limitations as well, otherwise I would have sent you to the person directly. Just wait a few more days, alright?"
"...Okay," He muttered and watched as the notebook and the pencil both dropped from mid-air, on the study table.
Okay, so the Invisible Man had someone who could help.
Who could it be?
Someone with extraordinary powers like himself? Or a scientist who could help him?
What did he mean by his "alter ego"?
The Other guy was the Other Guy and he was him. There was no connection between them.
The Other guy was just a mass of rage, hate, destruction, and power while he was just..Bruce Banner. Someone with non-existential muscles and a big head.
There was no way that the Other Guy was some part of his own mind.
Right? Right?
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 24
Manhattan [December 2008]
–Bruce Banner–
His eyes snapped open as he sat up from the ridiculously comfortable bedding he was provided with, at least compared with the ones he used before he was chased away from everything he ever knew by the Military.
He sighed and sat on the bed, his head hung low as he thought of everything that had happened in the past two weeks. It flashed through his mind at speeds that normal people would struggle to comprehend.
He had always been blessed. He didn't really understand how children his age didn't derive Newton's laws just from idle observation, hence the ostracism he faced as a child and even as a teenager in high school.
He would like to think that they were just intimidated by his intelligence but the truth was that he was a…nerd. Yes, he was a quintessential nerd representing the qualities that attracted Jocks as if they were bees and he was pollen.
But he trudged on. He endured the bullying and the taunts until he finally reached college, having graduated high school early. That was when he finally met people who could somewhat understand him and his thoughts. He had been elated beyond measure and after that, he worked on his master's, then his Phd, and then another Phd.
He engrossed himself in academia until he met her. Betty Ross.
How could someone like Ross ever fathered someone like Betty Ross was beyond him, something that could not ever be explained by science. And yet, there she was, working on something that required his expertise and he had been more than happy to help her.
He hadn't really expected for it to turn into anything else, other than a perfectly normal joint research project but somewhere along the way, as their research collaboration deepened, feelings sprouted in both of their hearts.
Well, he had fallen for her much earlier than she did but he was elated that it finally happened. He vowed to himself that he wouldn't let anything happen to their relationship and then…..
He rubbed his face and stood up, looking at the massive empty bedroom along with the equally massive living room that he knew was empty as well.
It was part of the accommodations that the Invisible Man had arranged for him.
When he was told that he would be given a safe place to live, along with all the necessities, he had nearly broken down in relief. For someone like him, a complete and utter civilian, to have lived the life of a fugitive for weeks, was so much mental pressure that he didn't know how he didn't kill himself long before.
'I know why' he thought to himself darkly before he banished those thoughts. Now was not the time for that.
For the past two weeks, he had been staying in this cozy apartment that came with everything paid for, along with groceries that arrived every other day for him, courtesy of the Invisible Man directly.
He had stayed away from open windows and devices with cameras and made sure that he never came out of his apartment as was instructed by the Invisible Man because he had some things to arrange before Bruce could come out in the open.
But now that he had some time to think about it, he didn't really know what to do with that option.
On one hand, it would be his right to live freely, with his own identity, out in the open, without the threat of military imprisonment and experimentation hanging over his head but on the other hand…last week had been nice.
He didn't get to go out but he had a TV and a computer he could use to browse the general internet, he didn't want to set off any alarms by searching for highly specific information. Cat Videos were something that amused him incredibly, making the boring lunches he could make for himself that much more tolerable.
Eventually, he had looked for recipes online and started making better food for himself other than plain sandwiches and meatloaf. Now, he could make pizza, mashed potatoes, turkey, chicken, salads, bread, and whatnot.
It was nice…..to do things slowly, without a sense of urgency in every single action he performed.
He slowly brushed his teeth, looking at his unkempt self. To be honest, he didn't really have the wish to shave at all. He felt lethargic most of the time.
IT got incredibly boring to watch movies and TV series after the first few days because most of the movies could be categorised into finite sections and even guessing which movie would go into which category got boring after the first couple of tries.
The internet access definitely helped but it would get very hard to control himself from looking at stuff that would definitely be flagged, so he refrained from using that much.
He had a gym in the apartment that he tried to use but it was actually nearly useless to him. Ever since he got his powers, apart from stress, his heart rate never really went up, even if he performed strenuous exercises for long periods of time.
It was one such bonus of the other guy, he thought to himself.
He had met a grand total of one person in the past two weeks and that was the doorman who came to drop off the groceries at the door. That was it.
The Invisible Man had promised him resources to help look for a cure but that had not arrived but he did not want to bother him, so he had not said anything about that.
Anyway, he had been meditating a lot in the time he had been alone and that had helped him sort out the jumbled mess of thoughts that had plagued his mind ever since the other Guy came into his life.
After getting ready, he sat down on the dining table, munching on an apple, as he watched his scribblings from last night's research session. Not having the luxury of typing anything in the digital world, he had resorted to writing with pen and paper.
His brain had been buzzing with ideas ever since it realised that he was in a safe space, so he had been just writing endlessly in his free time, which was all the time since he only had to cook twice a day. That much was enough to sustain him.
He had a washer-dryer combo in the apartment itself so he didn't have to go anywhere for the laundry.
"*Sigh* What has my life come to," he mumbled to himself as he once again began writing, on the fourth such notebook in the past two weeks alone.
They were a list of ideas through which he could try and cure himself of his affliction. However, calling it an affliction and not a curse would be doing it a disservice.
He had a nightmare the first night he slept here and woke up to find his arm almost green and had to concentrate really hard on the fact that he was safe, in the domain of the Invisible Man, and only after a tense minute or two, did the green glow recede slowly, painfully slowly.
That was the last time he had turned green, even partially. Ever since then, he made sure to get in a nice workout, even though he didn't feel tired the thought counts, and then a nice heavy dinner with a bout of meditation before sleeping, not before turning on whale sound for better sleep.
And it worked, like a charm. He could not believe that the internet guide for sleeping better worked on him as well but he was grateful for that.
He had an idea but once again, that idea required equipment that he simply didn't have.
"Um, uh, Hey, Invisible Man?" He looked up at the ceiling, feeling stupid immediately when he heard the pencil's scratching voice.
He looked down and chuckled as the word "Yes?" was written on one of his spare notebooks, though looking at it, he was running dangerously low on notebooks.
"Um, not that I am not grateful for all this, I am, really. But when will the equipment be ready? I understand if there are some problems. Just a timeline will do. I am already burdening you-"
"...Stop. I have someone who can solve most of your problems. That person is currently unavailable. As soon as that happens, I will let you know. Now, I know it is not the ideal scenario but the moment you come into outside contact, they might trace you back." The pen furiously scribbled as he read the words.
His shoulders slumped as he realised that the invisible Man was right.
"Although I could take care of any retaliation they could send your way, the mere sight of so many armed people might send you and your alter ego into a frenzy, something we can't have in a civilian population. I have my limitations as well, otherwise I would have sent you to the person directly. Just wait a few more days, alright?"
"...Okay," He muttered and watched as the notebook and the pencil both dropped from mid-air, on the study table.
Okay, so the Invisible Man had someone who could help.
Who could it be?
Someone with extraordinary powers like himself? Or a scientist who could help him?
What did he mean by his "alter ego"?
The Other guy was the Other Guy and he was him. There was no connection between them.
The Other guy was just a mass of rage, hate, destruction, and power while he was just..Bruce Banner. Someone with non-existential muscles and a big head.
There was no way that the Other Guy was some part of his own mind.
Right? Right?
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
Chapter 25 : The one with the Random Beautiful Agent 1
IdleMuse0307
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2021
- Messages
- 362
- Likes received
- 10,011
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 25
Manhattan [December 2008]
–Axle Riddle–
He watched on, with his mental eye, what two weeks of complete isolation had done to Bruce.
*Sigh* Yeah, he wished he could do something but the truth was, unless Bruce wanted to come out into the open and then be hounded by law enforcement and then by the public because they were too curious as to why law enforcement was here, there was not much he could do.
Chances were that Bruce could someday, hope to contain himself when exposed to chaos and people, shouting people, along with the possibility of violence, but that day was not today.
So, he had gone to the one person who probably knew the most about the human mind on the planet. The older-than-dirt Ancient One.
And yet, when he went to the New York Sanctum to ask for her, Master Drumm had informed him that she was on an expedition, one of her long-time duties as the Sorcerer Supreme and she would not be back for another two weeks.
Well, that was the first time he had heard about an expedition of sorts but the movies never really went into the depth of what Kamar Taj actually does aside from zapping monsters, bisecting demons, etc. etc.
So, he had watched over Bruce and the city as usual. Delivering groceries and making sure that he was not spotted was very easily done.
The apartment came from one of the many Billionaires that lived in Manhattan and owed him favours in that regard. Well, he hadn't done anything noteworthy for them but apparently, just the mere protection he provided to the city had made them grateful enough to offer him a free-handed favour.
Of course, he had made sure that it did not come with any strings attached and after confirming that, he had stashed Bruce in one of those buildings.
Now, was he certain that SHIELD was aware of where Bruce was? Yes.
But does that mean that Ross was aware of it? No.
That worked out perfectly for him because if SHIELD was tattling on him, Ross would have been here with a military tank in days, rather than weeks. This meant that SHIELD also did not want Ross to get his hands, or rather try to get his hands on Banner. For all his buster, Ross was never going to capture Bruce unless he came along willingly, it just wasn't possible.
The Hulk wouldn't allow it.
He had made sure to drill it into Bruce's mind to maintain a minimal online presence and to stay away from the windows but he didn't know how long Bruce could take that anymore.
Sure, the Gym and the books along with the TV helped but he could see that Bruce was not getting tired from the workouts at all. The books, he blazed through them at mind-boggling speeds and TV just gets boring after a while.
He could understand that so he watched on, as Bruce filled notebook after notebook with stuff he couldn't even begin to understand. Something related to radiation therapy along with a serum that would destroy the Gamma energy within him.
Oh no, no. He was not going to allow Bruce to do that, obviously but he couldn't just go and tell him that. It will break him, to know the truth of his situation. To know that the Hulk was just another part of him that could not be cured because he was not another disease to be cured.
The Hulk was just another part of his psyche.
He had let that one little tidbit out at the end of their conversation and he could see, in real time, how Bruce was processing it and it was…not good.
He was just looking blankly ahead, staring at nothing in particular as he sat on a chair.
Yeesh, that was a huge reaction.
Yeah, he had to do something for Bruce. His story was filled with tragedies, one after the other. He would not have been able to help him when he was out of his range but now that he was in his domain, there was nothing that could come between him helping Bruce.
In the first place, he didn't have the faintest clue as to Bruce coming here, in the city. The only time Bruce was in New York, as far as he knew, was when he and Abomination had that huge fight that broke Harlem. Which would not happen now, he would make sure of it.
Butterfly effect and all that.
If he had known that Bruce was making his way here, he could have made preparations. He had still not made official contact with SHIELD yet, so he could have done that beforehand and made sure that Ross kept his hands off.
He would have to do that now as well. Honestly, aside from Kamar Taj and the Ancient One, there was no other person and place he would trust Bruce to be in, aside from Manhattan.
Making sure that Bruce lived, out in the open, in a bustling part of the city would mean that he would have to become a lot more stable, mentally, than he was now. He couldn't have him hulking out in the middle of the farmer's market, for example.
No, he would have to talk with the Ancient One about this but she would probably agree with him. She would help Bruce get better and then he would make sure that he has a place to stay in Manhattan.
That would work out for the best, it would seem.
Now, the Ancient One's busy timetable was not in his hands but making sure that Bruce had a legit place to stay was.
With that in mind, he searched for the two SHIELD safehouses they kept stocked to the brim in Manhattan. They were not used in all the time he had been active, probably owing to privacy concerns but they were stocked up and kept up to date all the same.
He found only a single agent, lounging on the sofa, reading a magazine whilst also munching on an apple.
He quirked an eyebrow at that, what a harmless-looking agent, probably a ploy on SHIELD's part to try and honeypot him after trying all the possible strategies in their playbook.
Well, he just needed to pass along a message, it doesn't matter if the agent is drop-dead gorgeous or not.
_______xx________
SHIELD Safehouse Number 1, Manhattan
–Random Beautiful Agent 1–
Ah, man, this sucks. She knew that she was mainly hired for this gig because she was young and inexperienced, in everything that counted and she was the most expendable asset at the New York HQ, and she understood but still. This sucked.
On one hand, having to do nothing but look pretty while getting paid while living in a kitted-out apartment in Manhattan would sound like a dream come true for most girls with dreams of making it big in the showbiz but she was not one of those girls. Okay, she might have been once upon a time but not anymore.
Now, she was all about the good fight. Being a super spy agent.
Unfortunately, the only spy stuff she had been ordered to do, was a small stakeout out of the city, which turned out to be a bust anyway.
She was technically on duty but it was not as if anybody came to check up on her. The logistics guys came once a week to restock everything but other than that, she had basically no human interaction.
Everything was done on her SHIELD-issued phone, which was made to be very secure and nearly unhackable but it also meant that she could not log in on her MySpace account.
Things were made worse because she was technically on duty, ALL THE TIME, so she was not given her personal phone. She was so going to lose most of her follo-
Her entire thought process came to a screeching halt as she looked at the coffee table. On top of the coffee table, a notebook was floating and a pen was currently writing something on it.
It eventually said the one word, "Hello"
She screamed as her vision went swimming towards the coffee table itself.
Oh crap, she was going to faceplant on the coffee table. She was fainting.
So much for her first serious gig……
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 25
Manhattan [December 2008]
–Axle Riddle–
He watched on, with his mental eye, what two weeks of complete isolation had done to Bruce.
*Sigh* Yeah, he wished he could do something but the truth was, unless Bruce wanted to come out into the open and then be hounded by law enforcement and then by the public because they were too curious as to why law enforcement was here, there was not much he could do.
Chances were that Bruce could someday, hope to contain himself when exposed to chaos and people, shouting people, along with the possibility of violence, but that day was not today.
So, he had gone to the one person who probably knew the most about the human mind on the planet. The older-than-dirt Ancient One.
And yet, when he went to the New York Sanctum to ask for her, Master Drumm had informed him that she was on an expedition, one of her long-time duties as the Sorcerer Supreme and she would not be back for another two weeks.
Well, that was the first time he had heard about an expedition of sorts but the movies never really went into the depth of what Kamar Taj actually does aside from zapping monsters, bisecting demons, etc. etc.
So, he had watched over Bruce and the city as usual. Delivering groceries and making sure that he was not spotted was very easily done.
The apartment came from one of the many Billionaires that lived in Manhattan and owed him favours in that regard. Well, he hadn't done anything noteworthy for them but apparently, just the mere protection he provided to the city had made them grateful enough to offer him a free-handed favour.
Of course, he had made sure that it did not come with any strings attached and after confirming that, he had stashed Bruce in one of those buildings.
Now, was he certain that SHIELD was aware of where Bruce was? Yes.
But does that mean that Ross was aware of it? No.
That worked out perfectly for him because if SHIELD was tattling on him, Ross would have been here with a military tank in days, rather than weeks. This meant that SHIELD also did not want Ross to get his hands, or rather try to get his hands on Banner. For all his buster, Ross was never going to capture Bruce unless he came along willingly, it just wasn't possible.
The Hulk wouldn't allow it.
He had made sure to drill it into Bruce's mind to maintain a minimal online presence and to stay away from the windows but he didn't know how long Bruce could take that anymore.
Sure, the Gym and the books along with the TV helped but he could see that Bruce was not getting tired from the workouts at all. The books, he blazed through them at mind-boggling speeds and TV just gets boring after a while.
He could understand that so he watched on, as Bruce filled notebook after notebook with stuff he couldn't even begin to understand. Something related to radiation therapy along with a serum that would destroy the Gamma energy within him.
Oh no, no. He was not going to allow Bruce to do that, obviously but he couldn't just go and tell him that. It will break him, to know the truth of his situation. To know that the Hulk was just another part of him that could not be cured because he was not another disease to be cured.
The Hulk was just another part of his psyche.
He had let that one little tidbit out at the end of their conversation and he could see, in real time, how Bruce was processing it and it was…not good.
He was just looking blankly ahead, staring at nothing in particular as he sat on a chair.
Yeesh, that was a huge reaction.
Yeah, he had to do something for Bruce. His story was filled with tragedies, one after the other. He would not have been able to help him when he was out of his range but now that he was in his domain, there was nothing that could come between him helping Bruce.
In the first place, he didn't have the faintest clue as to Bruce coming here, in the city. The only time Bruce was in New York, as far as he knew, was when he and Abomination had that huge fight that broke Harlem. Which would not happen now, he would make sure of it.
Butterfly effect and all that.
If he had known that Bruce was making his way here, he could have made preparations. He had still not made official contact with SHIELD yet, so he could have done that beforehand and made sure that Ross kept his hands off.
He would have to do that now as well. Honestly, aside from Kamar Taj and the Ancient One, there was no other person and place he would trust Bruce to be in, aside from Manhattan.
Making sure that Bruce lived, out in the open, in a bustling part of the city would mean that he would have to become a lot more stable, mentally, than he was now. He couldn't have him hulking out in the middle of the farmer's market, for example.
No, he would have to talk with the Ancient One about this but she would probably agree with him. She would help Bruce get better and then he would make sure that he has a place to stay in Manhattan.
That would work out for the best, it would seem.
Now, the Ancient One's busy timetable was not in his hands but making sure that Bruce had a legit place to stay was.
With that in mind, he searched for the two SHIELD safehouses they kept stocked to the brim in Manhattan. They were not used in all the time he had been active, probably owing to privacy concerns but they were stocked up and kept up to date all the same.
He found only a single agent, lounging on the sofa, reading a magazine whilst also munching on an apple.
He quirked an eyebrow at that, what a harmless-looking agent, probably a ploy on SHIELD's part to try and honeypot him after trying all the possible strategies in their playbook.
Well, he just needed to pass along a message, it doesn't matter if the agent is drop-dead gorgeous or not.
_______xx________
SHIELD Safehouse Number 1, Manhattan
–Random Beautiful Agent 1–
Ah, man, this sucks. She knew that she was mainly hired for this gig because she was young and inexperienced, in everything that counted and she was the most expendable asset at the New York HQ, and she understood but still. This sucked.
On one hand, having to do nothing but look pretty while getting paid while living in a kitted-out apartment in Manhattan would sound like a dream come true for most girls with dreams of making it big in the showbiz but she was not one of those girls. Okay, she might have been once upon a time but not anymore.
Now, she was all about the good fight. Being a super spy agent.
Unfortunately, the only spy stuff she had been ordered to do, was a small stakeout out of the city, which turned out to be a bust anyway.
She was technically on duty but it was not as if anybody came to check up on her. The logistics guys came once a week to restock everything but other than that, she had basically no human interaction.
Everything was done on her SHIELD-issued phone, which was made to be very secure and nearly unhackable but it also meant that she could not log in on her MySpace account.
Things were made worse because she was technically on duty, ALL THE TIME, so she was not given her personal phone. She was so going to lose most of her follo-
Her entire thought process came to a screeching halt as she looked at the coffee table. On top of the coffee table, a notebook was floating and a pen was currently writing something on it.
It eventually said the one word, "Hello"
She screamed as her vision went swimming towards the coffee table itself.
Oh crap, she was going to faceplant on the coffee table. She was fainting.
So much for her first serious gig……
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
Chapter 26 : Ah! A good ol shitshow
IdleMuse0307
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2021
- Messages
- 362
- Likes received
- 10,011
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 26
Somewhere in the cosmos
–Ancient One–
Mediating between faes and their numerous enemies was always a chore, always has been and always will be, one that Agomotto took upon himself and then thrust onto the role of the Sorcerer Supreme.
While the work itself was very menial, it was in regular intervals and also required one to have a patience and calm attitude, one that could only be gained by having their minds subjected to the flow of time thousands of times by using the powers of the Eye of Agamotto.
Every 26 years, she had to come to this realm, to negotiate a deal of non-interference between the fae and the people they had passed off in their long existence. Time didn't really mean anything to the fae since they were essentially entirely conceptual in nature and thus, had no risk of dying until the eventual heat death of the universe.
Killing the fae in their own realm was impossible and they rarely ventured out, so it made addressing grievances that much more difficult. But the fae did, sometimes, venture out for various reasons. Entertainment, boredom, to kill themselves.
Oh yeah, some of the fae do eventually get content or frustrated or bored with their lives and seek to end their existence by venturing out of their safe abode and into the dangerous maw of the universe. The thing was that they could not really have that happening.
As mentioned, Fae was entirely conceptual in nature, and providing a conceptual snack to a demon lord, or a hell lord, or Vishanti forbid, Dormammu, would mean that they were just adding to the arsenal of their enemies.
Thus, the treaty of non-interference, allowing the Fae to move around in a safe environment, whilst limiting the number of deals that the Fae could make with the ones from the other realms. That was how the Fae had been safely withdrawn from Earth and kept in a small artificial dimension where they could do all the stuff they wanted, without the risk of empowering a demon lord, or making a deal with a ruler and then prompting him to slaughter the people under his rule. Stuff like that.
Unfortunately, this stuff was important. More so than killing yet another demon that had slipped through the nets or hunting down another rogue sorcerer because if the Fae were ever to be allowed to make deals with humans. Well, she knew what humans were like and the results would not be good.
Every time she tried to see into that future, it was so terrible that she had to erase part of her memory, to function properly, because apparently, Fae's empowered avatars' influence could travel back through time as well. If she had not cut the connection at the right time, her soul might have been damaged a bit.
"I suppose that marks the end of this summit, then?" She stood up and looked down at all the creatures that had assembled here. They all looked comically small in comparison but that was only because of the rules imposed on this dimension. As the rule enforcer, she was exempt of course but the rest of the species were not. Even the Dragons, known to reach sizes rivaling some small countries back on Earth, were not spared and turned into sizes that would more be suited for a 2-year-old kid rather than a hundred thousand-year-old Dragon Elder.
The deal was the same as before, nothing much changed in it except the date for the next summit, which, thankfully, she would not have to attend. The mere thought of it brought back a muted flash of happiness before that too, was dulled by her mind. See, for centuries, more if the time spent lost in the timestream was counted, she had not really felt anything.
No pain, no happiness, no sadness, and no grief. Nothing. It was as if, for the vast powers she had gained through looking through millions of timelines with the Eye of Agamotto, she had to sacrifice something.
She had to sacrifice her name, her feelings, and even her sense of time because even today, she had to use specifically calibrated temporal anchors to help her ascertain whether this was the reality or just another temporal simulation she was seeing using the Eye of Agamotto.
She smiled as she thought of one such temporal anchor, one who came into the timestream very recently.
Axle Riddle.
Somehow, in the vast multiverse of timelines she was able to witness, he was not there in anyone, aside from this one. The chances of his existence were so low that it would have been better to call them zero, and that was coming from her, who knew that even the infinitesimal possibility had the potential to become true, overcoming all odds set against it.
And that was why she had decided. When she would go back to the New York Sanctum she would—
Hmm? What was this?
She hastily exited the summit after greeting the Queen Fae, and as soon as she was out of the artificial dimension, she swiftly took out an artefact from her personal storage.
Communication within alternate dimensions was tricky at best if you didn't have a portal open between the two places. So, for one side to contact the other, you needed the help of artifacts forged from the broken parts of smaller dimensions, allowing them some leeway in skirting the rules regarding interdimensional communication.
One such artefact was the one in her hand. It was unnamed, because the moment somebody tried to name it, it stopped working for them so they figured that it did have a name, they just didn't know it yet. It was primarily used by Kamar Taj to ascertain the threats that any Sanctum could be facing at any given moment in time.
Right now, the threat rating was at the deepest red, something that hadn't happened in the past few centuries. And the Sanctum was the New York Sanctum.
Well, that complicated things.
She would have to make haste, lest Axle pick a fight with some demon who could shrug off his powers, however unlikely as that may be.
_________xx_______
–Axle Riddle–
Ah, this was so amusing.
The girl must have been completely unprepared for something like this if she fainted at the mere sight of a pen and paper, confirming that his attention was on her.
To be honest, she wasn't really dressed as an agent either. Clad in comfy pajamas and fluffy slippers, she looked the epitome of lounge material as she had just face-planted on the coffee table.
He had not intervened for two reasons.
One, it was hilarious, how her head thunked on the table and had yet to come back, meaning that she truly had fallen unconscious.
Secondly, he didn't want to make it look like he did anything to her. Non-interference and all that. The last thing he wanted was for Fury to come hound him for supposedly tampering with an agent.
Ah, there they were, he thought to himself as he saw or rather felt the three blacked-out SUVs hauling ass, burning rubber, as they rushed to the safehouse, probably worried about their agent.
He could not recognise anyone in the cars, so it was some agent with high enough clearance to interact with him but not important enough to be mentioned in the MCU. They were also packing in some serious firepower.
Sheesh, it was as if they expected him to attack them and if he did attack them, they expected those toys to do anything to him. What a bunch of fools.
Did they learn nothing after all this time?
He once again inspected the safehouse and found cameras at every angle. All of them were currently pointed at the unconscious agent and the floating pen and paper.
Soon, the SUVs reached the safehouse building, and judging by the way the doorman just slid the door open, not even pausing to blink as heavily armed men entered the building he was supposed to guard, he might be in on the whole safehouse thing as well.
He looked at the pen and paper and thought of the new trick he had learned in the spare time he now had because of his second mind thingy.
That was how once the agents cautiously opened the blast door and entered in, just the one unarmed agent, he noticed, he saw a bizarre sight of an unconscious agent in a vulnerable position and a floating bobblehead, composed entirely of torn paper shaped into a vague replica of a human face.
And for the extra dramatic effect, he had a bunch of rubber bands inside the floating paper bobblehead. Once he made the rubbers vibrate at the specific frequency he wanted to…
"Greetings, SHIELD,"
A very robotic, unnatural, and slow voice sounded out in the room.
Up until that point, Agent Ross was the perfect picture of calm and wary, as was written in the SHIELD handbooks about handling such situations. The second that creepy sound was made in the room, his face warped in terror as he pulled out his service weapon and fired two rounds into the floating white nightmare-inducing head.
The sound of gunfire brought the agents that were on standby, into the safehouse, who then proceeded to unload their magazines into the bobblehead, with one of the agents scrambling to get the now very awake and scared Random Beautiful Agent 1.
All the while, he laughed back in his apartment.
Ah, what a shitshow!
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 26
Somewhere in the cosmos
–Ancient One–
Mediating between faes and their numerous enemies was always a chore, always has been and always will be, one that Agomotto took upon himself and then thrust onto the role of the Sorcerer Supreme.
While the work itself was very menial, it was in regular intervals and also required one to have a patience and calm attitude, one that could only be gained by having their minds subjected to the flow of time thousands of times by using the powers of the Eye of Agamotto.
Every 26 years, she had to come to this realm, to negotiate a deal of non-interference between the fae and the people they had passed off in their long existence. Time didn't really mean anything to the fae since they were essentially entirely conceptual in nature and thus, had no risk of dying until the eventual heat death of the universe.
Killing the fae in their own realm was impossible and they rarely ventured out, so it made addressing grievances that much more difficult. But the fae did, sometimes, venture out for various reasons. Entertainment, boredom, to kill themselves.
Oh yeah, some of the fae do eventually get content or frustrated or bored with their lives and seek to end their existence by venturing out of their safe abode and into the dangerous maw of the universe. The thing was that they could not really have that happening.
As mentioned, Fae was entirely conceptual in nature, and providing a conceptual snack to a demon lord, or a hell lord, or Vishanti forbid, Dormammu, would mean that they were just adding to the arsenal of their enemies.
Thus, the treaty of non-interference, allowing the Fae to move around in a safe environment, whilst limiting the number of deals that the Fae could make with the ones from the other realms. That was how the Fae had been safely withdrawn from Earth and kept in a small artificial dimension where they could do all the stuff they wanted, without the risk of empowering a demon lord, or making a deal with a ruler and then prompting him to slaughter the people under his rule. Stuff like that.
Unfortunately, this stuff was important. More so than killing yet another demon that had slipped through the nets or hunting down another rogue sorcerer because if the Fae were ever to be allowed to make deals with humans. Well, she knew what humans were like and the results would not be good.
Every time she tried to see into that future, it was so terrible that she had to erase part of her memory, to function properly, because apparently, Fae's empowered avatars' influence could travel back through time as well. If she had not cut the connection at the right time, her soul might have been damaged a bit.
"I suppose that marks the end of this summit, then?" She stood up and looked down at all the creatures that had assembled here. They all looked comically small in comparison but that was only because of the rules imposed on this dimension. As the rule enforcer, she was exempt of course but the rest of the species were not. Even the Dragons, known to reach sizes rivaling some small countries back on Earth, were not spared and turned into sizes that would more be suited for a 2-year-old kid rather than a hundred thousand-year-old Dragon Elder.
The deal was the same as before, nothing much changed in it except the date for the next summit, which, thankfully, she would not have to attend. The mere thought of it brought back a muted flash of happiness before that too, was dulled by her mind. See, for centuries, more if the time spent lost in the timestream was counted, she had not really felt anything.
No pain, no happiness, no sadness, and no grief. Nothing. It was as if, for the vast powers she had gained through looking through millions of timelines with the Eye of Agamotto, she had to sacrifice something.
She had to sacrifice her name, her feelings, and even her sense of time because even today, she had to use specifically calibrated temporal anchors to help her ascertain whether this was the reality or just another temporal simulation she was seeing using the Eye of Agamotto.
She smiled as she thought of one such temporal anchor, one who came into the timestream very recently.
Axle Riddle.
Somehow, in the vast multiverse of timelines she was able to witness, he was not there in anyone, aside from this one. The chances of his existence were so low that it would have been better to call them zero, and that was coming from her, who knew that even the infinitesimal possibility had the potential to become true, overcoming all odds set against it.
And that was why she had decided. When she would go back to the New York Sanctum she would—
Hmm? What was this?
She hastily exited the summit after greeting the Queen Fae, and as soon as she was out of the artificial dimension, she swiftly took out an artefact from her personal storage.
Communication within alternate dimensions was tricky at best if you didn't have a portal open between the two places. So, for one side to contact the other, you needed the help of artifacts forged from the broken parts of smaller dimensions, allowing them some leeway in skirting the rules regarding interdimensional communication.
One such artefact was the one in her hand. It was unnamed, because the moment somebody tried to name it, it stopped working for them so they figured that it did have a name, they just didn't know it yet. It was primarily used by Kamar Taj to ascertain the threats that any Sanctum could be facing at any given moment in time.
Right now, the threat rating was at the deepest red, something that hadn't happened in the past few centuries. And the Sanctum was the New York Sanctum.
Well, that complicated things.
She would have to make haste, lest Axle pick a fight with some demon who could shrug off his powers, however unlikely as that may be.
_________xx_______
–Axle Riddle–
Ah, this was so amusing.
The girl must have been completely unprepared for something like this if she fainted at the mere sight of a pen and paper, confirming that his attention was on her.
To be honest, she wasn't really dressed as an agent either. Clad in comfy pajamas and fluffy slippers, she looked the epitome of lounge material as she had just face-planted on the coffee table.
He had not intervened for two reasons.
One, it was hilarious, how her head thunked on the table and had yet to come back, meaning that she truly had fallen unconscious.
Secondly, he didn't want to make it look like he did anything to her. Non-interference and all that. The last thing he wanted was for Fury to come hound him for supposedly tampering with an agent.
Ah, there they were, he thought to himself as he saw or rather felt the three blacked-out SUVs hauling ass, burning rubber, as they rushed to the safehouse, probably worried about their agent.
He could not recognise anyone in the cars, so it was some agent with high enough clearance to interact with him but not important enough to be mentioned in the MCU. They were also packing in some serious firepower.
Sheesh, it was as if they expected him to attack them and if he did attack them, they expected those toys to do anything to him. What a bunch of fools.
Did they learn nothing after all this time?
He once again inspected the safehouse and found cameras at every angle. All of them were currently pointed at the unconscious agent and the floating pen and paper.
Soon, the SUVs reached the safehouse building, and judging by the way the doorman just slid the door open, not even pausing to blink as heavily armed men entered the building he was supposed to guard, he might be in on the whole safehouse thing as well.
He looked at the pen and paper and thought of the new trick he had learned in the spare time he now had because of his second mind thingy.
That was how once the agents cautiously opened the blast door and entered in, just the one unarmed agent, he noticed, he saw a bizarre sight of an unconscious agent in a vulnerable position and a floating bobblehead, composed entirely of torn paper shaped into a vague replica of a human face.
And for the extra dramatic effect, he had a bunch of rubber bands inside the floating paper bobblehead. Once he made the rubbers vibrate at the specific frequency he wanted to…
"Greetings, SHIELD,"
A very robotic, unnatural, and slow voice sounded out in the room.
Up until that point, Agent Ross was the perfect picture of calm and wary, as was written in the SHIELD handbooks about handling such situations. The second that creepy sound was made in the room, his face warped in terror as he pulled out his service weapon and fired two rounds into the floating white nightmare-inducing head.
The sound of gunfire brought the agents that were on standby, into the safehouse, who then proceeded to unload their magazines into the bobblehead, with one of the agents scrambling to get the now very awake and scared Random Beautiful Agent 1.
All the while, he laughed back in his apartment.
Ah, what a shitshow!
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
Chapter 27 : Anticipation!
IdleMuse0307
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2021
- Messages
- 362
- Likes received
- 10,011
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.
The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 27
SHIELD Safehouse, Manhattan
–Axle Riddle–
Okay, now it is getting a bit ridiculous. They had stopped firing, which was good but were on their way downstairs, evacuating the honeypot trap while continuously calling for more backup since he had evidently "attacked" them or something.
Seriously, how afraid can someone be of just a white ghastly head bobbing around and then speaking in a guttural tone? Right? That must be normal for SHIELD agents, right?
He sighed as he realised the mistake in his actions. Anywho, time to correct them now.
He flooded his presence in the building, hijacking it essentially, in its entirety. Once he had flooded his presence in something, he was the de facto GOD of that place, allowing him to control every little aspect of that singular location.
In this case, he used it to freeze every single agent that was running on their way down, took their guns, moulded the nozzles in front of their wide terrified eyes, and then brought them back up to the safe house. He had to assume that the only reason the neighbours had not come out was because this was a SHIELD safehouse building and the neighbours must be trained as well.
Though, he could see that all of them had left the building for one reason or another. Some were grocery shopping, some were at a cafe eating cake, some were on a bagel run, etc.
With all the 20 agents placed in the same safehouse, it had become a bit cramped but nothing these agents were not trained for, right?
Oh well.
He watched on as another set of SUVs, 6 this time, burned rubber as they hauled ass to the safehouse building. Also filled with armed people, apparently ready to burst down the door with guns swinging.
Okay, this is just ridiculous now.
He unfroze the lead agent and immediately regretted it because the man just refused to stop blabbering. It was as if he had put the fear of god in them.
He did the same for the others but none of them showed any signs of listening to him. All they did was look around frantically in fear until the Random Beautiful Agent 1 once again fainted in fear.
That would have been amusing had it not been for the faint smell of urine in the air.
Just what was happening? He thought to himself as he watched grown hardened men tremble in fear.
Back in his apartment, his eyes narrowed as he tried to look deeper into the issue. Something was wrong here and he did not know what. For the time being though, he would have to get his message across so he tore apart a page from the diary on the table, which also had a few bullet holes in it, wrote his message in, and after folding it, placed it into the front pocket of Agent Ross.
All the while Agent Ross kept praying to his deity to save him or something.
Just what the hell was wrong with them?
He nevertheless withdrew his presence and left behind a note for the arriving officers as well, explaining that he didn't even do anything to them. The CCTV should confirm that as well but he didn't want to take any risks.
He watched as the next round of agents burst into the safehouse, expecting something, he didn't know what they were expecting but a bunch of hardened agents crying was not it.
He saw the second lead agent look at the note that was stuck in Agent Ross' hand as he clutched it as if his life depended on it and after securing the footage, ordered a complete withdrawal.
He watched as they left his awareness range and saw that they all simultaneously sighed in relief once they left Manhattan, confident in their ability to now remain safe because they were out of the Invisible Man's range.
Just what the hell happened back there?
He just flooded the area with his presence and somehow they all began peeing themselves in fear?
He reached out with his TK and "knocked" on the New York Sanctum's wards for a lack of a better word. He had learned how to do that ever since his spatial awareness began showing him the ward structure of the sanctum.
He still couldn't read worth a damn but it was a start and someday, hopefully, he hoped to do magic with it. I mean, it was magic. Who doesn't dream of wielding magic?
The doors opened on their own and once Master Drumm saw that there was no one on the front door, he sighed in disappointment and went back inside, to the drawing book he had left for him.
Once he saw the question he had pre-scribbled for him, he sighed once again and scribbled something next to his question.
"No," Was the answer to the question was - Has the Ancient One returned?
Oh well, he thought to himself while delivering another round of groceries to Bruce's apartment. She had to come back soon because he could see Bruce fraying at the edges, the longer he lived all alone in that apartment. He could not afford a Hulk incident in a civilian area, that would just be disastrous for everyone involved.
Maybe he could try and move Bruce to the underground tunnel.
Nah, he couldn't do that now, not after having him moved to a cozy apartment, that could kill the man. Plus, it was not fair to do that to him.
He expected SHIELD to reach out to him soon enough, once they got over their fear that he was somehow terrorizing their agents for fun.
That conversation was going to be very awkward, considering he did make over a dozen of their agents tremble in fear of him.
He would have to negotiate with them the terms of Bruce's arrest because there was no way Ross was going to let this go and once he came into the city for Bruce, guns blazing, he would have all the grounds to just bend his guns and evict him from his city, consequences be damned.
He would have to make preparations for that eventuality as well because—
His thoughts came to a halt as he sensed something truly interesting.
Betty fucking Ross was in a cab, coming into the city. Judging by the distressed look on her face, she was probably here looking for Bruce but how did she find him anyway?
Maybe Ross tracked Bruce before he could be hidden?
Either way, he needed faster responses from people, dammit.
Either from the Ancient One or Fury because things were about to turn a lot more hectic and more importantly….fun.
Ah, it had been so boring without some action and as much as he loathed the idea of collateral damage, he also had no entertainment these past year or so.
He would make sure that Bruce is out of the city the second he starts turning Green but the drama from SHIELD and Ross coming from Bruce would be oh so worth it.
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 27
SHIELD Safehouse, Manhattan
–Axle Riddle–
Okay, now it is getting a bit ridiculous. They had stopped firing, which was good but were on their way downstairs, evacuating the honeypot trap while continuously calling for more backup since he had evidently "attacked" them or something.
Seriously, how afraid can someone be of just a white ghastly head bobbing around and then speaking in a guttural tone? Right? That must be normal for SHIELD agents, right?
He sighed as he realised the mistake in his actions. Anywho, time to correct them now.
He flooded his presence in the building, hijacking it essentially, in its entirety. Once he had flooded his presence in something, he was the de facto GOD of that place, allowing him to control every little aspect of that singular location.
In this case, he used it to freeze every single agent that was running on their way down, took their guns, moulded the nozzles in front of their wide terrified eyes, and then brought them back up to the safe house. He had to assume that the only reason the neighbours had not come out was because this was a SHIELD safehouse building and the neighbours must be trained as well.
Though, he could see that all of them had left the building for one reason or another. Some were grocery shopping, some were at a cafe eating cake, some were on a bagel run, etc.
With all the 20 agents placed in the same safehouse, it had become a bit cramped but nothing these agents were not trained for, right?
Oh well.
He watched on as another set of SUVs, 6 this time, burned rubber as they hauled ass to the safehouse building. Also filled with armed people, apparently ready to burst down the door with guns swinging.
Okay, this is just ridiculous now.
He unfroze the lead agent and immediately regretted it because the man just refused to stop blabbering. It was as if he had put the fear of god in them.
He did the same for the others but none of them showed any signs of listening to him. All they did was look around frantically in fear until the Random Beautiful Agent 1 once again fainted in fear.
That would have been amusing had it not been for the faint smell of urine in the air.
Just what was happening? He thought to himself as he watched grown hardened men tremble in fear.
Back in his apartment, his eyes narrowed as he tried to look deeper into the issue. Something was wrong here and he did not know what. For the time being though, he would have to get his message across so he tore apart a page from the diary on the table, which also had a few bullet holes in it, wrote his message in, and after folding it, placed it into the front pocket of Agent Ross.
All the while Agent Ross kept praying to his deity to save him or something.
Just what the hell was wrong with them?
He nevertheless withdrew his presence and left behind a note for the arriving officers as well, explaining that he didn't even do anything to them. The CCTV should confirm that as well but he didn't want to take any risks.
He watched as the next round of agents burst into the safehouse, expecting something, he didn't know what they were expecting but a bunch of hardened agents crying was not it.
He saw the second lead agent look at the note that was stuck in Agent Ross' hand as he clutched it as if his life depended on it and after securing the footage, ordered a complete withdrawal.
He watched as they left his awareness range and saw that they all simultaneously sighed in relief once they left Manhattan, confident in their ability to now remain safe because they were out of the Invisible Man's range.
Just what the hell happened back there?
He just flooded the area with his presence and somehow they all began peeing themselves in fear?
He reached out with his TK and "knocked" on the New York Sanctum's wards for a lack of a better word. He had learned how to do that ever since his spatial awareness began showing him the ward structure of the sanctum.
He still couldn't read worth a damn but it was a start and someday, hopefully, he hoped to do magic with it. I mean, it was magic. Who doesn't dream of wielding magic?
The doors opened on their own and once Master Drumm saw that there was no one on the front door, he sighed in disappointment and went back inside, to the drawing book he had left for him.
Once he saw the question he had pre-scribbled for him, he sighed once again and scribbled something next to his question.
"No," Was the answer to the question was - Has the Ancient One returned?
Oh well, he thought to himself while delivering another round of groceries to Bruce's apartment. She had to come back soon because he could see Bruce fraying at the edges, the longer he lived all alone in that apartment. He could not afford a Hulk incident in a civilian area, that would just be disastrous for everyone involved.
Maybe he could try and move Bruce to the underground tunnel.
Nah, he couldn't do that now, not after having him moved to a cozy apartment, that could kill the man. Plus, it was not fair to do that to him.
He expected SHIELD to reach out to him soon enough, once they got over their fear that he was somehow terrorizing their agents for fun.
That conversation was going to be very awkward, considering he did make over a dozen of their agents tremble in fear of him.
He would have to negotiate with them the terms of Bruce's arrest because there was no way Ross was going to let this go and once he came into the city for Bruce, guns blazing, he would have all the grounds to just bend his guns and evict him from his city, consequences be damned.
He would have to make preparations for that eventuality as well because—
His thoughts came to a halt as he sensed something truly interesting.
Betty fucking Ross was in a cab, coming into the city. Judging by the distressed look on her face, she was probably here looking for Bruce but how did she find him anyway?
Maybe Ross tracked Bruce before he could be hidden?
Either way, he needed faster responses from people, dammit.
Either from the Ancient One or Fury because things were about to turn a lot more hectic and more importantly….fun.
Ah, it had been so boring without some action and as much as he loathed the idea of collateral damage, he also had no entertainment these past year or so.
He would make sure that Bruce is out of the city the second he starts turning Green but the drama from SHIELD and Ross coming from Bruce would be oh so worth it.
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
Chapter 28 : The One with Fury's POV
IdleMuse0307
Not too sore, are you?
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Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.
The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 28
NYC HQ
–Nick Fury–
Breathing in the crisp cold air, he alighted from the helicopter and entered the New York HQ through the roof. He had hoped to delay this meeting but recent developments had forced his hands, especially since some agents had leaked information to the WSC and they had expressly ordered him to get here and sort this out with the so-called Invisible Man.
He scoffed internally at the name. It was clear for anyone with a brain cell to rub that the man was obviously something else, certainly not a Man because that implied that he was a single human being.
The amount of actions he takes across the city simultaneously boggles the mind and tells everyone that he is probably someone with psychic powers that span over an area of an entire city, and also an expert in multitasking.
"Tell me everything," He said as he walked with Coulson, who had arrived here ahead of time to compile a report that he could trust. Somehow, he could not trust his own agents in this palace, not just because they could be compromised by the Invisible Man but also because they might just leak the information to unrelated parties at the moment and that was the last thing he wanted to happen.
"Yes, sir. Earlier Yesterday, The Invisible Man made contact with Random Beautiful Agent 1 but the mode of contact apparently spooked her so much that she fainted immediately."
He rolled his eyes at that. He never really liked this idea of picking up agents just based on their appearance but the concept worked sometimes so he could not just abolish the practice without having to answer to his overlords, in the form of the World Security Council.
"Following that, the analysts raised an alarm as they saw everything happening through the surveillance cameras. Two teams were immediately sent to the safe house to secure the Random Beautiful Agent 1 along with Agent Ross, a level 7 agent, to initiate a conversation with the Invisible Man,"
That checks out. Ross was the highest-ranking agent on site and protocol dictated that he be the first in line when something of this magnitude occurred on his turf. This was also the first time that the subject had made contact with any SHIELD asset from his side, making it a golden opportunity to make a favourable impression.
"After she fell unconscious, the Invisible Man chose to, I don't know how to put this, but he chose to manifest an avatar or something. Papers from a nearby notebook were ripped apart and then molded to form a face floating in mid-air. The face didn't perturb Agent Ross but the guttural voice that came out of that mask startled him into…"
"Into putting two shots in the face of someone who is the closest we have ever come to finding an ever-present god-like entity?" he finishes the sentence for Coulson, his patience riding thin because of this incident and how they wasted a golden opportunity to gain an ally or at least establish some sort of working relationship with the target.
"....Ah, yes…Sir," Coulson said as he handed him the tablet, showing the rest of the footage.
It would not be wrong to call it a complete and utter shit show.
"Have Agent Ross and his team transferred to the Arctic Belt for a year long stint," He ordered as they entered his office, one that is reserved for him in every HQ building SHIELD had ever built.
"Also, no casualties, that's good. Any evidence from all the sensors we have installed in various parts of the city over the months he has been active?"
Coulson shook his head in negative as he watched the second team arrive and then leave after securing the first team. God, they were horribly untrained and unprepared for something like this.
"How does one even fight something like that?" He mumbled to himself as he read over the reports that the analysts had drawn up on short notice. It was mostly assumptions and the same old recommendation as before - Do not engage with hostile intentions. Like he would forget the way the man can toss around semis and help cats off of trees at the same time.
"Do we have to?"
He looked up at Coulson who had asked him the question with a conflicting look on his face.
"Is it necessary that we have to fight with him? He could be a force for good. A very strong force. And he has done a lot of good already,"
"In one city, Coulson. There are billions more that need protecting and as strong as he is, he has for some reason, limited himself to a single borough of New York City, which might I remind you is not even in the top 10 most populous cities of the world,"
He said and went back to reading the reports they had compiled for him in preparation for his visit, incomplete and inaccurate as they might be.
However, what Coulson said did keep ringing in his mind. Having Someone of that calibre on call would mean that most crises would be solved as soon as he arrived on the spot. He would not have to worry about some pesky insurgents using the terrain to their advantage because, well, for someone who can rip apart buildings can most likely take care of some dirt and rocks with ease. The man also had some sort of hyper awareness powers that helped him know everything that was happening in a large area with complete accuracy.
So much so that he could even read words off of paper. That was just mind boggling, both to him and the boys in the lab. According to them, this could only be done by deploying an energy field across a large swathe of area, so sensitive that it detected even the slightest change in matter. Ofcourse, they had yet to find any evidence of that but the theory remained.
"Alright, Coulson. We will do it your way this time. What do you suggest? Going straight to him?"
Coulson smiled, "No, sir. That would not be in compliance with your safety policies. I would suggest–"
"Oh hell with the safety policies. I am asking you, would you trust him enough to take me into his domain?" He asked Coulson, point blank to see what his thoughts were on the matter. He trusted Coulson and if taking a risk could get them a chance of having someone as uber powerful as this person on their team, then he was more than willing to take the chances.
"I trust him, sir. He has not done a single thing out of line ever since he became active. But there is also the matter regarding Dr.Banner, sir,"
Ah, the Hulk shitshow. Another one on his pile of problems then.
Last they had seen him, he was on his way to Manhattan. It didn't take a genius as to why he would do that. Protection of somebody like that was worth its weight in gold, as was reflected in the real estate prices of Manhattan. Most locals had already sold their homes and moved out of the city, to retirement probably, such was the surge in home prices here. Most of the billionaire class of NYC was probably already living here.
In that sensitive zone, Banner had entered into the city.
Judging by the lack of location on his file, it had already meant that he was either successful in cutting a deal with the Invisible Man or he had, once again, dropped from their radar. Despite the hits his agency had been taking, there was no way an untrained civilian could escape their surveillance.
This meant that Bruce Banner, The Hulk, number one on General Ross' hit list, was also being provided with protection and cover in Manhattan, by possibly the strongest being in the world. In the most populous city of the United States, in the middle of a residential zone housing the richest people of the city.
This would go swimmingly.
"Coulson, set up a meeting. I think it's time we meet this Invisible Man,"
"...Affirmative, sir,"
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 28
NYC HQ
–Nick Fury–
Breathing in the crisp cold air, he alighted from the helicopter and entered the New York HQ through the roof. He had hoped to delay this meeting but recent developments had forced his hands, especially since some agents had leaked information to the WSC and they had expressly ordered him to get here and sort this out with the so-called Invisible Man.
He scoffed internally at the name. It was clear for anyone with a brain cell to rub that the man was obviously something else, certainly not a Man because that implied that he was a single human being.
The amount of actions he takes across the city simultaneously boggles the mind and tells everyone that he is probably someone with psychic powers that span over an area of an entire city, and also an expert in multitasking.
"Tell me everything," He said as he walked with Coulson, who had arrived here ahead of time to compile a report that he could trust. Somehow, he could not trust his own agents in this palace, not just because they could be compromised by the Invisible Man but also because they might just leak the information to unrelated parties at the moment and that was the last thing he wanted to happen.
"Yes, sir. Earlier Yesterday, The Invisible Man made contact with Random Beautiful Agent 1 but the mode of contact apparently spooked her so much that she fainted immediately."
He rolled his eyes at that. He never really liked this idea of picking up agents just based on their appearance but the concept worked sometimes so he could not just abolish the practice without having to answer to his overlords, in the form of the World Security Council.
"Following that, the analysts raised an alarm as they saw everything happening through the surveillance cameras. Two teams were immediately sent to the safe house to secure the Random Beautiful Agent 1 along with Agent Ross, a level 7 agent, to initiate a conversation with the Invisible Man,"
That checks out. Ross was the highest-ranking agent on site and protocol dictated that he be the first in line when something of this magnitude occurred on his turf. This was also the first time that the subject had made contact with any SHIELD asset from his side, making it a golden opportunity to make a favourable impression.
"After she fell unconscious, the Invisible Man chose to, I don't know how to put this, but he chose to manifest an avatar or something. Papers from a nearby notebook were ripped apart and then molded to form a face floating in mid-air. The face didn't perturb Agent Ross but the guttural voice that came out of that mask startled him into…"
"Into putting two shots in the face of someone who is the closest we have ever come to finding an ever-present god-like entity?" he finishes the sentence for Coulson, his patience riding thin because of this incident and how they wasted a golden opportunity to gain an ally or at least establish some sort of working relationship with the target.
"....Ah, yes…Sir," Coulson said as he handed him the tablet, showing the rest of the footage.
It would not be wrong to call it a complete and utter shit show.
"Have Agent Ross and his team transferred to the Arctic Belt for a year long stint," He ordered as they entered his office, one that is reserved for him in every HQ building SHIELD had ever built.
"Also, no casualties, that's good. Any evidence from all the sensors we have installed in various parts of the city over the months he has been active?"
Coulson shook his head in negative as he watched the second team arrive and then leave after securing the first team. God, they were horribly untrained and unprepared for something like this.
"How does one even fight something like that?" He mumbled to himself as he read over the reports that the analysts had drawn up on short notice. It was mostly assumptions and the same old recommendation as before - Do not engage with hostile intentions. Like he would forget the way the man can toss around semis and help cats off of trees at the same time.
"Do we have to?"
He looked up at Coulson who had asked him the question with a conflicting look on his face.
"Is it necessary that we have to fight with him? He could be a force for good. A very strong force. And he has done a lot of good already,"
"In one city, Coulson. There are billions more that need protecting and as strong as he is, he has for some reason, limited himself to a single borough of New York City, which might I remind you is not even in the top 10 most populous cities of the world,"
He said and went back to reading the reports they had compiled for him in preparation for his visit, incomplete and inaccurate as they might be.
However, what Coulson said did keep ringing in his mind. Having Someone of that calibre on call would mean that most crises would be solved as soon as he arrived on the spot. He would not have to worry about some pesky insurgents using the terrain to their advantage because, well, for someone who can rip apart buildings can most likely take care of some dirt and rocks with ease. The man also had some sort of hyper awareness powers that helped him know everything that was happening in a large area with complete accuracy.
So much so that he could even read words off of paper. That was just mind boggling, both to him and the boys in the lab. According to them, this could only be done by deploying an energy field across a large swathe of area, so sensitive that it detected even the slightest change in matter. Ofcourse, they had yet to find any evidence of that but the theory remained.
"Alright, Coulson. We will do it your way this time. What do you suggest? Going straight to him?"
Coulson smiled, "No, sir. That would not be in compliance with your safety policies. I would suggest–"
"Oh hell with the safety policies. I am asking you, would you trust him enough to take me into his domain?" He asked Coulson, point blank to see what his thoughts were on the matter. He trusted Coulson and if taking a risk could get them a chance of having someone as uber powerful as this person on their team, then he was more than willing to take the chances.
"I trust him, sir. He has not done a single thing out of line ever since he became active. But there is also the matter regarding Dr.Banner, sir,"
Ah, the Hulk shitshow. Another one on his pile of problems then.
Last they had seen him, he was on his way to Manhattan. It didn't take a genius as to why he would do that. Protection of somebody like that was worth its weight in gold, as was reflected in the real estate prices of Manhattan. Most locals had already sold their homes and moved out of the city, to retirement probably, such was the surge in home prices here. Most of the billionaire class of NYC was probably already living here.
In that sensitive zone, Banner had entered into the city.
Judging by the lack of location on his file, it had already meant that he was either successful in cutting a deal with the Invisible Man or he had, once again, dropped from their radar. Despite the hits his agency had been taking, there was no way an untrained civilian could escape their surveillance.
This meant that Bruce Banner, The Hulk, number one on General Ross' hit list, was also being provided with protection and cover in Manhattan, by possibly the strongest being in the world. In the most populous city of the United States, in the middle of a residential zone housing the richest people of the city.
This would go swimmingly.
"Coulson, set up a meeting. I think it's time we meet this Invisible Man,"
"...Affirmative, sir,"
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
Spearow
Respect the bird
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If you remove the mc pov from the entire fic, it sounds like they are dealing with some rogue SCP in marvel, what is hilarious, i think i will try to do that later if i decide to re read the story some day.
btw, Fury forgets that he works with the same people that would shot thor or hulk, like it would do something, hell, that image from the first avengers movie, of black widow with her 9mm pistol during a full on alien attack was so funny, those people only know how to deal with mundane stuff, they are absurdly unprepared to deal with anything supernatural.
SquirtleTurtle
Getting sticky.
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Great read so far, glad I clicked in. Honestly, one he finally leaves Manhattan the people in the borough are going to be SOL. Unless he establishes it as his base of operations.
Chapter 29 : Paper go brrr....
IdleMuse0307
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2021
- Messages
- 362
- Likes received
- 10,011
A/N - Hello my dear peeps! I come with good tidings, in the form of this chapter. Anywho, aside from delivering this important chapter to you, I also wanted to deliver an explanation to yall.
You might have noticed my updates being on point from Monday to Thursday before faltering throughout the weekend, despite me being off from work for the weekend.
Well, here's the story for that.[TLDR at end]
You see, Monday to Thursday, I have a regular 10 hour work shift. On Fridays, however, I am on call so that translates to a roughly 15-16 hour shift for the day. Yeah, it is pretty brutal so I am pretty much out of it for the majority of Saturday and sometimes, on Sunday as well.
That is why I am unable to maintain the glorious grind of pushing out chapters day by day because my eyes start to water if I so much as look at a screen after that harrowing shift.
TLDR - Huge ass work shift on Friday so brain go slow on weekends, explaining the lack of content on weekends.
_____________xx___________
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.
The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 29 [December 2008]
–Axle Riddle–
"Uh-huh. Yes, I know that the stock is falling now. Yes, I know we only cashed out about half of our investment but you know that even that turned out a decent profit for you…..Yes, I know that we are once again funneling money back into SI. Yes, I know the stock is free falling and I am telling you once again, I don't CARE!"
He slammed his phone shut at the last statement. Those old fogies were getting on his nerves now. Despite making a profit on their investment, they were still trying to advise him about it. Yes, he had no idea about the stock market but he knew one thing. Tony Stark was not a quitter and once the world came to know about Iron Man, the stock would only rise and rise and…rise.
Huh, slamming the telephone shut was an oddly satisfying feeling. He kinda wanted to do it again.
*RING* Ah, speak of the devil.
"Hello, Axle speaking,"
He immediately took the phone away from his ear as another tirade of old fogies was coming from the speaker. Okay, he had it with these rich old fogies. They had all the control of their money. If they truly wanted to end their partnership with him, they could have taken out their money on their own without ever telling him about it.
But noooo, they wanted to talk his ear off doing it as well.
"Hey, look, Master Wu, if you really want to end this, just do it, alright? I have a dozen other billionaires on speed dial, just waiting to take the deal, alright? So if you're out, you're out, don't yap at me about it. If you are in, then just shut up for a while. You'll see the results in a few months," He said after slamming down the phone once again, once again feeling that pleasant feeling.
It had been over a few hours ever since he had that horrible encounter with those SHIELD agents, forcing him to reassess his strategy for establishing a cooperative relationship with them.
He wanted to see if Bruce could get a pardon from the President if he could prove that Bruce was in control of the Hulk and could be useful, not as a weapon, god no, Bruce would never agree to that. But having him on board as a scientific expert and as a major deterrent alone would be invaluable.
He was sure that Fury would agree to it if only to get another player on board for the Avengers Initiative. It was the others he was worried about. Mostly General Ross and his connections in the White House, which might convince the president that instead of having a single non-combative Hulk, it would be better to have hordes of super soldiers who would do the country's bidding.
That possibility could not be taken out of play here. General Ross was one of those foolhardy people who climbed his way up in the Military, rising up to command a position of extreme influence.
It was not as if others in the Military were unaware of his actions and his tendency to go overboard when dealing with certain threats but what was the US military if not the very definition of Overkill?
The higher-ups were probably also aware of Banner and the illegal experiments that led to that outcome but just let him be, hoping to milk him for any advantages that might come by from the experiment and if not, just throw him under the bus if it ever came to light.
Plausible Deniability and all that.
The US Government might be a little slow but it was not incompetent, especially not on matters relating to super soldiers. Ross should have never even gotten to see the blood sample of Steve Rogers, let alone get the authority to use it for human experimentations.
He sighed once again, in his fully air-conditioned office, as he realised the probable reason as to why the government was tacitly supporting this hair-brained venture of Ross. It was because of his very existence.
He had never really thought of it that way, mostly because he thought that the handicap that never really let him get out of Manhattan would be enough to placate the people in power, at least until he left New York City. He had hoped for them to be rational about it and see that he was not some villain that they had to worry about.
Apparently, he expected too much from politicians.
Welp, nothing he could do about that. Well, maybe Fury could do something if Fury trusted him but knowing what he knew about Fury and his infamous Paranoia, there was little chance that Fury would ever endorse him.
Hell, SHIELD was probably already scrambling for countermeasures against him, not that they would succeed. He had already been pushing his powers to their limits, not the TK but his spatial awareness. He didn't know how to train his TK anymore but spatial awareness was really easy to do.
He could now feasibly exert his powers up to a mile outside the Imprisoning curtain, that was what he had taken to calling the orange curtain around Manhattan. He could not exert more power even after gaining more distance in his spatial awareness but that was probably another limitation imposed on him.
He could see that Bruce was now doing Yoga, having found some tutorials on the internet and while the image of Bruce Banner doing clumsy yoga would forever be imprinted in his mind, he was more concerned with the way Bruce was bending in ways that would have been more realistic for an Olympic Gymnast, without any visible effort, like…at all.
It would seem that becoming the Hulk did grant him some benefits in his non-transformed state as well. He had witnessed his gym sessions as well and aside from some light sweating, he had not struggled even after lifting all the weights he had access to, despite never being one for physical stuff in university.
So, slightly enhanced strength and flexibility, even in his base form. Good to know. Maybe he could train to alter between both states as a powered and a less powered state. Something to tell him once the Ancient One finally comes back from wherever the hell she went to.
Apparently, it was one of her few obligations that she had to fulfill and even Demon Lords abide by it as the attacks cease this time of the year. He was curious about it but he knew that not having any aptitude for Sorcery would mean that he would be pretty unaware of most things in that space.
Hmm. His attention was perked as he once again sensed a convoy of blacked-out SUVs heading his way. He peered deeper into the car and…
"Well well well, look who's coming to meet little ol' me," He whistled out loud as the stoic face of one Nick one-eyed Fury came to him through his powers.
Damn, he was hoping to meet Coulson at best, not the head honcho himself. Well, no time like the present then.
He was curious as to how they would talk. He sure as hell was not going to go there personally. He was not stupid.
Probably to the SHIELD safehouse then?
Apparently not, he thought to himself as he watched Fury enter the biggest precinct nearby. Apparently, they were all informed about it because the precinct was nearly empty, save for some detective who, after handing over the keys to Coulson, fled from the scene as well.
Now that he focused, he found that the entire building had been evacuated completely.
Well, there was no need to do that. They could have communicated over long distances, even in his car if need be.
But now that he had done all this, it would be remiss on his part if he didn't give Fury something of a show as well.
He watched, after ordering lunch ofcourse (Chinese today), as Fury entered the precinct and after standing in the middle of a bunch of tables that had all signs of being hastily arranged, he put his hand on his waist as he turned around and kept looking at Coulson with an eyebrow raised.
In return, Coulson just kept looking at him with the same placid smile plastered on his face. Fury sighed and took a seat, Coulson choosing to stand.
Fury's team, meanwhile, spread far through the building and even perched on top of the nearby buildings, armed with snipers.
"Oooh, scary," he scoffed to himself as he chose to finally make an appearance, metaphorically speaking.
Right outside the building, a huge stack of paper rims was dropped, right in front of an agent standing guarding on the curb, completely startling him. He yelped as he pulled his gun and after finding that it was just paper, he looked up and around, speaking furiously in his comms.
In his office, he giggled after seeing the scare they experienced from just…paper. It was hilarious.
Even more was the reaction the agent made when the stack of paper seemingly exploded, flinging shredded pieces of paper in every direction. He yelped as he drew his firearm and actually shot paper!
He could see every member of Fury's team furiously looking for something, someone. Well, he gave them one.
The shredded paper that had been strewn all around seemingly came back to life as it all began accumulating right in front of the precinct door. Slowly, bit by bit, all the shredded paper was gathered until a distinctly human-shaped man, made of paper, was standing right at the door.
In the middle of the chaos that was snipers taking aim at, once again, paper, they had not noticed a small phone he had slipped into the headpiece of his paper avatar. That was programmed with text-to-speech software.
All he had to do was type in the required text using his powers, from a distance, so that the blunder from his previous encounter with SHIELD agents doesn't happen again.
The noise he made using his powers was horrendous to even listen to and that made him feel a little guilty when he thought that agent to be a coward for being so afraid of mere paper.
The scene of a paper head giving out that voice, especially since the words would have been somewhat legible, would have sent anyone packing.
Although…
He made the show of looking around and waving at all the snipers and agents stationed around since they were not taking any overt actions against him. Of Course, the snipers were still completely aimed at him but the triggers were not yet pressed, so he counted that as a win.
It would seem that someone from the inside had ordered everyone else to stand down for the moment, probably Coulson.
After waving at the sixth sniper located two buildings away, he turned around and walked straight through the door, as if it didn't exist at all. He did so by having the pieces of paper slide through the gaps underneath and on the sides of the door before reforming on the other side.
Almost immediately, he came face to face with Coulson who was obviously wearing his signature smile.
"Welcome. Would it be safe to assume that it is not the real you and just a puppet?"
He inclined the puppet's head and said, through the phone of course, which too had slid through the slit below the door. Somehow, the door had that big of a gap between them for some reason.
"Yes, Agent Coulson. It would hardly be wise to come here personally. After all, I am quite aware of SHIELD's reputation,"
"Oh, really?" Came an amused voice from behind Coulson.
Coulson neatly slid out of his way and after nodding politely at Coulson, "he" made his way over to Fury who was sitting on a chair with a small plastic table in front of him.
"Of Course. I might not know much but I do know that SHIELD is definitely not to be trifled with," he said as his paper avatar slowly sat on the chair. He made the avatar cross his legs as he looked at Fury who maintained a stoic glare at the paper avatar.
Meanwhile, back in his office, he was laughing, clutching his stomach as he saw that all these people were on edge, simply because of…paper.
Man, he was hilarious. It was too bad that they simply weren't able to appreciate or understand his supreme sense of humour.
"And the US Army? Are they not on your list of not being trifled with? After all, you are harboring a fugitive of theirs. Quite an important fugitive too,"
"Allegedly, Director Fury. All allegedly. You have no proof and more importantly, no real person to convict," He said airily as he made the paper man lean back into the chair.
Let's see what Fury has to say for him.
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
A/N - I saw the Deadpool movie and hot damn, what a movie!
I hope that the execs at Disney see the success this movie brought them and finally give the team the creative freedom to do as they see fit.
I mean, half a billion in the opening weekend!
This feels like much more of a comeback for the MCU than RDJ's supposed comeback.
Thanks for reading!
Peace out!
You might have noticed my updates being on point from Monday to Thursday before faltering throughout the weekend, despite me being off from work for the weekend.
Well, here's the story for that.[TLDR at end]
You see, Monday to Thursday, I have a regular 10 hour work shift. On Fridays, however, I am on call so that translates to a roughly 15-16 hour shift for the day. Yeah, it is pretty brutal so I am pretty much out of it for the majority of Saturday and sometimes, on Sunday as well.
That is why I am unable to maintain the glorious grind of pushing out chapters day by day because my eyes start to water if I so much as look at a screen after that harrowing shift.
TLDR - Huge ass work shift on Friday so brain go slow on weekends, explaining the lack of content on weekends.
_____________xx___________
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.
The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 29 [December 2008]
–Axle Riddle–
"Uh-huh. Yes, I know that the stock is falling now. Yes, I know we only cashed out about half of our investment but you know that even that turned out a decent profit for you…..Yes, I know that we are once again funneling money back into SI. Yes, I know the stock is free falling and I am telling you once again, I don't CARE!"
He slammed his phone shut at the last statement. Those old fogies were getting on his nerves now. Despite making a profit on their investment, they were still trying to advise him about it. Yes, he had no idea about the stock market but he knew one thing. Tony Stark was not a quitter and once the world came to know about Iron Man, the stock would only rise and rise and…rise.
Huh, slamming the telephone shut was an oddly satisfying feeling. He kinda wanted to do it again.
*RING* Ah, speak of the devil.
"Hello, Axle speaking,"
He immediately took the phone away from his ear as another tirade of old fogies was coming from the speaker. Okay, he had it with these rich old fogies. They had all the control of their money. If they truly wanted to end their partnership with him, they could have taken out their money on their own without ever telling him about it.
But noooo, they wanted to talk his ear off doing it as well.
"Hey, look, Master Wu, if you really want to end this, just do it, alright? I have a dozen other billionaires on speed dial, just waiting to take the deal, alright? So if you're out, you're out, don't yap at me about it. If you are in, then just shut up for a while. You'll see the results in a few months," He said after slamming down the phone once again, once again feeling that pleasant feeling.
It had been over a few hours ever since he had that horrible encounter with those SHIELD agents, forcing him to reassess his strategy for establishing a cooperative relationship with them.
He wanted to see if Bruce could get a pardon from the President if he could prove that Bruce was in control of the Hulk and could be useful, not as a weapon, god no, Bruce would never agree to that. But having him on board as a scientific expert and as a major deterrent alone would be invaluable.
He was sure that Fury would agree to it if only to get another player on board for the Avengers Initiative. It was the others he was worried about. Mostly General Ross and his connections in the White House, which might convince the president that instead of having a single non-combative Hulk, it would be better to have hordes of super soldiers who would do the country's bidding.
That possibility could not be taken out of play here. General Ross was one of those foolhardy people who climbed his way up in the Military, rising up to command a position of extreme influence.
It was not as if others in the Military were unaware of his actions and his tendency to go overboard when dealing with certain threats but what was the US military if not the very definition of Overkill?
The higher-ups were probably also aware of Banner and the illegal experiments that led to that outcome but just let him be, hoping to milk him for any advantages that might come by from the experiment and if not, just throw him under the bus if it ever came to light.
Plausible Deniability and all that.
The US Government might be a little slow but it was not incompetent, especially not on matters relating to super soldiers. Ross should have never even gotten to see the blood sample of Steve Rogers, let alone get the authority to use it for human experimentations.
He sighed once again, in his fully air-conditioned office, as he realised the probable reason as to why the government was tacitly supporting this hair-brained venture of Ross. It was because of his very existence.
He had never really thought of it that way, mostly because he thought that the handicap that never really let him get out of Manhattan would be enough to placate the people in power, at least until he left New York City. He had hoped for them to be rational about it and see that he was not some villain that they had to worry about.
Apparently, he expected too much from politicians.
Welp, nothing he could do about that. Well, maybe Fury could do something if Fury trusted him but knowing what he knew about Fury and his infamous Paranoia, there was little chance that Fury would ever endorse him.
Hell, SHIELD was probably already scrambling for countermeasures against him, not that they would succeed. He had already been pushing his powers to their limits, not the TK but his spatial awareness. He didn't know how to train his TK anymore but spatial awareness was really easy to do.
He could now feasibly exert his powers up to a mile outside the Imprisoning curtain, that was what he had taken to calling the orange curtain around Manhattan. He could not exert more power even after gaining more distance in his spatial awareness but that was probably another limitation imposed on him.
He could see that Bruce was now doing Yoga, having found some tutorials on the internet and while the image of Bruce Banner doing clumsy yoga would forever be imprinted in his mind, he was more concerned with the way Bruce was bending in ways that would have been more realistic for an Olympic Gymnast, without any visible effort, like…at all.
It would seem that becoming the Hulk did grant him some benefits in his non-transformed state as well. He had witnessed his gym sessions as well and aside from some light sweating, he had not struggled even after lifting all the weights he had access to, despite never being one for physical stuff in university.
So, slightly enhanced strength and flexibility, even in his base form. Good to know. Maybe he could train to alter between both states as a powered and a less powered state. Something to tell him once the Ancient One finally comes back from wherever the hell she went to.
Apparently, it was one of her few obligations that she had to fulfill and even Demon Lords abide by it as the attacks cease this time of the year. He was curious about it but he knew that not having any aptitude for Sorcery would mean that he would be pretty unaware of most things in that space.
Hmm. His attention was perked as he once again sensed a convoy of blacked-out SUVs heading his way. He peered deeper into the car and…
"Well well well, look who's coming to meet little ol' me," He whistled out loud as the stoic face of one Nick one-eyed Fury came to him through his powers.
Damn, he was hoping to meet Coulson at best, not the head honcho himself. Well, no time like the present then.
He was curious as to how they would talk. He sure as hell was not going to go there personally. He was not stupid.
Probably to the SHIELD safehouse then?
Apparently not, he thought to himself as he watched Fury enter the biggest precinct nearby. Apparently, they were all informed about it because the precinct was nearly empty, save for some detective who, after handing over the keys to Coulson, fled from the scene as well.
Now that he focused, he found that the entire building had been evacuated completely.
Well, there was no need to do that. They could have communicated over long distances, even in his car if need be.
But now that he had done all this, it would be remiss on his part if he didn't give Fury something of a show as well.
He watched, after ordering lunch ofcourse (Chinese today), as Fury entered the precinct and after standing in the middle of a bunch of tables that had all signs of being hastily arranged, he put his hand on his waist as he turned around and kept looking at Coulson with an eyebrow raised.
In return, Coulson just kept looking at him with the same placid smile plastered on his face. Fury sighed and took a seat, Coulson choosing to stand.
Fury's team, meanwhile, spread far through the building and even perched on top of the nearby buildings, armed with snipers.
"Oooh, scary," he scoffed to himself as he chose to finally make an appearance, metaphorically speaking.
Right outside the building, a huge stack of paper rims was dropped, right in front of an agent standing guarding on the curb, completely startling him. He yelped as he pulled his gun and after finding that it was just paper, he looked up and around, speaking furiously in his comms.
In his office, he giggled after seeing the scare they experienced from just…paper. It was hilarious.
Even more was the reaction the agent made when the stack of paper seemingly exploded, flinging shredded pieces of paper in every direction. He yelped as he drew his firearm and actually shot paper!
He could see every member of Fury's team furiously looking for something, someone. Well, he gave them one.
The shredded paper that had been strewn all around seemingly came back to life as it all began accumulating right in front of the precinct door. Slowly, bit by bit, all the shredded paper was gathered until a distinctly human-shaped man, made of paper, was standing right at the door.
In the middle of the chaos that was snipers taking aim at, once again, paper, they had not noticed a small phone he had slipped into the headpiece of his paper avatar. That was programmed with text-to-speech software.
All he had to do was type in the required text using his powers, from a distance, so that the blunder from his previous encounter with SHIELD agents doesn't happen again.
The noise he made using his powers was horrendous to even listen to and that made him feel a little guilty when he thought that agent to be a coward for being so afraid of mere paper.
The scene of a paper head giving out that voice, especially since the words would have been somewhat legible, would have sent anyone packing.
Although…
He made the show of looking around and waving at all the snipers and agents stationed around since they were not taking any overt actions against him. Of Course, the snipers were still completely aimed at him but the triggers were not yet pressed, so he counted that as a win.
It would seem that someone from the inside had ordered everyone else to stand down for the moment, probably Coulson.
After waving at the sixth sniper located two buildings away, he turned around and walked straight through the door, as if it didn't exist at all. He did so by having the pieces of paper slide through the gaps underneath and on the sides of the door before reforming on the other side.
Almost immediately, he came face to face with Coulson who was obviously wearing his signature smile.
"Welcome. Would it be safe to assume that it is not the real you and just a puppet?"
He inclined the puppet's head and said, through the phone of course, which too had slid through the slit below the door. Somehow, the door had that big of a gap between them for some reason.
"Yes, Agent Coulson. It would hardly be wise to come here personally. After all, I am quite aware of SHIELD's reputation,"
"Oh, really?" Came an amused voice from behind Coulson.
Coulson neatly slid out of his way and after nodding politely at Coulson, "he" made his way over to Fury who was sitting on a chair with a small plastic table in front of him.
"Of Course. I might not know much but I do know that SHIELD is definitely not to be trifled with," he said as his paper avatar slowly sat on the chair. He made the avatar cross his legs as he looked at Fury who maintained a stoic glare at the paper avatar.
Meanwhile, back in his office, he was laughing, clutching his stomach as he saw that all these people were on edge, simply because of…paper.
Man, he was hilarious. It was too bad that they simply weren't able to appreciate or understand his supreme sense of humour.
"And the US Army? Are they not on your list of not being trifled with? After all, you are harboring a fugitive of theirs. Quite an important fugitive too,"
"Allegedly, Director Fury. All allegedly. You have no proof and more importantly, no real person to convict," He said airily as he made the paper man lean back into the chair.
Let's see what Fury has to say for him.
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
A/N - I saw the Deadpool movie and hot damn, what a movie!
I hope that the execs at Disney see the success this movie brought them and finally give the team the creative freedom to do as they see fit.
I mean, half a billion in the opening weekend!
This feels like much more of a comeback for the MCU than RDJ's supposed comeback.
Thanks for reading!
Peace out!
Chapter 30 : Inklings of Deal Made!
IdleMuse0307
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2021
- Messages
- 362
- Likes received
- 10,011
Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.
The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 30 [December 2008]
Evacuated Police precinct
–Axle Riddle–
It was quite funny to see Fury narrow his one eye and gnash his teeth as he bluntly threw all of his cards right into the dustbin. What he was saying was true. There was no real proof that he had been the one responsible for hiding away Banner and more importantly, they didn't even know who he was.
Basically, they were trying to pin a crime that they could not trace on a person they knew they couldn't find, not without said person giving themselves up voluntarily. That was not going to happen.
Visibly gathering his thoughts, then Fury spat out, "What do you want, then? You contacted us for a reason and I still haven't thanked you for the treatment you gave my agents,"
Ah, he snickered internally as Fury emphasizes the word thanked, so much so that he believed his gum had grown weaker simply due to the current gnashing session.
He then went to work, typing on the phone screen. He was sure by now that Fury and Coulson had caught onto the fact that text-to-voice speech software was being used here, and a very crappy one at that, but it was not like he cared one bit about that.
"Ah, that. You see, Fury, say, hypothetically, I was harboring a fugitive wanted by someone high up in the Army. How would I go about getting a pardon for the wronged fellow? Wronged green fellow,"
"So he is with you," Fury said as he shook his head and leaned back in his chair, finally having something to pin down on the Invisible Man. "Look, the matter has reached up to the President and Ross has somehow convinced him that he will bring back Banner without any bloodshed, which is a fat load of bullshit, everyone knows that. But the President cares about the results and since he has deniability now, he has given Ross blanket approval to use whatever resources he can to reel in Banner,"
Uh-oh. That did not bode well, for anybody.
"Those resources are not just limited to government resources, by the way. I have credible information that Ross is monitoring all communications with his daughter. I am sure he won't hesitate to use her as well. So, be careful about her. Now…" Fury said as he leaned forward, his eyepatch creating a small shadow-esque effect on his face, which was very cool if he was being honest.
"I want to ask you one thing. Are you an alien?" Fury asked him.
Wha- He reeled back in shock at his apartment and after a moment, so did his paper avatar as Fury accused him of being an alien.
"What? God no, Fury. I am a human, born a human, and will still remain a human until the day I die, at which point I will turn into a pixie and haunt you for the rest of your days on God's green Earth,"
Ha, it was funny to see vein after vein pop up on Fury's forehead as the phone spoke out the things he had typed in. Especially, after the Pixie part, Fury looked just about ready to strangle him. Well, this has been fun but he still had some work to do.
After all, he was the one who had made first contact, and also, SHIELD was a ridiculously useful ally, at least until it went kaput due to HYDRA's schemes.
'Alright, let's be serious for a moment," His paper avatar said as the very air in the precinct changed for a bit. Coulson was dragged much closer to the table. He took that sudden change remarkably well as he fluidly sat down on the chair that was also dragged in.
All the curtains and doors closed off on their own. For a moment, all Fury and Coulson must have heard was the sound of a high pitched wind movement before it all went…silent.
After that, dozens of bugs, planted all over the precinct, the chairs and tables, some from Coulson's and Fury's suits were brought in front of them, floating on top of the table before they were crushed into fine powder.
"Now, we can talk without the risk of anybody else listening in," He said as his paper avatar leaned forward on the table, the table groaning in protest due to the sudden weight he applied on it, from a distance. In his opinion, it helped showcase the seriousness of the situation.
"What did you do?" Coulson asked calmly even though he could see his gaze swivelling from one side to the other, trying to make sense of the sudden bout of silence they were plunged into.
"Well, Agent Coulson, this is the curtain of silence. It's something I learned to do rather early in my career. It is a way of creating a soundproof barrier, such that no sound can come in or out. I do it by manipulating the very air around us. Anyway, that is not the main topic for the day,"
"Fury," He pinned Fury with a look who glared back defiantly, "Yes, Dr.Bruce Robert Banner, is under my protection. Not just because of the litany of crimes that have been committed in bringing him to heel but also because of the sheer damage it would cause if Ross got his hands on him. You, of all people, should know what Ross is planning to do and what the President is tacitly allowing,"
"Yes, I am aware that Ross wants his own little army of Hulks and that is not going to end well for anybody but the matter stands, Banner is a fugitive and Ross will come for him. He believes that-"
"Let him come, then,"
"What?" Fury's confused Pikachu face was cute, if you could consider a 50 year old man with a permanent scowl on his face…cute.
"Let Ross come then. He can come with all the weapons he can get but let me make one thing very clear, he will not be seeing Bruce Banner, green skin or not. I will obliterate his forces the moment they step foot in my city."
It was quite clear for everybody to see that his words rang true in that sense. Nothing that Ross could bring forth would be able to stand in his way. Besides, what was the President going to do? Authorise The Army to bring military grade ordinance into a heavily populated residential area, where billionaires and millionaires resided aplenty?
His rating would tank so hard, that he would be scrambling to make amends.
"Threat of military warfare and possible treason charges aside, what do you want us to do? We are quite aware of your strength but even you must realise that fighting should be the absolute last option," Coulson interjected, seeing that Fury was about to explode on the spot.
"Ah, you would be right, Agent Coulson. I want nothing but peace but Ross wants Banner and that is not something I can permit to happen, in the name of continued peace, of course. So, I scheduled this meeting in hopes that you get help get Ross off Banner's back, and in return, we could come up with some sort of deal that would be mutually beneficial,"
Fury jumped in here, "Assuming we even do something about Ross, what sort of deal are we talking about here?"
He rolled his eyes from far away. Trust Fury to jump onto that part almost immediately.
"Look Fury, I am sure your analysts already told you this but I am very limited in the areas I can act in. So, anything that I would have to do, would have to be in NYC. In the future, my range might increase but as of now, I am limited in this area. So, keeping that in mind, what sort of deal can you cut me here?"
"We are quite aware of that. For now, we will see what we can do about Ross at the moment. As for the deal…." Coulson said and then turned to Fury, throwing the ball in his court.
Fury mulled it over for a moment before saying, "Fine. I can't make any promises, not without anything tangible to show to POTUS but once we have something solid, I can see about that pardon. For the moment, Coulson will be your primary contact. He will contact you once we have any update about the situation,"
Fury stood up, as did Coulson. He also made his paper avatar stand up and snap his fingers, dispelling the curtain of silence and opening up all the windows and doors, revealing the veritable storm of crushed bullets that the agents outside must have peppered the doors with.
Fury and Coulson looked incensed as he simply made the paper avatar wave at them before it was dispelled in a shower of paper spaghetti, revealing the primitive phone used to generate the speech.
Back in his office, he thought about the meeting that had happened just now. He was hoping to get something concrete from Fury but it made sense, he hadn't given them anything to work on, so far.
He would have to–
His thoughts screeched to a halt as he felt the wards around the New York Sanctum pulse before the form of Ancient One, standing on the rooftop, tending to the garden was made visible to his spatial awareness.
Well, it was about damn time.
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 30 [December 2008]
Evacuated Police precinct
–Axle Riddle–
It was quite funny to see Fury narrow his one eye and gnash his teeth as he bluntly threw all of his cards right into the dustbin. What he was saying was true. There was no real proof that he had been the one responsible for hiding away Banner and more importantly, they didn't even know who he was.
Basically, they were trying to pin a crime that they could not trace on a person they knew they couldn't find, not without said person giving themselves up voluntarily. That was not going to happen.
Visibly gathering his thoughts, then Fury spat out, "What do you want, then? You contacted us for a reason and I still haven't thanked you for the treatment you gave my agents,"
Ah, he snickered internally as Fury emphasizes the word thanked, so much so that he believed his gum had grown weaker simply due to the current gnashing session.
He then went to work, typing on the phone screen. He was sure by now that Fury and Coulson had caught onto the fact that text-to-voice speech software was being used here, and a very crappy one at that, but it was not like he cared one bit about that.
"Ah, that. You see, Fury, say, hypothetically, I was harboring a fugitive wanted by someone high up in the Army. How would I go about getting a pardon for the wronged fellow? Wronged green fellow,"
"So he is with you," Fury said as he shook his head and leaned back in his chair, finally having something to pin down on the Invisible Man. "Look, the matter has reached up to the President and Ross has somehow convinced him that he will bring back Banner without any bloodshed, which is a fat load of bullshit, everyone knows that. But the President cares about the results and since he has deniability now, he has given Ross blanket approval to use whatever resources he can to reel in Banner,"
Uh-oh. That did not bode well, for anybody.
"Those resources are not just limited to government resources, by the way. I have credible information that Ross is monitoring all communications with his daughter. I am sure he won't hesitate to use her as well. So, be careful about her. Now…" Fury said as he leaned forward, his eyepatch creating a small shadow-esque effect on his face, which was very cool if he was being honest.
"I want to ask you one thing. Are you an alien?" Fury asked him.
Wha- He reeled back in shock at his apartment and after a moment, so did his paper avatar as Fury accused him of being an alien.
"What? God no, Fury. I am a human, born a human, and will still remain a human until the day I die, at which point I will turn into a pixie and haunt you for the rest of your days on God's green Earth,"
Ha, it was funny to see vein after vein pop up on Fury's forehead as the phone spoke out the things he had typed in. Especially, after the Pixie part, Fury looked just about ready to strangle him. Well, this has been fun but he still had some work to do.
After all, he was the one who had made first contact, and also, SHIELD was a ridiculously useful ally, at least until it went kaput due to HYDRA's schemes.
'Alright, let's be serious for a moment," His paper avatar said as the very air in the precinct changed for a bit. Coulson was dragged much closer to the table. He took that sudden change remarkably well as he fluidly sat down on the chair that was also dragged in.
All the curtains and doors closed off on their own. For a moment, all Fury and Coulson must have heard was the sound of a high pitched wind movement before it all went…silent.
After that, dozens of bugs, planted all over the precinct, the chairs and tables, some from Coulson's and Fury's suits were brought in front of them, floating on top of the table before they were crushed into fine powder.
"Now, we can talk without the risk of anybody else listening in," He said as his paper avatar leaned forward on the table, the table groaning in protest due to the sudden weight he applied on it, from a distance. In his opinion, it helped showcase the seriousness of the situation.
"What did you do?" Coulson asked calmly even though he could see his gaze swivelling from one side to the other, trying to make sense of the sudden bout of silence they were plunged into.
"Well, Agent Coulson, this is the curtain of silence. It's something I learned to do rather early in my career. It is a way of creating a soundproof barrier, such that no sound can come in or out. I do it by manipulating the very air around us. Anyway, that is not the main topic for the day,"
"Fury," He pinned Fury with a look who glared back defiantly, "Yes, Dr.Bruce Robert Banner, is under my protection. Not just because of the litany of crimes that have been committed in bringing him to heel but also because of the sheer damage it would cause if Ross got his hands on him. You, of all people, should know what Ross is planning to do and what the President is tacitly allowing,"
"Yes, I am aware that Ross wants his own little army of Hulks and that is not going to end well for anybody but the matter stands, Banner is a fugitive and Ross will come for him. He believes that-"
"Let him come, then,"
"What?" Fury's confused Pikachu face was cute, if you could consider a 50 year old man with a permanent scowl on his face…cute.
"Let Ross come then. He can come with all the weapons he can get but let me make one thing very clear, he will not be seeing Bruce Banner, green skin or not. I will obliterate his forces the moment they step foot in my city."
It was quite clear for everybody to see that his words rang true in that sense. Nothing that Ross could bring forth would be able to stand in his way. Besides, what was the President going to do? Authorise The Army to bring military grade ordinance into a heavily populated residential area, where billionaires and millionaires resided aplenty?
His rating would tank so hard, that he would be scrambling to make amends.
"Threat of military warfare and possible treason charges aside, what do you want us to do? We are quite aware of your strength but even you must realise that fighting should be the absolute last option," Coulson interjected, seeing that Fury was about to explode on the spot.
"Ah, you would be right, Agent Coulson. I want nothing but peace but Ross wants Banner and that is not something I can permit to happen, in the name of continued peace, of course. So, I scheduled this meeting in hopes that you get help get Ross off Banner's back, and in return, we could come up with some sort of deal that would be mutually beneficial,"
Fury jumped in here, "Assuming we even do something about Ross, what sort of deal are we talking about here?"
He rolled his eyes from far away. Trust Fury to jump onto that part almost immediately.
"Look Fury, I am sure your analysts already told you this but I am very limited in the areas I can act in. So, anything that I would have to do, would have to be in NYC. In the future, my range might increase but as of now, I am limited in this area. So, keeping that in mind, what sort of deal can you cut me here?"
"We are quite aware of that. For now, we will see what we can do about Ross at the moment. As for the deal…." Coulson said and then turned to Fury, throwing the ball in his court.
Fury mulled it over for a moment before saying, "Fine. I can't make any promises, not without anything tangible to show to POTUS but once we have something solid, I can see about that pardon. For the moment, Coulson will be your primary contact. He will contact you once we have any update about the situation,"
Fury stood up, as did Coulson. He also made his paper avatar stand up and snap his fingers, dispelling the curtain of silence and opening up all the windows and doors, revealing the veritable storm of crushed bullets that the agents outside must have peppered the doors with.
Fury and Coulson looked incensed as he simply made the paper avatar wave at them before it was dispelled in a shower of paper spaghetti, revealing the primitive phone used to generate the speech.
Back in his office, he thought about the meeting that had happened just now. He was hoping to get something concrete from Fury but it made sense, he hadn't given them anything to work on, so far.
He would have to–
His thoughts screeched to a halt as he felt the wards around the New York Sanctum pulse before the form of Ancient One, standing on the rooftop, tending to the garden was made visible to his spatial awareness.
Well, it was about damn time.
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
Chapter 31 : A quiet filler chapter
IdleMuse0307
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2021
- Messages
- 362
- Likes received
- 10,011
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 31 [December 2008]
Evacuated Police precinct
–Nick Fury–
As he watched the paper human disperse into shreds of paper in front of him, his mind ran a mile a minute as he tried to process the outcome of this meeting. Sure, it might not have seemed that nothing of note happened in the meeting but for him, this was the most important meeting of the year.
Getting to know the tone of the so-called Invisible Man of Manhattan was so much more important than dealing with Ross. Oh, he could take care of Ross in a hundred different ways this second but that was never in question. Convincing the President might have taken longer if he didn't have something far more attractive on the plate in front of him.
The level of power and control that the Invisible Man had shown so far meant that he was the strongest being on the planet, if not tied with Banner when he was mean and green.
Plus, he was somehow capable of being damn near omniscient in a very large area, making him the literal definition of a perfect combatant. He was sure that if the Invisible Man made a move or was deployed in a city, he could bring that city's crime rate down to damn near zero in a day or two. The less said about military zones the better.
No, he could milk it a hundred different ways and while the President himself was not thrilled to be relying on "freaks" as he likes to call them, he is pragmatic enough to realise that they could be game changers on their own, if not that then at least powerful deterrents.
"Coulson," He called out for his trusted right hand man. He was the only one he could trust with a matter of this magnitude. Coulson looked back from where he was coordinating with the dozen teams that had arrived with him to protect him and had failed hilariously.
"Yes, sir,"
"We are moving out. Bag everything," He ordered as he sat on his chair, refusing to work on anything lest that man read it using his bullshit powers.
He had not even noticed as they continued to pepper the building with bullets and even battering rams, and not just any battering rams, SHIELD issue battering rams were capable of breaking open bunker doors if given enough time.
Somehow, that man, in addition to stopping crime in the city, had maintained a blanket of silence around them, so much so that the astronomical amount of noise made by the bullets and the battering ram went unheard by either of them.
Also, his eye narrowed as he went past Coulson, and climbed down the stairs. He looked back and his eye widened in astonishment as he could see that, despite the hundreds or even thousands of bullet shells lying around the building, there was not even a single mark on the building.
Goddamn.
What were the agents thinking, peppering the entire building with such heavy firepower? He knew he shouldn't have brought the STRIKE team with him, they were always a little heavy handed where they didn't need to be. Well, nothing a little stint in Antarctica can't fix.
"We're ready to move out, sir," Coulson said as he boarded the car, the same as him.
"Good. Let's go. We have a lot to do, today," He said and rested his eyes. There was scant little he could say in the domain of the Invisible Man that would not immediately be picked up by his prying gaze.
Honestly, he couldn't even begin to understand just how someone could perceive an entire city all at once. Even now, he watched as news reporters covered every single one of the Invisible Man's exploits, starting from that cult of his.
Thankfully, They didn't even have to step in to do anything to contain them. He had come forward himself and explained that he was no god and was just another human who was somehow blessed with powers.
His wording had been dissected multiple times with different teams of analysts at every single three-letter agency in the country. Without ever seeing the man or his body in action, there were limitations in what the analysts could do but they were sure that he was someone with heroic inclinations, obviously.
The cult was rather non violent and the gatherings were boosting the economy immensely, even though most of them went back home disappointed because the powers of the Invisible Man were pretty limited in what they could do.
Sure, applying CPR on a dying man could be done with ease but the same could not be said for terminal diseases.
Not even he has that level of fine control to target individual cells, at least that is what the analysts back home told him.
He had read some of the reports regarding the city and it was safe to say that Manhattan was currently swimming in money. It was the closest thing to a utopia on US soil at the moment.
Crime rates? Damn near zero, Traffic? Non existential. Hunger? Thing of the past with all the kitchens he had made the Mayor open and operate. Drugs? Incinerated before they could be brought into the city proper, at least the ones brought in by drug dealers.
Apparently, individual recreational use was permitted by him but that was non consequential. According to the reports, even the very air was being purified somehow but that might just be the consequence of him helping the municipal workers in cleaning the city.
Oh yeah, he was making sure that the city ran like clockwork, and in a sense, he was running the city. The city was more under his control than the Mayor's or even the President's.
He wasn't sure why there was not more uproar over the fact that a completely unknown all powerful entity had essentially taken over a major part of the most populous city of the United States.
Sure, the economic and societal benefits he brought with him were enormous, to the point that most other Mayors would sell their left nut for him to come and settle in their city. But the people must realise the consequences of giving that much power to an unchecked party.
It might be his paranoia speaking but the way the Invisible Man termed his powers were growing didn't sit right with him. Already, they had seen his effective range increase, though the more he tried to act out of Manhattan, the weaker his powers were.
He resorted to more creative uses of his power that allowed him to achieve similar effects while using far less power, as opposed to just using overwhelming brute force, while in Manhattan. He had seen him just lift 3 fully loaded semis and set them on their way out of the city while snuffing out a fire that had broken out on the other side of the city.
Oh yeah, he could not just move stuff with his mind, he could also somehow control the very air to devastating effects, the Curtain of Silence came to mind.
He had snuffed the very air out of those flames, stopping them nearly instantly.
"Coulson, move everything important out of NYC HQ. I want a skeleton crew working here only. Contact all INDEX individuals and tell them to move out of the city. We don't want them to come into contact with the Invisible Man and for god's sake, figure out a better name for him,"
It might just be paranoia but he had a hunch that the Invisible Man was not going to remain confined to a specific part of the city for much longer. Already they had predicted that with the rate of expansion, he would cover the entire city of New York in two or three years, at most.
That was an uncomfortably short timeline. The higher ups might be satisfied that the new powerful variable was somehow limited to a small area that they could light up with fire whenever they felt like it but things would not be nearly as simple as that.
For one, the fine control that he had, along with the amount of power he could bring forth, it would be safe to say that nothing short of Tesseract-powered weapons would work against his powers and those too worked best against a target. What would they be shooting against if they didn't even know who they were supposed to fight?
The underground highway that spanned the entire length of Manhattan came to mind. Doing something like that would have taken billions of dollars and an absolute eternity to make. He did that in what? 20 days.
"Sir, about Dr.Banner?" Coulson's question brought him out of his introspection. He opened his eye to see that they already exited his estimated range and even the caution zone.
HE sighed, "What can we realistically do, Coulson? We will just have to warn Ross and tell him not to come guns blazing into a residential area. If he does it anyway, well, that bout of stupidity will be on him. Meanwhile, I'll report everything to the President. Let's see what he thinks about this and then, we'll go from there,"
"Alright," Coulson said as he opened the door for him to leave. Coulson's new assignment was for him to stay here long term and monitor the situation. Technically, Ross would not do something to jeopardize civilian lives but the madman could not be predicted.
"Coulson, stay safe," He warned as the doors on the helicopter closed and he flew away to the airstrip, to go straight to DC.
He had a lot of work to do and more importantly, a lot of preparation to depose one of the most celebrated Generals of their time.
God, he could already feel the migraine coming.
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 31 [December 2008]
Evacuated Police precinct
–Nick Fury–
As he watched the paper human disperse into shreds of paper in front of him, his mind ran a mile a minute as he tried to process the outcome of this meeting. Sure, it might not have seemed that nothing of note happened in the meeting but for him, this was the most important meeting of the year.
Getting to know the tone of the so-called Invisible Man of Manhattan was so much more important than dealing with Ross. Oh, he could take care of Ross in a hundred different ways this second but that was never in question. Convincing the President might have taken longer if he didn't have something far more attractive on the plate in front of him.
The level of power and control that the Invisible Man had shown so far meant that he was the strongest being on the planet, if not tied with Banner when he was mean and green.
Plus, he was somehow capable of being damn near omniscient in a very large area, making him the literal definition of a perfect combatant. He was sure that if the Invisible Man made a move or was deployed in a city, he could bring that city's crime rate down to damn near zero in a day or two. The less said about military zones the better.
No, he could milk it a hundred different ways and while the President himself was not thrilled to be relying on "freaks" as he likes to call them, he is pragmatic enough to realise that they could be game changers on their own, if not that then at least powerful deterrents.
"Coulson," He called out for his trusted right hand man. He was the only one he could trust with a matter of this magnitude. Coulson looked back from where he was coordinating with the dozen teams that had arrived with him to protect him and had failed hilariously.
"Yes, sir,"
"We are moving out. Bag everything," He ordered as he sat on his chair, refusing to work on anything lest that man read it using his bullshit powers.
He had not even noticed as they continued to pepper the building with bullets and even battering rams, and not just any battering rams, SHIELD issue battering rams were capable of breaking open bunker doors if given enough time.
Somehow, that man, in addition to stopping crime in the city, had maintained a blanket of silence around them, so much so that the astronomical amount of noise made by the bullets and the battering ram went unheard by either of them.
Also, his eye narrowed as he went past Coulson, and climbed down the stairs. He looked back and his eye widened in astonishment as he could see that, despite the hundreds or even thousands of bullet shells lying around the building, there was not even a single mark on the building.
Goddamn.
What were the agents thinking, peppering the entire building with such heavy firepower? He knew he shouldn't have brought the STRIKE team with him, they were always a little heavy handed where they didn't need to be. Well, nothing a little stint in Antarctica can't fix.
"We're ready to move out, sir," Coulson said as he boarded the car, the same as him.
"Good. Let's go. We have a lot to do, today," He said and rested his eyes. There was scant little he could say in the domain of the Invisible Man that would not immediately be picked up by his prying gaze.
Honestly, he couldn't even begin to understand just how someone could perceive an entire city all at once. Even now, he watched as news reporters covered every single one of the Invisible Man's exploits, starting from that cult of his.
Thankfully, They didn't even have to step in to do anything to contain them. He had come forward himself and explained that he was no god and was just another human who was somehow blessed with powers.
His wording had been dissected multiple times with different teams of analysts at every single three-letter agency in the country. Without ever seeing the man or his body in action, there were limitations in what the analysts could do but they were sure that he was someone with heroic inclinations, obviously.
The cult was rather non violent and the gatherings were boosting the economy immensely, even though most of them went back home disappointed because the powers of the Invisible Man were pretty limited in what they could do.
Sure, applying CPR on a dying man could be done with ease but the same could not be said for terminal diseases.
Not even he has that level of fine control to target individual cells, at least that is what the analysts back home told him.
He had read some of the reports regarding the city and it was safe to say that Manhattan was currently swimming in money. It was the closest thing to a utopia on US soil at the moment.
Crime rates? Damn near zero, Traffic? Non existential. Hunger? Thing of the past with all the kitchens he had made the Mayor open and operate. Drugs? Incinerated before they could be brought into the city proper, at least the ones brought in by drug dealers.
Apparently, individual recreational use was permitted by him but that was non consequential. According to the reports, even the very air was being purified somehow but that might just be the consequence of him helping the municipal workers in cleaning the city.
Oh yeah, he was making sure that the city ran like clockwork, and in a sense, he was running the city. The city was more under his control than the Mayor's or even the President's.
He wasn't sure why there was not more uproar over the fact that a completely unknown all powerful entity had essentially taken over a major part of the most populous city of the United States.
Sure, the economic and societal benefits he brought with him were enormous, to the point that most other Mayors would sell their left nut for him to come and settle in their city. But the people must realise the consequences of giving that much power to an unchecked party.
It might be his paranoia speaking but the way the Invisible Man termed his powers were growing didn't sit right with him. Already, they had seen his effective range increase, though the more he tried to act out of Manhattan, the weaker his powers were.
He resorted to more creative uses of his power that allowed him to achieve similar effects while using far less power, as opposed to just using overwhelming brute force, while in Manhattan. He had seen him just lift 3 fully loaded semis and set them on their way out of the city while snuffing out a fire that had broken out on the other side of the city.
Oh yeah, he could not just move stuff with his mind, he could also somehow control the very air to devastating effects, the Curtain of Silence came to mind.
He had snuffed the very air out of those flames, stopping them nearly instantly.
"Coulson, move everything important out of NYC HQ. I want a skeleton crew working here only. Contact all INDEX individuals and tell them to move out of the city. We don't want them to come into contact with the Invisible Man and for god's sake, figure out a better name for him,"
It might just be paranoia but he had a hunch that the Invisible Man was not going to remain confined to a specific part of the city for much longer. Already they had predicted that with the rate of expansion, he would cover the entire city of New York in two or three years, at most.
That was an uncomfortably short timeline. The higher ups might be satisfied that the new powerful variable was somehow limited to a small area that they could light up with fire whenever they felt like it but things would not be nearly as simple as that.
For one, the fine control that he had, along with the amount of power he could bring forth, it would be safe to say that nothing short of Tesseract-powered weapons would work against his powers and those too worked best against a target. What would they be shooting against if they didn't even know who they were supposed to fight?
The underground highway that spanned the entire length of Manhattan came to mind. Doing something like that would have taken billions of dollars and an absolute eternity to make. He did that in what? 20 days.
"Sir, about Dr.Banner?" Coulson's question brought him out of his introspection. He opened his eye to see that they already exited his estimated range and even the caution zone.
HE sighed, "What can we realistically do, Coulson? We will just have to warn Ross and tell him not to come guns blazing into a residential area. If he does it anyway, well, that bout of stupidity will be on him. Meanwhile, I'll report everything to the President. Let's see what he thinks about this and then, we'll go from there,"
"Alright," Coulson said as he opened the door for him to leave. Coulson's new assignment was for him to stay here long term and monitor the situation. Technically, Ross would not do something to jeopardize civilian lives but the madman could not be predicted.
"Coulson, stay safe," He warned as the doors on the helicopter closed and he flew away to the airstrip, to go straight to DC.
He had a lot of work to do and more importantly, a lot of preparation to depose one of the most celebrated Generals of their time.
God, he could already feel the migraine coming.
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
Shaedy Hoe
Thicc Shaedy
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2020
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- 2,100
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- 16,136
Is INDEX some sort of agency or something?
IdleMuse0307
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
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Index is a list of super powered people that SHIELD keeps tabs on. It also includes supernatural objects as well.
Hope that helps!
SquirtleTurtle
Getting sticky.
- Joined
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As always spies pick up on more than you think you let out.
Loving how pedantic Fury is with the name of the IM. He's very much make it make sense.
Loving how pedantic Fury is with the name of the IM. He's very much make it make sense.
Shaedy Hoe
Thicc Shaedy
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2020
- Messages
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- Likes received
- 16,136
It really did help. Thanks, man!
Chapter 32 : Bluberry Truffle Delight!
IdleMuse0307
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
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- 10,011
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 32 [December 2008]
–Axle Riddle–
Well, that was fun, at least Fury has something to base his conclusions on. He was sure that Fury would do something in exchange for an agreement regarding Banner and the continued participation of two strong people in the Avengers Initiative. He thought to himself as he whistled a jaunty tone to himself, on his way to the New York Sanctum. He had some stops to make before that though, since Master Drumm had wanted to try some new pastry store on the other side of the Sanctum.
No worries though, the Ancient One would wait for him, after all, she did always love tending to that rooftop garden of hers.
He knew there must be some special magical plants in that garden but all his attempts to ferret out the secret from master Drumm had ended in failure. He could not, for a second, believe that the garden of the Sanctum, something that was visited by the Ancient One the most after Kamar Taj, was completely mundane in nature.
There must be something in that garden. Magical Tea? Honey? Weed?
He did not know and at some point, he would have even barged into the dimensional protections around the garden to figure out, if only he didn't know what fate awaited him if he did that.
That was not a fun game you wanted to play with, the Ancient ONe's personal wards were legendary. Spoken in hushed tones because it traumatised everyone who tried to act brave and try their hands at it.
"Yes, One Blueberry Truffle Cake. To go, please," He smiled at the cashier as he handed in the exact amount of cash to her. His spatial awareness had flared out, telling him everything that had happened in the city,
Except…that was not really true anymore. Ever since his range increased to cover most of Manhattan, it had been as if something else in his mind that was unlocked. And that unlocked part was responsible for most of his actions these days.
If he didn't consciously think about it, he didn't even know what his second mind was doing, which was wild. He didn't know if it was using his TK to save some poor cat, stop an accident, or do something else. It was kinda disturbing at first, to see a somewhat autonomous mind construct using your powers but he had gotten used to it over the period of time.
Now, it was the most convenient thing. It protected him from any attacks and warned him if it could comprehend the attacks. Saving people was done on the fly as well, day and night. It didn't rest, at all. He got worried a while back and tried to shut it down for a bit, so it could rest and everything, and the ensuing headache it gave him, made him call in sick two days in a row.
Turns out, there was a reason the second mind was able to do something that he could not fathom doing himself. It was somehow designed for that and was incredibly efficient in what it could do.
For starters, it could not access his full power. No, if he had to guess, it could access about 50-60% of his TK, which was plenty once you take into account that even felling a building was not out of the question with that amount of power.
It also could not use his spatial awareness power beyond the curtain around Manhattan, which was suspicious but fine. He had to actively concentrate on most days to sense the outskirts of Manhattan and check in on how the soup kitchens were working.
He was expecting, not the worst, but certainly bad enough that he would have to raise the issue but, to his relief, everything was going as smoothly as it could. One day, just for fun, he made sure to make his presence in the kitchen known to everybody who worked there.
He made them all sit back down and relax for an hour as he took over everything. Food preparation, cooking, serving, cleaning, the whole schabang.
It probably served as a stark reminder for them to do their jobs properly and he wouldn't have to act in their stead. It was quite easy and if it meant that it stopped people from trying to take advantage of the most underprivileged section of society, then so be it.
"Master Drumm, I come with cake!" He beamed as he opened the Sanctum door, which recognised him now. No longer would he have to bear the humiliation of knocking on the door and waiting for someone on the other side to open it for him.
No, he could do it by himself now, thank you very much.
"I see that you are in great spirits, Mr.Riddle," Drumm said as he came into view, entering the large hallway through one of the zillion adjacent rooms, doing Vishaniti knows what.
"Must you throw that in my face? It's not my fault I don't have the knack for magic like you guys do," He pouted as the cake was dutifully floated over to Drumm who looked at him as if he was some unruly child and not someone who could snap a building in half with a thought.
"Like I have told you hundreds of times, Mr.Riddle, please handle food with care. Especially a delicacy such as this one. They only make this once a week and it is gone by the time I can finish my duties and reach the bakery," Drumm said as he, very carefully, went to the Sanctum Kitchen to store the cake.
"Do you need anything, Mr.Riddle?" Drumm asked him, not emphasising on the Mr. part of his name.
"Nah, I just came to see the Ancient One. Enjoy your cake, Drumm," he waved him off and headed up to the rooftop garden. Somehow, the door going out felt it had more protections than the one on the main door, at least from his fledgling vision of the Mystic Arts.
He had not told anyone about it but he could somewhat perceive magic using his spatial awareness now. Before, it was as if a void was created every time he tried to observe magic being used. Now, he could even see some enchantments and wards that had been laid down on some artifacts and the entire Sanctum itself.
Huh, in a way, the entire Sanctum itself was another artifact. An immeasurably precious one, but still an artifact.
"Hello Ancient One. Back from your work conference? All good I hope?" His mouth shot off as he saw her tend to her precious plants.
"Ah, Mr.Riddle, can't say that I have missed this part of you. And why yes, thank you for asking, the conference was good. Nothing outside the norm happened, which as you know, is extremely good in our profession. Oh, sorry, my profession," The Ancient One turned around and said with an amused look in her eye.
Her face remained stoic though. She had centuries to master her poker face, it was not as if he would have been able to read her face or even her body language.
"Yeah yeah, I know. Anywho, I wanted to talk to you about–"
"About the threat you have unwittingly invited near the Sanctum. I was wondering what triggered the red alarm, so much so that I had to rush back here instead of feasting on the delightfully light yet aromatic food of the Fae. No calories, only feels, you see,"
He did a double take at that last phrase of her, what slang was that? Wait, What? What threat? Red alarm?
The question must have been evident on his face as the Ancient One whipped out something and shoved it in his face. It was a metallic object which now showed dark red.
"It is something that allows transdimensional communication, even in the worst of interdimensional turbulences. It warned me about an incoming threat that the Sanctum faces. Red means energy levels surpassing most Asgardians, including their royalty," She continued.
She sighed upon seeing his confused doggy look, "Mr.Riddle, you have just brought in the avatar of the Rage into the city. After bringing him here, you have made him coop up in an apartment without any human contact. All Mr.Banner does is wake up, freshen up sometimes, scribble down his ideas of self-mutilation, eat, and then go to sleep. That is not healthy for anyone, let alone someone who is on the precipice of a mental breakdown. His weak mental state is a brewing pit to call in someone far worse than just Mr.Banner's alter ego,"
His eyes had widened the more she spoke, realising his mistake. But then he remembered why he had come here.
"That's why I came here, to you. You could take him, train him in the Arts, or at least help him gain control. Isn't that like your motto? Never turn down anyone who needs help. Well, Bruce needs your help very much, and quite frankly, so does the Earth," He laid his case in front of her.
"I can't bring him in Kamar Taj, for his patron would immediately notice it and try to attack it from within. Trust me, he is much safer being away from magic, at least until his mental state stabilises. His soul itself is raw as if recovering from a patched wound. I will see what I can do about him once his condition is not as volatile as it is now."
His shoulders slumped as he realized that she was not going to budge on the topic. Somehow, Banner was a danger to Kamar Taj and he didn't know why,
"Is there something you can do now? Some meditation method or an artifact for calming him down? Or something else?" He made the last ditch effort for Banner.
She shot him an amused look, "No such artifact exists, Mr.Riddle. Now, please make haste. If I am correct, you are going to be encountering multiple interested parties in the span of a week. It is certainly going to be eventful. Bye bye now…"
He blinked and found himself standing on the door of the Sanctum.
Damnit.
Taking advantage of magically disinclined people like that.
For Shame! For Shame!
Well, time to meet the Hulk 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, for upto 5 extra chapters.
The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 32 [December 2008]
–Axle Riddle–
Well, that was fun, at least Fury has something to base his conclusions on. He was sure that Fury would do something in exchange for an agreement regarding Banner and the continued participation of two strong people in the Avengers Initiative. He thought to himself as he whistled a jaunty tone to himself, on his way to the New York Sanctum. He had some stops to make before that though, since Master Drumm had wanted to try some new pastry store on the other side of the Sanctum.
No worries though, the Ancient One would wait for him, after all, she did always love tending to that rooftop garden of hers.
He knew there must be some special magical plants in that garden but all his attempts to ferret out the secret from master Drumm had ended in failure. He could not, for a second, believe that the garden of the Sanctum, something that was visited by the Ancient One the most after Kamar Taj, was completely mundane in nature.
There must be something in that garden. Magical Tea? Honey? Weed?
He did not know and at some point, he would have even barged into the dimensional protections around the garden to figure out, if only he didn't know what fate awaited him if he did that.
That was not a fun game you wanted to play with, the Ancient ONe's personal wards were legendary. Spoken in hushed tones because it traumatised everyone who tried to act brave and try their hands at it.
"Yes, One Blueberry Truffle Cake. To go, please," He smiled at the cashier as he handed in the exact amount of cash to her. His spatial awareness had flared out, telling him everything that had happened in the city,
Except…that was not really true anymore. Ever since his range increased to cover most of Manhattan, it had been as if something else in his mind that was unlocked. And that unlocked part was responsible for most of his actions these days.
If he didn't consciously think about it, he didn't even know what his second mind was doing, which was wild. He didn't know if it was using his TK to save some poor cat, stop an accident, or do something else. It was kinda disturbing at first, to see a somewhat autonomous mind construct using your powers but he had gotten used to it over the period of time.
Now, it was the most convenient thing. It protected him from any attacks and warned him if it could comprehend the attacks. Saving people was done on the fly as well, day and night. It didn't rest, at all. He got worried a while back and tried to shut it down for a bit, so it could rest and everything, and the ensuing headache it gave him, made him call in sick two days in a row.
Turns out, there was a reason the second mind was able to do something that he could not fathom doing himself. It was somehow designed for that and was incredibly efficient in what it could do.
For starters, it could not access his full power. No, if he had to guess, it could access about 50-60% of his TK, which was plenty once you take into account that even felling a building was not out of the question with that amount of power.
It also could not use his spatial awareness power beyond the curtain around Manhattan, which was suspicious but fine. He had to actively concentrate on most days to sense the outskirts of Manhattan and check in on how the soup kitchens were working.
He was expecting, not the worst, but certainly bad enough that he would have to raise the issue but, to his relief, everything was going as smoothly as it could. One day, just for fun, he made sure to make his presence in the kitchen known to everybody who worked there.
He made them all sit back down and relax for an hour as he took over everything. Food preparation, cooking, serving, cleaning, the whole schabang.
It probably served as a stark reminder for them to do their jobs properly and he wouldn't have to act in their stead. It was quite easy and if it meant that it stopped people from trying to take advantage of the most underprivileged section of society, then so be it.
"Master Drumm, I come with cake!" He beamed as he opened the Sanctum door, which recognised him now. No longer would he have to bear the humiliation of knocking on the door and waiting for someone on the other side to open it for him.
No, he could do it by himself now, thank you very much.
"I see that you are in great spirits, Mr.Riddle," Drumm said as he came into view, entering the large hallway through one of the zillion adjacent rooms, doing Vishaniti knows what.
"Must you throw that in my face? It's not my fault I don't have the knack for magic like you guys do," He pouted as the cake was dutifully floated over to Drumm who looked at him as if he was some unruly child and not someone who could snap a building in half with a thought.
"Like I have told you hundreds of times, Mr.Riddle, please handle food with care. Especially a delicacy such as this one. They only make this once a week and it is gone by the time I can finish my duties and reach the bakery," Drumm said as he, very carefully, went to the Sanctum Kitchen to store the cake.
"Do you need anything, Mr.Riddle?" Drumm asked him, not emphasising on the Mr. part of his name.
"Nah, I just came to see the Ancient One. Enjoy your cake, Drumm," he waved him off and headed up to the rooftop garden. Somehow, the door going out felt it had more protections than the one on the main door, at least from his fledgling vision of the Mystic Arts.
He had not told anyone about it but he could somewhat perceive magic using his spatial awareness now. Before, it was as if a void was created every time he tried to observe magic being used. Now, he could even see some enchantments and wards that had been laid down on some artifacts and the entire Sanctum itself.
Huh, in a way, the entire Sanctum itself was another artifact. An immeasurably precious one, but still an artifact.
"Hello Ancient One. Back from your work conference? All good I hope?" His mouth shot off as he saw her tend to her precious plants.
"Ah, Mr.Riddle, can't say that I have missed this part of you. And why yes, thank you for asking, the conference was good. Nothing outside the norm happened, which as you know, is extremely good in our profession. Oh, sorry, my profession," The Ancient One turned around and said with an amused look in her eye.
Her face remained stoic though. She had centuries to master her poker face, it was not as if he would have been able to read her face or even her body language.
"Yeah yeah, I know. Anywho, I wanted to talk to you about–"
"About the threat you have unwittingly invited near the Sanctum. I was wondering what triggered the red alarm, so much so that I had to rush back here instead of feasting on the delightfully light yet aromatic food of the Fae. No calories, only feels, you see,"
He did a double take at that last phrase of her, what slang was that? Wait, What? What threat? Red alarm?
The question must have been evident on his face as the Ancient One whipped out something and shoved it in his face. It was a metallic object which now showed dark red.
"It is something that allows transdimensional communication, even in the worst of interdimensional turbulences. It warned me about an incoming threat that the Sanctum faces. Red means energy levels surpassing most Asgardians, including their royalty," She continued.
She sighed upon seeing his confused doggy look, "Mr.Riddle, you have just brought in the avatar of the Rage into the city. After bringing him here, you have made him coop up in an apartment without any human contact. All Mr.Banner does is wake up, freshen up sometimes, scribble down his ideas of self-mutilation, eat, and then go to sleep. That is not healthy for anyone, let alone someone who is on the precipice of a mental breakdown. His weak mental state is a brewing pit to call in someone far worse than just Mr.Banner's alter ego,"
His eyes had widened the more she spoke, realising his mistake. But then he remembered why he had come here.
"That's why I came here, to you. You could take him, train him in the Arts, or at least help him gain control. Isn't that like your motto? Never turn down anyone who needs help. Well, Bruce needs your help very much, and quite frankly, so does the Earth," He laid his case in front of her.
"I can't bring him in Kamar Taj, for his patron would immediately notice it and try to attack it from within. Trust me, he is much safer being away from magic, at least until his mental state stabilises. His soul itself is raw as if recovering from a patched wound. I will see what I can do about him once his condition is not as volatile as it is now."
His shoulders slumped as he realized that she was not going to budge on the topic. Somehow, Banner was a danger to Kamar Taj and he didn't know why,
"Is there something you can do now? Some meditation method or an artifact for calming him down? Or something else?" He made the last ditch effort for Banner.
She shot him an amused look, "No such artifact exists, Mr.Riddle. Now, please make haste. If I am correct, you are going to be encountering multiple interested parties in the span of a week. It is certainly going to be eventful. Bye bye now…"
He blinked and found himself standing on the door of the Sanctum.
Damnit.
Taking advantage of magically disinclined people like that.
For Shame! For Shame!
Well, time to meet the Hulk 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, for upto 5 extra chapters.
Mastersgt
Well worn.
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So... Like the story, looking forward to more, but I just cannot help but want to rant a bit.
Since I found this story already having over 30 chapters posted, I am filling this out as I go. I will try to go back through and edit my own comments/rant as it progresses. Taking out resolved issues, not repeating myself, etc... but sorry if I miss anything.
Since I found this story already having over 30 chapters posted, I am filling this out as I go. I will try to go back through and edit my own comments/rant as it progresses. Taking out resolved issues, not repeating myself, etc... but sorry if I miss anything.
First off, this really does not read like a story about someone with the Sage Force. That, and the MC, consistently, comes across as a bit of an idiot.(no offense intended)(I say this, because he made that choice., to be nerfed in this specific way/manner, and then he went that extra step and never tried, to our knowledge, to push that boundary and unlock new powers that he SHOULD have... Well, that and his interactions with others... but that is called out in-story by others as being idiotic as well)
What makes the Sage Force so special is that it is focused on the MIND, and on INTELLIGIENCE. So the MC choosing to nerf himself down to just Telekinesis and Spatial Awareness, as well as his physical body being enhanced... is such a massive let-down that I can not properly express how I feel about it. The Sage Force is all about Telepathy, tapping into the Akashic Records or the Collective Mind/Knowledge of Reality to be able to learn/master things, skills, abilities, etc... If it relates to the mind, is something that can be learned/known, then it is in the domain of the Sage Force, and you better believe it will elevate you to being the MOST skilled individual with it.
So taking that in, and then having the MC just get telekinesis and spatial awareness tied to physical enhancements(that somehow do not also apply to the enhancement of his mind) is insane. (like having someone be given Inspired Inventor, and then nerfing it to be just the ability to use a Hammer.)
I honestly would have liked it better if the MC had willingly nerfed EVERYTHING to baseline human, with EVERYTHING gradually improving to being full-on Sage Force over time and with training, like a SEVERE Acclimation Drawback. Rather than just having Telekinesis and stuff.
Heck, I'd think that those other abilities would develop and grow over time just as his connection to the Sage Force grows and his Body becomes more saturated with its energy.
Then, even reduced to just those abilities, they themselves are also supremely nerfed. A (growing) radius of a block, a mile, etc... is SMALL, when you consider that the Sage Force would normally have you starting somewhere in the neighborhood of Planetary or even interplanetary range... Then tie that in with the MC lacking in control and needing to constantly train it...
It is difficult to actually gauge the MC's improvements, due to them changing. He goes from having a 5 mile radius in the beginning of November of 2007, to a 4 mile radius at the end of December. From being able to, if with difficulty, control/manipulate every individual rain drop in a storm in his range, to having difficulty maintaining focus of several guns/bullets/grenades during an attempt by Hydra to flush him out. This is despite his ability to just block the gun barrels or something. Even to the point of someone getting hurt, Sitwell getting away, and the MC "overextending" himself and passing out.
You have the MC being unrealistically confident in himself. Talking about being the most powerful telekinetic on the planet and stuff, which is patently false. This is a setting with Reality Warpers. Telepaths with Planetary range. etc...
Even if this setting is ONLY limited to the MCU, so we do not count anything from the Comics, the Phoenix Force, X-Men, etc... That would still include beings like the Inhumans, Deviants, Supernatural Creatures, etc...
Surprised that with MC being thought of as a ghost, that the Ghostbusters did not show up.(they do exist in Marvel)
I was also confused about why the MC chose to attack the ghost/spirit without any reason, when he had no idea who/what it was, and it had not done anything to show it was malevolent in any way.
The Ancient One points out that the MC is clearly a POWERFUL psychic, leaking psionic energy into the Astral plane while healing... And yet she taught him no skills/abilities to harness/control that? She taught him to control his Telekinesis, but no Astral Projection, no Telepathy, no Mind defenses(that we know of), nothing...
With the lack of regular updates/mentions of the MC's stats, we have no real idea of his growth... I mean, in less than a year he matched the Physique of a normal Asgardian and had a range of over 5 miles... Now year(s) later, you would think his Physical Stats would match Thor or something, eventually exceeding Thanos, the Eternals, everyone...
Not a fan of the whole "second mind" thing. As someone with a lot of experience with mental issues. I dislike them in my escapism/fiction. Espacially dissociative disorders and stuff like mpd.
What makes the Sage Force so special is that it is focused on the MIND, and on INTELLIGIENCE. So the MC choosing to nerf himself down to just Telekinesis and Spatial Awareness, as well as his physical body being enhanced... is such a massive let-down that I can not properly express how I feel about it. The Sage Force is all about Telepathy, tapping into the Akashic Records or the Collective Mind/Knowledge of Reality to be able to learn/master things, skills, abilities, etc... If it relates to the mind, is something that can be learned/known, then it is in the domain of the Sage Force, and you better believe it will elevate you to being the MOST skilled individual with it.
So taking that in, and then having the MC just get telekinesis and spatial awareness tied to physical enhancements(that somehow do not also apply to the enhancement of his mind) is insane. (like having someone be given Inspired Inventor, and then nerfing it to be just the ability to use a Hammer.)
I honestly would have liked it better if the MC had willingly nerfed EVERYTHING to baseline human, with EVERYTHING gradually improving to being full-on Sage Force over time and with training, like a SEVERE Acclimation Drawback. Rather than just having Telekinesis and stuff.
Heck, I'd think that those other abilities would develop and grow over time just as his connection to the Sage Force grows and his Body becomes more saturated with its energy.
Then, even reduced to just those abilities, they themselves are also supremely nerfed. A (growing) radius of a block, a mile, etc... is SMALL, when you consider that the Sage Force would normally have you starting somewhere in the neighborhood of Planetary or even interplanetary range... Then tie that in with the MC lacking in control and needing to constantly train it...
......................................Now to comments on the chapters as I read them......................................
It is difficult to actually gauge the MC's improvements, due to them changing. He goes from having a 5 mile radius in the beginning of November of 2007, to a 4 mile radius at the end of December. From being able to, if with difficulty, control/manipulate every individual rain drop in a storm in his range, to having difficulty maintaining focus of several guns/bullets/grenades during an attempt by Hydra to flush him out. This is despite his ability to just block the gun barrels or something. Even to the point of someone getting hurt, Sitwell getting away, and the MC "overextending" himself and passing out.
You have the MC being unrealistically confident in himself. Talking about being the most powerful telekinetic on the planet and stuff, which is patently false. This is a setting with Reality Warpers. Telepaths with Planetary range. etc...
Even if this setting is ONLY limited to the MCU, so we do not count anything from the Comics, the Phoenix Force, X-Men, etc... That would still include beings like the Inhumans, Deviants, Supernatural Creatures, etc...
Surprised that with MC being thought of as a ghost, that the Ghostbusters did not show up.(they do exist in Marvel)
I was also confused about why the MC chose to attack the ghost/spirit without any reason, when he had no idea who/what it was, and it had not done anything to show it was malevolent in any way.
The Ancient One points out that the MC is clearly a POWERFUL psychic, leaking psionic energy into the Astral plane while healing... And yet she taught him no skills/abilities to harness/control that? She taught him to control his Telekinesis, but no Astral Projection, no Telepathy, no Mind defenses(that we know of), nothing...
With the lack of regular updates/mentions of the MC's stats, we have no real idea of his growth... I mean, in less than a year he matched the Physique of a normal Asgardian and had a range of over 5 miles... Now year(s) later, you would think his Physical Stats would match Thor or something, eventually exceeding Thanos, the Eternals, everyone...
Not a fan of the whole "second mind" thing. As someone with a lot of experience with mental issues. I dislike them in my escapism/fiction. Espacially dissociative disorders and stuff like mpd.
Last edited:
Chapter 33 : Lovers United!
IdleMuse0307
Not too sore, are you?
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Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP.
The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 33 [December 2008]
–Axle Riddle–
Argh, This made no sense to him. How could he solve Banner's problems if the only two ways he knows how to refuse to do it at this point in time? Banner didn't need their help ten years down the line when he would already be somewhat well adjusted.
No, they needed to help him now and by now, he meant yesterday because that man was fraying at the edges. He could tell from the way he kept moving and muttering to himself erratically.
It was as if he had lost his anchor point, as his mental being was slowly being dragged straight down. He didn't even know what to do with the other problem that had taken root in his city. One that refused to leave, no matter how many times he made her coffee spill or the number of inconveniences he had subjected her to.
No, Betty Ross was exactly someone General Ross could have sired. Headstrong, stubborn, fiercely persistent, and somehow, still good enough that he was still considering letting them meet.
Ah, what the hell, it was not as if Ross would try and use his own daughter as bait, right?
Right?
….
…
Ah, if he found them, he found them. He would have to go through him first and what was better than stopping the stereotypical villain from breaking up two lovebirds, one of whom had some incurable oddity that was trying to break them apart from each other?
He saw that Ms.Betty was having a New York style pizza slice and walking around Central Park. No, she was not walking around Central Park, she was walking towards something and that was the daily congregation they held in his name.
Oh god, please not that damned thing again. He had flat out told them that he was just a human who gained these powers by happenstance and he would not be taking any personal requests, not that most of the requests were ever in his power to fulfill anyway.
He gently nudged Betty to stop and stop she did, her eyes widening as she looked all around her, trying to spot the person who might have poked her. Her eyes then widened to saucer like proportions as she must have realised what had happened to her.
He kept nudging her, showing her the direction to walk to, eventually leading her into a not crowded part of CEntral Park. He then cocooned her entire body and just for safety, enclosed her in a curtain of silence as well, subduing all her sonic attacks in the form of the scared screams everybody would have heard, as he flew her to Bruce's apartment. Now, someone might say that flying an entire human being through the air at breakneck speeds was bound to catch attention, right?
To them, he would say: Wrong! It would have caught attention if it hadn't already happened all the time in the city. He checked in on his second mind and what do you know, they were lifting another thing in the air right now.
Only right now, it was a chopper with a failed engine making an emergency landing nearby, with both the pilot and the reporter being very excited about the entire thing for some reason. God, it was as if people did not care about their safety at all, so assured in his presence.
May the Vishanti help this city once he leaves. Well, something for future Axle to think about. God, the reporter was even reporting live on her camera about the entire thing.
Ugh, he disengaged from his second mind and focused on Betty as she landed right into Bruce's apartment through the window that had opened up just in time for her to make the surprise entry into her lover's home and then closed up after she was safely inside.
The look on Bruce's face as he looked at Betty and confirmed that she was real was equal parts sad and happy. He must have been so alone, so lonely. At Least he was safe here.
"Well, time to give them the privacy," He thought to himself before getting the bagel and leaving for his office, whistling a jaunty tone. He was oddly full of confidence today.
He didn't know why and didn't particularly care about it but he was of the opinion that today was going to go swimmingly, mostly because he had done the good deed of the day, in addition to the hundreds of good deeds that he does on the go.
Ross was a concern, yes, but not as much of a concern as the Ancient One was concerned about something happening due to Bruce's mental health.
Stark International stock was still plummeting. He didn't know what TOny was doing but he had not yet made the announcement regarding being Iron Man, even after he had already seen the news yesterday about an accident at the Arc Reactor facility back in LA.
That meant, presumably, that Stane was dead and Iron Man was already born. Tony had gone through his first betrayal and had learned some lessons, hopefully. It also meant that Tony was now going to be using the poisoning Palladium in his Arc Reactor. Well, he might have tried to help or warn him about it only that Tony Stark lived all the way over to the West Coast, which was far out of his….range.
Good Lord, speak of the devil and the devil is here.
Tony Stark, along with Happy Hogan, had somehow entered Manhattan in a limousine, followed by two SUVs full of armed bodyguards.
As if that wasn't enough, the Iron Man suit, hollow as it may be, was hovering right at the edge of his boundary. Not the boundary of Manhattan but the boundary of his Spatial awareness.
That was scarily accurate and he was sure that Jarvis must have played a crucial role in it, predicting the rate at which his awareness range grew and staying just out of it by just that much. He was somewhat off but he could not be faulted for that.
Even he himself didn't know how his powers advanced, just that they came with practice, and due to his second mind working all the time in the background, he couldn't really predict the rate at which his powers grew.
His pace quickened as he hastily made for his office and then promptly stumbled on himself as he watched Tony's convoy, after making a quick stop to get Tony a cheeseburger, headed straight towards his office. Well, it could be something else but he didn't want anything to look suspicious so he slowly, normally, made his way to his office.
"Hi! Good morning. Morning, Steve. Morning, Scarlet. Morning, Sarah," He greeted everyone and headed straight into his office. Most of them waved back at him, their smiles tinged with hesitation and uncertainty.
Well, since most of them didn't exactly know what he did in the office and he was given a corner office to boot, they were very curious but since he was mostly out of reach for them, they had resorted to his secretary but even she didn't know what he did so they were all kind of awkward around him. He tried to mingle but now was not the time to do that because, Tony Stark just alighted from his car and was entering the lobby of his office building, with his entourage behind him.
God, he was here because of the shares, wasn't he?
Oh yeah, he, or rather, his backers, collectively owned about 10% of Stark International's stocks right now. While it would not be visible to someone who was doing a cursory search since it was all held in different trusts, financial entities, and even in different countries but for someone like Stark? It was child's play to figure out who was behind all the buying up of his company's shares.
The only reason they were able to buy so much was because for one, SI's stock had been tumbling for a while now and two, he had more investors now. As it turned out, a lot of the old fogies had families worth billions just hiding away in that exiled mountain. He had made generous use of that money to buy up even more of SI's stock and Tony, as busy as he was, was never the wiser about it.
Yup, Tony just exited the elevator and was heading straight towards him. Well, he is probably wiser now.
His entourage stayed outside but Happy Hogan led Tony straight to his office. He stood up from his chair, trying his best to portray a surprised expression when Tony Stark, all but barged into his office.
Tony's face was bruised in places and his entire body felt as if he had just come out of a warzone, technically, he had but that was months ago.
"Mr.Stark, what can I do for you?" He put his best smile forward and greeted him, but not with a handshake, he did not want to put it back down awkwardly while Tony ignored it.
That would be….uncool.
"Uh-huh. Axle, was it? Mind telling me how some wet behind the ears kid somehow controls a tenth of my company?"
Well, so much for subtlety. It was his fault, really, to expect something as subtle as small talk before getting to the big part from someone like Tony Stark who represented more of a hammer than a scalpel.
He sighed, "What do you want, MR. Stark? I can assure you that I have not broken any law in acquiring your company's shares. So, what warrants this personal visit?"
Tony's smile was all teeth as he replied, "Well, Mr.Axle, how about we make a deal, right here and now?"
Well, that was not good.
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 33 [December 2008]
–Axle Riddle–
Argh, This made no sense to him. How could he solve Banner's problems if the only two ways he knows how to refuse to do it at this point in time? Banner didn't need their help ten years down the line when he would already be somewhat well adjusted.
No, they needed to help him now and by now, he meant yesterday because that man was fraying at the edges. He could tell from the way he kept moving and muttering to himself erratically.
It was as if he had lost his anchor point, as his mental being was slowly being dragged straight down. He didn't even know what to do with the other problem that had taken root in his city. One that refused to leave, no matter how many times he made her coffee spill or the number of inconveniences he had subjected her to.
No, Betty Ross was exactly someone General Ross could have sired. Headstrong, stubborn, fiercely persistent, and somehow, still good enough that he was still considering letting them meet.
Ah, what the hell, it was not as if Ross would try and use his own daughter as bait, right?
Right?
….
…
Ah, if he found them, he found them. He would have to go through him first and what was better than stopping the stereotypical villain from breaking up two lovebirds, one of whom had some incurable oddity that was trying to break them apart from each other?
He saw that Ms.Betty was having a New York style pizza slice and walking around Central Park. No, she was not walking around Central Park, she was walking towards something and that was the daily congregation they held in his name.
Oh god, please not that damned thing again. He had flat out told them that he was just a human who gained these powers by happenstance and he would not be taking any personal requests, not that most of the requests were ever in his power to fulfill anyway.
He gently nudged Betty to stop and stop she did, her eyes widening as she looked all around her, trying to spot the person who might have poked her. Her eyes then widened to saucer like proportions as she must have realised what had happened to her.
He kept nudging her, showing her the direction to walk to, eventually leading her into a not crowded part of CEntral Park. He then cocooned her entire body and just for safety, enclosed her in a curtain of silence as well, subduing all her sonic attacks in the form of the scared screams everybody would have heard, as he flew her to Bruce's apartment. Now, someone might say that flying an entire human being through the air at breakneck speeds was bound to catch attention, right?
To them, he would say: Wrong! It would have caught attention if it hadn't already happened all the time in the city. He checked in on his second mind and what do you know, they were lifting another thing in the air right now.
Only right now, it was a chopper with a failed engine making an emergency landing nearby, with both the pilot and the reporter being very excited about the entire thing for some reason. God, it was as if people did not care about their safety at all, so assured in his presence.
May the Vishanti help this city once he leaves. Well, something for future Axle to think about. God, the reporter was even reporting live on her camera about the entire thing.
Ugh, he disengaged from his second mind and focused on Betty as she landed right into Bruce's apartment through the window that had opened up just in time for her to make the surprise entry into her lover's home and then closed up after she was safely inside.
The look on Bruce's face as he looked at Betty and confirmed that she was real was equal parts sad and happy. He must have been so alone, so lonely. At Least he was safe here.
"Well, time to give them the privacy," He thought to himself before getting the bagel and leaving for his office, whistling a jaunty tone. He was oddly full of confidence today.
He didn't know why and didn't particularly care about it but he was of the opinion that today was going to go swimmingly, mostly because he had done the good deed of the day, in addition to the hundreds of good deeds that he does on the go.
Ross was a concern, yes, but not as much of a concern as the Ancient One was concerned about something happening due to Bruce's mental health.
Stark International stock was still plummeting. He didn't know what TOny was doing but he had not yet made the announcement regarding being Iron Man, even after he had already seen the news yesterday about an accident at the Arc Reactor facility back in LA.
That meant, presumably, that Stane was dead and Iron Man was already born. Tony had gone through his first betrayal and had learned some lessons, hopefully. It also meant that Tony was now going to be using the poisoning Palladium in his Arc Reactor. Well, he might have tried to help or warn him about it only that Tony Stark lived all the way over to the West Coast, which was far out of his….range.
Good Lord, speak of the devil and the devil is here.
Tony Stark, along with Happy Hogan, had somehow entered Manhattan in a limousine, followed by two SUVs full of armed bodyguards.
As if that wasn't enough, the Iron Man suit, hollow as it may be, was hovering right at the edge of his boundary. Not the boundary of Manhattan but the boundary of his Spatial awareness.
That was scarily accurate and he was sure that Jarvis must have played a crucial role in it, predicting the rate at which his awareness range grew and staying just out of it by just that much. He was somewhat off but he could not be faulted for that.
Even he himself didn't know how his powers advanced, just that they came with practice, and due to his second mind working all the time in the background, he couldn't really predict the rate at which his powers grew.
His pace quickened as he hastily made for his office and then promptly stumbled on himself as he watched Tony's convoy, after making a quick stop to get Tony a cheeseburger, headed straight towards his office. Well, it could be something else but he didn't want anything to look suspicious so he slowly, normally, made his way to his office.
"Hi! Good morning. Morning, Steve. Morning, Scarlet. Morning, Sarah," He greeted everyone and headed straight into his office. Most of them waved back at him, their smiles tinged with hesitation and uncertainty.
Well, since most of them didn't exactly know what he did in the office and he was given a corner office to boot, they were very curious but since he was mostly out of reach for them, they had resorted to his secretary but even she didn't know what he did so they were all kind of awkward around him. He tried to mingle but now was not the time to do that because, Tony Stark just alighted from his car and was entering the lobby of his office building, with his entourage behind him.
God, he was here because of the shares, wasn't he?
Oh yeah, he, or rather, his backers, collectively owned about 10% of Stark International's stocks right now. While it would not be visible to someone who was doing a cursory search since it was all held in different trusts, financial entities, and even in different countries but for someone like Stark? It was child's play to figure out who was behind all the buying up of his company's shares.
The only reason they were able to buy so much was because for one, SI's stock had been tumbling for a while now and two, he had more investors now. As it turned out, a lot of the old fogies had families worth billions just hiding away in that exiled mountain. He had made generous use of that money to buy up even more of SI's stock and Tony, as busy as he was, was never the wiser about it.
Yup, Tony just exited the elevator and was heading straight towards him. Well, he is probably wiser now.
His entourage stayed outside but Happy Hogan led Tony straight to his office. He stood up from his chair, trying his best to portray a surprised expression when Tony Stark, all but barged into his office.
Tony's face was bruised in places and his entire body felt as if he had just come out of a warzone, technically, he had but that was months ago.
"Mr.Stark, what can I do for you?" He put his best smile forward and greeted him, but not with a handshake, he did not want to put it back down awkwardly while Tony ignored it.
That would be….uncool.
"Uh-huh. Axle, was it? Mind telling me how some wet behind the ears kid somehow controls a tenth of my company?"
Well, so much for subtlety. It was his fault, really, to expect something as subtle as small talk before getting to the big part from someone like Tony Stark who represented more of a hammer than a scalpel.
He sighed, "What do you want, MR. Stark? I can assure you that I have not broken any law in acquiring your company's shares. So, what warrants this personal visit?"
Tony's smile was all teeth as he replied, "Well, Mr.Axle, how about we make a deal, right here and now?"
Well, that was not good.
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
ILoveYouAll
Know what you're doing yet?
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This is great, I can't wait for more.
Chapter 34 : Rich Shareholder!
IdleMuse0307
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2021
- Messages
- 362
- Likes received
- 10,011
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 34 [December 2008]
–Axle Riddle–
Well, that smile was not good. If there was anything he knew about Stark, as he was now, fresh out of the trauma factory that was his initiation into the superhero world, he was, let's just say, assertive.
Ruthless would be a much better term but it was all in the economic sense, so that would not be apt. Tony would have to be. There were vested interests in making sure that clean green, unlimited, energy never made it to the open market. That was probably the reason Howard Stark didn't pursue it that much, despite having the holy mother of all golden geese in his hands, in the form of the Arc Reactor.
Probably also the reason why there have not been that many advancements in the nuclear energy sector, despite this world being more advanced than his previous one in all the measurable metrics.
To that note, "What sort of deal, Mr.Stark?" He sighed, leaned back in his chair, and asked Tony. Since he had been outed anyway, there was really no point in making some false persona of being timid in front of Tony anyway. Not only would he figure it out within seconds, but it would also create a wrong image of him, especially since he was in Tony's camp.
Tony blinked at the sudden change in his attitude but then soldered on and sat down on one of the chairs, Happy staying outside his office, standing guard and most likely, preventing anyone else from coming into his office.
He was, of course, not worried in the slightest. While he could not exactly squish the suit that Jarvis must be piloting right on the edge of his awareness, he was more than capable of destroying it and every single weapon that Stark's bodyguards have on them, within the span of a second.
All of that was contingent on Tony acting out, and using weapons in his city, which was next to impossible unless the truly worst happened because, well, the reputation of the Invisible Man preceded him.
"I know the money has to come from somewhere and while I have tracked some of it back to parts of Asia and Europe, the trail goes dark there. So, why don't you tell me the people you are working for and I can make sure that you don't go to jail or just disappear because you misused a lot of money from some truly powerful people? Trust me, kid–"
Tony stopped as he scoffed out loud at his statement. So, that was how he was going to do this. He was disappointed. Tony expected him to just be some patsy, a scapegoat for when the government or the almighty Iron Man came knocking, to shove all their crimes on a single person. Man, that was the farthest from the truth.
"Oh, Mr.Stark, I am not some patsy that my patrons have installed in this place. I built this place and as of now, I own over 10% of your company and not my patrons. At least, that much you can confirm using your superior skills,"
Tony's eyes narrowed at that blatant provocation.
"Besides, I am not your enemy, Mr.Stark. With you holding on to the lion's share of Stark Industries, the company will go in the direction you want it to, anyway. I, for one, happen to agree that, despite your myriad flaws, you happen to be the best person to decide how your company runs. So, I am not in it to impede you in any way."
"Then what are you in for? Did you know about my kidnapping? Why else would you be buying stocks in a company that has been declining and was, for all intents and purposes, doomed to fail," Stark asked him scathingly.
Well, wasn't that a loaded question? One that he had no answer for. All he could do was deflect then.
"Look, Stark, your company was valuable enough as is. With you back, I am sure it will reach even greater heights. Especially since you haven't done anything to remedy the fall your stocks have been taking since you shuttered the weapons division, your bread and butter. You must have something on your mind to— Oh, excuse me, I have to take this," He was howling inside at the prank he was about to pull on Tony Stark himself.
"Hello? Yes. Yeah, I told you, grab all the lots you can find, and empty the balance if you have to. I don't care, today might be the last day we get it all for cheap. Yeah, text me when it's done. Already done? Great. Bye." He made a show of talking to someone on the other side of the phone and then after hanging up, he turned to Stark, who was also looking at his phone.
Oh boy, the smile on his face was very strained. He must have gotten Jarvis' notification of another round of stocks being bought by him. He was sure that SHIELD must have picked up some stocks as well, especially since Tony came back. HE was of the opinion that he might have to deal with SHIELD, down the road, if they wanted Stark Industries to make them weaponry that he didn't personally want to make.
Obviously, that plan was doomed since Tony himself must have taken measures against someone else to gain control over his family's legacy.
"Ahem, so as I was saying, I am sure you have something to turn everything around so let me ask you, once again, why are you here? I am not going to just hand over the shares, just so you know," He said with a completely straight face. He didn't know he did it but he managed to hold it in long enough for Tony to give him a truly venomous look before he stormed out of his office.
As soon as the door closed behind him, he howled in laughter. Ah, it was so fun messing with Tony Stark of all people, the quintessential hard to deal with person in the entirety of the MCU.
He could see Tony fuming as he entered his line of SUVs and furiously typing on the holographic keyboard that popped out of his phone. Man, he sure had all the good toys. Having that phone would be tempting but it would probably take ages for something like that to hit the open market and something tells him that Tony Stark would not be amenable to make a custom phone for someone who he believed was somehow involved in his kidnapping.
It was the logical conclusion. When the entire world was selling SI stocks, even Obadiah apparently, to later buy them at a lower price, he and his firm were the only people who were picking up the stocks in bulk, which slowed the fall but didn't stop it. The only reason someone would waste tens of billions of dollars like that would be because they knew something others didn't.
In this case, Tony's kidnapping and his eventual escape. But what Tony maybe failed to realise was that Tony was supposed to die there, at least according to the offshoot of the Ten Rings that had taken him, hostage.
He was sure that the real, the Wenwu led, Ten Rings had nothing to do with the kidnapping, otherwise, Suit or no suit, Tony would not have been able to get out of that cave in one piece.
He tracked Tony at the edge of his awareness range, continuously typing on his phone before he left his range. As soon as that happened, the suit Jarvis was remotely piloting left the area as well, heading somewhere he did not know; it was out of his range.
In the meantime, he had scanned the entirety of Stark's suit with such pinpoint precision that he could draw even the smallest of parts with ease. But what would be the point of that if someone didn't have the means of powering it, The Arc Reactor?
He had read in the news that yesterday was the day there was a huge explosion, commotion, and spark of lightning, that took out most of the city's power and the source was traced back to an experiment gone wrong at Stark Industries. That was probably Obadiah Stane dying.
This meant that any day now, Tony would go up on stage and declare himself as Iron Man. That was when he would finally turn a profit on his investment and it was not as if he would allow the old fogies to ever exit the company. They were bored in their high-up exiled abode and he was all too excited to hold a position of power in the company that would probably shape the future of Earth.
Convincing them with some grandiose visions would not be hard and it wouldn't even be false assurances. Tony would make that come true, one way or another. All they had to do was wait, and time was something they had plenty of, considering they didn't work, like, at all.
Only a couple of years left now, to the time he would be free from this city.
Now, let's see what the love birds have been up to, for all the time he had left them alone and even given them privacy, deliberately not scanning that area.
It had been hours, their reunion must be done by now.
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.
The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 34 [December 2008]
–Axle Riddle–
Well, that smile was not good. If there was anything he knew about Stark, as he was now, fresh out of the trauma factory that was his initiation into the superhero world, he was, let's just say, assertive.
Ruthless would be a much better term but it was all in the economic sense, so that would not be apt. Tony would have to be. There were vested interests in making sure that clean green, unlimited, energy never made it to the open market. That was probably the reason Howard Stark didn't pursue it that much, despite having the holy mother of all golden geese in his hands, in the form of the Arc Reactor.
Probably also the reason why there have not been that many advancements in the nuclear energy sector, despite this world being more advanced than his previous one in all the measurable metrics.
To that note, "What sort of deal, Mr.Stark?" He sighed, leaned back in his chair, and asked Tony. Since he had been outed anyway, there was really no point in making some false persona of being timid in front of Tony anyway. Not only would he figure it out within seconds, but it would also create a wrong image of him, especially since he was in Tony's camp.
Tony blinked at the sudden change in his attitude but then soldered on and sat down on one of the chairs, Happy staying outside his office, standing guard and most likely, preventing anyone else from coming into his office.
He was, of course, not worried in the slightest. While he could not exactly squish the suit that Jarvis must be piloting right on the edge of his awareness, he was more than capable of destroying it and every single weapon that Stark's bodyguards have on them, within the span of a second.
All of that was contingent on Tony acting out, and using weapons in his city, which was next to impossible unless the truly worst happened because, well, the reputation of the Invisible Man preceded him.
"I know the money has to come from somewhere and while I have tracked some of it back to parts of Asia and Europe, the trail goes dark there. So, why don't you tell me the people you are working for and I can make sure that you don't go to jail or just disappear because you misused a lot of money from some truly powerful people? Trust me, kid–"
Tony stopped as he scoffed out loud at his statement. So, that was how he was going to do this. He was disappointed. Tony expected him to just be some patsy, a scapegoat for when the government or the almighty Iron Man came knocking, to shove all their crimes on a single person. Man, that was the farthest from the truth.
"Oh, Mr.Stark, I am not some patsy that my patrons have installed in this place. I built this place and as of now, I own over 10% of your company and not my patrons. At least, that much you can confirm using your superior skills,"
Tony's eyes narrowed at that blatant provocation.
"Besides, I am not your enemy, Mr.Stark. With you holding on to the lion's share of Stark Industries, the company will go in the direction you want it to, anyway. I, for one, happen to agree that, despite your myriad flaws, you happen to be the best person to decide how your company runs. So, I am not in it to impede you in any way."
"Then what are you in for? Did you know about my kidnapping? Why else would you be buying stocks in a company that has been declining and was, for all intents and purposes, doomed to fail," Stark asked him scathingly.
Well, wasn't that a loaded question? One that he had no answer for. All he could do was deflect then.
"Look, Stark, your company was valuable enough as is. With you back, I am sure it will reach even greater heights. Especially since you haven't done anything to remedy the fall your stocks have been taking since you shuttered the weapons division, your bread and butter. You must have something on your mind to— Oh, excuse me, I have to take this," He was howling inside at the prank he was about to pull on Tony Stark himself.
"Hello? Yes. Yeah, I told you, grab all the lots you can find, and empty the balance if you have to. I don't care, today might be the last day we get it all for cheap. Yeah, text me when it's done. Already done? Great. Bye." He made a show of talking to someone on the other side of the phone and then after hanging up, he turned to Stark, who was also looking at his phone.
Oh boy, the smile on his face was very strained. He must have gotten Jarvis' notification of another round of stocks being bought by him. He was sure that SHIELD must have picked up some stocks as well, especially since Tony came back. HE was of the opinion that he might have to deal with SHIELD, down the road, if they wanted Stark Industries to make them weaponry that he didn't personally want to make.
Obviously, that plan was doomed since Tony himself must have taken measures against someone else to gain control over his family's legacy.
"Ahem, so as I was saying, I am sure you have something to turn everything around so let me ask you, once again, why are you here? I am not going to just hand over the shares, just so you know," He said with a completely straight face. He didn't know he did it but he managed to hold it in long enough for Tony to give him a truly venomous look before he stormed out of his office.
As soon as the door closed behind him, he howled in laughter. Ah, it was so fun messing with Tony Stark of all people, the quintessential hard to deal with person in the entirety of the MCU.
He could see Tony fuming as he entered his line of SUVs and furiously typing on the holographic keyboard that popped out of his phone. Man, he sure had all the good toys. Having that phone would be tempting but it would probably take ages for something like that to hit the open market and something tells him that Tony Stark would not be amenable to make a custom phone for someone who he believed was somehow involved in his kidnapping.
It was the logical conclusion. When the entire world was selling SI stocks, even Obadiah apparently, to later buy them at a lower price, he and his firm were the only people who were picking up the stocks in bulk, which slowed the fall but didn't stop it. The only reason someone would waste tens of billions of dollars like that would be because they knew something others didn't.
In this case, Tony's kidnapping and his eventual escape. But what Tony maybe failed to realise was that Tony was supposed to die there, at least according to the offshoot of the Ten Rings that had taken him, hostage.
He was sure that the real, the Wenwu led, Ten Rings had nothing to do with the kidnapping, otherwise, Suit or no suit, Tony would not have been able to get out of that cave in one piece.
He tracked Tony at the edge of his awareness range, continuously typing on his phone before he left his range. As soon as that happened, the suit Jarvis was remotely piloting left the area as well, heading somewhere he did not know; it was out of his range.
In the meantime, he had scanned the entirety of Stark's suit with such pinpoint precision that he could draw even the smallest of parts with ease. But what would be the point of that if someone didn't have the means of powering it, The Arc Reactor?
He had read in the news that yesterday was the day there was a huge explosion, commotion, and spark of lightning, that took out most of the city's power and the source was traced back to an experiment gone wrong at Stark Industries. That was probably Obadiah Stane dying.
This meant that any day now, Tony would go up on stage and declare himself as Iron Man. That was when he would finally turn a profit on his investment and it was not as if he would allow the old fogies to ever exit the company. They were bored in their high-up exiled abode and he was all too excited to hold a position of power in the company that would probably shape the future of Earth.
Convincing them with some grandiose visions would not be hard and it wouldn't even be false assurances. Tony would make that come true, one way or another. All they had to do was wait, and time was something they had plenty of, considering they didn't work, like, at all.
Only a couple of years left now, to the time he would be free from this city.
Now, let's see what the love birds have been up to, for all the time he had left them alone and even given them privacy, deliberately not scanning that area.
It had been hours, their reunion must be done by now.
If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon, for upto 5 extra chapters.