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The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 131[May 2012]
Utah
–Randall–
There was a lull in the battlefield, with only the sounds of the Chitauri being slaughtered from above, and the faint sounds of truck engines running at full speed as the camps were evacuated, with all of their equipment being taken away to safety. After all, they had recorded hours worth of important data and that was probably more important than the lives of some of the soldiers here.
There was a giant crater, which was carved in one direction, vaporising almost all of the yellow eyed giants that had jumped out of the hole. The energy storm around the Tesseract was subsiding as well, with the intensity of its blasts into the ground reducing at a measurable pace. It would still be absolutely lethal to go anywhere near that beam of energy but at least it would soon be gone. Taking advantage of their disoriented states, his brother's dove in to finish off the rest of those creatures, with him providing support in the form of repulsor shots from afar.
He also had to see if Tony’s weapons platform could do another strike like that because the platform was now smoking in various places. Thor’s vitals were alright and his skin was visibly healing after all the nutrient solutions were being pumped directly into his body, something that would not be advisable for normal humans but apparently worked just fine for Asgardians.
That meant that until Hulk got here, after resolving the Mole People situation, which was still not resolved as there were still dozens of different moles sighted by Jarvis in the city, hurting people before fleeing as they somehow sensed Hulk and the others converging on their location. None of Jarvis’ suits or even Hulk could navigate underground like the Mole People could so they were locked in a stalemate right now, with no side winning definitively, the situation would not get better.
They need heavy artillery to deal with these people, just like with the Chitauri. At Least these ones were vulnerable to physical attacks and did not have any fliers that could take potshots at them.
He slammed the hull of the weapons platform, which held Tony inside, “Tony, you alright?”
Tony’s muffled voice came, which meant that the outside speakers were now dud. He figured that with that level of energy output coursing through the thing, anything that was connected with wires was probably dead. It was a wonder the thing was even floating, though he could see that it was only floating upright, with none of the stabilisation it had previously, evidenced by the slight wobbling of the thing when he lightly knocked on the metal. “Yeah, just some energy overload. It should reboot soon,”
Well, he hoped it did, because there was no way that this was the end of it. He saw many more red dots when he came here. It was probably the shock of seeing so many dead, all at once, that temporarily stopped the bubbling of the land.
He was tense, waiting for the shoe to drop. Hell, this was the third shoe that was about to drop on their heads. A giant, heavy, dense metal shoe falling on the vulnerable chicken neck that was Earth.
The Chitauri.
The Mole People.
And now these yellow eyed monsters. Why couldn’t they catch a freaking break?
And there it was, the bubbling of the ground.
His brothers floated back up, and he called upon all the remote weaponry modules he had on hand, to float right behind him just in case one of them needed backup or heavy bombardment. It should not be needed because as far as he could tell, none of those monsters possessed anything that could pierce their skins but he could not rule out any esoteric so long range attacks was the best way to go right now.
Speaking of long range attacks. “Tony, we could really use that Fuck YOu laser from before?”
Tony’s response did not fill him with confidence, “That might take a while.” His voice was distracted which meant that he was working on something, which was good.
What was not good was the bubbling of the ground, which had increased in radius since the last wave of them.
“Uh, Jarvis?” His HUD lit up as Jarvis’ sensors, scarce as they were here, worked their magic, and showed him that this time, the number of those monsters was more than quadrupled, with an area covering thrice of what they were covering before. He relayed that information and Tony flew behind them, away from the Tesseract portal, while he got ready to be the first defender this time. HE had plenty of weapons that needed testing on armoured creatures but he spent most of them during the two Chitauri fights he was part of.
Right now, he barely had some explosive weaponry, and some exotic bombs, along with repulsor arrays powered by the second generation Arc Reactor. Tony was really stingy in giving him the latest generation Arcs, which was fine, it was his property but it was really coming to bite them all back in the ass right now. His repulsor arrays could not work quite as fast and at quite the strength with which TOny could use them, simply because his power source was not strong enough to power them all.
“Well, here goes nothing,” he increased the power output on everything and hoped to the high heavens that he did not die because he got monster rabies because one of these yellow eyed freaks scratched him, and got through his skin.
With yet another roar, the ground beneath them buckled as hundreds of those creatures came jumping through, brandishing their six claws straight at their airborne forms. He let loose a volley of repulsors, punting most of the closer monsters back on the ground, as the rest of the Monsters set their sight on the flying suits and started digging chunks of the ground.
He yelped as a rock went sailing right above them, nearly hitting Tony’s platform as he was busy firing repulsor after repulsor at the monsters below. He could hear Tony shouting at them to protect him but he probably saw the situation and retreated, far above even the Chitauri portal.
“Shit!” He exclaimed as he felt the repulsor arrays on his arms getting heated up. Any more and they would break down, leaving him with only a single dimensional repulsion control. He would not be able to move properly if his arm repulsors were dud.
The same was true with his brothers as well. They exchanged glances and came to the same decision. At the same time, all three of them dove into the mass of monsters, and smashed into anything that came into sight, using the increased thrust from the foot repulsors to give them that extra oomph, when it came to smashing stuff.
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It was all going well, they realised that the deviants could not hurt their hard tissue like the arms and everything else. He made sure that their soft tissue, like ears and stuff, was well protected and they never stayed in one place long enough to get dogpilled like these monsters were trying to do.
Ofcourse, that was when things had to go to shit.
Without any warning, he heard Samuel scream in his comms. This jolted him as he ripped apart one of those monsters and saw his brother falling down, with his repulsor array smoking and his arm…
He had one arm missing, he realised as he hastily went after his brother, which turned out to be a mistake, as he heard yet another scream. He looked to the side but he couldn’t see anything past the sea of monsters that were converging on them.
“TONY!” HE screamed into the comms as he dove and caught his brother, but instead of heading straight up, he doubled down and dove straight for the ground, knowing what was about to come.
He cradled his younger brother close to him as he spread what little armour he had around him, around his back, and braced himself. IT came not a moment later. The extreme heat managed to make even him scream as he felt his back burning, even though the beam was not directly hitting him.
He crashed into the ground, riddled with back burns but still conscious. Samuel on the other hand. He carefully placed Samuel down on the ground, relieved to find that he was still alive, but his hand.
His hand was cut off, with claw marks on his repulsors. He heard a thud, and watched as a suit landed and took Samuel in its arms, nodded at him and flew away. From the corner of his eyes, he saw another suit do the same.
“Tony?”
“Light Rescue grade models with no weapons functionality. They will take them to the Military medics who are waiting for them.”
Thank god.
Now, for the low life that dared hurt his brother, he turned around and saw a clear divide in the ground, a deep and long trench dug in the ground, with most of the monsters on the other side, with a couple of them on his side, whom he swiftly crushed with his hands, all the while maintaining eye contact with their apparent leader.
Their leader was surprisingly more human looking. Still hunched and on more four legs with two claws in the air but its size was much smaller than the other monsters yet he knew what those exact claws had done, with the hand of his brother laid down at the monster’s feet.
“Tony?”
“Working on it. The platform is mostly dead for now but new parts are on their way. We just need to figure out a way to sta–” That was all he heard before his breath hitched, as did Tony’s.
Because, right in front of their eyes, the monster took his brother's hand and was…chewing on it.
He saw red.
“Randall, wait!”
He had never been one to get angry in his life. Even when subjected to multiple injustices, betrayals, and maintaining a lifestyle with a group of people who were more frat boy animals than civilised gentlemen, he did not get rage like other people did.
He couldn’t really understand why people would rage specifically. He did get angry but not to that level. All his brothers had no problem in expressing that specific emotion but for some reason, instead of choosing confrontation, he chose to solve the problem, choosing to get out of anger rather than diving deeper into rage.
Now? Now he could understand. His brothers had all told him they got more powerful as they tapped into their inherent rage.
All of them had pent up rage against the world, from their nomadic days, from the days they were betrayed and used, only to be spit out and aimed at someone who was so hilariously out of their league, it was not even funny.
He felt his body heat up, wisps of blue energy leaking out of his body as he jumped. He jumped, with his fist cocked back, straight at the motherf*cker who dared hurt his brothers, his family, because he saw the claw marks on the repulsor arrays. They were smaller, much smaller than the normal claws.
The smaller monster threw his brother’s arm out of his mouth and grinned at him. He crossed the trench in a single leap, his anger amplifying his strength as he aimed to punch the monster in his stupid face.
Only that never happened. All he felt was a blow to his stomach and then his face as he was kicked back, his vision blurring. Even then, he felt the dozen shallow cuts that appeared all around his body.
That bastard was playing with him. Somehow that filled him with more rage. He scrambled back upright only to see a giant repulsor beam, much larger than his repulsor arrays but much smaller than the giant beam slam right into that stupid face, throwing the monster back, as Tony landed right beside him.
“Are you alright?”
He coughed out spittle and stood up straight, “Yeah.”
“Yeah, I don’t think we are equipped to handle that monster.” Tony said and he was probably right. He was never the stronger of his brothers, just the smartest one. Also, that monster just tanked Tony’s UniBeam and got up, without even a scratch on him.
“Any weaknesses?” He asked Tony since he was the only one with a full sensor suite on him right now, his entire exoskeleton having been damaged by Tony’s attack earlier and then completely dismantled in the attack he just sustained.
“Aside from his eyes and soft tissue inside his mouth? No.”
He was worried about that. The monster had also stopped all of the Invading members from doing any more damage but conversely, the monster itself was more than capable of harming them immensely.
His gaze never left the monster so he was understandably worried when the monster’s neck snapped behind them, with its face twisted in some expression he could not recognise. His ears registered a faint whining sound before he was jerked to one side as Tony tackled him right up, took hold of him, and then rocketed off, right up in the air.
“Tony?!”
“Missile Strike,”
Oh. Oooh.
That was a much better choice than to bet on his mediocre combat skills. He would have to rectify that as soon as possible. He saw as multiple missiles flew over them, right in the direction of that monster.
He grinned as he felt the heat of that missile attack, and the ensuing shockwave. Tony stopped and turned around, looking at the attack, which had created a giant mushroom cloud, thankfully not from nuclear fission though. They were still not authorised to do that and he was thankful for that.
At Least the President had the sense that if it turned into a Nuclear war, the land would be unsalvageable. At Least right now, they could do something to repair it.
“What? How?” He heard Tony whisper before they flew closer to the explosion, his heart sinking at the news.
“What? Did he survive?” He asked Tony but the answer became visible to him on its own.
There, surrounded by the corpses of its brethren, stood the smaller monster, injured but doing something completely bizarre. The monster only had three claws instead of six, its face was half burned off and its body was completely blackened, and yet…
“Shit!” Tony swore as its body was visible healing, as the monster ate its own kind.
Tony fired multiple repulsors at the monster, even as he was dropped to the ground, his injuries flaring up but he grit his teeth and stomped towards the monster, ready to kill him before he could heal.
Alas, the monster stayed in the same spot, tanking Tony’s admitted weaker repulsors and continued eating the monster corpses all around him, and by the time he was within reach, his claws had turned from 3 to 5, allowing the monster to lash out at him, carving a shallow wound on his forearm as he was pushed back.
“Tony! Missiles?” He roared at Tony as he jumped back in the fray as Tony’s repulsors managed to just push him back. The monster was grinning at them, toying with both of them as it continued to crunch on its own species, healing itself back to its prime.
Already, its torso had returned to its greyish colour from before.
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