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The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 132[May 2012]

Utah

–Randall–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That would just make things easier at this point.

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

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

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

That did not bode well for them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was……over.

____xx____

Manhattan [Subterranean base]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

……

….

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

……

….

–Axle Riddle–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…..

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

……[99%]

……[99%]

……[99%]

……[99%]

……[99%]

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

[INSERT FITGIRL REPACK SONG]

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

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

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

God Help them all.

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