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The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 133[May 2012]
Manhattan [Subterranean base]
–Axle Riddle–
“DO YOU WISH TO PROCEED WITH THE AWAKENING?” He jumped with all his might and body slammed the YES button as whatever the loading screen was made up of, broke apart. He looked back from his jump and saw everything, everything that was this infinite space breaking apart, with blue cracks appearing everywhere in sight.
In fact, he turned around to see himself healing into one such crack, “AAAAH!”
One moment, he was seeing the blue, feeling the blue, tasting the blue, the next his mind expanded.
He awoke with a gasp, his eyes seeing sterile white ceilings, his ears noting the beeps of the machine next to him, his skin noting the coldness of the bed but above all of that, above every single one of the sensations granted to him by his mortal body, was the feedback from his mind.
He took in a deep breath, closed his eyes and floated. His mind ran at a speed previously unthought of, covering Manhattan in an instant, taking hold of the entire city that he had come to love and adore.
He instantly took control over all the Moles hiding in the buildings and even in the Subways, breaking their necks and transporting all of the Mole People, dead and alive, into a large pile in Central Park, one of them had even escaped the borough. Thankfully, he was not the same as before.
He then took a breath, and then as if a switch had been flipped, he was assaulted by the voices of millions of minds, all in distress, all in some kind of panic.
PANIC. HURT. PAIN. HELP. CRY.
“Ahhh!” He screamed as he worked his mind overtime on resolving the issues. Hundreds of people were rescued from the rubble. His mind panicking at the sight of so much pain and suffering in his extra sensory vision.
His mind fell back on the one thing that worked with his powers. So, one moment he was overwhelmed with the sight of these many emotions, the next it was all gone, dumped onto his second mind, which then began using his powers to sort through everything and everyone, limiting itself to Manhattan for now.
Buildings on the verge of falling were turned into dust, or repaired wherever possible. But more importantly…
“Woah!” He exclaimed as he tore out of the base, blasting through rock and Earth as if it wasn’t even there, reaching the stratosphere in an instant.
“Ha..” It started with a small chuckle, which soon turned into a full laughter, “Hahahahaha!”
Then, his mind sobered up as he realised that there was still work to be done. He read the minds of the people and had come to the startling realisation that his mere presence in this world had changed things, enough so that Loki had done something that had somehow, in a roundabout way, fulfilled the condition for his release from the Dome but also made the situation worse, by targeting the world as a whole.
Within less than a minute, he was done with Manhattan, with hundreds of doctors and entire hospitals’ worth of stuff being transported to Central Park. He noted the astonishing efficiency of his mind, as the doctors were all on break, not on emergency surgeries or were on Vacation.
His second mind, usually reserved for jobs with less mental strain, had somehow scanned all the doctors’ minds, read some hospital reports, and had brought them to Manhattan, all within a minute. It was all way too advanced for him.
Manhattan was still a big ball of Red to his telepathic senses, an area filled with negative emotions so he was going to refrain from using that ability to its fullest right now, especially since he did not have the time to get accustomed to his newest ability, or more specifically, an ability that he always had but never had the brains to pursue more.
It had been 1 minute 22 seconds since he had awoken, and only then did he realise that he was feeling a draft on his bare ass. Deadpanning at the situation, he instantly ripped apart a fashionable outfit from a nearly destroyed store, and clothed himself, the threads of the clothing splitting apart to fit him before it was all sewn back together, in an instant.
“Huh, handy.” he grinned at that, then, his smile disappeared as he looked inside his mind, where time slowed down to a crawl. Horus could pass inside while only seconds would have passed in the real world, all the while maintaining his extrasensory perception.
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He could see his mind, which had expanded so much it was unbelievable. He could feel his range now. He dared not use it all at once, to get all that information at once would be suicide, even for him but he had a hunch that with enough practice, he could get either surface level information or something that would help reduce the influx of information in his mind, NOT turning him into a catatonic vegetable.
Solving the Mole People crisis was somewhat easy, mainly because his extended range easily reached the lair of the Mole People, instantly mapping the subterranean layers, and finding the lair of the Mole Man.
A quite pathetic specimen of a failed human who somehow managed to build a device that controlled all the Mole People. With a thought, the Mole Man slumped over his desk, overlooking multiple monitors that probably gave him the lay of the land in Manhattan.
Hijacking the mental signal of the device was easy enough once he cross referenced it across all the still active Mole People, disabling all the active ones lurking below the surface. He couldn't kill them outright because they number in thousands and it would amount to genocide. Ordering all of them to go back to their homes, he made sure that the Mole Man’s device was buried deep, and his chambers were sealed tight, along with all the tunnels to his burrow collapsed.
That should keep him occupied for a while. Once all of this was over, he could decide if he wanted to hand the petty man over to the government for attacking Humanity during a time of crisis, nonetheless.
It had been 2 minutes since he had awoken. The streets were safe, the buildings were safe, the partially collapsed entry points to the Tunnel below were all cleared out. All of the security checks had been done at blistering speeds. All the healing he could do was done, mental surface scans were done, with multiple heavily criminal mindsets spread to a separate part of the tunnel, something that he and Randall had built into the design of the Tunnel.
His second mind continued to work in overdrive, with his main one acting as a supervisor as it continued to unearth newer minds, finding damage, and repairing damage.
It scanned the entirety of Manhattan, then started going around in a circle, slowly increasing its radius. He would have loved to watch but he had a lot of other stuff to do, like saving Randall and Tony’s ass since both of them were absent from Manhattan, with Bruce being here.
He could sense the Sanctum, inside of it as well. He could sense Master Drumm and he was about to ask for his help with a direct portal to Utah once he was done with New York as a whole, something which should be done in less than 10 seconds of real time.
He was about to exit his mind, and travel to the Sanctum when he froze. He concentrated in his second mind and found, to his amazement as his second mind sensed an abnormal mind, something that moved at far greater speeds than an average human. Hell, even faster than the current him.
Opening up a link, “Hello Jarvis! This is me,” he sent as a greeting message.
The link opened up instantly, “Mr.Axle! This is an unusual way of communication.”
He was about to say more when he received a data packet from Jarvis detailing the entire battlefield situation.
He froze, his second mind freezing abruptly as well. Even inside his mind, he could feel it freezing and cracking almost as he absorbed what Jarvis had told him.
“Mr.Riddle?” Jarvis’ voice sounded distant to his ears. Tony and Randall were fighting for their lives against a…Deviant?
“809000?” He whispered to himself as he felt his mind, once a lush green landscape, shake and crack as he processed that number. So many people, dead!
Gritting his teeth, he exited his mind, almost violently, absentmindedly noticing that everything around him was shaking, his entire body covered in a corona of blue light. He looked to the West, knowing the direction of the battlefield, and with a single step, disappeared.
—Random Beautiful Agent–
This sucked. Not the invasion, even though that was arguably more sucky but the situation as a whole. When she was told to report back to base so that she could be escorted to WASHINGTON, she knew that something was wrong, so she absconded from her post, and went around from place to place, helping people, because that was what she was trained to do.
No, what sucked was the whole SHIELD being sidelined thing. She had to rip off all the logos on her uniform and even wear a jacket to hide who she really was so that people in law enforcement would let her help them. She knew that while some people were shady, most of the people she met during her time at the agency were pretty nice.
Then again, the thing that sucked the most was the absence of the Invisible Man. With the return of the Hulk, the Mole People situation was pretty much resolved with people told to stay indoors so that the last remaining few could be rounded up. She was out and about with a radio on her so she could report any anomalies to the police who would then send the Hulk to her location who would then play a game of Whack A Mole with the Moles.
She was about to report her area as clear and report back to the Police as a volunteer when she felt something pass through the ground. She looked up only to see a small blur in the air. She ran over to a smoking hole in the ground and was startled to find that it had closed completely.
She whirled around, her gun in her hands as she heard the signature noise of the Mole People but then the voice was abruptly silenced. She was about to call it in since she was in an all but deserted complex, but then her eyes widened, her words stuck in her mouth as she saw something that she never thought she would see again.
Floating People in the air.
Her hands above her mouth, she barely choked back a sob as she saw the sky filled with Mole People, being transported in the direction of Central Park. She collapsed to her knees, her strength leaving her as she finally realised that she was safe, once more.
Sniffing, she wiped her tears and took her radio, “Do you see that, Detective?” Her happiness was clear in her voice as she walked back to her back, ready to go to Central Park to see the spectacle that would no doubt be waiting for her.
The radio crackled to life, Detective Santiago no doubt wanting to snark something back when an Earthquake hit them, her bike almost falling on her.
The shaking barely lasted a few moments before she regained her footing. Her radio cracked life to life but she ignored it, her eyes glued to the massive blue cloud in the air before that too disappeared.