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 134[May 2012]
–Axle Riddle–
809000.
That was the number that kept repeating in his mind as he disappeared, appearing at the edge of his range through teleportation. Oh yeah, somehow, he could do that as well, good to know.
As he appeared, the blue shroud around him disappeared, his rage simmering down but never truly going away. He scanned the surface thoughts of the people around him and found that he was somewhere in Iowa.
His eyes widened minutely, as he calculated his range to be about 1000 miles. If it was a complete radius or if it was in a single line, he did not know but he was somewhere in Iowa.
He set his sights, closed his eyes, concentrated, and with little more than a pop which drained him somewhat, he appeared in…Utah.
His mind immediately latched onto the situation in the Salt Basins, flooding the entire area as he halted everyone, or at least tried to.
Breaking Mach speeds, he arrived on the battlefield and the sight made his insides churn. Hundreds, maybe thousands of corpses littered the battlefield, of both the CHitauri and some other species.
His finger twitched as he lifted Randall, Tony, and some other girl, Priya, if her thoughts were anything to go by, and brought them to the Military convoy with a hospital about 200 miles away. He could sense a barely conscious Thor trying to force his way out and knocked him out as well.
His mind was weird, well different than normal humans slim[ply because it was much denser and therefore, much harder to read. He did not mean it because THor was stupid but because it was [probably an Asgardian thing. Knocking him out was well within his abilities, especially since Thor was already weakened.
His mind expanded, somehow interfacing with all the devices in the area, contacting Jarvis through them, which was very very handy. He also noticed that he was not wearing a mask or anything that could hide his identity, which should be stupid but right now, he was not worried about that.
“Jarvis, Transmit this. Around the world,” HE ordered as he looked at the Chitauri portal. The portal was blue, as was in the original timeline but everything other than that was different.
“Who….are….you?” He didn’t let his gaze stray from the portal even as his senses registered the Deviant, the only one alive and also the one with the most energy dense body, with a barely humanoid appearance, glaring straight at him.
He didn’t deign that question with a reply, waiting for something. “Connection established. Multi angle feeds restored,” He smiled slightly at that as he sensed multiple drones buzzing all around the battlefield recording and transmitting everything.
This….This could not be something that he could solve with a wave of his hand, go back to the people, and tell them ‘Don’t worry about it, I resolved it. Trust me’. How could he? When he had fallen asleep, like the freaking Snow White.
Even in this barren land, he could sense the overall mood, and the motions of the people in his range. They were all in the negative, and while it would naturally improve once the threat was gone, that did not sit right with him.
So, here goes…..
With a raised hand, he stopped the incoming missiles from both directions. Jericho missiles, if he was correct, letting the CHitauri come in unfettered. He could not fathom what was going through the Other’s mind when he let so many Chitauri Leviathans come through the portal to their deaths. He could see no less than 11 corpses of the massive leviathans right beneath the Tesseract, with most of them in pieces.
The Deviant whose mind he could not read, not without doing a deeper dive, was looking straight at him, with one of his hands on the Barrier, his other hand, releasing a blue wave that was carving through the Chitauri Leviathans like butter and then digging a hole in the Earth.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
That monster must be the one who can absorb the cosmic energy from the Eternals and then evolve to become more and more humanoid, not to mention stronger. Evolution of the highest order. His gaze then slid to the Tesseract, the biggest source of cosmic power on the planet currently.
It was their misfortune that Tony chose this place for their final battle. The deviants must have been living underground, right below this place and the massive Cosmic energy right above them must have alerted them to the delicious snack waiting just above them.
His link with Jarvis was still established, allowing him to see the coverage of the feed. Jarvis was using the same reach that he had cultivated when Tony gave him blanket permission to hack most of the world, to telecast him floating strong in front of the portal.
The Military had received their messages and had stopped the missile launches, instead launching jets that were due to arrive at his location soon enough. First off….
He looked straight at the Leviathans that came out of the portal and with a thought, atomized them. It was incredibly easy as well, turning two Leviathans, what would normally be a city destroying force, into dust with just a thought.
With another thought patches of Earth all around him were ripped out of the ground and floated right at his level. Another twitch of his fingers turned them into spikes, another twitch had them rotating at speeds that turned the sand red.
Looking straight at one of the drones, he smiled and did the only thing he knew that had an absolute chance of drawing hope, and strength in trying times.
“Have no fear–” He waved his hand up, lifting an sq.km worth of land around him and also sending the superheated spikes straight into the portal, “Because I AM HERE!”
The next second, his hand came up, stopping the beam of the blue just as it was about to hit his palm as if some invisible force was holding it in place. He locked eyes with Kro, and the next second, he hit Kro, the Deviant born with a mutation, allowing him to absorb cosmic energy and evolve, to become smarter and stronger than his brother, with enough force to rip him from the Tesseract.
His left hand was still embedded into the sphere of pure energy surrounding the Tesseract, but the rest of the body was blown apart in a spectacular shower of golden lights. Lowering his hand, the problem resolved for now, he waited for Jarvis to arrive.
Randall was in the right direction but he didn’t have a concrete idea as to how the Portal machine could be stopped. Jarvis was on his way with the Sceptre, the one thing that would totally shut this machine down. In the meantime, despite the losses sustained by the Chitauri, he could still sense dozens of Chitauri Leviathan crowding the area on the other side of the portal, waiting to come through.
He borrowed one of the universal comms from the Military base and patched himself through, “Randall?”
There was a brief static before he heard Randall’s relieved voice, tinged with exhaustion, “Oh thank God! Keep an eye on that monster, he can heal himself by–”
“--Eating the remnants of his species, I know. But I hit him with so much force that there is nothing left of him, save for his hand in the Tesseract portal which is not doing much. Still, I will destroy it once the portal is closed.”
He could tell that Randall was not happy, mainly because he believed that Kro was a much bigger threat due to his ability to touch and use the energy from the Tesseract. While he was not wrong, Kro had turned into a very evolved version of himself, he could sense everything in his range and there was nothing left of him.
“Patch me to the President.”
He didn’t receive an answer but a slight static before the panicked, tired, and frankly desperate voice of the old President reached his ears.
He smiled and in a reassuring voice, told him that he was back and he would be taking care of the entire problem, once and for all.
He raised his left hand, as the Sceptre came flying through, in an otherwise perfect imitation of Thor and Mjolnir. With the cameras still on him, he flew close to the machine but waited a bit before looking straight up, ripping apart the leviathans and seeing the dozens more that were on their way from the main mothership.
He sighed, shook his head, and jabbed the crown of the sceptre into the Tesseract. He encountered some resistance but the portal was finally closed, the machine breaking down around the Tesseract.
He atomised the hand as well, leaving no trace behind.
He could hear and feel the faint cheers of the military around him as well as the thunderous applause as Jarvis was still connected to him and provided him, in a controlled manner, with information from all around the world.
His task done, he ripped the Earth apart, placed the Tesseract and the Sceptre in it, and compressed it, turning it into a very hard prison for the two Infinity Stones.
“Mr.President, I will be back in about two hours, give or take.” he said and disappeared from his position, the crude container transported in the military convoy, right in front of Randall who just received mental instructions on how to better handle the whole thing.
Meanwhile, he had a couple of Chitauri all around the world that needed to be turned to Dust.
Heh, he smirked to himself, turned to Dust. He smiled at the internal Joke.
Then, he disappeared.