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 18

Manhattan [October 2008]

–Axle Riddle–

“How did you know?”

He rolled his eyes as the CEO of the company asked him the same question for the umpteenth time. They were already up 16% on their profit in just a few days that it had taken Stark to be rescued from Afghanistan and him being cleared to come back on US soil.

He wagered that there were quite a few nervous US generals, waiting to see if Stark had given sensitive information or worse, weapons technology, to the terrorists so he was probably held up in the interrogation.

The other thing must be his overall health. Probably very dehydrated and starved, among other things as he was kept in that base for well over three months.

“I just knew, Mr.Wu, and as I have repeated it a dozen times before, no, we will not exit at this time,”

“What! Why?”

Well, because it was going to tank even more but he was not going to say that to the man’s face. The man was already pretty much depressed when he was told that pretty much the entire free fortune of the entire family was being pulled out of all their holdings and put into the falling stocks of Stark Industries on the word of a single person, who up until a few months ago, was a complete unknown to them. The same person was also getting a decent salary for doing essentially nothing.

Anybody would be suspicious of this but alas, the word of Master Wu was final in their company and so, there they were, in the CEO’s office who was trying to convince him to offload all of their stock from SI.

“The things Tony will do in the future will eclipse all of his previous achievements. It will be beneficial for us to hold everything for the long term. Don’t worry, I will explain my reasonings to Master Wu,”

There, that clinched it. The man was about to object but the second Master Wu’s name came in the concentration, his jaw clicked shut as he nodded with a strained smile.

Somehow, Master Wu had maintained an ironclad control on the family and none of their members even went so far as to raise any question, even if Master Wu was taking such risky bets that their entire family fortune might just be lost in that bet.

“Well, I have work to do. I’ll see you when Stark does his first interview,”

Saying so, he turned out and headed straight out of the office. He was craving an iced coffee and thanks to his powers, he didn’t have to save for pesky things like a down payment for the house or a car payment. No, that might eat into the things that he actually liked, like drinking coffee, eating fancy (good) food, and generally doing as his heart pleased.

Of course, looking at the orange curtain surrounding the city, his mood soured a bit because that limited his ideal life to only a small island but he tried to uplift himself by reminding himself that it could have been far worse.

He could have been stuck on an uninhabited island, doomed not to have human contact until the set period was up. Or be stuck someplace where modern amenities were absent. WIthout human contact, he might have really gone insane, and thinking about someone going insane with his powerset was enough to make even him shudder.

No, this was for the better. He was stuck sure, but on an island that had all the amenities he could think of, at a place that was sure to have some of the world’s most influential people originate from.

Well, one of the legendary heroes that would emerge from New York would be Spider-Man, Peter Parker. Sure, it was still almost a decade before Spider-Man would show up in the original timeline so he must still be a toddler at best but he was excited even now for him to turn up.

Hah, things had gotten so boring recently. Even his training to expand his spatial awareness reach had hit somewhat of a roadblock after extending barely a mile out of Manhattan.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

The force he could exert outside his sphere of influence was less than even 200 pounds at the edge of his range. Now, that was still enough for him to stop crimes using increasingly creative ways but when it was a car crash involving cars going above the speed limit, the best he could do was cushion the blow for the passengers, and even then, it was not enough as the whiplash was enough to break their necks, spines or other bones, leaving them either crippled or dead.

Those were the worst as he had to deal with not just them being injured on his watch but also taking them out of the wreckage of cars that could go up in flames at any point in time.

Now, it was the weekend and he hoped that Tony would come back to the States to give that damned interview so they could buy up even more of SI stock. Apparently, there were more old fossils in Kamar Taj whose families had proposed beyond the norm, making immense wealth for their families.

Master Wu was also somewhat of a tattle mouth, as he had informed his group of old fogies that he had increased their fortune in a matter of months and he had predicted the future when it came to Stark’s rescue, something that only the Ancient One could do.

That ability, the ability to peer into a possible future, more than anything made them come running after his ass, all trying to get a piece of the action. Apparently, the old fogies were plenty powerful but had retired because the Ancient One was so much more powerful than the threats that usually arrived on the planet. Nowadays, all they were useful for was the opportunity to find a talented junior and then impart all their knowledge to him.

They didn't even do that. All they did was hole up in their cave up in the Himalayas and wait for their deaths while looking for interesting stories. Apparently, there was a graveyard shift to clean that cave that was thrust upon whoever was the newbie at that point in time and that young apprentice was accosted by dozens of old powerful fogies capable of bending reality to their will, and forced to tell them the tales of the outside world.

It all sounded pretty hunky dory to him but apparently, the old fogies were not exactly living up in the caves voluntarily. Apparently, before the time he came into Kamar Taj, there used to be a council of Masters, that was responsible for appointing new Sanctum Masters, as well as supervising the orders of the Sorcerer Supreme. While the role’s name suggested that they had free reign over Kamar Taj, Agamotto had predicted that and made the Master Council to balance their powers.

The Master Council could also question the Sorcerer Supreme about their actions and decisions and they were bound to answer to them, provided they were not in a state of active war.

The thing was that before the Ancient One’s reign, which was the longest recorded one, Kamar Taj used to always be in a state of emergency, and as such, the Master Council had never gotten the chance to flaunt their authority.

Ancient One, with her seeming immortality, changed that. Nowadays, most of the extradimensional threats knew that Earth was guarded by a human who was unaging, and unchanging for centuries. So the attacks had abated a bit but never stopped.

He was sure they were just waiting for her to kick the bucket before sending in the heavy hitters. That meant that for the first time in millennia, Kamar Taj was in a state of prolonged peace.

This meant that the Master Council could finally focus on things other than fighting constantly and that led to them discovering their powers. They then, in their infinite wisdom, decided to question the Ancient ONe on her decisions.

While the Ancient One must have humoured them at first but the moment they started questioning her about her immortality, she shut them down. Hard.

They tried to protest but apparently, she was not nearly as patient with them as she was with Stephen Strange in the future. He was the epitome of assholeness and yet, she made a proper Sorcerer Supreme out of him.

That was how the exiled Master Council approached him and offered to give him almost 2 billion dollars to invest as he pleased and he was not going to let that opportunity go. After all, after intense negotiations, conducted remotely, they had finalised a 5% commission on their overall profits, which was….huge.

It was to the tune of almost a hundred million if he played his cards correctly, that is.

Also, it might just be beneficial for him and the Masters to just leave that money as is and influence the workings of Stark Industries. He, for one, would immediately push for an aggressive approach when it came to clean energy from the Arc Reactor.

In the movie timeline, Tony did not push Arc Reactor as much as he should have, probably because of the still strong influence of Big Oil and Coal companies from the United States.

Leaving that aside, he shut down that process of thought and focused on his powers as he opened the door to his apartment and lit it up.

He smiled in exhaustion as he looked at the brightly lit, very well-furnished, cozy but…lonely apartment of his.

“Ha, well, so much for the glamorous life of a superhero. When will it be my turn?” He mused to himself as the groceries put themselves into their place as his body seemingly floated straight to the bathtub, his clothes removed by his powers, the bathwater already at the optimal temperature with all the bath salts in it.

He looked at the awaiting bath with so much love as his form was slowly dropped into the bathtub.

“Ah, I hope someone loves me as much as I love this bathtub right now,” He closed his eyes in satisfaction as the exhaustion just melted away.

God, life is good right now. It could be better, but it was good right now.

Now, if only 2012 came quicker.

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.