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 19

Seattle [October 2008]

–Chris Turner–

Whistling, he entered his bedroom, ready to have the nap of his lifetime, especially after his social battery was drained by his best friends whom he hadn’t met in forever, after moving to NYU for his studies.

“Ah, that’s the stuff,” he sighed in contentment as the warm water in the bathtub soothed away the tension in his body. Ah, he loved his best friends but it was sometimes so draining to be with them all day.

He always feels the same way every time. The first few days after coming home are a whirlwind as he meets with every single friend, family friend, relative, extended family, and so on and so forth. Then, he gets the time to hang out with his old school friends and reminisce about simpler times, all the while getting drunk out of their minds and driving around town with no destination in mind.

Those two events happened exclusively to each other, of course. He did not want another lecture from the Invisible Man about the responsibilities of youth.

Huh. Invisible Man. What a dumb name, he snickered to himself but then he burped.

Ah, too much soda then.

Honestly, he loved the Invisible Man, not in that way, but the way he was so approachable. He had never thought that doing that stupid dare would lead to him coming into contact with a superhero.

Because that’s who he was— a superhero. Invisible Man had probably already saved thousands of lives and must be in the process of saving even more, as he soaked in the bathtub.

It helped that they had some outrageous ideas that the Invisible Man could test, all at the cost of zero dollars. Their underground highway plan didn’t work out because, well for one, the subway already existed. Secondly, the road was built by a mysterious person capable of moving matter with a thought. No matter how strong it was, it would never pass any audit of the government, forever entangling that project in red tape.

Oh yeah, the Invisible Man naming scheme was stupid because it was not an Invisible Man who did the work manually. No, they had seen with their own eyes the proof for that. A crime being stopped halfway across the city at the same time as he was interacting with them using the scribble letters that they had bought for him.

And the scale at which he operated was mind-boggling as well. Raw power combined with impeccable control, what a nightmarish combination, for his enemies that is.

For someone like him who had always dreamed of building huge structures with his own hands, starting with the treehouse in his backyard, well those powers would have been a dream come true.

Although, he was not sure if he could handle the burden of all of that. Having that much power and using that, not for personal benefit (that he knew of) but for the welfare of the society spoke to the Invisible Man’s morals.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Well, he wouldn’t lie and say that the thought of opening up about his powers to the rest of the world, confident in his abilities to stop anybody from harming him, and then becoming the most sought after bachelor for every single hot girl in the city, had never crossed his mind or dreams, but that was what every red-blooded late teen thought of anyway.

Okay, that was enough time in the bathtub, he thought to himself as he dried himself up and entered his PJs.

“Ah, so comfy,” Somehow, the PJs he left at home, despite them being years old, were more comfortable than the vastly more expensive ones that he brought into the city.

“I am afraid that your comfortable session with your bed might be delayed a bit. I am truly sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause you,”

He froze in his tracks and mechanically turned his neck in the direction of the voice and found his voice stuck in his throat as the most stereotypical of suits sat on his chair in front of the door, right beside his closet.

“Uh–Eh?” Chris.exe had stopped working.

“Um, who are you? What do you want?” He stammered out as he looked out of the window and was relieved to see that there was not a squad of armed suits waiting outside his home, ready to take him to some black site, from where he would never hear of, ever again.

“Well, Mr.Chris Turner, I am Agent Coulson from the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division and I have some questions that I am sure you have the answers to,” The man said with the most genial smile on his face but at that moment, it looked more like the devil’s smile to him.

“Uh, yeah, sure,” He stammered out as he sat on the bed, facing the scary agent.

He didn’t look all that muscular or anything but somehow, that only added to his intimidating stature.

“So, I am sure you know what this is about but let me refresh your memory. It is about the Invisible Man. We have credible intel that you and your friends have been in contact with him for an extended period of time, months if I am not wrong?” The suit man rattled off as he started reading through a stack of powers he had brought with him.

“Uh–yeah but look, we haven’t done anything wrong. I have rights, you can’t just make me disappear. The Invisible Man will know and he will come to find–”

“Stop Stop. Let me stop you right there. We are not here to make you disappear, as you put it. Besides, if we did want to kidnap you, we would not be having this conversation in the comfort of your home,”

“Ehh,” He let out a muffled scream, NOT like a little girl.

“Now, we have suspicions that the Invisible Man is practically omnipresent in the city of Manhattan and the surrounding areas as well. You are the only one of the group who lived so far away, across the country actually, so you are the only one we can ask about him.”

So that's why they were targeting him. Well, the decision to get away from his family and enroll in the farthest possible good school had backfired on him in an utterly unexpected spectacular way.

“Y-You are right in that. He knows everything that happens in the city, at all times. It is like he is everywhere at once,” He admitted out loud. He was surprised by that move. He never thought he would betray the Invisible Man’s trust but fear was a healthy motivator. But even then…

“Look, I will say it upfront. I do now know who he really is or if it is even a “he”. What I do know is that he is very powerful but he does not use that power for bad purposes. We did communicate over long distances but that was limited to academic purposes. It all began with a stupid dare but then he became interested in our stupid projects and to us, he was the only shot at bringing out ideas into reality so we just told him where and when to do stuff and he did it. At first, I was really surprised and scared as well because…”

He continued to rattle on, unheeding of the fact that the suit man had snapped his fingers, which caused another suit person to come in and point a camera at him, and then even after that, they started taking notes.

He sweated as he somehow began babbling on and on about everything despite the suit man not asking him anything more than the bare minimum.

God, he was such a wuss.

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