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The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 76 [October 2010]
Manhattan
–Axle Riddle–
With a gasp, he came to consciousness, as his mind returned to awareness of its surroundings. As soon as it happened though, he winced.
“Ow…” He had to forcibly control his power and wind it tightly within his mind for his head to stop hurting.
“Ow indeed. I assume you are finally feeling the effects of the stunt you pulled earlier?” He looked to the side as an invisible pressure forced him back on the bed, with the Ancient One reading a book while nonchalantly sipping tea.
“W-What happened?” He croaked out, his mouth feeling completely dry. He muttered a quick thank you as a glass of water slowly flew over to him. He ignored how it continued to be full despite him chugging down most of it within moments.
“What happened Mr.Riddle is that within a span of an hour, you managed to tangle yourself with one of the most dangerous beings in the universe, pulled off a ridiculous move of combining your latent potential with your partitioned mind which granted you phenomenal levels of power, proceed to battle his avatar using your own avatar, bonded with a block of Vibranium using your powers, and then suffered a backlash from said weapon being destroyed, and then still managed to reach Bruce Banner and Betty Ross to help defend them, where in we found you collapsed,”
“When you put it like that, anything will sound stupid. Where were you, anyway? I had to fight with that guy who was not even taking me seriously and winning, and that was with my shiny new upgrades, you know,”
He conveniently left out the part where he could not really use his powers right now. His head felt bloated as if it was filled with way too much water and was about to spill out of it. He didn’t have the courage to use his TK, that was how intensive the damage was. The shiny new powers did not come without a cost then.
“That, Mr.Riddle, is someone who can suppress the Vishanti all by himself if there was not someone else of equal power stopping him. Unfortunately, there is not much you can do about him. He has a vested interest in Dr.Banner and more importantly, in his unborn progeny.”
“But he is restricted in how he can act so he pulled that stunt. Wait, are you telling me that was him at his weak point?” He asked her incredulously. While he was more than aware of the existence of the One Below All, *chills*, he was of the opinion that the One Above All *Stan Lee Flashes by* was the one keeping him contained.
If this was his fractional power then….
“What happened to Betty?” He asked her urgently, his mind fighting the urge to just let his powers go and find out for himself since he was pretty sure this was the New York Sanctum and the warehouse was not that far away from here.
“Ms.Ross is fine. You have been unconscious for three days now. Full recovery will take at least a month,” She said, calm as a cucumber.
“A month?! We don’t have a month. Betty is due in a month and a half. What if something happens until then? And what about the city? Oh, dear god, there must be pandemonium in the city,” He panicked and began blubbering.
It had been years since he had felt this blinded, this helpless. Without his powers, he was unable to keep an eye on the city or keep them safe from the dangers by instilling the fear of god in the minds of criminals.
Oh, Shit!
“What about the city? Those tentacled monsters? Their blood was acting as if it was alive and was deliberately spreading to the sewers. I couldn’t do much about it because I had to save Betty and Bruce but did you find out anything?” He asked her, his heart sinking as he saw her brows furrowed as she leaned forward, the cup of tea and her book disappearing as if it was never there at all.
“No, Mr.Riddle. The remnants have been taken into custody by the government and we have purged as much as we could of the mystical influence of those foot soldiers but nothing is permanent. I am afraid that some of the blood that you are talking about, which is cosmic ichor, must have escaped.” She said before snapping her fingers.
He blinked as he found himself sleeping in his clothes and not the medical PJs from before.
“Here,” He looked up to see an armour floating towards him. He yelped a bit as it seemed to sink into his body and then sighed in relief as a warm pleasant sensation spread throughout his body.
“That is the armour of the Vishanti. It will help you against dark influences, be it from the Astral Realm or the real world.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Why would he need to go to the Astral Realm all of a sudden? He was not even that good at it. As if answering his question, another book appeared in front of him. He took hold of it and read the title of the book, and deadpanned at the Ancient One who looked just as serene as before, as if this situation meant nothing to her and did not affect her one bit.
“A Dummies guide to safe passage in the Astral Realm and the ways to heal one’s spirit”
“That was a mouthful, wasn’t it?”
“The author of that book is not human, Mr.Riddle. The Astral Realm is home to many species, and while the material universe has found itself devoid of most dragons for eons now, there are some species of dragons that evolved to survive in the Astral Realm, as psionic entities. One of those dragons, quite an eccentric one, managed to inhabit one of the homunculus that we had in possession at the time. That dragon is the reason we know so much about the Astral Realm.”
“You will do well to respect Master Jin’ya as he is the only reason you will recover your soul within the span of a week. In the meantime, I assume you will come to appreciate the struggles of being an ordinary person. I have taken the liberty to inform all of your minions, as you like to call them, that you will be out of commission for a month.”
He opened his mouth to argue when she forestalled him, “Do not worry about them. They will be fine. Just in case, I have also assigned one of the newer Masters to shadow them at all times. Nobody is going to come in and take them from the city,”
He sighed in relief. His existence was really the only thing stopping the vultures from descending into Manhattan, or Bruce and even Betty herself. He liked to think that Ross would not stoop so low so as to hurt his own daughter or his own grandchild for power but he could never be sure with that man.
For all he knew, Ross could consider the baby as an abomination, a monster, and in his mind, he could be doing Betty a favour by getting rid of the monster in her belly.
He shook his head to get rid of those dark thoughts. Nothing he can do about them other than heal up and get back to work.
“I suppose I will have to learn this by myself?” He asked her, smiling weakly when she nodded. It was not as if he did not understand the books, the books related to mind and Astral Realm were surprisingly easy to understand. IT was just that the books were really boring and mostly relied on the user’s mind’s imagination to function properly.
“You will be fine, Mr.Riddle. Now, I have a lot of work to do to strengthen the shields to make sure nothing of this sort happens near one of the Sanctums so…off you go,” She made a shooing gesture and he found himself standing outside the Sanctum once again, holding onto the book with one hand, and his wallet with the other.
Well, time to live life like a normal human.
_____xx____
–Nick Fury–
“Yes, Mr.President, we have taken all the samples into our custody,”
“Yes, Mr.President, multiple blood samples have been found at all the locations of the battle but we are yet to find anything concrete.”
“Yes, sir, I have tasked my best men on it.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” He hung up the phone and had the urge to just throw the phone and disappear from the world for a month.
“Fucking Invisible Man. Not so invisible, are you now?” he muttered as a series of photos, clicked using both SHIELD as well as US Government satellites were laid on his table. All of them were from different angles, the darkness making the photo blurry, but it was unmistakable.
The Invisible Man was a human and had to come out of his hidey hole to fight something of that calibre.
But then again, it was understandable, he thought to himself as he came out of the makeshift tent office and looked at the now pulverised six blocks worth of an area, filled with nothing but rubble.
It was good that the Billionaire army that the Invisible Man had raised, along with his cult, had taken all responsibility to rebuilt everything, down to the last brick. Money had already poured in, permits were being granted at an expedited pace, and construction crew had already begun working on the areas that SHIELD had cleared, and declared safe from contamination.
Contamination from what exactly? He did not know.
SHIELD Was supposed to be the first line of defense against motherfucking aliens and they somehow entered their backyard without anyone noticing.
It was their luck that they came to Manhattan, and just Manhattan, where the powers of the guy were the strongest. Otherwise, who knows what kind of death and destruction they would have had to face.
Well, he had received the news from Banner and Tony. The Invisible Man was injured in the fight and will not be back for atleast a week. That news will never make it into any of the reports because that was just begging for another disaster to occur.
What was important was that the Invisible Man was just healing, he was not gone. HE will be back and things will turn to normal. In the meantime, he had this headache to deal with.
How did the fucker do it anyway?
According to the records, there was a giant ass orange magical circle that appeared all around the island, and then white chains came out of those circles and restrained the tentacles.
Then, just as they came, they were gone, leaving behind dead husks of those monsters. They had testimonies of the Invisible Man falling unconscious just before the whole white chains came out of the magic circle thing but he did not have access to either the Invisible Man or his closest people to interrogate.
And even if he did have a brain the size of a pea to try and strongarm his people into an interrogation, he would not do so because he could not do so.
Everyone had gone underground, save for Banner and Tony, both of whom were individually capable of wrecking anything he sent their way.
So, there he was, standing amidst the rubble, waiting for the main guests to arrive so that he could finally understand what the fuck had happened!
"Ow, Motherfucker," He cursed as he almost tripped over a piece of rock.
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