The Sage of the Mind

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The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 107[May 2012]

Germany

–Tony Stark–

Things were spiraling out of control, that much was clear to him. While the entire Loki thing came on all of a sudden to most of them, the Invisible Man, whoever he was, seemed to know about it, all in advance. It was just that the Man himself couldn't do much about it because he was geo bound to the city of New York.

That was why he had sent them ahead. It was clear that the Invisible Man had some scary accurate information about Loki, his brother, and their civilization and he had a hunch that even the future was something that the Invisible Man knew about.

And yet, even as the things that the Invisible Man said came to be true, he knew that there was at least something that was not in his calculations, hence the mild panicking he could hear in the man. The Invisible Man had now begun ordering him around, knowing that he was very much averse to that. 

Alas, the hours of very expensive therapy had proven to work because he had set aside his petty thoughts because of the very real world ending emergency in front of him. They had captured, or rather, helped SHIELD capture Loki without much fuss and without even leaving the Jet, just as the Invisible Man had ordered them to, but that was when things began spiralling.

The Invisible Man warned them that Thor, Asgardian Crown Prince and the brother of Loki was sure to arrive to rescue his brother because, in his own words, Loki was the former Prince of Asgard and no other civilisation can be allowed to judge Loki other than Asgard. Doing so would be a huge affront to Asgard's honor, despite Loki killing over a hundred people ever since he set foot on the planet.

He and Bruce had been very excited to finally see actual, real life teleportation in action so he let the sealed state of the Jet go and pointed all the sensors that he could, at the Quinjet in front of him, in hopes that they could gather as much data as possible when Thor inevitable teleported to his brother.

Unfortunately, Thor's arrival was not without its effect on the weather around them. Thunder, lightning, clouds, and more accumulated all around them within seconds, heralding the arrival of the so called God of Thunder. Now, normally, that would have been fine, the Jet was more than capable of handling even space operations for a limited amount of time so a little bit of lightning and rain was not going to be an issue. But this lightning was not normal, and he had let go of most of the protections of the Jet in favour of setting the sensors on the outside of the body of the Jet so that they could get the most accurate readings.

That, combined with the surge in an unknown energy that somehow resonated with the Arc Energy led to a brief power loss, which should have been immediately restored by the backup Arc Reactors that he had installed in the Jet as redundancy but unfortunately, that energy surge reset all the Arc Reactors on the Jet, so he had to resort to Battery power, like a 20th century peasant.

The battery only helped them see where they were going to crash and not how to stop the crash because the Reactors were going to take another minute to reboot, according to his calculations. He would have done something but there was no time. 

Fortunately, even as all the occupants of the Jet strapped in their emergency seats, bracing for impact, the Arc Reactors came online and the Jet stopped barely a dozen feet from the ground with the help of the Repulsors.

Slowly, the other, smaller Arc Reactors came online and finally, they had full functionality back. Unfortunately, the moment the wide angle HUD came back online, they saw the Quinjet, smoking, crash land right in front of them. It seemed to be a controlled landing so they were mostly fine.

He controlled the urge to get out of the Jet and do something because according to what he had seen in the database, even as brief as his time was with it, he was not so sure about SHIELD being the good guys, especially so after Fury died.

This Pierce guy was giving him the creeps. The database was a godsend because they now knew which one of the guys were Pierce's and which ones were the good eggs, because he knew, in his guts, that after all of this Loki's matter was done and dusted with, the President would have to be informed about SHIELD's actions and Pierce's actions and a massive culling operation would have to be launched to either cleanse SHIELD and reduce its size, or destroy it altogether.

Either way, he was not really interested in associating any further with SHIELD and its mooks, so after confirming that Romanoff was fine and not in any danger, he let the Jet gain altitude, before following the area with the most lightning and thunder. With all the other areas of the sky being clear, it was very easy to find the God of Thunder.

"Tony? Whatever you do, do not engage the Crown Prince in direct Combat. Trust me when I say this that even the Hulk will find it difficult to best Thor," The warning from the Invisible Man came right on time and was duly noted but he could not let his curiosity not be sated, right?

Within a minute, they were upon the Asgardian brothers. The advanced sensors on board projected a picture as well as flaky audio for them to hear. He could see one of the brothers being completely indifferent to the passionate pleas of the Crown Prince of Asgard.

Thor was trying to convince Loki to come back and Loki was not having it.

"Tony, whatever you do, do not fire the first salvo," The warning came once again and he rolled his eyes at that. The Invisible Man was not the boss of him but he was keeping all his loved ones safe and sound at the moment so he replied.

"Yes yes, I know. Don't provoke the scary blonde who can flatten me like a paste,"

The line was silent after that.

He continued to eavesdrop on their conversation and was enlightened to many things. 

Loki was not the invasion party. He was the Vanguard.

He shared horrified looks with Bruce and Randall. If Loki was the vanguard, who was the army? And how terrifying must the army be?

"An army from outer space? That is…." Randall was speechless as they heard more of the conversation even as Jarvis filed away most of it and processed it, trying to find more and more clarity to the conversation that was happening hundreds of feet away in this very turbulent weather.

"Huh, what do you know, ET, in this case, looks just like us. I suppose the green Martian theory was way off then," He quipped, as he did when the stress of any particular situation became too much for him.

"The Chitauri will not win you this planet, brother. They will de…s… it. You must come home, brother," Thor's words did not fill any of them with confidence.

"Okay, I'm going in. They are talking about my planet," He declared and pulled the jet out of stealth mode and slowly, very noticeably, let the Jet descend near Thor's location.

The reaction was immediate, as the sensors recorded an increased lightning and thunder in the skies above them as Thor held his hammer in one hand and held on to his brother's collar with the other, looking straight up at him.

A shiver went up his spine at that. "Jarvis? Keep the suits ready, will you?"

He had never felt this much danger before. Damn, the Invisible Man was right, this man was dangerous, with a capital D.

"Affirmative, sir," Jarvis' reply came with a reassuring whine and thunk of armours as they lined up at the back of the Jet's cabin, ready to leap in and defend him at a moment's notice.

Thor didn't take any action, even as the Jet landed, without any of its weapons visible, obviously. Loki, on the other hand, looked quite interested when he, in his armour, and Bruce and Randall came out of the Jet's bay.

Loki and Thor both kept an eye on the armour that flew up in the sky but not for long, as they were finally within striking range of each other. He had taken an executive decision and ordered Jarvis to take possession of the sceptre.

He was not really comfortable with any government or government organisation having access to mind control artefacts. So, he was going to figure out a way to destroy that sceptre as soon as he could get it back to Stark Tower.

"Greetings, Asgardians. We are part of the team that was supposed to apprehend Loki," He said and almost immediately backpedaled when thunder rumbled and lightning gathered on top of Thor's hammer.

Bruce immediately took charge, as he should have in the beginning itself and stepped forward with his hands raised up, "We mean you or Loki no harm."

They all ignored Loki's scoff and eye rolling at the harm part, as if they could not harm him at all, even if they wanted to.

"We are just worried about what we heard. The Chitauri? An Invasion of Earth? We may not have the authority to interfere in Asgardian Royal Family matters but if there is going to be an Invasion happening on Earth, we need to know about it. Can we…just talk about it?" Bruce gestured to the very open bay of Stark Jet.

Thor mulled over it for a moment before replying, "Loki stays in my sight at all times."

"That is what we would prefer. Currently, we have no feasible way of countering his illusions and would prefer if you could keep a close eye on him, for our safety,"

Smart. Bruce presented himself as the lower, powerless party, partly to appease the Crown Prince's obviously sky high Ego, and yes, the irony of Sky High Egos was not lost on him, Mr.Tower with his name on it.

"Very well, lead the way…"

"Banner. Bruce Banner,"

"Very well, lead the way, Banner of the Bruces,"

Bruce wisely didn't correct the man with the scary hammer, because if the readings he was getting were correct, that hammer held more energy in it than all the Arc Reactors he had built in his lifetime, combined.

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