The Sage of the Mind

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 118[May 2012]

Manhattan

–Frank Castle–

He could honestly say that this was the weirdest day of his life, even more so than the first time he saw cars and trucks being lifted into the air, suspended by nothing, just in an attempt to clear the traffic after a fire had broken out of the oil container and had spread to the nearest car.

It was also kind of amusing to watch grown men get ejected out of the car and then flung back to the ground, with the fire put out by the same invisible hands. Then, there was the wave of cleaning that happened on the subway, it was as if a wave of cleanliness swept through the subway every morning. It was visible with how the grime, dirt, and whatever else gross stuff, was eviscerated by the Invisible Hand of the Invisible Man whenever the subway trains entered Manhattan and left Manhattan spanking clean.

While he didn't let his kids out of Manhattan, at all and never left Maria out of Manhattan without him being there as company, he himself had travelled all over New York and even out of State ot handle some business permanently, content in the knowledge that his family was safe and with the property they held in Manhattan, would be safe and want for nothing for most of their lives.

That assurance was worth more than anything and the will to be there, to watch all of them grow up and grow old with them was what helped him lower his pride and finally ask for help, ensuring that his past life, legal and grey legal, did not come to haunt him, or his family in their current happy lives.

Though, as he followed the voice's instructions and came to the rooftop of his building, which now housed railguns that were positively smoking, he thought of the current state of the city, his building, the expense of repairing it, and how the city or even the world would never be the same after today, considering the sheer amount of damage that was happening to major cities around the world, even now as he followed the instruction of the voice.

He turned around and aimed his gun at the sudden sound of something heavy hitting the ground, and saw a humanoid blue suit landing on his rooftop.

"Greetings, Mr.Castle, I'm afraid we don't have much time. Can you please get inside this suit?" The voice spoke from the suit as well as his phone and he relaxed minutely, but still didn't let go of the safety on his gun.

"Alright, but where are we going and what the hell is going on? And if you spoke from the assets that the Invisible Man gave me, then do you have any idea where the fuck he has gone?" He asked the suit even as he stepped forward and entered the suit.

Darkness filled his vision briefly before a series of complex diagrams and images filled his vision as he felt the suit jerk for a brief moment, probably from the suit taking flight, before an orange circle appeared in the bottom right corner of his vision, pulsing slightly.

"Mr.Castle, we are to approach a Class 2 Resource, such as yourself. His name is Steve Rogers,"

With that, a series of pictures appeared on the big screen, even as he felt the suit jerk minutely in various directions, probably because the suit was taking turns. His eyes widened as he read through the texts and saw the pictures, some taken with current timestamps.

"Son of a–"

"Yes, that is Captain America. To be brief, Captain America was frozen in ice in suspended animation. He has been rescued recently and has been living a normal life in Manhattan. We are to explain the current situation to him and gain his assistance. I believe you to be best suited due to your shared background and also because interacting with artificial intelligence for a man who has yet to figure out a toaster can be a bit disturbing,"

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, counted to three and then opened them once again, only to glare at the details in front of him. The gist of it was that they were currently under an Invasion by some alien God known as Loki, yes, from the Norse Gods, and he has an army of aliens just waiting to invade Earth through a portal.

Now, that portal machine is capable of not just opening portals to transport aliens through it, but also capable of transporting itself to any part of the planet instantly, making sure that even if they did defeat the aliens that came out of the portal, unless they managed to catch and deactivate that machine, they would be back to square one because according to the limited intel they have, this Loki guys has enough of those aliens to take over the entire planet.

"Good Lord. Jarvis, was it? Do you know the status of my family?"

"Yes. Would you like to talk to them?" A feed opened on the screen and he smiled fondly as he saw Maria, his sweet beautiful Maria helping people in what seemed to be a huge hall of some kind, filled with people who were currently confused and panicking, crying but more importantly, safe.

"Where is this?"

"That is the tunnel, reinforced with the best tech that we could build. It will be safe even in the event of a thermonuclear device exploding above Manhattan. So be rest assured that your family will be safe." Jarvis replied.

"Alright, let's go meet the sleeping beauty." 

____xx____

Stark Jet

–Tony Stark–

"What are we supposed to do?" 

He didn't answer Coulson's question since they were just coming back after making sure that all the aliens in California were taken care of and was also working on something that might help them at least get some victory in this fight. It was a nightmare to deal with, especially the Space Whales. He had nothing in his arsenal capable of taking down one of them.

Thor managed to take out two of them and the seven brothers took down another one, by going inside the Whales and then attaching multiple high yield bombs inside it.

Bruce took down another 2 and all he managed to do was take out the stragglers, the one who were shot out of the whales and were peppering the surrounding areas with laser fires.

They had taken and scanned as much of the weaponry they could and it was nothing advanced. He has built much more advanced stuff but the problem was the sheer quantity. According to Thor, Loki had practically unlimited troops and they would just keep coming.

He turned around and saw Bruce stumbling into the lab, his eyes red and his clothes in disarray but time was of the essence so they had no time for lab etiquettes as Bruce promptly sat down on his workstation and began working on the data they pilfered from the Reactor before he had to shut it down, and seal the entire thing, rendering it inert and destroying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property.

"Jarvis, relay all the information with Level 2 clearance to Coulson and Romanoff and make sure that they don't get out of their quarters,"

"No! Wait, Stark, you can't–" He swiped down and closed the call. He didn't have time for this. The President was breathing down his neck.

"Jarvis?"

"We have the railguns active at full capacity and I have expedited the manufacturing processes at both the bases. We should have an ample amount of weaponry produced in the next two hours, in case another Entry portal opens above New York," Jarivs helpfully informed him as Randall and Bruce worked tirelessly on the data they got from the reactor, including any video footage.

Most of it was scrambled beyond repair, mainly due to the wave of pure energy released from the machine that damaged all nearby electronics. Thankfully, this particular reactor was decades old and its protection systems relied mainly on plain old mechanical mechanisms that worked on time and disabled everything in the reactor..

"Got it!" Randall yelled and he immediately whirled around, suppressing a wince as he felt the bruise on his shoulder when one of the laser speedos clipped him on the shoulder, the sheer onslaught of them being intense enough that not even Jarvis could protect him from everything.

The suit he had used in the fight was being repaired as well as multiple suits were on their way to the Stark Jet, because he was not going to take any chances.

"They used the reactor's energy to jumpstart the machine, just like we suspected but they didn't just jumpstart the machine, they overpowered it. Look," Randall pointed at a series of graphs including video footage that showed the machine being activated in two stages.

The first activation created a blue halo around the machine, as if it was a shield, burning all the wires and equipment all around it, making it float mid air. For the Second activation, his eyes narrowed as he saw Loki holding onto two wires in both his hands and after doing something at them, his hands began shimmering in green before he thrust both the wires, including his hands at the blue glow surrounding the portal machine.

All of them winced as Loki's hands turned red but the wires stuck to the glow, including Loki. Loki's face was twisted in pain but he managed to say something before the green glow around his hand increased in intensity, blinding the camera before it all receded and all that was left in the facility were unconscious men, a barely standing Loki who dragged himself to the machine and stood atop a groove that was built beforehand.

And then, the feed cut off because of the portal creation.

"Shit."

Shit indeed.

"So, Loki can take the portal anywhere he wants to? He can use the machine to get anywhere on the planet or is there a pattern somewhere there?" Bruce asked as he got back to his workstation, the information being nearly useless to them because they knew that the portal machine was being transported to all the major cities on the planet.

Only now they knew that Loki was in the machine as well, guiding it.

"Wait! We can use this," he caught the attention of Bruce and Randall as he rushed back to his station.

"Jarvis, how quick can you get me access to every single radio, TV, as well as satellite frequency on the planet? Hack everything. Activate Protocol Omega, energy burnout be damned."

"I have certain orders standing in place to remind you sir that this might result in extensive backlash for the company." 

"And this is not the time to worry about that. Look at the counter, we have already crossed a hundred thousand casualties. Hurry,"

"Affirmative, sir. Protocol Omega activated. ETA until complete digital takeover - 13 minutes,"

HE heaved a sigh of relief and opened the direct line to POTUS.

"Stark! What have you been doing? Any updates on where the portal might open next? My analysts say that there is a delay of 6 minutes between the portal closing and the next portal opening. The pattern is completely random, except they are targeting major cities, irrespective of their population or population density," He leaned back at the rapid fire question and data vomit that came out of the feed.

"Sir, I am already aware of that, and we are working on mitigating the damage. Thankfully, unexpected parties have risen up in multiple locations to combat the invaders but we can't just keep fighting the dregs, we will be burnt out sooner than them, according to the intel that we have. We need to drag the battlefield to a location of our choice and keep it there. We are working on it but for that, we need access to every single digital device on the planet, anything with a speaker and a display, I need access to. How soon can I get that?"

"Done. Get him everything he needs. Tony, make sure that we don't lose," Saying so, the feed cut off. He grumbled internally, it was not as if he intended to lose or anything.

"Tony, what are you planning?" Randall asked him and he turned around, grinning a bit.

"Well, what else? How else would you bait a narcissistic asshole? By using another narcissistic asshole as bait, ofcourse!" He grinned as he got to work on getting his message across to Loki.

That might just work.

In the corner of his workstation, there was a small red glowing symbol which indicated the activity of the Invisible Man, i.e, Axle Riddle.

He couldn't believe it, the bastard had been in front of him all this time, buying up his company.

"Well, we will have all the time in the world to have a nice conversation once he is awake and all of this is behind us," He muttered to himself as he worked on something that might just help knock Loki off the machine.

The pure energy barrier was off-bar, no matter how powerful his weapons would get, they would not breach through an energy barrier with a power source that is effectively unlimited, but getting Loki off the machine should be simple enough because the barrier was now only surrounding the cube and not the machine.

Damaging the machine or dislodging Loki off the machine, anything was a viable outcome.

They just had to get it done somehow.

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