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 122[May 2012]

Zurich

–Loki Laufeyson Odinson–

It was odd. He shook his head as if trying to get rid of a particularly persistent migraine, the ones he had whenever he drank something called the "Romulan Ale" that flooded the black market a few centuries back and he had bought some from the Kree Black Markets, just as an experiment, and ended up in "compromising circumstances" with a "Quadrupedal land mammal of the genus Equus commonly domesticated by humans for transportation, agricultural labor, and recreational activities, distinguished by its elongated head, flowing mane, and swift locomotive capabilities".

Just then, he was about to take out a handy invention that humans made, a device holding tiny runes that held so much information and was also connected to all the other devices across the planet. Thankfully, the tracking feature of the machine was removed by the Good Doctor before he had ordered his minions to dispose of him.

The man was probably already gone because of the magnitude of information that was forcibly stuffed in his mind. Mortals were not supposed to have access to that level of information.

Then again, he thought to himself as he looked at the immaculate construction of the portal machine, mortals can do good work, if they were properly motivated. Imagining armies being capable of not just instantaneous one side transport but also troops capable of localised movement throughout the battlefield made him shiver in excitement.

Sure, the mortals were squishy but as the handful of champions had so handily reminded him, they could be tough and if not, there was always the armour that the mortal known as Stark touted about.

Once he was King, there would be nothing to worry about. Pesky things like Intellectual Property, trademarks, and more would become a thing of the past. He always wondered why things like Intellectual rights evolved exactly the same across all of the universe, that he knew of, and then realised that the ability to safeguard materialistic things will always be the virtue of mortal species with sentience, bare as it was.

He looked through the list of cities and their location on Midgard's map, which allowed him to feed the data to the Tesseract which instantly transported him to that location, all at a paltry cost of some magic that he would never really use because of the Tesseract and his ability to call on unending hordes of Chitauri.

Well, Shanghai sounds like an Ancient city name. 

Looking at the map, imaging it in his mind, he shoved the device back in his pocket, because he couldn't afford to waste his magic in opening and closing his storage space, and then shoved his hands near the sphere that covered the Tesseract. Wincing once again at the pain, despite the magic coating his hands, he shoved the image from his mind into the Tesseract and immediately pulled his hands away from the Tesseract, as his surroundings changed.

Swiftly casting a stealth spell on him, he looked around and was satisfied to see a bustling city with a proper amount of people. Huge artificial metal abominations littered the skyline, no doubt filled with people already.

Good, this was a place worthy of being called a city, for the mortals that is. Some of the previous cities he attacked barely had any people worth mentioning.

Just as he was about to open the portal to the Chitauri, he heard an annoying voice. His hands paused as he instead looked all around him, at the hundreds of shining lights that had turned black and were buzzing at a very frequency, something that affected him but didn't seem to deter any of the humans.

He sneered at that. Inferior beings with their inferior senses.

"Um, hello? Mic Check? Working? Okay. Good," His neck snapped up as he glared at the black boards that now projected the face of Stark, the one mortal who could match up to him, in his weakened form of course. The rest were clearly no mortals.

The Genus Loci of Manhattan could have posed a threat but he was not going to touch that city, not without having the rest of the world under his thumb. Let that spirit act as the guardian host, the last haven of Midgard and then let the rest of the Midgardians watch as he crushes their last stronghold, finally breaking the spirit, both literal and metaphorical, finally completing his invasion and conquest of Midgard.

"Um, hi? Everyone, as you know, we are suffering from a terrible crisis at the moment. The reason for that crisis is just one small coward, jumping from place to place because he is afraid that we will catch up to him. Now, I don't want to say that he is compensating for something with those giant ass whales but what do I know? "

His nostrils flared as he felt a white hot spike of rage at Stark, at the drivel he was spouting. Bereft of his sceptre, he could not fire any energy blasts, not ones that wouldn't deplete his already meagre mana pool but by the Allfather, he wished he had the sceptre that could burn a hole in Stark's pea sized brain.

"Anyway, Loki Laufeyson-" He growled at that, he was no Frost Giant,"--You can come to these coordinates. If that is too complicated for you, this is a picture since I am sure you cannot read and write properly, your brother's words, not mine!"

"See you there, bitch!" Stark said before the large screens turned to their black states, with the pathetic mortals scrambling beneath him. HE smirked at their patheticness, panicking at such a small crisis.

He would have to whip that out of them when he became their King. It might take a few generations to whip them into discipline and obedience but they were mortals anyway, a few generations would pass without him even noticing anything about it.

Now, to the pest problem that he hoped to push until later on but…

"Stark!" He growled and uncaring of the pain, he thrust his hand into the Tesseract and conveyed the location. Feeling the change, he found himself in a vast land that was white in colour.

Choosing not to dwell on that oddity, he surveyed his surroundings and found them bereft of Stark and his ilk. He sneered internally, typical mortals. Too cowardly to face their superi—

His senses blared at him as he hurriedly dropped the spell holding the machine up in the air and dropped a few feet, only to be ragdolled by the shockwave of whatever it was that passed him. Desperately holding on to the machine, his hand brushed against the sphere of energy, triggering the portal.

As a result, the ragdolling ceased instantly as the machine stabilised itself, him barely holding on to the machine. His neck on a swivel, he looked at where Stark's suit should be but his eyes narrowed as he found an explosion looking back at him.

His shoulders tensed as he realised that he barely avoided death just now. In his current mana depleted state, he would not be able to cast a shield spell and if he managed to survive that, his body would be in no condition to heal itself or keep him alive long enough for Thor to arrive.

That stupid naive fool would still try to save—

He looked up abruptly as he saw thunder right up above him heralding the arrival of his brother. He squinted as he saw the glowing form of his brother, arcs of lightning surrounding his body as Thor raced straight at him.

His jaw hung agape as Thor seemed to be in no hurry to slow down. He barely had the sense to hunch right behind the machine as Thor, clad in lightning, struck the machine and him with it.

The last thing he remembered was a white flash of pain on the back of his neck before darkness claimed his vision.

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