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 123[May 2012]

Utah Salt Flats

–Tony Stark–

With their plan in motion, they stayed put, thousands of feet above the place where they had just goaded Loki into coming. The atmosphere aboard the Stark jet was very stifling, everybody held their breath because there was a chance that Loki would just ignore them and not even think of coming into such an obvious trap.

They were also currently ignoring all calls from all government entities, even as he saw Jarvis tracking multiple fighter jet departures from all the nearby military bases, converging directly at their current location. He knew that the President couldn't give a direct order himself because his position was quite strenuous at the moment, but choosing a mostly empty location such as this was also going to generate a lot of backlash, especially from the environmentally maniac people.

He has dealt with them before, but that was about protests about his personal property, like the Arc Reactor or his many other weapons but this was different. He had just effectively declared an entire zone that was thousands of acres, a no mans land.

Jarvis was doing all he could to buy up everything at double, triple the price but he knew that he would need to burn a lot of favors to avoid jail time after this, since it was his face that was all over the world, practically inviting Loki to destroy a precious natural phenome–

Sirens began beeping as Jarvis tracked a heavy energy arrival in their area.

This was it, "Jarvis! Prep it and as soon as you have a lock, go in full throttle."

"Affirmative, sir. Project Big Sh*t activated," 

He expertly ignored everyone's looks when Jarvis uttered the original name of the project, something that he had cooked up during one of his many drunken tinkering sessions back when he was in college.

"Thor, can you hit the machine with your strongest attack? Preferably a physical attack since energy attacks don't seem to work?" He asked Thor since he was the only one, aside from the Hulk, who could hit with a strength that would destroy most things on the planet.

Also, The Hulk couldn't fly. He tried to tell Bruce about the foot repulsor units he could fix up but Bruce was confident that the Hulk would not care for those and would rather destroy them himself instead.

"Aye, Friend Stark. I will need a few moments to gather the lightning but I can hit the machine with all my might,"

"What about your brother?" Everyone looked at Randall who continued to type on his workstation, trying to work on something to interfere with the workings of the machine while also simultaneously recording everything so that they could detect such portal openings to the last meter, in the future, should the need arise.

Randall then stopped and turned to face Thor fully, with an intense look in his eyes, "What if you hold back at the last moment? How can we be sure that you will not destroy our one chance at stopping Loki?" 

He was taken aback at that. He didn't expect Randall to be so straightforward, especially since his patron, The Invisible Man was still comatose, something that should create many problems for them from the government but Randall was…fine.

Thor opened his mouth to speak but Randall beat him to it, "820,000 people are dead, Crown Prince Thor."

Thor winced at the reminder of his brother's borderline genocide. The worst disaster to hit the world in terms of human death count in the 21st century.

"I will admit that my brother has erred and he deserves to face full justice for his crimes. Facing the full brunt of my attacks can kill Loki, I acknowledge that but know this, I will never, never hold back because the lives of thousands of more mortals hang in the balance. I, Thor Odinson, vow on my powers that I will not go easy on Loki just because he is my brother,"

He looked around as the words reverbed all around the jet, even though the sound isolation in the Jet was supposed to be top-notch. Some magical bullshit then.

Randall's face didn't change one bit but he had a hunch that THor had just done some significant thing which basically guaranteed what he just said.

"Portal confirmed," Jarvis' reminder put everyone on high alert as Thor left for the hangar bay, which was opened, just in case Thor needed to rocket out of the jet. Jarvis had also increased the thrust on all the repulsors to increase the stability of the Jet, couldn't have the Stark Jet tumble out of the sky just because the God of Thunder jumped out of it.

"Alright, ladies!" He looked at the gatherings of their team, their faces set in excitement, anger, and even some fear as they prepared themselves for a very hard fight. The fight of their lives even, and honestly? He mirrored that sentiment but he couldn't let it show on the outside now, could he?

"It's showtime," With his words, a screen appeared in the centre, showing the energy blob that was the TEsseract;s location. Sure, they couldn't get a visual on Loki but that was due to Loki's illusions, something that was just a fancy way of bending light.

"3..2….1" And with that, he saw one of the Stark Industries' satellites that he'd put up in space a year back, spit out a projectile, a missile but it didn't have any thrusters on it. It was just a missile that he had hastily installed in the Satellite because he hadn't installed the hyper dense tungsten projectile that he was going to install because he felt that holding an Orbital Canon over everyone's head would be wrong.

As it turns out, it would have been illegal and treasonous but it would have been the perfect thing for such an occasion.

Instead, they had this.

On the screen, as soon as the missile was dropped out of the satellite, two different suits of his appeared on the screen, and their hands, which were not really hands but devices made to latch onto the circular body of the missile appeared.

"Alright, let's go," He muttered as he suited up in the Stark Jet, ready to get to the battlefield, if it didn't work as were everyone else but they couldn't risk going in early because Loki might sense them and flee the place.

The cameras on the suits along with a handy map on the screen showed the missile, its speed, and its ETA to hit Loki.

It was already going way faster than anything that Earth had ever built, including Rockets for orbital launches. He also knew that the President tacitly approved his actions because he was yet to see any response from the no doubt hundreds of missile silos that would activate almost instantly if any missile of unknown origin was approaching US soil at such breakneck speeds.

His decision to stay in the jet was proven correct when just as the missile was about to breach the clouds and enter Loki's vision and destroy him, Loki's head snapped up and he immediately ducked down, dropping a couple dozen feet, and then immediately flying up high, his body very much wobbly because of the shockwave. Loki struggled to hold onto the portal machine even as the air around him continued to ragdoll the machine as well as Loki. 

It would seem that without the portal being active, the machine didn't have any way of stabilising itself.

That single move saved his ass as the missile exploded on the salt flat and since the yield of the makeshift missile was not as high as he wanted it to be, the impact was not significant, either on the Salt Plains or on Loki.

"Alright, move OUT!" He shouted as the entire floor moved to create a circular hole, through which he jumped. Even as he was going through the tunnel, he felt the entire Jet jerk to one side, as his head hit the wall of the narrow tunnel.

"Damn it, THor!" He cursed as he exited the Jet and saw the rapidly flying form of Thor.

Then the idiot went ahead and did something that stabilised the machine but also activated the blue portal from Hell right above them, this one being the largest one ever recorded.

"Unusual Meteorological activity detected," Jarvis' warning was unnecessary because he saw, in real time, the darkening of clouds and the buildup of lighting in the atmosphere, seemingly following THor's flight trajectory.

He followed suit, making sure to remain at a distance because he did not want his suit to be damaged by friendly fire. He wasn't sure if his energy redirectors and the Arc Reactor itself along with the wiring, could hold on to the total energy amount of an actual lightning bolt.

Those things were scary, actually. 

Apparently, Thor didn;t get that memo because instead of going straight down, Thor just jerked up, right into the middle of the biggest thundercloud Jarvis had ever recorded on this side of the planet.

He was about to continue on his path to Loki when Jarvis' warning came in the form of the suit being thrown back by the repulsor thrusters as he saw, in slow motion, as Thor, wreathed in crackling white light, flew straight down, towards Loki.

Thor's hammer in particular was just white now, with no hint of its previous grey in sight.

In just a second, he saw all this unfolding and then he took control, following after Thor, activating the extra shields he had on the back, just in case some friendly fire did occur in this game.

The world's most dangerous, high stakes, high pressure, and crappy story game.

...

….

His jaw hung agape as Thor, seemingly not taking into consideration the safety of his brother, continued on his path, and stuck the machine.

The cameras in the ruined suits underneath Loki and on the Jet, the satellites as well as the suit he was wearing could not see what was happening because the machine was just a blur of white, with a blue beam sticking out of the mass of blue.

"Shit!" He shook his head as he moved onto the horde of Chitauri coming out of the portal now. After pulling off a move like that, even Thor must be tired.

They couldn't let the CHitauri spill out because these guys were nasty AF and did not care about harming children, women, or the elderly. For them, everyone else was a target.

"Alright team, keep an eye on the situation. I'll deal the first round," He announced before a series of micro missiles ejected his suit as well as the two almost ruined suits on the ground, heading straight for the horde of Chitaur.

"Jarvis! Any updates?"

"The energy storm around the machine continues to persist, with no possible way of calculating the energy levels in the sphere, I can't calculate a precise ETA,"

"Then get me rough figures!" He shouted as he shoulder checked one of the chariots, making it swerve and crash into another Chariot.

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