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 47 [August 2010]

–Randall Bo–

“Alright guys, gather up!” He shouted to the dorks as they were busy playing video games instead of training as he instructed them to. Well, at least they completed the bare minimum that was expected from him so that was good.

Only if it wasn’t enforced by the fear of going in the bad books of their almighty lord and savi–ahem, He meant, Boss and saviour, the Invisible Man.

He felt the thumps as all six of them left whatever they were doing, with reluctant groans as they gathered around him. 

In front of him, was the love of his life. The best thing money could buy in his opinion. The very best workstation setup that money could buy. Sure, he was a little constricted in terms of how much power he could use without tripping someone off but at the moment, they were fine with what little they could scrounge off the grid.

He was so very close to cracking the Arc Reactor that even if he got a glimpse into the workings of a finished one, he would be able to start making his own en masse. And wouldn’t that be the dream?

To have a completely off the grid man cave with all the computers and toys one would ever need.

Ahem, before he could start drooling, he opened up the Stark Expo Map that he had compiled using the map that was publicly available on Stark Industries’ website as well as their submissions to the fire and safety departments when they applied for the permits.

“Now, the good news is that the Expo is a fairly spread out event, so the density of people at any given place should be pretty low, barring some special event. That means that our job would be slightly easier to corral the people to safety.”

“Um, wouldn’t it be even tougher because then we would all be spread apart? You know our powers don’t work normally when we are not in sight of each other,” Bolton, the scrawniest of the brothers, hesitantly raised his point.

He pointed his stick at him, “You would be correct, but that is only before we were turned into beings capable of taking bullets to the face without flinching….”

“Speak for yourself…” Bolton murmured.

“Now that we are enhanced, I don’t think we even need our base powers for this to succeed. All we need is a way of hiding our identity while making sure that the people are saved, i.e., handing them over to the emergency services.”

All the brothers nodded at his explanation, finding it reasonable. After all, none of them had any training or powers that could help people heal or anything like that, so the next best thing they could do was make sure that the panicked people reached the people with the appropriate expertise.

“Now, to the main event,” 

All of them exited the first floor of their base and entered the lower areas. At first, all they had were the areas above them. Only a single floor for all the equipment they had.

Sure, the amount of space on the first floor was enough to cram in all the equipment they had currently but what about in the future?

The answer to that question was six more underground floors, custom built by the Invisible Man on his demands. Well, more like suggestions but the point was that the floors were made with his inputs in mind.

He didn’t know how to thank Ross for what he put them through, because he came to the other side a completely changed man. Well, all of them changed completely but he was not talking about their tough bodies.

No, he was talking about his own mind.

He could now think at dizzying speeds, and keep up with multiple trains of thought, all the while he maintained a normal conversation with someone else on the outside. Never in his wildest dreams could he have thought of reverse engineering the Arc Reactor just by watching some footage and seeing some old Soviet Era research papers he found on the internet.

Apparently, Howard Stark was not the only one who was responsible for making the Arc Reactor. There was some other Soviet scientist who also helped and probably knew much more so he approached the Invisible Man with this finding, hoping to get in touch with this Vanko guy to get some insight as to how the darned thing worked.

Unfortunately, that particular Vanko was dead and Vanko Jr. was the reason they were going to be deployed to the Stark Expo as he was the one who was going to attack the Stark legacy.

Vanko Jr. believes Stark to be responsible for his father’s demise, and Howard Stark kind of was, but that was no reason to commit acts of terrorism and endanger the lives of innocent citizens.

“Well, this is what we will be after. Obviously, it is a crude imitation but consider the real opponent to be much harder than this because they will be able to fly as–”

“AAAAA” WIth a loud charge, Leny, the youngest of them(by seconds) charged at the crude construction of the Iron Man Drone. 

He did a double take as Leny shoulder tackled the Drone into oblivion, scattering all its parts on the floor.

Apparently, Leny miscalculated the force required to destroy the drone so he stumbled once the drone fell apart with minimal force and almost face planted into the ground. 

His shoulders shook as he held in a chuckle in exasperation. Leny was always the youngest and the most impatient out of all of them.

“See, wasn’t so tough, now was it?” Leny stood up from the ground, dusted off imaginary dirt from his shoulders, and looked at them expectantly, as if waiting for someone to praise him for a job well done.

Of course, even the daftest of them (looking at you, Tim) was not fooled with the display. If it were this easy to destroy their enemies, then Randall would not be busy planning the entire thing and making sure that everybody got the training they needed for the D-Day.

“Invisible Man, if you please?” Randall sighed and looked at the ceiling, well not the ceiling but at the nearly omnipresent deity that watched over all of Manhattan and most of New York as well.

“Uh?” was the only thing Leny could say as he was bodily lifted by the Invisible Man and deposited on the side of the brothers, where he was promptly slapped on the back of his head by Randall.

“See? Watch and learn,” Randall said as all of them felt the heavy presence of the Invisible Man in the room.

He watched, transfixed as all the components of the Iron Man Drone floated before coming together, seemingly held together in thin air. 

Leny was then pushed forward by someone, “Now go try it out,”

Leny gulped but then, as if he got a rush of courage from somewhere, he straightened his shoulder and looked back at them, giving them a thumbs up, “Ha! Just a scrap of metal. I’ll destroy it in no time,”

He then turned around and with all the bravado he could probably muster, charged at the Drone who, somehow despite being literal metal, managed to convey the feelings of boredom from its posture.

He watched in amusement as the Invisible Man piloted Drone now toyed with Leny and all his attacks. Sure, they had trained a bit in the past months but they were neither professionals in normal human baseline fighting nor experts in enhanced combat.

He had discussed it at length with the Invisible Man and they had reached the consensus that Frank Castle, the middle aged Instructor at a nearby Dojo was a good choice for it. His record indicated that he would rather die than betray someone and as long as his family was safe, he would do anything one asked of him.

Seeing that his entire family lived in Manhattan and expressly avoided going out of the borough meant that he was concerned for their safety. And what better way to get Frank to thank the person who was protecting his family by working for him?

Having Frank on their team, even in just training capacity would help a lot because, from his files, Frank was an absolute monster when it came to hand to hand combat. They could definitely learn a lot from him.

“Oooof!” He winced back as the Drone decked Leny with a particularly hard uppercut that pushed Leny a couple of inches in the air before he was dropped on the ground, breathing heavily.

Leny just lay there, pointing his one finger at the Drone, his mouth moving but no words coming out of them before his hand fell and he closed his eyes.

Randall rolled his eyes internally because there was no way that amount of damage was enough to actually knock out Leny. he was just acting out because he didn’t get a chance to inflict a single blow on the Drone while the drone completely destroyed him.

Well, that is what you get when you try to fight someone who is nearly omnipresent, can act on different things all at once, and is capable of ripping apart buildings at their base.

Thinking like that, this outcome was obviously expected.

“Come on, form a line. Everybody gets a go,”

“What?”

“At the Murder Bot?”

“What did we ever do to you, Randall?”

“You mean aside from the constant bullying, emasculation, and more?”

“....”

“.....”

“That’s what I thought. Now, GO!”

“..Fine….”

Ah, it warmed his soul to see all his brothers gang up on a single machine and still fail as the Invisible Man summarily kicked all of their asses.

In the end, all six brothers lay in a heap as they groaned in pain, which was totally unnecessary because he knew the amount of force with which the Drone could hit them, they had calibrated it beforehand.

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