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 128[May 2012]

Utah

–Randall–

So, they had a tentative plan. The military would come in hot and fast, creating a temporary reprieve for Thor, a small window for him to try and touch the machine, or the sphere of pure energy that surrounded the Tesseract. It was a long shot but he hoped that Thor's "limited skill" in the arts of Seidr, which was just sorcery, would help them because Loki had manually controlled the TEsseract, albeit at a steep cost to himself.

That must be part of the reason why Loki was so easily captured. He could not fathom why Loki had been so easily defeated. It could also be that Thor had really amped up his attacks and Loki had been surprised to find his brother coming at him with lethal intent.

Either way, Loki was in custody but was still unconscious and he knew that Loki would not talk either way. The sceptre was on its way as well. SOmething about the energy signatures of both the things bugged him the wrong way and if he was correct, there was a shroud of pure energy around the crown of the sceptre as well.

IF they could somehow bring both the spheres of pure energy together and see if they could cancel each other out, they could finally stop this Invasion. Already, the Jericho missiles had been deployed, damaging their surroundings even more. The smell of gunpowder in the air had still not faded and now they were using high energy weapons.

"Okay, Clark? Are they ready?"

Clark stumbled to reply, even though the man was standing in a single place. He was now the primary mode of communication between them and the generals stationed both here and around the bases which were being used as a hopping point for all the Jets nearby.

The Military was being cooperative but not nearly as much as they should have had it been the Invisible Man here. Axle Riddle, huh?

He shook his head at that. He couldn't believe they were being ordered around and not just ordered around, afraid of someone who was a decade younger than him. Sure, age didn't matter when the man could lift a building and throw it at them but still, it felt kind of bizarre.

He wondered how constipated these generals would feel if they knew that their brass was deathly afraid of someone who they wouldn't even deign to look at in their normal lives.

It was…amusing.

"Uh, yeah. Sir, they have approved the flight paths and are ready to go at your word. Uh, sir." Clark, once again, stumbled over his words.

He looked at Thor who held Mjolnir tightly in his hand, nodding at his unasked question. He turned to Clark, "Do it."

Clark nodded as well and then pressed a button on his tablet. "Uh-the first missile volley should be here in about 2 minutes so if you could–uh-please get in position?" Clark asked Thor and wow, was that actual courage he was gathering before he spoke to Thor?

Thor, thankfully, didn't make fun of him for any of it and simply readied himself. 

….

..

Right on time, a high pitched whine filled the air, forcing him to look in the sky. His eyes widened as he saw Missiles coming in from two different directions, converging straight on the portal which was still clogged by the Leviathans, with not a single moment of inactivity. He had hoped that the Chitauri would learn something and stop sending their troops to die in a meat grinder but he supposed that they had more than enough troops to sacrifice and not have to worry.

His mind supplied him with what would allow something like this to happen. He knew that most of the Chitauri soldiers had very little in terms of brain activity and capacity. So, they probably had some sort of cybernetic implants that allowed them to coordinate everything. IN that aspect, they were little more than animals.

Also, the Chitauri were not in the most optimal states, despite their large stature. A thought flashed through his mind and his face turned ugly at that. Judging by the size and power of the Chitauri, it would not be wrong to assume they probably had some planets specifically reserved to breed these Chitauri and if they didn't need to actually train them, they could just forcefully grow them into vats, hand them their weapons and send them on their merry way, to die in some battlefield.

"Uh," lark's words brought him back to the present, "We didn't have enough Jericho missiles in a single base for the first volley so we had to send them from two different laughing pads but that is fine, I have triple checked everything," Clark hastily handed him the tablet and yup, the math checked out.

As the missiles passed overhead, Thor tensed and threw Mjolnir forward, matching the missiles for speed, as his target was the portal machine right beneath the Leviathan. He just hoped that it worked because he had seen a Leviathan corpse landing on the portal machine and the machine just made a hole in the thing, which then promptly slid off the sphere of pure energy.

He shuddered and hoped that nothing of the sort happened to Thor. Thankfully, he had Mjolnir which was also supposedly unbreakable, so that probably helped in the clash.

The winds buffeted the grounds, rocking a few tables back as Thor became a figure wreathed in lightning. Thor was not really supposed to hit the portal so much as touch it and try to see if there was any feedback in it. There was a chance that THor was either too bad at the magic thing or that Loki had built in some safety mechanism that made sure that the machine did not accept commands without authentication but they couldn't know anything without trying.

A feed appeared in front of him that showed Thor flying straight to the portal. His eyesight could only show him so much, especially since he was the least physically combat inclined out of all of his siblings, even more so than Leny who abhorred direct physical combat and was the weakest out of all of them, despite being the most deadly due to his stealth capabilities.

The missiles did their work as the Chitauri were outright vapourized in the ensuing explosion, giving Thor free reign to do his thing. Thor jerked Mjolnir back, halting his flight, and then rotated it above his head, allowing him to float in one place. If he was not wrong, even a single hand should be enough since magic was just about having energy, being capable of using said energy, and then having the intent imbued in the energy.

Thro had the first two parts nailed down. He was just worried about the third one. Thor was not really…well, let's just say that Thor was not the thinking Prince of Asgard. He was more along the brawns, at least at this point in time. He was sure that life would certainly teach him how to be more alert and mindful.

That was coming from someone who was approaching middle aged despite not looking a day over 25, courtesy of Hulk powers.

In the feed, Thor carefully extended his left hand towards the sphere of pure energy, Mjolnir still crackling with blue lightning. All of them leaned forward, curious and hopeful in equal measure.

Multiple drones captured the footage of Thor from multiple angles, the background flashing white sometimes due to the Jericho missiles. Tony was still completely out at the moment and he had made the decision not to wake him up, since he was the most exhausted out of all of them.

Arcs of lightning came out of Thor's outstretched hand, the energy readings jumping across the board. A smile graced his face as he saw a spike in the Tesseract's energy, something that hadn't happened until now, no matter what they did.

So, they could do something. That joy was short lived as arcs of blue energy, much darker than Thor's own, began appearing all over the sphere of energy. His eyes widened as his screen began flashing red, the energy readings soon surpassing anything that their sensors could measure.

Thor's face was captured as his eyes widened in alarm. "Get aw–" He barely managed to get one word out before the feed turned white, and a huge shockwave blew away all the smoke and smog that had accumulated all around the portal.

The screens all glitched in front of him as he looked towards the Tesseract machine, only to get another shock as lightning seemed to come out of nowhere and struck the machine once again. He almost fell down and had to steady Clark as well, as he looked at the screen which was showing once again the energy readings of Thor's lightning to be unreadable.

A roar resounded in the air, one that he recognised to be Thor, as a thick bolt of lightning emerged from the Portal machine and struck the ground. "Go!"

He ordered as Bolton, clad in his suit, rocketed towards the portal machine, which was now regularly sending the bolts of lightning right below, which held the Chitauri corpses, filling the air with scent of burnt meat.

He could barely see Bolton as his vision struggled to adjust to the white flash that appeared every 10 seconds. 

"I have him!" Bolton's comms crackled to life as a feed appeared from his suit. His heart sank as he saw Thor's condition. Mjolnir was fine, as was his right hand but his left hand, it was burned beyond recognition.

"Everyone! Get the medics. Somebody get me the President on the line." He screamed as his mind went into disarray. Even Thor couldn't do it, which meant Hulk would be out as well even though Hulk's ability to take damage was much higher than Thor's.

___xx___

Deep below the Crust

–?--

For millennia, he had slumbered, taking advantage of the inherent fighting instinct of his species, only coming up to ambush the weakened members, who had some iota of power that could be plundered by him.

After millenia of the same, he had rid his race of all the powerful members, leaving only him. Any opposition was swiftly dealt with, in the easiest possible way, by taking their energy.

The last time he awoke was when he had to move the base of his entire species after the pesky dolls had come far too close to his colony. He had been so frustrated he had killed off an entire line of his species.

But now?

His mind snapped awake, his body stretching upright as he sensed something. Something that should be impossible.

Cosmic energy. And how plentiful... he could almost taste it.

His eyes narrowed as he sensed more and more of the cosmic energy, hitting the ground, as if trying to burrow through the Earth to reach him.

He grinned at that. Howling, he summoned what was left of his species. Yellow eyes snapped open in the thousands in the massive cavern he had dug with his own claws. Howls filled the cavern as they began digging through the Earth.

Maybe, after all this time, he could finally accumulate enough energy to kill and take the energy of one of those dolls.

The mere thought of it filled him with ecstasy.

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