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 110[May 2012]

StarkJet

–Randall–

He looked at the huge holographic screen that was also the windshield of the StarkJet, which showed the ETA for their arrival being an hour into the huge yellow circle that was the Invisible Man's estimated area of influence and another 2 minutes until they entered the green zone, the area of absolute power that the Invisible Man maintained, i.e., Manhattan.

Once they were in the yellow zone, they were safe-ish but in the green zone, they could sunbathe on top of one of the many skyscrapers in Manhattan, and watch as an alien invasion happened and was repelled by someone with Invisible Hands, probably.

Okay, it might not be that exaggerated since the Invisible Man was also human and he must have some limits because if he did not, then it was just ridiculous. But he had a hunch that if an Invasion happened, the capability of the Invisible Man to handle both the invaders and the evacuation of the people in the surrounding area would depend, mostly on the relative strength of the Intruders.

For example, even three of those giant tentacled monsters had forced the Invisible Man to come out in person to battle and dismantle those things. But if an invading force of a million came out in droves but had the strength of say, only elephants, then the Invisible Man could take care of it with ease.

Such thoughts ran through his mind as he waited, impatiently for them to reach the green zone with the important cargo and prisoner they had on board. The Invisible Man, his boss, had made it clear, in no uncertain terms that NO experimentation was to happen to the sceptre, just to him ofcourse because if Tony heard NO then he was most definitely going to do the thing, mainly because the sceptre messed with minds and his boss definitely did not want the minds of anyone present in the jet messed with.

That would be a…disaster.

"So, nothing? They are just sitting there? Not even speaking to each other?" Tony asked everyone in the room, which was just him and Bruce, as they watched another feed on the holo screen, the captain's seat empty since Jarivs was the one who was remotely piloting everything anyway.

"Nope. Just sitting there. Though, Thor has kept constant watch over Loki, as requested," He shook his head at that. Something about this whole encounter did not sit right with him. 

"Alright, no clues there. What have we got about the stolen Iridium then? Why did they raid the sixth largest singular store of Iridium on the planet? Why would they need that much Iridium?" Tony asked them and once again, they had no clues.

Without any underlying data as to how the Tesseract worked, how the portal making ability of it worked, how the portal in New Mexico explo–

"Wait a minute!" He had an Eureka moment.

"The portal. In New Mexico, it was unstable, right?"

"So they need the Iridum to stabilise the portal? So that it doesn't collapse on their own invading forces? That's a possibility but then again, we don't have the slightest clue as to how they are going to make their portal machine. For all we know, Iridium could be used to make some new alloy to cool their machine," Bruce replied and he almost scoffed at that.

Iridium, for cooling? Doubtful.

But his point stood. They did not have the whole parts list and how the procedure was going to happen.

"Alright, they have Iridium and they need it to power their portal machine. Let's see what they had in that base when Loki shot out of the Tesseract's portal," Tony said as he accessed the SHIELD database, through his computer in the base and was met with a deadpan from Tony when he couldn't get his authentication through.

He sheepishly apologised, "Sorry. Standard Security Protocol. Everything remote shuts down within a few minutes of inactivity," He then entered his credentials and then verified his gamma signature, and then manually set the lockdown time to indefinite.

He would change it after the whole Invasion thing was over. One could never be too trustful of Tony Stark and his boundless curiosity.

"Alright, so they had energy constantly being rerouted from a nearby nuclear power plant, along with energy from the grid, on top of the power plants they had on base to power their entire experiment, all so Selvig could test if the housing of the Tesseract could absorb that much energy and remain intact. Spoiler alert, it did stay intact," Tony speed read through the entire thing, like the genius he was.

They all had copies running in front of them, about the Tesseract and the experiments they ran on the thing for two whole years. Anything from energy transference, to energy overload, to one time almost frying the grid because of the energy backlash from the Tesseract. They had done it all, except make a portal of any kind. Or if they did make one, it was so tiny that it did not register on any of their sensors.

Unlikely.

"So they have batteries filled with energy from the Tesseract but no viable way to use it beyond as a bomb, which did not have much in the way of yield or blast radius because all of the bombs act in different ways, but result in the same thing. Complete matter disintegration."

"Damn," Bruce swore uncharacteristically as they watched an unfortunate agent, disintegrate because one of the cubes of energy on the large pellets fell off and created a huge hole in the ground, and took the agent with them. The agent didn't even register anything before he was gone in a cloud of blue.

"Hey, Wait! Look at the footage again," He ordered Jarvis to enhance the footage as much as he could and then replay it frame by frame.

"Look at the edge of the cloud and then compare it with the edge of the cloud of the portal that Loki came from," 

All their screens disappeared as Jarvis did his magic and a single large video playback appeared in front of them. It compared everything, from width, to energy bleed, to light bleed.

It matched, in every single way.

"Damn. So the Tesseract's energy is capable of creating portals. Only the stored energy ones create a portal somewhere that we cannot trace, but is strong enough to suck in matter at incredible speeds so it is no different than disintegration to us," Tony muttered.

"So, this means that the Tesseract's energy's main function is to open portals, to somewhere. The energy output is just the byproduct. The only question remained, what more do they need to create a sustained portal because none of what we have seen is even remotely close to sustained," Bruce said as they began going through the list of components, most of which were hand made by Selvig, and see if they could find something that could lead them to the mind controlled agents of Loki.

"Jarivs, search for any theft reports or break ins at facilities that house any Nuclear fission material. Also, keep a lookout for the peripheral surveillance points of all nearby Nuclear Power Plants. I am reasonably certain that they will target one of our cities but cast a wider net just in case,"

"Affirmative, Sir," Jarvis replied as all the screens shut down and the ETA was once again, back on screen. It was a comforting 32 minutes only.

'Alright, gentlemen, let's get some rest before our "boss" sends us on another errand," Tony snarked before going to his personal chambers while he and Bruce retreated to the remote lab they had on hand. Seriously, the lack of any Jet engine, or any supporting equipment meant that the Jet was mostly hollow and had no lack of space.

______xx_____

Meanwhile, Somewhere in Germany

–Clint Barton [E̸̟̮̹͛n̸͖̄l̷͉͗̔į̸̇̓̎g̶̭̲͂̕ḧ̷͍͍̻͗t̷͇̝̀ë̸̺͙́̿̃n̴̻͌͛e̸̙̙̖͊̂̇d̸͎̈́]--

"Are you sure this will work? This doesn't seem like something that should work, even if my mind is telling me that the math is correct, which doesn't make any sense," He rolled his eyes at the Doctor, whose mind was expanded, more than the rest of them, unfortunately.

The Doctor's weak mind could not handle the extra knowledge they had dumped in his brain, so that he could build things out of the world, to their freedom.

"Yes, it will work. He said so, and it has to," He reassured the doctor before signalling one of the mercenaries to take the doctor towards the machine that he was supposed to build next.

They couldn't have him run out of brain juice before they were done filling their ruler's wishes.

He looked at the small rectangular machine, holding onto the Blue Tesseract in the center with a small vial of red blood right above it, just waiting to be dumped on the cube. 

"Alright, load it up," The boys loaded it into one of the Jets they had stolen from the US Military.

Once they were all strapped in, the Jet took off and reached maximum speed. They were untraceable by local radars because he had enlisted the help of someone who could do miracles like that.

Tech, was the only name they went by and they owed him a favour.

"Alright, here goes nothing," he took a baton he had bought for this express purpose and slammed it down on the top of the machine, breaking the vial of blood and dropping it on the Tesseract, making it sizzle and then the machine glow blue.

The glow increased until it became unbearable to look at.

With a slight whomp noise, they heard a slight grunt and a thud as the glow died down and the Tesseract which had melted through the machine was collected by a hardened alloy made specifically for that.

Once the Tesseract was secured, he looked to the side and there he was, their Lord and Saviour.

"Make sure he is fine and buckled in. Adam, take us back,"

"Roger that."

"And Tech. Thanks for your help," he muttered in his radio, which he was sure was being hijacked by Tech.

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