Chapter 114 : Holy Shit! Rubber Ducky, and Oh no!

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 114[May 2012]

Manhattan, Subterranean base

–Randall–

"Shit! Shit!" he couldn't stop swearing as he saw the video blaring on every screen around him. It was one of complete and utter chaos. 

A portal, a blue portal tearing a hole in the atmosphere, through which hellish creatures and space whales continued to fly out, terrorizing the world completely. 

"Jarvis, get everything," Somehow, Tony's ominous sounding words didn't fill him with much confidence as they ran straight towards the Hangar, which was unfortunately, on the deeper levels and for some godforsaken reason, they were unable to contact the one person who would have been able to guide them properly and would have also yanked them into the Hangar within seconds.

"Calm down, Randall. We can do this. Bruce said that he was in contact with the Invisible Man before all contact was shut off, and that was when both of them saw the California invasion. So, have trust in him and hope that he is doing something about that, like making some slingshot or something," Tony muttered the last part under his breath because they all knew that the Invisible Man, for some reason or other, could not leave New York, with Manhattan being his home turf, where he was the strongest.

And right now, Earth needed its strongest in California and that onus was now on them, because, undoubtedly, at the moment, they were the strongest Earth had to offer, and thank god for the Stark Jet because it would be able to take them to the site in less than half hour, so hopefully, not much damage would be done by then.

"Alert! Alert! Mr.Stark, protocol Sleeping Guardian activated," Jarvis' warning ran in everybody's ears and he noticed how Stark faltered immediately upon hearing that.

"What? What happened? What is Sleeping…" 

Oh. 

"It is too early to say anything but I developed a series of algorithms that continuously monitor the areas that the Invisible Man is heavily involved in. Drug confiscation, weapon confiscation, subway cleaning, traffic monitoring, everything. And according to what Jarvis just told me, the patterns are shifting, reverting to what they would be if an Invisible Hand was not guiding them, to the perfect solution," 

Shit!

Tony's words just filled him with more dread. It was just like last time when the Invisible Man was unavailable, but back then, they just had to handle a small city, with the occasional crime boss who thought himself too big to fail, and even then, they knew when the Big Bad of the city was going to come back.

Now? 

"Bruce has reached the Hangar, so have the brothers. Thor is being escorted by Jarvis and Romanoff and Coulson have been advised to stay on base," He informed Tony who just nodded. It was logical, baseline humans would have no place in a battlefield of that level, unless they were enhanced in some way or had an extremely advanced "prosthetic" that was weaponized to the high heavens.

"Great, tell Bruce to dump everything non weaponry and load it with all the weapons from the crates I had transported here," 

Well, that was reassuring though not as much as having that invisible support on their heads.

They were just about to jump into the utility hole that went straight down to the lowest level, with Levy and Bolton poised to catch them midway when another alarm rang, with the highest possible setting, even higher than the one that rang when the Invasion occurred.

He and Tony looked at each other, as Jarvis' warning came once again.

He immediately activated every holo display in the vicinity and what he saw just jerked him more into the realm of fear.

A huge orange barrier? Curtain?

"What the fuck is that?"

"It is emitting energy levels unheard of. I can't even measure it and I have measured the output of a fucking cold fusion reactor, multiple times over," Tony muttered under his breath as he furiously typed on his keyboard.

"Jarvis? Can you tell me anything?"

"Sir, the curtain appeared a moment ago and has shown no volatility in energy levels with no adverse effects on the surrounding,"

That was odd, he thought to himself as his algorithm kept on searching for something in that barrier to help them. They couldn't leave Manhattan without going through that barrier because according to his scans, it went underground as well, very deep.

"Tony, can you see if any of your remote repulsor arrays, does anything to–"

He stopped mid way and collapsed to his knees as a loud cracking noise entered the base, disorienting him completely. He saw, from the corner of his vision, that Tony was just knocked out, with his holo keyboard still active.

"Jarvis? What happened?" His own words sounded slurred to him, his head throbbing as he fought to gain his balance and strength to stand up.

In the background, he heard a roar and his blood chilled as he realised that whatever damage that sound had done to Bruce, it had forced him into the Hulk.

Shit.

"Sir, the curtain just cracked and the cracked parts are now floating–No, they have begun moving, aligning themselves to target something. Calculating,"

JArvis showed him a live feed, as he gave up on standing and just sat down on the ground, which showed a very cracked scene in the sky, with pieces of orange filling the camera's feed. 

Then the cracks, very sharp ones, he noticed, angle themselves towards a certain direction, all of them.

"Jarvis?"

"The shards are realigning themselves minutely in response to something. Calculating now," 

And that's when he saw it. The shards were aligned towards a building, more accurately, the rooftop of a building, where a single man was standing and looking at the shards as well.

"Subject named: Axle Riddle, second largest individual shareholder in Stark Industries and a current Board Member of Wu Enterprises, the largest privately held company in all of Asia," 

What the hell? He is so young, that was the first thing that came to his mind and the next got stuck mid way as he watched the shards flying towards their target, rapidly.

The man scrambled to get out of the rooftop as….

His eyes widened as cars, rebar, pieces of road, and more flew out of the street below and placed themselves right in the path of the shards but the shards cut through everything like butter and even through the walls and then, something happened.

Something that made all that stuff fall down in free fall, as if the strings holding them together were cut apart.

"Holy shit! That is the Invisible Man. I have been taking orders from a man so young," He exclaimed, temporarily having forgotten his crippling headache.

"Jarvis, take a suit and rescue him. I now give you authority to use any of the base's Class 2 resources, to secure and protect the individual known as Axle Riddle. Alright?"

"Access Granted. Optimum solution found : taking rescue bot designated "Rubber Ducky" for the operation," He nodded at Jarvis' reply and after throwing Stark on his shoulder like a sack, he went on his way down to the Hangar.

The Hulk roar had only happened once but that was another mess he had to deal with, especially since he knew some of his brothers and they would not hesitate to just brawl with the Hulk.

He wasn't worried about those jugheads. No, he was worried that they might damage the Stark Jet, their one way of reaching the Invasion on time. Without it, they would never arrive on time.

"Military response has begun," Jarvis' alert came to him as a display followed him to the Hangar. He was in no shape to jump through the utility hole and there was no guarantee the jugheads downstairs would catch him or not, so he was going the regular way.

The ultrafast Elevators, which was still slow because their base was…huge.

He saw that fighter Jets launched heaps of missiles at the flying whales but only at the edges. 

Oh. "Current military orders are for them to target the fringe ones and contain the enemies until a better solution can be reached," 

Oh. He chuckled bitterly, as he realised that they were going to be the better solution.

A bunch of disoriented Hulks, the Hulk, Iron Man. That's it. That was going to be Humanity's solution to an Alien Invasion.

How pathetic.

"Individual Axle Riddle secured. Bringing back to base now," 

"Okay. Once he is back and we have left, make sure that everybody, including Coulson and Romanoff, are in the core zone, the one designated as the panic room and then detonate all the explosives so the entry and exit zones are buried completely. We can't risk anything coming in or out. There are enough resources and power for them to last years, so no worries in that department."

"Affirmative, sir. Good Luck."

"Thanks, buddy. We are going to need it," He grinned as the Hangar finally came into view, with the Stark Jet in one piece.

"Thank God." He sighed and dumped Tony on the ground.

"Somebody wake this Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist up, and get every piece of weapon and armour you can get your hands on," He shouted as a series of racks came out of the ground, filled with weapons he made in his spare time, some of them being too dangerous to allow use in normal situations.

But this was not a normal situation, was it?

It was actually the Hulk who grinned, savagely, and took the biggest mace he had built in his tinkering phase. He grinned as well. That was just a mace, with no technology in it, just a dense, tough mace that was impossible to be wielded, even by the likes of his brother, and the Hulk just swung it around, creating literal gusts of winds in the Hangar.

Oh yeah, they were going to crush this.

...

…..

Watching the news as they were en route to California, only a single thought ran through his mind.

No, they were most certainly not going to crush this Invasion.

Damn Loki!

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