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 [2 hours after Loki was detained]

–Tony Stark–

"Please stay still, Mr.Stark," He resisted the urge to snap at the nurse who was nursing his wounds. Wounds that he had sustained in the hour long non stop fight that he was a part of, destroying Chitauri Chariots left and right, before the cavalry showed up.

It was official, Thor was powerful. Uber powerful one could say if they calculated even a tenth of the energy in Thor's hammer when he hit the machine with his big fuck you attack, and then they would have to weep in despair because even that didn't kill the machine, the machine somehow being protected by the pure energy barrier around the Tesseract.

THey had nothing in their arsenal capable of closing that whole thing down. They'd tried everything at this point and the only thing that would surpass Thor's sheer energy attack was a nuclear strike and he had been in a very heated argument with POTUS, Defense Secretaries and some analysts as to why that was a very bad idea.

A fucking stu[pid idea if there ever was one.

Good news, Loki was contained, if with some limbs missing, but Thor assured them that Loki would live. He was being held in a specialised cell, with Thor being very clear as to what would happen to Earth if anything happened to his brother while Loki was in the custody of the US military.

He waved off the nurse who wanted to give him a painkiller. Sure, it would help with the pain but it would also take the edge off and he was not sure if he would remain standing if the pain was not there to remind him of the current events.

God, he was so very tired.

Loki was taken into custody, which was fine. The Tesseract was right in front of them, going nowhere, which was good. But the damned thing was just out of reach for everyone save for Loki who somehow was touching the damned thing when he was taken out by Thor.

He was certain that had Thor hit Loki head on, with that level of power, not even ashes of Loki would have remained. IT would seem that the Crown Prince took his vows, especially the ones taken magically, very seriously. The attack legit would have killed his brother and Thor was willing to do it because Thor knew that if he held back then, hundreds of thousands of more lives would have been lost.

Speaking of lost lives, they had a zero casualty count in the military forces that had arrived here and that was only because of the scenery at the portal.

He grinned, hobbling towards where Thor and the less tech savvy members of the Hulk brotherhood were standing, looking at the greatest fireworks festival Earth had ever seen.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" He asked everyone as he watched the near continuous rain of missiles that was happening at the mouth of the portal. The machine was floating mid air as well but as they had learned in the previous two hours, no amount of explosions was going to dislodge the portal machine so right now, they were focused on making sure that the enemies didn't make it past a certain perimeter around the portal.

He looked up as fighter jets continued to roam the skies.

"Mr.Stark!" he looked back to see a trooper running towards him with a satellite phone in his hand, "POTUS is on the line,"

Great. He had to deal with politics even now. He would have thought that now of all time humanity would come together and try to solve this together but nooo. Somehow, the United States of America was still dragging their feet in granting clearances to other countries' militaries to help them contain this threat.

"Stark, how long until your Jericho missiles are back in stock?" 

He sighed at the question. Honestly, that was one of the harder things he had done in this invasion and he had personally weathered laser blasts and had dislocated both his shoulders during the fight, relying on JArvis to pilot the suit because there was no way he was backing down until backup got to them. 

Restarting the production of weapons that he had sworn to never do again, was akin to throwing away all the progress he'd made in the past years. Pepper was fully supportive of him and had told him, in no uncertain terms, that she would rather fight the government on this than let Tony make a decision he would regret.

And that had been the thing, wasn't it? Regret. He would have regretted any single person dying just because the government had been forced to turn to a substandard weapons supplier. Oh heaven forbid, they went to Hammer?

They would all die then.

"Mr.President, I have repurposed some of my facilities but it will take time. My people are working on it. The first missile should reach the nearest military bases in about 3 more hours. That's the best I can do. Also, we have redesigned them for the portal's purpose so they can target a much narrower target,"

"Alright. Any word from our prisoner?"

He sighed once again, glancing at Thor from the corner of his eyes, who still sported some cuts, and scuffs on his armour from the massive dogfight he had been in when two of the Chitauri space whales had descended on him, judging him to be the bigger threat of the bunch, which was a mistake because Hulk had proceeded to absolutely gut another space whale, and roar at the Chitauri which made every one pause.

"No, Mr.President. Loki is pretty bunged up from Thor's attack and I don't think he will be waking up anytime soon. We are on our own for this. Any words from the recovered mind control victims?" He made sure to emphasise on the word "victim" because he knew that this was wartime and the US government performed enough human rights transgressions as is, he couldn't imagine what they would do in wartime. 

He was making sure that the agents recovered were just that, victims of Loki's crimes and nothing more.

"No, Stark. The victims are all still in a coma apparently. Analysts say that they were given orders to surrendered to the closest authority, and after that, their minds shut down,"

He closed his eyes at that. So chances of permanent brain damage after being subjected to extensive time periods of mind control.

"Mr.President, is Congress still dragging its feet with the permission to have foreign militaries on our soil? I seem to remember the President having unprecedented powers during wartime," He reminded the older man, knowing that having coordination from other militaries was best. 

Plus, while the US military looked like they had the situation handled, they didn't. The US was vast and if the entire war machine was mobilised, it would have been another thing but the President was a weak minded simpleton who did not want to step on anyone's toes, so he was only mobilising forces as the situation demanded.

There was a sigh on the other side, "Tony, son, look, it's not that simple. I can't create a precedent for something like this. It makes us look weak. Plus, we have more than enough reserves to last weeks of sustained battle, if the numbers I am seeing are correct. In the meantime, we can always produce more, and with your–"

"Mr.President, you and I both know that this is not going to be resolved with just missiles and nukes. We need the enhanced, the hidden people who jumped out of their hidey holes during the invasion. We need explicit permission to make sure that they would not be prosecuted by the government for simply helping in a human crisis. Hell, that girl, with the intangibility powers alone would be very helpful if she could somehow lodge the Tesseract out of the machine,"

It would seem that his words were going above the man's head because the next words came out very hastily, "Great! Then we can have her to your location within the day, I will personally write her VISA so she does not suffer from any consequences,"

He sighed, and went along with the drivel, despite knowing that there was no way any law enforcement agency was going to be able to catch her, especially since she seems to be extremely adept at hiding from everyone and everything, including Jarvis and since it was India, she did not have as much of a digital footprint as an Average American.

Also, the President was missing the point entirely. He needed to create a precedent so that he could create America enhanced friendly, just like it becoming Immigrant friendly made it the economic powerhouse it was today.

They couldn't generate that many enhanced but they sure as hell could bring them to the greatest nation in the world and employ their services, and something like that wasn't going to happen with a one time return VISA, wherein she would likely be ambushed during her return trip if she somehow survived the battle at all.

Times like these were what SHIELD was for but as soon as he heard Fury was dead, he knew the reason why the agency was nowhere near this invasion and was instead being actively sidelined by the President in every matter that was significant.

He flinched a bit as a particular loud keening noise was heard, closing his eyes. He opened them when a squelching noise was heard, as yet another Space Whale was killed or burned alive in the explosives that were now staining the atmosphere around the portal.

The now dead space whale landed on a pile of already dead Chitauri, with their blood pooling around the space, the salt plains and staining everything, also likely poisoning everything as well.

Good Lord, this was going to be an environmental disaster of epic proportions.

"Jarvis, any updates?" He asked Jarvis the one question that he had been asking for hours now, a question that was probably in the minds of most of the people in the government and all the people in the team.

Just when will the fucking Invisible Man wake up?

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