The Sage of the Mind

A/N - Sorry guys for the inactivity for the past few weeks. IRL seasonal change hit me hard. Regular seasonal Cold, Cough and fever evolved into something more sinister due to my immune system's inability to fight it properly, leading to hospitalisation.

Anyways, double release today! Woohoo!

On a serious note, will try to get back to a regular schedule but let's see. Thanks for reading.

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 100[April 2012]

Tunnel Under Manhattan, the Refuge Zone [Time till Chitauri Invasion - 1 month]

–Randall–

"Urgh," With a grunt, he pushed the final part into the entire assembly, which created a clicking sound as the systems came to life with a whine, the Arc Energy pulsing through every single node that he had installed in the miles long tunnel that the Invisible Man had built, as a makeshift emergency center for the entire centre to huddle into.

When he was first approached with this concept, he was very much giddy to be given the opportunity to work on something like this, a giant panic room, with free reign and essentially unlimited resources to do whatever he wanted to create what was essentially a small temporary fortified city, by the Invisible Man.

He was confused at first because all the entry and exit points were either too small or inaccessible without the help of the Invisible Man. When he explained that along with some other problems to the Invisible Man, he was promptly handed the control over the entire project to him, as if he was the authority here.

And yet, over the past month that he had been working on this place, it had been very fast paced and just plain cool to work. According to the Invisible Man, he feared a large-scale invasion of aliens with no place for the citizens to huddle down, until the Invisible Man took care of the threat. It was understandable, and he had even refined the concept further as well.

Building multiple train routes, going deeper underground, and emerging into other boroughs, with the trains capable of carrying thousands of people at once, at lightning speeds to the other boroughs, so that they can get away from the epicentre, while the Invisible Man worked on containing the threat to Manhattan.

That was another oddity, he noticed. The Invisible Man seemed to be sure that the attack would happen on Manhattan, the home field of the Invisible Man, where he was the strongest, the absolutely undisputed powerhouse, and yet, he seemed almost certain that as long as the native population of Manhattan was safely evacuated to the other boroughs, they would be mostly fine.

He thought long and hard about that but the only thing that made sense to him was the notion that the Invisible Man was preparing for some sort of attack on him personally, with the damage to the city being just collateral damage as a result of the fight between the Invisible Man and whoever the third party was.

He soon abandoned that train of thought and worked on doing what he knew best. Tech.

Ah, it was so freeing, so have essentially unlimited budget, what with the babble of Billionaires just waiting to get some sort of command from the Invisible Man, to throw their wealth at someone who was giving them something that all the money in the world would not have been able to buy otherwise.

Security, but not just security. No, money could buy them absolute security in a deep dark bunker in some remote corner of the world with a private military protecting them. That could be bought with money but not what the Invisible Man was giving them right now.

Security in a mundane environment.

Being able to get out on their own, with no stuffy security or no feeling of danger, no fear of being hurt by breathing fresh air, was something that no amount of money could buy for these people.

As such, he had been able to blow through over a hundred million dollars worth of stuff in the past month alone with no sight of the people hesitating to hand over even more money for whatever reason. 

The best water purifiers, with enough stored air and supplied to last days at a a time. He was really proud as to how far this had come. When he had taken over, it was just a tunnel with some lights and a couple of reinforced steel rooms built into the corners for any emergency services to use. The Invisible Man had resorted to building giant water tanks and pressured air tankers for use by the people who would take refuge in the area.

While that was practical for someone of his powers, they had to build something that would not require his attention, at all. Something that would run by itself, without any attention required from the Invisible Man since he would be busy fighting the alien or monster or whatever it is that attacked Manhattan. Attacks that would force the entirety of the city to be evacuated would presumably also be potent enough that the Invisible Man would need to focus entirety on the enemy.

With the last part finally installed, he had done it.

His first large scale forcefield installation. He hadn't yet tested the system yet and there were a couple of checks in the tunnel integrity to be done before he could think of turning on the force fields but the generator was installed and more than half of the does were showing ready but still, for his peace of mind, he would check everything once again before hitting the ON switch.

He was about to go up to the city to get a sandwich or pizza but his watch began buzzing with a specific coded alarm.

He sighed, as he realised what the code was for. It was an alarm specifically coded into his systems to warn him if Tony Stark or one of his Iron Men suits were coming any closer to designated special sites, like their subterranean base as well as this tunnel now.

He opened the display and yup, Tony Stark himself was on his way right here, after discovering the closest unfinished entrance to the tunnel. How he found the entrance which was still about 50 ft from the surface, in the underground sewer, was another question he would have to ask the eccentric billionaire, after answering a thousand other questions from the Billionaire, obviously.

He sat down, not on a normal chair but on a forcefield chair, something that he did just so he could flex on Tony when he arrived and saw his awesome creation.

Now, granted, it would not have worked nearly as flawlessly without Arc Energy, energy that was taken straight from the Arc Reactor housing without any refinement and imputed straight into the forcefield cluster he had built for the tunnel.

Great for forcefield applications but it burns out the Arc Reactor far faster than usual.

Well, something to improve in the next iteration then, he thought to himself while deliberately sitting right in front of the point of entry into the tunnel that TOny was using, reading a digital magazine.

Presentation was important and he was a bit of a drama queen.

He didn't have to wait long before the sound of repulsors being fired reached his ears, the subtle whine easily audible to his enhanced senses.

Tony could have easily done away with any noise made by the repulsor systems, with ease but for some reason, he continued to have them in his newer suits as well. Admittedly, it was a nice sound, very futuristic to hear but it was a sound that had no place in the battlefield.

Such were his thoughts when he watched, through the translucent digital magazine, Tony land in the tunnel, with his signature three point landing.

He lowered the magazine, took one look at Tony, and…

"Get off my Lawn!" He grumbled as he stood up, his chair and the magazine dissipating.

"Ha. ha. So funny, Randall," Tony's modulated voice came through the suit before the mask slid off and Tony's obnoxious smug face was revealed to him as he looked around the tunnel, with multiple smaller drones ejecting from his suit.

"So? What you got down here, Randall? Some newer alien? Come on, tell me," Tony asked him, following in his footsteps as he began walking towards the makeshift office he had built for himself in the tunnel, all with a direct line to his systems in the subterranean base, something that he deactivated as soon as Tony set his sights on the system.

"This, Mr.Stark, is a refuge tunnel, being built, to house hundreds of thousands of people, in case an attack of a caliber that hit us recently ever happens again. It has everything, from clean water, and air, to enough storage space to keep food and more importantly, people safe from whatever happens above ground.

"Uh-huh. So a glorified bunker then. I get it. What I want– Is that a force field generator? Oh, that's a clever way to use the Muon bleedout. Hmm," And there he went, Tony in his own world as he snapped his fingers, and summoned one of the drones which flew right into the ceiling and began taking extensive scans of the forcefield node that he had built into the roof, and the floor of the tunnel, cross the entire length of the tunnel.

"Wow, it never occurred to me that the pure muon, something that will fry most electronics could be used to do this. It makes sense, though." Tony began muttering to himself as he floated to the top of the tunnel and reached towards the node and then.....

"Hey!" He found himself shouting and launching himself straight at the floating Iron Man as Tony just ripped out the forcefield node, shutting down the entire network as a precautionary measure he had built into the systems.

Tony flew away but he snatched the node right out of his hands.

Landing on the ground with a thud, he exclaimed, "Come on, Man! Now, I have to repopulate every single one of the nodes into the system, again."

Tony floated down, "That's great. You can show me how then." The smugness in his voice deserved only a single response.

Showing Tony the finger, he stomped with the node in hand, back to his office, to begin the tedious process of repopulating the system with nodes, one by one.

Tony's suits followed behind as they walked to his office, hopefully, Tony had some ideas about the software and what can be done to improve it.

It was not as if he was averse with sharing his technology. It was what the Invisible Man had told him to do, only to be careful to whom it was shared which was fair enough.

If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon or Ko-fi, for upto 5 extra chapters.