The Sage of the Mind

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The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 102[May 2012]

Manhattan

–Axle Riddle–

Breathe In. Breathe Out. In and Out. He repeated the cycle, trying to mold his vast psionic energy into something usable when it came to his telepathy. Being prepared to essentially kill himself just in case Loki got his hands on the strongest Telekinetic on the planet, he was now trying to advance his telepathy.

He was hoping that even if he could not read Loki's mind since the minds of even moderately strong people like Captain America were out of his reach, he could sense his mind. Sense that there was a mind present in his range, even if it was vastly more protected than the normal human's.

Because when it came to Steve Rogers, while he could not read his thoughts, he could, faintly make out his emotions and also could tell that there was a mind present there, it was just not in his capability to read, less said about controlling his mind the better.

For some reason, the controlling aspect doesn't come to him, not even at all. He couldn't even insert some benign suggestions in the minds of people, fairly weak minded people as well. He was hoping to insert a suggestion to STUDY HARD in a random kid's mind but that just seemed like something that would backfire on him and then ruin that kid's life. Maybe he was destined to be a sports star? Or someone who doesn't need to study all that much, like an actor? Or a Musician?

Yes, extensive study is required to become an expert in any field but that would not be STUDYING that schools provide. No, that would be a specific study and he did not want to do anything to affect innocent people's minds. That was going a step too far, in his opinion.

So, he sought out the criminals of the city. Turns out, there weren't many. Not in the process of actively committing a crime anyway. While he was sure that most of the Russian variety of Billionaires in the city had hundreds of crimes to their name, none of them were done in his purview and he had yet to see an arrest warrant for any of them.

He had received dozens of arrest warrants from multiple authorities of the US government and after minimal consultation with the Mayor and the local authorities, he made sure that the person against whom a legitimate arrest warrant had been issued, was safely put into the respective authorities' custody.

The Government was worried in the beginning that he would not respect the law but aside from Bruce's situation, he had not yet openly flouted any law. Well, aside from ALL the privacy laws that the US government might have but then again, the government flouts it as well, so who would police him in that regard?

At the moment, he was trying his best to increase his telepathic range, something that was so very hard because while he did have vast amounts of psionic energy, it was getting harder and harder to manipulate said energy into something useful. It was easy to strengthen his TK. Use it over and over, over and over again until his tank was completely depleted.

The thing here was that the tank was so absurdly large and the hose was so freaking small, that it was all but impossible for him to put any meaningful dent in the tank. So, there he was, stuck in his apartment, trying to do something to get the jitters off. It had been a week since the tunnel was completed, with everything he could think of and more. Dedicated hospitals had been built in that place, which would mostly be unnecessary because he would keep a close eye on everything but then again, Randall's idea of self sufficiency was correct.

It had all the supplies needed, along with multiple large water tanks, with the filtration plants connected directly to the river water. They were all powered by a giant Arc Reactor which provided centralised power and then, each unit had another smaller Arc Reactor just in case the bigger one failed for some reason.

It was quite an intricate design. Randall and Tony working together were able to build the forcefield much faster than just Randall working on it. They had even tested the forcefield and theoretically, he was able to focus about 10% of his total strength on a single point on the forcefield before it burst apart, destroying some nodes and one of the Arc Reactors.

That was…great. It might have broken at his 10% but there were not many things that could exert that much pressure in such a small area. He was sure that even one of the Leviathans crashing on the forcefield would not destroy it because the weight would be much more distributed.

Seeing the effectiveness of the shields, Tony had the idea to install some of them in his tower as well. Well, that worked out exactly as he planned it to work out. So far, he could see partial installation being done on the penthouse floors.

The end of the month was in sight and there were still no signs of Loki arriving. He couldn't even subtly inquire about the Tesseract or anything. Fury wouldn't tell him anything anyway.

All he could do was focus on the city, do his job, strengthen his telepathy, something that he should have done ages ago, and then wait.

…..

…

Okay, where the fuck was Loki? He thought to himself, frustrated at the lack of any action. He was getting more and more anxious as the days went by. There were now only 5 days left in the month of May and if his memory was correct, The New York invasion happened in the month of May itself.

In the meantime, there had been another development. A new company, with Stark Industries being a minority shareholder and Bruce and Dr.Cho being the majority shareholders, had been created, headquartered right in Manhattan.

It was aptly named Maximus Defensus Pvt. Ltd.

Bruce had asked him for a name and with no way of backing out of his absurd suggestion, Bruce watched helplessly as his first company, his first corporate endeavour was named something so silly. In his defense, it was just a way to get rid of some of the stress he was accumulating.

Already, he could see many people pointing at the name on the building and whispering amongst themselves. It was not to the point of outright laughing but it certainly was odd.

As for what the company did, well, it created skin grafts. The strongest skin grafts that any company did. Fury and the US military, having known about it beforehand, had already booked all the available slots. Extensive testing had been done by basically all the branches of the military and it would be safe to say that the company was now basically drowning in money, as the government threw whatever they asked at them, just to get their soldiers bulletproof.

And it wasn't even completely bulletproof either. Sure, it was stronger than Kevlar but they couldn't do the skin grafts on any part of the body. Most extremities were covered obviously, but a bullet to the back of the head will still put them down, just like any normal human.

Even then, the military was jumping at the chance to get their soldiers enhanced in quantities ranging in the hundreds, with no horrible side effects or fancy super soldier serums.

SHIELD had gotten their cut as well, as was discussed in the deal they had with Tony and the Invisible Man as the witnesses, to make sure that Bruce was not ripped off.

It was safe to say that little Bellina… wouldn't have to worry about money, at all, in the future.

Bruce expressed some concerns about going into the military industrial complex but Tony was the one who explained to him that he was not creating stuff to kill people, just defend people better.

Plus, Bruce had strictly put 40% of all the available slots to be used for civilians only, out of which most of them would be free anyway. THe skin grafts also had a very low rejection rate so people across the country would soon be pouring in to get their grafts for free, subsidised by the revenue coming in from the military, obviously.

NYPD was getting some of them as well, on his suggestion, just in case.

As all these thoughts ran through his mind, his mind still ended up going to the root question of all.

WHERE.THE.FUCK.WAS.LOKI??!!

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