The Sage of the Mind

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The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 96 [March 2012]

Manhattan [Time till Chitauri Invasion - 2 months]

–Axle Riddle–

He was in his room, practising his telepathy by concentrating on the thoughts and dreams of the young couple that lived just upstairs, all the while he worked with his TK to reconfigure the tunnel below and stop crime in the city. It was a strenuous activity for his mind but he was not bothered by that, doing that was how his mind would grow and he needed that growth, especially since lately, he had been feeling as if some noose had been tightening around his neck.

It was 2012 already, and despite all the preparations he had done, he found his hands sometimes clammy with sweat as he thought of the various ominous "what-ifs" that wandered into his mind from time to time.

What if Loki found him somehow and then used the Mind Stone on him?

What if the portal didn't open in Manhattan, limiting his ability to use his powers on the Chitauri?

What if he couldn't actually sense Loki with his illusion magic? What if something happened to the evacuation and controlled invasion that he was trying to enact, resulting in grave tragedies?

He shook his head violently, trying to banish the thoughts but doing so with meditation was next to impossible so he gave up on telepathy practice for the day. Instead, he stood up, and floated right into his bedroom with his clothing for the day all ironed and ready for him to wear, floating mid air.

He had to do something to get rid of the restless energy he seemed to have and meditation was not the proper way to do it. Unfortunately, building a gym for the superpowered was very much on Tony Stark's list of capabilities but for that, he would have to expose his identity and that was not something he was willing to do right now.

The night of Christmas and New York was still fresh in his mind. Man, the amount of alcohol he had consumed that day would have killed multiple men with ease, an amount that barely seemed to affect his system. At the time, he was resentful of that fact but right now, he was grateful because he couldn't even begin to imagine the unmitigated disaster that a drunk him with all his powers, would be.

Thankfully, he had one major thing to focus on today. 

A meeting at the Wakanda Embassy. Well, the new Wakandan Embassy that they built right in the heart of Manhattan, for some reason. It was totally pedestrian with no advanced anything in the embassy save for a hardline fiber connection straight to their Embassy on the outskirts of the city but aside from that, it had nothing of note.

It must have raised some eyebrows when Wakanda, a third world African country, with barely any forex reserves, opened not one but two Embassies in the Big Apple in less than a year. Their reasoning? Only they knew.

He had the meeting in about two hours and he was already done for the day. His telepathy, atleast the focused version of it, would leave him feeling pretty drained throughout the day, not something he wanted to feel while talking with the Wakandans. They were mentally draining enough on their own.

It was about the Vibranium fibers they had utilized and how and why they had withered into nothingness when the operation was done. It must have spooked them to go through that particular recording when they hacked into Stark's or SHIELD's database. Vibranium was their sacred metal and his being able to destroy Vibranium of all things must have set off alarm bells in their mind.

That was why they had been trying to set up this meeting for months but he had been blowing them off. A bit petty but hey, he had to make them know somehow that he didn't really like them and their policies all that much, especially their policy to outright kill the scientists that came too close to their technological superiority.

That rubbed him all kinds of wrong ways, and he just hoped that the rise of T'Challa to becoming King of Wakanda would stop that practice.

Why was an advanced technocratic, self-sufficient, and borderline utopian society run by a monarchy anyway? What kind of backward ass thinking was that?

Hold a tournament, examine the candidates, choose the one most suited for strategies to lead, choose the most physically dominating to be Black Panther, and then have some sort of elected cabinet, directly or indirectly, and then have them make informed decisions.

That way might be slow but it was not as if Wakanda was making any phenomenal world changing progress right now. They were completely stagnant and while changing anything would demand nothing less than a bloody revolution, he still hoped that sometime in the future, when humanity inevitably expanded to the stars, decentralization of powers happened in Wakanda.

But then again, he was neither Wakandan nor invested in their internal politics, so what right did he have to comment on their ruling style?

As long as they didn't export that to the rest of the world and didn't impede normal efforts to advance humanity, it would be fine in his books. After all, they were not even a hundred million, if he was remembering correctly, and the world's population had just crossed the 6 billion mark.

Wakanda must be strict on population control because they had all the resources when they were growing as a country or rather, they observed the developed country phenomenon of falling birth rates much earlier because they were a developed country when the rest of the world ran on steam engines.

"Thank you. Keep the change," He insisted to the Barista, one of the many small sized coffee shops that had popped up in this place that he loved to explore, smiled back as he sipped on the heavenly drink, with six shots of espresso, being just enough to rouse him a bit.

He was on his way to the office while the appointment with the Wakandans had already passed about 20 minutes ago.

What? It was a power move to let them stew for an hour and also, who was going to do all the fake paperwork in his office, if not him?

In the meantime, Tony and Bruce had already figured out the specific frequency of repulsors needed to peel open the skin of the probable Moloid that he had captured. Ofcouse, they were not going to vivisect it. They were not savages.

They made sure that the Moloid had a painless death and then were conducting experiments on its body to figure out how it ticked. So far, Dr.Cho had been the one with the most excitement to join the project and had already begun forming her own thesis based on the skin samples she had received from the Moloid.

According to her, the skin could be used as the base for an artificial skin graft, virtually indistinguishable from normal skin, but just built differently, in his own words.

It would have blunt resistance, fire resistance, cold resistance, and even puncture resistance if used properly, creating natural skin armor for people.

Something that he was quick to warn her about. The skin might not make them as strong as the Moloid, you would need the underlying muscles as well as the bones to make that happen but if something even remotely enhancing was invented by Dr.Cho and it reached the ears of the military, well, it would be used in wars.

So, he just told her to tread carefully. And she took that advice and went to Tony, who was the certifiable current expert on military grade commercial activities.

A questionable choice but the best she could have made considering the circumstances and the sheer ease of access to Tony.

So, he let them be and would only pipe in if Tony tried to shaft Cho and not in a sexual way, the chances of that happening were pretty low but he would still maintain a close eye on that.

Wouldn't want mini Moloids popping up, attracting Deviants and Eternals to the city. That was the last thing he wanted, especially with the Invasion just on the horizon.

"Alright, get the latest financial reports," He pressed a button on the intercom and ordered in his authoritative voice.

At the same time, a series of papers stuck together before being shredded to form a small human, with a phone flying out of nowhere into its head.

Let's see who he would have the pleasure of meeting because the last time he went to a Wakanda Embassy, he met a pretty trained woman who was not a part of the Dora Milaje because she had hair on her head. This time though, he could not sense the same woman being in his entire range, so it must be someone different.

His paper avatar then began floating high up in the sky before it deformed and began rocketing toward the Wakandan Embassy.

If they wanted him to be discreet, they should not have built an Embassy in Manhattan then.

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