The "G" Shield

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Kamar Taj [July 2015]

–Jack Sullivan–

"Master Sullivan, you do always come with the nicest of surprises," He was greeted by the absolutely dry voice of the Ancient One once he arrived at the training stage, the spot most visited by the Sorcerer Supreme as she watched over the next crop of initiates, from whom the next group of Masters would come.

Unfortunately, he knew that this group would not have the pleasure of hosting the next Sorcerer Supreme, and so did the Ancient One but that did not stop her from frequenting the same spot, overlooking the same training of the same average talented initiates for some reason.

"Uh. Yeah, so I kinda need a favour from you," He said as he retrieved the box that contained the Power Stone. A gift that was also a big fuck you since he could not open the box and use the Stone without alerting the Xandar Empire about it and consequently, their allies as well that it was the Green Guardian of Earth who was after the Infinity Stones, and not the purple Scrotum himself.

"I was not talking about the Infinity Stone, Master Sullivan," She said as she waved her hand, covering the container in a soft orange glow as it rotated in front of her. Multiple glyphs appeared on the surface of the container before they all converged into a single circular symbol that glowed a deep red before it dissipated, leaving a mark on the container, which he was sure was made from some Vibranium alloy.

She then floated the container right back to him. He could see the container was open to him now, with the energy of the Infinity Stone almost gushing out if it were not for the barrier that the Ancient One had cast around them the moment he had arrived. He covered the container in one of his barriers as he finally got the opportunity to get a long deserved power up.

It was only then that the Ancient One's words caught up to him, causing him to look up at her in confusion.

"What?"

"Thor Odinson, Master Sullivan. The Thor you have brought back is quite different from the one you met during the Invasion of New York, as I am sure you must have noticed," 

And notice, he did. How could he not? What with Thor suddenly gaining the ability to perform magic as if he had been doing it since birth and on a scale that would be more suitable for Odin in his prime rather than Thor who hadn't even inherited the Odin Force yet. The sheer ease with which he summoned the Bi Frost was as alarming as it was exciting. 

Another powerful ally in the fight against Thanos and Hela, and all the things that went bump in the night.

"Yes, I did but for now, I have chosen to ignore the changes. Do you know what exactly happened to him?" He wasn't going to ask Thor about it but if the Ancient One knew something about it, which she probably did, then it was fine.

"Yes…but not much. My sight grows blurry around the God of Thunder, his immense power cloaking him from my sight. Still, what I do know is that the Thor you met is not just one Thor but the amalgamation of multiple Thors, made one through sheer happenstance and the will of all the other Thors to die," 

He blinked in confusion.

What the fuck?

That…raised more questions than it answered and now he was really curious as to what happened and yet, he had a hunch that Thor would not be really receptive to his questions.

Oh, well. Something for Future Jack to worry about then.

For now, it was POWER-UP time.

"Oo-kay, that's odd. Anyway, I will be in the ritual room. See ya!" He shouted and dashed into the ritual room, setting the isolation to the max.

Once confirmed that the room was working as it should, he covered the container in his barriers and then extended his barriers, slowly, into the now open container. He slowly, steadily, let his barrier touch the Power Stone.

The outcome was….underwhelming.

Sure, he felt the energy flow and the barrier line connected to the Stone began glowing purple but it was nothing like what he had expected. It was not as absurd or dramatic as it should be.

Maybe, something was wrong in his approach? Maybe he needed direct contact?

Hesitantly, he removed the Power Stone from the container, covered the stone entirely in his barriers and let it float above his open palm. He gulped, feeling his hair rise on end as the sheer energy of the Stone suffused the atmosphere around him.

He just hoped that he didn't do something that blew apart the ritual room. The Power Stone certainly seemed like one of the few things in the universe that could do that level of damage to something that was built by Agamotto himself.

"Well, time to find out," He muttered to himself as he removed all the barriers covering his hand, and slowly maneuvered the Power Stone right above his open palm, just waiting to be dropped. Damn, he had never really come so close to an Infinity Stone intentionally. His last experience left him half dead, all the while making him feel so much pain that his mind blacked out, and couldn't think of doing anything else.

He took a deep breath and just…let it go. He dropped the Power Stone on his palm. He could watch in slow motion as arcs of power raced out of the Stone towards his palm, as if joining the two together even before they made contact.

And the second the Power Stone made contact with his skin, his vision blacked out. All he could see was purple. He could feel the sheer amount of energy coursing through his body. He could also feel all that energy being automatically siphoned by his barriers and dispersed, without any conscious input from his side. Slowly, he blinked as his vision adjusted, or rather, his nervous system adjusted to the sensation of having so much power running through his body.

He looked at himself and saw his hand having criss crossing purple veins of power that diminished the longer they went up his arms. His barriers helped a lot in that regard, by dispersing all that power.

Well, at least he didn't spontaneously explode on the spot. That would have been terrible.

He grinned as he created a barrier around his arm, but with the Stone still making contact with his body. He could feel the toll it was taking on his body and he knew that he could not keep this up indefinitely but it was more than enough time for him to make some actual difference in the fight.

Time to test it out then.

He tried to cast a spell, the easiest spell, the Tao Mandala. They weren't even a spell, just conscious expression of dimensional energy given form. 

And….he failed.

His brows furrowed as he tried, again and again, to control the flow of dimensional energy to create the Tao Mandalas but nope. No luck. He tried other spells, some easier than the others but even then, the result was the same.

He could not cast spells while having the Power Stone equipped. Well, it did disrupt and overwhelm all the other energy sources in his body just by its sheer volume so there was that. Only his barriers were able to coexist with the volatile energy of the Power Stone, it would seem.

He looked at the non existent orange sparks, even as he rotated his left arm while imagining the location he had dropped into the most, Kamar Taj, and sighed. Nothing involving Dimensional energy can be used while he was using the Power Stone.

Or more accurately, dimensional energy spells could not be used yet. He could feel that with enough practice, he could wrangle the Power Stone's energy enough that he might be able to cast the Tao Mandalas.

But that was a moot point anyway. He didn't need that much versatility going forward. He needed pure power and the Power Stone was the definitive answer to his question. So, he fell back on his innate powers.

His barriers.

He cast a medium sized Gundam around himself, nothing extraordinary. Simple shroud with unbreakable barriers. He then pulled the energy from the Power Stone all around him. He could see, from the exploratory barrier he had cast in front of him, the veins of purple that now adorned the Gundam. He could also feel the power output being increased by a lot.

Before, he had to rely on inertia, momentum, and whatever kinetic bursts he could create to exert force with his barriers. He mostly relied on the sharpness of his barriers rather than the force with which he could hit them.

But now? Now he could hit someone with even the lightest of touch and they would most likely vaporise, due to the sheer energy output from his Gundam. 

He winced as he felt the energy from the Power Stone try to overwhelm his barriers. It could not do it yet, he still had hours, if his calculation was correct but it was going to be something that he was going to have to get used to. Having to consciously balance the energy flow from the Power Stone with the number of barriers he had cast at any given time.

"Alright, next step. Mirror Dimension," he grinned as this was the favourite part of his power testing. Wanton and utter destruction at first and then figured out the control aspect as he went on destroying vast swathes of cities at once.

He covered the Power Stone in his barrier, lifted it from his body, sighed in relief as he immediately felt the load on his body lessen, and then dropped it back into the container. Sealing the container tight in his barriers, he went out and after making sure that the ritual room had properly absorbed the residual Power Stone energy, opened a portal to the mirror dimension and floated right into it.

He noticed that even after he had removed the Power Stone from his system, he could feel a slight imbalance in the way dimensional energy flowed throughout his body. Hmm, something to think of later on.

"Let's do this," he muttered as he equipped the Power Stone, created a Large gundam around himself, and floated right into the Himalayas.

Taking a deep breath, he let the energy from the Power Stone loose into the entirety of the Gundam. Immediately, he could feel the snow around him sizzle as a deep purple glow was cast into the valley he was floating in.

"Show time," he grinned as he created a sword around his Gundam. That single act would have required some mental gymnastics in balancing the power from the Stone but this one thing was saving him that trouble.

His entire Gundam was now continuously releasing waves of energy from the Power Stone, essentially bleeding off all the excess energy continuously. This was more taxing than just mentally balancing it but it was much faster and much more battle worthy.

The sword was created and he didn't even sharpen it all that much, just let the Power Stone energy flow through it, making it glow mostly purple.

Then…

He blinked in confusion and awe as the mountain, which he had slashed with his sword, just…ceased to exist.

Oh yeah. He grinned menacingly, as he dispelled the sword, increased the flow of energy all around his Gundam, and just rammed into the mountain ranges, or at least, he tried to anyway. All matter disintegrated as soon as it came into contact with the Gundam's shroud, which consisted of both, the excess energy bleed-off, and the conscious flow of Power Stone energy.

Damn, he could get used to this. Literally deleting small towns off the map simply by flying through them. Or destroying Sanctuary II, Thanos' flagship spaceship, by simply flying through it, while releasing conscious bursts of Power Stone energy.

He grimaced, as a beat resounded in his body, with the Gundam simply dispelling on its own. He covered the Power Stone in his barrier and cut off all energy flow with difficulty as apparently, his body reached its limits within an hour of high intensity usage. In that hour though, he had wiped out the Himalayan range in its entirety, in the mirror dimension of course.

He slowly sat down and put the Stone back into its container.

This was harder than he had expected it to be. He hadn't even tested the energy beam aspect of the Power Stone. If he could create multiple barriers and then shoot giant fuck off beams through them, then he would be a mobile assault system, with the perfect defense since anything that came close to his shroud would find itself disintegrated due to the sheer energy of the Power Stone.

Despite the clear exhaustion, so much so that even opening a portal felt difficult to him, he smiled. A genuine smile, filled with relief.

He had it. Finally, a way to definitely destroy Thanos and his forces, is to actually make a giant difference in the final fight.

Not that he ever intended Thanos to ever reach that level. The first thing he was going to do, once he was recovered, is meet Thor, try to see if Thow would be amenable to sharing what the fuck that happened to him, and then move to either Asgard or directly to Nidavellir if Thor could once again use the Bi Frost without any equipment.

A feat that should have been impossible for the current Thor, without the Stormbreaker anyway. The memory of that projection of Stormbreaker was still fresh in his mind and that too only added more questions than it answered.

"Welp, time to leave," he once again surveyed the sheer destruction left in the wake of his power testing and opened a portal straight to the Avengers Tower. It wouldn't do for Tony to annoy Thor into erasing Manhattan off the map, however unlikely it might be.

Tony was a genius unlike any other but his talent in pissing people off was something that could not possibly be replicated anywhere in the universe.

Word Count - 2437

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