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 11

77A Bleecker Street, [1st February, 2007] 

–Axle Riddle–

Huh. You learn something new about this place every day, he thought to himself as his powers detected yet another room in the vast hallway that kept every single non-sorcerer away from the precious artifacts that littered this room. It was a neat little enchantment that was nearly impossible to break unless was intimately familiar with the codes of the spell. In the month he had been at the Sanctum, he did go home occasionally but for all purposes, this had been his home for the past month.

Mrs.Sanchez was very sad to see him go but wished him good luck in his future endeavours along with giving him a ton of sweets after making him promise that he would make sure to visit her more often. Only then did that old adorable monster let him out of her freakishly strong grip. They also gave him some money that conveniently found itself back in the cash register. He also looked into the person they hired after him and found him to be trustworthy enough. Even then, he continued to check up on the bakery from time to time to see how things were going on. His apartment was cleaned by him when he went there on the weekends.

Unfortunately, he was not able to employ the coolest mode of transport that almost everyone in Kamar Taj enjoyed. The portals.

As a direct consequence of being an Avatar of a force that flows through his body, he is unable to make pacts with other extra-dimensional entities and use their energy to cast spells. He was stuck with the energy that suffused his entire being and that was a type of energy that was slightly different from the energy that most psionics in this universe used. Nevertheless, according to the Ancient One, it was not the type of energy that was used that mattered but the applications of it. 

And his powerset was best suited for any type of telekinetic application. Most telekinetics had some sort of limit on them in terms of range, application, strength, and so on and so forth. His powers were suited for all of them so he had a host of books to refer to. 

After consultation with the Ancient One, she had commented on his training methods and had confirmed that his growth would be good even with those methods, even if it would take longer than normal to reach the peak. With the books he had in hand, the Ancient One predicted that he would reach the strength required to destroy entire cities with just his mind, within a scant 10 years. 

Just imagining the ability to recreate Pain's "Shinra Tensei" on his own just by pushing down on the city, was so exhilarating that he doubled his efforts to complete the training fast enough, which in hindsight was not good because he soon found himself bleeding from his nose and then fainting. The bad news was that he was forbidden from using his powers for a couple of days after that which felt like such a sudden jolt to his system like he had just lost the use of a limb and his brain was still trying to figure out why. The good news was that his body had healed in such a way that it would take much higher levels of overloading on his mind before he would pass out. The thought of doing that again had crossed his mind but he then immediately got out of the masochist training thoughts and focused on his controlled training which was proven to have the best results in the longer term.

His current focus was on control and that was why, he was using his spatial awareness to control 100 different brooms to clean a hundred different rooms in the hallway of artifacts. At the same time, he had a litany of napkins responsible for cleaning the glass containers of artifacts that were deemed too dangerous to keep in the open.

Doing all that multitasking has expanded his ability to apply his vast powers in minute quantities to hundreds of different tasks. As a direct result of that, he has been able to do his "vigilante" activities much better around the city. He could now finally hear some solid rumours about something weird going on in the city as criminals of every kind found themselves being stopped by an invisible entity once they entered a circle where he was active.

It had been about 6 months since he had arrived in this world and that was enough time for people to start noticing. For different organisations to start noticing and that was why, he was looking at a black hooded SUV passing through the street where the Sanctum was located, as he sipped on the heavenly coffee the cafe next door still served. Apparently, the Sanctum Masters also liked this coffee upon his recommendation and he could not have been happier that his words had helped a small business.

The SUVs were completely nondescript but that was where it stood out. He had already scanned the insides of the car and aside from the alarming number of weapons they had on board, the car itself was fairly standard. He had expected something more high-tech from the cars of SHIELD. Or at least HYDRA that was masquerading as SHIELD. 

Because if he was not wrong here and he very rarely was, in this regard, that was some Sitwell guy, a pretty high-ranking member of HYDRA as well as SHIELD. 

Hmm, so he has caught their attention as well. He still has not gotten the lip reading part down so he was not sure what they were talking about but it would be safe to assume that they were here for him. He watched them go and then his brows furrowed in confusion as Sitwell's car separated from them to stand a bit ahead of a bank and the rest of the cars stopped right in front of the nearest bank.

His heckles rose as he saw every single person in the three cars that had stopped behind, don masks and automatic rifles. He watched on, flabbergasted as they alighted the vehicle, opened the trunk, and took out even more heavy artillery as some of them started to open fire on the people. 

"Shit!" He realised what they were doing. They were trying to draw him out or rather, force him to reveal himself in hopes that heavy weaponry would be too much for him to handle. 

Aside from a slight tremble in his hands, nothing changed on the outside, but inside, his powers had already taken stock of all the bullets and the people that would be stuck by them. His mind went into overdrive as a 3d map formed in his mind. He flooded the entire area around the bank with his mind, allowing him extra leeway to manipulate the surroundings. It was a little risky to do that for such a large area but stopping hundreds of bullets at the same time was no small matter.

People started panicking at the sound of bullets and he had to work even more to stop more bullets as people, in their panic, inadvertently found themselves running in the direction those bullets were taking. He stopped the dozen or so bullets that had already pierced the glass doors and then just slammed a telekinetic barrier down on the area behind the door, stopping all the bullets that were about to go in.

Unfortunately, somebody got shot before he could do anything about it. It was not someone inside the bank where he had focused the bulk of his powers. It was someone who was about to enter the bank and had witnessed the entire thing. They had shot him once in the chest and once he was down, assumed that he was dead and moved on to their main target of seemingly looting a bank. However, that was not the case because he had stopped the bullet from going too far inside his ribcage. It was now only on the surface of his ribcage and could easily be removed, without any risk of the person dying. Though there was blood, that person would be fine as long as he was removed from the scene, which is exactly what he did when he floated his body and placed it safely on the top of the rooftop.

Now that the people were safe behind the barrier and even the grenades these animals had launched at them had not done anything but heat up in the internal surroundings, he couldn't exactly stop thermal energy from taking its natural course, he could finally focus on HYDRA's goons.

First off, the cars had to go so he just simply…crushed them. One second, they were taking out even more ammo from the trunks of the car, the second moment the cars were simply scrapped. Also, two people had already lost their arms because their hands were in the way when he crushed those cars.

Then, he focused on the people. One by one, every single gun they had started exploding in their hands as he simply bent their muzzles beyond repair and then floated all of them a hundred feet in the air. He could see Sitwell looking at a screen of some sort, very calm even though his men were about to get severely injured. 

What a ruthless monster.

He then simply dropped the attackers and just shy of them hitting the curb and dying, he softened the blow and simply knocked them out. Before he could do anything to Sitwell, though, he found him to have left the surroundings. He crossed his range before he could do anything and he did not want to chase after him.

So, all he did was make sure that all the guns and grenades were accounted for, made a huge pile of the scrap that they now were, thanks to yours truly and let the people come out. 

He rolled his eyes as only now did the NYPD come out of their hidey holes and reach the scene. HYDRA and their meddling in everything.

"Excuse me, sir? SIR?" 

"huh-Yes?" He asked the waitress who was looking at him in concern…for some reason.

"Are you alright? You are…bleeding from your nose."

He immediately put a hand to his nose and yup…he was bleeding. Guess the strain of manipulating those hundreds of bullets was not exactly light then. It was a good thing that he was not unconscious.

"No, it's fine. A regular occurrence, I assure you. Now, thank you for the coffee," He set down a 20$ bill and left the cafe, hobbling towards the New York Sanctum as his head began hurting like a bitch.

Damn HYDRA.

He would get his payback. He might have to be more careful with his activities because Sitwell getting out of his range just as he was done with his goons could not have been a coincidence.

You can read upto 5 extra chapters on my P*treon. It is the same name as my username.