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 56 [September 2010, Day 1 of the Stark Expo]

–Axle Riddle–

Axle Riddle watched as Justin Hammer, Yapper of the Yapperston University, continued to Yap on and on about the current unfair situation of Tony Stark just hoarding all of Tony Stark’s tech, and not giving it to the military or better yet, to leeches like Justin Hammer who can use it to wage even better warfare. 

He was not kidding when he said that the mood between the members of the audience could not have been lower. It was not like Justin was standing in a military fair, in front of decorated generals or members of the government. No, he was standing in front of an auditorium filled with regular people, students, who had taken time out of their evenings to watch….this.

Understandably, the mood was rather down. Thankfully, Justin seemed to realise that the longer he kept his mouth open, the bigger the hole he was digging for himself, so he just shut up and began doing his whole show about the drones popping out of the stage, with Rhodey leading them as the War Machine.

Seriously, it might be called a War Machine but unless Tony himself supplies his top tier weapons, he doubted there was much difference in combat levels between the normal suit sans the weapons and the suit with all the Hammer weapons in the world attached to it.

“Army!”

“Navy!”

“Air Force!”

While Hammer continued to yap, his mind was working overtime as he tried to look for something that would indicate someone who should not be here. Because he could not discount the possibility of HYDRA knowing about Vanko and then coming here to make sure that they could get the spoils. Although, if HYDRA really wanted something, they could have just coaxed old Justin over there to send over a sample of every drone to them, ahead of time.

However, competence should not always be expected, even from thousand year old Behemoths.

Aha! He finally got here.

“All units, Tony Stark has just entered my range. He should be visible right…about…now,” He said to all the Hulks as well as Randall who was monitoring everything. He spied Romanoff’s form along with Happy Hogan leaving the Expo for some reason. So, Romanoff had something then.

“Randall, follow Romanoff and Happy Hogan and see if you can do something to help them. They must be going after Vanko,” 

“Roger that! Oh! I always wanted to say that in real life!” Randall's voice cut over as he kept a close watch on Tony. He could see that the suit was completely new, devoid of any defects or even repair work.

So, Tony should be relatively safe in that big hunk of iron. Tony’s face, inside the suit, was one of determination, with none of the sickly purple lines showing on his body anywhere. He smiled as it seemed as if, no matter the timeline Tony was in, he would pull through.

Tony Stark had officially created Vibranium, or at least some variant of it that was more useful in energy transmission rather than kinetic energy absorption.

He could feel Justin, as well as Rhodey, tensing as the entire audience silenced down, hearing the whine of Tony’s repulsor. However, that same silence turned into deafening cheers as Tony Stark’s Iron Man landed on the stage in his signature style.

Tony’s faceplate opened up as he put his arm around Rhodey’s shoulder, waving at the audience while telling RHodey something, probably about the fact that Vanko was still alive and Hammer was keeping him hidden somewhere.

He was more busy with making sure that the pieces were in place. Samuel and Tim were the ones who were chosen to become the flying pieces of grinders who would take apart those drones. 

Both of them were standing right in front of the stadium, looking fearlessly at the arrayed drones, with their pieces of armour just waiting to pop from underneath the stadium. Both of them were tense, waiting for the other shoe to drop, as were the other 4 Hulks who were stationed in the other areas, waiting to evacuate the other people.

This would be it. After today, these guys would be public heroes, since, in their own words, they didn’t want to remain hidden. Most of them loved the attention and since being in Manhattan meant that there was no real danger to them, they would love to become the so-called heroes of Manhattan.

…..

…

“Go!” As soon as he felt Rhodey shouting at Tony and the other drones activating on their own, he just sent the pieces of armour at Samuel and Tim. Both of them remembered their training and jumped forward in a swimming diving pose, the pieces of armour interposing around them, forming a literal clone over their head, made from the strongest titanium alloy mixture that Bruce and Randall could find.

The screams began a second later as Tony blasted his way through the glass auditorium, with the War Machine hot in his tail. Thankfully, he was able to strain his powers long enough for the glass shards to be collected in a small ball before throwing it down into the center.

“Evacuate Everyone!” He made sure to make it heard over the comms as he saw Samuel and Tim just blasting through two rows of Army Drones, scrapping them completely, before the rest of the drones began taking cognizance of them.

He could feel Tony and Rhodey blasting through the skies, with Rhodey’s weaponry constantly taking shots at Iron Man while Tony tried his best to take the drones away from the people.

“Randall, patch to Tony and tell him about our people there. Also, tell him that he will have backup soon,” He ordered Randall who immediately began typing furiously on his custom made keyboard.

So far, Samuel and Tim had seen the lion’s share of action as the other Hulks were busy getting people away from the center of action. Most of them had resorted to shredding through the expo panels to make way for more people to get out of the danger zone.

Meanwhile, the drones, or rather Vanko had finally taken note of Samuel and Tim and were focusing the firepower of the drones on them, with most of the air force drones creating a circle around the area and constantly peppering the area with repulsor blasts. 

Samuel and Tim were both doing okay, what with the repulsor arrays only stinging a bit, as opposed to punching a hole through them. Once all the army drones were taken care of, he lifted Samuel and just…rammed him through one of the Air Force drones.

Being made of lighter stuff for more maneuverability, the drone folded in pieces as Samuel just tackled it out of the sky. The next moment, Tim did the same.

Just like that, half of the total drones that Hammer had brought were scrapped right in the auditorium itself, never having the chance to get out and hurt people. 

He sighed in relief as he felt most of the people getting out of the Expo and into the parking lot where the emergency services had just arrived and began setting everything up.

Not to be outshone by their siblings, the other 4 hulks arrived on the scene as well and well, lacking any means to be airborne, simply began lifting stuff and throwing them at the drones. The drones too, the ones who were not after Tony, began firing at them.

He almost laughed out loud when he saw them throwing Leny at one of the drones, what with Leny being the scrawniest of the bunch. Leny missed but with the drone’s attention firmly on the falling form of Leny, it missed the literal pole that skewered the drone through the chest as the hulks made sure to capitalise on the opportunity provided to them.

He could see the drone horde closing in on Tony but it was very thin this time, allowing him to outmanoeuvre them very easily. The War Machine though, was hot in his tail, the advanced repulsors with better maneuverability meant that Rhodey was keeping up with Tony, even with the advanced reactor that Tony had this time.

He switched tactics and tried to see if the components of the drones were as cheap as he thought they were.

He focused on the foot repulsors and after some fidgeting around, he grinned as just unplugging some wires, he was able to make the repulsor fizzle out, unbalancing the whole drone, leading him away from Tony. He then started pulling wires from all the repulsor arrays from all the drones, creating a completely hilarious situation where the drones kept facing Tony but their repulsors kept flickering in and out, drawing them further down, or away from Tony.

He grinned as the drones never saw Leny, Samuel, and the others coming as the Hulks, combined made very short work of the remaining drones. 

“Good work, team. Now rendezvous at Tony's location, the Big One is coming,” Randall said into the comms before the Hulks began heading to the clearing Tony and Rhodey were talking in.

It would seem that Romanoff had finally infiltrated the facility and rebooted everything.

Good.

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