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

–Tony Stark–

Well, today was certainly not going, according to expectations.

Normally, that would be a bad thing, what with his penchant for extreme SCIENCE! adventures, but today it actually turned out to be a good thing.

Today has actually been good for many reasons. He finally figured out how to create the new element that his father had designed all these years ago, only being unable to create it due to the limitations of the technology at the time.

Hell, even he was limited to the technology of his time, the only difference was that he lived in a much more connected world than his old Pops did, so he was able to source all the parts and use the combined knowledge of the world’s geniuses, to make the makeshift particle accelerator, however stupid it might have been to make on in one’s basement, and create the new element for his Arc Reactor.

He named it Starkium, after his father. Ah, him and his atrocious naming scheme.

Oh well, he thought to himself as he dogged yet another round of lethal repulsor volleys before turning hard right, grinning to himself as he further thinned the hoard that was after him because Hammer was too cheap to install advanced turning compensation mechanisms in his suits.

Well, what could one expect from a copycat anyway?

“Six bogies remaining, sir.” Jarvis helpfully reminded him even as he watched the red dots on his HUD disappear one by one. Jarvis, without any prompting, opened up a feed from one of the many cameras nearby, and the visuals he was seeing left him stunned for a moment.

If he was not wrong, he was seeing a bunch of humans, though judging by their sheer strength, they were anything but regular humans, just throw one of them at the drones. The even more strange thing was that the person would find themselves airborne and then land in the dit without a scratch, all the while the drones were being skewered lift, right, and centre by anything the people could throw at the drones.

Poles, Chairs, Rocks, and even some experimental showings from some companies that had come to the Stark Expo for exposure. The items themselves were certainly not lethal to metal drones by any stretch of the imagination. What was lethal was the speed and strength at which the group was throwing the objects, as well as each other.

“Jarvis?” He yelled as one of Rhodey’s repulsor blasts came way too close for comfort. While the Hammer Bots had quantity when it came to repulsor blast quality, the suit Rhodey was wearing was made by him and such, was top notch when it came to quality. While the Arc Reactor itself was the last gen, the power output was not the issue when it came to the last gen, it slowly killing him was.

“Only 2 remaining bogies, sir. Colonel Rhodes’ suit is being scrambled by outside code.” Jarvis helpfully reminded him, even though he was stating the obvious.

He grinned as he had an idea, “Jarvis, point me to the strongmen,” Yeah, he was going to be calling them the strongmen since they were strong.

“Any luck in scrambling the signal, Jarvis?” “No, sir,”

Yeah, he thought so. So, he just turned a hard left and then a hard right, and so on and so forth, until the drone itself was somehow malfunctioning, with its repulsor arrays flickering in and out of the stable stasis field that was required for the muons to safely generate thrust. He grinned and just clipped the drone, shoving it straight into the direction of the strongmen who took great joy in viciously tearing apart the drone with their bare hands, the stings from the repulsors apparently not even drawing blood from their skins.

Well, that was scary.

“Tony TONY! I am back in control.” He sighed in relief as Rhodey finally got the armour in control. They then landed in a small clearing around the Expo. 

“Thank god,” Rhodey said as the faceplate of his armour opened up.

“Yeah, I don’t think it was God who rebooted your Armour, Rhodey. We have a Miss Rushman to thank for that,” He said even as Jarvis relayed the details to Rhodey’s HUD as well.

“Stark, you have an incoming bogie, and be careful, the energy signature on this one is incomparable to the drones before,” Romanoff’s voice sounded in both his and Rhodey’s suits as their respective faceplates slid over their faces. 

Both of them stood with their backs to each other as the bigger energy signature came closer and closer. Both of them looked up at the sound of something big coming through the air, seeing a huge black behemoth of a suit dropping down in front of them.

His face scrunched in distaste by instinct as he examined the monstrosity of a suit in front of him. It was easily over 9 feet tall and was completely grey and black, with two-no three Arc Reactors embedded inside the suit for some reason. It was not as if he had some energy intensive application that required–

CRACK! SIZZLE!

Oh. Ooooh.

His face turned grim as he watched a veritable storm of energy gather around Vanko’s suit as multiple whips came out of the suit. So, that was why he was packing so many Arc Reactors.

“DUCK!” Rhodey said even though he was the first one who moved out of the way, as two whips came blasting down on the ground he was standing on, leaving nothing but a gaping hole with molten sand around it, due to the sheer heat generated by the whips.

“Jarvis!” 

“Getting into direct contact with the whips is inadvisable, sir,” Jarvis, oh so unhelpfully reminded him. The HUD Showed energy readings far beyond the pale, somehow the whips could generate enough energy to overwhelm the suit’s energy dissipation capabilities, so if even one of them touched him, it could shear the suit in half, and him in the process.

“Argh!” He grunted in pain as the tail end of one of the whips caught one of his legs, melting through the repulsor arrays, creating a small localized blast of energy that shrugged off the whip but also sent him careening straight into the mud.

He propped himself back up, only to see Rhodey trying to unload every single one of his payloads into Hammer but from a distance.

“Jarvis!” He said as he peppered Hammer’s suit from behind with his repulsors, only for the third whip to begin rotating around his back as if it was some sort of energy shield and it was actually working.

Holy SHIT! Hammer actually worked out the concept of an energy shield. Damn, if only he wasn’t a villain vying for his bloodline, he would have made Stark Industries a boatload of money.

“No viable weak spots detected, sir,” Jarvis’ analysis meant that they couldn’t do much but flee.

“Rhodey! Leave!” He shouted over the comms and Rhodey’s suit immediately began backpedalling but the whip, the damn whips came too close and sheared off part of his chest piece, along with the Arc Reactor.

“RHODEY!” He shouted as he blasted towards Rhodey and picked up his prone form. Jarvis’ sensors indicated he was having third degree burns on his chest and a broken rib or two due to the impact but nothing life threatening as long as medical attention was given to him in a few hours. 

He slowly dropped him down a distance away before turning to face Vanko, with fury in his eyes.

“Jarvis, reroute all power to the Chest piece,”

“...Affirmative,”

He looked on his HUD as the power levels began climbing, charging the chest piece which would then unleash a single devastating beam of repulsor blast, capable of cutting through steel like paper.

The UniBeam was only charged halfway through when, with a roar, multiple beings came barreling through the forest clearing around them, seemingly throwing themselves on top of Vanko.

Vanko, clearly caught off guard, struggled to deal with the small people who were just shoving his gigantic suit around.

He recognised those as the strongmen. It was about damn time.

The UniBeam continued to charge as his eyes spied on the reddening skin and burn marks on some of the strongmen. Yeah, this was hurting them as well, the whips clearly being on another level than the repulsors.

Seeing the UniBeam almost charged, he shouted, “Hold him STILL!”

They clearly heard him as all six of them, at the same time, charged and held on to his whips and pulled.

Vanko struggled but the strongmen held on, even as their fists sizzled by the temperatures.

With a loud whining sound, he braced for impact as his feet drove into the ground, the UniBeam tore through the air and then slammed straight into the chest piece of Vanko’s suit, punching through it like it was paper.

The beam fizzled out after a moment as the suit unfurled around him, the Arc Reactor dropping down to dangerous levels. His eyes unfocused, he managed to point at the injured Rhodey before falling down on his face, darkness claiming his vision.

If you guys would like to support my writing or just read ahead of the public release, you can head to my P*treon or Ko-fi, for upto 5 extra chapters.