Chapter 31 : A quiet filler chapter (Patreon)

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The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 31 [December 2008]

Evacuated Police precinct

–Nick Fury–

As he watched the paper human disperse into shreds of paper in front of him, his mind ran a mile a minute as he tried to process the outcome of this meeting. Sure, it might not have seemed that nothing of note happened in the meeting but for him, this was the most important meeting of the year.

Getting to know the tone of the so-called Invisible Man of Manhattan was so much more important than dealing with Ross. Oh, he could take care of Ross in a hundred different ways this second but that was never in question. Convincing the President might have taken longer if he didn’t have something far more attractive on the plate in front of him.

The level of power and control that the Invisible Man had shown so far meant that he was the strongest being on the planet, if not tied with Banner when he was mean and green.

Plus, he was somehow capable of being damn near omniscient in a very large area, making him the literal definition of a perfect combatant. He was sure that if the Invisible Man made a move or was deployed in a city, he could bring that city’s crime rate down to damn near zero in a day or two. The less said about military zones the better.

No, he could milk it a hundred different ways and while the President himself was not thrilled to be relying on “freaks” as he likes to call them, he is pragmatic enough to realise that they could be game changers on their own, if not that then at least powerful deterrents.

“Coulson,” He called out for his trusted right hand man. He was the only one he could trust with a matter of this magnitude. Coulson looked back from where he was coordinating with the dozen teams that had arrived with him to protect him and had failed hilariously.

“Yes, sir,”

“We are moving out. Bag everything,” He ordered as he sat on his chair, refusing to work on anything lest that man read it using his bullshit powers.

He had not even noticed as they continued to pepper the building with bullets and even battering rams, and not just any battering rams, SHIELD issue battering rams were capable of breaking open bunker doors if given enough time.

Somehow, that man, in addition to stopping crime in the city, had maintained a blanket of silence around them, so much so that the astronomical amount of noise made by the bullets and the battering ram went unheard by either of them.

Also, his eye narrowed as he went past Coulson, and climbed down the stairs. He looked back and his eye widened in astonishment as he could see that, despite the hundreds or even thousands of bullet shells lying around the building, there was not even a single mark on the building.

Goddamn.

What were the agents thinking, peppering the entire building with such heavy firepower? He knew he shouldn’t have brought the STRIKE team with him, they were always a little heavy handed where they didn’t need to be. Well, nothing a little stint in Antarctica can’t fix.

“We’re ready to move out, sir,” Coulson said as he boarded the car, the same as him.

“Good. Let’s go. We have a lot to do, today,” He said and rested his eyes. There was scant little he could say in the domain of the Invisible Man that would not immediately be picked up by his prying gaze.

Honestly, he couldn’t even begin to understand just how someone could perceive an entire city all at once. Even now, he watched as news reporters covered every single one of the Invisible Man’s exploits, starting from that cult of his.

Thankfully, They didn’t even have to step in to do anything to contain them. He had come forward himself and explained that he was no god and was just another human who was somehow blessed with powers.

His wording had been dissected multiple times with different teams of analysts at every single three-letter agency in the country. Without ever seeing the man or his body in action, there were limitations in what the analysts could do but they were sure that he was someone with heroic inclinations, obviously.

The cult was rather non violent and the gatherings were boosting the economy immensely, even though most of them went back home disappointed because the powers of the Invisible Man were pretty limited in what they could do.

Sure, applying CPR on a dying man could be done with ease but the same could not be said for terminal diseases.

Not even he has that level of fine control to target individual cells, at least that is what the analysts back home told him.

He had read some of the reports regarding the city and it was safe to say that Manhattan was currently swimming in money. It was the closest thing to a utopia on US soil at the moment. 

Crime rates? Damn near zero, Traffic? Non existential. Hunger? Thing of the past with all the kitchens he had made the Mayor open and operate. Drugs? Incinerated before they could be brought into the city proper, at least the ones brought in by drug dealers. 

Apparently, individual recreational use was permitted by him but that was non consequential. According to the reports, even the very air was being purified somehow but that might just be the consequence of him helping the municipal workers in cleaning the city.

Oh yeah, he was making sure that the city ran like clockwork, and in a sense, he was running the city. The city was more under his control than the Mayor’s or even the President's. 

He wasn’t sure why there was not more uproar over the fact that a completely unknown all powerful entity had essentially taken over a major part of the most populous city of the United States.

Sure, the economic and societal benefits he brought with him were enormous, to the point that most other Mayors would sell their left nut for him to come and settle in their city. But the people must realise the consequences of giving that much power to an unchecked party.

It might be his paranoia speaking but the way the Invisible Man termed his powers were growing didn’t sit right with him. Already, they had seen his effective range increase, though the more he tried to act out of Manhattan, the weaker his powers were.

He resorted to more creative uses of his power that allowed him to achieve similar effects while using far less power, as opposed to just using overwhelming brute force, while in Manhattan. He had seen him just lift 3 fully loaded semis and set them on their way out of the city while snuffing out a fire that had broken out on the other side of the city.

Oh yeah, he could not just move stuff with his mind, he could also somehow control the very air to devastating effects, the Curtain of Silence came to mind.

He had snuffed the very air out of those flames, stopping them nearly instantly.

“Coulson, move everything important out of NYC HQ. I want a skeleton crew working here only. Contact all INDEX individuals and tell them to move out of the city. We don’t want them to come into contact with the Invisible Man and for god’s sake, figure out a better name for him,” 

It might just be paranoia but he had a hunch that the Invisible Man was not going to remain confined to a specific part of the city for much longer. Already they had predicted that with the rate of expansion, he would cover the entire city of New York in two or three years, at most. 

That was an uncomfortably short timeline. The higher ups might be satisfied that the new powerful variable was somehow limited to a small area that they could light up with fire whenever they felt like it but things would not be nearly as simple as that.

For one, the fine control that he had, along with the amount of power he could bring forth, it would be safe to say that nothing short of Tesseract-powered weapons would work against his powers and those too worked best against a target. What would they be shooting against if they didn’t even know who they were supposed to fight?

The underground highway that spanned the entire length of Manhattan came to mind. Doing something like that would have taken billions of dollars and an absolute eternity to make. He did that in what? 20 days.

“Sir, about Dr.Banner?” Coulson’s question brought him out of his introspection. He opened his eye to see that they already exited his estimated range and even the caution zone.

HE sighed, “What can we realistically do, Coulson? We will just have to warn Ross and tell him not to come guns blazing into a residential area. If he does it anyway, well, that bout of stupidity will be on him. Meanwhile, I’ll report everything to the President. Let’s see what he thinks about this and then, we’ll go from there,” 

“Alright,” Coulson said as he opened the door for him to leave. Coulson’s new assignment was for him to stay here long term and monitor the situation. Technically, Ross would not do something to jeopardize civilian lives but the madman could not be predicted.

“Coulson, stay safe,” He warned as the doors on the helicopter closed and he flew away to the airstrip, to go straight to DC.

He had a lot of work to do and more importantly, a lot of preparation to depose one of the most celebrated Generals of their time.

God, he could already feel the migraine coming.