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 5

Upper West Side, Manhattan [21st Sept. 2006]

–Axle Riddle–

Ugh. So many rich people.

The mere sight of them was enough to find out he had landed in the rich neighborhood which was fine. It was always assuring to have filthy rich people in your neighborhood. Better protection, better schools, less noise, better traffic, and overall, a place where crime is reduced is what is the result of having filthy rich people in your neighborhood, especially if they are white. What it also created was an underbelly of illicit and illegal activities that he made no particular effort to stop. Having rich white people in the neighborhood just meant that the government services that should be equal for everyone, are just plain better for this neighborhood. It was unfair but that was how it worked in some parts of the world. He had known that in the back of his mind but seeing that just hit the fact home.

In the walk he had taken to get a bagel early in the morning, he had encountered no less than a dozen different dealers selling drugs to people who had plenty of cash to spare. He had also stopped 2 more homicides from occurring in the exact same way he did yesterday. He thought that creating a MO like that should help create his name.

He hoped to expand his sensory range and help stop even more crimes but for the time being, he was fine with the way things were. It didn't help his confidence in human beings that for every block he crossed, he sensed some sort of crime happening to someone. Sure, some of them were petty crimes and he had no intention of stopping them but some of them were violent crimes or at least had the intention of doing violent crimes. Why else would that nondescript yellow taxi be carrying a dozen automatic rifles in their trunk? He subtly destroyed their triggers as well as bent their muzzles slightly so that the guns were no longer usable.

He had found this morning that his sensory range had expanded a bit on its own. The fog that was there just past the building and the curb now expanded to cover multiple buildings around his own building, allowing him to find the numerous crimes that were happening in each of those buildings. God, just from a sample of about 5000 people, he had stopped almost a dozen violent crimes from happening. What would the rest of New York be? What would the high-crime zones be like?

No wonder the Police are overrun with cases. Well, that and bureaucratic nonsense coupled with corruption meant that no matter how high the budget the police might get, getting rid of crime was not a job for their profile.

For that, they needed someone who worked outside the framework. And that someone might just, someday, be him. He had over 5 years to hone his powers in preparation for D-Day. He had taken to calling the CHitauri Invasion as D-Day. It was kinda tacky but he liked it.

He was sure that 5 years would be more than enough time to become able to secure the sceptre once it was just lying down, having fallen from Loki's grasp and then jamming it straight into the cube, after guiding the nuke into the portal, of course. He did not want to turn into ash because of a stupid decision that a handful of people sitting in their bunkers made. He also literally could not get out of Manhattan if he wanted to. The condition was that he would gain his freedom after the INvasion but he did not know exactly when.

Would it be right after the portal opened?

Would it be after the portal was closed and every Chitauri was taken care of? 

He did not know and that scared him a bit. It was not as if he could go to someone for guidance. According to that ROB, he had been accosted by the agents of the Vishanti for some reason and they had dragged him from his destination universe into some other universe for their own purposes. Of course, it was stopped but the ROB had no other way to send him to his destination other than taking the help of the VIshanti who paid some sort of heavy price to open a universal portal to send him here. That increased his paranoia and vigilance towards Kamar-Taj. From all the fanfics he had read in his free and not-so-free time when he should have been working, going to Kamar Taj to gain both power and knowledge was almost surely the best way to gain a foothold in the Marvel world. Thinking about it, it was true. Kamar Taj provided for all of your necessities along with giving a safe learning environment where literal magic was taught. You were also given the option to gain your own relic, a literal magical superweapon of sorts. Then, there was the guidance of the Ancient One who was so old that she had actually forgotten her name. Or maybe, she sacrificed it for power, he didn't exactly know.

So, he had taken the decision to expressly avoid them, at least until he was sufficiently powerful. For the time being, his focus was on finding a job and then becoming self-sustaining. That was going to be a little tough because he had an English degree in this world. He did have the identity part set up though so it won't be hard to find a job that is above board but getting one will be hard….enough.

"Shit," He silently exclaimed to himself mid-bite as he remembered something. He didn't need some cushy job where he would always stay indoors and then make minimum wage. He had the benefits of a thoroughly enhanced body. There were always construction jobs going on in New York. He just had to find some in Manhattan and do the hard labour. With his body, he should have more than enough physical strength to do the job. Of course, he won't do that forever, wouldn't be fair to the people who really need that job but just as a starter job?

Nah, he did not like taking jobs from actual hard-working people. That would not be fair. Then what should he do to sustain himself? 

The rent was paid off for another 6 months. He just had to worry about food and utilities until then. Judging from the stacks of cash he could sense on every drug dealer once they were done dealing, he could easily survive for a month by taking one day's income from a drug dealer. That would be illegal, sure but not unethical. Most of their customers were rich brats and judging by their conditions, they had been doing that for a long time. He was not a medical genius by any sort so depriving them of their drugs could have led them to more dangerous areas.

He did stop the dealing when he could see that the person was new to drugs or was trying drugs for the first time due to peer pressure or something. His powers were incredible in that regard, he could even sense people's heartbeats and then judging from that, he helped them trip up or knock the dealer unconscious or just spill the drugs on the street in front of everyone so that the dealer ran away and then flinging that merchandise straight into the sewers.

Come to think of it, he could become a very great drug dealer if he wanted to. Just deal with everything remotely but then again, what would he even do with all that money?

Maybe he could do some vigilante justice and then distribute the cash he would raid from the dealers and then distribute it dollar by dollar to the poor. Some sort of modern-day Robin Hood?

No, that would not hurt the true rollers of drugs and it would take an incredible amount of time and effort on his side that he could dedicate somewhere else.

"Hmm," He hummed to himself as he crushed the bullet in the muzzle itself of a gunman who was about to shoot some poor shopkeeper just 3 blocks south of his position. He then promptly made the shelf behind the gunman fall on him, HARD. He may or may not have also given the robber a couple of blows using his powers so he would not wake up anytime soon. If the shopkeeper was smart, he would be calling 911 anytime soon. The sound of sirens ringing in the background a couple minutes later confirmed that for him.

"Now, what?" He mumbled to himself as he headed back to his apartment with a generous serving of Mac and Cheese for lunch. He would have to look into cooking for himself because someday, this food might just catch up with him. He then remembered the physical advantages that were granted to him and then chuckled to himself. That made him realise that he was officially off the guilt-ridden binge eating he subjected himself to back in his previous life. He could now safely eat whatever he wanted until he felt full without any worry of calories. Honestly, life was better when he didn't know what calories and what a deficit was and he would like to return to that phase of his life. It was glorious.

He nodded at the doorman and went back to his apartment, passing a couple of policemen who must have come back for evidence of some sort. The couple on the upper floors had both been arrested for running some sort of organised crime racket. He was surprised to find that the woman was not just some innocent lady in danger. In a way, she was the danger as well.

"Now, to work," He said as he sat, cross-legged on a yoga mat he had found in one of the closets. "Time to make this work," He said as he attacked the fog at the end of his awareness range with renewed energy. The extra awareness meant that he would be able to work with longer distances and would not have to linger in places doing nothing. That would be suspicious as hell. His current power levels were more than enough since he had found out this morning where he had lifted the garbage truck that had come to collect the trash, just a couple millimeters off the ground but the ease with which he had done that had cemented it in his mind. He was very powerful, at least in the context of normal people. He just needed the control to harness his powers properly and not end up, you know, tearing people in half instead of just pushing them gently away from a speeding car.