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The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 48 [August 2010]
Stark Expo
–Axle Riddle–
He was currently in the Stark Expo, or rather a 3D render of the Stark Expo. Of course, by "he", he meant that his awareness was there in the underground base where the product of Randall and Bruce's big brain colliding together was being used to create a rather lifelike rendition of the Stark Expo that was about to happen in September.
So far, he had been monitoring the news, and as hidden as it was, he could see it in Tony's behaviour, both in public and in terms of the moves he was making with his company.
Huge philanthropic donations.
Multiple parties. And more.
It was clear for him to see that Tony thought that he was going to die and was making all these moves. He had also stopped going out as Iron Man. Probably because he knew doing that would only poison him more and kill him from within.
The Grand Prix was scheduled for the last week of August and the Stark Expo was scheduled for the second week of September. The events in the movies moved fast which meant that Stark went from being completely poisoned, almost dying from the Palladium, to creating an entirely new element and then kicking ass with Rhody, all in the span of 15 days.
Damn, the man was good when it came to his field.
Yeah, he had made the executive decision of letting Bruce meet Randall because what's the worst that could happen?
…..
….
He just tempted Murphy, didn't he?
Oh well, moving on, he elected to, after discussion with Betty ofcourse-you don't offend the Missus of the Banner house, introduce Bruce to Randall and co. Betty wanted to come as well, to meet the new generation of Hulks but Bruce was against it so they decided that she would join them once Bruce deemed them trustworthy enough.
It was justifiable, from Bruce's perspective because nothing had ever been able to kill or stop him before, so he was not in any real danger from the Hulks but Betty was still a regular human so risking her life was not justified in any sense of manner.
Once Bruce and Randall were introduced to each other, they quickly bonded with how big their heads were. Seemingly shouting off random things, Bruce just handed a list of items to thin air that he then immediately transferred to the Russian Billionaire, what's his face.
He didn't bother learning about people he could replace as shady Billionaires like him were dime a dozen in Manhattan and were more than willing to use their money if they felt like they could gain the Invisible Man's favour by doing so.
Money was literally the cheapest thing for them. They could burn a bag of it every day and still not care or have to worry about where the money would be coming from, at all.
The Billionaire probably realised the weirdness and how wide ranged the list was but didn't complain as he organised the drop off in the river as fast as he could. The method for delivery was something else as well. First off, he took the delivered machines and then had them placed in a sewer, where they were checked by Randall with a device that could detect bugs of all kinds.
Thankfully, the Russian what's his face had more intellect than he gave him credit for because there was no sign of any breaches on the equipment.
So, the Billionaire gets one more chance to be of help to the Invisible Man. Good for him.
Then that equipment was transported down to the subterranean base and kept there until Bruce and Randall were ready to work on it. Apparently, they didn't need that exact same machine, they just needed the parts of it to create something new.
He looked at the scrapped remains of the machine and had the urge to tell them that he could have just ordered that specific part instead of them having to gut what was presumably quite an expensive piece of equipment.
They ordered a couple more of these machines from which they took specific parts and left the rest as storage, finally creating their magnum opus, as Rnadll liked to call it.
He was pretty sure that this was just another month for Bruce Banner whose head ran at speeds competing with geniuses like Shuri and Tony Stark.
The holographic system.
Now, they had a 3D rendering of the Stark Expo and all its routes projected in front of them, at 1/20th of the scale, which was still pretty big. Damn, the Stark Expo really was a very big deal if the size of it is any indication.
And all of it was house full as well. All the companies worth a damn in the modern world had purchased a spot in the Expo, to showcase their products or to attract investors or just for brand recognition, it mattered not.
The Stark Expo was the place to be if you want your company, especially Tech Company, to be considered as part of the ones that had the potential to change the world.
Not in a good way, mind you. But change the world, nonetheless.
"Now, I am all for innovation but can someone please tell me why we had to waste over 10 days on this holographic system when a normal monitor or at most, a projector screen would have worked?" His voice rumbled in the underground cavern they were standing in.
Bruce and Randall both looked at each other and then replied in unison, "It was cool?"
He almost facepalmed in frustration back in his office. Here he was, hoping for it to be something cool like a device that would track down every single Hammer Bot and destroy it but it turned out to be a Holographic projector, something that Stark had in his basement already.
He created a sighing sound to let them know he was disappointed in them. 'Come on, guys. You are better than this. The expo is just a month away now. Where are we on the Arc Reactor for energy? Speaking of which, I had to go through so many hoops to procure that power load, just for this demonstration?"
The twin winces he got from Bruce and Randall were telling already.
It was not as if he didn't see them make the machine. He just didn't know what they were doing, not being scientifically inclined and all. He did see them dismantle a couple of Stark Tech as well but the end result of that seemed to be a small ring which was once again, installed in the projector as well.
So, his hopes of that being the Arc Reactor were once again dashed.
"Told you we could fool him…" All of a sudden Randall turned to Bruce.
What?
"Hey! Invisible Man? Take a look around and see where the wires to the projector are going and track them down." Randall shouted in the air as he gleefully rubbed his hands and advanced towards the projector installed in the middle.
Apparently, the projector needed to be in the center of the image being rendered.
He followed the trail of electricity and found it to be exactly as planned. It was split into multiple connections which were then burrowed underground to reach multiple properties owned by Whats-his-face, all of them commercial electricity lines.
So what was the catch here? Even the switches were turned on so he was not getting what the joke was.
In the meantime, he watched as they began dismantling the projector as well for some reason.
Just as he was about to explode in frustration, Randall reached into the core of the projector and removed the same ring that they made from Stark Tech.
Hope bloomed in his mind as he watched Randall carefully put it on top of a table and then remove the cover, revealing what was underneath.
"Tada!" Randall declared as he pointed at the Arc Reactor on the table.
How could he have not sensed that?
"When we first made it, we realised that you could not sense it, at all. All you could see was probably a ring so that got us thinking.
You, Invisible Man, cannot see energy, can you? Pure energy is invisible to you. It is visible to you now because we made adjustments to the energy frequencies, allowing some of the heat to be turned into visible light,"
Bruce went into a long winded explanation but he was not listening to any of that.
"So, does this mean that?"
"Yes, the base will soon be on uninterrupted off-the-grid clean power so we can begin some of our more energy intensive experiments soon," Bruce continued as they put the ring on top of the Reactor and placed it into a small container.
Well, Damn.
It was good that they figured out how to create the damned Arc Reactor but it was even better that they managed to figure out an apparent weakness to his power.
He could sense power but not pure energy for some reason. So, the Infinity Stones' energies and attacks would mostly be invisible to him.
Good to know.
"What are we waiting for then? Let's get this show on the road…" He gave the orders for them to go ahead and forward him the list of materials they might need and went on with his day, starting with a long meeting with Sarah.
He was just about to get to the good part when Tony freaking Stark entered his range, clad in his black Armani suit as his jet just landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Damn.
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