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The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 94 [December 2011]
Research Warehouse 1, Manhattan
–Axle Riddle–
"Alright, ladies, let's get in line," Tony hollered at the seven brothers who had all gathered around curiously a table that now held the still form of the alien he had captured. It would be wrong to call them aliens though because they were coming from underneath and their numbers suggested some sort of expanded population living below the Earth.
"Alright, Bruce, would you do the honors," Tony asked Bruce dramatically who rolled his eyes at Tony's actions but still complied since they were SCIENCE! Bros, after all.
Bruce tapped a switch on his holo display and a forcefield appeared all around the table which held the very heavy, multi ton body of the digger, a tentative name that had been decided for the ones who were leading the digging charge, with heavier, denser claws and extremely large musculature around the arms and legs for better digging and jumping.
The forcefield flickered a bit as a small repulsor blast from an immobile drone from within the forcefield struck it with a small repulsor blast.
"Just testing. Now, let me show you all something interesting," Tony muttered as he controlled a joystick on his holo display and aimed the repulsors at the body below. As far as he knew, the digger was still awake and completely conscious, with no human drugs working on sedating it, but with its spines, and tendons severed and re-severed because they were starting to heal rapidly, the only way to keep it sedated was to forcefully reduce the flow of blood or whatever equivalent they had in their body.
That was the only reason they were able to conduct such painful tests. Well, painful in the sense….
BOOM!
Yup, just like that.
The small arm drone had smoke coming out of its repulsor output because irt was probably not built to the same standard as the Iron Man suit ones but it still outputted a decent amount of energy and despite that, there was nothing. No mark whatsoever on the skin of the alien.
"There you have it, folks. A biological skin equivalency to Vibranium," His gaze turned serious at Tony's words. If it was true, that could change things.
"You know that is not true, Tony. It is just something that we think might be the answer. Its biology is so tough that anything short of an energised alloy scalpel will not get through. We had to rely on IM's powers just so we could get the acidic sample," Bruce interjected as he continued to log in the creature's powers.
"Yeah yeah, I know but look into the possibilities Bruce. The skin can absorb blunt force, direct kinetic damage, repulsor output, plain old heat, Gamma Energy, and more. Why shouldn't I call it the Vibranium of biology," Tony said as he slung his arm around Bruce's shoulder who deadpanned at Tony.
"Because for one, it is not unbreakable. Because, it would be unethical to label its skin something even close to Vibranium because that would mean that the entire species would soon be hunted to extinction and despite their, less than savoury, actions, they don't deserve genocide," Bruce, ever the forward thinker explained to Tony who gained a thoughtful look at that.
Well, would you look at that, already Bruce was reigning in some of Tony's expressly reckless ways of doing SCIENCE!
"Dr.Banner is right. Plus, we still have a ton of testing to do. Please, Invisible Man, can you get us some more of these?" Randall asked him and that gave him a pause.
Huh, should he really get more of these? So far, the Invasion, if it could even be called that, was laughably small, so much so that he could stop it in his sleep, without even breaking concentration on the city around him.
But what if the next one turned out to be much bigger than the previous one?
"Well, Randall, I can't reach their current location. We can only wait for the next wave to emerge so that I can snag another one. Until then, where does SHIELD stand on this?" He asked Tony who had already informed Fury about this and he was not happy about it, well, no one would be, to see Fury's face first thing in the morning and then inform Fury that they had an alien living body that they were experimenting on, without the express consent of the government.
Ah, trolling Fury, once again, quite fun.
"What more can you tell me about it, aside from what I already gleaned from my scans," He asked Tony and the SCIENCE! Bros but aside from their DNA being carbon based and very close to Sea Horses for some reason, there was not much additional info there.
"I see. Okay, please keep working on this. Tony, I am sure the Hangover has receded by now. Bruce and Randall don't suffer from that issue so they are fine. In the meantime, I want you to figure out something that can exterminate them en masse,"
Bruce whirled around on the paper avatar, no doubt to admonish him about talking of extermination but it was just for precaution.
"Bruce, they were in the thousands and they were crushing each other to get to the top, even when I created the forcefield in their way. It is quite possible that it is an HIVE mind connected to everyone and please, make sure that this specimen can't hear what we are talking about." He informed them and dispelled his paper avatar.
The structure of the body, its purpose, and its origin pointed him to one thing: Moloids.
A species originally created by the Deviants to be a slave class or a working without pay class, but were later regressed into unthinking brutes because of massive inbreeding, allowing someone like the Mole Man to usurp command of the entire race, allowing him to become a very powerful person since the Moloids, while not smart, were overwhelmingly powerful, capable of overwhelming even the likes of Luke Cage and Spider Man with their sheer numbers.
They mostly lived in the subterranean levels though so the only reason they could be so organised and rushing for the surface would be, if someone was controlling them.
Good Lord, he had a supervillain on his hands.
Well, let him come then. There was nothing he could do at the moment, aside from letting Tony and Bruce come up with ways of creating something to counter a species that had acidic blood, an HIVE mind, and high physical characteristics who did not flinch from pain.
Sound familiar?
Oh yeah, the Chitauri were not going to realise what hit them, when Tony and Bruce whip out their countermeasures, designed for the Moloids in mind, but worked just fine for the Chitaur as well.
Dance, little puppets, Dance!
MUAHAHAHA!
Meanwhile, he would sit back and relax, and fly little Bellina around as she giggled in happiness.
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