The Conceptual Deck

Chapter 49: Leaving the ground

Ema and I poured over the repair list for the arm, settling on a final list of what we were going to leave out once we were ready. When we were done the list was eight parts long, having to do with its connection to the Odin Force, the ability to control it remotely and several other parts of what drove it. It also apparently had its own repair function that could fix minor issues, which we regretfully added to the list. Having armor that could slowly repair itself over time was nice, even if it was minor things, but the chance that one of the things we didn't want would be re-created was too high.

When we were satisfied with the list I disconnected the repair tablet and got it working on my undersuit, before lugging the arm outside and setting it on a nearby rock.

"What are you doing?" Ema asked as I adjusted the position of the arm, pushing it around until a small portion of the broken end was hanging off the edge.

"A few of the thing's we don't want to repair are still partially intact." I said, getting a slight bobble in agreement. She had after all seen the same list I had. "But if we repair it from an even smaller chunk?"

"Then those things might be fully offline." Ema finished. "That's a solid idea but how are you going to get that chunk?"

I pushed out my sword from its card, flourishing a bit before checking the blade.

"I stacked twenty different swords and a dozen plates of magic super metal into this one sword." I explained. "The cutting concept blows past anything I have ever made before."

I touched my marksman's ring, turning it into my melee ring before cranking the blade's power all the way to its maximum. I lowered myself into a falsely familiar stance, held the sword at ready and swung it downwards. The blade impacted exactly where I wanted, letting out a reverberating thunk as it lost a significant amount of its momentum. It still carved into the metal, cutting off a few twisted ends of the arm, scattering four pieces of metal onto the ground.

I reached out and carded the arm before picking up the chunks of Asgardian mystery metal. I was headed back to the tent when I carded my sword and froze. It now had a noticeable damaged concept to it. With a flick I pushed it back out and examined the normally sharp blade, noting a serious chip and noticeable hairline crack.

"What the hell?" I said. "Look at this!"

Ema scanned the blade and let out a humming noise as she focused on the damage.

"You really messed that up." She said, floating away, backwards. "What did you do?"

"I I don't know." I admitted. "I mean if there was anything that could damage it I'm not surprised it's the destroyer armor but still."

I carded it, examining the concepts in detail. When I had put the sword together it was a bit of a rush job. I had attempted to make it stronger by adding in sheets of super metal, but I had a sneaking suspicion it hadn't been enough.

"Its cutting concept is extremely high, way higher than its strength concept, even with its super metal aspects layered in." I eventually said, shaking my head as I realized the problem. "It has an edge that can cut through almost anything, but it isn't strong enough to do it without damaging itself."

I quickly headed back into the tent and hooked up the universal repair tablet to the blade, setting it to repair everything when I read it would only take fifteen minutes. With the tablet occupied with my sword I took three of the four armor shards and put them into a small bag from the shed before carding the bag.

With nothing to do for the next fourteen minutes Ema and I made a final brainstorming list about how we would achieve flight. In some ways we were spoiled for choice in how to get the concept of flight, but in practice I was worried whatever we made wouldn't be realistic. Drones, paper airplanes, helium balloons, model rocket engines, RC planes and helicopters. Hell you can buy miniature jet engines at the right hobby shop!

To help narrow it down, Ema and I broke up what we needed to four points. It needed to be fast, it needed to be safe, and it needed to be precise. I couldn't just strap rockets to my back and blast off, I needed a way to control myself, the more precise the better. However, if it wasn't safe and fast then being pinpoint accurate meant nothing. The final point, and probably the most important is that it needed to be practical. I couldn't fly around the city with spinning propellers strapped to myself, or risk starting fires every time I took off or landed because I had rockets strapped to my feet.

After a bit more planning I decided it was time to head home for dinner and sleep. I disconnected my sword from the repair tablet and plugged in the fourth chunk of destroyer armor. My theory had been correct, starting with a much smaller piece meant that almost everything was at zero percent. This meant that while the total repair time was now eight days, anything we didn't want repaired wouldn't exist when we were done. Ema and I carefully went over the list of things we wanted to fix again, double and triple checking before clicking the repair button and resting it on a table. After a pause I pulled it off the table, carded it and reinforced the work surface with a few sheets of titanium and tungsten before setting everything back up.

When that was all set Ema and I spent a half hour cleaning up, though I left the storage shed in place.

"Alright, I'll be back around noon tomorrow, maybe a little later." I said when we were done. "I want to have bought everything to try my first and second ideas."

Ema nodded and with a wave I traveled home, leaving her to keep watch over the quarry and more importantly the repair tablet and shard of Destroyer armor.

- The Next Morning -

I woke up the next morning and quickly went through my routine. It was a shopping day, which meant a lot of traveling and spending money. This particular shopping day was going to be a bit different though. I was going to do some of it as Maker.

I wasn't going to show up anywhere in full armor, because that would be a good way to get in some stupid trouble. But I would be openly driving around the super truck and carding what I bought. While I wasn't ecstatic about it, some of the things I wanted to buy would be too big and difficult to transport without the Deck. Instead of wasting days and coming up with whatever crazy bullshit that would get things delivered to empty parking lots or to fake addresses, I would just card them. It was a bit of a big step, but Ema and I felt like we were ready for it.

I changed my face with my mask and traveled out to my upstate New York landing pad, pushing out the super truck and driving an hour to a smallish runway. The runway wasn't why I was there however. The owner had a warehouse full of old airplane parts, including a few spare wings from a basic Cessna propeller plane. He also had a mostly functional set of hang gliding equipment. I bought it all, and managed to keep the owner from freaking out when I carded them.

When I was done I traveled back to the city and switched to my civilian truck before driving to an apartment building to buy two wingsuits from a man whose wife just found out she was pregnant. I threw those in the back of the truck, carding them before traveling to Texas to buy another fully working hang glider as well as two more wingsuits, all from separate people. All of it was in decent shape, but I dropped them off at the quarry so that Ema could fix up any glaring issues, putting the armor on hold.

After dropping off the larger stuff I went out and searched for everything having to do with flight I could get my hands on. The list was long, but I honestly didn't know what would actually be useful. I was trolling hobby shops for everything I could find, including parts for RC planes and helicopters. By the time I was done I was down ten grand, just in flying stuff. I also bought a few skateboards and snowboards.

I was about to go home when Ema sent me a location, a shop in Chicago that claimed to be a costume, cosplay, theater shop. The pictures looked like the description wasn't far off, but I wasn't sure why she thought I needed to go there. I sent her a message as I was eating lunch and all she would say was to trust her.

When I entered the shop I immediately knew why she had sent me. Standing on display, strapped to a mannequin was an incredibly intricate set of costume wings. They were obviously mechanical in nature, and a plaque described them as cosplay wings. Despite the fact that there wasn't a price tag on them I offered the store owner three thousand dollars for them. When she got over her shock she said these had a special place in her shop as they were the first pair she made, but she had another she could sell me. So I offered her four grand for each of them.

When she had confirmed my purchase had gone through I put a down payment on another set, and as many as she could make past that, with the added guideline of making them as robustly as possible. When she agreed I gave her the number for my secure line, before carding them right in front of her, leaving with a smile. I immediately headed back to the quarry, eager to finally take a solid crack at personal flight. I pushed the mechanical wings out onto a table to the side, before checking out the armor. So far only the shoulder and some of the arm had been reformed, but it was noticeable progress.

Happy with the progress of my future projects I focused on my current one, gathering and examining everything I had bought. I grabbed a few examples of rc planes, spare model jet engines, and rocket engines and mixed them together, blending the concepts until it basically just directional thrust. I took one of the snowboards and added a few of my blended thrusters, adding in a Cessna wing as well as plenty of magic rods, which I had restocked the materials for while I was shopping.

When I was done with my first experiment I examined the card. It was B rank, which did not fill me with the most confidence. I flicked the card a few feet away, the new creation popping out on the ground, only to fall over on its side.. The result reminded me a lot of the surfboard looking thing from Treasure Planet, minus the solar wind sail. It had a couple of thrusters at the back, a sort of rudder that ran along under it. I frowned and carded it again, examining the concepts as I headed back into the shop. I quickly combined a half dozen gyroscope sensors and stabilizing fins, before finishing it off with a plate of super metal, though I left out the tungsten and added in extra aluminum.

This time when I pushed the flying board out it stood straight up and down all by itself, the rubber like formation on the bottom the only thing touching the ground. I was about to step into the foot straps when Ema caught me, coming back from a patrol I assumed.

"Please tell me you weren't about to try that out without activating your armor?" She said, sounding defeated and frustrated.

"Ummm no?" I responded sheepishly before activating my armor.

I put my boots into the straps, locking them in tight. I envisioned setting this up as a transformation of some sort, probably worked into my boots, because strapping in like this each time I wanted to fly would be ridiculous. Once I was strapped in I could feel the connection to board the. I pushed down with my front foot and the thrusters spun up in response, pushing me forward. Once I was going I lifted my front foot up, the board pulling up into the air.

Soon I was riding around the quarry, making slow loops and turns. It was a little nerve racking flying around like this, and I soon found a rather large problem. While the board was intuitive to use, its turning speed was way too slow. It wasn't a problem when I was doing lazy turns to get used to it, but I could feel myself losing even more maneuverability as I sped up. Thirty miles an hour I was struggling to turn around inside the quarry clearing. I landed, which was an interesting experience in and of itself, and tinkered around with it some more. I was able to work in a little more maneuverability with some additional parts from the RC planes but the drop off was still too high when I reached any reasonable speed.

With my first experiment technical success but a practical failure, I passed the board to Ema to experiment with while I returned to the tent, eager to start on my second attempt.

It started with combining a wing suit with a pair of Cessna wings, then another wingsuit with one of the now fully repaired hang gliders. I took both of those and combined them with a few sheets of extra light magic super metal and a half dozen gyroscopes. When I was done with that I grabbed one of the most important parts of this attempt, an unreasonable amount of real wing feathers from various hawks and owls.

The feathers were surprisingly expensive, but I still emptied almost a dozen stores of their entire stock. I took the feathers and combined them together in groups, combining two sheets of the extra light magic super metal so that they belonged in a group together. The result was twenty eight feather groups, each of them filled with two dozen enhanced, metallic feathers. I set aside half of the groups to potentially make a second version since I was now out of usable feathers.

I broke down two of the feather groups and added them individually to the wingsuit combos I made earlier, before combining them both together. I quickly put together six thrust packages, then blended them with magic and another two groups of feathers, combining them until they were just feathers with the concepts of thrust.

I added three of the thrust feathers to the wingsuit conglomerate, before carding one of the fake wings. I studied the concepts, realizing that the biggest hurdle here would be minimizing the concepts of fake that it held. Before I could talk myself out of it I combined it with a few sheets of my new flight metal combination, before mixing in five whole stacks of my enhanced feathers, followed by my remaining thrust feathers.

"God I hope this works." I mumbled to myself as I combined the new enhanced wings with the wingsuit combination, finishing it off with a single spark from Thor, one of three remaining.

The final result was an A ranked card that was a complicated mess of flying, magic and other enhancements. I had no idea if they would work. I pushed my newest creation out into my hands, and was surprised to catch a back pack of sorts. It was metal, a complicated harness system that probably came from the original cosplay wings. The metal pack itself was a foot and a half long and a foot wide, a streamlined shape that looked like an upside down teardrop, the thinner end pointed down.

After a minute or so of trying to figure out how to slide into the harness I gave up and carded my deployed chest armor off of myself, recarded the back pack and combined them together. I was already working on better armor, so I wasn't too concerned about what would happen to this set. The wings on the other hand had to work.

Silently praying that I didn't just royally screw it up I quickly put my armor back on, shrank it then redeployed it. Both forms had the same long teardrop shaped pack, the extra mass barely even noticeable. Anxious and eager I stepped out of the tent and closed my eyes, focusing on my desire to fly.

Slowly I could feel something shift behind me, almost as if an extension of myself was emerging. I opened my eyes and flexed, and sure enough, wide metallic wings pushed into view. I reached out and touched one, running my fingers through the feathers. They were cold, but still soft to the touch, but tough enough that I couldn't break or damage any of them by hand. I focused on stretching them, feeling them move and how doing so changed my center of balance. I had a wingspan of twelve, maybe fourteen feet.

Now for the important part.

I took a slow breath, releasing it out after a moment, before flapping my wings experimentally. It was bizarre that I could feel them, and yet I knew they were a separate part of me. I beat and flapped, feeling how the different movements worked. After a few minutes of experimentation I pushed off with my feet and flew into the air.

Working the metal wings was intuitive and easy, almost like second nature. For a moment I wondered if it was a side effect of the magic, of Thor's spark or a combination of the two. I didn't dwell on it long however, as I quickly realized that my feet hadn't touched the ground yet!

I looked down and saw the ground becoming farther and farther away. I couldn't help but laugh as I pushed harder, my wings whipping in the wind as I darted forward. In the distance I saw Ema, pushing the limits of the hover board. With a grin I darted forward, the land whooshing by underneath me as I flew towards her. As I moved I rolled back and forth, feeling the air pushing against my metal feathers, tugging at my wing tips.

She noticed me before long, slowing and turning, lowering to the ground. I followed her in, flaring my wings out to slow myself down, landing in a half stumble before catching myself. Her pure emerald eyes trailed back and forth over my wings before focusing on me.

"So Are you making mine next?"

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