The Conceptual Deck

Chapter 58: Gaining momentum

The next week went by in a blur.

By the end of the first day, after returning home with a shaving from Steve's shield I had four more UCM's slowly being repaired into existence, scheduled to be done the next afternoon. My own vibranium shield was set to be done in the middle of the night and the first set of Destroyer armor was already sitting in the Deck, with another three on the way.

The completed UCM was set to print out a dozen sets of full armor, the ones I had made that were comparable to my own, minus the wings of course. When they were done Caps shield would be finished, and Ema stayed behind to set the UCM to print a few extras when the previous print was finished. By the time I returned the next morning I had two new vibranium shields. I didn't spend long at the quarry that morning though, because a source of vibranium was only partially useful if it was stuck with full of the dozen strong concepts that the copies held. The protection and shield concepts would be useful for making armor, and my own shield, but not for making much else.

I spent the morning gathering materials to make a metal manipulator, mixing a few dozen different pieces specifically made to work with metal, including things like furnaces and metal presses, ingot molds and metal rollers. I kept away from equipment that cut or removed material, mostly to keep the building/crafting concepts out of the machine. The end result was as big as an oven and had an in port on top big enough to take one of the vibranium shields. I dropped one of the shields into it, and ten minutes later it spit out three vibranium ingots. I immediately removed a piece of the machine, and set a second one to be repaired into existence.

By the time I was done with that another shield was done from the UCM. I set one of them aside in the storage shed, before removing the paint of the other two and combining them to my own deployable shield. The result was a shield as close to indestructible as I think I could get, with rounded edges that gave it an ovoid look instead of just a rectangle. Satisfied with the result I set two of the now finished UCM's to print out a dozen more shields, set another one to print out more energy cells and then the last and original UCM to print out magic rods before leaving.

The next day, with everything being produced and repaired in the background, Ema and I sat down to apply my next tattoo. It took a while to plan but eventually we settled on improving my toughness, before creating a few colored inks to improve the quality of the tattoo itself. Ema took her time to create the illusion that my skin had been torn away to reveal armor plating underneath. It started where the Hydra had managed to impale me on my own arrow, tearing back around my side and ending where the arrow had come out the other side. It looked amazing when it was done and more than doubled my overall toughness. My skin was now completely stab proof, at least to normal knives. I was making plans for an improved formula before Ema even finished the tattoo.

After that it was basically a waiting game. Days were spent getting and printing everything I needed to make my penultimate armor. A dozen full sets of normal armor, four suits of Destroyer armor, a huge stack of Vibranium sheets and ingots, a dozen Vibranium shields, twelve sets of my chest armor/flight pack, a box of magic rods and a large stack of magic super metal and normal super metal, both of which now included two sheets of vibranium in the mix. At the end of the fourth day I had everything I needed.

I got to work with very little ceremony, too eager to start to really care. I started by enhancing my undersuit with vibranium super metal and vibranium shields with the paint removed. At this point I was pretty sure that the only thing holding it back from being an S tiered card was the fact that it had no magic in it. Regardless, the vibranium and shield mix was incredibly potent.

Satisfied I began working everything else together, combining the four destroyer copies with a dozen suits of armor, extra vibranium shields, super metal, magic and everything else. The final addition was four triple stacked sets of my flying armor. The result was my second S tier card. A single suit of armor that when undeployed started out as basic chest armor, not much more than my original undeployed armor was, including the flight pack of sorts. With a press of a button it unfolded and turned into a full coverage suit of armor, similar to how my old armor shifted when I deployed it, except now it had no gaps.

The full armor was a light burnished metallic color, made of mostly banded metal, very similar to how the original Destroyer armor looked, though thankfully without the spikes. On top of that banding was extra armored plating, covering the most important areas, shaped vaguely like my original armor. It was clearly a combination between my original deployable armor and the Destroyer armor, and it looked and felt phenomenal.

"This This is incredible," I said, looking down at my arms and chest. "I feel"

At a loss for words I looked around before walking to the nearest boulder, a chunk of rock the size of a large van. I lifted it up, shards of stone falling free as I lifted it over my head with only a bit of strain, with what little there was due to the awkward heft of the massive stone. With a grunt I hurled it into the air, the boulder clearing the water pit and smashing into the ground, the entire area shaking from the impact.

"Holy fuck!" I said, before running and leaping over the same gap, landing with a thud on the other side.

I walked to the same boulder, slamming my fist into it, the entire rock splitting in half. The amount of strength this new suit had was incredible, and I could feel it with every move I made. I jumped back across the quarry with a whoop of excitement to find Ema waiting for me, already in her exosuit. I walked under the tent, noticing that the top of the entrance brushed my helmet as I did. I made my way to the mirror and examined myself a bit closer.

"Holy hell Ema This is fantastic."

I made my way back out of the tent and extended my wings, taking to the air. It felt easier than ever, despite being enveloped in armor that was certainly heavier than the previous version, by a significant degree. I flapped and pushed, streaking across the sky as I pushed the limits of the armor's speed. I immediately stopped after the air cracked around me.

I had broken the sound barrier without even really trying.

I turned and flew back, finding that I had left Ema in my dust.

"You are upgrading my wings." She stated when we were close enough, leaving no room for an alternative

"Of course. I need to update your exosuit as well," I added, slowly landing back at the quarry. "It at least needs some vibranium mixed into it. Just let me bind this and we will get to work."

I ended up half repairing a chunk of Destroyer armor before running it through one of the metal manipulators, leaving me with two ingots and three sheets of enchanted Asgardian alloy, according to the universal scanner. Apparently the metal was specifically created from nothing by Odin for the armor, and as such lacked a true name, but was steeped in enchantment and power. I combined all of that with several transformation cards, mixed in equal parts of vibranium and a few controllers before adding it into the exosuit. I also quad stacked her wings, leaving a fifth basic version in my cabinet. This process took another day days, but was well worth the results.

"How does it feel?" I asked as the suit formed around Ema.

"It feels incredibly dense and powerful," She said as she shifted through a few dozen shapes. "I think I have even better control over it now."

We spent the rest of that day sparring, exercising and getting a better feel for our new and improved suits. Ema's seemed to have gained the ability to partially compress her suit down, allowing her to appear as a normal sized person while having much more actual material to use. She was also much stronger and could absorb a pretty decent amount of impact due to the vibranium.

My new armor could only be described as a monstrous improvement. It absorbed Ema's hardest blunt hits with relative ease, and was only scratched by her trying to pierce it. I could lift an ungodly amount of weight and my stamina was clearly being enhanced as well. We both spent a few hours running around the quarry and the surrounding areas without pausing, though with my enhanced strength I settled into a sort of modified lope that let me run a hundred and twenty miles per hour in a straight line.

With my improved armor done, and my production level well and truly cracked wide open, Ema and I spent another two days copying and repairing into existence a variety of things we wanted to have on hand. Two dozen healing flashlights, five healing amulets like mine, eight wings copied from Ema's spare, a dozen suits of the basic version of deployable armor, under armor as well as healing amulets, a few spare medical scanners and universal scanners, strength and stamina cuffs, a compact tattoo gun that I whipped up as well as a place for any enhancing inks I made or will make.

In the end I had so much extra stuff I ended up having to enhance my storage cabinet, turning it into a vibranium and Asgardian alloy reinforced behemoth with deeply enhanced storage capacity from a few dozen storage cabinets combined, using my own created objects to fill them out. Now when I placed something in it, the first of an item was put on display but every copy I put in after it was stored in some sort of expanded space. I was making plans to miniaturize a UCM to fit inside it when I got a surprising call from Tony.

"Maker, how the hell do you have a five digit phone number?" He asked the second I picked up. "And how is it completely untraceable?"

"I'll give you one guess Tony." I said with a smirk.

"Right, reality breaking bullshit. I want one," He said, sounding annoyed that he didn't already own one. "Listen, I finished modifying the suit to hold its own arc reactor."

"And you want the shrapnel out?"

"Yeah. Knowing that there was a risk free way the idea has been growing on me,"

"Alright. Let me run some tests, work on some stuff and see if I can't come up with something. If my amulet works, I'll probably be ready in an hour or so."

"Right well I'll be here all day, not like my time is valuable or anything," He said, before hanging up.

Shaking my head I pulled out a medical scanner from my cabinet of tricks and closed it up, carding it before heading back to the tent. Ema landed behind me and followed me inside, her wings folding into her pack.

"Was that Tony?" She asked as I sat down, carding off my armor and healing amulet.

"Yeah, apparently the idea of a risk free option for fixing up his chest has been growing on him."

"I'm sure Pepper pestering the crap out of him has nothing to do with it."

"Of course not," I said with a chuckle. "This was all his idea, remember?"

"You're awfully eager to help considering you didn't want to get involved with him originally." She pointed out.

I stopped what I was doing and considered what she had said, eventually shrugging and continuing.

"He isn't at all what I expected," I explained. "He seems to genuinely want to do good, even if he hides behind his sarcasm. If that starts to change well I'll have to come up with something to stop him. I was worried when I first got here that I would get wrapped up in something I couldn't escape from, but I'm slowly starting to realize that the Deck is too powerful. If something happens like Tony going crazy or Shield putting me on a wanted list, I can handle it, especially now that I have my new armor."

It took an hour of experimentation, quite a bit of it bloody, to figure out that the amulet fully dissolved metal that was completely stuck inside a person, but would push out anything that was still breaking through the skin. When I was done I packed everything up, washed up any blood, thanked Ema for the idea of a painkiller ring, and messaged Tony. It took a few minutes for him to respond but he confirmed he was free, and that I could fly to his house.

Ten minutes later Ema and I were landing on the front lawn of Tony's mansion, a nervous looking Pepper waiting by the door.

"Hello, thank you for coming," She said, giving us a smile as we walked closer. "Tony didn't tell me you were coming until a few minutes ago. I've been trying to convince him to do this at a hospital or something but"

"That isn't really necessary," I assured her. "He will be perfectly safe and won't feel any pain."

"But wouldn't it be better to do it in like some sort of sterile environment or something?" She asked as she led us into the house, heading straight for the workshop downstairs.

"Pepper, I promise that my healing amulet can handle anything you could throw at it. You could do open heart surgery in a New York dumpster and come out healthier than when you went in wearing it. I'm not sure it's actually possible to die with it on. Not that I plan on testing that."

The strawberry blonde woman still looked nervous, but nodded in understanding as she unlocked the workshop door for us, leading us inside. There was Tony, laying back on a makeshift operating chair, some space having been cleared. He had his shirt off and was fiddling with his arc reactor, the main fully out of his chest. Pepper gasped when she saw this, rushing closer in her heels. It took a few minutes for Tony to calm her down, during which I scanned him with my medical scanner.

"It's funny, a few weeks ago I was scrambling to make this before the old one killed me," He said when Pepper finally took a step back. "Couldn't have stopped by a few weeks earlier?"

"I wasn't exactly in the neighborhood," I said vaguely. "But I'm here now. I've got two things for you to put on."

It took a minute to explain everything, but soon Tony was laying down on the table, wearing the painkiller ring and a double stacked healing amulet. Pepper was standing close by with a medical scanner of her own, constantly watching Tony's vitals as the amulet did its job.

I watched on my scanner as the metal shrapnel inside Tony's chest got smaller and smaller before fading into nothing. When they had fully disappeared the healing amulet seemed to switch gears, slowly pushing the implanted retaining metal cylinder out of his chest. Ignoring how gruesome having an almost four inch wide hole in his chest was, the process went smoothly, his body healing at a steady rate.

"This is the strangest thing I have ever felt in my entire life," Tony said as he watched the metal cylinder slowly slide out of his chest, at this point almost an inch out. "It doesn't hurt but damn that feels weird."

"Can't be worse than regrowing an arm or a hole in your stomach all the way through," I said, shrugging when both Pepper and Tony looked at me. "There was a reason I was sure this would work."

"You lost an arm?" Tony asked skeptically.

"No, that was someone else," I answered, before tapping my chin.

"So you got impaled through your stomach?"

"Yeah," I said, shivering slightly. "It sucked, I wouldn't recommend it."

It took another fifteen minutes for the hole to fully heal and close up, leaving Tony's chest completely unmarked. We let him sit for another ten minutes to heal the general damage the palladium poisoning had done to his body before he took off the amulet and handed it to me, followed by the painkiller ring. I put everything back into my cabinet while Pepper rushed her partner and held him tight before running her hand over his chest.

"I'll be honest I didn't think I would ever get that removed," Tony admitted, touching the spot where his implant had been. "I owe you one Maker."

"I'm sure we will break even eventually," I said with a shrug. "Now why don't we get you bonded to a lesser healing item to keep your health up?"

We hung around for a bit longer, answering a few questions before Pepper invited us to stay over for dinner, which she sheepishly admitted was going to be takeout from somewhere. I accepted the offer, mostly because I knew Ema wanted to spend more time talking to Jarvis, which she immediatly flew off and did.

"I noticed your armor is different," Tony pointed out as Pepper went upstairs to order dinner. "Finished your upgrade?"

"I did. Turned out even better than I had been hoping," I said with a smile. "I recently made a couple of big strides forward. It made getting everything together a lot easier."

"Oh yeah? Like what?" He asked, leaning back against a workbench.

I looked at him for a few seconds, considering how much I wanted to reveal at this point and how much I wanted to offer him. I flicked out a card to him, which he managed to catch before it shifted into an ingot of metal.

"What is this?" He asked, turning it over in his hand. "I don't recognize it."

"It's vibranium."

Tony Stark fumbled with the eight pound metal ingot, just managing to catch it before it hit the ground.

Not that it would have been damaged if he hadn't.