The Conceptual Deck

Chapter 66: Security

Tony and I spent the next few days planning and building a massive overhaul to his home. It started with me taking one of my BB's and modifying it, layering on concepts of building improvements rather than just building. It was a struggle to keep from adding the concept of cheapness as the construction industry is riddled with things that are strapped over older buildings to cover up problems, and a lot of them are cheap crap. Eventually though I was able to shift it into a building improvement system, something that could modify and enhance a structure. It was limited to what already existed, I couldn't build an addition at the click of a button, or turn one room into two different rooms, but it still served its purpose.

We set the building improver up to completely revamp the materials the mansion was built from. Concrete was strengthened into a quintuple stacked enhanced concrete, the rebar woven into the concrete was replaced with my ultra metal, the Asgardian alloy and vibranium enhanced version of my super metal. The glass was thickened and replaced by my ultra metal laced diamond glass. While the building improver enhanced the structure itself, Tony and I enhanced the mansion's security.

Every door, window and point of egress was strengthened and enhanced to ridiculous levels. They were tuned to Tony, Pepper and Jarvis, with the system capable of adding new people. Tony whipped up a mounted non lethal air gun that Jarvis could control and deploy, or that Tony and Pepper could use with voice commands. I took that creation, copied it with the UCM's and then enhanced them by stacking them. We installed them all over the house and stuffed them with a payload that simultaneously put the target to sleep and bound them with an ultra metal enhanced cable.

The final touch, which took an entire day by itself and several failed attempts, was an honest to god wardstone. It took a massive amount of materials, including a hundred and twelve magic rods, a safe and low powered energy field projector that Tony made, almost thirty books, all the protection meta materials I could get my hands on and an intent detector I used to make my armor follow mental commands as well as a pile of other things, all worked down into a two foot circle of stone about eight inches thick, mounted on a pillar of stone, all made from granite. The circle of stone itself was carved with symbols and runes, carried over from the various meta materials we had used.

The wardstone projected a field that encompassed Tony's entire property, a bubble about two thousand feet in all directions. On its default low setting it prevented anyone with murderous or violent intent from enterinng the bubble, knocking them out without harming them. If anyone entered who had malicious but non violent intent it would simply notified Tony, Pepper and Jarvis. If activated to its second level it would knock out anyone who wasn't neutral or there to help, and its third would knock out everyone who isn't on its protection list. Its final ability, which took the longest to develop, was attached to a separate creation, but one that was controlled by the wardstone and by Jarvis.

With the samples of energy shields that I had gotten from the Dora Milaje, a couple different movie projectors and the energy field projector that Tony put together, I conceptually crafted a basic shield generator, one that could be tuned to various sizes. I copied it with a UCM and stacked it a dozen times, powering it up with a few energy cells in the process while enhancing it with meta materials that revolved around protection and defense. I then took that creation and increased the size of the project shield to encompass the mansion itself. Tony and I both tested the resulting shield, firing a barrage of weapons at it. When it absorbed both the fully empowered beams of energy that my revolvers produced on their highest setting, as well as a full barrage of blasts from my combo cannon we installed it in Tony's basement, connecting it to Jarvis and the wardstone.

Then, when that was done and Tony decided to tempt fate by commenting that it was basically impenetrable we installed a second ward stone and shield generator that would kick on if the first one failed.

"Not bad for a few days of work." Tony said with a grin, dusting off his hands despite the fact that neither of us had really lifted a finger in the past hour, using a combination of the building improver and the Deck to get most things done easily. "You want a drink? I think it's time for a drink."

"Alright," I said with a chuckle, following the inventor up the workshop stairs into his house proper. "But I can't stay too long. I want to get a set of these shields set up around my warehouse. Plus there's a dozen other applications for them that I want to try. I've been trying to come up with a way to make some sort of projected shield system for months."

"Glad me getting attacked in my own home solved one of your problems."

I rolled my eyes as we made it to the kitchen, Tony pouring himself some whiskey and me some brandy. We both walked back to his living room area and sat down, enjoying our drinks.

"So have you finished your plans to expand your base?" Tony asked, rolling the ice cubes around in his glass.

"The general plans, yeah." I explained. "The warehouse is all of the space I need for my own smaller projects. My first step is to build somewhere I can work on bigger things."

"Like the walkers?" Tony asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No, the walkers are just for fun," I answered with a shrug. "I have plans, but it's too early to really start talking about them."

"And you still want to link up with the tower once it's done?"

"Yeah, as long as you put a wardstone in there too," I answered.

"God do we really have to call it that?" Tony asked with an exaggerated pout. "No one is going to take you seriously if you keep giving things magic names."

"I just called it what fit Tony. Hard to argue when you still have no idea how anything that I make works."

"Stupid reality breaking bullshit," He responded without any heat in his voice. Before he could continue Jarvis walked into the room.

"Sir, Pepper is on her way home, she will be arriving shortly."

"Thanks Jarvis," He responded before looking at me. "Time for you to go."

"What? I mean sure, alright."

"Pepper was very emphatic about rewarding me if I worked hard to make this house safe again," Tony said, standing up and shoo-ing me away.

"Alright alright, I'm going." I said with a laugh. "I'll talk to you later, probably once I'm ready to start building step two."

"Fine, yes, I'll make sure you don't mess everything up. Goodbye!"

With a word I traveled back to my warehouse, chuckling to myself as I started the process of setting up my own wardstone and shield system. It took a while, mostly because I used a building builder to make a secret area under the warehouse itself, and I wanted my shields to be invisible until they were hit. I tuned the intent based field a bit much closer to the warehouse than Tony's was to his house, not wanting it to interfere with anything else I ended up building.

I also set the shield to always on and kept it tight to the warehouse's exterior, almost a second skin. The three other shield generators, two back ups and one as a second always on layer, were programmed to do the same. I sealed the secret space up using the BB again before activating my armor and heading towards the exit to the warehouse.

I stepped out into the cold and turned to look at the building, pushing out my wings to lift off of the rocky ground, barely having to move them to lift off the ground. The wardstone of course let me pass through the shield, allowing me to fly out and look down at the warehouse. The sleek metal design of the warehouse was easily visible, despite the fact that I had tried to keep the roof as close to the gray color scale that the rest of the landscape shared.

I pulled out my revolver and fired at what I knew was an empty corner of the building, nodding as the shield lit up, dissipating the energy before once again fading. I fired again and again, testing to make sure the shield held. When it passed the test of both revolvers on full blast I put my weapons away, satisfied for now.

A shield system to protect my buildings had been the final challenge I needed to solve before I was prepared to start expanding. I turned, eyes following along the rocky gray landscape, trying to visualize what I would be making for the next few days. When I was done I stopped and looked up into the black, star filled sky, unable to stop the massive smile on my face.

There, hanging in the dark sky was Earth, a blue, green and white marble. It was a breathtaking view, one that few people had ever experienced, even fewer from this angle. I was a bit worried when I started planning this move out, worried that I would run into the Inhumans or that this was just a crazy pipe dream. But this view made it all worth it.

The process of getting to the Moon had actually been pretty easy all things considered. I took a droid frame, which would actually go on to become Alfred, and fitted it with an enhanced wing pack. They lifted off on a Monday carrying a landing pad and about four days later I traveled to the Moon with my building builder and a powerful air generator. It took about two days to make the ultra strong and air tight building from the ground up.

The two hardest parts had been the "Gravity" generator and the life support generator. The first of which was just a combination of gyroscopes and a dozen copies of a small sized G-force simulating rig that Tony helped me get my hands on, with a huge amount of magic rods mixed in. It all worked surprisingly well. The resulting device was mixed with an energy cell and buried under the workshop, though it wasn't sealed under it like the shield generators now were.

The life support generator created a sealed environment inside of whatever it considered to be an room or enclosed space, even going as far as to create some sort of non physical barrier at entrances so that airlocks weren't needed. It was a combination of air purifiers, tanks containing normal air, a bucket of magic rods, a few books about building sealed rooms and oddly enough a dozen bubbles and six massive filled balloons. In all it took me just about a week to establish a fully independent and stable Moon base.

Tony bitched at me for three days, until he realized that I could get him up there too.

Now that my warehouse base was complete and fully fleshed out, and I had a shield generator to protect less substantial buildings from things like meteorites and debris I could start branching out. My first step was something I had been wanting to build for a while, a method of making things much bigger than the deck could hold. The first step to that would be building a shipyard of some description, a place that would use enhanced materials to build ships, tanks, and massive trucks like the Behemoth without the use of the Deck. That idea itself came in two parts. The first was a space large enough and with access methods for large construction projects. The second was a piece of equipment, or maybe multiple pieces of equipment that would work together, similar to how the building builders functioned.

For now, I would start with building the structure because I needed a place to work that wasn't practically weightless and where I wouldn't have to worry about my air slowly running out. I floated in the air for a few minutes before picking a space that was mostly flat about eight hundred feet away from the warehouse, flying over to it and landing softly on the ground. I summoned a card to my hand, pushing the building builder out onto the ground and stepping closer. The powerful piece of equipment was CAT yellow and had a dozen pieces of equipment branching out from it. An excavator shovel, a crane boom, forklift lifters and a bulldozer front decorated the odd looking machine. Despite having all of these tools attached, the machine didn't move at all, nor did any of the equipment do anything, they were all vestigial attachments from some of the trucks and equipment I combined to make the device in the first place. What did work was the intake port for materials and the building design interface.

I tapped on the interface screen and spent two hours designing the new Moon base addition. I had to go inside and refresh my suits oxygen about half way through, before returning to the builder. The center of the new addition would be a circular "dry dock" with a seven hundred foot diameter and a depth of a hundred and fifty feet. The bottom of the dry dock would have four tunnels that angled upwards, spinning around like a parking structure entrance as an exit for any land vehicles that I built. The entire dry dock rim would be lined with an observation walkway and railing, with smooth concrete sides to the bottom. An octagonal building would sit around the opervation railing, the dry dock built like a courtyard in the middle. The interior walls facing inside would all be enhanced glass, while the rest of the building would be ultra metal and enhanced concrete with accents of pure vibranium. For now the building would not be connected to the warehouse as I wanted to make a central hub that it would connect to first.

Happy with a general design and resulting estimate of supplies required to build the structure I returned to the warehouse to gather and prepare everything. It took the rest of the day and into the next morning for the UCM's to make the necessary ultra metal, enhanced glass and enhanced concrete. During that time I would spend an hour or so at a time out by the building builder, refining the design and adding details. I added a coat of gray white and black paint for the outside, a combination of hardwood floors and carpet for the interior. I created a lounge and observation areas around the inner glass walls as well as bathrooms and break areas to the first third of the octagonal building, while the back two thirds would house materials and a cadre of UCM's that would supply the building device I had yet to create. Finally I added small hatches that led to spaces under the building where I could put life support systems, wardstones and shield generators.

When my design was done, and the supplies were finished I spent half an hour hauling materials over using the Deck and feeding them to the builder. With one final look around I pressed the start button and flew up into the air. It took a minute for the process to start, but I could see the machine start to further flatten the area, beginning the process of digging the hole for the buildings foundations as well as the dry dock itself.

I watched the process continue for a little while longer, watching the building device carve into the Moon's surface, despite the fact that it hadn't moved in the slightest, before my suit warned me it was running low on air. I gave one last look around before swooping down, stepping into the warehouse.

"Is it going?" Ema asked, sitting on her hovering platform, painting the branches of her second fall tree.

"Yup. It's gonna take a few days to finish because of how much earth Moon? Dirt and stone it needs to move."

"Oh no, a few days to build a massive building on the Moon, how could you possibly wait that long?" She responded blankly, rolling her eyes before laughing at my sheepish expression.

"I know, I'm spoiled," I said with a shrug. "I shouldn't complain, especially not for this. I'm going to need some time to design and work out how this construction system is going to work in the first place."

"Are you going to start working on it now?"

"No, I need a break. I've been building and working non stop since before we crashed T'Challa's party at Tony's house."

Ema snorted and laughed, nodding her head in agreement.

"You have something in mind?" She asked, still facing the wall.

"Yeah. I'm going to give Natasha a call."

Ema turned to look at me, her eyebrow raised.

"Why?"

"Well I want to see how she is doing," I asked. "I feel like just healing her and not checking up on her is negligent."

"Yeah, sure, alright. Well, good luck," Ema said before turning back to her painting. "Say hello for me."

"Alright."

I watched her paint for a minute before pulling out my phone and making my way to my living space. I dropped down to the couch and stared at my phone for a moment before dialing in her name and pressing send. Her name shifted to a number, my bullshit super phone connecting despite the fact that I was at least two hundred thousand miles away.

"Hello? Maker, is that you?" Natashas voice came through as she answered. "How did you get this number, and how did my phone know it was you?"

"My super secure phones are weird," I answered. "Their concept of communication is so strong all I really need is a name and it goes through."

"Oh Well what is it?"

"I wanted to check in on you, see how you were doing." I admitted, beginning to think that this might be a bad idea. "Also, I-

"Who is that?" A distant voice said from somewhere on Natasha's end, sounding vaguely like Clint. "Is that Maker?"

"Hold on Maker," Natasha said with a sigh, clearly covering the phone. Unfortunately for her between my enhanced hearing and the enhanced quality of my phone, I could still hear them pretty clearly.

"Yeah, it's Maker."

"Tell him to come over for dinner. We have plenty of food for one more."

"...are you serious? But what about"

"Nat, after what he did for you, twice now, the least we could do is treat him to a home cooked meal," Another voice said, this time a woman who I didn't recognize. "Unless you don't want to see him or you don't trust him?"

"No, that's not it," Natasha responded. "I would like to see him. If you're okay with him coming here."

"Yeah, just tell him to use the stealth cloaks that Steve said he has," Clint added in.

There was a slight scratching as Natasha pulled her hand off of the phone and continued talking.

"Maker how long would it take you to fly to Iowa?"

Just to make it clear, Inhuman's are not on the moon in this world. It seemed silly to include lore from a show that existed for a single season that nobody really watched.