The Conceptual Deck

The Conceptual Deck is, at its start middle and end, an examination of a power-set, and as a result, is firmly a crafting story. That said, it was always the plan to transition to less in depth descriptions of said crafting, focusing more on character interactions and the story beats. The good news is that I wasn't far off in my judgment of when that needed to happen. The bad news is that since I write relatively far ahead, course correcting on a dime is impossible. For those who have felt the weight of to much crafting, you don't have much longer to wait for a break, and for those who are here primarily because this is a crafting story, rest assured that crafting is a fundamental part of the story and is not going anywhere, even if it becomes much more streamlined. I hope you continue to enjoy the story!

It took a few minutes or so of planning, mostly because I was nervous about wasting diamonds, but I ended up making see-through magic super metal by adding two diamonds to each plate, then combining that with the window. When I was done reinforcing the windows, Ema and I spent fifteen minutes unloading all of the green crates from the shed, before she started to put the truck back together and I cracked each crate open, going through everything. There was a lot of firepower in these boxes, not to mention ammo, attachments and aftermarket parts. We cataloged everything and I spent another thirty minutes going through the concepts of each type of gun, making note of any outliers.

"So revolvers, especially the beefier ones all have a few extra concepts related to power and lethality, probably because of how people view revolvers in general." I explained. "Same with the lever actions, though it's weaker."

When I was done going through everything I went over the outlier pile again. I put aside four Beretta 1301 shotguns, four out of five Colt Pythons I had, two out of three Chiappa Rhinos, four out of six Taurus 608s and four FN SCAR's.

"... I think we might have gone overboard with our list of guns." Ema said, still putting the truck back together just outside the tent.

"No, I had no way of knowing what would work and what wouldn't." I said with a shrug. "Besides, I hadn't made my marksman ring yet, we were going off of top ten lists online, remember?"

I grabbed two extra revolvers from one of the crates, deliberately picking two models I didn't like the concepts of. They were both the same caliber but different guns, and after loading them quickly I combined them together, I made my way over to the pit. I fired into the water below, emptying the gun as fast as I could, firing twelve rounds before walking back. I slid out the cylinder and tapped the empty brass out, shaking my head as twelve empty shells came out of six holes.

"God that is bizarre.'' I said, still shaking my head before focusing. "But I'm glad it works."

I tested to make sure the cylinder still fit normal ammo before putting the pistol down and sitting in a chair, thinking to myself. I had a vision in my head about what I wanted to create, especially now that I knew as long as the pistols were generally close and fired the same caliber then I could combine them without worrying. The problem was there was a lot of blank space between my final vision and the guns I had around me.

I took my experimental revolver and started disassembling it, using one of the tool kits that Shield was nice enough to include. I separated everything into piles, picking up the cylinder when I was done. I rolled it around in my hand before carding it, getting a feel for its concepts.

"I have a feeling if I combine one of the magic rods with this it will deform it somehow." I mumbled, before standing from my chair to head to my metal stock area.

I work together a simple sheet of super metal before adding two magic rods, heading back to the table and combining it with the revolver frame. The frame was now a slight copper tint, but only just enough to barely notice. I repeated this with the cylinder as well.

"Why isn't it changing now then?" Ema asked as I walked by from the metal pile back to the tent.

"The sheets of metal aren't finished products, they are materials. Meaning you make things with them. Combining them with things just doesn't shift the original very much." I explained with a shrug. "We have been taking advantage of that for a while and I hadn't even realized it until I was upgrading stuff earlier."

I examined the cylinder again, pushing it out of its card and loading it with all twelve rounds. I carded it again and…

"Huh…"

"What?" Ema asked as she laid the windshield back into place.

"It has the concept of being full, but it feels different than the magazine full." I tried to explain.

"Why is it different?"

"I don't know…" I said, thinking for a moment. "Maybe because it's a part, meant to hold the bullets, but it's not a magazine, but an actual part of the gun. And it's outside of the gun so the part concept is even stronger… The magic is interacting with it as well…"

Absentmindedly I walked over to the sheets of titanium, carded one and combined it with a magic rod before adding it to the already magically augmented part.

"I think this is exactly what I was looking for." I said to Ema excitedly. "I need another concept, some sort of regeneration."

"Rechargeable batteries?" Ema suggested. "We have some left over I think."

I nodded and went hunting in the storage shed, coming back with a half empty box of AA rechargeable batteries. I carded one and was about to add it to the cylinder when I stopped. Instead I pushed the cylinder out of the card and tipped it over, emptying it completely. I picked up one of the bullets and combined it with a battery. The result was a deformed bullet that was too big for the cylinder. I quickly combined it with two normal bullets, from a different box than the ones that had been inside the cylinder. The new bullet fit in the cylinder easily.

Quickly I did the same process for the eleven other bullets, loading them in and carding the result. I shouted in happiness and quickly put the entire revolver back together as quickly as I could, finishing it after a few minutes. I walked back over to the edge of the pit and aimed down into the water.

"Deploy your helmet at least!" Ema shouted at me, watching from the truck, catching me off guard.

"Fine, yeah alright." I said, deploying all of my armor, even my boots before aiming back down into the water.

After a pause I pulled the trigger once, the gun kicking, though I easily controlled it with my strength. There was a streak of light that fired out from the barrel of the pistol, only visible from the after image. It hit the water and splashed, quickly joined by eleven other bullets, all fired as fast as possible. Then I pulled the trigger again and another bullet joined the now agitated water. I pulled the trigger of the revolver as fast as possible, firing three more bullets before the revolver clicked. With a frown I carded the pistol, smiling again before pushing it back out into my hand. I waited a few seconds before firing it again, getting four shots off before the pistol clicked.

"And just like that, regenerating ammo!"

"That's impressive." Ema said, having walked over to watch. "But it seemed kind of… limited?"

"For now. But that was just a single battery per bullet, and we will be combining all the revolvers together…"

"That… Alright, that might be impressive."

"Yeah, it just might." I said with an eye roll, returning to the working area under the party tent. "Okay, I need more rechargeable batteries before I can start."

I quickly traveled back to New York and did a short shopping run, picking up a few bags of rechargeable batteries before traveling back to the quarry. I got back to work, starting with taking apart the first revolver I had set aside, augmenting the frame and cylinder with magic super metal, augmenting the rest with normal super metal. I repeated this over the next hour with every single revolver we had set aside. Before I put them back together I went through the process of adding a second sheet of magical super metal to the cylinder while it was loaded, emptying the cylinder, augmenting the bullets and putting them back. Thankfully Ema had finished putting the truck and could help with taking everything apart and putting it back together when we were done. Turns out being able to shift your body into any tool you want has some advantages.

When all of the revolvers were reinforced, loaded and reassembled I began combining them together. Two Pythons were combined with two Taurus' and added to a single Rhino, resulting in two beefy, slightly futuristic looking revolvers. I carried them both to the edge of the pit and opened fire on the other side. Just as before, streaks of light launched across the gap, this time slamming into the stone face. The rock wall shattered and splintered, sending rock shards flying as I fired what was essentially two quintuple stacked revolvers at full power. By the time that I confirmed I had functionally infinite ammo I had drilled a deep hole into the rock wall.

I returned to the workbench area and added a scroll wheel selector switch to each of the revolvers, which added a nonsensical scroll wheel right above where my thumb naturally rested. It adjusted the power smoothly, letting me scale down to around normal revolvers chambered in .357 magnum.

"These… are mostly done." I said after a few moments of examining them. I carded them before looking back at the rest of the guns. "Just everything else left."

Ema and I quickly got into a rhythm after that, disassembling, carding, combining, augmenting and reassembling. We worked our way through all of the remaining guns, using a huge amount of metal and magic rods. Enough that about half way through we took a break for me to go out and buy three more bags of copper grounding rods from all round Austin.

When we were finally done the sky was going dark, enough that I had needed to use the super truck's flood lights. The final result was two more guns, each of them the result of multiple guns stacked together. One of them, the SCAR, had expanded magazines since the regeneration trick I had found wouldn't work one something without a built-in magazine. Even so, I wasn't particularly worried since it came with six fifty round drum mags and eight thirty normal mags. I combined them all down to a single drum mag with two hundred and seventy nine rounds and another normal looking magazine with a hundred and eighty seven rounds. The smaller spare mag fit perfectly in one of the pouches around my waist.

The Beretta 1301 on the other hand did have a built in magazine, and took to the regenerating ammo easily. It wasn't quite fast enough for me to pull the trigger as fast as I could, but it was close enough not to matter.

The final additions to the guns were a set of simple scopes, red dot sights and flashlights. Instead of just having them always attached however, I mixed up a bunch of transformation cards and made them deployable so that I could switch from scoped to red dot easily. The chances that I would use a scope on the shotgun was small, but because of my ring I knew that the video game logic that said shotguns were only effective short range was bullshit, especially when loaded with a slug. The last thing I did was combine in a selector wheel for both of the firearms.

"Are you done?" Ema asked as I laid out all of the guns on the table. "That seems like more firepower than you could ever need."

"Just one more step for today." I assured her, doing my best not to think of all the fucked up things these guns wouldn't even scratch in the normal Marvel reality. "Well maybe two."

"What else could you possibly be doing to these guns?" She asked skeptically. "The revolvers hit like a fifty cal and I'm pretty sure the shotgun hits like a tank shell."

I chuckle but said nothing as I flick up a card, a transformation card and attach it to my revolver before combining it with the shotgun. After a moment's inspection I found the activation button on the butt of the revolver. I pressed it and in a matter of seconds I was holding my newly made shotgun, only to press a button on the side of the stock and have it retract back down to my revolver.

"That is what else I could do with these guns." I explained cheekily, before making my way through and combining the second revolver with the SCAR. "What do you think?"

"Those… Carson, that's a lot of fire power." Ema said.

"They still aren't done to be honest." I said. "Well the SCAR is done, I'm going to leave that one like it is."

I pulled one of the cards I had been carrying with me for a few days now, one of the Destroyer blasts. I deployed the shotgun and carded it, pausing for a moment before combining them. I pushed the card back out and into my hands. The gun, which had just previously looked like a normal Beretta 1301 with a slight copper tone, now looked slightly different. The gun seemed to glow with an internal fire, the light seeping through every gap. Every bit of polymer was gone, replaced with burnished dark metal and inlaid with copper highlights. The forward grip, which normally contoured around the magazine tube and tapered down, now continued all the way to the front, giving the shotgun a beefier look. The red dot and scope both still deployed, though they were completely unchanged. It weighed the same but was warm to the touch, almost hot even.

I made my way to the edge of the pit and looked down at the water before pulling the shotgun up and firing it once. On the lowest setting the streak of glowing energy was not too dissimilar from what it had been before, if a bit brighter. Slowly cranking it up the energy got more and more substantial until I was launching coconut sized blasts of energy into the water, shooting steam and water up into the air. The final setting was very different. Instead of a streaking single blast it was a continuous beam of energy. Nothing approaching what the destroyer armor had been capable of, but still a devastating barrage. It fired for a full four seconds, plowing into the water and rock cliff as I struggled for a moment to compensate for the recoil. When it was done the gun was empty and I had to wait for it to recharge.

"Holy fucking shit that was AWESOME!" I shouted, pumping my fist. "Talk about a plan coming together!"

I quickly retracted the shotgun back to the revolver form while all but running back to the workbench. I carded the second revolver and combined the remaining two destroyer blasts, one for each. I pushed them back into my hands. Both of the revolvers had already looked unique since they were an amalgamation of multiple different types of revolvers. They were transformed even more now, though in a similar style as the shotgun had been. The grip was bent a bit farther back, but only by a few degrees, while the color was now much darker with the same orange glow leaking through the gun's gaps. All three of the weapons looked like the perfect combination of Sci-Fi weapons and an artificer's dream.

A quick test showed the same increase in power all through the settings, culminating in another long blast of destructive energy. Smoke rose from the barrels as I looked down at the opposite cliff face. I had chiseled massive amounts of stone from it over the last few test fires.

"Well… now you know why I was done with the bow." I said to Ema with a smirk. "C'mon, let's bind these and then get back to the apartment."

I quickly bound both of the revolvers to myself before changing them to their alternate forms and binding those as well. After making sure the binding didn't mess anything up we spent another half hour cleaning up, putting everything away into the shed. We double checked the truck was done repairing before carding it and the shed and traveling home.