The next morning, I woke up with a blueprint in my head and a problem I hadn't solved yet.
I sat up in bed, rubbing my eyes, and looked at the sketch I'd made last night. Scout Unit. Bird-sized. Flight, cameras, microphones. Simple, right?
Wrong.
I knew how to design it on paper. I knew what components I needed—motors, propellers, a camera module, a microcontroller, batteries, wiring. But knowing what you need and actually getting it are two different things.
I could use Contractual Reclamation to get anything I wanted, as long as I had a receipt. But I didn't have receipts for individual electronic components. I couldn't walk into a store and buy a single brushless motor. That's not how consumer electronics worked.
I needed a different approach.
I grabbed my laptop and started researching. My enhanced cognition meant I could process information faster, but I still had to find the information first. I spent two hours reading forums, watching YouTube videos, and scrolling through electronics supply websites.
The answer was simpler than I expected.
Hobby stores.
There were stores that sold remote-controlled cars, drones, planes—the kind of stuff hobbyists built for fun. They sold individual components. Motors, propellers, speed controllers, receivers, transmitters, everything.
And those stores printed receipts.
I grinned. "Perfect."
---
I grabbed my backpack and headed out. There were three hobby stores in the city, according to Google Maps. I hit them all.
At the first store, I bought a small drone kit—the kind that came with everything you needed to build a basic quadcopter. Motors, propellers, a frame, a flight controller, a battery. I paid cash, walked out with the box and the receipt, and ducked into an alley.
I made a copy of the receipt using the printer I'd left running at home—I'd set up a remote connection through my phone, so I could scan and print from anywhere. The copy appeared in the printer tray, and I used Contractual Reclamation on it.
A second drone kit appeared at my feet.
I repeated the process. Scan, print, create. Scan, print, create.
By the time I was done, I had ten identical drone kits sitting in my apartment. I'd spent $150 on the original kit. Now I had ten of them, plus the original receipt safely hidden away.
The second store was better. They sold individual components, not just kits. I bought a high-end brushless motor, a carbon fiber frame, a 4K camera module, a GPS unit, and a handful of other parts. All of it went through the same process. Scan the receipts, make copies, create duplicates.
By the end of the day, my apartment looked like a robotics lab had exploded in it. Boxes everywhere. Components spread across the floor. Wires, screws, propellers, circuit boards, batteries.
I had everything I needed to build my scout drone. I had ten copies of everything, in case I messed up.
Which I would. A lot.
---
That night, I sat down with a notebook and started planning the build.
The drone kits I'd bought were designed for beginners. Snap-together frames, pre-programmed flight controllers, plug-and-play motors. If I built one of those exactly as instructed, it would work. It would fly. It would be a perfectly functional quadcopter.
But that wasn't what I wanted.
I needed something I could control with Puppet Manipulation. Something that could feed sensory data back to me. Something that was more than just a remote-controlled toy.
The kits didn't have cameras. They didn't have microphones. They didn't have the kind of processing power I needed to run the Cursed Energy connection.
I needed to customize.
I opened my laptop and started watching tutorials. Soldering. Circuit design. Programming microcontrollers. I watched for six hours straight, pausing to take notes, rewatching sections I didn't understand, letting my enhanced cognition soak it all in.
By the time I went to bed, I had a basic understanding of how to modify the drone's flight controller to accept inputs from my Cursed Energy instead of a standard radio receiver. In theory, at least.
In practice, I had no idea if it would work.
---
The next morning, I started building.
I cleared a space on the floor—I had to move boxes out of the way just to have room to sit—and laid out my tools. Soldering iron, wire cutters, screwdrivers, a multimeter I'd created from a receipt I found at an electronics store. A small magnifying lamp I'd grabbed from a hardware store receipt.
I opened one of the drone kits and started assembling the frame.
The instructions were simple. Snap the arms into the center plate, screw them in place, attach the landing gear. I had the frame assembled in ten minutes.
Next, the motors. Four brushless motors, each one mounted to an arm with two screws. I lined them up, tightened them down, made sure they were all oriented correctly. Forward-facing motors spinning clockwise, rear-facing counter-clockwise. Basic physics.
I soldered the motor wires to the electronic speed controllers—the ESCs—that would regulate their power. My soldering was sloppy. I'd never done it before, and my hands weren't steady. The joints were lumpy, the wires were too long, and at one point I accidentally bridged two connections and had to desolder them with the pump.
It took me two hours just to get the motors attached to the ESCs.
But I got it done.
---
Now came the hard part.
The flight controller was the brain of the drone. Normally, it would connect to a radio receiver that picked up signals from a remote control. I didn't want that. I wanted to bypass the receiver entirely and connect the flight controller directly to something my Cursed Energy could interface with.
The problem was, Cursed Energy wasn't electricity. I couldn't just wire it into a circuit board and expect it to work.
I needed a translator.
I'd been thinking about this all night. The cognitive enhancement from Puppet Manipulation meant my brain was faster, sharper, better at making connections. And I'd made a connection.
The doll.
When I used Puppet Manipulation on the plastic doll, I wasn't sending electrical signals to it. I was wrapping it in Cursed Energy, using that energy to move its limbs, to feel what it felt. The doll didn't have motors or sensors. It was just a hunk of plastic. But the technique made it move anyway.
So what if I built a drone that didn't need electronics at all? What if I built a frame, attached motors and propellers, and just... controlled it directly with Cursed Energy?
I thought about it for a moment, then shook my head. No. The doll was simple. Moving plastic limbs was one thing. Coordinating four motors spinning at thousands of RPM, maintaining flight stability, processing wind resistance—that was something else entirely. I wasn't strong enough for that. Not yet, anyway.
So I needed a hybrid. A drone that could fly on its own, using its own electronics, but that I could "override" with Cursed Energy when I needed to. Something that could send sensory data back to me through the Puppet Manipulation connection.
I went back to the tutorials.
---
The next three days were a blur of failures.
I built the drone, wired everything up, programmed the flight controller with the open-source software I'd downloaded. The software was complicated—a thousand lines of code written by people who knew way more about drones than I did. I spent hours reading documentation, trying to understand how it worked, making small changes to see what happened.
Day one: I finished the build, plugged in the battery, and watched the drone do absolutely nothing. The flight controller wouldn't boot. I spent four hours troubleshooting before I realized I'd wired the battery backwards. Fried the entire board.
I threw that drone in the trash and started over with a fresh kit.
Day two: New flight controller, new ESCs, new everything. This time, I triple-checked every connection before plugging in the battery. The drone powered on. The motors beeped. The flight controller connected to my laptop.
I loaded the software, calibrated the sensors, and ran the motor test.
The drone lifted off the ground for exactly one second, then flipped over and crashed into the wall. One of the propellers shattered. The frame cracked.
I sat there for a long moment, staring at the broken pieces, and tried not to scream.
Instead, I took a deep breath, grabbed another kit from the pile, and started over.
---
Day three was worse.
I'd gotten the drone to fly. Not well—it wobbled, it drifted, it had all the aerodynamic grace of a brick—but it flew. I'd programmed the flight controller, tuned the PID settings, balanced the propellers. It was ugly, it was loud, but it stayed in the air.
Then I tried to connect the camera.
The camera module I'd bought was supposed to be compatible with the flight controller. Plug it in, enable the settings, and it would stream video to my phone. Simple.
Nothing is simple.
The camera wouldn't initialize. The flight controller didn't recognize it. I spent hours combing through forums, trying different configurations, updating firmware, downgrading firmware, trying to find someone else who'd had the same problem.
Turns out, the camera module I'd bought required a specific version of the flight controller software that wasn't compatible with my ESCs. If I updated the software, the motors wouldn't work. If I kept the old software, the camera wouldn't work.
I couldn't win.
I sat on my floor, surrounded by drone parts and empty coffee cups, and seriously considered giving up.
Then I remembered what I'd said in the void. Time to get to work.
I wasn't going to quit. I just needed to be smarter.
---
I went back to the hobby store the next day. This time, I didn't buy a kit. I bought a different flight controller—one that was explicitly designed for camera drones. I bought a different camera module, one that came with its own processor, so it wouldn't rely on the flight controller to work. I bought better motors, better propellers, a carbon fiber frame that was supposed to be almost unbreakable.
I spent $400 on components. Then I made copies. Ten of everything.
Back in my apartment, I started building again. This time, I didn't rush. I laid out every component, read every manual, checked every connection twice before soldering. I followed the wiring diagram exactly, color-coding the wires with little stickers so I wouldn't mix them up.
The flight controller went on the center plate. The ESCs went on the arms, close to the motors to minimize interference. The camera module went on a vibration-damping mount I'd 3D printed—I'd found a receipt for a 3D printer at a maker space, and let me tell you, having the ability to create any physical object from a piece of paper is a game-changer for prototyping.
I wired the camera to its own battery. Separate power supply, no interference with the flight controller. The video feed went to a small transmitter that would broadcast to my phone. No software integration, no compatibility issues.
Simple. Elegant. It would work.
---
I finished the build at 3 AM.
The drone sat on my coffee table, looking like something between a military surveillance device and a child's toy. The carbon fiber frame was sleek and black, the four arms extending out like spider legs. The motors were silver, the propellers bright orange. The camera module hung underneath, a black cube with a glass lens that stared at me like an unblinking eye.
I checked every connection one more time. Everything was solid.
I plugged in the battery.
The drone powered on. The flight controller's LED blinked green—ready. The ESCs beeped in sequence, confirming the motors were connected. The camera's transmitter lit up, sending a signal to my phone.
I opened the app on my phone. A live video feed appeared, showing my coffee table from the drone's perspective.
"Okay," I breathed. "Okay. Let's do this."
I picked up my phone and went to the window. It was dark outside—3 AM dark—but the streetlights below cast enough light to see by. I opened the window, feeling the cool night air rush in.
I placed the drone on the windowsill, facing outward.
Now for the real test.
I reached out with my Cursed Energy, feeling that cold ocean inside me stir. I pushed a thread of energy toward the drone, looking for something to connect to, something to grip.
And I found it.
The drone wasn't alive. It didn't have a soul, didn't have Cursed Energy of its own. But Puppet Manipulation didn't care about that. The technique worked on anything that could be controlled, anything that had moving parts and a form to inhabit.
The connection snapped into place. I could feel the drone now, not as a separate object, but as an extension of myself. I could feel its weight, its balance, the tension in its frame. I could feel the motors waiting, the propellers still, the camera's lens focusing on the street below.
Through the Puppet Manipulation connection, I could see what the camera saw. The video feed on my phone was redundant now—I was seeing it directly, through the drone's electronic eyes, transmitted through Cursed Energy instead of radio waves.
It was... blurry. The camera's resolution wasn't great, and the image had a slight lag, like watching a video with a bad internet connection. But it worked. I could see.
I took a breath. "Okay. Up."
I pushed energy into the motors, commanding them to spin. The drone's own flight controller would normally handle the speed adjustments, balancing the propellers to maintain stability. But I was overriding it, using my own will to control the motors directly.
The drone lifted off the windowsill.
It wobbled. Hard. The propellers were spinning at different speeds, fighting each other, and I could feel the drone tilting, trying to flip over. I poured more energy into it, trying to stabilize, but that just made it worse. The drone shot up three feet, spun in a circle, and slammed into the side of the building.
I lost the connection. The drone fell, tumbling end over end, and hit the ground below with a crunch that I heard through the open window.
I leaned out, looking down. The drone was on the sidewalk, one arm snapped off, propellers scattered everywhere.
"Damn it."
---
I went downstairs, picked up the pieces, and brought them back to my apartment.
The carbon fiber frame was supposed to be almost unbreakable. It wasn't. The arm had snapped clean off at the joint, and the center plate was cracked. The camera module had popped out of its mount and was lying on the ground, still blinking its little red light, apparently unharmed.
Small victories.
I sat down at my desk and started thinking about what went wrong.
The problem wasn't the drone. The drone worked fine when it was running on its own software. The problem was me. I was trying to control four motors simultaneously, adjusting their speeds in real-time to maintain stability, and I was failing at it. Badly.
I needed to be smarter about this.
I opened my laptop and started researching drone flight control algorithms. PID controllers, Kalman filters, sensor fusion—the math that made drones stable. I'd skimmed this stuff before, but now I dove deep.
The basic principle was simple. The drone had sensors—accelerometers, gyroscopes, sometimes a barometer or GPS—that measured its orientation and position. The flight controller took those measurements, compared them to the desired orientation, and adjusted the motor speeds to correct any errors. Do that thousands of times per second, and you get stable flight.
But I wasn't a flight controller. I couldn't process sensor data thousands of times per second. I was just a guy with a brain that was slightly faster than average.
Unless I didn't have to process it manually.
The Puppet Manipulation modification I'd made—the sensory input boost, the cognitive enhancement—it wasn't just for seeing through the drone's eyes. It was for processing that information. For making sense of it.
What if I let the drone's own flight controller do its job? What if I didn't try to override it, but instead... worked with it?
I went back to the drawing board.
---
The next version of the drone was different.
I built it the same way—carbon fiber frame, brushless motors, camera module, flight controller. But this time, I didn't bypass the receiver. I left it in place, connected to the flight controller, ready to accept input from a standard radio remote.
Then I added something new.
A small microcontroller—an Arduino Nano—that I wired into the flight controller's input pins. The Arduino would sit between the receiver and the flight controller, intercepting the control signals and optionally replacing them with my own.
I programmed the Arduino to accept commands from my Cursed Energy. When I pushed energy into it, a specific pattern of signals would pass through to the flight controller, telling it what to do. When I didn't push energy, it would just pass through the signals from the receiver.
That way, I could let the flight controller handle the hard part—stabilization, motor balancing, all the math—while I just told it where to go. Up, down, left, right. Simple commands that didn't require me to think about individual motor speeds.
I tested it on the bench. The Arduino accepted the Cursed Energy connection, translated it into signals, and the flight controller responded. The motors spun, the propellers turned, everything worked.
Now came the real test.
---
I took the drone to the bridge.
It was early morning, still dark, nobody around. Perfect.
I set the drone on the ground, stepped back, and reached out with my Cursed Energy. The connection snapped into place, passing through the Arduino, into the flight controller. I could feel the drone now, not as a collection of individual parts, but as a single unit. A body. My body.
Through the camera, I saw the ground beneath me. Through the accelerometers, I felt the weight of my own frame. Through the gyroscopes, I sensed the angle of my tilt.
I sent the command: ARM.
The motors spun up, a high-pitched whine that echoed off the bridge's concrete supports. The drone lifted off the ground, hovering at waist height. It wobbled slightly, the flight controller making tiny adjustments, but it held steady.
I smiled.
UP.
The drone rose, climbing into the air. Ten feet. Twenty. Fifty. I kept going, watching through the camera as the ground fell away, as the bridge shrank beneath me, as the city spread out in all directions.
I stopped at a hundred feet. The view was incredible. Streetlights tracing lines through the darkness, buildings rising up like mountains, the river a black ribbon winding through it all.
I sent LEFT. The drone banked, gliding smoothly across the sky. I could feel the wind pushing against it, the flight controller compensating, keeping it stable. I sent RIGHT. The drone turned, following my command.
I was flying.
I spent an hour at the bridge, just flying. I sent the drone up and down, left and right, in circles and figure-eights. I practiced hovering, practiced landing and taking off, practiced flying through the bridge's supports without crashing.
Every time I made a mistake—every time I sent a command too fast, too sharp—the flight controller caught it. It smoothed out my inputs, kept the drone stable, saved me from my own incompetence.
I wasn't controlling every motor individually. I wasn't doing the hard work. I was just... steering. Pointing where I wanted to go, and letting the drone figure out how to get there.
And it worked.
---
When the sun started to rise, I brought the drone back down. It landed gently on the concrete, its propellers slowing, its motors clicking as they cooled.
I knelt down and picked it up.
It was ugly. The wires were messy, the 3D-printed parts were rough, and I'd used about a pound of hot glue to hold everything in place. But it flew. It worked. It was mine.
I held it in my hands and looked at it for a long moment.
"This is the first one," I said, my voice quiet in the morning air. "The first of many."
I thought about what I'd learned in the last few days. The failures, the frustrations, the moments where I wanted to throw everything out the window. But also the breakthroughs. The moment the drone first hovered. The moment the camera feed came through clear. The moment I realized I didn't have to do everything myself—that I could work with the technology, not against it.
I pulled out my phone and looked at the time. 6:15 AM. School would be starting soon. Mark Grayson would be heading to class, still normal, still human, still a year away from becoming Invincible.
I had time. Not a lot, but enough.
Enough to build more. Enough to get stronger. Enough to be ready.
I tucked the drone under my arm and started walking home. The sun was rising behind me, painting the sky orange and pink, and for the first time since I woke up in this world, I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
---
Back in my apartment, I set the drone on my desk and pulled up my laptop.
I had a list of things to work on. The drone's camera resolution needed improvement—I could barely make out license plates from a hundred feet up. The battery life was terrible—maybe fifteen minutes of flight time, less if I was pushing it hard. The range was limited—I'd lost the connection when I tried to fly it more than half a mile away.
And that was just this drone. I had other ideas too. Ground drones. Larger flying units. Maybe even something that could carry a payload, something that could actually fight.
But that was for later.
For now, I had one functional scout drone. One set of eyes in the sky, one extension of my will, one small step toward the army I was going to build.
I reached out with my Cursed Energy and re-established the connection. The drone's camera feed popped into my mind, showing my desk from an angle I'd never seen before.
I made it do a little spin, just because I could.
"One down," I said, grinning. "A few hundred to go."
I closed my eyes, let the connection hold, and started planning my next build.