Grrl Power #670 – Orbital bombardment obstacle course
Sydney’s speed upgrade was significant. She didn’t go from mach 4 to 5. I’ll leave the actual number for a fun reveal later when she challenges Maxima to a race or something.
Okay, it’s mach 16. I didn’t want to wait to tell you. She went from 4 to 16. It’s really fucking fast. Honestly it’s too fast for Sydney, because she may not have the reflexes she would need to avoid things like planes, buildings, other supers. Not an issue on this world so much, but still, it means she can circumnavigate the Earth (let’s assume this planet is within 10% of the same size) in about 12 minutes… assuming I did the math right. Historically I haven’t been great with that. But you can see how it might be a problem for her resolving something on the horizon and reacting to it before she’s on top of it, (or blowing through it) and near misses don’t count when you have the sort of wake she would generate.
Edit: NOPE! I screwed up the math as per usual. It would take her roughly 2 hours to circumnavigate the globe, not 12 minutes. Gah.
Honestly, come to think of it, mach 4 is a lot faster than she should be traveling, even with her map of air traffic.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Looking at the light trail, the only comment that occurs to me is “Taste the Rainbow, B!tche$!”
That’s… what they are trying to do, butt she won’t slow down!!
I thought, “And so, the day was saved, thanks to the Powerpuff Girl.”
+1
“And once again, the day is saved! Thanks to Mojo Jojo, Fuzzy Lumpkins, and HIM?”
Yessss yessssssss ohhh you cute little girls are soooo going to *gravelly full throat shout! DIE HORRIBLY IN AN EXPLOSION! *Back to creepy voice!* yesssss oh yessss……
HIM disturbed me on many many levels. I loved…well…it? HIM? What DO you call the persona of all that is evil and horrible in the PPG universe? Other then HIM?
Here’s a present: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOIt_nof89Y
I looked at it Sydney’s new speed upgrade, and I couldn’t help but think that it’s 20% cooler.
The video was deleted. What was it?
it’s working for me right now and is 14 minutes of HIM.
A thought occurred to me as our heroine weaved through the blasts. A useful bit of gear would be a glove that fit over both her hand and an orb, with maybe a strap at the wrist, so that she could hold onto an orb without risk of letting it go. It’d be useful for taking naps while enshielded.
For the shield. ..maybe.
But for an emergency, not being able to change orbs instantly may be fatal.
Yes…once Sydney is somewhere safe her left hand will be cramped like a SOB.
It’s the shield I’m thinking about, for things like that long deep space flight we were debating a few episodes back. You want freedom to make choices in battle, certainly, but there are those occasional points where exhaustion is going to kill you if you don’t have something to help. Without such help, she’s limited to about a half-day to a day before fatigue makes an error inevitable. With it, she could spend several days or weeks in space if she carried proper supplies along.
Her utility belt includes ductape for this contingency.
What is in that utility belt? We know:
– Duct tape
– Stick-on googly eyes
– Extra meds
apparently ,
Looks like some stickers, googly eyes, markers, scissors, and glue stick. I guess the duct tape is in a different pouch.
And i’m not sure what all else.
Ok, so yeah that was my first attempt at a link. Been a long time since i messed with html.
Was supposed to be
a first aid kit,
ONE pouch for arts and crafts.
Maybe I shouldn’t be trying something i haven’t done in well over a decade at 4am.
Good thing she has them
*later.* “finally we got the portal..”
*maxima stares through at several giant aliens. appearing to be crying in tight large balls of quivering masses. And one laughing hysterically at the stars*
*sitting on a rock, contentedly whapping an alien in the eye with her energy whip and calling it “Bad Puppy” is Sydney*
“She forgot her meds didn’t she” Maxima sighs then presses a button “Syd alert. code hyper. get some meds here stat”
I wonder if that alerts as bad as the alert that happens when heat wave eats Sydney’s lunch again
It’s not that she forgot her meds but ran out
Not shooting your idea down, just a reminder – she really should cover both hands for sleeping in spaceflight. One on the shield, the other on the air orb. Depending on how big she makes her shield and the atmosphere in the bubble before she naps, a nap could well kill her. https://www.medicaldaily.com/buried-alive-man-gets-sealed-casket-see-how-long-he-can-survive-breathing-377107
I actually suggested something like that a few pages back, but Dave just went back to the duct tape. Ah well.
Remember that the orbs go dark and fall when she falls asleep…
Wonder how the others are going to react once it dawns on them how potenitally powerful Sydney really is? So far, they all seem to like her, but realistically, you’ld expect some jealousy to occur. Not that that would be bad; a team that never has internal conflicts is boring and frankly unrealistic. Who would be the most likely candidate to start experiencing ‘power envy’ towards Sydney? My money’s on Max actually. She’s been used to being the strongest super for so long, it seems only human for her to get a little jealous once Sydney begins to realize her true potential, though I think she’s mature enough to get over it fairly quickly. Still, it might sting her a little, and it would be interesting to see how she reacts to that situation.
Apples and Oranges.
Each is better at something than the others.
Maxima is really good at several things admittedly.
I don’t see it being an issue except TMH may have to be reminded
to ‘dial it back’ depending on the situation.
Well, as far as powers go, Sydney seems to have almost everything Maxima does, and she’s got a lot of upgrades to go in every orb, which gives the implication that yeah, she’s going to get a hell of a lot more powerful than Maxima if she ever gets enough upgrades in everything.
About the only thing Max has that Sydney doesn’t seem to have access to is super speed in the sense of reaction/combat speed, but who knows if that’s going to be a possible upgrade on the fly orb? But even assuming it’s not…Max’s strength will probably be exceeded by the lighthook, with enough upgrades. Her blasting capability will probably be exceeded by the PPO. Her toughness already seems to be exceeded by the shield. And Sydney already seems to be better at superhero-fight combat tactics, or at least, equivalent in different areas.
Maxima has access to all her powers at once, and can switch way faster than Sydney.
And Maxima can keep up her shield (she is her own shield) while flying and shooting at the same time. Sydney is limited to 2 powers, and in a fight, limited to 1 power and her shield.
All true, but it would still be only human for Max to have to adjust to the idea of no longer being much more powerful than anynone else. Remember, even Dabbler couldn’t defeat her, and if Sydney could acivet the whole skilltree of her orbs, she’ll probably be stronger, faster and tougher than Max. Though as you say, Halo has innate limitations becasue she can use only two powers at the same time. She has proven very creative in how she uses them though, which to me seems to be her greatest asset. But like I said already, Max is a professional soldier and too much of a team-player not to apreciate having another heavy-hitter on the team.
Max isn’t the only one on the team though. I wonder if none of the others will have a problem with a raw recruit upstaging them like this? Or what about the other recruits? Sydney (being the main protagonist) gets to do things and go to places none of the other recruits do. In the real world, that would be cause for SOME resentment, human nature being what it is – even if they actually like her.
my vote is for Harem being the one to first show it openly towards Sydney, either that or Sydney is the first one to suspect that Harem is a Traitor…
for example: Daphne seems to be a spoiled brat silver-spoon kid that’s never had to really “work” for anything and doesn’t really take anything too seriously about life and the consequences thereof because she’s never had to worry about them before. but now that she’s NOT the only Teleporter, now shes got some competition, and since we’ve already seen that she can’t stand Dabbler, and she’s already turned traitor against Maxima, etc, for informing Deus about stuff. (and does anyone “seriously” believe that all those times she “accidentally” TP’s into closed-door meetings is NOT intentional?)
i agree that Max is too much of a team player / military mentality personality for her to be jealous for long, but that yes, initially it will be there…
Daphne’s ability may not be the best combat-wise but it is massively overpowered for mundane situations, and has much better speed and range than Sydney’s teleport. She might be a little jealous about the high-speed flying under your own power bit especially if there’s interstellar flight, but not much else.
She will probabably get upset if she gets left out of the adventures for whatever reason, since the experience is basically what she lives for. However she would blame Maxima, not Sydney.
Besides, Daphne would probably love to see Maxima’s ego taken down a peg by some competition.
But now I’m wondering… could Daphne teleport the lightbee? That would be super useful. :)
Wars are won by the best supplied, that’s why lines of supply are typically priority targets: cut the enemy off from their supplies and they will lose, a well protected line is the sign of a winner
Um Harem is not a traitor. She’s a triple agent. Max knows about it.
Problem is: on whose side is Daphne first?
Maybe she is working for Frank Quigley, who has her working for Archon and SmugD, who both know about each other butt not Frank
She’s working for me.
“Once upon a time there were 5 girls (who were all the same girl) who went to the ARC-Swat Academy,
They were all assigned hazardous duties,
But I took them away from all that,
And now they work for me.
My name is Charlie.”
My thought is that by the time the team rescues her, there won’t be an alien ship in orbit and the remains of any Calamarians on the planet will be mixed with and indistinguishable from the ashes of their conquest. When they ask The Mightay Halo for a report, she’ll realize how unbelievable it will be, and she’ll be uncharacteristically modest. “I guess they were finished with the Alari. They’re gone, now.”
The way you say it Sydney is more less a upgraded version of ultra boy from Legion of Superheroes.
It occurs to me that i the other orbs follow the initial step-up in power between lvl 1 and lvl2 on the light orb, it’s possible that lvl1 is nothing more than ‘tutorial’ level; just enough power to give the user a chance to train with it before replacing the parade blanks with actual bullets… level 2 on the PPO could potentially be nuclear-plus. Lvl2 on the shield orb might be intended for transiting the photospheres of blue giant stars. The life-support orb might scale up to a full-on terraforming machine. Lvl 3 on the comm-ball could make her a Plainswalker…
the fact that she’s dodging the nuke blasts, I think her reaction speed has increased already.
I actually expect fear.
The supers will feel in Sydney’s presence the same way that a normal feels when near a superfight.
Those darn alien Rednecks, fishing with nukes again. That’s a lot more expensive than Dynamite. On the plus side, it cooks the fish so all you have to do is scoop them right onto the plate.
Also you can get revenge on things that eat your fellow giant tentacled creatures.
I have a super hero cha in Champions that can run at Mach 46.
The Flash, can run at Superlumunal speeds, as his speed comes from a different universe, it was explained as a Speed Dimension. Though dimension, is the wrong word to use.
Yes, Barry Allen can run faster than light, but it’s not from another dimension. It comes from his connection to the speed force, the manifestation of kinetic energy. It’s not a place you can go to, though you see speedster “go” there, it’s more of a state that a person can achieve.
Actually it’s a lot more complicated than that. Barry Allen the prime Barry Allen is supposed to be the source of the speed force even though Wally West underwent the exact same accident that Barry did to gain his powers. On top of that when speedsters essentially run themselves to death they enter the speed force. As it took three or four speed to push Superboy Prime the three speedsters that started the push Wally West Bart Allen and Jay Garrett the three speedsters that ended the push Bart Allen Barry Allen and Johnny quick
Piker. ;)
In one of my HERO games, I made a baseline game rule of ‘non-superheroic side effects’ — meaning that if you had high-end STR, you couldn’t necessarily lift an air craft carrier, and running hypersonic caused damaging sonic booms behind you. With 5 points in the Power skill, you could learn how to use your powers ‘safely’, though … not to mention being able to use the skill to execute the low-end ‘power tricks’. ;)
We had that too. So I had the skill.
Welp they can’t hit THAT small a target moving at THAT speed, it would be very difficult for em. But at some point she is just going to wind up back at the beginning, going from one side of the world only to get back to it from the opposite direction.
Making random turns might result in the loss of situational awareness.
(IE going the wrong direction)
If only she could steer towards the sunrise.
Based on panel 5, the Calamarians are making lots of fake sunrises. She’s steering away from those.
She’s still wearing her arm band thingy – it has GPS. I wonder if it would give her directions home? :D
Currently, Sydney is about 700 light years out of range for the nearest GPS tracking satellite
as has been said elsewhere, it’s a useless hunk of technology here, there are no GPS Satellites with which it receives the timed radio signals from and therefore cannot tell where it is IN RELATION TO THEM anymore (those are in orbit around the planet Earth)… that being said, if it has an inertial guidance system, kinda like how some laptop PC can tell if the device is in free-fall, and in micro seconds it tells the HDD to go to a “park mode” so that when the impact of hitting the ground happens, it does not damaged the HDD because it’s now in a “safe” place for the sensitive internal moving portions. well, that’s totally useless as well, because her Fly orb cancels out inertia too… therefore the wrist gizmo thinks that it is stationary with respect to the outside world, and even though she’s flying at Mach 16, the wrist unit thinks she’s maybe just waving her hands around while otherwise just standing still on a non-moving floor/ground. so it has no way of even falsely saying things like , “Hey! be careful! you’re going to fly smack dab into the Rocky Mountains at this altitude and direction…” Heck, she can’t even put a waypoint in and expect to find her way back to it, for those same reasons
To all personnel, the reward offered for termination of the unknown hostile has been extended to any department’s staff who achieves this goal. Use of unnecessary violence in the terminatio of the unknown hostile… has been approved. Have a nice day and remember, try not to die.
so sound like the speed is more something when she need to travel somewhere really fast more likely space travel. tho the orp could still add to reflexes like it does with whiplash and vertigo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7bxgqASreE
Classic Serpentine Maneuver!!!!
i think you linked to the wrong video.
when i saw it it showed nothing but a Tron-styled object in space / VR that never moved or morphed or anything for the entire length of the 2.39 video of an instrumental/techno song
Well, you’re clearly not a Sark fan.
That’s about a 60 point upgrade if you were stating her out in GURPS. Not bad for one pip on her upgrade wheel.
As for traveling on Earth using that Mach 16 speed, her best bet for long distances would be to simply go straight up till she’s above commercial flight lanes… or even all the way out of the atmosphere, then go up and over.
As has been pointed out earlier, without the friction of an atmosphere, top speed isn’t an issue, only acceleration. Sidney could probably go around the planet in a lot less than 2 hours if she went into orbit first.
I mean, she COULD have some sort of ‘speed limit’ on her orb that keeps her top speed at Mach 16 relative to the nearest celestial body… but that’s something you’d find in a game, it’s not based on any kind of real physics. Top speed in an atmosphere is simply the speed where your acceleration is canceled by the friction of the medium you’re passing through. Having a “universal” speed regardless of friction isn’t realistic. Because if that was the case, than Sidney could fly Mach 16 through water as well as air. (Which would be a good way to destroy a major city if she happened to be near a coastline…) And since her shield isn’t frictionless (if it was, then even those big alien blasts wouldn’t touch her), she pretty much has to follow physical laws at least a little, right?
Also, a fourfold increase in acceleration from what she already has actually does make space travel for her (at least interplanetary distances) a LOT more feasible. She could CERTAINLY fly to the moon and back without, say, passing out halfway there. Although bringing a bunch of water and some snacks would still be a great idea.
Interstellar travel is still pretty much out of the question, of course.
In the motion picture ‘Mouse on the Moon’ (1963) the Grand Fenwick rocket
had virtually unlimited fuel so it flew at a leisurely 447 meters / second,
well under escape velocity.
Watching Mouse on the Moon was a bit strange because I just couldn’t get over seeing Bernard Cribbins as a young man. He will always be Wilfred Mott to me.
From the top of my head, you need Mach 33 to escape from Earth. Since we’ve not had any mention of different gravity im assuming the same here. So she’d at least 1 more upgrade, probably 2, to get off the planet. (one upgrade to Mach 32, one more to go beyond that). If she can find a way to get an extra “Mach” worth of speed without an additional upgrade, or perhaps teleport higher up with her lightbee (to a point where you only need mach 32 to get away, which will be very high in the upper atmosphere), she might get off.
of course, that ignores the possibility that she’s in a parallel universe.
Again, that’s only if you are going straight up
Ordinary planes can reach the edge of space without going near that speed, nor the amount of fuel needed, wouldn’t take much for them to simply go that little extra and slip the bonds
Also, since her shield isn’t frictionless, and her flight orb obviously has a SERIOUSLY powerful inertial dampener (or the equivalent), using her shield and flight orb to simply ram enemies seems like a very viable option for combat. Why bother taking her hand off her flight orb to fire her energy beam if she can simply fly straight into them at Mach 16?
I mean… obviously her energy beam is better for swatting multiple targets, and the auto-fire is good for hitting targets that are good at dodging, but if she doesn’t want to stop moving to fire, she could just play bumper cars at Mach 16 and rack up some damage that way while continuing to keep moving.
Leaving quickly at this point does seem warranted, however. She’s only one super, and she’s facing an alien armada plus who knows how many Kaiju. Maybe she could win given time, but just as likely they’ll catch her off guard, or she’ll get tired and make a mistake. And one mistake could easily be it for her. Although it does seem that her “grinding for xp” idea really does work.
Now the question is, can she get far enough away to get a nap? And how long can she keep this up before she’ll need food and water? Sidney is doing great so far, but she’s on an alien planet with no support or supplies. Things are going to get grim before long unless she gets lucky.
Since it’s gravity (or at least pseudo-gravity) based, no inertial dampening is required. gravitic acceleration can’t be felt within the gravity field. The only time inertia is an issue for passengers is if she runs into something, slamming passengers against the inside of the shield.
Damn it woman! Fly the hell away from the surface before the splash damage gets you!
If she builds up enough heat, she would glow higher frequencies, above ultraviolet.
This reminds me of space ship tactics in a Star Trek fanfiction, and why their battles were at close range most of the time (within a light-second or two). As well as why there were mostly small battle-groups and ‘lines of battle’ were rarely seen. Basically, their long-range offense was so great that ships had to get in close to to nullify the powerful AoEs of Star Trek ships, anti-matter, mass phasic torpedoes, etc.
Of course, the other reason for this is that Star Trek ships always magically meet nose to nose (the alternative is pretty funny). Plus, anything over a light minute away over your left shoulder isn’t a really a threat when you can jump away before incoming fire arrives.
MATH TIME
if her speed was mach 4 before (1372 m/s) and mach 16 now (5488 m/s) we can extrapolate back with a multiples of 4 to see what her speed would have been.
For reference, average human walking speed is 1.4m/s
average run = 2.5 m/s
average sprint = 7 m/s
Usain Bolt = 10.4 m/s
no pips (non-upgraded speed of fly ball) = 5.4m/s
one pip = 21.4 m/s
two pips = 85.75 m/s
three pips = 343 m/s
four pips = 1372 m/s (her limit from comic start to now)
five pips = 5488 m/s (speed limit now)
This multiples of 4 thing works pretty well and leaves the base speed at a slow but still usable velocity.
Yeah, one pip might be slow (using x4 per pip) but it’s still twice as fast as a world-class sprinter and as fast as a car driving on a local road.
in other words
Base = running speed
one = car speed
two = airliner speed
three = fighter jet speed
four = sr-71 speed
five = orbital speed
Two pips is more like helicopter speed than airliner speed. Modern airliners usually cruise at about Mach 0.85.
why is it that a jet can taxi and a taxi can jet?
Don’t tell anyone, but aircraft are taxi’s that learnt to jet
So… next speed upgrade if I recall is the one that has lines leading from all the ‘normal speed’ upgrades. That might be the interstellar travel one, and locked to outside-of-atmosphere situations.
The reason I suspect this is ANOTHER 4x upgrade would put her at 20km/sec. That’s putting her at “wipe out the dinosaurs range” if pointed down.
Adding on to math.
4 machs is roughly 0.0001% the speed of light, 16 machs is about 0.00045% the speed of light.
She’s not going interstellar any time soon with x4. I’m excited to see what change there’ll be!
She…..she did a Sonic Rainboom. Eeeee~!
Always knew she was 20% cooler.
When figuring out sydney’ circumnavigation time for covering the world did you do that why her flying at cruising alt. or doing high orbit parabolic flights? At Mach 16 she could get into a low gravity orbit in minutes then speed up before dropping back into thicker air/altitude again. Maybe?
As far as Halo flying in earth airspace, since she already has air traffic showing on her wristcom (ADS-B?), adding TCAS ( Traffic Collision Avoidance System ) should be trival. TRAFFIC TRAFFIC. CLIMB CLIMB!
19,082.88 Kilometers per Hour…
Okay wow.
so if im right (im most likely not)
*if* she just did a acceleration of 0-19000 km/h in a second there.
she would be able to go into space. and reach 0.9 % of light speed in roughly half a day….
this is fast.
she could keep accelerating like this ofc endlessly… (baring sleep and starvation)
but i might be wrong. constant speed is rough
Previous discussions sort of converged on Halo being speed limited, rather than acceleration limited. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been maxed out at Mach 4 previously.
Would a planet being destroyed go unnoticed?
Be newsworthy?
Could there be any 3rd parties nearby?
Just wondering how improbable it would be for Sydney to hitchhike to Earth.
that is most likely who Dabbler was referring to when she told Maxima that she sent her message and was just waiting for a reply.
Pretty unlikely, unless the final orb is a Thumb, but she doesn’t have her towel either way.
One thing that is bothering me about this: when we have seen her flying before, it never seemed like she was doing anything like the sharp acceleration she does here. like when Max was testing her top speed, it looks like she gradually accellerates from their starting speed up to her top speed, whereas here she hits the pip on the orb and is suddenly going much much faster. It also never looked like she was switching gears when she has accellerated in the past, or if she was, I don’t think our attention was ever called to it.
Well in the previous case she was only keeping up with Max who was accelerating in a controlled manner to test her without getting too far ahead. In this case she is flooring it as hard as she can
as well as the fact that that portion of the flight was off camera, and we never SAW it happen, just the start where Sydney did the “mic drop” and the end where they were already over the range and dropping in for landing.
I think I was combining the flight to the range and the maximum speed test together in my head. but skimming through the archives, for the maximum speed test she tapes her hand to the orb while hovering, and it is clearly still taped when the breaks the sound barrier. pretty hard to move fingers to different blips like that, though I suppose not necessarily impossible. I suppose it could just be like Morpheus said – we haven’t seen her do this sort of all out acceleration before – but above she is pretty clearly pressing one of the pips.
don’t forget that in that instance, we only saw the beginning and ending of the flight to the artillery range, the in-between portion of the flight was “off-camera” so we never saw what Sydney did or didn’t have to adjust on the orb to keep up with Max.
i hate this comment system software… first post gets swallowed up and doesn’t display, so i do it again, and then BOTH of them show up!!, grrr…
Did she stop carrying her rebreather around once the Air Orb became functional?
Using that would free up a hand and be usable on an alien spaceship or when
visiting a planet with unknown air.
She still has a rebreather. Maxima said to not make the air orb public knowledge when Sydney said “guess I dont need the rebreather anymore.”
Anyone elsewonder if that ‘call’Dabbler mentioned was to the Xevoarchy? ‘Hey guys, I want to report a genocide in progress on Alari Prime. If you hurry, you can catch the perps redhanded! Oh, and one of my team members is stranded there. Please give her a lift back to Earth, mkay? Thanks a lot!’
Of course, if Sydney really is stuck in the future, the Xevoarchy will find Alari Prime either unharmed, or, (ifthey’re really lucky) they’ll arrive at the moment the Squiddies sre just about to attack. And suddenly Sydney sees the Alari world come back to life all around her…
Or they catch The Mighty Halo shooting up the joint.
I doubt the devastation is just going to be time-travel retconned away. At least, I really hope not from a narrative perspective.
It might even be that there’s only one ship left on the Alari homeworld because everyone else is fighting the Xevoarchy or whatever.
I think it’s a nice touch that the new pip has a “saftey” that requires deliberate activation (panel 1), instead of just ramping up under normal flight. Sort of like various supercars (e.g. the Veyron) that require parking and turning a key to enable ‘ludicrous mode’.
“Remember the little red button?”
“Yeah…?”
“Push the little red button.”
She is still thinking two-dimensionally. Climbing might give her more maneuvering options, e.g. visiting the missile source. Teleporting inside the force field of another robot also looked like a good idea, as made previously be someone else. At some point, she needs to revive the air inside her shield.
Big problem with that: the closer you are to the source, the less manoeuvrability you have
Keeping close to the water might make her harder to track (from the ground) and harder to shoot at (from the ground).
Now with being nuked at from orbit it’s less of an advantage.
You all have excellent points if her GPS was built by, I dunno, Apple or Samsung or Sony… but if Dabbler built it, GPS might mean Galactic Positioning System, and rely on signals that travel instantaneously from far, far away…
Serpentine! A reference to “The In-laws” with Peter Falk.
That’s it! Another movie that doesn’t get enough respect!
So… would the next speed upgrade get her to Mach 256?
Or FTL. Or hyperspace bypasses/wormholes/zeta beams/portals/boomtubes, etc
She can also go underwater to avoid orbital bombardment
Ha!
Imagine her doing Mach 5 underwater!
A good test of the incompressibility of water.
Tsunami waves 3 miles high… or would they reach the stratosphere?
Mach 5 = 3,333 knots. That’s about 1000 times faster than the fastest submarine (40 knots) :)
I like your idea of what that would cause on the surface :) :) :)
Like this but a few hundred miles long?
https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2013/02/bakercrop.jpg
This is more like my conception of being nuked at sea.
I’m assuming her shield is heat-resistant, given all the explosions and Max-nukes she has withstood with no adverse effects. But I have to wonder if it just completely ignores wind resistance, otherwise she should be leaving a wake of plasma right now. I’m also assuming she feels no inertia, otherwise best-case scenario she would have no blood above her ankles, worst case her organs would be in places organs should not be.
I mentioned the superheated air earlier.
Maybe the shield teleports the energy away?
(Too bad it doesn’t go to the PPO’s energy reserve!)
Worth noting…
Whatever Arc Swat was paying Sydney before, she is now grossly underpaid. At these speeds, Sydney is now a capable of orbital launch and deployment. She is worth as much as an entire space program. Once Ariana realizes this, she is going to be very happy with the contract.
at mach 16 with a shield, sydney doesnt need to avoid anything, they need to avoid her
Those blasts were still strong enough to nearly bust her shield (she might want to upgrade it) so getting hit by the blasts is still a bad idea. That said, ramming those shooting blasts could be a very good idea.
Why did she have to push a button to access the new speed she bought? Unless you’re making the jump to hyper-space speed if usually just 0 to Maximum as a somewhat smooth curve, no cross-curves.
Also, at significant Mach speeds you’re leaving plasma trails from compressing the air out of the way. (Take a look at railgun test firings, or meteors) I think it might be as low as Mach 5?
Assuming the shield doesn’t parasitically shift the air around itself or something as a function of the upgrade. She did produce a sonic boom when testing flight speeds with Maxima.
It doesn’t LOOK hypersonically streamlined. Not even tear-drop. But we also don’t get a view of the whole shield-bubble so we don’t know.
See, everyone is assuming that the upgrades are linear – like the next one will give her 4x the speed.
I’d argue it’s more likely to be quadratic – so she was at mach 4, which squared is 16 – so her next upgrade would take her to mach 256. Two more upgrades from that would put her at… 4913x the speed of light, which makes interstellar travel much easier.
That would mean her potential is.. ridiculous. If all the orbs follow that sort of progression (and why wouldnt they), they would be one of the most dangerous things in the universe.
“Serpentine!”
Does she have any in-laws?
Ya know, it occurred to me just now that the second of these two pages does actually manage to convey a certain touch of Saitama-esque feeling to it. It’s something about the size of it, the motion and movement, the proportions and the layout…which is pretty good, considering Sydney just effectively one-punched Curly, there, in the tractor beam eye with her PPO…
Anything planning to evolve there is going to be set back a few geologic ages.
In space, no one can hear you Mach. Maybe you should pick a different unit of velocity, because in space, you’re only as good as your last impluse.