Grrl Power #222 – Rhythmic gymnastics deathmatch
I made Heavenly Sword up on the same panel I first drew her (guilty admission, that happens a lot) but obviously since then I’ve had weeks to think about her powers. She can obviously can create blades of varied shapes along sword like objects, probably including an actual sword, but evidently she can to extend her powers along any linear object like that ribbon whip. It would work with an actual whip, what about a cat of nine tails? What about the landing skip of a helicopter, or a helicopter blade? Assuming she could figure out how to remain in contact with it without loosing her hand, that is. What about an elevator cable? She has a lot of potential with such a seemingly limited power. That’s the fun of limited powers, thinking of cool ways to make use of them. Power stunts. If you enjoy that sort of thing in novel form, I recommend Playing for Keeps, it’s all about using seemingly pathetic powers in creative ways. Sometimes I wish I had given Sydney a much more limited set of powers for that reason but there’s fun to be had both ways.
Someone suggested that Dabbler’s ineffectiveness in this fight has to do with keeping it non-lethal, and that’s absolutely part of it. Dabbler could be the hero in many different genres of video games, be they first person shooters, third person tomb raider type games, isometric dungeon crawlers, or a multi-planet GTA style intergalactic bounty hunter game, and all of those sorts of games have massive body counts. Heavenly would have trouble defending against a fireball, or a rain of arrows, but that doesn’t really excuse Dabbler’s performance thus far. Her ego is definitely a contributing factor, and like she said on the previous page, she really has been enjoying the fight. We’ll see if getting hit with Heavenly’s 6D4 attack helps her focus a little.
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I see the fight here as a test of the teams powers. If it had been an attempt to kill them, it would have started out with something to take out people quickly. Poison food followed by an explosion in the restaurant would have gotten rid of most of them. I think the villain team was sent by someone who is most definitely watching and keeping track of each member’s skills and abilities.
Someone is throwing 30ish idiots away to get a decent intelligence report. There WILL be stronger idiots in the mix to test the top team members further, but no masterminds are in there.
They are busy with their maniacal laughter devices… or their butterfly-aimed mind control alien satellite networks and dolphin powered doomsday machines and whatnot. That is a nice hobby to give the idiots a reason they are not personally leading the way…
The low tier ones yes, but that just lets those of us way up the ladder have conveint dupes for the heros to smash. While we continue to reap the rewards of raping the stock market and the like.
First, that assumes that the bad guys not only knew that Archon was planning on dining out, but where as well. Second, detection of the poison and/or explosives would likely tip off Archon that someone wishing ill of them knew the above and would lead to heightened security.
If a mastermind has the pull to get this many villain types in one spot, he (for convenience) could easily have arranged for a mortar barrage for openers. If all he wanted was a body count. and Maxima for a permanent enemy. This is more than the standard “let’s see what they’ve got” mastermind challenge. What exactly I have no idea, but it’s a surprise to Archon, despite their intel staff. That alone is troubling. They don’t have the handle on the super community they though they had. 30+ show up when Archon though that was near the grand total of US super people outside their own. There’s more trouble coming. And worse than this I have no doubt.
Perhaps its NOT about Archon. These guys are just showing off so they can get hired by a REAL supervillain, lol?
And obviously this is mostly expendable minion material.
Someone (namely ArcLight) is going to get hauled over the coals over this debacle: how could they have gotten the numbers so disasterously wrong?
They will get their asses kicked for failing not picking up that there was an attack imminent. The sheer number of supers that have been gathered into one group should have given them some clue. Unless every single one was unknown, and none had criminal backgrounds at all, then there should have been some hints, that they could have picked up on.
As for estimating of the total numbers of supers in general, that Arianna was quoting, at the press conference. That would be down to various civilian and military academics, not just Arc-light alone. If the consensus, of learned opinion, was that numbers are very low, then one can hardly blame the spies for using that as the basis of their analysis.
Once they had identified a proportion of criminal supers akin to that of the percentage of criminals in the general population, when compared to the estimated number of supers, they might have felt that they had picked up on the majority of players, and turned to analysing their behaviour. It being counter-productive allocating significant resources to find a small number of unknown individuals. That policy might change.
The numbers are either wrong, or edited for publication.
Still: If you already have an ARCSwat of roughly 15 supers on one continent, why wouldn’t you assume just as much, or maybe twice as much, unidentified supers are there as well?
For Maxima claiming she’s the best there is, that’s a bold claim which you will only do if you WANT a challenger to appear.
That’s why I’m waiting for someone like SCP-056 to show up. Someone who by themselves is fairly normal but around super’s grows exponentially powerful. Seriously, imagine KopyKraut from the intro chapter who’s powers aren’t reliant on an easily dislodged cap, can not only instantaneously duplicate a persons powers and whatever power-stunts they’ve devised, but have powers that are 30% stronger than the original and 30% better control over said improved powers.
If the super was friendly, fine. If not, simply trick him into absorbing the wrong power. Say somebody who’s power was to permanently convert their own lungs into gills. Whilst the absorber is well away from any water of course.
Well that’s why I bring up SCP-056, she/he/it is an automatic copying and improvement of all individuals in the vicinity (objects as well if no individuals are around). I mean, you could swarm her with self-destructing heroes and 056 would cobble together a power suite that would put Maxima to shame. You have them copy an individual that converts their lungs to gills, 056 will probably end up with the ability to reshape their lungs into a respiratory system that can inhale any fluid, liquids, gases, plasmas, even plastics. Or, conversely it will become the ability to convert other peoples lungs into gills.
The only way you could possibly trump her would be to put her at a rifle range, with a gun expert like Peggy, but not give 056 a gun. 056 would instinctively know how to use whatever firearm better (and disarm Peggy should she turn the gun on her) but without a gun herself, the ability to improve is useless.
However… 056 has the lovely side-effect of using self superiority to infuriate a strong-willed individual and subjugate a weak-willed one. She would probably belittle Peggy’s achievements at every opportunity, and if Peggy could hear 056’s snarks, she’d probably lose her cool. (I use she because it would probably turn into an ‘improved’ version of Peggy, and it just seems natural for me to think of 056’s base state as female)
I would not describe that as a 30% improvement, more like a 300% improvement. At a minimum.
I think 30% is the default, it can be scaled up automatically depending on how many people are being faced or how vindictive 056 is feeling. And it’s not really that much of a boost when you think about it. Perhaps as opposed to replacing their own lung with gills, 056 can augment their own lungs with gills. Just check out the SCP article. I picked 30% because most skills that could be measured went up by 30 units from whatever was being measured; 30 points higher in an IQ test, could lift 30kg more than the strongest individual in the room etc.
Having unrestricted power duplication grants near infinite power, in it’s own right. Then allowing the multiplication of the power into multiple diverse powers too, and gaining all the skill and power usage, and likewise multiplying that, is rather overdoing things.
Far easier to simply indicate that the character has unlimited, godlike, powers, to do what they wish, at their merest whim. They would end up with that level of power anyhow, in less than a week, with access to a planet full of supers to leech from.
Which makes taunting opponents petty. Simply erase them from existence, as if they had never existed. Or place them in some hell, to suffer eternal torment, for opposing you. Or ignore them, and do something interesting, like create a few galaxies in the shape of the Taj Mahal.
Proximity is the key factor. Personality is the second. 056’s power would basically be mocking you for your inferiority and being better than you, in that order. There may be a limit to how many individuals it can be better than at a time seeing as while it became a better female when presenter with a guy and a girl. A bodybuilder stronger than the strongest guard when in a gym. And here’s the kicker, a drop dead gorgeous woman when presented with 10 men. So beautiful it had them fighting over her in a matter of minutes. But conversely, when initially presented with an elite security team to take them down, it became [DATA EXPUNGED], which was apparently capable of killing over a dozen agents before being subdued. The powers fade off when not in proximity to a person, as it became a surveillance camera when placed under solitary surveillance (needless to say, a better quality camera).
Not quite sure why you think someone should be raked over the coals for anything. Yes, they obviously guessed wrong, but it’s not like anyone claimed they were handing out ironclad guarantees in terms of numbers. It’s closer to their best guess according to the limited amount of data with which they have to work.
I like Playing for Keeps. It’s fun to come up with Lethal Harmless Powers. Healing and Teleportation are the easiest to work with, even if it’s only a square inch; Over-heal the carotid into a tumor and Teleport a section of the trachea. I think control over bacteria would be the most underrated yet powerful. A fun one would be water into wine. Or the ability to clean anything.
Coincidentally if nobody has pointed this out already. Blink is a mutant from the Marvel universe and has the power to port or “blink” from place to place. Also comes with a handy crystal maker fashion that she can throw to make portals outside of her normal just her body power. “I first learned of Blink years ago through the exiles just to keep my nerd cred :P Not the newest X-Men movie XD”
i like heavenly sword you should let her join the team when she gets done with her debriefing
She certainly has proven to be very popular.