Grrl Power #1057 – Combat stress huggles
I know it wasn’t obvious from the prior page, but the incoming helis lobbed like a dozen missiles all at once. The thought being to overwhelm unknown and probably pretty advanced defenses. You know what they say, “You miss every shot that’s still attached to the chopper when it gets cut from the sky, plus you could be just handing the enemy some perfectly good missiles. I mean, probably not, as they’re likely to get fucked up during the crash, but you never know, and you guys are going up against supers and demons and possibly aliens, so cut lose the first chance you get. Your families will be taken care of.” It’s not a pithy saying, but it’s surprisingly appropriate for this situation.
Sydney has a lot of superhero “experience” (AKA deep genre lore), but almost no “war” experience. Not that this is a proper war, really, it’s just a targeted skirmish, but a bunch of dudes in full tac gear getting blown up and a half dozen assault helis and missiles flying and Sydney doesn’t even know who she can try and save? Yeah, given Sydney’s accelerated Arc-SWAT training, they did skip a bunch of “In case you’re in a foreign country and a third party’s military attacks” scenarios. Not that normally cover that for recruits, especially considering that they’re a domestic only force, but they do get into action against military opponents, or at least well organized and equipped militias slash criminal organizations in later training. Not to mention half the team is already poached from other branches, so it wasn’t prioritized with the first batch of recruits.
Parfait, on the other hand, is part of the defending team, so she could jump in, but like Sydney, she doesn’t have much in the way of training for situations like this. She’s graduated Demon High, and a large part of Infernal education is about learning trades, so you do your language/history/math courses, but you also get apprentice level training in your demon basics, warlording, fire mageing, weapon crafting, hospitality, civil engineering… I mean, someone’s got to build storm drains and roads. Anyway, Parfait was two years into Succubus Finishing School, which is just classes succubi start taking their junior year. Yes, everyone wants to help them with their homework. Managing that queue is part of becoming a successful succubus.
All this is to say that while Parfait has some melee weapons training (P.E. class in Demon High is quite a bit more violent than in the U.S.- though everyone still has to climb that rope) and can cast a few spells, she too has no experience with “war.” Thoth could start ordering her to do stuff, with her being new to the collar, she’d have no choice but to jump right in, but he probably saw her under Sydney’s shield and figured that was definitely the safest place for her. Could the succubus submission bond work through Sydney’s shield? I… hmm. I’ll have to think about that. Probably yes, since it’s like a soul-level entanglement. Her shield blocks a lot of stuff, but that’s probably asking too much from it.
The June Vote Incentive is up! What’s that dripping down Sydney’s face? Uh… well, actually, clicking on the link won’t actually give it away necessarily, cause the thumbnail is from one of the, er, advanced pictures in the series, if you take my meaning. Yes, I mean there is a nude version of Sydney (and guest) over at the Patreon version.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Well, Dabber’s hypnoboobs worked on Vehemence through Sydney’s shield. Parfait just figured them out though, so she’d probably need some practice.
Her boobs worked. If their hypnotic effect worked is unknown.
Maxima, OTOH, knows exactly what to do. I can’t wait to see what that might be.
A mountain of over-the-top violence, seasoned with profuse profanity? (Slight paraphrase of Hellsing Ultimate Abridged)
Destroyer of mosques unleased.
If she’s unleased, does that mean she’s been fully paid off?
…I’ll show myself out.
You stay here. we need more jokers in this deck.
Enough Jokers and we can start a major arcana.
If she’s unleased, does that mean she’s fully paid off?
(Sorry if this ends up being a double post. These comment sections don’t always show comments when posted.)
Bob, weren’t you just eaglejarl?
I was, yes. The “taking forever to post” thing has gotten a lot worse lately. I had a theory that maybe my username or cookies or something had been banned, so I cleared cache and tried a different name. (Not that this would stop browser fingerprinting from IDing me, but it was a cheap test.) Didn’t help.
Yeah, it does seem to have gotten worse over time.
Of course she was unleased. Max is not the kind of woman who puts up with being leased.
I hope we get to see Sydney help out in some way. Hate to see characters get side lined.
Honestly, I’m hoping we DON’T see Sydney help out beyond just shielding Parfait. Hear me out. This isn’t Archon’s fight. So they stand down and let the locals take care of it.
This means Sydney goes home after watching a whole bunch of people die in a battle with supers aliens demons and way too advanced tech. And… She has to cope with the fact that she just stood there and watched it all happen doing nothing. She has to ask Dr. Frost that can’t be the right thing to do, right? Being a hero doesn’t mean standing around and watching people die. It means stopping the bad guys from killing the innocent. But who were the bad guys and who was innocent? the real world is a lot more complicated than her comics and this is a good time for her to realize that.
Actually the bad guys in this case are the attacking force since they were the aggressors.
Same thing where Deus and Co. could be declared the ‘bad guys’ for being the aggressors in the little ‘war for access to water’ that they just had.
That said the ‘bad guys’ often in wars are the losing side.
The ‘bad guys’ are always the losers, because the winners write the history books (or they did before social media made experts of everyone who weren’t even involved… )
Most of the people who write history books weren’t involved either.
Depends on how old the history books are, anything published this century should not be trusted at face-value (revisionists are trying to rewrite history, all history, even the ones with people who experienced are still alive, like WWII and Viet Nam, hael, even Desert Storm)
I don’t see any reason to trust anything written in the past either. Were the people then any more objective, informed, or trustworthy? Can we prove any of it? More perspectives than just the dominant, accepted one at least means we’re more likely to have seen truth, even if we can’t separate it from the fiction.
I say don’t trust anyone over thirty, but don’t take my word for it, I ‘m over thirty.
Was more of a bad joke about how so much history (like, rilly old history) is getting re-written to either paint one group in a better light and another in pure evil (two guesses on which is now the pure evil, and your first three guesses don’t count)
Nothing new.
My aunt told me a hilarious story about a civilizations he studied. Pre-Egyptian unification, there was a small kingdom who NEVER lost a battle. Every single battle was a ‘glorious victory’. Then they ran home with their tails between their legs to build another army. The next year they had another ‘glorious victory’ and then they ran home to build another army. Funny how that worked. That ‘never’ in their hieroglyphics was it shown that they got their butts kicks every time they ventured out of their main city.
This is circa 3000 BCE.
So yeah. Nothing new. Same old, same old.
And yet finding those records hard to believe makes someone a ‘revisionist’.
There has always been a balance of history and memory. It is just more immediately obvious to us now because social media and internet access lets us look far beyond our school text books, public libraries and personal collections/connections.
Saying that the “bad guys” are always the aggressors is a bit too simplistic. What about when a country is threatening their neighbors and could cause larger wars if not stabilized quickly? Or what if atrocities are happening internally that result in the deaths and displacement of large parts of their population?
Heck, what about when a people group claim a region as their “country” but have really just stolen it from somewhere else? On the small scale, what about squatters who claim your house and refuse to leave?
What about civil wars?
Given the way international politics tends to work or rather not work, would it be acceptable to say in any conflict between countries that break out into war, the bad guys are probably both / all of them? At least, it sure feels like that to me any time I dig into stuff too much.
OK, sure, I’ve not found anything too shady about how the Ukraine has been doing business of late, but I also haven’t really looked.
If you’d like to understand the politics and history behind why Russia is invading Ukraine (again, because the stole Crimea in 2014) all you need to do is put “why russia invading ukraine explained” in the search bar of YouTube. The results will include videos spanning from 2 minutes to 2 hours.
If you’d like the Cliff’s notes version, I’ll oblige:
After the fall of the Soviet Union Ukraine gave all of the Soviet nukes in Ukraine to Russia in exchange for promises that Ukraine would remain safe from Russian aggression. This is a very important ‘stage setting’ fact.
The Russian economy is almost entirely based on oil and natural gas exports. This is another vital ‘stage setting’ fact because it demonstrates that the Russian economy is completely tied to the price of oil and gas. Russia only engages in foreign adventures, such as their invasion of Afghanistan or their annexation of Crimea, when oil prices are high.
Russian revenues are on a inevitable decline due to other nations construction of their own oil and gas pipelines, and the discovery of new oil and gas resources outside of Russia.
In 2012 massive natural reserves were discovered in Crimea owned territory. And then Russia invaded Ukraine and stole Crimea from Ukraine. As a part of that land and sea theft (Crimea owns a large area of the Black Sea and Russia is of course asserting that this comes with the territory) Russia also stole billions of dollars of oil and gas collection, processing, and refinery equipment which belonged to Ukrainian companies. These properties were ‘given’ to the Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom. In 2010 massive gas reserves were discovered under Eastern Ukraine (the Donbas region). Which is of course the exact area where Russia is focusing their invasion of Ukraine.
So the tl;dr version of the Cliff’s notes is: It’s all about the money.
It’s really able to be boiled down that simply. Russia is invading Ukraine for money. And Russia previously invaded Ukraine in 2014 for money.
What Sydney is doing instinctively is quite likely the BEST thing she can do, protect herself and wait for orders.
Since Sydney’s shield doesn’t block Daphne’s mental capabilities, I’d say there is precedence for the soul link not being blocked either. Plus, since her shield blocks damaging light but not harmless light, it’s clearly very advanced (still waiting for Dabbler’s explanation on that without the Barberian butting in).
The shield also doesn’t block the choker communications, though that too could be a quantum entanglement technology exception. Or it might operate like some hearing protectors, permitting/copying safe levels through while setting a safe maximum. (Or safe for whoever created it. Hmmm.)
They’re smart shields. They block basically everything as a default, and then let through anything that’s evaluated as safe for the user. On a genuinely intelligent basis.
Sydney wanted the hypno boobs to work on Vehemence, so they were permitted to. If Vehemence had been an ally who Dabbler was attacking, I bet they’d have had no more effect than any comparable non-hypnotic boobs.
So… maybe no different? In my experience it’s not just succubi who have hypnoboobs, if you’re a guy.
I recall in college a group of us were chatting in the lounge, and the one girl who was rather endowed was leaning forward while talking, and all the while her buttons were gradually coming undone. We all failed our save on that, except for the one guy who pointed out to her. HE ended up married to her…
I’ve always been under the impression that the “hypno boobs” were just the normal distraction ability a well endowed girl jumping rope in a skimpy outfit has for a hetero male. And not some spell or mental effect that needs to be ‘allowed’ to pass through Sydney’s force field.
Why this would work in the middle of a fight where arms, eyes, and teeth have been blown off as well as just general mayhem, well that’s a question for the author. I’d certainly hope that most soldiers or first responders or even just regular people wouldn’t be distracted by a titty in the middle of a firefight. Or at least not for more than the second required to process “Is that what I think it is? Yep, but I guess I’d better keep [shooting at the enemy/saving this guy’s life/running the fuck away].”
OTOH, the shield prevents Harem from teleporting and most importantly managed to contain Vehemence aura, so depending on the level of the tachimuon or whazizname field at which the soul link works it might actually do work.
this is what I was checking the comments for.
the shield is somewhat selective. It doesn’t block the quantum entangled mind of Harem, but it does block Harem from teleporting.
however I seems the shield like the rest of what the orbs do is especially geared to counter magic, block magic auras, detect and label magic items, see through magic illusions.
-heh, what if the Architects of the Superion were in an arms race/product competition with the Architects of Magic in this setting.
(or its like Magic 2.0 and making products to one up the old products).
in any case they seem especially geared to magic.
and Harem’s power is Superion not Theumian, so maybe a partial block, but maybe it would interfere with the soul bond…unless it registers the same as the quantum mind so as a safety feature life force links aren’t blocked.
I suspect the grunts are severely outmatched here
They could just be a distraction. Wouldn’t be surprised if they had supers drop from the helicopters in the sandstorm to go steal stuff.
Plus, if something happened to Parfait this early, Dabbler may never forgive Tom.
Sending a Succubus child into open battle that also involves superpowerered aliens and 5 storey tall combat demans? Because he can compel her to?
It is not just Dabbler who will eviscerate him, the matriarchs will remove him from the roster of leash holders with extreme prejudice.
In a conflict succubi are spies and assassins, not frontline fighters.
I think Dabbler would disagree with your last point :)
Dabbler knows perfectly well just how extreme an exception she is.
I’m not sure that she would. Sure, she’s an adventurer, but it’s unlikely that most of that has been as a grunt on the front line. I feel like most of her adventures have been in a party of 2-8 people, not a company of 150 soldiers. She wouldn’t be a jack of all trades like she is if she typically had 149 other people to lean on, y’know?
Dabbler’s actually done a lot of SOLO adventuring. I forget when and how we, the audience, learned that, but Sydney has drawn correct conclusions based on knowing it.
One could argue that they would block anything with a magic component, including mystical soul links, just in case, unless they are smart enough to figure out it would cause some level of harm to a “passenger”.
Would and could are seriously different. Let’s not confuse Sydney nth tech with omnipotence.
They did block Vehemence Fight Aura.
But they did not stop Dabblers Hypno-Boobs.
Or Harems Multi-Body.
Maybe it is smart enough and only blocks what the user might consider a danger to themself, leaving other “passengers” potentially vulnerable to secondary attack vectors?
My thinking is the shield blocks potential attacks, but not communication. If somebody shined a laser pointer at Sydney’s face, with the shield up, it would come through EXACTLY bright enough to be useful for for silent morse code signals, without impairing her vision in the slightest. That’s why it blocks Harem’s teleportation (which includes momentum shenanigans that can be used as an attack) but not her “quantumly entangled” brain, which is purely information-sharing. Likewise, Thothogoth would simply be sending instructions to Parfait’s existing, inherent soul-bond collar, rather than imposing a new harmful effect from outside the shield.
I think it’s been established that the shield is pretty darned smart when it comes to figuring out what to block and what not to block. And in the case of succubi, the soul leash thing is not only not harmful but actually plugs a hole in their soul. I don’t think the should would block that.
All the energy forms it doesn’t seem to block at this time are also communication that isn’t directed at Sydney herself. Though it also doesn’t block any communication equipment signals (radio waves) unless the sonics are designed to do damage either it seems. *waits for an attack from an entirely sound based weapon*
The shield only activates when it’s in Sydney’s hand. So the shield should protect against things that would definitely cause harm to the physical form, which it could tell via contact, and from things which the user believes could cause harm, again through the link. Believe isn’t really the best word, GROK would actually be the best, but it’s awkward in that situation. The biggest problem with all of it is really that DaveB painted himself into a corner when he ruled it blocked air and needed an upgrade to allow her to breath without drop and raise. That’s the current sticking point on “how smart is shield ball.”
Quite possibly Sydney’s Orbs are quite a bit smarter than Sydney herself, or possibly anyone on Earth (with the POSSIBLE exceptions of Dabbler and Deus).
Djeez, calm down Sidney, you did the right first thing by grabbing the shield ball!
You’re save, now just take a moment to see what you can do with a second orb.
Grab the green one and add more fresh air! You have two people in there in panic mode, so they are quickly using up the available oxygen.
Sydney is 100% doing the mostly right thing. She has shielded up with an innocent non-combatant for their protection. Okay, the freaking out is not strictly necessary but let’s cut her some slack. Right now, all she has to do is sit tight under the shield with Parfait and await further orders from Maxima. Yes, Sydney doesn’t know what to do. That’s fine. She has a CO who knows exactly what to do. This is her make or break moment. All she has to do is keep it together enough to follow orders.
Also, given how Harem’s multi-body continues to function in every way except her ability to teleport out of it when one body is in the shield, I think we have established that a few VERY SPECIFIC things can still get through the shield. Quantum Entanglement allows information to pass through the shields. If the soul bond thing worked through the shield it would suggest that it operates on such a fundamental level that blocking it would be functionally impossible. It would be interesting to see if Tom tries to borrow magic from Parfait while she’s under the shield.
Quantum entanglement doesn’t pass through the intervening space so there is nothing for the shield to block.
Image’s filename is 2022-06-14-GP1057.jpg . . . the “14” should be “13”
tell that to your next elevator :)
Good news! The girls are doing what they should. Like, unless Sydney wants to fly away so they can put Mr Bubble in Embiggen mode between the oncoming storm and some civilians, right there keeping Parfait safe keeps Thothogoth’s and Dabbler’s attention on the action instead of defending the 18 year old demon girl.
Don’t know what to do? May I suggest making out?
She can use the Pew Pew orb with the shield when she remembers she can.
She knows perfectly well that she can operate while under the shield.
She doesn’t know what she’s SUPPOSED to do, given that she doesn’t have jurisdiction here, and it’s not exactly clear who the good guys and bad guys are.
That would violate the standing orders, which are “only fire when fired upon.”
Now, if one of the invaders points a gun, rpg, or other weapon at Sydney, she can, and will, return fire.
Sydney’s first taste of battle…!
(Hopefully she won’t screw up on the field and if that’s the case,would Max have her court martialed?!?)
This is not even remotely Sydney’s “first taste of battle.”. She fought multiple Mecha Kaiju on the Alari homeworld, she fought Vehemence, she fought the Bloodbots and LITERALLY DIED to Sciona. She got captured, nearly killed again, and only just barely rescued by Cora. There might be ten people on Earth with more Super Combat experience than Sydney, given all the military supers on her team. I doubt there are twenty. Sydney does not have military combat experience, no, but that doesn’t mean she’s unblooded. Heck, at this point she’s been completely painted in the blood of her enemies twice. A fact that likely crops up in her PTSD therapy sessions.
“and LITERALLY DIED to Sciona.”
…. What? Um… Ok, scuze me, it seems I need to go back through the archives again because that seems an important detail that I’ve totally forgotten about.
It happened on Page 501, which was back in Feb 2017.
We don’t see her die, and Krona says she doesn’t need to. More likely, Krona’s checkpoint reacted to Sydney impending death.
Yups, she was under imminent possibility of death (Sci wanted to see if she could gain control of Sydney’s balls if she took her blood) but we never actually saw what triggered the reset, so it’s possible the threat was enough (largely because Sci didn’t have anything on her to incapacitate Sydney or immediately drain her of her life-juice)
This is her first war zone with humans being killed around her. This may make it far more (real) to her mentally than.
mannequin kill bots in horror movie creatures council chamber, giant alien anime bio-tech kill bots,
or the very superhero comic book fights she has been in with Vehemence, Sciona, alien muggers, and such.
the key thing being she has so far only had two very human experiences, one being confined to a chair by dangerous cult like individuals who want to kill her, and the other this warzone.
like with the chair her hands are tied *so to speak*, she was powerless there, and now she is being ordered to stand down. She has the power but unlike her stories about superheroes there is legal red tape so she doesn’t know what to do, she is supposed to be a superhero, but who to protect, what to defend, foreign soil, orders, etc..
this experience may weigh down on her that despite her fantastical adventures so far that she is in fact a soldier (military enforcer) and not a cape and tights, truth, justice, defender of the universe.
You forgot the Bank Stunt
I don’t think she literally died to Sciona. She hit the level of panic that tripped the save point. As discussed right after the save point was tripped, there were options for that which were short of her dying.
Don’t know how much of that actually is talked about with her counsillor. Sydney seems to put such things behind her with remarkable ease.
the whole Dr, Frost thing seems to have gone cold.
Frozen, even.
best be careful or we will get burned.
Ouch, thinking of the tongue on the flagpole… Best stay frosty though, There are ninja’s about…somewhere…
the ninjas are on ice. they skate rather well.
For the record, troops rarely chant “HUT HUT HUT” outside of supreme sarcasm.
Just saying.
It’s a trope. For comedic effect.
this is the football team. no idea what the foot ball is in this case….
The ref must be blind, then. That’s the most blatant offsides I’ve ever seen!
I suspect the rules are different for midgets deploying from helicopters.
Doing it to this extent seemed to me to be small soldiers reference. Which is apt given the large size of some combatants.
Sydney fought those giant alien ships firing death beams by herself but a couple of helicopters firing missiles while she’s surrounded by super powered friends freaks her out?
That was a desperate bit of survival while alone against seemingly non-living eldritch monstrosities/mechs focused solely on her, it was more of a puzzle for her to figure out using her abilities, she coped by bringing it down to the level of a video game. For the former there were fewer relevant complicating factors for her to deal with such as civilians, friends and enemy combatents who were living humans engaging in each other. Sydney hasn’t killed someone far as we know.
The first was a little more organized and direct. With this people and weapons are all over the place plus sand storm for a chaotic mess of information overload. So far no one has even targeted her specifically, her shield is just protecting them from collateral damage, weapon misses and sand.
She wasn’t worried about collateral damage on the Alari homeworld.
She HAS to worry about collateral damage here, on the soil of a foreign country, where leveling a house by mistake could mean serious problems for her, and death for whoever lives in that house.
Since she hasn’t been through THIS kind of combat before, a bit of freak-out is warranted.
You said it. She was by herself. No innocents dying there. No bystanders were involved. It was a simple decision, fight or die. These guys here are different, they want to kill others and she can’t protect them all. Officially she isn’t even allowed to protect them.
Shielding up with the innocent succubus was the best thing todo.
ok, the first looks like a video game, was in a really unfamiliar setting, was alone, and did not have complicating instructions. she wanted to go home. in fact she tried, realized she was going to have to grind a point or two to get home and did so. ‘I hate grinding’ was the quote.
this time. much more familiar setting. looks uncomfortably real, and has really conflicting instructions. person closest to he seems to be panicking- this can be contagious and is not helping. in short- someone with a cooler head needs to find Sydney and point her in a direction. running away is a time honored choice and she is uniquely suited to bailing on this situation. I, however, still think a PPO enema will do the sand guy some good and give him something else to think about. but I’m sitting in a comfy chair in an A/c room with some of my favorite toys.
cue Monty Python reference, once they get off the bus.
She’s not freaked out by what to do if she were fighting. She’s freaked out by analysis paralysis over whether she *should* join the fight.
At the time she fought Vehemence she was with a large team and had time to focus, the Bloodbot she was still fighting one target and wasn’t afraid of it at all, The Kaiju was too big to be a threat one-on-one, and so on the deal here is it’s her first human combat situation there’s too many things going on at once for her to focus on which is common for actual combat. Anytime a inexperienced trooper is faced with true combat they tend to freeze up I’ve been told that in the case of enemy engagement only a handful of the troops actually fire at first. Plus there being so many things happening at once she can’t know what to target and how to attack without causing problems for another super. Say she reaches for a down chopper at the same time a flyer heads towards it and the lighthook knows the friendly down giving the enemy time to fire on that super… yeah…
“the lighthook KNOCKS the friendly down” Jeez i wish there was an edit button! lol
What rope climb? When I was in middle and high school in Maryland 22+ years ago, they had phased out the rope climb because they were worried about students falling from the top of the rope or being able to get to the top, but not back down safely.
After how many years of inflicting that barbarian requirement on kids, suddenly someone somewhere finally gets worried? I recall 2 boys and a girl breaking bones falling off the d**ned rope while I was in school 45 years ago, but that didn’t stop the school from requiring it to pass Phys. Ed. You want kids to be combat-ready, give them combat training from the beginning, don’t just throw it at them cause they reached puberty.
You say “everyone climbs the rope” but one thing that always annoyed me in gym class was that we weren’t allowed on the rope at all. It was only for ROTC. in retrospect that was for the best since body weight has gone up and fitness has gone down overall.
I feel kinda bad for Parfait and Syd… combat lock is a helluva thing. But.. Syd should be able to break it easily because well, we have seen her do much in worse circumstances.
She just needs to get her bearings and figure out priorities.
Okay this is about the Vote incentive and not todays comic… Sydney’s T-shirt…. I don’t get the joke, I mean I know that its Krillin and icecream but otherwise I don’t get it and it is driving me NUTS!
maybe each iteration of Krillin on the shirt dies from a nut allergy, and they bring him back so he can try a different icecream?
Dave says it’s a pun based on an old song, it’s not the flavors but the Ice Cream, Krillin, Krillin.
google “ice crem, chillin, chillin…”
I did. that was an interesting suggestion.
Sydney can be useful with the triage and cleanup.
It’s Maxima’s call to give her orders.
Is Parfait going to join Syd’s nascent Harem?
don’t rush the girl. she has to get over loosing out on Leon. maybe she can date a sword or something.
Shes a very young succubus just bonded to a master she can’t leave him for very long until she’s gained enough skill and experience like Dabs has.
well, if the shield doesn’t block it, probably there is a power up for it somewhere… but if it is a soul-to-soul connection to give the command? or is a soul to spell to soul command? because in the latter case, the shield could block the spell part…
That panel with the Fabricator’s sliding into the ground gave me a flashback to the old Garry Anderson Puppet show, Stingray when the whole submarine base and living quarters would go into lockdown during battlestations by retracting into the ground and steel hatches sealing them in.
The Anderson’s shows had the most wonderful sets and machine models.
Check out the Thunderbirds Reboot from 2015.
Weta workshop modernized all of Gerry’s stuff, but still kept the spirit of the show. And just “CGI-layered” over marionettes so they could show facial expressions and didn’t have noticeable wires.
Who else thinks Sydney and Parfait make a cute couple?
That’s really not a tough call to make. If we all answered, this comic would get swamped.
I can’t help but imagine that, after this battle, the Orbs will pop up with the ‘Level up!’ bit. Sydney will be a bit miffed, because she didn’t end up doing anything.
The point will then be accidentally used on something that is either completely pointless or entirely cosmetic.
Like I dunno, a cupholder that pops out of one of the orbs.
given the hand economy needed for the orbs. I’d say a cup holder would be very handy.
The succubus bond probably works through sydney’s shield since even hypno boobs work through sydney’s shield (remember vehemence was affected while he was inside the shield and Dabbler was outside it). So clearly certain things work that are non harmful. Its a good guess that cutting off a bond that keeps a mana hole in her soul plugged to keep her alive would be quite harmful to someone inside the shield. Plus like Harem said her unimind is quantum entsngled so theres only one ‘daphne’ even if she has 5 brains. Theres only one actual ‘self’ and whats more a person’s ‘self’ than a soul would be? That link between souls seems like something that would definitely be quantum entangled, just like the link between harems unimind.
some what can get through feels like it may be life force related, the quantum mind of Harem for example. One may hypothesize that the makers of the orbs did so for safety reasons. which may create some ideas as to the nature of the orbs’ makers.
(or just so they couldn’t mask their presence from the scans of their parents if we keep on the toy theory, like a psionic scan can still find the one using the shield just not attack them); passive abilities allowed.
I have always assumed the shield operates in a way in which no directly dangerous acts can happen to the oerson inside the shield from outside it.
Like the shield has safety protocols in place. Thats why hex’s lasers can’t pierce it or a Sonic attack wouldn’t blow out her eardrums but she can still see and hear from within the shield, and even tell when something bright happens like the squidward nuke explosion or when maxima blew off vehemence’s arm.
Okay I admit Dab’s sister is cute as a button, seducing yeah not entirely her field of work BUT being cute yeah she can win me over with that pretty darn quickly.
Engaging a known army of aliens, demons and supers on the ground, not even counting Arc-Swat? Really?
To be fair, Max will be busy. By chain of command Anvil will need to direct Sydney. As a private her job is to Follow orders. Not just make stuff up by the seat of her pants.
The times what she was doing independently was correct, was shields when the behemoths blasted at them. And when she was totally on her own.
Anvil needs to point Sydney to where she can do the most good. Even if it is to just tell her to keep herself an Parfait under shield and not get involved.
Yeah… Those guys exiting the chopper should be about 50% larger. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a big chopper but not THAT big.
yes for reference- a HMMV just fits. as in the doors will not open and there will not be room to clamber out the windows. if the back is open or the windshield is gone you can get out that way. you would not believe how small the space inside the copters really is.
When the off ramp of a chopper looks more like a C-17 Globemaster.
The Mi-26 is a BIG bird. 131 ft long, 26 ft high.
Here’s a picture from inside. Inside a Mi-26 Halo.
The compartment is 12m long, 3.3m wide and 3.2m high.
The problem I have is; Why the fuck do they have riot shields?
They’re not doing crowd control or urban breaching.
An FMJ from an AK is gonna pen that shield no problem.
In retrospect, those poor bastards chose a very bad time to attack. I mean, really, maybe they should have waited until the giant super demon left before attacking ?
Are we really going with the idea that the power requirements to stow the fabbers is so high that they have to serialize?
Cute dramatic effect, but Deus is WAY too smart to allow such nonsense.
I see two possibilities.
1) Deus is that dramatic because he can easily replace them.
2) Or they need to be bled of power before they can be stowed and the power system can’t be sturdy enough to do them all at once.
Also, if the fabbers are built to recess into an underground bomb shelter for protection, why aren’t they in it all the time?! Sure it makes the logistics of moving finished work to the surface a little harder, but not much. Bad practice to leave an extremely critical asset vulnerable like this in the first place, but ridiculous to build protection that isn’t being used 24/7.
Perhaps when the fabs are running, they generate a lot of heat. That requires them to be “freestanding” to allow cooling. The shelter space is too small to functionally cool them. So the option was either a small, sturdy shelter, or a large space that couldn’t be armored / protected as well.
tsk tsk on Deus here.
So Wile E Deus super genius didn’t have any shields or anti-air strike defenses place around his all important matter fabricator factories (looks like the walls are tougher than usual given the small amount of damage, but still; after all that bragging and he doesn’t even have a shield or a target EM pulse, or lasers to lock on and take down an incoming missile on a structure of importance. going to need to make another trip to the alien wal-mart and buy some of those over the counter weapons/shields that can easily counter explodey metal tubes flying through the air.
Good point. He should have force fields for the factory which accounts for half of galytn’s revenue.
even without diving into fancy sci-fi defenses like capture bubbles, cutter shields, slicing laser grids, space inversion barriers and whatever else…
he could at the least have set up anti-missile laser defenses (something real world Earth is working on now), add his advanced tech and alien tech resources and shoot down the missiles entering the air space of his factory should have been a given.
that said, force fields would still have been a must because anyone could have done a high atmosphere bomb drop and take out half that economy from the looks of it right now.
unless he is trying to pull a Planet X staged attack on himself and accidentally got one of his own hit by trying to pretend to be less capable.
*Godzilla vs Monster Zero, the Planet X aliens had control of Ghidorah and staged an attack on themselves to earn Earth’s sympathy *in a convoluted plan they didn’t need to do, but that’s another rant*, in this staged attack Ghidorah accidentally hit one of their power plants and they nearly lost control.
I wouldn’t put it past him, though it might also turn out that he simply knew he wouldn’t be attacked until Max & co. would be there. (only partly kidding her: Deus has been shown to be extremely good at knowing stuff he’s not supposed to know to the point that knowing the future can’t be ruled out entirely. Still hope it’s not true; that way it’s possible he’s just good at using other people’s (super)abilities).
For all we know, the protective thing they’re lowering the mass fabs into does have a force field protecting them. Just seems like he went through the trouble of showing force fields. Seems narratively appropriate that he employs them in protecting important Galytn assets.
But I agree with everything rhuen said as being possible – that he’s feigning weakness in order to create a scenario in which Maxima (and thus the United States) is publicly seen helping Galytn.
BTW does anyone else think Deus is being attacked by an asian anti terrorist unit?
Who else practices coming out of a Helo with ballistic shields (which are quite unwieldy and not good for running)
given the trail mix of copters, weapons, uniforms, and a city destroyer; I am suspecting less government militaries and more a coalition of corporate hired mercenaries pretending to be a military force as a cover for their employers *false flag as the local nations’ armies while actually serving a corporate interest*.
I’m not asian , I’m european and one of our anti-terrorist unit use balistic shields . But the use of balistic shield is rare in armed forces because it will be inadequate against AP rifle ammunition and even in some cas against pistol caliber hard-core bullets. But in urban combat it could provide extra armor and could be use with a PDW – HK MP7 or FN P-90 -.
And if they had russian vintage hardware any aditionnal armor is usefull.
I’m sure that a pilot of one of this shielded jet was ready to take of if Darude became distracted.
And if you wish to represent a non Russian non American Figther
This one is pretty good:
https://www.ainonline.com/sites/ainonline.com/files/styles/ain30_fullwidth_large_2x/public/uploads/2019/11/498_7dwm4599.gif?itok=4tz1oMXk×tamp=1574076488
Rconnizable but with not a lot of geek knowing every detail about it in US.
One of the principle goals in Basic, is getting recruits past the “I don’t know what to do,” stage.
That comes within the context of the branches operations, however, and if you pull a uniform sufficiently out of the context(s) they are trained for, you run the risk of exactly what’s happening to Sydles right now.
She has know real idea what she can (as in ‘permitted’ rather than ‘capability’) do in this situation, which is wildly outside of her training, or experience.
Frankly, this is where an NCO or JO needs to step in, and start directing.
And Sydney _should_ be trained well enough to seek out her senior for that very reason. So her first priority in this instant is finding Anvil, as I am pretty sure that Dabbles isn’t actually part of the chain of command.
I’m hoping her training kicks in, or Xuriel reminds her, in the next page.
1. Tom showed up *before* the attack, which makes me think Deus orchestrated it somehow. I doubt Darude knows he’s being manipulated.
2. It seems like Sydney and Parfait are becoming fast friends! Chaotic Good & Chaotic Neutral, that sounds like a perfect set-up for shenanigans.
Tom showed up when he heard about the betting on the super fight, which seems pretty reasonable as there are likely demons stationed on base or at least a super easy way to contact them in a hurry. But one could also argue that Deus knew enough about Archon and his staff that he manipulated things to increase the chance of some sparring and draw demonic attention without actually ordering anything, so it’s hard to say either way.
Based on what’s been demonstrated in-comic so far, Sydney’s shield tech seems to operate like computer Firewall Rules.
There are some hard blocked things (presets that the original designers wanted blocked, based on design intent & “what needs to be blocked” experience), some things that the designers missed or never considered, and possibly some things the last user set themselves.
Figuring out things like safe vs harmful electromagnetic radiation that are quantifiable and algorithmic, isn’t hard if you know the user’s biochemistry. Likely the same with most magical radiations. Course there are always edge cases. Like Hypnoboob Magic. Which may piggy back on otherwise non-harmful visible light. Like the way an attack could come through port 80 (default HTTP) which has to be open for Internet traffic to work.
Things like soul-links or quantum entangled brains could be missed edge cases, or considered “safe” communications channels.
Shields and Firewalls are only one layer of a good defense system.
Sydney’s radio and internet also works through the shield, so radio signals and wifi or cell connections seem to have no trouble bypassing the shield.
The shield probably just prevents anything from crossing through that could be potentially dangerous. Like light can come through, but only so much that it won’t blind Sydney. Sound can come through, but only so much that it won’t rupture her eardrums and liquefy her brain.
Or maybe the shield is just transmitting a version of what’s happening outside to the people inside, and transmits an image of what’s happening inside to the people outside, thus ‘faking’ transparency.
If you don’t know what to do get in the safety sphere.
It’s the same rule 0 as playing a character with the Force Field powerset in City of Heroes: When in doubt, bubble up and cry.
Hey, random thought. Could Sydney loan control of one or more of the orbs? At least if they don’t get separated by any distance? So she could use the shield and lighthook while parafit uses the blaster and truesight orbs. Go go real spaceship impersonation.
No, it has been covered before. They only work for her.
Annnnnd Varia, but she’d have to be touching Syd.
Once Archon figures out Varia has some kind of effect on the orbs Syd and Varia should be teamed up.
first they will need to figure out if Varia can handle the clearance level for the Veil. otherwise the first time she gets the true sight orb…..
Could be that Dave just dropped that tidbit of a teaser to tantalise us and totally intends to ignore it, to taunt us. Then we end up sitting in the bleachers yelling “BEHIND YOU, BEHIND YOU” while Archon spins around not noticing anything, just like at a panto. To be fair, yelling “behind you” at a panto IS half the fun.
I have always suspected that there’s a sadistic side to authors. maybe it balances the masochism.
She may have gotten it off panel, as she did touch a vampire and go all primal beast of darkness for a second…and seemed to know what that was all about.