Grrl Power #1066 – No teeth for you!
Just a quick reminder that Varia has a pronounced Bostonian accent, which is really hard to account for if she’s not saying words that have an “ah” sound near the end, i.e., “Get to the cah pahk, idiot!” Or as the most famous person with a Boston accent would say, “Get ar um, to the aaaah, cah pahk, you ar um idiot!”
Does Sydney know about the secret tunnel in the breakroom? They’re… getting around to telling her.
I know you’re all asking if a fire extinguisher would actually beat a flamethrower. Well, they did it on Mythbusters. Granted, it was a super horsepower extinguisher so they were kind of cheating. But here, Varia came in low and this maneuver probably cost her some hair, so I’ll allow it. Plus, I mean, who’s to say the extinguishers at Archon aren’t overcharged for this very reason?
The July Vote Incentive is up! This is an unusual incentive because it started life as a panel from the comic. A few people thought it was a good pose to turn into a nude version, and I agreed. It was originally intended to be a stopgap pinup while I finished the one I’d started on for this month, but I got caught up in shiny skin and various bits of anatomy and alternate outfits so I’ll just leave this one as the July incentive. The advantage being that I have a head start on next month’s so… maybe it won’t be late?
Be sure to enjoy the alternate outfits and lack thereof over at Patreon.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Bad guy better hope his evil boss provides a comprehensive dental plan.
Doesn’t matter. Once he’s in custody, ARCHON (ie- the taxpayers) will cover that. Of course, once they find out who his boss is (the one who sent him into the battle), then ARCHON will charge him the cost…
O right, professional soldier. You’d be forgiven for forgetting about that, but these are the most badass of badasses.
I now expect a scene where Sydney does a happy dance in the kitchen then falls into the redoubt.
SECRET TUNNEL, SECRET TUNNEL, THROUGH THE BREAKROOM
To the Archon cave!
fun episode. horrible singer. zero stars.
Sadly, Dave missed an opportunity to give us a panel with Arianna going down all legs akimbo. Now we’ll never know if she wears My Little Pony panties.
Or ……. will we? Given the rest of her personality and work environment, maybe she wears somewhat more bold & empowering lingerie.
Perhaps in this case the absence of proof is the proof of absence?
Commando Arianna.
It’s often wise of a author to leave something to the imagination of the reader.
Akimbo, means hands on hips!
If Arianna were flexible enough to get her legs akimbo, this comic would have a much more adult & restricted “viewer rating” than merely PG.
…You can thank me now, for that mental image…
Arianna goes like her knife skills. Commando.
she shoulda yelled : stick around!
No, this is not an 80s action movie. :)
I still doubt her choice of not cutting a lemon before throwing the knife.
This comic would have made a great eighties action movie.
Admittedly true.
Especially a film inspired by the punny masterpiece Commando.
nothing like sticking it to the man.
I was born too late to hire ninjas during its production.
I believe the phrase is better late than never. besides you haven’t been sending ninjas out lately.
Arnold is one of the greatest pungeon masters. His performance as mr Freeze is legendary.
he had such a cold read.
I’m pretty sure that Batman and Robin is universally seen as a war crime, and Arnold became a war criminal every time he said something. “Ice to meet you!” or “Alright everyone! Chill!” or “what killed the dinosaurs? THE ICE AGE!”
I mean c’mon Arnold. That last one wasnt even a pun. It wasnt even a good joke!
And… why CHILL? Just say the obvious pun. Freeze!
It’s even worse than making a bad pun… making a bad and incorrect pun when a better one was obvious. GRRRRR.
Yeah. Definite war criminal for that role.
Arnold is a hero to the punsters for his totally shameless delivery of puns and dad jokes. He knows what he is doing but he just don’t care. And not just in the glorious punfests Batman and Robin and Commando.
MLP panties? Nah, Arianna wears….legal briefs
*slow clap* 10/10, no notes.
Unless she have been de-briefed
I believe she would object to that, except in certain cases.
She keeps her legal briefs in a certain attache case when she has been debriefed.
Varia’s being extremely ballsy here. Willingly depowering herself to a) secure the non-com and b) engage the enemy with only what’s at hand.
Might have been a good idea to either:
1) Keep Arianna with her if facing a fire-based Super, since his only real power seems to be fire, and if they’re both immune to that, he loses his major advantage; or
2) Get in the redoubt WITH Arianna, since without anyone else around, she has no powers.
Although Varia does still have at least some military training, which does make her more capable than Arianna, I’d assume.
She can’t guarantee Arianna’s safety against other supers coming with him or bullets, so getting Arianna to the safe room is a good move on her part. Staying to fight them by herself is risky, unless she knows (via her earbud) that more help is coming soon. I suspect we’ll see them start to counter her JUST as re-enforcements show up. :D
I’m kind’a thinking here that Varia’s immediate next move should be to grab Fire Guy. Whatever power she gets from him, she should have instant immunity from whatever he attempts. With her military training, she can keep pounding him senseless while maintaining her grip long enough to put him out for a long time.
I mean, a fire extinguisher to the face would do for most people, but he is a super. So, best to make certain.
That wouldn’t work. Varia gets a random power and FireGuy gets immunity to *that* random power Varia got. FireGuy still has his own fire powers and most likely Varia will not get immunity to those…
Down to Hades you go! (Stomping three times was the traditional way to get the King of the Dead’s attention…)
Be careful where you stomp: on the ceiling you get Tony Orlando :P
If Varia gets cold powers from Heatwave, it seems logical the same could happen with this guy.
That would give Varia exactly the ticket to neutralize this mook.
The person she’s touching becomes immune to her abilities.
So no, it won’t
But it does. She doesn’t need to hit the guy with ice, she just needs to shut down his fire to protect the building. In fact, having him be immune is the ideal outcome, because she can be reckless with her aim and still get a flawless no-injury, no-collateral takedown.
Not to mention the possibility of taking a prisoner who may have useful intel.
All that said, though, Heatwave should be somewhere nearby-ish, and able to run…er, fire-control?
(Not what that actually means >_<‘ )
Doesn’t work that way. The “element” isn’t important. Varia only gets similar (not necessarily duplicate) powers from people who are directly genetically related. So off Magma-skin there, she could get anything, like maybe static electricity powers (because volcanos that put out ash clouds generated internal lightning). Also her gained power doesn’t on the person she’s touching.
What we don’t know is if she also becomes immune to their power. I don’t think she’s ever touched an elemental yet.
This guy may also not have viable “skin”. Varia can’t get anything off Maxima. I’d presume she also wouldn’t power-up off Marble Maiden for similar reasons (if they ever meet).
Nonsense.
She gets cold off Heatwave, electromagnetism off Jiggawatt, and co-teleportation off of Harem.
And that weird vampire-monster thing, off of…what-her-name, Ingval’s childe, at the club.
Clearly, there’s a pattern here. Given the situation, I’d say it’s her best move. If Archon’s leadership is half as smart as we give them credit for being, she’s been trained in grappling for exactly this reason.
We don’t have sufficient in-comic data to establish patterns beyond what Varia herself has said. That, “if it’s another super, the power I get usually has something to do with theirs. [*]Not always though.[*].”
Heat/Fire powers != always Cold/Ice powers.
Like with Ren, she becomes a “lightning golem”. And again, no in-universe examples (yet) of Varia grabbing powers off a Human Torch, Blight, or Ebon-Streak type.
Again: she has to touch their bare skin, if his power gives him magma skin, would she even be able to touch it before her hand melts?
Also, they may gain immunity to whatever Gestalt gives her, but does she gain immunity to their base power (we know Heatwave gives her the cold shoulder, but that was while she was powered-down, and every one else we have seen her touch has had normal skin even when powered up)
Having clocked and been clocked with an extinguisher I’m all too familiar with the feeling and sound. @.o
Story time!!!
Someone has to have asked this before me. But why have the building sprinklers not gone off yet?
Either jammed by the same thing that took out the internet or Heatwave kept setting them off by accident, so they are set for far higher threshold than most places would be.
And sprinklers? I am betting on firefighting foam of some kind instead of water.
The bad guys have already managed to shut down all communications within the building. It’s not that much of a stretch to assume that they’ve also shut down fire suppression systems, etc.
If I had to guess, probably because fire dude hasn’t gotten up close and personal with them. Fire sprinklers are set off by heat, not smoke and each sprinkler head goes off individually. For all we know, they’ve gone off in places we can’t see because they’ve been on fire longer.
1) Sprinkler systems are set off by heat, not smoke.
2) Each head goes off individually.
Full explanation here: https://www.guardianfireprotection.com/blog/how-do-fire-sprinklers-work/
Given point two, for all we know the sprinklers have gone off in areas we can’t see because they’ve been on fire longer.
It depends on whether the sprinkler system is wet or dry. https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Publications-and-media/Blogs-Landing-Page/NFPA-Today/Blog-Posts/2021/03/26/Sprinkler-System-Basics-Types-of-Sprinkler-Systems?icid=W483 A wet system works as described with temperature sensors at the sprinkler heads turning on the flow at the head when a specified temperature is reached. With a dry system, the pipes to the sprinkler heads are not filled with water until an automatic valve is opened, normally triggered by a sensor separate from the sprinkler heads. You can still have a temperature sensor in the sprinkler head so that the flow won’t occur until the valve opens and the sprinkler head reaches the specified temperature.
Different situations get different types of systems, with the fire suppressant being water, halon, carbon dioxide (normally for unoccupied machine spaces with a delay to allow people to evacuate since pure carbon dioxide will kill you as well as the flames), water based foam, or some other material.
With regard to the lack of flow from the sprinkler heads, its also possible that flamehead melted the pipes.
It depends on whether the sprinkler system is wet or dry. https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Publications-and-media/Blogs-Landing-Page/NFPA-Today/Blog-Posts/2021/03/26/Sprinkler-System-Basics-Types-of-Sprinkler-Systems?icid=W483 A wet system works as described with temperature sensors at the sprinkler heads turning on the flow at the head when a specified temperature is reached. With a dry system, the pipes to the sprinkler heads are not filled with water until an automatic valve is opened, normally triggered by a sensor separate from the sprinkler heads. You can still have a temperature sensor in the sprinkler head so that the flow won’t occur until the valve opens and the sprinkler head reaches the specified temperature.
Different situations get different types of systems, with the fire suppressant being water, halon, carbon dioxide (normally for unoccupied machine spaces with a delay to allow people to evacuate since pure carbon dioxide will kill you as well as the flames), water based foam, or some other material.
With regard to the lack of flow from the sprinkler heads, it’s also possible that flamehead melted the pipes.
My daughter once asked if everything is an engineering problem to me. I thought about it a minute, and then said yes.
The whole system doesn’t activate all at once. This is true of real-life systems.
1) The sprinklers are set off by heat, not smoke (and it’s not instantaneous)
2) Each sprinkler head goes off individually.
It’s entirely possible that the fire suppression has gone off in areas that have been on fire longer, and we just haven’t been shown them.
Fire sprinkler systems don’t work the way they’re portrayed in movies or on TV.
1) They’re set off by heat, not smoke, and it’s not instantaneous.
2) Each sprinkler head goes off independently.
It’s entirely possible that the sprinklers have gone off in areas that have been on fire longer, and we just haven’t been show them.
Could you repeat that?
Sorry about that. I’d type up a comment, post it and have it not show up, so I’d try again. Now it’s several hours later and they’ve all shown up.
Yeah this forum is funny like that. I think it’s part of its charm.
As long as you didn’t get an error message, count on it just being slow to update (personally starting to believe they are being batch-loaded at set times, like maybe every five or ten minutes every post made since last upload gets loaded)
I think it keeps the flame wars on ice.
The incandescence coming off the wall would be roughly 1000C more than ample to trigger the FPS.
A standard response system would activate in about 60 to 90 seconds.
This is an office building so it would be using a fast response system so reduce that time about 20 % or so, say 35 to 70 seconds. The incandescence shows the thermal load would probably push that down to the low end.
We’ve had the first shot, the long aarrhh, the wtf, the knife toss, the drag and dump in the hole, the second shot, the frrsh-ssssh and finally the face klang; so the FPS would have to be really close to activation.
In fact I believe that the last panel shows the FPS finally spraying.
nope… not enough Wet T-Shirt/Foam Party effect…. ;)
Actually they would have disabled/bypassed/hacked the central fire detection/alarm unit.
Those things have the nasty habit of Talking to Other Places, and aren’t something you want to go off when you’re short on time and high on avoiding unnecessary alerts outside of the theatre of operation.
Unless you use magic to invoke the law of similarity and trigger them all at once to help ground out an area of effect magic field allowing a light sensitive fae force attack. Bonus points to whoever identifies the wizard who did this. :D
That just SOUNDS like something Harry Dresden would do.
We have a winner. :) I owe you a Small Favor.
why wasn’t there more than one season of it? It was an awesome show.
the books were so much better. especially the later books. when are we getting another. (puppy dog eyes)
Depends on the system. One building I worked in had a sprinkler system that had about 5 psi of pressure in it. Each sprinkler was blocked by a little glass vial of liquid. Liquid gets too hot, vial bursts, sprinkler starts. Here’s the kicker though – as soon as a sprinkler starts the 5 psi drops to nothing. That triggers some big ass pumps near a huge tank, about 200 psi crashes through the whole system blowing the little vials out of every sprinkler. They all start.
This sort of system is used where a fire would be a Very Bad Thing.
yeah, the system we use at work is a really, really REALLY old one where the actual sprinkler pipes are Dry, with about 40 PSI of continuous AIR pressure, when the glass vial melts due to the heat, or if it accidentally gets hit and shatters, the air pressure goes away and the loss of pressure is what lets a Water valve open, filling the pipes, and like the other system, blows out the rest of the vials in that set of pipes… we actually have to be careful when we do maintenance on our air compressor system, because if we shut them off for too long, the sprinklers may go off due to various tiny air leaks in the rest of the air system…
I talked to someone who was offered a chance to be in a building where they tested the sprinkler flow for a water system. its not a gentle rain. its a flood, goes to hard to walk in instant soaking.
Well, be won’t be getting up anytime soon
Max does boot to the head, Varia does extinguisher to the face.
I really hope Math is there,because him alone could probably deal with all the Mercs they brought with them.
quit having a knifefight with the flamethrower guy
Considering some of the REAL LIFE super charged extinguishers I have seen in places? I personally doubt hat a portable Halon system would be very effective against anything larger than a grease fire, but I HAVE seen those for sale. And odder things.
I am not going to quibble. Fire guy deserved that and SO MUCH more.
Yeah, my preferred fire control method is. Well problematic for building and structures in general. It involves 207# of cast steel and Trinitrotoluene or TNT for those who didn’t know. You insert that into the ground next to the fire at about 1,800fps and you deploy the firefighting feature a couple millisecond after it hits the ground.
Just the thing for busted oil wells. I have never seen one of those up close, but I heard stories while I was a paramedic.
Most people do not realize, but explosives often DO put out fires very nicely. All the O2 goes away for an instant. THEN you get to clean up the mess. I learned a lot more than I should have as a civilian about things that go ‘bang’ and ‘boom’. But that was growing up in house with an Army Combat Engineer as a Dad.
Hope she finds her other shoe.
It will drop next to her, you can still see it in that panel
no, I think we’ll be waiting at least a week for the other shoe to drop.
One thing to remember about real-life flamethrowers is that it is basically throwing highly flammable fuel, which is particularly difficult to extinguish as it keeps burning and heating up. There is a question, what a pyrokineticist throws around, but it surely does not contain any kind of fuel that would keep on burning. So lowering the temperature with whatever means available might actually work and any kind of gas extinguisher would do just that and what Varia used kind of does look like a gas extinguisher as there is no foam or powder visible.
Yeah. It is odd. What it is throwing doesn’t look like Water, CO2, dry chemical or foam. I have seen and used all of those in training and in real life.
Then again, this IS Archon we are talking about and Heatwave IS in residence, so… Would they have a ‘normal’ fire extinguisher or some ‘super’ version?
Just from the colouring on the canister it looks like an ABE extinguisher, also the hose looks like a powder dispenser and it’s a really common type for general fires.
Yeah, it kind of does look like and ABE one on second glance, but that just makes me VERY suspicious of the author when he makes something look to mundane in a headquarters for superheros.
Especially when one of those plays with fire.
I was thinking about this this morning. a blast of gas or foam or whatever against liquid fuel isn’t going to do much unless you can amp the pressure and sustain it for a good while, but while that applies to the Mythbusters example it doesn’t necessarily apply here. I figure pyrokinetics can mostly work by either launching parts of the user’s body (probably as a small stream or mist of fine particles) that act as fuel for the flame, or else by manipulating the chemistry of the air to concentrate the more flammable gasses and keep the reaction going. A regular extinguisher probably works pretty well against the second type and could work against the first type depending on how dense the stream is.
I hope for Arianna that there was something down there to break her fall, otherwise she may well have broken her back
Her fall direction is very bad news for her. She may also need to have the pelvic bones wired back together.
Bahstin accent just puts the Rs elsewhere, as in places like Cuver and Afriker, and drops other letters, as in pam tree.
I imagine the redoubt entry points are designed for multiple modes of entry, including diving through or falling. Especially when they open like a trap door. :D
Her fall direction is very bad news for her. She may also need to have the pelvic bones wired back together.
Bahstin accent just puts the Rs elsewhere, as in places like Cuver and Afriker, and drops other letters, as in pam tree. I write from scenic Wistuh (Worcester) Massachusetts.
Always thought it was “Wuster” (sounds like ‘puss’, not ‘pus’) for those who can’t pronounce it English-ly
Given the expected entry method I’m going to go ahead and assume that there are thick gym pads below.
Yeah it’s not a problem, there’s a Chuck E Cheeze directly under the breakroom and that hatch leads directly to the ball pit, so there’s plenty of kids to break her fall.
Figure that anyone who can plan a redoubt can also plan for the slide to terminate in a soft landing. I wouldn’t want to clip the edge of the opening but better that than getting fried.
Nothing Doc Chevy can’t fix.
a lot depends on the flame mechanism. the Mythbusters used a regular extinguisher first. against a flaming liquid sprayer (flame thrower).. it did not do well. if the guy is primarily throwing heat then a co2 extinguisher would have more success. also, this wins points for both creativity (MacGyver scale) and rule of cool. (pun fully intended.) so its a good play. besides, imagine writing the year end review and you get to say- saved head of HR, clocked fire powered invader with mostly empty fire extinguisher. would this qualify for a raise? maybe a promotion? Its not walking on water but its gotta be worth something.
“Tuesday”. If Varia were an unpowered person up against a parahuman it would be worth points, but as a Supe? it’s worth a “Tuesday”.
At that point in time she IS unpowered, she is not touching anyone to actually gain a power.
Hopefully that’s a knockout and she can grab his hand for something useful to use on the others. I can’t she’d get a power that would somehow work against him with the built in immunity, but I guess she might get something that makes her immune to his fire attacks, or to counter them if they’re used on someone else.
If it’s not a knockout, it’s certainly a lesson in why you wear proper head gear and not some stylish, villain mask that doesn’t protect squat.
Don’t be a dimwitted hero. It only takes a moment to make sure he’s dead
Double Tap, always double tap, from a distance
Flame throwers put out a pressurized stream of flammable liquid. The flames are just on the surface. The stream has weight and substance and even then they have a limited range.
This guy seems to be shooting out pure flame, which has to be controlled by his power or otherwise it would just puff up into a big ball. So distracting him with anything would likely affect his flame, and he’s likely pre-conditioned to think of a fire-extinguisher as a bad thing.
Archon fire extinguishers have to deal with Heatwave accidents, they probably are overcharged.
“Does Sydney know about the secret tunnel in the breakroom? They’re… getting around to telling her.”
I can see that – she would definitely have to ‘try it out’ way too many times.
Maybe have smoke alarms and sprinklers for further Heatwave mishaps..?!?
I’m told that, in supervillains, teeth are overrated…
That and not having them makes you more popular with the fellow prisoners once you go to Club Fed.
No brightly coloured glass balls full of carbon-tet hung decoratively on the walls to throw at just such an intruder ? Those are handy for putting fire based supers out and gassing them at the same time when the heat turns it into phosgene :)
With all the tech, surprised there’s no halon systems deploying.
Halon kills people.
So does CO2 and ABE if they get enough of it in their lungs. Halon is FAR more dangerous, but not even close to the MOST dangerous fire suppressant out there these days.
There are some SCARY things in the fire suppressant category, but Halon got the worst press. Admittedly, it deserved that bad press.
In fact, Halon is pretty non-toxic at any concentration that doesn’t kill you by just displacing oxygen. It got a lot of bad press, and manufacture got banned, because as a chlorofluorocarbon it was associated with Ozone depletion. It’s still used in key applications, though, until world supplies including recycling run out. It’s especially popular with… the military!
You would in any case where it was in use be more endangered by the smoke from the fire it was putting out.
https://www.firetrace.com/fire-protection-blog/why-is-halon-banned
Mr. Flamey seems to be throwing out heat, which then sets things on fire. Even with a Halon system, he could keep doing damage, he just couldn’t make the damage self-sustaining.
Don’t bring evil things like FACTS in here.
*mutter*
Next thing, you might start with LOGIC and THEN where would we be?
Oh goodness, who let the sensible people in?
the same person who let the dogs out.
STEEEVE
Yeah, when i was in the Navy we had Halon systems for the engine and boilers rooms (steam ship) and while they didn’t go too much into the Ozone Layer aspect of it, they taught us that an accidental release with no fire wouldn’t kill you as Halon is non-toxic… Yeah!… You’d STILL want to get the heck out of the space because of the pressure change as well as the air being replaced rapidly with Halon as it’s being released… and in a “real” instance, the HALON wouldn’t be what killed you… It would be the TOXIC BYPRODUCTS that occur AFTER the Halon has interacted with a fire and extinguished it…
But the fire goes out.
Kind of important on a ship, right?
Okay, does the commenting system have problems with links? Because I’ve tried posting twice with a link to an explanation of how fire sprinklers work at a site called fireguardianprotection.com and neither post has shown up.
Anyway, the tl;dr is
1) fire sprinklers are set off by heat, not smoke (and it’s not instantaneous)
2) each sprinkler head goes off individually.
That means that it’s entirely possible that the sprinklers have gone off in places that have been on fire for a while and we haven’t seen it because we haven’t been shown those areas.
Yeah, stop doing that.
Two is forgivable, five is not.
Patience grasshopper, it takes time to update.
Strange – you tried twice and succeeded 4-5 times.
Quoth the Raven and all that.
I think PyroNoob here still needs to see his fire to direct it; once he was blinded and distracted, the flames goes olut.
aka his lost his concentration check.
So as long as Varia is in contact with another being she has her powers. The moment she doesn’t she loses them. So that is why she is also a skilled hand to hand combatant.
Evil Overlord: ‘Hey they get to put in trap doors for their floors why can’t I?’
Contractor: ‘Because those are panic rooms not Pitfalls Of Doom, we can install panic rooms they just had some special requirements for where. They don’t HAVE to be in the walls.’
The contractor then quietly notes, “Mind, I can’t stop you from removing the pile of foam cubes, and having a second guy install the spikes, once I’ve left. You want a referral for a good spike guy?”
Does Varia lose her powers the moment she stops touching someone?
Yup.
That’s an interesting question, if you think about it. Her ‘power’ is to get EXTRA powers when touching someone.
So, no. She still has that power.
Her EXTRA powers, her gestalt powers, fade away if she isn’t touching someone.
So, yes, she lost her Gestalt powers.
Mythbusters completely ignored that in the video they were ‘testing’ the flamethrower was clearly going to end at he midpoint with or without the extinguisher coming the other way
The more I think about it, the more I realise that Varia’s power (while indisputably the most versatile) is actually pretty weak. Most of the time, unless she is holding on to someone, she is basically just an ordinary soldier. Maybe a bit stronger and more fit than most soldiers (we’ve established that supers are extremely fit, whatever their powerset, right?), but still just a soldier.
I’ve been wondering if you can make blood into a tattoo ink. Because if you can, it would be really interesting to see if it would give Varia multiple powers and/or the ability to choose which powerset to use.
Someday perhaps they’ll find a good Baby Yoda analog to put in an armored backpack for her. :)
I just had a thought, does Varia only get powers from people?
Can anything with a genetic code trigger powers for her? She can get powers from unpowered people, so can she get powers from unpowered animals?
Varia needs to get a parrot to ride on her shoulder and see what happens.
Pirate Varia, Arrgh.
Sydney asked during her intro about carrying around vials with hair samples or some such. If that works, she’d be able to dial up a wide variety of powers with a bit of notice. Even more so if she can have multiple powers, although I’d expect the gestalt effect to modify the actual manifestation of each – which could be awesome or a liability, definitely would want to test that in advance.
Varla’s power is generally a very bad combat power.
But it can be an amazing utility power as she can keep trying people until she gets a power with out-of-combat compounding benefits. Like a self-modification power, a “Tinker” power (think Tony Stark if he was limited to niches of tech, like AI development, vehicles, or modular systems rather than power armor and whatever else he thinks about), or any power with long-range benefits like long range metal or insect control, or portal generation, or metal production akin to the guy who could conjure tons of gold. What if she found a combination that let her conjure thousands of tons of any metal including pure lithium every day?
Her power can be absurdly powerful if she puts her mind to experimenting with it at scale and testing its limits – but it’s not necessarily the kind of power that should be employed as a soldier rather than an engineer, scientist or goddamn factory. Not everyone is a good fit for combat deployments just because they have combat training and a potential for an ok-ish combat superpower.
In the Wearing The Cape cross-over at a convention here in this Universe, Varia has a running “event” to have people queue up just to see what they get as a Gestalt Partner for her… later on, she had to evacuate some con-goers from a battle that broke out in the Dealers Room and mentioned that a specific individual (that was also at the same Con) gave her Force-Field powers and had been “Put on ‘The List'”, so it’s Canon that there IS a list of people she CAN Gestalt with for whatever powers are needed (AND has been tested for) so far… BUT in this instance it won’t do much good as the Partner would need to be gathered up and transported here before they can be any use…
Definitely interesting – potentially as much of a strategic asset as either Max or Halo as it seems like it would only be a matter of time before she ends up with a power with strategic or logistical rather than tactical implications.
Oh come now, who hasn’t wanted to throw Arianna down a hole?
Yeah, Varia… call one of your bosses an idiot and then bodily throw her down a hole. Let’s see how far *that* gets you in the military.
Arianna is part of the civilian management. While technically a boss, and due certain respect, ultimately Maxima is Varia’s superior in the chain of command. Max will probably ding her lightly for the “idiot”, big props for getting Arianna out of combat, and have words later with Arianna. About how Arianna is, in fact, an idiot for that knife throw (however effective it was), and also for brainlessly stepping out into the hallway while the base invasion alarms are wooping.
I think she might get a pass moments after saving Arianna’s life. :) Plus Arianna is not her superior officer or her boss technically.
Varia I know you’re trained and all but you just gave up your super power that made you entirely immune to the other person’s super power. That feels like a bad move.
Yeah, immunity to that power, what about Wall Climber?
i get the feeling the secret tunnels are one of those things that only specific people that have the powerset to be able to trigger them, like its gotta have the right amount of pressure and lets face it, sydney doesnt have the weight to jump up and down on it to trigger it, let alone in a specific time space or pattern.
In defense of Arianna she had the presence of mind to fight back the only way she could. She not only forced flame guy to dodge the knife, thus distracting him momentarily, but he turned his back to her in order to see she, by chance, took out one of his comrades. Turning your back to your opponent is a very bad move. It gave Varia the chance to push Arianna to safety and launch an effective counter attack. Any thing that disrupts the enemy’s plan of attack can be useful.
As for Arianna’s back/hips, I am guessing that is actually an escape slide that leads to the redoubt. It, probably, starts out vertical and then transitions to 45° before leading to a padded landing area. It would be designed to account for people jumping in frantically with not much thought about how they are going to land. Even if that is not the case, one has to be alive for a broken back to be an issue. Dead is dead no matter how you get there.
Look closely at the corner of the trapdoor Arianna is falling through; you can see the chute. I can’t believe an emergency entrance like that, ISN’T designed to have people arrive at almost any angle or orientation. Stamp, fall and slide to a controlled landing.
Pretty sure MythBusters disproved the idea that you can fight a flamethrower with a small fire extinguisher.
Pretty sure Varia should have lost her hair and gotten some 3rd degree burns from that stunt.
if look close at final panel her hair is on fire abit
I am pretty sure that fire guy is using regular flame, not jellied gasoline or whatever mix goes in modern flamethrowers. It is NOT moving like napalm.
And who is to say that Archon’s fire extinguishers are ‘normal’?
Looks like she has also lost her feathers. I’ll bet they smelled when they burned off.
I hope Varia doesn’t have product in her hair. I recall sitting in a Grad Psych Statistics course many years ago. It was a small classroom with only 7-8 people in the course. Brenda, a classmate, had long hair worn in the fluffy 80’s fashion and on this particular day was wearing a fuzzy sweater. Bob was sitting behind her and noticed that she had a string dangling from her sweater. He went to remove it with a flick of his Bic lighter. Things went Woof! and it singed the loose hairs hanging down on her back. Bob patteted it out before it could progress and Brenda turned around to give him a WTF look. It could have been soo much worse but as it was nobody got hurt and it took weeks for Bob to live down his “Gilligan” moment. The professor was standing ten feet away and was oblivious to the whole thing. Presently he turned around and said “Do you guys smell something burning?”. So Varia is likely to need a trip to the hair stylist that we met in the melee arc.
my spouse had long hair for years. her hair was fine and could tangle just from someone looking at it. for a significant birthday we went to one of the fanciest restaurants in town. (nationally know steakhouse) we handed them a birthday cake to bring out after our dinner. they lit ALL the candles. it doubled the light level in the room. she foolishly bent over the cake to blow them out. her friend had to pat down the burning hair very fast. she now wears her hair short and if we want to declare the age on a birthday cake we use numbers.