Grrl Power #1116 – Boston express
Okay, there’s a lot of confusion regarding Varia’s powers in the comments. That’s fair, they’re not so straightforward. So, when she touches someone, Varia gets a power (or a power unlocks, no one is quite sure how it works). The person she’s touching doesn’t get any powers, at least not directly. If the power Varia gets is something that would be harmful, like as we saw with Arianna (as established in the Grrl Power crossover in Wearing the Cape 6), Varia gets a fire form, and Arianna gets not-being-burned-by-Varia’s-fire. And any other source of fire, as it happens. (It’s unclear if there were a source of fire that was much hotter than the heat Varia is putting out if Arianna would still be immune to it. To be safe, the team assumes there isn’t an absolute immunity conveyed, just considerable resistance.)
So if Varia turned into Californium 238, (which has a half-life of 21.1 milliseconds), her gestalt partner wouldn’t be harmed by all the gamma radiation and whatever else Cf238 puts out, like probably heat and gossip. They’d probably both be in trouble once she let go, because everything around them would straight up be having a cherenkov rave. Fortunately this has never happened.
Obviously this guy with the Boston Eyes is breaking the rules, but as you see, V-visor there has a hypothesis. That or the guy’s powers are just triggered by stress and he has anime-protagonist-holding-a-woman’s-hand anxiety.
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Well, Phrasic Phail (For Who the Death Tolls) and Portal Chick who isn’t Opal are inconvenient, but is V-Visor going to be Knockoff Cyclops?
You know, the guy Sciona got her useless eyebeam power from?
What eyebeam power?
Well it wasn’t exactly an eyebeam…
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-628-maximas-mfp-attack/
Oh, that one…
This one: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-628-maximas-mfp-attack/
I think you mean the Periwinkle Butt Sniffer? Shouldn’t he be in a holding cell somewhere?
Kevin took the fall for everybody at the Restaurant Rumble. Everybody else was released with a warning, “Please don’t do that again,” unless there were outstanding warrants. It has been a few months since then, so PBS/FWDT should have healed from the injuries he sustained that night, although he might still be sitting gingerly. I wonder if he has come up with a better name.
Well, He Whose Naming Skill Sucks can’t claim innocence because his power would have negated Vehemence’s. However, he never initiated any combat and only defended himself against the team, so I suppose he could have been released, charged with a lesser crime, gotten out on bail etc. It depends on the quality of lawyer he has.
Aggro Aura is subtle – does it even count as an attack? What if he gets a power that would allow him to counter it, but he has to take deliberate action for it, and he didn’t realize he was being manipulated?
And “I was mind controlled into joining by Vehemence” is an in dubio pro reo defense anyway – they walked because Archon couldn’t prove they weren’t. That applies to Phrasic Naming Fail too.
Pretty sure that Beam was stolen from Cthillia the Walking Beholder.
We’ve never seen Cthillia exhibit that power – her death gaze looks and works differently in everything you could name.
We have only seen two of her gaze attacks
Okay, the one she uses in the vault looks much more similar.
Really? I’d say we’ve seen at least three, since I think the heart attack gaze is probably distinct from the force beam she used to breach the vault, which is also probably not the same freezing gaze she used for fire suppression. I can’t remember any others off the top of my head.
Thank you, forgot one of those (honestly, not sure if forgot the force beam used to push through into the Black Vault or the freezer burn :( )
Who says this is not Opal…and the other guy Vector in a purposefully misleading outfits? They seemd to form some kind of group from the very start. On the other hand, they probably are too closely connected to Deus and I doubt that he would employ or approve such a blatant scheme as attacking Archon HQ directly.
Might be Opal, but Ad-Visor is most certainly not Vektor (face is completely wrong, even taking into considerationing Artistic Drift)
It’s not Opal, her portals look and work different. Her face too. And Vekter has a paler skin color than this guy.
Oh hey, it’s the guy with googly eyes on his skull mask!
Looks like the bad guys figured they needed to act pretty quick once a couple of Goon Squad guys got taken out. Unless they had the drop on them the whole time and have been waiting for their moment but more likely a Goon Squad informed them he’d had two of his selves taken out or someone finally checked the interrogation room.
So pre-attack objectives were:
1. Disable self-destruct: Chimyriad was on it
2. Deal with prisoners who have incendiary insurance devices: Escape method obtained but complicated by discovery by 3 supers and possibly whatever their wristbands do
3. Prevent escape via 3 escape tunnels: Possibly moot if the Ascenders have a teleporting super
Finally: Is that “For Whom the Bell Tolls”?
I don’t like the faceoff they have here but at least Harem can report the situation immediately.
3. If the portaller can be taken down or distracted, the tunnels become relevant again.
Smart thing to do would be to have already evacuated everyone before revealing they know they’re under attack, except for those who are going to try to fight, so that at this point the only ones still there are these three. And also having wiped any relevant data, destroyed evidence, etc.
Of course, I don’t expect these guys to have *been* that smart, since their previous behavior has not indicated particular brilliance in their strategies or genre-savvy like Deus.
Do they even know they’re under attack? As opposed to dealing with a heist trying to extract the prisoners? In which case they want to react before the prisoners can get away.
For Whom the Death Tolls. It’s a phrasic portmanteau! … (dork alert) …
More likely it was about the loss of cameras when Jiggawatt blasted them. Ted’s candy clones appear to be pretty independent once generated.
Jigga just zapped the cameras to freeze their frame. Whatever the cameras were last looking at will be stuck in the shot. Of course, if thats her zapping them, possibly not helpful.
He seems to at least know when his clones die, since he knows about the minigun bayonet.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1071-goon-life-and-death/
Yeah, it notes his intelligence diminishes with the splits and each one also seems like it might have some separate knowledge from the other. Bits and pieces they didn’t get from the original or maybe different things they’ve seen or thought of after the split. But it looks like the knowledge might come back to the original at least, maybe even to all the “Goons” once one of them is killed. We’ve only seen that one Goon confirm knowledge of others but its uncertain if he was the primary Goon Squad or just another Goon.
So even though there’s not necessarily an ethical reason to avoid killing them, there certainly seems to be a tactical reason for knocking them out instead.
Is… is that the Death Tolls guy?
Looks like him
Aka “Skeletor” aka “the Periwinkle Butt Sniffer”.
No. That’s Periwinkle Butt Sniffer.
Boston: also home to the Millers River Potato Monument. Pirato potato potato potato.
Awesome, finallly we see Death Toll again (Hopefully with a better moniker). Though it makes me wonder, how would his powers go against Varia?
Unless you mean what would happen if Varia grabbed him, I doubt Varia would be much trouble for him to deal with. His power is Nemesis, and she only has one power set at a time.
Unless it’s immunity to powers altogether or something.
For supers, her power set is usually related in some way, so it wouldn’t be out of the question for her to counter him or at least end in a stalemate.
Maybe he gets a power that stops her from touching people, therefore countering her.
I wonder how the Periwinkle Butt Sniffer’s power would work if someone attack him with, for example, a baseball bat?
His power is to counter any single attack against him.
Depends on simply touching him is considered an attack, I’d guess?
He was unable to counter Harem teleporting in to put stuff on him, so probably not. I’d gues he gets a counterpower once Varia uses her new power to attack him.
True. Although sometimes touching could be an attack – like if Rogue from the X-Men was to touch him – he’d probably counter THAT, because Rogue’s power is offensive when touching someone. Varia’s is not offensive or dangerous – at least not to the person she touches.
If anything, Varia touching him would probably make him immune to whatever power Varia has, just like Arianna is immune to fire when Varia touches her. So his Nemesis power would likely not work on Varia since it’s not an attack on the person she’s actually touching.
Now, I could be wrong, but middle guy looks a lot like For Whom The Bell Tolls.
And Sydney’s not here to put googly eyes on his mask this time.
The death tolls, but yes
It almost certainly is that loser. However, Arc-SWAT members presumably all know that he can’t do anything to them if they don’t attack him (and Harem was there when the fight happened, while Jiggawatt was countered by him herself)
That only works if a). His compatriots don’t force an altercation and b) his powers haven’t evolved since the superbrawl. I would guess that B is pretty iffy, considering what the Ascension-ers have been up to.
What if his teammates attack him to give him powers he can then use against ArcSWAT?
So I see For Whom the Stupid Name Tolls is back lol. I hope someone remembers him and trolls him hard.
“For Whom The Death Trolls.”
“Death Row Tull”
Dang it, no upvote button. Consider yourself upvoted metaphysically, online. Would that be metametically?
Nice!
Periwinkle Butt Sniffer! Mind you, the Ascension folks probably do have a publicity department, so he may have a better name by now.
Considering they are a secret organization, they probably don’t have a publicity department.
Or at least they’re not very good at their jobs.
Oh god it’s for whom the bell tolls again.
Hey! The grand return of the Periwinkle Butt Sniffer!
I love how everyone now remembers this guy as ‘the Periwinkle Butt Sniffer’
Archon has a PR department. Periwinkle But Sniffer does not.
Oh hey, it’s The Periwinkle Butt-Sniffer!
Also, the non-standard masks & capes pretty instantly indicate these are probably not mooks.
Except for BPS.
That guy is totally a mook.
*shares the popcorn*
Oh thanks. popcorn is in short supply in the US right now.
Actually that guy wearing something that looks similar to (but not exactly same as) Death Tolls’ attire looks like a good move: if he is indeed Death Tolls, then he is harmless normally but deadly if attacked. However, if he is NOT real Death Tolls and just faking it, then he won’t have supreme defenses yet may have some other powers. Either way, ARC will be wary of attacking him
Maybe the skull mask is a symbol of rank or membership in an elite group. You could have a cadre of these guys, all with death themed names.
Calling it now, one of those guys is Deus
Deus is on his way to being King of Africa, with his own superpowered army and alien technology. These guys are too small-time for him.
Was thinking that as well, has to be Butt-sniffer
Nah, this isn’t Deus’ style.
Maybe. But VVV (Violet V-Visor) still has this Deus vibe.
They’re both the smug corporate type.
Maybe we should call him the Corporate Ad-Visor.
excellent. well done.
They don’t have the chin.
OK, if this is HIS power in some sense, then there is still an additional power that Varia is getting from him. It is probably something to do with controlling where the portal opens, since this first portal opened in her hometown, which otherwise seems like a pretty ridiculous coincidence. If this is the case, then I think the best play here is probably opening a new portal right next to Max and all the rest.
Maybe she gets the power to give him the power to open portals but only to the hometown of the first person touching him.
I like to think at some point he’s going to be called “forty” instead of for whom the bell tolls because “for thee” is the much shorter punchline but if anyone ever said it aloud someone is guaranteed to hear it as “forty.”
Particularly if Varia was involved somehow.
And Sydney would turn it into “Frothy”
“he has anime-protagonist-holding-a-woman’s-hand anxiety.”
so no nose bleed to go with that trope Dave?
I ask because it would fit in with medically altered person
s first usage of a Power.
I’m not sorry, every cape wearer needs to be made an abject example of. Of why you drop the dang cape if you are going into a fight or doing anything around moving parts and puppies. Seriously, our union got all up in the boss’s face on this subject. Changed his toon about not just the staff, but his own cape.
But they’re not just capes – they’re cowls! Cowls help with looking intimidating!
Wait, no happy hours? What?
Yeesh!
Molasses flood – what a weird way to go. … Do you drown, or suffocate?
Suffocate. Like quicksand but stickier.
yes, but first you get flattened into a pancake. Mmmmm, pancakes.
depends, I suspect they heat the stuff up for industrial operations so, we can add: burned and/or cooked to the list of possible causes of death.
but whatever it is it will be a slow sweet death.
Diabetes, you die from diabetes.
But seriously, suffocate, get bashed around by 12 tons of sugar laden water, basically it acted like a tidal wave.
I feel the severe lack of Sydney since there is no one to go “Pum-pum-puuuum!”
It’s probably worth noting that the new baddies and Periwinkle Butt Sniffer teleported into the holding cell, not to Boston, so getting the prisoners out may still be on the table.
Did they teleport in? Effect looks like the bricks were moved somehow, maybe they just came thru the wall?
I dunno about that. These guys don’t seem very bright, but keeping your prisoners right next door to the wormhole storage room seems like a BIG oversight.
I think it’s just a power that made the hole in the wall, probably the woman’s because her visor has a similar color glow.
Nice supervillain entrance, especially the monolouge. 8/10
Judging by the visuals, the portal power isn’t the same Hench Wench got, so apparently they have two portal supers?
Opal being a third one.
That’s total Opal, with a new mask (in an attempt to hide her identity, just like SmugD thinks wearing that skull mask hides his identity… )
It’s not Opal, Opal’s portals look different. (Assuming you’re serious, I’m never quite sure with you…)
Disregard that, I forget that HW got the portals from someone else, since she used it after was fired.
Hench Wench’s portal power probably was from Opal, under a separate contract, since those effects were visually similar. The new Portal girl has a different special effect, though she is wearing the same purple lipstick…
No, they weren’t visually similar (Smooth purple gateway for Opal, crackling wormhole effect for HW). They were even different in operation (Opal’s portals have side effects from pressure differences, HW was able to port underwater without notable effect.) So it wasn’t from Opal.
Am I the only person who actually LIKED For Whom the DEATH Tolls (AKA Death Toll)? Sure, once Sydney figured him out he didn’t last long, but it DID take most of the team to do so, and he had some style, unlike most of the dorks on that goon squad. (Vehemence is of course in a class of his own and my favorite character aside from Sydney herself, I think).
For me, the real key will be if Death Toll turns out to have learned from his prior experience or not.
I thought that, of all the people at the brawl, he had the power that ARC would most want to recruit (and possibly research the artificial replication of), even given his criminal actions at the brawl. They are nominally a police agency, and his power is totally reactive and enormously effective at neutralizing any given individual with super powers.
I was wondering if he was recruited by this group after they saw him on TV.
Yeah, I loved his interesting power set and flair for the dramatic. I’m excited that he gets to be a menace once more.
> So if Varia turned into Californium 238, (which has a half-life of 21.1 milliseconds), her gestalt partner wouldn’t be harmed by all the gamma radiation and whatever else Cf238 puts out, like probably heat and gossip.
The fireball and the pressure wave too? What about shrapnel from what she was wearing?
Awesome power.
Fireball and pressure wave?
…and exactly what do you suppose would trigger the initial fission?
Spontaneous decay.
Cf238 has a half-life of 21.1ms, which means half of it decays in that time. Automatically. Basically, it decays nearly instantaneously, so all the energy is released at the same time, just like in a nuclear bomb, except it happens automatically.
The released energy is about 80TJ/kg, so ~20kilotons of TNT-equivalent, per kilogram. Californium has a density of ~15g/cm^3, so Varia’s californium body would weigh about a ton. Cf238-Varia would turn into a 20MT explosion.
(For more fun, if she continuously gets turned into Californium, as opposed to just once, we’re talking a continuous blast of 500MT per second.)
Well, actually her partner would just immediately get blasted away, ending the effect early, but there’s still going to be a sizable explosion that kills them both once their skin contact gets forcibly released.
Huh.
Today I learned a thing about nuclear science.
It’s californium 238, it has a tiny chance of emitting a positron and turning into berkelium 238, a 0.2% chance of spitting out an alpha particle and turning into curium 234 and a 99.8% chance of simply going to pieces through spontaneous fission.
The question isn’t “will fission occur?” but rather “is there even enough time for it to go prompt critical?”
I thought the one with the fur collar was Deus,but is he still in Galytn?!?
It’s not Deus. Deus likes to gain loyalty through good treatment, the participants in his own power experiments appear to be happy to work for him afterwards. He would pay people to participate, not kidnap them and lock them up.
Being in Galytn wouldn’t have necessarily precluded that though, since they came through a portal.
Everyone is dismissing Death Toll, but ARC was only able to take him down before by saturating his ability with most of the team. Which isn’t an option currently.
‘but just don’t attack him’. Viable, unless he does something ARC feels they have to stop, such as heading for an alarm or the killswitch for the cells.
Their assumption should be that the alarm is already triggered, since that would be natural to do before portalling in.
ArcSWAT probably don’t see a control panel they recognize as such, or they would be checking it out.
They attacked him with several people, but his weakness was that he can only have ANY power, not EVERY power. Given what we understand of him so far, two people could take him down, so long as their attacks are sufficiently different that he can’t block them in the same way.
But, was it specific to powers? Like, would an ordinary gun kill him?
We know at least that it works against magic, because he got a fire aura against Dabbler’s ice shard attack, which is a magic attack channelled through her sword.
She Who Knows Everything guessed that that aura came from Heatwave, are you now doubting Her intelligence on these matters?
And she was wrong in that instance, so she obviously doesn’t know everything. In fact, she’s been wrong on a number of occasions. Sometimes she just guesses until she gets it right, so she’s probably wrong more often than she’s right. So you’re irritated about something that isn’t even true.
Par for the course, I guess.
She considered it, then quickly discarded it.
Even if I actually believed Sydney was infallible, as opposed to that just being a strawman you made of me, how is that supposed to be a gotcha?
> That or the guy’s powers are just triggered by stress and he has anime-protagonist-holding-a-woman’s-hand anxiety.
But apparently not getting-kidnapped-and-experimented-on-by-supervillains anxiety.
Wouldn’t be much of an anime protagonist if something as minor as that caused a freakout.
But hand-holding? Egad!
Exactly, there’s being in actual danger, and then there’s holding a pretty woman’s hand which is Social Stress and can be much worse than facing physical threats.
Nah, don’t buy it. These guys have not always been the brightest – antagonizing and blackmailing some supers to work for them (Concretia).
Deus has more class and smarts than that.
That snippet is the opposite of the Boston Travel Guide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHQAZkxHYbM&ab_channel=shorisquared (Trust us this is the funniest AMV about a city, and 1000% true.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHQAZkxHYbM&ab_channel=shorisquared
( Assachusetts: A Wicked Good AMV (Anime Boston/NDK 2017 Best Comedy)
The official Boston Travel Guide.
Sorry for the Double Post. Posted originally and nothing popped up, so reposted and it became a double post. So apologizes for that.
Happens all the time. The comment system is extremely laggy after the new comment goes up, so you can expect nothing to show at first.
*trolling razz* “Hey! “Autograph”, I love your music! Is this a free concert?”
“Boston Blick”.
“Blick” is german for “gaze, glimpse, stare”. But it also has meanings along the line of “view, look, glance, sight, vista, squint”.
Not sure about the medical experiments hypothesis. Varia’s gained power could be ‘hand out super powers to others like a loot pinata’.
And yeah, I see Death Tolls hasn’t gained any INT points. You’d think a guy who has no active powers would at least carry a gun to help him prompt supers into doing something.
I think his power doesn’t work if he attacks first – or he could just punch a super to bait powered retaliation.
Clearly what’s happening is that Varia got the ability to give the person she’s touching Go-to-Boston eyes.
but is it fall in Boston?
I myself have never been to Boston in the fall, among many other things I’ve also never done.
have you never been to Greenland or Denver?
Yes, I’ve never been there as well! Nor Moscow or Tampa.
Is it just me, or do the prisoners all seem to be lacking the standard “super” physique?
excellent point – maybe they’re largely (or all) ‘created’ supers?
haven’t seen anyone make that observation yet :-)
They’re likely not supers at all – it seems they’re test subjects for creating supers, but that doesn’t mean the program has been effective yet.
Aside from the lack of super physique, keeping lots of supers contained just with steel bars would hardly work. (We’ve discussed this two pages ago.
It could be they are trying to create supers and this guy’s reaction to Varia is the result? I doubt they have the understanding of how supers are created like Deus has but since they don’t care about the subjects they are trying to “throw the book” at people and see what happens. I’m sure somewhere there’s a lab with half-dead subjects like the one the Riply clone found in “Alien Resurrection”
There are at least two male Archite’s that don’t look like Mr Olympus
Who are you referring to?
Not every male super is going to look like a tank on steroids, and we have seen at least two Archite’s who look similar to the ‘prisoners’ (and no, not talking about Math, who may or may not even be a Super at all)
> and we have seen at least two Archite’s who look similar to the ‘prisoners’
Let me repeat my question: Who are you referring to?
Because my best guess for who you’re thinking of is Vance, who, while not huge, is still extremely ripped, and also not actually confirmed to be a super.
Ren, and someone else that Harem included in her impromptu strip show
Just like not every female super is going to have size Triple-D+ breasts, not every male is gonna be overly-muscled
And the only thing not known about Vance, is what his actual power is
Ren is absolutely super muscled, and the guy in Harem’s strip show is likely Vance, so what I said about him being extremely ripped applies.
So yes, every male super is ripped (and every female super has big breasts.)
I have a Ms. “Mode” on the phone – she said she is upset by some of this week’s villains fashion choices(?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEqwjDDU7js&t=4s
and because it is so so awesome…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GXzCVIvMH0
Pretty sure V-Visor is going to turn out to be Deus.
Nah, they would recognize his voice, and his chin
I took another look after I made the comment. And “For Whom the Death Tolls” is wearing a very similar suit and tie to Deus so I believe Deus is dressed as FWTDT, so he can watch and gloat while FWTDT dressed in a different mask, and acts as the mouthpiece.
There’s also a very good chance Deus has at least one illusionist on staff who can hide who he is, right down to how he sounds.
No.
Just…no.
It is infinitely more likely that VV is to Deus as Justin Hammer is to Tony Stark.
Brother? Evil Uncle?
Varia’s new power could just be the ability to give super powers to other people.
Time to tell Max to stop being subtle.
DUN.. DUN.. DAH……..
You can tell he’s the big boss because he’s wearing fur, Death Toll can act as a shield if he steps in he can counter an attack by acting as a shield. Now I believe fur guy is the telekinetic that attacked Archon headquarters so he’s confident he can handle them. (insert the supervillain dumb genius here) I’m betting he doesn’t realize Max could blast her way in and leave a tunnel they could walk out through, they are only doing it this way to rescue Chimy and try to free any “guests” while they are at it. It would be funny as hell if Death Toll was in fact Chimy and the fight’s going to go south very quickly!
It’s not Vekter, Vekter is shorter and has paler skin. (Also he’s seems to be working for Deus now.)
He was always working for SmugD, just like Opal was
Right, I keep forgetting that the king’s assassination was a flashback.