Grrl Power #1236 – Bespoke accommodations
Happy leap comic! If today wasn’t a leap year, it would make zero difference in when you received this page, so… there’s that?
Don’t feel too bad, Sydney. Don’t know you that you’re judged by your enemies’ regard for you? Also your sensibly cautious allies. This containment solution would also work pretty well against mages. At least the ones that need to wiggle their fingers to cast spells. The fact that the chair is obviously designed for someone who is exactly 5 feet tall? You know, mages are from the olden times when people didn’t have as much food and were usually shorter… no, this room was designed for you.
BTW, I know a taser doesn’t really knock people out, at least not for an extended period of time, but when Harem needs someone knocked out immediately, she goes for the taser-sedative combo. Also she just wanted to taze Sydney.
BTW, it’s obnoxious that Noun Taser is spelled with an “s” but Verb Taze is spelled with a “z.” Like, was there a word “tase” that the committee in charge of such things were worried people were going to confuse it with? I know “taser” is actually an acronym for “Tom A. Swift Electric Rifle” but the guy could have done us all a favor and changed his last name to Zwift, so both the noun and verb have a “z” in them. Also there’s a million dudes named “Swift” but probably a lot fewer named “Zwift.” You have to have a unique name if you want to be famous. Imagine if Einstein’s last name was Jones or Smith. Or if Ernst Mach’s last name was something boring like Johnson? Or if it didn’t happen to be cool, and instead was something like Longbottom? The movie Firefox would have been a lot different if Clint Eastwood was like “Let’s push it to Longbottom 4.”
My point is, have a cool name if you’re going to invent or name something.
The new vote incentive is up! This is a bit of a weird one as it’s a character that hasn’t appeared in the comic.
It’s my Ifrit Pathfinder 1e monk, Fray! Ifrits don’t really make great monks in Pathfinder, as player characters they get a +2 to Dex and Cha, but -2 to Wis. For monks, Dex is good, Cha is largely irrelevant, but Wis is important as it can add to your AC and also has something to do with Ki points I think. But I didn’t care. I wanted a character with dark blue/gray skin and glowing orange hair, so that’s what I picked. (I don’t think Ifrit even really have dark skin, so maybe she’s 1/4 Drow? Don’t care. I think she looks cool.) Will she show up in the comic? I mean… maybe? Probably in a Dabbler flashback, but who knows?
As usual, Patreon has her in delicto flagrante.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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This has gotta be stressful considering what happened to her/on her/in her immediate vicinity last time she was in this position.
Cardinal Fang!
Fetch the comfy chair and ths soft cussions, sir?
Better than Captain Fang, ya don’t want that lunatic anywhere near this lunatic, the world as they know it would implode in neon glitter and pastrami-on-rye
Have faith, Syd. Hopefully in the time span you were unconscious and restrained this way, Dabbler recovered from her mana potion OD and she is researching like crazy with Zeph and the other Archon and Shadow Council/Semper Vigilantis mages for ways to forcibly separate a rogue Aetholith from their host.
I doubt demon society would have agreed to grant civil rights to the species without one such method being available to prevent a scenario like the present one of a rogue aetholith abusing their possession abilities. I guess we shall see such an effort ongoing in the next panel or two since there is nothing else Syd and Lapha can do atm but rant at each other so the camera running on them quickly exhausts story value.
Yes, Syd, with your genre knowledge you should not be any surprised that Archon had this kind of contingency prepared for the case you went Dark Halo or more likely a hostile messed with your head as it happened. Mental manipulation scenarios of a hero are a dime a dozen in the genre. I hope you can leverage this to forgive your friends and allies for what they had to do as they work on freeing you from your body hijacker.
I wonder where this padded room lies in reference to other Archon and/or SC/SV facilities.
Congrats, Lapha, you recidivist idiot. Fate gave you a warning and reprieve from attempting to kidnap Max, getting your head on a plate, and barely escaping but you had to double down and try again with Syd. Now you bought life imprisonment in solitary for your sorry ass.
I’m pretty sure Dabbler already knows how to pop out alien siri, she’s just recovering still
There is a method. It is the same Lapha used to get into Parafaits friend.
I am mostly confused why they haven’t done that already. Seems like a thing they do not need Sydney for.
I’m fairly sure mention of that technology included it being illegal or forbidden in some fashion, so it’s not just a quick call and you can have one blipped right over to you.
Or simply they do not have that extractor/container doodad in Archon facility (if they even know about such a thing existing) and have to ask the Shadow Council if they have something like that on hand.
That being said, it is more of a “when” they extract Lapha rather than “if”.
Or rather they don’t have the contact that would make that viable so quickly. Dabbler likely doesn’t have one pre made either apparently. Getting the correct materials and parts doesn’t seem to be a problem for her making practically anything though.
They probably need to acquire the necessary tool first:
“You can’t just grab an Ætholith off of their own head and just balance it on the nearest cylindrical object. Well, first off, you can’t grab them at all. You need special magical wand-caliper thingies, and if you’re caught with those things and no license for them, it’s assumed you’re up to nefarious intent.” https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1229-half-napped/
As Nightmask points out, them being heavily restricted means they’re probably difficult to acquire. Maybe they can get the one Lapha and Garamm used after investigating Tenri’s whereabouts, but that would also take time.
I really hope that Garamm isnt captured. He’s just too fun.
Plus means a possible escape later for Lapha.
I hope Garamm cooperates and ends up performing a heel-face turn.
We already saw that he isn’t fully behind this scheme and has moral concerns, he just got strung along by Lapha, so the setup is there.
Hey, Lapha. Archon has contacts with the Twilight Council, i.e., they can call on archmages. You are a living spell.
Conclusion: no matter how much you shoot your mouth off, you’re done
Flashback to where Sydney told Archon her weakness was mittens.
Not unexpectedly, Sydney is a super hero with the weirdest Kryptonite. Although, I think they went overboard in their efforts to keep her from removing the mittens.
Given the power of her PPO, among other things, that is not overboard, it’s positively UNDER-board.
the orbs are locked up. I hardly think they needed her strapped into a chair with oven mitts locked on her hands, with her hands strapped down with iron bands, all inside of presumably bullet proof glass or plastic boxes. they could have locked the orbs into a bank vault and put a cot next to it since Sydney cant get very far from them.
I disagree. They know she can remote-control the orbs with her mind. Who knows if she can rattle them fast enough to destroy… well… anything like a well-placed diamond edged chainsaw.
They can’t rattle if there is no room to rattle in
At the moment, they can barely klonk against each other
They couldn’t go through concrete when Syd had a lot of motivation to make it happen
The force is enough to hurt somebody but it doesn’t seem to cause huge injuries
Actually, they simply need room, which they didn’t have then nor do they have now
Have we actually seen them do any significant damage to objects by colliding with the object?
I can’t recall a situation where they did. They’ve donked a few people in the head and hit a villain where he lived but I don’t recall anywhere that they did significant damage
Breaking bones? That seems like significant damage to me.
It’s called redundancy and/or preventing having a singular point of failure.
Kinda curious about that: Does it have to be actual skin contact, such that even a coat of paint would stop them from working, or is there some minimum distance from the palm? I’d assume she’d have tested it.
baring change do to xps it’s canon that it has to be skin contact with the orb in the palm of one of her hands.
Lesson learned Syd. At the end of the day these people are not really your friends.
You’re getting out of this but it’s time to plan out out some COUNTER-countermeasures in case someone up the chain decides you’re too much of a liability and orders you “dealt with” later.
And step one on that plan is to take the dammed shield passive already!
She’s too genre savvy for her own good, thinking that because she’s the cute protagonist, nothing really bad will ever happen to her. I would think she’s had enough traumatic superhero experiences already to disabuse her of that notion though. Shield passive would have been my first pick, once I suspected that’s what it was!
No, the lesson here is, that she shouldn’t be thinking herself all that anymore, because literally ANYONE who isn’t stupid enough to announce their presence could body her. She’s needed a reality call for a long time. She felt completely untouchable for the longest time, after all.
Some of them probably really are. But friendship doesn’t mean complete trust, or placing that person above defending yourself or others. Friends don’t let friends go rogue and take over the world, or put it at risk. A hero would want their friends to stop them, because that’s what being hero is all about: placing what’s right above what serves you personally.
Friends don’t plan ahead how to take out their friends.
You can argue Harem tazing her doesn’t mean she wasn’t a friend since it was spur of the moment, and that the “everybody wants to taze you” was 100% a joke, but this? Nope. Not only did they have this room waiting for her but they literally learned of this method from a supervillain that kidnapped her.
I wouldn’t even consider planning a way to take her down to be a problem, in fact it probably makes sense they have some methods of combating enemies like their own team on case any do turn out to be, say double agents or evil or actually fully possessed, or even just of someone else has the same power set.
But the fact that their plan seemed to be going from calm discourse straight to tazing, sedation and full body immobilization with no consideration for the context is pretty screwed up.
Especially when the same result could have been achieved with Sydneys cooperation, it was obvious Lapha didn’t have access to the orbs and didn’t have Sydneys cooperation, so this didn’t need to be handled as a “Halo has gone evil” take down. Harem could have communicated to Sydney that she was going to be sedated for security reasons and not put her through an assault by a team mate and a trauma redux. If nothing else, I’d appreciate Harem getting a dressing down for escalating too hard on a team mate who wasnt the actual threat, especially since it apparantly actually gave Lapha some temporary full control of Sydney. Not that I expect that to happen, I 100% expect this all to be played off as a joke of course.
This whole arc just feels like an excuse to put women in full body straight jackets.
My guess is that Lapha was unaffected by the tasing, so other than being inconvenienced by spasms could still try to move. After all, she does say she already tried to escape.
…but the initial takedown was wildly out of place.
The restraints came out when Sydney became a hostage.
Not really, the balls in the box _might_ have been inspired by what Concretia did but remember that Sydney kept them in the tube initially.
Putting her in a chair with restraints isn’t exactly rare enough that Concretia would be the only inspiration, and the Mittens were something Sydney called out.
If I had a friend who was capable of going wild and causing actual damage you better believe I would have a plan to deal with it while not actually harming the friend. And it would have to be a true friend… for anyone else the plan would be to call the cops.
For a reality-based scenario, imagine a friend who is currently clean but was formerly addicted to narcotics and who was known to get violent when high, and say they have kids. If I valued the friendship, I would absolutely have a plan to protect their kids and/or restrain the addict in the case they went back to drugs in a moment of weakness.
Back to the comic, and weird non-sensical comments aside, Sydney is not being harmed. She is being restrained to keep Lapha from harming Sydney’s body or anyone else. This is actually a trope in comics… a good-guy Super gets processed or someone mentally compromised, and their teammates have to restrain them. Batman, Superman, Hulk… lots of examples of “friends” doing this.
Yet, canonically, in the DC universe Batman has contingency plans to take out pretty much everyone, specifically including his friends and allies. And the smarter ones have similar plans for him.
Real-world, the US military has contingency plans in case we go to war with our neighbors. As, I’m sure, they do for us. Are we likely to go to war with Canada, or invade Mexico (again)? Maybe not. But we have specific, up-to-date plans in case we need to.
Or even more real-world: most police departments have internal affairs divisions, tasked with investigating potential mis- and mal- feasance by their own cops.
Not because they expect the vast majority of their officers to go bad. But because it’s possible, and the potential for harm if they do is so high.
Sydney and her teammates have an astronomically higher possibility of causing problems if any of them go off the rails. Why wouldn’t they take precautions, no matter how unlikely they are to need them?
Especially since on our side of the fourth wall we know that at least one of them – Harem – may already be off the reservation.
We also know, that Daphne is a triple agent: Maxi already knows, and probably authorized, the mission to feed SmugD info, the only thing she didn’t like was Daphne fornicating with him
On the contrary, if you had a friend and you knew this might one day be the only way to prevent her from getting kidnapped, or from being enslaved to someone else’s influence, you’d get ready do it.
Friends don’t let friends drive drunk, and friends also don’t let friends go out and murder people.
You build a roof when the sun shines.
You build a levee when the river isn’t flooding.
You build a storm shelter before the storm.
Plan for the worst, hope for the best.
I would say they certainly ARE her friends. What they’re doing to her prevents her from being kidnapped and, if Lapha’s plan bears out, sold into slavery. A few days sitting in a chair with mittens on is well worth it to Syd, even if she is annoyed.
It was already clear that Lapha’s plan wasn’t going to bear out, because she only had contested control over Sydney’s body.
Sydney has to sleep sometime.
Not for several hours, which may well be enough time to get Lapha out.
Not unpredictably, which means she can put on mittens and go in a locked room when it’s bedtime. There no need for tasering her and letting her wake up in excessive restraints.
they are her friends, but she is also a walking breathing nuke, sydney herself has joked several times about having a plan in case maxima ever goes rogue because she is likely one of the only ones that can actually do something if maxima decides to go to Washington, nuke the white house and declare herself queen of the US
I’m sorry, but what the hell else are they supposed to do? If there wasn’t a failsafe in the orbs for this contingency, the situation would be very, very ugly and likely would have caused accidental civilian casulties as Lapha tried to fight off a team of supers.
The people in Archon are her friends (at least some of them think so), but they’re not together because they are friends but because they have a job to do and take it seriously. Sydney knew that the day she signed up on it. Her getting here means that took that job seriously with her. This treatment sucks but it is better that Sydney suffers some discomfort for a while rather than allow the chance that Lapha discovers a loophole in the orb’s countermeasure against body-snatching. If Lapha takes the orbs to a new client, something far worse than this is likely to await Sydney.
Sure, they have a cell just for her. But they probably have a cell for every member of Archon, including Maxima. Or better, they probably are able to make personalized containment cells for anyone on short notice, with weird supers can come out of the woodwork at any time.
Frankly, I think it should be common practice to have a Z within words pertaining to electric equipment.
Tazer.
Lazer.
Zap.
Buzz.
But “Light Amplification by Ztimulated Emission of Radiation” is hard to pronounce. You need the ‘S’ for ‘Stimulated’.
And you you replaced the ‘st’ with the ‘z’ you’d get ‘zimulated’ which sounds better, but also like a stand-in for ‘simulated’ which sounds like you aren’t _really_ amplifying the light so that’s just a flashlight, not a laser.
Well the people use it it will be changed or added. Look up the word jigawatts. It was added as a synonym to gigawatts due to back to the Future movie
FWIW, ‘taser’ aligns in some sense with Star Trek’s phaser as well as laser. And I have seen ‘tase’ as a verb sometimes.
(tangent warning) I’m guessing either are acceptable now, but it’s always bugged me to see “phase” instead of “faze” (as in “nothing fazes me any more”. I always saw ‘fazed’ as linguistically (or neurologically) related to ‘dazed’ but I was too lazy (heh) to check.
I was certain that Archon had protocols in place for possession. Obviously this is it. (Although I’m sure the mittens are a one-off just for her. That setup can probably be customized for anyone.)
Meanwhile, outside, experts are debating the safest way to free Sydney from her vile thralldom. (Or how to describe her heroic demise in tomorrow’s press release … either/or.)
Sydney may not like it but she understands.
It’s what Batman would have done.
It’s what Batman did do. I believe that it was both in the comics and one of the animated episodes. See https://dc-comics-cinematic-universe.fandom.com/wiki/Batman%27s_Contingency_Plans for a list of exploitable weaknesses.
Check out his contingency plans for Bugs Bunny
I just noticed the mittens. They really did use Syd’s Kryptonite!
This is probably going to be a moment where Syd gets hers for all the secrets and lies of omission she’s been keeping from the government. She’s too dangerous to be allowed to keep secrets, especially if she wants to continue her state of non-not-aliveness.
why? she knows a lot of secrets but she has kept them all and hasnt actually go and told any of them, she has respected the secrets that she knows this whole situation literaly was out of her control she is being posesed by a demon
So the next question is, how to exorcise Lapha?
I think the key is to inflict some sort of sensory torture that makes Lapha WANT to leave the body.
Out of compassion for Sydney, said torture will be administered in the form of vegetarian chili, featuring a hefty dose of Pepper-X.
There exists a tool that can extract her, which Lapha and Garamm used to kidnap Tenri.
“You can’t just grab an Ætholith off of their own head and just balance it on the nearest cylindrical object. Well, first off, you can’t grab them at all. You need special magical wand-caliper thingies, and if you’re caught with those things and no license for them, it’s assumed you’re up to nefarious intent.” https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1229-half-napped/
You… do realise a vegetarian anything wouldn’t bother Sydney, right? She doesn’t eat meat or anything with a cute face
That’s the point, it won’t bother Sydney. The unwelcome guest, however…
I do realize that. The point is to select a form of torture that won’t hurt Sydney but which will be unbearable to almost anyone else.
Except, Lapha isn’t really there, or the stun gun would have, well, stunned her as well
A sedative drug doesn’t work via sensory feedback, so Lapha can feel everything Sydney feels without being affected by a chemical.
(Although one wonders how that relates to her apparently being dropped by the nitrogen earlier …)
Oh don’t be offended. You literally have storybreaker power. They’d be off their rockers not to have contingencies in place to fight you.
Maxima probably has her own tailor-made prison cell too. Ditto Dabbler and every other high-power-leveled teammate.
Nice work in expression on 7-8 panels…
Hmm boring names can be made cool by the person sometimes. Browning springs to mind.
Fear for the day she gets so far along the upgrade tree that she unlocks the ‘use without touching’ function, but for now this is surprisingly effective.
Unless there are some unseen catheters, this doesn’t look like a long term solution. Which is a plus.
Okay, I am bit worried why they haven’t removed Lapha already.
I can undertand Dabbler still being out, but they do have contact to the twilight council.
Whatever method Lapha used to get Parafaits friend out of her body – the council should have those stockpiled.
My best guess is that maybe removing them that way unpleasant for a co-inhabited host. So they are hoping they can talk Lapha into leaving?
It’s only been a few hours of subjective time. Is the Twilight Council HQ in NYC?
Oh….
They’ve removed her Xeno-Tech glasses!
Of course they did. She’s nearly blind without them, so that’s another means to neutralize her. And likely, they will be destroyed and Sid’s going to be in even BIGGER trouble when they discover she was cheating all those marksmanship exams.
Seriously, right now, they have no reason to let her back out, after all the secrets she’s been keeping from the people who are supposed to know EVERY kind of threat. She’s going to be a guest at chateau gulag for a while,. Don’t forget, her decision to nearly cause an international incident at Galatea. (Deus could EASILY have claimed reparations for that giant disk of POISON Syd made there!)
What’s wrong with you? Sydney’s not that blind. Your idea of appropriate punishments is insane. I would hate to live in your world, and I would hope you would too.
She’s not nearly blind without them, that’s been pointed out in the comic in the past
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-206-the-velma-reversal/
You take glasses off somebody when they’re asleep or unconscious because they can fall off and/or be damaged.
They’re unlikely to put the glasses on so they’re unlikely to find out about the tech.
And you’re way over the top in terms of likely consequences anyway, not to mention that the number of lives she’s saved (including Max) gets her a lot of credit. Do you mean Galytn, Deus’ country in Africa, rather than Galatea?
Because allowing Max to capture Darude – who’s tough enough that previously she fought him for 4 hours – is a definite win. Yeah, Deus could have complained theoretically but it’s not exactly like stopping Darude is a terrible thing, he’s wanted for killing 100 US citizens…
except Sydney doesnt keep any secrets (other than stuff like the true capabilities of her orbs which she did tell to maxima to make sure to follow procedure, its a black book secret the goverment is filled with those) and this incident wasnt her doing she was posesed which could have happened to any member of the team including maxima
also what incident at galatyn, sydney helped to stop a rampaging super with enough firepower to fight maxima to a standstill, if sydney didnt do that the fight would have likely leveled at least a couple of city blocks and killed a lot of people and destroyed fundamental infrastructure for galatyn
It’s SOP to remove glasses and anything else that might get damaged or interfere in the restraint process. Even if Harem didn’t know to do it, who ever was involved in transporting Sydney would have pulled her glasses, her choker and any other loose jewelry or accoutrements.
Let’s be honest, would have happened in any other comic regardless of whether she had an alien in her or not at some point.
Ack, reminds me of cover art from The Sword by Luna Brothers. Overdone restraints mon.
So – Lapha can control Sidney’s body while she’s unconscious (“I already tried that while you were out”)
Then – how does knocking Sidney out help subdue lapha-in-Sydney? The taser would limit her movements for a little while, but she would apparently remain conscious; the sedative only affected Sydney’s consciousness, which left Laps conscious and in control of Sydney’s body, right?
Or I suppose it’s Sedative affected Lapha too just not as long
Harem didn’t know it wouldn’t knock out Lapha would be the reason.
So the question is what was Lapha saying or trying to do while Sidney was out cold, we assume Maxima showed up shortly after, and we don’t know how much time has passed…at least long enough to secure Sidney wherever this is.
but hopefully they can/will remove Lapha soon…one being you’d think it a high priority so she doesn’t access more memories and to get Sidney out of this as Sidney technically hasn’t done anything wrong, she was taken hostage. So punishment is unjust on Sidney. And also…given the last time Sidney was tied down to a chair unable to move her hands with her orbs secured some distance behind her…cue PTSD at any moment.
Oh fa God’s sake people, catheters are not necessary. My wife was in a coma for more than a week a few years ago with tubes everywhere BUT NOT a catheter. The modern solution is just a vacuum pump with a long porous filter and you know where it is.
Fray the Monk needs to be a Scaled Fist — uses Charisma instead of Wisdom. ;)
Her science experimentation horrors begin Now. Why? Medicine withdrawal symptoms in 3 2 1…
Entity with her along for the ride is going to experience both Sydney Bound and Unbound at the same time.
Good. Let her sentence be staying like that.
They came to take her away, ha-ha!
So Cardinal Fang forgot the rack AND the comfy chair? I guess good help is hard to come by at ARC.
related to the issue with taser and taze,
I had a frustration with my spell check as it didn’t seem to know what word I meant when I was writing some backstory stuff about my aliens and such…and in fact the wrong misspelled word is likely still in those documents as I assumed by spell check just didn’t recognize the word…
the word is spatial…yeah,,,why is there a t in there? Space, so I had heard the word used so assumed spacial…
Spatial…we have another word…Spat…pronounced like Pat…with an S…and is the past tense of spit…so why would the encompassing word for space related things…be Spat..with an “ial” on the end…
It’s pronounced as an ‘s’ with a lisp: Spashial
Just imagine Sean Connery speaking Captain Kirk’s famous opening line :)
Whoever built this knew that “Sydney” would immediately start bashing her head backwards to either snap her neck or bash her skull… but they thought ahead.
That or they were thinking of her comfort.
Wow. Imprisoning an innocent person. Pretty low.
The intention is to imprison the entity that has taken her hostage. What would you do? Let that entity kidnap her to sell her into slavery somewhere?
As soon as they find a way to eliminate said creature without harming the innocent host, she can return to her duties as a hero.
The intention is clear. The execution flawed.
Harem went straight for an aggressive assault including a taser to the chest and forcefuly drugging her. ARC then doubles down with her waking up in an isolated room, and fully restrained.
I would expect that approach if Halo were the actual threat, that being turned hostile, for whatever reason. and using her orbs.
But in this case Lapha has limited influence on Sydneys body while concious and can’t use the orbs, the worst threat she poses is information security.
This could have been handled without bushwaccking Syndey, with her agreeing to a sedative, cooperating with Harem to take it if Lapha tries to resist and then waking up in a less extreme restraint with her orbs in her cannister and someone on duty when she does wake up.
Are you seriously lacking in mental capacity right now? They have no idea who is occupying Sydney right now, they aren’t even sure it’s not Tenri. And they sure as micro-spittle don’t know how much control they have over Sydney
Sydney is possibly the most power member on the team, and you want to risk everything on her being able, let alone willing, to cooperate? If she managed to get her bubble up in time, there is nothing they could do to get her out, certainly not alive
First off, reel back a bit, I didnt go insulting anyone so why is that you first response?
Second, I am well aware of the threat Sydney COULD pose, she is powerful, but she wasnt being an active threat right then, because Lapha was essentially stuck in place while Sydney was awake and could not get ahold of the orbs. Harem had as much information to that knowledge as we did. The fact that Lapha went for the orbs and failed actually helps this case because it shows Sydney still has full control of them, not the possessing demon.
And thirdly, if you cant trust Sydney to stand down in a situation like this, be restrained and allow security measures to be put in place, then that betrays a distinct lack of trust in her as well. Which sure, that could be something interesting to explore, but i doubt its the direction were going.
But say you are right, and the threat is too great because of the unknowns, I can see that being a judgement someone coming to, but then Harem still put a taser directly to Sydneys chest, rather than and extremity, they still stuck her in a replica of the previous kidnapping attempt, went overboard with the methods of restraint and left her alone in a room to wake up isolated.
Rather than simply leaving her in a room, restrained to a chair or a bed by handcuff and her orbs in the cannister on the other side of a wall, with a guard or attendant on duty to prevent a freak out when she wakes up.
Its excessive is all i am saying.
Sydney has literally just woken up, as in, she has been awake for less than five minutes, even if someone is monitoring (which they would be) it will take about that time for someone to come talk to her
They can’t hear Lapha, for all they know, that was Sydney blurting that out
Shes alone in the middle of the room, heavily restrained and isolated. Its excessive for someone who isnt fully hostile, but rather a person who is their ally, being copiloted by a hostile. She shouldnt be running free sure but Id expect more effort to keep their ally comfortable calm and not panicking.
This would be done by a friendly face in the room but at a safe distance, and sufficient, but not extreme restraint measures (orbs in container or on other side of the wall, and a pair of mittens plus hand cuffs to a chair or bed). They dont need to release her of course, until Lapha is removed, but it would be a lot more reassuring than waking up in a full body binding like that.
Thats my piece said, so im leaving it there.
>Shes alone in the middle of the room, heavily restrained and isolated. Its excessive for someone who isnt fully hostile, but rather a person who is their ally, being copiloted by a hostile.
By what standard?
That thing in her mind was going for the ppo. Remember what that orb can do? That is a weapon of mass destruction. An organization such as ARC doesn’t take chances with that. Act first, apologize later.
I think Sydney would even have WORDS with them later if they didn’t do absolutely everything to restrain her in a situation like this. Again, genre-savvyness means she knows what kind of damage Evil Sydney would be able to do before inevitably having to be killed just to stop her.
She went for the orb, and Sydney showed she still has full control of it and the other orbs, since Lapha couldnt grab them. It wasnt like Sydney had to use one hand to forcefully wrestle the other hand down either, the orbs simply would not allow her to get a hold of them. This was not a “barely holding Lapha back” situation.
So they were not dealing with a true “Evil Sydney” moment, since Sydney still obviously had partial control of her body (which is definitely not the threat) and full control of the orbs. Lapha was effectively neutralized, unable to take control or use Sydneys powers, shown by the fact they were willing to calmly stand and talk for a while without a take down. That is until she started talking about secrets, which is the real reason Harem made the call to escalate and this was done.
For how long? You know how distracted Sydney can get, what happens if she got distracted enough for Laph to gain control even just long enough to activate the Causeway… and she opened it to deep space? or worse!
The conversation was continuing without any apparent concern for what you mentioned, that is until secrets started getting spilled. There wasnt any urgency to do anything UNTIL the secrets were being spilled, so there must have been a trust in Sydney to keep the level of control she had been showing until then.
I also think even Sydney can be trusted to concentrate long enough to allow Harem to restrain and sedate her to neutralize Lapha, if she was told to keep still and allow it to happen. Because shes genre savvy enough to understand the necessity.
But if they cant trust her to concentrate for that, then what the heck are they doing trying to train her to be a super powered police officer?
If you disagree with that assessment fine, im not going to argue this further.
As stated by others, it had been shown the entity couldn’t use the orbs and Sydney had control. What Sydney couldn’t do was remove the entity.
The only reason Sydney isn’t fighting back now, and taking it out on them later (and she won’t) is because they’re not going to get rid of Sydney from the comic.
Just look what innocent people do when there are rightful reasons to detain them now. :p
I almost can’t believe I need to point this out (from Wikipedia) :
Jack Cover, a NASA researcher, began developing the first Taser in 1969. By 1974, Cover had completed the device, which he named TASER, using a loose acronym of the title of the book Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle, a book written by the Stratemeyer Syndicate under the pseudonym Victor Appleton and featuring Cover’s childhood hero, Tom Swift.
The intention is clear. The execution flawed.
Harem went straight for an aggressive assault including a taser to the chest and forcefuly drugging her. ARC then doubles down with her waking up in an isolated room, and fully restrained.
I would expect that approach if Halo were the actual threat, that being turned hostile, for whatever reason. and using her orbs.
But in this case Lapha has limited influence on Sydneys body while concious and can’t use the orbs, the worst threat she poses is information security.
This could have been handled without bushwaccking Syndey, with her agreeing to a sedative, cooperating with Harem to take it if Lapha tries to resist and then waking up in a less extreme restraint with her orbs in her cannister and someone on duty when she does wake up.
Dang, replied to wrong comment.
“Loose lips sink ships” and they know Lapha failed to control an orb on the first attempt, they probably aren’t aware of whether there they gain increased control with time or whether there’s other things she could try to boost control.
When the option is a slaver getting access to something as powerful as the orbs a pre-emptive zap and sedate is a sensible option
You forgot to bring up several facts:
Tom Swift’s history as a character goes back before World War II.
The purple prose is so famous that it got it’s own term, Tom Swifties. “That’s a nice stallion,” Tom said hoarsely. “I love to fly,” Tom said airily.
Why was she passed out again? Stun guns and tasers don’t induce unconsciousness, that’s a bit of tv show and movie based misinformation.
Ah! Just saw the notes on that. Invisible ruffies it is.
From the author notes beneath the comic
“BTW, I know a taser doesn’t really knock people out, at least not for an extended period of time, but when Harem needs someone knocked out immediately, she goes for the taser-sedative combo. Also she just wanted to taze Sydney.”
The one thing missing from this set up, imo, is a voice controlled television.
I mean they gave Vengence (or whatever his name was) a tv and it would distract Sydney and Lapha arguing over which channel to watch
With this information in mind how would I make Archon cells.
Sydney: this.
Harem: heavy hard to remove clothing and pressurized cell in a remote area, anti-teleport sigils
Max: constant stream of heavy fire, underround armored place, armored restraints.
Math: steel walls.
Heatwave: vacuum with breathing apparatus on her.
Dabbler: take her tools(including her cybernetic arm) and do some anti-magic mumbo.
Jiggawatt: basalt walls
Anvil: magnetic floating device or other way to keep her from hitting anything.
Ren: boring room
Mr. Amorphous: hermetically sealed room
Achilles: standard cell
Varia: standard cell with protocols to keep her from touching people
Hiro: armored walls and roof.
Stalward: underground bunker
Max is vulnerable to electricity. I think that would be the better restraint and certainly easier to control and administer to the required level without causing prolonged oxygen deprivation, etc.
Except Max isn’t vulnerable to electricity any more than she is to anything else.
But blasting her with electricity might possibly be cheaper than blasting her with ammo for the same effect – keeping her defence stat as high as possible so she can’t super speed+strength her way out of anything.
But other options might be even better.
Blasting Max with constant electricity forces her to keep her armor up to avoid being taken out, which means her super strength and blasting ability will not manifest and free her.
It’s actually a really good idea.
Well her super strength and blasting abilities will be at their base levels.
How much that helps is rather open to question, even her base levels are pretty impressive (and she can fly which means she wouldn’t be grounded for electricity)
The unknown orb reveals it’s purpose, the hands skitter across the floor and reattach. Right hand to left arm…but look on the bright side. If the hands AND feet had been chopped off it could have gotten weird.
I’d be rather more than a “little” offended – particularly since **everyone** already knew that Lapha can’t actually Use the Orbs… hustling Sydney into a van would’ve been a simple matter.
“It’s nothing personal” they’ll say – after stating how much they’d enjoy doing what they subsequently Did.
Play along until you get out – then tell everyone how much you’re going to enjoy what you subsequently do.
Does everyone already know that?
They saw the orbs move when Lapha went for them, but given that Sydney can control them, Lapha could possibly be doing the same – pretending she can’t use them as a ploy. Also, there’s no assurance that Lapha can’t gain control of the orbs, or realise she simply needs to overpower (or suppress) Sydney in order to become their “new” owner. We don’t know if there is a transition period where the orbs adjust to the ownership and prevent any contact in the meantime. All that is known is that Lapha couldn’t touch them at that specific moment, and she clearly had an intent to use them.
Sydney needed to be incapacitated with absolute urgency, for her own safety and the safety of everyone else. You don’t give the “bad guys” the time to regroup as it were.
Could Lapha threaten the host body? We don’t know. Even if we did know, there’s no telling Harem would have known at that moment either. If Lapha said, “stand back or I’ll kill Sydney”, she would essentially force a hostage stand-off, whereas by taking her out before such a threat can be made prevents her from forcing the issue – it buys them time to learn more and take control of the scene.
Sydney is now somewhere decidedly less public with no unauthorised witnesses.
Didja notice Lapha can control Syd’s body while Syd is out? Didja wonder if Syd has to keep moving the orbs out of the way to prevent her using them? The idea of Lapha in there, potentially able to control those things if Syd’s not around to prevent it, is a pretty scary idea and fully justifies this level of restraint. Syd has to sleep sometimes even when not drugged.
Two people knew and even then, let me ask you a question: how could they know that there isn’t a loophole? For example, could you be certain that Lapha can’t take over once Sydney started holding an orb? They do not know Lapha’s full capabilities and it would be irresponsible to assume that she’ll be reasonable from this point on.
If it was just Sydney’s body involved, yes, this is excessive. But those orbs are easily the most dangerous tool on Earth, at least in terms of the comic’s continuity and one of them can output enough power to rival a nuke. If an asshole got them instead of Sydney and went on a power trip where they declared themselves king of the world, nobody would question that the most efficient solution to that problem would have been killing said asshole.
So yes, this sucks for Sydney but it it is vital that Lapha does not ever get a chance to test the orb’s security measure against body-snatchers ever again. Or to stupidly blurt out any other national security secrets.
So, fun fact, it’s only a Taser if it’s actually made by the Taser company, and shoots darts. Anything else is not a Taser, it’s a “stun gun”.
Also, it IS supposed to be “tasing” or “tased”, with an S. The word is a back-formation from the Taser name.
Using a Z is basically the same as people spelling “laser” with a Z. In both cases, the root of the word is an acronym, and spelling them with a Z is incorrect.
And here’s a personal pet peeve. I loathe media depictions of how stun guns and even Tasers work. Always showing them as knocking people out has led to the general public thinking that there’s actual value in something like a stun gun for self-defense, and there really, really isn’t. A Taser is somewhat better, but for civilian use, their actual value is far over-rated. In both cases, their effects wear off nearly instantaneously and they very much don’t knock people out, except occasionally incidentally. A stun gun is largely an annoyance.
I speak from experience. Being hit with a taser hurt a lot. I thought I had been shot, and immediately broke the guy’s arm to stop him from shooting me again. Once he was down I noticed there was no blood and identified the thing in his hand as a taser instead of a pistol. Oops. Dude thought he had an easy way to make people not fight him while he took their wallets. Oops, on both of us.
Y’all are missing the threat a super-powered being represents, and the lack of knowledge in the moment, *and* making a lot of assumptions that seem to err on the side of trust that shouldn’t be given. If Lapha had her own body and was just holding Syd hostage, would you have any problem with the taser-and-drugs takedown of the kidnapper?
Probably not. I think that’s a safe assumption.
It’s the fact that it’s “sydney” wearing the face that’s bugging people – if Lapha suddenly took full physical control, if the orbs immediately started responding, you’re talking about someone who’s more dangerous than a tactical nuke in the middle of a populated area. Even if we assume Harem didn’t see it, Lapha reached for the PPO *first* – as readers, that should be your clue that Lapha may be personable, but isn’t going to care about things like collateral damage. Lapha’s already expressed that her goal is to take control of the orbs using Syd, and nobody knows whether she *can* actually do that in the near term.
In this case, you absolutely stop the threat. Period. Then you work your way backward. That body is not their teammate – it’s an immenent threat to everyone and everything around it. Sydney’s control is nominal at best – and Lapha can take herself hostage through threatening self harm.
The correct response *is* a safe takedown using nonlethal methods straight to incarceration relative to the threat until you can figure things out. It protects your teammate, protects the innocent lives around them, and offers the best chance of recovering everything with minimal potential external harm.
“Lapha didn’t have access to the orbs” *yet*. Nobody knows if she’s going to get them, and if she does this goes from relatively gentle takedown of a friend to a massive superfight in downtown with an extremely powerful villain.
This isn’t some guy on the street – this is one of the premere superpowerful beings in the world who has been bodily compromised. And you all are forgetting that Lapha has the body and hears what Syd does: “I’m going to tase you and put you down now” could just as easily turn into a self-hostage situation with an unkown antagonist.
Is that crease lines indicating it’s a padded cell or is that a tile pattern? It’s overly consistent.
At least she is wearing something warm.
I think Lapha will have a nasty surprise when it finds out that some esoteric bs intergalactic law that would protect an invading ætholith doesn’t apply on earth.
Sydney is basically a military installation herself, a starship armed with weapons of mass destruction. And if you trespass on such installationsm guess what the soldiers will do? Ask nicely that you go home? Oh no… trespassers will be shot.
If Lapha doesn’t leave asap, the military will find a way to kill her. Not harming Sydney will be less important than not having this weapon system fall into the hands of that entity. This is the military and not some church. In the end she will be begging to be taken prisoner in some form of magic container.
How many hours, if not minutes, after her kidnapping by Concretia (recap: that’s where this method came from) was it before her “friends” started construction on this room?
They 100% had that thing set up a day after Sydney demonstrated what the ppo orb can do.
Batman rule number 1: Be prepared for everyone on the team going rogue. The importance of these plans is proportional to the power of that team member.
The plan they have for maxima going rogue is probably pretty extreme.
The problem I have with that is that the anti-Maxima plan is almost certainly a secret to everyone but the highest members of the government. Meanwhile this plan was probably suspected, if not outright known, by most of the team.
What makes you think the plan would be known to most of the team?
Suspected, sure, but then what makes you think team members don’t have ideas about what Archon would do against Dark Maxima?
It has been known since forever that Sydney can’t go beyond a certain distance from the orbs. Concretia was only the first to use that knowledge in practice.