Grrl Power #615 – Whoops
If I was a superhero, I would buy stock in “construction.” That’s how stocks work, right? Construction and bandages. And moral outrage or racism probably.
Nobody planned Max’s bolt hitting the bridge, but the law of comic book averages meant it was practically predetermined.
Maxima didn’t know Sciona could deflect her shot, and to be fair, neither did Sciona. Maxima might have had more luck with a beam weapon, but to be fair, neither of them knows if she could have deflected that either. I don’t think I’ve ever drawn Max doing a beam attack, have I? Maxima also could have put a shitload more watts into her attack, but she didn’t want to risk washing the cars off the bridge if it missed and hit the water. Or volts. I’m not entirely sure how her powers work. Do cosmic beams have watts even? Or cosmic particle beams?
I like how non-specific “cosmic energy” is. What is that, energy that’s in the cosmos? Isn’t everything in the cosmos? So really all we’re saying is that the beams aren’t made of matter. Unless it’s a particle beam, and then it’s… kind of matter? Little tiny bits of matter. Like a super hot sandblaster, except a much finer grain. So like a super hot powdered sugar blaster.
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Opps! THAT wasn’t supposed to happen!
My very first thought on seeing that was, indeed, Oops…
One of the most dangerous words i know is Oops. If you ever hear me go Oops you should be concerned.
If you ever hear me go Oops… Oh-oh. start running.
You just KNOW Sydney is going to tease Max about that.
ANOTHER Bridge?
I imagine Max is undergoing stress and guilt right now… :-(
+1
Although the combined needs to fight Sciona and rescue people will be dominating her thoughts.
Although if we are to believe Sydney, that she is using the nitro, and Sydney is one of the fastest fliers on the team, it’s safe to say that she might be there showing off her shield in the next few panels.
What do you mean? It was inevitable.
Emergency Cuddle Kittens & Souflee Delivery?
Nice callback to Scraps of Hope Oprhanage & Bunny Rehab:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1223
I NEEEEEED THIS
Personally, I would have rather seen something like this.
:D
+1
I’m reasonably sure we will soon see Sydney shouting “release the kittens!”
That reminds me…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPvH9M4ZHO0
Feral Cat used to behave like that. Now she is cuddled up on my lap, napping. Although I can’t say what might happen if a tasty-looking mutant should enter the room!
Ohhhhhh, that soufflé is NOT going to make it to its destination intact.
Yea, that driver does look kinda peckish.
you are looking for Joule. That is the unit for energy. More Watt can you get if it explodes faster. Volt is a unit for the speed of a electron.
For a beam-weapon, Watts would actually make sense though :)
Also, Volt is a unit for electric potential difference between two positions. From that alone one cannot tell the speed of an electron without additional assumptions.
For a beam, watt/cm^2 is maybe more interesting then watt. for the volts you are right of cause. I was thinking electron volt, as in accelerated in a field with x volt.
I don’t know watt you are talking about.
Yorp gets my volt for best comment.
Of these physics puns I need mho mho mho
Depends on beam shape and intent. Trying to burn something with a sunglass? Pretty important whether the beam is focused (increasing power (watts) per area (m²)), as heat-loss during the process is significant and once ignited in a small spot, the target can itself supply more energy, but won’t if it never gets hot enough anywhere.
Energy transferred in a single strong pulse carrying enough energy to vaporize the target plus surroudings? Doesn’t really matter if the energy is initially transferred to 1mm² or 100cm², in 1 nano-second or in 1/10 of a second.
The difference between a nuclear power plant and a nulcear bomb is mostly the time-scale
And here I go thinking about super-hero Physics instead of writing my Physics thesis… Writers block is annoying :(
Also it turns out, that this comment system doesn’t support unicode smileys ^^’
Aww. 😍
❓
Okay, only the eyes-smiley isn’t rendered. https://emojipedia.org/eyes/ My favorite. I am suffering now :(
I may be able to help. 👀
Or maybe not. The decimal version of the code works, but those were a singularly unimpressive rendering of eyes!
☕ 😊 😻 🎁 🐼 🙏 🍺 👻 🐟 🐺
This is the source that I use. But just be sure to use the decimal options. Experimentation being required to find those that display OK here. They are mostly more limited than the ones you might expect elsewhere.
Couldn’t you write your Physics Thesis on Superhero Physics, though?
I thought the speed of an electron within freely flowing electricity within a conductor was about
1/3 c regardless of voltage.
No, it’s *much* lower
More like feet per minute. Erm – lets put it this way. A mole of electrons is called a Faraday, and is 6.023×10^23 electrons. It’s a common constant, and holds 96485 C of charge.
Many common electrochemical operations, such as the process for production of chlorate from chloride require addition of X number of moles of electrons to the formula.
So, consider a copper wire. Each copper atom has one free electron, so the number of atoms to have a mole of free electrons would be 6.023×10^23. That’s about 63.5 grams of copper.
So, to push a mole of electrons into an electrochemical solution, I’ll have to push the electrons in 63.5 grams of copper into it. If I was using a computer power supply, capable of supplying 5 volts at 12 amps to do this, it would take quite a while. And I’m talking a day or so. 63.5 grams of copper isn’t a very long wire, at 12 amps.
(I THINK I have those figures right. They look right. I did check, as well as I could. Long time since I did anything remotely resembling that. Anyone feel like checking?)
You have the average velocity of electrons in a wire, which is like wind speed. The average speed of a single electron is much higher though.
velocity is given as u=m*s*V/p/Q/f/L
m is the conductor mass (kg)/mol
s is the conductivity (ohm^-1 * m^-1)
V is the voltage
p is the density of the conductor (kg/m^3)
Q is electron charge (1.6 * 10^-19 C)
f is electrons per metal (2 for copper)
L is the distance across which the voltage is being applied
1 volt across 1 meter of copper wire gives a speed of 250 km/s.
If you think of the wire as a pipe and the electrons being balls in the pipe.
As you push an extra ball into one end of the pipe, it pushes one out the other end.
The ball you push in is only going in slowly, as is the one coming out the other end, but the effect of you putting energy into the system at one end is transferred to the other end near instantaneously.
A pulse will travel at about 1/3c, but the electrons are much much much slower
@Baldrickk
Ah, so that’s where I got that number from. Glad to know I got something right.
When dealing with electricity, the speed of “sound” is a substantial fraction of C.
The speed of the individual electrons is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1% of C (depending on the mass of the medium), but they’re mostly stuck very quickly whizzing around protons, not making progress down the “wire” at a macroscopic level.
If you tracked a billion electrons while running current through a wire, the mean position of those electrons would move with a speed proportional to the voltage / meter. In a usual electronic DC circuit, that’s millimeters per *hour*, in an AC circuit, the voltage alternates directions, so they don’t move up and down the wire much at all.
See the wikipedia page Speed_of_electricity
?Additional assumptions or extra measurements? The latter is better.
Joules is the measurement for energy. Watts is energy per time. Energy output can be measured in Watts, but the total energy used, transmitted, etc. is in Joules. Volts is the measure of the the electrical pressure, technically called electrical potential difference.
The actual speed of electricity depends on the electron field strength (voltage) and the resistance of the material. While the actual energy can propagate at .5c to nearly the speed of light, the actual electrons do not move very fast or far at all, a few mm/h, at best. In alternating current, the electrons just kind of jiggle in place, bumping into the next electron and transferring their energy down the line.
Found an old table for the NaCL -> NaCLO3 reaction I was thinking of – at 12 amps at 100% efficiency, you’d get a gram every 14 minutes, according to the multiplier. It would take six moles of electrons to produce one mole of NaCLO3, which would be about 106.5 grams. So a sixth of that would take 248.5 minutes, call it four hours and ten minutes. So stick a copper bus bar you’ve filed down to 63.5 grams to the anode, and in four hours and ten minutes you’ll have pushed the electrons in that bus bar into the solution. A 1/16th by 1/2 (inch) by 9.5 (inch) busbar will be approximately that weight. So the electrons would move 9.5 inches in 4 hours and ten minutes.
Gahhh – absolutely too many years, and I really went behind the barn figuring that out. Seems to be on the right order though.
joule would be the generic for power measurement for Supers given the variety of the energies involved-
One joule in everyday life represents approximately:
The energy required to lift a medium-size tomato (100 g) 1 m vertically from the surface of the Earth.[6]
The energy released when that same tomato falls back down to the ground.
The energy required to accelerate a 1 kg mass at 1 m⋅s−2 through a distance of 1 m.
The heat required to raise the temperature of 1 g of water by 0.24 °C.[7]
The typical energy released as heat by a person at rest every 1/60 s (approximately 17 ms).[8]
The kinetic energy of a 50 kg human moving very slowly (0.2 m/s or 0.72 km/h).
The kinetic energy of a 56 g tennis ball moving at 6 m/s (22 km/h).[9]
The kinetic energy of an object with mass 1 kg moving at √2 ≈ 1.4 m/s.
The amount of electricity required to light a 1 W LED for 1 s.
—stolen from wiki
That’s a nice list.
Psst VultureTX
Are you Santa, in disguise?
A noble and appropriate name indeed.
Darn. I wish I could remember what season I got up to, on red vs blue. I lost a bunch of my bookmarks some time ago. And really don’t fancy having to wade through tons of YouTube videos, just to find where I got up to.
But I, when I free up time, I probably will. It is a good laugh.
The official Red vs Blue website has free playlists for each season and a pretty good summary of each episode. I thought the first few episodes were a good light laugh when I first found it, but the storyline is actually quite good as the show develops – ended up watching it all.
Thanks.
*wags tail appreciatively*
Nerd engineers!
And yet nobody took the grand opportunity to mention E=mc², matter is just yet another form of energy! Whereby “cosmic energy” is a brilliant wording, as it actually says absolutely nothing!
You need to also include the Energy-momentum relation E2 = p2c2 + m2c4
Concrete and steel rebar manufacturers, basically.
And civil & private construction companies. If I had Earth money back while the Autobots and Decepticons were fighting & I went AWOL, that’s were I would have sent it. Well, if i had Daniel the Human to help me work that out at least…
Drama Laws… where the 1% means 100%.
Should we keep a running total of what Maxima has destroyed now?
An apartment wall, a mosque, a parking lot, two bridges, several sets of clothing…
a tank, her nose, random villains shoulder.
Vehemence’s arm
and at least one Mosque.
That was mentioned already.
It bears repeating, repeatedly.
She destroyed a bear?!?
And it gave her indigestion, apparently.
He was trying to steal her pick-a-nick basket. It was not a good idea.
oh yea that too.
A not-insignificant amount of desert along with the tank…
Butt it got its revenge.
Get it? I cracked a joke.
(Don’t see them mentioned yet)
a cell phone
a pair of Harem’s panties, via atomic wedgie (yeah, unmentionables, but still gotta)
I think that was not an apartment but the living room wall in her parents’ duplex house.
I’m sure there’s lots more off screen. She’s done more than her tank melting shot before so she must have used it on something (even if it’s just “17 firing ranges”) :D
Especially when you consider that she was an army field operative in an unknown number of classified field ops before being transfered to ArcSwat.
Oh, and at least one foreign super.
Actually, she was a United States Air Force before transferring to Archon, not Army.
“Don’t expect me to buy dinner every time I blow something up”
A fanboy’s hopes, dreams, and fantasies.
He he. Well played.
On the plus side, of the tally list, Maxima did destroy at least one aspiring villain’s aspirations of making a fortune unopposed.
Incidentally, as he returned to construction, Maxima is kindly providing him a rich source of work, at this very moment.
You know, I’ve always wondered about the feasibility of hitting your own shot in one of these cases. Should be theoretically easy enough since it should be a pretty strait shot by comparison. Idea being to use ether the initial shot or the second shot as a blasting cap to set off the larger of the two shots so that you can effectively control your own detonation rather than detonate on impact. Application would have been to detonate it slightly before it got to Sciona and at the very least try to drop her into the water or blow her up in the shockwave.
I think that, just about now, Maxima would settle for her bolts to detonate on impact.
“You know, I’ve always wondered about the feasibility of hitting your own shot in one of these cases. ”
Besides issues of reacting, reloading, and targeting, well, the second shot has to be able to reach the first shot before it wrecks havok, and the shots have to be able to interact in ways that reduces any havok.
Yeah, it’s no good if all it does is make for a wider spread of mayhem.
Not to mention that if you actually can hit your own shot, the second one would be much more energetic and, therefore, would have much more chances of being able to breach deflector and hit intended target being fired upon. So why not use hyper-velocity second-type shots instead of relatively slow and low energy ones?
And no, “preventing collaterals” doesn’t counts – if you are so inclined to prevent it, you have only two realistic options: either you use projectiles so low-powered that they will be near harmless to anyone (think Imperial Lasgun from W40K), or you use overkill mode on any target you engage (Drukhari Blaster Pistols comes to mind). After all, if target is so powerful that they can survive/dodge/deflect your hypersonic high energy penetrator, collateral damage is inavoidable. Granted, in case of Sciona, she would gladly use livestock as ablation shield and/or deliberately cause injures on industrial scale to anchor and tie up the pursuit – but this is precisely the case here. Accept casualties and move to kill.
If you being bothered by such trites like lives of innocent bystanders, change the battlefield – continue pursuing and harassing target with duds until you clear dangerous area; or establish barrier/dumper field/interphase- or void- shield around you, so any of your projectiles would be automatically destroyed/made inert/phased out upon crossing the safe line; or use smart selective ammo upon engaging the target. Of course, the latter variant demands you to be sufficiently prepared – but oh well!..
Disregard all that, Maxima probably used enough power to evaporate any other target without causing excessive fireworks, and this is classic case of “If you know yourself but not the enemy…”
I mean, in the real world that’s called a radio detonator. A proximity fuse is usually a better bet though, given human reaction speeds and the distances involved in aerial combat.
The only member of the team that has any hope of saving this bridge would be Halo. Maybe Anvil or Hiro could hold up the beams or something but if the cables snap, no one else can stop the bridge from collapsing.
well…Dabbler might have some super space adhesive in her Deus Ex Machina bag…
Sorry that was one of Max’s exploding blasts. You can see in panel 4 one of the large support cables is off. That means the side of the bridge in that section is going down. And Halo has a weight limit of eighteen tons. . . Heh. Can’t catch the bridge. But she can catch that truck.
But, but…. the souffle, they’ll all collapse… Oh the humanity
What about the cuddle kitties? Gotta save the kitties!
The souffles can be replaced relatively easy in a bakery or even a standard domestic kitchen, but to replace the kitties would take breeding stock & much more time! The order must be delivered & there’s probably not enough time left for a kitty breeding program!
The obvious solution is to speed up to them and sew the souffles into parachutes for the kitties!
https://orig00.deviantart.net/6fbf/f/2014/065/b/5/icecream_kitty_strikes_again__by_at_studio-d794u6n.png
this universe, maybe they’ll all just merge into a cuddly souffle kitty
+1 for the pun on collapsing souffles, totally missed that
+2. Likewise!
If Max reacts/moves fast enough she could grab that cable that just pulled out and hold it up until the vehicles get off the bridge and a repair could be made.
+1
Although then there is the minor matter of Sciona flying around unopposed.
Yeah at best she’d be letting Sciona get away.
Not true on definite collapse of the whole bridge. That (left, from our perspective) side of roadbed will break and sag down towards the water but as long as the cable on the right side remains intact it *should* be able to take the strain and prevent a total collapse of the span on that side of the support column, at least for a while. Given which side of the bridge that broken cable is on the traffic on that side is driving AWAY from the sag so that traffic *should* be safe, in terms of not going off the bridge. The sudden drop and change in angle may well cause accidents due to unavoidable swerving though, and says nothing about where the falling cables land. Traffic on the other side of the support pillar may not be able to stop in time and drive right off the broken edge of the roadway though, and thats, um, bad… Rightbound traffic before the support pillar will have swerving and falling debris problems but not as severe, but driving off the end of the roadbed into the river or smashing into the other end of the broken roadbed is definitely possible. Check videos of collapsing bridges on youtube to see what I mean.
The support pillar itself is damaged too, so the other cable on this side is a tossup on collapse depending on the pillars remaining strength, but thats the main span cable that its supporting, which is under more strain than the now-severed shore span, so its not looking good..
Bah, just double-checked, that probably is the main span cable thats severed, and the shore span thats still intact.
Yeah, the main cable on the left being disconnected, that whole span of the bridge between it & the next pylon will sag. There’s also enough damage to the pylon itself that the main cable still attached on the right side may not last long either.
The sagging length of bridge may not tear & collapse immediately, but there will be a sharp tilt in the roadway…Probably dump nearly all of the cars along that span before the road-support structures break & drop tons of steel on top of the cars that fall off…Dunked, then buried. So far though, it looks like only the truck might fall off the bridge…We don’t yet know how many other cars might be along that span of the bridge.
With that much damage to the bridge, I think the rest of the team should stop for this mess, with maybe one flight-capable team member at most, should follow Max. At least Hiro need to keep most flight-members with the bridge though, because it’ll take flight and strength to rescue whoever gets dumped with their cars.
Halo could rescue at least any people inside of one vehicle at a time, by flying into the inside of it, activate her shield to protect the people & provide air. Once she has them protected, she can switch from Air-Orb to Flight Orb again & fly them out with her shield…Even if it takes Hiro some time to move debris from the top, Halo can keep them safe.
Though I can’t see Max, as the indirect author of this disaster, delegating saving its victims to less capable members of the team.
But hey, she’s graduated from ‘overpass under construction’ to ‘suspension bridge in use’!
Her hentorb has enough strength to lift at least any one car, she’d just need to fly and that (depending on how deep the cars are).
Halo’s tentacle can lift 16 tons, so she could rescue several vehicles. Including the one with the kitties!
• Compact Car (e.g. Chrysler PT Cruiser) – average weight of 2.9 tons
• Midsized Cars (e.g. Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme) – average weight of 3.4 tons
• Large Cars – average weight of 4.3 tons
• Compact Trucks or SUVs (e.g. Ford Ranger) – average weight of 3.4 tons
• Midsized Truck or SUV (e.g. Chevrolet Blazer) – average weight of 4.2 tons
• Large Truck or SUV – average weight of 5.4 tons
Source: http://www.junkcarmedics (but can’t link as WordPress has a hissy fit when I try)
a normal car in Europe weights much less then two. Most of us aren’t even allowed to drive anything above 3.5t in Germany. Even the golf 7, that is already quite large weights 1615kg max.
The cars do weigh the same on both sides of the pond, it’s just that the definition of “compact” and “large” is different and that a metric ton is 1000 kg, while the american short ton is 907 kg.
Mmm… Could it be that you confused lbs with kgs?
No. I copied the information directly from a website (and clearly a US one at that, given the models cited). So I would expect that to be in US tons, and thereby matching the weight estimate that Maxima made, by tugging on the tentacle.
And I did not have the http or www in there, I specifically only put in the name! Bad WordPress, don’t make me have to spank you!
https://www.nctcog.org/trans/air/programs/fleet/policy/calculator/type.asp
There you go.
My guess is between 7 and 10 tons range for that type of delivery truck.
Assuming her projectiles are contained by a magnetic torus feild in flight, any Iron or Steel rebar that the bolt passes through or close to will distort enough to pulverize concrete close to it. However the heat dump Basicaly vaporised and melted a lot of that.
In fact a couple of expirimental plasma cutters were modeled to try to do this, but from what I recall it’s a lot cheaper and effective to just use a drill or water jet.
As for that plate on the cable, it’s posible that the cable suspension is partly cosmetic, I know a proposed replacement Bridge on the Mississippi would have had a simular structure, but, that was a steel tower design, not masonry.
Basicaly the problem is that heat from the initial hit would dump into the rest of that part of the tower. Any rebar in there will be hot, probably a lot hotter than the surounding masonry, and the explosive nature of the penitration just dumped too much energy into that top. On top of that the tower now has Asymetrical force pulling the tower from one side. That bridge is basicaly a write off at best.
I was thinking of Halo’s tentacle being able to grab the cable. and maybe the shield to hold it to the post until it can be repaired. I think Max is going to be tied up with Sciona.
It would have to be the other way around (unless Halo can tie her tentacle to it thus ignoring its limited lifting capability). The tentacle’s strength limits it to only 16 tons. Which was less than one of the girders we saw when they were helping out as construction crew. The weight being supported by that cable will be massively more than that.
Ok… let’s review.
Sepending on the structure, to reattach that cable you have to replace vaporised mass, get thermaly distorted material to Basicaly recrystalise in a way that is non fragile,
Basicaly matter replicate a bridge suport on the fly…..seriously they could have done that back at the overpass that Max trashed just a week or so ago…..
At best they will be getting survivors off that bridge. And given that Halo is no Susan Storm Richards that may be tricky.
Time for Sydney to step up her game.
On the plus side we saw that Sydney could easily pick up and carry three team mates, when rushing off to privately disclose her embarrassing diet. Provided the tentacle can form long enough, it should be able to do exactly the same thing with various vehicles.
at least 5. given
It is safest not to assume that the tentacle and Halomobile have the same weight carrying capability (assuming that is what you were referencing). Possibly Halo could lift the entire press corps, and all the sand they were standing on. The latter amounting to a lot more than 16 tons (assuming that the shield formed a whole sphere, for the purposes of this argument).
My argument being that the flyball would be manipulating the gravity (/inertia or however it moves stuff) within the shield. Which is a very different property to physically lifting things with the tentacle.
5 people don’t really weigh that much, unless they are bringing a metric booty load of gear
Yup. So 5 people would not equate to 3 vehicles.
Now if Sydney can get the bunnies and people out of their vehicles and into her bubble, she may be able carry all of them in one go.
All she has to do is make a bunny herding skill roll.
Interesting point, hadn’t thought about the capacity of the flyball vs the lighthook. We know gravity still functions within the shield while flying (everything slides to the bottom), but I can’t think of anything in the comic (or Dave’s comments) that’s shown either way if there is a weight limit to flight. There are some screwy things that happen with the shield – like it can go through solid objects without cutting them; how does she pick up teammates without a section of roof? – but she can’t use all 3 together anyways. Unless/until Xochitl is strapped to her, I’m looking forward to the eventual 4-power shenanigans when they figure that out. :)
Back on track though, if her flight weight limit is higher than the hook’s (or unlimited?), what happens if she grabs something with the lighthook and then flies with it? Does the lighthook fail, or can it hold against a higher load but not lift/move it on its own? Or does Sydney just get anchored and can’t fly up any more?
What would lighthook failure even look like? Uncoiling? Snapping / dissolving / dismissing? Any repercussions to Sydney?
We have seen the lighthook fail, when Sydney tried to lift a girder and failed. Nothing much happened to it or her. About the same as with any other limb which could not lift a particular load.
Likewise we have seen it fail in a tug of war with Vehemence. There was a comedic dragging of dust, for Sydney’s feet, but more just to emphasise that she was not actually going anywhere, despite him having massive strength at that point.
I imagine that if flying, the tentacle will simply not be able to hold on to anything too heavy for it. Possibly a very heavy individual (say if the construct was rebuilt on a giant scale) grasped the tentacle, they may be able to be lifted by the flyball. In that case though it is just being used like a rope, and is their grip that would be keeping them from falling.
As for the shield, I am pretty sure that, as it is formed, it goes underneath people’s feet, in between their shoes and the ground. Deforming, as need be. We can see that it does not form underground, and phase through it, when flying up, when we see Halo giving Harem a lift from the shop.
Likewise, when the tank melting incident threw up a lot of sand, that ended up pooled in the bottom of the shield. Rather than falling out, as might be expected if the shield treated sand as something that it should phase through (and conversely which should be able to phase through it).
did we ever find out if the tentacles have a tensile strength? as distinct to a lifting strength?
If she managed to wrap each end of her tentacle around the cable and the pylon she wouldn’t be “lifting” the cable, just holding it.
This is of course glossing over the significant structural issues discussed elsewhere.
Nope, we have no indication of that. It may be no more capable than its lifting capacity. Or it could, at the other end of the spectrum, be just as unbreakable as the immovable tether aspect.
If the latter, then it would just be a matter of getting it in place, and tying it off, before it all falls apart.
With the nasty side effect that Sydney would then be trapped there. Possibly for a considerable period of time, if there is no other way to secure it. Other heroes (assuming Maxima is busy dealing with Sciona) could take the strain. But not indefinitely.
So if they wish to save the bridge, Halo may need to hold it for days or weeks, until replacement parts can be brought in and fitted. All depending on their availability and whether any have to be custom forged.
Now that is one hell of a delivery/business model.
Mmm, Chocolate Souffle.
Mmm, kitten souffle…
… now I want Vietnamese Food.
*covers kitties ears*
Don’t listen to the bad people, my kittens!
No doubt a overlooked part of the market.
Dgeezus, Mary, Joseph. Max, watch the collateral! Couldn’t she have just tackled her her with a supersonic shoulder check?
Traveling supersonic destroys any glass (such as car windows) and other property in a large area. While not the same danger, the citizens could still get into life-threatening situations.
The shockwave on a human sized object is a lot less than that of a fighter jet.
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-016-DFRC.html
Maybe. But did you factor in proximity? Weren’t government tests done thousands of feet in the air and their Sonic Booms still reached the ground? I’m pretty sure Maxima at comparatively point blank range would have been at least as bad.
And before you get on another argument about how fast her energy was thrown, it seems to be a high-heat projectile. Part of the reason Flash can run so fast is the electricity around him; that plasma supercharges the air and makes a bubble of thinner air around him. Less dense air means a higher speed is needed to create a Sonic Boom. Maxima’s energy produced a similar effect as it was thrown.
There was a one-in-a-million chance for Max to accidentally blow that bridge. Anyone who has read Terri Pratchett should know that that is a guarantee that the gods will intervene to see that it does happen.
Maybe just keep the attack armor piercing and not throw in the high explosive bit, next time. Hmm? Providing she has that kind of control.
Yeah, it’s a good bet that any given work of fiction will include at least one example of a “1-in-a-million chance” that will work out to happen 9 times out of 10 similar occurrences written into it.
It happens in real life too. My brother is a civil engineer who has dealt with the effects of 3 “once-a-century” storms in the last 10 years in one area of concern when it came to redesigning a bridge. You gotta love global climate change!
When your theory and your evidence do not agree, 1) verify your evidence, then 2) change your theory, no matter how much you liked it. So clearly, the measure of the “once-a-century” is a little off these days.
It just needs changing from 2nd millennium centuries to 3rd millennium centuries.
Also her blast wasn’t explody. If you look the bolt was still going after it went through the pillar. So it could be argued that it was more armor piercing then explosive. It just punched a rather large hole in the pillar as it went through and compromised structural integrity at the mounting point of the cables. So more like using a 50cal sized armor piercing shot instead of a much large sized shot?
Modern munitions, designed to destroy armoured vehicles, can be both armour piercing and explody.
Although having a cloud of super heated metal and other bits entering the interior is probably enough to give the crew a bad day all on its own.
But they do tend not to be.
Tank rounds as typically fired by NATO forces these days are long rod penetrators. Basically a long, slim, very dense dart made of things like depleted uranium or Tungsten Carbide. They don’t explode, instead, all their energy is kinetic. Spalling heat and shockwaves from the impact do the majority of the damage.
An alternative shell type is HESH (high explosive squashed head) aka HEP (high explosive plastic) rounds. These are tipped with an explosive “putty” that is squashed flat against the target and then detonated. This is meant to cause spalling on the inside killing components and crew or taking out lightly armoured targets that a penetrator (that can go clean through tanks, yet alone truck or cars) would be unsuitable against.
There are also HEAT (high explosive anti tank) aka shaped charge rounds. These are both penetrating and go boom, but backwards. When they make contact with a target the high explosive is detonated. This vaporizes a cone of (typically) copper into a molten stream, and this stream is then what penetrates the target and does the damage.
If you look back to WWII though, then you did have AP rounds with explosive fillers.
As for the second part of your comment, yeah… that’s like a HEAT round. Nasty.
The sort of shells they were firing at the second world war… At the museum in duxford (uk) they have some penetration test results.
Think multiple blocks of metal packed together into a column, with the shot fired down the column.
They have one of these there. The hole in it is over 1m deep…
? Thought that was High Explosive Armor Tearing.
High Explosive Anti Tank.
https://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/Gun_Data_p2.php
Basic info on Nanal ordinance,
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_(projectile)
More info.
BTW, “Ow, fuck!”; in super hero terms, translates to “Bunch of Endurance lost, but no Body lost. This time.”
Hit her again, Max!
…Stun, not End.(Champions/HeroSystem)But I second your motion!…
Yup. Been a loooooong time.
Profanity: the original ablative armor.
Also, must be a newb driver. One simply never drives a souffle truck over a bridge. It is just not done in polite society.
Cosmic Energy….Gamma Rays?
The high end of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The photons of gamma rays from the sun’s core are aged a million years so by the time they reach the photosphere they’re in the visible wavelengths.
I thought Max was super fast…catch a bullet fast.
Nothing she could do about that ricochet?
She probably saw that go off course in slow motion.
Middle of the night.
Just that truck on the bridge this moment?
Probably anything that she can throw will move faster than she is.
As to why Max didn’t catch the ricochet, that’s been explained before: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/267
But she fired it and knew the bridge was ahead. How much more ready for trouble can you be?
She fired it from stand-off range and had no reasonable expectation that Sciona would be able to deflect it. Maxima is a seasoned veteran so is used to things going “boom”, when she fires at them. Not “SPACK PANG WAH BOOM”! That is justifiably surprising.
Isn’t this the other presumed dead person who fought Maxima and Dabbler was considered the third known member of their power bracket?
It’s strongly suggested they fought before though Dabbler is more viable/ versatile as the one who beat her before.
Agreed about Dabbler, especially given her significant nudge to Sydney and proud smile, when Maxima mentioned that to the press.
As regards Sciona no, that is not possible, as Maxima had no idea who she was and needed to be briefed about her background, by Ingsol. Had Max fought Sciona before she would have been up to speed on everything about her.
Yes both Sciona and the other individual were presumed dead. However that is just a co-incidence, rather than a link. With their super powers it will be fairly common for individuals in this kind of setting to be presumed dead. Take both Cooter (who was not even a super!) and Wyrmil, as other examples.
The most likely candidate for the ‘presumed dead’ guy in question is the bandaged one who appeared on the page of villains responding to Maxima’s nuke-like demonstration and threat to all super villains. Whilst he may literally be a mummy, it is more likely that the bandages are a result of his fight with Maxima.
Throw in the fact that he was speaking in an Arabic language, plus Maxima has served in Iraq, and you get quite a reasonable case for it being him. Albeit not certain, by any means.
Plus, once the bandages are taken off and reconstructive surgery is completed, he can reenter the story as someone that even Maxima may not recognise. However that scene was pretty recent, so the injured individual would not be Sciona, as she can regenerate, so the wounds would have healed long ago.
Plus she is not Arabic. Or a guy. OK she was physically a guy, but a guy orc. ;-)
Oops…
7 vehicles on the bridge in a preceding panel.
Photons don’t “age”. The gamma photons produced in the sun’s core are absorbed (destroyed) and re-emitted many many times before they can escape the sun, and the energy (and frequency) they have at that point depends on the temperature of the last element of plasma they interacted with, according to the black body law. Which also means that the sun doesn’t produce only visible photons, but also a lot of UV, X, gamma, IR, and radio. Our atmosphere just stops most of the non-visible stuff (except some IR).
Cosmic rays are also mostly made of protons, alpha particles (helium nuclei), electrons and positrons. Not a lot of gamma rays, except from specific sources like gamma ray bursts.
Max has to work on her stealth attacks.
She was spotted last page, this is her taking out the target- oh bugger, shot deflected? Neither expected that, now we’ll see how fast they can respond…
She isn’t the subtle type.
Cosmic rays are high energy particles, like from a particle cannon. They’re mostly hydrogen and helium ions. They’re what makes the northern lights.
Sciona’s control is excellent – detecting and deflecting the shot while flying at supersonic speed a few feet above a river. And without being shoved down into the river. Maybe Max should have aimed at the water just in front of her? Hitting a steaming wall of water while going that fast can’t be a good thing.
The concussive shock wave would not be good for anything living in the water either. Depending on how populated the river is, you could be looking at a lot of dead fish washing up on shore for next few miles downstream. Not good.
Not for an air-burst that high off the water (unless the blast is so massive it actually reaches the water). Barring any fishies sticking their heads out the rest will be fine.
Unless I totally got the directions wrong, I would expect the bolt in panel 2 to come in from the left and bounce off to the right.
Maxima is flying high and left from Sciona, the bridge pillar is the farthest one on the right.
Also, Sciona has done a very fast flip in this panel.
I’d guess about a third of a Superhero’s pay goes to insurance.
It’s not as if they have any reasonable expectation of retiring.
… DaveB,yes you have-Steakhouse fight versus Hex(“Budget Halo”). And that driver may have the near simultaneous joy of getting hit by debris as the bridge deck hits the water-the bridge is DONE, short of a Magneto or Gravitar personage showing up first thing next page+ said personage couldn’t fix it,just hold it up long enough to clear it of civilians…
Why did Max use a projectile at all (given that her energy weapons seem to throw about terms like blast radius, minimum safe distance, yield, (megadeaths?) etc?) knowing that civilians (or structures) were anywhere near by. Couldn’t she just have closed the distance and tackled Sciona into the water?
Couldn’t she have simply shot the water and blasted Sciona with high energy steam?
Time was of the essence. The energy attack could be any speed up to the speed of light.* Versus Maxima’s flight speed which is upwards of Mach 4. The speed of sound being a heck of a lot slower, even when x4.
Plus it would be exposing Maxima to a counter-attack, or perhaps even a preemptive one, as she approached. It was a snap judgement, but using Maxima’s military instincts.
Perhaps getting in touch with her police instincts might have made her opt for a less explody attack mind.
* Although very worrying if it was that and Sciona still managed to block.
As you pointed out, the fact that Sciona blocked it implies that the blast was not moving anywhere near the speed of light. Sciona has not been shown to possess super speed (that I recall), so the attack was likely not moving relatively much faster than Sciona herself.
The fact that Max closed at all (from a considerable distance, since they started off at their base) implies that she is likely far faster than Sciona. I don’t see anything that indicates that tackling wouldn’t have been just as fast.
As to being exposed to a counter attack, this is not unreasonable (though likely doesn’t justify endangering civilians and millions of dollars of infrastructure) but not a concern Maxima has expressed previously. There had been some concern as to what Sciona might do with Max’s blood, so perhaps this was the concern.
With regards to snap judgement, instincts, etc. I don’t see anything that points to that conclusion.
Well the snap judgement is down to there having been only a moment to make a decision, so it is that by definition. Regardless of whether the call is good or bad. As for military instincts, Maxima has served in two wars and been involved in life or death battles. She has combat instincts.
Recall, however, that Maxima does have super speed. Therefore she didn’t have just a moment, from her perspective. Maxima would have a much longer subjective time to make combat decisions, severely cutting down on the number of snap decisions she would make.
Only if she has it engaged. At the time Maxima had her flight maxed out, which is a different attribute to her super speed.
She has it at constant low grade (supposedly, in the same way she has the rest of her abilities in some fashion), and the ability to turn it on at will. Consider that even if she had to turn off flight to access it, she would fall for an extremely brief period while she experienced a subjectively much longer amount of time to measure up the pros and cons, etc. She could then turn the speed off and her flight back on very quickly.
Yup (as regards the minimums). But you are assuming that Maxima gets enhanced thinking time. That is Black Hulk’s* thing, not Maxima’s. Whilst there must be some degree of that, in order to coordinate her actions (such as disarming the grenade in mid-flight), that is more of a required secondary power, once she gets moving at bullet speed.
So far Maxima has not displayed any ‘super fast thinking’ nor has any such mention of that been made. In each battle Maxima has exhibited normal human decision making, within the time frame available. For example she was caught by surprise by Sydney’s vomit attack, likewise Sydney walking into the tree.
* The dude better hurry up and decide on a call-sign. Those are a lot easier to remember than mundane names.
Maxima has displayed super fast thinking. Recall that we were told earlier that it was Okay for Maxima to point her gun at people (I argued with you at some length about this) because she A) keeps her gun unloaded until she fires it by super fast loading and B) could apparently catch the bullet before it hit anyone. These things require her to perceive items, make decisions, aim, catch things etc. while utilizing super speed. There was also the grenade incident.
I agree that her being caught unaware by the vomit undermines Max’s display of this power (as I recall, you thought differently when I brought it up about the range, but I can’t be bothered to confirm that). In this case, however, Max is not surprised. She observed her target and had plenty of opportunity to use power schenanigans to think about what she was going to do.
You are missing the point that I made the distinction between being able to think fast whilst moving at bullet speed, and being able to do so all the time. Even Ren, who specialises in that, only does so when his super adrenaline kicks in.
Just imagine life where you had to wait a week to hear the next word someone said in a sentence. It just is not practical.
Possibly I am wrong (this does happen from time to time).
However the comic works on the basis that a super power is designed to do X, so it can do that. If that requires Y and Z, whilst working, then it has that. But it does not necessarily mean that the super gets to use Y and Z on their own.
In this instance Sciona was heading towards the bridge at high speed. Maxima had to make a choice whether to switch from maxed out flight, to super speed (either to think fast or to close the distance) or to fire her attack. Every moment that she delayed with the attack put Sciona closer to the bridge.
If Maxima had Black Hulk’s power, she could engage fast thinking time, decide what to do, then switch over. But her gig is super speed (or flight or strength or defence).
I have never posited that Maxima always has fast time perception, and only stated that she has it when super speed is in effect (although I did note that per the author’s previous statements, she appears to have a baseline level of all of her abilities. As I argued earlier, as long as Maxima is not surprised, nothing that I know of prevents her from dropping into super speed to consider things, then popping out to resume whatever she was doing previously seemingly having spent no time doing so. The issue of time taken to swap her power pool about is an issue, but in the instances we’ve seen Max accomplishes this via thought, so we presume that if she can think really fast, she can shift really fast. Otherwise she would be locked in superspeed for at least some minimum period every time she used it, which seems unlikely.
Not unreasonable points.
I am pretty sure that low grade super speed was being used up to maintain concentration on super-sonic flight, tracking another super sonic target, aiming a cosmic blast, and lots of other stuff. Also, we don’t know how fast she can switch specs. Another point is the moment she turns off flight she will immediately begin to rapidly decelerate (wind resistance is always a factor and increases dramatically with increased speed). Yet another factor, she knows what Scionia did to Cooter, so a close range engagement is very risky, given without a method of propulsion people are helpless in a zero g environment (which free fall simulates). In the absence of in-depth knowledge of Scionia’s capabilities, staying at range makes the most sense. Finally, everyone has 20/20 hindsight and sometimes you just don’t happen to think of the best solution to a problem in the heat of the moment. Not even Batman is prepared for literally every possible outcome.
One more thing to pile on, this could be literally the first time anyone has ever outright deflected one of her projectiles. It’s hard to factor in something as a possible outcome if you believe it to impossible.
Yup. Although you are wise to have the ‘implies’ in there. Because it is possible to block something moving at the speed of light if you have precognition or some other magical way of predicting the attack and being able to (in this case) move Sciona’s wings to intercept it.
Then it just becomes a matter of being able to do that faster than her opponent can launch the attack. The better the early warning system the less speed Sciona requires. Whilst there is nothing to suggest that she does have combat precognition, we have previously seen that her magical wards are good enough to detect an invisible stealthy super. Plus the HUD clearly picked up Maxima just now.
So we do know that Sciona is heavy on detection technomagic. Improving the odds for this speculation turning out to be right.
Sciona having precognition of any sort seems belied by her repeated humiliations at the hands of Deus and co.
‘Combat precognition’. This can be achieved by having only a second or two’s warning of an imminent danger. So she would not have advance warning of Deus’s arrival, beyond that time.
As for Vale, Sciona is arrogant and we saw her ignoring Sydney smashing her arm, with the orbs. So clearly she is not bothered about individuals she is contemptuous of. So even seeing Vale’s kick coming, she would not have dodged. By the time that she got the precognition of flying through the air, it was probably already too late to evade.
I think you’re assuming an awful lot when Occam’s razor would dictate it’s just a power she doesn’t have.
Feel free to come up with an alternative explanation for how Sciona blocked the attack. The author indicates that it is cosmic energy. Even when it is feeling lazy it travels at 40% the speed of light!
I am using Occam’s razor, but am doing so without ignoring information that the author has provided. If Sciona could not dodge a kick, from Vale, she should not be able to block something moving at 40%c!
Unless of course it’s a work of fiction where the author might simply have made a mistake / done so deliberately for purposes of drama.
☺
Also, panels 1 and 2 seem to disprove the bolt moving at even 40% of the speed of light. We can judge the bolts distance by its size. It is close in both panels, yet Sciona repositions herself to deflect. Either she moves incredibly fast, or the bolt is moving only a bit faster than her (and demonstrably less than 1% c ). As already covered, Sciona has not previously demonstrated super speed. Either those are some very lazy cosmic rays or, to paraphrase Cave Johnson, they’re in a universe where light doesn’t haul nearly as much butt as it does on Earth One.
While Sciona isn’t likely to fly at the speed of light, we don’t have any idea of her top speed. She may not have been flying at top speed, when Maxima caught up to her.
plus Max attack is making an audible sound (“skreeee”), so it is either subsonic or plot-shielded against common physic laws
Things do not become silent when they go supersonic, whatever noise they might otherwise make they still carry on making.* Possibly the sonic boom might drown that out, of course, but it is possible for the reverse to occur. Given the power of Maxima’s attack that is not something we should dismiss.
Far more importantly though it is an energy attack, and may have no (or negligible) mass in order to displace the air to create a sonic boom. A laser does not make a sonic boom, for example. The sound could just be from water vapour in the air boiling off, as it passes.
* Although I give credit to your point in that our ‘camera’ angle, for that frame, is ahead of the “V” shape the missile’s sonic boom would be creating, if it did make one. Any observer ahead of that should not hear the missile until it passes.
However a frame only captures the visuals for a split second. The sound effects represent what would happen during the course of the action represented by the frame, up until the next one occurs.
Most of that time would be silent, but the sound would catch up before Sciona’s parry, in the next frame. Dave could have split that frame into two, having one silent, and the next (with the missile further ahead) could have the onomatopoeia. But that would have lost the dramatic impact of the single large frame he opted for.
So the compromise is that, but with a lot of silence at the top of the frame. Look, loads of nothing, then “SKREEEE”! ;-)
Yes, she should have used her phaser, but elected to go with photon torpedo instead. Or plasma cannon instead of graser. That’s history – now deal with the aftermath, which is that Sciona escapes while the supers deal with the side defects of Max’s blaster (a light saber would have been more elegant?)
Lol. Love the caption, at the bottom of the comic.
Unfortunately, a photon blaster’s beam is only made of matter if that’s what your opponent is shielding against.
I kind of assume a beam of light should travel the speed of light.
But if so, Sciona wouldn’t be able to dodge.
Because of that I’d assume it’s not actually a beam of light. But a concentration of matter flung fast.
But how fast?
It’s said that Max can catch a bullet fired near her. Bullets are fast, but if the shot went at that speed Max should have been able to catch up to the projectile before it hit the bridge.
So the Projectile was traveling at a speed somewhere between a bullet and light.
But Really, I assume Sciona wouldn’t been able to react even at a significantly lower than light speed.
Anyway, my point is. The projectile was traveling at a speed that’s awfully convenient for this exact incident to occur.
Joules would be the most appropriate unit, given the shot was a single event rather than a continuous one. Watts are joules per second, and volts are not a measure of energy at all.
Ooh, Maxima has a connection with the Silver Surfer, as a cosmic energy user.
Shiny metal skin must be a side effect of that.
Hmmm…
So Missile Reflection: Any Ranged, Any Target… Let’s throw in Area Of Effect Hex for the h*ll of it.
Guessing it has Always Triggered Side Effects as well, which explains the “Ung! Ow F*ck!” – probably applies half STUN rolled to defenses.
Max either either made the mistake of targeting the character with her Explosive ERKA (as opposed to the hex Sciona is in) or the campaign allows Missile Reflection to offset usual explosive triggers (i.e. hitting the target hex).
…sounds about right- +this is the first time we’ve seen Sciona do this(possible regained skill set linked to Flight/Lightwings?)…
Despite Max’s concerns, I don’t think Sydney will ever cause as much collateral damage as Max.
Lol.
Max’s next conversation with General Faulk aught to be very interesting… and loud! The conversation with the state Highway Department should be interesting too. “But I don’t have 38 million dollars! Can’t I just help in the repairs?”
Easy solution.
Max makes $60 million in tunnels for them…the next day.
Yea, she is powerful enough to do that easily. Clever solution.
She just needs to ensure that no civilian dies. Although she can make a replacement, society does not work that way. And it is more than a one day build.
Will this bridge incident serve as more ammo for Arianna when she chastises Maxima???
Are you suggesting Arianna would weaponize kittens? :-O
The lady that staged a bank robbery, involving approximately a couple dozen civilians, just for the proper PR just before her press conference?
But now she has to think ‘what would Suzy News do’?
Talking about whom, she is long overdue an appearance!
Come on girl, time to do live coverage, from the chopper, of a daring kitten rescue!
Sometimes I think Max acts before she thinks. Although she didn’t know that would happen, I feel aiming around Sciona and letting the blast hit her would have been a safer way. Especially sense they dont know too much about her abilities. Where is a good Halo analysis when you need one?
Speaking of which, do we know if the council has a file on Sciona somewhere, and, if so, why didnt they share it with Archon? Hmmm… I feel like things could have been done differently.
Max’s training background (and really all military and martial arts training) is designed precisely so that she can act without thinking – you drill scenarios and responses until it is instinct for your subconscious to act appropriately when you don’t have time to weigh your options. Max was in a hurry to stop Sciona before something terrible happened to the bridge and endangered civilians… oops. Sometimes the right response from training doesn’t work out – “the plan is first casualty of contact with the enemy.”
That said, aiming next to (or slightly ahead of) Sciona as you propose (or other options that have been discussed) seems like a better idea, but we don’t know enough about Sciona (or even if Max knows anything we don’t) to really evaluate whether that makes sense. Or if Max has a timer / proximity / impact setting on her shots that even makes any of those options feasible.
When talking about amounts of energy you use joules, not watts. Watts are about the output of energy over time.
True, but the discussion should have been about the POWER of her attack, not the energy. Watts, horsepower, etc. were entirely appropriate.
Max is putting all she got to keep her nº1 place as a PR nightmare ^^ arianna is going to be overjoyed when she hears the news ;)
I think you’d have to buy stock in companies that produced materials FOR construction, like steel & concrete, or construction equipment. There might be some sort of ETF (exchange-traded fund) out there though- I think those basically aggregate an industry as a whole.
No not the kittens.
You have indeed had maxima fire a beam attack.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1758
I always interpreted that scene as the trail from a plasma shot, where we were seeing the target after the shot passed through it. There was a kaboom, I don’t think an energy beam (or the ballistic gel) would explode afterwards… but who knows with superhero physics.
Cosmic beams do have watts… so does running and farting. A watt is just one joule per second.
Voltages are a measure of electromotive force so… technically Cosmic Rays have a small electric potential.
Positive for the more energetic Alpha rays and negative for Beta rays. Alpha Particles have two positive Electron Volts and Beta Particles have one negative eV.
I’d be curious to see Maxima’s face as she saw her “bullet” be deflected and wreak havoc on this pillar… Probably something between shame and total fury. Good luck portraying that, DaveB ^_^
NOT THE KITTENS!!
I bet Arianna is feeling a disturbance in the force right about now.
💘
Didn’t Maxima give Sydney a whole lecture on not using explosive powers when there was a chance that civilians and civilian infrastructure could get caught up in the action?
You missed out the caveat. Namely ‘until you have been trained’. The introduction training, to give her an idea why, was to check what lies beyond your target.
In this case Maxima did just that and it was water. She had no idea that Sciona would be able to deflect an energy attack, from that trajectory.
The real question is, why didn’t Max use that hyper speed of hers to just fly down and block it? Too surprised?
Don’t forget that Maxima can only max out one of her powers at a time. So to fly at that speed, she would have to lower her defences. And we have just seen that Sciona can react faster than Maximas cosmic energy attack.*
If she had flown up close to Sciona, it would be Maxima being decapitated this time!
* Cosmic radiation speed ranges from between 40% and 99.6% the speed of light!
just out of curiosity, is dark faster than light? ’cause if you shine a light into the darkness, the darkness all hides in a shadow
Ooh!
*starts drawing plans for a ‘dark energy faster than light drive’*
I got that reference :D
I was thinking that — one of the issues for Maxima is that it apparently takes non-zero time for her to shift points into her various powers. She can’t react to fear-vomit fast enough to activate super-speed in time to get out of the way, for example. Sciona (I’m assuming — I hope that DaveB gets the opportunity to animate Grrl Power some day, as he’s mentioned that he *thinks* in moving scenes and then has to capture them) shifted her flight track suddenly and (possibly) accelerated. Max wasn’t using (much) super-speed, and didn’t have subjective time to really assess all possibilities. And Sciona may have been *at* the bridge by the time Max got super-speed up, and after making her decision, she’d *then* have to shift points again to execute her plan. Caught flat-footed, it looks like Max only has *really great* reaction time, not Speed-Force levels of reaction time.
No time to consider, close-quarters attack (which might have required shifting more points into flight than she wanted to take away from strength and shield against an unknown opponent) not ideal, so: shoot. And let’s be honest — even using casual levels of power, Max *usually* outclasses damned near everybody. Something that could *survive* a default-power blast — let alone *deflect* it to a different target — is really rare.
tl;dr: good gracious me, this is going to get interesting.