Grrl Power #647 – No healthpack needed
Imagine that red section of Sydney’s shield is actually blinking red, if you will. It would be more visually interesting in the animated version of this story, but I didn’t want to spend page real estate with a bunch of panels trying to illustrate that.
Maxima looked at the crater and was like “Okay, that was a respectable opening move. And if I wasn’t worried about my team… BANG! ZOOM! Literally to the MOON!”
Of course, whatever these things’ interest in the orbs are, you’ve got to respect something you can fit in your pocket that can take a hit like that. You’ve got to figure they either want them, or want to make sure no one has them. Or it’s like a weird game of tag. They’re aliens, who knows how they think?
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This could be dangerous….
Someone called for a Duck? o_O
Or maybe a Mouse?
Holy shite! Just saw they had remade Danger Mouse, and it is the total shit!!!!!!!!!
Could only bare to watch the first minute or so
FWIW, Guesticus, people usually use “the shit” to mean a good thing, as opposed to just “shit.”
Because we decided English wasn’t confusing enough.
In his defense the common use actually makes less sense because really common on shit is not a good thing. Well unless you grow stuff in it. Maybe the phrase was started by farmers. lol
An old parable of the corporate workplace traces a memo from engineering all the up thru mgt to the company president. It starts out simply saying “boss, this is a crock of sh*t and it stinks.” by the time the prez gets his copy, it says “This is a cornucopia of life-bringing nutrients that freshens the air of home or office with the scent of spring roses.”
or something like that.
It is particularly problematic in armies. I recall a serious source a long time ago (i.e. my memory is vague on the details) tracing actual incidents in Vietnam. Starting out as ‘a grandmother threw a grenade’ or ‘one guy shot at us and ran away’, getting re-written each time it went up the chain of command. Each change ostensibly to make the language a bit more professional, and/or relevant to the level of command it was going to.
However having the trend to ’round up’ when summarising it. So going to a ‘small element of the enemy’, through ‘a unit of Viet cong’ and eventually reaching the President as ‘a company of elite Viet cong engaged in hit and run tactics’.
“…and it is the total shit!!!!!!!!!”
Not really…This is.
Well your link is.
[Guesticus]:
Why a Duck…
…or a Mouse…
…when you can have an Ant_[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSdhEflcPvU]
…or a Chicken_[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKss2pBYQ6Y]
…or a Chimp_[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVbZId6BxWc]
…or a Dog_[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73zpwWG0JQo]
…or a Space Pixie_[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32ZsjRUdw8E]
…or a Space Patrol_[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-nVWhWyja4]
…or even an “older” Mouse_[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsPa8QgGGkc]
OR AD TEDDY!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqAksFdiKzo
OR A TEDDY!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqAksFdiKzo
Huh. And here I was wondering why someone would make an animated version of Boris the Bear.
Not that it wouldn’t be interesting, mind you. Just a bit surprising. Especially if it were on TV.
note to self: see if we can get Mike Richardson in touch with Jhonen Vasquez. He’d know how to pitch that idea to a network, I’ll bet.
…don’t even get me started on all the options to be found in TV-shows that featured Puppets, Marionettes, Anime, Live-Action Anime, & Kaiju?!?!
(…head…spinning…gotta…lie…down…)
Because apart from the chicken and Mighty Mouse (never heard of the chicken and forgot about MM), none of the others actually mention the word ‘Danger’
Or even an underdog…
Though TBH I was expecting a different mouse.
Damn, got Hanzo’ed.
Sydney is right, when your “invulnerable” shield is starting to crack, it IS time to leave!
… same with Archilleus suddenly starting to get a nosebleed or similar from an attack…
If Achilles hasn’t gotten a nosebleed just from hanging around with all of those superheroines, he’s probably immune to them completely. :p
Well looking at the hole it left we know Syd limit is some where around the level of Ragnarok..
I speculate that it is somewhere short of “Punches a hole in a Planet” level
Learning the limit of your shield can only be calculated if you survive the test. At least now, Sydney should decide on flying multi-mach speed rather than shielding up while on ground zero for a nuclear ICBM strike, yes?
0.o
Better idea, shrink the sheild down as far as it will go (while keeping it active) and still fit everyone inside, then fly thought the portal like that.
I think it’s clear that any size large enough to fit all of them would be too large to fit through the portal.
There is also that other little issue of not opening the shield before reducing it’s volume.
Do want a first hand demonstration of how a diesel engine works?
Sydney makes a comment early on about how resizing the shield doesn’t seem to do that. I think it was around the point of her flight speed test with Maxima. The reason she dropped it to embiggen it before the orbital strike was to let everyone inside.
Correct. The air pressure remains constant even if embiggening or unembiggening, without lowering the shield in between. Neither Sydney nor Maxima could figure out how (beyond ‘space magic’).
No amount of cold can cause Mr Buble to shrink while active, and from the looks of things, the portal has reduced to “single file access, keep all limbs within the ride at all times” dimensions
Good idea, they should totally do that. hero sausage.
Hey! Stop looking at Hiro’s package!!!
We don’t know how the shield and the portal would interact. Better safe than sorry with portal travel.
actually we know that the shield has a “Dimensional Anchor” effect on it, seeing as it blocks all forms of teleportation and conjuring (lighthook) inside it while active, if you tried to enter a portal with an active but mobile Dimensional anchor the entire thing would get ripped apart, taking everyone inside the anchors radius, and everything else for a few miles, with it.
Sydney has already gone through this portal once with the shield up , so I suspect a second time wouldn’t be that devastating. The big question is can she shrink it enough to fit through with everyone inside. As someone else said… superhero sausage… just not super Hiro’s sausage.
Hasn’t Harem ported thru the barrier?
No, she tried when Shadow No-Nuts tried to backstab Sydney during the “Rumble At The Restaurant”
The last time we went through that portal, weird energy streams managed to hurt Maxima, and Sydney only avoided a worse fate because her shield was up.
Good point. If Sydney can narrow the sphere into something more bullet like, she can fly everyone through the portal without taking it down.
I bet this ends with Sidney using the telepresence orb to teleport through the collapsing wormhole. I’m wondering if she can carry people inside the shield with her…………
When the going gets too tough, the smart get out.
“…the smart get gone.”
“…especially while the rest are arguing over wording and semantics of something that wasn’t stated to be a direct quote.”
:P
Do we know what happens when the shield hits the edge of the portal? It could just phase on through it.
Also, hitting the limit on the shield is probably worth a few points.
the enemy’s reload cycle time is not a good time experiment.
Hm, do we know the shield can’t pass through the edges of the portal? Also, if she put some speed on, they wouldn’t have to jump, as they could literally fly through on momentum. Worry about stopping after you cross the finish line, yeah?
Also, does testing the limit of the shield count for XP?
Sidney, Maxima and Hiro can fly
The shield grid is still visible, which means it’s still actively repelling something. Either heat or radiation or both.
It’s regenerating, mostly
It is regenerating, but it is almost certainly also dealing with some kind of after effect from a blast that created a possibly kilometer-wide crater.
The temperature and composition of the local “air” after an explosion like that are probably pretty harmful to Sydney.
Wait a second there was an explosion propagating through that portal strong enough to destroy the sigil on the other side in an underground facility and they want her to drop that shield? Maybe shrink it down but the other option seems like suicide.
to shrink it down she’d HAVE to drop it. it can’t change size while active.
It can change size while active, as referenced here: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1476
What it doesn’t appear to do is be able to envelop more people or let people out without deactivation.
Also, I’m betting that Mechathulu is related to top-right-panel-demon seen here: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1189
Ahh, shows how memory plays tricks. I was recalling that as being something from Dave’s blog (re. ears not popping when changing the size).
Agreed about the deactivation. It makes good sense, as there is no way for a person to pass through a force field (even Harem could not teleport through it). So, in this case, even if Sydney wanted to shrink it down to the snug one-person size, that would squish everybody in there into a bloody mush of broken bones.
OK more likely it would just shrink-wrap them all, as it has good safety features. But the group would still be too big to fit through that hole. They have to run through individually.
BlackIkarus sadly they do have to take the risk. Unless Sydney is able to use her lightbee to mass-teleport them (which she cannot know for sure, so could be a time wasting experiment), or she unlocks a Mystery orb feature, there do not appear to be viable alternatives.
On the plus side we know that the Mecha-Cthulu’s weapons light up prior to fighting. So Maxima is using her nerd end-of-level boss fighting history, combined with her combat experience, to make a sensible calculated risk. If the team responds instantly to her orders, they should be able to make it.
The one at greatest risk though is Halo. With her shield down she is even more squishy than Harem (who can teleport away from danger – an ‘echo’ in her mind should not prevent that). On top of which it was scanning the orbs which made the scout freak out and summon the mother ship. So, as Dave’s blog confirms, the baddies are fixated on Halo’s orbs.
Let’s hope that that was the “end-of-level boss”, anyway…
Wait, the shield beeps? A useful but odd design feature. Is it that beeping’s just a universal warning?
Also, worth noting that both of the hostile aliens we’ve seen appear to have (at minimum) enough limbs to use all the orbs..
Reading Dave’s comments, it sounds like the “BEEP” “BEEP” effects are actually *PULSE* /*FLASH* effects.
Soneone needs to animate this page…
a beeping shield would tell the enemy to try again with a larger warhead.
Assuming that anyone else can hear the beeps, yes.
Agreed.
We know that the orbs can affect senses of beings/devices observing them. So nobody but the operator can even see the controls (the sigils and glyphs on them). That is on a need to know basis and nobody else does. Although we get the courtesy, this side of the 4th wall, to see them as Sydney does.
I would bet a small stack of Yorpie Snax that Varia could see them though, when in a gestalt with Halo.
Likewise the beeping is very much a need-to-know basis. Clearly Halo is hearing that. Possibly it may extend to the others inside too. But there is a very good chance that nobody outside can hear it.
Likewise the red warning patterns would probably follow exactly the same logic. From the outside the shield would probably look completely unchanged.
Supposition only, of course. But the orbs are very sophisticated, so I don’t think it is taking much of a gamble, in predicting that.
That’s only helpful if they have a bigger warhead.
I am willing to bet they have stronger attacks than the opening salvo of a single being on that massive ship.
From the first panel it looks like that grid isn’t visible from the outside.
Re: SpiceFreak, that’s another good point. Assuming that the shield is actually beeping and not just doing a flashy thingy visual, Does only Sydney hear it, and if others can hear it, is it actually sound, or something else?
There are all sorts of noises made in an airliner cockpit when things start to go wrong, many with standardized sounds, like “Pull Up!”, “Terrain”, “Over-speed”, etc. as well as a variety of of beeps, horns and sirens, depending on what is going wrong. This is just another one of those standardized sounds that you can look up in the Quick Reference Handbook, which is accessible from the the brown documentation orb. You did read that, right?
Dabbler (or perhaps Max): “You’ve had an orb with the user manual this whole time?!”
It’s a long shot, but maybe the brown orb is the user interface, and she needs truesight active in order to see it.
The brown orb basically being the “ship conputer” does sound like a possibility, especially if certain functions are not yet available to make it possible for Sydney to have already figured it out (ie, currently the only thing active is universal translator, which Sydney has not yet discovered because she hasnt heard any foreign languages while holding the brown orb). But I have a problem with it being an actual user manual, since one would expect the user manusl or instructions to be something obvious. Sort of defeats thr purpose of a user manual is accessing said manual or “help bar” or “binky the helpful paperclip” is so subtle that you need a manual to find the manual.
Maybe the user manual *is* obvious to the ones who made the orbs. Perhaps brown is the universal “help me” color in their culture?
I will refrain from making a ‘Code Brown’ joke. Because I’m a classy gal.
Maybe the help routine was written by someone with the kind of inspired thinking which led to:
“Where do I shut this down?”
… time passes hunting through all the logical places … until … eventually ….”
Oh, using START.”
And that is logic used by people in OUR culture!
*giggles maniacally* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVEZSJt3dLo
Could be similar to the shield mechanics in Halo as they seems to have a similar warning system
The orbs might make whatever sensory alert is appropriate for the user.
+1
The orbs are clearly able to read Sydney’s mind, given that she can give them mental orders. Plus the orbs have been with her for months. If monitoring to see what cues trigger a ‘uh oh, I better take care’ response, the orbs will have noted that from trucks going ‘beep, beep, beep, beep’ as they reversed.
Likewise when gaming she will have responded well to red indicators on HUD, to mean damage taken.
Something that is very important, for the orbs to optimise, in particular for Sydney. Given her ADHD, she will get fixated on things at times, and getting powerful audio and visual cues (including the flashing) will be important to try and get her attention. The same can be true for anyone mind, but if the orbs tailor themselves to the individual, they will have had to really refine the warnings, for maximum effect.
I totally hear the HALO (Combat Evolved) energy shield sounds here. That rapid beep when your shields fall, then the woooom of them building back up.
It might even be what Halo (Sydney) subconsciously thinks shields recharging should sound like, having lived in the era that Halo Combat Evolved came out.
I say it’s about time that her shield got challenged. I like this development. ^^
I wonder if she gains Exp for that, too, like in FF2. I think she should totally invest way more time into grinding Exp for her orbs (after finding out precisely how that works) and less of the military training she’s been doing.
@Description: Is Maxima really able to “BANG! ZOOM! Literally to the MOON!” a being that opened up with a shot like that?
Uhm.. No. I could MAYBE understand mixing up her training regimen a bit, say PT in the morning ’til she drops, protocol classes until lunch, afternoon training her powers, but she absolutely needs the ‘military training’ still. At the very least she needs to train herself to respond like part of a team, not just a rando.
Disagree… those orbs are one of the most powerful artifacts known to man at this point. Not making mapping out their full power set an absolute priority over getting one cadet field ready to send out on missions is kind of insane. Not that military training for anyone going into the field isn’t important but the only reason Cadet Sydney isn’t permanently stationed at HQ doing nothing but putting those orbs through their paces with the entire research staff pointing every instrument they have at her and pouring over the meaning of that skill tree every chance they get is because that would make a much more boring comic.
And that’s not even taking into account how much value they could potentially get from having one of the other most powerful entities in the world…. Krona…. being able to study that Deep Code she can see when the skill tree activates.
The value of those two activities relative to putting Sydney through Basic doesn’t even graph on the same scale meaningfully.
I agree with the importance of the orbs. However I think a more balanced approach is wisest. Sydney is an extremely erratic individual. Further she is extremely emotionally fragile. Basic training is used to instil mental fitness and toughness into individuals, amongst other things. Provided that they suitably modify her regime (breaking her is not a good idea) they will be making her a more effective individual.
Then we must look at the other side of the equation. Those orbs are not just powerful. We know that Krona manipulates reality at quite a profound level. Yet she recognised that the orbs code operates at an even more fundamental level. So their maker(s) are probably singularly significant beings.
You really do not want to delve too deeply into exploring such incredibly important items when they are in the control of someone who may go postal, if pushed too far. You must do everything you can to ensure that they are in control of their own emotions, and have the discipline instilled in them such that they will obey orders.
Finally Sydney’s basic training does include a heck of a lot more than an average squaddie. She is learning about the supernatural, magic, magical programming, the world-wide-magical-web and a lot of other things which will help her to both understand and come to terms with the power that she is uncovering.
No matter how many experts you put on the job, it is Sydney who will be the one most able to intuit how things are working, as she is the one in control and getting feedback (such as the PPO being ‘hard to activate’). And there is only so much that she can convey by analogy (“It is like touching a star”).
That said exploring the power set is incredibly important, so it should be done as fast as is practicable. But not at the expense of failing to train their operator, at the same time.
Also given the size of the ‘skill tree’ and just how little of is filled, It could be very unwise to just test some of the upper bound anywhere around earth.
I’m thinking of E.E.’Doc’ Smiths Skylark series of books (awesome scifi BTW) and his remark of his pistol sized ‘Metal -X coated round’ gun and a mark 10 round. eg ”I don’t think I’ll fire a mark 10 anywhere around here”
Sure…. but train their operator by drilling her on her powers and leveling her up. Not by having her run obstacle courses and learn how to disassemble and reassemble a handgun. I mean they can both achieve the same “instilling discipline and self control” purpose but one is an utter waste of time relative to the other in terms of additional payoff beyond that.
“First a fit body, then a fit mind”
We have already seen that the weakest component in the Halo arsenal is Sydney. No disrespect to her, as she had been pushed beyond her limits, but when she was suffering from sleep deprivation and exhaustion, her behaviour became dangerously erratic, to the extent that it provoked a diplomatic incident, with one of the most powerful organisations on Earth.
Likewise the gun-in-a-bag is a test to see how competent and trustworthy Sydney is with a dangerous weapon. You really want to find that out with a weapon which has a limited capacity to kill.
Plus it is a teaching technique. Both assessing her practical learning skills (in contrast to her book learning, which she has already shown to not be that keen on) and helping her to gain confidence in hands-on learning.
One thing that the military is very keen on is practice, practice, practice. In as safe a way as possible. Until the individuals involved have the necessary skills to survive the more dangerous environments.
Sydney has already burnt down two forests, with the PPO. The next setting up may be strong enough to kill even Maxima (perhaps). Making sure that Sydney is competent, fit, well trained, and capable of assessing if something is going wrong, is a very good course of action.
Trying to do that with unknown abilities of god-like strength is a huge risk.
Ensuring that the operator is competent is an essential precursor to the next step.
Which may well just be a montage, in any event. ;-)
All points which would have a great deal more weight if they weren’t currently already sending her into the field to use those “unknown abilities of a god” in actual combat situations instead of testing and drilling her on them under controlled conditions. ;)
A strong point. However there is many a combat force who has been required to go into battle with whatever was available. Untrained and unequipped, you have a far worse chance of surviving. But if the alternative is being overrun and loosing the war, then these risks have to be taken.
When the Japanese invaded Singapore, they were badly over-stretched and on the brink of having to abandon their advance, to consolidate. As it is they sensibly did not approach the city from the heavily defended seaward routes. Rather they landed on the far side of the island, and struck across land.
That side of the island had no gun emplacements or readied defences. Plus it was where the city’s water supply was located.
The correct military response, having been caught in that situation, would have been to throw every available man into defending that approach. And they had the biggest concentration of British (and other allied) forces in that arena.
As it was the bungling leadership just gave up and surrendered. Which totally flabbergasted the Japanese leaders, to the extent that they thought it was a hoax! Even token resistance would have halted the Japanese advance at that point.
Instead the allies suffered a crushing defeat, without shooting back, which badly shaped the fate of the Pacific war.
If you face loosing everything, you must take what risks have to be taken.
Sydney wasn’t even a planned part of the departments forces so they clearly believe they can handle these things with what they have. And why not? They have clearly BEEN handling the Strange, Unusual, and Powerful on earth for some time and through a few evolutions of this department’s name and charter. Add in that they have a least one group member that can replicate or even do better than any one of Sydney’s orbs and a couple who can replicate the strategic value of several of them to some degree and it seems more likely that in some crazy universe where this was what real people had to deal with they would have kept Sydney at base testing and, as they figured out the true nature of what her powers do, power training. (probably still start out training the “basics” though as I agree they are always a great idea and what else is she going to train while they figure out the nature of her powers and how safe they are)
Furthermore, if I was running the show all new recruits and frankly any known citizen with a power would get their powers extensively tested on some facility buried underground on the far side of the Mars (or whatever isn’t already claimed if Mars is inhabited… ). ESPECIALLY unknown artifacts we can’t even register as existing if it wasn’t for being able to see them and their effects.
The power that is used as an excuse, in universe, to break this common sense is the True Sight ability of the True Sight/Telepresence orb. Because what it can do is seen as being stronger than even those spells and sensors that replicate some of its effects as well as being able to seemingly sense just about anything which means they will eventually find something it can sense that none of their other tricks could even get a blip on even if they already knew it was there and what it was. (not only is this a reason why she ‘tags along’ on fully trained member’s missions but it is pretty much the strongest factor in why she was enlisted in the first place)
Aaand… its a pretty good excuse actually. Potentially having such a superior and easily accessed amount of intel on hand in the field at the drop of a hat is like they were carting Dabbler’s lab and all the Arclight mooks, etc… around with them wherever Sydney goes as far as raw sensor data is concerned. Still need experience personnel to interpret said data on the fly, but if they just kept her teamed up near Dabbler all the time they should always have amazing levels of intel at the tip of their fingers. If she was kept in her shield with breathing devices most of the time active combat was expected and she was tightly partnered with a powerful and experience senior member I could see the temptation to allow it.
So I can see how a similar group would come to a similar decision but that didn’t really happen here. Nobody really planned this out. She wasn’t tested and trained even in the one ability that makes her most unique, etc… She just sort of fell into tagging along on the field commanders whim. Or that’s how it felt anyway.
I guess I’m saying I can see how this comic could have reached the place where new recruit Sydney is doing these things but I can also see how readers feel a little put off about how casual and unnecessary it comes off feeling based just on the comic and with out all this forum based speculation.
Clearly Dave’s vision is that Sydney should discover most of her power’s ins and outs in the field. And that is also fun. And we are here now and the rewrite to make the transition smoother would take a lot of panels to be added here and there in the past which would slow releases way down and confuse those who didn’t get the memo that Dave was doing that so let’s just pretend they did and move on for the good of my weekly entertainment! ^_^” :-P
My personal impression is that Korona’s “programming” operates at the same fundamental level as the Orbs, but she’s inexperienced compared to their maker, and complately self tought.
Imagine you discover a programming language and spend much of your life fumbling around to figure out out and work with it because there is just no-one else who knows the programming language or can even work with it.
Then you discover a set of programs in the language, made by a master programmer, or even a set of them. I imagine it would look profoundly beautiful
I don’t think so…. we’ve seen Krona’s code and we’ve seen the “Deep Code” she saw when the skill tree activated and they don’t appear to be the same programming languages at all to my eyes.
The impression I got was Krona has access to a high level GUI and some object oriented programming and the orbs are directly manipulating universal machine code or something.
Beautiful code… well programming is an art. As a programmer I find that the more you know the better your skills/tools box gets. There are many levels to programming languages. ‘High’ levels let you work at abstract levels without getting mired in the machine level details and quirks as well as making more understandable and portable for us mortal to understand. ‘Low’ level languages let you get down to fine control and speed and custom specific optimizations or features not dealt with well in ‘HIGH’ level ones. ‘microcode’ also is a cool bits of code that operates ‘inside’ a specific bit of hardware/CPU etc. that also allows you to ‘upgrade’ it as well. finding well written code IS like finding a jewel in the rough. some ‘languages” fit certain tasks better than others. My personal favorite is Forth – sometimes refereed to as a ‘Mid’ level one.
I would have a field day with a low level language that could program/and control the fundamental bits of the universe.
A real hallmark of the most sophisticated technology will be that it is simple to use. For which your immediate thought would likely be ‘but complex behind the scenes’. Whereas, of course, the genuinely most advanced will have developed that side to be simple too.
As an example of refined simplicity, we have E=Mc². Truly advanced languages will ensure that the code remains simple, even for complex uses at a fundamental level.
I don’t have to imagine that – I lived it while starting my career as a programmer. Your point is definitely valid. (Perkin Elmer Cal/32 and a pathetic batch language called CSS that is entirley unrelated to the CSS you’re thinking of.)
Remember that it has literally only been a few days so far.
Yeah, a few days in which they are repeatedly sending their totally untrained recruit into the field under questionably consistent supervision while she is the walking equivalent of a super powered nuke with a totally unknown maximum yield.
Like I said, I get the story telling reasons for manipulating events so that that happens and turns out to be completely necessary to avoid disaster without the central heroine being there to save the day… but the fact remains that not having her planted at HQ (or some secure nice safe heavily shielded test facility) spending every waking hour figuring out that orb skill tree would be nuts absent the deliberate contrivances that keep being worked into the plot to get her out in the action. And if she was back at base having her spending precious hours drilling on how to disassemble and reassemble a handgun rather than drilling on exercising any one of her powers that could pop her over the next experience threshold to level up is equally nuts.
Despite me arguing for the balanced approach above, I do agree that you are making good points here. Testing must proceed apace. See above for why I think that it needs to be done in parallel to her basic training.
As regards keeping her at HQ, if they did that then:
• Maxima would have died (fighting Vehemence)
• The Twilight Council would have been decimated by the manekillers surprise attack.
• What remained of the Council may not have trusted Archon to investigate the trouble at the Dark Reliquary.
• Even if they did get invited, Archon would have been there without Maxima, without the Halomobile (she would be back at base testing) and likely as junior partners, because they could not even get down to it without Halo.
• So Sciona would very possibly have made a clean escape to Alari and be returning at the head of a conquering army.
In short, Halo has been chosen for the Alpha team because she already has one of the strongest set of super powers on the planet. And Archon needs those powers now.
The R&D is having to be fitted around the immediate needs.
Not ideal. But you work with what is available.
I do honestly agree with a lot of what you are saying. But it is not as black and white as you are painting it. So I’m just playing the Devil’s advocate, to show the other aspects are important too.
Hence the disclaimer that I get the storytelling reasons for creating all these conditions that suddenly make Sydney necessary to all the missions success and the team members survival practically within hours of her becoming known to ARCHON… ;)
But if we didn’t have an all powerful Author manipulating the events of time and space to make a good story, the decisions they were making about how to deal with Sydney would still be nuts. :p
Dave is but a chronicler of the events. :)
The cascade is entirely consistent, so we need not view it as being contrived, rather as being the logical consequences of the starting conditions.
• The status quo, which has held for three thousand years, is that the supernatural and aliens on Earth have maintained a parallel society, much like the United Nations, but hidden behind the Veil. Although having wars between factions, overall a balance was maintained.
• In space the Xeovarchy have kept the peace, by meeting aggressors with greater aggression. Probably for a lot longer than the Twilight Council have been around on Earth.
• Humanity have (for reasons yet to be discovered) have been allowed to remain blissfully unaware of this.*
• The balance has been gradually tipping though, due to the expansion of the number of humans with super powers. Gradually they have been becoming more influential, but kept behind the scenes, working for governments, in secret. However having reached a point where that secret can no longer be maintained.
• So the formation of Archon represents a tipping point, when all the checks and balances, which have kept things apparently peaceful to humans (barring their own wars of course), are all coming undone.
• Soon the Veil will be pierced by supers, too often and too publicly to be covered up. So the dynamics are changing in anticipation of that. Alliances are being drawn with humans. The Twilight Council allying with the USA just being one that we know of, but there are bound to be others. Especially as each faction, of the council, has differing agendas.
• Meanwhile alien civilisations, which had long been convinced that Earth was OK to keep, to study supers, and to provide a bit of sex tourism, will have been becoming wary that supers might start to come out into the galaxy and upsetting the balance of power, in the galaxy itself.
• Then there are the local events like Maxima throwing down the gauntlet for the planet’s super villains. Plus the inevitable formation (or public coming out) of other national super organisations. Along with the less spectacular, but probably more significant, growth of supers amongst the general population. Any time there is significant change, there will be problems to solve.
• Sydney just happened to have one of the powers of greatest concern, for these issues, as part of her package of top-tier powers. Which seem to have a significant history, off-planet, if the reactions we have seen are anything to go by.
So Dave does not have to keep inventing new reasons for Sydney to be in intense demand. The dynamics of the entire world, and the galaxy beyond that, will do the job on their own.
* Writing this, I suspect that it is because of the presence of super powers amongst humans.
The Twilght Council admit to have been studying supers. Potentially they could pose a threat to galactic civilisation but so long as they did not go around the galaxy conquering planets, there would be no need to intervene.
However we do know that humans quite like invading places that interest them. So keeping the bulk of humanity in ignorance of other races and civilisations would be a way to counter that risk. Whilst still preserving an enclosed environment to see how humans behave, amongst themselves.
My counterargument:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2597
It does not hold water. ;-)
An alien race seeking to move against the growing threat super humans pose.
Reminds me of the development of reactive tank armor. (“reactive” means flat explosive devices are tiled over the tank. they explode fast enough to shatter the sharp points of incoming armor-piercing rounds, thus preventing puncture of traditional “passive” armor.)
At some point in the testing of reactive armor some soldier was told to get in the tank during testing.
“yes sir! – wait – you’re gonna shoot the tank while I’m inside…”
“Yes, be sure to tell us how loud it is.”
“…with an armor piercing round?”
“It’s ok – we packed explosives all over the tank.”
Nitpick time!
Reactive armour is designed for protection against shaped charge weapons.
These use a stream of molten metal (usually copper) as the penetrator.
This is done by detonating the shaped charge in the warhead.
The active armour interferes with the formation of the stream, breaking it up and causing it to be unavle to penetrate.
Penetrators, like APFSDS rounds, won’t be affected by such a small explosive going off (but will likely trigger it regardless) and need to be defeated by the underlying armour.
Nitpicking your Nitpick.
You are referring to first gen reactive armor. Updated multi-plate reactive armor DOES effect solid penetrators by forcing them upwards, changing their angular momentum as well as hitting them with multiple plates.
So new penetrators have been designed to try and counter this by having tips that shear off, allowing the denser material behind it to try and reach the armor beneath. It is a constant game of improving to defeat a previous improvement until all improvements are obsolete.
yeah thats not really it. Reactive armor is for defeating explosive rounds
Layers of hardened steels (and other stuff like of all things, rubber) sandwiched together are Still used to deflect/absorb (if not out right shatter) armor piercing rounds.
unnecessary nit pick is unnecessary. My bad
“Here’s your sign”
Still too subtle.
Nitpick the Third: ‘Colonel Leander and the Escaped Prisoner of Archon’
“BANG! ZOOM! Literally to the MOON!”
Have we established whether or not the Alari home-world has in fact a natural satellite?
Nitpick of your nitpick =Nitpick ^4 (nitpick to the fourth power) : Technically Sciona has not been taken prisoner at all.
Just feel like mentioning, she’s holding ONLY the shield orb, so it might be stationary when embittered enough, which in this case would not be ideal.
If you meant embedded, maybe, butt we have seen her fly with Mr Buble big enough to carry passengers
And while protecting journalists watching Maxima vaporize a tank.
I could be wrong but it looks like the bubble is floating next to the portal in panel 1, and her flight orb is definiely above her head in panel 2. I could be wrong about the position of the bubble, it could be embedded in the side of the crater. I guess I’ll just have to wait for by next update to find out.
It didn’t actually move at that time
Auto correct is a evil at times, I meant to say embiggened.
Once her teammates are out this might be an opportunity to use the secret ‘swap real and virtual positions’ that she’s been keeping from Maxima.
… Why would she want to do that? Sydney ain’t hanging around either
… because lightbee would fit through a shrinking portal fullsize Sydney couldn’t…
Even if Sydney is the smallest person on the extraterrestrial team.
Hmm, this comment shows up later; please ignore. It was supposed to be a reply here.
Oh, if only she had had a chance to test this feature and discovered it could teleport other people within range, like within her shield, though I suppose that would make the orbs a bit too OP at this time. Maybe a later enhancement.
Agreed that this feature should definitely not be field tested during a live engagement, but it would be a pretty cool and clever use of an orb power we’ve already seen. I would prefer a clever reapplication to “coincidentally” discovering new powers, or even Sciona switching sides and somehow blasting the attacker out of the sky before it can take a second shot.
If hiro and maxima fly through with their passengers and then the portal gets too small for sydney to fly through, then that would be a good time to try the teleport feature of the comm orb.
(Please ignore this comment when it occurs later; it was supposed to be a reply here)
Oh, if only she had had a chance to test this feature and discovered it could teleport other people within range, like within her shield, though I suppose that would make the orbs a bit too OP at this time. Maybe a later enhancement.
You could just have this be a gif, with that section of shield blinking two colors of red. Just a thought.
Reminds me of one of the Dr McNinja comics with Dracula sliding into panel.
The mouse over text was something like “Yes, it will do that in the print book too.”
It was a joke but there are books with pull tabs so you can make things move in them.
They better get out while they can and Sydney better not choose to hold an impromptu symposium on weather or not to drop her shield BEFORE they enter that portal…!
I’m pretty sure her quick action just saved her team. But yeah it is well past leave a clock right now.
Sydney almost certainly saved Dabbler and this particular Harem. Even if they’d gotten through, the blast would have been immediately behind them. Possibly Harem would have teleported the instant she got her bearings again, but pretty doubtful.
Hiro is fairly tough, but I’m guessing he’d have been mortally wounded if not outright vaporized. We’ve seen, for example, that a snapping steel cable can cause him a decent cut. This is a completely different order of magnitude.
Max felt pain from Atomic Bombshell’s shaped charge (not her Overnuke) and had her back popped, but didn’t bleed. I think she would have survived Mechathulu’s shot, but not without some serious injury. Depends on whether or not she was pumping up defense too, I suppose. Vehemence’s lightning (guessing that his is standard lightning’s 30,000+ degrees F temperature) burns her when she’s not maxing Defense. Depending on the nature of this particular weapon (is it on par with a fission explosion, for example?) there’s a good bet to be made that it should have burned her pretty badly. https://factsanddetails.com/asian/ca67/sub429/item2517.html
Well argued throughout.
I use the pretty similar vein of logic order to come to the same conclusion that yes she probably did save her 10. Even if maximum would have survived there’s a good chance that that she said she would have been highly injured dabbler and Harem I give next to no chance to survive and superhero just barely if possible since he’s been shown to be able to be less than what’s necessary to lift a space shuttle.
The shield is not totally invulnerable. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.
Though Only vulnerable to planet killing level tech is still obscenely overpowered =)
This *has* to be a
marriagedeath proposal to Sydney. Can’t you feel theloveheat? The poundingheartbeeps ofloveregeneration?Also, if Mecha-Cthulhu does trace and chase back to Earth, how they will defend Earth against such a terror should be … interesting…
Just because an aggressive species is space faring warmongers does not imply that they are dimensional travel aware or capable. Don’t even think about time since that is whibbly-wobbly at best.
I just saw it. This is going to end with the telepresence Orb teleported.
Now if Sydney is insude the portal and holds the shield up, which would win, the shield or the closing portal…..
Portal has perhaps the power of the entirety of space-time behind it. Syd’s shield rates at “can take a city destroying nuke, barely.” I’d say portal wins, cracking the forcefield like an egg.
Agreed, my sense is that the forces behind the blood-magic interstellar portal would simply outclass the science behind the tough but localized (and not invulnerable) force field.
Sydney is going to level up at least once from this encounter, as her last big shield hit leveled her up pretty easily.
In most RPGs (the ones you play, not shoot) there tends to be about doubling of XP to get from each prior level up to the next level. The first one was ‘survive a mini-nuke, get a level’. The next ones are going to take either a lot more combat points, or maybe Sydney should switch to the safer ‘solve a puzzle’ strategy of getting XP.
Hopefully I don’t forget any of the big stuff…
First XPoint – assuming that she didn’t inherit a partially filled level along with the orbs (in other words, started fresh*) – experimented with the orbs on her own, burned down a forest, got punched by Max a few times in the ballroom, got shot a few times by Max on the range, and then finally shielded a gaggle of reporters from a larger Max-induced explosion.
Second XPoint – various power usage during supervillian battle royal, speed testing the Florb with Max, combat at the council meeting, discovering teleport function while scouting Sciona.
* – if a new person gets a new XP tally, does that mean that Varia could help Sydney level up the orbs twice as fast?
Don’t forget she leveled up on the Stakeout for Sciona? as well
the “sound” in panel 2 in my head: https://youtu.be/eBoM6MrKWwI
How did an inexperienced recruit with ADHD end up on an alien planet of blood mages and giant death lasers again?
I think, like most stuff in her life, things just sort of spiraled out of control.
It seems perfectly understandable if you’ve been following closely from the beginning, but when you look back at it afterwards or try to explain it, by all accounts it doesn’t make sense.
Why does everyone call her “inexperienced”? Syd is the world’s leading expert on the use of the Halo Orbs, which are one of the most powerful artifacts known.
1) Syd was highly effective, even crucial, in ArcSwat’s first battle.
2) Syd was key in accessing The Council meeting.
3) Syd’s early warning likely saved the lives of many on The Council, earning ArcSwat significant good will.
4) Syd enabled ArcSwat members to get to and fix the falling bridge in time for Maxima to continue her pursuit of Scionia.
Even the “raw recruit” doesn’t fit. Having see this much action and performed this well Sydney would have several medals by this point.
+1
Sydney is both things though. Rather like a photon, she is in two seemingly contradictory states simultaneously.
You cite a bunch of important things which make her not just combat experienced, but elite. On the other paw though she has barely started basic training. So there are an awful lot of things which she is totally ignorant of. Basic arrest procedures, instruction on the things that cops are and are not not meant to do, how to do military, plus how to avoid being killed when your invulnerable bubble ceases to be invulnerable …
So a lot of important things she needs to learn fast, to do her job properly and safely.
As for being here, I doubt that any regular army basic training would adequately prepare anybody for this situation. However it would instil discipline and an instant response to orders, in a crisis.
Right now Maxima is wondering ‘is Sydney going to obey my order, or is she going to do her own thing now?’
In this kind of situation, a comic book super might be expected to do the latter. A soldier must do the former though (unless there is an overwhelmingly good reason not to, and Sydney has not had enough training and practice to be expected to make such a call without the risk of a rookie mistake).
In other words being ‘genre savvy’ is great for many things, but sooner or later Sydney is going to zig when she should zag, or do something she thinks is right (for comic book reasons) but is probably deadly if tried in real combat.
….they’re going to be stranded, aren’t they?
It’s fairly likely dabbler can get them home.
Look on the bright side – it takes a super weapon capable of wiping out a hyper advanced warrior civilization to drain it and it still regenerated quickly. Doubt there’s much out there short of a supernova that can breach the shield – and if it survived a supernova, youd have bigger things to worry about anyway.
Supernova is a huge jump up from that attack. Our biggest nuclear bomb right up against the shield has less power than a supernova at the edge of the solar system.
Our biggest bomb has less power than a supernova at the edge of the next solar system too. Probably even less than at the opposite edge of the Galaxy.
No matter how big you think a supernova is, it’s bigger https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/
Nah, supernova on the edge of our solar system (roundabout the Ort Cloud) and Tsar bomb against eyeball are about equivalent in how much they hurt. :D
Note: A Tsar bomb is going to leave a much bigger crater than the one in the comic.
Yes, they’ll deliver an identical amount of pain ;)
The only difference is the super Nova will deliver that same amount of pain to everything in the next few hundred solar systems (or more, probably more)
Well, to be pedantic, the tzar bomba might hurt more because it will crush you before it explodes, depending on the delay between the charges going off and the nuclear explosion happending. (It could be microseconds, tbh, I don’t know *that* much about nukes)
That was actually the result of me calculating it. XD
I got “Oort cloud” as approximately how far away you have to be before you’re getting the same amount of energy on you as the aforementioned Tsar bomb in your eye.
A supernova is dangerous out to about 75 lightyears according this interesting article:
https://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/05/18/the-closest-supernova-candidate/#.W0kD2PZFyno
On craters you’re right.
https://academo.org/demos/nuclear-craters/ gives a nice sample of craters caused by nukes and their megatons.
I tried to compare this crater to nuke ones but quickly realized that what the material it hits makes a huge difference and that this crater is deeper relative to diameter than ones made by nukes.
Still if a 12 megaton nuke makes a 1.9km wide crater then this 100-150m crater is going to be from something with a lot less power than the 50 megatons of a tsar bomba.
Probably not that far.
The supernova at 1AU is only 1 billion times stronger than a nuke and square cube of an expanding sphere means that drops off fairly quickly (well quickly at galactic distances).
So at 10x the distance it’ll be 1/1000 as strong so you’d only have to go 1000x the distance to get it to match. The next solar system over is over 4 light years away or 276,000 AU.
(I might be off by some orders of magnitude but probably not 3 (1000x) and definitely not the 10 needed for the galaxy range (it’s billions of AU across).)
I don’t think you followed the advice in the linked article. At one AU, a supernova would deliver more than a billion times more energy than a hydrogen bomb at point blank… to your *eye*. That to your eye bit was meant to be taken literally.
Your eye has a very very small surface area, relative to the the surface area of a one AU sphere.
Take whatever number you just thought of, and multiply it by the ratio between your eye’s surface area and our 1 AU sphere, and that’s how far you were off by.
But the supernova is also being measure by how much goes to your eye (he was comparing which is brighter).
Besides the one order of magnitude bigger collection area doesn’t change my numbers much. compared to the difference in distance between solar systems the difference in size between your eye and a whole person is meaningless.
Relevant link
https://www.quora.com/How-much-energy-does-a-supernova-produce-in-watts
That’s for the full sphere of it. The further out you go the smaller section of that sphere hits your eye. So while a supernova is incredibly high powered the distance between stars is also incredibly large.
At 50-100 light years a supernova is safe for us https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/supernove-distance
So it’d take much less distance for it to not immediately vaporize something (which is what a nuke does at point blank range).
And our galaxy is 100,000 light years across.
Ah, darnit, I was mixing up a few things in my head.
You’re right, I underestimated the power of a cubic root, and I was thinking regular supernovas generated gamma ray bursts, which supposedly, if one originated in our galaxy and was pointed at earth, could potentially sterilize all life from earth.
Those aren’t from regular supernovas though.
I’m still very confident that a supernova at one AU would blow up the planet though (mostly because in order to go supernova, I’m pretty sure the star has to be bigger than 1 AU in radius).
Although, I guess being totally atomized is about as much as either is going to do to you… Maybe one will have more exotic high energy reactions?
Apparently gamma ray bursts are caused by neutron stars crashing into each other… whew, how’d I get those two mixed up
Yeah it would definitely vaporize the planet at 1AU from the surface of whatever star goes supernova.
All that said, we’re comparing it to our most powerful nuclear bomb at zero range which can completely disassociate atoms for a large radius, leave craters miles wide, and knock down lighter buildings hundreds of miles away (the one test drop broke windows 500miles away). In other words if someone dropped a 50mt bomb in the Nevada test range it would destroy the whole state (give or take hills), most of Utah, Arizona, and Southern California; and break windows all along the coast and into Mexico.
In 1987 there was a supernova 168,000 light-years away that was visible in day time.
These are insane, unfathomable levels of energy on both sides of the comparison
Mike: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=100000&lat=39.5144891&lng=-116.6230631&hob_psi=5&hob_ft=47553&ff=52&psi=20,5,1&zm=7
Nah, states are big. Even if Nevada was completely flat you still wouldn’t blow up more than a small fraction of it.
NOOOOOO! Don’t push the launch button! Even if it has lots of empty bits you are bound to hit some people! And kitties and doggies. Maybe even an orphanage!
I was just repeating the reports from the tsar bomba test bombing. Maybe they were wrong/lying on the tsar bomba MT rating or that map doesn’t scale up properly.
Time’s a wasting people, MOVE IT!
Oh, if only she had had a chance to test this feature and discovered it could teleport other people within range, like within her shield, though I suppose that would make the orbs a bit too OP at this time. Maybe a later enhancement.
Oh well, this was supposed to be reply to Jayessell’s comment about using the teleport feature of the lightbee, but I can’t seem to get it to stick there.
And now it does show up twice above. Sheesh, what a morning and apparently not enough coffee. Sorry folks.
Mr. Bubble seems to be about 3 Maximas high. I guess Maximas height to be about 185 cm, so about 5,50 Meters. If it would be an even sphere (which doesn’t look like one) than we could estimate the crater.
The shield (on panel 1) is about 1 centimeter in length on my screen and the center of MR. Bubble is about 9 Cm of the edge of the crater away, so 5,50 Meter x 9 = a radius of 49,95 Meters.
If i take for granted that the crater is also an even sphere (which it isn’t) it would mean that about 83333 m³ ground was vaporized.
I did this calculations on the run, maybe they are wrong. Please correct me. If someone knows how much energy is needed to create such a crater. I am interested.
And here people say that algebra and calculus aren’t important after High School…
Not vaporized, merely no longer present. Either pushed down or flung outwards as dust.
(Very few craters are caused by something that actually vaporizes everything in the crater because well… you know what happens to all that vapor? it flies outwards, taking most of the not-vaporized stuff with it!)
We can’t see the mechanism that made that hole. If it melted and vaporized like you said then:
Multiply the volume with the density of the rock you think this is to get the mass. Multiply it with the heat capacity of this rock and the difference from the surrounding temperature to the rock’s boiling point. Now you have the energy needed to raise the temperature.
Now look up the enthalpy of fusion and the enthalpy of evaporation and multiply each with the mass. Those are the energies needed to first melt and later vaporize the rock.
Well I know in the animated version I would want Jennifer Hale to voice Maxima, and Tara Strong to voice Sydney :D
Still calling it. Syd gets taken before the portal
or.
it tries to get syd. it gets Maxima instead who interferes.
Then they’ll go to the destroyer arc~
I really like the detail in panel 5. That’s much higher quality than we usually get.
Danger Sydney Scoville, danger!
You are too young to die! Again.
Its about time Sydney was shown to have some limitations when it comes to her more than the entire justice league collection of potential powers though her shields being able to just about stop a Vegita level attack isnt much of a limitation.
That explosion was actually probably bigger than vegita’s first big bang attack.
Vegita level attack?
Which one?
Original or monkey boy – 18K or 70K / 180K
Namek Saga – 24K
Ginyu Saga / post Recoome – 30K / 250K
Baby Vegita original or gold monkey – 1.3B or 1.6B
Uh – yeah – power creep might be a bit of an issue with this series – maybe …… just a bit
Almost as bad as WoW has been getting.
Are those B’s as in billions of tons of TNT? (i.e. 10^9). That’s quite a jump, from a kiloton to a gigaton
Given the weird jump, I’d think the last one was a calculation or measurement error. The others are actually more reasonable, represent vegita getting more powerful with training.
They look more like the rough arbitrary Power Rating number the scouters would give of someone, before they creeped high enough to get fairly silly (Freiza was in the millions range when he was originally killed during his Saga by Goku’s original Super-Saiyan form). So the numbers are probably accurate as the Baby saga was way after all of that and power levels had massively increased compared to previous sagas, including the introduction of Super-Saiyan 4. It’s even worse in the Dragon Ball Super era.
That wasn’t an opening shot. That was the equivalent of a tracer round/range finding.
Re, the Author’s commentary_”Imagine that red section of Sydney’s shield is actually blinking red, if you will. It would be more visually interesting in the animated version of this story, but I didn’t want to spend page real estate with a bunch of panels trying to illustrate that.”:
Have you considered using a GIF-animation, as an alternative…?
Perhaps only 2-or-3 steps before repeating, but still…?
That thought did strike me too. However we know that Dave pushes himself continuously to keep to the publishing schedule (bearing in mind that, other than the excellent help provided by Keith colouring, Dave does everything himself). Plus we have not seen Dave use such effects before, so there would be a learning curve, even if it is a modest one.
So, whilst I agree that it is a nice idea, it is probably not practical. Even if someone else volunteered to set it up for him, Dave would still need to provide the alternating art, and would probably have to spend more time coordinating with such a volunteer, than it would take him to learn the ropes himself.
Plus it would need to be done every time thereafter. So would be an ongoing increase in time expenditure.
Finally Dave does want to do paper copies of the books. Which means his current solution would work with that too.
I’m in complete agreement.
As a “special treat”, & rarely seen, it might be OK, but it’s just too time-&-labor-intensive to be a regular thing.
The look on Sydney’s face in panel 5 is fantastic. She got way too comfortable too fast being invincible and having world-class supers there to back her up at a moments notice, and suddenly has had a very rude wake-up call that reminded her she is not at the top of the food chain.
Also, I love how the team looks so small just hovering in the center of the crater-o-destruction in the first panel. Great sense of scale and how outclassed they might be here.
I agree with you about Sydney’s expression. Likewise all the implications, and for the additional comment.
My one caveat being that she looses some of her distinctive looks there. The pointy nose and chin is giving rather a ‘wicked witch’ vibe (albeit a worried one).
sooo…. what about sciona though? i can’t imagine she wants to stay around for a faceoff with that kind of enemy…. my guess, she will slip through too and seek asylum on earth for her and her soul buddies ;)
If the portal is closing that fast, she is very unlikely to be able to get there in time. Whilst she can teleport, she is unaware that she needs to.
Although it is possible that she may guess the explosion was something to do with the portal. Trouble is it is not where she last saw it. So if she does teleport back, she would be in the wrong location!
Not impossible to recover from that mind, if the current location is within line-of-sight of the original location. But that was inside a fort. So first Sciona would have to gain height, by flying up. Then search around. A task not made easier by lots of terrain from Earth having been brought to this planet, by the unstable wormhole.
Whilst the heroes are worried that they will not make it just having to travel a few feet and step through the portal!
Dear Krona,
If Sydney dies again, please can you lower her difficulty setting from “Hard” to “Average”, before you respawn her.
I predict Sydney discovers an unidentified orb power involves shrinking. OR Dabbler uses a shrinking spell.
An interesting option. Especially as it would allow Halo to be teleported by Harem, in future. Given that Harem has a weight limit, so getting smaller, and thereby we would expect a lot lighter, would get under that limit easily.
Although Dave did toy with making Harem’s power only work for non-living objects. That has not made it into canon yet though, but does give Dave an out if he doesn’t want team teleporting like that.
Oooh, tell me those are supposed to be the Halo shield noises :D
I believe so.
Further, if pushed even a teensy bit more, I think the sound will change to “She cannae take any more, Colonel!”
Is no one going to mention the apparent reference to Halo shield regeneration? When low it would “beep beep beep” until it started regenerating with a sound very similar to “bwoooo.” Those sounds are iconic!
Nobody could say “Beep, beep, beep” like Leonard Nimoy.
*displaying black foreleg band*
Henceforth I shall hear him voicing any onomatopoeia, from the orbs.