Grrl Power #660 – Armored on the inside
To be fair to whoever made the orbs, this is a pretty unusual situation to account for.
I’m not… too sure what else to say about this page. I didn’t plan on having her glasses break, admittedly a detail that’s easy to miss on this page, but now I get to draw broken glasses on her for the next however many pages. She could take them off. She really only needs them for reading, but it kind of doesn’t quite look like Sydney when I forget them. I guess I’ll have to decide if I want to stick with the big round ones when she gets her next pair. I’ll experiment with that maybe when she goes shopping next.
Panel three I straight up didn’t draw clearly. It’s supposed to be building across the street from Sydney blowing up. Like the beam went over the top of the one Sydney is hiding behind and blew the top off of it. Instead I drew an explosion and a wall.
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This is gonna get messy for someone- Sydney if you remember is on her period. Getting gut hit about the uterus point in gut (guts in general) is gonna doubly suck. Last time she had cramps she went on a page long invective roll. And her period or uterus got put into the lil black(blue) book of hate.
This means she’s gonna go with her guts here (pun intended) when she goes on offensive after recovering enough. I think she’s gonna get up close and personal to Mr Squidee and look for an entry to return the favor of the pain…she’ll be too angry to consider the implications of a flying shield enema. Then she will let off full barrages inside until big boy is no longer there.
Also if the Newtonian transfer of energy spread enough it’s likely her bottle of hot sauce might have shattered. That’s gonna piss her off even more. (if that got on her female supplies, god help the universe.)
Next two pages from Mr Giant Squidee… Senses sonic disturbances like never before from location of last explosion. Sees ground explode outwards as shielded bullet streaks away from him…misses the light bee moving behind him.
It shoots at shield with everything it has…hits. Sydney BIPPS to where bee is. Looks for entry for revenge. “I’ll give you cramps you _————————————–!”
We see look of surprise on Alien creature. Who knew it was a universal thing? Makes some odd sounds. From inside we hear. “KA ME HA ME HAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!”
ALien face is a look of panic and “oh shit”.
Alien explodes.
Alien on big ship watching fight scans closer in shock to see what happened right at the moment it looked like a victory.
Zoom in on drippy glowy ball…
Sees a very angry Halo staring back at him.
She makes a motion. “Come get some”
Ship Leaves very very quickly.
Halo realizes what she did and pukes from pain and disgust.
nah man, she started her period on the second day of the comic timeline, the day after she got discovered.
it`s been a couple weeks since then. period and blow from are long gone. maybe about to return but i`m pretty sure she`s clear in that regard for now.
It’s the seventh night of the flashback right now, so her period is probably over and her next still several weeks away.
And, adding on to those two points, her period didn’t actually make her any more prone to violence or angry outbursts than her normal baseline.
We had a time skip of undefined length in the training phase. We a re a few weeks in.
No, she said it was ‘several days’ but in the blog DaveB indicated it was really only two days.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2532
Does projectile vomit ricochet like this shrapnel?
It occurs to me that she can make that shield quite large… if she can find a way into the inside of Meganegasquidward, and then expand the shield, it might have a Very Bad Day.
This makes me wonder if the orb with the unknown function is going to wind up being for healing wounds. I guess we’ll see.
We’ll see how her body armor holds up against That.
Next week the glasses come Off. Bye bye alien.
Ooooh, so I’m not the only one who remembered she’s wearing armor :D
Oh, thank you, I forgot the body armor. I hope it’ll spread the impact out so she’s not badly injured!
I understand that the shrapnell got caught inside the shield and kept ricocheting in it until it hit something that could absorb its energy (i.e. Sydney)
I just think that there should no be shrapnell inside that shield but something even more lethal. Maxima hit her shield with a blast powerful enough to vaporise a thick steel plate.. It didn’t even stress the shield.
This means that the squid blast is an order of magnitude (or more) powerful. We are talking about ionising materials being hit here, the kind of energy that causes fission reactions. The blasts shouldn’t cause explosions but miniature suns going off in whatever they hit. Tens of thousands to millions of degrees hot plasma and high energy gamma or x-ray radiation.
Then again, the way it is written and drawn is a lot less terrifying than the squid thing already is, so perhaps it is a good idea to stick with shrapnel rather than something that would flash burn our heroine…
Different squid blasts though. The ones the squid is shooting now didn’t stress the shield, just made her bounce around.
the shrapnel got in before the shield got up and came up and hit the back of inside of shield and like a bullet played pingpong till hit Sydney
It’s not like the shrapnel penetrated the shield. It just got in before she put the shield up.
Don’t forget. Maxima didn’t hit Sydney’s shield with her full strength. For all we know Maxima might still be stronger then squidward.
I do suspect that that was at least *partly* her pride talking. Maxima does seem to show some pride in her powers, and since she didn’t know Sydney well yet, she might have felt a little hurt by being foiled by this little greenhorn.
I actually suspect Maxima has one more level of power in her death blast, namely, fully draining all of her other powers and putting it all into one shot. It’d probably be lethal to her, or at least dangerous, even if only from back scatter on the beam (from hitting the air).
Still, probably not something we’re going to see this decade.
Maxi has a base level that she can’t go below
Yeah, we saw a bit of her ‘pride’ pop out after she hit Mr Buble in the conference room and all that happened was one of the windows cracked
Remember that she just now purchased a new perk on her shield orb. It’s even stronger now than it was when the “shimmer blast” almost got through…but in what way?
she did not.. she upgraded Flight orb, so she will be even faster than she was. and since that “shimmer blast” was relatively slow, she can easily dodge it now that she is alone. so she does not even need better shield unless that squidward has some other overpowered attack :D
She upgraded the flight orb, yes. That doesn’t have to mean more speed.
The way its laid out and what she picked, it sure looks like speed upgrade. Last speed upgrade that unlocked something faster (FTL or warp drive? Who knows). And even if its not speed upgrade, it is something that will make her flight easier.. And she was fast enough to avoid those big blast even without upgrade, she just chose to save her slower friends by shielding them
Guesses for the unknown orb:
-healing, regeneration
-copy experienced power effect (like rewind time would be good right now)
-telepathy (to explain a misunderstanding to the alien bounty hunter who think Sydney wiped the planet)
-Summon. Deux ex machina would be good right now. Summon Deus X and see if he’s an alien-in-a-human-suit that knows how to deal with the situation from sheer intellect and knowledge of the situation — or ability to make a certain alien bounty hunter remember when she couldn’t stand anymore.
-Teleport home (to the comic book shop, of all places)
-Invisibility (it’s hard to notice that power if as a side effect you can still see yourself even if nothing and no one else can, it’s an easy power to miss)
-the “reverse forget me not” orb.
-summon ferret balls? Maybe it’ll help?? ADHD ex machina???
Oh – so like a Klingon cloaking still. Invisibility sorta makes sense. But part of me thinks that could be part of the scanners/true sight tree. If that tree lets you see invisible beings than ir should let you become invisible…
I would expect:
telepathy to be on the yellow orb (mind powers),
teleport to be on the blue orb (movement powers),
invisibility to be on the purple orb (cloak often takes the place of shields in scifi),
if those powers exist.
And I keep forgetting she already has teleport on the yellow orb, but apparently so do a lot of other people.
Ooh! Enemy Skill Materia! Me likey!
Oo, that’s gonna leave a mark.
Time for her to go into her utility belt.
Does she have a stapler for emergency field dressings?
She’s small arms “bulletproof”+ – That’s got a lot of kinetic energy, so big bawda bruise, but she shouldn’t need a staple, just a pressure bandage for the sharp bit that got through the super silk and armor plate.
Situational bonus: +1 to charisma toward badass types, from the scar
time bomb: dropping a few drops of blood (eventually, can’t keep that bubble on forever) on the surface of an alien world who might be specializing in blood magic.
Except, the ones who utilize blood magic, have either all been killed or fled to Earth
The perils of shields that act as perfect reflectors. If I remember my collision physics correctly, this means the shield acts as if it has lots more mass than the projectile.
How would that stop the bullet itself from soaking up the energy by constantly being deformed?
It wouldn’t – similarly, you’d lose some energy to heat on each ricochet as the kinetic energy gets redirected through the mass of the bullet. However, it looks like this projectile isn’t deforming much, and the heat loss isn’t a huge factor within 2 digit magnitude bounces. ie – yeah, it’s losing energy, just not much.
If it didn’t deform, it wouldn’t ricochet, it would shatter. In order to ricochet, it has to absorb the energy of the collision by deforming and then releasing it back be returning to its original form, usually only partially therefore a loss in energy. If it doesn’t deform , the energy hast to go somewhere, and if it is hard enough to not deform, that mean it will shatter instead. A super ball is able to return to its original shape and loses only a little energy in the exchange. Steel used in construction is a softer steel to retain strength, and therefore would deform. By the time it hits Sydney, it will have very little energy left.
You’re assuming…several things. for one, shattering only occurs if the structural integrity of the object is overcome by the total energy of the impact – that is by no mean assured. If it weren’t, swords would become useless after three or four deflections. It matters what the material is, how int’s internally structured, and how much energy is involved. If the material is “advanced enough” it very well could be able to take the impact with very little deformation. We know jack about whatever it is that shrapnel is made of. Secondly, we also know jack about the nature of the collision – the impact with a solid, non-elastic object is one thing; impacting with a force field might very much be another – why that would be, I don’t know, but physics already says the force field isn’t possible in our universe, so, who knows what screwy bs is involved in this case. Other than Mr. Barrack, and he hasn’t said.
That looks to be right in the solar plexus. Have fun breathing, even if it doesn’t penetrate.
I figure shes probably OK but maybe a little scared now that she actually took damage. Well, vengence time now, LOL.
Since this is technically a flashback, you’re gonna have to go with the glasses she has in the beginning- unless glasses breaking becomes a running thing with her.
Technically, it is not flashback, because FLASHback are relatively short.. Technically, it is a narration. The kind you see in some movies… The kind, where she could possibly jump in and say something like “wait, no. It did not happen like that. Let me roll back a bit” :D
No, it is a flashback as it is explaining what happened up to the point we see in the first few pages, the duration doesn’t mean anything: an old guy laying on their death bed relaying everything that happened in the last 150 years is still a flashback
sure, but that old guy won’t remember everything that happened in that time. only some BRIEF fragments from, lets say, each year. and like that, they are flash backs.. but this is basically continuous story with some gaps in time, like in book.. do you want to tell me that when you read book, you read flashback? :D
Almost all the comments so far have been pretty stoic, only a few “oww, that probably hurts”. Maybe everyone else went right into analysis mode before they started reading, but the cut on the cheek gave me the feels, and I felt some genuine concern about the gut hit.
Well done DaveB, you made me forget for a moment that Sydney is a make believe character in an imaginary universe.
+1
It’s only shrapnel not an actual attack from the alien thing, and it ricocheted a lot losing lots of energy.
Don’t forget she’s wearing anti-kenetic armor made by Fashion Ninjas.
I predict nothing worse than than a demonstration of her Swearing skills.
And, because I can’t have all of my thoughts at once, the track of the shrapnel’s first bounce doesn’t seem to correlate well with the path shown in the subsequent panel.
Why isn’t she using the Sensory /teleport orb?
“Telepresence”, not teleport. It just lets her have an out of body experience. :)
Hmm, wonder if she can use “true-sight” to see what the upgrades are?
She got teleport from an upgrade to telepresence.
Odd, my reply didn’t post? Lets try this again. Sorry if it duplicates. :)
That orb only does Telepresence ( leaves the body behind ).
I wonder if it’s true-sight function could be used to read the upgrades by touching it while they are showing?
If i recall correctly, she tried that last time. But touching one of them just selects it for upgrade.
When she first met Troll-Sciona, she accidentally teleported into the building with her truesight orb.
Her first upgrade to it made it able to actually teleport her. That’s how Sciona may or may not have killed her before Krona’s reset kicked in, remember?
Damn, it did duplicate. >_< Oh well.
Yeah, I totally forgot about the teleporting. Hmm, it kind of looks like she needs to get to the destination using the "lightbee" before teleporting. So it'd be too slow. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2409
Well, now I get to see if the orb that makes air is capable of healing. :)
Should have picked a spot father away to upgrade.
She wasn’t planning on upgrading right then, or she wouldn’t have been planning on hitting Squidly from below
I say keep the round glasses, they fit her look so well.
Something to keep in mind, glasses contrary to their name haven’t actually used glass for decades, instead lenses are made out of a material called Polycarbonate. Which is the same material used to make safety goggles.
This is because Polycarbonate is highly impact resistant, to the point you are more likely to break your frames then you are the lenses themselves while having the same ability to create a lens that glass does.
Or to put things simply, her glasses shattering like that make no sense. Doubly so since no modern military would allow someone with actual glass lenses into the field due to safety concerns.
polycarbonate lenses will shatter if you hit them ( on your face) hard and sharply( impulse, not edge) enough.
go ahead, guess how i found out……. still have the scars on my right cheek….
and NO it did NOT involve firearms…..
You probably had CR-39 lenses, which while a type of polycarbonate, is not the polycarbonate used in modern day lenses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UapRDQr4DJs
A 2mm sheet of the material used in modern glasses lenses can take a sledghammer hit without so much as a hairline crack.
Polycarbonate lens also have a different refractive index than glass. They can thus be thinner for near sighted people and avoid the ‘coke bottle’ uber thick lenses
The biggest thing regulating edge thickness is center thinness. For safety, to prevent shattering and eye damage, the center has to be thick enough to withstand an impact. Polycarbonate is stronger than glass and therefore can be thinner in the center than glasses as well as having a higher refractive index.
Bad power foreshadowing potential:
If her powers are comparable to a space ship, then while many of us have theorized navigation *that may be a function of the com-ball she hasn’t unlocked* there is also Medbay, although the green ball that we are calling airball may be full life support and have a healing function as well as one of its powers not just “makes air” as its a life support.
Assuming she’s bought the med-bay upgrade…
you know, another typical spaceship feature is the Self Destruct
I really dont think it has “medbay”.. Giving that it has really strong shield and it is only one person “space ship”, why bother with medbay? If it is made to be a space ship of some kind, you need to have shield up at all time.. Shield that is nearly impenetrable… Anything that would go through it would kill you before you could heal.. And nobody wants those annoying bad powers :D
I was just thinking that she should really be doing her thinking out of line-of-sight from Squidward…
She was. Squiddy was just firing randomly and hit near her.
Whelp, I think we now know what her last or is or isn’t. it is either a medic/healer orb making
Sydney even more OP or it’s not and she meets her demise here.
We can’t even be certain that Sydney is damaged. The fragment that hit her might have been able to do all those ricochets only because it was light and made of something that retains and releases energy easily when compresses.
Also, since this is a flashback the sense of drama is somewhat muted. Even if she is injured here we know that she’s all better in her present time. We haven’t seen her stomach so perhaps she pick up a wicked scar if she was indeed injured.
We can see a line of blood under her eye in panels four and seven
I don’t get why so many people are rooting for the last orb to be navigation or healing. That would be kind of disapointing imo. The orbs are so versatile. Healing could go in life supply and navigation in the yellow intel and communication orb. I’d like the last orb to be something really original since it has been teased for such a long time.
Anyway healing wouldn’t be that useful. Her shield is tougher than a bunker while she is under average in constitution for a human. Anything that can force its way through the shield would most likely have enough residual force to obliterate her.
I agree with your assessment. Life support (the orb that makes air) would also have healing abilities and nav joined in coms makes sense. I haven’t much thought about the last orb but I still like the Bag of Holding idea. Dimensional storage could allow her to keep a small arsenal of stuff on hand like Dabbler does. But as Maxima pointed out – what if it does turn out to be the brig!
What is the brig and cargo hold are one in the same?? Maybe it has a genie inside.
This possibility is exactly why Max didn’t want to experiment with this idea when the spaceship comparison was first made.
The upgrade paths for the unknown one are zigzags, makes me think of power absorb and redirect. It wouldn’t do anything earlier because there was nothing to absorb.
Maybe she’ll try to use it to heal herself, and end up absorbing the next beam instead.
Absorb and redirect you say? You might be right.. It would be cool, and a bit funny, to see squidward there get killed by his own beam.. And she could try to redirect that pesky sunlight she hates so much :D
My shiny 2 cents worth has me rooting for it to be equivalent to a sensor suite/tricorder/etc. This orb kit is lacking any analysis abilities thus far.
She already has that: with the Tele-Sight orb: she was able to identify the magical junk in the Council’s attic
As interesting as different glasses for a time could be, they’ll have to switch back to the big round ones that you’re probably used to. (And for some reason my first attempt at this said “match her well: big, in the way, and easily seen through”, but that just sounds mean and is probably wrong anyway.)
As, on pages 3 and 4, which is supposed to be future to this, they’re the same style. (Though presumably a bit more resilient.)
Oh shit- Wait – did she upgrade her shields when she grabbed that orb? Cause I think she needs life support right now!
No she upgraded flight into the second speed tier which we believe to be a warp drive level of flight.
I think you guys are forgetting, she is wearing the ArcSwat combat armor. Something like this is gonna sting, but it won’t be that damaging.
Not to forget another pertinent detail: this is still a flashback, Sydney survives
Sydney had a top speed of Mach 4 with 4 dots filled in on the diagram. If this is a linear progression she should now be able to hit a top speed of around 3700 mph with all five. (or about 6000 kph for you metric people)
I think Dave B has hinted that it increases geometrically, so I’d guess that the 5th dot will double her speed to Mach 8* and one dot would have given her a speed of Mach 0.5.
*Though at what altitude has not been specified.
…It’s okay, everyone! She’s in her Bullet Resistant Field Uniform!
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2804
Also in this series, she gets fitted for her bullet-resistant uniform: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1722
and here where she tries it on: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1731
and more discussions about how good/bad her uniform will be at resisting various kinds of damage: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1735
COME ON! I just finished updating the map with the last fix one and now I have to update 6 more!
As a side note, it seems the the thought about that one node unlocking the rest in the series was correct.
This isn’t the first time Sydney didn’t deploy Mr Buble in time, heck, it’s not even the second or third time!!!
Something tells me tenticle idiot there is going to regret those actions, considering WHERE Sydney was hit she is going to go full blown beast mode and get up close and personal with that thing then fire full blast right in its face not from a distance giving it time to react.
Time to see the side of her that flipped a “bank robber” by the tongue and bit him repeatedly on the head.
What’s all this then?! Faith and Begorrah!
Only without Max to pull her off.
Unknown orb Better Be Haeling.
-1 not enough misspelling
At this point I would be really surprised if it was healing. This is too obvious a set up for it, I have a feeling the unknown orb is going to really surprise us.
So many people think that one of the Orb can heal.. And so many people think she’ll need healing :D with armor she has, she will probably have a minor bruise.. Not worth healing :D and I hope that unknown Orb will be something better, like a disguise or telepathic radio… Or maybe access point to some kind of pocket dimension as suggested by (i think) Maxima (when they talked about it after they discovered that green Orb does)… And
(Accidentaly submited before I was finished.. Stupid phone :D) and Sydney does not want healing power anyway… Who would like to have the “bad” power, right? :D (certainly not Deadpool :D)
As the round appears to be dinging the force field each time it bounces, it may have lost enough kinetic energy by the time it reaches her that her body armor saves her from total bodily destruction.
I don’t mean to be picky, but I can’t help wondering at the physics of an object ricocheting tangentially off of the interior of a sphere several times and then finding itself on a path through the sphere’s center. I presume that relates to the shape of the object, which probably means this object is as likely to be hitting our heroine broadside as point-on, and possibly with a bit of spin, which should work in the armor’s favor. Also can’t help wondering what this building fragment is made of, that it survived several impacts with the shield without breaking into smaller pieces – metal structural support, perhaps, or something similar.
At least shes wearing a bullet resistant uniform…
NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
And she’ll be fine-ish thanks to Kevlar 2.0 and oobtek.
Which I’m assuming she’s wearing since they’d want her protected when going after Sciona.
Hopefully.
*ears drooping*
That… was… perfect!
Here’s the thing about ‘shields’… how to they work? Armor either absorbs energy, slowing it down, distributing it as heat, and transferring a lesser amount, or it works to deflect energy, either via geometry or by applying an opposing force. You can see this in modern reactive armor where a tank is fired upon and on the moment of impact, detonates a small shaped charge in the armor, and this counteracts the force of the impact.
Now, I’m pretty sure that Sidney’s shield isn’t absorbing energy, because energy can’t be destroyed, only transformed… usually into heat. If Sydney’s shield was sucking up that much energy, it would cook her. Just as the copycap allowed light through the shield, so it must also allow heat. Otherwise Sydney would cook in her own body temperature.
So if the shield is reactive, it means that it pushes back somehow on any energy that strikes it. That means that it has a limit that it can push back, and Squidward nearly reached it. However, because it’s reactive, it doesn’t really do anything to absorb and reduce the energy of impacts. Not a problem outside, where the object goes flying off somewhere else. Big problem inside, where the shield will sustain the object’s kinetic energy. If you’re lucky, the object will pulverize. If not, then the object will continue to deflect indefinitely until it hits something that can absorb its energy.
Like Sydney.
Well, good thing that piece of whatever didn’t shatter on first impact, or there would have been a whole lot of smaller pieces ripping around. That would have done a lot more damage than this. Also, I agree with what some of the other posters said about the trajectory, I think the physics of deflecting off a concave object suggests that piece would bounce around near the perimeter and wouldn’t go into the centre like it did.
it occurs to me… this is not actually an unusual situation. This is Sydney, after all.
This is the second time she’s met discomfort inside her shield by the same stuff to cause her to put it up.
More than second
Cue in unidentified orb which completely heals her.
She’s already tried healing herself
So if her reading glasses are broken… She can’t see the symbol-whatsits on her orbs, right?
Well, not clearly anyway.
Hope that’s not a problem.
I’m assuming Sydney is wearing body armor of some form, either Kevlar or some super-invention equivalent. Still, I can’t see this feeling to great. She’s got a fresh new bellybutton at worst, or a motherfucker of a contusion at best. I want to believe her mystery orb is going to fix this, but then I have to question: Why would it activate now when she has been extremely injury-prone to this point? Maybe a damage threshold? Is it linked to a high-level Cast when Damage Taken? Is anybody going to get a Path of Exile reference?
Her outfit includes a non-Newtonian bullet-catcher, plus non-specific super enhancements. Won’t stop a tank round, and the force still has to go somewhere, but it’ll take a bullet better than her face will.
Given the sound effect (Thuk), there’s a fair chance she’s escaped serious injury. One thing’s a given however…
If somene hasn’t been hurt yet in this fight, they’re about to be.
Gonna have a hell of a bruise there. Even the best body armour can’t absorb all the kinetic energy from a round… or shrapnel in this case.
Though having been reminded that this is a flashback (I kinda forgot that in all the excitement), I know Sydney’s not really in trouble, so all drama and sense of danger from the situation has gone.
She survives, doesn’t mean she survives in one piece or unscathed (well, more scathed)
I’m accepting she’s not getting through this without injury, she nearly lost an eye to one bit of shrapnel, gained a nasty cheek gash which she hasn’t noticed (probably due to the amount of adrenaline she’d mainlining), one hell of a gut punch from the other large piece of shrapnel…
But no matter what McKree the MechaCthulhu does next, I know Sydney is going to survive it… I just don’t feel there’s any threat to Sydney any more. Unless DaveB plans on blowing off an arm (or even a hand) in the near future.