Grrl Power #664 – The biggest collar of her career
I don’t know what Sydney is hoping to accomplish with suggesting that thing is under arrest. I mean it’s obviously just a suggestion. There’s no indication the thing even understand English, and even if it decided to surrender or whatever the next step would be, her whole goal is to beat the hit dice out of the thing until a skill point falls out.
I guess it’s partially to ease her own conscience, as if this goes as she needs it to, this will be her first time killing something. Assuming that thing is alive and not some sort of mecha-kaiju. It helps that it’s a huge rampaging monster. She would probably have a heck of a lot more trouble killing something more human looking. She blew up a few of those mannekillers, but they were soulless automatons. It also assuming all those fighters were drones and not manned. It’s convenient how those things stopped attacking as soon as Sydney decided to focus on the big guy. Basically I sort of forgot. They probably should still be swarming her, or at least some stragglers should be picking at her shields. Maybe they actually ran out? Or they just decided there was no point in tossing more materiel into the meat grinder that is The Mighty Halo.
As I post this page, it occurs me that I maybe should have posted this page on Monday, and Monday’s today. I do like popping back and forth between Sydney and stuff back on Earth, but it was kind of a weird place to break the fight. Maybe once we’re past these pages, I’ll change up the order in WordPress if I can figure out how, to make it read a bit smoother.
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Well as to the timing of monday and today´s pages, I wouldnt have broken it up, unless events on Earth are going to do something dramatic that would feel like Duex Ex Machina if not properly explained. Like if Skybreaker was about to be used to create a portal and that portal appears at just the worst or best possible time. I feel like thats what the author is going for, but he is telegraphing it pretty hard by breaking up the action.
Seriously? I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m glad not to have to wait on the actual story for weeks while most generic villain ever spews more vague foreshadowing.
But one random page stuck in the middle of an action sequence? That’s just poor pacing man. Commit to the interlude or don’t do it at all.
So today I learned that “Raoooooo” is mecha-cthulhuoid for “Owowowouchgoddammitfuckthathurts”.
An important concept in any language.
Also translated as Jozxyqk“.
Great, next time something tries to intimidate her by roaring it’s gonna get a speech about how she took down a skyscraper sized tentacle kaiju all on her own.
Well she’s de-feeted the thing, and that seems to have made it peeved.
Maybe that wasn’t a leg, and now he won’t be able to peeve.
He should just walk it off.
It’s a rather pedestrian injury.
If he didn’t want to be set on fire, he shouldn’t have been so flammable. Or sliceable. Or explodable. Or, well, basically…Sydneyable.
If she is flying and shielded, how is she going to shoot?
Fly into mouth land and fire from inside would be my choice.
While it’s breathing fire at her by the looks of that mouth.
Yup. I would suggest flipping the pages as well. Though honestly I dont’ even remember monday’s scene until you mentioned it.
Its sure is odd to cut a leg off then offer them surrender haha. I wonder if she thought about talking first or not. or just occurred to her after taking the leg off and feeling guilty.
“Stop!”
BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM
“Or I’ll…”
“Dammit Steve!”
I know it’s a nitpick, but If I’d been writing the story, I would have stuck with everyone who went back through the portal, did the Skybreaker recovery, and only reveal what happened to Halo when either they get back to her or she gets back to them. You know, they portal back to see the aftermath of Halo’s raging rampage of revenge, then maybe have Dabbler cast a spell to see what happened or have Halo report in and recount the events.
General rule of thumb, avoid doing too many flash backs during a flash back…we can’t all be Mary Shelly and get away with it.
Although I would say a “meanwhile” or something could be in order. Or (across the thresholds of time and space we join another tied to our heroine’s fate).
Just for the record, the Sydney that MistaSquid is about to unleash all its power at/into/on, might just be another HoloHalo per LightB while Halo is actually taking aim at another leg/orifice/vulnerable point.
Could be a decoy of course. But shield plus lightbee means no PPO to aim.
It’s actually fair reasonable that the fighters/drones didn’t pursue Sydney to the surface if they aren’t built for atmospheric flight, re-entry, or don’t have the power to escape a gravity well once they’re down in it. Of course they were launched from a stationary carrier so I guess re-entry’s off the list.
They were already in the atmosphere
Also already in the gravity well.
Yeah, I’m not thinking. They still had to be accelerating against near surface gravity even if they’re were high enough to not be getting a lot of drag. Gravity at low orbits is still 90% surface gravity, and that’s something like 200 miles up. Still, atmospheric resistance thins markedly by the time you’re ten miles or so up, and it looked like Sid was above that when the ships started on her. I could see them not having the fuel/power to plow after her.
Seems to me the drones were only defending the mothership. They didn’t attack her until it was clear Sydney was going to attack the ship. Now they probably are thinking something along the lines of: ‘Let Squidward deal with her. If he./she/it can’t what chance do we have?’
Is Squidward a she? I can’t help but feeling an aggressively feminine vibe here.
I dunno. What with the tentacles and all…
If McKree is female… that’s not its arse…
I don’t know. Could be she’s also just an idiot and thinks every where is her jurisdiction (which she’s completely outside of). :p
Bonus points because I can’t tell if you’re talking about Halo or Mechthulu.
Well, Halo. The other wasn’t acting like an government law enforcer. :p
maybe it was!
She’s not serious; this is just trash-talk.
I was thinking about this, but the jurisdiction would be alari, and I’m sure they wouldn’t mind killing whatever that is. So she’s fine.
Jurisdiction, like all government authority is just a function of power. While in the civilized world that power is derived from law and social contract, having the raw power will suffice as well. (Brute force is what is resorted to when law and social contract are ignored aka:Swat Team Raid) That’s how Gengis Khan reshaped the world, raw power which then applied new laws and new social contracts as Khan saw fit. Halo potentially has that same level of power if she can take on the Alari killers Big-Bad. Halo just MADE this her jurisdiction.
Since Squidward was having trouble finding her the drones were probably having trouble too. Likely they were in a search pattern elsewhere. Plus making sure she isn’t the only one.
Well holding the drone fighters back is one thing that helps make the big guy feel more like a mecha-kaiju than a sapient being, as maybe “they” thought it would just fire at them too, wasting their resources, as it impartially attacks anything with a power level or moves.
Right, piss it off and then fly up in front of the eyes. Remember those eye beams that bounced you around like a ping-pong ball? Great idea.
this is why i think this is a hologram.
It is not.
You can see yellow Com Ball orbiting her in fifth panel.
I find it interesting that Sydney has progressed to taking pages out of Maxima’s playbook. She took off her opponent’s limb and threatened to kill it if it doesn’t stand down and surrender. Just an interesting, if probably unintentional callback.
Obviously, she has a total bromance going on with Maxima, so I totally see her using a page out of Maxima’s playbook.
It’s going to be great when Maxima and Dabbler finally get back there, after a Herculean effort, to find Sydney sitting next to a campfire, making Squidward s’mores and telling ghost stories to a troop of alien girl scouts, or something.
It would make sense if you’re going to continue to alternate pages… otherwise, it is a bit of an awkward place to put a single page interlude. But, y’know, whatever.
I wonder if there’s going to be more before the climax here, I thought there would be at least one more page with Deus and Vale after the first one. Maybe that’s a reason to switch them.
I’m always happy to see Vale, though. That one, she’s got big dreams :)
If you’ve got the element of surprise, take the kill shot!
Never get a job as a bodyguard.
!SYDNEY! Stop Monologueing!
Leave it to Sydney to arrest the Kaiju !
Also that takes some balls to do that, so it’s a good thing she’s got 7 of them!
Getting a bit cocky there Sydney, remember what happened the last time you tried to arrest somebody?
But I agree that’s probably holo-Halo, her legs look like she’s standing, not hovering. That still brings up the question of why the shield looks round, then…
Zooming in there looks to be a yellow orb over her head, but the arrangement is strange. The green and orange ones are on opposite sides, but they’re usually together. Orb goofs have happened before too, so I can’t really say either way.
If it isn’t holo-Halo I’m curious about what the shield would look like in midair.
I agree with it being holo-Halo, and you are right about her posture showing she’s standing on solid ground (her feet are planted on something flat), and you are correct in that the shield is flat… to which comes this explanation (to me anyway), Sydney is standing on a large rock below McKree, and Lightbee’s hologram doesn’t include what Sydney is standing on, just what she is wearing and carrying. So “flying” Halo is in a grounded standing position in front of McKree’s face.
Still, she can’t take a shot at Squidward without dropping either the shield orb or the lightbee orb. In the first case she’s suddenly unprotected, so that’s a no-no. In the second case, she suddenly disappears in front of Squidward, which might tip him/her/it off. Also, if she’s still standing on the ground it’s unlikely she could hit that mouth thing.
well if you miss the orifice of choice you take a leg; sounds legit. then call for surrender??????
maybe she needs to get eaten so she understands that you need to fully commit to attack unless you are sure your opponent cant harm you. as another data point to consider as in the disk world series you dont worry about the fella that pulls the sword from the stone; you worry about the person who put the sword in the stone. the large squid seems to be the put the sword in the stone type to me.
I know this one! Though not as sacrificial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdhuAYlHVO0
> her whole goal is to beat the hit dice out of the thing until a skill point falls out.
For some reason, this description of Sydney’s goal here hit my funny bone.
Ok, this is Sydney we are talking about, what she says and what she does is two totally different things.
So far the comic has not shown her using actively using her PPO so she may not be super efficient with it. So her missing were she was intending is totally believable.
She is putting on a very strong face but she is trapped on a alien world, and no idea when help will come her way, if any.. So she playing it like a game hoping to level up to get more points to try and open different sphere powers.
I am hoping the author does not spread this out to much because I like her on earth handling earth problems, but this is not my comic so I will let the writer write and enjoy were it goes.
Pretty sure she realized that she couldn’t fire across from its foot its limb/torso conjunction axis.
Look back to her initial attack on it with the PPO, and how close the blast was when it bent around it. Chances are if she tried to fire from its foot to that point she’d either be firing from within its shield or hit its underside shield. Its shield appears to be a defense aura type not a bubble type like hers. So chances it wouldn’t have this massive no shield point under its legs where people could hide and shoot up from the ground at it, would be kind of a dumb oversight for a monster that big attacking relatively tiny opponents to use a force field that makes it vulnerable to such small opponents just because its stepping over them.
Umm, if it had a bubble shield, when it stepped over a tiny insect, they would either be squished or shunted aside, otherwise, it defeats the purpose of having a shield if anything could just get inside like that
That’s like saying Sydney is dumb for flying above someone because they could just shoot up at her
You appear to be making the same point I was, which makes the tone very confusing that you are using.
I stated it is clearly not using a bubble shield *given everything under it is not being crushed or pushed aside*, so clearly is using a defense aura type shield. Hence Sydney where she is standing would be unlikely to be able to fire across from its foot its limb junction as the shield wraps around the entity so she’d be firing inside the leg portion and not able to fire across open space outside the shield *under it* to the underside.
I’m wondering if McKree’s “shield” was a conscious telekinetic based defense. I say that as when Sydney fired on it before, it could see her firing on it, so telekinetically bent/warped the particle beam around itself. The second shot (on this page) was from surprise, which didn’t get stopped with any form of shield or defense as McKree didn’t see it coming.
We might get more details of the defenses in the next few pages to get a better theory of Mechathulhu Defensive Countermeasures.
It cant *possibly* be stupid enough to eat her.
It just can’t.
Sid is doing an imitation of “Nyah Nyah Can’t Hit Me Man” from page1223 and the mother ship is playing the part of the orphanage he shoots at her, or possibly through her, and the bigger threat is gone
That is devious, and I hope it works out that way.
Sydney, it’s probably trying to eat you.
Not a very good idea for it, mind you, but I’m pretty sure that’s its intention.
I am guessing its going for some sort of beam breath attack.
But eating is a viable option to attack something that much smaller. Unlike what you see in cartoons and tv shows like Hercules, the insides of a creature are generally inhospitable, for one most things to have to at least bit down on or crush their prey before their throat will allow them to swallow it, even when its tiny to them. Saliva, venom, backwards facing barbs *more common feature than you think especially in aquatic animals*, throat muscles that crush, airless environment, stomach acids, the story of someone surviving being swallowed whole and found alive are extremely rare *one account of a guy found alive in the stomach of a spermwhale comes to mind and is highly suspect*, but looking at that thing’s mouth, going with internal inferno.
But at anyrate, as its been acting like a weapon this whole time, going to assume this is its third attack, we saw a shimmer explosive blast from the head tentacles, explosive eye beams, so some atomic breath or what have you would make sense.
if squidward tries to swallow Syd, that would be the equivalent of a boa swallowing a porcupine. It won’t be good in the end.
something about that sixth panel reminds me of a show called, “Drawn Together”.
Not sure if this has been posted or not, but those were microgravity-based near-vacuum fightercraft. Unlike a lot of modern media, what works in space might not work in atmosphere. At least not without a conversion kit or something.
Those fightercraft no longer pestering her? They just might not have enough wingspan or thrust to fight the gravity well of this at least semi-earth-like planetoid. Or maybe their drives are gravitic and can’t compete against a gravity well of this size, rendering them little more than Unidentified Falling Objects.
Take your pick.
Or maybe they’re just happy that Sydney’s Squidward’s headache now?
Oh hey the copyright changed to 2017.
Prediction:
It has a hellfire breath, dragon breath, Piccolo mouth beam *did he ever name that move?*, Atomic Breath, or whatever type attack, and this is Holo-Sydney baiting him.
Piccolo’s breath energy wave is called the Explosive Breath Cannon.
Just thought of a potential flow of the current story arc that joins Dues and Sydney’s current paths. (which probably won’t be anywhere near the mark, but hey, speculation!)
Syd is currently fighting Squidward, Dave could go any of multiple ways with how that goes down. The phrase ‘weak spot’, while Sydney’s guess as to what that is may be incorrect (looks like an alien mouth to me), is interesting to me. It could be setting up a plausible explanation for an explosive death for Squidward. IF Squidward has some form of power source, which Sydney blows up, it could result in an explosion, potentially even larger than the previous ones. (possibly the source of the massive craters we can see from space.)
Meanwhile, Dues has the Skybreaker. Some have speculated that he plans to use it to create portals, massively increasing the power output of his Thermal updraft tower. either by design or by an accident/miscalculation, one side Dues’s portal is opened on the Alari homeworld, as the above-mentioned explosion is taking place, turning his thermal updraft tower into an explosive former thermal updraft tower. from there Sydney can get home (or ark can at least identify the location of the Skybreaker.)
Of course, there are… problems with this line of thinking, firstly, the timelines don’t match, Syd, from what we’ve seen, hasn’t been on the Alari homeworld for long. One or two hours maybe. whereas the Skybreaker had to be found and then transported to Dues’s private country, and that’s before any setting up/preparation that needs to happen before a portal is opened. that said, time travel speculation has happened with the original portal, so the timeline may be less of an issue.
secondly, however, is the energy required, the amount of power it takes to create an interplanetary portal in the grrlpower universe appears to be significant, so how is Dues getting all that power, and how could it be accidental? if it wasn’t accidental why did dues create a portal to the Alari homeworld, when Earths upper atmosphere would work just as well? maybe he’s in league with Squidward(‘s people) and is trying to bring them to earth (for reasons?), but then, why the thermal updraft tower?
ultimately this is just a poorly thought out idea, but the thought of dues creating the portal just to see his brand new tower vapourised in a fiery explosion was amusing to me.
I’ll stop now
This assumes a linear/parallel between the events in question.
But remember Harem’s echo.
There is a chance Sydney is fighting in the near future, so the events back on Earth we are seeing could be a case of catch up.
That was my thought too when I noticed the time discrepancy. If Sydney’s in a different time from Deus/Vala etc, it would explain a lot, especially why Sciona was so surprised to find her world in ruins. Given how powerful the Alari were, I doubt Squidward’s people could have just steamrolled them.
Add that Sciona was in communications with her homeworld only two days prior according to her. You’d think a “we are being attacked,” emergency call would have been a priority at least as a “stay way, world under attack.” Especially in only two days, if this is their standard method of attack.
The other way around – it’s the thermal updraft tower that provides the power to run Skybreaker.
Multiple layers going on with the Skybreaker.
If it was sooo important to Sciona, why didn’t she take it when they were in the Reliquary? In hindsight, I suspect Deus intentionally goaded her in order to get her to leave before acquiring it. But then, if Deus had plans for it, why didn’t he take it when he had the opportunity?
The ‘wheels within wheels’ aspect of Deus has me suspect he had a part in Wyrmil (and to a lesser extent Cooter) surviving and finding themselves in possession of it, so Deus could then leverage its location for what he wanted from Sciona. And plan to get the Skybreaker from her when an opportunity presented itself.
And while self centered, anything Deus does is not automatically evil. His primary use of the Skybreaker could be to simply create a gate to ship Galtyn products directly to worldwide distribution centers, almost entirely removing shipping costs and insurance.
Certain things about the Reliquary are still not clear. When Sciona smashed the pillar it left the brane ripper in the base where she couldn’t reach but Deus also couldn’t smack it out, either by design or because she had wrong information on how it worked. It’s implied that she tried to get it later just after the Council disabled the system, because the blood portal was still open and she didn’t blame Deus for taking it until after that.
It also isn’t known just what happened to Wyrmil or how he got the brane ripper. Wyrmil said Sciona “probably” used the Epimorph, implying he was unconscious when Sciona used it in the same room, and that Sciona wasn’t responsible for nearly annihilating him on her return to the vault. But then how did he get the Regenator, and what of Sciona’s other expendable “allies”? Did Deus help them get out? And where is the Regenator now?
All I can figure is there’s a lot more that happened there that isn’t being shown.
Well Sciona did not get the Brane ripper from the vault, since Wyrmil had it hidden inside the Cooter /Wyrmil combo. Cooter/Wyrmil was the one who tore a rip in space to bring Trent into the vault. We just don’t exactly how Wyrmil picked up the ripper – before or after he merged with Cooter.
Sciona grabbed it from Cooter/Wyrmil after Cooter/Wyrmil escaped and was in some unknown town, when she ambushed him and sliced him up.
Considering how important the Brane Ripper was to Sciona, it’s seems pretty chancy to leave it to Wymil to be involved in the removal of the artifact from the vault that way.
If squidward, is enslaved, they may not care and will sacrifice, it.
“Of course, they could open fire from orbit, but odds are good they’d be hitting Squidward too.’
Squidward did both assault and battery Sydney. You’re good on the charges :)
Also attempted murder :)
Sydney (and the rest of Goof Troop Zeta) could be considered invaders: they are not native to that world, and they did attack someone who was
They can’t be considered invaders insofar as Squidward is concerned though, since it isnt Squidward’s planet, and no, Squidward is NOT native to that planet. Squidward is an invader.
Also Sydney cannot even be considered an invader as far as Sciona was concerned, since she didn’t arrive under own free will. She was brought there against their will, via the portal. She’s more like a prisoner (also probably not accurate, since Sciona wasn’t attempting to bring them along to her planet initially), or at best a castaway (more appropriate name).
Thinks of it like this – Gilligan, the Skipper, and the rest of the Minnow weren’t invaders to the island, even in reference to the headhunters from the neighboring island. They’re castaways. And technically, the headhunters were invading since it wasnt the headhunters’ island :)
Full volley, right down the gullet!
“There’s no indication the thing even understand English”. Given that all the characters in the comic are the product of the same mind that produced that sentence, I would question whether any of them really understand English.
I just had a Awful thought…
Have you ever had a item or working on a computer and someone showed you a niffty function that was so easy that you were like, WOW how did i not know to do that?
What if Sydney when she is touching the balls activate them, but there is a simple way to lock them into the on position? Like turn on Shield, and turn the ball 90 degree to the right and it stays on?
Would that just cause her to flip out if it turns out to be something as simple as that?
So basically she is just leaning on the on button, and releasing it is without locking is the turn off.
Sorry i meant that since she is not locking it,
releasing it just turns it off.
You mean like when I learned that in Win7+ you can CTRL+Screenshot to autosave screenshots in a folder that creates itself and you don’t have to use Paint, paste, save?
That might turn out to be more dangerous than it first appears, and not because it can/might fight back. If she gets a point while still in combat she’ll be orbless until she spends it, and a second outside her force field is one second too long.
Also she is really really fearless, is that her or are the orbs helping like they do with the flight Vertigo?
Could the Shields protect her from fear based and Presence based effects?
Sydney the glorious Golden Paladin?
I thought Sidney was doing a nod to Evolution, which would have her being stuck while giving the alien an enema. But then she goes and misses with a laser… Guess Arc-Swat never taught her to aim eh?
Well, she has been a figurative pain in the arse to Archon, time she became a literal one? o_O