Grrl Power #668 – All’s fair in love and kaiju battle royale
Weirdly, Sydney’s flight orb doesn’t have nearly as much torque as you’d expect considering how fast she can go. That isn’t to say it doesn’t have a ton of juice, but Cyclops’s eyebeam there is used for paralyzing massive starships and stuff like that.
Cyclops actually has 5 eyes, but the one big one kind of dominates any discussions about him. Well, they call him 1.4 eyes, cause the 4 smaller ones… well, you get it.
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Man, those are creepy looking monsters….
AND the other two are warming up…
It’s a Grabthar beam, breakable only by his hammer.
By the Sons of Whorvan!
Do we know it’s not “suns”?
Sydney will be avenging!
The Suns ARE his Sons. It’s a very cosmic mythology.
Or by pressing the turbo. I’m always saying “Press the turbo,” right?
we’ll find out for certain in 13 seconds
I almoust spected to them to talk to Sid.
It’s still a possibility. They may just wonder what so tiny can kill one of their own. Then to spank her and tell her not to do it again.
They speak a language based on explodey beams. Sydney speaks in slicey beams. They have been studying Sydney’s language and are going to attempt a simple sentence in it now that they have a captive audience…
+1
I suspect conversations with beginning learners tend to be extremely brief.
They do tend to cut to the chase.
Just wait. They’re the galactic police and Dabbler ran to avoid getting arrested for outstanding parking tickets (and battery)
I don’t recall seeing the explanation for why Harem went whacky, but I assume to had something to do with the gate crossing more than just physical space.
Well t;he reason for the problem that Harem had, still under speculation. It was due to crossing the gate, since she was fine when she crossed back. However; the exactly reason has not been divulged yet.
We also seem to have about 3 story threads at large too. Where Syd is, Where Arc personal are, and what Dues and Vale are up to.
The one using the beam, seems to be of an advanced rank. Officers are the same everywhere!
I wonder how he is planning to eat her.
I mean, he is tracting her to his eye, not his mouth.
Also, does he still have a shield while using that beam?
Because if he doesn’t, then that’s an evolutionary oversight.
You could say his eye was bigger than what he can stomach
Full Marks.
+1
That deserves a handfull of peanuts!
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One hears Dumbo going by snacking all the peanuts “pop, pop, pop”
[gianoria]:
Despite what cartoons show you, elephants can’t drink thru their trunk without drowning. After sucking-up a snoot-full, they squirt it into their mouth.
( … must be terrific for clearing-out a pachyderm’s sinuses … )
( … anyway, moving-on … )
In a similar fashion, & depending on the flexibility of their jaw/mouth-parts/eye-socket/skull, this alien will most likely “tractor” Sydney into the mouth.
( … assuming that eating her is the plan – the Esteemed Author may have other ideas for her … )
Sydney’s best chance for escape is to exploit the brief window of time between the ending of the tractor-beam & the closing of the mouth, & zip to freedom.
I think her best chance for escape is her teleport.
Or, you know, not wait for him to position her with the TRACTOR beam (not to be confused with a repulse beam)… just freaking fly full-bore into his eye; the best place to hide from the other two bullies is probably inside Mr. Tractor’s head.
Just imagine the cost and hassle if tractor squidly needed Contact lenses.
Eating something that can cut it’s way out isn’t a good idea. Imagine eating handful of live hornets.
Depends on if you chew first or swallow whole
Well, that sucks.
I don’t think “torque” was the word you were searching for. More like “thrust” I think.
In any case, it is doubtful the fly orb even works like that. As Sydney cannot accelerate to higher speed in space, the orb might be “setting her speed”, rather than “create a thrust to accelerate and reach given speed”, even though there should be no such thing as an absolute speed…
Sure, there is an absolute speed, the speed of light. Everything else is measured in reference to that. Other than that, perceptions of time and space are not absolute, so what you measure your speed to be can be quite different to what someone else measures your speed to be; too bad that does not work with the cops busting you for speeding.
Maybe the flight orb is set for a maximum 0.00045% c, but keeping the operator’s perceived gravity at 1g, despite the high acceleration getting to that speed.
You don’t get it. If you travel at 90% of C away from earth, and someone travel at 90% of C away from earth in the opposite direction. What is their speed compared to each other?
Speed is relativistic. It can never exceed C between any two objects. But how fast do you think the stars at the end of the galaxy move compared to the stars on the other side of the galaxy?
There’s no absolute speed. Your speed is always your speed compared to another object. And your speed will be different depending on what object you choose to compare to
For anyone not familiar with special relativity, they’d be traveling away from eachother at .99c.
Expansion of the space between two objects caused by the expansion of the universe does not “count” when calculating the true relativistic velocities of the objects. That’s why some distant galaxies are travelly at superluminal speed.
I only wrote this comment so I could use the word “superluminal”.
Superluminal is a fun word, that should have caught on more than FTL.
For the loss.
Full Truck Load
Fried Turkey Limbs
Ford Truck Limits
Fart Transportation Locomotor
Fiendish Taunt Linguistics
Ludicris Speed.
The general appearance of that tractor beam ins’t really far off from being plaid as it is…If the “sparkles” were more numerous & still conforming to the right kind of pattern, it would appear fully plaid. So maybe it’s even stong enough to stop it’s captive that’s already at near-ludicrous speed?
Superluminal was a pretty good book, too.
There are no galaxies observed as moving away from eachother at superluminal velocities. That would place them outside of their hubble volumes, even if expansion is the explanation. Being that anything observed is inside our hubble volume, and the unviverse expansion rate at the antipodal points of our hubble volume is far less than the speed of light, seeing as our hubble volume is increasing in size, not shrinking, it is impossible for us to observe that.
You’re probable thinking about how we have observed galaxies at a greater distance than the universe is old in light years, but no super luminal expansion is occurring within the space of a hubble volume… yet…
What if dark matter was actually superluminal matter that could no longer be seen/detected?
Except that dark matter is detected by the way is affecting the movement of galaxies. They appear to be moving as if there is extra mass on the outer rim. Galaxies rotate fastest in the middle and slower on the outside and they do, but they are moving way too fast at the outer parts, according to our observations and current theory (general relativity). One explanation for our observations is putting extra mass that we can not see spread throughout the galaxy. This is dark matter. We still have no idea what it is, or even if it is real and we are seeing the some other effect with a completely different mechanism.
I wonder if it’s only preventing escape. Could she ram herself into 1.4’s face?
The way I see it, if the tractor beam is holding her in place she can let go of the flight orb and she’ll have a hand free for something else.
Shoot it in the eye. Seems like an obvious and valid tactic. “they got us in a tractorbeam captain.” “Target their tractorbeam emitter and fire.”
Alternatively use the com orb to teleport away.
I was gonna say teleport to the crook of its neck and then take its head off.
That sounds like a plan with a high likelihood of success — I vote ‘yea’…
… any naysayers … ?
We really doesn’t have enough data at the moment to come up with any detailed plan for how to solve this. Logic says that this isn’t these things first fight. We strongly suspect that they are what killed this planet after all. And if they aren’t totally inept they probably wouldn’t use a tractor beam this way if it left a hole in the defence allowing the captured to bypass the shield by firing straight down the beam.
We also don’t know if this is just a tractor beam or if it has her immobilized in space. What Dave has told us tend to suggest the later. This would mean she can’t just accelerate down the beam to smack Squidward II in the face, not to mention they would most probably still have the shield up to stop her from firing down the beam.
The com orb seems like it might have a good chance to work. It seems that the tractor beam does let light through so it’s possible she can send the “bee” out. Still doesn’t mean it will work. Who knows what kind of nasties they have developed that beam to capture.
But all of this is just guesses at the moment. We need more data!
COMBALL for the teleport.
Or you know… shoot his eye out.
I strongly suspect that one of the other lines in the flight orb might be acceleration, ‘cos compared to Maxima Sydney still has nothing.
She can’t shoot his eye out. She doesn’t have her Red Ryder BB gun.
The Peanut Gallery is in rare form today – again, full marks.
+1
Merry Christmas!
(Yeah, I got the reference)
Here – have some peanuts.
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Does not have lawn darts either.
Hopefully Syddles has encountered basic gravity assisted orbital mechanics before.
Just accelerate toward the squilien ™ then at last moment veer off to new course.
Also should be firing for affect if can’t break free.
Might as well try the “null” orb too.
I think shes gonna be upset when she discovers that the null orb is her FTL drive but only works in a vacuum. She really should be treating it as a point and click adventure game and trying the orb in every new situation.
Activating the 7th orb will take her back to the (former) rooftop where Krona set her checkpoint.
More of an immobilizer than a tractor beam?
She can’t just fly through that one’s head?
Sydney may not be able to shoot through those sparkles.
I guessed theIr next move would be to keep her from leaving.
Mistake.
‘Tractor’ is short for ‘attractor’ beam, since they’re used to pull in and grab stuff. They usually have a reverse option (repulsor).
This would be an ‘inertial’ or ‘stilling’ beam…
Wait. “Stilling?” Giant aliens made of tentacles? Hmm…
Actually, not quite. Long story short, the word “tractor” – as in both the vehicle and the science fiction beam device – was created sometime in the 18th-19th century as meaning “something that pulls” based on the Latin verb “trahere”.
(I like googling etymologies for fun and learning)
Hi kids, Professor Pedantic here. For those of you who may be confused, Etymology is NOT the study of insects, it is the study of word origins. Learning is fun! (It is actually a verb. Or sometimes a noun when used to describe the knowledge or skill gained from the process of learning, to be pedantic about it.)
It really bugs me when people don’t know the difference between etymology and entomology.
I’m surprised and saddened at the reckless neglect of a perfectly good opportunity to deploy the word “gerund”. Clearly the so-called “Professor Pedantic” is no true scotsman! I mean no true pedant!
Incidentally, the word pedant, despite the appealing folk etymology of the itinerant teacher, appears to have its root in “paed-” or child, much to my disappointment.
It’s okay, you can just admit that you’re a pedantophile.
Can you cite source? I can believe the word “tractor” would have it origins in Latin, but “tractor beam” I always thought came from E.E. Smith’s shortened use of “attractor beam”.
I could have sworn a tractor beam was the part of the tractor that attached the trailer/plow/etc that was replaced by a hitch system back in the 10’s or 20’s. Still trying to find the book that it was in, grandpa had one on the farm that I read (something like a general farm tractor guide), or maybe it was replaced by a drawbar. Been too long…
Now I’m disappointed – I was imagining a beam that fires farming equipment.
In this instance the Flight and PPO are useless.
That leaves Light Bee, Light Hook, Air and Useless MFer.
I’d say to poke it in the eye then leave.
Looks like Sydney has a couple of options here. Since the flight orb doesn’t seem to be able to break her free of the Tractor Beam, she can switch out flight and shoot the PPO beam straight down John Deere’s eyeball. A more risky option would be to assume her shield can take smacking into the tractor eyeball, so she uses the flight orb to make herself into a projectile shooting JD in his tractor eyeball.
Conveniently, the tractor beam makes a nice guide for targeting the source. Like tracer rounds lead back to the shooter.
Inconveniently, the PPO has to open a portal in the shield in order to fire through it. Would hate to see that tractor beam yoik Sydney through that opening.
On the third hand, or possibly tentacle, maybe that tractor beam has to fire through a hole in Cyclops’s shield.
That’s a reticle for aiming, not a hole.
What about her light-bee? Teleport seems like a good way to escape the tractor beam..
You don’t believe they would notice Sydney suddenly going motionless (and silent) and a ball of light hightailing out of Space Dodge?
They might notice, but if they can’t counter it then it’s still a pretty good tactic. We don’t know how fast she can send the bee or how frequently she can teleport yet, but they might.
Considering the Bee is a physical object, and she can’t use the Florb at the same time, probably no faster than Sydney can run
And if it is physical, what’s to stop the Squiddies from grabbing it?
Time to break out the teleport again :o
She can pull a classic here and trick them into shooting each other by getting between them and dodging at the last minute. Can’t Sydney teleport now? Why is the tractor beam even an issue? Drop flight and telepresence-port.
Keep the shield orb and reach for the one allowing teleportation to go out of the beam?
Time to try out the speed upgrade and do the unexpected… go WITH the tractor beam and go right through Cyclops, faster than a speeding bullet.
What will happen to Sydney afterwards!?
So I have a question, as someone who may not have read/seen enough sci-fi to know if there are rules about this. Why can she not shoot into the eyeball with the PPO? I get that it’s a paralysing thing, so…would it paralyse the PPO’s shot? But also if it’s dragging her towards it, then would it not also mean that the PPO’s shot would just go towards the eyeball even faster?
It would be worth a shot, but if they have the same shield as the big squidward beamer from before, she would just waste one turn and be back at square one.
DB said the tractor beam is usually used against starships. So they’ve probably had to harden the “eye” against some pretty heavy weaponry.
They kind of remind me of Beholder kin type abominations. Just more upwardly mobile than those usually are.
This beam brought to you by courtesy of John Deer and International.
(Tractor beams. Another reason, besides Popsicles and Martian Charades, that Earth is famous throughout the Universe.)
i can somehow picture the John Deere company branching out when that tech becomes available to claim a official John Deere Tractor Beam “For all your Space farming & mining needs think Deere”
They better not let Sydney or her friends break it then, you’re not allowed to fix John Deere stuff yourself because of copyright law. Yeah, really.
News to me. My dad fixed everything he could on the farm himself, as did every other farmer I knew. You only brought it in if you couldn’t fix it at home. Farmers hate paying for anything they don’t have to.
Also, copyright doesn’t cover tractors.
Nowadays they have computers in them, the computers have “digital rights management” software that makes it hard to do your own repairs or modifications, and circumventing that is a felony because of the DMCA.
Sadly, this is all true, but it’s also the reason many farmers are abandoning the super fucking greedy John Deere company, and I say more power to them. I’m not a fan of modern marketing trying to make everything a monthly bill now.
It’s like how almost everything new is a service instead of a product now. It’s all just a marketing ploy to make us keep paying for something we used to just buy and own. Even “games as a service”.
If television had been invented recently instead of in the 40s and 50s, they wouldn’t be products you own, they’d be devices you lease, and all the classic TV channels would have been for lease separately.
As the rise of all these new streaming services show, everyone and their brother wants a piece of that pie now, before the public settles on the one true streaming service it deems worth paying premium cost for, for pretty much forever. Netflix has the lead, but Amazon is going to do it’s level best to take the top spot, and Disney is right behind them.
IMHO all the others are going to either settle for lower tier or fall by the wayside in time.
They truly have caught her monologging now.
time to break out the ‘badgers’ jump scare.
Truely in the Realm of gods one does not pose atop a fallen foe like the God of war lest he appear.
Well, she’s monologging her shorts as we speak.
Well folks things might seem like ol’ Sydney got her self up in a tree now. Stay Tuned
As someone who works almost exclusively with things that you wouldn’t want in your eye, who the hell thought ‘tractor eyebeams were a good idea?
In theory its effective at holding smaller starship in place to strike at.
though i can see the downside, like it pulling your eye out, having to focus all your concentration on it and not much on the surroundings (granted it has 4 other comparatively tiny eyes). In the end remember this is Kaiju Logic, evolution at work does not always equal making sense it just has to work and let nature decide if they survive.
as a engineer would say “If it isn’t broke it doesn’t have enough features yet”
Sure, it’d be great for small starships with high build quality but, if anything breaks off, that’s going to go straight into your eye. And there’s dust everywhere once you’ve entered an atmosphere.
To be honest, your job description applies to just about everyone in any industry, except manufacturers of contact lenses and saline. Still, a very vivid way to describe it, and I am really curious what you do now.
I review hot sauce. It’s not really a living but it’s what I do and you can find my work if you click my username. Just not the one at the start of this comment chain because I typoed it.
He’s wearing Eldricht brand safety goggles. You just can’t see them because of the alien geometry.
the goggles do nothing.
I think the tractor beam is very dangerous for her – likely the other two opponents are going to shoot at her simultaneously while she is caught and can’t do evasive measures.
They might breach her shield that way.
So she better gets out of there as fast as possible. I would suggest teleporting to some cover, so she wont’ be caugth in the tractor beam right again.
Biggest problem with that is finding a structure for cover that is still standing before the shooting begins.
Easy Right atop Tractor eyes head.
Sydney, you lightbeed into their
buddy’scolleague’s shield. You don’t get to complain about cheating.its only cheating when the enemy does it, otherwise its superior tactics. Don’t you know anything about superior gaming logic?
…. that it’s the logic that leads to using wallhacks and aimbots?
Exactly and everyone else who beats you is obviously cheating, and your just using “creative assistance techniques” that are perfectly fine for you to use.
or is that bad gamers/games manipulaters bs-ing
Game lawyers to me follow the rules to the letter even when it screws them.
Game manipulators are what most people call game lawyers the people who wheel the system to their needs
at least thats my view
Hey, I’m not saying this isn’t the situation to break the rules. I’m saying that if your’e going to do that, you don’t get to complain about the enemy breaking the rules.
…. especially since no one actually bothered to lay down rules.
Suppression fire gets laid down first, rules a distant second, and sweet tracks much much later.
i think Suppression fire then artillery strikes then maybe a few grenades tactical retreat then napalm the area then make tracks. I personally believe you should follow the Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries handbook to the letter.
I find it improbable that she can easily try to shoot the eye doing the tractor beam. Imagine her point of view. She’s surrounded by sparkly light all of a sudden and has likely lost her orientation. We, as outsiders, see a nice straight line to aim along, but she just sees confusing sparklies all around her.
I do want to know what’ll happen if she drops the shield and reactivates it a second later, whether it’ll throw off targeting. And of course teleportation.
Right now, I’d call dropping the shield the LAST thing she should try, as she’s got no idea what that beam would do to her body. Seriously, they have a shield that can defeat the PPO, and a tractor beam than can defeat the forb. I’d say this is a definite case of “safety first”.
On another matter, the shield orb has 4 upgrade paths (with only 1 taken, presumably shield strength). This would seem to indicate that (a) the shield isn’t at maximum strength yet, and (b) the shield orb can shield against other things as well. I wonder if one of them is “shield against tractor beams”? :-)
It’s a Gazer Beam. Wait, it’s trying to attract her. It’s a Male Gazer Beam.
Gurps fan?
Or he just saw either version of “The Incredibles”
Also nope.
Nope.
And then Maxima and Dabbler arrive and argue about whether to punish it or indulge it.
Time to teleport.
Assuming the Lightbee ball isn’t affected by the tractor beam.
…. so now’s the time to drop the flight orb and lightbee out of there, yes? Either into Cyclops’s shield and start cutting, or into the city to break contact, force them to split up to search for her, and pick them off one by one.
Also, is anyone else skeptical that she selected the SPEED upgrade? I mean, I’d give it 50/50 odds, but there are TWO chains on the flight orb’s tree. Speed might easily be the one that’s still only got two points in it. This one might be, I dunno, improved maneuverability or something.
Time to try diplomacy. Sydney needs to send out the light tentacle and wiggle it around to see if says anything in squid-ese. With her luck it would probably be a rude comment about their mother.
Okay Sydney, It might Bee time to get going. Live and let Bee. Make like a Bee and… find greener pastures?
Alright, well, I ran out of puns at the first one, but I thing you get what I’m saying.
And hey! If you time it right, maybe they won’t be fool enough to try Stinging you again. Eh? Eh? (I’ll see myself out)
To Bee or not to Bee?
There will be an answer, Let It Bee!!
Back on their ship:
“Ooooo and down goes Gr’knizokkk.”
“You know, Skreeee’krrr, he always had a GREAT offense, but as you saw, his defense is lacking. Couple that with his overconfidence and well… ya see what happened.”
“Right you are Steve, he’s gonna be out for the rest of this season while he regrows his body. And it looks like the little one is doing a victory dance. It’s almost like it doesn’t even know that there’s three rounds in Extermination Ball.”
“And here they are! The all-stars who took down an entire Alari Battle Fleet! Our very own KILLINATORS!”
“Right you are Steve, and what are you thoughts on the match so far Wise One?”
“Well you know the best way to win a game of Extermination Ball, is ya gotta play a good game of Extermination Ball.”
Well “Torque” is rotational force (When you hear “Torque” mentioned in reference to engines, it’s the rotational energy of the driveshaft) Since the tractor beam AND the flight orb probably both work on the manipulation of gravity fields, the stronger one would prevail.
And the “Tractor” in Tractor Beam is short for “Attractor” meaning the beam creates and attractive force to pull on things. Not like in Hardware Wars where Augie Ben Doggie is looking for the tractor beam controls and there is a little screen with an animated farmer on a tractor.
can’t she shoot into the beam eye thing…. its pretty much a weak spot isn’t it?
I always kinda thought that her barrier isolated space with how it invalidated even Vehemence’s energy while it was up. Guess not, otherwise the tractor beam shouldn’t have anything to lock on to.
Looked up ‘why is it called a tractor beam’ and found this interesting little tidbit.
“A tractor beam is a device with the ability to attract one object to another from a distance. The concept originates in fiction: the term was coined by E. E. Smith (an update of his earlier “attractor beam”) in his novel Spacehounds of IPC (1931).”
So it probably was a misunderstanding. ‘Attractor’ probably became ‘A tractor’.
I like that, it’s a very reasonable explanation of how the term became so common. But I can also attest that my uncle (who owned a rural farm and bred cattle) watched TOS, but was irritated by the technobabble EXCEPT for the term “tractor beam”. When questioned, he explained that if you need to move a fallen tree, a heavy rock, or a Bull that really didn’t want to leave the heifers paddock, you attached a rope to the immovable object and tied the other end to your tractor and if that didn’t move’em safely, they weren’t going to be moved at all. “They’re using a beam instead of a rope, but in the end they’re moving things around with a tractor” he said, “and if they’d been that clever on the rest of the silly names they give to things, I’d like the show a lot more.”
I don’t think it isolates space, it’s more like it neutralises threatening energies. But the tractor beam isn’t a threat it’s an attractive force and possibly is aimed at the forb rather than Sydney, and so is treated like sunlight rather than a beam weapon. Possibly if she spent a point connecting the shield and flight orbs it would protect against anything that threatens the flight orb as well (where neutralisation is counted among threats). Or not, DaveB has a tendency to be at least two steps ahead of us (as it should be).
The tractor beam is likely a ‘gravity’ based system. Remember even with the shield orb active, Sydney still needs the fly orb to at least levitate, that means gravity and velocity are forces that the shield doesn’t stop.
A thought occurred to me today…
When that big ol’ eldritch thingy winger slammed her into the ground, Sydney wasn’t hurt.
Now obviously the shield protected her from being squished, but the force of acceleration pushed onto her was incredible! That should have killed her regardless, like a having a car slam into yours despite wearing seat belts!!
SO! The shield itself seems pretty damn resistant to being moved when she’s grounded, but when she’s flying, it moves freely.
I hypothesize that the FLIGHT ORB, and NOT THE SHIELD ORB, is what protects Syndey from those accelerated forces. I’m guessing it keeps her whole body in a sort of non-accelerated stasis, which allows her to fly off and great speeds and stop on a dime without dying either.
SO!
If she’s immune to accelerated forces, being pushed on, or immediately stopped, and the shield itself is damn near indestructible so far… wouldn’t she have a HELL of a cannon ball attack to make against those guys?
Instead of slicing them to death a million times over with the PPO (I’m hip), what about becoming a battering ram? She clearly wouldn’t be hurt by it at all, and it could be worth a shot, especially since we’ve seen the shield warp its shape when she flies (likely to reduce wind friction), which would make her a little more bullet shaped as well!
Good points, but she’d have to keep going out and back to build up some momentum in order to do more than bump them annoyingly. Also, she doesn’t have the raw strength they do at close quarters, she’s far better off staying at the limit of her (exclusively) long-range weaponry.
One of Murphy’s Laws of Combat Tactics – If the enemy is within range, so are you.
I don’t think strength would come into it much. Speed is the greater component of force than mass is.
Seeing how far she got out of the atmosphere in what was presumably very little time, and other demonstrations she’s shown us, I don’t think the Flight Orb takes any significant time to reach full speeds. I think it IS capable of basically immediate full propulsion.
Another law of combat. If you’re opponent is in your short range, you are not in their long range.
The smashing did NOTHING, but the laser really taxed the shield. I’d risk the attempt at least to see if it’s worth any damage on those guys. It also deals with the fact that her movement becomes predictable when using the PPO. Then there’s the fact, that she’s already in their close combat range by the very fact she needs to be to get past their own shields.
I think the Sheild Orb and the Flight Orb are using the same subroutine.
Maybe Inertia Damping is available when ANY Orb is in use.
In addition, consider this – there’s a pip connecting the Flight and PPO orbs. I suspect that if she were to use the two together, she’d be able to super-speed-punch her way through anything. And leave a big hole behind her!
Of course, to test that, she’d… have to let go of Mr. Bubble. *gulp*
It’s a stasis beam. Its holding her in place. I always wondered why spaceships didn’t try to move laterally out of the beam.
Other options would start with letting go of the Fly ball since it’s supporting her and trying that mystery orb that nobody knows what it does. Maybe it’s a universal translator I mean the com ball is really more sensors and teleport than it is Communications.
Very good observation about the tractor beam (DaveM explained it nicely above)
As for the CommBall: it is a translator, it translated what those magical objects in the Council coat-closet were, she’s just never tried to use it when someone is speaking because so far, everyone she’s met, has spoken American
Yeah, much as I’d like to bask in the glory, Riger’s explanation of E. E. Doc Smith’s “attracter beam” mutating into “a tractor beam” is over thirty years before my uncles explanation (I’m old, but not that damned old), and is more likely to be the correct explanation. But thank you nevertheless.