Grrl Power #669 – Particle beam-ik
That was a terrible pun, but Sydney would feel worse if she left a potential one-liner hanging.
At some point, Sydney’s going to realize how narrowly she’s escaped death and have a real freak out. Right now she’s at peak adrenaline. Not quite ‘I almost just got shot in a bank’ adrenaline, but ‘I narrowly just avoided ecto-lava driven oblivion’ adrenaline.
It may seem like both of those events would provoke very similar adrenal reactions, but even in the face of battling 3 giant monsters on a dead alien planet, the situation still seems a little esoteric until after the fact.
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You’d think they learn after seeing her somehow get inside the first one’s shield.
I don’t think they actually saw what she did or knew how she did it.
I agree with Pander there – they did not see her teleport into the first squidward’s shield and here they might not notice at all.
She just appeared out of thin air right before the tractor-squid’s head exploded. Detecting the small yellow glowing orb heading towards it’s eye would be very hard to notice with the tractor beam having a similar color and blocking that eye’s vision already.
It may be like watching an annoying fruit fly – which suddenly is in your eye – just because they are stupid… but in this case, the “fruit fly” has a laser, a pretty solid defense and is not stupid.
Relevant comics maybe?: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/621
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1167
Maybe the Squids just can’t see/detect most of what she do, hence the “must quickly destroy, or at least die trying”
The 1st creature Sydney sliced up must not have mentioned it.
Maybe their shields are only tuned against energy based attacks only – and getting in the shield itself is not really hard at all. But usually they notice everything before it gets there, so when she Teleported in there, nobody noticed. Their guess was that she flew behind their sensors, so they opted to get the guy who can suspend Sydney.
This also nicely fits in with her intro, where she was discussing how a transparent force field shouldn’t block lasers. Similarly, why would a transparent force field stop her light-bee?
Sometimes knowing exactly how something is going to screw you over doesn’t help you come up with a defense against said screwing over. They have force fields, and they work really well as evidenced by the first guy being perfectly safe inside his force field while trading shots with Sydney. But Sydney can go through them and attack from within them. There isn’t a whole lot you can do to prevent that, and they seem to have given it their best shot just immediately prior to losing the second one of their number.
I guess if you are Inspector Gadget or ST:TNG and can reconfigure the forward deflector array to make the perfect pot of coffee any time 10 Forward is closed you might have a chance. But most of us can only use a thing for what the thing is good for, and can’t just invent other uses for stuff on the fly.
They are probably rotating their shield frequencies, which may work on the Borg for a while but has no effect on Syd’s balls. Who knows, they may find out what they need to do to adapt to be Syd proof, but they may be all out of bad guys by then.
“OK, we lost the tractor port. Initiate corbamite maneuver with real explosives! Detonate all fusactor banks! Crew! Let her have it with the super soakers!”
An actual suicide blast from these guys might be their final option. Either deliberate or a dead man’s switch on the last one standing.
I have a feeling that when the others come to “save” her, they’re going to find Sydney standing in a pile of giant spacesquid aliens screaming for the next one to step up.
Or there will be tentacle beasts kneeling before her and she will declare herself god queen of the Cthulhu- faces.
I’ma bet on this one.
See, this is where Max and Dabbler clearly lack imagination. When we saw them a few strips ago – the worst they could even conceive of was that she might try to fight the thing… and they thought that was just a joke.
The idea that she might defeat her foe – and the reinforcements – and declare herself a god? Don’t be silly… Sydney wouldn’t do… oh fuck. She would.
To be fair; when someone asks if you are a god, you say yes.
YES!!
WE HAVE LEARNED FROM OUR FOREFATHERS OF GEEKDOM!!
Just sayin’.
In the comics when he gets asked that a second time and says yes the ghost demoness thing says “youuuuu lieeeeee” and he grumbles about how there is no right answer to that question
To be fair, in the second movie he does say yes immediately. Don’t know where that comes in, but.
You will also notice that the first Kaiju is practicing good particle beam technique. He did not cross the streams.
Well, except when their religion involves ritually eating the avatar of their god.
Is that any worse than trying to kill you as hello?
Hey, at least Christians use transubstantiation, not just grabbing the guy and taking a bite.
Yeah, I’d bet on that one too. After all, having multiple titles like that (sydney is already the Queen of Salt, remember?) makes a formal introduction sound so much more impressive, doesn’t it?
:D
When the others come to get her, she will have her very spaceship, having emptied it of squidwards. Or probably she’ll just fly it home.
Does the unknown orb allow her to interface/hack tech?
grhamf. oh god I think you are on to something.
the orbs aren`t a spaceship. it`s an emergency army survival kit/shutle. side arm, space suit, rebreather, limited vehicle, arms and communication. it would make sense the last one is a skeleton key interface to control an actual spaceship. ^^
“Are you not entertained!”
Am… am I the first one to comment today? I don’t think that’s ever happened!
Okay this is what I thought Sydney would do. Good job :)
This is exactly what I thought Sydney was going to do :)
Same here. The pun was a nice surprise though.
I think this is the best-predicted page so far actually, quite a few people proposed the lightbee this time. Still well executed (ha ha, ouch, eewww) on Sydney’s part though.
The last 2 panels were a surprise though – I can’t tell if the PPO punched a hole deep enough to breach the back of the Skree generator (organ? Still don’t know if these are alive), or if the shield just reflected enough of the beam blow through the back.
I also like the detail in the last panel of how Squiddy’s brother (Scrappy Cthulu?) is grabbing for it’s head. “Brain freeze! Migraine! My head asplode!!“
Oh! I didn’t see that last part. Thanks.
Sydney, that’s not we meant by “Laser Eye Surgery”. What you did is “Laser Eye Removal”.
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1681/
In the comic series known as the League of Super Redundant Heroes, when Laser Pony got his power, that’s exactly what happened…
Well technically it did get rid of the problem. No eye, no problem!
+1!
MISREAD THE DESCRIPTION!
AAAAAAAAAAAA!!
Now they can call him 0.4 eyes, not that he’d respond.
I don’t think he has even the 0.4 eyes anymore.
Eww and Ow.
That’s going to leave a mark :(
This and the bank event are different enough. Here Sydney is in action, where at the bank she was passive, maybe even a bit helpless.
So those two events having a hugely different psychological impact sounds feasible. (Adrenaline prefers action.)
Ah – at the BANK she wasn’t holding the Flight Orb – she’s different with that…
The Flight Orb cancels out vertigo, and she is repeatedly letting go of that one to switch between other orbs.
It has been suggested that it is the Forcefield orb instead that is giving her the edge to keep on going.
There appears to be some overlap in the functions of the Flight and Force Field Orbs.
They both provided inertia and G Load damping.
Having the Orbs influence her mind may not always be desirable.
Could PewPew be making her trigger happy?
If you check, those are the orbs with their sections in the center hexagon filled. That may mean that they can each tap passive functions of the other when needed or perhaps just all the time.
If you aren’t aware of a buff, is it really a buff?
Better than hesitating when something needs to be done though… At least most of the time I would reason it would be beneficial. Not for everyone of course, but they had it coming / it was self defense.
Based on the back robbery tongue-jitsu, I’d say she’s always trigger happy. The adrenaline rush probably isn’t helping either.
I do like the idea of the orbs guiding her thoughts though, in ways that would help her use each orb more effectively. Makes a lot of sense from a design standpoint to augment the appropriate instincts, although it also carries a risk of getting users addicted to combat.
“The Forbs is strong with this one.”
~Almost, but not quite, Darth Vader
and now i want to see a guest appearance with Phineas and Forb.
Hi boys. Whatcha doing?
you would be surprised at just how much fear weighs in toward an evil act. if the orbs just suppress fear, I don’t see a problem, if they suppress her moral compass to let her fire the pew pew orb…that’s a problem.
The most useful thing the PPO orb could do mentally would be to calm her. when you are firing a beam that is as powerful as that cutting beam, the last thing you want to do is have the typical ‘flinch’ reaction most people tend to do from the recoil, flame and noise.
Or it could be that Sydney is quite a bit more “mentally preoccupied” with bigger concerns than vertigo…
At the bank, her only experience with superpowers was adrenalin-fueled adhd.
Adrenalin-fueled adhd, AND a capsaicin-fueled breath weapon that was enough to stun Mr. Amorphous.
Pepper breath.
now that`s hot!
It took Sydney quite a bit of time to take out Squidward the First, yet she one-shotted Gazer Beam like an old pro. That is going to seriously demoralize the rest of the squidbilly troops.
Quality over Quantity.
what would you rather face? Darth Vader at 100%, or 100 Vaders at 1%?
I believe theres a ninja version trope of this somewhere…
Conservation of Ninjutsu is the trope you’re thinking of. A trope Sydney also mentioned when fighting Vehemence at the restaurant.
Yup. “Inverse Ninja! Inverse Ninja!”
Demoralize the rest, and certainly embolden Sydney. By the time Max and the others get to her, she’s going to insist on leading the team because of her knowledge of tropes giving her a tactical advantage as well as her undeniably being the most powerful.
Max: It doesn’t work that way, Recruit. You still have to finish Basic Training. But, yeah, I’m glad to see you’re okay.
Sydney: [ gasping ] Can’t breathe!
Max: [ releases hug ] Oh, sorry about that.
Anvil: Are you okay? Did she break a rib on you?
Sydney: [ Sucking in breath ] I think I am just bruised, and not broken. By the way, I got jammed by a piece of shrapnel (No, I am not talking about our finance guy!) but the uniform caught it but it still left a weird bruise. I am going to be just a walking set of bruises by the time we get back home.
Krona: Yeah, about that…
Well, it helps that this time Sydney didn’t have to turn off the PPO to grab the flight orb, she was able to hold the beam on full power in one spot for a few moments (before the eye beam was turned off by burning out the eye…).
Also, that giant eye would be a lot more of a weak point than the normal smaller eyes.
Disturbing visual for you… Syndey did not teleport to in front of the eye. She teleported through the light admitting lens into the eye, so she was floating in the thick jelly inside the eye with her shield. The PPO orb would then be boiling the inside of the eye for a short moment before burning into the brain, and then blowing out the back of the head.
Nope… she’s very visually directly in front of it. A few meters at worst. But… she’s no longer flying against it’s pull and thus it pulls her INTO the eye as she fires it up.
Inverse Ninja. 1 opponent, and now it’s 3 opponents. So the 3 are easier.
It’s not sure Cyclops is already dead. Squidward didn’t die until he was literaly in pieces on the ground. One wound most likely isn’t going to kill Cyclops, though missing his eye(s) may slow him/her/it down a bit…
No lie, panel 7 made me laugh despite (or maybe because of) the bad pun
She’s doing rather rather well for someone I thought would be catatonic with terror at this time.
That comes when her adrenaline rush ends.
And many a sleepless nights to come, as nightmares will likely be an issue for awhile.
I suspect Archon has a policy on mandatory counseling after active engagements, and doubly so after any mission resulting in casualties to either side. If they don’t yet, they’re about to – most of the team leaders probably wanted Sydney seeing a therapist ASAP even before this mission.
Ah, yes. Just how many military recruits start PTSD counselling prior to actually graduating BASIC?
I think that after you’ve actually DIED on a mission, facing 4 kaiju isn’t going to be enough to trigger PTSD anymore.
There’s not a linear scale here for trauma. Just because you’ve faced Doomblaster the Godeater, Teabagger of Galaxies, doesn’t mean that some guy pulling a knife on you doesn’t faze you. Things that are hard, that are scary, that make you hate or doubt yourself still affect you.
Look at it from the perspective of the squid troops – they may have thought they just incinerated their foe… which somehow had feedback that blew up Five Eyes’* head. She plays her cards right, they may think she’s gone.
*The absolute worst burger joint.
I just sprayed my screen with soda thanks to your pun. Also totally worth it!
What time zone are you in? Soda for breakfast??
Hopefully one far away because otherwise they were awake at 5am and that’s a horrible thing to happen to anyone.
Soda for ANY time is completely possible. It’s like water to proper geek/nerd culture. Ok… water isn’t like water to normal people because geek/nerd water is Water Joe…
That’s possible, after all she not only shot its eye out, she flew through the hole she made and is now hiding behind its head. It will take a moment for the other two to process that even if they saw it.
Cheap knock-off with no peanuts.
Oh, good. I can go in there. My nut sensitivity (and their lousy buns) means I avoid Five Guys.
In which case, that is an unfortunate last name you have, good sir.
There are worse places to not be able to go, though.
I sometimes describe myself as the tall nut at the front of the class room, but I am not teaching at this point, except for some individual tutoring. I spending most of my time as the IT manager for a small business in the GTA.
The big guns have, indeed, arrived.
It definitely fits for Anvil calling her that now.
I’m curious whether this was actually Halo’s firepower though, i.e. did the PPO actually fired through its head – the ‘skree’ and multiple glows in panel 7 seem to indicate a system backfire. This may have been the equivalent of jamming the barrel and letting Scrappy Cthu overload itself.
Either way though, gutsy* move.
* Ew. Good thing Mr Bubble is self-cleaning.
Well, we see her grab the PPO, so it stands to reason she fired it. Might just be the eye is one massive weakspot.
I love how adept Sydney is about orb switching mid-combat to adapt to new situations and come up with creative strategies. It shows that despite her erratic behavior she’s put a lot of thought and practice into using her orbs. Though her puns are too good, i mean really. Who has eye-damage based puns ready on the fly like that?
Sydney does. Because Sydney has no doubt spent as much time thinking of suitable puns as she has thinking of new tactics. Because she’s Sydney.
I think she actually mentally calls for the orbs, they come to her hand when she wants them to.
Dave, you’ve got it all wrong. “A Sydneytism” is a GREAT pun.
There are some things that there are no ways to gain a defense against.
Isn’t her left hand going to have a cramp?
She should have put a mitten over it when she had the chance.
Actually that’s not a good idea according to this https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/589
A mitten over it to hold it in place would probably be fine though.
Not holding it while wearing mittens.
Dmac71…. Yeah…I wanted some kind of safety, like the switch cover
over the ‘Jettison Lunar Module’ switch seen in Apollo 13.
BUT…
It shouldn’t be tied down (as a mitten would) because it would limit
her responses in an emergency.
Dave in 2001 A Space Oddessey was able to manage vacuum for a few seconds.
If Sydney *really* had to drop shield a mitten would cost seconds she wouldn’t have.
That only works if you have good air to go back to. Syd would have to use the air orb and hope it does heat as well.
Damn Sydney! That was a Laz-sick burn there!
That pun was worse’n Sydney’s! Ima throw peanuts at you – 888 8888888 88888888888
Given she has been pinged around like a hamster in a ball, someone should be shouting “Go for eyes boo! GO FOR THE EYES!!”
“There is safety in numbers. And I’m two or three at least.”
“Less talk, more fight!”
“Butt-kicking for goodness!”
go for the eye Syd, GO FOR THE EYE!!! YAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!!
Is “VEEEVEEEVEEE” from the George Pal ‘War of the Worlds’ or the Star Trek episode ‘The Doomsday Machine’?
Probably War of the Worlds, given it seems to have some resemblance to the Tripods.
I’m personally just hoping she gets to pull a Buster Beam Slice on that SpaceMonster-looking squidward, and if the resemblance there is intentional XD
Something like this?
https://youtu.be/Ii2Qg52Pw6w
I’m hoping to see what the other beams actually do – the sound is intimidating, but I want to see what kind of crater they leave. Maybe a future page will show the resulting damage in the background or something.
I like all the varied sound effects in today’s strip.
Halo hit the bullseye. Eye find it easy to see that these puns are eye rolling bad. They really caught my eye.
Five Eyes lost his focus, and it came back to bite him retina face.
Meanwhile, the cyclops couldn’t face the Halo fire he was bombarded with.
Is it safe to close the lid on this pun chain?
Iris kit.
Much more of this slaughter and Halo’s rep will start developing a stigma…
…tism…
All y’all deserve peanuts thrown atcha!
888888888888888 8 8888888888888888 88888888888888 888888888 88888 8888888
Eye can’t figure eight what pun you’re trying to make there.
Bet tractor-squid probably hated poker – all “Aye, Aye Captain, One- eyed Jacks and Dueces wild me matey!”
No no no. That’s not the Stanley Parable, that’s just a button that says the work “eight”. I can confidently say that this button does not exist anywhere within the actual game.
Heh, good thing she got that teleport tho when did she first find out she could teleport?
Just before she got shanked by Sciona in that warehouse they tried to infiltrate.
Strip #499
Teleport and particle beam 1-2 combo. That’s kind of like the Picard Maneuver, right?
Only if her shirt is riding up.
The 2nd and 3rd creatures may not have seen LightBee and if they did they might misintrepret it as a projectile launched just before their target was destroyed.
Sydney can use the colapsing corpse as cover and hide behind rubble.
BUT….
She’ll have to risk DEACTIVATING ALL ORBS!!!
This would reinforce their assumption the target is destroyed.
Certain death if they just spray the area with beams but a chance to get them to leave.
How long would she have to wait to be sure?
5 minutes? 30?
She would have the shield and flight orbs at her fingertips.
That might be her freakout time.
don’t you hate how you’ve got the boss monster on the run and all of a sudden they come up with a new attack? Sydney is these creatures boss monster. Sadly, however fortunately for our hero, they don’t have a bunch of lives to spend figuring out her moves.
Particle beam
Particle beam
doing the things that particle’s seen
what’s it like, to nerds it’s important.
Particle beam
Is it more like light or laser to you?
when it hits a shield, does it get through?
or does the shield have to yield instead?
nobody knows
Particle beam
You win.
Thank you! ^^
I think that song ‘Another one bites the dust’ by queen comes to mind, BUT Sydney chosen her target wisely. The other two are in trouble.
Aayiii yi, yi, yi, yi. PPO in your eyeball.
Better than being blasted and fried.
A-Sydney-tism??? Can’t she come up with anything original!?
A-Sydney-tism? Couldn’t a Scoville Scale joke work there? Something involving Dragon’s Breath, Carolina Reaper, or Pepper X?
Going by the comments on a previous page, Carolina Reapers may not actually exist yet in the comic’s timeline.
I think Sydney is working more on the level of The Unmaker here…
How about:
Sydney is less on the level of mere peppers & working more on the level of The Unmaker>/a> here.
Unless these guys can track her movement very accurately, they may start to think that the bug they are trying to swat has some sort of feedback power that turns their own attacks against them.
Don’t you just hate when you get something in your eye? Let me take care of that problem for you… FOREVER!
Its not much of a stretch (the author comment) Its like was displayed much earlier, the difference between maxima pointing her finger at sydney versus pointing a gun at her. The gun is WAY less deadly and dangerous, but because its a known threat there is an instinctive response out of proportion for it. Same here, facing a gunman in a bank is more first sight terrifying than these death gaze beam of doom hurling titans because its outside her frame of reference. I too fully expect some shaking and shuddering when and if she gets the chance to calm down and actually process whats going on.
Sydney is doing well.. however she cannot sustain this.. the adrenal spike, the fear, the flight or fight… it’s send her metabolic rate through the roof..
She gonna burn up the ADHD meds in her system and then combat is going to get…. “Interestng”
Yeah. “Night on Bald Mountain” is supposed to be the LAST song, not the prelude to a, very base heavy, “Flight of the Bumblebee”/”Ride of the Valkyries” remix.
.
.
.
Now I want to hear that.
Hold on there. Night on Bald Mountain was the second to last song in Fantasia. Ave Maria was the last song.
let`s be honest, as an ADHD Ridden person, I can guarantee she still singing the ride of the Valkyries at back of her mind, you know the one she was singing out loud at the beginning of the encounter vs the “drones”
Unrestricted ADHD would be an asset in this situation. She doesn’t need to plan as much as she needs to think fast.
Fast yes, but carefully too. Now is not the time for rash decisions….
And YES Ride of the Valkyries.. Infused with the spirit of Lt Col Kilgore
in a situation like this, her ADHD is probably more of an asset than a deficit.
Am I the only one who thinks this is way too much? Yes, Sydney’s powers are top tier, but she still has less than half of them unlocked, and here she’s slaughtering things that are huge, powerful and almost certainly way more experienced that she is. And the only damage they have managed to do to her was ACCIDENTAL! Why do they even need the rest of the team when Halo is this overpowered?
I know I haven’t been commenting here for as long as most of you guys, and I don’t want to seem presumptious, but am I really the only one who thinks this is not realistic? Grrrlpower is my favorite webcomic, and I always eagerly await new episodes, and yet I find myself disliking this fight a lot. This webcomic has always been a more realistic take on the superhero genre, which is what I like about it, but that feeling of realism is (for me at least) disappearing rapidly.
Yes, it is just you.
Sydney needs the rest of the team to cover for her own impulsiveness and need to gloat.
The primary reason she’s doing so well against these guys is that they woefully underestimate her, repeatedly, and have no idea what they’re dealing with, yet continue to antagonize her without fail.
Sydney is trying new things. Squid Kaiju just keep trying the same thing, but bigger.
Halo: Max, it is so good to see you! [ Big hug, would have tackled anyone lighter/not as strong ]
Max: We here to rescue you. Sydney are you okay? Anything to report?
Halo: [ Look behind Max ] You came in that?! You braver than … nah.
Dabbler: What?
Max: Star Wars reference.
Dabbler: Oh. I didn’t enjoy that movie that much. They got so much of their physics wrong, it was distracting.
Max: [ Turns to Sydney ] Well?
Halo: Umm, what’s the best way to serve 128 tons of kalimari?
Wouldn’t that be Kaiju-mari? *leaves before retaliation starts*
Actually, the first blast from one of the squids redlined Sydney’s shield. There’s reason to believe that, if she hadn’t poit’d out of the tractor beam just now, the focused crossfire would have ashed her.
Also, as mentioned, their standard tactics aren’t geared towards something this small and fast that can bring this much power to bear. And we don’t know where the upper limit of this race’s power is yet. For all we know, this is a small squadron — not as disposable as the drone swarm, but also not representative of how serious they can get. If this is a tactical team, the next step might be they fall back and they roll a tank in.
Precisely. Power is always relative. Max is also overpowered, but she had trouble with Vehemence. Sydney had a problem with Sciona’s construct, but the ArcSWAT tag team took it apart within seconds. I mean she looks like she’s cruising through it, but she still barely dodged death here. Squidward’s one nuke redlined her shield, now she had two comming her way. And that was just three of who knows how many world killers waiting in a spaceship that is as tall as the planet’s atmosphere is thick.
Never mind the fact that they can just wear her out. She’s still human, needs to eat, sleep, drink; at some point she’ll fall unconscious from exhaustion and her only chance is to either chase them away, kill them all, or manage to get away before that happens.
I’d take this fight over anything Superman has ever done, any day.
I get where you’re coming from, it does feel a little excessive. Unless the lightbee has a weakness, it effectively means that Sydney can never be immobilized.
That’s fine for Daphne because she doesn’t have this type of attack or defense. Just imagine if she got the orbs.
If the lightbee can be taken out with the equivalent of a flyswatter, then that changes things a bit. Still, it’s risky to have heroes with ability sets that the enemy must figure out to be able to counter, that means that they all have to know it beforehand to maintain tension.
There are plenty of ability sets that I like that are rarely used in heroes for that reason. Take Mercury from X-Men for example, for every hero with an ability like that, you have a Sandman, a Hydro Man, a Clayface, an Inque. Most forms of attack and restraint are ineffective, which limits their opponents’ options. It can be done well, but it’s a lot harder to make it work with a hero especially when you want to keep presenting new situations.
I will admit, however, that I was hoping for further plot developments in the form of somebody else showing up, so my response is painted by that. I’d also like to see others like Daphne get a chance to shine.
Oh c’mon there…Spider-Man’s first encounter with the Sandman & Spidey was able to trap him in a vacuum-cleaner…
:D :D :D
Ouch, I would not have guessed that.
It’s visible light. ALL you need to do to trap it is make the FF opaque, or better yet solid and opaque.
But first, you have to know it exists. Sydney has the element of surprise and her fast reflexes at the moment. We’ll see how long that lasts.
only need to see it and track it…. bad guy 1 tracks light bee, bad guy 2 tracks Sydney, fire simultaneously… rinse repeat rapidly….
Sydney is still in a word of hurt here, even without an space ship of reinforcements.
Plus, we don’t know the if the ship is armed…. they would more than likely given their aggressive stance.. probably not using ships weapons due to not yet realising it is necessary.
That’s what I’ve been wondering about: once they realize that Sydney’s destroyed four of their soldiers, how long until they decide: ‘Scr*w this!’ and arm the planetbusters? I doubt even Sydney’s shield could protect her from that!
Ok. Mad props to Sydney. Took me a second to follow what was happening on the page but once I did, yeeeea…*clap clap clap clap clap*! To come up with that plan on the fly and execute it perfectly before Douchenozzle McBullhorns, there, could barbecue her face off, shows how great her potential is.
Calling it, once she gets a bit more training under her belt. She’ll be considered Sigma Team material along with Max, Dabbler, one-fifth of the Harems, Anvil, Hiro, Math, and Peggy*.
*Hey, never underestimate how much an exceptional sniper/support operator watching your back can boost a team’s performance. Personally, I don’t even go to the bathroom without two snipers and an NSA satellite tasked for overwatch.
If you upgrade the satellite you wouldn’t need snipers.
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2012-07-01
In all seriousness, Sydney did a great job removing that beam from its eye
And she became a mote to do it.
“Mote?”
“eye?”
Did you two combine to give a shout-out to a Larry Niven story?
“By their powers combined, they are….”
Probably going to get an eye-full for this, butt: THIS IS CRAP!!!
There is no way this is how Sydney survived. When is someone in the debriefing going to call her shit out on this?
WHAT?!?! Are you implying that she panicked, tried to run, and accidentally holed the ship’s reactor core by flying straight through it (note to Sydney: Watch for what is in front of you, not what just scared the bejeebus out of you behind you), killing all life within half a parsec?
But I’m sure Sydney will be demonstrating all her maneuvers with vigorous arm gestures and providing kick-arse sound effects. How could anyone not believe her?!
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/comics/2011-07-25-GP0050.jpg
Surprised you didn’t use that clip of Threepio from RotJ (too late, can’t use it now)
HALO: “…and then SKREEEEE! zzzzzzzzzzzzzip! poit! VEEEVEEEVEEEVEEEVEEE! WOOSH! and I totally got in a cool pun! and WHA-BOOM! then I flew through the explosion… like a BOSS!!!”
MAXIMA: “….”
Yeah, it doesn’t seem too plausible, does it. More like Sydney’s own version of what happened. Wonder if the others will believe her?
Gotta give credit where credit is due – Sydney is on fire with working out and exploiting weaknesses as well as generating puns.
She really gave an eye-full to that tower of an alien.
Yup, it certainly did not see that one coming
…Definitely didn’t see it going either…
Sydney uses Blink: it’s super effective (as is the Skreeee-Whaboom follow up).
Maybe he thought Sydney was a Weeping Angel… so he didn’t blink when he should have.
Meanwhile the others might think he blinked… since they didn’t and Sydney suddenly appeared a LOT closer to the poor 1.4 eyes.
I am predicting the response of the ‘ARC-SPARK’ technical team once Sydney gets back and tells this part of the story.
“Way to go Scoville. We finally had a situation to test the upper limits of the shield orb and you just jumped out of the way.”
That would be `Chernobyl ‘ style testing.
I could honestly see them at some point sending her back to Earth just to get rid of her . . .
See,
My running theory is her battle here all amounts to friendly fire. See, super race is killing off the Alari. Then during essentially the mop up here comes another Alari followed by several other races and one straight up unidentifiable potential weapons system (Sydney’s orbs).
Looks back at orders that say kill all Alari and potential allies. Boom goes the nuke.
It didn’t know he was firing on Alari enemies. All he sees is them retreating with Valri refuges (spirits) One gets left behind and we are left with a friendly firefight for the ages.
Buddies see him go down and now have to step in and then suddenly take another casualty.
I’m thinking that when its all over they are going to want restitution for Sydney’s actions because she killed at least two solders and destroyed lord knows how much equipment in the line of official duties and is now in fact actively interfering with that operation.
Sydney’s response would be something like “F@ck that! They shot goddamn first! Lucas isn’t around to rewrite that bullshit.”
the winner doesn’t have to pay shit back. no, on the contrary, they owe HER for pain and suffering and for killing off all the Alrari on her the world she was coming to conquer. why? she just killed 4 of their pussy death machines and a thousand of their space fighters. she’d better get paid or…well…that’s a nice moon-sized super space carrier ya got there…would be a shame if something were to happen to it.