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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I know it would be a knee-jerk reaction for Sydney, being a non-super with super powers, but I wonder if Maxima is kicking herself for her line about going for the shield orb first right now.
I could also picture Sydney tearing up a bit as she picks one point after the other on her skill-tree, while it’s sinking in just how much worse of a fight this was than taking on someone like Vehemence…
I’m picturing a complete “HOW DID I SURVIVE?!” freakout if the skill tree shows up when she get’s to earth (the safety systems won’t let her power-up in combat) and she sees a half dozen points.
Pretty sure that’s not how it works.
The danger is that she’ll be vulnerable during a level-up moment.
There’s probably a “can’t level up during combat” clause somewhere in the orb’s code to avoid that particular danger.
I think the only rule that’s really been established about leveling up is that Sydney must let go of all orbs in order to level up. So long as she is holding at least one orb at a time, she should be able to delay the level indefinitely. As we see here, Sydney is NOT letting go of that shield while there are hostiles nearby, so she should be good until the fight is over.
no skill tree popped up just before combat at the mars factory vs the robot “not a robot” thing that used others blood to power up. it caused the magic Sidney to cry when she saw it stating “gods dice bag tumbling across the velvety tabletop of space and time” still needs a pause option or return later.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2447
That page, and her level up during Squid #1, imply that there is a minimum amount of “down time,” i.e. no immediate threats and no orbs in use, before the upgrade tree pops up. Vs. Sciona, the tree came up near the end of a series of progress reports. Here, Sydney had time to run away and start strategizing first.
There seems to be some level of threat detection: at the demonstration, Maxima had time to give several statements, blow up a tank, and leave before the “Sydney moment.” Obviously, Sydney was not in danger, but that indicates detection only, not intention.
I’m sure the rule from our side is “whenever Dave feels best,” but in-world it seems to be a set time.
She was also holding onto the force field orb to shield the reporters until moments before the skill tree popped up. That whole “holding onto one or more orbs delays the level up” is making more sense by the moment.
You’re right, I forgot about the shield at the demonstration.
Never had that happen in a game before? Fight a boss in an epic fight and get 4 level-ups at the end? Then realize you weren’t supposed to fight him at that level.
It almost never happens because most games have to impose a fixed rate at which you can progress to maintain the designers’ intended idea of enjoyable progression. They can’t account for all niche possibilities usually, and they can’t reward you too much when they do.
So bad news for gamers but it’s a cool storytelling shortcut when you want to make a character seem really badass.
I have has that moment. you can’t run, you can’t hide, and your supposed ‘best weapon’ was little more than a marshmallow gun.
so you grab you infinite ammo ‘default pea shooter’ and play run, dodge, parry, pow, for a few hours trying all the while not to die.
In the end you’re covered in cheeto dust, have wasted several 2liters of dew., as you stand over the corpse of a monster and a mountain of loot you should never have been able to even _get_ to for another 5-6 levels.
At that point all you can do is go. “Oh fuck yea!”
Was thinking of how Most older JRPG’s were like “This enemy is always worth This much EXP divided by surviving members.” beat a boss that drops like 20k exp each with a team that on average was still at the point of 5-7k xp between levels ….
And you were trying to speedrun Borderland 2 weren’t you. =P
Who? Moi? Hell yea. I’m not afraid to admit I found that spot on the fence, before you dropped in to the arena with ‘royal ugly dude with a bazillion Hp’ the second time around.
Got my sweetest sniper rifle of all time that way. I still liked borderlands 1 over two however for the Siren.
According to Dabbler the skilltree does’ t show on video and we know the orbs can’t be detected when inactive.
If she were to lay low and wait for the Squids to leave the skilltree won’t give away her position.
No, but she’ll still be a sitting duck unable to raise her shield or do anything until she selects an upgrade.
Would she risk sitting like a duck to leed the Squidlings to believe she’s dead?
Didn’t the Hobbits hide out until the coast was clear?
Didn’t The Last Starfighter hide in an asteroid until the Kodan armada had passed?
Didn’t Captain Kirk shut down the engines to get the attackers within Phaser range?
All she needs to do is nothing for the next hour or so.
1.) The last time Sydney tried to hide from one of the giant opponents, she ended up injured and buried in rubble as it decimated the surrounding area trying to draw her out.
2.) Sydney appears to be on the “fight” side of the fight or flight response.
3.) Sydney is trying to level up her powers, so running from a fight she may be able to win is counterproductive.
as much as it screwed her over this time, going for the shield first is always the right call. if it had been an attack of some kind she’d be a puddle on the floor. unless you *know* what a thing is you dont go “oh well maybe my best defense will actually screw me over instead of saving me, lets roll the dice!”
Continuing the previous “Monster Office” metaphor:
“Oh God, it killed Bob!
…dibs on his lunch.”
Notes from head office:
Insurance rates are going up and we have yet to discover why. All notes include excessive amounts of deplorable language and often is unintelligible. Please stop swearing with four mouths and speak clearly. Also reply with information on what “floating death bubble” is as we are now hiring.
+1 for the Mechathulu version of Arianna adding a line about potentially hiring the floating death bubble.
Mechathulu Arianna: “Its action figure will be so cheap to make! Heck, we can even do a 1:1 scale version.”
Mechathulu Ariana? >SLAP< Did. No. One. EVER. Tell You "DON'T CROSS THE STREAMS?" Ah well, too late.
So Bob’x*#%^$ how many quatloos are in the current devastator betting pool on mega-beam there and lava-breath?
Did anyone bet on Floaty death bubble there?
Surprised you guys did go the Southpark route.
Lol, “a-Sydney-tism”. Nice.
That went better than expected. But dont let your guard down yet Sydney. After she takes these three down ( assuming she can, which seems likely ) she should really take the battle inside the mothership and wipe it out before they throw something even worse at her. Not to mention destroying whatever information they have gathered on her. I have no doubt that whoever is in charge of the squidwards is busy analysing her every move in this battle.
My suggestion would be to go find somewhere to hide and try to level up. Hold onto the shield orb while she decides what upgrade she wants, then release all orbs to see if she’s at the point to get one. If so, buy it, re-shield. THEN go after the mothership.
Bad idea. The ricocheting shrapnel incident earlier dictates she shouldn’t let go of the shield orb until she’s 110% sure she’s safe unless she wants a piece of building in her skull next.
My suggestion would be to check her utility belt and double-up on her focus meds. Taking the battle into the ship is a good idea too, but that could lead to her getting yanked across the galaxy if they try to warp or something.
Well that last one isn’t exactly an issue since she is in unknown territory and “lost” so getting more “lost” may end up with her being “found”
This is Sydney. She should KNOW that the second she gets taken away by the aliens, the rescue team will arrive on this planet to bring her home. That’s just how these things work.
That was close, so close.
Yes… 7/10ths of a second or so.
That’s dramatic license close.
Well close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. (who came up with these) … maybe now with annihilator beams too.
And Nuclear weapons. Never disregard nuclear weapons.
If that level of juggling and coordination doesn’t deserve a level up, I don’t know what does.
Here’s to hoping it waits until the fighting is over, though.
So long as Sydney has at least one orb in hand at any given time, the skill tree can’t appear. She clearly isn’t letting go of that shield, so we’re good.
Even when she has none in her hand it seems to wait until things calm down before popping up. Of course that didn’t prevent things from exciting up again right after it popped up.
Just had an idea, these are war machines of Sciona’s world that got out of control.
It seems more likely that some alien race got tired of dealing with Sciona’s race monopolizing the Evil Empire gig in this quadrant of the galaxy and decided it was time for a little Xenocide.
Where’s Ender Wiggin when you need him?
Ender is clearly in mid-travel to a far off location. And since Card wrote in the realistic time-dilation issue (when you get closer to light speed) it’ll be a while before we see him again :)
A few authors have made use of the time dilation effect to show “the future” as a protagonist does the skip through time. Niven, with A World Out of Time. Haldeman, with The Forever War. I’m sure there are others but those plus Card are the ones that come to mind first, and all did a really good job of it. Well, Haldeman’s was pretty much planet of hats changes, with his “straights are queer and everyone is gay now” and “we’re all clones now” cultural changes, but I tend to forgive that in the mix of a solid science fiction story.
And Gunbuster, in anime.
The scene when they finally get home is one of my favorites in anime.
Their resemblance to “not a robot” and the fact it could copy powers so bag of them. Has me thinking this is its race out for revenge on the Alari kidnapping their smaller members, or something along those lines.
Yeah they are very similar to that but that one seemed to be a mix of these guys and Alari type technology.
All the better to say “Do my bidding or I’ll blow you up”, but then the explodey crystal got yanked out.
Yeah, that’s close to my guess about these guys given the timing of the attack. Maybe they’re looking for that guy, having gotten a transmission that can’t be traced to its origin like the fabled entanglement communications, that implicated an Alari and somebody with seven inscrutable spheroids before being interrupted.
I’ve been wondering about that myself. ‘Not-A-Robot’ did look a lot like these guys, at least it’s tentacles did. It would explain some things, wouldn’t it?
Except these guys don’t grow back, and have yet to copy a power. But it’d be an interesting explanation to their “nuke it from orbit” reaction to the orbs.
Their odd grab bags of powers between them could be the result of past power copying.
Also, Sydney doesn’t have any power they could copy, and Not-A-Robot got the regeneration power when it got a sample of Pixel’s blood.
Was thinking about Dabs comment back when she replied to Syd comment about stealing Earths water. mining asteroids would be easier. Well if they were just there to destroy the Alari home world there would be easier ways to do it.
There has to be something on Alari the squidlings really want bad. Hm.. Alari… is that whort for Cali-Mari?
Revenge maybe? The Alari were not nice people from what we’ve seen so far. Or maybe they’re mercs hired by one of the Alari’s victims?
Why not toss a lot of meteors at the planet to assure global devastation. Why up close and in person (so to speak)?
Is this thing like a berserker from Fred Saberhagen Berserker wars? Some leftover bit of supreme weapon system?
Because up and personal and terrorizing them with monsters they can’t defeat is much more satisfying.
Also any reasonably advanced society has defenses against kinetic bombardment tactics. Its actually pretty primitive, “lets toss rocks at the planet”, its like the first thing you do as an up and coming interstellar power is to find ways to detect and defend against meteors.
Also, the first reason, some just find it satisfying to just obliterate an enemy, they have to crush their hopes and watch the superior than thou look fade from their eyes as they are faced with the impossible, a force they can’t fight, stop, or control.
Probably because “the enemy just threw rocks from the edge of the solar system to destroy the planet” is a very effective and also very boring story. One which doesn’t even need a monster if the target planet and the inhabitant’s tech level is low enough (say, up to about our own, give or take a few hundred years) that deflecting incoming rocks isn’t even an option for them.
Seriously, Earth is just straight up fucked if we even manage to detect a mass extinction sized rock approaching before it’s far to close to do anything at all about it before it hits. There is just nothing we can do about it, and there is absolutely fuck-all we’re doing to try to correct that lack of capability either. We’re too busy fighting amongst ourselves over whether climate change is man made or not, so even if we don’t kill ourselves by poisoning out own environment we’ll be sitting ducks if some outside threat pops up to do it for us.
And the fact that we’re approaching Idiocracy levels of mass stupidity, what with all the flat earthers and chem trail and vaccine and Clinton child sex slavery conspiracy theory believers isn’t helping much.
There are a lot of people who seem to be disappointed she’s doing this well in this fight.
Consider other ‘levelling up’ situations in other comics and cartoons. There could have been a month of comics for montage purposes while she’s getting trained at Arc. Instead, she’s getting the passive buffs from using the orbs and kicking butt. Now that I say it though, I wonder if the buffs stack as long as she keeps one of them active. PPO makes her aggressive, shield calms her down, com ball increases intuitive thinking (is my best guess at this point), the molestorb probably increases porno sense…
But if the buff stays even after the lets the orb go, it would really explain why she’s so clear headed and focused.
Sydney is basically a twink character from back before MMO items got level restrictions. She may not know how to use them all that well, but they are still stupid powerful.
Good theory. I do agree there’s some sort of unnatural boost to her focus. Considering the differences between the times where she had an adrenaline rush while still hiding the orbs (Tongue-fu) and the several times where she WAS using them, there’s a clear correlation.
My problem is that her progress is way too fast. Like you said, a ‘leveling up’ scenario would realisticaly take weeks of training; here it’s been one week and she’s already levelled up three times, with a fourth (and maybe fifth? sixth?) coming up soon by the looks of it. It’s partially because of the comic time vs. real time difference: to us it’s been years since Sydney first joined Archon, but to her it’s been only a week. So, for us she gets a new level every few years, but to her it’s every few days. Maybe the effect would be less pronounced if there were more time skips. (So far there’s been only one, after Sciona’s escape the story skipped one day while they were searching for her and for WyrmCoot.)
I agree about leveling up too fast. It’s been, what, 10 days tops since this started? I know it’s been years of comic strips, but not much time in the comic world. I am curious how the orbs decide to level.
She blew up a ton of drone ships and got an upgrade when she landed to hide. She took that huge hit from the Kaiju and didn’t get an upgrade even though she got one when she took a similar hit from Maxima hit at the testing facility. Still don’t understand how she got the PPO upgrade fighting the blood mage’s robot monster thing. Nothing really happened there.
Meh, still fun to read.
She discovered how teleportation works.. and she may have had some leftover exp from the last fight..
If the exp thing even is a thing, that would be my closest explanation.
Maybe it’s not so much how much she uses the orbs but when she learns to use them in new ways, showing better insight in how the can be used?
I’m going to be so pissed if after this she doesn’t get at least a dozen individual skill points she can spend.
This was an obvious development. With an eye THAT big, someone was obviously going to poke it out sooner rather than later.
Monsters built with that much emphasis on vision tend to be a bit short-sighted and overlook things.
It’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye — then it’s just FUN!
Vale might agree with you there.
Sydney you are becoming a monster and verifying the fear that that thing had once it scanned you.
I don’t think it’s original fear was “I’ve got to kill it before it kills me and everything else around here.”
Granted it very obviously evolved very quickly into that…
Yeah the whole alarm thing was because it registered her as a dangerous threat not that she was overtly hostile simply that she was dangerous.
She didn’t shoot first, if I recall correctly. This is all self-defense.
She’s trapped on a distant planet surrounded by hostile beings/robots/whatever, and she needs to get home.
I’m sure if they had sent a diplomatic envoy first, she probably would have at least tried to hitch a ride home, or something. Maybe a polite refusal for a ride straight to earth (because Halo would have taught her to protect information about where Earth is), but maybe a FTL phone call?
I’m not saying she’s the aggressor. All I’m saying is that when the things scanned her and bugged out calling for backup it did so because it registered her as extremely dangerous. And while her first battle did take a while for her to decide exactly what she was going to do and how to take them down now she’s on the verge out quick fast and in a hurry proving that she is every bit as dangerous as the first scan and freak out indicated she might be.
We don’t know anything about the people who created the orbs, except that they must be extremely powerful. Perhaps they are also extremely aggressive and hostile, and the reaction of the Squiddies is the only reasonable one: kill them before they get a chance to kill you, because it’s your only chance to survive. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole ship runs away after Sydney kills the three Stooges.
I would not be surprised if the ship ran away either especially after her attempt to board it. As for the reason why but I never specified that I only specified that the skin itself revealed her is being dangerous there’s any number of reason why it can register her as dangerous. Heck for all we know the first one may have had something equivalent to a bootleg version of her orbs and she still took it down. Whether something is aggressive or not has little to do with whether or not it is dangerous in the long run.
I’m a little disappointed that the comment section isn’t just a big long thread of one-liners like, “I shot your eye out, kid!” or “Halo-sine: It puts the red in!” Especially since those are super lame and need to be one-upped so hard that Mario becomes jealous of all those green mushrooms.
We already know for sure the orbs can affect her mental state – the flight ball eliminates vertigo, she somehow wound up grabbing the (at the time unknown) air ball when she was near drowning, as if the orb recognized the danger.
It seems obvious the orbs have some sort of awareness of their possessor, their surroundings, and what is happening, which may or may not rise to the level of AI.
So I would not be surprised if the orbs are helping to keep her super-focused on the job at hand, suppressing fear, energy level up, keeping her from freaking out, etc.
I certainly support the idea that the shield orb diminishes her fear responses while raising confidence.
Actually, it looks to me the air orb went to her hand of its own accord. She was reaching for her rebreather, not trying to get the air orb (remember, she only found out it could make air immediately afterwards). It’s the only orb that has that isolated double-lined node activated, maybe that gives it some sentience?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2560
I suspect that in the case of the “air orb” the double line activated some kind of emergancy failsafe. Less sapiance, more health monitor.
I am disheartened and disappointed in how easily Sydney is destroying the genocide squad, it just shows how stupidly overpowered she is, and she hasn’t even unlocked a quarter of her abilities yet.
This is the kind of thing that kills the enjoyment of a comic for me.
We still have at least 2 squidbillies with new weapons to deal with, I’m hoping we see some more action now that Halo’s really in a position to shine on her own. By the time help arrives, we might end up with 1/4 of the planet blown into orbit and a bloodied and much-humbled Halo orbiting barely conscious with the debris of the mother ship.
It isn’t easy, it’s just very fast-paced. This comic isn’t actually about long super-fights, and the author has gone on record as being interested in keeping them down in size.
Sydney isn’t even coming close to solving her actual problems with this. This is just grinding. There’s no narrative reason why we should spend a lot of time focusing on that. If we get to a point where Sydney is actually making perceptible progress towards getting home, without any struggle or character development, then it will be time for this complaint. But right now, against nameless aliens with generic attacks, and an entire city’s worth more of them waiting for her, it isn’t the time to say she’s having too easy of a time.
This comic isn’t supposed to be about the fights in the first place, and we knew from the start that Sydney was fairly overpowered. This is the first time Sydney was forced into a situation where lethal force was necessary, and we are all expecting some psychological trauma to set in once her life is no longer at risk.
I don’t see it, she’s mostly only winning so hard because they have a weakness she’s exploiting, this is more similar to her out-thinking them and having abilities that counter thiers than being explicitly overpowered
as a side maybe those orbs were made to kill those things, it would explain why squidface reacted the way he did
Right at the beginning, when Halo was first brought to Arc, she was told she has an incredible suite of powers, and they are all extremely powerful.
Her weakest known orb, the molestorb, ahem- lighthook, can lift ten thousand pounds.
This battle is like Zeus taking on the Titans. Yeah, they were titans, but tiny Zeus beat the **** out of them.
With the help of Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, the Hecatonchires, the Cyclopes, Themis, and Prometheus. The War lasted ten years before Zeus and his allies won.
He didn’t do it alone. Like Sydney’s doing.
Fine, it’s like Zeus taking on Typhon. Or an X-wing taking on the Death Star. Beyond “one weapon able to tax Sydney’s shield” and “mach 2 supersize punches” we have no gauge for how strong these are defensively except “not strong enough to resist explodey cutting beam”.
As an avid viewer of slice of life anime featuring insanely powerful characters, I was drawn to this comic on the up and coming learning her powers newbie superhero in a world where superheroes weren’t a real thing till now.
Heck, being so powerful can be a draw back, like if she is in a non-lethal engagement how much can she dial back her attack powers, and make use of her other powers (she isn’t really OP as her power set here is mainly just exploiting a common weakness of giant army fighting kaiju and robots…no zero point defenses). They aren’t designed to fight a small powerful tactical opponent, and she has figured out how to get inside their defense perimeter where they can’t hit her with anything big.
If she was fighting opponents with their same powers and shields but human sized; she wouldn’t be doing this well as she wouldn’t be able to teleport inside their shields like she is here.
In fact unless the PPO has a low stun setting somewhere in its skill tree, her use in normal battles will be delegated to stand to the side, evacuate civilians, defense, and take on debris. She is actually less useful than Maxima or Dabbler as Sydney’s offense looks to be pure lethal. Her other powers are all tactical so far.
Its not like she could suddenly develop magnekinesis, psychokinetic kill bullets, necrokinetic bolts, oxygen freezer, or other OP powers as they don’t fit into her current power set. We’ll likely see the flight orb have more speed options, the PPO get stronger and/or hit wider targets, the light hook get stronger, the com-ball has holograms and teleport so it will be tactical stuff like that (maybe range, carrying capacity on teleport, ect…), that’s pretty much it.
I don’t expect Sydney to suddenly have Light Hawk Wings or use the Ragna Blade or something that is an unavoidable instant kill *usually* short ranger super weapon, or elemental powers, and such as they wouldn’t fit.
Besides, super heroes taking out giant monsters and the like is common, Spider-man has done it before, heck Wolverine whose strength is D-class has taken out a sentinel robot or two in his time.
To a certain extent just the fact that she’s small sized with power on level with the big guys is a way that she is overpowered. That said I don’t think she’s over-powered in the plot sense since the point isn’t supposed to be on the fight but the characters.
Just glad to see I’m not the only one who feels that way.
Protagonists’ constant being barraged and defeated is a trend born of bad writing. In the real world, the type of people who lose all the time almost never stop losing. Winners win, and I, as a novelist and a fan, welcome the idea that heroes can get their butts kicked once in a while, but do more kicking than receiving.
But this isn’t the real world, this is a comic book we’re discussing. And people who nearly always win are as boring as those who nearly always lose.
That is a shallow and unfortunate way of looking at writing and storytelling. If the only determining factor in whether a hero is interesting is their win/loss ratio, I fear you’re sorely missing the point. Sydney is interesting because of her unusual powerset, personality, skills, and outsider status in a room full of born and raised superheroes and military vets. If she beats big enemies it is only because she has the rock to beat their scissors, which she plainly does here.
And even still, you have things like One Punch Man. He never loses or even struggles, but the story doesn’t use “can the good guys prevail?” as a literary crutch for suspense; the story is all about the characters, the world around Saitama and how it responds to him, and fights have a lot of good stuff with other heroes until Saitama finally arrives– or while he’s fighting the Bigger Bad.
It’s kind of interesting to me that Sydney has, of necessity, been revealed as hugely more powerful than Maxima, a character scarily powerful in her own right. With more training, what will she be capable of? What if she were to go rogue? Who would stand a chance against her? It would come down to intelligence-knowledge about Sydney/Halo. Probably only Maxima, Dabbler, and Anvil. And I mean all three together.
Has she? Maxima hasn’t fought one of these, we have no sense for how she would do. If she got through their shields, like Halo has, she would certainly win with ease. These really do not suggest that Sydney out-powers Max at all. Max might struggle with the shield, though.
Max doesn’t have a lightbee to teleport her inside their shields, and considering Squidward’s shield easily deflected the PPO (No, I’m not hip, but I’m not going to write ‘Pew Pew Orb’ everytime so sue me! :)) so Max’ best shot seems to be shooting it with her strongest Nuke Blast and hope it’s enough. Which it might be, we don’t know how powerful that blast is or how strong the Squiddies’ shields are.
i think its only a matter of time before Sydney is out classing max on all fronts. the orbs are made by race with base code of the universe level knowledge. they may even be the people that made the geode that gave max her powers, so in a lot of ways halo is a god in the making in away.
That makes a LOT of assumptions. The simple fact is that short of an unprecedented leap in passive abilities or exponential strength increases, Sydney will likely never match Maxima for raw strength, speed, and reaction time.
Heh, that matches some of my own ideas. Who knows, maybe you need that golden symbiont that makes Max so powerful to be able to use all orbs at once, without having to hold them? Just speculatin’. I have to say that I admire DaveB: even when I’m not happy with how things go right now, he still keeps me hooked. That’s real talent!
Sydney is not overpowered. It’s just that these aliens are not as overpowered as one would expect from their size – instead, their size is their disadvantage.
When this is all over, Max is gonna have to buy a new pair of boots. Just sayin’.
I know Dabbler is supposed to be the Diablo character on the team but this fight seems exactly like every time I’ve ever played the game. Incredible damage output, but if you ever actually take a real hit, you’re splattered.
You can build non-glass canon characters but they are the odd ones. There’s even a skill on one of the more tanky characters in the new one called “glass canon’ that increases your damage and decreases defense across the board.
Looks like they’re shooting five different flavors of herbs and spices. Now they just need fifteen more for a delicious dinner of Kentucky Fried Death.
What is the Giant Monster sized lump thing between tractor beam guy and VeeVeeVee guy in panel 2? It disappears by panel 3 and whooshy Flame guy in on tractor beam guys other side.
That’s the back of “whooshy flame guy’s” head. The viewing position shifts between panels 2 and 3.
“Cyclops, you asked my noble name, and I will tell it; but do you give the stranger’s gift, just as you promised. My name is Nobody. Nobody I am called by mother, father, and by all my comrades.”
Max: “Sydney, we’re back! I need you to tell me immediately if there’s anyone in the area.”
Syd: “…Nobody. But it’s worse than it sounds.”
You’re assuming the stump with the eye was it’s head. Maybe it’s like a Beholder? Shooting it in the primal eye just really pi**es it off…
A good rule of thumb is to remove the head as that removed vital organs.
That said, what you say is true: it could have its brain in it’s arm pit for all we know…
Vital organs or no, that’s it’s gun eye.
Reminds me of Schlock mercenary where they guy who’s eye was up top but has his brain in his torso was shot in the eye. He was in pain and angry (soldier boosts and armour with auto-injecting combat meds) but didn’t go down. His partner had to tell him to play dead so that the sniper didn’t try again.
Yeah, Ebby’s acting skills are… Not his strong suit, let’s say.
If that’s what 1.4 is doing, then I’d just stay down, if it was me. Let the bazooka-wielding mosquito find someone else to maim for a bit.
“I’ve worn it down for you, guys. You take over from here, while I recover from my injuries…”
She is getting serious use out of the PPO for sure. I mean, I know she’s used it like once before in combat, but that time it kinda flopped against the golem, this time however she’s using it galore.
Okay. Sydney definitely deserves the title of badass now. Not because of the firepower, but because of how quick she thinks on her feet and how well she is handling this situation – whitout any real training. She is doing pretty spectatularly for a rookie, stranded on an alien planet with entities capable of destroying a very powerful race.
Eye scream, you scream, we all scream for Eye Scream.
**Warning: this link leads to TV Tropes website & if you do not possess enough self-discipline you will be drawn into an hours (maybe even days)-long quest for superficial trivia**
I’m writing a story that was spawned by too much time on TV Tropes.
Started with one scene, the image of a Likable Villain pulling a Papa Bear moment.
So yes, TvTropes can be an absolute time waster, but it can also give you great ideas.
Hmmm…Start with a random trope, sketch out an idea. click another random trope, sketch out an idea. Repeat until satisfied or committed to a rubber room in an insane asylum.
…Yeah, that could work…
I feel like the sound effects kind of dominate the limited visual space on this one to distraction, especially in panel two.
And there we have it homicidal xenophobic monkey mode activated. Yup these guys don’t stand a chance against Sydney.
Sydney: “Looks like you’ve got something in your eye!”
ADM (Alien Death Machine): ???
Sydney: ZOWT!!! “Got it!”
ADM: … Creeeeeeeek!!! Kathoom!!! (As ADM crash’s over onto the ground…)
Sydney: “Whoops! My Bad!”
“Oh! I just figured out what it was!
It was your brain!
…
Sorry!”
Haa! ! Knew it! “Dive into the eye & zap”
That’s how to defeat a tractor beam, don’t run away, dive in!
Sydney should a been a Marine, (like me) :D
The fun will begin when she gets back home and finds out that her collar has a “record” function and her entire battle is stored in there for playback and analysis.
Maxima: Sydneytism? Really? You couldn’t have said it had a Halo Vision problem?
(That’s actually a thing, where you see a rainbow halo around everything)
Halo: Hey, I didn’t have a lot of time for quips, I was completely blindsided – so I returned the favor. Now that I know I can record these for YouTube, I won’t be so short-sighted.
Arianna & Max in unison: Under no circumstances are you ever allowed to post footage *anywhere* until I’ve approved it.
Didn’t want to say anything last comic, because I figured this was the sequence of events coming up next. They were holding her to double team her with attacks, but she’d teleport out and then get close and blast the primary target (the one shown to be able to incapacitate her).
For the complainers who think Sydney lacks the training to do all of this. She’s a comic book geek, RPG and all around gamer. Not all of the skills are applicable to real life, but a number of them are. As far as ADHD, many of us with the spectrum have hyperfocus. It usually does kick in with intensity under stressful situations. And boy would this be stressful. She would not be cured as such when this s over, and yes, she will be a bit wobbly after it’s all over. It’s not just adrenaline, it’s also biology and simulation-training.
I have also pointed out, previously, that Sydney appears to have a knack for improvisation. To anyone who has ever been in a fight with somebody with a knack for improvisation, I feel for you. It is no fun trying to fight someone who has no idea what they are going to do next, but something will happen, and it will be interesting.
I really can’t wait to see what happens when she’s done fighting, not in terms of adrenaline crash but in terms of how many skill points she’ll have. I can imagine her having a rather violent panic attack and suddenly being completely distracted by the number of points available, spending them all wildly and NOT listening to Dabbler trying to tell her what to buy, and then returning to panic mode once all the shinies are spent….
But will she fear-vomit on Max’s boots? That will be the true test.
When she stops doing that, she will have exited rookie status, I think…
Combining the teleportation ability of Nightcrawler to the massive destructive ability of Cyclops makes Sydney the most powerful assassin on Earth (and here, as well, apparently). There’s going to be a mad scramble to make certain Sydney gets some sort of psychic protection, once she gets back home and debriefed. Otherwise, she’ll be the target for every nefarious hypnotist, world-wide.
*GLARE* Never. Give. The GM. IDEAS!!
Actually, I’m pretty sure she has psychic protection already. Her shield blocked Vehemence’s aggro aura. I’d find it odd if it didn’t also block psychic attacks, though I think this has yet to be truly tested.
It may well do – when it’s active. But remember how she was having to restrain herself once there was no longer a shield wall between herself and Mr. V? For that matter, how about when she first met a certain ‘consultant’ and her innate psychic abilities?
Her ADHD might be sort of protecting her already …
I could imagine the squidwards being a bit perturbed with the sudden apperance of what they could only guess is an Alari Avenger of some sort.
If Sciona is anything to go by, then Alari are humanoid enough that Sydney could legitimately be mistaken for one if their use of powers/magic is similar, especially if bubbled-up, flying around and basically firing non-stop.
It would be amusig if there were any Alari left behind in bunkers somewhere under the surface, that Sydney is awarded that “Alari Empire Order of Merit” medal that Sciona seems to have wanted, after defeating these invaders.
Sydney, Geneva called. There’s evidence that you’ve been torturing puns.
The puns deserved it.
THEY KNOW WHAT THEY DID.
Sydney will have her freak out when she is sure she is safe and it is safe to have a freak-out. Right now her survival instincts are doing their job keeping her alive by focusing on the very important “murdering the kill-things”. Freaking out is for when the adrenaline’s job is done. If the adrenaline crashes in the middle of a threatening situation, it’s not doing its job very well.
CALLED IT! :D
I’m noting the specific shots of Sidney swapping out orbs. This seems a minor detail, and it could be, but I’m wondering if this is a precursor to a callback to a certain scene. Involving a training pool. And Sidney swapping out the wrong orbs.
Ooh, I like. Maybe we’ll see some more from the life support orb; I doubt we’re far enough into the
overall storyskill tree to reveal the mystery orb.Yo dude, there’s something in your eye.
Oooo, eeeesh, *turns away*
Hopefully what happens on the other side of an intergalactic/parrallel-universe?? whatever portal stays on the other side of an inter… that thing I said.
I pray she does’t have too big of a problem dealing with whatever going space murder hobo on intelligent beings does to her and can dial things back down when she returns to earth as a super-police woman in training where some of our allies/citizens are non-human and sometimes very much so.
Have we already seen a super therapist in this comic? If not hopefully we see the on staff one soon…
The Squid-Kaiju’s inherent intelligence is debatable.
Besides, they started this with a nuclear bomb level attack, and refuse to communicate with anything other than a loud “RRRRRAAAOOOOOOWWWW!!”
Kinda unfair to call Sydney “murder hobo.”
I like Sydney.
I was not defending the Beholder-kin-abominations-octopi things.
I am worried about what having to do this will do TO Sydney.
But as long as you pointed it out that way. She decided to harvest a bunch of maaaybe unmanned drones and then proceeded to attack the potentially intelligent being on the planet. She is doing this hoping to satisfy what she sees as the game like interface of her artifacts in an effort to gain “XP” and “level up”. She hasn’t really made much attempt to think about what they are or why they might be doing what they did. (the people they slaughtered, for what we know of them, were not very nice conqueror types who may have earned this reaction by screwing around with the wrong planet/system)
So, while I said it just to say it, its not all that terribly far off.
That said, I think she is incredibly stressed dealing with a situation so far outside of anything her life and non-existent super training could have prepared her for that if she REALLY thought about all the various aspects of it she’d probably shut down mentally. Her mind is dealing with the bits it can deal with and maintaining momentum at least. I might do the same suddenly facing such a wild situation on my own.
I don’t hate her for it. I was worried about what happens when she survives and has to actually process everything that’s happening during this little adventure.
What sort of communication would be more intelligible? I doubt I’d be able to tell the difference between brilliant balladeering and baby-babble in most currently-known languages, and that’s within the same planet and species. Add the significant differences of physiology (obviously) and mentality (presumably), and that RRAAOOWW could hold many levels of modulation and meaning that simply go over our heads. Or they’re broadcasting like mad in the microwave range, and wondering why the little beastie refuses to reply.
As for the shoot-first-shoot-heavy policy, compare it to the Human authorities’ reaction if someone starts wandering around a secure area toting unidentified heavy weaponry, and remember that Humans are small and squishy relative to Kaiju. What is overkill to us may be a limited-lethality knockdown weapon to them, as if we were to use a crowd-control beanbag round on a rat.
I can’t say for sure that the Kaiju or Fighters are People in their own right, and/or that the failure to deal non-lethally with squishy Humans lies in the ability rather than the will. But I certainly can’t rule either possibility out.