Grrl Power #880 – Variable lethality
By “Variable,” Cora of course means “That depends on what I’m shooting and where I hit them.” I suppose that applies to most non-AOE weapons, really.
My first draft had some Predator looking scrawl in panel 5 there, but I thought that wasn’t particularly helpful, so it’s been translated for your convenience.
So, the “stasis” gun doesn’t stop time, because if you reference your technobabble lookup table, it’s too power inefficient to do so. It’s like accelerating mass to light speed without cheating with spacial compression or just straight up warp nonsense. Basically, slowing time to 10% takes 100 energoid-hours, slowing it to 9% takes 200 energoid-hours, slowing it t0 8% takes 400 e/h, 5% takes 3,200 e/h, etc.
At least, that’s how the gun works. The stasis pod is more efficient because it’s maintaining a time slow field inside layers of other fields, and those usually have much larger power cells than a rifle. They can put 10 fields that each slow time by 15%, which is far more power efficient.
Basically what’s happening here is the gun is trying to keep Maxima at something like 2 or 3% speed, but as she realized something is wrong, and is using super speed to compensate, the gun is like “I don’t know what’s happening here, so I’m going to double fist your power cell to attempt to keep things stable. Please be alarmed if your gun starts getting really hot.”
“Torchy” is probably a racial slur, but a fairly mild one. Whatever Torchy is, her race definitely has some demon or devil in their ancestry, neither one is usually ever described as a snowflake. If you call a Marileth a six-armed snake-butt, their first instinct isn’t to go cry about it on Space Twitter. Succubi have certainly heard their share of slurs. On top of all the usual female derogations, they get stuff like “Horned Hussy” or “Homewrecker on hooves.” At least the ones that actually have horns and hooves, that is. Even without their glamors, succubi have morphologically and chromatically enjoyed the spice of life. No, not Melange. Variety. Most have horns. Some have hooves, some do not. Some have that little tail with the spade thing on the end. That has to get caught on stuff. Walking through the woods with a spade tail is probably like pulling a DVI cable out of a big tangle of wires. You know, the ones with the big screw things on the side that get caught on everything? Man, I’m glad we’re moving past stupid cable connectors. USB C fo lyfe!
Oh shoot, I forgot to draw Torchy’s wrist forcefield thingy.
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Plot twist. Maxima realised the issue a while ago already, maxed out her speed, took her time to assess the situation and then decided to slow-turn just for effect, she can actually move a lot faster, which she will reveal when she suddenly just strolls out of the ray at normal speed only to completely disapteleport behind Scorchy as soon as she is out of the stasis field.
Better plot twist. She didn’t max out her speed yet. This is her normal level enhanced speed. Remember back when she disassembled the fired projectile in the council chamber? What shes doing right now is just draining the gun that can completely disable anyone else on the field.
When she did that in the Chamber, she was moving at Max speed (or at least, faster than her ‘normal’ speed)
Max is always moving at “Max”-speed!
Really should give you a Pun Hammer beating for that.
I believe if she disaports the sonic boom that she would cause would probably ruin the surrounding area (and deafen people for miles around at least those not killed by the pressure wave or shrapnel the boom would kick about)
A sonic boom does NOT contain THAT much energy else a rifle bullet would creat mass devestation to the suroundings every time one is fired. If she was going fast enough that just the pressure wave would cause collateral damage at a distance the bow-wave alone would at the minimum be a plasma, which is already in the NOT GOOD category. Past that we are heading towards and way past that oh so fun fusion threshold with all sorts of fun once subatomic particles get mushed.
Oh, almost forgot the inverse square law relating to the energy release at the point of origin at what level it is at any arbitrary distance from the origin.
Or, another way to put it: “The alien with the stasis beam saw Maxima turn in spite of said beam and stared into her captive’s cold, merciless eyes. It was at this moment, realized she just f***ed up.”
I think we’re all overlooking the most important question posed by this comic, which is:
Why is the stasis gun’s display in ENGLISH? With real Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals, rather than whatever is on this wall?
Obviously this APPARENT shanghaiing by rogue, plausibly deniable aliens is actually some deep earth-based conspiracy to neutralize and remove Max. I suspect elements in the Twilight Council. She worries them.
And DaveB’s on it as well, judging by that second paragraph above.
for the same reason everyone in End Game was speaking English despite translators being a thing, and aliens in shows speak English (or language the show is from or dubbed in) when alone.
because, don’t think about it, assume the fourth wall comes with auto-translate
“assume the fourth wall comes with auto-translate” – when the plot does not require the viewer to be left ignorant of what’s being said AS it’s being said, but to instead get that information later in another way (via a translator or by someone’s actions, for instance)
ah yes, when the aliens are speaking their own language with no subtitles. That is when you know some sneaky surprise is in the works.
My headcannon explanation for this sort of thing is, as always, it’s not REALLY in English. It’s just dubbed/captioned for the sake of the audience.
*click* *click* *BzzZTszt* ok, this things sorta working.
I always put it down to my personal translator working as advertised. Also could be, we are all around tbat proverbial campfire telling tales, and we are getting 4th wall break from Mz. Navigator there aka “pilot” from Bunsen relating herz side of the events.
Okay, so as everyone pointed out, I’m blind. I’d read the under-comic blurb something like 2-4 times, and I somehow missed the 2nd paragraph each time.
… but also it’s a false-flag operation by the Twilight Council. Seriously. For realz. 100% confirmed.
Um, “Live nude girls” and “Artificial nude girls” both appear to be English to me (oh, excuse me: ENGLISH), despite some spelling errors. Could you really not read that, and thought it was some kind of alien language?
Umm, believe they were referring to panels four and five, the symbols in gold
Or did you think they were some sort of decoration or wall art?
Given your failure to use the pronoun ‘I’, you are probably Guesticus engaging in the vile practice of posting under a secondary assumed name.
And regardless of your identity, the author of the comment has made it clear that you’re wrong.
Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot to include a single letter, that makes me someone else, does it?
All you do is attack and make accusations, why are you even here? You have repeatedly stated you don’t like the comic
But those words also had some weird slashes through a lot of the letters, which is why I specified “Latin Alphabet” to distinguish. While that might be derivative of the Latin alphabet, it’s clearly departed from that origin. The readout on the stasis gun doesn’t have those weird characters.
Somewhere, someone has a 1st stage font of english to “comm9n” ? Never been named either.
BTW, can hear all the programmwrs moaning about revamping Uni-code because “it’s not big enough to hold all that alien language symbology!”
Kinda glad I am not 9-5ing that at the software div of the traffic and parking units.
Conceded that the text on the rifle was pure English and in no way “alien fontified” as was the writing on the wall. (heh). Perhaps DaveB just couldn’t be bothered?
HA!! Called it! Was exactly right about what would happen with the “stasis gun” and Max’s speed!
Yeah Something designed to inflict paralysis(say magic based) wouldve been a much smarter idea but it looks like these mercs are just opportunistic amateurs looking for a quick and easy buck who didnt do any research at all.I mean if this happened anywhere at Archon(where their target is easiest to find) These buffoons would have been captured pages ago,This entire shaggy dog story is literally the best outcome for these idiots.
I guess our writer applies to the Johnen Vasquez school of writing when it comes to aliens(Aka- it doesnt matter how advanced a race is just like the people of earth most of them will still be morons)
Kay : A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet.
Ptolemy, knew the world was round, about 10,000 BCE. More or less! :)
and Iceland is green and Greenland is icy.
His mistake was misquoting who he was quoting.
*Agent K *Movie: Men in Black*
yes we all know the line is wrong, so was Scarecrow’s in the Wizard of Oz stating the math equation for finding the sides to a triangle (stated the wrong kind of triangle),
that doesn’t change the quote its self. I was tempted to make the same correction, most people are who know its wrong when seeing it, but it is just a movie quote.
Greenland’s name was an early example of a marketing campaign. If you name the place where you hope to convince a bunch of people to go start a colony “Frozen Wasteland Where Not Much Will Grow,” you don’t get many takers.
Ah, but we are talking Earth-born beings.
Ptolomy was an Alien. Discuss.
Once you have eliminated every other theory, whatever is left must be the truth.
“Ptolemy, knew the world was round, about 10,000 BCE. More or less! :)”
Ptolemy was roman citizen who lived in egypt in roman empire … born circa 100 AD death circa 170 AD .
The invention of wirting date from around 28th or 27th century BC for a coherent wirting with sentences.
“The idea of a spherical Earth appeared in ancient Greek philosophy with Pythagoras (6th century BC), although most pre-Socratics (6th–5th century BC) retained the flat Earth model. In the early 4th century BC Plato wrote about a spherical Earth, and by about 330 BC his former student Aristotle provided evidence for the spherical shape of the Earth on empirical grounds. Knowledge of the spherical Earth gradually began to spread beyond the Hellenistic world from then on.”
500 years ago spherical Earth is a consensus we are in 2020 500 years ago is 1520…
Christopher Colombus based is attemp to reach china leading him to cuba by the acceptation of sperical earth… in 1492.
Ferdinant Magellan atempted the first circumnavigation of the Earth in 1519 completed in 1522 by his lieuteant Juan Sebastián Elcano…
Eratosthenes as caculated Earth’s cicumfrence circa 230 BC and was based on geometry asimplifcation could be:
“Under the previous assumptions, you can measure the Sun’s angle of elevation at noon of the summer solstice in Alexandria, by using a vertical rod (a gnomon) of known length and measuring the length of its shadow on the ground; it is then possible to calculate the angle of the Sun’s rays, which he claims to be about 7°, or 1/50th the circumference of a circle. Taking the Earth as spherical, the Earth’s circumference would be fifty times the distance between Alexandria and Syene, that is 250,000 stadia. Since 1 Egyptian stadium is equal to 157.5 metres, the result is 39,375 km, which is 1.6% less than the real number, 40,008 km.”
Flat earth was not longer a theory since 4th century BC….
Now that I think about it Maxima being able to move at Super Speed in the Stasis Field isn’t really the problem! As long as Torchy could hook up an Super Battery Charger to the Stasis Field then her problem is solved.
But carrying around the power supply for that will require even more lifting.
But yes your description of what is happening is basically the function of the stasis pod.
hooking up my dryer directly to a nuclear power plant instead of the local power grid won’t change a thing if I over tax it and burn out the heating element.
Then you need a better dryer!
No, no I don’t because that’s not the point.
the point is the battery/power source isn’t the only factor. A machine’s capacity to handle it is also a factor. Most appliances don’t draw MORE power when stressed; they either simply break *burn out* or an emergency shut *a fuse for instance or surge protector* is tripped and shuts them down to preserve them.
adaptive tech like this gun is trying to draw more power to compensate for the resistance. It is already at 99.9 percent draw strength, adding more battery won’t stop Maxima from moving if she can now move inside the field, just prolong the inevitable; unless she can and does tax it even further and a surge protector trips and the gun just shuts off to prevent its version of (or to keep simple) overheating.
want to have a good example, a computer or modern game console that when pushed ups its fan speed to fight overheating, but if it heats up too much will shut down to prevent damage.
so the larger power source isn’t going to make a difference if the hardware isn’t able to handle a larger power flow.
So Maxima is basically Foxy from FNAF 1, if Foxy never left the the door and kept pounding on it, which causes the battery to run out faster with hit? Now I want a picture of Maxima as Foxy for Halloween! Why do you make me think this way, Dave!
sure,
I was thinking along the lines of trying to run a program in your computer that requires too much processor speed so the fan has to kick on high speed, or
think of the gun (or the stasis pod on the ship’s having something like your breaker box. Normally it only has to deal with one light bulb on in the house. Now the power source can be a generator, power plant, doesn’t matter *for the secondary problem*,
sure if the only problem is someone has turned on several lights then the power source draining faster is a problem, with a battery. But now Maxima has turned on all the lights, the stove, the microwave, the dryer, plugged in several high powered devices to one outlet. The drain is not only higher but is taxing what the wires can handle, drawing too much power. So to prevent a fire, the fuse blows shutting everything down; even if there should have been more than enough power to back it up. The electrical grid after all supplies your whole city, the problem is the bottle neck.
Basically the point I am making is the problem with adding more devices or using a ship’s battery for a stasis pod is that there is more than one variable. Maxima is providing so much resistance that even if you provide more battery power that won’t stop the amount of resistance she is giving, and we have to imagine the devices themselves have a tolerance limit to how much power they can draw. (a fatal flaw in tech that can detect that it needs to apply more power, there is a finite limit to how much it can draw at a time before reaching its breaking point).
More to the point they could also use multiple stasis rifles to keep her in stasis, just shoot Maxima with another riflen when you get down to 10 to 5% power and problem solved!
The problem is that Maxima has adapted and going the problem is Max moving rather than being cargo. If Maxima can fire her beam then sticking her in a box that slows time to 0.0001% still means she can be blasting her way out in under a day and the moment you open the box that beam will do what it does so you can’t really act on her unless you are ready to go from the get go.
Also stasis technology has diminishing returns so eventually Max just costs more to contain than it’s worth since whoever buys her has to pay upkeep meaning they will be paying you less for her due to fewer bidders and fewer options than this group assumed the buyer would have.
Firing off what amounts to a deadly energy beam while within a stasis field might be criminally reckless. When you’re moving so much slower than events outside the stasis field, you’ve got no real way to be sure you won’t be mowing down innocent civilians by the time your beam exist the field.
Note that the only cop charged in the killing of Breonna Taylor was charged for recklessly firing off his firearm in an uncontrolled way which endangered all of the people in the neighboring apartments. Murdering Breonna didn’t result in any charges at all for any of the cops.
*in self defence in response to gunfire from the other occupant of the building.
There’s a reason there aren’t murder charges, because it was unfortunate collateral damage when dealing with a felony warrant. The person who would be charged with murder (the one shooting at cops) is already dead.
It’s a tragedy, but not a murder.
It’s a murder. The cops should never have been there, the story they spun for the judge that issued the warrant about the post office “tipping them off to suspicious packages being delivered to that residence” was a complete fiction. There is an ongoing federal investigation into that crime, but investigations unfortunately don’t stop murders from happening.
Only reforming the police departments so that the cops don’t think that they are above the law, can break the law in order to supposedly enforce the law might have a chance at accomplishing that, for the future.
Breonna Taylor didn’t shoot at the cops, her boyfriend did. And he did so in response to an unannounced entry without any awareness that the intruders were police officers. (The only people saying the cops announced themselves prior to the incident are the cops themselves, who didn’t have any body cams on. At this point, no, I do not trust their account of events without independent corroboration.)
BTW, that warrant? It was obtained using false information (they claimed that a postal inspector had confirmed suspicious packages being delivered to Taylor’s apartment, but while the postal inspector said they had been working with the cops, they also said they’d found nothing to support investigating Taylor).
Wait, so you are saying that her boyfriend would have shot and killed anyone who entered?
And that they weren’t a threat to the public? o_O
Listen, you walnut: When someone enters your apartment via breaking down the door, when you live in a rough neighborhood or even if you don’t, when your girlfriend’s past boyfriend who is a criminal has been stalking her or not, firing a single round at the people illegally entering your residence to do who knows what to you and your girlfriend is completely justified.
But don’t believe me, believe the legal system which dropped all charges against Kenneth Walker. If he had done anything illegal the charges would have been maintained and he would be in jail now awaiting trial. He’d be offered a plea deal which would see him imprisoned for years if not decades for attempting to defend himself and his girlfriend against people who burst down a door in the middle of the night. That’s how things work in this nation, unfortunately.
Those officers, all three of them, sprayed and prayed. While the various self defence laws in play might prevent charges of murder there’s no comprehensible way they should have prevented a charge of manslaughter being brought against the officer who fired the fatal shot, especially if they’re recognising that one officers volume of fire as an act of reckless endangerment towards people who were not the shooter (whom they comprehensively failed to eliminate). It’s going to be interesting to see what the recording of the grand jury session reveals when it’s released.
They are the epitome of Max’s lesson about irresponsible shooting
It will never be released.
That’s a decent idea, but ignores the possibility that you can’t just use multiple stasis guns on a single target for some techno-babble reason. Plus, they brought a stasis pod for use after the stasis gun was employed, and their plan seems (Seemed? Their plan appears to be suffering a bit from contact with the enemy.) to be to quickly replace the temporary stasis from the rifle-like thing with the more permanent solution of the pod.
Since DaveB has stated they are temporal dampeners, the go to techno-babble for not using multiple could be fractal collapse, cascade feed back, that sort of thing.
Generally it is hypothesized time is produced as a by product of gravity reacting with mass; the greater mass, greater gravity, denser time. The idea being every single particle of mass produces a time field, the time fields all fuse into one with localized ripples *only way time can be isolated into one spot and changed*, generally stating that time works as a collective, the greater temporal impacts cascade across the time field collective. A fractal timeline is a ripple, usually only lasting pico-seconds, but potential larger noticeable deja vue level confusion zones; where the events in one localized pocket have multiple possible paths that wouldn’t influence enough to produce another timeline, so instead the one path with the greatest influence on surrounding time washes over the others and becomes the events that *did* occur. (like you could turn down two different roads to get to your destination, but only one had the greater impact on everything else around it, so those few seconds of decision become an absolute *in an over simplified and generally not what causes it way*
so to apply this to the stasis guns slowing down time in an isolated point, which is also clearly being influenced its self by surrounding time as they are still moving relative to the planet; so this isolated spot is slowing time in a bubble, while that bubble is being controlled by the greater time field around it to correspond with the events and mass present.
So producing a second time dampener field to interact with the first creates a zone with one variable *Maxima* operating on two slightly out of sink dampeners; as such she is the only influencing factor in that time field. If her impact is great enough of an influence on that field and to the greater time field around it being observed by others; including the ground under the time field she is still standing on and her movements are in relation to; then the greater time field may just correct for the changes in the easiest way possible *spooky quantum alignment*…the second time stasis rifle suddenly is drained to the same amount as the first as the two devices have become linked by a time bubble that entangles them treating them as a single rifle as far as the time bubble is concerned.
there, techno babbled awayed complete.
addition:
if the slowed down time bubble was its self not influenced by the greater time field of the planet; then the second she was hit by it she would no longer be visible as the time bubble would become a pocket dimension operating on its own relatively slower time (like a fairy world, out of synch and disconnected without use of a time/space bridge); which even if we say the beam can act as the time space bridge this isn’t a containment as there would be a portal and the bridge would create a window into the pocket dimension; and a relative zone around it so Maxima would appear to be moving normally to the naked eye near the portal’s opening until it closed again.
(possible way to use time to imprison a powerful being…not so good if you want them immobilized for transport unless you have a pocket dimension device that sustains it…which would be more a Soul Gem *or Pokeball looking* thing sucking her into the device via a wormhole or something and not a visibly stuck in one spot effect.
(how this beam looks is why I didn’t think it was time related but a general kinetic containment beam), but this provides some more mental work around.
Basically, “don’t cross the streams or something bad will happen.”
Yes,
the simplified form:
the dampener is a time bubble which is inside the larger time field of the Earth otherwise it wouldn’t stay in position relative to the Earth. Maxima is also standing on the ground which is both inside and outside the time bubble. As Maxima is moving and she is the only mass wholly inside the time bubble and her position is changing relative to the ground which extends out into regular time Maxima becomes the dominating factor inside the time bubble, so anything short of a gravitational force greater than the Earth acting on her will be subject to the influence of the greater time field.
ergo, a second time dampener rifle can’t change what is happening while she is in motion relative to the ground because she has already overpowered the initial time bubble. So quantum alignment treats both guns as one gun to correct for the inconsistency. *basically half the power of one of those guns is either annihilated or the second gun isn’t there anymore and becomes one gun with one power source…what could happen to someone holding the gun when that happens…eh…well…that is a mystery; these things don’t normally happen at this scale.
Why I said, time manipulation tech may feel like a genie in a bottle, but that genie is drunk.
No, their plan was always to put Maxi in the pod after capture for transport, they just didn’t count on such strong resistance from the locals (or that two aliens would be siding with the locals)
Also, they had no way of knowing about Maxi’s ability of going at such high speeds
“Why didn’t they do better research?” (or similarly idiotic response)
What research? Doubt details of what Maxi can do exists outside of ARCHON, and maybe a few eye-witnesses from the Council Chamber Calamity (when she caught that shell and dismantled it before it hurt anyone)
All they knew would be that she appears to be gold, can fly, and can single-fingerly destroy a Fel battle-cruiser
“Torchy” should consider turning of the vocal function of her universal off to not leak all her tactical information to the rest of the world.
Wouldn’t much matter, her primary opponents have their own UTs.
Also, translators appear to work for both broadcast and reception – recall that aliens on Fracture were able to understand Sydney without her wearing one, and the Torchy vlogger was able to speak English to her. Turning off your translator wouldn’t matter when you’re face to face with an opponent wearing one.
They should at least have encrypted comms though, but so far we haven’t seen that level of planning.
See also computers.
No matter how fast we make computers, no matter how big we make the RAM or the storage, some lazy-ass programmer will immediately write even worse code to gobble up all those new resources with bloat.
That’s a fundamental law of computing: Any given program will grow to fill all available memory.
This is sad but true. I recall playing computer games that came on a floppy disk and created an entire galaxy of stars via some fractal magic. Most games I’ve bought in the past 10 years come on not one but several CDs and/or DVDs.
And even then you had to download the rest
To be fair, a lot of that is enhanced graphics and the fact that there is much more to do in the newer games.
Those old games were really good at creating the illusion of size and freedom but in reality were very limited.
The old Fallout games are a good example actually. Fallout 1 only had 12 (IIRC) locations. But it always seemed like it was bigger thanks to random encounters throughout the map. Some newer games have hundreds of locations, but they are not always well fleshed out. So they sometimes feel empty, even small.
If Max is using all her power to speed turn she may be vulnerable to a bop on the head …if you can place the edge of the field just right
Yeah but even without actively pushing her power into invulnerability (or strength or another stat) she always has a baseline level of it. Remember her skin/tissues is resistant to radiation and puncture just because of it’s apparent makeup. Remember in her flashbacks to when she was still a kid and first started changing from exposure to whatever was inside that geode that the docs couldn’t even X-Ray the portions of her body that had become “gold plated”. And that was before any of her real powers had even developed. Even without actively pushing any power into invulnerability, it would almost definitely take more than the average “bop on the head” from someone who isn’t a power heavy level super to take her out.
Where is Sydney? I’m expecting someone to turn to ash any time soon as she overkills on her response to Max’s dilemma.
If I’m counting right, that’s 9 aliens out of the tour group that are Mercenary Scum. Just how many tourists did he cram into that ’50s Sci-fi-stye yacht? Is it “bigger on the inside”?
it’s just smaller on the outside
Anyone else hear the Ultra Instinct theme start up when Maxima started to turn her head?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNHwsigk_-I
Nah its gotta be guiles theme.
waaaait a minute! She said a few pages ago that the syndicate would pay billions for her. The syndicate were the ones on the planet Sydney got trapped on. Does she think Max was on that planet?
Are you under the impression that there is only one syndicate in the universe?
syndicate means an organization, most oft used to refer to a criminal syndicate.
Also when was it stated the titan Fel looking guys were a syndicate?
Syndicate. Xevoarchy. Whatever. One is easier to remember, and I shall nickname them what I please. So nyah nyah.
the main take away is neither was on the planet Sydney was on, the Xevoarchy is the federation/galactic empire of this setting. Dabbler didn’t recognize who was attacking the Alari (and also the Xevoarchy only commit some genocide as they bomb a planet that is being imperialistic back to a pre industrial age), the Fel looking kaiju pulled a total “scorched earth” move and killed everything they could on the surface.
Sydney, was trapped, on a dead world!
A thought just occurred to me, how are these clowns planning on getting off planet, didn’t they arrive on Space Lando’s ship?
My opinion of Lando may or may not have just been adjusted downwards.
I’m just enjoying the implication that Original Lando isn’t Space Lando.
OK, sorry, but HOW THE ACTUAL HELL did Dabs fight Max to a standstill? And how many tries did it take her?
Tickle war.
Maxima is NOT immune to tickling.
And Dabbler is not merely and expert, she’s a MASTER tickler.
(Hey, why not? ;) )
chances are it wasn’t a fight where either was actively trying to kill each other, and Dabbler’s wide range of spells, tech, and artifacts gave her a surprise advantage. Given Maxima is showing the same weak points as ole Juggernaut, I’d wager Dabbler utilized distracting psionic effects like lust aura mines, sleep spells, and so on that Maxima kept having to shake off, and while Maxima couldn’t get too close because of those Dabbler had no effective way to actually take down Maxima, so in a battle of attrition but one probably taking so long between the S-class super and centuries old demonic adventurer that a side line observer called it off.
I recall during the fight against Vehemence that Dave mentioned how Dabbler used some kind of telekinesis to “weigh” Max down, forcing her to draw from her other powers to boost her strength in order to stay standing.
I cast, Slow, Slow More, Extra Slow, Feet of Lead, Feet of Iron, Gravity Crush, Gravitas Chains, Temporal Drain, Sticky Air, Waves of Aether Sand, Giga Slow, Hands of Stillness,
*why is she still coming!
Once all that weight is on, Max’s gold skin would have the tensile strength of gold foil in comparison to its usual durability.
It’s nice to know our characters aren’t invincible, even if both Max and Dabs rub me the wrong way in different ways.
Probably because you didn’t cast STOP!
I see a hat tip to that noble and excellent 1950s SF thriller ‘The Deadly Mantis’. This one is a bit smaller, bit likely to end up in equally bad health by the end of the arc.
Something weird that just occurred to me,
on the list of crimes these mercs/slavers have committed one not being mentioned is the taking too advanced of tech to too low of tech-level world.
Yes Earth is getting a basic FTL ship as a “have earned it” but remember at the Fracture that not all worlds are considered the same level, so even if your civilization is in that 1.2 or so range of space travel, tech from the 1.7-2.5 range or so is still considered off limits to take to their worlds as some *they need to cross those technological boundaries themselves…BS…from the Xevoarchy (imperial factions always try to limit the capabilities of others and make excuses for it like not interfering with their development), but I digress.
Chances are the latest model of personal shield and the time dampening stasis gun (again seems too advanced even for these mercs, so chances are they’ve been breaking a few laws and smuggled some tech from a 2.7 or so civilization’s vaults), but yeah; just taking that stuff to Earth (Earth taking it or not), breaks that weird law.
*and honestly it is weird internally between their friendly worlds, imagine a law saying you couldn’t take your Alexa, Smart Phone, Holographic Waifu, to a third world country *especially weird if the country is listed as friendly and your country has trade with them* because you might drop it and some local might reverse engineer it and bam…suddenly they now have something like it…like…yeah.
I understand don’t give a space gun to a caveman stuff; because some tech gaps could dramatically alter a civilization and their development, Star Gates, Guyver Units, Self Replicating techno-organic super androids left behind in underground vaults that when activated become worshipped as gods as they were designed as care takers for a population and law enforcement drones; ect…
but there has to be a cut off point like, once you are part of the Xevoarchy (or recognized as a non-threat to your neighbors but also just as space faring as us, in the name of trade and peace we will freely share marketed tech).
Actually you are incorrect, certain tech are not allowed to be traded to certain countries as they don’t want competitors (like china) to get there hands on them.
Just because you haven’t heard of it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exsist.
you could have said that in a less asshole way you know that right? Your last sentence was completely uncalled for.
To put it bluntly, I have no problems being corrected or informed of something I didn’t know about. We are all constantly learning,
your sentence however “just because you haven’t heard of it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist” implies willful ignorance on my part based on ego. Which is an insult.
Not to defend this batch of criminals, but there is probably a line between “handing over high tech” and “having high tech.” All of the aliens we’ve seen have probably had some kind of ‘forbidden’ high tech items. If only so they could call their friends across the universe while they were on their sex tourism vacation, or whatever. But that isn’t the same thing as sharing high tech with a pre-FTL culture.
Taking Star Trek as an example, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy (and all the red shirts and guest starts of the week) always had their phasers and communicators on them even in the most primitive of cultures. And McCoy only left behind a communicator once.
Do they think Maxima is an android?
The more I analyze this situation, the more convinced I become they think Maxima is an android and not a living person.
First off the one thing that has been pointed out so many times, their lack of intel and how they didn’t bring down a stealth craft but came down with a tour bus screams less of *infiltrate and capture a person, and more smash and grab what we can get*. Their intel consists only of (shiny metallic looking humanoid unleashes energy blast greater than most ships and brings down a Fel battle carrier); they may not even think this is the same individual but another unit of its model type patrolling another area.
But you think, its a Pre-FTL planet how can they think Earth could have battle android tech like that? Simple, FTL is travel tech; it isn’t unreasonable to think a world could put it resources towards energy use and military/robotics but not space exploration (we kind of are in the real life doing that anyway).
So they could think this planet is one of those that looks harmless, doesn’t have faster than light travel yet, but has more advanced tech hidden under the surface including heavily regulated high powered robots.
With how little they know of Earth and what little intel they got it isn’t an unreasonable conclusion to assume the shiny metallic humanoid that used a high powered energy beam isn’t a living organic being but a construct.
Looking at it, what kind of “living” beings could unleash an energy blast that strong?
Demon Lords,
Divine Beings,
Eldritch,
Ascended Beings,
DaiKaiju
(none of which seem like the kind of thing you’d try to kidnap (except maybe DaiKaiju, but Maxima isn’t exactly over a hundred feet tall and sporting spikes and such);
So not unreasonable to assume this must be some “surprise we may not be space faring but we have powerful weapons” situation. Wouldn’t be surprised if they were thinking all these supers were actually androids of some kind. Easier conclusion to come to then, the non-demonic, god, eldritch, ascended organic beings have powers that break the physics limits of their size and mass for organic life forms.
An equally valid conclusion, or a follow-on or extension-of your conclusion, would be that the supers are in fact contraband high-tech someone has smuggled onto a world “not yet ready for it” by the Xevoarchy standards.
So this kidnap, if they assume they are dealing with constructs created by contraband alien tech, is exactly the kind of seizure that law enforcers would be trying to arrange. Seize the contraband, figure out where it came from, shut down the smuggling ring, figure out how Earth was paying off the smugglers, bring the people (human and otherwise) up on charges.
It would amuse the heck out of me if these clowns turn out to be alien law enforcement.
well wouldn’t the first time supers were made because someone somewhere unleashed a swarm of nanites into the atmosphere *Generator Rex*
or were the product of ancient alien gene manipulation, Kree, Celestials.
or someone found an alien pod left over from some hyper advanced civilization and the astral..nites..whatever, fed into the metaphysical bodies of inhabitants to cause a base line physical change but emotion based metaphysical powers *I forget what series this was…I want to say Tekka something or the story behind A Certain Scientific Rail Gun, but I don’t think so…
That said Androids with super advanced AIs that have fully sapient minds may still be subject to property laws…Star Wars…because corporate galactic powers have enforced this mindset on artificially constructed beings. Which on the other supers, they are showing off for the tourists displaying their cool abilities beyond biological limitations. If you came with the bias they were androids the locals were trying to pass off as organic people to hide the tech from the galactic community this probably wouldn’t dissuade that opinion. If anything it might enforce it a regular robot carnival for the tourists; look at our powerful and hyper realistic robots.
(doubtful all the aliens are thinking that, but like I said, if you had this tech bias showing up)
FWIW, I don’t think the information available to them really supports the “is a robot” theory, especially having interacted with the other supers doing things that are very clearly emotion driven and social. Or, if these are robots, then these are the kind of robots whose AI is so good that they’re also people.
“Constructs” is a broader word, and includes individuals born human, or with human parents, that have been transformed or altered by some unknown process.
In which case the process is clearly outside Earth’s technosphere, so there’s still probably a smuggling ring to break up somewhere.
This has something from Hit vs Jiren.
Jiren was also “too fast for timestop”.
Funny enough, if Maxima is in a time delayed field, she would not see the same colors we do in normal time.
Everything would be red-shifted, and if it is red shifted enough the normal colors would actually be just black (at least for us mortals) and higher UV and xray might be in the normal color zone. Not sure how it would look, but its not a stretch to say that there would be a difficulty assessing the situation outside the field.
Good point! It depends how the time delay field boundary works.
we are assuming what we see is what they see, and aside from a blue haze we see her just fine. So whatever time dampener effect this field is having isn’t affecting photons very much. In fact it appears to be producing some as a form of radiation (the blue visible beam and field), as opposed to a normal time field which has no color, time is invisible. So the x-factor of what makes this gun work relates to an energy field it is emitting that influences time around a target, but the energy field is also visible…so this looks to be a weak point in the design of this tech if it is only slowing down macro particles and not something like photons…
Max can shoot out her particle beams.
Yeah but that assumption is physically wrong.
If there is a field that is either gradually or at a certain barrier slowing time, then every photon going into that field is slowed. This means a red shift.
Every photon exiting must be blue shifted back as time speeds up again.
So hence, what we see is not what she sees because of the time difference.
There should also be a lag effect since the time field is actually buffering up photons, for a period of time (in, reflect and then out again) so there could actually be that maxima is already turned around and very close to exiting the field, we are no just seeing it yet.
Add to the list of reasons I didn’t think it was a time distortion stasis field but a immobilizer ray type kinetic containment field until it was stated in-comic.
Also that last idea is pretty cool and does add up as a go around the light problem relating to a time distortion.
Time for another stupid idea: Deus hired them.
It seems like they had perfect information how to find Maxima but not enough to do any real damage. So this would be perfect to demonstrate the need for more Supers (rented from his country) without really harming anyone important.
SmugD is a dumbfuck, but he’s not that dumb!
His involvement would be exposed during interrogation, unless he planed for Torchy and Co to not be taken alive
Of course he wouldn’t do it directly. I think he seeded a few bits of information while space-shopping, so some kind of space-deus would hear about it, hire the syndicate which would send these few agents. As earth has no warp drive they would be unable to follow back the tracks, as the syndicate is already out of reach he would be completely safe. I don’t think “Torchy and Co” (sounds great…) know more about it and think this is an ordinary abduction.
to go from a full charge to 60% in like what a minute? that’s not a lot of time to get that stasis pod over and even then the power draw from the pod just to contain max might not make it worth doing
Whew! Took 2 days to re-read the entire story up to this point, and:
– It’s sad that we never got to see Vance’s power, or what Shawn could do.
– Vehemence is still Best Villain. Or at least my most favorite.
and
– Sydney is pure adorawin! But it’s sad that she gone so long without a really good swearing storm. Although that is slightly made up by her finally getting to eat something dangerously spicy to the point her own ass glew with light bright enough to light up a bathroom in red light and specks of phosphorus.
BTW, there will probably be a health and safety notice in the near future to not combine Grakz and refried beans under any circumstances.
“Well you could, but it’s your ass on the line”
The only thing I can think of when I see Max slowly turn was the word DOOOOM!
Further regarding the time delay effect, it probably has to be much higher than just slowing down time to 1-2 %.
I mean maxima has super speed right? well slowing time to only 1% would be that a car going 100km an hour, would be slowed to 1km an hour. Now 1 km an hour is average walking speed. And last time I checked Maxima could move way faster than 100km an hour.
Hence if time is slowed to 1% or maybe even 0.1% she should be able to walk out of there no prob.
So I guess the time delay effect is maybe at 0.0000001% time or something similar. Yeah because there has been several minutes and all maxima has done is turned around probably just from reflex.
ok so 5 km/h is average walking speed, but still in the same magnitude…
My guess on how the gun works based on the given info is it slows down it’s captive (as opposed to binding them) and Max turning up her speed a lot is using up the battery faster than her captor expected.
Oh wow, somehow I missed this page. This puts a whole new perspective on the “these kidnappers are SO SCREWED” concept we’ve got going on.
I’d say “stasis field” is a misnomer in this case, but I’ll let it pass. Humanity has been plenty guilty of calling things by names they don’t truly deserve. (first example that comes to mind: Hoverboards.)
Seeing Max slowly turn around just makes me think of that one scene in Red vs Blue where they slowed down time for The Meta just as he was about to punch Doc.
Ooh, I love that! Max moves so fast that she’s draining the charge!
Kind of surprised at Dabbler’s restraint. These people think they should get to take someone out of the middle oft he street and sell her to slavery. I’d kill them if it was even slightly more convenient than taking them alive. Or less.