Grrl Power #980 – Destination beatdown
Sydney probably could have just hunkered down in her shield and let Kevin just blast away at it, then maybe juggle him around with the lighthook, but she felt this would be a whole lot more demoralizing.
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update:
I really need to finish the book so I can close the tab I’ve had open for three weeks on google results for “sintered.” (Spoilers? Not really, no.)
So Assassin’s Creed Valhalla was on sale and I’ve never played one of those so I decided to check it out. It’s… fine? The hide, stab, climb a thing loop is okay I guess. It’s basically the same game as Far Cry, but you hide, shoot and climb a thing in those. That basically describes all of Ubisoft’s catalog I think. The world is huge and there’s a lot of nothing. Like I remember Skyrim, you couldn’t walk for 90 seconds in any direction before finding a carin stone or dungeon entrance or a giant herding sheep or something. AC:V has you running for 5 minutes from place to place to a pre-marked treasure which is usually an ingot for upgrading your weapons marginally, or a “mystery” which is usually just some minor scripted side quest that gets you some XP. There are also towns you can raid, because you’re a viking, but instead of calling in your homies, I can usually take down an entire town by myself because I’m playing on normal difficulty.
Like I said, it’s fine.
All this is to say, I haven’t made any progress on T:E2 since Monday because I haven’t played any video games in quite a while and thought it would be fun to hit some digital Saxons with an axe. I do hope to make some more progress by the next update though. I’ve played a lot of video games and the gameplay loops tend to wear out their welcome with me fairly quickly. I actually can’t think of the last game I actually beat. Playing Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, I maxed out Enchanting and Stealth, then enchanted a full set of glass armor with stealth buffs, then crouch stealthed all the way through an Oblivion portal and stole the gem thing and I was basically invisible even in bright light, and after I did that I kind of figured I had basically won the game in all but time expended, so I stopped playing there. I tend to either do stuff like that, or just play long enough to get about half the upgrades then exhaust the gameplay loop and lose interest.
September’s vote incentive is up! It’s been over a year since Max was featured in one of these, so I figured it was time to revisit.
If you just popped by to see it right when it went up, you might have missed the update. Her nipples were a touch high in the first version, and if you poke through the comments there, you can see the reference I used, only that model’s boobs were about 3 cup sizes smaller. Anyway, I flew her nipples south for the winter and updated the relevant pics.
Nude version is up at Patreon.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
On the one hand, this is a delightfully simple way to end the fight, to demonstrate that it was NOT a winnable fight for Kevin, and to practice the kind of lateral thinking Archon will need to employ.
On the other hand, I’m a little bothered that they have effectively disclosed that Sydney is capable of traveling in space, which feels like the kind of thing they’d have been better off keeping quiet – especially because that ability is one they *need* to keep secret from non-Terrans.
I’m just going to go out on a limb and say Kevin isn’t talking to any media outlets while in max security super prison. If there’s any high tech races around the planet they probably can detect the gate way opening, but that’s only if they are currently present and scanning, especially since they don’t leave any traces.
Plus, Kevin is exactly the sort of person who would keep quiet about this to maximize violence. He needs a steady stream to keep him going, and while a massive intergalactic war to control access to Sydney’s Nth tech would generate massive levels of violence in the short term, it’s the kind of thing that would probably depopulate entire regions of space, thus minimizing Kevin’s food sources, especially since he can’t travel through space himself. Kevin isn’t mindless, he thinks these things through, he was willing to let the entirety of Arc-Swat go if they let him kill Maxima because superhero’s generate violence and the only one powerful enough to be a threat was Maxima. He would total keep his mouth shut just to garentee that low level space moons will keep coming to earth instead of any big guns that would actually be a threat.
Was already disclosed when Sydney met NDT.
Ooh, good point.
I mean, the picture of Fracture Station coulda been handwaved away as something she took from Cora’s ship, but the part where she opened an Aetherium Causeway while on camera, not so much. Yeah, cat’s outta the bag, you’re right.
…
Why’d you have a cat in a bag?
Clearly, Hasufin meant the genitals were unveiled.
Didn’t that already happen when Sydney went on TV with Neil DeGrasse Tyson showing him her picture of the space station, and popping out to get him lunch from the Fracture Station food court?
i don’t think it was disclosed “how” she got there.
It’s not hard to deduce that she has _some_ method of convenient FTL travel – the specifics don’t make that much of a difference.
oh the specifics would make a GREAT difference, since if it was an aetherium causeway instead of, say, a hyperspace bypass or something, which from what we know from Cora are very different things (and the former is untraceable once they close apparently, and might not have any actual limit in distance for all we know), then it could start an interstellar war, since “Sydney has a device which can create interstellar causeways and fits in her pocket – NO ONE has that type of technology.”
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-689-customs-conundrum/
The problem with that is “If you actually have Nth Tech and anyone even SUSPECTS it, there are organizations and civilizations who woul do ANYTHING to get their hands on it. [Sydney] could ignite an interstellar war”
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-690-gotterdammermcguffins/
That being said, it’s just a guess. There is at least one alien shopkeeper who would know that another human was on Fracture Station as well, since the Sky Ripper is also a thing that exists.
Okay, but they haven’t actually learned it’s an aetherium causeway. Detla couldn’t see enough to make that determination. And if fracture station can measure it themselves, the cat was out of the bag already when she popped by to get some Grakz for Neil.
So you’re technically correct (best kind of correct, especially as a lawyer), but she still hasn’t revealed anything new.
“Okay, but they haven’t actually learned it’s an aetherium causeway.”
I know. I mentioned that in another post when someone brought up the dust obscuring stuff. We do know that Cora could tell it was an aetherium causeway, but she also had a bunch of high tech computer equipment on the ship to be able to discern that. No idea if they LOOK different from a visual reference.
“Detla couldn’t see enough to make that determination.”
Very true. Which is something I didnt even think of until someone else mentioned it.
“And if fracture station can measure it themselves,”
Somehow I suspect tha an aetherium causeway is only able to be picked up on scanners if you’re actively LOOKING for it. Cora got lucky because they WERE actively looking for Sydney as soon as they popped out of hyperspace or whatever they were in. And once it’s gone it leaves no trace, like Cora said.
“So you’re technically correct (best kind of correct, especially as a lawyer), ”
Muhahaha.
While this is sort of a breach if info, like other have said, it’s already known on Earth that Sydney can create some sort of portals to distant worlds (since she did that to get some Grakz for Neil deGrasse Tyson and DaveB did mention that it was apparently not classified that she could do that, just not the particulars of it, which probably ARE classified since it could start an interstellar war). The viewers do NOT know that it’s an aetherium causeway though, which would be different than other forms of teleportation, I’m guessing from how Cora described it, since Cora’s ship can do hyperspace jumps.
The only thing I’m bothered with at all would be that Detla was watching this, and Detla might realize it’s an aetherium causeway. Which would be a quick step to guess that ‘Sydney has Nth Tech.’ Maybe her warrior’s code would not allow her to betray Archon though – dunno. She seems to be the ‘honor-bound warrior’ type, and she did make a pledge to Archon. According to Dabbler, her species adheres to that sort of thing VERY strictly.
The other possible problem might be that Vehemence might recognize it as an aetherium causeway. The only reason I’m even guessing he might know what that is is because he knew what the Aetherium Thrones were when he immediately knew that Dabbler was a succubus and mentioned ‘Aetherium Thrones.’ And I’m wondering if Aetherium Thrones and ‘Aetherium Causeways’ are related.
Still, it’s a brilliant way to QUICKLY end a fight with Vehemence. It’s non-violent, and immediately forces him to surrender. Even if he had the ability to link himself to the ground, it would not work here, because he was charging her and she just put the aetherium causeway in the way so he went through it.
Judging from panel five, there may be doubt as to how much Detla actually could see. It’ll be obvious that some sort of transportation was used, probably portal-based for ease of playing matador with a charging Vehemence, but the dust cloud may easily have obscured the details that would identify it as an Aetherium Causeway as opposed to any more ‘normal’ local portal.
” there may be doubt as to how much Detla actually could see.”
That’s true! I didnt think of the dust factor and how it probably is obscuring a lot of what Detla can see right now. Very good catch! I completely didn’t think of that. Or at the VERY least, it would obscure what TYPE of portal it was.
Heck, that might have even been a reason for the dust-up by Maxima since I’m assuming she knew that was the plan for making Vehemence surrender.
Is an aetherium causeway visibly distinct, or did Cora have some instrument readouts that told her what it was? Note that they wouldn’t need to be obvious to us. For example, the instrument readouts that clued her in could have been a *lack* of extra information being reported, which we wouldn’t notice at all, because we wouldn’t have any reason to know how her ship would report other phenomena that have similar appearances.
They’re the Aetheon Thrones, not Aetherium Thrones, though the words are similar enough that they may be related
I also doubt that the average person in the universe knows anything about Nth tech or aetherium causeways, given their rarity. Just because Cora knew about them doesn’t necessarily mean it’s common knowledge, or that the average person would be able to tell the difference or identify them, even if they knew of their existence.
Oops, my bad. And yeah i agree with everything else you wrote here. Cora also did have a high tech ship with scanners to be able to tell, which were ACTIVELY scanning with probes at the time.
Probably a bit better to be able to determine that something is an aetherium causeway than just someone looking at it with their eyes. Unless it’s Specs maybe. :)
Even with Specs’s abilities, identifying an Aetherium Causeway as such isn’t necessarily a given. It’s a Knowledge check as well as a Perception check: not just ‘can you see the identifying signs’, but also ‘do you know what signs to look for and what they imply’. I’m sure she could pass the Perception aspects with no problems, but less sure that she’d have the required Knowledge base.
“Even with Specs’s abilities, identifying an Aetherium Causeway as such isn’t necessarily a given. ”
That’s why I used the qualifier of ‘maybe.’ Because we know that some sort of sensors are able to identify aetherium causeways, based on Cora’s sensors being able to. But we don’t know specifically if Specs could, assuming she knows what to look for. Which she probably would if she just asks Cora what she’s supposed to be looking for as an identifier.
“I’m sure she could pass the Perception aspects with no problems, but less sure that she’d have the required Knowledge base.”
Then it’s good that they have people like Cora and Dabbler, who can tell her what she should be looking for to identify it. Since that’s not giving any special technology that Earthlings don’t already have. Since Sydney is an Earthling and has that tech already.
Detla couldn’t see anything due to the dust, probably doesn’t have very powerful instruments available, and she doesn’t know where exactly Sydney portaled to – for all she know they just went to low earth orbit.
Sydney just proved to be the most dangerous person to ever fight. There is almost no grouping of superpowers that can deal with the combo of hard vacuum and several million lightyears of travel.
Pretty much just the Power Cosmic there, and that’s only because it basically does the same thing.
Well, it only worked because V rushed after her with no hesitation. The portal can be dodged.
unless you get grabbed by the tentacle and pulled through
Only can use 2 balls. Shield + portal, or shield + lighthook
Actually, when he gives up there is some problem getting him back, because taking him the shield is not preferable. And hooking + shield + portal cannot be be done.
Not really. They’re in space, remember? Objects in motion remain in motion?
Just a light push with the lighthook, put the lighthook away, and he’ll float right into the portal.
The easy thing is to make him a bug on her windshield, so to speak.
Depending on how her shield acts. Lighthook would be a little more reliable.
Plus, she’d be able to fly beside him in order to watch his reaction better when they return to Earth … 500 feet up.
Um, they’re in space, as you said. Objects in motion… they were already in motion. So they’re still in motion. No worries.
But that would mean Sydney is using the Molestorb to grab and the flight orb to open the portal. No shields and no air. Sydney would get to experience vacuum too in that scenario.
… Unless she can open the aetherium causeway and throw things through it without having to travel herself. That coukd be useful and/or completely broken.
Once she’s in space, no need for the flight orb for a moment.
It isn’t needed for station-keeping, but it is the access interface for opening a Causeway. I don’t think we’ve seen whether having the Causeway remain open requires the Flight Orb to remain held. If it is fully persistent, she may be able to free up a hand to put Vehemence through by Lighthook while retaining her own atmospheric Shield; if not, she’ll have to shunt him with the Shield bubble
Use the molestorb to throw V, then let go of the molestorb and grab the fly ball in its place. Use the fly ball to open a portal in front of V. That way, she uses the same hand for both molestorb and fly ball, while keeping the other hand on Mr. Bubble the whole time.
Doesn’t even have to be a throw. Just a light poke. He just needs a LITTLE momentum. The lack of gravity and air friction does the rest.
It’d be funny to have her ‘walking’ through the portal with him floating beside.
I specifically recall that creating a Causeway to Earth was either impossible or incredibly dangerous (possibly both) so are they getting another ride back from Cora?
It was intimated at one point that a “last position” switch was available
On her first trip into space, she didn’t go straight back to earth because the bookmark was corrupted (or some other event registered that caused the demise of the previous owner of the powerballs) She has since used a causeway in the comic shop to get that celebrity some of the space food. Of course she was told off for that because it is supposed to be too dangerous to open what is essentially a wormhole inside the atmosphere and gravity well of a planet, but that was a warning from somebody who only ever heard of the theoretical possibility of nth tech exiting, but never actually seen any before meeting Sydney.
And she’d already done one from above her comic book shop.
She had a talk with a few people that know something about interstellar navigation that also had a look at her navigation system. In addition to the bookmarks of last places visited.
I love how Kevin’s first complaint is “no flying!”
aka: “Just because I’m cheating and breaking my promise doesn’t mean you can break the rules too!”
also, This is some fantastic lateral thinking from Halo/Maxima. I’m a little embarrassed that this sort of tactic didn’t occur to me at ALL.
That’s because you are thinking Kev is ‘cheating’, you should be embarrassed
Well he IS breaking the rules by not stopping when agreed upon.
Not cheating but he is violating the rules.
Even that is debatable.
Max declared they reached the limit.
Vehemence asked what happens when he continued, getting Sydney as answer.
Nobody said explicitly, that he isn’t allowed to attack her. Only, that she will enforce his complicity.
“Even that is debatable.”
Well not THAT debatable. Maxima said it was time to stop fighting. He said ‘what if I don’t want to stop’ and Maxima said ‘then you’ll have to fight her.’ As a penalty for not stopping fighting at the agreed upon time.
And he is fighting her, which means he did not stop fighting, which violates the agreed upon rule. So that incurs the Sydney Penalty.
“Nobody said explicitly, that he isn’t allowed to attack her. Only, that she will enforce his complicity.”
Fighting Sydney was clearly being presented as a penalty for non-compliance, rather than capitulation to his demands to keep fighting though. :) And a penalty in a contract only happens when one side breaks the agreed upon rules.
“Omnigal? What are you doing?”
“I’m giving him a good lawyering, that’s what.”
My head canon is that it’s actually Pander in the gaming session (off screen), and Sydney is just siding with her on screen.
Hehe, good callback to the second comic :)
But he never broke the rules before, even when Maxi repeatedly did by flying! AND attempting to smash his face in!!
But no, you are correct, Kev is cheating because he doesn’t want to stop playing :vomit_from_eyeballs:
What ‘before?’ This is the first time he has been given this opportunity. He is a convicted prisoner and needs to comply with this temporary supervised work furlough if he wants to get this benefit again. And he liked getting his face smashed in.
Yknow, because violence.
He does not want to abide by the rules of the work furlough. He csn lose the privilege then.
sooooo…depending on his vehemic uptake range, bringing him close to fracture station might not be the best idea….
“Close” is relative in terms of spatial relations while in literal space. Fracture Station huge, they would have to be hundreds of thousands of kilometers from it to appear that size next to it. I think it’s just a conveniently recognizable backdrop, not to mention a good way to show how much Sydney has levelled up her flight abilities.
I do wonder now how far away he can absorb energy from. Is it an inverse-square thing, or is there a hard cutoff?
Hopefully Dave knows that holding your breath in space is probably the worst thing you can do. It would be a good way for Kevin to rapidly lose energy due to his body having to regen constantly from the damage expanding gasses cause.
You know, I get the physics behind that, what I never understood is how human lips could possible create a tight enough seal and overcome the pressure from expanding gases to keep shut.
Don’t forget about how there’s no easy way to prevent pressure in the lungs from equalizing to the outside pressure by way of the nose. The epiglottis, unless held down by food, drink, or some other object, will let air merrily pass by on its way up to the sinuses and out through the nostrils.
To compound potential misery, if the mouth and nostrils WERE somehow sealed, Kevin’s eardrums would be having that pressure differential pressing outward, so his ears would be a sudden source of screaming pain. The Eustachian tube is how the structure of the inner ear is kept closely equalized to outside air pressures, by connecting down to the nasopharynx, in the back of the throat.
He is probably burning a lot of vehemic energy to prevent dying right now.
From what I know from the well estsblished totally scientific tome known as “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” thoroughly researched by noted scientist, the late author Douglas Adams, you can only survive 30 seconds in the hard vacuum of space.
Oh please oh please let him be picked up by Vogons. Or any other race really, not so much because of his personal inconvenience but just imagine all the complications that would create for Sydney and Archon to a) lose a prisoner b) who is violent and superpowered, when c) humanity has the market cornered on super powers and d) is still trying to negotiate some kind of relationship with the larger galaxy.
Vogon Bureaucracy is definitely a complication. :)
Counterpoint: try holding your breath and compressing you lungs in an effort to breath out – I don’t know how, or what the names of the parts responsible are, but I’m definitely (and somewhat more literally than usual) still holding my breath. And if I can do that against whatever pressure difference I’m generating, I’m sure Kevin would be able to hold back one measly atmosphere of difference.
Counter counterpoint: you can’t generate one atmosphere of pressure by trying to compress your lungs.
People are able to breathe in one atmosphere of pressure because we only need to create a large enough pressure imbalance to get the air to move. We’re roughly balanced at the one atmosphere of pressure, and it’s air so it only takes a small differential.
It’s been years since I used a hand pump with a pressure gauge to blow up balloons that were too hard for me to inflate. I don’t remember the numbers. But it took a depressingly small fraction of one atmosphere of pressure on the pump to inflate the balloons. I’m pretty sure it was significantly under 10%, but I don’t remember how significantly. To be fair, I was a child at the time, but I had a reputation for having powerful lungs.
I’d say a better argument is that you can hold your breath at water depths that are significantly over 1 atmosphere of pressure over and above the air pressure above them. Water’s heavy. It doesn’t take all of that much to get that much pressure.
But even there, we do it by reducing the volume of our lungs, so the pressure is still fairly balanced. If you don’t do it well, that can be pretty painful. Also, if you come up too fast after doing it, that can also be painful.
“Counter counterpoint: you can’t generate one atmosphere of pressure by trying to compress your lungs.”
We can’t. Vehemence, however, is much stronger than a regular human. If that extends to his entire respiratory system …
This reminded me of this exchange in Futurama, even though it doesn’t relate here.
Leela – “Professor, how many atmospheres can this ship withstand?!”
Farnsworth – “Well, it’s a spaceship. So anywhere between zero and one.”
90 seconds of exposure to hard vacuum might be survivable, two minutes probably is not. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/survival-in-space-unprotected-possible/
He’s much more durable than normal humans, he probably isn’t taking damage.
for now. wait until his vehemic levels of energy start to go down.
yah, but the screaming ear ache, pressure in his sinuses, itching/tingling in his skin as the moisture in his sweat glands evaporates/freezes and the outer layers start freeze drying, a hell of a case of “the bends”, all with “no violence” to feed his need…
perfect deterrant. Not only can she kill him with no violence, but she can DRAIN him till he passes out and then port him back [most reports I have heard from people who experience accidental exposure to hard vac stated that as soon as air and pressure returned they were fine with no lasting effects]
As someone who scuba dives, there are enough structures in your body to hold pressure inside long enough that the expanding gas pressure while ascending can rupture your lungs. Thats going from MULTIPLE atmospheres of pressure to 1 atmosphere. The comparative difference between 1 and 0 atmospheres is actually small enough that chances of lung damage while possible are actually LESS than with a scuba accident. You DO want to exhale before you go out to MINIMIZE damage, but not if you are already holding your breath because of expanding gas cooling [think canned air cleaning your keyboard and how cold it gets as you depressurize the can].
So many factors…so much science…well played counter to someone who can heal from damage but gains energy from violence.
He can handle pain. Yes, the lack of oxygen will do him in, but that’s the only thing.
I mean, the amount of lethal radiation he’s taking would probably do that too, given time.
Yeah, he’d get cancer …
Well, there is also the total depressurization of his blood, which will release a huge amount of not only nitrogen but also oxygen bubbles into his blood vessels, literally causing his blood to boil even at such a low temperature as body temp.
Since low pressure liquids become less able to hold gases within them and there are no pressure around to keep Vehemence blood from doing that shit in space, sure it might not be immediate, but it will happen and probably not too long into his stay either.
If he stays too long, he’s have a heart attack from said air bubbles hitting his heart.
This only gets worse for him because his internal pressure is bigger than the outside pressure with no counteracting force.
I’m not comfortable with Kevin being so close to fracture station. Just knowing it exists makes it a thing he’ll try to access in the future.
Imagine he has enough air in his lungs to enable him to blow himself closer to the station.
Imagine the station detects him floundering in space without a spacesuit and automatically enables some rescue protocol. Sydney will be in some serious trouble if the station turns on a stasis field and pulls him in with a tractor beam. Suddenly we have a new bull in a different china shop.
I’d have been much more comfortable with Sydney bringing him into space midway between the Earth and the Moon. Nothing new is revealed to Kevin, therefore it’s a safer place to choke him out. Fewer worries about him revealing some previously-hidden superpower that will save his life and also put him in a different place or different plane of existence to escape. It would let him threaten species who have no clue he exists. Sydney is probably breaking some Interstellar or intergalactic law about transporting dangerous invasive species. The good guys are assuming they know all of his tricks, and that could be a big mistake. Especially as he is in such close proximity a place that contains technology far beyond his original ability to imagine. I don’t want to see him getting away and having access to it.
Letting Kevin know about the Fracture is kinda moot, since Sydney’s picture of the Fracture is already plastered all over the interwebs and Neil deGrasse Tyson interviewed her about it. Any avenue Kevin might have had for planning anything would have been an avenue for him learning about it.
But yes, Fracture traffic control is eventually going to get wise to it and install a special sensor array just for her, and at that point all this could come back to haunt her in a thousand different ways.
I think a lot of people are underestimating how big fracture station is. Word of god (if I’m remembering correctly) is that it’s a Dyson sphere built around a blue giant or something. So the fact that it’s small enough to fit in the background means that they are billions and billions of miles away. If they had any sensors delicate and powerful enough to detect a human size mass from that far away and accurately understand that it was a life form in distress, they would definitely have sensed Sydney creating an athereum causeway and hit the oh shit button since that normally a capital sized ship or the death of thousands of psykers (Cora’s words) to generate.
I thought it was around a Neutron Star…those are relatively small, but still planet sized.
Even if it is a neutron star, you need to be far enough for the gravity at the skin of the Dyson sphere not to be too much. Even if Fracture is only as big as Earth (probably bigger), you’re a long way away if it’s only this big.
There was an author comment about them having gravity dampening tech. It’s a lot smaller than you’d think it would need to be, based on the strength of the gravity field a mile beneath the surface of Fracture Station.
They’re nowhere near “billions” of miles from the station. Fracture station is about the size of a large planet, if I remember right. To appear that size, they’re probably within a hundred thousand miles, since billions of miles away would make it all but invisible to the naked eye. Pluto is 3.67 billion miles from the sun, and the sun only appears as a tiny glowing dot in the distance.
Sydney estimated it at about the size of our Moon, within a factor of two either way, but she readily admitted having no real idea.
Given the size of the station and the sheer *immensity* of space, they maybe hundreds of thousands of kilometres from the station at their current point.
“I’m not comfortable with Kevin being so close to fracture station. Just knowing it exists makes it a thing he’ll try to access in the future.”
Everyone on Earth by now already knows about Fracture Station.
Sydney pretty much plastered it on the internet when she showed it to Neil deGrasse Tyson and had the pictures posted online. :)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-783-cosmic-cameo/
Then she even told him, which was also recorded online, the science behind how Fracture Station worked, although she has no idea what she said. “Piezo gravitational plating.”
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-784-how-to-lose-friends-with-alien-cuisine/
I figured she was gonna grab him with a light hook and fly him to space. I was pretty close.
That “desperately holding his breath” expression isn’t doing him any good, since there’s no valve structures that close off the sinuses. If he’d instantly pinched his nostrils shut as well, it might have made a difference.
The flap of tissue that protects the lungs from food and water isn’t consciously controllable; with an absence of something pressing it closed, air will escape the lungs, go up through the sinuses, and out into the hard vacuum in the vicinity of Fracture Station.
He’s getting cold, because of the flash-boiling of any water/sweat on his skin, and any close enough to the surfaces exposed to vacuum (which would include his lungs). I imagine he’s very quickly going to tap his vehemic energy for vacuum and cold survival. Sydney will be able to observe the changing color of his power-lines, and once he’s down to whatever is considered a reasonably safe color, will take him back to where they were.
Hot, actually. Sure, he’s radiating heat away in infrared, but that’s slow and inefficient, and hilariously outstripped by the body’s metabolism. After any initial cooling provided by sweat and fluids evaporating from his skin, he’ll very quickly start warming up, as there’s no medium for his heat to be taken from him via convection. He might get cold when he releases the air in his lungs and in his guts, but it wouldn’t freeze him faster than he can warm himself up again. And that’s *before* factoring in the usage of his vehement energy (which I will refer to as mana going forward).
Speaking of, it’s not inconceivable that he’s holding his breath in by using his mana to keep it there; not to mention that he could burn his mana as a substitute for oxygen. But he’s kinda burning his candle at both ends here, since he’ll need to generate oxygen AND constantly repair any damage done by vacuum, radiation, and any damage from temperature.
What? You are human right? It is totally possible to close off your nose with internal valves.
You can try breathing now and will find yourself able to manually close your oesophagus (can’t breathe in/out through nose or mouth), back of throat (breathe through nose only), or the interior nasal valve (breathe through mouth only).
The nasal valve is anterior to the sinus, but it still blocks air from to/from the outside world. Although it is probably moot when it is easier to close the oesophagus.
just imagine how tight hes gotta pucker the OTHER sphincter…really crappy situation with all the gasses that build up in ones digestive system
I foresee some “I need to change my shorts” jokes
It doesn’t work. Dogs exposed to hard vacuum experienced forced defecation and urination, every time, during the experiments. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/survival-in-space-unprotected-possible/
After falling unconscious, if I’m reading if correctly.
Also, Vehemence is much stronger than any real animal, so he can probably clench it real good if he has a case of gas.
Aaaaand Syd is now an eldritch horror. Damn.
“Now”?
Acting as one is the final stage of becoming one.
“Oh, you’re one of THE most powerful mortals to ever live? Allow me to drop you on the other side of the galaxy, by means you don’t understand.
Allow me to show you sights you don’t understand.
Just to show you how small and powerless you truly are.”
Acting as one is the final stage of becoming one?
Oh, good, nice to know that I really did live with an eldritch horror for a semester.
To be clear, he didn’t have the sorts of power that Sydney has, but he certainly did his best to act like one a lot.
“The Colorful-Language-Girl Out Of Space”
Wonder if Sydney will take Kevin by that nice restaurant inside Fracture Station?
With his powers?
And with him already super-charged?
Sydney isn’t that stupid, she’s just making a point
Not to worry about the super-charge. Grakz isn’t really violent until 12 hours later.
I think that was becase there was some sort of dammage to its memory. she already has been to the station and back when she made the noodle run for Mr Tyson..
Effective. But wouldn’t it have been simpler to take a page out of Sue Storm’s book and put the shield around him until he ran out of oxygen?
If I remember correctly, Halo’s shield can only be generated around the person holding the orb
It can be expanded to include others, but it still centers around the operator
She can’t project the shield, only put it around herself.
It’s amazing how many people keep bringing up powers that Sydney DOES NOT HAVE
Probably because of how the Invisible Woman uses her force fields in Fantastic Four. :)
To be fair, Sydney might eventually unlock that ability as well – there are a LOT of pips left on the shield orb in lines other than shield strength.
and with this, I feel…disheartened, I guess? Instant win condition here for about anything earth-side. so what point is any fun combat if they always have this?
meh
They don’t though.
She’s only one person, she can only operate 2 orbs at a time (for now, the ‘skill tree’ may improve that), she can’t be in more than one place at once (again, for now), the Aetherium Causeway appears to be slightly larger than human-sized (which means it probably wouldn’t work on ships), and even in this case it only worked because it was a complete surprise to Vehemence for her to do this. He was dumb enough to charge straight into a dust cloud, thinking he could actually get through her shield…without accounting for what her other orbs can do — had he seen the portal first, he wouldn’t have just gone through; he’s already demonstrated that he’s smart enough to not put himself in a completely unwinnable position.
Also, given that Arc-SWAT has a code of operations which is *heavily* weighted towards non-lethal victories — assuming that doing so doesn’t result in other lives being lost — Vehemence is one of the VERY few supers they know could survive this. So they won’t be using it on less durable foes.
And now he knows he can’t beat them, so it’s a total mindfuck that will probably make him behave.
even more so in that at this point, he just realized that if he became too much of a threat, where lethal force is authorized, she not only could incap him by putting him in hard vac, but leave him there and go home. Lousy way to die, especially with how long it would take to discharge his energy before he would succumb.
Did you forget Maxima is nothing but “win conditions” when she puts all her points in a single stat?
Or that she can basically launch anti-matter nukes from her fingertips whenever she feels like it?
But how often has she actually done that?
Then keep in mind Sydney is going 1v1 against Vehemence
Who, when fully charged as he is now, can at least match Maxima, and maybe even defeat her if she were to let a fight drag on long enough
Vehemence isn’t just some average mook, or a run-of-the-mill Super
He’s one of the top 5 strongest beings on the planet
So yeah. he’s one of the very, very few people that would warrant Sydney pulling a move like this
Especially given the way his powers work
Since Sydney dragging the fight out would only risk charging him up more
As Ehna said, Arc-SWAT is still Super Law Enforcement, so the priority is to capture.
Point – back in the restaurant fight, they COULD have killed all the brawlers, and Maxima COULD have killed Kevin, but they didn’t. It would have been easier to decapitate him than incarcerate him.
So this sort of fight-ender is for the ones who just will NOT give up… or can’t, for whatever reason.
She needs to trick her opponent through the portal first. I don’t think it would have worked on Kevin if he hadn’t been in fun brawling mode, or if visibility hadn’t been bad.
She doesn’t need to trick her opponent. A non-flyer would be a toss up in the air with the molestorb, and enter the portal on the way down.
Anyone* who can be tossed up by the molestorb can already be beaten by just lifting him up.
The big threats like Vehemence have counters to it.
*Wtih the exception of those who have a ranged attack but no movement power.
Huh. Maybe that’s because “fun combat” isn’t the point of the comic.
Because they often don’t want to kill their combatants.
The first thing that came to mind was that the training session may very well have attracted some passive attention so it was not too smart to have Sydney demonstrate her gating ability. But then I remembered that the members who had been watching Maxima spar with Kevin were complaining that they could only catch glimpses due to the dust kicked up so Sydney’s move most likely was also shielded by the dust.
It occurs to me that it would be a smart move to have her fly to several places through the solar system and gate from there creating jump points she could call up quickly in a pinch which would have made her trick with Kevin just as effective while not possibly attracting as much ET attention as gating to a major transit point might involve.
So remember that Cora was able to not only detect Sydney’s Causeway, but detect where it went while it was still open. So how many alien ships now know that someone just opened a causeway from Earth to Fracture Station? And how many detected it the last two times she did that (To get NDT some Grakz, there and back)?
If she keeps this up, Earth is going to get a lot of attention.
Earth already got massive attention in the form of a *very* brief attempt at an invasion by the Fel.
Starting on page #763
Which Maxima thwarted four pages later.
When she *literally* single-handedly blew up the invading ship in what appears to be about 10 seconds.
Earth is DEFINITELY already on the galactic community’s collective radar.
Also there’s the whole “Earth is great for sex tourism” thing that was already going on, so it seems pretty likely that Earth is decently well-known already…
Now it just has some VERY sharp teeth.
don’t forget the kidnap attempt by alien bounty hunters…That door is already open.
Earth is already getting a lot of attention. Female aliens are going there to have bachelorette parties, tourists are spreading gold coins to take taxi rides and alien poachers are attempting to hunt and capture humans for whatever nefarious purposes. What more attention are YOU thinking of at this point?
As much as I love the refrigerator logic brigade. I think we could do with giving Dave some space for some cartoonish comedy.
In any case, whatever horrors might happen upon a human in space can be just hand waived away with “Vehemence burns power to counter it, for the few seconds it takes him to give up”
In fairness, a normal human can survive a few seconds in absolute vacuum
And odds are Sydney has no intention of hanging around even that long
This is just her pulling a “the fights over. Get over it” move, before hyper-jumping them back to earth
survive for minutes…maintain consiousness, seconds…technically you’ll survive till the O2 dep shuts down your brain completely and people who have been knocked out by sudden exposure to hard vac have woken right up once pressure was restored as the body’s reflex is to breath even when consiousness is lost.
She could literally wait till he passed out, and drag him back to Earth and he’d survive…probably without any lasting harm.
Really, he should thank her for the rare chance to just hang out in space for a few moments.
Yeah let’s just go with rule of cool and rule of funny here. This is a superhero comedy, not anything serious or realistic.
get rekked kevin
omg this is amazing, i love syd’s face in panel 2, looks like the face of an old chinese martial art grand master who knows he’s going to flawlessly fuck your shit up with minimal efforts if you try to challenge him lol!
Smash cut to Kevin back in his cell, curled up into a ball, mumbling “can’t sleep, she’s in my nightmares, can’t sleep, she’s in my nightmares…”
… probably not, but this still definitively establishes that Kevin’s not on top of the food chain.
My bet is they’ll cut back to the quarry
With Kevin either kneeling in the dirt crying/begging for his life, or being led away in restraints
And Sydney either bragging about 1-hit OKing one of the strongest beings on earth, or making some kind of nerd culture reference
Nah, I don’t think this would cause any sort of serious break for him.
Shocked? Absolutely. Reduced to groveling? No.
I think we might get another page or two of cooling off, maybe some banter (he has been shown to have some fondness for Sidney before). Assuming he does give up from being spaced.
Um, 0-hit KO.
Why does that sound less impressive? 5-hit KO is more impressive than 10-hit KO. 2-hit KO is more impressive than 5-hit KO. 1-hit KO is more impressive still. Logically, 0-hit KO should be the most impressive, since one can’t -1 hit something.
Sigh.
Your last statement presumes a grrlverse in which it is impossible to have a superpower that temporally undoes getting hit. And I don’t mean something that takes a major storyline to pull off, I mean someone who does it (undoes it?) about as often as Superman flies.
…. also, I have a new idea for a super now.
…. and now I’m questioning whether it’s new. I’m far from encyclopedic where supers are concerned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w09inP6duZg
check out the Flash, he can move fast enough to make a part of his body work like a vacuum, and the vacuum of space makes this a -1 hit.
:D
It’s interesting Max says “this is where we agreed to stop”. And (coincidentally?) its where V’s “progress lines” turned red. Was that red color the trigger for Max? Or was it V losing half his face covering, showing metal?
Going back to when V was originally introduced, his colors ran through a range as he got stronger and stronger. By the time he reached Yellow or Gold he had Max pinned to the ground, apparently helpless.
Colors he ran through, in order of increasing strength:
White
Pink/Lilac
Light Blue / Brighter White
Green
Very bright Green
Yellow
Gold
Orange
Red
Red only showed up for the first time just today, when Max refused to fight him further.
It makes me wonder what else he could accomplish while red, since at “weaker colors” he could create new pants to accommodate his increased size.
Does he shift to Blue or Purple or Black? Can he be in the ultraviolet range? Is there a color at which he is truly omnipotent? Hopefully not also omniscient!
Vehemence losing half his face was because of Maxima’s opener.
She kicked his face in when they started fighting.
Yep, that’s regenerated tissue that will at some point revert to normal tones, not an underlying metal skeleton.
Surprised Halo didn’t just Aether them to the former Alari homeworld. Kevin gets to fry some giant Calamari, the universe is freed of some world wreckers, everybody except the Calamarians goes home happy.
Until someone else decides to visit that planet and Kevin gains access to a spaceship of his own
Than the entire galaxy is in trouble
No this is just Sydney pulling a “the fights over. get over it” move before hyper-jumping them both back to earth
We don’t know the end of Vehemences different powers. If he can do something like conjuring pant who knows what else he can do if powered by Calamarian world wrecking violence? Perhaps even casual space travel. Not worth the risk. It would have been fun seeing Vehemence and Halo tag team the Calamarians though.
Should have taken him to a less inhabited place. Cora is supposed to hove taught her some interresting destinations. Keven have been shown to invent powers on the fly like breathing through his tattoos. Wouldn’t be surprised if he found some way to propel himself then terrorize the station.
Issues like atmospheric pressure notwithstanding, I can see one obvious mean of propulsion for him, which is to take off his pants and throw them in the opposite direction. Conservation of momentum would do the rest.
He could ka-pants himself extra pairs as needed, until he runs out of vehemence. It’s the denim-powered star drive.
She took him to the literal vacuum of space
It doesn’t get any less inhabited than that
Also that station is the size of an entire solar system, it would take him months to inch his way close enough to be a threat to it
Reminds me of a discussion I once witnessed, about a fight between (not very advanced) tanks and wizards. One of the comments was “It would be quite pleasing aesthetically if a wizard would teleport a tank onto a tree stump, preferably from a hundred years old oak”.
So we’re back at Fracture Station… I figured this might happen. But now it’s got me thinking…
Fracture Station was CLEARLY bookmarked by the last owner of the orbs… So the station’s records… MIGHT… have a record of the previous orb user… Could find out an upper limit for how long the orbs had been laying there, as well as what the previous user looked like… and… it might even have an explanation of what each orb does assuming security ever had to talk to the previous user about following proper protocols when approaching the station.
And who would you suggest ask the station for that info?
And how would you suggest they go about asking it in a way that doesn’t bring down the wrong kind of attention on Sydney?
Remember it normally takes a ship the size of a planet to make the kind of FTL travel portals she does
And every hostile race in the galaxy would want that tech
If the orbs did indeed belong to an N’th being, who are an absolute mystery to the entire galaxy, then there is no way Fracture has any records of it.
When ‘Heroes’ start to cheat (or at least, feel they don’t need to play by the rules), that’s when you get ‘Villains’ playing for kill
What rules?
There is only 1 rule in a fight: Beat the opponent.
Also, Kevin was unwilling to stop at the agreed-upon point. This was an enforcement move by Sydney.
I like Buffy’s rule as well: Don’t die.
I appreciated Aang’s rule (TV Series Avatar: The Last Air Bender): defeat the opponent, but don’t kill him. In that final fight, Aang removed his opponent’s elemental (fire bending) ability.
I wonder how someone would remove V’s ability to get stronger, develop new skills & abilities–without killing him?
I disagree G.
I present to you the Bangkok Rules scene in Escape from LA.
Snake Plissken:
“I’m gonna give you assholes a chance. What do you say we play a little … Bangkok Rules.”
*bad guys snicker*
*picks up a tin can*
“No one draws until this hits the ground* *everyone lowers their guns*
*Snake throws the can into the air, then promptly shoots everyone while they are looking up at the can*
*Everyone falls down dead except Snake*
*Can falls on ground*
Snake Plissken: “Draw.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue8TvvYik74
Halo’s not holding her shield orb. She’s holding the flyball. She shouldn’t need the flyball inzero gravity, and her shield is clearly up. I don’t remember purchasing her shield passive.
Unless it’s tucked into the palm behind the book she’s holding…
This does look like an error, even accounting for the color of the background and the closeness of the colors of the two balls. The forcefield ball is around her head.
It’s pretty obviously a coloring error on DaveB’s part. She’s holding the shield orb, not the fly orb, but DaveB put the wrong color on the shield orb in the picture.
We can tell this for two reasons.
1) Sydney’s hair is flowing around, because the fly orb isnt being held so her localized gravity isnt in effect.
2) Sydney isnt dead, because her shield is still up and she is not in the hard vacuum of space.
What did Sydney do!?!?
Opened up an Aetherian gateway as per previously.
One Winged Angel is appropriate here. Starts off on land, does something flashy, ends up in space with an end game move.
Sydney pulling a Road Runner worthy moment-AGAIN.
I thought of this when she went get grakz for Niel, but didn’t comment then; wasn’t traveling straight to Earth through those a huge plot point? Sydney specifically didn’t do it to save herself the first time because the icon was glitchy and she assumed something had killed the previous orb owner, and that’s why she found them in the ocean.
think glitchy was cause last known warp caused death type thing thus new owner of ship or orbs knows not to touch it. or more it was or ment to be reminder to owner of orbs to not warp there again or least at those cords and delete that history point. and theres the whole blood mage time portal mix up which could of caused the glitchyness
Correct, she didn’t have a known waypoint to Earth. Once Cora brought her back and she warped to Fracture again, Earth (presumably) showed up on the travel history and she popped back with the Grakz. She is now safe to Stargate about at will.
And that is how you deal with a supervillain if you can teleport halfway across the galaxy in a second.
TBH, I was expecting her to be using the IllusOrb and making him chase impossibly-fast illusions until he tired out, but this is better.
I get that Fracture Station is here to give us (the readers) a landmark, but it’d make way more sense to have teleported to some random spot in the middle of space.
It has to be someplace she’s been to and placemarked.
She probably hasn’t had the time to placemark, say, Jupiter. Or Mercury.
She can go to somewhere manually with the help of Cora’s crew, which she’s spent plenty of time around. Certainly enough time to have programmed in a “middle of nowhere space” location for banishing problem enemies forever.
Especially since Cora was around just 16 comics ago and most of those comics were part of this fight scene, so her navigator could have been involved in the planning for this.
I did not expect this result.
What’s he doing spacing out in the middle of a fight?
Okay that might be the absolute best strategy against Vehemence!
Or any hard to kill villain. When in doubt, space it!
Yes, the Immortal’s go-to solution on Invincible vs Bi-Plane. :)
“When in doubt, throw them into space.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ks8axyM_Jc
That’s some funny shit.
So basically, She’s a Loony Tune?
*pulls out gun* Always has been.
In both senses of the phrase.
Fracture Flight Control Operator: Uh, sir, that weird ship is back.
Fracture Flight Control Commander: This is Fracture Station, corporal. I’m gonna need more details than that.
Op: The one that’s just, like, one being with a shield? Although I’m detecting some debris…
Cmdr: Oh, Gods, HER. Someone warn the Grakz dealers! And make sure she pays for a berth this time!! Last time she just landed on the station without so much as a “By Your Leave”! We’re an official port of call, she can’t just-
Op: She’s gone again, sir. Along with the ‘debris’…
Cmdr: SONUVA-!
*Ahems.* Three. Moves. Ahead. */Ahems*