Ah-ha, I bet you were just checking to see what excuse I came up with this time, but it’s a comic! Bet you weren’t expecting that!
The grenade was probably significantly more damage to the building structure than the thrower seems to have intended. The skyway is still intact, but a large part of the floor and walls blew out. In Panel 7, Arkady is trying to catch Naomi with his magic, but fails because she’s far to resistant to magic at the moment for it to work. Naomi is probably referring to Mium’s ability to do this. Some of you can probably guess what that’d work for Mium better than Naomi, as no matter how strong she is, she’d lack the leverage to just grab stab her fingers into a concrete building facing while falling. Not that would really really stop her. She has referenced running up a wall before which also doesn’t actually work with physics, it just makes it harder since there’s secondary magics needed, not just trying harder. Mium, however, can cheat that.
Fortunately we’ve seen Naomi fall a lot further than this. It’s not actually that clear from the panel I realize, but she only fell a few stories, not the ground. The explosion sent her slightly backwards, causing her to hit the wall well before the ground, and ultimately land on the ledge there after falling to grab the wall.
We’ve seen before that Arkady can sort of fly; while a lot of mages can do sort of an “infinite jump”, they just cannot really change directions more than once or twice (both Kally and Tyler can do that sort of “leap to the top of a building” flight if they really want), Arkady’s method is slightly better than that, as he modifies his own weight, and the controls the air pressure around himself to cause winds he can fly with; flying using wind would normally wouldn’t give enough lift, but if you fiddle with how much gravity is effecting you first, it can work; it’s not easy magic, but Arkady is pretty good at messing with air pressure to cause wind, and it’s a major part of how he can whip fire. It’s not really an innate magic, but more of a specialized magic of his family – the difference being innate magic would be something he was born with, specialized in this case more means it’s a family technique he knows, but wasn’t inherently born with. There’s a good case to be made that family lines tend have some affinity in their specialized magic, but it might just be because they tend to learn it from an early age. Some people in Arkady’s family are much better at control fire through a complicated set of magic involving heat, air pressure, and other things; it’s a bit different than Rovak’s explosion (and has different trade offs; while Rovak’s magic is brutally efficient at dealing with lesser enemies, we saw it’s weakness against Tyler where if he cannot make an explosion near a target, it’s harder for him damage them – preferably just exploding the target, but that won’t work vs. a powerful mage; the Family mages tend to favor magic that’s more effective against powerful mages – like we saw from Camilla’s magic, where they execute magic close to themselves and then unleash the result of it physically to stop magic interference from being as effective… as we saw with Elizabeth, it can be countered by just tanking the damage, but it cannot be stopped by magical interference as easily, as the effect, though caused by magic, is still a physical phenomena)…. that was a really long aside. Ah well, you guys are used to my rambling by now…
Similarly. Naomi probably could jump on a Eidos Construct without it breaking inherently, though we’ve seen if she starts unleashing a crazy amount of mana she can start breaking apart at least blue ones by brute force… but it’s something she’d have to be a little wary of, though I doubt she’d really consider that.
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I read the first couple of months of this comic back when it first started, then got too busy to keep up with my webcomics. I’ve only been able to start reading them again the last month or so. Just finished catching up from 2015 – well worth the time and effort. Keep up the good work.
Appreciate it; always glad to hear people are enjoying it 🙂
Unfortunately not going to get 2 on time pages in a row…
Page’ll be late. Still a good shot at tomorrow. Got a lot done on the weekend, but not going to get much done on it today, unfortunately. Spent most of the day solving other people’s problems and not getting my work done.
…and yet here we are anyway.
Hey, don’t sweat it. Not like half of us in the US have jobs to go to right now…. All I’ve got is free time.
Also, I think it’s a good idea Naomi didn’t do what Mium did with the wall grab. I mean, his F-8 frame seems to be more durable than most squishy humans, and even then, he loses the skin on his fingers/hand! Even if Naomi can boost to be more durable, that’s got to be anoying to deal with.
Last panel, first Bubble
By->be
The suspense is killing me!
And that hair is epic too.
You know, PastUtopia, it is sort of unfair making the images that small when you are hiding details in there… if this was a whole page what you did with Naomi’s hair in the last 2 panels would be more fair.
…and yet here we are anyway.
I was looking at it zoomed in to see if the wounds had the “mana lightning” effect (which they do). I just happened to see that when I did.
Always worth popping the image open in a new tab and running up the zoom.
I’m having a big of difficulty following the action this time.
The grenade detonates in the skyway, breaking the floor and sending Naomi falling. Naomi tries to grab a wall… successfully? or not? while Arkady is flying after her and trying to dampen her fall? and then she lands at some place that looks more like a roof than the ground – do the lower floors span both buildings?
The panel order is always left to right so we see:
* The immediate aftermath of the explosion (1),
* Arkady looks out (2),
* Arkady sees her failing (3),
* Arkady jumps (4);
* Cut to Naomi falling (5) (chronologically at the same time as 3, as she’s in about the same spot failing),
* See her try to grab the wall (5),
* See arkady use flying magic on himself and fail to catch Naomi with it (6),
* See Naomi hit what I think is a lip/ledge on the building (7),
* Arkady descends to level (8),
* Arkady lands on the ledge and they discuss plans (9).
Hope that helps; it’s a bit of a choatic half page I guess 🙂
“half page”
Author says:
“* See Naomi hit what I think is a lip/ledge on the building (7),”.
If he’s not sure of what Naomi hit, then it might well be forever a mystery!
Looking at the design of the place, and whats on it, that is clearly access scaffolding.
I think this is fair game for here. Sorry that I’m posting it nearly 3 years after the fact. I only just discovered it.
http://datachasers.thecomicseries.com/comics/1514
Ah that was a long time ago. I used to talk to other webcomic creators more, but don’t do that much anymore, as I guess I don’t follow any webcomic forums. The main one I’d go sometimes doesn’t exist anymore.
As I recall they were on hiatus for some reason. Pretty sure I posted here somewhere whenever I did a guest art back in the day, haven’t done in forever though.
I’m not sure that they were so much on hiatus as much as their posting schedule is extremely erratic. Sometimes it is every couple of months, sometimes it is once weekly (I think that’s their current announced schedule), sometimes it is daily for a week or two or three.
I’d love to offer some advice re: making hours in the day. As soon as I get caught up on my stuff, I’ll be sure to do so. Let’s look at comparing notes in June, shall we? June of 2048 I mean.
Making hours isn’t that hard. Unfortunately, it seems like there might be one of those thermodynamic rule thingies involved, because everyone I know who knows how to make time seems to take a lot more time to make the time than the amount of time they make.
I’m not all that confident in my own abilities to make time. While I can usually make an hour in under a day, when I’m using those hours, they often seem like less than five minutes. That’s only like about 80% of an hour. Right? Or am I confused again?
Your math seems spot on to me.
I think the trick in “making time” is to be brutal in slaying any consumer of time that isn’t very important to you.
Important to someone else doesn’t count, somewhat important to you doesn’t count.
… that is a technique which honestly did not really occur to me.
I will admit, a certain amount of my experience suggests that you might be onto something. I remember a coworker, back in the day, whose termination resulted in a net 2.4 increase in our effective person power (calculated with a reference unit of person power calculated while said individual was on the team, of course.) What was really impressive about that was there were only five people on that team including him.
That said, on the opposing side to this method, it’s my understanding that being tried for manslaughter or other similar crimes is also very time intensive. It feels like there may be some method of dealing with these people that avoids that cost as well.
I’m not sure what that other method might be, but somehow I have this feeling that one of the characters within this comic might hold some key to this secret. Could the next update possibly give a clue? I somehow have my doubts. I consider it at least somewhat possible that the secret has already been shared, but somehow we missed it.
Tgape, I have solution to your dilemma. A former employee of mine had a brilliant solution to a useless colleague. He gave the person’s name to a headhunter with a glowing recommendation. The guy was gone in three weeks. I have never had to resort to emulating his strategy, but I would do it in a moment if the need arose.
That’s brilliant, Pittsburgh. Also it explains why I get so many great job offers out of the blue.
Tgape, I like where your mind is at. I wasn’t necessarily advocating for bodily harm, but I like how you embrace a solution and run with it.
I feel the need to point out that said coworker’s contract termination wasn’t something that I was particularly involved with. I was the FNG at the time, and that sort of thing required a manager to initiate. Once initiated, the rest of the work was done by people not on our team.
The role I played was simply becoming sufficiently more competent than said individual in under a week’s time for it to be apparent to everybody except him by the end of two weeks. He’d been on the team for six months.
To be fair, I didn’t really pick up the job so phenomenally fast. I just started the job with all of the minimum required background and most of the desired background. I was only missing any real familiarity with the core technology, and between finding out about the job and starting, I read up on that core technology. He clearly did not have significant parts of the required background even after six months.
Best approach, if possible, would seem to be have Arkady flying Naomi to the other side of the skybridge in a flanking maneuver that would give her a strong tactical position. Naomi will object, but Arkady will say that he has to do something. Arkady could also probably use his wind powers to create a sort of smoke screen out of the dust without exposing himself too much.
Looking at this, I also wonder how well magical defenses work in preventing wardrobe malfunctions. By the time Naomi reaches Eliana and Ila, Eliana may want to offer Naomi some clothes that are in better shape. After all, a lot of Naomi’s clothes have been destroyed in various explosions.
Naomi probably has to dial down her boosting a lot before Arkady can overcome her resistance.
Given how much wind Arkady uses to do his flying and how little Naomi’s hair is blowing while she’s right next to him? I’m pretty sure that’s confirmed. Arkady’s not flying Naomi anywhere unless they have a nice long rope she can hang from beneath what he’s really flying.
That unit on the ledge appears to be a cooling unit with lines for the coolant and electrical power. I don’t think Naomi would have much problem ripping a length of power cable out of the wall. She could also smash through the wall of the elevator shaft and climb the lift cables or other structural parts inside the shaft. Naomi is the equivalent of a FuBar https://sofrep.com/gear/stanley-18-fubar-forcible-entry-tool/ all by herself and could easily extract all sorts of equipment through the wall. If you look in the walls and floors of most construction, you’ll find all sorts of things available. (However, don’t say McGyvering. Most of the stuff McGyver did wouldn’t actually work.)
Ripping a length of power cable out of the wall would likely be about as useful for stopping a descent like the one Naomi made as most of the stuff McGyver did to escape from impromptu cages that generally people who were intended to be captives wouldn’t be allowed to roam free in.
It would, on the other hand, be potentially useful in frying Naomi if she wasn’t sufficiently boosted to ignore it, and adding an annoyance expense to Regin’s house that I’m sure he’d rather not deal with. It’s unclear what kind of effect the interruption to the house AC might cause. Some places, house AC is vital, other places it’s just a luxury. Some places, it’s a single point of failure, and others there’s redundancy.
I believe the point of having Arkady along was she wouldn’t need to act as a FuBar, which is generally helpful when one wants to be greeted as a friendly by the residents. It’s likely that Arkady can gain entry via privilege at street level, too, and that entryway is probably easier for them to get to from here.
That said, Naomi at least seems focused on the original revised plan.
Regin’s house? Nah, I’m still pretty sure this is the hospital building. 😉
(I keep telling you guys …)
Comic pages are the best kind of excuse, I think. . . .
Okay someone had the right grade of response to Naomi, just wrong level of supplies. If someone charges at you while shooting at them, its safe to assume bullets will not be enough to stop them.
Given the damage that level of concussion would cause in an enclosed space against creatures made mostly of water…. I think it is fair to assume that there not are any non-mages remaining in the area. Well, not living anyway.
I assume that Muim partially dissolves the wall while grabbing it, giving him handholds to leverage. He also weights a ton, giving him all sorts of mechanical leverage. Is there any other physical forces that he need to manipulate to do his famous wall grabbing? I feel like there must be, the action and reaction forces and rotational forces throwing you outward are going to be enormous, especially if you are very heavy.
Love that Past considers all these things, so rare in this genre.
Loved the aside!
And yes, I bet she could do it in two jumps – at a minimum, I wouldn’t bet against her unless it was to provide an extra layer of motivation. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t need that from random strangers/readers.
Poor Arkady, though! This is more of an education in response to the questions he was asking than I imagine he wanted, even if it *is* likely to stick better this way!
I sure hope Ila’s attention has been gained.
p.s. I suspect that the last line in Panel 10 should finish with “…do it IN two jumps.”
Fixed, thanks 🙂