Comic for Thursday, December 13th, 2018
Dec13
It seems the pointed finger is scarier than the gun?
Ila has spent more time around Naomi than we have really seen, which I reckon is obvious, but as that I think about it we mostly see Naomi with Mium or Ila with Mium but not all three together that often in their ‘on screen’ appearances, though their outings have been referenced here and there.
Ila’s fighting style is intentionally a lot closer to Naomi’s than her earlier appearances, though I imagine that’s hard to tell from the way the action sequences are drawn. Mium views this as something of a bad influence, as he does not really approve of Ila’s tendency to engage in close quarters combat.
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What is in the box though. It looks to much like foreshadowing to not be important.
This is the bad part: “Family… Mages…”
Malsa’s family mages/Malsa’s government/The Consul are likely going to get blamed for something they didn’t know about. Mium being MIA is leaving Ila to her own devices. What happens when you have power without planning? Actions without wisdom? The fan is going to get hit so hard that it’ll lose it bearings. I’m curious if we’re looking at a rebuild-from-the ashes situation or if Peter and/or Mium will be able to steer the wreck in a productive manner.
Nah. They’re already at war with the country with the family mages. This is more like invading the Marvelverse, and finding yourself facing Superman. You THOUGHT you had all the mutants accounted for…
So Malsa gets its cred punched checked by mistake. No big deal. That thing was already looking like it was more hole than card anyway.
I have to agree with Mium: Naomi is a bad influence on Ila, purely for how Naomi’s tendency to engage in close quarters combat has rubbed off on her.
There’s simply no question: If you have the capability to fight enemies very effectively at range, this is immeasurably safer and more advantageous than trying to engage in close quarters. There may be some exceptions, but only a few.
I suspect this why Mium has such a reputation for shooting things (preferably in the back) or trying to blow things up (preferably with prearranged explosives detonated from a long way away). I suspect that if Mium was entirely “unshackled” most people that “fight” him would end up dying in car crashes, sudden elevator accidents, or contracting weird incurable diseases.
I wonder if this conversation here was not some sort of foreshadowing allusion to Ila and her suboptimal fighting style (her trying to win a video game with a bad character).
Heh. I had forgotten about that scene with Ila fighting in that game with a bad character. But, yeah, I can now see that scene as a sort of foreshadowing for this.
As a side note: For Ila to mimic Naomi’s fighting style (to an extent), it seems that she has taken a liking to her ‘big sis’. Android or not, it’s kind of cute.
Everytime I read the comments I feel like an ungrateful reader. @PastUtopia puts all this foreshadowing in, and it would all just be wasted on me without @Amaranth to decode it for me.
@Gok2Gud: You’re looking at it wrong. Artists and authors hide foreshadowing sort of like a game they play with the readers. It’s possible to read such stories and enjoy them even if you don’t catch on ahead of time.
We have the extreme good fortune of having @Amaranth (who could give pointers to Sherlock Holmes) to point these things out. Just reading the comments has taught me a ton of stuff, and now I’m better at sniffing out foreshadowing, too. ^^
Read carefully, young Padawan, many arcane things you will learn. 🙂
As far as Naomi and Ila together, and as far as action shots showing both Naomi and Ila, that would be the big fight scene at the end of chapter 7. (They’re only both shown in three of those, but it can be presumed that Ila’s hanging around in the air over a mile out watching Naomi in her sniper rifle the whole time.) That seems to be plausibly sufficient interaction to me, though I would guess that they’ve had a bit more fun time together off screen as well.
I feel badly for the guy trying to say, “I surrender,” because it’s clear he’s not going to get it out. Think Ila will be generous enough to properly interpret that first syllable and accept his surrender without hurting him?
Um, no?
I get the feeling Ila takes the “a” part of “a chance” pretty literally.
i su… has a lot of high probability continuations.
Suggest?
Suppose?
Sure?
Support?
Ila decides making an impression and being scary (two things Naomi is better at than MIUM) is the order of the day. And nails the execution PERFECTLY.
“…full Naomi on this whole place…”
LOL 😀
Poor guy trying to make the correct response.
You just know one of the others is going to shoot him.
to the guy pointing his gun at Ila, I’d suggest you stand down.
Well the Guy with the pistol looks like he might be trying to take a shot. He’s gone from ready position to aiming position and at that close of a range I don’t think even she can dematerialize the bullet. Of course she may just need to redirect it into somebody. I do notice that of the five people all of them are standing such that firing from them isn’t going to go into one of their friends. I also think that the surrender is going to be fake. Mainly because he said <[Family Mage]> in his own language, which may be a tactical command to handle it in a particular way. Of course he has the ID wrong, and unfortunately it is massively wrong. They think they have a human with boosted reflexes when in fact what they have is an AI with normal reflexes.
there are glowies around the gun; she may have already stolen the firing pin or whatever. On the other hand a couple dots is all she needs to disassemble whatever offends her, so the bullet could come out and be subdivided into a cloud of steam, she’s FAST…
Yeah either the *family mage* bit means ‘Aw, carp’ or it’s a tactical signifier, but in the case of the later it’ll just get them killed… I hope they get to live and go home talking about the scary little girl
That actually looks like a gun-shaped autocaster to me, They tend to have weirdly shaped barrels like that with a ‘just for show’ hole, so the purple glowies could just be it starting to do its thing. But I think that means less danger for Ila, not more.
Well, I can’t remember his name, he’s not probably a “recurring” character (unless Rovak fixes him,) he was a war mage. And it is with him they are attempting to communicate in the first pannel.
Given this is Arpon. The surrenderer has assessed the situation and told his colleagues, “these are the bad guys (Malsa,) if they’re here… guess what has happened our guys.”
Do you think any of these guys could take on the tanks and that one guy? I don’t.
It looks almost indentical to this one here, as a matter of fact. I believe that was guy was a Resh soldier, and used it to shoot Rovak.
It was both effective, and not effective at all, given that it was Rovak.
Indeed, most of the IDS who have encountered Ila made the same mistake. And then quickly up-scaled their estimate to war mage. And as Ila has said, this is a one time offer, the next action will be the only one permitted. So mess is going to happen. And Arkady is going to be disappointed.
Ok, reminding everyone here. Illa’s abilities and MIUM’s abilities are VERY different. Mium has his ability to distupt and destroy pretty much any spell or matter, self reinforcement and self repair (in addition to his other hacking and simulation type abilities that aren’t actually magic). So, for instance, MIUM has basically no ranged magic options other than just throwing something with magically enhanced strength.
Illa, on the other hand, has a set of preprogrammed spells that she can use however she likes, and use a lot of them as many times as she likes, but only those spells. I don’t remember the full list (if someone else does that would be great) but I do know that it doesn’t include matter discintigration. “Her” use of that earlier was really MIUM loaded into her body, not Illa herself.
(PS: lets see if I can remember the abilities she does have. Construct hands: pretty basic but strong enough to hold down a mage without trouble and she can manipulate them as she likes. Movement Spell: she adds movement to anything that passes through or is within the circle, most often used to fly or to turn rubble into artillery. A Shield Spell: Simple, but powerful enough to stop multiple rounds of artillery without issue, possibly by physically destroying them as they didn’t explode and instead disappeared with a “bzzzt” sound. A Lazerbeam Spell: Powerful, especially since the lazers explode whatever they hit, but somewhat less useful is “major” engagements since her “artillery rubble” is more powerful (and the really dangerous targets can survive the lessor attacks). Theoretically a Boost Engine Spell: boost engines (that make the target nearly involitable (indestructable)) are common and would be necessary for a mage to be durable enough to engaged in any pitched engagement, but don’t have any teltale spell matrixes, so we can only assume that this is one of her known spells even though it hasn’t been explicidly stated (though her pristine, if still broken, state after MIUM deleted her from AVON’s computers is pretty good proof of it). Unfortunately that is only 4 spells out of the 6 that she is supposed to have.
By my estimation, her six spells are:
1) Acceleration. This is probably her most used and best spell, used for both her HVW “railgun” attack, flying, and general movement.
2) Green Hand Eidos Construct. Seems like her general non-lethal and utility ability.
3) Red Lasers (“Rupture”). I think this was probably intended to be her offense spell, but Acceleration is usually more potent the way she uses it.
4) Blue Shield Eidos Construct. We have only seen her use this once that I can think, but it is a pretty strong shield.
5) Boost. This one is hard to see being used (besides with Naomi) but it is both implied and I think outright stated that she can use it.
6) Weight. She can make things heavier or lighter. The only time she explicitly used this was when she was forcing the IDS Dropship carrying Jayce to land, but it is pretty likely she uses this to fly along with Acceleration, especially when she is just floating. For example when sniping the IDS Monster Hunters.
Credit where credit is due to Mir (assuming Mir is the one that came up with that list), that is a pretty comprehensive list to make an adorable murder machine.
Acceleration and Weight are extremely low level and versatile and combine well with her ability to repeat the same spell for extreme effect, and Boost is basically mandatory.
I would say that Red Laser (Rupture) is potentially unnecessary. I’m not sure if Blue Shield really has any advantage over Green Hand, but Green Hand was a pretty solid choice assuming she couldn’t make it to a Red Construct.