Some readers called Kaycee out for giving away her element of surprise at the end of last page, fair enough too, but keep in mind this page follows on less than a second after that previous panel – not quite enough time for Orange Team to react properly. In fact, all the action on this page probably transpires in less time than it takes to read it – very quickly. It was a challenge to get so many different elements into one page and make it coherent but not overcrowded – I’ve learned from errors I made in the last chapter where the fight sequences often dragged on over several pages.
Also, a big hint here into the actual nature of Chiq’s power – more about how it works exctly over the next few pages.
So Chiq is either a copycat or a power leech. If she’s a copycat, then she’s a formidable threat when teamed with Kaycee and Rochelle, the two best tacticians in the class. A power leech would be equally useful, since it would remove one of the opposing teammates from play. In other news, it looks like Louis got the same medicine he gave to Gifford; he doesn’t seem to be taking it as well, though.
You’re pretty close to the mark there – but more info over the next few pages should solve some of the unknown factors.
I’m guessing that she’s a super by the standards of her species too.
I know I’m being picky, Xmung, but you’re screwing with Newton’s 3rd law… in the last panel of 6.13, Kaycee is spinning her bola at a 45° angle, in panel 1 of 6.14, she launches it vertically yet in panel 2, the bolas spun horizontally to snag Louis. I’ve been building airplanes for 40 years and I KNOW that that doesn’t work. Even before the bola would have launched, Kaycee would have received one of the weights in the noggin.
Consider it visual artistic licence, but I take your point and do like to have some degree of authenticity for the more normal aspects of the comic. Given it starts out horizontal and goes around his legs horizontal she should be seen to throw it that way, so I’ll think about fixing it at some point.
Cor it’s a comic. Most comics don’t pay that close attention to real physics also Kaycee taking out two of them sweet.
It’s cool, I don’t mind and always appreciate feedback – but yes, in most cases many laws of physics and biochemistry and who knows what else are seriously comprimised in this comic at the best of times!
not sure how much control gabby has with her power, but it looks like kaycee would be dead if it was a real fight against villains. it would seem rochelle dropped the ball, it would have been better if she had opened the engagement by using the fire suppression drones on gabby, instead of waiting until she potentially takes out a member of the team. additionally the focus of the group would be on the drones instead of jones, and they would be wondering why their drones are malfunctioning and causing a ruckus, instead of immediately realizing they are under attack.
as for bola throwing, not sure if you are imagining her hand being at the center of a prop or not, if so then you are wrong, it would be at the edge of a prop, though ya the shift in angle is awkward.
bola throwing: http://youtu.be/Z9-1IKKz4z0
notice that there is a lot of rotational speed, if there is then the string resists wrapping around the legs (due to centrifugal force trying to keep the string taught).
and yes it is very difficult to get fake action sequences seem realistic, just look at some old war movies, using gasoline explosions and what not.
despite the minor flaws, a good action sequence.
Actually, it looks like Rochelle is responding immediately to “save” Kaycee. I think the “thingies” are dousing her before she can “kill” Kaycee. Besides that, Gabby explicitly states it was a warning shot, so it would not have put Kaycee out of the exercise.
Magellan RoE probably also demands giving a warning before using lethal force, at least against an enemy who doesn’t appear to be using lethal weaponry.
I think that Rochelle indicates here she is well aware of that and would make different plan, if it was real deal – she just took the rules into consideration as a factor, something most people won’t do, because we always (okay, most of times) assume other guys are going to cheat.
the problem isn’t that rochelle is metagaming the fight, it is that she isn’t metagaming the test. think about the robomat, if a speedster were to recklessly use the delay it takes to announce that she is in fact dead and decided to go ahead and destroy her target bot despite being obviously ‘dead’ the instructors would not look favorably on the outcome, even if her team won. also, the ony thing rochelle did in the fight is pretty much the drone takeover, so if kaycee didn’t need saving rochelle wouldn’t have done a thing. so the argument that she was simply acting to save jones implies that she had no plans to help in the actual fighting, thus her having poor timing looks more favorably on her, as opposed to letting her teammates take all the risk.
The trainers will no doubt be taking much of this into account – expect some clarification on their perspective of Rochelle’s actions in the next update. And you’re right about the robomat example, failure to comply with the instructions from the room would result in disqualification form the exercise.
Who wasn’t expecting Rochelle to commandeer the “thingies” after seeing what she did with the comm?
Well, they are all only in their second year operating in a fairly dangerous environment (as Rochelle notes, Gabby’s power is potentially lethal – as are the powers of a number of other cadets, eg Anka, Lyta, Bill, Charisma, and possibly Montana-Rose, Jemima, Gregor, even Jenna – there’ll be more on this issue in a few pages…) and one would expect that mistakes will be made. Green team do appear to have succeeded despite some possbly not perfect execution though. 🙂
Nice takedown!
IRONY!
Sigh. Now I’m wondering how they’ll take out blue team. And I’m wondering if you’ll leave Kaycee undefeated or let her suffer a massive blow so that she can grow from it later. Or if Charisma will try to kill her and get kicked out of school, and if Chiq will save Kaycee from certain death, possibly transferring Chiq’s abilities to Kaycee in the process, either temporarily or permanently. You know I’m supposed to be working right now, right?
BTW, I’m grateful for the speedup in action. I tried to get my husband hooked up on this comic several years ago and he couldn’t handle the time delay. He would ask me every few weeks how many minutes had gone by in comic-time (this was at the end of Bad Karma). I love the detail, though. And when it’s out in book form, so will he. But for now, when I have to wait for Wednesday, at least I can hope that the setup for the blue/green fight will occur, and then hopefully on Friday the actual fight! Though I doubt it will all be resolved by Friday next week… dammit… who is going to get the crap kicked out of them? WHO? WHO?!!
Kaycee has had blows before. The worst would have to be the robo-evil weevil. I think she also failed when saving robot-presidnet but I’m not sure if that was on camera.
The loss in the robo-mat to the character assassins who “killed” President Tin-Can was definitely a defeat. So yes, Kaycee certainly hasn’t been triumphant all the time.
@jenlion: I know what you mean about the drag in webcomic time… and certainly it took many months for even a few minutes to pass during Bad Karma. I’m (finally) figuring out how to compress action and even stuff like exposition into fewer pages. That said, I hate to tell you but Blue and Green teams won’t be engaged by next Friday…
When i originally wrote this training in the jungle sequence – I did it in the form of a train of thought narrative from Kaycee’s point of view, and written in longhand it went on for pages and pages. I got to the end of that and thought, OK… how can I squeeze that into six pages of comics? I still failed in that regard – the whole training sequence will be about 11 pages in total so we’re almost halfway through!
Excellent. I like when characters are able to exploit the conditions of a test to their advantage. Remniscent of some of the solutions to the Kobayashi Maru. And also to Ender Wiggin, and to Scout the Jedi Padawan.
(Scout’s my favorite of the three — in one of the novels, Scout’s in a practice lightsaber duel with some jerk. The lightsabers are set to ‘ouch,’ and so aren’t lethal. She just grabs the jerk’s lightsaber and pulls it away, then pins the jerk. Jerk argues that, in a real fight, you can’t grab the other guy’s lightsaber because you’ll burn your hand off. Scout is still given the win.)
Although, in this case, I’d argue that Gabby can’t use her power for another reason — Kaycee is collinear with (and between) Louis and Gabby. Even if they’re supposed to be pretending that they can land lethal blows, Gabby still couldn’t shoot, because if she hit Kaycee she’d hit Louis too.
That’s right. I don’t think that Rochelle is the only one calling Gabby on the way she uses her power – Kaycee would’ve known she was fairly safe and that Gabby’s tendency is to go for “shock & awe”, that when it come to direct interaction with people she uses the power in a defensive rather than offensive way.
Although I did have one question. Lethalness didn’t seem to bother Gregor way back in the 2nd chapter, when he tried to hit Kaycee with a ‘bio plasma’ bolt. Were the rules different for that test?
Actually Gregor has a scale to the power of his blasts – from dangerous and potentially lethal down to stun. Kaycee remarks at the time that had Gregor managed to hit her she wouldn’t have felt her leg for a week.
How old are the cadets right now? I poked around in the about section, but didn’t see that mentioned. Also, in attempting to find it, I noticed the link for Magellan Justice Academy is broken: it says hpp, rather than http. Finally, because no one has mentioned him lately: GLOM! Totally irrelevant, but fun to say.
Cadets generally start around the 15-17 age group depending on when their powers have manifested and how long they have been living with them etc. Yes… GLOM! And who can say, Glom might very well show up again at some point… 😉
So is that 6 boobed lady a power copier like Peter from Heros?
I won’t say too much about Chiq here… a lot of interesting info regarding our interesting alien friend will be revealed over the next few pages and i wouldn’t want to spoil that… 🙂
ok How do you pronounce her name?
“chick” 🙂
I was thinking it sounded the same as ‘Shiek’ or “chique” for some reason. Whoopsie. 🙂
That was a reasonable assumption to make – especially since I’ve never given any indication as to the pronunciation before! But from the moment I thought of the name it has always sounded like “chick” in my head.
Whew! I’m not sure why the posts on Drunk Duck are several stories behind here but I am very glad I found this site! Been enjoying the story, and now that I’ve caught up maybe I can start leaving an occasional comment.
Love the world so far. I do hope Karma eventually stops seeing Kaycee through a filter of anger and hatred. Do you know she could make a huge amount of money as a super-anesthesiologist? No need to depress autonomic systems except in rare cases so surgery becomes much safer, no after-effects from the gas and drugs, and pleasant memories to boot!
Oh, and we shouldn’t jump the gun and blame Rochelle. It’s entirely possible that adrenaline got the better of Kaycee and she jumped into action before Rochelle had finished hacking the drones.
Thanks for the comments! The DD site has been a kind of delayed mirror – I started it a bit over a year ago when Crossoverkill started as a way for me to engage with the DD community. It’s running at an update a day and will probably catch up by the end of the 2012! Great to have you onboard 🙂