Grrl Power #1487 – It takes two to backstab
Sure it takes two to backstab, but a storm of mirror images certainly helps.
The neat part is, Final Blade is always a backstab, no matter which way the target is facing. If the target happens to know that, and they put their back to a jet of plasma, (and presumably aren’t incinerated by that) it can be a problem for the backstabee.
Max isn’t arrogant enough to think that she’ll come out of the tournament unscathed. She reviewed all the quarterfinalist and above winners of previous U.C.B.A’s, and the earliest events usually favored the guy with the biggest cannons and most armor, be they mech or bioroid kaiju. But as the tournaments went on, being tough as shit became the minimum credentials for winning, and increasingly, having some flex skill or crazy hail mary or clinch ability determined the winner. So Max is definitely on the lookout for the Word of Death spell, or Petrify, or Electron Inversion or whatever.
What she’s more worried about is leaving DNA on the field. The Holo-Not-Latex-But-Basically-Print-On-Latex (which is a fair bit stronger than latex) outfit she’s wearing will prevent that, assuming attacks never get past her body reinforcement force field thingy. Now you may ask yourself, does Max have DNA at this point? Well, she has something. Human scientists haven’t mapped it yet, but it is, as far as anyone can tell, unique to her. The alien law enforcement database of “Protein Encoding Instructions Found in Crime Scene Goo” is vast, but sticking some of her blood or “skin” or whatever in there and have it come back with “Unknown Unique Sample EFX-13025a95” would still be easy enough to match to her if any alien Galaxy Rangers thought to sneak into her quarters and make off with her pillowcase.
Oh, look who it is in the vote incentive. And a not-quite-yet-but-it’s-coming NSFW version over at Patreon.
Vote incentive and Patreon updated with some shading. Not finished yet, but progress.
I think she would get in trouble for doing this. She’d mess up the… floor of the waterfall? Is that what it’s called? The receiving pool? No, probably not that. Anyway, she’d churn things up and cause a ton of weird erosion.
Since you might be wondering, Niagara Falls is about 165 feet high, so Babezilla obviously doesn’t have to be full sized. I’d say she’s about 175-180 feet tall here?
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
A problem for the backstabber. The problem for the backstabbee is the backstab.
he broke he blade on her back, didn’t he?
his* (god I really need to proofread before I hit submit lol)
Two things. One, you owned up so you get to criticize everyone else for 24 hours. Two, spiel chukars werks until that one guy… ‘shut up carl’ IYKYKYK? p.s. uhg, new boss’s hanger is clean. But, a flying pill bug? Really? Some SV’s.
That begs the question, what if you put your back up against a sufficiently impenetrable or thick wall/cliff/surface?
And what about targets that don’t have a back?
A sufficiently impenetrable object or thick wall/cliff/surface works up until you have someone who can phase or pass through it like it’s water or just not there.
Like you’re dealing with Marvel’s Vision or an Earthbender from Avatar.
As for if they don’t have a back, do they have a blindspot?
Because it works just as well with that instead.
The super obvious backstab worked?!
Or Maxima/Ixah wants him to think that, when she’s actually upped her defences across her back so it does little to nothing except make him solid enough for her to take him out.
Per Dave’s commentary, the spell/ability being used *always* lands a backstab.
This does not promise anything about the back of the target being a safe place.
Of course, in principle she’s fast enough to pull that old DC Flash trick of feeling the bullet touch your back, and then step out of the way of it. If she’s got her points dumped into speed, rather than having planned on tanking whatever was coming.
Or just turn into a spherical blender that dices everything within sword reach regardless of which image is real.
But he’s nothing but images until he makes his thrust, right? None of them are real enough to be diced.
Saying your attack name while doing it means he’s quite confident in it despite having seen what Maxima can do.
I wonder why she didn’t decide to fly away at supersonic speed. Letting your opponent hit you so that you can get a hold of them or their weapon is a trope I’ve seen in multiple Animes, like Bleach, Naruto or Samurai Champloo, so wouldn’t it be hilarious if Max got told that by Sydney and decided to test it?
*Slowly turns* Thanks for getting that kink out of my lower back. Sorry about turning your blade into a coil of metal. You wanna submit or be seismicly punched?
37th!
Her – Is it in? Oh!
I think the play her would have been to move around at great speed so that edge lord couldn’t catch up to her to do this.
There certainly wouldn’t be any harm in that.
That would only work if he needs to be in sword range already to use it though – if part of the technique involves one of his mirror images becoming real, rather than one real him mixed in with the images, then he could use it from anywhere he can see her and the image ring would move with her at super-speed since its centered on her rather than him.
I hate when I know it’s coming, and it still hurts or it hurts way more than we thought it would.
p.s. Skippy, I know you are monitoring me. Don’t you bring up what happened, you were there, you said we’d be fine.
Potential twist.That blade is nth tech too and actually cuts right into her back like butter, then we get a Maxima in mortal peril arc while everyone else scrambles to figure out damage control for a quickly spiraling intergalactic issue as some details start to come to light.
See? Reverse grip on 1,2,3, then normal grip on 7, then reverse grip on 8. I roll for disbelief, it must be an illusion of Max.
And then he tries to remove his knife… only to realize he can’t remove it, and she’s turned around. At which point something of his snaps. And it’s not the knife.