Grrl Power #1171 – Accidental super soldier potion
What Max is really asking is, “Dangerous to who?” Or possibly “To whom?” I’m not sure about that breaks down.
Basically, it just occurred to Max that most adventurers aren’t, well, Apocalypse Tier threats. Or S+ Tier, or Diamond/Dragon/Platinum/Divine Tier. However its measured in a given game system/novel/actual world Dabbler’s been to.
Of course, Dabbler could respond with something like “You have to kill a Plutonium Dragon which has adamantine scales two feet thick and its breath weapon is a gamma ray beam powerful enough to turn the Matterhorn into a caldera of extraordinarily radioactive magma.” Which does, on its surface, sound dangerous, but presumably it doesn’t have super speed, and its eyes aren’t nearly as armored, which means Maxima could still take one out literally before it could blink. That is unless it has some kind of fear attack or death sphere around it or the like that might slow her down.
The June vote incentive is finally up! Maxima is prepping for her night out.
And in the Patreon variants, she gets (un)dressed and takes a look through all the makeup options.
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Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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I’ll have what she’s having.
Time to send in Math, Jabber, Shawn, Harem, etc. for sparring training. Anyone who could use hand-to-hand training at human strength levels. Let her fight! Better to get it out now, lest she decide to shift activities towards a romantic partner; they probably won’t survive.
“To whom,” is correct.
Only if it is more than one
Um, no? Who vs Whom has nothing to do with singular or plural.
Indeed.
Top tip for determining whether to use who or whom:
Try the sentence with the words ‘him’ and ‘he’ (you will probably need to rearrange the words a little).
If it makes sense with ‘him’, then ‘whom’ should be used in the question form.
If ‘he’ is better, use ‘who’.
To use the given example:
‘Dangerous to he’ doesn’t make much sense, but ‘Dangerous to him’ does. Therefore, ‘Dangerous to whom’ is correct.
A similar trick can also be used to pick the proper one of thee/thy/thine/thou, using me/my/mine/I (respectively) as the test substitution.
NB: I use him/he rather than her/she or any other option because ‘him’ and ‘whom’ both end in ‘m’, making the rule easier to remember.
Better questions would be: How expensive? In what quantities can we produce it?
Never, under ANY circumstances, let Sydney have one of these potions.
I really want to see that happen, but there is a 50% chance she simply explodes.
Um… Sydney taken to 11? Apocalyptic scale danger incoming!
Wait…
That sounds like FUN!
(to watch from a LONG ways away!)
Preferably from a different solar system. It would be fun if they had to make Sydney go full Kali mode to stop Galactus or something.
Adderall is a stimulant (amphetamines). There’s a reasonable case to be made she’d just react as if she’d taken more of her meds, lol
It could be that her control panel would pop open and start going sparkly….
I think, based on her side-eye look, that Maxima was wanting to get one to give to the guy she spent last night with, to give him a bit of a boost in bed. But then again, my mind is in the gutter…when I need to come up for air.
That would be like giving the squirrel from Over the Hedge a Red Bull.
*hushed tones*
Oooo, they went plaid
She’d be fine. Unlike Seneca, she DOES have a way to burn off excess mana – the orbs. That top-tier potion might actually recharge them!
I don’t think we’ve seen any evidence that Sydney’s orbs can collect mana from her body, or that they even run on mana.
Certainly a “makes a human more energetic” potion isn’t going to be more than a drop in the ocean to the kind of power pool that supports glassing a desert.
On one hand I thought ‘dangerous’ meant her dangerous lack of self preservation right now was she was acting waist than Sydney on a caffeine overdose right now…
As for the other ‘dangerous’ it might be a question of how dangerous it would be to take if it could give some of their super heroes a power boost. Yes 50% boost might not be as affective in a super, but those extra ten points could be useful for our golden super woman.
It was ‘dangerous to obtain’ not ‘dangerous to consume’
Butt then again… if you are in a position where you need to take it to stay alive…
Yeah, this^
I wasn’t even thinking about supers (or even baseline humans) getting access to top-shelf mana potions, the Terran market applications alone would be huge. Healthcare, fitness, energy drinks, etc etc. My mind went towards “what could supers get paid to stroll through a boss dungeon or murderbeast’s den and collect those rare ingredients?” Dabbler would know exactly which materials had the highest ROI for anyone who wanted some side gigs with her on their days off, and could simultaneously buy Earth a lot of bargaining power with the galactic economy/community.
you mean like taking orders to grab a basilisk for a ornamental garden statue business?
Well, yeah, why wouldn’t she think having a few more of those potions on hand would be a good idea? Helping Dabbler resupply would be a perfectly defensible training exercise for the team.
Didn’t Senaca already have “tiny, ravenous anime girl” levels of calorie intake?
This would actually be a great time for her to hit the gym, as the chief limit on the benefits of exercise is recovery time, and she’s got a recovery time of zero right now.
That calorie intake was just in the sugar in all the candy she eats, but you’re right; she is usually taking in large quantities of calories normally. In this new scenario, most of those calories will be in the form of protein and fats, to replace those that went into rebuilding all her tissues. Hopefully, all this exercise she is having will help her build extra muscle mass.
Not to mention, Dabbler did it on her own before. Now she has an idea of what kinds of dangers are in each area and a large superhero team to choose fellow adventurers from to make the job as simple as possible with the lowest chance of major injuries.
We know she soloed it how?
It’s my impression she did stuff with other adventurers prior to Archon. I would guess that at least one of her last party prior to Archon is actually in Archon. (Zeph maybe?) Sure, she did a bit of soloing, but that doesn’t mean everything she did was solo. As a succubus, I’d guess she probably had a preference for companionship with at least one sapient companion irrespective of their orientation or gender and probably several.
The few flashbacks we’ve seen from Dabbler’s adventuring days show mostly just her, although there is one scene showing her fighting back to back with a partner. It’s pretty clear she and Cora (and Cora’s crew) have done some dungeon crawling together as well. So probably a mix of solo and team escapades.
In this case it’s “to whom” (although most linguists wouldn’t chide you for using “to who”). It may help to think of it like this: mentally reword the original as a response, replacing “who” or “whom” with the appropriate masculine pronoun, and if that pronoun is “him” (as in “Dangerous to him”), you use “whom”. If it were “he” instead (“Dangerous to he” — no, that doesn’t work), you’d use “who”.
Hopefully that made sense. I’m tired.
Mostly, it depends on the quantity of the recipients: singular who, plural whom
“Who” is both singular and plural, and so is “whom”. The difference is one of case rather than number, like the difference between “I” and “me”, “he” and “him”, “she” and “her”, or “they” and “them”
That is mostly incorrect. Whom is the objective case of who, not it’s plural.
its, not it’s, as it’s is only ‘it is’, and not the possessive of it.
Sorry Guesticules but that is really not it. “Who are all these people?” is correct where “Whom are all these people?” is wrong – it’s a matter of case (with some specifics), not number.
“Tiny ravenous anime girl levels of calorie intake”. This is Seneca we’re talking about, right… the one who already lives on a continuous diet of sugar…
Seneca and Rowan’s sugar addictions mean they should never, EVER be allowed to meet. That said, that happening and them hooking up is now guaranteed.
Turns out, they’ve already met; they’re cousins.
J/k, but I’ve had multiple instances of meeting a couple of people who seemed oddly similar in some fashion, only to find out that they were related. One of the most humorous was a pair of Lewises. When I first encountered the second and learned that they shared a quirk with the other Lewis I’d somewhat recently met, I commented on it.
“Probably not,” she informed me. “You’re new here, so I’m guessing you don’t know. A little ways northwest of here is a town called Lewisville. About 150 years ago, our ancestor moved in. Our family tree’s very horizontal, there are more Lewises around here than you can shake a stick at. So we’re probably slightly related, but really not close.”
I mentioned it to him when I saw him next. “Oh. No,” he said, “my family isn’t even from around here. My uncle met another Lewis he really liked, and it turned out they weren’t actually related, so they got married. They had the wedding in Lewisville, because it was where her family was from, and my parents decided they liked the area. So I’m related to almost no other Lewises here.”
That uncle, as it happened, was her father.
Uh, it kinda looks like one of the ingrediants was ‘methamphetamine’.
That’s Sydneys ADHD medication.
Sydney has Super ADHD. Only treatable with crystal Meth and a Red Bull chaser…
Or giver Powerthirst.
Ok, could somebody let me know who the girl is that currently makes Sydney look like the teacher from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off?
Seneca is one of the “Career Military” members of ARC.
As far as I recall, she’s non-powered, like Peggy, but is almost certainly at least, as the Arrowverse wiki puts it, Peak of Human Physical Condition, if not Math-level.
You may remember her such adventures as wading into combat beside Goose when ARC was repelling the first alien invasion (page 766), supervising Sydney’s sidearm certification course(page 818), and throwing Sydney off a roof when she made a Repelling/Rappelling pun(page 952.
I’d forgotten what Seneca got up to during the aggro portion of the restaurant battle.
I have no memory of what happened to Seneca…
It was not seen, only mentionned in https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1137-sitrip/
It happened offscreen. Here’s a link.
Did I miss something? Who is this character and how did we get here from the last comic?
Im thinking this is the thig that Dabbler is so freaked out about in the previous page, whatever happened to Seneca.
Nah, Dabbler was freaked out due to her sudden realization that the choker’s Aura of Xanax might, when combined with the embedded glamour and Maxima’s own personal borderline-transcendent appearance, have some unintended side-effects, and was really worried about it ruining Maxima’s night out (also, Maxima discovering there was an Aura of Xanax she was uninformed of). I’m curious if the extra health, mana, and stat boosts are something that’s innately part of the potion itself (that is, it both heals you up and gives you some buffs), or if Dabbler’s stats are so high that a “full rejuvenation potion” for her is a massive buff for someone like Seneca. Regardless, something like that would be extremely useful to have a reliable source for, if for no other reason than to minimize the risk of someone on the team getting killed.
I think it’s the sort of all purpose top end recovery potion that just tops off everything, so that if you give it to a mage, say, they not only get that ripped off arm back, they’re able to resume casting. Strictly emergency use stuff.
Not as efficient as a potion specific to the condition that needs curing, or the character class it’s used on, it’s wastefully comprehensive.
If you’re a professional adventurer and you need a super duper healing potion because all your organs just got fried, it’s probably -really useful- to also throw a +10 all stats, full mana regen and two extra health bars into the potion….assuming you can afford it.
This is not something from the discount potion bin.
It sounds much like a combination of the phoenix down + full health + 50% mana regen potions from oh so many JRPGs from the 80s and early 90s. Those potions were VERY hard to get and damned expensive! Ideal for boss fights or long missions/quests. Clearly Max is thinking “If they can be made would it be worth the effort to have her make more? Or something without the mana effect?” They don’t have that many mana users in the group so a plain old mid range health potion or a phoenix down would cover the issue WITHOUT the side effects. Like in FF7, the PD would revive a member with 10% health regen so they could use a health regen and stay in the fight, I went through SO many of those against both Ruby and Emerald Weapons! Yes, yes, there was a way around that and i found it but it’s been decades so shush :p
Seneca is mentioned here: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1137-sitrip/
Not sure she’s been previously mentioned.
And it’s clearly a “the next day” scenario since Max came back at night.
Seneca is the literal sugar-momma (as in, she eats boat-loads of the other white powder)
Believe she got into a mini-brawl with the Wizard-Crew during the Restaurant Rumble (which mostly resulted in the Crew smudging her makeup and creasing her gear, what with them being pasty mages and she a Space Marine)
The appearing characters are tagged under DaveBs comment to the commic. You can click seneca01 and get a list where she appeared.
I get that it’s supposed a time-skip, but what’s connecting the time skip? Did Maxima come back at night and this is the next day? Or did Maxima come back the next morning and Dabbler’s been prowling around, waiting all night?
We went from interviewing Maxima after her date to some sort of field exercises with a background character trying to fight Stalwart.
There wasn’t even Maxima blowing off Anvil with, “I’ve had a long night, and I promise I’ll tell you about it some time, but I’ve got to assess Senca’s recovery first thing tomorrow morning.”
Anvil, “But-”
Maxima, “And like I said. I had a LONG night.”
Cue squee faces from Anvil and Dabbler.
For a second I thought she was asking how dangerous the ingredients were, not how dangerous the source was.
That’s what I saw “dangerous-to-source” to mean, it’s dangerous to get the ingredients. I don’t think it means “dangerous to user”.
Yeah Max would for sure want to go get more of those components if it meant she could keep her team safe.
SO!
Grinding for components montage!!
Cue the adventures of Bored and Put Upon Man. and Climby Woman
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1137-sitrip/ – What Happened to Seneca
I so need that potion right now.
Hey Sydney, uh… maybe don’t wear two shirts out in the blazing sun…
That’s exactly what I was thinking! She’s obviously overheating, It’s Dallas Texas for god’s sakes! You can fry a egg on the sidewalk in the spring over there and cook a turkey in your car during the summer. Unless she is one of those girls who think 80F is too cold she is way overdressed.
She should still pour water on herself though.
They are all out on the obstacle course, could be she was working out dressed like that. Dumb, but Sydney is so self-couscous about her “lack of” certain attributes that the supers ladies have, and a track suit would be even hotter.
For some of us it’s either sleeves or an entire bottle of spf100 sunblock.
She needs two shirts to have enough SPF to not-burn from said blazing sun. Until I found some SPF100 shirts that were wicking and basically opaque, I had to wear wicking underwear under my wicking bike jersey to not get sun poisoning riding around Dallas and North Central TX. Not as bad as Utah or the Atlas Mountains where you have much less atmosphere to absorb the UV, but still bad enough.
She could probably use the atmo-sphere for air conditioning.
Stalwart just standing there like a training dummy, and yay!! A new appearance of Peggy!!!
He and Hiro are both very close to Max level of power, so having a tiny crazed but well-trained gal attack him is like having a 6 week old kitten attack your hand lol! He did, after all, just grab her leg and hold her upside down her ineffective attacks! Pay attention Sydney, you might be next! That would be funny, Sydney see’s her coming, grabs the shield orb, and continues to cool herself off while Seneca just keeps bouncing off… Would be a great way to burn off the excess energy without anything or one getting hurt/damaged.
Maxima might be asking because If she SMASHED Rowan, he might need that revive potion.
Or to give him extra power the next time they meet.
Now what happens if Seneca gets horny on this potion too?
I mean, Dabbler made it. Or can the potion double as a sex performance booster?
Add one to punchbowl at a party…
Which begs question, how safe were the punch bowls at Dabbler’s High School mixers? Did they have an alchemist their dedicated to analyze and or neutralize it every so often?
There will now be fan fic where Seneca tries to shag anyone who isn’t actually dead. The the potion wears off and hilarious results ensue.
Maybe Dabbler should get lessons on potion making from a certain Gaulish druid?!?!?
Unless ARC has a combat field medic or an EvacPortalMage, keeping life saving potions on hand is mandatory to team integrity long term.
So yes to having the team building farming by grinding Mats.
Archon is tasked with protecting US-specific interests, but making a few dungeon runs, er, “acquiring galactic-tier raw resources” (for a huge range of purposes) would easily get approved by an oversight committee. Just look how hard they went after the downed Fel ship.
The effects will “probably” wear off.
The “probably” refers to the time frame. Probably a few days, a week at the outside.
I honestly forgot this even happened. That’s how chaotic and messy the assault on the mask fortress was.
Well, technically, it was never shown, only mentioned
That’s not a “what is Dabbler planning?” look, it’s a “Hmm, that could be useful” look. It seems Max might be planning a road trip to source some potentially useful material for the various ARCs.
Road trip slash extensive training and survival
And establishing trade relations with the galactic community. Bet the Earth’s trading status and access to alien tech gets upgraded if the US suddenly starts offering unobtanium resources on the open market (after Dabbler showed them what and where to harvest).
yes! This is So Much what I was picking up from her look… :D
“Dungeon Crawl On Easy Mode” time! This could get FUN! Maxima might even laugh on the job.
For a potion that good, Maxima would probably team up with Dabbler to tank *and* DPS for several Dungeon runs.
…how do you draw and quarter tractors? They don’t have the parts!
Start with a blank canvas and a sharp pencil
Metaphorically. You just have to decide what counts as the tractor’s entrails. I would probably pick everything in the fuel path from the cylinders on . . .
With a really big plasma cutter.
build them smaller like this…
https://actionfarmtoys.com/collections/pedal-tractors-ride-ons
or if you wanna get technical
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Husqvarna-YTH1942-42-in-19-HP-Riding-Lawn-Mower/5013874587
Most of them have four wheels that one could use as stand-ins for the limbs. The challenge comes in quartering them, as most likely pulling on those wheels with enough force to get significant movement won’t split the tractor. So you have to perforate the tractor pretty thoroughly first. Some might say it’s cheating, but it won’t be satisfactorily quartered otherwise.
Pulling on a hyu-mons limbs doesn’t split them either, it simply separates them from the torso (so it’s more of a quintering than a quartering as you are left with five pieces)
How dangerous?
Well, getting some of those ingredients does require a literal trip through Hell. You have to very careful to not get detected or you will be swarmed by the various denizens of the realm. Not good. Also, most dragons don’t appreciate you hanging around waiting for it to produce some droppings that you can then extract the required enzymes.
Max one-shotted Tom the Demon, Dominus Secundus of the Something-or-Other. Between her, Achilles, Stalwart, and Hiro, they could probably stroll up to any prize in Hell and walk away with it unscathed – especially if Dabbler handled some basic magic protection. If they took some time to gather resources and map out a leveling strategy, Archon could go play adventuring party for a few months and complete most of the galactic Legendary-tier quests.
I cannot remember when that happened to her. I can’t remember seeing her after her “volcano lair” comment.
glad she’s good tho
Gotta give Stalwart credit for not doing anything after she starting biting.
I know we haven’t seen Peggy in a long while but…
Where are her tattoos?
Oh yeah, she has a whole rainbow sleeve – I knew something was off but couldn’t place it. Found a good view of Peggy’s tats here, although they’re also missing on the very next page, so this isn’t the first time.
Her tats are VERY hard to draw, so lets cut the man some slack ok? Besides, she could have used temps rather than the iffy non-military reg real ones.
Grammatically the form “who” goes with “I” and “he” and “she” and “they”; the form “whom” with “me” and “him” and “her” and “them.” You wouldn’t say “to I,” but “to me”; in parallel, it’s “to whom” rather than “to who.” Though in vernacular English “who” is routinely used in place of “whom”; if I showed a character saying “to whom” it would be a way of showing that they were either a bit old-fashioned and formal, or pedantic.
You guy now can go all out on training and sparring…we have a new sports drink. (Halo peers at label closely. Reads fine print. “May cause variable increases in libido, horniness and sexual performance. Use at own risk. Do not place in punchbowls at company party again.)
Next adventure, dabbler picks her adventuring party. Hal chosen for savvy and Jack of all skill sets. (Of course she pack rats like her character for a dungeon dive).
While she whines about needing a magic bag that’s bigger on the inside, dabbler’s muffled to stop the obvious Woof joke.
After she says maybe brown ball can do that… everyone stares at Halo expectantly.
Also who else on Magic adventure team? For every squishee your gonna need a dedicated defender…
And team must fit in the flying bubble.
Make it a classic DnD five man adventure party. Maxima is the paladin and Halo is the wizard.
That would make Dabbler the rouge, Max the Paladin/tank, Sydney the wizard, and maybe the doc as the healer? I don’t think they have a Priest/holy man super.
When did Seneca get cooked. I went back and looked at the pages she’s tagged in and not seeing it.
It was at the very end of the raid on the supers base. Text bubble mention that she got electrocuted.
Sounds like Sydney’s rubbing off on Dabbler.
“You’re getting my pants all drooly,” is the best damn line. X’D
Maxi is oh so tempted :)
I suspect Max is thinking of how much trouble it would be to make more of that potion, plus how the user is amped up after using one. It clearly saved Seneca’s life, AND made her more hyper than Sydney on 10 cups of caramel espresso after forgetting her meds, so a few of those in a field pack might help in the future. Max:”NO Sydney! You have Mr. Bubble, you don’t need that kind of boost!” “But I wanna try it!” (pouty face)
Perfect spot to drop this potion-making scene from Asterix the Gual.
I think the real concern is the probability of accidentally (read deliberately) creating magitek Juicers, á la Rifts.
Juicers do not tend to meet with good ends.