Grrl Power #1327 – Booty duty peeper creeper
You can tell an alien likes you when she installs advanced space encryption on your phone for the purpose of secure sexting. Even if she thinks of you as a himbo nitwit. Of course, her general opinion is that humans and most other races are lame, so her thinking of you as a nitwit is less a targeted insult, and more of a general racial narcissism. Which is just racism, really. It’s not like there are a lot of racists that think some race other than their own is the superior one. >cough<
I honestly couldn’t remember if I’d already shown that Sydney’s space glasses had a zoom function, but there’s no way that wouldn’t be a function of super advanced space glasses. I only question if I’ve shown it before because I vaguely remember linking this video before, showing a modern smartphone zooming way out from a windmill from a plane. I think it’s a Galaxy S22 maybe? That’s not important. What’s important is that the phone has a 10x optical zoom, and a 10x digital zoom on top of that which makes for 100x overall. The digital zoom is heavily cleaned up by some sort of algorithm, preventing it from turning into a pixely mess. My point is that space optics and space algorithms would be like 100 times better, probably.
The new vote incentive is up! (Finally.)
I’m revisiting a panel from a recent page, but I included some comic reactions and a few outfit swaps, so hopefully you all enjoy it. I also plussed up the art from the comic version a bit, though I suspect that despite the time I spent on that, not a whole lot of people would immediately notice that, so I’m gratuitously pointing it out here.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Not at all related to this page, but I think Sydney should concentrate on filling her her skill tree from the center outward. I believe it would grant her a fundamental understanding. of the orbs and also interlink the abilities of the orbs so they would function more as a gestalt than individuals. Second thing, and this goes back a ways, but it was brought up then never answered. When they were on the Alari homework and Harem was discombobulated it was assumed it was because she was cut off from her other self’s, but when they got back to Earth she said it was the opposite problem, there were too many of her. What did she mean by that?
The portal brought them forwards in time, so there was the Harem that went from the portal from now connecting to the five Harems at that point in what was, at the time, the future, so she temporarily had six bodies. Since her powers have’t advanced enough to handle six bodies yet, it caused her discombobulation.
I must have missed where they explained that. it did strike me as odd that Sydney could survive for a few months on a blasted and barren world with no water and just what snax she had in her belt.. Of course that opens up a few other questions.
What I wanna know is if Harem could’ve just teleported back to Earth…
If she hadn’t been so thoroughly discombobulated… I think so? She has a weight limit, and a knowledge requirement; but she hasn’t found a distance limit.
Unless your question is referring to space-time continuity and meeting her past self. Although, if she had been able to teleport herself back from the planet and would have chosen to make the attempt, then it stands to reason she wouldn’t have been facing extra-body discombobulation since that fifth body wouldn’t have gone back in time. Instead, she would have lost a body into the portal and it would have felt like it disappeared entirely for several weeks, then all of a sudden it would be back but on an alien planet. And she would summon it back and everyone else would jump back through the portal. And maybe if she were lucid enough she could pass a message from the future back to the past through the others?
…Yeah, I’m seeing how, ‘discombobulated, can’t do anything,’ was waaaaaay easier to write.
Harem was certainly described as having a variable distance limit dependent on her familiarity with the destination, and that she normally has to be able to see the destination. I’m less certain that her power has always been depicted as constrained in this way, however.
She can always teleport one body to another, because she can always see the destination when she’s doing that. If she has no distance limit, this should allow her to teleport from an exoplanet back to Earth.
“Several months” was objective time. Because of time dilation she spent way less than that, and most was on Cora’s space ship.
The best encryption and proxies are still undone if your Opsec is space garbage.
“Don’t let people look on your screen.” is probably “Opsec 101”.
I do hope and expect Sciona is able to deflect this by pretending and complaining she was exaggerating while sexting with her lover (6xguy himself jockingly mentioned the possibility), she is just a fit and sexy woman that looks very good thanks to the right genes, lifestyle, and a lot of work, and Sidney has no damn business reading someone’s intimate texts over their shoulder.
Narratively speaking, if Archon has to become aware of Sciona’s new identity and her renewed take-over-the-world plotting at some point, this would be the wrong way to do it. I would downright hate if Sciona is punished for letting her hair down and allowing herself to be more human with her lover, and Sydney is rewarded for being an insufferable nosy creep.
I think the intended forward path is further humanization by befriending a once-enemy
Well, I had not thought of this possibility at all, but on second thoughts, it is quite possible. Sydney is quite the avatar of friendliness that is willing and often able to befriend almost everyone, so it would make sense in general and in terms of Sciona’s humanization arc. I just hope Dave can and would make it happen, if at all, in terms that do not wreck the rest of her arc, which I am enjoying a lot, before it run its proper course.
I’d hate if premature revelation of her new identity to Archon forces her to drop her new plot, her rebuilding of her power base, her double life, and her budding relationship with 6xGuy, not to mention the possibility of a three-sided confrontatation with her golem’ sun turned independent supervillain, just for the sake of more Sydney-centered filler comedy and cheap plot, and either to be on the run again or become a second Lapha too soon. If this can be avoided, I have no objection to adding the befriending-the-enemy element to her arc, quite the contrary.
I meant golem ‘son’. Damn typos and lack of an edit function.
Deus knows. 6xguy knows. Random bar people suspect. There’s also the criminal records of her body and the others we know she’s killed. And various problems associated with just taking bodies like not speaking the host language.
Sciona is being way less clever and secretive than she thinks she is.
Arrogance and shortsightedness bit Sciona’s ass in the past big way, true, but she’s trying to be better in this incarnation.
Deus and 6xguy are going to keep their mouth shut for their own opportunistic reasons. The latter in all evidence has no issue with Sciona’s background and oddities, and thinks he won the dating lottery. Random bar people are going to think she is an oddball (her people skills, human version, are a work in progress, but her way of courtship and deal-making may well be normal for her people), maybe a ‘do not stick in crazy’ dangerous one, but as long as she is not tied to any disappearances, she is reasonably safe. She is already good enough to keep her professional facade as a CoS for a US Senator.
6xguy is alive, well, and in all likelihood speaking enthusiastically to his friends of this hot and interesting government lady he is dating. Escorpia’s background by now is a non-issue; in all evidence she managed to bury or obfuscate it well enough to pass the background checks for her current job. It seems the Senator she works for is in to her plot and knows the Alari language, so either she taught him or (more likely) she made him an Alari host. If the latter, she pulled the switch well enough to defy notice of the US government. The other Senator she made an addicted thrall of and whose daughter she recruited is nothing that cannot be treated as the equivalent of mundane corruption and cronysm ripe in Washington.
She probably got around to give a crash course in host language and background, as well as Earth culture, to any Alari follower soul of hers she gives a new body. ATM I cannot think of anyone else she has killed in her new incarnation, but serial killers often manage to avoid discovery for years; she has orders of magnitude better resources at her fingertips.
I really don’t know, perhaps even inclined to say she could get away with it for a long time, but I feel this sort of back and forth is likely to be revealing.
What about the extra resources for tracking criminals? There are mages in police forces looking for her. The scale of her crimes encourages a larger dedication of resources.
She is choosing high risk endeavors like being near a senator and playing large scale power games. At some point she likely to be near a random security sweep or caught up in something she didn’t instigate and outed as anomalous.
Well, low-probability and hardly-predictable (unless you have Batman levels of parano… err, extreme caution) events are always possible, as shown by recent events. She currently risks her cover blown because of a very nosy super with no notion of discretion that tested her telescopic vision and read her texts over her shoulder from afar.
Apart from this, however, I simply don’t see her current situation or her activities that we know of at serious risk of discovery. Nobody is looking for her: as far as Archon and the Twilight Council know, she is stranded on a dead planet far away and likely dead at the hands of the aliens that destroyed her civilization. Her crimes are very likely to go under the radar of a LE that is just beginning to integrate magic, superpowers, and super-tech in its procedures.
The Alari ghosts in her faction that she provides with new bodies (likely a few tens or hundreds total) do not register as murders or disappearances, and equate Body Snatchers-type replacements. I have reason to assume she got her act together since her arrival on Earth to provide each of them with a crash course in host language, background, and culture that is fairly effective, if herself and possibly the Senator she works for are any guide.
She is already good enough to keep a professional cover as the Chief of Staff of a prominent US Senator. The Senator is either a willing accomplice or one of the Alari in her faction, but either way his facade seemed very good to me. The other Senator she got as an addicted thrall is a case hardly distinguishable from mundane lobbying or vanilla cronysm, since he is addicted to a drug that is almost indetectable to LE. So far, we have seen her using her resources to support a project that was the US government’s idea and seems highly beneficial to the USA and to her master plan for different reasons. Hardly any reason for the US government to suspect her for this.
Deus knows about her, but so far it seems he is not going to talk for his own reasons. As it concerns her and 6xguy, it looks like a case of a government lady and a guy who works in Washington’s government/corporate circles meeting in a singles bar, having a great one-night stand, hitting it off, and starting to date and fall for each other. It motivated her to change her hair style. Nothing to see here, best wishes for the happy couple.
Admittedly I lack specific expertise in the issue, but I fail to see how a random security sweep could threaten her, her minions in the Congress, or their current activities. In all evidence, she already managed to beat background checks to get her current position, so Escorpia’s background became a non-issue.
She could hardly avoid meeting Deus in the process of developing the dungeon or him recognizing her. He is a factor beyond her control, then and now. Thankfully he seems to have no intention to interfere in her doings. She rolled the hookup dice because a girl has needs and even supervillains have use for R&R. She got a keeper with 6xguy: a hot, clever, and nice guy that is good in bed, falling for her, OK with her ways, willing to keep her secrets, and uncaring about her baggage.
sciona has no context for a government agent suddenly asking her that. so she would probably think yes her encrypted text was intercepted and go into damage control. that must be very humbling.
I do like the idea of the Alari in general becoming less… hostile… simply because of their interactions with humans. Sciona learning about things like love and friendship, Sid’s kindness to the refugees resulting in them choosing to side with her over Deus or the feuding houses that didn’t help them, stuff like that.
How do you think it would play out if the Alari found out that HALO had single handedly, well actually double handedly (orb in each hand) nuked several of the monsters responsible for destroying their homeworld?
Quite possibly they would attempt to make her one of the new leaders of the remnants of their civilization. In all evidence, they live by Might is Right, are willing to extend that to sufficiently strong and competent members of other species, and run their empire as a sum of noble Houses that were half industrialized feudalism half mob cartels. The Alari survivors that became refugees on Earth (unknown if others exists across the Universe) are reorganizing themselves in ‘House Deus’ and ‘House Sciona’. Imagine what would happen if they try to set up ‘House Scoville’.
I can just see the results if they made Scoville a Leader. “The Great Scoville just sneezed a pint of milk out through her nose! What does it mean? Are we required to filter bovine lactose substances through our sinuses now? Another 30 House members have succumbed to Capcaisin fumes in the dining area!
I can just see the results if they made Scoville a Leader. “The Great Scoville just sneezed a pint of milk out through her nose! What does it mean? Are we required to filter bovine lactose substances through our sinuses now? Another 30 House members have succumbed to Capcaisin fumes in the dining area!
what was she originally zooming in on hmm hmmm hmmmmmm
its wonderful that she actually does sincerely like the guy in her own way. Her subtle expression and light heated blush convey it.