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 backstabber.
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.
Yup, fixed it.
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.
Seconded the 24 hour rule. Also totally confirm that he probably did absolutely shatter the blade. This may have been a “shank” but that doesn’t mean a “kill” has occurred. I put quatloos on him attempting to stab her with mercury blade. She probably just got a sugar rush.
That’s what I’m expecting lol
Pretty sure she was expecting something like that and turned durability up to max, so… Yeah. Probably.
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.
And so questioning is they have a blind spot beneath them, or at their rectum equivalent becomes relevant.
Or a portal in that location.
Jusr saw ‘Rick vs The Doctor’.
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.
Yup. Max just suckered him in (and gave Dave a good opportunity to draw the clothed version of next month’s incentive)
Final Blade just stabbed an afterimage, and Max is going to play her geek card and end up behind him with her much cooler sounding named attack.
I don’t think it is even that complex. I bet she cranked armor to maximum and he did “land” the hit. That just means the sword made contact not that it penetrate and anywhere near an angry Maxima is not a safe place. Ryzyl probably pushed Max a few inches an impressive feat but not life threatening or saving.
She is probably going to turn around and wreck him.
Ixah doesn’t even have to turn around. She’s holding Manavore reverse-grip. Tanking the obvious backstab and then using super speed to stab at the location she can guarantee he’ll be at is her best chance to try and hit him.
Eh, it’s probably not penetrated her forcefield meaningfully. She might have a bruise – like getting shot through a bullet-resistant vest which catches the bullet – he’ll have a broken or hopelessly bent dagger.
inb4 the “shank” sound was him impaling himself on her blade instead, which she switched to behind herself in anticipation of a move like that…
My thoughts exactly.
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?
“Final Blade” could be a spell (implied by Dave’s commentary) with a verbal component. Or also just overconfidence like you said.
I agree that just standing there was a questionable decision, especially since it’s what got her in trouble in the first round. Maybe Nightwing and Ryzyl could just as easily hit her with a spell while she’s moving, but it would have to be more difficult to target something they couldn’t see clearly or that was 10 km away vs. someone just just standing there.
Now the question is whether the blade penetrated her suit/shield/skin and caused damage (also implied by Dave’s commentary). She definitely took bludgeoning damage in the first round (broken ribs), and before that when Vehemence broke her nose, but we’ve never seen anything get through her skin before. The closest was the bit of blood from the broken nose. Dave said the spell “always lands a backstab”, but there’s also the magic-eating sword right there.
It could be that part of the reason Max and the Brass were willing to have her enter this tournament in the first place was to see if there WAS anything that she needed to look out for aside from overwhelming power.
This sort of backstab spell/causality attack thing is exactly the sort of “technically lethal but survivable” attack that would trigger the arena failsafes, and so Max might be letting it land to see if it IS dangerous or not.
*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.
At those speeds there is also a real concern of being able to move the mirror images fast enough. Mach 2 is blisteringly fast to match speed with a conjured illusion by eyeballing it if you can’t “anchor” the illusions to the target in some way.
Pretty much – unless your brain is also capable of thinking at the equivalent of multi-Mach speeds, youd need the spell/ability to essentially be continually centered around the target regardless of their speed or location. Since they are illusions anyways there is no mass or inertia to worry about until the moment one image becomes solid and the strike lands, which is presumably instantaneous as well.
Funny thing is, if you just make an illusion real and then try to stab someone going at mach 2 and your real self doesn’t match speed, your arm isn’t moving fast enough to catch up with the stab, even if you start with the dagger in contact with their skin.
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.
Or she’s shifting the blade from hand to hand for a rotational swing, rather than spinning herself in a circle.
Granted, ending up with the blade in a reverse grip still seems odd, especially for a sword that size.
Maxima doesn’t really do illusions. While it could be an after-image, the reverse grip really doesn’t lend that option any particular credence.
With Maxi’s strength, she would be handling that sword like you would handle a butter-knife
Remember, Maxi tends to forget most things (like a tank) have weight
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.
So, is Electron Inversion anything like total protonic inversion?
If so that would be BAD!
Only question is if she had her defense or speed maxed? More likely 80% Def, 20% speed.
Can Ryzyl fly? Just wondering what would have happened if “Ixah” had floated up to $(vertical limit of the UCBA arena) for half a minute.
He only had to reveal his location within that timeframe, not actually land an attack.
And if he showed up for real (would illusions count for the timer?), she could have given him the Arianna Aneurism Special.
Please to be of noting of how Maxixah is holding her sword in panel 8
Someone got shank’d in panel 9, but it wasn’t Maxixah
If Maxima continues to spin really fast (not sure if she stopped or not), centrifugal forces are going to act on the backstabber and his blade
I could quote Casey Stengel here, but most readers are too young to get it. :)
Ha, OK coach, that is truly a Yankee man.
He was the Mets manager when he called a game, “a real cliff dweller”.
Maxima: Hmn…I actually FELT that. Surrender and give me that knife, I could use a good backscratcher.
So the PEIFSCG database must be vast if it has data for the whole galaxy.
The question is what kind of forensic traces, if any, Maxima normally leaves. Recall that the Marble Maiden was a bit of a problem because she doesn’t leave the usual hairs and skin flakes and whatnot (though only a “bit” of a problem because she provided helpful clues with her selfie habit).
That is because it isn’t her real body, any more than a drone pilot leaves DNA where it crashed. This is however Max/Ixah’s real body (speculation about illusions aside).
I’d be a little worried about magic etc. on the blade that take place when it makes contact regardless of penetration. The equivalent of the D&D “touch” attack.
It depends on how confident this guy is of always drawing blood (or equivalent) with the attack. At this level he probably has *something* to handle things like the other guy piloting an enormous robot.
Does the blade do a backstab on the pilot or on the robot body? I guess it would have to be the pilot, since magic can do “impossible” things like that.
Believe you are getting Marble Maiden and Concretia mixed up
And what if the ‘pilot’ is operating the robot remotely like a giant drone? And they not even on the planet?
Ouch.
Maxima disappears on contact. Reappears knelling behind him.
Hands form the double gun jutsu of “10,000 years of pain.”
Unseen micro-ball of her energy attack.
How high and far will he jump screaming?
And how closely will his scream resemble the “goofy Yell”?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUL5w91dzbo
Hmm. Looks bad, but I presume that as soon as the sand started swirling, Max moved all her power points into Speed and Toughness (and that she was only struck because she prioritized Toughness, and the guy was actually just fast enough to hit her.)
I foresee a crushed dominant hand and yielding like a little bitch on their knees
“If I am no king, why are you on your knees before me?”
It seems like the play for Max should have just been to hover 100 feet above the ground until Ryzl revealed himself.
My guess is this.
The special attack Final Blade is a probability manipulation attack. The strike comes from all possible angles, with any attack that would fail being a false image until one connects, at which point that attack becomes the real one.
Maxima / Ixah is arching her back. This has several implications. The strike is landing in the small of her back, which is not immediately lethal. Most probable target is either a kidney (eventually lethal without healing) or her spine (aiming for paralysis), although an upward thrust might hit a more vital organ. Even hitting a vital organ (heart or lung), while technically very lethal, would not be instantly lethal. So no matter what, Max still has time for a counterstrike.
Because Max can fly, she is not limited to standard ground-based dodges.
While SHANK is being used as a sound effect, it is not a well defined sound, such as SQUELCH. As such, it does not indicate the level of success of the action to which it relates. My prediction here is that it has, at a minimum, cut through to the gold skin. At a maximum, it may have pierced the skin enough to draw a bead of blue blood (refer to trip 262 on October 30 2014).
It is also possible, given the assumption of time/probability manipulation, that the blade ended up lodged between her cheeks, that being the only location where it could potentially *ahem* penetrate his target’s defenses. However, given the herein-assumed nature of the attack, it means the attacker did not intentionally select said location as a target point, so much as the attack itself dictated it.
This outcome would, more than any other, explain the surprised expression on Ixah’s face.
No, it only takes one to backstab, provided the blade is curved at least ninety degrees- maybe as little as sixty if you’re REALLY flexible. Just think of it as an excessively thorough backscratcher.
Actually almost any humanoid can backstab themselves with a short blade in the lower back. Getting any real power behind it requires bracing the blade’s far end against a sufficiently stable object or surface. If the blade is mounted to a stable surface, backstabbing oneself in less convenient parts of the back also becomes possible.
What if you stabbed a creature with radial symmetry?
Presuming you are asking about a backstab specifically, it depends in the number of dimensions of radial symmetry. For a cylindrical being (2d radial symmetry), the tail-end and the back would be synonymous. For a spherical being (3d radial symmetry) the question becomes more complicated. I suppose it might be possible to stab something in the past, thus stabbing it from ‘behind’ the current chronological instant, but that basically just equates to pulling the blade out without putting it in first.
Stabbing outward from the center point could also count as backstabbing a spherical being with 3D radial symmetry. Which, coincidentally, would be a second example of pulling (or in this case pushing) the blade out without putting it in first.
So which side of a starfish is the “back”? The bottom, with its feet and mouth, or the top, with its eyes and butt?
I guess the spell could throw a “404 – backside not found” error?
Though somebody suggested it might be probability manipulation: The attack comes from all directions at once. The ones that don’t hit for maximum damage are the decoys.
I was wondering if she would set her points to “superspeed to react faster” or “armor to just block the attack”.
Of course it is also possible she tried the speed and then quickly switched full armor when she didn’t connect.
The upside of him using a “infallible sneak attack” spell is that it means he isn’t sure his blade can pierce her normal armor. So there is a decent chance that “full armor” can stop it.
Gee I wonder if the next comic will be him staring in wonder because his blade as snapped? Such suspense. -_-
Maybe Dave B. has taken the “Mary Sue” complaints seriously and Maxima is really getting hurt?
Or not? We should find out Thursday.
Re: “Final Blade”
I think we have just seen Ryzyl’s ultimate move, one that has never failed him. He would have preferred not to reveal this before the final round, if at all, but Ixah just spent 28 seconds proving to Ryzyl that it was his last option.
I agree that it is a magic spell, that can be cast from a distance while Ryzyl remains concealed. It begins as an illusion, not a mass illusion effect, therefore only the target can perceive it because it only affects Maxima’s senses. Her relative position and speed are thus irrelevent, because this is a perfected assassin’s spell.
I speculate that the actual attack is magical, not a physical blade. Perhaps some kind of death magic, or mental magic like the classical D&D spell that kills if you fail to disbelieve the illusion. We may find out Thursday.
Doubt it. Mostly because the morons who use that word have no fucking idea what a Mary Sue is. Mary Sues by definition have no faults, instantly knew any powers they have, are beloved by everyone, etc. We’ve been shown Max has plenty of faults (case in point, her getting her nose broken fighting Vehemence because she decided to grandstand), had to learn about her powers gradually (and nearly killed her own brother being surprised by him), and is incredibly socially awkward when it comes to dating among other things.
“Mary Sue” is not a standin for “Character I think is badly written.” it’s a *specific* kind of badly written character, usually as a self-insert of the Author (Think r Rey in the Star Wars Sequels)
Check out Irregular at Magic High School sometime if you want a textbook Mary Sue. Main character is
>Unbeatably powerful but nobody recognizes it because his skill isn’t textbook measurable
>A child prodigy
>Liked for good reasons, disliked for bad reasons, people who dislike him are either bad or come around to like him
>Never fazed by any surprise or deception
>Doing it all to protect his sister
>Revealed eventually to be conventionally powerful too but it’s all sealed away in the name of a self-sacrifice power
He is painfully boring
Maxima is not a “Mary Sue.” The tropes that more suit her are “The Superman problem” (sometimes referred to as the Overpowered Protagonist (OP)) which DaveB has dealt with several times successfully (Vehemence, SuperMannekiller, Supermassive, Hench Wench (to an extent), and Darude). Or the God Mide Sue (different than a traditional Mary Sue). She couldnt defeat any of them on her own, and in several cases was losing. Even Sciona sort of defies this trope. She also more closely fits the “Boring Invincible Hero” trope, but like I said before, DaveB has shown this is not accurate… plus the comic itself is somewhat almost a deconstruction of superhero comics by being more realistic about strategies when concerning someone like that.
Being socially awkward is actually often an element of being. Mary Sue. The Mary Sue’s only real flaw is sonething trivial, like they are clumsy or think they’re clumsy, or they care too much, or are awkward in social situations but easily recover from that awkwardness and no lasting problems from it. But that being said, I definitely agree that Maxima is NOT a Mary Sue. For some of the reasons you mentioned. The Grandstanding and arrogance when it actually results in problems for her that she cant just power through with ease (Vehemence, Supermassive, throwing out her back when she got stomped and needing a healing potion afterwards, supermannekiller mesmerizing her, Sciona being able to escape multiple times and sort of fulfill her goal if not for the Squidwards, Dabblee being able to fight her to a standstill, , etcfleeing the Squidwards instead of just beating it up with ease, Hench Wench getting away (although that one annoyed me to no end), not being able to breach Halo’s force field, etc)
Yeah, I’m calling that a timesighting/insight-based attack, that always strikes at the right time to hit the target, regardless of speed or motion.
The problem is that against a super-speedster who is reacting AFTER the blow makes contact, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got the perfect swing. Max can see bullets and snatch them out of the air.
This guy literally cannot thrust fast enough to actually wound Max appreciably. Even if the nature of the attack punches her armor, he’s got maybe a half centimeter of thrust at best before Max moves out of the way of the attack and does whatever she wants to at superspeed.
He’s done. Pure stats overriding penetrative skill and timesighting placement.
For the record, if the blade is, in fact, lodged in a culturally-inappropriate but otherwise-harmless location, I expect to see a shot of Ixah spinning around to grab Ryzyl by the throat, knife handle yanked from his grip and still visibly extending from said location, followed by a pan-back shot of the battlefield (or the planet) explicitly to portray an absurdly-loud booming declaration of “How DARE you!?”
An alternative reaction scenario for the same conclusion would rely on Maxima cooling down enough to get vindictive rather than furious. It could be represented mostly has headshots with dialogue. Unfortunately this is less what I would expect from the Maxima we know.
Panel:
Ryzyl’s expression goes from giddy to confused.
Ixah’s expression goes from surprised to resentful.
Panel:
Ixah turns around to face Ryzyl, faces now in close proximity.
Ixah, eyes narrowed, “Reciprocation.”
Ryzyl opens one eye a bit, implying a raised eyebrow. “What?”
Panel dedicated entirely to the onomatopoeia: {Henson}
Panel:
Ryzyl, eyes wide with surprise, speech bubble shows a musical score with a single C-above-high-C note, “yield”
Why would she be vindictive? What has he done to her to warrant that reaction?
In this scenario specifically, and again this is based on my original comment, the assumption is that Maxima would be reacting to a blade that is literally shoved up her rectum (via the existing entry path, subsequent to tearing a hole in her disguise). Maxima is not GENERALLY vindictive, but she is VERY reactive regarding specific gender-related matters.
I suspect that the ‘shank’ sound is Ryzyl impaling himself on Maxima’s sword which she has held in reverse grip sticking out behind her.
Max just holds her big-ass blade pointing behind her and lets the guy impale himself on it when he goes for the backstab.
i know this is a bit late, but they were talking about and testing DNA Recovery from latent fingerprints back in 2019. I’d actually be curious if the current compulsive hand washing that so many of us do makes an appreciable dent in the amount of DNA that we leave behind When We Touch things. The suggestion at the time was to pull additional DNA from the same objects that the latent fingerprints were lifted off of.
the applicable study is here:
https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/dna-our-fingertips
So… If he didn’t just get himself stuck on Max’s sword, I’m going to guess he’s about to suffer a Team-Rocket style ring-out…
…It occurs to me, I’ve never seen anyone learn the hard way that your standard super-flying-brick typically isn’t limited to just flying forward, and that being hit by a truck suddenly doing 60mph in reverse would hurt just as much as being hit by said truck going forward…
What happens if you don’t have a back? Like if you’re amorphous or radially symmetrical.
joolja asked that already