With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

DAT_NOOB · 2025-07-11T06:47:45+0100

Darko said:
Yeah, they don't need any Nazi robots.

At least he's smarter about this than the Renegade.

Hey Eradikara in the renegade timeline is hilarious.

Vaermina · 2025-07-11T07:08:02+0100

Ardy said:
I know we joke about his attention span, but shouldn't he at least be looking into one of the many dangling plot threads still out there instead of teaching Kara? He has the team on speed dial, it's not like this needs him personally.

Most of us aren't actually joking when we say he has the attention span of a goldfish...

And yes, he absolutely should be focusing on the many much more important things that are going on right now.

Chojin Patriarch · 2025-07-11T07:09:52+0100

Mr Zoat said:
20th July 2013
21:52 GMT

Kara looks around the arctic panorama. 24 hour sunlight, air temperature a balmy 1oC and filled with intermittent sleet. Fortunately, my armour is sealed and Kara's robes are hydrophobic.

"Am I going to be shooting at targets again?"

I see they've moved straight to some basic combat training, then. Poor weather for it, but real fights don't wait for a convenient sunny day. I suppose if she's going to be more proactive, OL wants to make sure she doesn't get blindsided again.

Between my ring and her super senses, we have no difficulty communicating with one another. I scheduled almost all of our previous sessions during dry days… Possibly an oversight on my part, but at the time she was fairly clear about not intending to get into fights.

"No, that was an exercise to help you maintain control of your abilities when under stress. This is about how to actually fight."

True, unexpected moments of heat-visioning can put a dampener of a conventional life. Especially if it activates while in close proximity to someone else's face.

"Ah-. Against you?"

"We will be sparring, but I think I'll start you off against something a little easier."

After all, he's speed-blitzed at least one entire Justice League's worth of powered foes, and can consistently take down Scarab Warriors without hassles.

I fabricate… A basic humanoid robot frame, with a kinetic belt to let it fly, and… Basic combat programming. The O.M.A.C.s were probably more intelligent, but we can work up to that. Uh… Ah. Heat-resistant armour panels but leave the joints exposed, add a low-power plasma pulse gun to the head and… Weaker crumber gauntlets to the hands. Enough to sting, not enough to actually disintegrate her.

So, barely enough to singe the dead epidermal layers of a Kryptonian. Might be useful as a depilatory and exfoliatory tool for her, if nothing else.

And activate.

"You'll be fighting this thing."

Expected lifespan if it turns uncontrollably hostile... Two seconds? No big threat.

"Did you have that in subspace?"

"No, I just built it. I'm not expecting-."

It's kind of impressive how OL just casually says stuff liek that.

She holds up her right hand in a 'stop' gesture. "Wait a moment. You can just create a robot out of nothing?"

"Not out of nothing. I need ring power, and I'm not a technologist or programmer myself so I'm mostly copying other peoples' work."

Fortunately, you do have a repository of plans for good and better quality bots.

"But you don't need raw materials or parts?"

"That reduces the cost, but no. Why?"

"There's been a few times lately where it might have been nice to have an army of robots."

And then you compare them to an actual Kryptonian and they come up a little short.

"Alright. Do you know any A.I. programmers you would trust with programming their brains with the capacity to make the complexity of judgements that they would need? Because the best I could do would be a telepresence system or making them fully intelligent in their own right. And I don't really have time to be the father of a new machine species at the moment."

Nor does Earth need that sort of hassle, useful as some might think it might be at the time. So many ethical questions, for example.

She frowns thoughtfully. "I could.. do it."

"Really? I thought you were focused on pure maths."

'Focused', yes. But kryptonians always were multi-disciplinary types.

"Yes, but I could adapt the Eradicator program-."

"Noooo."

And I can picture OL literally extending his neck like the classic meme. Just to drive home the Nope-ness.

"Okay, the name's a bit misleading, but they were really just high quality security robots."

"Which need constant oversight and direction and whose evaluation matrix makes them a bit weird about kryptonian societal norms."

And the last thing Earth needs is another alien technology running amok.

"I could change those!"

"You could, except that humans aren't a monoculture. There's no such thing as 'human cultural norms', and from what I remember about their value judgement system they need something in there in order to judge anything."

I shudder to imagine how wacky things get when they don't.

She exhales, eyes dipping as she thinks it over. "It should still be a solvable problem."

"Feel free to look into it. But this drone has basic combat programming and nothing else."

And please don't go making any functional devices without at least three separate look-overs from other people? Not just Kryptonians!

She nods. "And the dangerous parts are the hands on the face, just like the Operatives."

"It uses far less power, but you should act as if they were dangerous."

Since those are the easiest places for humans to have dangerous energy projection systems (and the hand ones can do double-duty as propulsion and manoeuvring..) I mean, sure, you could put a heavy weapon in his ass or something, but that would be silly and Japanese.

"But they're not?"

"A hit wouldn't be. If it could grab you for several minutes it would be, but I'd call it off if that was happening."

Since in a real fight it wouldn't be using low-lethality weapons.

She nods. "What should I do?"

"To start with, evade it for a minute and then destroy it." I make a stopwatch construct behind me. "I'll lecture you while you're doing that as an additional distraction."

Once she can tune him out, then he can start with the barrage of city noises. Cars, explosions, people screaming, that sort of thing.

"Right." She nods, locking her eyes on the robot.

"Activate."

Round One, FIGHT!

I release the robot and start the clock. It drops a little in the air before activating its kinetic belt, then checks its surroundings. Then it locks onto Kara and charges its plasma gun.

"Is it on easy mode?"

Presumably running on fairly simple isntructions. 'Attempt to harass target until told to stop', that sort of thing.

"You heard me say that I'm-" The robot takes a long ranged shot, with Kara effortlessly evades. "-not a programmer, right? There's an adaptive component, so it won't just-" It takes another shot which Kara evades again, and then starts flying towards her with its hands to its sides. "-keep taking long ranged shots forever. If it can't learn quickly enough, I'll make a few more and network-" Three shots in quick succession, and Kara has to actually put a little effort into dodging in the right direction to avoid all three. "-them together."

And a minute is a long time in combat, especially when super-speed is involved.

"Does it know that I only have to survive a minute?"

"Not in any meaningful sense. It will learn that you only attack after a minute, but it's not mentally complex enough to 'know' things. It doesn't have abstract reasoning."

The robot accelerates as Kara backs up. Since she has no particular reason to let it get close enough to punch her until the minute is up, it's going to have to pursue her. I might add a restriction after the first couple of bouts, but that's an intelligent thing to realise.

Perhaps a nasty trick or two once she starts expecting that...

"One thing you should always-" The robot continues making shots, and-. Ah, it's realised that it can vary the speed at which they move. It tries a trio of faster shots, but all they do is increase Kara's focus. "-do is evaluate where the danger comes from, both to yourself and others. Sometimes, it's best to keep away-" I gesture to her and the robot. "-while in other it's better -or essential- to rush down the target as quickly as possible. If you encountered this robot in the wild you'd be better off attacking it the moment you realised that its weapons weren't dangerous to you, because they are more dangerous to other people."

Basic skills she'd be taught if the Team were available. Sadly, it's still all hands on deck for their free time.

She glances at the clock behind me, then dodges a cluster of shots the robot times to bracket her at the same time. She's forced to move upwards more, but that's about all it achieved.

"What if it's not obvious?"

Then assume the answer is 'yes, it is dangerous'. Better to over-prepare and not need to than to underprepare and be found wanting.

"You can provisionally estimate it based on known factors, such as available power supply and any previous examples of weapons from the same villain. You can hold back and test it, for example by throwing things at it to see how it responds. Does it ignore things it doesn't consider threats, or dodge or deflect everything? Can it dodge? What's its peripheral vision like? And depending on what else is going on you might decide that it doesn't matter and just try to avoid getting hit."

Also, try talking to it. As OL has shown with other synthetics, they aren't always dumb attack drones.

Kara nods, watches the time run out and then fires her heat vision at the robot's neck. It melts through, head and body falling towards the arctic ground.

I catch both, and reattach them.

"Good. Again."

And he can easily add in interesting twists every one in a while.

While this is good for elementary training, sooner or later, she's going to have to deal with smarter foes. This would be a good opportunity to get the Team in on her training. And while this is a good chance for OL to take a breather, sooner or later, he's going to have to get back on the cases he had open...

Neruz · 2025-07-11T07:40:07+0100

Vaermina said:
Most of us aren't actually joking when we say he has the attention span of a goldfish...

And yes, he absolutely should be focusing on the many much more important things that are going on right now.

The downside of being powered by the Orange Light is that you do what you want to do, not necessarily what you should be doing.

Duke Long · 2025-07-11T08:26:07+0100

Mr Zoat said:
I fabricate… A basic humanoid robot frame, with a kinetic belt to let it fly, and… Basic combat programming. The O.M.A.C.s were probably more intelligent, but we can work up to that. Uh… Ah. Heat-resistant armour panels but leave the joints exposed, add a low-power plasma pulse gun to the head and… Weaker crumber gauntlets to the hands. Enough to sting, not enough to actually disintegrate her.

'crumbler'
Is there a need to make the plasma pulse gun low-power? Can he actually make one that fits on a humanoid robot and is strong enough to seriously hurt a kryptonian?

Mr Zoat said:
"Not out of nothing. I need ring power, and I'm not a technologist or programmer myself so I'm mostly copying other peoples' work."

'people's', unless he's copying the work of other peoples, which he certainly is to some extent but I doubt that's what you meant.

Mr Zoat said:
She nods. "And the dangerous parts are the hands on the face, just like the Operatives."

'and'

Mr Zoat said:
"You heard me say that I'm-" The robot takes a long ranged shot, with Kara effortlessly evades. "-not a programmer, right? There's an adaptive component, so it won't just-" It takes another shot which Kara evades again, and then starts flying towards her with its hands to its sides. "-keep taking long ranged shots forever. If it can't learn quickly enough, I'll make a few more and network-" Three shots in quick succession, and Kara has to actually put a little effort into dodging in the right direction to avoid all three. "-them together."

'which'

Mr Zoat said:
"One thing you should always-" The robot continues making shots, and-. Ah, it's realised that it can vary the speed at which they move. It tries a trio of faster shots, but all they do is increase Kara's focus. "-do is evaluate where the danger comes from, both to yourself and others. Sometimes, it's best to keep away-" I gesture to her and the robot. "-while in other it's better -or essential- to rush down the target as quickly as possible. If you encountered this robot in the wild you'd be better off attacking it the moment you realised that its weapons weren't dangerous to you, because they are more dangerous to other people."

'other situations'?

Mr Zoat · 2025-07-11T08:31:48+0100

Ardy said:
I know we joke about his attention span, but shouldn't he at least be looking into one of the many dangling plot threads still out there instead of teaching Kara? He has the team on speed dial, it's not like this needs him personally.

Because he felt guilty about her injury, and can't do much until Diana has a chat with Batman.

Duke Long said:
'crumbler'
'people's', unless he's copying the work of other peoples, which he certainly is to some extent but I doubt that's what you meant.
'and'
'which'
'other situations'?

Thank you, corrected.

Ngamer11 · 2025-07-11T09:14:17+0100

Mr Zoat said:
Because he felt guilty about her injury, and can't do much until Diana has a chat with Batman.

This feels like the Justice League's reaction to Paul killing Nabu it=s them keeping a closer eye on him rather than actually changing how they operate so that such a scenario wouldn't happen again. Now that Batman is the one who's doing something sketchy the League needed Paul's prodding to actually confront him about it. If something unfortunate were to happen to the League because of this, my sympathy for them would be a little limited.

boo600 · 2025-07-11T09:48:23+0100

Ngamer11 said:
This feels like the Justice League's reaction to Paul killing Nabu it=s them keeping a closer eye on him rather than actually changing how they operate so that such a scenario wouldn't happen again. Now that Batman is the one who's doing something sketchy the League needed Paul's prodding to actually confront him about it. If something unfortunate were to happen to the League because of this, my sympathy for them would be a little limited.

They are, ultimately, the People In Power. This isn't the Boys, so they don't want to do horrible things to those below them, and they don't really think about how they can do whatever they want… but they like the way the world is, barring things like the Anti-Life, and they have the power to avoid suffering and being forced to challenge their conclusions.

They like their tribalism, with the League being the Good Guys, and they aren't going to reestablish their emotional conclusions based on mere evidence. Frankly, they're already much better than many real-life authorities, and they're tireless champion of Righteously Punching Crime without being addicts who manufacture criminals whenever they're bored.

They could be much, much worse.

With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

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