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

[Mr Zoat]

Either this needs to be Russian, or US needs to be italic. Depending on if he's specifically put out by a Russian or if he's comparing the situation with Atom like "That was bad enough, now Russians too".

Click to shrink...

...

US is in italic. It's literally in your quote.

 

[moralrelativity]

can't make purchase themselves

Click to shrink...

purchases?
the purchase?

 

[Flux Casey]

...

US is in italic. It's literally in your quote.

Click to shrink...

...

I have hilariously bad eyesight.

 

[FreeGod]

I gather from that for this Flash it is his general reflexes and automatically processing that gets speed up. Like a normal person can walk around without needing to think about it and maybe do many other tasks on autopilot without needing to think about it. Flash can run though a obstacle course without needing to think about any more than we would need to. He just does it faster.

Edit: No that's not right. He was able to watch Paul's screens being played on fast forward.

 

[Mr Zoat]

This sentence needs work.

Click to shrink...

It's trying to convey how quickly everything went past.

*wait instead of want.

Click to shrink...

Thank you, corrected.

purchases?
the purchase?

Click to shrink...

Thank you, corrected.

 

[Prince Charon]

Ah, the creepy one. Seriously, did they design him after watching The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari? I always got that vibe from him.

Click to shrink...

If they didn't, he could still have been indirectly inspired by that film, and yeah, he does have that sort of vibe.

 

[Sockmonkey]

I gather from that for this Flash it is his general reflexes and automatically processing that gets speed up. Like a normal person can walk around without needing to think about it and maybe do many other tasks on autopilot without needing to think about it. Flash can run though a obstacle course without needing to think about any more than we would need to. He just does it faster.

Edit: No that's not right. He was able to watch Paul's screens being played on fast forward.

Click to shrink...

AFAIK he can choose not accelerate his consciousness to the same degree as the rest of himself. That's how he's able to do things like try every possible combination of a lock without going crazy from boredom. I think that's why he can't retain stuff he reads at super speed unless he sped up his whole mind. He doesn't do it that way because then he would fully experience the hours of tedious reading.

Kaldur being decent generalist makes him good to have along in most situations where you need some extra manpower, but he's not good enough to really solo anything but regular criminals. Most of the main league were powerful or tanky enough to be soloing supervillains, prior to joining up. His best bet for improvement would be a set of orichalcum armor. The stuff is on par with Nth metal in terms of durability, and with the proper enchantments he'd be as tanky as Kon was pre-dannering. Strength and speed boosting enchantments could be added as well.

Changing colors from his base palette is really hard for Plastic Man to do, which is why whatever he morphs into is usually red. He's damn near impossible to kill though, short of chucking him into the sun. He's not made of meat, and doesn't need to breathe, which makes him immune to bioweapons and the majority of chemical ones. I don't think he even registers as a life form to most sensing equipment.

 

[Sorrow]

Plastic Man the Human Beach Ball, that just cracks me up...

 

[FreeGod]

AFAIK he can choose not accelerate his consciousness to the same degree as the rest of himself. That's how he's able to do things like try every possible combination of a lock without going crazy from boredom. I think that's why he can't retain stuff he reads at super speed unless he sped up his whole mind. He doesn't do it that way because then he would fully experience the hours of tedious reading.

Kaldur being decent generalist makes him good to have along in most situations where you need some extra manpower, but he's not good enough to really solo anything but regular criminals. Most of the main league were powerful or tanky enough to be soloing supervillains, prior to joining up. His best bet for improvement would be a set of orichalcum armor. The stuff is on par with Nth metal in terms of durability, and with the proper enchantments he'd be as tanky as Kon was pre-dannering. Strength and speed boosting enchantments could be added as well.

Changing colors from his base palette is really hard for Plastic Man to do, which is why whatever he morphs into is usually red. He's damn near impossible to kill though, short of chucking him into the sun. He's not made of meat, and doesn't need to breathe, which makes him immune to bioweapons and the majority of chemical ones. I don't think he even registers as a life form to most sensing equipment.

Click to shrink...

Flash gets to get the best of both worlds.

 

[Aeess]

Kaldur being decent generalist makes him good to have along in most situations where you need some extra manpower, but he's not good enough to really solo anything but regular criminals. Most of the main league were powerful or tanky enough to be soloing supervillains, prior to joining up. His best bet for improvement would be a set of orichalcum armor. The stuff is on par with Nth metal in terms of durability, and with the proper enchantments he'd be as tanky as Kon was pre-dannering. Strength and speed boosting enchantments could be added as well.

Click to shrink...

Kaldur does wear orichalcum armor, he uses ocean masters armor and trident, which stronly increases his magic amd perfectly defends anything except attacks against his hands.

 

[Chaoswind]

Kaldur does wear orichalcum armor, he uses ocean masters armor and trident, which stronly increases his magic amd perfectly defends anything except attacks against his hands.

Click to shrink...

Pretty sure he no longer has the trident and he stopped using the armor for some reason.

 

[Aeess]

Pretty sure he no longer has the trident and he stopped using the armor for some reason.

Click to shrink...

Zoat confirmed last year that everyone on the team kept their equipment since the SI left the Team, since he hasn't pointed out any changes on Kaldur presumably it stayed the same with him.

 

[Irked]

Russian?

Click to shrink...

No, he's stating he was already uncomfortable when they had a US military guy (Captain Atom) Join, with Red Rocket joining feeling even worse after he'd heard Jay's cold war stories.

 

[Siskulous]

And Plastic Man actually did beat an evil Flash in the comics.

Click to shrink...

Only because Flash isn't being handled realistically. Attosecond reaction times and the ability to run around the world a dozen times punching you on each pass in the time it takes a normal person to blink. Plastic Man's got nothing to counter that. No one does. The absolute best you could do against that is to be hard enough to hurt to withstand it, which would result in a stalemate. Even the cold gun thing that slows him down realistically needs to hit him before he can react to it which simply isn't going to happen given that he's established in canon to have attosecond reflexes.

Let's put that in perspective. An attosecond is 10x10-18​ seconds. 1/1 sextillionth of a second. With reaction speeds like that, combined with his established acceleration and top speed, Flash can trivially dodge lightspeed projectiles from as little as 1 meter away. You're not hitting him with anything except attacks from another high-tier speedster or an attack that he cannot see coming until it's already hit him. And you're certainly not going to hit him with a cold gun to slow him down (Zoat's go-to counter for Flash). But, again, no writer ever takes this into account. Which, really, is a good thing. Otherwise Flash would be a boring unstoppable juggernaut of a hero.

 

[Pinklestia]

The problem is that a Flash at full power is like a Superman at full power, he ends being ao overpowered is hard to make any victory he has have a meaning.

See the new Flash tv series as a perfect example of that.

 

[Siiracai The Supernal]

It would be interesting if someone on the villains side made some sort of small explosive with an extremely reflective case. Not sure if this is true, but I remember reading somewhere that Mirror Master could access the Mirror Dimension using reflective surfaces that weren't actually mirrors. Again, not sure how true that one is, but if someone did make an explosive like that and set it to go off a few seconds after they entered the Mirror Dimension...

 

[Nioz]

See the new Flash tv series as a perfect example of that.

Click to shrink...

Which one is that?

 

[PDV]

Only because Flash isn't being handled realistically. Attosecond reaction times and the ability to run around the world a dozen times punching you on each pass in the time it takes a normal person to blink. Plastic Man's got nothing to counter that. No one does. The absolute best you could do against that is to be hard enough to hurt to withstand it, which would result in a stalemate. Even the cold gun thing that slows him down realistically needs to hit him before he can react to it which simply isn't going to happen given that he's established in canon to have attosecond reflexes.
...
But, again, no writer ever takes this into account. Which, really, is a good thing. Otherwise Flash would be a boring unstoppable juggernaut of a hero.

Click to shrink...

The problem is that a Flash at full power is like a Superman at full power, he ends being ao overpowered is hard to make any victory he has have a meaning.

Click to shrink...

It's possible to do, but you have to write the whole world and plot around it. Doing the Flash justice is the raison d'etre of The Fall Of Doc Future. Flicker started life as "There is a man who moves so fast that his life is an endless gallery of statues." and an attempt to do that justice.

 

[Gilhelmi]

After all, Barry and Bruce are two of the League's best investigators. It makes sense they'd be lead on the background stuff.

Click to shrink...

I would debate that slightly. Bruce is the best investigator, no question. But Barry Allen is the 3rd best in my opinion.

Patrick O'Brian (Plastic Man) is the 2nd best by far. Flash can gather major clues faster, and is skilled enough to piece things together eventually. But Plas can find the more of the subtle clues that others can miss, his thinking is more malleable (probably due to his abilities, taught him to think differently) giving him an edge to seeing patterns sooner.

I guess this is like asking "who is the best basket ball player". The top tier are always going to be close to one-another in skills.

 

[Chojin Patriarch]

I would debate that slightly. Bruce is the best investigator, no question. But Barry Allen is the 3rd best in my opinion.

Patrick O'Brian (Plastic Man) is the 2nd best by far. Flash can gather major clues faster, and is skilled enough to piece things together eventually. But Plas can find the more of the subtle clues that others can miss, his thinking is more malleable (probably due to his abilities, taught him to think differently) giving him an edge to seeing patterns sooner.

I guess this is like asking "who is the best basket ball player". The top tier are always going to be close to one-another in skills.

Click to shrink...

Plus, How often is Plastic Man going to be asked to be involved in an investigation. That's why I said 'two of the league's best', not 'the League's two best'. I'd say Ralph 'Elongated Man' Dibny would also be top five, if he were a member. But that's not likely to happen anytime soon, in this universe at least...

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd March
20:14 GMT

In the interests of reality, most of the faux-supervillains are wearing clothes which clearly distinguish them from the semi and fully professional criminals around them. This includes the final boss, who I'm pretty sure they'll all recognise. The costumes aren't indicative for the metabots, and only roughly indicative for the techbots, but they're there and clearly mark out some on the villain side as higher priority targets.

In the interests of not being stupid, not all of them are costumed. Slade Wilson aka Deathstroke the Terminator might wear that natty blue and orange number but Constantine Drakon doesn't feel the need to try quite so hard.

With Dmitri on site they have access to KordTech's database. There shouldn't be any difference between the files I planted for this exercise and the ones which were there anyway. Even the fact that I 'brought' the technology to the company doesn't stand out. I've been doing that a lot. And because I'm sure that Batman will check, I also added a bunch of e-mails relating to the fictional project to the server. Except… I'm not quite sure how the Rocket Red armour's 'talk to technology' ability works. It's perfectly possible that it might just tell him that the files I added were added at a different time from what the server now thinks they were.

It's also possible that there's a truth compulsion spell which can affect machinery, but if they managed that I'd award points for creativity and just accept it. Dmitri doing it would just be 'using an ability everyone knows he has in a really inconvenient way'. It wouldn't ruin the wargame, but it would make the investigative portion which the research team has been so invested in less valuable. This is one of the places where the villain team actually need a win to get their preferred end result.

Not that we don't have contingencies. Ultimately, team villain can do what so many of their contemporaries do and slink off. If the Justice League thwart them but can't find them by the end of the day I'll call an end to it and… Talk about rerunning it in a couple of months.

Jordan's using what he sees through his telescope to make a construct model of the facility, and Batman's using KordTech employee files and publicity brochures to create a 3D model of the place and a register of the people likely to be there on a Saturday. The telescope was a little clever, but Jordan's revealing his limits by not creating a construct infrared sensor. He simply doesn't understand the technical components well enough to create a construct of it. That means that the Leaguers don't know how many attackers there are or what they can do. And Dmitri is filling Mr Allen in on all of the ways the Russians found to stop speedsters with mundane technology.

Inside, the mookbots pantomime coming fully alert as the metabot with enhanced senses reports that the League have arrived. Faux-explosive harnesses fitted to the hostages bleep and twinkle, each connecting to four others in other parts of the building. While that won't stop Mr Allen, it might well result in him inadvertently killing hostages. He can outrun radio triggers, but it seemed reasonable to me that the villain side might suspect that he'd struggle to do so without advanced notice to several different end points. Their mission objective here is theft, so all they need to do is delay the League members until that's done and the chance of dead hostages achieves that result nicely.

In India, there's a flash of light as the Hawks' ship is 'killed' by a cyborg monster, leaving them with a two hour wing-flight back to the nearest zeta tube. Hawkwoman and Captain Atom themselves are.. coping, picking up injuries which the GM system thinks will inhibit them further. But limiting their mobility was the main aim, and I think that Batman suspects it.

In China, xeno teams have decided not to trouble the League and are going in shooting, which… I'd complain, but that's a pretty realistic depiction of what they'd do in an actual crisis. The mook-mookbots drop pretty quickly, but the pro-mookbots are returning fire and triggering traps. Since we predicted that something like this might happen, the traps aren't 'flash, please sit the rest of the event out'. They're genuine neural shock devices that will render the attackers unconscious and paralysed for a few hours. I wonder if they'll tell the League that this happened quickly enough for it to matter.

In Japan, a superbot team manage to neutralise the alarms too quickly for the League to be alerted, and also locate and deactivate the local zeta tube so they'd struggle to respond anyway. Slightly worried that the Sivanas managed that.

In France, Diana and Dr Balewa manage to prevent an attack on a nuclear power plant by a probot team without any injuries or damage being inflicted. Diana truth-lassos them one after the other and receives everything they know. Which isn't much as they weren't 'told' why or who, but she sends it to Batman anyway and another part of the puzzle comes together.

"Batman to Flash. I think the attackers are at KordTech to get their experimental radiation shield technology."

"Are they trying to build a nuclear bomb?"

"No. There are far easier ways to get fissionable material than this."

"That wasn't meant to be reassuring, was it?"

"KordTech isn't enriching material which could be used to make a bomb, and the fuel rods used by nuclear power plants aren't high grade enough. KordTech's shield would allow people to survive high levels of radiation exposure without lead-lined suits-."

"So they want to go somewhere highly radioactive?"

Oh, well done.

"They want to allow humans or delicate equipment to go somewhere highly radioactive. Equipment they don't have time to redesign from scratch."

"Any idea where?"

Batman looks over to where Mr Hol is already looking at nuclear waste storage sites.

"We'll look into it. The hostages come first, stopping them acquiring that data or any prototypes comes second."

"Got it. Flash out."

He says something to Dmitri, who gives him the bad news that while he can identify anything on a data storage system he can't remotely erase it. Now things get interesting. Flash can sort of go invisible, but it makes it hard for him to see what's going on around him and reduces his straight line acceleration for a while. With the lives of hostages on the line that isn't an option. Guy performed his traditional macho bullying routine until Jordan learned to make filaments, but it still doesn't come naturally to him and he certainly can't infiltrate a building with them. Dmitri's armour doesn't have stealth.

Huh. It's surprising how unprofessional evildoers usually are. Plenty take hostages, but most of the time they just point guns at them or put them near a single large explosive. Two veteran superheroes and a veteran soldier and they're struggling to work out the best way to proceed.

In a police station in Fawcett City, several files are manually destroyed to cover up the disappearance of an object that's already missing.

In a police station in Central City, several objects are covertly removed from secure storage. It's not the first time that store has had something appropriated from it.

In the tunnels beneath Aberrance, a mechanical thumper starts going off and triggering all sorts of alerts. They actually start the process of preparing for the public relations effect of League members arriving before they send the notification that something untoward is happening. They do actually send it though, which is a good sign that Cranius is less bitter about our first meeting now than he was at the time.

Mr Allen moves, and a second later Jordan starts-. Oh, I didn't know he knew how to make those! A construct to disrupt electromagnetic radiation, good thinking. Mr Allen vibrates the harnesses -that was risky, but he's been doing this for a while and I'm going to assume that he checked them before risking it- off the hostages in one frantic charge and throws them into a box construct Jordan has waiting. They explode harmlessly and Mr Allen's already back inside punching mookbots out.

Dmitri decides to head for the server directly, meaning through the building's walls. Jordan sticks a construct shield around the hostages, using the map to send thick green beams through the building's corridors before the hostage-takers can 'kill' them. They fire anyway, because that's what everyone does. Mr Allen's run into one of the techbots, who's covered the floor around 'her' with a gel copied from the Trickster. He slows down the moment he touches it, having to vibrate at exactly the right frequency in order to get it off.

A metabot fires a sonic blast in his general direction and he's thrown backward, being caught in a green catching mitt as Jordan arrives and advances under the cover of a green shield. Gel shots and sonic blasts are harmlessly absorbed, and Mr Allen is back on his feet and vibrating through a wall to attack from a novel angle, running through a toilet-.

"Watcha, Flasher."

And getting charged by a translucent mirror image of himself.

 

[Ej190]

Things are heating up fast. This is definitely shaping up to be one of my favorite episodes!

 

[FreeGod]

Things are heating up fast. This is definitely shaping up to be one of my favorite episodes!

Click to shrink...

Shame that it would take more money and legal power then the entire readership could possibly muster to get this story animated.

 

[Handlewithcare]

Shame that it would take more money and legal power then the entire readership could possibly muster to get this story animated.

Click to shrink...

Or a smart AI system in a few years.

The limitations of a war game are becoming obvious, while it is still remaining a valuabke excercise.

Once again, very well written Zoat.

 

[megrisvernin]

I'm guessing the villains want to contaminate a lot of areas of the planet with radioactivity, making no go zones that with the shielding tech they can manage out of just fine. Thus giving them stable strongholds that heroes would struggle to operate in.

If you're intending to create your own petty fiefdoms, I can see the logic as an endgame. Though they might be doing this to slow down heroes while they contaminate an area to seize something else, or of course both/

 

[Chojin Patriarch]

In the interests of reality, most of the faux-supervillains are wearing clothes which clearly distinguish them from the semi and fully professional criminals around them. This includes the final boss, who I'm pretty sure they'll all recognise. The costumes aren't indicative for the metabots, and only roughly indicative for the techbots, but they're there and clearly mark out some on the villain side as higher priority targets.

In the interests of not being stupid, not all of them are costumed. Slade Wilson aka Deathstroke the Terminator might wear that natty blue and orange number but Constantine Drakon doesn't feel the need to try quite so hard.

Click to shrink...

So, colorful spandex and/or leather for the powers, plainer utility suits for the technician types, and a few plain-clothes for confusion's sake.

Spoiler: Commentary spoilered for length

With Dmitri on site they have access to KordTech's database. There shouldn't be any difference between the files I planted for this exercise and the ones which were there anyway. Even the fact that I 'brought' the technology to the company doesn't stand out. I've been doing that a lot. And because I'm sure that Batman will check, I also added a bunch of e-mails relating to the fictional project to the server. Except… I'm not quite sure how the Red Rocket armour's 'talk to technology' ability works. It's perfectly possible that it might just tell him that the files I added were added at a different time to what the server now thinks they were.

Click to shrink...

Might want to get him to study the mechanics of his gift. The difference could be significant someday down the line.

It's also possible that there's a true compulsion spell which can effect machinery, but if they managed that I'd award points for creativity and just accept it. Dmitri doing it would just be 'using an ability everyone knows he has in a really inconvenient way'. It wouldn't ruin the wargame, but it would make the investigative portion which the research team has been so invested in less valuable. This is one of the places where the villain team actually need a win to get their preferred end result.

Click to shrink...

Nice to see he's a DM willing to reward unconventional tactics.

Not that we don't have contingencies. Ultimately, team villain can do what so many of their contemporaries do and slink off. If the Justice League thwart them but can't find them by the end of the day I'll call an end to it and… Talk about rerunning it in a couple of months.

Jordan's using what he sees through his telescope to make a construct model of the facility, and Batman's using KordTech employee files and publicity brochures to create a 3D model of the place and a register of the people likely to be there on a Saturday. The telescope was a little clever, but Jordan's revealing his limits by not creating a construct infrared sensor. He simply doesn't understand the technical components well enough to create a construct of it. That means that the Leaguers don't know how many attackers there are or what they can do. And Dmitri is filling Mr Allen in on all of the ways the Russians found to stop speedsters with mundane technology.

Click to shrink...

Once again, the Greenies' limited Ring functionality bites them in the tail.

Inside, the mookbots pantomime coming fully alert as the metabot with enhanced senses reports that the League have arrived. Faux-explosive harnesses fitted to the hostages bleep and twinkle, each connecting to four others in other parts of the building. While that won't stop Mr Allen, it might well result in him inadvertently killing hostages. He can outrun radio triggers, but it seemed reasonable to me that the villain side might suspect that he'd struggle to do so without advanced notice to several different end points. Their mission objective here is theft, so all they need to do is delay the League members until that's done and the chance of dead hostages achieves that result nicely.

Click to shrink...

And also tick off the League considerably, even if it's a simulation.

In India, there's a flash of light as the Hawks' ship is 'killed' by a cyborg monster, leaving them with a two hour wing-flight back to the nearest zeta tube. Hawkwoman and Captain Atom themselves are.. coping, picking up injuries which the GM system thinks will inhibit them further. But limiting their mobility was the main aim, and I think that Batman suspects it.

Click to shrink...

Ah, the joy of traditonal Silver-age storytelling tropes: split the party to cover more ground, and stop the big guns outshining the less powerful heroes.

In China, xeno teams have decided not to trouble the League and are going in shooting, which… I'd complain, but that's a pretty realistic depiction of what they'd do in an actual crisis. The mook-mookbots drop pretty quickly, but the pro-mookbots are returning fire and triggering traps. Since we predicted that something like this might happen, the traps aren't 'flash, please sit the rest of the event out'. They're genuine neural shock devices that will render the attackers unconscious and paralysed for a few hours. I wonder if they'll tell the League that this happened quickly enough for it to matter.

Click to shrink...

He cleared the exercise with the Chinese Metahuman officials, of course? Like he did with the Relasians? At least the Chinese are getting some useful experience for their troops.

In Japan, a superbot team manage to neutralise the alarms too quickly for the League to be alerted, and also locate and deactivate the local zeta tube so they'd struggle to respond anyway. Slightly worried that the Sivanas managed that.

Click to shrink...

Probably because there're no Japanese League members, only a few locals who aren't a consideration for this exercise. And the fact the Sivanas thought to disable the Tube is worrying.

In France, Diana and Dr Balewa manage to prevent an attack on a nuclear power plant by a probot team without any injuries or damage being inflicted. Diana truth-lassos them one after the other and receives everything they know. Which isn't much as they weren't 'told' why or who, but she sends it to Batman anyway and another part of the puzzle comes together.

"Batman to Flash. I think the attackers are at KordTech to get their experimental radiation shield technology."

Click to shrink...

Ah, a vital clue. Let's see if they can follow the plot.

"Are they trying to build a nuclear bomb?"

"No. There are far easier ways to get fissionable material than this."

"That wasn't meant to be reassuring, was it?"

Click to shrink...

Anything involving nuclear material would be worrying.

"KordTech isn't enriching material which could be used to make a bomb, and the fuel rods used by nuclear power plants aren't high grade enough. KordTech's shield would allow people to survive high levels of radiation exposure without lead-lined suits-."

"So they want to go somewhere highly radioactive?"

Oh, well done.

Click to shrink...

Fascinating. I wonder where that could be?

"They want to allow humans or delicate equipment to go somewhere highly radioactive. Equipment they don't have time to redesign from scratch."

"Any idea where?"

Batman looks over to where Mr Hol is already looking at nuclear waste storage sites.

Click to shrink...

Somehow, I think they're chasing the wrong thread...

"We'll look into it. The hostages come first, stopping them acquiring that data or any prototypes comes second."

"Got it. Flash out."

He says something to Dmitri, who gives him the bad news that while he can identify anything on a data storage system he can't remotely erase it. Now things get interesting. Flash can sort of go invisible, but it makes it hard for him to see what's going on around him and reduces his straight line acceleration for a while. With the lives of hostages on the line that isn't an option. Guy performed his traditional macho bullying routine until Jordan learned to make filaments, but it still doesn't come naturally to him and he certainly can't infiltrate a building with them. Dmitri's armour doesn't have stealth.

Click to shrink...

Not the best party for this instance. Let's see how they handle it.

Huh. It's surprising how unprofessional evildoers usually are. Plenty take hostages, but most of the time they just point guns at them or put them near a single large explosive. Two veteran superheroes and a veteran soldier and they're struggling to work out the best way to proceed.

In a police station in Fawcett City, several files are manually destroyed to cover up the disappearance of an object that's already missing.

In a police station in Central City, several objects are covertly removed from secure storage. It's not the first time that store has had something appropriated from it.

Click to shrink...

Ooh, interesting side-threads. I wonder if Batman noticed? If nothing else, maybe Flash should try and get his departmnent's security looked at...

In the tunnels beneath Aberance, a mechanical thumper starts going off and triggering all sorts of alerts. They actually start the process of preparing for the public relations effect of League members arriving before they send the notification that something untoward is happening. They do actually send it though, which is a good sign that Cranius is less bitter about our first meeting now then he was at the time.

Click to shrink...

A reminder: Aberrance got messed up by a flesh titan, way back during an early episode (Aberration, starting here). The Renegade had a much better time of it.
Correctiom: 'Aberrance'

Mr Allen moves, and a second later Jordan starts-. Oh, I didn't know he knew how to make those! A construct to disrupt electromagnetic radiation, good thinking. Mr Allen vibrates the harnesses -that was risky, but he's been doing this for a while and I'm going to assume that he checked them before risking it- off the hostages in one frantic charge and throws them into a box construct Jordan has waiting. They explode harmlessly and Mr Allen's already back inside punching mookbots out.

Click to shrink...

Good to see the League can still surprise OL. Though getting the hostages out entirely would have been better, there's no way of knowing whether they're 'infected' or working with the goons...

Dmitri decides to head for the server directly, meaning through the building's walls. Jordan sticks a construct shield around the hostages, using the map to send thick green beams through the building's corridors before the hostage-takers can 'kill' them. They fire anyway, because that's what everyone does. Mr Allen's run into one of the techbots, who's covered the floor around 'her' with a gel copied from the Trickster. He slows down the moment he touches it, having to vibrate at exactly the right frequency in order to get it off.

Click to shrink...

Sneaky on both side. A techbot based on Marvel's Trapster (nee Paste-pot Pete?)

A metabot fires a sonic blast in his general direction and he's thrown backward, being caught in a green catching mitt as Jordan arrives and advances under the cover of a green shield. Gel shots and sonic blasts are harmlessly absorbed, and Mr Allen is back on his feet and vibrating through a wall to attack from a novel angle, running through a toilet-.

"Watcha, Flasher."

And getting charged by a translucent mirror image of himself.

Click to shrink...

And here's the bonus boss!

I still can't tell where the villain plot is going, or how well the League is handling it, and I love it. This is shaping up as a damn good episode.

Correction:

In the tunnels beneath Aberance, a mechanical thumper starts going off...

Click to shrink...

Correctiom: 'Aberrance'

 

[Sceptic]

I'm guessing the villains want to contaminate a lot of areas of the planet with radioactivity, making no go zones that with the shielding tech they can manage out of just fine.

Click to shrink...

Or they're planning to stake a claim to some planet or other that's otherwise a bit too radioactive. Remember, this is Paul's war game - the villains are a lot more likely than normal to actually have a somewhat rational end-game.

 

[FreeGod]

Or they're planning to stake a claim to some planet or other that's otherwise a bit too radioactive. Remember, this is Paul's war game - the villains are a lot more likely than normal to actually have a somewhat rational end-game.

Click to shrink...

Of course being villains they have to go about it in a very confrontational way.

 

[moralrelativity]

meeting now then he was at the time

Click to shrink...

then -> than

 

[Vaermina]

He simply doesn't understand the technical components well enough to create a construct of it.

Click to shrink...

Neither do you Mr has his ring AI do everything.