“Striking Sparks” — Page Sixty-Five
Ever the spirit of helpfulness, Sophie takes advantage of Letoa’s momentary disconcertion to move Max’s hands into “extract” position. Thus the signal is finally sent to Strike Gate HQ, where I like to think that a furious argument was already being waged over whether to pull the obviously unmoving Max now or give him the full count in case he’s playing possum for some reason. Oh, and Sophie also sends Letoa a special signal of her own.
For the record, Letoa is not happy about any of this. It’s subtle, but you might be able to tell.
Since Letoa was born a matakite (seer) she’s also now aware of Sophie’s existence. And this… oh yeah. This has just upped the ante.
By the way, I personally liked the bottom panel of our determined Island Girl so much I requested a version minus the dialogue so I could use it as wallpaper, and Max was happy to oblige. Fits beautifully on a wide-screen monitor. In case you like the panel as much as I do, we’ve put it up as a 0+ on the site’s Gumroad page. This means you can download it for free by just shoving a 0 in the “name a fair price” box (you don’t even need to enter a credit card number) and we won’t get hit with bandwidth charges for multiple 2MB downloads (which do mount up, believe me, especially when they all happen in a short period of time.) Of course, if you are particularly awesome you can actually make a donation, which will always be appreciated. But for 0+ items, it’s not required. Good to know, right? Click the image to be taken to the page for downloading!
More below!
Bobservations
Backport
One of our readers — I believe it was RockB — once used the word “backport” in reference to the Strike Gate extraction. I don’t know if he’s the first to use it in a teleportation context (I gather it is generally a computer term meaning software adapted to be compatible with earlier operating systems) but I loved the term for our Strike Team’s purposes. So let it hereby be known that I’m stealing it right now.
For this particular backport, some thought needed to be given as to what would be staying and what would be going. Our hero and his armor were badly burned by the blast, and then skidded across the concrete and ended up impacting an air conditioner unit, leaving a scorch mark. There were also ropes.
Well, the ropes are staying, because they were part of the previous ‘port, and the power was cut. But Max and his armor and the blast gasses were all part of the subsequent teleport. Therefore he goes, and the armor goes. And since the skid marks on the concrete were mainly the soot from his scorched armor, the skid marks go too. As does most of the scorch mark on the air conditioner unit, except for the part that is the unit’s own paint blistered by the heat. So a faint trace of that remains behind.
Most of the gasses reacted with each other, so there will be a lot of soot and water vapor (condensed) and carbon dioxide going back as well. We’ll assume that the Strike Gate, backporting things like water vapor, will not feel any compunction to keep it adrift since it’s not backporting the molecules of air the droplets are dispersed in, so we’ll basically get a cascade of sooty water and carbon dioxide and melted carbon fiber and damaged human, all appearing in the machine at once.
For the sake of not driving ourselves crazy, let’s assume that the Kinetic Boost Mechanism will somehow deal with all the heat and light and pressure and other forms of energy that were dumped into the surrounding area. Kind of like a giant shock absorber.
Still gonna be messy, though. The Strike Gate chamber will probably look temporarily like a giant churning mug of Guinness Stout.
–Bob out
Oh, the good detective may be mad, but now the hunt is on, and there is nothing a warrior likes more then a challenge. She’s having the time of her life.
Love it
Aaaah. I SO want to know what she said!
Well, my Maori’s a little rusty, but… *grin*
While searching for swear words in the Maori dictionary (because that is what dictionaries are for) I found (under the word “bastard”) the example phrase “Damn the pigs of that bugger! Fetch my gun!” Which of course was awesome and perhaps something that Letoa (as a child) might have heard a relative say when the neighbor’s livestock invaded the garden. I almost used it as is, but she was already holding a pistol. So I dropped the second sentence and swapped out the word for “pigs” with the (rude) word for “testicles.” So what she is saying should be something along the lines of “Damn the balls of that bastard!”
Would be hilarious to watch their reactions as things repair themselves. I don’t Think the building can as the explosion was a reaction, but still fun to think on.
You know, Haley Starshine from Order of the Stick also gave a raspberry in the (currently) last strip … are you trying to one up OotS?
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/images/aifiwr0dso2esd02osdf0wqepsx976.png
I would love a wallpaper of the top panel. I just love Sophie’s expression.
ok! It’s now up on my gumroad for $0+. Enjoy!
https://gumroad.com/maxforward
Thanks a million!
Is it wrong that my personal preference for a wallpaper is Sophie in frame 1?
I was hoping to see more from her sooner or later and now she has gone in one scene from oddball dangling plot device to the badass new hotness at 3MM.
Max put that one up as well!
Yes! *makes fist* Me too!
The last panel surely is wallpaper-worthy but I gladly line up with those preferring the first 😀
(And in case I really used that word and blew my cover (I’m a programmer), I was totally not thinking of the computer term. Still don’t. Hrm…)
I guess the decompressed gas will go neatly back into the containers it started from? The fun part is that all the gas is now in compounds with the air, which didn’t port, so… Shouldn’t there be an energy release from tearing compounds apart (not fissile, it’s not tearing atoms apart)? Also there’s a whole lot of elemental oxygen lying around if you remove the other part of the compound.
There won’t be a mushroom cloud, but there should be one hell of a fireball (not explosion) around the evacuated building. I hope that reporter got out!
Most of the acetylene and oxygen that was transported combined with each other, and so they won’t be split apart on return; the Strike Gate doesn’t reassemble things, just pulls back the pieces. If they’re combined now, they’ll stay that way.
Any acetylene that combined with atmospheric O2 will indeed be split away, the acetylene returning and the elemental oxygen suddenly loose. However, there’s been a huge fire going on, with massive updrafts and air currents, so the oxygen will be fairly well dispersed around the outside of the building. A momentary increase in burn rate will likely not even be noticed.
There will be some free acetylene showing up in the Strike Gate, but there will also be so much water and CO2 that it likely won’t reach the proper air-fuel mix for combustion.
+1! I’m impressed you thought all this through. I completely forgot that all that gas would also teleport back.
I guess the fire gets a little hotter for a few seconds, and maybe some firecracker pops in the sky. I’m more worried about how he had 3 tanks of pressurized gas that are now suddenly not pressurized. Most of it should be relatively inert, but not breathable? It’s still going to flood the room with low-oxygen air when it comes back.
I could also be overestimating how much gas is in a pressurized tank.
Well, they did say the tanks were almost empty.
Hey Sophie is giving the international gorilla sign for “go **** yourself!”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a gorilla make that sign.
Okay, it wasn’t immediately clear to me that she was positioning his hands in order to save him but that’s pretty damn cool.
BTW. Wouldn’t all the acetylene go back with him?
Maybe once ported molecules form chemical bonds with ‘local’ matter, it can no longer be recalled.
Only one of the two tanks was acetylene. The other was oxygen. He got them off the oxyacetylene welding rig Marissa was using earlier.
Wooden Maori translation comes up with something about “the floor of the toilet by day.” Don’t you just love colloquial idioms?
Oh that one is awesome, if only for the mental picture it forms.
Russ, Google Translate gave me “Pokotiwha the platform manure pile.” No idea what Pokotiwha means.
Here’s where I got most of the info. Pokotiwha is apparently a Bad Word or a Very Bad Word, depending on the amount of emphasis. (Letoa is being quite emphatic here.)
I amused at the translation variations. I’ve already stated what I intended it to mean, but if some translation programs are coming back with something along the lines of “M*therf*ck the pile in the pit toilet!” well… y’know, that kinda works too. 🙂
Oddly enough, Pokotiwha is apparently also the name for a type of crested penguin. Probably with a different emphasis/pronunciation.
One might get the idea that the Maori were at bad terms with these penguins…
And… Thinking about it… I don’t remember but “backdrop” seems quite natural to me. Because… you wont believe it…
Ever heard of Space Patrol? A very old German TV-SF-series. Very German also. They often used the term “Rücksturz zur Erde”, literally “back-drop to earth” or better “falling back to earth”, a term which doesn’t make too much sense for a space ship, meaning “returning to earth”. It makes a lot more sense for the Strike Gate where everything is like being on a string or rubber band… But it’s not a drop, its a ‘port. 😀 So yeah!
“A local police detective attempted to arrest a dead man… but she somehow fails to bring him in! More at ten o’clock.”
LOL!
So Max now has a third female highly interested in his badly broken and bleeding body.* This would have interesting implications if they weren’t 1 dead 2 too professional to risk the meltdown 3 wanting to toss him in a cell.
*alliteration rules mightily
Yes, in anime terms – the harem grows!
I suddenly realized _Sophie_can_touch_Max_.
The term “Dead” means a lot less if you can interact with the living and communicate. In a very real sense Sophie is less ‘dead’ and more ‘out of phase’ with the living. So Max gets a hot girlfriend after all…
Yeah, that seemed a bit odd – unless she didn’t really move his body, but remote-moved the hands of his soul-image.
Touching only works while he is “dead”, I’d imagine, and she’s trying to keep him _not_ dead…
Also…Sophie left with Max.
Letoa is SO jealous right now.
I was going to make a crack about Letoa wanting him in cuffs (instead of the cell remark), but I figured she’s aggravated enough right now she might find a way to come through the screen and break my jaw.
I am thinking our “friendly” detective will have some time to try and look for poor Max. I don’t think a few days in bed is going to fix all that got broken this time. Way to take one or fifteen for the team.
you said it was subtle Leota was unhappy?
SHEESH!!!
if this is subtle… what would you consider a glaring example?
I love the tongue. The. Tongue.
“backport”? I think I would prefer “port back”, short for “teleport back”.
Hahahahaha! Love her expression in panel 1! And I love the detective’s reaction.
Isn’t anyone else creeped out by Letoa’s spirit guardian, which looks like a nautilus, having human eyes?