PS238 by Aaron Williams
Ps238: The School for Metaprodigy Children
©2006-2015 PS238 by Aaron Williams Powered by WordPress with ComicPress
©2006-2015 PS238 by Aaron Williams Powered by WordPress with ComicPress
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So 6 people, but the group is only 5. I wonder if that’s Neuronet trying something or not.
I thing Neuromnet is going to be nominated to be one of the next ones to be defeated. And he should cooperate if he know what’s good for him.
Perhaps conjurer will conjure 3 minor things for this guy to defeat.
He’ll get six?? 84, Phlogiston, Neuronet, Firedrake, Conjourer. That is five. Who am I missing?? The dwarf or himself?? I’m confused.
If Conjurer is more of a Dr. Fate Expy than Dr. Strange then he could count as two people, the host body and the helmet mind. That’s a bit predictable though, so could be one of the others is basically two beings united as one, but he may go the predictable route.
He stated he has gotten 6, but he only needs 3 more.
Honestly don’t you folks know about the villain rule? There will always be a villain that follows the hero. The villain shall let the hero solve all the puzzles and then he shall claim the prize for himself and grab it once the heroes reach the end.
In this setting either the villain was already in the egg and decide to follow them or he jumped in the egg when the rest of the group was sent in. That or the magical god like being outside sent a referee to grade them on their performance as he/she is just sitting in the background until they reach the end. So far our mind control hero has a D- with everyone else currently with a C.
No, he states that they’re the first to get that far (or so he thinks), that he only needs three, and follows that with how he’s ecstatic that he’ll actually get six right off the bat from the first batch to get to him.
You got a point there. Veles was very specific that he would only send 5 people in. And it would be rather hard to fool him.
It could be someone invisible tagged along from the first area. But otherwise Veles is propably looking over thier shoulders.
Hmmmm, so she’d have exploded in any case from making contact with his shield. It had nothing to do with Neuronet’s co-opting her.
Wrong. It had everything to do with Moronnet enslaving her. Phlo would have known better than to interact with a magic shield in that way.
Uh no, I’m right. It had nothing to do with his taking her over and sending her against the mage, her exploding was due to her powers not mixing with the mage’s magic. It’s also unsupported speculation that she’d have somehow known better than to interact with the magic shield. She could have just as easily volunteered to try to get through it if asked and had it all happen as it did here anyway. Since that would have been her in control she’d have felt more confident than being coordinated by Neuronet.
Uh, no, you’re wrong.
Saying that it would have happened anyway the moment they came into contact doesn’t absolve Neuronet in any way, shape or form of the fact that he mentally assaulted an ally, took over her will and then threw her into something that would have caused her death if it hadn’t been for the fact that you don’t actually die inside the egg.
And in regards to what might have happened if Neuronet hadn’t unilaterally taken control your speculation is at least as unsupported as Eeyore’s, possibly even more so since so far she has demonstrated a great deal more thoughtful caution than brash overconfidence.
Uh no, once again I’m right. She didn’t explode because Neuronet took control over her body and couldn’t handle her powers but because her powers didn’t react well with the mage’s magic. That has nothing to do with his controlling her as he did and would have happened whenever she made contact with the mage’s magic. While he was wrong in doing so he didn’t cause her to explode, something completely unpredictable did that, something that given it was a fairly standard super-hero battle could and likely would have happened anyway.
Seriously, wrong as Neuronet was trying to inflate things even more just doesn’t cut it.
Your rational is on par with “No, she’d have died the moment she put a gun to her own head and pulled the trigger.”
Moronnet put her in danger. He is completely at fault. Even if she would have dove in herself, once enslaved the slave master takes full responsibility of the actions committed under his power. Ignorance of repercussions is not an excuse.
nightmask, thats ridiculous. for one thing you’re assuming she couldn’t have adjusted to the resonance if somebody actually competent was in control of her body(she said her power was complicated) and would use the same tactics. for another much bigger thing personal choice is ridiculously relevant. theres a difference between choosing to sacrifice yourself and “your better” hijacking freewill and deciding for you
Had she been under her own control she wouldn’t have tried to phase through a magic forcefield. She said as much when Neuronet was forcing her to.
She said her powers were tricky and was hesitant to do so, as a hero if it had looked necessary she would have certainly volunteered to give it a try. Given it was the interaction of her powers and his magics that caused her to destabilize and explode it’s likely any contact of her with his magic would have caused the explosion.
I had everything to do with that. She is leader material. She has years (possibly a full decade) of experience with ther powers. She would not have done such a stupid mistake.
And they were far, FAR from the point where she would have tried despite the risk.
Without Neuronet, she would still be around and Rastov would still be contained eventually.
I agree they weren’t in a spot where they had to jump right to her phasing in, but just because she’s got experience and leadership skills doesn’t mean she wouldn’t have tried getting through the magical force field to get at the mage. It’s being classed a stupid mistake now courtesy of hindsight and a desire to further demonize Neuronet when no one could have predicted her interacting with the magic itself would mess up her powers and cause her to explode. Firing one of her plasma blasts to try and bring down the barrier likely would have done the same thing and nobody knew at the time that death wasn’t real and the implied threat of it from hearing how the guy had to eliminate them for his freedom makes it appear like a life-threatening situation even if they did outnumber him 5 to 1 (since the guy had Homefield advantage).
I think we’re ganging up to yell at you because it looks like Phlogiston did predict it.
First off, there’s likely to be a big difference between the interaction of powers involved in trying to phase through a shield, and the interaction of powers involved in generating a plasma bolt and hurling it at a shield – even if her powers continue to actively contain the bolt in flight, the interaction is then happening where the shield and bolt meet, rather than all over her body – so it’s likely to be more contained – and even if it is still a big bang, she’s not at ground zero for it.
Secondly, there’s a big difference (or two big differences) between doing something risky as a last resort after trying safer options, and throwing someone else into danger as your first action.
Phlogiston was trying to warn Neuronet about something, so, at the very least, he would be guilty of negligent homicide, if not outright murder…
Neuronet isn’t responsible?
She herself stated that she has questionable control of her power. I seriously doubt she is so Stupid as to risk attempting physical contact with an unknown energy form. She is Not a Ditzy Blond, far from it.
You Assume automatically that she would have done the same thing and thus Neuronet is Absolved on responsibility for the pain she suffered. Like Rastov said, its a bad memory. However, the “dying” as she was ejected probably hurt like you wouldn’t believe.
Whether or not she Might have done it doesn’t matter, the fact is he Forced Her, he removed her Right to Choose. That makes him a guy worthy of all forms of Contempt.
There is no sliding around that simple fact. He Took Away Her Choice. Period.
Yeah, that no one died was moral luck. If Neuronitwit used his power to force some random person test a landmine field and they died, it was his crime. He plainly wasn’t listening to their objections from his comments at the time. She may have warned him that it was dangerous. He didn’t know she wouldn’t die.
He did eliminate one competitor and failed to eliminate 84. This makes the open antagonists far less dangerous than someone who USES allies as minesweepers.
Have to make one correction to my comment. She said her powers are hard to control. My brain mangled that somehow (had to go back and read the whole spiel again).
Still, it doesn’t change what Neuronet did. He removed her Right to Choose How to Act.
Or Phlogiston was pregnant?
Or a group of miniature heroes,to small to been heard or seen by us, was there too and their leader was send into the egg with the others.
Someone has a pocket-hench, maybe?
Hah. A funny little theory just occurred to me:
Rastov doesn’t know how many times they’ve looped.
Because the loop resets for him.
Which probably means the whole trap resets for him.
Which in turn means…the current batch of candidates probably weren’t the first people to make it this far after all. Rastov is trapped forever because he’ll never know if the conditions for his release have been met. He’s probably paid off his “debt” centuries ago. If Conjurer can prove that to him…
I’m fairly certain that is the case. Remember, there is only ONE barrier before this point. And to get past it, all you have to do is not be searching for something protected and state your purpose as such. In however long this has been here (likely since Nodwick’s time) it’s pretty likely at least one other group or individual got this far. The “not-noticing part” likely makes it so Rastov doesn’t remember any previous loops unless he thinks hard about it (kind of like how it took 84 a while to notice that they passed the same point several times, but she noticed when she thought about it).
I think you’ve pegged it. That would fit in very nicely with Conjurer’s comment to Rastov about the trap being “greater than you think”.
That is what they are getting at here. It seems unlikely that nobody ever tried to get there before. And it would be a nice irony if even Rastov was part of the loop.
My guess is that Rastov is inside the circle of the diagram, with everybody else.
Actually, the true condition to being released could be to let people pass. After all that could mean he could pass on too.
Something he never did before, because nobody ever figured out the magic in the Conjurers level.
It would also be one of those magical trade offs that make the magic stronger I bet, like death being a memory. If death can be a memory to be erased why not his memory. Of his death maybe??
I’m thinking that this is one more trap on his part. Probably not as crude as “I prepared Exploding Runes this morning”, but rather something more hypnotic, which 84 will not be snared by because her reading comprehension isn’t that high.
“How many of these non-deaths do you have to oversee before gaining your freedom?”
“Only three!”
Called it!
Imagine.. Koschei the villain trapbuilder being _dishonest_ (*gasp*) to Rastov the villain illusionist (*wide-eyed shock*).
Julie’s learning so much about duplicity and villainy she already knows from her school pals.
Rastov going ballistic, finding out he’s been hoist on his own petard, will be one thing.
That sixth?
Now won’t that be interesting.
A stalker? One of the heroes with two components? A stowaway shrunk or merged into someone’s costume?
This is why we keep tuning in.
Notice what happens when you turn Rastov’s glammer sideways and hold it in front of Julie’s symbol?
And here’s a question I really, really need answered now. Look very closely. Julie can read the glammer. She identified “the not noticing part”.
Now, maybe Vashti is a really awesome teacher, but.. does it strike anyone else as odd that Julie, the FISS child, can see plainly what Rastov the master Illusionist missed in magical writing? Or.. at all?
I’m pretty sure the ‘not-noticing’ part is meant to include Rastov. If he could notice it, it would give him a chance of unravelling it.
Conjuror pointed out a section, and Julie had a good idea what he was looking for, since she brought it up. She doesn’t have to be able to interpret the magic herself to figure out what he’s pointing to and ask for verification.
Conjuror is still being pompous here, but at least he’s being useful. It’s an improvement.
Honestly, pomposity seems to be a bit of an occupational hazard for higher-end magic users. Virtually all of them have fairly formal speech patterns; the only ones who seem to escape it are the teen ones who the writers need to seem ‘hip’ (like Traci 13 or Nico Minoru of Teen Titans and Runaways, respectively), or the ones who are incorrigible smart***es (like Harry Dresden).
As a random aside, I don’t find Conjurer’s costume *that* bad- it wouldn’t take much to salvage it, honestly. Close the robe at the belt, give it a higher collar (or just lengthen the back of that silly helmet), and maybe flare the gloves a bit, and it would look alright, I think.
The higher collar should be both protective and flexible. The helmet should not be lengthened; if it were longer in back, it could be tipped backward and then would break his neck. Football helmets that were too long in back caused several deaths and paralysis cases.
Personally, I’d rather deal with a mage who sounds like a pompous ass than one who isn’t careful about what he’s saying and accidentally unleashes a plague of bees – or dogs – or dogs with bees in their mouths and when they bark bees come out…
Sorry – I wandered off for a moment there. If magic works, words have power, and the words of wizards doubly so, meaning that any wizard with any sense will be very careful about what they say. Harry Dresden mostly comes at it from the other direction by using non-English words for his spells…
Unless “glammer” is a D&D misspelling (like spelling lighning as “lightening”), I think you folks mean “glamour”, a spell of illusion (such as not noticing that you’re walking in circles).
Also, I think we’re not seeing the spell, but a display of the structure and/or rules of the spell. In computer terms, this would be the source code of the spell, not the compiled (“cast”) spell itself.
Oooh, that is a very apt way of putting it!
It’s nice to see that at least Conjurer gets to be competent every now and then. For all that they’re narcissistic sociopaths they wouldn’t have been in leadership positions if they weren’t at least competent at their job…
… Although Neuronet is still criminally negligent and disturbingly cavalier; I’m hoping 84 will beat that out of him at some point.
I know she’s still a kid but somebody really ought to mention to 84 that taking promises from a supervillain isn’t a great idea, even after that big intimidation roll.
“Of course I promise this is the last time I’ll attack the Baxter Building, Reed. Don’t you trust your old college roommate?”