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

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Empiricist2 said:
//I make no guarantees that anyone is in character.

Today is a fantastic day.

It's been about a week since I was transported to this Earth, because apparently Eris has no conception of what vacation time is. Not really so bad, and it's been a while since I've had this much fun fighting Earth villains. And this place could really use some help.

Anyways, I'm walking with Saitama towards his preferred training location. I could fly there, and Saitama could run there rather fast, but like I said the weather today is just beautiful and I want to enjoy it.

So, about this Earth, which I still don't know the number for. For one, the continents aren't in the normal positions, which I've never seen before. Second, everyone speaks Japanese, which is unusual but little more than a curiosity. Third, and by far the most important, everyone seems to completely lack the ability to come up with good names for things. "Metal Bat" who uses a metal bat as his only weapon. A few heroes who named themselves with variations of Tank Top in their name. The cities are all named for single letters. It's just odd.

The heroes I find mostly boring, with very few people that have some power other than variations of "strong and tough". Saitama isn't an exception, but from the recordings I've seen he's taken it to the extreme. Recordings of his fights end between frames, and each time I've registered the hit on seismic sensors. He certainly deserves more than the piddly C rank he was given, and I want to see how good he really is.

"We're here." I look around at this rather odd geological formation. There's no river, but it looks like a canyon. Flat ground, no plant life. Strange.

"Thank you for agreeing to my request for a fight today."

"Yeah, well you did promise to buy me lunch after this," he says as he walks away from me. "Is right here good?" I nod an affirmative, "So we're just having a practice bout, right? Not fighting for real?"

"Yes, that's what I have in mind. But take it seriously, as I want to see what you can really do." He doesn't seem to be taking it seriously by his stance.

Power armour appears from subspace, construct armour appearing over that. Ring, railguns and… Music.

Compliance.

I fire a single solid slug at his centre of mass, which.. he dodges. Matrix style. I form more guns as the slug impacts the far wall.

Flying up, I begin barraging him with tungsten rounds, lasers, and a destructive bolt or two. He continues to dodge, dashing around the canyon floor and leaving small craters behind as my shots miss. Briefly reviewing a slower speed recording, he looks like he's just walking fast. Right then.

I send a wide area gravity pulse at his predicted location, splashing the stone where he just was. Plasma beams lance out, scoring lines in the ground and attempting to hem him in so that I can get a direct hit in. Flashbangs launch with a faint whoop sound, hopefully blinding him for long enough to hide what I'm doing. Filaments shoot out, forming a sphere over where Saitama briefly stopped to pull his cape over his eyes. I grin savagely as he looks around, then back to me as I form more gravity pulse barrels.

Saitama's eyes widen briefly, then he dashes at the nearest wall of the sphere. The kinetic nullifier field the filaments are putting out.. really doesn't seem to slow him at all as he bursts through, and he gets away unscathed as the enclosed area is devastated.

More railguns appear along with a cold gun, and I start loading crumblers. He's running along the wall now, with a trail of unmade craters in his wake. Just a distraction really, as I lay down a field of thin ice over most of the ground around us. A few more flashbangs launched in his direction ensure that he doesn't see what I'm doing.

As soon as the ice is finished, I fire a scattering of apparently ineffectual gravity pulses just to get him off the walls. He's running down, and… Yes! He stumbled, and he's sliding without traction now! I fire a single crumbler at him as he brings his arms up to block any more flashbangs. There's a blur, and the next thing I see clearly is that there's a brand new crater where Saitama was standing, with Saitama himself slowing down from his apparent sprint a hundred metres away. What just happened? I was sure that hit him.

My eyes widen as I review the recording. The round did hit him, in the glove, and the crumble mechanism activated. But he outran it. I watch as the round consumes itself, a small portion of Saitama's glove, and suddenly he's just gone, the ground under his feet nearly evaporating from the force of his sprint.

What.

I slowly turn towards Saitama, who doesn't appear to have a care in the world, hands behind his head as he stares back at me.

Playtime's over.

Neural shock grenades appear from subspace as I form more mundane plasma detonators and a small levitating holoprojector. I continue to fire tungsten rounds, more as a distraction than anything. For the first time, Saitama does something other than dodge, and it's no less casual than his dodging. He's just swatting my supersonic rounds out of the air with one hand, like they're a particularly loud form of mosquito. Never mind the metre long gouges they're leaving in the rock behind him.

The neural shock grenades go off, to no apparent effect, as I activate the holoprojector to show an image of myself and then transition behind him. He doesn't notice as I form a gravity cage around his feet. Useful things, those. Plenty of places have super strong criminals that need to be contained, and force field projectors strong enough to hold them usually aren't very portable. The gravity cage gets around the energy requirements by not trying to compete with the criminal's strength at all, simply enclosing them in a bubble of gravity so that they can't get any leverage to apply their strength.

Saitama floats into the air, his cape looking like it's suspended in water. He turns around as I load a few plasma detonators into my railguns along with the tungsten rounds, and I smile behind my helmet. I fire all rounds simultaneously, and Saitama explodes into motion. Gagh! I'm thrown back against the canyon wall, my construct armour cracking as I hit! I catch a glimpse of my previously fired slugs hitting the wall beside me, the detonators apparently torn apart in the intense winds, as I yet again review what the hell just happened. I watch my railguns fire. I watch Saitama get into a.. swimming pose? And finally, I watch as he swims through the air away from me with such force that the backdraft slams me and my rounds against the wall fifty metres away.

Alright, one last shot.

His dodging is impeccable. I don't think I could score another hit on him like I did the first. Assuming your opponent will make the same mistake twice in a row is a rookie's mistake. So, what to do when your opponent dodges everything you throw at him? Give him something he can't dodge.

Again, I turn towards Saitama, and at least this time he has the decency to be in a stance fit for combat. Floating slowly towards him, I drop every weapon construct I have remaining and repair my construct armour. I drop to the ground, anchoring my feet to the rock, and start forming my weapon behind me. Putting my hands behind my back, I redouble my armour, expanding it out to double, triple its usual thickness. I'll need it.

Saitama looks wary, ready to sprint in any direction. Not that it will help him. My weapon finishes forming in its vacuum bubble, and I grab it in my right hand. A small white sphere, unremarkable. I toss it up and down twice, awkward in my extra thick construct armour, before gripping it. Looking up, I stare Saitama in the eyes as I underhand throw the sphere into the space between us, mentally cutting off the sensor feed from my armour.

The thing about antimatter weapons is that they're rather small. All that's really required is an energy field projector large enough to hold a few micrograms of matter in an isolated environment, the power source, and some sensors to detect when said energy field should turn off and let the antimatter annihilate itself against its container. Simple, elegant, and rather quick to make for a power ring. If I thought most people could survive the explosion, like I know Saitama can, I'd use them more. As it is, this one will make a rather large fireball at a speed even Saitama can't escape from, a bit of radiation that won't bother him, and my first real hit against him this fight.

Dodge that.

The outside world explodes as I'm buffeted by the sound and shock waves that my construct armour can't keep out fully! I'm in the darkness of my suit, lit only by an empty HUD, because even if I wanted to my ring wouldn't be able to make out anything useful for the next few seconds. As it is, I focus on keeping myself whole to pass the seconds before the blast abates.

As the world returns to normalcy, I turn my suit's sensors back on and observe the destruction I've wrought. The canyon rock all around me is red, the nearer parts of it visibly sloughing off as the heat from the blast liquefies the rock. The few trees overhanging the canyon are just gone, and no doubt the plant life up above is on fire. I dismiss my abraded construct armour and start turning my head, looking around for where Saitama went. Prrrobably not in the crater before me that's slowly filling up with lava.

"Whow, you nearly got me there. Good one."

I turn my head as much as my armour allows, and then slowly close my eyes. Of course. The one place that he could reach that he knew to be mostly safe from the explosion. Directly behind me.

As I open my eyes again, I dismiss my power armour, turn off my music and turn fully to face Saitama, my environmental shield blocking the rather considerable heat radiating off the nearby rocks. Saitama, despite standing on the lines of cool rock formed by my legs, doesn't seem to notice.

"Yeah. Nearly… Nearly hit you. Anyways, good fight. I've seen what few recordings there are of your fights, and I don't particularly want to act as your punching bag, so let's call this one in your favor."

"Great! And you promised lunch, right? Ramen?"

"Sure. Ramen."
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OL: "That doesn't seem physically possible."

Saitama: "That's exactly what Genos keeps screaming."
 
SirKaid said:
He's from the thirties, yes. He was also created by Jewish immigrants and was explicitly anti racist from the word go.
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Yet Marvel was genuinely shocked when people backlashed hard over the recon that Cap has always been a undercover Nazi.

"No, no!" They cry. "He was always a Hydra agent! They just heavily worked for and supported the nazis!"

But who runs Hydra Marvel-san?

"The...Red skull?"

And what did you state him to be?

"Siiiigh.....the ultimate nazi"

moralrelativity said:
But I thought you said he *shouldn't* keep relying on his snake? ;)
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This is bottom shaming and I won't stand for it.

SaltyWaffles said:
So, uh, what is that other Lantern doing there if she doesn't have training in resisting assimilation?
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I'm going to go out on a limb here and say...avoiding assimilation?
 
Ah this was a waste of time considering he could have ripped their orange rings off with a bit of snake help.

I guess Paul really wants a thinking military space station or something.
 
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Coda said:
I should certainly hope not. There are many better positions; it's far more awkward when standing up.
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Then you're doing it wrong. Unless its in the shower. It's not romantic people!

Well...maybe if you had a power ring....

Coda said:
Space is water, wat? ;)
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I suppose it is...if you're a flat earther....and stupid.

To the chapter.

It occurs to me that OL is still....pretty weak with his ring. I mean he is teaching and there are loads of things he should be able to do with it that he can not. To say nothing of his over all brute force power. I guess it does come down to avarice though. I wonder what it would take to make him want to get better/stronger.

Obviously the GLC vets probably wouldn't have any interest in helping. So who would that leave? Or would Paul simply have to do the whole heading off to train thing? Be interesting.
 
Mr Zoat said:
I hit Guy with a construct shove
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I'm not sure if you meant "a construct shovel," or meant that the SI hit him with some other kind of construct to shove him. I imagine shoving him out of the way was the intent, but I'm having trouble picturing what your intended appearance of this maneuver is.
 
Yeah ! I finally caught up from a few months-worth of updates.
Shoot ! I finally caught up with the updates, now I'll have to wait to read what comes next.

Anyhow, I'd say that Paul recruiting planets and giant whatnot is impressive, but doesn't top Grayven bedding hot alien sisters at the same time.
 
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tgojeff said:
Suspension of belief completely broken. Faith in humanity obliterated. ;)
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Saitama gets hit all the time. It just never does anything aside from maybe destroying parts of his clothes.
moralrelativity said:
Very cleverly constructed fight scene. Nice to see Paul get outmatched. Also, I think you meant "antimatter" in the following...
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Antimatter is still matter.
Maxx Crowley said:
It occurs to me that OL is still....pretty weak with his ring. I mean he is teaching and there are loads of things he should be able to do with it that he can not. To say nothing of his over all brute force power. I guess it does come down to avarice though. I wonder what it would take to make him want to get better/stronger.
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Part of it is that the strength of his constructs varies wildly with how motivated he is, as has been mentioned in story. He does want to stop these Berrith people, and he does want to get Ranx on his side, but not more than the Berrith want to keep their rings. If he was defending a planet against the Reach, maybe, but the stakes aren't as high here.

He also optimizes his fighting style around not relying on construct strength, at least partially because it's not consistent. It would be really hard to get good at a fighting style when the only time you can train is when you really want to kill your opponent.
Buggy said:
I feel like the gravity cage was in the right direction there. Maybe if you also surrounded it with high vacuum? He'd have to take off a glove and throw it really hard to get out, which means he'd have to get rid of one of his favorite gloves. Though, I suppose he might just be able to spit really hard to push himself out.
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He still has air in his lungs, and like I said thinking that your opponent will fall for the same thing twice is a rookie mistake.
 
Empiricist2 said:
He also optimizes his fighting style around not relying on construct strength, at least partially because it's not consistent. It would be really hard to get good at a fighting style when the only time you can train is when you really want to kill your opponent.
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While I'm not sure what sort of event would inspire such feelings inside of Paul, a construct failing when really needed perhaps, and something bad happening, but wouldn't it be possible for his strength to grow if he seriously wanted strong constructs or wanted to improve? I would think so, and no killing would be involved.

Eh...it's the Judoka in me. He's plateauing in my mind. Something I truly hate having happen to me, or see happening in my clubmates. People quit over that kind of thing.
 
Segev said:
I'm not sure if you meant "a construct shovel," or meant that the SI hit him with some other kind of construct to shove him. I imagine shoving him out of the way was the intent, but I'm having trouble picturing what your intended appearance of this maneuver is.
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A hand on a stick. The SI was glad that Jordan wasn't there to see it.
 
Mr Zoat said:
A hand on a stick. The SI was glad that Jordan wasn't there to see it.
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I actually recommend describing it. "I used a construct hand to shove Guy out of the way, glad Jordan wasn't around to see it." Or something like that. I mean, the "glad Jordan wasn't around to see it" is perfect humor for this story's style, but absolutely needs the "made a giant hand construct" to make sense.
 
Segev said:
but absolutely needs the "made a giant hand construct" to make sense.
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Dissenting opinion: since the SI usually describes his constructs in detail and makes snarky asides to himself the lack of them here emphasizes him acting without fully thinking it through and being focused enough to not let himself get distracted thinking about Hal. I also think "construct shove" is pretty clear, but that may be just me.
 
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