Status
Not open for further replies.
Yeah i'm half expecting this to be a Doctor who family of blood moment at this point, where Paul goes back to normal before the time reset and China!Pauls loved ones freak out at the clearly different person wearing their friends face.
 
"No, he said we could prevent that happening by finding a sufficiently large power source to make up the energy debt." She blinks. "I don't want our history to be destroyed any more than you do."
I don't think he correctly perceives the scale being talked about here...

Every nuclear detonation which occurred on the Japanese Home Islands during the entire Imperium War has occurred again.
Well crap...

If the timeline was in trouble before this is going to push things into a full on Zero Hour event. :o
 
Last edited:
Wait, what?

Savage caused nuclear explosions to occur twice via temporal manipulation. But it's highly likely that whatever power source he used, it can produce nowhere near that much energy over a reasonable amount of time, else he'd probably just use that to make a bomb. This means that its possible to generate energy by teleporting it through time, garnering a net gain, and also that its perfectly possible to do it to a lot of energy all at once.

Or, alternatively, I suppose he might've used temporal manipulation to bring the bombs to the future just before they detonated. But since history hasn't further been altered, either there's some sort of temporal momentum effect that will catch up eventually and render his threat moot, or you can clone things with temporal manipulation fairly easily.

If either of these mean that A, you could get some very high output alternatives to a Bleed Generator, and B, you can make wildly destructive weapons with the same tech. Want to destroy a planet? Either repeatedly teleport the energy from a explosion so that it grows exponentially, or build a nuclear carpet bomb that self replicates with temporal manipulation.

Even if there are some minutia that prevent those two examples, this still opens up a whole world of opportunity.
 
Progress, of a sort. "Do you think it's worth bringing Mister Truggs here?"

"No. I've planted a remote observation device. He and Artificer will have to make do."

I nod. The alternative would be removing the anti-FTL ward, and that is legally rather tricky without a.. smoking gun. People have to meet, and the handful of us actual affected by the thing have to explain why saving a few hours is vital to the wellbeing of the planet.

I wonder if this was a big mistake on OL's part. In this chapter and the previous one, he was feeling a sense of urgency regarding travel times. The wording here is ambiguous. Would people have to meet in order for the ward to come down, or could he have taken the ward down under his own authority and merely had to explain himself afterwards? If it's the latter, then a reluctance to use his authority just cost them a lot.

Should have gone with his gut, declared that the situation was sufficiently serious that every second counted the moment he understood the scope of the temporal meddling, and ordered the ward taken down and legal explanations to come if everyone was still alive on the other side.

"Ninety-three years are all that separate the Japanese Home Islands from atomic desolation."

The ward finally wins but I'm coming around the corner of the world now, laser constructs at the ready.

"A mere ninety-three years."


Brilliant flashes of light appear in the Sea of Japan.

"To a man as old as I am, ninety three years is nothing."

The flashes, the.. mushroom clouds… I start to slow down as my growing horror starts to eclipse my single-minded drive.

Ring, is that..?

Every nuclear detonation which occurred on the Japanese Home Islands during the entire Imperium War has occurred again.

I'm not clear why Savage just re-nuked Japan. Was it in service of something, or did he just kill a bunch of people as dramatic punctuation to his speech? Sadly, either seems possible.

"My alternate self could not become Emperor. But I think you will find me a rather tougher prospect. I am at the top of Mount Fuji, and when I have slain the Heavenly Guardians the world will bow its head to me."

Vandal Savage obviously does not lack for confidence. That golden android he has backing him up must be very powerful; he couldn't hope to challenge the Guardians without some kind of ace up his sleeve.
 
Isn't this the guy who fights hand to hand in an era where knives and guns exist? And doesn't have the excuse of generally not wanting to kill his opponents? I'd nominate my cat as a smarter ruler.
Given that Savage is still around, and the people with pointy bits of metal and boomsticks tend not to be, it doesn't seem to be working out too poorly for him?

Time travel is a pretty big stick when you're the only guy with it.
"In a world without weapons, the man with one bomb is king."

I wonder if this was a big mistake on OL's part. In this chapter and the previous one, he was feeling a sense of urgency regarding travel times. The wording here is ambiguous. Would people have to meet in order for the ward to come down, or could he have taken the ward down under his own authority and merely had to explain himself afterwards? If it's the latter, then a reluctance to use his authority just cost them a lot.
It's the former; the bit about 'having to take a few hours to explain' makes it clear ('is', not 'was').

I had a gut feeling that ward was a Chekov's Gun...
 
Last edited:
Any world of opportunity that involves use of time travel is just too dangerous to explore.
Clearly not in the future, if they let a group of children superheros have time travel tech*.


*I actually know almost nothing about the legion of superheros, aside from the fact that they appear to be children and most definitely have time travel tech.
 
Last edited:
Savage caused nuclear explosions to occur twice via temporal manipulation. But it's highly likely that whatever power source he used, it can produce nowhere near that much energy over a reasonable amount of time, else he'd probably just use that to make a bomb. This means that its possible to generate energy by teleporting it through time, garnering a net gain, and also that its perfectly possible to do it to a lot of energy all at once.
Even if there are some minutia that prevent those two examples, this still opens up a whole world of opportunity.
Not necessarily. It is possible that the net gain is actually a debt that the universe will call in at some point much like how this timeline may snap back. It is also hard to judge what is a reasonable amount of time when time travel is involved. You could drop a battery with a generator somewhere and then time travel to the point where the battery is full.
 
Last edited:
It's interesting to be rooting against a Paul for once, even though it isn't our Paul. Some of the other Pauls did questionable things (anti-green lantern Paul, for example), but none of them were a threat to the main timeline Paul. This Paul seems like a decent enough dude, but he's trying to undo literally everything that's happened in the story up to this point... plus, his earth seems fundamentally worse than the other one even before this event, in that authoritarianism is extremely prevalent here... despite the fact that an oddly large number of people on this forum seem to support that.

I just hope this isn't a permanent change. It PROBABLY isn't, but I would likely stop reading if that turned out to be the case.
 
Even if the Timeline wasn't about to break down Savage has pretty much won at this point so long as he has even two braincells to rub together...
 
authoritarianism is extremely prevalent here... despite the fact that an oddly large number of people on this forum seem to support that.
I mean, is it really worse than incompetent and eternally corrupt democracy? Plus, magic is mainstream in this timeline, quality of life is almost certainly higher thanks to improved technology, and crime and genocidal villainry is doubtlessly at a all time low.
 
Wait, what?

Savage caused nuclear explosions to occur twice via temporal manipulation. But it's highly likely that whatever power source he used, it can produce nowhere near that much energy over a reasonable amount of time, else he'd probably just use that to make a bomb. This means that its possible to generate energy by teleporting it through time, garnering a net gain, and also that its perfectly possible to do it to a lot of energy all at once.

Or, alternatively, I suppose he might've used temporal manipulation to bring the bombs to the future just before they detonated. But since history hasn't further been altered, either there's some sort of temporal momentum effect that will catch up eventually and render his threat moot, or you can clone things with temporal manipulation fairly easily.

If either of these mean that A, you could get some very high output alternatives to a Bleed Generator, and B, you can make wildly destructive weapons with the same tech. Want to destroy a planet? Either repeatedly teleport the energy from a explosion so that it grows exponentially, or build a nuclear carpet bomb that self replicates with temporal manipulation.

Even if there are some minutia that prevent those two examples, this still opens up a whole world of opportunity.
I think that i remember something about most energy from nukes being wasted somehow.
 
That might just be because of how high the mushroom clouds get.

Eh? Eh?
I think you're thinking of antimatter explosions where most of it comes out as neutrinos.
No, i mean that, like, half of it gets wasted being pumped into the ground, or into making the atmosphere sort of "splash" away from, and then back toward, earth; if all that energy could be put into a portal into the future or something (and, by the way, shaping explosions with portals and space/time warping is something i don't see nearly enough of for how interesting it is) then it could easily give a impression of exploding twice.
 
No, i mean that, like, half of it gets wasted being pumped into the ground, or into making the atmosphere sort of "splash" away from, and then back toward, earth; if all that energy could be put into a portal into the future or something (and, by the way, shaping explosions with portals and space/time warping is something i don't see nearly enough of for how interesting it is) then it could easily give a impression of exploding twice.
That energy isn't necessarily wasted. Energy pumped into the ground (namely gamma radiation) is the chief cause of fallout, if you took that away you'd notice a bizarrely low amount of residual radiation from the bomb.

More-or-less no matter how seemingly wasted the energy you want to take away is, it would still have butterfly effects at the very least, and it would be very difficult to try to harvest all the energy that is "useless" unless you use something like conceptual magic to specifically target energy that humans would perceive as wasted.
 
That energy isn't necessarily wasted. Energy pumped into the ground (namely gamma radiation) is the chief cause of fallout, if you took that away you'd notice a bizarrely low amount of residual radiation from the bomb.

More-or-less no matter how seemingly wasted the energy you want to take away is, it would still have butterfly effects at the very least, and it would be very difficult to try to harvest all the energy that is "useless" unless you use something like conceptual magic to specifically target energy that humans would perceive as wasted.
Yeah, and i get that it is needed to make that effect happen, but is all of it needed to cause that effect?
 
"Your other self was my enemy, but he was his own man! He wanted to change the world! He was not a collared 'super functionary'. He was not a slave."
oh my god, this must make it into the next part.
Paul, buddy, noble sentiment there, I can certainly appreciate it, major kudos on achieving your ideal ending... but it is way out of your hands now.
Im betting if pol doesnt fix the timeline then truggs will.
I mean, is it really worse than incompetent and eternally corrupt democracy? Plus, magic is mainstream in this timeline, quality of life is almost certainly higher thanks to improved technology, and crime and genocidal villainry is doubtlessly at a all time low.
Except POL is fixing that. Hes raising the quality of life in the main universe, hes finding peaceful (and non peaceful) ways to take super villains out of the equation, and all of that while still having the power remain with the people and not letting a bunch of nearly genocidal villains essentially become dictators, and all of the other heros are nothing more than goddamn bureaucrats that kill people. I mean fuck, a fucking vampire is the leader of a damn country in this universe. A being that feeds on and kills human beings to keep itself alive is running a country (and dont point out how it said those vamp cops have to have serious self control, it said nothing about them not eating people). So yes, this timeline is worse.

also did you just forget when savage essentially said that all that remains of korea is a radioactive, barren strip of land. the main dcu is bad but there are no countries that have just been destroyed quite like that.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top