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

War with the Reach, working for others instead of making his own thing like Grayven, obeying Batman despite being an independent hero and no longer being part of the Team, no longer thinking like a human...

 

I kinda get your other complaints(even though I disagree that those are necessarily bad things), but I really don’t get what you mean by no longer thinking like a human.

 

The Earth would have been in danger even if he never showed up.

In case you forgot the Reach showed up to Earth in the canon universe and in one timelime of said universe managed to win.

Paul may have just decreased the time it would take them to go there, but he also most likely improved things since now there's a dedicated and powerful force ready to fight them.

If he didn't go to war with them then they would have continued doing their atrocities.

By working with others he gains more allies, more resources, more knowledge, that he otherwise may not have found if he decided to be an asshole and not work with others like renegade is doing.

Batman is an experienced and highly competent man.

And I think most of the things he has told Paul to do were very useful and helpful.

Why shouldn't Paul obey him when the advice he gives is good?

Disagreeing with someone for no other reason than just to disagree isn't cool, it's just stupid.

And Paul is a member of the Team.

Did you forget that he's been on a bunch of missions with them?

He's just not that active with them now, but is still a member.

Admittedly I agree that this can be annoying.

After his enlightenment Paul has changed in some pretty significant ways, such as how he behaves.

Some of these behaviors aren't exactly something you'd see in an average human.

If I remember correctly Mandate Paul actually took a glance at Savages emotions when they were fighting and found them interesting, but decided that he wanted to kill him either way.

Before this he kinda made mention that if he was enlightened he may take a greater interest in him, but because he was not he was just repulsed by him.

 

I know that. But his thought process and axtions don’t feel that inhuman to me. An odd human, and certainly different from way I think(as far as I can tell), but it’s still understandable.

 

Ehh, I guess he's different to all of us.

Though I think he once mentioned that he was human mostly out of habit.

 

Yes, but the character from the comics looks nothing like Zoat's version.

Here's that group shot-

 

Confused Hal with John. My bad for not going back and doublechecking which GL he was talking to. Still, all Gl's are poor, poor men (or women or others or attack helicopters).

 

So... No corrections today?

 

Wait, I'm confused, the armor Dame Carol uses, is it an actual armor suit that looks like Morrowind glass armor? Or is that just how her construct armor looks when she's in a high level fight? Because, being honest, that is an ugly armor in my opinion. The Oblivion version looks better to me, or maybe I just saw a better image of it?

Another doubt is, shouldn't ablative shields be an effective defense against this anti-construct weapon? If it drains the energy out of a construct it could do it in different ways, disrupting it sounds difficult without being a different version of the crumbler technology. So I would assume it is negating the emotional spectrum energy or actually absorbing it in some way; I would think then that multiple low level shields would intercept enough shots of the weapon without costing too much energy while the Lantern works to eliminate the enemy.

Probably not something that low level or inexperienced Lanterns can do, but if the lanterns can learn to scan for the technology they can avoid confronting the fleets or ships that have the weapon. Or better yet, copy the weapon and start training the Lanterns in the ways to combat the weapon, same way all the earth Lanterns trained to fight or handle encounters the Crumbler technology. At the end of the day, I don't understand why the Illustres is worried; I understand why he could be annoyed with Hal for not being forthcoming with the info when they first talked but is not like the Illustres is sending reports of what he's doing out here in space to the Justice League, is he?

My recommendation would be to pass on info on the weapon to Dox with any recommendations and then go hunt the Free Lancers for more info on it, origin for example, and afterwards check to see if he can intercept the info of the weapon before it gets to their central command. If the last part isn't possible then just move forward, at least he's warned now and the Orange Lantern Corps didn't get surprised by the weapon in the way that weapons usually surprise, by unexpected body counts.

 

It's armour made from Zamaron crystal. I can't find a completely appropriate image to compare it to.

 

So that's what she wears as her superhero custom/"combat uniform"? Or is it kept in subspace, like the Illustres' power amor?

And just to give an idea, what's the kind of aesthetic that the armor is going for? Is it

Spoiler: Star Sapphire style sexy crystal armor:

Or

Spoiler: Zamaron type armor:

Or

Spoiler: Medieval crystal "functional" armor

 

None of those, really. Imagine if Solitaire from Jewel Lords was pink, something like that? It's armour made from plates of shapeshifting crystal, but it's clearly armour and not a bikini.

 

Thanks, that does clarify it a lot.

Spoiler: Like this but in pink?

Admittedly, that image is pretty "artistic" but it does bring the message across that the individual is completely covered in armor instead of being a robot like the other images I saw. Originally I thought she was wearing something like the second sexy version combined with the original Zamaron one since they were the ones that provided it.

Hopefully someday we can narrow down how the Illustres' power armor looks, at this point I have given up on imagining how he looks in his "superhero" custom or in the middle of combat.

 

Not sure about that feet, but something like that.

 

What would happen if Paragon tried his FEED ME trick? I forget if that's been successfully defended against (probably by Devlos's Anti-Monitor armor, but I feel like that's a whole different level than what's going on here).

If I'm understanding correctly, Paragon pulled the desires from an assortment of alien species and infused them into the Threllian clones to disorientate them. I wonder if he can do the same to the Scarab Warrior (or possibly have the Hellwraith possess it, but I doubt that would work), but I do hope those random species are okay in the long-term; maybe he plans to go back and fix them after the battle (Edit: they're other Reach-affiliated ships so that makes more sense).

Tracking the Free Lancers down and disabling them seems to be taking higher and higher priority now.

 

'built'

Goes to show that just because you don't like war you can still be a scary and dangerous mothefucker.

'blast through'

'the ships' or 'their ships'

I'm reminded of an abandoned Indigo SI fic where the author was planning to have his SI merge with the Indigo Entity and go Sun-Eater on the Reach's sun.

maybe 'step out and'

'usual'

'shoulder'

'arm-mounted'

Really hoping Paul didn't just attack a bunch of innocent people and that these people were somehow evil.

 

So he just rapid abducted a bunch of people with desires as alien as possible to the Threllians then crammed those desires into them as a form of mental chaff?

And if he can hide stabilisers to negate their fracture cannons behind normal armour that blocks their anti-construct guns they don't seem that much of a threat abnymore anyway.

 

Their -> there

 

I’m a little unclear why he cares about the free lancers anymore. They’ve already given the reach the guns, it’s not like the reach can’t reverse engineer them?

 

They may still give them other types of tech in the future.

Seeing as they somehow got their hands on a power ring their ability to get dangerous tech is very good and a very potential threat.

 

So put a bounty out for their heads and move on, he has to deal with the gigantic fucking war-shifting clusterfuck that is anti-construct guns not track down a handful of pirates

 

And when it's OL saying that, we can guess they are not playing nice. This is going to be an actual challenge for our dear Illustres, it seems. Something some people have been saying is overdue... Well, then.

Spoiler: Commentary spoilered for length

...ouch. I doubt that had a very pleasant effect on their racial psyche.

Ah, they went the 'bigger gun' route right off the bat. And then followed the Teddy Roosevelt method of diplomacy: 'Speak softly, and carry a big stick.'

That's a nastily effective layout. Hooray for guns that can fire through solid objects, eh?

They've been busy in the last two-odd weeks. Unless this was set up well before the Ring handoff.

Great. Sounds like a min-maxing DM sick of player tricks.

On the other hand, if you can pop in long enough for them to track and fire, then very quickly make an exit before the shot can hit, they'd probably do some damage to themselves... But that's on the level of Touhou-style bullet-scraping reflexes.

Yeah, not worth the effort of trying to arrange a 'Rube Goldberg'-worthy setup for minimal damage...

Unfortunately, you can't really zerg-rush with a respawn timer...

...Pray to Best Snek? Try a bigger gun? Give up and go home? Unfortunately, none of those are good options...

Besides prohibitive energy costs and painfully short range? Sure, if you want to knife-fight them with their own guns...

Again, assuming the Free lancers sold off their anti-spectrum weapon after the Yuna incident... Though if they'd sold it off beforehand, why would they not have been leaving at all speed with their money?

Ehhh... This might be a situation where Best Snek isn't the power-play option...

I assume that's another fleet? But why is he...

...I don't even...

I hope those aren't allies he's hitting up. Best bet, more of the Reach's remnant fleets...

On the upside, he's doing some crazy shit with Avarice. Hinon will be very interested to see this mission report.

And then doing what? Making each of the things he's taken... Crewmembers of the remnant fleets? ...Fight the remnant of Threllian's people?

...Or did he just speed-run the rest of the fleets so he could concentrate solely on this one? I am honestly lost here...

Huh. So, instead of enkindling their own - rather muted - desires, he dragged chunks back and forth through the Honden and shoved them into the fleet's brains? Let's hope he plans to clean things up afterwards, because I bet that just made a mess of Best Snek's place.

Oh, dear, he has company out there, doesn't he?

For a second, I thought he was throwing Constructicons out there. Now I'm disappointed.

Oof, this boy ain't playing around either. Looks like he's had plenty of time to read up on Orange Lantern tactics.

Welp, OL just jumped from easy mode to bonus-boss difficulties. This might actually be a hassle. I presume the Scarab warrior is seconded to the remnant fleet because of the anti-Spectrum weapons. So if OL's lucky, he can head off their little experiment off at the pass.

---

Did you mean 'instructions' here? Because it's an odd choice otherwise.

 

He could do that, but it's also likely that with their access to such dangerous tech an ordinary bounty hunter may not be able to do much and thus an Orange Lantern, and a powerful and experienced one at that, may be required to capture them.

Paul is an extremely powerful Lantern and has experience with various types of crazy tech.

 

Paul also has a war to win and they’re one barely above average cargo ship. Unless they’re wearing rings themselves he has more important crap to do than fire a single barrage from a NEMO battleship

 

Or their just an assortment of various evil people that aren't affiliated with the Reach.

Seeing as he wanted to confuse the species the Reach reprogrammed they probably have their own thoughts, so may not be controlled.

Or even if they were altered the few thoughts they have are different enough to work.

 

Are you seriously not paying attention to the part where these guys have access to dangerous tech and are willing to give it to the Reach?

If they are allowed to keep doing this then the Reach will probably get more and more tech.

However, if Paul stops them then the Reach lose a recourse.

The war with the Reach may take decades.

Stopping the Free Lancers may take just a few days.

Why shouldn't Paul stop them when he may be the only one that can do it and stopping them helps them with the war?

 

Because the free lancers aren’t building this tech, I have no clue where the hell they’re getting it from but they’re middlemen, or if we’re lucky they stumbled upon some ancient tech trove and decided to sell it to the highest bidder. For all we know they’ve done literally everything they can because they’ve already sold off everything they’ve found, all they’re doing now is mopping up whatever profit they have left to grab by duplicating the tech and selling it before the reach starts producing anti construct guns on their own

Don’t ignore them or anything, but Paul can take on whole fleets by himself and unless he plans to greediport to them and end this in 10 seconds this doesn’t require his skills

 

Why would them being middlemen or just finding the tech but not building it matter?

They still have the tech and are selling it.

If Paul catches them then he can figure out where they're getting it from and stop it at the source.

If he doesn't then they're free to keep selling it to the Corps' enemies.

Or other people can find the place they're getting it from, or the one making it can use other people to sell it.

And why should Paul take a risk and think that they've sold all the tech they had?

The first time he met them they had a power ring in their possession.

The second time they came up he found out they have anti-Lantern tech.

Taking a chance and hoping that they have no more tech is stupid when so far it's been shown they have tech that can do serious damage to the OLC and GLC if it continues spreading.

And this may require his skills.

As I mentioned previously, Paul is extremely powerful and has a lot of experience with unusual tech.

The Free Lancers apparently managed to get away from Jordan, a skilled Lantern, so they have experience fighting Lanterns and thus any Lantern Paul sends to get them may not be able to do the job.

 

Thank you, corrected.

Those were some of the other Reach-created fleets.

Thank you, corrected.