Little Voice 2016-11-08

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lake_wrangler
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Little Voice 2016-11-08

Post by lake_wrangler »

http://wapsisquare.com/comic/little-voice/


The emotional pain is only starting... Poor, poor Castela...

I wonder if she's figured out that little girl is Atsali, yet... She may be about to.
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AnotherFairportfan
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Re: Little Voice 2016-11-08

Post by AnotherFairportfan »

Oh.

Boy.

Tomorrow is gonna be hard.

We know Atsali opens the door, comes out ... and the next we know for sure, she's huddled in a beanbag chair with her favourite stuffie silently weeping.

And apparently she remembers NONE of this.

============

How long will Castela have to watch helplessly from when Atsali come out, sees the carnage (particularly her mother's body) freaks out and goes into shutdown in that chair ... to when the MiB get there?

I'd been sort of assuming that the MiB arrived in time to finish upl dealing with the raiders...
Last edited by AnotherFairportfan on Mon Nov 07, 2016 11:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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GlytchMeister
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Re: Little Voice 2016-11-08

Post by GlytchMeister »

...did we ever see Atsali open that door? I don't remember that happening.

I thought she was crying on the beanbag after one of the agents had to tell her something along the lines of "your Momma's gone, youngling. She won't come back." Then again, I never saw that actually happen either... So...
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Re: Little Voice 2016-11-08

Post by AnotherFairportfan »

GlytchMeister wrote:...did we ever see Atsali open that door? I don't remember that happening.

I thought she was crying on the beanbag after one of the agents had to tell her something along the lines of "your Momma's gone, youngling. She won't come back." Then again, I never saw that actually happen either... So...
As she says she needs potty she's stepping up to the door; i assume she opened it.

It's kind of the Occam's Razor assumption.

In case you're interested/didn't see it, yesterday i did a recap of both halves of what we've seen so far...
Last edited by AnotherFairportfan on Mon Nov 07, 2016 11:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Little Voice 2016-11-08

Post by FreeFlier »

AnotherFairportfan wrote:
GlytchMeister wrote:...did we ever see Atsali open that door? I don't remember that happening.

I thought she was crying on the beanbag after one of the agents had to tell her something along the lines of "your Momma's gone, youngling. She won't come back." Then again, I never saw that actually happen either... So...
As she says she needs potty she's stepping up to the door; i assume she opened it.

It's kind of the Occam's Razor assumption.
Dunno . . . I think I'd make it a little harder for a child to casually open a safe-room door.

Maybe a high latch or something.

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Re: Little Voice 2016-11-08

Post by AnotherFairportfan »

FreeFlier wrote:
AnotherFairportfan wrote:
GlytchMeister wrote:...did we ever see Atsali open that door? I don't remember that happening.

I thought she was crying on the beanbag after one of the agents had to tell her something along the lines of "your Momma's gone, youngling. She won't come back." Then again, I never saw that actually happen either... So...
As she says she needs potty she's stepping up to the door; i assume she opened it.

It's kind of the Occam's Razor assumption.
Dunno . . . I think I'd make it a little harder for a child to casually open a safe-room door.

Maybe a high latch or something.

--FreeFlier
It's not much of a safe room {Leucosia doesn't call it that; the times she refers to it as "the family room") if handgun and SMG rounds can penetrate the door/walls - as has been discussed. Also, the bad assumptions we find in even supposedly high-tech/security designs are fascinating.

As i said, i'm assuming it because it fits the so-far observed facts without need for assuming facts not yet in evidence. I'm not married to it - but by the time Cassi talks to her, Atsali has obviously had time to work herself into a state. Whether the MiB can open the safe room from outside when the Bad Guys can't becomes a question if Atsali doesn't let herself out.
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Re: Little Voice 2016-11-08

Post by AmriloJim »

I'm reading the last panel as the light coming on... realization that "A'sawi" is spoken in the third-person.
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Re: Little Voice 2016-11-08

Post by DilyV »

I'm not quite sure what the safe room is made of... it could consist of only the door (but then they could go through the walls) or the walls could be lined with armor also. I'm assuming that Paul mentioning the use of Depleted Uranium (DU) rounds was an explanation of why the rounds fired penetrated the safe room but my post in an earlier strip's comments on this discussed the possibility of that being the case as slim to none. For depleted uranium rounds to penetrate they need kinetic energy enough to allow the heavy DU core to penetrate said armor. Neither a Submachine gun such as the HK MP5 nor the pistols the assault team were using would impart anywhere near enough energy to the projectile for it to penetrate a properly armored safe room. The shell casings are just too short. Completely packing the casing with powder to impart more muzzle velocity wouldn't give you anywhere near the velocity you'd need and you'd risk blowing up the weapon. Proper armoring of a safe room like that would involve the use of 1/4" steel or alloys. With current 9mm ammo, "shooting steel" results in a shattered projectile. Even if the projectile were DU or DU Cored, it just wouldn't have the energy to do more than dent the armor. Think "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot"... they used a 20mm cannon to breach a bank vault (or was it an armory?). "A 20mm cannon with Armor Piercing Shells" the guy says... A 20mm has a casing that is about 8 to 10 inches long, the projectile is just under an inch in diameter. Armor piercing ammo tends to be a somewhat more dense alloy of steel (in the case of WWII era ammo). The analog today would be the 30mm DU rounds fired out of the GAU-8 Avenger cannon. THOSE rounds are better than a foot long and over an inch in diameter and DO have the DU penetrator projectiles... but look at the energy imparted by the powder charge behind it. The barrels are like eight to ten feet long which impart a much higher muzzle velocity allowing the DU penetrator to do its job. The short barrels and low powder charge in a pistol caliber round just wouldn't penetrate steel armor.

I feel so bad for Castela... the shock is just setting in... and now she's beginning to realize that the "little sweetie" is Atsali... and that she (Castela) just witnessed her (Atsali's) mother's death.
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Re: Little Voice 2016-11-08

Post by oldmanmickey »

We appear to be assuming that the red button seals the room which it may very well do. Does it not make a tad bit more sense that the red button is a general shit just got real send help button? I also find it a bit interesting that we are arguing over whether such and such a round could penetrate like that. I would refer you to the first predator movie when the hero fires a chain gun by hand. If i were going up against supernatural creatures i would opt for one of those even if it did break both my arms. At lest i would have a chance for them to heal using heavy firepower.
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Re: Little Voice 2016-11-08

Post by GlytchMeister »

Just had a thought. This is Wapsiverse. Maybe those guns aren't using gunpowder.

They might be using some wacked-out reverse-engineered Lanthian craziness, and the people firing said guns aren't normal people, but are instead themselves supernatural and thus capable of handling the enormous recoil.

We're in a universe where science and magic coexist... Anything goes, as long as it can sorta make sense.

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Re: Little Voice 2016-11-08

Post by AnotherFairportfan »

oldmanmickey wrote:We appear to be assuming that the red button seals the room which it may very well do. Does it not make a tad bit more sense that the red button is a general shit just got real send help button? I also find it a bit interesting that we are arguing over whether such and such a round could penetrate like that. I would refer you to the first predator movie when the hero fires a chain gun by hand. If i were going up against supernatural creatures i would opt for one of those even if it did break both my arms. At lest i would have a chance for them to heal using heavy firepower.
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Re: Little Voice 2016-11-08

Post by GlytchMeister »

AnotherFairportfan wrote:More Dakka!
never enuff dakka...
He's mister GlytchMeister, he's mister code
He's mister exploiter, he's mister ones and zeros
They call me GlytchMeister, whatever I touch
Starts to glitch in my clutch!
I'm too much!
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Re: Little Voice 2016-11-08

Post by Gyrrakavian »

Well, Pickle did describe Atsali as being "pants-wettingly terrified" of Cath leaving.
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Re: Little Voice 2016-11-08

Post by scantrontb »

GlytchMeister wrote:Just had a thought. This is Wapsiverse. Maybe those guns aren't using gunpowder.

They might be using some wacked-out reverse-engineered Lanthian craziness, and the people firing said guns aren't normal people, but are instead themselves supernatural and thus capable of handling the enormous recoil.

We're in a universe where science and magic coexist... Anything goes, as long as it can sorta make sense.

[Barbossa]The laws of physics are really more like... Guidelines.[/Barbossa]
i'd go with the reverse engineered Lanthian tech or even extremely advanced "now days" weapons tech rather than the attackers being supernaturals simply due to the fact that the Agent says that humans were the ones that killed her parents and that whole conversation with Agent Foxglove further implies that humans were responsible... nothing was said that implied ANY supernaturals were involved in ANY way.

as for the strength required, they are currently developing exoskeleton suits for the military to boost strength and endurance for carrying heavier loads, etc... and if "WE", the regular John Q. Public, know of such things, then what kind of stuff does the military already have that we DON'T know about due to it not being DEclassified yet?? when it comes to weapons tech and things like crypto, etc. the people involved are usually pretty darn good at keeping secrets a secret, so i would not be surprised if it turns out that way.
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Re: Little Voice 2016-11-08

Post by FreeFlier »

oldmanmickey wrote:We appear to be assuming that the red button seals the room which it may very well do. Does it not make a tad bit more sense that the red button is a general shit just got real send help button? I also find it a bit interesting that we are arguing over whether such and such a round could penetrate like that. I would refer you to the first predator movie when the hero fires a chain gun by hand. If i were going up against supernatural creatures i would opt for one of those even if it did break both my arms. At lest i would have a chance for them to heal using heavy firepower.
It wasn't a chain gun, it was a Microgun . . . 5.56x45mm NATO sibling of the 7.62x51mm NATO Minigun. I did the calculations years ago, and the recoil, while high, is not beyond what a large man could stand.

The button being a combined seal-and-alarm function does make sense. (I believe that that red button closing up the family room was pretty firmly established.)

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Re: Little Voice 2016-11-08

Post by jwhouk »

We're about to see what happened between Atsali asking to go potty and the MIB cleanup crew arriving on scene...

And I'm betting it involves them discovering bodies strangled to death by a thorny vine...
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Re: Little Voice 2016-11-08

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Re: Little Voice 2016-11-08

Post by sheik »

On the subject of depleted uranium rounds I can enlighten the good readers.
DU is not magic. It has about twice the density of lead and is pyrophoric, that is it will burn if raised to a high enough temperature in the presence of air.
DU is especially useful in anti-tank rounds because of the presence of on-board ammunition, however it is the superior armor penetration aspect due to its high density that is most useful.
With DU, for a given amount of propellant, the superior penetration is achieved by narrowing the round's cross-section and usually lengthening the penetrator as well, allowing the round to cut through far less armor. This means to be effective the DU penetrator is made very narrow and surrounded by a "sabot" to fill out the bore diameter.
That sabot can be either "discarding", that is it strips off just after leaving the muzzle thus leaving the penetrator to fly through the air with its small diameter alone, or "fixed", that is staying with the penetrator until it strikes the target.
The ammunition used to penetrate the safe room walls was probably the latter, since "fixed" sabot is easier to make and doesn't leave a cloud of debris to fire and see through when fired from an automatic weapon.
Also, the low velocity of SMG ammunition is probably not enough to cause the DU to ignite, thus Atsali was not trapped in a room set on fire by the raiders' burning DU ammo.
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Re: Little Voice 2016-11-08

Post by AnotherFairportfan »

In his non-Hammer's Slammers SF mercenary novel, The Forlorn Hope, David Drake postulates a shoulder weapon that is effective as anti-armor.

The guns (i think he calls them "rifles" but i'm pretty sure they're smoothbores) have barrels made of synthetic diamond, grown as a single crystal. The bore tapers; using some sort of handwavium super-propellant, they fire an osmium pellet, which is squeezed down by the bore into a dimensionally-stable ultra-high-velocity penetrator that will punch through just about anything.

One member of the regiment (who seems to be about seven-foot-six and strong for his size) can manage to fire the thing on full auto from the shoulder - but only when standing. Prone, it would break his shoulder. The regiment's best shooter, a cute blonde Buffy-type about five-foot-nothing, can manage single aimed shots which almost knock her down, but, as with lightning not striking twice in the same place, generally the same place isn't there any more.

Firing the damned things off hand sounds to me like foring a Number One Bore elephant gun or - even more, come to think - a punt gun offhand.
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Re: Little Voice 2016-11-08

Post by FreeFlier »

If memory serves, punt guns were usually about eight feet long, and didn't have actual shoulder stocks.

I want to build one someday.

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