On That Note 2016-08-24

[Sideromelane]

Did she dump enough energy in to make sandstone laze? Because there might be some questions about a beam of radiation knocking out satellites from the ground if she did.

How much energy would that even take?!

Not sure that's even possible, under the circumstances. Creating a laser, in a relatively small space, requires some form of reflective cavity within which the energetically-excited gas (liquid, crystal, or plasma) is confined. Without a parallel pair of mirrors, there will be no opportunity for the photon packet to bounce back and forth, building up strength each time and then "leaking" out through one mirror in the form of a (near-)parallel beam. Even tiny semiconductor lasers (e.g. CD and DVD-player laser diodes) have two polished parallel surfaces to create the necessary back-and-forth.

You can generate some amount of coherent energy in an open "cloud" of plasma (e.g. a natural maser) but it won't beam - it will tend to radiate outwards in all directions and will be subject to the inverse-square law.

So, a sensitive satellite might have detected a flash from Castela's vaporization of the rock (assuming that the "mini World Grid" containment field didn't block the light pulse), but I doubt very much as if there would have been enough energy hitting the satellite to even "blind" a highly-sensitive sensor for a moment, let alone knocking out the whole satellite.

Now, if she were to pick up a laser tube (with mirrors, intended to be pulsed via a flashtube) and then ZOT its innards like she did the rock... it might be able to emit quite an impressive laser pulse. Dunno if the laser would survive for more than one use, though. If she blew apart a chunk of sandstone so easily, a fused-quartz tube and/or ruby crystal might not hold together for more than a millisecond.

I was thinking along the lines of 'bomb pumped' but I see what you mean.

[oldmanmickey]

1. The Pickle was not even trying hard. So that would probably be no where close to her max power.
2. We have no idea exactly what happened to the chunk of rock. Anything from it was vaporized to it was converted to pure energy to it was teleported to who knows where or anything in between.
3. The reason i think that Bud went semi tilt is she is visualizing exactly what a pissed off Pickle could do just based on what she has seen so far.
4. I had a flash back to thought of Phix chewing Monica and Shelly for showing off and talking about those that did not have the power they have. I first thought of that cute little plant girl they had showed. Surprise!!! Bud might want to bring in Phix and maybe a few others because it seems the Blackthorn weaponization program exceeded all expectations.

[Drakkenmensch]

Pickle is a grass type, so it's not surprising she'd know how to use Solar Beam!

Apparently, it's super effective against rocks.