Schlock Mercenary

I feel LOTA might disapprove.

edited 7th Feb '18 1:09:31 AM by 3of4

@3624 ... Damn, that is a pretty reasonable assessment. It still requires a bit more coincidence than I'd like... even with godlike knowledge on the level of Petey, it seems a stretch to assume that mysterious entity's use of the long gun would have involved Petey, Chinook, and others like that. But I can forgive a bit of Contrived Coincidence in service of a good Xanatos Gambit.

@3625 That may, in fact, be the direction Chinook is drifting towards.

The dangers of gardening.

Remembering that "godlike" is not actually the same as "actually a god." Because a god would have seen that coming.

Yeah, he really should've prepared some contingencies the moment Chinook dug up the guns.

Well, unless Tayler actually wants to kick off the Long Gun apocalypse, I feel we're in for a sharp turn on the plot route.

Well, like I said previously, the "Mandatory Failure" of the chapter title might also apply to whomever is firing off long guns - this may be some variety of Pyrrhic Victory, or it might be an "all lose" scenario.

Ethics of rewriting crazy people.

That reminds me of the fact that Petey is pretty comfortable being a bit loose with the ethics on rewriting someone's brain.

EDIT: Ooh, found an even more pertinent strip in that same storyline. I mean, I think we all saw the potential for Foreshadowing there, but I didn't think it would come in so quickly.

edited 9th Feb '18 12:51:38 PM by 32_Footsteps

Bearfriend.

Putzho didn't rewrite quite fast enough.

This is many degrees of pear-shaped.

Iafa gets in on the problem.

edited 12th Feb '18 8:23:07 AM by Discar

Desperate.

Being committed.

The joys of being "voluntold"...

When to agonize.

Yeah, he's had a lot of experience in that particular department.

At this point, my money is on the Paan'uri being behind this. While teraporting between galaxies has been previously commented on as difficult, but possible, Petey has demonstrated the ability to teraport entire fleets relatively safely between galaxies with all the power he has at his disposal, and the Paan'uri, working through their baryonic allies/servants, fired up a core generator of their own. So what's to keep them from teraporting long guns into the milky way and stirring up trouble with them to try and get baryonic life to destroy itself?

I think the main problem with theorizing that it's them is that it shouldn't be easy for them to get that much detailed information. There's a difference between convincing someone to build certain structures for you of your own design, and knowing that killing a particular ship full of people will piss off the least mentally stable person in possession of a particular piece of technology, and how she'll respond. And as for the deal with the gatekeepers that was a one-time thing that's clearly ended now.

It doesn't really have to be assumed that they were even targeting the toughs or specifically trying to piss of Chinook. Firing long guns and causing destruction without a clear cause is going to set everyone on edge, and given the threat long guns pose it's not a huge stretch to assume that eventually some government or other powerful body is going to snap under the tension and start the war that rips baryonic life in the galaxy apart, or at least causes them significant setbacks. Pissing off Chinook could just be a happy accident.

That's true. Despite it being a turn of good/bad luck and them being the main characters, nobody was targeting the Toughs specifically. They were targeting locations and the Toughs happened to walk into one.

Overreacting. Pretty sure Cindy can handle the entire armada by herself.

Not so easy, they are a real military while Cindy is still just one ship.

Setting aside who would likely come out ahead in such a conflict, there's still the issue that "can" doesn't necessarily mean "should".