• Adriano

    Run, Tenzin, ruuuuuuun!
    Also, Jane was easily distracted on this one…

    • T.R.

      You suggesting he run *towards* or *away*? :)

      • Hornet

        As he doesn’t know where the enemy is, guess it’s just a move to they don’t catch him flat footed. But he could just end up dying tired.

        • Kaiden

          I’m guessing that the suit is actually doing most of the running for him, so he should only get tired at the normal rate.

          Also, adrenaline can do some amazing things to a person.

      • Adriano

        Both. Both is good.

  • Adriano

    (and aaaaaaaaw so cute they seem to work as a better team rn <3)

  • Kaiden

    It’s killin’ time!

  • Kaiden

    Also, I appreciate the colors Seba used for Tenzin in the last panel. I’m liking the grungy-shaded look for the armor.

    • T.R.

      I expect that he’s recharged and refueled from his big battle against the 5 enemies, but he’s still waiting to get an appointment for someone to detail his armor. :)

      • Kaiden

        He got some repairs from Rick too. Note the lack of tank-shell damage on his shoulder. And hey, why waste time and money on cosmetics?

        • Heh, there is supposed to still be damage, it just might not be visible from this angle (or sometimes Seba forgets part of the damage. We should make a chart showing where it all is XD )

        • I think the angle doesnt show the damage… but I’m awfull at keeping track of these things.

          • T.R.

            I see the fluid stain on his upper left torso - right where I think it was after the battle. And 2 pairs of big scrathes, one on the right shoulder and the other on the right collar.

            As usual, I think you’re doing just fine. :)

          • Kaiden

            Oh, indeed. The tank damage was on the back. My mistake.

  • Matt [in Middletown]

    So which limbs will Cpt Dorje part with this time?

    • He doesn’t have many options left XD

      • Matt [in Middletown]

        True, true.
        But he can still lose the artificial limbs too.
        But that’d be cheating.

    • Aaron R.

      Beginning to remind me of the “penalty game” from Dead Man Wonderland.

  • T.R.

    Interesting. What could have brought the ‘hawks down? Did someone leave a team (or a deathbot (2.0?)) on-site to deal with any snoopers? Seems like an inefficient use of resources, given Minerva’s position. Especially since it seems that Tenzin came here straight from the earlier fight - I don’t see how someone could have put resources in place to deal with the possibility of his arrival. (even if the baddie caught Ricky/Randy and made him sing…)

    Looking over the last few episodes, it doesn’t seem like they’ve been at the terminal for too long. Were Tenzin/Jane at that terminal longer than it seems to me? (10-15 minutes)

    I suspect we’ll find out after some quality combat time. :)

    • I like your theorizing. A piece of info to help your thoughts, he was digging for most of the night, and it’s now almost dawn. Just for the time scale of when he left the earlier fight till now.

      • T.R.

        So he’s gonna be tired.

        I wonder if someone has some sneaky intel on Tenzin’s location. (e.g. a tracker on his transport) That could explain why the baddies showed up - needed time to mobilize out there. I don’t see the terminal access tipping off the bad guys, though it looks like they may have taken action to cut Tenzin/Jane from that data when the combat team made its move and took out the drones.

        I’m a bit surprised that Jane didn’t notice the drone connection right away. Her reaction is what I’d expect when someone remembers to check in and finds a problem. That’s the second time she didn’t notice a threat. I thought she’d have enough capability to hack/manage combat *and* keep an eye on the surrounding situation. Am I mis-reading her abilities?

        I *really* liked the Essence of Nightshade story. Fascinating backstory/world building. Makes me wonder if Okane’s “revolution” is behind all this; who’s part of that and who’s maneuvering based on their own ambition. Whoever commissioned the Deathbots has access to detailed Minerva data, and was able to arrange a scenario where all the elite units were put in a position to be eliminated at the start of the fighting. That’s not a small conspiracy.

        • Heh, Jane may be a supercomputer, but even she can get distracted, especially with the number of simultaneous things she’s working on. She can only divide her attention so much before it becomes too much even for her.

          AND/OR it says something more about OTHER’S abilities, and less about hers ;)

        • Kaiden

          Thing about drones: You don’t need to be on-site to take them down. A little hacking and you can steer them into a building or change a setting in their flight instruments. Bam, dead HAWK. No physical evidence to lead back to your weapons supplier.

          That’s not to say there aren’t baddies out there. I’m just saying that it might be better for them to stay under cover until AFTER the HAWKs are dead.

          As for Jane, her reaction might be explainable by the hacking. “Wait a sec, why did the HAWKs just change course?” (CRASH) “Oh no!”

          Building on Dan’s comment above: We do know that Jane is not the only super-advanced AI. We also know that the other AI is very, very evil, and recently loosed upon the world. (Chapter 7, pages 19 and 20)

        • DeNitro

          Only conjure, But,, as this smells of internal conspiracy involving tech and intel.. Wouldn’t one presume backdoors and intentional exploits be a major tool? Someone just turned off the Hawks. And with that exploit unseen, Jane meerly saw connection go dark in realtime..

          If so,, What other Black Hax do come??? °o°/

          • I’ll never tell. Until tomorrow. Then I’ll tell something. Or later today, if you’re on Patreon XD

          • DeNitro

            I wouldn’t have it any other way… 👍👍 :-)

  • T.R.

    So he swears in Mandarin when he’s surprised? (especially when the situation is bù hāo - though I think my keyboard can’t match the “correct” spelling of that phrase…) I didn’t think he came from an ethnic Chinese background - maybe from a place in Central Asia where Chinese cultural influences are still felt?

    (I *so* hope my google-fu on that translation is right… :) )

    • Yeah Tenzin is mostly ethnic Tibetan Chinese (see Chapter 4 for his childhood, etc). And Mandarin is definitely a big post-war language, just given the sheer numbers of Chinese refugees moving around the continent.

  • Hornet

    Hope she’s locked the wifi.

  • This may be an odd thing to point out, but I really like the continuity here. If you look close, you can see how Lily got pinned up on the door!

    • Thanks man! you don’t know how many details we put on the pages that no one notices :P

      • All on the hope that someday some readers will re-binge on the archive and notice them XD

  • Huh. So that last page, was it a coincidence Tenzin was being jumpy, or did he really notice something Jane didn’t? If it’s the latter, his powers of perception are better than I thought, if he noticed something before the AI did.

    • Heh, just jumpiness and a lucky coincidence XD