How powerful is Scion?
I believe his rating is listed as “hella”.
Tag: asks
“Wait, how is moving her body involuntarily affecting her flight, considering she’s using her brain to do that? Did Regent mess with the nerves in her brain? Can he do that?” I would assume he can mess with at least some of them, considering he can hijack the entire body. But I’m not a neurologist.
Maybe, maybe not. There’s no good reason for his power to not affect the brain when it’s divorced from human ideas, but if he can do that, that’s a form of mind control rather than body control, and he’s been pretty clear on the distinction there.
More Steven Universe spoilers! Assuming Shatterbird is constrained by the Manton effect, I doubt the S9 (except maybe the Siberian) have enough firepower to even scratch the Diamonds, the things Blue tanked were insane, and I doubt Yellow’s durability is any worse. Even if they only have their hot bods, it’ll still be like fighting 2 even more durable Crawlers (though with admitedly lesser regeneration), rather than Fenja and Menja.
Ehh. I’d imagine Shatterbird and maybe Crawler could top the stuff Blue was hit with tenfold or more. That includes Steven’s bubble attack, which was the only non-barn attack that really fazed Blue in the sequence where the CGs fly past, attacking one by one. (Symbolism, only a diamond can scratch a diamond.)
You’re right, the Diamonds are probably significantly more durable than Fenja and Menja, but I do think you’re overestimating the attacks we’ve seen them at the receiving end of.
I feel that you are overestimating Lapis power significantly. Lifting the ocean is well into the “Sci-fi writers have no sense of scale” part of the spectrum. Consider for instance both that if she had actually picked the ocean up it should have made a far far taller pillar by a longshot than was shown, but it would still have been as silly to think it could reach even the nearest star as it would be to think Connie could do it by tiptoeing.
It’s also the same sort of thinking that would push Ronaldo into being able to move at supersonic speed (because Lapis could lift Steven to the top of the water pillar quickly, steven could move visibly on said hand and Ronaldo hit Steven with a brick once). Thats just a danger of basing powerestimating on the most powerful feat shown once particularily while involving the entire planet/space.
Instead I would base my estimates on her actual fights with the crystal gems/Jasper both fused and unfused, which would still make her a huge powerhouse by worm standards, outside of the probable reach of the undersiders, but less so.
That is a fair perspective. The alternative is that Lapis is holding back and/or not giving her all in fights like the one in Reunited, after all.
And hey, nobody ever accused this show of being consistent about scale… 😛
Figured I might note that if you want to get really nitty gritty, then the damage heat would do to a person is technically based in movement on a microscopic scale, so Siberian being unharmed by Sundancer’s power does still jive with the “immovable object” model on some level. Of course when you get that granular the difference between “immovable object” and “physical form that is fundamentally impossible to compromise” is essentially nonexistent.
I suppose that’s true, and it is something I have given some thought. I’ve been thinking along the lines that heat transfer by radiation (like sunlight) wouldn’t be moving the atoms directly like heat transfer by contact would. That might not really hold up, though, especially since temperature is movement.
Ballistic was the one supposed to kill Cherish, the others had different targets. It was when they didn’t attack the others while waiting on ballistic to kill her, and instead pushing him to do it, that she instead warned the nine after having been waiting a safe distance away.
Ahh, I suppose it makes sense that she might not have time to mess with the others’ emotions after she realized messing with Ballistic’s wasn’t enough. She didn’t think they all were after her, so she may have figured Ballistic’s murderous intent was in spite of the plan.
More SU thoughts:
While Lapis may be more powerful than Leviathan in terms of hydrokinesis, I do still think Leviathan would win if it were between the two of them, at least if Lapis didn’t fly way out of reach quickly enough. Lapis is a glass cannon while Leviathan is practically invincible, and even if Lapis is immune to water attacks (unknown), Leviathan has attacks that don’t use the water, like using his claws or tail. Lapis, on the other hand, doesn’t have much in terms of non-watery attacks besides using water to levitate objects above a target and letting gravity do the rest – as far as we know, anyway.
However, if anyone can contain Leviathan, it’s probably Lapis. She has displayed the ability to keep people trapped in levitating bubbles of water (though Leviathan’s swimming speed might mess with that), and she has the power to make a city-sized one if she cares to. She can also make chains out of hardened water, which can be quite effective. She’d need to find a permanent place for him or keep sustaining these restraints, though. Maybe she could make him a little lake on a different planet?
(spoilers for SU ahead, right up to the latest episode)
So, what with Lapis and Bismuth (and Diamonds???), do you have anything to add regarding CGs vs. Undersiders or S9?
Apart from fire resistance (good against Burnscar, obviously) and a specialty in shapeshifting her arms into tools and weapons, Bismuth doesn’t have a lot of good combat powers that we know of, beyond what most Gems have. She’d be super good as a motivator and weaponsmith, though, and is capable of making weapons with magical properties. Her weapons and weapon upgrades might give the other Gems some new tricks, and while she doesn’t have many combat powers, she does have experience in using what she’s got. But yeah, send her (alongside Garnet, the best Burnscar counter the Gems have) after Burnscar.
The Diamonds may be less useful than you’d think simply because so far, all the powers Blue and Yellow have shown us only work on Gems (and Steven). Still, though, they’re resilient and big, making them similar to Fenja and Menja. And, judging by Pink, it’s likely they have a lot of powers they haven’t shown us yet, some of which may be incredibly strong against the Undersiders or the Nine.
Lapis… oh, boy, Lapis.
Apart from being only tangentially affiliated with the Crystal Gems up until the latest episode, the main reason I left Lapis out of previous “Gems vs” posts (I’m gonna make a tag for that at this point) is that she made the outcome too clear.
Lapis is more powerful than Leviathan. Not defensively (she’s a glass cannon like Shatterbird), admittedly, but her hydrokinesis could drain an ocean while she was cracked (not to mention pull all that water upwards). If the battle happens somewhere there’s a lot of water – which describes both Beach City and post-Leviathan Brockton Bay, Lapis is practically a goddess. It’s just a matter of staying alive and unpoofed to use that raw power. Jack and Shatterbird might be her main threats, considering Lapis is typically out in the open and sometimes flying, but Lapis is far from defenseless.
Huh, Burnscar really gets the short straw against the Gems, doesn’t she? Discounting non-Garnet fusions, the Gems have three members who are immune to fire, two members who can predict where Burnscar will teleport, one member who can exude coldness and create ice, one member who controls large amounts of water… Apart from Lapis “OP” Lazuli, Garnet is definitely the best one to match up against Burnscar, though, between fire resistance, future vision, super speed and rocket gauntlets. Burnscar can’t even teleport through the fire before a pair of explosive hands are soaring towards where she’s going to be.
On the subject of Siberian’s invulnerability, remember that she’s gone up against the Triumvirate multiple times. I think you can reasonably assume that she’s invulnerable to most things Legend or Eidolon can dish out, which goes way beyond just being invulnerable to forces.
Fuck, that’s true. Eidolon in particular should be able to find something to work around a selective invulnerability.
I did think about this factoid, yes, but I failed to consider it beyond Legend’s lasers (which were relevant to whether light could hurt her).
For me, at least, it’s HEAVILY implied that Ballistic’s reluctance to kill Cherish was Cherish sensing murderous intent towards her and then fucking around with it. The whole thing seems reminiscent of her powers in general.
Oh yeah, that’s a really good point. And Taylor didn’t think that was the case because Cherish hadn’t given any indication that she’d noticed the ambushers.
The one thing that makes me wonder, though: why didn’t she do the same thing to Trickster (and maybe Skitter)? Did she miss that murderous intent?
Also, there might be a range issue. Cherish has a decent range for messing with emotions (and a much larger range for sensing them), but it has seemed to be more like “across the street” than “three blocks away”. Though that’s a minimum, so who knows.
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