‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 497

Colors by Audrey. Everything else is by me.

Kat really likes that 100%.

66 Comments

Hmmmmmmm.
Self Sacrifice is a trait of many heroes, Kat.
Also, Pride goeth before a fall.
Plus… can’t people dodge in this game? Well, okay, Dude panic interferes there… but still!

Danni has a bad leg and can barely move as it is with the gravity.

The other two are badly injured and still partially entangled by Kat’s vines.

She’s going to have to eat one of the hits, I’m thinking, and let the chimera take the other. It’s about the only solution I can see that will work. Now granted, there’s sieve-like holes in this plan, but Kat is Kat. If anyone can make it work, she can.

I wouldn’t be so sure….

Even the best strategist in the history of the world would lose a battle against 100,000 battle hardened soldiers if all they had was a marmot with a baton.

Not if that’s a ninja marmot, with upper ground, and dead sneaky…

On the other hand, if it’s a normal marmot and a balsa-wood baton, well, you’ve got problems.

Ninja marmot will assassinate you for doubting its abilities!

Everything about this page is amazing and I think this might be my new favorite page, its just so dramatic!

…So block both anyway. With, umm, yourself?

Love the odd shapes in the last panel, a the despair on the opposing team members’ face, by the way.

No no, with grass! Grass is clearly strong enough to block that thing. Yup. Definitely.

I have so many thoughts right now:

– Wait, why can’t Dude and Danni dodge the attack but Kat has enough time to get in-between them with her Chimera from all the way over there?

– But since those attacks deal more damage than their targets’ HPs, shouldn’t this be yet another trigger for the Dude’s Special what with there being excessive violence again? Or could he at least use his luck card to get them both to safety? Or am I once again being too optimistic, since I keep hoping that he’s actually going to reveal his hand any time soon? I want to watch his tournament replays!!! >_< Virtually the whole world knows what he can do except for Kat and Danni and the readers.

– Bandit is going to get scolded for this. Attacking his team mates during a difficult battle? Bad move. That will cost him fans.

– And where is Jane anyway? It would be so ironic if Kat somehow rose to even this occasion and then Jane just stabs e.g. Vize from behind.

I think Kat is gonna send the Chimera to block one while she jumps off to facetank for the other pair.

what if she only controls the chimera while riding it…

Lol, that’s the first time I’ve seen someone use the word ‘facetank’, it cracked me up, I like it. XD

But yeah, that could happen. Not sure about taking it to the face, though. She was able to block a sword with grass, so she might be able to shield herself again.

I feel like you may have hit a plot point.

Which one?

HAha! Bandit will not be scolded! This is the way he plays himself dude! Like a chaotic neutral smirking guy who needs to be able to trigger his special and has a televised history of giving our Erbana a hard time. Good game Bandit, but don’t hurt the dancer! Cuz, umm, Paddy would be real upset..

I see a sacrifice …

Me-OW!

I know I shouldn’t be ‘encouraging’ her, but she should have split up with the chimera. have it block the enemy party, while she takes the hit for Danni. The opposite also works, but the only way she’s keeping that 100 is if she walks the walk and takes the rough, literally…

I’d wager that Danni would be fast enough to dodge if she wasn’t hurt and also in a tree.
The other two two were rooted an instant ago and are not in an upright position.

It’s also possible that the projectile is very slow, but homes in on the target and thus can’t be dodged, but easily blocked

So Kat can’t allow anyone to perish around her, but does that apply to herself dying too?

Imagine the image she will get in the eyes of the spectators if she gives her life for preventing anyone else to die.

Yeah I agree this will not look good on Bandit’s scoreboard. If Jane killed someone nobody would act surprised

So you’re wondering if she would lose Erbana points for dying? 😀 I think those points won’t matter much if you die. Or did I misread you somewhere?

But this just reminded me:
Why would anyone really die from that blast? Don’t they have Esones to absorb one blast? Man, that would make Bandit look even worse. But since Kat is thinking it it has to be true. I need an explanation.

That’s what I was wondering; Danni and Dude both have their Esones, so won’t they live regardless?

Danni no longer has her Esone after she took the hit back on page 471. (She even makes a comment on page 478 that if she takes another hit then she is dead…)

maybe the esone just revives you or something from a game mechanic perspective and it still counts as a “death” for the purposes of erbana rating?

I wouldn’t imagine it any other way.

As Psiberkiwi above states though, the esone can’t count as a death – as otherwise, Danni would’ve affected Kat’s score.

Okay, I’m thinking Kat’s gonna throw herself in front of one while the Chimera blocks the other.

So im kinda thinking of trying to knit a Kat v7 plushie. With the big head and everything.do people approve?

Neemz? Okay phone, thats one way ti spell Neekz, syre

I approve heartily!!!

Chimera to block one, jump in front of the other herself.
Only way she can protect everyone is to sacrifice herself.
Which is really going to suck. And then I am going to scream and yell.

Seems to me that BANDIT is the one who needs to learn something and grow up. How many people will HE screw over just to make a point?

I generally like the Bandit, but this was a jerk move. One, he does not know enough of the big picture of Kat’s life to make a call like this (I am not sure anyone would); two, he is sending 2 players out of the game for which they have to renter via game trials (AFAIK).

You know Jon, I would have to respectfully disagree. If the reality pages and flashbacks are anything to go on, then no other living person in the world had a better grasp of the big picture here concerning Kat than Jake here. He practically grew up with her family. He was there when get dad was teaching her never to let rules hold her back. He was one of the few people quick enough to keep up with her and probably the only person her age.

Bottom line here is that he is willing to stick his neck out for Kat, but after the end, he needs to know that if push comes to shove she won’t resort to an at all costs approach to get what she wants.

It’s not absolutely unreasonable considering she crashed TenKa’s city to erase the play data after finding out she was sick with villains for a party.

It’s not absolutely unreasonable considering she crashed TenKa’s city to erase the play data after finding out she was stuck with villains for a party.

It’s a MAJOR gamble, make no mistake. But the inherent pay off a rebuilt world. For which he needs Kats help.

What if she must be in contact with the chimera to control it? Then she can’t just split from it to block both.

Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about. Otherwise, it’s the obvious solution. It will cost Kat her Esone, which is a nuisance (and may take away her Bag of Plant Holding until she finds another Esone), but I don’t think self-sacrifice should lower her 100% Erbana rating. I don’t know if she has enough blocking ability, though. The chimera is huge. Kat is not.

As for what counts as a “kill,” given how everyone is reacting, losing an Esone keeps the character from having to leave the game, but still counts as a “kill.” Danni and Dude have Esones. We’re not sure the other characters still do– they were in pretty bad shape.

Wait, Danni may have lost her Esone in the last Demoli attack by the other team, which explains why Kat is more worried about her than Dude (other than her being better friends with Danni, of course).

The guy who made the evil chimera was controlling it from far away before Kat intervened. So, I’m thinking since Kat now has the cards he used, she could easily control it without being in contact.

Also, as I understand, and Esone is basically and extra life. So if you have multiple Esones you have several backup lives and if you have no Esones, it’s Game Over if you die.

I think it’s due to splash damage from that attack that even if someone else takes the brunt of the hit that the others in the area with insufficient HP would die anyway. It’s a good thought that others think she can take the full hit and save other people but let’s be realistic. This attack looks different from the one he hit her chimera with so it looks like it will explode and deal area of effect damage instead of direct damage.

If The Dude stopped panicking for just a couple seconds and drops out of the tree holding Danni they could escape that attack and Kat can focus on saving the other team. However this attack may be a tracking attack so dodging may not be an option which may be the real reason The Dude is panicking.

Kat needs to block the shot heading for Danni, let the other group get hit, then send the Chimera to EAT the Bandit for being such a jerkface. Seriously, he’s done nothing but try and trigger her since they met. Just kill him, kick him out of the group, and invite the surviving members of the other group to join them (since they were all at least partly hero). Then with Danni turning Kesti they will have a hero group, even with Jane.

Aww, but with that scenario, Kat would lose her 100% Erbana…..

Yeah, but she can get it back with time. The bigger issue is getting rid of Bandit, who is actively working against her.

Betting time…

I’m betting that Kleya takes one of the hits herself. She may not want to get hit, but allowing someone to die will destroy her 100%, and I notice she said nothing about *her* dying if she got hit by one.

I’m thinking Kat is going to have to make the very touch decision to save Danni & the Dude, and let the alternate team die, take the hit to her rating…and hate the Bandit for what he did, of course.

I do think that the Esones give you an extra “life” (because a game with a one-death-only would actually be incredibly frustrating to play with the Morto who HAVE to kill to retain their rating, and the Demoli who can kill from a distance, etc, etc.) but I also think the Esones only absorb so much damage, then it spills over.

And yeah, this is a total d**k move by Bandit. @wilw would be very disappoint, son.

*You* have enough hitpoints, Kat. Take the hit for one group, & your pretty new pet take the other, and you keep your 100% allocation, just not your 100% health.

MORE GRASS!

Okay, Aneeka, you’ve just freaked me out. How am I supposed to wait until the next update now?

Best. Web comic. Ever

Clearly this will not be the end for Danni. My guess: The dilemma (trilemma?) will be salvaged in part with the unexpected help of someone besides Kat.

Hmm, couldn’t she have the Chimera take the hit for the prisoners / Use the Chimera to drag them away, while tackling Danni & Dude out of the way / use the Chimera to rocket herself to make them off balance, due to either hitting the tree or branch? (She doesn’t even really have to take much damage, if she can pull it off right; flip in mid-air, like a cat, and pretty much kick the tree/branch.)

would consider the oposite, Danni and Dude are in a tree, the chimera can jump there, but I doubt she could get there on time, she could, however, run toward the other group in time.

Remember, gravity is 41%. Kat had no trouble making it into the trees just before this encounter.

I love this page!!! I can’t can’t can’t wait for the next!!!

So, this page has made me think a whole heck of a lot more than any of the more recent pages. I can see several different scenerios coming up. There are two I don’t think will happen because they would completely change the course of the story in a direction that doesn’t seem to be Aneka’s goal, but I think are the most realistic given the character’s personalities.

I will share these two first. The first scenerio has Kat saving Danni and Dude but not the other team. Her percentage drops below 100%, Bandit succeeds in ruining her perfect run, and Kat has one of two reacions. In the first, she loses it, reveals who she is, but takes out ever computer component with her code, basically ending the world… again. And in the second, she get’s really depressed, but could potentially be encouraged by a friend, like Danni, or a member of the other team that she meets in LiFe. I… huh, that could actually work…

Moving on to the second chain of events, and Kat saves the other team, but not Danni. I don’t think Kat would do this, but there are a couple of reasons that she might. The first reason is that, as far as we know, both Dude and Danni have their esones and won’t be kicked out of the game for their first death. The second reason is that the other team might have already lost their esones(which Kat knows through her mystical hacker magic) which means that they would be kicked out on their next death. Saving players from being kicked out of the game would constitute a “nice” action even though she kinda left her friends out to dry.

The rest of my theories have to do with her ability to save both targets, and basically more tweaking on the major two listed above…

And that barely scratches the surface of my musings. I am not quite sure what to make of Bandit at the moment. The biggest thing I would like to see is some sort of explanation that might, potentially, hopefully, maybe, possibly excuse him from some, SOME, of the blame from his murder-bots(the AIs). That would let me see him as a generally good guy, which I can’t right now because of the murder-bots. I do wonder if Dude is holding Danni in place specifically to help Bandit with his plan. I still kind of think that Dude might be the biggest threat in the entire team, because no one knows what he really thinks or is capable of.

shall i go on?

i think i wall-of-text to much…

Is it just me or is Kat more concerned with losing her 100% then the threat to her friend?

Not just you, unless she has already decided that she isn’t letting Danni die.

send the fast, and bulky chimera to jump in front of the allies in the tree, run and jump indront of the other 2

There’s one big problem with what Bandit’s been doing here: He’s turning on his own team.

His motivation for it doesn’t really matter, the audience (the literal audience, watching the group playing the game, right now), has no d*** clue what’s going on and why their guy is suddenly going after his own teammates. He’s going to have to find some way to explain this when the dust settles.

That’s exactly why I was so confused the earlier page. How is he going to justify that he attacked his own team mates without revealing the “why”? Which is to make Kat less “perfect”, but why would a rational person want to ruin their own team mate’s percentage? There’s just absolutely no reason!

It’ll be interesting to see what happens after the dust settles

My take on it
Bandit’s move was justified not only from an “in the know” POV, but also from in-game.
He is trying to ruin her perfect image to prove the people in charge she is not who they are looking for.
And from an in-game one, Kat and Bandit goals are diametrically opposed. He wants to kill, she wants nobody to die, and someone has to lose.
He also knows that she will prefer to save her own team under this situation, so unless Kat makes a new plan he has no chance to fail.
He is going to get scolded for this, sure. But he can justify it anyway. Kat is not the center of the world from an in-game perspective, she should lose many followers over saving the opponent’s team members and obstructing her own.
Many peole here seem to think that the audience will surely punish Bandit, while the blame is actually pretty distributed.
She is not the main character TO THEM, just to us.

Well how is he going to justify attacking his own team that will cause damage?

At most Kat just disarmed Bandit, but she never hurt him.
Bandit is actually sending an attack that could possibly hurt his team

Wonder if using yourself as a human shield would work (and shock bandit)

I can’t help but wonder where Jane is.

I can’t say I can see Bloody Mary outright wanting to save anyone is completely in-line with her character, but the fact that she has been gone for so long during this fight and was shown coming back before it implies she will make an appearance. Not to mention… she IS the leader of the group. Like it or not.

It would be an interesting turn/plot twist for Bloody Mary to come in and cover one of the blasts. We do know that Jane is in league with Sandra, who has incentive to want this group to do well at the very least.

Still, Kat is likely to lose her 100%.

Don’t forget that Kat also has the CARDS now. So maybe she can use one of those to take-out one of the fireballs.

Not A Villain Webcomic

Webcomic of a semi- reformed hacker trying to redeem herself in a post- apocalyptic world she may have created.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 497