Zokusho: Shoot The Messenger–Page 15
So long, Contra Brothers. You will soon be forgotten.
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I guess that will teach them to be prepared….oh…that’s right there will be no next time. Forget I said anything…..
How strong/fast or clever are fiends, anyway? Could you nail one to the ground and immobilize it that way? Would other fiends rescue it, or would they eat it? If you cut off a fiend’s head and locked the head in a strongbox, which part would regenerate? Are severed limbs dead enough for Rotting Johnny to assimilate or do they crumble to dust? What would happen if something that eats magic tried to eat a fiend? Should the first letter of fiend be capitalized? Have the creators read Atomic Robo? How many of these questions will be answered anyway? I motion for immediate infodump. All in favor?
Fiends are, by default, above average in strength and dexterity (though specific specimens would vary on a similar level to any species). Not stong enough to throw a car, but strong enough to run those claws right through an average person.
Regarding their intelligence, they’re not stupid like a simple reanimated corpse (as opposed to something more sophisticated like Rotting Johnny), they can just be somewhat single-minded in their pursuit of victims to tear apart. They are rarely seen attacking each other, so it seems likely that they can communicate on some level, although there isn’t any conclusive documentation on the subject.
Theoretically you could immobilize a fiend by thoroughly nailing it to the ground, but this would be difficult enough to do in the first place without losing large chunks of flesh, and the fiends’ lack of a self-preservation instinct makes them uniquely equipped to escape from such bondage at the loss of an arm or a leg that will simply regenerate.
Other fiends might help a stuck or trapped fiend, but at the worst they would simply ignore it. See previous point re: lack of violence between fiends.
Fiends’ regeneration typically starts from the head, though there have been instances of decapitated fiend bodies regenerating their heads when one was missing.
Rotting Johnny could likely make use of a severed fiend limb, though he has yet to see exactly what kind of effect that would have on him. Drake’s body was Johnny’s first step outside of ordinary human parts.
Re: magic eaters, there’s no documented cases of something that can absorb magic on a large scale being found near a fiend outbreak. Experiments have been done with anti-magic fields which were promising (fiends didn’t regenerate within the field until it was turned off), but this requires extremely expensive/sensitive/difficult to set up resources, which makes it unfeasible as a long-term solution.
“Fiend” in and of itself isn’t a proper noun, but in the introduction text box it made more sense to capitalize than to not.
I have not read Atomic Robo (though I am aware of it), and I don’t think Landon has either.
Ten, counting this one.
Bravo. This is probably why I love this comic. Read Atomic Robo, as it is awesome. Volume five is called Atomic Robo and the Deadly Art of Science. Just so you know. Also, just to confirm, inflicting “fatal” wounds on fiends stuns them, but they do not need their heart/lungs/liver intact in order to move? Also, is where they come from/where and when they show up going to be mentioned later?
Yeah, fatal wounds will put them down for a minute while they recover, but not as long as you might think. More specifics about what people know about them will be covered later in the issue, I just wanted to avoid having a massive info-dump in the middle of all of the action (this issue’s more than long enough without that).
Okay, I was just trying to confirm that a stake to the hart would not keep it down indefinitely.
No, not indefinitely–though something like that would probably keep it from getting back up for a little bit longer–like a minute, as opposed to the ~15 seconds that we saw with it getting perforated. Also it’s going to be in some pretty severe pain until it does something about that stake, but as a rule, pain just seems to make these things madder.
Oh, excuse me, I meant to say heart, not a type of deer. Oops.
^^ vv BA?
That didn’t show up correctly- up up down down left right left right B A?