Tuesday, January 01, 2013

I Like To Roam Around, Around, Without Leaving Home

Back to Captain Marvel #7. I'd never seen the stunt Monica pulled near the end. Sending small portions of herself down to light the way for Carol, while most of Monica stays up on the boat. It's part of why I thought she could transform her energy into matter away from her, since she clearly has pretty good control.

Except the energy spheres are still her, on some level. She can "see" through them, somehow, and it must be like being there herself. That would explain why she's still a little terrified, even though the majority of her is up on the boat. Because a part of her is down there at the bottom of the Gulf, where she doesn't want to be.

It probably isn't much fun for her in this particular circumstance, but it sounds pretty cool to me. It's similar to Jamie Madrox, where he absorbs the memories of his dupes when he absorbs them. So he has overlapping and contradictory sets of memories, because he was doing multiple different things simultaneously. The difference is, that doesn't happen for Madrox until he reabsorbs the dupe, while Monica is aware of her main body, and what the smaller energy pieces of herself are doing, while they're still separated. It'd be like Jamie "seeing" what a duplicate is up to while it's on the other side of town from him.

It's a cool ability to have. It'd be a handy way to tell if anyone was around, for one. Say you need to sneak Christmas presents in past the kids. You send a little bit of yourself to scout before you go in. Or use it as a distraction. I'd probably use it for even more frivolous things. Maybe I want to see the Great Barrier Reef, but I can't spare the time or the money to travel there in person. I know, if I have Monica's powers I could just fly there in a split-second, but let's say I'm very busy. Or lazy. That's closer to the truth. Anyway, I direct a little bit of myself to zip over there, ad I get to see the Reef up close and personal without leaving my chair, interacting with other humans, or having to rely on technology!

Seriously, though, it would be a relatively safe way to visit places that might otherwise be dangerous. Like the bottom of the ocean. That could be mind-blowing, especially since I could generate my own light, but it's also pretty dangerous. As Monica told Carol, if I switch to the wrong type of energy, I'm sunk. I don't know if that means I'll be disippated and scattered across the bottom of the ocean, or revert To flesh and be crushed by the pressure. Either way, it'd be ugly. This would be a way around that. Send just a small piece, let the rest stay somewhere safe. I'd be more likely to use it to explore space, zip a piece of myself to Mars, but it's the same general idea. It might also serve as a test, what should I not do if I try to go there entirely.

Maybe it's just me. I find a lot of the super-powers I like best are those that would help me get somewhere faster. Spider-Man's speed, agility, and wall-crawling appeal to me more than the spider-strength (though I'd gladly take that, too, and the spider-sense, absolutely). Teleportation, phasing, super-speed, anything that helps me get to Point B faster, or let's me get where I otherwise couldn't. It's the little bit of me that's a wanderer.

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