The Authority: Revolution #10

[history79]

Comments

[nyadnar17]

Do they ever explain how knowing what someone is going to do guarantees you winning? Like Mike Tyson could promise to only aim for my left eye and only throw jabs with his left hand every 10 seconds and I still ain't beating him.

[skjam]

Presumably Midnighter can back it up--usually--because of his other enhancements and combat training. At least once he sees no future in which he can win a physical fight, so resorts to psyching his opponent out.

[tugrul]

YAAAASSSS! You worded my feeling so perfectly. There was also this Marvel character, white guy with long hair and two ninja swords that gave me the same feeling. His only power was premonition, but couldn't he just see his own death if he knew there was absolutely no way he was going to win against Wolverine or another character? Too bad I can't remember his name.

[q99]

Mr. X?

I think his thing was merely reading his foe's nervous systems to tell the next move, so not as advanced as Midnighter's.

[shadur]

He was partially telepathic.

And he got his ass very satisfyingly handed to him twice in the SIEGE event.

Once by Amadeus Cho (because trying to follow the thought process of a metagenius was like trying to speed-read War And Peace in ten seconds) and once by Quicksilver (because knowing exactly how an attack is coming in is of exactly ZERO help when it's literally coming in faster than your neurons can fire).

[q99]

Right, didn't Cho just, like, throw a few dozen projectiles he'd predicted the course of or something?

[shadur]

While calculating the exact ballistic course, wind resistance and collision interaction of each of them simultaneously, yes. By the time Mr. X managed to recover from the brutal headache several of the sharper ones were already sticking into various parts of his anatomy.

Let's just say his day really sucked, but he'd been such a smug asshole the entire time that absolutely nobody felt sorry for him.

[halloweenjack]

That was one of the few things I still like about the whole Kev series that Ennis did. Midnighter does his usual speech to three SAS guys who have already drawn a bead on him and one of them says, "So who wins this one, then?"

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

To be fair, Midnighter wasn't the least bit concerned about said soldiers

[megaspork]

Because as he said, he doesnt just know what youre going to do... hes also figured out how to counter it. Its not just precognition its situation analysis. If hes been able to run the numbers that many times in a few seconds it stands to reason he can continue to do so in battle.

[q99]

It doesn't guarantee winning in many circumstances, and there are foes he's definitely needed help with, or that have blindsided him before he ran the calculations, but it does mean, if there's a bunch of possible outcomes, he generally gets to pick which one happens because he knows what moves to do to lead to it.

So if someone with his physical powers and skills but no computer had a 1 in 10 shot against a stronger foe, due to *most* of the time what moves beat what being a rock-paper-scissors with way more moves that beat his than vice versa? He'll know what makes that 1 in 10 and do those moves that do manage to come out on top each time. A 1 in 100, similarly.

It's only if foes outmatch him a lot (be it power, numbers, or simple situational advantage) that he'll end up in position where there simply isn't a winning move, but if there is one, he takes it.

[dcbanacek]

Deadpool or the Joker would break his mind.

[q99]

It's not that kind of power- it doesn't tell him what they're thinking, but what they can/are likely to *physically* do.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Not really. Nor do they ever explain how he always knows the correct counter

[q99]

It scans the situation, and runs countless simulations, and then he picks which counter out of the simulations with good results that he wants.