Except for the broken nose, that’s just about exactly how Max wanted that exchange to go down. Grandstanding is always a risk in the superhero game given the enormous range of abilities, but she has enough experience gauging the relative strength of other supers by now. She saw Vehemence punch a roughly 75 ton Stalwart a few inches off the ground and that gave her an idea of what he could do.

You can see her visualizing her power distribution there on the page, but she wasn’t quite able to max out her armor like she’d planned. She needed to keep some of her power pool reserved for flight so she didn’t get knocked back, and strength so her head didn’t snap back. Her armor makes her less… floppy (in a ragdoll sense, not in a girl on a trampoline sense you perverts… although, I guess in that way as well) but with a punch like that she needed a little extra. She can even crank her armor up so high that she can’t move, but that only happens when she’s actually drawing against her strength for an ultra boost. Keep in mind, even without spending her pool on anything she’s still pretty tough. In Marvel superhero terms she’s like straight Amazings (which is 50 on a 100 point scale, 6 being a regular human and 100 being Thor/Hulk/Silver Surfer level.) Her power pool dump puts her at the 100 point level (in only one stat) and if she draws against her other abilities she can exceed that.

Yes, Maxima’s blood is blue. I don’t have any particular reason for that other than it’s been that way in my head for a long time. If nothing else, that should tell you that her unusual appearance is slightly more than skin deep. Also that she should blush green. I tried to color her that way on the one page on which it happened, but she looked seasick, so I just kept it red. I’ll have to think of some canon reason it happens that way.

So what does all this mean for Vehemence? Stay tuned!

Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome which I can’t live without anymore, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.

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