Technically she wasn’t under NDA when she saw that. Just saying.
↓ Transcript
ANDI: Why do I need an NDA to know about my OWN DAUGHTER'S health?
AVERY: Here's what I can tell you.
AVERY (VO): What I've been informed you were told last night, is that Amanda experienced a reaction to sarnothi presence. Our working hypothesis is along those lines. Due to my own NDAs and the sensitivity of the Sarnoth situation, I can't explain further without your signature.
AMANDA: Wait, that WASN'T a fib? SELKIE gave me eye lasers?!
ANDI: Ha ha, eye lasers?! Kiddo, it's a bad time to play pretend, okay?
*Amanda makes another hole in the wall*
AMANDA: ... Eye lasers.
AVERY: I'm afraid I have to insist on the NDA.
ANDI: PEN! PEN!
AVERY: Here's what I can tell you.
AVERY (VO): What I've been informed you were told last night, is that Amanda experienced a reaction to sarnothi presence. Our working hypothesis is along those lines. Due to my own NDAs and the sensitivity of the Sarnoth situation, I can't explain further without your signature.
AMANDA: Wait, that WASN'T a fib? SELKIE gave me eye lasers?!
ANDI: Ha ha, eye lasers?! Kiddo, it's a bad time to play pretend, okay?
*Amanda makes another hole in the wall*
AMANDA: ... Eye lasers.
AVERY: I'm afraid I have to insist on the NDA.
ANDI: PEN! PEN!
Sometimes the balance in a Selkie strip between realism and "It Made Dave Laugh" is precarious and fragile
Well, I guess she mains Cyclops in Marvel Vs Capcom now.
Her lasers burn, so I’m pretty sure her eyes aren’t portals to the punch dimension, because Cyclops’ beams are made of pure kinetic force
OK, Andi! Suspension of disbelief aside, where did you think that scorch mark was coming from?
Also, I’m wondering if Amanda just felt the urge of another discharge rising, or whether she can control her powers to an extent already and just thought “Eff you, Mother! I ain’t fibbin’!”
This needs to be taken care of before the next time Amanda goes to school. There are not enough NDA-s in the world…
Another random thought: how will the landlord / an insurance agent / a repairman react when they see this type of damage? For the latter, it’s probably gonna be a government-approved one, and for the former, there’s another NDA looming.
In Andi’s defense… if you walked into your child’s room to find a brand-new hole in the wall, and your child told you they did it with their eye lasers, would you honestly believe them, or would you be more suspicious of the new hairpiece of vague origin and purpose?
You can see that she took the barette off to do that, then immediately put it back on. So it was definitely intentional, if only controlled through use of the barette. It appears she was even aiming for the same spot on the wall there was already a hole (presumably that one was an accident from when it fell off).
As far as school goes, she may not be able to turn it off or really control it (yet?), but that can be solved with hardware.
pretty sure all Amanda did was remove the barrette to see what would happen. and the result was she shot a hole in the wall.
and then Andi found out about the hole at the same time as the feds showed up to explain things.
and she just repeated the experiment to prove to her mother that eye lasers are real
Selkie’s gonna flip when she sees Amanda can do this in a day without so much as breaking a sweat.
Nuclear level flip. Poor Selkie 😞
She took the barrette out to do that, didn’t she…
Pretty sure you can see her putting it back on in panel six.
Yep. Barrette off, zappo, barrette on.
Keep that barrette on, kiddo!
Based on the look our dear agent is shooting at the kid he knows too.
I think previously we’ve only seen him give that precise look to his son. 😀
Selkie is going to be Very Upset. And I can’t blame her for that. 🙁
That said, Amanda’s control is fairly impressive … unless this is just a case of “took the barrette off and put it back on again real quick.”
And of course Dave answered that question while I was typing the comment above. Thanks, Dave! 🙂
. . . WHAT?!
The pen has dropped.
My son insisted one day on wearing socks.
I told him no.
So he asked his brother to help him.
I relented, and his gleefully whispered ”ssssockssssss’ is how i imagine her saying ….eye lasssserrrrrrssssss….
Why wouldn’t you let your son wear socks?
“My name is Amanda McClellan, and YOU WILL FEAR MY *LASER FACE!!!*”
I wouldn’t be signing crap from the feds without an attorney present.
In regular cases, I would agree. In this case, I think I’d just go ahead and sign.
National security tops anything else in this case. Andi doesn’t sign and she doesn’t get any info and probably Amanda gets taken away.
You can’t fault Amanda’s communication skills… that cut straight through not only the wall, but also any disbelief from her mother about what was happening.
I wonder if the NDA would be considered valid because Andi signed it under duress.
“YOU need to sign this NDA so I can legally give you the information you need”, which is basically what Agent Brown is saying, won’t count as duress, since that’s how NDAs work. You can only discuss the sensitive material with others who are party to the same agreement.
Taking the oposite tact of most of the other commenters, Andi can be angry, or indignant because Todd ‘lied’ to her, but it was a lie he was required to tell her from a legal standpoint, BECAUSE ANDI WASN’T PARTY TO THE NDA.
Also: Todd’s lie just meant Andi was blindsided the next morning, and Todd was planning on taking steps IMMEDIATELY to position himself so he could pull back the veil and reveal the masquerade safely. Andi’s Lie deprived Todd of any ability to care for Amanda, and she originally NEVER planned on tellking him.
So, like, it might be duress, but it’s not from Todd, Agent Brown or anyone else who had signed the NDA previously? It’s from whoever brought NDA into this in the first place.
Considering the sensitive nature of integrating a completely different species into human society, putting people under NDA seems fairly reasonable.
Heck, just look at how we treat other humans based purely on differences in physical appearances – what do you think would happen if some random yahoos found out some Sarnothi could potentially shoot eye beams?
Last thing you want is an angry mob trying to murder any Sarnothi they can find.
Pretty sure national security considerations would top any of those concerns. Andi not signing just means she gets left out of the loop and probably loses custody of Amanda.
Even if she signs, he’s not going to be able to say much more because this is uncharted territory, even for him.
Even though this is uncharted territory in humans, he can probably tell them what they know from the Sarnothi though, which is probably quite a bit.
So much for that damage deposit. How the heck does she have that much power and control right from the start? Selkie is going to be very jealous.
It’s clearly singe marks on the wall. Probably paying right over it. My high powered laser pointer can do the same thing.
Omg, I love the expressions in this one. Dave, you outdid yourself! I can’t stop giggling madly.
Panel 5 is officially one of my favorite comic panels of all time anywhere XD
Oh gods, she’s a natural. She just does that, on a whim, with full control :O
Yea, okay. NOW Selkie has real cause for being jealous.
Per Dave (above) she doesn’t have control, she just pulled the barrette off for a second.
That’s still kind of controllable :p
I am hoping that it wears off plotted as a function of time lapsed across distance from Selkie. If it’s permanent, … well I’m just hoping it wears off as a function of distance.
Minor problem with Amanda’s realization. It wasn’t Selkie that gave her eye lasers; it was Doctor Pohl. He pushed and hit the wrong target. Sure, Pohl wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for Selkie, but it was still Pohl that did it!
I’m not sure Pohl hit the “wrong” target so much as Amanda is also resonant-sensitive. She’s complained all along about Selkie’s practice giving her headaches, and she heard “singing” from the Sarnothi laser beam that came out of the lake. There’s been foreshadowing of this possibility ever since Amanda first came in contact with Echo abilities. https://selkiecomic.com/comic/selkie1007/
Well-played, Dave! You keep the story where you want it.
Amanda’s reaction in panel 6 is absolutely priceless. Hopefully Selkie can learn how to do the eye lasers soon, so then they can shoot them off together! (preferably not at each other)
Brief interlude when neither of them can find a pen and they need to goand borrow one from Todd.
I still can’t help giggling helplessly when I reread this, even two day later.
I love how Avery goes from really PISSED in panel 7 to oh so “butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth” Bureaucratic BLAND in panel 8…
Selkie is going to be do jealous