I Sincerely Hope This Will Be His Final Form, Though – Chapter 8, Act 2, Strip 50

I know I said I wanted to save Mopey some humiliation by keeping her defeat off-screen, but that caused vocal complaints on the part of Snuka – who wanted to know when he is ever spared any kind of humiliation. And the coin-monster needed an opportunity to introduce it’s second, more powerful form, anyway – with the added bonus being that introducing it here, at the end of the first cycle of defeats for the team, makes a second cycle unnecessary, saving a lot of plot-time. >_>

And of course the coin-monster has a second form – after all, the word “coin” itself has undergone quite a dramatic shift, off lately. Its original, physical reality is increasingly marginalized, while a new, non-physical phenomenon has usurped the word for itself. And naturally, the coin-monster is much more powerful in this new form, bloated with media attention and surrounded by buzzwords and similar multiplying villainies of nature: not only does the transformation fill up the painful emptiness at the center of its prior existence, it also massively improves the monster’s to-hit roll by turning it into something vague and blurry that’s moving up and down very fast.

On the con-side, it needs massive amounts of energy to do that – but fortunately (for itself) it has no compunctions about leeching of the public energy net for that purpose. The result: a particularly pretty display of a flashing, dashing coin against the background of a darkened cityscape and complete and utter defeat for Mopey. Plus: justice! After all, the monster was created from a victim of bitcoin volatility, if you remember* – so it must feel like sweet vindication to be on the profiting side of that volatility now.

More on Thursday.

* Of course, that’s not “official” until the monster has been defeated and turned back – but I think it’s so bleedingly obvious I’m really not giving away any big spoilers here. =P