Thursday, February 23, 2012

Block



Blocks are one of the most common of XANA's monsters, and one of the weakest. They inhabit the Ice Barrier, Desert, Forest, and Mountain Sectors. Blocks have four Eye of XANAs, each one situated atop a different type of laser or mechanism. One of the eyes is a standard laser, one a Freeze Ray, one shoots Fire Rings, and last Eye covers the brain. The lasers and fire rings do 30 points of damage. If any one of these eyes are hit, the Block automatically dies. Blocks are moderately intelligent, but in some cases, they are quite unintelligent. One thing that supports Odd's above statement is found in the episode Frontier, where Aelita is being chased by two Blocks in the Mountains. The Blocks come across a gap and attempt to jump. One of the Blocks accidentally bumps into the other and loses too much speed and falls into the Digital Void (the other Block made it, though). They won't jump off to their doom in a desperate attempt to catch a Team Lyoko member, but instead carefully time everything. Blocks usually attack in groups, one herd containing a record breaking number of 46 bloks, as seen in the episode Ghost Channel. Blocks can rotate their heads on the axises which connect them to their six-legged lower bodies, and each Eye can see and lock onto enemies. They can also defy gravity by climbing upside down and on the side of things.

Odd claims in The Girl of the Dreams that Blocks are his favourite monsters.

Blocks are basically cubes on legs. They have six legs compared to the usual four seen on other monsters, allowing them to balance on surfaces that other monsters would plummet from, like peaks in the Mountain sector.

Each Eye on the Block's cube-shaped head has a different function. Despite having different functions, these eyes look identical and can't be distinguished from each other. This has worked in the Blocks' favor on a few occasions, but is usually not a concern. The front Eye is the brain, the right Eye is a laser, the left Eye fires a freeze ray, and the rear Eye shoots pulses of fire rings. Each weapon has a specific glow before firing: red for lasers, light-blue for the freeze ray, and orange for fire rings. The laser and fire rings each do thirty points of damage per hit. Either one can be fired rapidly. The ice beam fires as a continuous stream and has several different effects. It can either freeze part of someone's body, forcing them to chip the ice away, or it can freeze them entirely. If someone is completely frozen, they are either devirtualized or stuck frozen for three minutes. So far, Ulrich is the only one out of the group to have been completely frozen by the ice beam. This might be due in part to his style of combat, which focuses on blocking attacks instead of avoiding them. The ice beam has proven largely unblockable, though it may have just been either good timing on the part of the Block, the inability to block specialized attacks with the sword or the fact that they have only used this ability when their targets were caught off guard. A Block has accidentally frozen its companion on one occasion, but the freezing did not devirtualize it. The Block actually tried to fire through its companion after doing so.

Blocks usually appear in groups of two to four, sometimes burrowing their way out from under the ground as seen in "Mister Pück". The Blocks are persistent and clever, though single-minded in the pursuit of a target. The Blocks will use their climbing ability to sneak up on targets and their unique array of weapons to devirtualize them. Their single-mindedness causes them to make mistakes, however, providing some comedic results. They also tend to ignore most forms of danger, but will dodge attacks.

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