Why this crossworlds argument doesn't work.

 

Hello there! In this blog, I’ll be looking at and examining a debated ability in powerscaling which hammerspace/item manipulation, along with the resistance to it. More specifically, does it actually hold up in Sonic Racing CrossWorlds, or is it just a misconception that is getting overhyped?

The argument:

The argument comes from a little black creature (Shadow 05 FTW) called the Dark Chao . It teleports onto a player and drops a box on them, forcibly swapping out the items they’re holding. Meanwhile, Super Sonic is unaffected by it. So that means he’s immune to hammerspace manipulation, right?
Well, nope.

The problems and why it doesn't work :

Problem 1:

Before getting into it, let’s define resistance. Since this is a powerscaling topic, we’ll use the definition from VS Battles Wiki:

“Resistance is the power to withstand the effects of certain abilities through varying means. Of course, simple resistance to one showing of an ability isn’t enough to ignore all uses of that ability, as some applications may be far stronger, while others may work differently, meaning they must be resisted differently.”

 

Now here’s the problem. For the Dark Chao’s ability to take effect, the box it throws has to open or break, which forces the item machine to reroll and hand the player different items. When it’s thrown at Super Sonic, the box never opens. It simply gets reflected or knocked away. The ability never actually starts, so there’s nothing for Super Sonic to withstand.

Resistance means withstanding the effects of an ability, and that requires the effects to actually take hold in the first place. Take an example: someone throws a poisoned needle at me, and I deflect it. That doesn’t mean I resist poison, because the poison never touched my skin. I avoided the attack thus I didn’t endure its effects. The same logic applies here. Super Sonic isn’t resisting anything here, He’s preventing it from ever being applied because he deflected the box.

Problem 2:

Super Sonic ignoring the Dark Chao most likely comes from his invincible state negating all hazards, not from any specific defense against item or hammerspace manipulation. Being invincible to everything is a different claim from resisting this one thing, because the Dark Chao’s box is treated as just another attack, and invincibility negates attacks. This isn’t unique to Super Sonic either. The Shield and the Monster Truck, along with other effects that grant invulnerability during gameplay, all do exactly the same thing. The Shield’s description says it “negates all attacks” and that includes the Dark Chao. So within the game’s own logic, the Dark Chao’s box is classified as an attack, and the Shield nullifies it by never letting it hit and open in the first place, deflecting it basically. The Monster Truck works the same way, think of it as water negating fire or something.
Basically I'm saying the simpler explanation is that all of these are blanket invulnerability effects, and none of them are specific counters to the Dark Chao’s ability.

Problem 3:

There’s another problem with calling this hammerspace manipulation: the Dark Chao’s ability is much closer to technology manipulation (with some kind of item manipulation as a byproduct), and the game gives us plenty of reasons to think so. Items in CrossWorlds are held inside the machine itself. The animations show you pressing a button for the item to activate, and the screen shows the machine rolling and drawing the item, so the machine is clearly the one doing the work. The Dark Chao’s own description backs this up, since it says it “grants items to all machines” and that a “new item will be redrawn,” and redrawing is something a machine does when its item system is forced to spin again, not something you’d say about pulling an object out of nowhere. The strongest evidence is how the item behaves when the machine is damaged. If your vehicle takes a bad enough hit, the item box gets released from the back of the machine and you lose the item, which wouldn’t make sense otherwise if go by the other route, because damage to the vehicle shouldn’t affect your hammerspace or wherever you hold the item. On top of that, the only way to stop this from happening is to modify the machine itself with the item keeper gadget, which is obvious what this upgrade does. So we know the item box behavior depends entirely on the machine’s condition and upgrades, which makes the other case wouldn’t work. So when the Dark Chao’s box forces a reroll, t’s tampering with the machine’s item system, which makes it technology manipulation at most.

Possible counterargument:

But what about IDW Sonic Racing CrossWorlds One-Shot? Wouldn't this prove what you said rn wrong?

My response:

I don't understand how does this debunks my point and It doesn’t really change anything, because it's established that the items are tied to the machine, and the Chao hitting Tangle in the face for the funsies doesn’t undo that. More importantly, leaning on the comic here isn’t a fair read of the whole picture. Adaptations usually simplify game mechanics, and Sonic is no exception (like how rings are absent in the comics but super forms still have limited time).The comic already contradicts the game in several ways.
The Dark Chao pops straight out of the box without any machine rolling an item. 

It targets a single character (Tangle) when the game’s version affects all machines. 

Slime doesn’t make characters drop their items like it does in the game

The shield behaves differently from how it works ingame.

If we treated every one of those as real mechanics, we’d end up with two incompatible versions of the same ability. Since the game is the original source and the comic is a simplified retelling, the game’s mechanics are the ones that should decide how the ability works. And even if we go by what the comic shows, the Dark Chao just hands the driver an item, and that’s all it does. That’s the problem with cherrypicking, you can’t take the parts of the game and the comic that suit your narrative and ignore the rest. The “redrawing items” part of the ability only exists in the game. The comic never shows the Dark Chao swapping or rerolling anyone’s items, so it can’t be used to support that claim. The ability originated in the game, and the game has its own mechanics for it, so you can’t carry the comic’s version over onto it. Either we judge the ability by the game, where it forces the machine to reroll its item and the technology manipulation argument applies, or we judge it by the comic, where it only grants an item and there’s no pure item manipulation to talk about at all. Mixing the two just to get a specific hax doesn’t work.

Problem 4:

To make things worse for the hax and resistance  side, Super Sonic doesn’t resist Fenzy either, and Fenzy also changes the items of the machines. There’s no projectile or box to deflect here, and no separate attack for his invincibility to negate. Dodon Pa just has the ability to control the machines directly, 

and the items change as a result. That further shows the whole thing is tied to the machine itself. Fenzy can do other stuff like giving extra speed or temp invulnerability directly.
Along the fact that Super Sonic doesn't resist any item stuff in Shuffle (Although I do think the canonicity of his appearance is dubious), and doesn't resist his items being locked up in Speed Battle (maybe, maybe because it's not considered an attack in that game and Idk if this is even canon with how it's missing up the timeline)

Conclusion:

The argument is fake and blockite and its sisters can just do the job.