The fact that he said "jerk-face" and had an extremely angry face tells me that he was very emotional in his killing of Chen, but he specifically told Oasis to burn out his tongue. It looks like he is being childish with his simplistic language and his sudden emotional distress. He may not even realize that "burning out his tongue" would definitely kill Chen. Like, why was he so angry? We have NEVER seen him angry. And he just straight up murdered a man but proceeded that murder with the term "jerk-face". That's very unusual.

And now Roberts is the new Big Bad of the series!

Damn... I did NOT see that coming...

Wow. I figured Roberts would come into play, but this? I am impressed.

Yeah, Roberts has always been a doofus, the butt of jokes. (Except for the sentient pie incident...) Who woulda guessed he would be the one to take out Chen.

Rest in pieces, Chen. You became less evil as time went on, but you were still a creep.

Although Roberts was quite angry at Chen's betrayal of Schlock and attempt to take control of Oasis, more than we might expect (which is interesting), and a doofus, pretty much everything he did here seems pretty sane and not necessarily either evil or that supportive of Schlock. Before he spoke, he and Chen were the only ones who could control Oasis. Chen might at any moment give a command attempting to make himself the sole controller, which would only benefit the backstabbing Chen and would interfere with any plans Roberts had.

So what to do? Stop Chen from issuing more commands as soon as possible. How to do that? Either ask Schlock to have Kusari kill him, or use his own control over Oasis. The first way would require a lengthy explanation to Schlock which would have to be out of Chen's earshot, and likely make Chen suspicious. So use Oasis, then. But she can't free herself from her bonds without a command to Kusari (she was trying and failing), so how can she help? Pyrokinesis. How to stop Chen from issuing more commands using fire? Burn his tongue. Not necessarily the only course of action, but a perfectly reasonable one. The most surpising thing is that Roberts was so motivated to avoid losing Oasis and thought and acted so quickly and rationally, seeing as he has been a 'goofy' character so far.

Note that despite Oasis' impressive accuracy, her burning of Chen's entire head may have been less accurate than Roberts intended. Only burning his tongue would not set the rest of his head on fire if Oasis had that accuracy, and wouldn't have killed Chen, or at least had a chance of not doing so. So it's not clear if he meant to kill him.

Even if Roberts doesn't care about Schlock's plans, his actions still make sense. He avoided losing control of Oasis, and now is as vital to Schlock's plan as Chen thought he was.


+1

It's not explicitly represented in the strip, but it is quite possible Roberts didn't say 'not if you're still on speakerphone, jerkface' into the microphone. Also, bug-eyed Roberts is awesomely terrifying-looking.

Well. Don't kill Robert's clone/brother friends, that's what I've learned today! I cant tell if Torg is oh my godding about Chen's unfortunate situation or Kusashi ;)

I was fairly surprised that she couldn't - we've seen her tear through a straitjacket like tissue paper, wield a (short) grown man as a weapon in one hand, and perform other feats of strength. Wouldn't have thought ropes would slow her down, but maybe they're special ropes.

hot damn angry Roberts is scary!

Loving the sudden twists several days in a row.

Aand apparently Oasis can burn on command . Interesting

I don't know that Roberts is on Schlock's side. I just know that he's unhappy about Chen (probably because of the betrayal, but most likely due to other factors as well) and this was his one chance. We have no idea what he's going to do next, but the next move is definitely his. Assuming the phone is still on, he can do more Oasis-work -- and if not, he still has some negotiations with Schlock (who could just imprison him, I suppose).

Also, Kusasha looks strangely nonchalant as Chen's head explodes. And couldn't Oasis do that to her too?

childish and clever aren't mutually exclusive :) Thank goodness for me!

Actually, doing the maths of tongue burning actually suggests that that in all likelihood the rest of the head and neck WOULD catch fire anyway. The flash point of human flesh is high due to the 70% water content - you need a decent exposure to 650C to dry the body out at a resonable speed for ignition to be allowed. The actual flashpoint is difficult to say due to the high water content - that needs to be removed before ignition. Flashpoint ignition loooks like to be over 1000C by some guesses of the sort of energy required to be rid of an organ the sie of tongue of it's water pretty much instantly.

Now for the sake of the thougth process, you need to have enough energy to a) flash off the water and b) ignite what is left. Now even if you release that kind of energy to the tongue only - which is actually a fairly large bit of meat that goes a fair way back into the throat - I suspect that there would be more than enough sheer heat release to cause a lot of collatoral damage elsewhere and yes, set the surrounding tissues also on fire... which if you think about it, you have a large piece of meat suddenly at something like 1000C+ in the head and ummm.... yeah it wouldnt matter how precise the aim is, that's going to flash the water out and set the remaining fats on fire for the surrouding tissues.

What I would suggest the issue is is not accuracy but the amount of energy applied. If you want to burn the tongue and not set it on fire, the heat energy only needs to get the flesh up to 100C to do the job quickly.

We will find out in due course, and maybe we will find out why he wears a hat with an antenna on it.