2008-09-08 "So Awesome!"

[Slamlander]

Here is the inventory, as I see it at the moment;

1. Misa has always seen Sarine as her mentor and teacher.
2. Sara has recently accepted Sarine as her sifu/teacher.
3. Meji has growing respect for Sarine and has at least acepted Sarine an an advisor and may accept Sarine as a teacher.
4. Jon, at the least, sees Sarine as a co-conspirator/partner/fellow operative (We don't know whether or not Sarine is boffing him again).

The group dynamics are that Jon is the Alpha Male, Sarine is the Alpha bitch, and the other three females are beta bitches (Although, they may all be alpha children, they're relatively young enough, with Misa being an elder daughter.).

This sticks Sarine with a virtual brood of three talented and rather deadly, but somewhat naive, girls. If they go after Senilis' crypt, they could get it done and even get it done before the Elven expedition shows up. However, it's going to be hair-raising and Sarine won't have a speck of sanity left when it's all done. The bicker-factor alone is going to be off the scale.

*shares popcorn with sareth.*

It is almost incidental that, on this journey, Meji may learn enough to make her final exam irrelevent.

[Neko7]

If Misa has a good head on her shoulders and her trainers have been able to get a sense to her that there's a time to chuck out the book, she'll be fine. If, on the other hand, she's very stuck on tournament play... she's done. The fact that she gleefully is suggesting live blades implies to me that she's clueless...

Really?
From the look of the sword in the 3rd panel I was thinking that was a wood sword, agains a wood staff.

[Forrest]

From the look of the sword in the 3rd panel I was thinking that was a wood sword, agains a wood staff.

Correct, but Misa is gleefully suggesting that, once they play with the wood blades a bit and get to know each other, they should upgrade to live weapons...

[Forrest]

It suddenly occurs to me that Sara may not have any uber magical surprise factor at all, because Sarine already warned the council about the Ensigerum. I don't recall her saying "time ninjas" or anything like that on screen, but she did just a few pages ago refer to them as an "order of warrior-mages", so she may have given them a more complete report on Sara and Warrel than we got to see.

[Initial B]

Pass me some of that popcorn, please. ^_^

The fight should be interesting. Sara might come at her full force, considering that she pulled that time-bending technique on the elven detachment sent to bring Sarine back into P.A. for the meeting, and she's also tried to use it in Meji's home on those visiting elven dignitaries questioning John. Everyone might be aware of that now that the Ensigerum can do some funky stuff, and Misa will know if Sara's holding back.

[RubberBandMan]

I highly doubt it. Misa is out of the loop big time, her best source info on time magic is from the never-shuts-up Sara, so unless she gets a first hand demo, I can see her not knowing about time magic until Sara takes out five guys before she can blink.

[mindstalk]

I highly doubt it. Misa is out of the loop big time, her best source info on time magic is from the never-shuts-up Sara, so unless she gets a first hand demo, I can see her not knowing about time magic until Sara takes out five guys before she can blink.

Misa's out of what loop? She was the one bringing Ensigerum gossip to the embassy. And she's Viradior.

My low-probability prediction: Misa has not only heard of "and she moved really fast! weird!" but is in top-secret elven R&D (they can't all sulk all the time, can they?), and in fact means "I'll keep up" quite literally. Because it'd be funny if Miss Bubbly kicked Ensigerum ass right now.

Given the general surprise, such R&D would be very top secret and possibly not even official -- perhaps one of the Great Houses, or some revolutionary cabal, trying to get an advantage for the next war. (They're immortal. There'll be a next war.) No matter who, Sarine would be out of the loop, with her "spend days per century in the city" policy.

Even lower-probability, cruel and unusual division: the Ensigerum monk who "invented" time magic actually got it from a sympathetic or meddling elf.

FWIW, I note that Sarine recognized the time magic *as* time magic, and not "move really fast" magic, and Poe has told us Tsuiraku mages kill themselves trying the things the Ensigerum thinks are impossible. So there's something odd about "time magic as superadvanced secret of one tiny group".

Oh, and how is it that "blatant crush" is not part of the thread title?

[icekatze]

hi hi

This is the first time I've noticed it, but Misa and Chris act quite a lot alike. I wonder if Sara is noticing the similarities? Did she ever spar with Chris in the past? Maybe Misa is going to see a taste of what he received during training.

I'm also going to assume that Jon, having at one point in time a little sister who was relatively normal, would know something about how younger siblings look up to their older siblings. (I know I've experienced this sometimes inexplicable phenomenon) It seems in line with his character to try to push people to respond to his jests.

[BloodHenge]

Sara, on the other hand, has seen the elephant. She may have no where near Misa's experience, but she has the practical real world experience. Dirty tricks, a practical understanding that there are no points for landing a blow second, and form doesn't matter if you stick it to em.

But then, Sara has also sparred before. Anita may enforce different rules about sparring than the Elves do, but she'd still probably call for more restraint than in an actual battle.

[RubberBandMan]

Of course, her 'last' sparing match ended up being clocked accross the face. And her sparring with Chris ended up with him getting a boot to the face.

Granted, if you can heal broken bones, getting knocked around a bit and feeling the pain is more likely to prepare yourself for battle, if you can be 100% by tomorrow instead of nursing a bruised leg or arm.

And Misa may be over-excited and lack real battle experience, but I doubt she is bad at sparring. She's had many chances to find out why leaping attacks against a person are a bad idea, where Chris was most likely still learning "Pointy end away from you".

And the Ensigerum did invent the time-magic trick, it was mentioned that the first person who figured it out became the leader of the order because of it. As of yet, we still have not seen an intentional counter to Time Magic attempted by anyway. There are lots of ideas I've seen on this fourm, and we already know that reactionary shields and Ian-Bane nades will screw them up, but as of yet no elf anywhere has said "And here is how we'll stop them".

Which they really ought to figure out, since from what we've seen the Ensigerum has been called "Magic using Super-sword using fighters" And not "People who can move ten times as fast as anyone else". They're being treated more like a hardened group of Elfish-style fighters, and not something that iss entirely new to this ball game.