Comic for Friday, May 31st, 2019
Sorry this is so late. So what happened is I decided to push through and finish the whole page, and that took a lot longer than anticipated. I think I underestimated how much time it takes to draw a full page as I’ve been drawing half pages a lot recently, and it was a page with a lot of dialog and few complicated panels. Particularly drawing the dragon always takes a bit, as that’s not exactly in my wheel house, and it sort of ruins the effect of it if it looks too silly. But it does mean Monday’s comic is done. I will probably push that Tuesday again to space them out, but if I can work on the buffer again, we’ll go back to Monday/Thursday. I know the variable schedule is a tad annoying.
For the record, no, it is not intentionally that Sophie’s hair looks vaguely like Tyler’s, if less extreme an example. But particularly when hair starts getting floater and longer I’ve noticed it sort of does… these things happen.
The null caster almost certainly could have stopped Sophie from making the stairs right in front of him, but I think he is operating under the rules of engagement protocol of “I really don’t want to”, particularly with Elizabeth there too now and everything that’s going on. He definitely thought about it, but didn’t have that long to decide.
While Toki is more clever than Elizabeth, Elizabeth has dealt with Nathan before, and consequently treats any assumption that he want cause trouble as laughable.
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Nathan and Kally are are both members of the House of Summer. Typically houses have more than two members. Even if Nathan had died on that plane and even if Kally dies here, Tokiwa is just begging to be assassinated. You really don’t go around saying people are …accounted for. Not out loud. Not in front of random people who can take that info and sell it to your enemies.
Also not when you are associating with Peter’s foes. He has an insane knack for getting that information to where it will cause said person the most harm.
The way Tokiwa and Dendrin spoke of the “vagabond” and the “warden”, it sounded like Tom was to be the target. A distraction for Nathan, perhaps? (Tom reckoned no one would be dumb enough to be gunning for Nathan, “‘sides maybe Atter”. And no, it didn’t sound like Dendrin was another exception.)
Mind you, admitting that she knows of this “distraction” is probably a bad idea anyway.
Oh, and it’s been a long day. Since Tokiwa met Dendrin, Ila has eaten nothing but field rations, and she’s probably the only one to catch any sleep.
Sophie has decided to face her fate with style.
And yeah the monster hunters mission was full arse or perhaps a desperate bluff even before it started. Four monster hunters including one null caster is totally inadequate for facing off against two top tier registered mage equivalents.
Even if they have the rest of the squad acting as sniper and lookout (total of 6), it looked far to much like a fair fight for anyone to like. Ricci has had plenty of time to review the tapes of the Elizabeth-Camille fight and should have a comprehensive dossier on Sofie so we should expect better of a notorious Colonel.
Possibly Ricci s just making a last ditch effort to offer her sanctuary?
While showing her that he’s taken command of some of her best assets, demonstrating that Arron has the upper hand? Yeah, Ricci may not be afraid of a hussle, but he’s not stupid enough to fight a civil war if he can talk one of the parties down.
But he better have a plan B.
I do not think the monster hunters losing is a forgone conclusion, I think they really just do not want to fight her.
They actually got fairly close to beating Kally before Naomi and Ila intervened. While Kally was probably trying not to hurt them, she did already have her dragon summoned. During the first meeting the Null Caster did think to himself he could probably stop her from summoning the dragon at point blank distance, and was only convinced to back down by another one of them who pointed out that Ila and Mium would probably intervene even if he did succeed, and they were already having some trouble against Ila.
While we have seen the monster hunters typically lose, they did take out Tyler basically effortlessly, and he is one of the top tier mages out there (granted he did not know how to fight them, and that they cheat with knockout gas), but Kally was also knocked out by gas, so that seems like a pretty effective tactic. The only person that it outright failed on is Naomi… and that was the second time. The first time it almost worked and she had to sleep it off for awhile.
If the monster hunters just gassed the room, does Sophie have a defense against that? Maybe, maybe not, I think they are just being cautious. The only times they actually lost was to Mium (1v1) and to Ila/Naomi/Kally (4v3 or so). Neither of those really set their power level as definitively lower than Sophie, particularly if they had actually leveraged the element of surprise.
Adding Elizabeth into the mix might it harder, but I still am not sure definitively out of reach. They were winning against Ila 2v1 (well, technically 3v1 as there was also the agent there) until Mium showed up and freed Kally, and Ila herself is no slouch.
All in all I do not think it is unreasonable the monster hunters could be expected to arrest a tactical mage 4v1 as long as they were able to get close. Sophie did not actually attack them. While she did say their fight would be pointless, I think she was referencing that she thought it was too late to stop Atter from killing the Family members, which, combined with the death of the Consul, would trigger Biana’s plan of putting the Rogue Families in charge.
I’m trying to remember; Wasn’t Toki one of the sane aids Sophie had at some point?
Because man she is confused about what is going on.
Then again Sophie is starting to look to troublesome to exist in any column on Peter’s spreadsheet.
Sanity and naïvety (on a particular subject) aren’t mutually exclusive.
Past’s comment for May 20th also comes to mind: “Tokiwa may have a harder job than even Elizabeth, I sort of feel sorry for her.”
She may have given up her claims to sanity on 2018-09-03, when she paid Dendrin some presumably absurd amount of cash and a presumably highly illegal MacGuffinOfAnotherStory to bait Nathan. My suspicion is her confidence here is due to being confident in her and Dendrin’s abilities.
Ahhh yes! Back in September! Past remembers that fondly as the Time of Buffers.
I’d forgotten that bit. Possibly that is also something that is about to drop into place? Or already has and we’ve not seen the connection yet? Or already has and my swiss cheese memory just isn’t pulling it out?
If you remember, Nathan’s plane exploded for no apparent reason. Could be wrong, but pretty sure that’s the connection.
Brilliant! I failed to make that connection!
Thanks!
So, the plane exploding and Nathan being accounted for means he stayed off the grid until now? I thought Aaron spoke with him after that occasion. i know he was at the safe house but not staying within it.
Also, don’t get me wrong here, but Nathan’s super wordy stick lets Atter get away earlier in their discussions. even if it gives him super powers, it just takes too long to deploy, if your enemy decides to leave while you are charging up. Fluffy has a much faster trigger, and seemingly enough Power to take care of the problem.
Interesting thought just occurred to me…could Atter have possessed a null caster and surpressed other magic while allowing his own?
Nathan’s plane exploding happened after Arron talked to him at the safe house. I think that happened “today”, and we just have not seen what he has been doing since then. I expect he will turn out where people want him the least. Or not, as I get the feeling Nathan is sort of a tangent to the plot half the time.
Nathan let Atter run away when he was meeting Arron, because he did not want to fight him in the middle of a city. Given Mium and then Kally’s fights with Atter, it seems that he has a point as to the level of destruction.
My feeling is Nathan is probably a whole lot more restrained than Kally when it comes to blasting things with beams of annihilation. Just like in terms of physical ability he lost out to Naomi rather handily, in terms of raw power I think there is a good chance Kally is more powerful than him, but I would suspect when it comes to tricks up the sleeve and magical know-how, neither can compete with him. He is one of the few people that have ever used yellow/golden magic circles, though we do not really know what that means.
And, if he was actually series, I suspect the fancy stick can do something decided unpleasant, given Elizabeth’s reaction and indication that she would have no real chance of fighting him if he was being serious. While Elizabeth also doesn’t think she can beat Kally (as evidenced with her previous line), she herself was no slouch.