Suzumiya wrote:
Are they even fighting seriously? looks half assed to me, since in a real fight if you tried to talk, you'd be very dead.
I think that very true point goes the way of the catgirl when it comes to fantasy webcomics. Story supersceeds physics, especially when someone has something really cool to say during a fight. And when you're writing for an audience with as short an attention span as we do. Go back and look, the only one who doesn't talk during fights are Sara and maybe a couple of those unnamed time-ninjas.
And yeah, I think Sarine won the actual duel to start with. That was a hard fall on her wrist- she landed straight-armed on the butt of her palm after appearing to roll an ankle. If she'd done that on purpose, she'd have bent her elbow at least a bit in order to absorb some of the shock, cause I can tell you from experience, landing like that hurts like living fuck and is a good way to break your wrist. When she flat-edged Sara on the back of the head, I think there was an indication that Sarine was counting coup, and inviting Sara to do the same- "best 2 out of 3? or shall we get on with trying to eviscerate one another?"
There's also an element of building trust there- "That's one time I could have killed you, and didn't. Are you going to return the favor, or just decide to be an asshole about it?"
But if I'm not completely off the mark, Sarine's inviting and I think Sara's agreeing to turn this from a Duel to the Death to a practice session- albiet a very hardcore slicey practice session that can still kill either of them if one or the other screws up.