The aether saw is way too cumbersome to do anything swordy with, but possibly someday, if development continues.

>And by the way — now that we've seen action together, you can
>call me Shirley. -- I'm glad this got sorted out. It... seems like
>it was a weird thing for Shirley to have been worried about in the
>first place though, or at least not without it being pointed out to
>her. Wonder who it was...

Well, now that you've raised it, my mental image is of Lucchini, probably while lounging somewhere improbable, reading a magazine and eating chips. "Is Countess Scarlet mad at you?" (crunch) "I don't think so... why would she be?" (crunch) "Well..." (crunch) "... you did kind of totally ignore that she was supposed to be leading the Stuttgart mission... " (crunch) "... at the end there." "... Oh yeah."

>(I am not allowed to refer to Gungnir, Spear of the God-King
>Wotan, as "the whacky stick" any more...)

It's more a sort of stabby stick, anyway, and I'm not doing that one joke 4koma where Patchy dies by the end of every strip. :)

>"It's kind of a long story." -- I almost feel like Flandre and
>Meiling's trip to Helvetia would work better if it was never
>explained.

It's tempting, but I've gone to all the trouble of plotting it, so I suppose I really should write it one of these days.

>(Reimu is not allowed her lightsabre until she learns to play
>nice with Marisa's emotions)

Weirdly, she thinks she's acting in Marisa's interest. Reimu has strange ideas sometimes, which presumably comes of having been raised by a stack of 10th-century ascetic hermits' journals.

>(Minna goes Bridezilla, but Mio instead goes Bridejira.)

Weirdly, the difference mainly involves Raymond Burr.

I think it says something fundamental about Mio Sakamoto's character that she can witness a balls-to-the-wall mage duel between two of the most powerful unconventional magic users of her age, one of whom holds a position of direct (albeit largely ceremonial) authority over every single witch of her nation including herself, and her main reaction is to mutter to anyone who might happen to be listening, "What in the seven hells are those goddamn fools doing?"

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.