Also, despite me only catching portions of the 'subtext' as Sakura would put it (before resorting to googling), it was hilarious, as is Ana's character in general. She's pretty awesome.

Have to admit though, after the lab o horrors setup I was half expecting Gryphon having to fight a catatonic Cammy rather than Decapre.

Random question, I know Decapre is from the Street Fighter franchise (though I'm not actually all that familiar with her), but her setup also seems a bit reminiscent of X-23, I don't suppose there's going to be any of that figuring into this?

Not as such, the resemblance there is mainly coincidental - stemming from the same root references, you might say. In the Street Fighter universe, Decapre is one of M. Bison's Dolls, as seen here, but she fights with strap-on claws like Vega, they aren't built-in. In Warrior's Legacy she's been put through the Weapon X process, but apart from the that she bears no actual relation to Logan.

I'm not very familiar with X-23 (she's a bit after my time, I don't think I've ever actually read a comic that had her in), but I'm given to understand that she's supposed to be Wolverine's Heinleinian she-clone or daughter-from-the-future or some such. Decapre's origin is pretty messed-up, but she isn't either of those things. (Nor is she an experimental re-entry vehicle, although, heheh, I said "re-entry". ... Uh, sorry. That was juvenile. And a bit suspect, I think. :)

--G.
She is a clone, just... not of Logan.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Given recent events, I thought it was only fair to revisit this topic now that I am fairly familiar with X-23...

It's odd, really. That character's been around for what, 10-12 years now, and I had heard of her, but she was part of a scene I'd largely lost track of, and on its face, let's be honest, she sounded like the kind of concept you could trust 21st-century Marvel's management to screw up. (And they kind of did, I mean, NYX, what the fuck is going on there? Why do they keep letting Joe Q out of his cage? I digress.) I also hadn't seen the pair of late-series X-Men Evolution eps she was originally invented for.

The only reason that state of affairs changed, really, was that I won a Kindle Fire at random a couple months ago and ComiXology happened to have a deal running on a compiled version of the original X-23 comic miniseries. That led to the second miniseries and then to the last four or five issues of her now-canceled "ongoing" solo book, which were the only issues available through them at the time (they've since released issues 1-6, but now the start-of-the-semester flush is over and I'm too cheap to pick them up).

So basically, you can blame Weapon of Choice on issues 18 through 20 of X-23 Volume 2, in which she appears in the Good-Hearted But Slightly Confused By People form she takes in the "present-day" segments, and Decapre is still not supposed to be her. :) (If anything, Decapre got a slightly better deal - I mean, she's a clone too, but at least she was decanted an adult and nobody involved in Shadolu's cloned weapon project actually had anything personally against her.)

--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.

        As I plummeted toward - I hoped - the Province of Alberta, I
still didn't have time for a lot of rumination.  While the icy wind
snapped at my clothes and the glowing dial of the altimeter on my
wrist wound down, I only had one stray thought:
        How did I get into this again?

Ooh, in medias res cold open followed by flashback. Nice.

(If you're uneasy about the use of technical terms for writing stuff, feel free to read that as "I like how this one starts in the middle of things and then goes back to show how things went up to the point we saw at the start, 'cause that's more interesting that way.")

 So over the next
six weeks, I threw myself into Sakura.  ... Let me rephrase that.  I
spent all of my time working on her.  ... What I mean is...
        (Look, I know what you're thinking, and Zoner keeps giving me
this irritating little smirk, but -really-.)

I'm sorry, Ben, I'm just a relentless pervert and hopelessly immature. I'm sure you don't actually mean it, that's what makes it *funny* and not squicky as heck.

 "Why do you care?" I asked, probably more sharply
than I really intended.  "She kicked your ass for you."
        "Yeah, well... it could be argued that I was asking for it,"
Guile replied with something it took me a few moments to recognize as
mild sarcasm. 

By Jove, he has a sense of humour! Perhaps there's hope for him yet!

       I stared at the handset for a second - that was simultaneously
the best and worst news I'd had in weeks, and the most affecting thing
Guile had ever said to me - then put it back to my head and said, "Uh...
thanks.  No, seriously, thank you.  I... I kind of suspected as much?
But it's nice to have it sort of confirmed."

I just kind of like this. It really shows how much of a state Gryph is in, for Guile to go from "not this guy again" to "one of my bestest friends in the world aside from Zoner" just by confirming that yes, Cammy has a thing for Gryph too.

      Lara Croft - world traveler, traceuse, adventure archaeologist
extraordinaire - was as famous to civilians (that is to say, non-street
fighters) as anybody in my circle of friends and acquaintances, or at
least tied with Ken Masters - but Zoner and I knew her when, before the
Discovery Channel series or the improbably dramatized TNT biopic.

Yay Lara! Because everything needs more tomb raiding. And Tom braiding.

       ... and over the course of our Peru adventure, she managed to
let me down easy with such consummate aplomb that we've been the kind of
friends who can talk about any damn thing ever since. 

Because geeky brown-haired *girls* are more Lara's type. (Hey, I can dream, too...)

She's disapproved of all the girlfriends I've had since (not, as
my grandfather says, that they could fill a rowboat)

This struck me as sort of weird at this point - seemed like sort of a snobby thing to do, and Lara doesn't come across as snobby. But it made more sense later.

       "That's what Zoner said."  She gave me a quizzical look as she
swung into a roundhouse kick and asked, "Sensei, who's 'Nabokov'?"
        I was so startled by the question I completely failed to defend
myself and took one of her size-6 Chuck Taylors right in the breadbox,
entirely unprepared for it. 
        "Oh my God, Sensei, are you all right?  What did I do?"
        "... good... good hit," I managed to croak.  "that's all for
now.  please go inside and tell zoner that i will kill him someday."
        She hesitated, biting her lip.  "Are you sure?  I didn't really
hurt you, did I?"
        "no, no," I replied.  "just need a little rest.  i'm old now and
i get tired."

I laughed and I laughed.

        "Caitlin Sanders, SIS.  Would you come with me, please,
Mr. Hutchins?"
        I considered the request for a moment, then replied, "No."
        She blinked.  "... I'm sorry?"
        "I said no," I told her.  Keeping my tone pleasant and
nonconfrontational, I explained, "It's the opposite of an affirmative
response.  In this context, it means I do not care to go anywhere with
you or any other SIS sonofabitch at this time.  As it were."

Good banter. I mean, it fits him.

(to be continued because it is Way Too Late and I need sleep.)

Why yes, in fact.

>(If you're uneasy about the use of technical terms for writing stuff,

I'm actually kind of a sucker for jargon, much to my editor's occasional despair when I was a newspaper reporter. :)

>Yay Lara! Because everything needs more tomb raiding. And Tom
>braiding.

When the original Tomb Raider was still a relatively new game, I had a roommate named Tom; either he or I bought a copy at some retail chain that used big square price tags, and noticed when we got it home that the price label on the copy we had had been applied so that it very neatly covered the B in the title. Tom liked that very much.

>She's disapproved of all the girlfriends I've had since (not, as 
>my grandfather says, that they could fill a rowboat)

"Disapproved" might not quite be the right word; it implies that she thinks her approval is in some way required, which is probably where the snobby vibe comes from, and isn't really accurate. It's just that she hasn't particularly liked them. Which, given that they're quite a small group and two of them were the Onatopp sisters, well, it's conceivable that Lara might have a point. :)

>I laughed and I laughed.

True: The concept of the "Who's Nabokov?" scene has been on the board for... jeez... years. Possibly as many as 13. Zoner and I first jotted a version of it not very long at all after Sakura first entered the WL picture. It's been a question of finding a place to fit it ever since.

>(to be continued because it is Way Too Late and I need sleep.)

yay!

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

        And he was right: I didn't like it.
        I wasn't sure which part of it I didn't like the most: the fact
that Cammy was a former Shadolu agent, or the fact that SIS hadn't seen
fit to mention that fact.
        To her, I mean.  It wasn't any great surprise that they hadn't
mentioned it to me.

Dun dun DUN.

This probably isn't new to anyone familiar with the source material, but as someone who isn't, I can say this was nicely handled.

        "That's obvious," I snapped.  "Doesn't she have ANY IDEA what
Shadolu is, what BISON is?  This isn't some megalomaniacal attention
deficit case like Cobra Commander we're talking about here.  Bison is
one of the most dangerous men in the world - personally, not just
politically."

...okay, I remember the phrase "megalomaniacal attention deficit case" coming up at some point on the forums, but now I can't place it. Either way, it's a great phrase.

       "It does, rather," the Brigadier said, a little mischievous
light coming back into his eyes.  "Damn near killed her to give me the
go-ahead to ask -you- to do this.  I had to go through all the files
and give her a two-hour presentation proving that you and MegaZone
have been more reliable, more valuable assets to SIS in the past than
some of our own top agents."

I'm just imagining one of those really dull Powerpoint slide-shows with each transition accompanied by a sound effect.

        Even as I asked it, I realized I knew the answer.  It tied in
too neatly with what Lethbridge-Stewart had told me earlier in the
day.  I just hadn't put it together...

Dun dun DU- wait, Logan's a secret agent *too*?

You may have noticed that there isn't a
ninja crime syndicate in Japan called the Order of the Emerald Dawn any
more.  That's because of Logan and me, that summer.

Sounds like two men whose vacations you should never spoil.

 We'd gone over CSIS's
map of the area dozens of times on the kitchen table, planning
rendezvous points, fallback points, entrance and exit routes.  Sakura
had taken to it all with slightly unnerving glee, as if being a
commando might just be even cooler than being a martial artist.

Tough call, but I'd definitely say being a commando who is *also* a martial artist is cooler than either.

        I ended up sort of standing around next to the brook, trying to
stay in a spot where I could duck quickly into the underbrush if
necessary, feeling a bit like I was waiting for a bus - if waiting for
a bus involved keeping one's every nerve tense for the slightest sound
or movement.

Like waiting for a bus, except the wrong bus could kill you? ...okay, I'm definitely overthinking this.

        Sakura said nothing, instead eyeing the equipment the Baroness
was double-checking.  Then, in a low voice, she said, "You didn't tell
me you knew any dominatrixes, Sensei."

What can I say, this whole bit was highly amusing.

      "It seems to me that was why you dumped me," I noted.  "The
second time."  Lara, I recalled, had -really- not approved of the
Baroness. 

Okay, so in that small group of women Gryph had dated, we've got the Baroness and the two Onnatop sisters. Somehow, I'm no longer surprised Lara had disapproved. If I had a platonic male friend who was trying to get into a relationship with the Baroness, I'd not as much disapprove as yell "what the HELL are you thinking?!" and attempt to shake the idea right out of him.

        "The decor brings me back," the Baroness observed dryly.
        "Imagine if the Commander had had the chops to back up his
ambitions," I told her.  "That's Bison."
        "Hm," she said, and I couldn't tell if she looked chilled or
intrigued.

This is a terrible idea... but then, the Baroness seems like the sort of woman who knows it's a bad idea and goes with it anyway because power is shiny.

        We didn't just click, we -ignited-.  We were Fred and Ginger
with fireball fists and eyes in the backs of each other's heads. 

And quite a lot more beating people up, presumably. ...unless in this universe Fred Astaire's movies are *also* far more awesome than in ours. Which is perfectly plausible.

       I went to Cammy's pod, opened it, and repeated the procedure
that had revived Logan.  She, too, came back immediately from wherever
the immobilizer had sent her, her eyes focusing on mine - but unlike
Logan (uh, fortunately), her first reaction was to kiss me.

A moment of "awww..." marred by a tiny bit of "what the heck, man, where's the brain bleach?"

      Something about that struck me as faintly odd, but I was too
busy defending myself to mull over what it really meant.  The other two
commando girls had been kind of snarky.  This one had all the
personality of drywall.  It's funny the things you notice about a girl
when she's trying to kill you.

Keep your mind on the task at hand, Gryph. Next thing you know, you'll either be missing an obvious strike and getting your liver perforated, or worse, getting into another relationship.

 My back arched, I barely managed to stay under a wide two-handed
claw sweep - the phrase "limbo for your life!" raced through my brain -

Ah, the woes of a brain marinated in pop culture. No amount of Serious Martial Arts Training will prevent those references from popping up.

       But I wasn't going to give her half a second, because I was
already executing my all-or-nothing wrap-up - the seven-maneuver chain
of techniques Zoner, in a fit of puckishness, had dubbed "Murder on the
Orient Express". 

That should really be a 12-maneuver chain, with some of the strikes being very weak and- although I suppose there's not much point to a combo where some of the strikes are light?

more
than enough time for the woman in the Shadolu officer's uniform
("Laura", I think he had called her), battered though she was, to bash
him in the back of the head with the shock baton built into her crutch

A shock baton. Built into her crutch. That's... such a very megalomaniacal-organisation thing to do. It's like, what, you want to stay *out* of combat situations until your leg heals? No, that would just not be *evil* enough. Your crutch is now also a shock baton. They'll never see that coming. Now hop back to it.

        "You... you can say that.  After what I did to you."
        "What M. made you do to me."
        "After finding out what I am."
        "What you were. 

Awww.

Further debriefing will have to be conducted later, by
remote link."  As I watched, her face hardened, her eyes glittering
angrily in the dim night lighting of the hold.  "Because, ma'am, I'm
very tired now, and effective immediately, I resign.  Good morning."

Air-punch!

        Not that it would change how I felt about her if there were.  I
knew that, deep inside me, just sitting there looking at her face.
Whoever she once had been, I loved her now, and I had her back.
        That was all that mattered today.

Awww. Warm fuzzies all around.

The Brigadier is the sort of man who would do that - or rather, have his staff do it - just to make it as painful as possible for M. If he knew about them, he'd have insisted on animated bullet points too.

>Dun dun DU- wait, Logan's a secret agent *too*?

Well, inasmuch as he sometimes does work for the Canadian government - that is, acts as an agent - and it's secret, yes. But they know better than to call him in for certain kinds of jobs. For instance, he would have been a bad fit for the Casino Royale mission, if the Canadians had been doing the heavy lifting on that one instead of the British. He's more of a one-man counterterrorism squad than an intelligence operative.

>Sounds like two men whose vacations you should never spoil.

Or, well, about one and two-thirds, at the time. :)

>Okay, so in that small group of women Gryph had dated, we've got the
>Baroness and the two Onnatop sisters.

Well, sort of. The Baroness is one of the Onatopp sisters (Xenia is her younger sister). And he didn't so much date Xenia as, erm, encounter her in the line of duty.

>Somehow, I'm no longer surprised
>Lara had disapproved. If I had a platonic male friend who was trying
>to get into a relationship with the Baroness, I'd not as much
>disapprove as yell "what the HELL are you thinking?!" and attempt to
>shake the idea right out of him.

To be fair, she wasn't yet infamous (indeed, wasn't yet technically "the Baroness") at the time.

>Keep your mind on the task at hand, Gryph. Next thing you know, you'll
>either be missing an obvious strike and getting your liver perforated,
>or worse, getting into another relationship.

With Decapre? That'd be... a lot of work. And not in the good way.

>[Murder on the Orient Express] should really be a 12-maneuver chain,
>with some of the strikes being very weak and- although I suppose there's
>not much point to a combo where some of the strikes are light?

Not much, but you're correct - however, in-universe, Zoner named it, and he's not so precise with his Agatha Christie references. It irritates Gryphon a little bit too if he lets himself think about it, so he doesn't. :)

>A shock baton. Built into her crutch. That's... such a very
>megalomaniacal-organisation thing to do. It's like, what, you want to
>stay *out* of combat situations until your leg heals? No, that would
>just not be *evil* enough. Your crutch is now also a shock baton.
>They'll never see that coming. Now hop back to it.

Under the circumstances, it was probably Laura's idea, because she's kind of cracked that way. She has a deep-seated need to demonstrate at all times, to an extent that's considered eyebrow-raising even in the brutally Darwinian world of Shadolu, the full depth of her commitment to ruthless badassery. When you're Lord Bison's favored student, you really do give to the job 'til it hurts.

That said, whatever technician built it for her won't have kicked up a fuss about it. A, he'd prefer to live, and B, as you say, it's not really that strange a request in that organizational culture.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I'd imagine Zoner was insufferable during that period of time, always with the sly grin and asking "so, is it true that the Onatopp sisters are always *PUNCHED IN THE MOUTH*"
------
Jon Helscher

That thing you burned up isn't important to me. It's the fluid catalytic cracking unit. It made shoes for orphans. Nice job breaking it, hero.

GLaDOS- Portal

Although there are times when punching Zoner in the mouth is an attractive option, in this particular instance, Gryphon found it was both more effective and more satisfying to let him get it out of his system, then reply calmly, "Not any more," while walking away.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

The whole "Baroness de Cobray" thing seemed like a good idea at the time, although now that she's no longer with Cobra it's become kind of an embarrassing relic of youthful overenthusiasm, like a tattoo with the name of an ex-boyfriend on it. No doubt she's considered revisiting the Borokovian royal palace to file the appropriate paperwork with the Prince, but A) they'd be expecting her this time and B) she hasn't thought of anything better. I mean, as you note, going to her own name wouldn't really be an improvement. So yeah, she generally just tries to downplay the whole thing and just focus on the title itself.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Yeah, obviously. Still! Secret Agent Super Logan.

>>Sounds like two men whose vacations you should never spoil.
>
>Or, well, about one and two-thirds, at the time. :)

Even moreso at the "current" time, then.

>>Okay, so in that small group of women Gryph had dated, we've got the
>>Baroness and the two Onnatop sisters.
>
>Well, sort of. The Baroness is one of the Onatopp sisters
>(Xenia is her younger sister).

Huh. I must've blanked out on the full name, sort of skipped over it assuming I wouldn't get any of the references anyway.

>And he didn't so much date Xenia as, erm, encounter her in the line of duty.

You did mention both sisters being in the figurative very small boat upthread.

>>Keep your mind on the task at hand, Gryph. Next thing you know, you'll
>>either be missing an obvious strike and getting your liver perforated,
>>or worse, getting into another relationship.
>
>With Decapre? That'd be... a lot of work. And not in the good
>way.

Okay, maybe not literally this time, but am I far off in guessing that his habit of noticing things about women who are trying to beat him up is what got him into several of his (attempts at) relationships?

Meagen

It's entirely possible. They say you should never date people at work, but with a "job" like Gryphon's, there aren't a lot of alternatives. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Think of him as the kind of agent sent to act as the CSIS liaison on a JTF2 operation.

Or a more violent version of Bond from the novels: If he's being sent in, things have already hit the fan and the cover is just to get him in position to do some troubleshooting.

>>[Murder on the Orient Express] should really be a 12-maneuver chain,
>>with some of the strikes being very weak and- although I suppose there's
>>not much point to a combo where some of the strikes are light?
>
>Not much, but you're correct - however, in-universe, Zoner named it,
>and he's not so precise with his Agatha Christie references. It
>irritates Gryphon a little bit too if he lets himself think about it,
>so he doesn't. :)

Here's a reason for having some light blows in a combo: There are points in the sequence where the choice is between a light blow and no blow and the light blow is basically free. So you may as well throw in the hit.

>I'm sorry, Ben, I'm just a relentless pervert and hopelessly immature. I'm >sure you don't actually mean it, that's what makes it *funny* and not squicky >as heck.

That particular line made me think that it is awesome how Gryphon can keep his fictional selves separate and distinct from each other despite them being essentially the same person. UF-Gryph or TIA-Gryph I think wouldn't have made that kind of unwitting innuendo. :P

>more
>than enough time for the woman in the Shadolu officer's uniform
>("Laura", I think he had called her), battered though she was, to bash
>him in the back of the head with the shock baton built into her
>crutch
>
>A shock baton. Built into her crutch. That's... such a very
>megalomaniacal-organisation thing to do. It's like, what, you want to
>stay *out* of combat situations until your leg heals? No, that would
>just not be *evil* enough. Your crutch is now also a shock baton.
>They'll never see that coming. Now hop back to it.

I must confess that when I read battle 06, I had misread crutch for crotch and only caught my mistake when I asked myself why there was a shock baton there and nobody was well...reacting to it.

_______________________________
Take your candle, go light your world.

-Droken

There's one significant flaw in that strategy vis-à-vis Decapre: The only exposed metallic bits are really, really sharp.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

-Droken

Correction -- Juri Han, the Tae Kwon Do practitioner of Super Street Fighter Four, is not one of Bison's Dolls. In fact, she couldn't be happier if him and his allies, and Shadolu itself, all died in a fire -- preferably one set by herself.

Of course, this meant she joined up willingly with one of Shadolu's subsidiaries to destroy it from the inside, but we never said that she had a straightforward thought process on the matter.

You may be confusing her with Juli/Juni who are members of Bison's Dolls, or the fact that she's the Dragon to SSF4's Big Bad, Seth.

--- Philip

	Philip J. Moyer Contributing Writer, Editor and Artist (and Moderator) -- Eyrie Productions, Unlimited CEO of MTS, High Poobah Of Artwork, and High Priest Of the Church Of Aerianne -- Magnetic Terrapin Studios "Insert Pithy Comment Here"

"They say one should not speak unkindly of the dead, so I say, 'nice try'." --Lezard

Well, if you look at it like an RPG campaign (which is how WL began, after all), she "starts" with the moveset she had in Street Fighter Alpha, which was all self-taught Shotokan-alike stuff. Thus far, what she's learned from Gryphon has been largely the lower-level techniques - ways of moving, methods for focus and concentration, that pivoting backfist thing - and her "super moves" are all still very Ryu-like. Since what gets described explicitly in the text is mainly the high-level stuff, the change thus far isn't easy to depict.

She's never going to lose that Shotokan "flavor" entirely - and Gryphon doesn't want her to, because diversity is strength - but as we go on, we'll see her style evolving into its own thing, much as G's own continues to develop. Battle 07, for instance, will see her unveil a new trick that's part one and part the other, unmistakably marking her out as not just a dritkar, but one who could only have been trained by him.

(There's just a touch of this in 06: When she throws the sho-ohken that takes down Juni, she puts a Gryphon-style electro-gauntlet flare on it.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I was gonna say, I thought I'd seen her tossing in some flare into one or two of her better hits.

-Droken

There's an element of that, certainly, especially when you start getting into the advanced ki-manipulation stuff. It's a bit like the Matrix - one can't really be told what it is, one has to see it for oneself.

Mind you, part of that is simply an artifact of the fact that that's how Sakura learns. She picked up what she knows of Shotokan karate in the same way, and in any sort of training or educational context, once you've found the best way a student learns, you'd best stick with it. It helps that G's always been a learn-by-doing type himself.

>I could be wrong, but
>I'd imagine that Gryphon worked out big chunks of the Icon of Stone
>out for himself, since it doesn't seem like Rose would be intimately
>familiar enough with that part of Ler Drit for a step-by-step teaching
>philosophy to work.

Oh, she knows how to do it, but it doesn't come as instinctively as the more mobile and precise forms, and the Icon technique itself is the sort of thing that doesn't really look like much when someone else does it anyway. She could describe the focus required to make it work, but finding the way to achieve that focus was up to him. It's a very sink-or-swim style, at least the way Rose teaches it. You never know when you might find yourself ditched at the airport with a note giving you two months to walk the entire length of Japan.

>And just as similarly, I don't think the Icon of
>Stone bit would work too well for Sakura.

I'm not sure. She hasn't got the mass to do anything really spectacular with it, but she certainly has the determination to make it happen. In her case it'd pretty much only be useful for turtling (which is what G's doing with it in 06, but under certain circumstances, for a big enough fighter, it can also be used offensively).

>So I'm curious, on an
>technique level, are there other sub-styles in Ler-Drit other than
>Gryphon's Icon of Stone, Rose's Psycho Whirlwind, and whatever Bison's
>version's called?

Quite a number - it's a bit like kung fu in that respect. There are a number of flavors. I've been thinking about going into greater detail about that, but the fact that the entire martial art, in its WL incarnation, is a huge and embarrassing error is holding me back a bit.

The thing about Ler Drit as it appears in WL is that its original appearance was based on a misinterpretation of some incomplete data on my part. It's listed as the fighting style Bison uses in the old White Wolf Street Fighter Storytelling Game manual, which is what inspired this series in the first place, and I knew from elsewhere (probably the cutscenes in Street Fighter Alpha that Rose had taught Bison the psychokinetic techniques he used. I had never heard of Ler Drit and there was no such thing as the lazyweb at the time, so I assumed it was made up for the game setting, and that both Bison and Rose were practitioners.

Well, it turns out that's not the case. A while after WL started coming out, when it would have been a fairly big faff to fix the mistake, someone informed me that Ler Drit is a real fighting style. It's more or less the Thai Army's analog to Krav Maga or Sambo - special forces fighting, emphasis on hurting the other guy real, real bad, not much in the way of finesse. What the game manual had actually meant was that Bison had learned Ler Drit somewhere in his early travels, and then added the psychokinetic stuff he learned from the mysterious Rose, who fights in a completely different and apparently unnamed style, to create that whole Psycho Power ultra-murderous-bastard thing he has going on.

Similarly, information was very thin on the ground as to how the "culture", as it were, of the made-up martial art I assumed Bison and Rose shared would actually work, so most of the window dressing in WL - the terms for master and student, the word for someone who practices the art, the sub-styles and names of techniques - I made up from whole cloth on the spot, and they're obviously nonsensical in the light of the above.

If I had it to do over again, I'd take things that logical step further and just make up all the terminology surrounding the mysterious art Rose practices, and all would be well. It certainly annoys me a little more each episode as I inevitably compound my original mistake by making further references to "Ler Drit" and embroider the whole concept further.

Odds are I'll just snap and go fix it all one of these days. It might even conceivably be today. I used to be dead set against major revisions of released material, but that was in the days when EPU's output was distributed through USENET; nowadays, with the master repository for all the stuff being a website under my control, there's really no reason not to beyond pigheadedness - particularly for obvious, glaring errors like the Ler Drit thing.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I'm not sure if it's an alternative you'd consider, but you could also say that the two martial arts have the same name, with the SF version being pretty esoteric/mythical. From some admittedly cursory searches, Ler Drit (or Lerdrit or Lerd Rit) just seems to mean 'Great power' or 'maximum power' which is a pretty generic term.

As for the Sakura thing, I agree that she could make use of the Icon of Stone, especially as a counter to her weaknesses, I just meant that it doesn't seem to be a style that would really build on/maximize her natural advantages like it does Gryphon's. That said, if Ler Drit has that many branches, are there any other practitioners left out there besides Rose or Gryphon? Or is Rose something like a last repository. (Laura seemed awfully surprised that anyone else knew even anything resembling it).

(On a completely random note, I bet Sakura's just itching to learn the Ler Levitation bit. It seems just the thing to help her perfect that hurricane kick of hers... and with potentially hilarious results the first time she tries it.)

There were others once, but as far as Rose is aware, they're all gone now. It's just her.

>(On a completely random note, I bet Sakura's just itching to learn the
>Ler Levitation bit. It seems just the thing to help her perfect that
>hurricane kick of hers... and with potentially hilarious results the
>first time she tries it.)

MAX. HEADROOM 7'2"

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I suppose they could have had a common root (Muay Boran) which could have split into the Muay Thai (physical) and Ler Drit (metaphysical) branches -- and then the Muay Thai forms became ascendant, and the Ler Drit forms fell into legend and rumor. And then when the Royal Thai Army created their "Ler Drit", they were just riffing off the old legendary name, not knowing there were still actual practicioners.

At least, that's how I'd play it out.

	Philip J. Moyer Contributing Writer, Editor and Artist (and Moderator) -- Eyrie Productions, Unlimited CEO of MTS, High Poobah Of Artwork, and High Priest Of the Church Of Aerianne -- Magnetic Terrapin Studios "Insert Pithy Comment Here"

It hasn't been explained how it got there (in either case), nor whether it's just a coincidence, but as to why it strikes Gryphon as familiar, well, look closely.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

(I'd had the idea that hers was smaller for some reason...)

-Droken

Neither did I, but I intended this sort of resolution for it when I set it up in the first place; I just hadn't intended to leave it hanging for that long.

>Gryph, I'm certain you could not care less, but the story that got me
>hooked on you website way back around '98 was Battle 01.

Why wouldn't I care about that? It's cool to know. I'm even still reasonably happy with Battle 01, which is not always the case with works dating from the early '90s. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I know that we don't have any solid proof that Cammy was "really" his Eldritkar, and not just another Doll before she lost her memory, but it would make some sense...

That's Gryphon's current working theory, inasmuch as the other Dolls he's seen haven't had one like it. There are other possibilities, of course, having to do more with the structure of Shadolu than the actual practice of Ler Drit - and there's the interesting fact, which hasn't occurred to him yet, that they're both very particularly on the left cheek - the traditional position of a Germanic dueling scar.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Well, eight years, yeah, but not a few decades. Ye gods, I'm not that old. :)

>Sakura, however...I don't know if you've read any of the comic books
>Udon put out about SFIV

I haven't read any of their yet, but I have got most of the original Street Fighter run in trade - as well as the Sakura volume of Street Fighter Legends, to which there are a couple of references coming up in Battle 07. It seems most, if not all, of the events depicted therein happened before she met Gryphon in WL (though she apparently wasn't corresponding via the Internet with Ryu, since he barely remembers meeting her in Battle 03 - then again, the Internet hadn't developed to the point where a guy like Ryu would be able to use it when I wrote Battle 03, so that might just be an artifact of WL happening in Nebulous Comic Book Time :).

>All of
>which....is probably not forthcoming, because if she loses, or is
>broken or whatever, all Bison'll do is decant another Doll and start
>over.

Indeed. Gryphon figures as much too, which is why probably he doesn't seem to dislike Laura so much as just find her tiring. It's like dealing with your irritating cousin who a) doesn't seem to realize what an asshole Uncle Milt is and b) wants to be just like him.

Mind you, she keeps trying really hard to get him to dislike her, and one of these days she may succeed, at which point she'll probably wish she hadn't tried quite so hard. We've only seen a vague third-party description of what he's like when he gets really riled up, but it doesn't strike me that it's the kind of thing you'd really want to stick around for, much less be the one to have caused. :)

Also, I should note here that, as far as organizations like Interpol and SPECTRUM (who keep track of such things) know, the Dolls aren't clones; several of them appear in the SPECTRUM database as probable missing persons. (Doll No. 7, for instance, appears to be a German national named Julia, last seen a couple of years ago in northern Mexico.) What isn't known for certain is whether they joined Shadolu on purpose or got "volunteered" for the job by somebody else.

That theory would end up with a bit of a hole in it if what Gryphon discovered about Decapre were better known, but he hasn't seen fit to mention it to anyone as yet.

>Hell, with Decapre, it seems that he's tiring already of simply
>"training" his proteges and has settled for simply building them.

Decapre is... well, I'm not going to give it all away right here, but you saw the first revelation in 06, and there's more to her story. Suffice it to say that she's unusual even by the standards of the Doll Agents - and even more so in WL, where she was developed in part to test Shadolu's version of the Weapon X process.

>(That, and the scar makes me wonder if Laura's just a first generation
>Doll herself and thinks she's a Real Girl).

They don't all have them, so it's probably not specifically a Doll thing, but that's all I'm going to say about it for right now.

>And all this without ever seeing Bison in person, or him having any
>lines whatsoever, and being known purely by reputation and
>second-person description. That said, seeing him given some real chops
>(his character seems more overblown and less competent in the games
>than here, where he's a monster in a less Caligula-esque manner) is
>rather nice. I'm very interested to see more.

I'm very deliberately restricting Bison's screen time in WL, for exactly that reason - I want him to be as mysterious and indirectly understood to the readers as he is to the principal narrator. It gives him a much greater air of menace, I think, that of the members of the primary cast, only two have ever met him, and of those, one doesn't remember and the other refuses to discuss it. Hopefully, it'll give it that much more impact when he and Gryphon actually do end up face-to-face.

>But yeah, I really like the universe mash-up this is presenting,
>though a very odd part of my brain keeps wondering when Lara's going
>to meet a certain Mr. Fox along the way, but that would be Bad because
>WL really shouldn't end with Second Impact.

Heh, no, Laura in WL doesn't know any FBI agents - although, interestingly, an very early proto-draft of NXE1:1 was conceived as a post-apocalyptic sequel to WL. Proto-DJ wasn't related to Lara Croft at all; he was blond and Scottish. (There's a tiny callback to that design in the meta-reference humor stuff we did toward the end of NXE, in which it's mentioned that DJ Croft is "played" by a Scottish actor named Dennis MacCrofton. :)

>Still, very yummy. Please, sir, can I have some more?

By a curious coincidence, you can, just as soon as I hear back from one of the Suspects about a bit of future-plot-hook design I dropped into the final scene of Battle 07. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.