Alfhild: What floor is your friend on?
Violet: Atarangi, did they say upstairs or downstairs?
Atarangi: Ah —
{hff}
Violet: Juniper? Nothing here after all. We’re in the clear. Talk to you tomorrow.
Leif & Thorn
Fantasy comedy about a magic knight trying to have a romance in his second language
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Uh oh! Wonder if this counts as “suspicious enough” for Juniper to worry… maybe not, but at least Violet has given a definitive “last heard from” point if they get kidnapped
Also, interesting detail below Alfhild’s wrist in the third panel – a scar from power-blocking cuffs, possibly?
If Juniper was listening in throughout (which is kinda what she was told to do) then the sudden jump from “Where are we looking?” to “All good, there’s nothing here” should be very suspicious – especially given that the first of those strongly suggests that there’s enough options to search through that they’d better be efficient and cut to the chase, and yet Atarangi never got a chance to say where that chase they were cutting to was.
Juniper uses they/them pronouns.
And yea, I agree, this seems like they should be suspicious of this brevity. They are pretty far away and on duty though, so we’ll see if they’re able to do anything about the situation.
Yup, definitely suspicious, even if the sudden glowing eyes wouldn’t be visible.
Whoa, wasn’t expecting that! I wonder if the ultimate plan with Kale’s rehabilitation is supposed to be stopping Alfhild, considering their powers look very similar
I would assume all fire mage mind-control powers look similar and that government already have fire mages. Kale is not SPECIFICALLY for stopping Alfhild, although he may be assumed to eventually become part of special forces who are stopping people like Alfhild … and Kale.
So, I’m gonna be honest, I’m expecting Alfhild to straight up eliminate Atarangi here. Unless she can put the whammy on another magical, letting her live seems needlessly risky. What’s stopping her from doing that?
The only thing I can think of is curiosity as to why the camouflage Alfhild set up didn’t work on Atarangi.
The “raising stakes” part. It’s one thing if she just stops those two from investigating and run away. It’s other if she starts killing. It means she’s more serious threat and more resources might be spent on investigation. Also, it can mean that when they find her, they will shot first because they would consider her too dangerous to capture alive.
She’s trying to *stop* people from investigating. Dead and/or missing bodies do the opposite of allay suspicions.
Well, the first reason is because willingness to do X crime doesn’t mean you’re also ready for Y crime.
The second reason is that would work directly against what she’s trying to accomplish. This question is kind of like “If you’re trying to make dinner for everyone, why wouldn’t you just stab half the guests? It would make it easier.”
Maybe that’s a bad metaphor, since stabbing half the guests doesn’t make you automatically fail at cooking dinner.
Oh, and the third ability is that there’s no reason to think she even has the ability. If you’re expecting her to fail to manipulate Atarangi, that means she has no advantage. She can’t just decide to kill her, that’d be an actual fight she’d have to win.
Stabbing half the dinner guests does make you fail automatically if the dinner you’re making for everyone is to impress your hopefully future in-laws and hopefully future spouse.
Well, OK, I suppose that will impress them, but probably not in the way you want.
On the other hand, it could be just the right tactic if your goal is to ensure noone objects to the wedding. (Obviously, assuming your spouse is OK with that).
Hmmmm… I dunnow, I feel like Juniper might be suspicious of this prompt about face. Calling them up to be background listening was serious enough in the first place that I would have expected a less brief disconnect or more detail if I was them. :/
Especially the “talk to you tomorrow” bit. That’s definitely a bit added to try to stop anyone from checking in on these two until tomorrow, to give Alfhild as much buffer time as possible.
That’ll *probably* set off a lot of alarm bells for Juniper, but I dunno how “on duty” Violet and Atarangi are right now.
Also… oh dear… tags just confirmed that I remembered who Alfhild was correctly and that is super bad.
The site wasn’t working for me on my iPad today. I was able to see the comic, but the CSS was all off. I’m using the default theme.
Go ahead through the questions/troubleshooting in this thread:
https://leifandthorn.com/comic/o-is-for-overwritten-16-60/#comment-29262
It actually is working fine for me today! Weird how that happens.
I dug through some settings and cleared a cache, so the good news is that it seems to have helped! Less good is that I have no idea how long until it breaks again :/
Does Alfhild realize Atarangi was not taken in by her shield?
She comments on that later in the storyline, yes.
I always forget that I’m often reading things very late. 🙂 I have to force myself to not read for a while and build up a backlog so that I can then read a big chunk all at once, because I like getting into the flow of the story.
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