Thank you all for the feedback! I definitely see where I had issues clarifying where the characters were, and how cohesive the story was. A lot of issues I had was that I was very unhappy with my first attempt at this comic, and decided to scrap a lot of it last minute because I wanted to at least put together some kind of completed work instead of a half-finished comic. However, I definitely could have done with more planning and writing to make it a bit more clear on what was happening, even if it was just to stitch the parts together in a better way. (Sorry, it's a lame "I ran out of time" excuse, time management is something I need to work on) I'll definitely work on fixing these issues, thank you for taking the time to point them out! And thank you, Flytee, it was fun battling you!

thanks so much for all the feedback! Some of the crits were super useful and I'm glad the comic was entertaining for a lot of you. I just want to address a couple of the comments and some confusion. Just for my own peace of mind haha @Reecer - I can confirm Dairyu is the first and only assassin that will be sent after Rae by the antagonist. I'll be progressing the story more in a beyond battle, it's never been my intention to hurl assassins at these characters, just a heads up lol I tried REALLY hard to explain why Dairyu was doing the job (the dojo and all the good it would do there.) I also attempted to emphasis here slightly pragmatic, cold outlook on things as a creature aligned to war. Its a shame it didn't really work for you :/ but I guess there's only so much explaining I can in this time frame. @Flutters- I think your comment has shown me that I need to work on the clarity of my writing, so I'll just clear some things up now. The job only became beneath Dairyu when she was in deep and released Rae was effectively a helpless civilian. Upon taking the job all she knew was she was dealing with something weakened and unstable- the contract was mysterious which was why it didn't feel "right" other then that she had no strong reason to not accept it and get a big pay out. The stuff with Blue- I kinda get you point as a reader and how it comes across. My intention was to emphasis that Blue is a small, faint ghost who, for a creature of spiritual power like a Kami (basically a god) would be rather irrelevant and hard to pinpoint. As for the final point about Dairyu "jumping to conclusions" her profile suggested she was brash and impulsive so I was trying to be true to the character. You mentioned her motivations to keep the scar being weak, I probably could've created a deeper more interesting reason outside of "I fucked up and didn't properly vet my dodgy side job" buuut admittedly I kinda ran out of time. I felt like the reason made enough sense/ showed a deity effectively-being humbled by a mistake, so I stuck with it.

flytee: very nice! felt like a good bit of characterization for both your own characters and your opponent's! love seeing blue reveal cool new powers, and the way you depicted it in pages 12 and 13 was excellent!! i guess all your antagonists are going to be this person's assassins, huh? feels kind of strange that dairyu would even be in this situation to begin with, but it's a good excuse to get cool ninja moves going on. a little nitpick that seeing rae run left on page 7 threw me off when she was running to the right on page 8, i assumed dairyu was somersaulting backwards :v but in general, i super liked the comic! moth: i can tell you really wanted to draw this cool monster. all the panels with it are so sweet, and the one where the vines are being cut up by the panel borders especially wowed me. but i feel like the panels with all the characters, which is most of them, suffers from it. everything's very tight, and i don't really get a good concept of where anyone is in relation to the environment, and especially not in relation to the monster. also, i dunno, i can't really explain it, but the dialogue often hits weirdly in a way that makes it difficult to understand? like, on page 5, panels 2 and 3, i keep rewriting this to explain what's bugging me but i don't really know what, something about the separation of the panels and the way rae's line is written that implies that these two words are a conversation. there's small... incongruencies, i guess, throughout the comic. on page 2, when dairyu says "you're dead," i don't know if that's meant to read as, "how can you be intrigued when you're dead" or "i will kill you," and i assume it's the latter but i read it as the former for a good while. sorry, there's no real good advice here, i don't know what the problem is u_u i should say, while i've spent so much time staring at this dialogue, that i really appreciate how much you play with word balloons! but yeah, i dunno, give some of it more room to breathe, and that's all i got!

Flytee: I like the moodiness through use of mostly monochromatic color schemes.I wonder if the story is a little muddled by the fact that it's the result of a number of bad decisions instead of just one (taking a job so far beneath her morals, not talking to the ghost she could perceive, jumping to the conclusions, etc.). I guess it's a statement of her character that instead of sorting things out or apologizing, she chooses to keep a scar, but I think something could be a little stronger about her motivation to keep a scar willingly. The story still works, though. Also, I spy a sparkly Ben! :D Snowymoth: I like your clean, somewhat imperfect in that "I meant to do it" way lineart. The limited use of blue is not a bad idea, but thematically it may be little odd to use it as a blank background when the character who also uses that spot color hasn't shown up yet? You have some nice establishing shots, but the action is a little hard to follow. There isn't much indication of who is standing where doing what, and crossing the line of action doesn't help things. The scarification feels a little too incidental for a match that is all about getting said scar, and the fact that scarring a ghost at all seems like it would be a big deal.

Flytee: You did a great job with the story for this. You mentioned worrying about starting with the ending but you made it work. Also I love your style and the limited color keeping pages monotone, when you add other colors into the mix it makes them pop even more. My one crit would be I would like to see some more contrast on the characters to help them pop even more. You have been doing a great job and i love seeing all these comics you're making. Snowy: I really like your line art, Your line variety is good and I like how you play around with the layouts like on page 6. My main crit is the lack of establishing shots to show us where everyone is in relation to each other. this I feel is the main cause of the pacing issues since we don't have panels to give us the locations of everyone it gets a little confusing. Also Blue getting attacked by the monster was under emphasized, that panel was the one of the smallest but it was one of the most important since it's how Blue got her scars, which i didn't notice till it was pointed out in the dialogue. I think you could have upped the scar and made it more visible and more throughout her body. For a Scar match I do think the scar should be a central part and the action that causes it should be emphasized as well as a focus on the after effects and the result of that scar. Blue and Rae's reaction to the scar was also underwhelming, which left the feeling that the scar wasn't so severe. All that being said you did a great job and I like the monster design as well as the inclusion of the other character in this.

Flytee: God, o nce again you've put out an amazing comic! At the risk of sounding a little repetitive, I love your colors and tones. And man, what a good story. Such intrigue!! honestly, for a moment I got so engrossed in the comic I forgot which one was even your characters, it felt so cohesive. And what a cool scar!! I think my only real critique is that maybe you could add a bit more white to the introspection bubbles, it sometimes got a bit difficult to differentiate the text from the lineart in areas where the narration bubbles weren't opaque enough. Snowy: I love your lineart, it's so gorgeous!and that's such a cool monster design :0 I think my biggest critique is that the pacing feels a bit off? It took me a couple of readthroughs to figure out what was going on, and... I get the feeling there's supposed to be more suspense, but it just isn't there. Not sure why but it just felt like there was no real sense of urgency or danger. I also kind of wish we'd been given more of an explanation on why the creature was chasing Rae and Blue. That said I do love that you chose to scar the ghost! That looks like a real cool scar too :D

Cydork pretty much said it. I really enjoyed your comic, Flytee. Very strong showing. Snowymoth, yours had some pacing and clarity issues, but some very fun things going on in the layouts and art. 6.1 was my favorite as well, and you clearly had a lot of fun drawing that monster.

Flytee: Really enjoyed how you organised the story and your use of colour, plus your style is charming as always! My only quip is that the scene on page 12 with Blue, Dairyu and her kami form deserved its own page in my opinion!! Also I think keeping it in the dark alley would have made it more dramatic and given a sense of scale of the kami form. Snowy: Your lines are gorgeous, I loved the monster design and the way you used the top panels on page 6 to indicate slashing were so clever! I feel your half was pretty hard to follow though, I think due to a combination of the unfortunately similar hairstyles between characters, lack of colour and speech bubble placement. For example, on page 5 I kept wondering why Rae was asking for takoyaki, since the speech bubble is closer to her head than Dairyu’s. The introduction of Hanako also threw me off - she’s new, some panels focus on her closely as if she’s important to the story, and the last panel on page 3 almost reads as sinister, yet she’s not seen after that page. I’m assuming she was just meant to be a friend chatting with Dairyu to set the scene?

Just uploaded! I wish I had just a bit more time to finish up some details, but I'm good with what I got done. Thanks so much for the match, I can't wait to see yours. ( :

I had to upload really early because I'm away now until Monday. This is a rather open-ended scar match, I will be doing a beyond battle in the future to continue the story. I feel pretty ok about what I submitted, I'm just pleased I got it finished. :V Can't wait to see your side Snowy! BRING IT ON.