Panel 1: The idea in the first image is that Ninjette’s katana just hit the Ayakami’s forearm array of shuriken, as seen in the next panel. Note also that, by this point in Empowered, I had decided to ditch Ninjette’s straight-bladed, rectangular-tsuba (crossguard), cliched “ninja-to” in favor of a proper, curved-blade katana. (Or, er, katana italicized, I suppose.)

Panel 2: I photoreferenced this Ayakami ninja’s forearm array of shuriken from a book on the topic, but must confess that I’m not at all sure how one would pull individual projectiles from this dealie in a hurry.

Today’s Patreon update: As it’s a Wednesday, time for the $5+ Patron tiers to get their weekly dose of commissioned damsel-in-distress content! This time around, we’re serializing a lengthy narrative of a familiar lass imperiled by a goofy, gluegunning varlet (among MANY such varlets, as we’ll see); in fact, I’ve long considering redrawing this one as an Empowered story, but will almost certainly never get around to doing so now.

-Adam Warren