There is a point where Chiaki is really unwilling to escalate to. She's willing to call in a posse to teach another posse a lesson; but if it's going to be a battle that will cause a lot of collateral damage and put innocent lives at risk she'll find a different way to do things.

For instance if someone sent the Carnifex after her, rather than involve the entire Lair Legion and possibly a few alien races to beat him, she probably would just try to negotiate with him, and appeal to either his sense of honor or pity. She's not above using big, sad puppy dog eyes in situations like that.








She's been cornered before, and was badly hurt. She won the fight, though.





This is an interesting spot to point out an interesting contrast between two characters.

Chiaki particularly hates people who think they have superior intelligence and therefore have the innate right exploit other people, especially those they feel contempt for. Chiaki will manipulate people sometimes, but usually on genuinely friendly terms. In other words, she would make a terrible Hollywood agent. Note that this also means she would have a particular dislike for the Hooded Hood. Screwdriver sounds like he's in that same category.

Lara Night, on the other hand, thinks its fun to match wits with the super-smart and super-powerful types - but not so much to battle them physically. She can be quite sneaky in her own right, but tries to keep honest so she can sleep at night. She believes the Hooded Hood to be occasionally interesting, sometimes a fun opponent. Screwdriver, she might make as angry as she made the Chronicler.





She might have passed a carrier pidgeon vendor somewhere in Badripoor. And they might be fairly common among people who don't trust their communications not to be intercepted.








It's kind of like if you have something in the room with you making a high-pitched cricket noise, only very loud. You might be highly tempted to bash it into dust with a stapler.

In Chiaki's case, Tom might produce a lot less psychic noise if he's unconscious.








Lara hates being the "bad guy" if she can avoid it. Note how much abuse she's taken while in the Parodyverse simply because she's unwilling to use extremely deadly force. She's a lot like a cop who's been shot several times because he's afraid to draw his weapon.

But, if she feels sufficiently threatened - or if her friends are threatened enough to force her to lose her temper - she's not going to freeze up and allow herself or her friends to be killed to preserve her white-hat status.