Phil did pump up the action FX on this page and punched up the dialogue a bit, but in any drafted version, this is where Rachel really clicked for me. Oh, I was having fun with her before, but I didn’t feel bonded before this.

She is fully aware that after this attack, she’ll be falling from a dangerous height, but she was going to fall from that height one way or another, so why hold back? We all have to die sometime. If this is her last minute of life, better to spend it doing what she believes in. I’d say this was foreshadowing for her eventual actual death, but if so, it was accidental. Her fate was not yet even in the planning stages. She’s… just like this.

Yalaria’s description was built on Phil’s earlier notes about avians. Some of them are as articulate as almost any human, as Gondolessa’s already shown, but others’ psyches are far closer to birds and there’s a broad range in between. If you weren’t watching the tags too closely, you might think her name was “Gralor” and her non sequitur at the end of the first panel just means that lifting heroes up and dropping to their deaths is hungry work.