Still, she couldn't let his attacks go unchallenged. And since she didn't know when, if ever, he was going to come in long enough to give her the chance to make a counter-strike, she had decided to be proactive. That meant using alternating banked turns to climb, and working her longspear for all it was worth, thrusting and slicing whenever Joker approached. She was keeping him at bay, and she'd nearly reached the cloud cover, but the effort had been exhausting.