Playing With / Combat Clairvoyance

Basic Trope: The (supernatural) ability to peek into the next moment of combat, and plan accordingly.

• Straight: Ellen can dodge anything the opponents throw at her, because she can see how those attacks are going before they even begin.
• Exaggerated: ...even in the case of More Dakka, Macross Missile Massacre, or Slow Lasers.
  • Ellen predicts the outcome of an entire battle in her head before she fights it... Including the predictions of Emperor Evulz, who's a precog in his own right!
• Downplayed: Ellen can see an attack before it happens, but can't react fast enough to do more than shout a warning.
• Justified:
  • Ellen's psychic power allows her to see time in non-linear way.
  • Ellen is a mind reader, and can peak at her opponent next move directly from his mind.
• Inverted:
  • Ellen's ability is learning from the attacks that have happened and planning for every possible next move, but not peeking into the next moment itself.
  • Ellen can't see an enemy's attack before it happens, but she can see the result of her own attacks before she uses them and can use this information to perform the best attack for any situation.
• Subverted: Turns out that Ellen have the more mundane Kung-Fu Clairvoyance.
• Double Subverted: But when things gets really serious, she activates her Combat Clairvoyance. She's just that awesome.
• Parodied: Ellen use this ability to win in a TV Quiz.
• Zig Zagged: Ellen has this ability, but it's not reliable, and doesn't cover attacks she wouldn't be able to see, so it fails at dramatically appropriate moments.
  • Ellen is not actually a precog...However, she's The Anticipator, and one that is so good at the Sherlock Scan that she can still predict every move her opponents makes before they happen, giving her Combat Precognition in practice if not in theory.
• Averted: No one can see the future in the story.
• Enforced: It's a justification for Video-Game Lives: every "death" is an alternate timeline that Ellen foresaw and rejected.
• Lampshaded: "That move is damn impossible to counter!" "I saw it going before it happened."
  • "Hey! Seeing the future is cheating!"
• Invoked: Ellen multiclasses into mage specifically to get access to scrying magic and therefore this trope.
• Exploited: Emperor Evulz can also see his enemy's attacks before they happen, and he's better at it than Ellen. When the two of them fight, he uses this power to throw Ellen off-guard by planning to use one attack before actually using another.
  • Emperor Evulz gains Victory Through Intimidation, by simply asking Ellen to look into the future and see how many times, exactly, does she walks out of this fight alive?
• Defied: Emperor Evulz mastered quantum-based martial arts to prevent his moves from being countered this way. So basically, he can choose which attack to happen in the next moment, and these are never the attack that Ellen peeked... So, yeah.
  • Scrying is mentioned to take immense amounts of time, resources and focus, and Ellen can't spare that while in mid-combat.
  • Alice is a seasoned fighter with well-honed reflex and muscle memory, and combat is as much as Xanatos Speed Chess as physical endeavor. Ellen may be able to see and dodge Alice's initial attack plan, but she can't anticipate Alice's reflex and reaction to her dodging, as these are impromptu and by its nature, unpredictable.
• Discussed: ???
• Conversed: ???
• Deconstructed:
  • Since Ellen is such a master of dodging, she can't protect her allies when enemies start ganging on them.
  • Ellen's enemy has Super-Speed and thus can't dodge and counter her opponent's attacks.
  • Ellen is constantly confused between visions of the future and the present, which means she takes more hits than usual and jumps at attack that never happen due to this confusion.
• Reconstructed:
  • Ellen's Combat Clairvoyance allow her to take the bullet bullets dakka aimed at her allies. (Preferrably while carrying the Barrier Warrior Yoshino with her, otherwise she's toast.)
  • Alternately, Ellen can focus her attacks on the enemy initiating the attack, causing them use a different attack which may not be as effective, or even defeating them before the fatal attack ever happens in the first place.
  • Even if it's confusing enough mid-battle that it's not too reliable for dodging, Ellen's precognition allows her to avoid any and all ambushes planned for her.

---

I saw you going back to Combat Clairvoyance.

---