Emmy swallowed.
...
Warrior Emmy reached up to—
hWOOP!
rising; onstage.
"nrrf. (hello). Yup." Jake gave Emmy a smile, letting go of her hand. "Yeah just the PSU, but. Zap. Ded rig."
the cuteness with the name, emmy --> warrior Emmy
changing "Jake gave her" to "Jake gave Emmy"
tiny little frictions
not clarity. a lot, a lot, about clarity -- of diction and usage, and then of course more broadly of story. but this is not. I think even a reader who's skimming--generally my enemy reader; the person I am happy not to be writing for--I think even that reader would get that "she" is Emmy, here. Grace (Emmy's big sister) is also in this scene, and she's prominent in the first half, but she's at this stage receded into background and not had her name mentioned or been giving a visual check-in for a few paragraphs.
BUT. even for me, reading -- and presumably i'm paying attention to this text -- it's a TINY bit quicker, easier, less frictious to read "Emmy" and not "her", there -- a tiiiiny bit less work to lock into identity and image of that instant. So: change it.
I think I think a lot about these tradeoffs because I'm aware that, in other ways, I ask a lot of a reader. And I want to "ask" those things that I ask; because those are the things that I value and love as a reader, too, so I want to give those to people. But I think an important/useful flip to that--to "asking a lot" of a reader--is to try to make the easy parts easy, the smooth parts smooth.
a lot of it is just the summation of moments of "ask"
there's a moment of "ask" when I go from Emmy to Warrior Emmy; why is that word in there? I sort of remember it from before, what's it mean? etc.
there's a moment of ask after, with "PSU". a lot of readers won't really know what that is; I'm hoping even those who don't know will quickly gloss it as a "tech thing fine whatever", but it's still an ask. and if don't know or do that (quickly gloss it and put it away) then it's really an ask.