a power we should all have for free

They do. Although I think it's just the Brawl animation with the pistol still in your hand.

Probably the Pummel animation was removed from AR because the animation time did not match standard Brawl. It was likely changed when all the animation times were standardized, back when Arcanaville learned female characters were taking longer to attack than everyone else.

This is just speculating, but Pummel's animation time is 1.67 sec. Kick is 1.83. And Brawl is 0.83. It looks to me like the kick version of Brawl looks like Kick, but perhaps there is some leading or trailing animation that is trimmed off of it. Pummel requires you to turn the gun around, though, so it's a much more complex animation that maybe can't be trimmed down to 0.83.

IIRC, Arcana did some analysis of the kicking Brawl animation, and did conclude that it was slower than standard Brawl (but not as slow as the power Kick)

Of course, redrawing your weapon after Brawl would be a bigger hurt to your DPS than the longer animation of the kicking Brawl, so it's not worth worrying about, I think.



Sidebar: Brawl is the most complicated power in the game. (Technically, not mechanically)