[Backdated to Wednesday afternoon]

[justaflowergirl]

Characters: Cirno, Juri Arisugawa, Yuka Kazami, and anyone else who might come by.
Format: any
This log is: open
Location: Conquest courtyards
Summary: After-battle conversation.
Warnings: none

Yuka smiled as she poured Juri's tea.

On the face of it, someone might call their fight rather disappointing - the younger girl had obviously been unprepared for an opponent who could fly, and Master Spark had taken her completely by surprise.

Yuka thought otherwise. Even in the face of those shocks, Juri had wielded her blade with authority - and far more skill than Yuka could claim with the one she was using. The outcome may not have been in doubt, but she'd made Yuka work for it. Given more experience with the unusual, Juri would be formidable.

Yuka was looking forward to it.

Once she'd poured cups for Cirno and herself, she stowed her thermos and sat down. She didn't say anything yet though. Juri had the look of someone with questions, so she'd wait for them.

Comments

[jurist]

Juri shook her head. "At my old school, duels were merely swordfights." Well, there had been... that one girl whose name she couldn't recall, who had... who had... there had been something special... Juri's head began to hurt, and she lost her train of thought.

[justaflowergirl]

"I see. For me, it's almost the other way around - close combat was only a part of one format - and it was the unpopular format at that. The system here might be called a compromise between the one's we've known."

Yuka drank some more tea. It'd be a shame to let it get cold just because of an interesting conversation. (Well, Cirno would like it that way - but that wasn't how Yuka preferred hers.) "Of course, that's not the end of it. If you want to be successful, you'll need to be able to make use of the weapon that someone who will vow to you has. Although you might have an easier time of that than I... swords seem to be rather common. And you'll need to learn how to handle abilities that do things outside your previous experience - not just how to fight against them, but how to use them yourself."

"Of course, that assumes you want to be successful..."

[jurist]

Juri sipped her tea as Yuka was speaking, listening intently.

"Of course I want to be successful," she said, setting her cup down with a bit more force than was strictly necessary. "I don't know what the true purpose of these duels is, but if I must fight—which it seems I must—I want to do it well. Not to stage pointless mock-fights or to roll over and give up."

[justaflowergirl]

Yuka smiled. She liked what she was hearing. (Although she was glad she'd chosen her tea set for durability rather than elegance.) But she wasn't quite done yet...

"But that's the real question, isn't it - what's the purpose in fighting? I may enjoy battle for it's own sake, but I seem to be in the minority there, and even I might prefer to focus my efforts on familiar things, rather than spend time learning ways to fight that will be meaningless back home. There's really not that much difference between winning and losing, and it only takes minimal effort to avoid penalties. So why do more than is necessary?"

Yuka drank the rest of her tea and set down before looking Juri right in the eye and asking, "Would you like to know why I think it's worth doing more?"

[jurist]

Juri leaned forward a bit, intrigued. She had figured that Yuka simply fought for the fun of it, but perhaps there was more to it after all.

"Why is it, then?"

[justaflowergirl]

"I think it's something very simple - for practice. The outcome of these duels may be meaningless - although our headmistress seems to feel otherwise - but the skills gained in the process are not. And someday, there will be battles those skills are put to the test, where the outcome does matter."

Yuka leaned back, fidgeting with her cup a bit. "Of course, that's only my theory. But it's the best explanation I've been able to come up with for some of the peculiarities of the Exaclan system. And when the time comes, I may not wish to follow the path being laid out for us... Lelouch's speech raises certain doubts. But whatever comes, I intend to be ready for it."