Beyond Belief [Ira, Yugiri]

Well, Ira couldn't exactly say he was feeling too great after that bout of his in the arena. Emotionally, he was doing fine. Hell, he felt pretty good all things considered, even if he felt like he could definitely have performed better. Just hurt like hell to move around with all these bruises and the like. Looking out the window from his little apartment, he couldn't exactly help but feel at least a little disappointed. He'd have to get better than this.

"Ah, this isn't doin' me any good."

Wincing to himself as he stood from the bed he'd been laying on, Ira looked around for something to change into so he could actually head out for the day. He'd mostly just been laying around here, thinking of who to ask for help. Yugiri, Ehefra, hell he'd ask Kasha too.

Ow, damn it. Slipping on shorts hurt when he was this bruised.

Well, she'd heard plenty of what had happened and Ira's scathing loss. It was always a sad thing to take a loss so she'd naturally check up on Ira, Shaoling seemed eager to get involved but it didn't appeal to Yugiri. Well, she did want to but she was still recovering after injuring herself trying to create new techniques. Didn't sound that exciting to go in there with a limp and be fighting with a handicap, right? Especially when her reputation was on the line as the queen of speed!

"Morning Ira."

She said with a bit of a boyish voice from the corner of the room, in the shape of a cat all snuggled up in a ball with silver eyes peeking at the girl getting dressed. The black cat getting up and giving a proper stretch with a small whine.

It had been a while since she'd been like this, she forgot how cramped it could get sometimes like muscles not exercised and the feeling of atrophy in them. Oh well, she didn't mind hanging around as a cat in the City of Lights for a while while the people she cared about were her.

Wincing as he jumped a bit in surprise, Ira finished tossing on his choice of clothes before he properly turned to his feline friend, expression at least a bit brighter now than it had been a moment before.

"Mornin' to you too. You know you oughta tell a guy when you're gonna stop by, but I'd been meaning to chat with you anyway. Guess that works out, eh?"

It was pretty amusing seeing her in this form, if only because it wasn't really one he saw much, if ever. He'd tell her it was cute, but that was a real coin-flip on whether or not she'd take it well, so he kept that one to himself.

"Probably heard how my match went, huh? I can't say I'm thrilled about it."

"I show up at just the right time and not a moment later, maybe earlier if I sprint. You know that."

She answered back from her comfortable spot, the woman in the shape of a cat lazily making her way over the ground towards the bed and jumped up on it. She forgot how nice it was to just be able to do nothing like this, lay about and be completely inconspicuous if she wanted to be not that this was one of those times so she rolled onto her back and looked up at Ira with big silver eyes.

"Every now and again we lose, it's what you want to do afterwards, that determines if it's a true loss or a victory in disguise. So what'd you learn?"

"Ha. Fair enough."

As Yugiri hopped onto the bed, and layed down, Ira couldn't help but reach over and give her a brief scratch on the stomach, though in his head it was more just a playful gesture at the fact she was in such a form to begin with. His thoughts were mostly on what she'd asked, and his expression made that much clear, still firm and focused.

"Learned I'm not quite as good as I'd like to think. I've got decent enough technique, but I'm missing out on a lot. Strength, speed. I know how to fight, but that only means so much if I can't actually capitalize, or if one good hit's enough to take me out of it."

Discounting the fact that Ira's gesture might be the slightest bit weirder should Yugiri have not been in the shape of a cat right now, though she was in the shape of one and she responded in kind. In this form the gesture was no more different than having someone pat her head. Regardless there was still the faintest purring sound that came from her.

"So what would you like to do about it?"

She followed up, establish what she'd learned which in this case her weaknesses. Now that she recognised those weaknesses how was she to move forward with them? It might've been a lecture from a cat but she had her decent share of experiences with having her weaknesses blow up in her face and needing to be taught to grow from them.

Just a few.

"Nothing to be done about it but train, right? But I don't think it's really good enough to just keep doing what I've been doing. That's just getting complacent, hoping eventually I suddenly get better. I'll need to shake things up a bit."

Ira continued to pet Yugiri upon noticing the purring, thinking mostly about who else he could actually ask and what else he could actually do. Maybe that was part of his problem, though. He knew who he could learn from, sure, but who could they learn from?

"Know any good teachers I haven't already run ragged by following 'em around?"

He'd have been perfectly content to just keep traveling with Yugiri and learning under her, but it wouldn't get him the results he was looking for. Just being content wasn't quite good enough for him.

"A couple but I'm sure they would be ill-suited towards training you. You're not a shinigami, a swordswoman or spellcaster after all."

She shot back with a roll onto her side to look up at Ira and cock her head. It was just the reality of it, Erchanhardt was one option but she was deign to put him in the position of training Ira after the recent news but she'd also heard of some of the people that she'd briefly met or heard about who had helped Erchanhardt during the war. They sounded quite accomplished.

"I know the Holy Roman Empire has a few high-spec humans among their ranks and associations with others. Maybe it's worth a trip to Europe, that's where I went when I was feeling pretty down once upon a time too."

Yugiri said and let her mull on that information. There was some names that came to mind but maybe Ira needed to find those ones herself.

Hm. Ira hadn't really been in Europe for a while now, but if she felt like it might be good to visit, he sure wasn't going to turn down her advice. She was right, after all. A lot of the teachers she knew probably weren't the best for him. Hell, that was probably true here in the City of Lights, too. Sure, not everybody around here was a Quincy, but most of 'em definitely were, and he wasn't really aiming to walk that road.

"That so? Then I'll have to make my way over there once I'm back in tip top shape. Be a shame to get out of here before we've had any time to catch up though, eh?"

He had ambitions, of course, but he wasn't in a hurry to leave just yet. Ira was old, after all, even if his body didn't look it. He knew life wasn't something you wanted to just blaze right through.

"Of course, why? Do you think so little of me that I'd tell you to go to Europe and then run off immediately?"

She shot back, a little bit of a joke but also a little bit irrate at the idea that she might be perceived as so callous. No way to spend time together like this though, well she'd rather spend time with Ira in her proper form. She did opt to remain in the shape of a cat for the most part while she was roaming around the Vandenreich for the benefit of being harder to notice but for the people that she did like here the purpose of this transformation was irrelevant.

So rolling back off the bed and in a flash of smoke, Yugiri successfully landed on her feet and grinning a little bit.

"So what have you been up to? Being a good girl I hope and not making lots of trouble."

She teased before looking down. Eyes darting to Ira's little bathroom to go steal a towel faster than a person could blink and being all covered once more.