[h2]Jennifer White[/h2]

Briefly, Jen had a chance to try to react to having a girl on her sword (hardly a comfortable place to stand with all the machinery on it) before some other force sent the blade careening into the ground, where it ground to a halt. The blonde was equally baffled by the sudden change in direction independent of being stood on until the watching boy apologised for his interference. The English girl was in no mood to actually prevent Ruriko from hitting him (once), given the danger if her blade had actually deflected off the floor and hit one of them purely by chance.

The training rooms were reinforced so that students could actually put their abilities to use without blowing holes in the walls; why hadn't it deflected?

It was when the teacher came in and broke the fight up that the now-standing Jen realised exactly why she hadn't removed her own ankles or something: her Gear's cutting reinforcement and the speed with which it had swung had actually created a deep gouge in the floor. Hopefully she didn't get made to pay for that or something...

Fortunately, the teacher that had shown up was one that had no reason to dislike the blonde: PE was the class she had the best attendance for and where she actually performed well. It meant that she actually had a good chance of Akira listening to her justification: "Ah... I came in to train and Yuriko started waving her sword around going on about a mock battle and I was worried she'd gone crazy. That guy accepted a duel before I could go find a teacher, though."

[hr]

[h2]Tachibana Kaede[/h2]

"I'm pretty good, but I wouldn't call myself one of the best. I guess I'll do better if I take it more seriously this time, since it's my last chance--it's really hard to get into a competitive mindset for a tournament revolving around doing your best to put someone in an inescapably fatal situation, don't you think?" the redhead ruminated, wishing that there'd be less direct combat with other people in the things. Maybe a few set up as exhibition matches, but some sort of simulated monster-hunting as the main attraction seemed more appealing and in the spirit of showing which school would be best in the event of an outbreak. It would be better than just introducing variable terrain, since you'd already removed the honourable duelling part.

She wished that people would stop being so obsessed with whether or not they could win. Of course they could win but it was an international tournament with a huge amount of competitors, doing well enough to get in the top ten was a pretty big achievement on its own. "Yeah, we can win. I think last years' winners' powerhouses graduated, so it should make for less stiff competition."