Welp, I guess that those vouchers would have been helpful now. But hey, you made the thing about struggling together...


Fortunately, Tetsu had received his stipend, meaning that he could splurge a little tonight and still have plenty of currency available for the rest of the trip. He taps his foot a bit nervously, the effort to look cool forgotten. He's in his nice clothes, as steamed and starched as possible, and he is ever more aware that he's a bit rough looking compared to a lot of the clientelle.

She appears soon after, dressed in a light blue furisode decorated with sprays of white cherry blossom branches. Her hair was arranged carefully. The graceful quintessential Crane image was broken when she waved eagerly upon seeing him and trotted over before bowing. "Good evening, Kaiu-san! I hope you didn't wait too long."

Tetsu waves a hand. "Hey, I asked you out. It's a date, right? Call me Tetsu, please." The Crab isn't able to resist beaming. ""You look great."

"All right, Tetsu-san," she agreed brightly. "Call me Shixuku, as well. Or just Shizu."

She blushed at the compliment. "I think this is the most I've dressed up in a while. You look nice, too."

"You look cute when you blush Shizuku-san. Well, cute all the time, but it suits you." Tetsu quickly downs some sake from his cup.

"Well, it does seem that we have something to celebrate! To Daidoji Shizuku-san, and her second place finish in the Rally! You certainly smoked me~" Tetsu chuckles. "It was a job very well done"

She raises her cup at the toast, blush deepening. "Thank you, Tetsu-san. To be honest, I was mostly thinking how I wanted to place well so you wouldn't regret potentially working with me on our project. I guess it propelled me to do a good job."

Tetsu offers an unabashed grin. "I wouldn't have regretted it if you'd come in dead last. I got to plan with you. I just had a bit of bad luck on my end, which could have happened to anyone. But you...you did fantastic, and you deserve every bit of accolade."

He sips his sake again. "And it wasn't a total loss for me. A lot of people chose my upgrades, including all of the winners, so I've heard it brought up"

She pressed her hands against her cheeks. "Yeah. Thank you. I'm proud of how my little bot did. I kept him."

At the talk of his upgrades, she got excited again. "Those were great upgrades! I honestly felt like it would've been a mistake not to take any one of them. You did an awesome job on them."

"Same here. I call him Tachi." Tetsu offers a conspiratorial look. "They were doing upgrades at the Robotics Club this afternoon. Maybe we can get a trial run of the drones talking to each other."

"But that's tomorrow. Are you doing anything else tonight? I'd be up for that card game tournament if you were interested"

"Ooooooh..." She nodded firmly. "We should totally do that!"

At the suggestion, she grinned. "I was already planning to go. I won a deck at the Retro Game Night, and I've been learning on it ever since. I'm looking forward to tonight."

"Well, the sum of my knowledge about it is watching people play on the ship during downtime, so I could use a helping hand. Maybe it will be my turn to kick your pretty butt." Tetsu winks. "All I heard was "manage your holdings" and "don't be afraid to give up the lost cost bushi to strike". I'm an easy mark. Really."

"Honestly, it's not bad advice. I've only practiced a little, but we can practice while we wait or after dinner, if you want," she suggested.

"Sure...go ahead and deal and show me" Tetsu scoots over to sit next to her

She plugged the deck into her densai and brought it up with a smile. "I'll do my best."

Her strategy is decently solid, but basic, almost boring.

Fluff Fantasy Fight: 4d10o10k3 18

"Huh. I thought there was more to it than that, but therin lies the first lesson of Applied Engineering: KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid. Kiss." He pauses realizing how close they are.

"Yeah... I remember reading somewhere that if a user can't figure out how to work your program, it's a problem with the design rather than the user," she replied with a chuckle, then turned red as she noticed their closeness, as well. "Ah, sorry..." She gave them a couple more inches... despite what her inclinations might've been.

"No, no, it's fine. I'm the one who moved over to you." Tetsu backs away a hair as well, flipping open his Densai to look a builds. A few articles have dedicated players breaking down ratios. "I think I want to go equip heavy. That way, I can do a few basic things over and over"

She could help but try to get an eye on what he was looking at it, awkwardly trying to do so without getting so close that she makes him uncomfortable. "That makes sense to me. Kinda similar to my style so far."

"Yeah. I don't know if I have the experience to plan for any different. But come on, what are the odds that we get matched against each other."

She chuckled at that. "Yeah. I mean, there's gonna be a ton of people here."