Creeping Admirations [Nami, Lerna]

Lerna was .... a little surprised. The responses to her little...disguise had been a bit more pronounced than she'd expected. Her ability to manipulate her appearance certainly had garnered some attention. However... she did notice a bit .... MORE attention than normal. Or at least she felt like it. That nagging sensation that she was being watched. An Animal instinct from a long time ago more than anything else. And so, as Nami watched the unsuspecting woman, Lerna let ut a sigh as that purple-haired mistress would suddenly ....shift. A smooth transition of straight purple into wild blonde, and Lerna had to catch herself for a moment as her uniform almost slid right down her shoulders from the slight dip in height and chestyness.

"Tch, maybe I shoulda gone for stealth squad." She chuckled to herself, shaking her head and pausing as she looked around the little training courtyard. All the other students were gone after all. And so she peeled her zanpaku'to from her waist and sighed, glancing over the blade of Sōteiken as she drew it from that small gourd, the action almost seeming like magic. "Well may as well practice eh Sotty?" she asked slyly, able to FEEL the mild disdain from the weapon. "Not a fan of that nickname Sotty Wotty?" She smirked, sticking the blade into the ground. "Maybe I'll just practice hakuda for a bit then." She hummed, unaware that someone was playing spectator to her bullying her zanpaku'to.

Lerna paused and glanced over her shoulder toward the observer, her brow raising ever so slightly before she took a moment to observe the little eavesdropper. "Nah. I just call her that to piss her off. Her real name's Sōteiken." She pointed out, turning to face the woman completely and turning her back to her sword, and for just an instant, it would seem as if something slithered from the shadow of the blade to where Lerna's feet were. A trick of reiatsu, her zanpaku'to trying to be cute and menacing. But all the same, she tilted her head to the side and refastened her uniform.

"How about yours? Learn the name yet?" She asked with a slight tilt of her head. She didn't know this one in particular. Small, pretty little thing. She usually paid more attention to the loud types she guessed, but this girl seemed shy enough to have escaped her notice thus far for sure.

Lerna had killed enough people to know that letting the name was usually not enough to get the full gist of an ability. Shinigami in particular always had such esoteric names for their blades. All the same, she smiled as she noticed the girl was shy to say the least. A little awkward as well. She din't mind that in the slightest. Plucking her blade from the ground and slipping it back into the gourd, she made her way over and stopped a short distance from Nami as she gave her answer.

"That's alright. A good number of full division members and officers don't know the names of their Zanpaku'to. But if you don't have that. How about we settle for your name then?" She asked with a calm smile, folding her arms and leaning slighty to the side as she watched what she assumed was her underclassman. Since she seemed to be a student. Well... no that wasn't true, some of those that had gotten in before her definitely still didn't know the name of their blades.

"Were you going to use this area bye the way? I can move a bit off to the side if you need the room." She added, surely if she was an academy student she was here to train. The notion that the girl was here just to spy on her....well that would just be silly.

Lerna paused for a moment at that, her head canting to the side. A little...perplexed. What a weird one she was. It reminded her a lot of some of the other recruits she saw. The new ones that came in from the Rukongai, who maybe hadn't SEEN a hollow before and heard about what fighting one was like. Well, not that she could judge that shit at a glance. All the same she smiled.

"Huh, alright. Well you wanna join me then? I was just gonna do some drills but heh, always better when you have someone to work with. You don't gotta hide I'm not gonna bite." She assured the tiny woman staying right where she was as they backed up. A little....perplexed. But if nothing else, she was pleased to see they weren't just outright running. Which WOULD suck, because that would mean she'd have to go through with her initial plan of just doing reps.

Lerna stared at the girl for several long moments. It was abundantly obvious that the girl really didn't want to train, the girl practically sounded like she had a gun to her head. For a moment, she considered that she was falling behind on her training, but well, that wasn't too important. On one hand, she could just tell the girl to scram. It wasn't like she was a tutor or anything. But it was also abundantly clear the girl was having some trouble, she sighed internally before shaking her head. "Hmmm, well I don't really wanna rope you into something you just 'don't mind'. Have you had any lunch yet, Miura?" She asked. There were a lot of fancy whatever she could try and pull to get the girl to relax a little. But she wasn't some therapist.

There was one thing that Lerna thought about when it came to getting to know someone, or really just solving some problem. And that was eating and drinking. And well....for now she'd stick with eating. Maybe a little food would help the girl relax enough to not look like she would fall over from a stiff breeze.