Coffee And Conversation [Diana/Meninas]

"I am fine." Diana assured the other Quincy that despite how she sounded she was perfectly fine... physically, anyway. Her mental state was a different story. Meninas had noticed her tone of doubt and that would complicate things a little, but there was no taking back what she had said now. The best Diana could do was keep going and tell the truth... from a certain point of view. Diana peered down into her cup and kept a straight face despite the mild displeasure she felt at the sight of it being empty.

She had truly liked the coffee she had ordered and to find that the cup had run dry at such a critical time was an inconvenience, but she would live. Since there was no more coffee in her cup Diana could no longer use that trick to stall for time to think, so she was going to have to be able to think on the fly. The best way to start off was by telling a complete truth.

"I was just thinking back to how much I struggled when it came to trying to learn Gebet." Diana stated part of the nature of the doubt the pink-haired Quincy had been able to pick up on. That particular issue had come up several times in the course of the conversation and by now Meninas might have started to tire of hearing about it, but the problem went far beyond just the expected challenges facing a novice Quincy who did not have the benefits of uninterrupted training time or professional tutors. Diana's inability to learn even the fundamentals of Gebet was a problem that the blonde wanted to solve once and for all, but she was not sure how to go about it.

Diana did not want to waste Meninas' goodwill and tutelage on trying to train an art she had virtually no aptitude for, but she did not want to give up on the idea entirely. Maybe the other young woman could teach her Gebet in a way that would finally enable Diana to learn the fundamentals.

As it turned out Diana had not exhausted Meninas' goodwill and patience yet, so the blonde was going to keep going with the conversation for as long as the other Quincy was willing to speak about it. Hearing Meninas' struggles with the art assured Diana that the latter was far from the only one who had difficulties learning the intricacies of using spells. Hearing that the pink-haired young woman had made mistakes in the course of learning to use Gebet was another comforting thing to hear.

Meninas telling the story of one of her most spectacular mistakes was a third admission that eased Diana's mind, but hearing her father's reaction quickly put a stop to the blonde's good mood. It was not what had happened... it was the stark contrast between the reaction Meninas' father had and the reaction Diana's father would have had if his daughter had made the same mistake. Alvin Remington would have not taken the destruction of a piece of property in stride... he probably would have shouted at Diana until her ears rang for days afterward. Diana was not sure if that forceful verbal rebuke would have been delivered because he was a perfectionist when it came to the Quincy arts or because he did not have much money lying around with which to replace destroyed property, but either way he would have made his displeasure pretty clear.

Moving on from that uncomfortable thought, Diana latched onto the bit of advice concerning how to properly use Gebet and ran with it.

"I have never heard it put to me that way before." Diana candidly admitted. Her parents had never explained it that clearly or concisely... instead they focused too much on the technical aspects of the art and took it for granted that their daughter would easily pick up what they were saying. It was safe to say that Diana had not managed to decipher their explanations and had struggled as a result of that inability to understand. It did not help that for some reason Alvin and Anna Remington chose not to put it in simpler terms.

"If I may be so bold as to say this, I would suggest that we train Gebet after we train Blut." Diana accepted the proposal and gave her opinion on what should be trained first. Hopefully Meninas would not object to the blonde offering an unsolicited opinion, but that remained to be seen.

Hearing that Meninas had not taken her suggestion as a demand set Diana a bit at ease. Normally the blonde would not have been nearly so bold as to say something like that, but she did not want Meninas to get the impression that Gebet was to be the blonde's new focus. While it was certainly an art she wanted to improve, if only to exorcise the ghosts of her past, it would still take second place to Blut because that one was rewarding even at its most basic levels while Gebet would take awhile to pay any noticeable dividends.

Diana listened to Meninas tell how relaxed and sensible her father's training philosophy was and felt a twinge of something that might be considered jealousy, but her face did not show it. Diana's own father started off relaxed and sensible but gradually grew more and more frustrated as Diana got older and still had not advanced as far in Steigen or Gebet as he would have liked her to. The last subject was the one he seemed to want her to learn the most because his frustration seemed to be at its peak whenever she did not make much headway in it.

The blonde did not dare ask what the other Quincy had meant when she had claimed her brothers spent their time coveting material wealth and purposely neglecting the development of their abilities. It sounded like they were so confident in their abilities that they did not see any point in training, but Diana was not going to ask because that was likely a sensitive subject to the pink-haired young woman. To stay on Meninas' good side Diana chose to momentarily change the subject to training.

"I will take what you teach me seriously." Diana assured Meninas that she was going to give any training she got the focus and effort it deserved. Meeting the pink-haired Quincy was nothing short of a gift from above and Diana was not going to squander it.

Diana did not need to be reminded about the importance of staying calm during a crisis. She had had to do just that the day of the Hollow attack on the Remington property when she heard commotion outside and spotted her parents preparing to sell their lives at as high a price as possible so that their daughter could escape. The moment she spotted the wave of Hollows coming over the horizon Diana had a feeling that she would never see her home or her parents again, but she did as she was told and ran for her life, not daring to look back because if she did she might return and try to fight in an effort to pull off a miracle and save everything she knew despite her skills being well below what a Quincy of her age should have been capable of. The blonde did not return and fight in pursuit of a miraculous victory... she kept running until she could not see or hear the battle and she kept running until she was far away from Columbus.

After fleeing to her mother's hometown in Central Georgia Diana had to work with the local militia to defend it from Hollows whenever an attack occurred. In those situations she had to think clearly and act quickly to prevent her fellow militia members from being hurt or killed by those mindless creatures. Knowing that people were counting on her and having a chance to keep their homes and families from being destroyed like hers had been gave Diana the resolve to fight... as a result she was able to focus when it mattered and keep the people she was fighting alongside from suffering serious harm.

Moving on from those thoughts, Diana shifted gears to trying to describe the nature of her difficulties with improving her weakest subject.

"I would say that the main problem I have with spellcasting is the usage of spiritual energy. No matter how hard I try I just cannot channel it in the right way." Diana did her best to sum up the problem that prevented her from using Gebet.

The prospect of gaining personal power was appealing to Diana, who had made it clear that she wanted to grow stronger as a Quincy. She wanted to finally learn the skill that had been her greatest weakness ever since she had started her training over ten years ago. She also wanted to become strong enough to be able to travel on her own in relative safety and to fight Hollows by herself so that no one else had to run the risk of getting hurt in a fight with those beasts.

Diana listened closely as Meninas offer the belief that if the blonde knew how to use Blut and Kreuzen she already had the basics of what she needed to perform Gebet. The second part of that belief was that learning and using that particular skill was within Diana's reach but required a mindset different from the one needed to use Blut or Kreuzen. After that was said Meninas stated that to attain a Quincy form that granted the wielder extraordinary power an aspirant needed to have a good deal of competence in Gebet.

The irony of a way to obtain great power being tied to learning a skill she was not very good at was not lost on Diana, who kept a straight face as she tried to wrap her mind around that particular conundrum.

That situation was every bit as ironic as her being named for a Roman goddess whose weapon of choice was a bow but being unable to create one as her spirit weapon.

"I will keep Blut as my main priority, but this Quincy form only attainable through knowledge of Gebet is interesting." Diana calmly commented on what she had just been told. She was not going to dramatically shift her priorities just to chase power, but now she had a new reason to put serious effort into learning Gebet. Or at least try to learn it, anyway.