Welcome to Gaia! ::

Mieu cooed gently at the touch. He certainly thought his name suited him. It was the name given to him by his master, after all. What else could possibly suit him more?

Luke, however, was more ambivalent on the matter. He shrugged, "I guess it does. Named him when I was little... Don't really remember it, but I guess he's stayed the same since then." A vague and awkward attempt at continuing polite-esque conversation.

Huh, that was true, wasn't it? Perhaps Luke wouldn't remember the exact source of the Flareon's name even if his childhood had been uneventful. Even so, he suspected from the sounds the fire-type made that his name had been an uninspired derivation of the pokemon's cries. How original.

"Well, it could be better too, but what's done is done," he shrugged. It would have been nice if Mieu's name fit with, say, Tartarus or Tenebrae - as it was, he was sort of the group's outlier - but it was pointless to try and change the name of something that had been known as such for the duration of its memory.

The pettings ended, and Mieu turned a circle and returned to his master's side, taking a seat at his feet. Luke spared a passing gaze at the fire-type to ensure he wasn't going to run off somewhere again. It didn't seem he planned to. Good. He turned slightly to gesture Tenebrae forward - the Umbreon had been waiting a ways off, lying lazily in the shade - before offering a reply to the stranger's question, "Not much." He rested a hand on the hilt of his sheathed sword. "I come here to practice sword arts... Doesn't bother anyone if I'm out of the way enough."

Luke's eyes drifted to the hilt as the stranger spoke; he'd noticed it passingly before but hadn't made the connection that its bearer could be skilled in its use until the man mentioned sparring. He blinked in a momentarily confusion before offering a curt nod and a vague smile, "Sure, why not?" He practiced occasionally with Guy and had been teaching Emil as of late, but it was rarely that he actually had the opportunity to match another in single combat.

Luke took his own stance, the one that had been taught to him years prior by his master. It had shifted lately, growing more resolute and energetic as he practiced more and more seriously. He raised his sword into a versatile guarding position, yielding the first blow to his opponent in an effort to gauge his strength. He had underestimated opponents before; it was ill-advised to rush in before he knew anything of his adversary.