Say, my and your character are in the middle of a sequence of actions.
I don't name you as someone who has to Answer my Challenge, and you choose not to.
You go with your own Challenge and again, you don't name me as someone who has to answer, and I choose not to.
End of round.
There was no exchange, nobody has the stick.
What happens?

Or, what I missed?

Is this something that came up in play, or are you just wondering?

There are two possibilities. When it happens, one of the following will be the obvious correct approach, depending on the immediate circumstances:

1. We just negotiated an outcome. The action sequence is over. Play goes forward.

2. Those weren't the real challenges. We keep talking within this round. You won initiative, so it's up to you to make a real challenge; I wait expectantly for you to do so. When you do, we go from there.

-Vincent

Just wondering. It's been a while seens we played IAWA the last time, and I've been reading the clarifications again to make sure I'm getting the whole resolution procedure right (e.g. the fact that you don't have to name anyone to Answer or that you can Answer even if not named was a surprise to us, recently). This involves considering corner case scenarios - whenever possible, I prefer to be ready to handle them, rather than to look for a solution in the middle of the game, if something tricky happens to actually occur.

Thanks for the answers.