"But first, I have a few questions," said Lucius, an inquisitive look on his face.
"How did you guys communicate my location? I didn't hear a whisper, nor did I hear the sound of movement," he asked, remembering how the leaflings seemed to have been telling each other of his movements.
"Huh? We did no such thing," replied one of the leaflings.
"Then how?"
"We just practiced it that way. We didn't have to know exactly where you were, the plan was just to lure you in," Alpha explained.
"Wait, so you guys just got lucky? What if I had caught one of you? What then?" Lucius asked, shocked by the realization.
The leaflings remained quiet, it seemed they had not planned for such a situation, indeed they still had a lot to learn.
~Sigh, it seems I may have rated them too highly,~ he thought to himself, looking at the leaflings as they avoided his gaze awkwardly.
"Last question, how did you get above me," he asked, looking towards Ghost.
"They helped me get up," she replied as if it were common sense.
"But you guys don't hav- show me," he decided, unable to imagine how they had gotten her up so high without hands to grab onto anything.
The leaflings started grouping together before one of them knelt down and another climbed atop. The leafling at the top knelt down as well, and the next climbed on top of the first two. They repeated this process until they had formed a tall ladder, using the side of the tree as support to make sure they didn't tilt over and fall. Though simple, Lucius could tell they had to have practiced this a few times for it to have gone this smoothly. In the end, Ghost could just barely reach a chunk of protruding bark from the side of the tree.
"Interesting," he said as Ghost settled herself on the tree bark. "Okay, now get down. We'll start discussing the reasons you guys failed to win this exercise," he instructed before sitting down on the moist cool dirt.
The leafings got down from the ladder and sat around Lucius, as he drew a circle on the ground.
"I'm guessing you came up with this strategy, huh Alpha," said Lucius, looking towards Alpha as he ran his fingers into the dirt.
"It wasn't me. The one responsible for this idea was him," Alpha replied, gesturing towards another leafling sitting opposite Alpha.
~Did I miss someone? I was certain that only Alpha, Ghost and Pagan showed any potential,~ he thought to himself, getting a good look at the leafling in question. ~Perhaps I was too hasty with my assessment,~ he decided before proceeding.
"Ah. Anyway, you came up with the strategy right, so tell me, why a circle? Why not have everyone rush me from the same direction," Lucius asked, drawing a straight line in the dirt.
"I-I don't know, would the straight line have been better?" the leafling asked in a confused tone.
"Hmm, okay perhaps I should've asked this first. How did you come up with this?" he asked, dusting the dirt off his fingers.
"I-I really didn't know what I was doing. It was a dumb idea, I just kept pestering Alpha and he eventually agree-"
"I'm not angry, this is actually a common tactic employed when hunting. I'm just asking for your frame of reasoning when you came up with this," he said, before thinking inwardly, ~I want to confirm something,~
"Oh," the leafling replied, a little less nervous than he had been before. "I came up with it after seeing how you positioned us during the emergency procedure. You had each of us facing a different direction so that we could see everything around us as if at once. I just figured that if there were less people it wouldn't have been possible, and we could sneak up on you if you weren't able to face all of us at once. But it seems I failed somewhere," the leafling explained.
~A tactician,~ Lucius thought with a smile. A natural at that. Lucius had explained the reason for his positioning offhandedly, he hadn't expected that one of the leaflings would actually ponder over it and use it.
"From now on after your training exercises I want you to report me," Lucius said after a moment of silence had passed.
"Ah, and from now on, I'll call you... Hannibal, that's if you want the name though," he said, before continuing on with the discussion. The leaflings became restless, though they felt happy that one of their own had finally been named, the others were even more determined to prove themselves. Lucius picked up on this but decided to ignore it, right now it seemed to be the only form of compensation for outstanding leaflings.
"Okay -Hannibal- can you try to explain where you went wrong? How come your plan didn't work?"
"You mean apart from you cheating and using that twisting move against us?" Ghost retorted, apparently still a bit angry from being slammed to the ground.
"Our difference in size and strength?" Hannibal replied, almost as if it were a question.
"Be more confident in your answers, if you're going to be wrong, be wrong wholeheartedly," Lucius responded before answering. "But yes, that's one reason."
"Though you guys had the numbers advantage, I was still able to defeat you all because of the blatant difference in our strength," Lucius explained, drawing a big dot at the center of the circle in the dirt.
"You did well in using your numbers to confuse me," he continued, drawing smaller dots around the circle. "However, it was ruined because of timing," he continued, drawing a few of the dots closer to the one at the center.
"If you had Ghost jump on me at the same time all of you attacked, perhaps you would've had a better chance," he finished off.
"That was actually the plan, but someone got a bit too excited," said Hannibal, an awkward smile on his face as he side-eyed Ghost.
"He had his back to me, I figured I could get him before you guys rushed in. Not my fault he slammed me to the ground," she replied stubbornly, avoiding the gaze of the other leaflings around her.
~Sigh, a loose cannon, huh? Well, its better you learn sooner than later that personalities have to be accounted for in planning,~ Lucius thought to himself as he looked at Ghost.
