"Overall, it was a good game," Ruez opened his lecture with that. It might have sounded like a nice, gentle opener, yet it made the Leopards shudder.

  "Surely, you uand at which point things have started going south for you?"

  "When the Double Kill in Mid happened," Sonya replied instantly as if she had been waiting for this opportunity her whole life. She k was best to quickly own up to her mistakes, doing so should score her some points on the coach's exam.

  "Correct,” Ruez said. “That was the First Blood of the game and a big turning point for both teams. It was an iing situation, that I assure you we'll analyze i detail during the match review."

  "Haha, fun..." Ronald rolled his eyes.

  "With that said," Ruez tinued. "To put it simply, the enemy outpyed you in that sario. They weaved an eborate scheme that involved great risk, but it paid off for them. As such, there isn't much you learn from that i for the game. Just be more vigint."

  Everybody nodded in response. So far, the coach’s assessment of that py was in lih Cato’s speech from earlier.

  So, I was in the right dire overall. Cato nodded in satisfa. But, I'm sure Coach won't leave it at that. In fact, I really hope he doesn't because there's certainly one issue I'd like him t up.

  As, Cato would have to wait a little longer for that. Before dissing the team's biggest troublemaker, Ruez first focused oeam's attention span issues.

  "That py aside,” Ruez tinued. “There was one gring issue with the team's focus in this game. Does anybody care to venture a guess?"

  "............" Only awkward silence respoo that question. The pyers exged uain gnces, each of them hoping somebody else would step forward to answer. As, nobody seemed fident.

  "Hmm, so you really didn't notice?" Ruez asked. "Perhaps my w was a little vague. There was a certai in this game that stantly weighed on your minds, wasn't there?"

  Nobody mao give a response even then. Nothing immediately came to mind.

  Uo bear this silehe team's brat decided to throw a guess. "I bet it's that we’ve been pying too defensively, isn't it? That was our downfall for sure."

  "Not quite," Ruez said. "But, it's irely ued. It's because the team pces so much emphasis on defehat you ended up obsessing over that ohreat, to the point of letting it distract you from everything else."

  Even with all these hints, the team was still uo figure out what the coach was alluding to. It was a rare occurrence, as these kids were a smart bunormally, they figured out their mistakes right away. This only went to show how deeply this issue was rooted.

  "Hmm, I see,” Rodiguez said. “It appears that the 'elusiveness' of that threat is eveer than I suspected."

  "Oh!" Cato and Sonya responded as one.

  "Are you talking about VanishingFlower?" Sonya asked, just to be sure.

  "Yes, I do.” Ruez nodded. “It seems you weren't even aware of how much attention you were giving her, and what it cost you."

  "I believe it was necessary," Sonya asserted. "I'm not sure how clear it was for the audience, but for us, the pyers, Vanishing's peculiar pystyle caused a healthy amount of trouble. Even I have to admit that she really is a threat."

  "Oh, I'm nuing against that at all," Ruez reassured. "In fact, even from the side, I could tell just how sneaky of a pyer she is. So, it made sense for you to focus your attention on her."

  "Right."

  "But, haven’t you ever felt like you were going a little overboard?” Ruez asked. “The number of wards you pced, the way you made ners immediately retreat when Vanishing otted in the Jungle, and so forth. It was quite the excessive defense, even by your standard."

  "That's..." Sonya wasn't sure how to best respond. She wao cim that all of this was necessary to bat a phantom like Vanishing, but she wasn't fident that this was the ahe coach wao hear.

  And so, Sonya decided to maintain her silen this one. heless, she threw Cato an urging gnce. I did my part. Now, it’s your turn to deal with this.

  Oh my, how cruel. iled wryly. Is this where you’re tellio sub in? You’re throwiraight to the wolves.

  Sonya only took the easy part for herself. If the rest of this discussion remained as easy, then she surely would have answered all the questions by herself. For her, these meetings were like an exam, and she was all about ag those.

  A, Sonya passed the torch to Cato here.

  Oh well. Cated. It's the manager's job to up the secretary's mess, after all~

  I'm not your secretary! And, I didn't make any mess! They telepathically exged these words by using only their gnces. Or, maybe all of this only happened in Cato's head. Anyway...

  "Yes, our attention span might’ve been a bit problematic this game," Cato started. "Irospect, we might’ve been fog on Vanishing too frequently, to the point we couldn’t fully trate on the rest of the game.”

  “Right.” Ruez nodded.

  “With that said,” Cato tinued. “I still feel like she’s the kind of elusive pyer who warrants that kind of attention. It’s hard to deal with her otherwise."

  "Yes, the solution you came up with for tering her is not ily fwed," Ruez reassured. "Appointing a supervisor who'll keep track of Vanishing's movements is a sound termeasure. In fact, Cato hahat role detly in the first game. I didn’t feel like any of this was getting in your way back then."

  "It’s because Vanishing wasn't nearly as good in that game," Sonya responded in self-defense, as she could already see where this was going.

  "True, Vanishing's performan the first game was rather ckluster,” Ruez agreed. “heless, the fact remains it ossible to keep tabs on her without sabotaging the rest of yame."

  "We didn't really sabotage..." Sonya wao object further but her words trailed off. In truth, she wasn't even sure how big of an impact the whole thing had oeam’s performahey might’ve indeed “sabotaged” themselves without even realizing it.

  “For starters, think ba how many resources you’ve passively lost because of Vanishing,” Ruez said. “Laners stantly retreated early because of her, losing on both farm and ne advantage, which led to losing tower HP. On top of that, you’ve spent a lot of gold ora wards. And, there are also the attention span issues she surely caused for you as you had to verify her position all the time, which likely made you mispy more often.”

  “.........” Nobody could retort as Ruez hit them hard with facts and logiow, that all the evidence was shoved into their faces at ohey had no choice but to accept that Vanishing’s existehrew them pletely off their game.

  "Even though you lost the game," Ruez tinued. "I firmly believe you're the better team."

  "Of course we are!" Ronald excimed.

  "So, why did you lose?”

  “Ack…” Ronald piped down.

  “You try to pin your defeat on some suboptimal pys you made or on the enemy’s brilliant pnning, but from what I saw, everything es back to Vanishing,” Ruez said. “You successfully shut her down during the early-game, but you had to pay a hefty price for it that came back to bite you in the long run.”

  “I’ve actually been saying that all along, you know?” Ronald cimed. “I kept telling them it’s dumb that I have to retreat every time Vanishing sneezes in my general dire. It made no sense! But, did anybody listen? Nope.”

  “If we listeo you,” Cato said. “Then you would’ve died at least a huimes during the early-game.”

  “Agreed.” Sonya nodded.

  “You see!?” Ronald poi his foes. “They’re bullyio going along with their bad decisions!”

  “Ron, you have a bad habit of getting carried away,” Ruez said. “Even though you intuitively uood there roblem with how the team erating, I assume you only yelled in protests instead of f pelling arguments, right?”

  “I mean, I tried the best I could…”

  “If you want your teammates to listen, you have to get better at f yuments without ing across as too emotional,” Ruez advised. “This is especially important if you ever bee the team’s captain.”

  “Roger!” Ronald saluted. His eyes lit up the moment the word “captain” came out of Ruez’s mouth.

  “Anyway, that’s not all I have to say about your defeat.”

  There’s more!? Everybody turned pale. Ruez had already bashed them so hard arding Vanishing, yet he nning to keep going!?

  “In the end, you’re all smart kids,” Ruez said. “I’m sure all of you uood you were going to pay a big cost for supervising Vanishing. There might’ve been additional costs that you didn’t take into at, but overall, you knew what you were getting into.”

  “Right,” Sonya agreed. The others nodded as well.

  “At the very least, you knew you’d be hampering one pyer’s map awareness by having them keep a close wat Vanishing, and you knew about the extra gold costs of wards,” Ruez said. “A, you decided you were fih these costs. Do you not feel like that decision was based on a certain assumption?”

  “Assumption?” Sonya blihe others looked puzzled as well.

  “The assumption that we could bear the cost?” Vi suggested.

  “Yes,” Ruez said. “More specifically, the assumption that you’ll be able to defeat Stratus despite these costs. You assumed that you were uionably the superior team, even though you should’ve known by now that Stratus is a formidable oppohis year.”

  “That’s…” They wao deny it, but they really couldn’t. Somewhere at the backs of their minds, they were fident that they’d pull through despite the handicaps. They simply couldn’t imagihemselves losing. Though this wasn’t quite the same as Game 2, it felt like their arrogance was their downfall once again.

  "Will, I'm sure that you in particur didn't enjoy this game pn at all, did you?" Ruez asked.

  "Well, I uood why Cato and Sonya wao py like this," William said. "But yes, it was a terrible arra for me. Every time Vanishing was near a he ner had to retreat, so I couldn't suggest ganking there."

  "My," Cato excimed. "I don't remember you ever pining about this particur issue, though."

  "What's the point of pining about something like that?” William asked. “You two had your justifications for stig with that kind of game pn, so what could I even say? That it’s ‘inve’ for me?"

  "True, true."

  "I actually disagree with you there, my boy," Ruez said. "You should have at least expressed your dissatisfa. It might’ve made the others a little more aware of the straints you were putting on yourselves."

  "Hmph. aken." William nodded.

  "Dang!" Ronald exploded. "I 't believe bro is getting fck for the terrible game pn Cated! That's so unfair, bruh! Just for the record, I was also totally against the whole thing."

  "Yes, as you’ve already made painfully clear," Ruez said. "Throughout the match, it was very obvious from your movements how unwilling you were to py along with that game pn. However, you stuck with it for the most part regardless, which is rather admirable."

  "Well, I know when I have to be an adult." Ronald puffed his chest. "Everybody else agreed on this pn, so I had to follow along. That's the mature thing to dht?"

  "Yes, it was quite mature of you. But, you couldn't quite keep it up all the way through, could you?"

  "Hm?” Ronald tilted his head.

  "Once you entered mid-game, yame pn strayed from the team’s script, didn't it?” Ruez asked. “You started dialing up the aggression."

  "Yeah, because we had to start getting some kills," Ronald asserted. "There was no way to win that game by just sitting on the defense. We had to act! Bro uood that tht?"

  "Of course," William agreed. "Stig to defense was a reasonable pn overall given our lineup. But, we had to get whatever kills we could, or else we would have never caught up."

  "Right? Right?" Ronald nodded repeatedly.

  "It's o see that both brothers are in agreement on this," Ruez said. "But, even though you agree oopic itself, the ways you chose to handle said topic varied greatly, didn’t they?"

  "Really?" Ronald blinked. "I thought we were doing the same stuff for the most part, weren’t we, bro?"

  "Hard to say. I wasn't paying enough attention to what you were doing."

  "Dang, did I get just ed by my big bro!?"

  "There was a lot to deal with, so I didn’t really follow what you were doing,” William said. “All I know is that you died a lot."

  "Hey! That's not all I did!” Ronald protested. "I scored a bunch of kills too, almost as many as you did!"

  "Did you?”

  “Sure did, bro! I had 3 kills!”

  “Oh, is that so.” William shrugged. “I had 6, so no wonder I didn’t even notice your kills. I mean, you only did half of what I did. Nothing impressive, holy.”

  "Grrrrrr! game! game, I'm beating your score for sure!"

  "And, there it is," Ruez interjected. "This right here is the big differeween how you two pyed during the mid-game, don't you think?"

  "Hm? Is it?" Ronald tilted his head. "We were just both going for kills, right?"

  "I'd like for somebody from the team to ahat question." Ruez directed his gaze toward the rest of the crowd. "Matt, you haven't talked mu this meeting. Do you mind answering Ron’s question?"

  Do I have to? Matthew made a face. What a drag...

  DarkestCymore