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

"Surely, you understand 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 knew it was best to quickly own up to her mistakes, doing so should score her some points on the coach's exam.

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

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

"With that said," Rodriguez continued. "To put it simply, the enemy outplayed you in that scenario. They weaved an elaborate scheme that involved great risk, but it paid off for them. As such, there isn't much you can learn from that incident for the next game. Just be more vigilant."

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

So, I was in the right direction overall. Cato nodded in satisfaction. 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 to bring up.

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

"That play aside,” Rodriguez continued. “There was one glaring issue with the team's focus in this game. Does anybody care to venture a guess?"

"............" Only awkward silence responded to that question. The players exchanged uncertain glances, each of them hoping somebody else would step forward to answer. Alas, nobody seemed confident.

"Hmm, so you really didn't notice?" Rodriguez asked. "Perhaps my wording was a little vague. There was a certain element in this game that constantly weighed on your minds, wasn't there?"

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

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

"Not quite," Rodriguez said. "But, it's not entirely unrelated. It's because the team places so much emphasis on defense that you ended up obsessing over that one threat, to the point of letting it distract you from everything else."

Even with all these hints, the team was still unable to figure out what the coach was alluding to. It was a rare occurrence, as these kids were a smart bunch. Normally, 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 even greater than I suspected."

"Oh!" Cato and Sonya responded as one.

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

"Yes, I do.” Rodriguez 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 players, Vanishing's peculiar playstyle caused a healthy amount of trouble. Even I have to admit that she really is a threat."

"Oh, I'm not arguing against that at all," Rodriguez reassured. "In fact, even from the side, I could tell just how sneaky of a player 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?” Rodriguez asked. “The number of wards you placed, the way you made laners immediately retreat when Vanishing was spotted 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 wanted to claim that all of this was necessary to combat a phantom like Vanishing, but she wasn't confident that this was the answer the coach wanted to hear.

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

Oh my, how cruel. Cato smiled wryly. Is this where you’re telling me to sub in? You’re throwing me straight 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 acing those.

And yet, Sonya passed the torch to Cato here.

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

I'm not your secretary! And, I didn't make any mess! They telepathically exchanged these words by using only their glances. 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. "In retrospect, we might’ve been focusing on Vanishing too frequently, to the point we couldn’t fully concentrate on the rest of the game.”

“Right.” Rodriguez nodded.

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

"Yes, the solution you came up with for countering her is not inherently flawed," Rodriguez reassured. "Appointing a supervisor who'll keep track of Vanishing's movements is a sound countermeasure. In fact, Cato handled that role decently in the first game. I didn’t feel like any of this was getting in your way back then."

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"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 performance in the first game was rather lackluster,” Rodriguez agreed. “Nonetheless, the fact remains it was possible to keep tabs on her without sabotaging the rest of your game."

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

“For starters, think back on how many resources you’ve passively lost because of Vanishing,” Rodriguez said. “Laners constantly retreated early because of her, losing on both farm and lane advantage, which led to losing tower HP. On top of that, you’ve spent a lot of gold on extra 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 misplay more often.”

“.........” Nobody could retort as Rodriguez hit them hard with facts and logic. Now, that all the evidence was shoved into their faces at once, they had no choice but to accept that Vanishing’s existence threw them completely off their game.

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

"Of course we are!" Ronald exclaimed.

"So, why did you lose?”

“Ack…” Ronald piped down.

“You can try to pin your defeat on some suboptimal plays you made or on the enemy’s brilliant planning, but from what I saw, everything comes back to Vanishing,” Rodriguez 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 claimed. “I kept telling them it’s dumb that I have to retreat every time Vanishing sneezes in my general direction. It made no sense! But, did anybody listen? Nope.”

“If we listened to you,” Cato said. “Then you would’ve died at least a hundred times during the early-game.”

“Agreed.” Sonya nodded.

“You see!?” Ronald pointed at his foes. “They’re bullying me into going along with their bad decisions!”

“Ron, you have a bad habit of getting carried away,” Rodriguez said. “Even though you intuitively understood there was a problem with how the team was operating, I assume you only yelled in protests instead of forming compelling arguments, right?”

“I mean, I tried the best I could…”

“If you want your teammates to listen, you have to get better at forming your arguments without coming across as too emotional,” Rodriguez advised. “This is especially important if you ever become the team’s captain.”

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

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

There’s more!? Everybody turned pale. Rodriguez had already bashed them so hard on regarding Vanishing, yet he was planning to keep going!?

“In the end, you’re all smart kids,” Rodriguez said. “I’m sure all of you understood you were going to pay a big cost for supervising Vanishing. There might’ve been additional costs that you didn’t take into account, 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 player’s map awareness by having them keep a close watch on Vanishing, and you knew about the extra gold costs of wards,” Rodriguez said. “And yet, you decided you were fine with these costs. Do you not feel like that decision was based on a certain assumption?”

“Assumption?” Sonya blinked. The others looked puzzled as well.

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

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

“That’s…” They wanted to deny it, but they really couldn’t. Somewhere at the backs of their minds, they were confident that they’d pull through despite the handicaps. They simply couldn’t imagine themselves 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 particular didn't enjoy this game plan at all, did you?" Rodriguez asked.

"Well, I understood why Cato and Sonya wanted to play like this," William said. "But yes, it was a terrible arrangement for me. Every time Vanishing was near a lane, the laner had to retreat, so I couldn't suggest ganking there."

"My," Cato exclaimed. "I don't remember you ever complaining about this particular issue, though."

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

"True, true."

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

"Hmph. Note taken." William nodded.

"Dang!" Ronald exploded. "I can't believe bro is getting flack for the terrible game plan Cato arranged! 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," Rodriguez said. "Throughout the match, it was very obvious from your movements how unwilling you were to play along with that game plan. 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 plan, so I had to follow along. That's the mature thing to do, right?"

"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, your game plan strayed from the team’s script, didn't it?” Rodriguez 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 understood that too, right?"

"Of course," William agreed. "Sticking to defense was a reasonable plan 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 nice to see that both brothers are in agreement on this," Rodriguez said. "But, even though you agree on the topic 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 neglected 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, honestly.”

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

"And, there it is," Rodriguez interjected. "This right here is the big difference between how you two played 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 answer that question." Rodriguez directed his gaze toward the rest of the crowd. "Matt, you haven't talked much in this meeting. Do you mind answering Ron’s question?"

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