Vargas watched, that faint 'grin' that split his face a natural one but, too, one of approval. His skin was rigid, he hardly had expression but for now, for once, it matched his feelings.

This one had promise.

He hoped that beneath its clipped responses lay a cunning intellect. Its more complex responses certainly indicated as much, and if so, he might have a true gem here. And he began to call out, even as he watched, scrutinized, sent out his senses once again--he'd let them falter, allowed Delta to attempt to take up some secret space on the ceiling, if that was where it chose to go. Visual sight had quickly lost it to the Chambers' shadows. "Quick reflexes will always be important to you. But what to do in any given situation will only come with experience, and that is why we will practice, and train. Resourcefulness is important. But how to use the terrain, the weather, your prey's habits to your advantage--that will also only come with learning." He paused, magicka flickering up again, once he judged that Garnet-Delta had had enough time to hide itself properly.

Again he could see the distant figures: the few bats along the ceiling, the batcats here and there. They each stood out, in their own way; this one resting, that one moving just a little from place to place, another grooming itself. But he could not pick Garnet-Delta from them. The throb of their heartbeats was vague; a dim red shape shifting in the dark.

He gave it time. He studied each form, the group as a whole, looking for anything that stood out.

At least, he cried out, voice booming: "Very good! Now your final task, for this session." The lesson had been something of a short one, but so much had been information and instructions for future learning that Vargas didn't want to overwhelm Delta. Too much at once would be impossible for it to remember; they had to learn, and teach, in steps. "Approach me, as subtly as you can--continue pretending to be a bat! See how long it takes for me to pick you out; I will call out when I think I have found you. In the UNLIKELY event that you make it to me," he added, a grin in his tone, "strike me somewhere and we will consider you a very good assassin-in-training." He had his own ideas on how to do this, of course; the hybrid could pretend to be hunting, or simply take wing and fly overhead, or idly groom its way closer. Or it could sit tight, and wait for Vargas to make a mistake in identifying; it would be some form of disobedience but he'd praise that thinking all the same.

Meanwhile, he continued to speak, though his eyes--and senses--searched. "I will make a final note, before I assign you your missions and further training, and schedule another lesson. That is, in certainty. The reason I am giving you all of these... fallbacks; all of this insurance to learn about, is an important one! Perhaps only one in ten of those you are to watch, to follow, will sense you as I can. And if you have a plan," he went on, shifting to his other forefoot to turn, scanning to one side, above, behind him; "with a nine out of ten success chance, surely that would be enough-? What of ninety-nine out of one hundred-? But I put it to you this way: it depends on how long you want to live. Perhaps you will be lucky and your first ninety-nine tasks will succeed, flawlessly, with an excellent--but not perfect!--plan. Perhaps you examined it for loopholes and found nothing, or only one, one small chance of failure and deemed it 'unimportant.'" Toxic eyes shifted back upward, ahead, to his left; he watched as he spoke, a critical eye searching each bat-like silhouette. "But eventually--first, or tenth, or fiftieth--it would fail. So it is a matter of how long you wish to live. Long enough for ten missions? One hundred? A thousand? -Plan to never fail. Never. Ensure your plans are as foolproof, as flawless, as you can make them. Study your approach. Study your prey. Study your magic, and practice. And if you do so, well. One with a one hundred percent success rate is not going to fail."

In practice? Near impossible. But it was important, Vargas knew, not to ever say "that's good enough." Good enough was never good enough.

Only perfection mattered.

He already had an inkling of his next set of lessons: when he spotted Delta--or it struck him--he would end this lesson.

It would be tasked to learn the things he had covered--to find a trainer in some, and practice on its own. But more than that he would make himself its target, truly; task it with finding him alone, off his guard, and hitting him again. At his neck, or head. He would tell it to use a particular 'weapon'--some crystal, perhaps--and tell it to train itself first and get him when he least expected it, in the future. It meant he'd have to constantly be watching over his shoulder for Garnet-Delta, and for spies--but that was good practice, anyway, was it not? His guard should always be up.

One hundred percent.