@
meraki
A time was given to his trainee, and he fully expected her to be punctual. Noonhigh, at the training grounds, that's the time and the place she was expected to be. And he would wait there, nearly an hour before noonhigh, just curious to see if she would be the one to be early, on time, or late. Another small thing that could tell a bit about a cat, a small test to gathering other small bits of information about her.
This was her first true training session with him, sure they've had small conversations before, but this was a real session. He would test her, see what she knew and see how she fought. In a way it was an observation, a pre-test. If she showed promise, he would continue to train her, if she didn't, then he would consider killing her and then go on with his plan and leave the Syndicate. Though, already from their talks, Hannibal could see some sort of potential in this young cat and believed it would be an interesting few moons until she became a full warrior. He had reason enough to believe he wouldn't have to kill her, unless of course she did something idiotic. But he believed she had enough brains about her to not do such a thing.
And so the tom sat there quietly in the training grounds, tail wrapped over his claws with the claws already unsheathed, but they were always unsheathed so that fact meant nothing.
The quietness of the training grounds was meaningless, but favorable to a noisy location. It was rather cloudy today it appeared so there wasn't as much light as there usually was in the Dusk Syndicate territory, but Hannibal could see just fine. And smell just fine too.
There were a few birds in the canopy above, silent, but they were there, the smell of other cats were stale but they were there, and there was the distant scent of cats somewhere nearby. All of which were irrelevant in his mind at the moment, the only thing that he was actively interested in smelling was his trainee, he was hungry for information. Fiery orbs slowly sweeping over the training grounds, he imagined how the training session might go today.
They could spar, which they would, but the ending.. It depended on her skills. He wouldn't hold back, but wouldn't exert himself. If she could at least handle that, she would live. He wouldn't be afraid of hurting her, for those injuries could teach her lessons, and he wasn't afraid of killing her, for if she were so weak to not be able to handle him when he wasn't exerting himself, then she wasn't worth keeping alive. And if she could handle him when he wasn't exerting himself with minimal injuries, she could prove to be quite the interesting and valuable trainee. It could go so many ways. And each of them had an equal opportunity of happening.
But for now. He waited for Maple to arrive.