Edit: Piecewise, I suppose I'll boldtext to draw your attention to this plan as well. I'm not the leader of this group but most people seem to be going along with the flow. So unless it's mutually exclusive with what other people want to do we could default to this? >.>
((Bleb. I should probably make a better habit of explaining everything I want in a single post.
Here's what I want to do:
Aa disguises herself as a normal, unarmed human, and goes into the woods ahead of the rest of the group, presenting an ideal target for a hypothetical attacker: alone and unarmed.
If such a target does appear to try and ambush her, she'd use her needle to contact the others following some distance back, and then up to seven other Homunculi could Link to her and subdue the target.
In order to improve chances of noticing an enemy trying to target her, Aa will look behind her using her right glove. This lets her look without appearing to from outside, thus getting the drop on the enemy.
In case Aa in incapacitated before being able to get out a message, she'll wear Hugh's left glove and he'll check in periodically. If she gets knocked out by magic or such, the rest of the group can run to to intervene.
The rest of the group follows a short distance behind Aa, far enough to be out of sight. Also disguised as villagers, but traveling together and potentially visibly armed, presenting a less appealing target to the enemy, but also not giving away that the Magi are involved by being a big roving band of Homunculi.
This plan will kind of require everybody's agreement, since the whole group has to be disguised in case the enemy spies on the larger group and realizes they have a serious opponent. I'd also ideally want to link with five more people so that we can really assault the enemy in force should all go well.
So, does that plan seem good to everybody?))