Chapter 160: Chapter 160: Academy’s Entrance Phase Four [4]
On the other side of the shattered storefront, the restaurant had stopped being a rescue site and become a kill box with bad lighting.
Lia and Mia moved like they shared one nervous system.
They spun through the wreckage in mirrored arcs, bows singing, arrows multiplying until the air between the booths looked stitched with fletching.
One shaft skipped off a toppled fryer.
Another punched through a menu board and kept going.
A third and fourth came high and low at the same instant, forcing any single defender to choose which threat to respect first.
Rei didn’t choose the polite option.
She opened her palm with an ugly cut and shoved Gianna hard toward the partial cover of the service corridor.
"What are you doing?" Gianna snapped, catching herself on the doorframe, markers already lighting along her wrists.
Rei’s smirk was all edge and no apology.
"Borrowing the floor."
She focused on the dark puddle spreading from her hand across the tiles.
The blood didn’t simply pool.
Small droplets lifted free of the surface as if gravity had been given a different set of instructions, trembling in the air, tightening, lengthening into needles so fine the restaurant’s ruined lights caught them like glass.
[Blood Manipulation — Active]
[Construct type: Micro-needle swarm | Density: High]
[Cost: Controlled venous draw — Acceptable]
[Target vectors: Twin projectile units | Priority: Disruption over lethality]
[Synergy note: Primary anchor field detected — Lag compensation available]
The swarm moved.
Lia tried to slide behind a booth.
One needle found the gap between strap and shoulder and sank deep enough to matter.
She hissed, voice cracking out of the twin-identical calm.
"Fuck—"
"Your hulk is dying out there," Rei called, bright and vicious, already cutting a second line along her forearm for volume.
"Big guy must be good in bed, huh? Does he moan when you wind him up, or does he just roar like a bitch the whole time?"
Mia’s face tightened hard enough to make the lollipop stick angle like a weapon.
She dragged the string back to her cheek, next arrow aimed for the soft space under Rei’s jaw.
Gianna was already moving.
She didn’t bother with a speech.
Her hand closed on the service table they had been using as partial cover and pulled- not a shove, a full telekinetic claim that ripped the table off its remaining leg and drove it across the narrow dining floor like a battering ram with tablecloth still attached.
Plates and cutlery exploded off the surface.
The twins’ perfect mirror footwork met an obstacle that did not care about their timing.
"Shit—"
Lia stumbled first, shoulder still bleeding, bow dipping.
Mia vaulted the edge of the sliding table and still lost a half-second of draw.
Rei used the gap the way she used every wound she had ever opened, without hesitation.
She ran the cleared lane, boots finding purchase on spilled sauce and broken glass, and left the floor in a low spring that put her weight on Lia before the injured twin could reset.
They hit the tiles in a tangle of blonde hair and dark braid.
Rei’s blood-slick hand pinned Lia’s bow wrist.
The other hand, still open and dripping, hovered a fresh needle a breath from the soft skin under Lia’s eye.
"Drop it," Rei said.
Lia bared her teeth.
"Mia—"
"Busy," Gianna answered for her.
Mia had cleared the table wreckage and was already drawing again, an arrow meant for Rei’s spine.
Gianna raised the entire broken display case from the dessert counter and interposed it in the line of fire with a single sharp gesture.
The arrow buried itself in laminated wood and sugar glass instead of Lawless.
The case kept moving, forced forward under Gianna’s will until Mia had to give ground or take the weight across the ribs.
"You came for a hard-track fulcrum," Gianna said, voice flat, eyes bright with the kind of focus that made her look older than the exam allowed.
"You found a dual unit that already finished arguing about who stands where. Adjust."
Mia spat the lollipop stick aside.
"Everheart always did talk like the room was a briefing."
"Everheart is currently keeping you from putting a second hole in her secondary," Gianna replied, and flicked two fingers.
The arrow still stuck in the display case tore free, reversed, and flew back along its own path hard enough to make Mia twist.
It scored a line across the twin’s sleeve instead of her throat.
Warning shot.
On the floor, Lia tried to knee Rei in the ribs.
Rei took the hit, laughed once through her teeth, and pressed the hovering needle closer until Lia’s eyes crossed trying to track it.
"Your sister’s form is slipping," Rei murmured.
"All that Sector 4 polish and you’re still bleeding on my exam clothes."
"Get off me—"
"Ask nicer. Just know my blood wasn’t the only thing I could control."
Outside, the street carried the sound of something heavy hitting asphalt hard enough to change the shape of the road.
BOOM!
Through the primary anchor, Gianna felt the echo of Revien’s effort, chains tight, breath controlled, the particular cold satisfaction of a restraint that was working.
Mia tried a different angle, body blurring into a slide that put a support pillar between her and the telekinetic field.
She came out the other side already at full draw, this time aiming not at Rei but at the cluster of blood needles still hanging in the air, trying to scatter the construct before it could be redirected.
Gianna’s third marker lit.
The pillar itself leaned.
Just enough.
Mia’s exit lane became a narrowing geometry of concrete and bad options.
The arrow flew wild and punched into the ceiling.
Rei used the distraction to haul Lia up as a human shield for half a breath, then shoved her toward the open floor where Gianna’s field could pin both wrists without crushing them.
"Down," Gianna ordered.
Lia hit the tiles under a telekinetic weight that felt like a second ceiling.
Mia froze at the edge of the pressure, calculating whether a rescue attempt would cost her the shot or the sister.