Sui lightly jogged down the corridor, spotting another two targets along the way, that were easy to hit. The first was caught out of the corner of her eye, hidden on the back of one of the higher white pillars, while the second was wedged in between two pillars and had to be hit on the side.

The other thing Sui noticed, was that Aife had managed to score forty points already. She seems to have a much larger advantage in this game then I thought. She’s faster, and likely has better aim. Her speed lets her find more targets and her accuracy lets her hit even more targets. It seems unlikely Trina and I will be able to catch up with her unless she slows down specifically for us.

Another trick Sui was implementing was trailing a few pieces of thread around her. She was using a tiny bit of her mind to keep an eye on all of them and keep them mostly straight. As she wasn’t trying to support anything with them, it was a simple Matter and allowed her to have much better awareness of things coming from the ground.

She was glad for it, as just before reaching the next intersection, she felt her threads being pushed up directly in the path of her feet. Slamming them into the ground to stop her running, Sui leaned backwards and lifted her arm just in time to meet a target that had been trying to take a shot at her chin.

Sadly, she wasn’t quite prepared for the follow up attack, that slammed into the back of her head. In that brief moment her focused had shifted away from her threads and a second target had snuck past.

Sui felt her ears ringing, and this was amplified by the target which was also ringing, as if it was a gong. Sui’s thread all went slack, and as she struggled to put her entire focus on trying not to fall over. She pressed her hands against her head to study herself… or that was the attempt anyway.

One of those hands happened to have a gun attached to it still and this meant that just as she was about to slow the motion down to avoid smacking herself in the face… well, she failed spectacularly and smacked herself in the face anyway. That was the final straw to Sui’s failing balance and she collapsed to the side hitting her head once again on the pillar as she went down, but it at least let her avoid slamming her head against the ground.

Sui’s mind was a mess, the pain was clouding her thoughts and thinking of anything proper in this situation was impossible. She was struggling to remember exactly what it was she was doing for the few seconds and only wished for the cursed pain to stop. Scattered thoughts of red targets and irritation flashed through Sui’s mind, but they had yet to mean anything sensible to her.

It took around a minute for the pain to subside, and another thirty seconds for her mind to knit itself together enough for Sui to start making complaints. Dammit. I can’t believe I got taken out like that. I’m starting to wonder if I need to put stats into something other than wisdom… then again, if I’d kept up my threads warning me, I’d have been fine, so perhaps it is simply my own skill is lacking.

Additionally, I must truly thank my luck, this is not a deadly test. I was taken out for at least a minute there, maybe more, before I came to my senses. This might be a lot harder than I initially, or even secondarily thought.

Sui pushed herself up and tried to ignore the lingering pain in her head. She found it surprisingly easy to do, once she started focusing on her web of thread that had gotten slightly messed up in the fall. Luckily it was nothing to serious and by focusing her attention on her threads the pain seemed to sink into the background. It was still noticeably there, but it seemed to grab much less of her attention.

Sui checked the spot, the target had likely been when she hit it and saw no sign of it, or any others in the immediate area. Hmm, I wonder if that was the only one missing, now that I’ve been knocked out for such a long time all of the others in the area have vanished as well. I suppose it will be easy to work out.

Sui took a quick glance at the score and saw that Trina was now ahead of her by one point at thirty-four, and that Aife had a full fifty points. Hmm, I wonder if she’ll keep pulling away. If I know Aife, she’ll probably stop either now or at sixty and wait for us, damn the agreement about seeing how well we could do.

Sui took a few more hesitant steps forward with her thread spread out around her slightly more, and taking up around half her focus now. She had also reduced her speed. I might be slow moving now, and while a light jog was worth the risk of missing one or two targets to cover twice or more of the ground, I can’t risk getting taken out like that again.

Sui’s caution was rewarded. As soon as she stepped into the next crossroads, a target appeared in front of her, but instead of watching it, she brought her gun up and turned to the left, finding a second target coming as well. Deciding not to risk a potentially four-way collision, Sui moved over to the diagonal.

Sui wanted to take the shot, but decided not to risk it just yet, and waited a few seconds where she was mildly amused to see all four targets slam into each other right where she had been standing. Firing off a paintball, she managed to get the first two, so she shot another one aiming for the corner which gave her a full four.

Checking the score, Sui couldn’t help but smirk a little seeing that Trina hadn’t gained any more points just yet. Neither had Aife of course, but Sui wasn’t going to delude herself into thinking that was anything other than Aife’s own choice.