c40 guards

A moment later, Ryouko teleported herself to behind the group of guards on the left, carrying half the group with her, while Mina took the other half of the group to the other end of the corridor, essentially trapping their welcoming committee between two pincers.

She immediately released a fusillade of arrows, strafing the area in front of her indiscriminately, bright green bolts shimmering as they found and penetrated their targets. Asami tore a set of automated defenses out of the ceiling with her gravity, three copies of Kyouko impaled whoever was closest, and Meiqing stood ready to bring the entire ceiling down with the weight of the earth above, if necessary.

Seeing movement out of the corner of her eye, Ryouko blinked again, finding herself looking at the dull black plating of an armored suit. She instinctively summoned an arrow into her arbalest, punching it forward with her arm instead of firing.

She saw blood and hydraulic fluid gush out, just a little, then pulled the arrow downward, searing a bright green gash into the armor of the guard in front of her.

She heard herself suck in a breath, and then the guard collapsed, and she found herself looking down the corridor.

Meiqing hadn't needed to use her specialty—their initial attack had completely cleared the corridor, leaving only twitching armored corpses, as well as a few living guards at the other end of the corridor that appeared to have been disabled by Nana, and one that was attached to Marianne's hands with a set of strings.

Ryouko saw with a not‐insignificant sense of satisfaction that many of the twenty‐odd group of soldiers appeared to have been disabled by her arrows, still active and glowing where they had landed.

She remembered, then, what Kyouko had said once about her bloodlust, and dismissed the arrows. She felt a little sickened, realizing she had left the arrows active just so she could count her "kills", so to speak.

(To The Stars, Chapter 40)