A boy holding the flat paddle swung it at one ball and was struck in the back by another. One of the girls with the magnetic boots was caught while trying to push off a wall, and a cadet with the small shield blocked three throws in a row only to be hit by a fourth that rebounded from behind him.
One by one, they drifted down to the floor of the chamber and made their way to the side.
By the time eight of the students had been eliminated, not a single instructor had been touched, and the mood among the remaining cadets had started to sour.
Then two of the students tried the instructors' own trick against them.
They had drifted into positions on either side of one of the younger instructors without seeming to coordinate it, though Ning suspected they had exchanged a glance at some point, and they both threw at him at almost the same moment. The instructor saw the first ball coming and twisted cleanly out of its path, moving exactly as he had been doing all game.
