The experience of just having been brutally beaten made Empress almost instinctively want to open fire and shoot down the figure crashing toward her.
Fortunately, the Sirens' excellent friend-or-foe identification system kept Empress from attacking an ally—
The figure shooting toward Empress was not Gwen, who had feinted in one direction while attacking another, but Lavoce, who had just been blasted away.
"Are you all right?"
Empress activated her shield field and caught Lavoce, whose rigging bore an obvious fist mark. Seeing tears actually glimmering at the corners of Lavoce's eyes, Empress's mouth twitched before she asked.
Although high-ranking Siren rigging did possess faint self-awareness and could be considered their children, much like carrier shipgirls' Carrier Aircraft, crying because their rigging took a punch...
Since when had the ships of the Arbitration Mechanism become so weak?
"No..."
Facing Empress's astonished gaze, Lavoce gently shook her head. The tears at the corners of her eyes vanished in an instant.
"I'm fine..."
"Then prepare for a hard battle..."
Because they had previously been assigned different missions, Empress and Lavoce were not particularly familiar with each other. Her concern just now had been instinctive, and seeing that Lavoce was fine, she no longer spared much attention for her.
Though they had only exchanged a few blows, Empress had already gained a rough understanding of Gwen's strength—
She could not beat him.
Even though Gwen had yet to display any particularly flashy abilities, his power and speed, enough to crush an Arbiter within close range, already gave him an absolute advantage over Empress.
On top of that, Gwen's effortless Transforming Shot had nearly rendered useless the firepower of two extraterrestrial warships whose armaments consisted almost entirely of various energy weapons.
Her physical abilities were clearly outclassed, and her energy attacks were completely countered. Although