Since she'd run into someone she knew—and the other party didn't seem all that strong—Annie had to hold back so she wouldn't drag them down by cutting loose among the demons like she had last time. She had to consider whether they could handle it before doing anything. So this time, unlike her rampage in the west of the city, she quickly found her target and proceeded by the book, using a low-frequency laser to guide a fusion strike.
However...
For some reason, Annie had been shining the low-frequency laser built into her weapon at the target for ages, but hadn't gotten the slightest response. And the huge fireworks she'd expected to arrive any moment showed no sign of falling from the sky at all.
After waiting for more than ten minutes without seeing a giant mushroom cloud descend, she finally lost her temper!
So!
Feeling rather embarrassed, Annie stopped guiding the strike, pulled a small, portable, low-yield shoulder-launched fusion missile out of her stockpile, and fired it at the target herself. At last, she destroyed the source of the red fog hanging over Guixu City.
Then, once she saw that the mission was complete, she didn't wait for the furious Warp Daemons to follow the missile's trajectory and find the two of them. She promptly took the startled robot girl and slipped away, soon boarding the Banshee and returning to base.
Once the two of them arrived safely at the mining pit base, Annie naturally stormed straight to the base's huge steel fortress—the Command Center—to give certain people a piece of her mind.
In Annie's view, the fact that she'd used a low-frequency laser to guide a strike and gotten no response wasn't merely embarrassing for her. It was a serious dereliction of duty on their part!
After all,