The jungle was filled with smoke, and flames and thick plumes of smoke rose skyward from one burning spot after another.
"..."
()°
At that moment, a certain troublesome little girl captain stood in the middle of a patch of scorched earth. She first brushed at the almost nonexistent dust on her skirt, then looked up at the sole enemy mech still standing in the distance.
It was grayish-brown, only about sixteen or seventeen meters tall, and so drab and ugly that it looked as if it had never been painted.
Ugly or not, though, it was still a proper mech. Its dark, gaping beam-rifle muzzle was pointed straight at her.
Annie, however, didn't care in the slightest!
The enemy's weapon was overloaded and cooling down, so she didn't need to worry about it for the moment.
Besides, whenever the enemy aimed at her and fired, it had to charge first. That left a delay of somewhere between a fraction of a second and a full second. And since it was a beam weapon rather than a solid projectile, as long as she wasn't hit directly, it would generally just punch a molten hole in the ground or pierce and burn through a few trees—or a few rows of them. It was no big deal.
So she really wasn't worried at all!
"..."
Meanwhile, across from her, the bandit pilot sat in his cockpit, beads of cold sweat dotting his forehead. He gripped the control stick tightly, his face twisted and his knuckles turning slightly white with the strain.
Clearly, he had never imagined that the mech he'd relied on to dominate this region could be utterly helpless against a little girl.
Even more absurd to him was that the girl hadn't even piloted a mech or vehicle. With nothing