"Aiyo."
Hive Princess held her head, fell upon the floor and rolled about crying out in pain; upon her brow a swelling had visibly risen.
Zhao Chen stared at Hive Princess; those spider-lances that had been behind her drew swiftly together, and became once more that rounded arc-shaped shell of before.
That savage air of a moment since had vanished as well.
"It hurts so, it hurts, it hurts…!" Hive Princess rolled about, clutching her head.
Once Zhao Chen was certain that the breath of a moment since was gone from Hive Princess, the intelligent equipment within the room recovered as well.
The lights that had been flickering came back to their ordinary state.
"Medical kit," Zhao Chen required of the intelligence within the room.
Very soon a small robot walked out from within the wall, and handed Zhao Chen a medical kit.
Zhao Chen took a small thing out of it and pressed it upon Hive Princess's head.
In the next second, Hive Princess collapsed upon the floor with a look of enjoyment.
"So… so comfortable…"
"Press this yourself, for ten minutes. It can ease your pain and the swelling," Zhao Chen said, letting Hive Princess press the medical device herself.
Hive Princess pressed it honestly herself; her great watery eyes full of doubt, she said, "What was that? How did my head suddenly begin to hurt?"
Zhao Chen narrowed his eyes at Hive Princess. "You do not know what happened just now?"
Hive Princess shook her head with a foolish, guileless air, and said, "I was just sitting upon the bed making ready to rest, and suddenly I knew nothing at all. And then my head hurt… and it is as it is now."
Hearing Hive Princess's answer, Zhao Chen looked her up and down.
He could be sure that the "Hive Princess" of that presence a moment since, and this Hive Princess before him, were two wholly different persons.
Though the faces of the two were exactly the same, Zhao Chen could yet be certain they were not one person.
For that breath of them was utterly unlike!
"Do you know that a moment ago you turned into something with spider-lances grown all over your back?" Zhao Chen asked.
"Spider-lances all over my back?" Hive Princess started, and at once put a hand back to feel behind her, but felt no spider-lance at all.
She looked at Zhao Chen in her doubt. "There is nothing."
Seeing Hive Princess so, it seemed she truly knew nothing whatever of her own case a moment since.
Zhao Chen thought of a certain possibility.
Could it be… that there was another person within her body?
But why should that person come out suddenly and take possession of Hive Princess's body?
Such a thing should not happen without cause.
Zhao Chen looked suddenly toward the floor-to-ceiling window at one side of the sitting room; upon it was a web-shaped crack, showing that it had suffered an attack before.
Happily this was a T5 interstellar warship, and the Hades at that.
To the eye this was a pane of floor-to-ceiling glass; in fact it was several meters thick!
Even Zhao Chen could not blast through it with a fist.
And outside the floor-to-ceiling window was……
Zhao Chen's pupils widened slightly.
"Little Bug, were you looking out of the window before?" Zhao Chen asked.
"Out of the window? What is outside the window?" Hive Princess turned her head toward the window in her doubt, and in the next second the look upon her face went stiff.
A look of terror began to climb over her expression.
At the same time the lights within the room flickered again, and all the intelligent mechanical equipment failed once more.
"It is them! It is them, come again! The pitch-black interstellar warships… they will destroy everything… Mama… Granny Bug… everyone…"
The look upon Hive Princess's face went from the terror of the first moment, and was soon possessed by a kind of fury, and thereafter by savagery, by slaughter.
Hiss, hiss, hiss, hiss.
The rounded arc-shaped shell upon Hive Princess's back began to split, and spider-lances stretched forth one after another.
Hive Princess's eyes lost that childlike innocence of a moment since as well.
It was this very feeling!
"Who are you, and why are you within her body?" Zhao Chen demanded.
The voice behind her made Hive Princess turn her head; her whole body clung in an instant to the ceiling, and by the spider-lances behind her she moved there near enough as upon level ground.
She made as though she would attack Zhao Chen.
"Do you want another of my fists?" Zhao Chen smiled slightly.
Hive Princess called that fist of a moment since to mind, and kept her body in a posture of defense, with no thought of attacking.
Her gaze began to search about on every side, sweeping many times over the door behind Zhao Chen.
By the look of it she was seeking a way of escape.
She knew she was no match for this fellow before her.
"Let us talk. I will not hurt you, but I need to know what you are, after all." Zhao Chen drew over a chair, set it upon the way between Hive Princess and the door, and sat upon it as lightly as cloud and wind.
Hive Princess showed not the least sign of relaxing her guard; she kept to a corner of the ceiling, holding a posture from which she could fight at any moment.
Zhao Chen could feel that the fighting power of this "Hive Princess" before him was such that even with an interstellar marine detachment, and several T4-grade battle mecha here besides.
They would not certainly be a match for this fellow.
Only, more's the pity for her, Zhao Chen had injected himself with the T5-grade Super-Soldier Serum.
Seeing that the other still wore a look of being unwilling to speak,
Zhao Chen, without ceremony, drove a fist into the wall beside him.
The wall caved in, and half his arm sank within it.
At this sight, Hive Princess upon the ceiling went blank in the face.
"I do not like to talk with people with my head tilted up. Do I need to invite you down?"
As Zhao Chen's words fell, this Hive Princess had already come down upon the floor, but still upon her spider-lances, with both feet off the ground, watching Zhao Chen with great wariness.
"You may not know who I am. I am called Zhao Chen; I come from another universe, and am a Lord, and the Commander of a military fleet besides. We found you in a certain place, that is, this body of yours. And then we brought her back, and gave her protection. We mean her no ill; else we could not have arranged so fine a room for her, nor left her freedom unhindered. Those pitch-black interstellar warships far off outside the window, they are your enemies, are they not? We are at war with them; so we are not enemies, but friends." Zhao Chen had found the chief culprit that had roused Hive Princess to this state.
It was the Pitch-Black Legion fleets that had appeared upon the far-off field of battle at the Black Great-Wall line.
Perhaps it was these that had stirred Hive Princess, and brought her to the state she was in now.
"You… are not… an enemy…." Hive Princess's voice was somewhat uncanny, not so smooth as before.
"I am not; we are friends." Zhao Chen shrugged.
Hive Princess stared at Zhao Chen; though she kept her fighting posture still, yet the air of killing had plainly dispersed not a little.
"Now can you tell me what relation you and this body bear to each other?"
"I… am… protecting… Little Bug. Elder sister… I…" Hive Princess said.
"You are Little Bug's elder sister, and you are protecting her?" Zhao Chen asked.
Hive Princess nodded.
Zhao Chen rubbed at his chin. "Is this a splitting of the mind with you?"
Hive Princess wore a look of not having understood.
"Does Little Bug know of your existence?"
"No…"
"And neither you nor Little Bug can see the other's memories of the time when she held this body?"
"Yes…"
Zhao Chen stared at the Hive Princess before him.
If that charge of before had, in Zhao Chen's view, held no threat whatsoever.
Yet this Hive Princess now, even without any equipment, Zhao Chen could feel that terrible energy fluctuation upon her.
This was perhaps the thing the Hades had detected.
The secrets upon Hive Princess seemed to have grown more.