This page does feel a bit overdialogued, but the arguably excessive text was driven by the tension of not wanting to burn any more pagecount on the scene, especially as the volume was running out of space as its final story wrapped up.

Panel 3: The crosshatched “blush pattern” on Emp’s mask was, I think, cribbed from a visual riff used by mangaka Mayoco Anno (Sakuran, Insufficient Direction) long before I knew who the hell she was; I stumbled across an old (untranslated) story of hers in an issue of Business Jump, and quite liked her slightly unusual approach to blush rendering.

Panel 4: Always liked this angled-sideways view of the Lotus Node portal, with Manny’s mecha vanishing through it. Also, in retrospect, I vastly prefer this simpler version of the portal’s “petals,” as opposed to the fractal-looking flurry of smaller and smaller petals I gradually drifted into using as the series went along.

Alas, I emphatically do not like how I handled Emp's word balloons in this panel. See, in theory, she's responding to Manny's first line, "You won't have to worry, Miss Emp," but the reader will almost certainly read all three of his word balloons before popping down to read—and be confused by—Emp's line about "Make sure I don't, okay?" Without resorting to the back-and-forth "ping-pong" dialogue exchange I dislike so intensely, one viable approach would've been to have Emp's balloons overlap the bottom of Manny's first balloon. That wouldn't have read perfectly, tbh, but it would've certainly worked better than what I did here.