No Guns Life – 11 – An Arm Poorer, A Case Richer

Juuzou enters his office to find the Hands/GunSlave duo of Pepper and Seven, (perhaps not coincidentally named after sodas). Minase Inori does a baddie for once, giving Pepper a sultry, irreverent voice that actually sounds quite close to Mary’s Numakura Manami.

Pepper has a simple request: for Juuzou to let her kill him and his handler, whoever they are. Obviously, Juuzou has no intention of taking this”job.”

Seven may seem younger and less experienced than Juuzou, but he’s faster, and manages to shear off Juuzou’s left arm. Unfortunately, Pepper didn’t bother researching her target and his associates very carefully, or she’d know by now that Tetsuro is able to stop any Extended in its tracks with his Harmony (though doing so causes great strain to his sub-brain).

Pepper doesn’t want anything to do with Tetsuro, and so withdraws with Seven, and the fight ends in a stalemate—though not before licking Juuzou’s face and calling dibs (to Mary’s outrage).

While Tetsuro wallows in guilt and regret for starting all of this, Juuzou is confused and suspicious about why Berühren is suddenly targeting him and quietly dropped their search for the kid.

Whatever Berühren’s reasons (if any) for continuing to antagonize Juuzou, Mary invites a new client, who takes the two of them to a mansion where a kid is being “haunted” by some kind of Extended “ghost.” The episode ends just when they arrive at the gates of the mansion, so this felt more like a bridge between two unresolved stories than a standalone episode in its own right.

Assassins Pride – 11 – A Vast and Insidious Conspiracy

From the moment Mule and Salacha arrive, Melida and Elise are at Mule’s mercy. Her family administrates the library, and she knows what all the books do, from dressing them in fairy tale cosplay to showing them the way through the labyrinth. The whole time, we know Melida and Elise’s “new friends” are up to something.

What we don’t know is why, aside from loyalty to their respective houses. What those houses are conspiring to do to Melida is evil, and all it takes for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing. So…who are Mule and Salacha, really?

When the quartet completes a trial, which consists of defeating low-level imps and organizing books, four new books bearing their names materialize on a shelf. This is when Salacha decides: forget her bro’s orders, she’s Melida’s friend, and she owes her at least the warning that all of this is a trap, and help her chase down Mule, who’s taken her book.

Meanwhile, the Headmistress and the upperclassmen (of whom apparently only Shenfa can actually fight) are attacked by a Guild Grimface necromancer, but are bailed out by Kufa, who in turn is bailed out by Williams Gin when the necromancer transforms into Ains Ooal Gown’s cousin.

Grimface has apparently come to eliminate any and all witnesses to the screwing over of Melida, but Kufa made sure some students, led by Rosetti and Naqua, stayed on the surface to repel the guild’s raid. Thanks to Salacha, Melida at least knows that even two of her friends are working against her on behalf of their blood purity-obsessed families.

But what does Mule mean when she says she’s doing this because she “likes” Melida? Is she really doing her father’s bidding, or does she have a third, distinct agenda all her own? Was she just putting on an act in last week’s secret meeting? The final episode (at least of this season) has a lot of questions to answer.