Mission 20

Holding Anya close, Yor squares up against Keith. He sics his German shepherd on her, but the sheer menace of her glare sends the animal fleeing. With bystanders drifting toward the alley, Keith bolts, kicking Bond when the dog refuses to follow. Yor starts to give chase, then stops herself rather than abandon Anya. The girl explains that the men are terrorists planning to use dogs as bombs, prompting Yor to pat Bond down for explosives before relief sets in. After a mutual apology, Yor steps away to phone the police with what Anya can describe.

During the call, Anya catches Bond mid-vision and looks inside his mind. The happy image of the Forgers has changed: Loid is missing from it. A second premonition follows, a clock tower bell, a blast tearing through the city, and Loid's body beneath the rubble, then a broadcast confirming the assassination succeeded and war is coming. Desperate to change that future without exposing her own power or Bond's, Anya invents a story about bringing Loid toilet paper and takes off with the dog. Yor hurries after her.

WISE, tipped to a terrorist sighting near Central Station, works to predict the cell's route and soon intercepts a van, seizing four students, three dogs, and a case of explosives, but not Keith. Watching his comrades taken from around a corner, he resolves to see the plan through by himself. The captured students stonewall questioning until Handler enters and asks what they are after; one answers that they want a war that crowns Ostania and erases Westalis. She kicks him across the face, tears into their romanticized ignorance of what war actually does to people, and presses a gun to a student's head, asking whether their university taught them anything real about it.

Keith fits his remaining shepherd with a bomb and commands it to hunt Minister Brantz. Reasoning that security will now blanket the clock tower, he plans to weaponize the site against whoever pursues him. Handler distributes agents across the four suspected bomb positions, assigning Loid to the clock tower designated B1. As Loid's car heads there, Anya rides Bond toward the same tower, racing to arrive before her father and rewrite his death.

Yor's glare alone routs Keith's attack dog, and Keith abandons Bond while fleeing.

Bond's premonition shows Anya a bombing at the clock tower that kills Loid and triggers war.

WISE captures four of the terrorists with their explosives, but Keith escapes and straps a bomb to his last dog.

Loid is assigned to the clock tower site as Anya and Bond race to beat him there.

The volume and full-color releases add a line on the opening page in which Keith registers shock that Yor is Anya's mother.

Endo originally drew the dead Loid of Bond's vision facedown, then redrew the scene so Anya could identify the body.

To make Sylvia's dressing-down of the students ring true, Endo revisited psychology books collecting soldiers' accounts of wartime experience.

The chapter continues the Doggy Crisis Arc and is adapted in Episode 14 of the anime. Yor, Anya, Keith, Bond, Kurt, and Aaron crowd the cover, and the WISE agent Red 4 debuts.