Episode 38

On a family holiday at the park, Loid stages a public performance of domestic bliss until Bond freezes mid-walk, gripped by a vision of an excavator tearing through the crowds. Moments later Anya's telepathy catches the seething resentment of a construction worker stuck clearing rubble alone on his day off. Faking a sudden urge to go home and study for Stella Stars, she steers her parents toward the site just as the man, humiliated by a fall and a direct hit from bird droppings, snaps and starts swinging his machine wildly. Loid commandeers a second excavator to block his rampage before it reaches the park, and the two machines lock in a shoving match while Yor plucks an elderly passerby and his dog from under falling debris. Evenly matched in raw power, Loid wins through technique, twisting his rig to overpower the cab and knock the man out. Anya's victory proves costly: Loid holds her to the study excuse, and Yor promises a celebratory feast that terrifies daughter and dog alike.

The second story begins with Sylvia briefing Fiona on Sergei Ostosky, an Ostanian economics official illegally choking strawberry exports to Westalis, where the shortage has already ruined the Foreign Minister's birthday cake and threatens a genuine diplomatic rupture. Needing a forged state seal for a fake export license, Fiona gets a referral from Loid to one of his assets and, after navigating a gauntlet of amateur traps and riddles, finds Franky waiting behind the final door. He agrees to broker a meeting with a counterfeiter called the Quill, on the condition that they enter the nightclub venue disguised as a couple. Franky milks the fake date shamelessly; Fiona threatens murder. The Quill rejects her offer outright as absurd on its deadline, but when SSS agents close in on him outside, Fiona repels three attackers with a kick, a leg throw, and a thrown knife, and the shaken forger agrees to the job as repayment. Franky reveals an escape tunnel and explains his politics: he serves no side, he simply wants Ostania's stagnant order shaken up. Days later he delivers the forged documents along with a sharp observation, that Fiona herself tipped off the SSS to engineer the rescue. She feigns ignorance and floats future collaborations, but Franky declines; working her way, he says, would cost him his friends.

Bond's vision and Anya's telepathy avert an excavator rampage, resolved by Loid winning a machine-on-machine duel while Yor shields bystanders. Sylvia tasks Fiona with defusing a strawberry-export standoff that could escalate between Ostania and Westalis. Fiona meets Franky for the first time, secures the Quill's forged seal by orchestrating and then foiling an SSS ambush, and gets a working demonstration of Franky's street-level network and neutral ideology. Franky sees through her manipulation and refuses to become her regular asset.

"Berlint Panic" is an anime-original story, while the Fiona and Franky half adapts the B part of Chapter 60. The season's opening theme, "Protect the Light," debuts over this episode's end credits rather than at the start.