Top-Notch

Recognizing Heisuke as a sniper, Seba judges the odds newly dangerous and slips off to hide. He jeers that a marksman flashy enough to be noticed loses all menace once pinned down, only for Heisuke to answer with a wall-bouncing shot that opens a cut on his shoulder. When Heisuke admits that even across the room Seba feels close enough to touch, the mercenary triggers his Invisibility Suit and disappears. A storm of ricochets drives him back until the walkway gives way beneath them.

Seba resurfaces behind Heisuke without the suit and hurls an object that rips open his right shoulder; the trick is a pipe wrapped in the cloaking fabric, invisible in flight. Pinning the sniper's arm underfoot, Seba is stunned when Heisuke fires anyway and a rebounding round seems to shear off his arm. The smile that follows betrays the ruse: he had willed the limb invisible at the instant of the shot, and his concealed knife plunges into Heisuke's gut.

Believing the pair finished, Seba lectures on the uselessness of friendship and kicks Heisuke's spare rounds to the level below. Refusing to fold, Heisuke beams a thought toward Shin, and Piisuke swoops past to drop him a single bullet. His next shot skims Seba's cheek and punches into a water tank overhead; the resulting downpour soaks the lab and strips the suit of its power, leaving Seba's outline plain to see. Shin springs in from behind and clamps him in a crab-scissors neck lock, dropping the mercenary as he coughs blood but clings to consciousness.

A blast then rocks the walkway. The view cuts to Sakamoto and Kashima, where the cyborg boasts that explosives now line the whole facility, set to erase every trace and greet the Order in twenty minutes. Flexing his knuckles, Sakamoto replies that five will do.

Known as "Top-Notch" (Ichiryū), the twenty-eighth chapter spans 19 pages in the Lab Arc and is collected in the fourth volume. It debuted on June 21, 2021, in issue 29, with Shin, Heisuke, Piisuke and Seba on the cover. The installment showcases Heisuke's ricochet marksmanship and Shin's crab-scissors hold.