Loid's Past Arc

Spanning chapters 58 to 63 in volumes 9 and 10, and adapted across episodes 36 through 41 of the anime, the Loid's Past Arc sits between the Cruise Adventure Arc and the Friendship Schemes Arc. Known in Japanese as Roido Kako-hen, it mixes lighthearted family vignettes with the series' most sobering material to date: the childhood memories Twilight has buried since the war began.

While Operation Strix ticks along quietly, the spotlight rotates through the supporting cast. Bond, Becky, Fiona, Franky, Donna Schlag, and Sylvia each anchor a chapter before the story turns inward to explain why Loid ever entered the trade of espionage.

Guard dog training frustrates both Loid and Bond until a walk turns serious: Bond foresees an apartment blaze and drags Loid to the scene, where the pair pull a pug named Daisy from the flames and take down the arsonist responsible. Loid apologizes for drilling Bond too hard and tells him he counts as a true Forger. Soon after, Becky visits the household determined to charm Loid with seduction tricks borrowed from her favorite soap opera; the scheme collapses in confusion, and she ends up idolizing Yor instead. Fiona covers Loid's missions during his cruise vacation and is quietly overjoyed when he thanks her with leftover souvenirs, while an anime-original outing sees Loid and Yor stop a rampaging construction worker in a duel between two excavators.

Franky helps Fiona chase a counterfeit export license to defuse a strawberry trade dispute, a job that lands the disguised pair in a couples-only club and a scrap with SSS agents. At Eden Academy, the feared disciplinarian Donna Schlag, nicknamed Old Lady Tonitrus, punishes minor infractions during a bag inspection; Anya hands her handkerchief to a panicking Damian and eats a second Tonitrus Bolt for it, leaving him sworn to repay her.

The heart of the arc arrives in Loid's sleep. He grew up in Luwen, a town in eastern Westalis, playing soldier with friends while his father insisted no war would ever come. That father vanished after the Ostanian bombing that ignited a new East-West conflict, and his mother died in a later air raid on Kielberg. Enlisting under a false name and age, the boy fought through the war, spared an amusing Ostanian deserter named Franky on a mountainside, and lost his childhood friends to a doomed operation. Condemning his own ignorance, he accepted a recruiter's ultimatum and joined Westalian intelligence, becoming Twilight in pursuit of a world where no child has reason to cry. A closing chapter follows Sylvia's WISE team as they shield the opera singer Jonas Wellman from smear campaigns and from Pance Karmer, a vengeful ex-soldier, ahead of a cultural exchange trip west.

The arc permanently reframes Loid. His war-torn origins, his first encounter with Franky, and the recruitment that created Twilight are all now on record, giving weight to his conviction that ignorance is not bliss but sin. Anya carries two Tonitrus Bolts, yet her sacrifice buys real progress for Operation Strix: Damian feels genuinely indebted to her, and Loid, freshly reminded of the friends he lost, urges his daughter to treasure hers.