Mission 21

Anya and Bond reach the clock tower ahead of the blast, but the exhausted dog cannot summon another vision, and Anya discovers she never learned to read a clock. A man on a bench tells her the bell will sound within half an hour. Bond then catches Keith's scent and yanks her into hiding; Keith's shepherd notices them but stays silent as its master hauls it into his car. From Keith's stray thought about the bomb he planted, Anya's telepathy pinpoints its location.

Once he drives off, she hurries to the spot. Bond barks her hand away from the doorknob, warning that the door itself is wired to detonate, so she wriggles in through a small side window. Disarming it proves nothing like her cartoons: every wire is identical. Spotting ketchup on a table, she smears a warning for Loid instead and slips out with Bond.

Loid arrives with two WISE agents, one of whom reads the ketchup scrawl as "NO" over a drawing of an eggplant and reaches for the knob anyway. Loid stops him, angles a mirror through the little window, and finds the bomb rigged to the door. With the State Security Service closing in on the location, the agents leave the device for them and abandon the hunt for Keith, heading straight to Minister Brantz.

Brantz, grumbling about constant state surveillance, is soon relieved of his clothes by Loid, who departs disguised as the minister. Yuri Briar greets the false Brantz as part of a foreign ministry escort, but "Brantz" takes the wheel himself and drives off alone, drawing Keith into pursuit exactly as intended; the stolen clothes carry the scent the bomb dog needs. The real minister fumes to Handler about being mugged.

Loid leads the chase toward the river, away from crowds, while the two agents shadowing in a second car radio in details. When the older agent opens fire, Keith rams them and flips their vehicle with a stick grenade, prompting a radio warning that he still carries explosives. Loid ditches his car and continues on foot, the bomb-laden shepherd hard behind him. His pistol shots miss the weaving animal, and he escapes upward with parkour that leaves Keith baffled, since Brantz is supposed to be sixty. Cornering the dog in an alley, Loid sheds the disguise, apologizes to the animal for the human war it was dragged into, and pulls the trigger.

Anya locates Keith's planted bomb through his thoughts but cannot disarm it, so she leaves a ketchup warning on the door.

Loid heeds the crude message, confirms the door is rigged with a mirror, and leaves the bomb for the SSS.

Disguised as Minister Brantz, Loid lures Keith and the bomb dog into a riverside chase.

Keith disables the support car with a grenade, and Loid confronts the explosive-carrying dog alone.

Handler's given name, Sylvia, is disclosed for the first time in this chapter.

Keith's vehicle during the chase is a grey sedan.

The chapter continues the Doggy Crisis Arc and is adapted in Episode 14 of the anime. Anya and Bond appear on the cover.