Mission 25

On the walk to Eden Academy, Becky raves about the soap opera Berlint in Love and teases Anya for being too childish to grasp romance. Anya barely listens; she is busy trying to impress Damian with a new Forger family portrait that shows off Bond's size. The plan flops when Damian walks past the dropped photo, and Becky claims it instead after falling for the dreamy man in it, Anya's father Loid.

With the art teacher out sick, Henry Henderson runs a crafts lesson themed around animals, with supplies shared per table. Damian only commits after hearing the results might reach the secret transcripts, then bristles when the seating puts Anya beside him. Becky sculpts Loid rather than an animal and, challenged by Henderson, argues that humans qualify; he concedes the point, but she restarts anyway, deciding Loid outranks mere beasts. Anya's paper model of Bond earns nothing but scorn from Damian, so after reading his daydream of paternal praise she launches Operation Griffin, donating her paper to help him recreate his family crest. Her contributions, jet engines and mismatched feather scraps, burn through his supply and leave him shouting until Henderson intervenes. By way of apology, she reworks her paper Bond into a small companion griffin.

Displayed in the hallway, Damian's ragged sculpture inexplicably wins first prize; the visiting trustees read it as a stirring image of Ostania rising from the war. Anya's hope that he will show it to his parents collapses when he says he has no plans to. That evening Damian phones his butler Jeeves, learns his father will skip the upcoming occasion while his brother Demetrius returns home, and probes how Donovan reacted to the punching incident. Jeeves insists his father was worried, an answer Damian quietly disbelieves. Concluding that only becoming an Imperial Scholar will win Donovan's respect, he pulls Emile and Ewen into evening study sessions with the dorm tutor, while Henderson lingers in the hallway puzzling over how that art project ever won.

Becky keeps the Forger family photo after developing an instant crush on Loid. Anya sacrifices her own project to assist Damian's griffin, and although her help nearly ruins it, the trustees hand the piece first prize. Damian's call home confirms his father's absence and deepens his sense of neglect, so he resolves to chase Imperial Scholar status through hard study before the midterm exams.

Mission 25, the series' twenty-fifth chapter, was published April 20, 2020, in Volume 5 as part of the Midterm Exams Arc, and adapted in Episode 17. Becky and Anya share the cover.

The English release marks the first confirmation of the older Desmond brother's name, Demetrius, while the Japanese edition introduces the siblings' nicknames Demmy and Dammy.