Mission 26

Henry Henderson tells the class that midterm exams arrive in two weeks, with a Stella Star awaiting the top two scorers in each subject and a Tonitrus Bolt punishing every failed test. Handing back history quizzes, he assigns Anya remedial lessons for her 13 percent while Damian gloats over his 91. Anya realizes she can simply lift answers from Damian's head during tests and starts smirking mid-class, which lands her in trouble with Henderson.

Riding home late, she spots the full moon and panics. Loid confirms her fear: a new moon coincides with exam day, and her ability goes dark during that phase, a weakness she calls Eclipsing. Cheating is off the table. An attempt to have Bond show her the future questions instead serves up a vision of dinner, and she promptly forgets her crisis until morning.

Loid's tutoring produces nothing, so Yor remembers her brother's offer to help and summons him. Meeting his niece for the first time, Yuri floods Anya's telepathy with thoughts of Yor, and while the two men discuss the recent peace talks she gleefully eavesdrops on both of their hidden identities. The study session starts with Anya acing practice problems by mind-reading before catching herself, then souring under Yuri's harsh criticism until Yor asks him to soften. When Anya questions why anyone would study, Yuri explains that he worked hard so he could look after Yor, and frames learning as a source of power, an idea that finally energizes her. The marathon ends badly when she reveals she still has no idea what grammar is, sending an exasperated Yuri storming out, though he doubles back to devour Yor's fresh cookies.

Reflecting that a smarter version of herself might have defused the bomb during the terrorist incident on her own, Anya buckles down with a workbook. Loid later discovers she has been diligently studying a beginner foreign language, a subject the midterms do not even cover. Two weeks on, the students file into the exam hall, Anya offers Becky a confident word, and Henderson declares the midterms open.

The chapter establishes the Stella Star and Tonitrus Bolt stakes for the midterm exams and reveals Eclipsing, the new moon blackout that disables Anya's telepathy. Yuri meets Anya for the first time and tutors her, and his conviction that knowledge equals power gives her genuine motivation to study, even if her efforts partly land on the wrong subject.

Mission 26 runs 23 pages in Volume 5, released May 4, 2020, within the Midterm Exams Arc and adapted in Episode 18. Henderson, Becky, and Anya appear on the cover.

A joke on page 17 differs between editions: in Japanese, Anya mishears "knowledge is power" as "no leash is power," picturing a muscular chihuahua as she does, so the English version reworks the line into "the whole enchilada" becoming "a swole chihuahua" to preserve the visual gag.