Chapter 43

At his tobacco shop, Franky hands Loid a forged I.D. for Doust Industries along with engine test data for a fighter jet in development, but the photographs Loid requested of an association's membership are delayed: the contact who handled that intelligence has been eliminated, reportedly by Garden. Franky insists the group is real, an unofficial force that executes traitors on orders from a shadow organization, its soldiers rumored capable of wiping out entire military units. Loid, who had filed half the Garden stories under urban legend, takes the documents and leaves with orders to hurry the pictures along.

Franky's true preoccupation is Kopi, a missing male Nortblue cat belonging to Kacey, a server at his favorite café. Refused Loid's help even after threatening to cut off his intel and offering a gun built into a toothbrush, Franky works his informant network solo from a payphone and traces the cat to Ritter Street near city hall, where he bumps into Yor on her lunch break and gains a willing helper.

His arsenal gets a field test: cat-shaped listening posts tuned to Kopi's bell collar, already torn apart by the local strays; a catnip decoy rig that summons a swarm of cats with the target among them; a telescoping grabber arm Kopi dodges; and a net launcher disguised as a camera that never gets close enough to fire. When his exoskeleton power suit demands fifteen minutes of battery warm-up, Yor simply rips a section off it, hurls the piece ahead of the fleeing cat to cut off its escape, and pounces on Kopi herself. Franky mourns the suit he spent a decade building, then delivers the cat to a weeping, grateful Kacey, only to discover she already has a boyfriend. He wishes the couple well and walks away in tears, resolving to live for his work.

Back at city hall, Yor's high spirits draw needling from Camilla and Millie, while Sharon's sarcastic remark that Yor has finally become normal only delights her. Then a suited man announces a phone call from her special contact: the voice on the line greets her as Thorn Princess and tells her a new client is waiting.

Franky reports that the assassin organization Garden eliminated one of his contacts, giving Loid his first serious indication the group exists beyond rumor.

Yor, not Franky's decade of gadgets, captures the runaway cat Kopi, though Franky's hopes with Kacey are dashed regardless.

The Shopkeeper reaches Yor at city hall with a new assignment, addressing her as Thorn Princess and setting the next arc in motion.

Mission 43 launches the Cruise Adventure Arc across 21 pages in Volume 7, adapts into Episode 29, and puts Loid and Franky on the cover.

One partly obscured silhouette among the depicted Garden members closely resembles Yor, an early hint of her ties to the organization. Endo notes that the Garden rumors Franky repeats are exaggerated, and that how readily people believe them illustrates the frightening power of information. The wrecked exoskeleton represents ten years of Franky's work.