Chapter 54

High above the Princess Lorelei, the rooftop battle between Yor and the Swordsman rages on. Down below, the fireworks show has ended, and Loid walks Anya back inside while apologizing that Yor never turned up. The apology jogs Anya's memory: she still intends to track her mother down and lend a hand.

Reading the lips of agitated SSS agents nearby, Loid learns a bomb sits in the ship's bilge. He cannot walk away from a threat of that scale, so he needs Anya somewhere safe first. She picks his intention out of his head and points at a drop-in daycare, claiming she wants to play there. The moment Loid leaves, so does she. Disguised as a crew member who once handled ordnance for the Marines, Loid talks his way into the bilge, where a nervous crewman is stuck babysitting the device under SSS scrutiny. Moving it would trigger detonation. The design matches hardware favored by Western extremist groups, yet WISE would know about any genuine Western operation, so Loid concludes someone staged it to cast blame on the West.

Anya, meanwhile, catches the informant's stray thoughts about where Yor is fighting before losing his trail. At the battle site she finds the weapon Yor dropped earlier, wedged into the floorboards. Above her, Yor holds the advantage over the Swordsman but cannot close the distance, and the Assassin Leader's gunfire pins her back. With no stairs in reach, Anya hurls the weapon up to the deck. It lands nowhere near the fight, but two assassins sneaking toward the hatch hiding Olka, Gram, and Zeb stumble over it and knock each other out in a chain of accidents, one taking the weapon's point in his rear. Anya declares it all part of the plan.

The gunfire draws Yor's eye to her recovered weapon. She commits to a final charge as the Swordsman sheathes his blade for a counter. The Assassin Leader lines up a shot at her, only to be gunned down by a reawakened Matthew. The two duelists cross in a single exchange; both drop, but only the Swordsman stays down, blood spreading from his chest. Listening from below, Anya hears her exhausted mother's thoughts and celebrates the win.

Loid disarms the bilge bomb to cheers, though the SSS presence stressed him more than the explosive did, and a nagging suspicion hardens his expression. His instinct proves right: the informant bids the ship a mocking farewell as a second timed device keeps counting down.

The bilge bomb is neutralized. Loid infiltrates the crew under a false identity, identifies the device as a plant meant to implicate Westalis, and defuses it in front of the SSS.

Anya's throw decides the duel. Her "Rising Hope" toss returns Yor's weapon to the roof deck and accidentally takes out two assassins hunting Olka's hiding spot.

The Swordsman falls. Matthew recovers in time to shoot the Assassin Leader, clearing the way for Yor to win the final exchange.

A second bomb remains. The informant escapes notice while another timer ticks inside the ship, setting up the next chapter's crisis.

Mission 54 runs 23 pages, appears in Volume 9 of the manga, and released on October 18, 2021. It belongs to the Cruise Adventure Arc and was adapted into Episode 34 of the anime. Matthew McMahon, Yor, and the Swordsman share the chapter cover.

The daycare Anya visits is called the "Waku Waku Kids Room," borrowing the Japanese word for "exciting" that doubles as Anya's own catchphrase. Her weapon throw is named "Rising Hope" after the LiSA song of the same title, and the chapter illustration poses Anya like LiSA on that single's cover art.