Chapter 55

With the Swordsman defeated, Yor puzzles over how her weapon reached the deck and senses someone may have helped. Anya, eavesdropping on her thoughts from below, backs away before she can be spotted, and Yor chalks the mystery up to the wind before tending to Matthew.

In the bilge, Loid warns everyone that a single device would never sink a ship this size, so more must be hidden aboard. His call to evacuate the passengers is shot down by the SSS agents, who refuse to risk a panic; Loid reads the refusal as face-saving. A quiet search by every available officer and crew member begins instead. At the atrium, Anya crosses paths with the wounded Assassin Leader, who sniffs out explosives packed inside a decorative clock and pins the sabotage on the informant. Unable to reveal her telepathy, Anya tells a passing crew member she watched a strange man smear a booger on the clock, which is enough to get it inspected.

Outside the hull, the informant listens to his bugs from a raft and learns every assassin has been eliminated. The Leader drops in on him, addressing him as Snoops and demanding answers. Snoops admits he rigged the ship to send Olka to the bottom, disguising the bombs as Western handiwork because a new war would suit their employer Leonardo Hapoon just fine. The pair turn on each other when Snoops mentions the raft only carries supplies for one.

Loid reaches the clock bomb and judges there is no time to disarm it, so he unbolts the whole fixture and pitches it into the sea, where it detonates directly above the feuding assassins and blasts them off their raft. Sharks begin to circle. Watching from a distance, Anya takes full credit before the daycare worker hauls her back. In the storage hold, Yor and Matthew ready an inflatable boat for Olka, Gram, and Zeb. Olka embraces Yor, insists Gram owes his future to her bloodied hands, and promises to pray for the Forgers' happiness. Once the boat departs, Matthew snaps Yor out of her sentimentality, passes along Loid and Anya's request to meet the next day, and frames the family time as her reward, tossing her a handkerchief to ice her swollen face. Loid retrieves a sleeping Anya from the daycare, catches himself thinking of the Forgers as his family, and hastily reframes them as part of the mission.

The final bomb is destroyed. Loid throws the clock-encased device overboard, where its blast knocks Snoops and the Assassin Leader into shark-filled waters.

Anya covers her tracks. Her booger story gets the atrium clock inspected without revealing how she knew, and she slips back to the daycare unexposed.

Snoops's plot is laid bare. He confesses to framing Westalis for the bombings to please Leonardo Hapoon, who would profit from renewed war.

The Gretchers escape. Olka, Gram, and Zeb depart for their rendezvous, closing out Yor's bodyguard mission with a heartfelt farewell.

Yor's cover survives. Matthew arranges for her to rejoin her family and coaches her on hiding her injuries.

Mission 55 spans 23 pages in Volume 9 and released on November 1, 2021. It closes out the action of the Cruise Adventure Arc and was adapted in Episode 34 of the anime, with Yor, the Swordsman, and Anya on the chapter cover.

Page 17 contains a drawing error: both of Yor's earrings sit in intact earlobes even though the previous chapter showed her ripping one earring out to stop the Assassin Leader from pursuing the Gretchers.