After visiting the professor, Ange finds the best way to hide for the night while on the run : a high class hotel for the obscenely rich. No questions asked, and very discreet. Amakusa sleeps on the couch in the living room of the suite, of course : Ange doesn't have any hormones.
Since she can't seem to find any sleep, Ange reads Maria's diary once again. Cue Maria on the passenger seat, this time in her fancy new witch dress. To pass time, Ange decides to do some magic, something she apparently did a bit in the past, but stopped after a while. She had somehow managed to lay her hands on the last existing killing knife from the Incident (you know, the ones the knife-girls become), and now she's trying to invocate this specific knife-girl, Mammon. Which she manages to do, with some difficulty.
Mammon being aligned with Greed, she immediately asks for her sisters to be invocated too. At the sixth one, Ange starts faltering, and collapses. But hey, not bad for the first invocation magic Ange has done in ages. She'll do better in a while.
Meanwhile, around the chessboard for the 4th iteration, "Gretel" has isolated herself a bit, discussing some stuff with Mammon. She's not supposed to be her master yet, so they try their best to have a friendly if cryptic chat. (I don't really remember what they talked about, but I doubt it was that important.)
Just after Mammon leaves, ANGE/Gretel senses time stopping, with Lambdadelta showing up to have a friendly chat. Basically, our evil witch justs points out the obvious Plot Hole in Bernkastel recruiting ANGE : if Battler wins against Beatrice with her help, Ange's family will probably saved, and return to the 6-year old who is waiting for them. not the 18-year-old ANGE, who won't exist in this reality if Battler wins. So, ANGE will never be reunited with her family.
On the other hand, if ANGE helps Lambdadelta stalling the game, by helping Battler only when he's in danger of losing completely, she could play with her brother forever. Wouldn't that be nice ? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
Wow, Lambdadelta only shows up one or twice per episode, but she manages to top her Magnificent Bastard-ness each time. I have no doubt ANGE will recover in a while, but this is a very well calculated blow. I like it. And it makes Bernkastel look more manipulative, which is always a bonus.
Back to the flashbacks to Ange's childhood. Maria has started teaching her magic, which mostly involves summoning the knife-girls and playing around with her imaginary friends. But at least now Ange is happier.
The main problem is that Ange has now become a worse student than ever. Which is a bad thing, because she's attending a Boarding School of Horrors. Her bad grades lower the average of the whole class, which makes her classmates despise her even more. Even when they "help" her by giving her tests subjects in advance, she screws it up. So they set up a "teaching group" for Ange... and the upshot is that now her free time is completely gone and replaced by hours of her classmates humiliating her. Fun !
After a few hours of this, Ange snaps, and orders the knife-girls to kill her classmates. Which they can't do, since there are two many magic-repelling humans in the room, or some such nonsense. Ange's not pleased, and dismisses them brutally. And Sakutarou too, since the catboy is annoying. At this point, Maria thinks Ange has crossed the line (you DO not assault servants of a fellow witch, especially someone as helpless as Sakutarou), and expels her from Mariage Sorciere.
And then Ange really snaps, uttering a soul-crushing speech with so much self-loathing that her classmates are taken aback. Basically, she thinks she should have died with her whole family. Ouch.
Now we're back to the Maria flashbacks... and Maria's complaining about Ange being mean to her. Wait, what ? The Timey-Wimey Ball makes no sense here... For the moment, I'll assume Maria is alluding to something else the 6-year old Ange did back in 1986, because it makes no sense otherwise. (Anyway, it's not as if it matters that much in this scene.)
Maria has been left all alone at home once more by her mother for the whole weekend, due to "work". This time, she manages to lock herself out. Thankfully, the neighbourly shopkeepers warn the police, and Maria's able to eat some dinner and sleep in a bed. But there's now a stern social worker wanting to have a good talk with Rosa. Especially after the police found out that Rosa was actually not working, but on a three-day vacation with her lover. But Rosa won't have any of it, and chews out the social worker. Then she transfers her anger onto her daughter, for not being discreet enough when she was alone. Especially with that big stuffed lion she always walked around with, making her very recognizable. So Rosa tears up and destroys Sakutarou there and then.
Rosa, BEST MOTHER EVER. No wonder Maria turned into a Creepy Child after that...
Meanwhile, in the Future…, Ange has arrived on Niijima (an island nearby to Rokkenjima, but with a proper town and everything) to interview some relatives of the victims. This includes Dr Nanjo Jr, and a son of oldbag Kumasawa. Both have received a curious letter... sent on the day before the fatal weekend, supposedly from themselves, and to their respective deceased relatives at a nonsensical adress (the street number is something like 12345678). So the mail company sent them back to the "expeditor" about a week after. (Ange also remember receiving something similar back when she was six, but lost it.)
Anyway, inside the letter was a key and a password for a coffer in a high-class bank. Inside the coffer : millions in cash. The relatives smelt a rat and left that blood money well alone (or so they say). But who could have prepared all this ? On the day just before the massacre ?
But enough of all that. This is a show about 18 people on an island, and we've barely seen them in the last 10 hours. Let's check back on them, shall we ?
Grampa has summoned everybody but the four grandchildren (who are sent back to the guesthouse) in the main dining room. He's very displeased with his children, whom he considers complete failures as heirs. One of the grandchildren may qualify as his successor, so he will test them ; but the adults are definitely out of the running. But they'll still be useful for something : Grampa needs 13 sacrifices to revive Beatrice, and besides himself there are 13 people in the room...
Next part : Everybody but one person dies. It also gets very weird.
