Episode 13 - SYSTEM (One Who Obtains the Power of God Without Being Divine)
With Shokuhou now helpless, Gensei Kihara takes Exterior's limiter release code from her mind. He cheerfully remarks that, however his 'experiment' turns out, she won't be alive long enough to see it.
Kuroko searches all through the building where they've deduced Kouzaku must be hiding, but there's no sign of her. At the Judgement office, Uiharu and Saten continue monitoring the fixed security cameras outside, but to no avail. They notice that several of the aerial camera drones used for the Daihasei Festival are in the area; Saten suggests hacking into them to expand their field of view. As Uiharu does so, she suddenly realizes that they showed up right when Kuroko entered the building. It turns out Kouzaku is controlling them; watching from her hiding place, she directs her metal puppet in its pursuit of Kuroko.
After concluding that Kouzaku isn't in the building, Kuroko stops to re-examine the situation. The cameras saw Kouzaku outside the building, and there are no others she could have gone into without being seen. Then she suddenly remembers there was a manhole outside...
At that moment, the metal puppet catches up with her. Guiding it remotely, Kouzaku has it corner Kuroko so she's forced to teleport, having realized there's a momentary lag when she rematerializes. The instant Kuroko reappears, the puppet fires a metal spike directly at her new position. Watching through a camera drone, Kouzaku sees Kuroko get hit, then fall out of view and down into the atrium. She points the camera down to see Kuroko lying motionless on the floor. She seems stunned for a moment, but reminds herself that she and everyone else in Academy City will be dead soon anyway. Then she notices what's happening to Mikoto outside, and joyfully exclaims that the time has come.
Having changed form again, Mikoto is looking increasingly inhuman and other-worldly. She offhandedly slams Gunha into a building, knocking him senseless. Then she points what was once her hand in the direction of the Windowless Building, and a huge black circle forms under her.
Watching this, Gensei says it's time, and inputs the code to activate Exterior...
...and outside, the black circle expands into a swirling spherical vortex. Kouzaku, watching gleefully, says Mikoto can destroy all of Academy City, and that person along with it. Looking towards the Windowless Building, she screams that he can apologize to 'her' in the next life.
Then she hears slow footsteps behind her, and Kuroko steps into view. Shocked that she's alive, Kouzaku checks her video feed... and sees Kuroko still lying motionless on the atrium floor. She realizes in disbelief that someone must have hacked into her camera drone and reprogrammed it to show a false image. Kuroko says she has a co-worker who's good at that kind of thing.
With Kouzaku cornered, Kuroko charges straight at her. The other girl throws a knife, calculating that when Kuroko teleports to dodge it, she won't be able to move far in the narrow sewer — allowing Kouzaku to hit her with another knife before she can reorient herself. But instead of teleporting, Kuroko simply blocks the thrown knife with her hand, allowing it to impale her palm. Stunned, Kouzaku has no time to react before Kuroko closes in, punches her in the face, then finishes her off with several kicks to the head. As she falls unconscious, Kouzaku tearfully whispers Dolly's name.
Gensei drops his remote control and stops cold; down in its giant tank, the Exterior brain is disintegrating. Still mentally linked to it, he collapses to the floor, mumbling that Shokuhou managed to outwit him after all. Returning to her senses, Shokuhou realizes he must have entered Exterior's destruct code instead of the limiter release code. Meaning... she set this up herself by tampering with her own mind, switching her knowledge of the two codes and then erasing her own memory of doing so, knowing that Gensei would defeat all her traps.
Outside, the eerie glowing figure that was once Mikoto Misaka stands motionless, a huge black sphere of power still gathering in front of her. Inside her mind, with Kouzaku's hatred no longer streaming into her, Mikoto's consciousness wakes up and sees what's happening. However, to her horror, she's lost control of her own body and can't stop it. The black sphere crackles with lightning and continues to grow.
Standing alone in front of it, Touma Kamijou clenches his right hand into a fist...
Tropes
- And Zoidberg: Kuroko wraps up her lengthy, commentary-riddled recap by adding offhandedly that there are two boys (Touma and Gunha) causing some kind of commotion outside.
- Celestial Body: Mikoto's continuing evolution towards Level 6 turns her head down to her collarbones pitch black with glowing lights that resemble a starry night sky.
- Clothing Damage: The rip in Shokuhou's PE shirt seems to change size from one shot to the next. Most of the time it merely goes up to her waist, but now and then it randomly expands into Sideboob territory (incidentally confirming her apparent lack of a bra).
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Kuroko's takedown of Kouzaku is quick but brutal. No elegant Waif-Fu here: she charges straight in, smashes Kouzaku's nose with the heel of her hand, follows up with a roundhouse kick to the face, then teleports behind her and delivers a two-footed drop kick to the back of her head, knocking her out. Kouzaku, used to relying on her knives, is caught completely flat-footed.
- Deliberate Injury Gambit: Kuroko realizes that Kouzaku is trying to trap her into dodging the thrown knife in order to create an opening for a follow-up attack. Rather than give Kouzaku control of the fight that way, Kuroko simply blocks the knife with her hand, allowing it to impale her through the palm, and continues her forward charge. Kouzaku, who has her other knife readied for throwing, is caught off guard and can't react before Kuroko is within melee range.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Two:
- Uiharu suddenly realizes how Kouzaku is monitoring Kuroko when she goes to hack into the cameras around the building: if she can hijack the security cameras, then Kouzaku can too...
- Kuroko finally deduces that Kouzaku is hiding in the sewers rather than one of the buildings.
- Flashback: Shokuhou's true plan, and the actions she took to put it in place, are revealed this way. This is purely for the audience's benefit, as Shokuhou erased her own memory of it.
- Failure Gambit: As shown in Flashback, Shokuhou realized she couldn't enter Exterior's destruct code herself, both because Gensei had locked out access, and because doing so could cause its user to suffer a fatal backlash. However, she realized that Gensei was almost certain to win their fight no matter what she did, so she decided to pin her strategy on that.
- Memory Gambit: It turns out Shokuhou's Defensive Feint Traps were all a ruse, although even she didn't realize it. She'd actually calculated beforehand that Gensei would beat her and then steal the limiter release code from her mind... so she used her tampering ability on herself, switching her knowledge of the limiter release code with Exterior's destruct code, and then erasing her memory of making the change. As a result, when Gensei enters what they both believe is the limiter release code, he ends up destroying Exterior, rendering himself helpless.
- My God, What Have I Done?: She's maintained a cheerfully ruthless facade up until now, but Kouzaku is visibly disturbed when she thinks she's killed Kuroko. She stares in shock, then gives a forced-sounding laugh and tries to stammer a rationalization before reminding herself that she and everyone else in Academy City will soon be dead too. The thought seems to cheer her up.
- Never Bring a Knife to a Fist Fight: This proves Kouzaku's undoing. Because she relies on knives, all she really knows how to do in a fight is throw, slash, and stab. Once those attacks are neutralized, she's completely outmatched by an expert in hand-to-hand fighting like Kuroko.
- One-Winged Angel: Mikoto's latest form is now only vaguely human: her features are no longer visible and she has elaborate, spiky appendages in place of her hands and feet.
- One-Word Title: With a subtitle / explanation in parentheses.
- Previously on…: Unusually, this episode starts with one — narrated by Kuroko, complete with in-character editorials.
- Sparkling Stream of Tears: Kouzaku leaves a brief trail of sparkling tears in the air as she falls, whispering Dolly's name.
