Episode 15 - Promise
While Mitori Kouzaku is developing her ability at the Clone Dolly institute, the scientists ask her to play with Dolly — a chronically unwell girl who has lived there her whole life. Reluctant at first, Mitori soon becomes close friends with Dolly, who quickly takes to calling Mitori "Mi-chan". Despite her poor health, she's a cheerful girl with endless questions about the world. Dolly doesn't really know what her treatment is for, except that it's supposed to help her younger sister. She says the scientists have told her that if everything goes well, she'll have lots of sisters someday.
After finishing her work early one day, Mitori goes to visit Dolly and inadvertently walks in while she's undergoing a physical exam. To her shock, she sees that her friend's body has strange medical devices implanted in it. Mitori is immediately taken out of the room and told the devices are part of Dolly's treatment. Feeling that something isn't right, Mitori uses her liquid metal puppet to break into Clone Dolly's computer systems.
The next day, Mitori confronts the institute's director and demands they stop experimenting on Dolly. The computer files revealed that not only is Dolly a clone, but that her 'treatment' actually involves dosing her with toxic chemicals to measure her artificial body's endurance. The director contemptuously tells her that clones and espers have exactly the same rights in Academy City: the right to be guinea pigs and nothing else. Mitori threatens to report him to the authorities, but he just scoffs and points out the window to where the Windowless Building is visible in the distance. He says the experiment is fully authorized by the board of directors — and if she wants to stop it, she'll have to stop Academy City itself. Before Mitori can respond, several guards come up from behind and seize her. They throw her into a bare metal room containing nothing but several crates of liquid ration packs, and lock her inside.
Months go by as Mitori sits alone in her prison. Then, one day, the guards disappear and the security systems all shut down. Venturing outside, Mitori finds the institute abandoned, and Dolly's playroom dark and empty. Going up to a window, she sees the Windowless Building in the distance, and swears revenge.
But nothing she does is able to touch it. Eventually arrested for terrorism after a failed attempt to bomb the building, she is brought before an elderly scientist: Gensei Kihara. Looking into her eyes, he expresses admiration for the smoldering hatred within them — and then asks her if she'd like the chance to obliterate Academy City. When he explains his plan, Mitori asks him what's so special about her. He replies that someone with such pure and unwavering hatred as hers wouldn't be deterred by the possibility of death.
Lying in the sewer, despairing over her failure, Kouzaku is shocked when Misaki Shokuhou steps out of the darkness and regards her. After a moment, Shokuhou says she's just looked inside Gensei's memories, and now knows that Kouzaku was "Mi-chan". Then she tells Kouzaku she learned something else from Gensei's memories: it seems Dolly had a 'sister' who was created at the same time — and part of the experiment was to test the creation of a mental network of genetically identical clones. All of Dolly's knowledge and memories were transferred into her sister... who is still alive, in stasis, at a secret facility. Shokuhou releases Kouzaku from her handcuffs, and asks for her help in rescuing Dolly's sister.
Following the end of the Daihasei Festival, the girls celebrate Kuroko's release from hospital. They chat about recent events, while Mikoto takes mental note of how their memories seem to have been edited of everything related to her, Shokuhou, and Exterior. She decides to just accept it, happy to be reunited with her friends.
At the same time, Shokuhou and Kouzaku make their way to a certain facility, where Mental Out easily gains them entrance. Shokuhou has been telling Kouzaku about her time with Dolly; Kouzaku thanks her for ensuring that Dolly wasn't alone at the end of her life. Shokuhou looks troubled, but the conversation stops as they come into the room where a familiar-looking girl is floating asleep in a transparent chamber...
Dolly * wakes up to see Mitori sitting beside her, eyes full of tears. At first she can't believe her eyes, saying she thought "Mi-chan" had abandoned her. Mitori embraces Dolly, and calls her an idiot for thinking that was true. Watching them, Shokuhou smiles sadly and then turns to leave — but Dolly calls out to her, recognizing her as "Misaki-chan". Shokuhou tries to play coy, but Dolly says she's spent a very long time dreaming about the three of them together. At this, Misaki breaks down, sobbing that she's sorry she didn't realize the truth about "Mi-chan", or what was being done to Dolly, before it was too late. She adds she'll do anything to make up for her failure. Dolly hugs her, and asks if they can visit the seaside... and an amusement park... and the zoo... and ride on a plane, and travel around the world... Mitori points out that she's asking for rather a lot, but Dolly just smiles and says that anywhere is fine, as long as the three of them are together.
In the hospital, Mikoto visits Misaka 10032, who is almost fully recovered from her ordeal. The Sister complains that the Daihasei Festival ended while she was sleeping; Mikoto promises to take her out somewhere fun, and asks where she'd like to go. Misaka 10032 pauses thoughtfully and says "the seaside". Mikoto, puzzled, points out that the season is over, but the Sister says she feels a strange desire to keep a promise with a dear friend...
Tropes
- Break the Cutie: Mitori Kouzaku: she discovers her only friend is dying from being deliberately poisoned by the people responsible for her care. When she tries to intervene, she's told that she and every other child in Academy City is just a lab animal without any rights, and is then locked up in solitary confinement in a bare metal room for months (at least). By the time she emerges, her hold on sanity is questionable at best.
- Call-Back: When Shokuhou gives Kouzaku her old bottle of liquid metal, she watches as the latter uses her ability to create a miniature dolphin swimming around. Shokuhou then turns away and sadly says "So that's what she wanted to see", clearly remembering Dolly (who thought she was Kouzaku) asking her to use her ability when they played together.
- Call-Forward: Dolly's backstory unsurprisingly contains several.
- Her mania for visiting the seaside evidently came from Mitori entertaining her with tiny liquid metal dolphins.
- Dolly rather eccentrically enjoys sniffing Mitori's hair, saying she likes the way she smells. This is what later allows her to see through Misaki's disguise, as the two girls evidently don't smell quite the same.
- Continuity Nod: One of the stolen files Mitori passes over while looking for information on Dolly is the "Parameter List". As ultimately revealed in A Certain Magical Index, this is the governing board's most closely-held secret — for good reason. The fact that Mitori was actually able to get hold of it (even though she didn't seem to recognize its significance) suggests that either Academy City's data security is a lot more lax than thought, or else that Clone Dolly themselves acquired it under the table somehow.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Mitori and Dolly are finally reunited after the former has suffered trauma, months of imprisonment tantamount to torture, Sanity Slippage, the Despair Event Horizon, and being manipulated into trying to destroy Academy City... and the latter has been dead for years.
- Empty Eyes: Mitori is shown to have these after emerging from her cell, when we see her reflection in the window as she vows revenge. Since at this point she is also filthy with long, unkempt hair, the effect is quite disturbing... though a more or less accurate reflection of her mental state.
- Not So Stoic: The normally highly-controlled Shokuhou breaks down in tears when Dolly remembers her.
- Revenge Before Reason: Kouzaku wanted revenge on Academy City, in particular the board of directors and Aleister, both for what happened to her and Dolly, and more generally for the way it treats the children who live there. This is why she agreed to help Gensei try to force Mikoto to Level 6 and let the resulting singularity destroy Academy City. She considered her own death and that of everyone else in the city to be acceptable collateral damage.
- Start of Darkness: The first half of this episode is devoted to showing Mitori Kouzaku's.
- Stepford Smiler: The young Kouzaku starts out as one of these, in a low-key way: she finds the scientists condescending and tedious, but knows she'll only get ahead if she sucks up and acts enthusiastic. Her smiles gradually become real whenever she's with Dolly, however... at least until everything goes to hell. Present-day Kouzaku, of course, is all over this trope.
- The Chess Master: Gensei Kihara was evidently planning his experiment with the Misaka Network and Exterior well over a year ago. That raises some disturbing questions about just how far ahead he foresaw events.
- The Power of Hate: Gensei's reason for recruiting Kouzaku. As he tells her, even someone pursuing a goal for passion or ideology is likely to give up in the face of certain death. Someone who pursues their goal out of sheer, all-consuming hatred, however, will never abandon it, even at the cost of their own life.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: 'Sweet' might be a slight overstatement — she was fairly jaded and self-centred from the start — but it's clear that Mitori Kouzaku was a genuinely decent person. And then the dark side of Academy City did a particularly awful number on her.
- What Beautiful Eyes!: In a dark version, Gensei compliments Kouzaku on the 'beautiful' hatred in her eyes.
