Episode 19 - Strange Coincidence
Rewinding to late September, Kuroko tells Mikoto about her encounter with Shaei Miyama, and says she'll probably be busy for the next little while. Similarly, Uiharu tells Saten that she has to do extra patrolling thanks to the precognition app, and apologizes for being unable to join her for dinner.
Saten goes to the supermarket and buys groceries for dinner, including the store's last two cans of mackerel. In doing so, she just beats out another girl — Frenda Seivelun — who has been searching for canned mackerel only to find it sold out everywhere. Melodramatically insisting she can't live without mackerel, Frenda demands, pleads, and nags Saten all the way down the street until she finally agrees to give up one of the cans. Unfortunately, Frenda is a bit too enthusiastic in trying to open the can and inadvertently blows it up. Saten tries to leave, but Frenda is so persistent that Saten ends up reluctantly inviting her over for dinner. After a surprisingly enjoyable meal, the two girls exchange IM chat IDs, then Frenda takes her leave with a cheerful "ha det bra" note . Quickly becoming friends, the pair start chatting regularly over IM.
One day in early October, Saten visits the Indian Poker trader and buys a card which is supposedly from an expert with chopsticks. She sends a message to Frenda, boasting that it will let her pick up any object, no matter how tiny.
Elsewhere, a boy with a strange headset and creepy eyes gets a call from an elegant-looking girl in a dress. She tells him she's received word that information about the "Tweezers", an experimental nanoparticle manipulator they're searching for, has shown up in an Indian Poker card. The boy, Banka Yobou, uses his headset to interface with several computers and run a data search for potential matches related to Indian Poker. Coming up with several matches, he orders them all investigated as possible leads; among them is Saten's message to Frenda.
While out shopping, Frenda notices a couple of men walk past and recognizes them as 'professional' operatives. They pay her no attention, but she decides to see what they're up to. A few minutes later Saten is walking along the street when the same thugs come up and grab her, bundle her into a van, and drive off. Frenda, watching from a short distance away, mutters that she still owes Saten for dinner, and calls Hamazura on her phone.
In their van, the thugs search the unconscious Saten and find the Indian Poker card. Since she might have additional information, they're under orders to deliver her to their employer, who has ways of getting information out of people. Meanwhile, Frenda and Hamazura are following the van, courtesy of a tracking device which Frenda planted on one of the thugs. As soon as they catch up, she uses some explosives to block the van's path. Then she dismisses Hamazura and heads in.
Around the same time, Yobou breaks into a research facility and hacks his way into a high-security room. Plugging into its computers, he finds a sealed vault containing an Indian Poker card. Using his psychometry ability, he is able to duplicate the sealed card's contents onto a blank card, leaving no trace of his intrusion. As he does so, he gets an urgent call from Saten's abductors, who say they're under attack by seeming professionals. Figuring this means they're onto something, Yobou decides to send in a certain person to investigate. In the meantime, Frenda finishes dispatching the abductors; she finds Saten inside the van and wakes her up.
In the Garden of Learning, at a school called Shidarezakura Academy, a timid girl named Rakko Yumiya is approached by some classmates. Much to her surprise, they invite her to go shopping; blushing, she is just starting to stammer acceptance when her phone rings. After talking briefly to the caller, she regretfully tells the other girls that something important has come up.
A very short while later, the girl is at the scene of Frenda's attack on the van, having changed into street clothes. Quickly deducing what happened, Yumiya — an elite sniper for the dark-side organization SCHOOL — finds Saten and Frenda's trail, and says she hopes she'll enjoy this hunt.
Frenda and Saten have made their way back to a nearby shopping district. Saten complains that she's lost her cell phone, as well as the card she just bought. Frenda tells her she's lucky that's all she lost, then suggests they go and celebrate with another mackerel dinner.
A short distance behind them, Yumiya tracks them through the crowds by the lingering smell of blood on Frenda's clothes. She notes that while she has to capture Saten alive, she'll happily kill the other one as payback for making her turn down her classmates' invitation. Grinning sadistically, she draws back one hand as if pulling an invisible bowstring, and sights carefully...
...and Frenda, chattering cheerfully about dinner, is caught off guard when a bullet suddenly tears through her shoulder in eerie silence.
Tropes
- Bilingual Bonus: It isn't stated, but the foreign words that Frenda tosses out are identifiable as Norwegian.
- Continuity Nod:
- Uiharu and Kuroko both mention being involved in the precognition incident; this episode takes place during the same several-day period as episode 17.
- It turns out Frenda acquired her liking for mackerel curry from Saten.
- Frenda appears to be shopping for a clock or a watch. This is a subtle nod to New Testament volume 12, in which she is revealed to have left Shinka Kanou a watch as a present.
- SCHOOL is searching for information on the Tweezers, which they will end up going after in the Index "Battle Royale" arc a few days from now.
- Contrived Coincidence: As the title implies, this all happened because of a series of coincidences. Saten sent a text about her new Indian Poker card that could be interpreted to be discussing the Tweezers. The text was intercepted, and a capture team was sent after her just in case. By sheer coincidence, she had recently befriended Frenda, a skilled Dark Side operative, who just so happened to be close enough to rescue her. That in turn convinced SCHOOL that there was something important going on after all, and they increased their response.
- Cute and Psycho: If Frenda is this, Yumiya dials it up to eleven, emphasis on the 'psycho'. Whereas Frenda (all told) reverts to being a slightly eccentric (if explosives-obsessed) Genki Girl when she's not on a mission, it's very quickly clear that Yumiya has some serious screws loose.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Yumiya is not happy that she had to turn down an invitation from her classmates for the sake of tracking down Frenda and Saten. As revenge for them crushing her dream of becoming the idol of her school, she vows to make them suffer.
- Even Evil Has Standards: One of the Mooks who abducts Saten is clearly uncomfortable with the prospect of delivering her to be tortured. His colleague assures him that their employer doesn't need such crude tactics to interrogate someone.
- Fluorescent Footprints: Yumiya mentally visualizes her prey's tracks this way.
- Four Lines, All Waiting: This episode and the next one show what Saten is doing during the late-September-to-early-October time period. The previous several episodes followed Kuroko/Uiharu and Mikoto, respectively.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: While Frenda does rescue Saten from her kidnappers, the fact that she is obviously a professional causes SCHOOL to conclude that Saten really is involved in something serious, thereby putting her in even more danger.
- Odd Friendship: Saten and Frenda develop one over the course of a few days. New Testament volume 12 will later reveal that Frenda actually has quite a number of friends both in and out of Academy City's dark side.
- Psychopathic Woman Child: Yumiya is somewhere between types B and C. If you look past her professional skills, it's clear that her worldview, emotional maturity and thought processes are those of a socially stunted young child. She desperately wants to be popular, but is cripplingly shy and has no real understanding of friendship. She also bitterly blames other people for even minor setbacks, and uses her job as an assassin to take out her resentment on them.
- Psychotic Smirk: Yumiya's is possibly even creepier than Accelerator's, which is saying something.
- Scarily Competent Tracker: Yumiya manages to track down and identify Frenda and Saten across several blocks and through a large crowd. She does this without even knowing what they look like, relying on a combination of footprints and scent.
- Sherlock Scan:
- Frenda instantly recognizes SCHOOL's Mooks as a professional dirty-work team when she passes them on the street, simply from their body language.
- At the scene of the van crash, Yumiya quickly deduces that she's looking for one attacker plus the original target, both female, and that their heights are 150 cm and 153 cm respectively.
- Shrinking Violet: Yumiya is very much this when she's at school, to the point that she blushes and stammers when someone so much as talks to her. As an assassin, however, she's extremely calm and confident.
- The Nose Knows: Yumiya can track her prey like a bloodhound. She picks Frenda out of a crowd from dozens of metres away (at least) by detecting the scent given off by the tiny traces of blood on her clothes.
