Erma also received the news that Dea was also the target for the assasins, but she thankfully managed to survive, while capturing the culprit as well. On the other hand, Secretary Shato was nowhere to be found, albeit they don't suspect that something could have happened to him either, while they didn't find any particular pattern on the murders. Meanwhile, Erma and the rest of the EDF members were into an improvised war room trying to analyze the whole situation.
While this was going on, we see Secretary Shato, dressed in a dark jacket, trying to find any clues about the mastermind behind the whole rebellion against the EDF. Concurrently to this, we see two EDF soldiers (a Vulpine and a Canine) being surrounded by a not-so-friendly crowd, and after a barrage of insults, the crowd killed them with their own hands in a very grisly manner.
Meanwhile, the news networks of all Ekosiak were reporting the events, while distorting the news for their own benefit, including some bogus reports of the EDF soldiers shooting against citizens. Ironically enough, Lazlow Kosak was planning his next scoop, while lambasting the competition as a bunch of clowns in his own words. On the other hand, Lazlow's boss lampshades this and calls him an overrated babblermouth, but he considers himself as someone who works for the people.
Before Lazlow could began his show, he receives a visit from a person, a nameless Ursine with a jacket and a cape, who gave Lazlow a Data Pad with classified information from his, and also Lazlow, Anonymous Benefactor, but before he could spread that information in the Net, Lazlow took a look at the Data Pad, and after reading the info inside of it, he noticed that info that the Ursine man gave to him were not straight facts, but nothing more than paranoic non-sense that even Lazlow would not dare to say. Unfortunately for him, the Ursine man felt pity for Lazlow, before killing him offscreen with a silenced gun he had. The killer then pretended that someone else entered the room when he and Lazlow were talking previously before and pinned the blame on an EDF agent.
The EDF war room when Erma was in received the news of the death of Lazlow Kosak, and even after his demise, their coworkers still managed to throw some low blows against the EDF, painting them as a bunch of murderers. The worse part of all of this is they also twisted the already-known news of Erma when she killed a spy the previous issue before and also they gave a fake report blaming Dea, who was hidden in Hicho's base previously of the murder of Lazlow, of his death. Meanwhile, Eda warned her escorts that no one will want to hear their testimonies, since they wanted Erma, Eda and the entire EDF in Ekosiak burned in a stake. In that moment, the protesters approached the military base in an attempt to kill Eda and the EDF members in Hicho tried to convince the protesters from attacking the base from their aerodynes, while exercising restrain on them, but they were attacked with gunfire, so they don't have other choice than return fire.
In the next pages we see the situation not only in Hicho, but in the whole planet, and even in the space colonies surrounding Ekosiak has become incredibly chaotic, with the rebels taking over many cities, and with a big number of civilian and military casualties everywere. The situation has become so bad that Erma, normally a very emotionless and logical woman, finally cannot take it anymore and when she is asked what to do with the rebels, Erma cannot avoid to recommend throwing some concussion grenades on them, thinking they will cause less damage than simply killing them with machine guns, but she quickly came to her senses after she figured out what she said and Erma admits she doesn't have experience with such kind of situation, and the only thing she can think of is requesting the news media to stop inciting violence.
In the next scene we see Shato again still investigating, while tampering with some cables along th way. Then, we see him again talking with another person, a Feline enterpreur named Aito Kho. It's later revealed after a brief chat that Aito was the mastermind behind the whole rebellion against the EDF and the people he murdered were persons who strayed from his plans. It's also revealed that he was the owner of the Chishata mining colonies that were destroyed by the ILR, and those colonies were used by Aito as a money laundering operation so he could fund the whole rebellion against the EDF, but the massacre caused him to speed up his plans. Shato managed to figure out all of this thanks to info inside the fake nuke in Hicho and the after intercepting all his information from the Net as there were an automatic log on all his comunications (he didn't bothered to encript them for some reason) and now all his personal files are in the public net thanks to Shato, but Aito doesn't seem to mind, oddly enough. Then, Aito reveals his whole plan was both creating a situation when Ekosiak managed to get their independence from both the ConFed and the EDF, no matter how many people could die in the process, so he could rebuild the planet at his own taste and also to prevent either the EDF, the ConFed and Shato, the current Secretary of the EDF Home Guard to do something about it, now that Ekosiak would not be a member of either of them anymore. Shato quickly points out the main flaw of his plan: If Aito dies, the whole rebellion will die with him. Aito finally throws his quiet facade when Shato points down this flaw and he also reveled he already uploaded all of Aito's files on the public net. Aito warns him tha he already deleted those files when he showed up, but Shato already took that into consideration and he alreadt prevented that. Aito could not take it anymore, and he requested what did Shato wanted: Shato says as long Aito lives, Ekosiak will never had peace and Shato kills Aito offscreen.
After that, the news of both Aito's death and his role in the whole rebellion were spread in all the news networks of Ekosiak, while the EDF were still dealing with the violent protesters, some of them went into the extreme of killing their own men under the suspicion of working for the EDF. Meanwhile Erma and the other members of Ekosiaki Home Guard went to rescue Dea and her men from the rebels. Even with the news of Aito's death and his role being spread on the rebels, they dismissed them as ConFed fabrications created just to divide them, even when they received solid proofs. After a few hours of fierce combat and after Erma and company managed to rescue Dea, the EDF managed to keep the situation under control and they arrested many rebels. One of the Ekosiaki soldiers wanted to execute the rebels, but Erma prevents them from doing so, and the issue ends with Erma throwing a tirade against her men since she thought the main reason why the whole rebellion happened was because of the very liberal laws Ekosiak had and the attempt to the authorities of the planet of supressing those right in a violent manner. In few words, Erma thinks the Ekosiaki people are nothing more than a bunch of hypocrites.
Tropes:
- Arc Villain: Aito Kho reveals himself as the main culprit behind the violent events of the Ekosiak Story Arc and also behind the fake nuclear incident in Hicho.
- Asshole Victim: Aito Kho, who was killed by Shato in his office and being the main instigator of the whole rebellion, and in less degree, Lazlow Kosak, due of his role in the whole incident, and also by tarnishing Erma's reputation in Ekosiak.
- Break the Haughty: The whole issue shows that Erma, after many issues being shown as someone almost invincible or infallible, has her limits and she cannot think about anything else about the whole rebellion other than kill the rebels in a gory fashion. She quickly figured what kind of non-sense she said and Erma apologized after that.
- Everyone Has Standards: Even a dick like Lazlow would not dare to show bogus news to his audience, even if with the current situation in Ekosiak everyone would believe him anyways. Too bad for him that Aito's men doesn't accept a "no" for answer.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Aito and Lazlow's deaths happens offscreen and we only knew that they are dead because of the reaction of the people closer to them. On the other hand this is oddly averted with the EDF guards who were mauled to death by a furious crowd, since we see the aftermath later on.
- Killed Off for Real: Laslow Kosak and Aito Kho, offscreen.
- Manipulative Bastard: Aito manipulated his own people to rebel against the EDF and the ConFed by installing a spyware program inside the military net so he could get classified information from them and using both Lazlow and the rest of the news networks for spreading a distorted version of the events so the people of Ekosiak could rebel against them and trying to kill both Erma and Dea.
- No Ontological Inertia: Discussed and finally averted regarding the Ekosiak rebellion and Aito's role on it: Even after Shato killed him, the whole conflict still continues because no one believe that Aito died and the rebels thought it was EDF propaganda for stopping them.
- No True Scotsman: Erma invokes this trope during her Break the Haughty moment, when she said that no one on her homeworld would do such a thing, like the entire rebellion thing in Ekosiak.
- Villainous Breakdown: Aito finally breaks down when Shato threats him after he pointed out the flaws of his plans.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: This issue was Aito Kho's debut and his violent farewell.
- Xanatos Speed Chess: Aito was the owner of the Chishata mining colonies and the whole massacre forced him to speed out his plans, causing his fall.
