Alright, we’ve made it one quarter of the way through this show’s two cours, and Shun and Emilio haven’t killed each other yet! Even better, they’ve stopped fighting! *party time*

Shun and Emilio are running through the forest to meet up with the Ignauts again. They encounter Alicia and Pascal, and Pascal boasts that it was his invention which caused the bright flare of light from the previous episode. It involved superheating a kind of metal to produce large amounts of light, but Shun rudely cuts off Pascal as he tries explaining the process.  -_-   Then the Ignauts catch up with them, and Emilio tries to explain that Alicia and Pascal are his friends. However it’s not enough to quell Demetrio’s suspicions, and when Emilio is unable to better explain his relationship with them, Demetrio lets the matter drop while still making it clear that he’s not impressed with the prince.

Later that night the Ignauts head into a small town to eat discuss their next actions, leaving Shun and the others alone for awhile. Pascal takes the opportunity to vlcsnap-00007have a heart-to-heart with Emilio, and reveals he knows that the prince tried to assassinate the king. The talk quickly turns to a scolding however when Pascal hears Emilio’s flimsy reasoning for wanting to kill the king; all of Emilio’s plans and past actions are based on hearsay. He can’t actually prove that anything he was told was true. Emilio gets disgusted with Pascal and stalks off. We also learn that King Delzaine is not Emilio’s birth father, but rather just the man who raised (well, semi-raised) him. Emilio’s birth father was the man who was king before Delzaine.

Meanwhile Shun and Alicia are having their own chitchat.  Alicia’s pissed that Emilio left her behind, and- oh, it looks like she’s got feelings for Emilio. Well that explains a lot. Shun annoys Alicia with his questioning and she leaves him sitting alone in the forest. She runs into Emilio, but he ignores her and walks away. Cue a flashback showing that Alicia and Emilio are childhood friends. As children they used to play together, and they got along well. But after what I’m assuming was the death of his father, Emilio became an angry, violent child, and I’m guessing they didn’t have much to do with each other afterwards.

In town, the Ignauts are deciding what to do next. They decide that they need to focus on recruiting more members, because the recent battle greatly reduced their numbers. Demetrio also decides to allow Shun and Emilio to continue to travel with them, because they were able to fight off the lion creature together. He also decides to allow Pascal and Alicia to stay with them, for the time being anyways.

Suddenly there’s a loud noise outside; Shun is trying to find the Ignauts, but the barkeep is having none of it. Demetrio allows Shun to sit in on their meeting, where Shun proceeds to spill the beans about Emilio, Pascal’s past, and his need to get to Babylon asap. Demetrio says that Shun can travel with them because they’re going to Babylon as well, and the Ignauts are going to Babylon because it seems that that’s where King Delzaine is headed too.

After dinner Shun heads back to their group and finds Emilio by the lake. He gently teases Emilio and reassures him that Pascal was hard on him only because he cares for him. As he’s leaving, Emilio sees Alicia watching him from behind a tree and tells her to go home. She insists that what’s going on with him is her business, and that she’s going to stay.

vlcsnap-00021Back at base camp, Pascal is showing off his handheld flamethrower, and that thing is just so damn cool. It’d make camping so much easier! Felix drags Shun and Emilio off with him to help patrol the area. Louise approaches Alicia and tells her that they girls should stick together because they’re outnumbered by guys, and coaxes some information out of Alicia about Emilio and Shun. Alicia doesn’t fall for it though, and remains a little suspicious of Louise’s motives.

Out in the forest, Felix tells Emilio and Shun that they will patrol in one direction, and he will patrol in the other. In a flashback sequence we see that Felix was (I’m presuming) orphaned and fending for himself on the streets. He was once beat up and left for dead. In the winter Demetrio found him, and they’ve been together since. I was a little surprised because I thought Felix and Demetrio looked close in age, but going by how old Demetrio looked in Felix’s flashback, maybe appearances are deceiving.

While the guys are gone, Demetrio finds Pascal measuring the water levels by the lake. He asks Pascal if he knows what the king’s up to, but Pascal says he only wishes he knew. After Demetrio leaves, Pascal confirms that the level of Warp Particles are continuing to drop, and he wonders if it’s because of Babel’s restoration.

The next morning, everyone packs up in preparation for leaving. Shun muses with great determination that nothing will stop him from getting back to the surface.

My thoughts: I am so, so relieved that Shun and Emilio have stopped fighting. It was tainting this series to the point where I was seriously considering dropping it. I thought it was gallant of Shun to not tease Emilio very hard, and to just let this fragile truce stand on its own.

I am a little disappointed that Alicia may have fallen into the old “childhood friend who has feelings for the main character” trope, but I’m hopeful that she will get more character development as the season progresses. I don’t ship her and Emilio or anything, but I’m always supportive of having fewer clichés in anime.