“I control my target’s fate. In the end…they were born to be killed by me!”
Summary
Misaka decides to target the penultimate research lab, but quickly comes face-to-face with Frenda, a mercenary who’s been hired to stop her. Despite her superior esper skills, the pre-prepared bombs and fuse lines set up in the facility by Frenda makes life really hard for Misaka, who has to continuously dodge and evade lots of traps. Meanwhile, Shinobu’s been called to supervise the data transfer at the final lab – but she’s got no intention of helping them at all.
Impression
And here I thought Misaka’s fight with Accelerator was action-packed xD Frenda’s methods are pretty damn nasty, along with her personality – while she might seem cute and fangirlish on the outside, her demeanour gets really cruel when she goes in for the kill. There’s no emotional attachment whatsoever once she knows she’s got the upper hand, and its her arrogance really shows through. She’s clearly in it for the money – Frenda doesn’t care about her client’s back story or history, and will do whatever it takes to get her as much of the pay as possible. I suppose it makes her an effective mercenary, though that’s a huge contrast from being a good person. And those dolls are far too creepy. Is she even an esper? She’s got her makeshift fuse lines and exploding dolls, but other than her physical strength I didn’t see any sort of esper powers. I’m pretty sure she only put Misaka in such a bind with her petty tricks – if none of those dolls or fuse lines were drawn beforehand, nor had the fake gas been there, she wouldn’t have stood a chance. Misaka was at such a disadvantage, yet she still came through with her versatility – as expected of the 3rd ranked Level 5 😀 It irked both Misaka and myself when Frenda started talking about people being “born to be killed by her”…it instantly reminded me of the Sisters and their eventual fate at the hands of Accelerator. She had no idea how badly she struck a nerve…
So this group…ITEM, was it? It seems that they’re a group of mercenary espers (I think) who evidently take on all sorts of shady jobs for the high pay it involves. I’m more worried that the scientists were perfectly willing to hire people to kill a Level 5. While they didn’t want a ruckus, if they killed Misaka a massive shitstorm would have kicked up no matter how they did it. The redhead lady seems like the leader of the group, and is definitely an esper, especially with those massive green lasers that managed to melt steel. I’d say…a strong Level 4?
Then we have Shinobu, who’s snooping around the final research lab – this time, she’s clearly not here to help them with the transfer, and seems to be looking for the Sisters instead. It’s about time she starts taking a more active role in preventing the experiments, as the money card thing didn’t really do much – if she’s given that much of a privilege within these labs, she should definitely use them to her advantage 😀