Hundred – Episode 11 [Garden’s Crisis]

The concert is a resounding success! Sakura and Karen have been singing their songs, and the audience is loving it. Even Hayato has to admit that Karen’s done a great job.

However this all begins to fall apart once Wendy’s unconscious body is found and she is gently woken up. Wendy doesn’t remember anything that’s happened recently, or why she was down in the depths of Little Garden, but she remembers a fragment from her battle with Ally: she has seen a Savage with no core.

Once Charlotte joins Claire in the command centre, the problem quickly becomes clear: they are under attack by Vitaly from half-mechanical Savage bee creatures. Char calls them Replicants; they are created from both the mechanical auto-cleaning robots scuttling about the ship and the stolen variable stones the Hunters had been collecting. The Slayers had better destroy them quick, because they appear to be targeting the ship’s power relays!

In the giant stadium, Sakura’s assistant Souffle gets a ping from Claire (as do Hayato and Emilia, because they’re all Slayers). Sakura notifies the concert-goers about some trouble going on outside, but as the ship starts to shake she and Karen try to reassure everyone that the situation is under control.

Somewhere inside Little Garden, one of the bee-Replicants has managed to access what looks like either Little Garden’s power supply or information centre of some kind. It presses a button and all of the lights on all the machines turn red. Is it uploading a virus of some kind?

Up on the ship’s landing strip, unmanned aircraft start divebombing the ship. (Seeing as how later ships hit a barrier, and these first ships don’t, maybe if they fly in low they are able to avoid the barrier?)  As destruction rains down, Char mentions that Vitaly was involved in the creation of Little Garden, and that she must be accessing a backdoor entrance which Char had not known about. Hayato and Emilia show up at the command centre, Claire briefs them on the situation, and asks them to join the security team which is guarding the Hunters down below.

Unarmed ships continue to crash into the Little Garden’s shields, and now we see that each ship carries various types of Replicants. The Replicants which were stowed on the unarmed airships which crashed into Little Garden’s protective shield are quite large, and they immediately start trying to break through the barrier with their claws. Hayato and Emilia volunteer to instead go take out the Replicants attacking the barrier, leaving the Hunters’ protection to Mei-Mai.

Speaking of Mei-Mai, she is nowhere to be seen has Vitaly takes out the lone guard outside the Hunters’ room and walks inside. She gives the two Hunters back their variable stones, but it appears that in their time away from her, they’ve had a change of heart. Krovanh tells Vitaly that he won’t help her hurt “normal people”, and that he doesn’t think the people on board the Little Garden are as bad as Vitaly claims they are. Vitaly naturally is not happy to hear this, and pulls out a device which emits a high-pitched sound that hurts the Hunters’ ears. If they won’t obey her orders, she’ll have to use that device to control them it seems.

Mei-Mai shows up right as Vitaly is leaving with the Hunters, and while she puts up a good fight, Vitaly is able to injure Mei-Mai. When the android protests the Hunters leaving, Krovanh shoots her with an energy blast and knocks her to the floor. Vitaly leaves with the Hunters as Mei-Mai watches helplessly.

Back on the Air Deck, Fritz and the other Slayers are hard at work destroying the Replicants crawling across the ship. Will they be able to save Little Garden before Vitaly destroys it and everyone on board?

My thoughts:

• Who is Linis, and why did he make Mei-Mai?
• It appears Vitaly and Judar know each other. Have they been plotting this from the very beginning?!
• Are we ever going to find out what happened to Wendy’s Slayer friend Ally?

Oh man, the stage sure is set for a final showdown next week!