Everybody gets punched day.
This episode, Naomi and Rouge are on a cruise back to Earth, along with some familiar faces, and also a killer clown. Namely Giallon, up to his usual lethal tricks. He takes on face after face, killing his way through guests and staff alike while looking the part of this, that, and the other person. He even manages to stab the cop we’ve been following, though in that case not lethally.
During this process, Rouge gets roped in when Naomi’s face is used for a killing or two, putting her under suspicion. Eoon enough, though, they’re able to corner Giallon with one fact: his mass doesn’t change no matter what he looks like, so even impersonating some poor kid’s dog, he can be picked up as part of a short list. Rouge disambiguates which list member he is by punching all of them, ending with a kick to the evil robot dude disguised as a dog. After the normals scatter, the two of them fight, with a hull breach putting their battle on the outside of the ship. Rouge pulls a fakeout where Giallon ends up slicing off his own legs, but he gets knocked away from the ship and descends into the atmosphere. Seeing as the cores from the Immortal Nine are something of a plot trinket, he’s presumably fine being a shooting star.
In the wake of this, the cop (injured though he is) manages to see Rouge transforming back from her mech to human appearance, resulting in loads of enforcers being ready to greet her as the ship makes Earth. Naomi stands among them, declaring that Rouge is under arrest.
Presumably, Naomi realized that not cooperating would just see her having no leverage to help Rouge later, but this is probably going to be taken as a serious betrayal for some time even if that is the case.
I’ve probably made clear before that I tend to like it when Giallon is on screen, and this episoide gets a far amount of him enjoying himself as he creates a little murder mystery for the audience to enjoy. Other than that, we get some hints about a pair of twins, some hints about the internal structure of Alethea, and of course a fairly large turn for the show with the cat being out of the bag regarding Rouge’s identity.
I guess this was also technically our swimsuit episode, since Naomi and Rouge visited the onboard pool and didn’t really get (or take) a chance to change clothes before everything hit the fan. But if the fanservice was meant, it was quite muted.
Rather than padding this entry, I’ll just say I think this was a stronger episode with a fair plot of its own, and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next.