This is not the end. This is also why you don’t dump literally all of your physical and combat-related stats in an RPG.
In this episode, Harold tracks down the Nightmare Apparent, a cop insider who we saw briefly. They find where he took Echika (who of course got overpowered trivially) and the other fellow related to Harold, and bust in before anybody gets sawed to death. Harold follows the guy in a car chase, while Echika takes an offer from the chief to ride to where he believes the Nightmare would flee.
At the end of the car chase, Harold seems to catch his nemesis, running him off the road and being rough with him while demanding answers. However, as backup arrives to Harold’s position so does the information that Echika took off a different way. Harold, realizing that Echika sucks, races off assuming she’s in danger.
Of course, Echika is in danger. The police chief, who turns out to be the real Nightmare, knocks her out from surprise and hauls her to the basement, right where he killed Harold’s former partner. He doesn’t bother to tie her up or even take away her gun, and this somehow doesn’t bite him in the rear: she doesn’t remove that “isolation device” keeping her from being GPS located, fumbles her gun out of her hands when she tries to draw it, and is trivially pummeled into submission.
Just as our killer, who is given little other reason besides artistic insanity (something I expect to potentially change next week), prepares to start carving Echika like a Thanksgiving turkey, Harold arrives. Naturally, the killer is more amused than anything that he’ll get to once again dismember a partner in front of Harold’s eyes, but Harold picks up Echika’s lost gun and shoots him
Remember what a big deal, fighting his own system warnings, it was for Harold to just handle a gun in order to shoot out a door rather than a living thing? Apparently he’s totally over that, as he’s able to address the real Nightmare of Petersburg, his tormentor, who betrayed him and his partner twice now, with cold and murderous efficiency. As he gets the Nightmare running scared, he even picks up the saw, and seems prepared to give the villain a fair bit of turnabout.
This is when Echika manages to acquire a dropped gun and point it at Harold, hoping to stop him. This is where the episode ends. I know this is supposed to be an impressive threat but with her track record I don’t think she’d hit the broad side of a barn even if she did pull the trigger.
Naturally, this leaves us perfectly set up to have the fifth episode of this arc being the by now customary long, draggy summation that’s supposed to be tense because there’s a confrontation going on. Knowing that Your Forma is an ongoing series, the laws of storytelling include Harold not crossing any Ruibicon with Echika and thus being preserved against the technical violations he’s already committed. Echika already was a secret keeper regarding the fact that the “laws of respect” are smoke and mirrors so all that changes is that Harold now knows as much. I hope we get a good motivation for our arc enemy, but I think at this point they’re angling towards him just being crazy.