Recaps

Nicole and the Cunning Hares recovered the strongbox and became entangled in her father Huojin’s intervention at Dead End Hollow. The crisis ended with Nekomata welcomed into the group, while Huojin received a challenge from Hoshimi Miyabi.

• Nicole, Anby, and Billy fell into the Cretan Hollow with the safe, while Huojin awakened from his five-year recovery and sought news of his daughter.
• Wise and Belle helped Nicole’s group navigate the Hollow, where a hacker seized control of their HDD and demanded the safe’s password.
• The group recovered the safe’s data chip and escaped the Hollow, while Wise activated Fairy by accepting the chip’s user terms.
• Huojin returned to TOPS, exposed a conspirator’s secrets, and killed him before turning his attention to Nicole’s activities.
• Nekomata warned Wise and Belle that Perlman was lying about Vision Corporation’s demolition project, and Huojin’s Iron Guards moved in to stop the explosives and rescue the residents.
• Huojin revealed himself to Nicole as her adoptive father Hawking Hongke, while Red One, Blue Two, and Yellow Three defeated the Dead End Butcher and reduced the Hollow.
• Nekomata agreed to consider joining the Cunning Hares, and Huojin watched Nicole with her friends before learning that Hoshimi Miyabi had challenged him.
• Nicole welcomed Nekomata to the Cunning Hares’ base, then described her father to Billy as gentle at home but fierce-looking outside.

Huojin enlisted Wise and Belle to help him reconnect with Nicole, while his experiments and TOPS machinery projects set several dangerous events in motion. The arc ended with Belle rescued from a Hollow and Wise preparing to continue Shepherd’s commission to clear out-of-control mechs.

• Nicole showed the others an old newspaper photograph of herself with her father, while Billy secretly reported his failed inquiry to Huojin and accepted payment to keep their deal quiet.
• Huojin hired Wise and Belle to discreetly investigate Nicole’s feelings, then followed Belle’s coaching to call Nicole and hear that she was not distancing herself from him.
• Huojin revived Trigger with cybernetic limbs, restored her memories of the Silver Squad’s destruction, and recruited her as his bodyguard after showing her that her captain Anby was alive.
• Red One, Blue Two, and Yellow Three arrived at Belobog Heavy Industries as TOPS representatives, but a signal from a nearby Hollow activated their systems and sent construction machinery out of control.
• Grace and the Belobog crew stopped the runaway machines, with Red One helping to disable the tunneling machine before Grace removed a dangerous program and identified the signal’s source inside a Hollow.
• Butler reported that the signal likely pointed to the Order of the Condemned’s target, while Huojin arranged a covert retrieval and Trigger began preparing for her bodyguard duties.
• While Belle drove to a videotape supplier, a spatial rift pulled her and her car into a Hollow, and Wise authorized Fairy and Iron Guards to search for her.
• Iron Guard 813 found Belle and another girl hiding from Guardian, and the rescue teams destroyed the mech and recovered its Ether-affected intelligent core before Belle contacted Wise to confirm she was safe.