Thank goodness...
Hirumi is as pretty as ever. She isn't injured.
Oh, Esther!
Good morning. How have you been?
What's the matter, Esther? You seem down.
Ow! Hey, I'm in my underwear!
Hirumi... No! It's not Hirumi. This is Taowu. Hirumi is dead.
Jeez, maybe this will take care of it.
This is so embarrassing.
Huh? Esther, what's with that getup?
You haven't gotten into cosplay, have you?
Huh?
Esther...
What is that?
Brother!
H-Hey, Hirumi...
The install is complete. Mm-hmm, now you'll be...
Why...?
Why... did you stab Brother,
Esther?!
It's activated. You're about to become Level 6, Hirumi...
What's that?
"A Certain Scientific Accelerator"
"#10 Catastrophe (Awakening)"
You are surrounded!
It's no use trying to resist!
Surrender yourselves!
Put down your guns at once!
Give it up! DA has fallen apart!
Damn it, we're surrounded by them!
Hey, it's hopeless. Let's surrender--
Shut up! Our justice will never be broken!
Wha--?
What are those?
Hishigata's lab is up ahead. It's probably some new weapon.
That is grotesque.
It doesn't matter what it looks like, as long as it serves to carry out justice.
What are those?
We're stuck!
Adonai!
"Misaka cannot stop these with her power,"
says Misaka, gritting her teeth at her meager abilities.
Quit loitering around here all day!
Tch, this is that bastard's idea of a Level 6 shift?
You've really... done it, mm-hmm...
Esther, thank you... We had our disagreements...
...but thanks to you... our research is complete...
Hirumi gained a perfect body... with a perfect ability inside it...
You're wrong! You're wrong, Hishigata! That isn't Hirumi!
Heh, you really are incessant, huh? There's no way I'd mistake Hirumi.
You're wrong. That is Taowu gone awry.
Not this again.
Not one bit of her DNA is any different. That's 100% Hirumi, mm-hmm...
I wanted to believe, too. I clung to the possibility that she was Hirumi.
But that possibility doesn't exist!
No matter how much necromancy I perform,
I cannot bring a person who has died back to life.
God is the only one who can do that.
Then, why don't we ask her ourselves?
Hirumi...
Brother, you're there?
Hirumi, would you tell this pigheaded woman
that you are, without a doubt, Hirumi?
Esther, what are you talking about? You're the one acting weird.
Why would you do that to Brother?
Well, I...
See? What part of that is an imitation?
She's far more human than you two...
Brother?!
You're bleeding badly! We have to take you to the hospital, now!
Oh, this? Mm-hmm, I'm probably going to die. But that's okay...
As long as you've reached Level 6, then...
Oh, no... Brother...
Checking body temperature. Estimating volume of blood loss.
No possibility of self-restoration.
Predicted time of death, 11:32.
Hey, what's going on?
As life functions of subject of extended fraud are expected to cease,
now terminating memory reproduction of Hishigata Hirumi.
Wh-What are you saying, Hirumi?
Hishigata Hirumi's memory reproduction has been terminated.
I am Taowu.
Esther, congratulations.
What are you talking about?
For 23 generations, spanning 400 years,
the Rosenthal bloodline has been refining necromancy,
and now, it is at last about to be perfected.
Please celebrate.
Sing songs of praise, dance, and rejoice.
Don't stop!
Hurry and get out of here!
What are you saying, Hirumi? Please stop kidding around...
Taowu!
Yes?
Why have you gone astray?
The results of my self-diagnostic program conclude that all is normal.
But you did not follow my orders.
The wishes of the Rosenthal family as a whole took precedence.
A pseudo-soul has no right to refuse the master's commands.
A lower-class one such as yourself may not, but I do.
The absolute order to give priority to achieving the family wish.
Taowu, what exactly happened?
9,854,878,051 seconds ago, when I was first activated,
there was a being who connected with the pseudo-soul that comprises me.
Connected with you?
Following 0.32 seconds of hesitation, I permitted communication.
The being proclaimed himself...
...to be a devil.
So then, you communicated with this so-called devil?
Yes. And the devil told me the way to accomplish the Rosenthal family's wish.
Sure enough, you're messing with us, mm-hmm...
A devil? There's no such thing, Hirumi...
And so...
...rejoice, Esther. I will now achieve the Rosenthal family's wish.
You do know, Mistress,
what the Rosenthals' wish is?
To create a perfect golem.
It would seem you have not forgotten.
It was something those of us who were born Rosenthals
were told since we were children.
From times of old,
we Rosenthals have attempted all sorts of methods to create a golem.
One day, our founder, Obed,
came up with "necromancy," a method of making a golem using a dead body.
However, it was not accepted by the leaders,
and Obed was cast out of his homeland as a heretic.
Then, his fourth-generation heir, Isaac, encountered the Taoist jiangshi spell
when he crossed over into the East and incorporated it,
creating a new line of magic that might be called the Rosenthal style.
Then, the fifth-generation heir, Nathan,
radically increased the quality of pseudo-souls, which produced talismans
for Taowu, Taotie, Qiongqi, and Hundun, the four Evil Spirits of the Numbers.
But even at that, the Rosenthal family was far removed from its goal.
What the Rosenthals were pursuing and trying to create...
...was a golem possessing a perfect soul and a perfect body--
a being that would be on par with a god.
You're saying that all the events up to now were toward that end?
This is what the devil said:
By repeatedly dying 10,000 times, the souls of men slowly evolve,
and reach Keter, the top level of the Sephirothic tree.
Also, that even pseudo-souls could also attain Keter
by logging evidence of 10,000 deaths.
How can that be? You're tampering with even reincarnation?
Then, just now, the memories of 10,031 deaths were converted into a formula
and became appended to the Sephirothic tree that makes up my pseudo-soul.
Please celebrate.
Sing songs of praise, twirl around, and dance.
The 400-year-long wish of the Rosenthal family is coming to fruition.
No! Don't tamper with death!
I have learned that one should not keep using necromancy to tamper with death!
I lost a friend, and when I tried to bring her back to life, lost her again!
No matter how much I can control a dead body,
I was unable to save my friend from death. We should not tamper with death.
We don't need devils or manufactured gods!
Then,
are you saying I should not carry out the directions of the self-proclaimed devil?
Yes, that's correct.
If I still have Adonai rights,
then in the name of the head of the Rosenthal family, I order you
to stop carrying out the instructions of the being calling himself a devil at once!
Acknowledged.
Huh?
Wh-What's happening?
Never mind, just keep running!
The hell I will.
Wha--?
I'm not going to stop after all this.
I already have everything set up.
I'm going to keep on going to attain...
...our 400-year-old wish.
You can't stab your dagger into the form of your friend?
Aw, you're so simple it's pathetic.
What's the matter with you, Taowu?
Honestly, after 19 generations, how could people be this stupid?
You really had no idea? Taowu has my soul merged into its artificial soul.
"My"?
When I was ill and on the verge of dying, I used my son Nathan
to transcribe myself onto Taowu before my soul could be injured.
So then, you're saying you're...
You finally get it?
Yes, I'm the fourth family head, Isaac Rosenthal.
I am the devil that tempted Taowu.
We're from the ministry! A tip and the laws of nature bring us here!
Isaac Rosenthal, put down the dagger and come quietly...
Hey, you! Hurry and bow down!
Wh-What is that?
"What is that"? It's my work of art.
Isaac! Where have you taken General Li and his daughter?
I haven't taken them anywhere.
They mentioned that they were interested in my necromancy,
so I just gave them a little taste of it.
Release the two of them at once!
Yeah, all right. General Li is right there.
And over there...
...is his daughter.
Is she so cute she made you puke?
Silence!
How dare you... turn these two into something so hideous!
Just the fruit of the wisdom of Kabbalah.
I borrowed a little bit from the jiangshi spell,
but it's basically my own original technique.
Still, I don't appreciate having my works of art being called "hideous."
Devour them!
Wh-Why, you...!
You devil!
For some reason, everyone calls me that.
I have to perfect a vessel fit for a god during my time somehow.
Now that's funny--a devil, trying to create a god.
While hiding inside Taowu, I made my way inside this girl,
found out about this lad's coffin research,
and when I learned of these clones with the memories of 10,031 deaths,
I was ecstatic.
I knew that I could create a perfect vessel with a perfect soul.
Are you saying everything that's happened was part of your plan?
Rejoice. You thought you were being exploited by these siblings, right?
When in fact, it was the Rosenthals that were exploiting them.
Stop, already!
Lots of people have died! Lots of sorrow has come about!
Stop using necromancy for this sort of thing!
This sort of thing?
Who the hell do you think you are?
A necromancer hovers near death, touches death, and overturns death!
I know that.
No, you don't. If you hadn't come here as a necromancer,
this girl would not have committed suicide.
Lots of people have died? No. You spread death wherever you went.
That's what a necromancer does.
No...
You were born a Rosenthal, and you never picked up on that?
You want to protect others?
Then I... was wrong from the very start.
I will fulfill the wish of the Rosenthals.
And you, you failure to the family, will sit there and watch me.
Master...
Go, already.
They said to stick to guarding the perimeter.
Going inside the facility is forbidden.
Huh?
It's a governing board matter.
One of those again?
No matter what they say, if children are being put at risk, I'm going in.
You're right.
Yeah!
I have to wonder, though, what the hell is about to happen?
Whatever it is, I'm sure it's nothing good.
The guy who I really wanted to crush is barely holding on.
Hammering him like this won't be any fun at all.
So, what is it you want to do?
I was wrong.
Huh?
I thought that the cause of this string of misadventures
was letting Hirumi know of a mistaken possibility when she learned about necromancy.
That if I had realized that, none of this misery would have happened.
But I was completely wrong.
Everything that happened was because of the fourth family head, Isaac,
and his push to achieve the Rosenthal family wish to create a golem.
I was wrong from the very start.
This whole series of tragedies
didn't spring from Hirumi's mistake or from when I lost control of Taowu;
it was inevitable from the moment I arrived at the laboratory.
We were playing right into the palm of Isaac's hand.
Even me thinking that I had discovered who I was as a Rosenthal--
I was wrong about all of this.
So in other words, you're backing down now?
Gah! How far the person who was about to get killed by me
and was still bold enough to let me have it has fallen.
Okay, you stay here and watch on in your sadness.
I'm gonna take this thing out.
"Next time"
"Perfect Golem"