Mara reveals her true intentions with her contract with Sayoko, to use the queen as a tool to defeat Belldandy by making her return home.
Summary
Megumi arrives at Nekomi Tech on a bicycle and is baffled at the sight of the university, now transformed into a castle. A nearby student speculates the engineering students are responsible since last year they managed to put a bus on the roof. Megumi decides that she neither knows nor saw anything and rides away, aware that if there's no school, there are no classes today! Indeed, after so many years of student pranks, the town of Nekomi has been rendered "shock-proof".
Inside the castle, Keiichi snaps out of his hypnosis thanks to Belldandy's ribbon, but he realizes that Belldandy herself has fallen under Sayoko's influence and wants to put it back on her. Mara, still holding onto Sayoko, knocks Keiichi away with some magic and reveals her identity to the others. Keiichi wants to intervene, but he's wearing a dog collar around his neck that's tied to a stake in the floor with a rope. Mara tells Sayoko that if she wants to be queen for more than a day, she must use her power over Belldandy and order her to "go home".
Urd and Skuld enter the room with the amplifying machine and plan to destroy it. Skuld tells Urd that she doesn't have any bombs, but Urd reminds her that this machine is amplifying their powers. They blast the machine with magic attacks, but they don't even scratch it because of a mind-force defense system protecting it. Undeterred, they keep attacking it and Skuld tries using increasingly vulgar insults in her magic spells.
Sayoko refuses to make Belldandy go home, surprising Mara. She explains to her that she wants to defeat and utterly crush Belldandy to the point of making her cry from her failure, but if Belldandy were to instead just go away, she wouldn't be able to gloat about it! Undeterred, Mara declares that now that Sayoko has breached their contract, she has the power to enforce it! She grabs the back of Sayoko's neck and uses her power to force Sayoko to tell Belldandy to go home against her will. While Sayoko tries fighting against Mara, Keiichi manages to bite off the rope connecting his collar to the stake and frees himself. He blindly dashes toward Sayoko and Mara to try and muffle Sayoko's mouth, but he accidentally muffles Mara's mouth instead, letting Sayoko finish her command to Belldandy.
Belldandy accepts Sayoko's order and takes out a small mirror to disappear into. Keiichi rushes forward and prepares to take off his ribbon again. Mara assumes Keiichi wants to put his ribbon back on Belldandy and taunts him, saying that she'll just give it back to him and they'll repeat this process over again. However, Keiichi isn't putting the ribbon on Belldandy, but Sayoko, as he thinks that putting it on her head will disrupt the mind force.
Mara didn't expect Keiichi to do such a thing, and the moment he puts the ribbon on Sayoko's head, they hear a huge rumble from below, the sound of Urd and Skuld suddenly destroying the magic amplifier. The two sisters are surprised at how badly they trashed the machine and walk away pretending nothing happened.
Sayoko passes out in Keiichi's arms, but to his surprise, Belldandy is still following her command and is about to fully pass through the mirror. He tries to grab her at the last moment, but he's too late, and Belldandy disappears. While he sits heartbroken, Mara is delighted that she finally defeated Belldandy and disappears, just as the castle begins crumbling.
With the castle gone, everyone affected by Sayoko's mind field comes back to their senses and makes up excuses to explain the strange circumstances they find themselves in. A depressed Keiichi meanwhile returns to the temple, convinced that she'll never see Belldandy again when she abruptly greets him at the front door! While he's confused, Urd and Skuld meet him and explain that Belldandy came home ages ago. Keiichi realizes that Belldandy followed Sayoko's command precisely, to go home and back where she belonged. Keiichi hugs Belldandy, knowing that her home is now here, with him.
At the same time, Sayoko argues with Professor Kajigaya and claims that she turned in her dissertation to him (the one she gave to him while she was queen), but Kajigaya doesn't know what she's talking about and suggests she see a doctor about the stress she seems to be under.
Trivia
- After this chapter, Sayoko will not reappear in the manga until chapter 235, in Volume 37—an absence of 149 chapters, twenty-one volumes, and about eleven years of publishing (1997-2008).