Darker than BLACK – 06

Summary:

As he breaks Havoc’s fingers one at a time, Hei orders her to tell him what happened with herself, Amber, and his little sister on the day South America disappeared. He angrily questions why only she and he are here now, and where his sister is. Havoc finally answers that she wasn’t their comrade, so she doesn’t know anything about Amber’s group, including if they’re still alive or not. She had indeed been in South America on that day to carry out the Organization’s orders, but she doesn’t remember anything after that happened. When she regained consciousness, she found herself in the remote countryside of Europe, and she had lost her powers for some reason. After that, she didn’t set foot outside town and instead lived a quiet live that didn’t have anything to do with the Organization or contracts. This explanation, however, doesn’t satisfy Hei and he grabs her neck. Havoc claims that she doesn’t have the information he wants and feels that he should understand that Contractors don’t give priority to the Organization or to ideology – they give priority to themselves. She reminds him of how cold-hearted he had been before he became a Contractor – to the point of being feared as the Black Shinigami – and notes how now that he’s become a Contractor, he gets unglued just because of his sister. For saying this, Hei smacks her across the face with such force that she falls to the ground. Despite that, Havoc still questions if Hei’s really a Contractor since he’s emotional, but not mentally unstable like a Moratorium, and she hasn’t seen him pay the price for his contract yet either.

Meanwhile, Misaki is thinking to herself about BK-201 and the organization that exists behind him when the detective Saitou reports that the MI6 group is under the watch of Matsumoto and Kouno. To their surprise though, November 11, April, and July suddenly show up with November 11 commenting on how this is the place that July detected earlier. It’s only after they appear that Misaki gets a phone call from Matsumoto and Kouno apologizing for losing sight of MI6. November 11 then convinces Misaki to let them help out because their opponent is a cursed Contractor who took away a feared Contractor and because he says that they don’t want any innocent victims. At that very moment, Havoc is dreaming of her past when she had been shelling beans with a happy family. She wakes up to the sound of Hei cooking, and he soon lays a plate of fried rice in front of her. As Havoc watches Hei eat his own dinner, she comments on how he’s eating a lot as usual and wonders if he always personally cooks. She then explains that until she lost her power, she didn’t think that meals could be enjoyable. She recalls that she had met the family of a woman named Laura and had helped them cook. Havoc had been so happy when the children had wanted to eat her cooking, and she came to want to see their happy faces. As the price of her contract though, she had sipped the lifeblood of the children.

Havoc then tries to pick up a spoon to eat the fried rice, but the pain from her broken fingers prevents her from doing so. After watching her attempts, Hei finally sits down in front of her and spoon feeds her. After tasting Hei’s delicious food, Havoc reveals that Laura’s mother had said that a man good at cooking is not trustworthy – he’s definitely a bad guy. Although she says it’s a joke, Hei stops feeding her and starts eating the rice himself. She laughs over how he’s angry and eventually notes that he’s really changed, but he’s not bad. Hei responds by saying that it feels weird because it’s the first time he’s seen her laugh. Havoc thinks that this might be an experience given not only to her, so there might be others like them out there. Promising to help him, Havoc asks Hei to take her to the Gate, so that her memories and abilities return, and she would be able to tell him where his little sister is. That being said, she also makes him promise to kill her if the old her returns. Shortly after that, both July and Yin locate Hei and Havoc moving East towards the Hell’s Gate. As the MI6 group and Misaki’s group head in that direction, November 11 remarks that he gets a strange feeling – a nostalgic one – and wonders if every Contractor’s heart is stirred when approaching the Gate. He also feels that if Havoc’s powers awaken, then Misaki’s group’s submachine guns won’t be very useful. In addition, November 11 wonders what Mr.201 wants to do because he had thought that Havoc would be killed since her memories would reveal the inconvenient mystery of the organization.

As Havoc and Hei walk along the abandoned road, she suddenly stops and pulls on his hand. Hei notices how hard she’s breathing and how much her arm is shaking, but Havoc still wants to continue onward. When they reach the chain-link fence separating them from the wall of the Gate, Havoc’s entire body starts shaking and her eyes begin to glow red. It is around this time that Misaki gets a call from the Astronomy Department informing her that Havoc might have regained her power. Misaki immediately requests a special force be dispatched, but she stipulates that they not fire without her orders. She and the others then notice that November 11, April, and July have all disappeared. Havoc meanwhile runs towards a building away from the fence and apologizes to Hei, but she doesn’t want him to get any closer to her and explains that a certain feeling has returned. She had thought that if she could change like him, then it would have been okay for her to accept her powers again. However, it seems that she doesn’t have the capacity for that. Havoc feels that if she had met Hei earlier, she wouldn’t have feared the contract and might have lived. Instead, she now begs for Hei to kill her. Hei’s feelings conflict about it for a moment, but then a powerful wind blows through, and he realizes that a Contractor is coming. He decides that they should escape from here and asserts that Havoc’s not a Contractor anymore, so she doesn’t need to die.

Unfortunately, the pair are unable to run away from April’s swirling cloud and proceed to get rained on. Havoc isn’t able to keep up with Hei’s pace and panics because she’s scared. She doesn’t want her powers to return and doesn’t want to kill anyone anymore, so she once again begs Hei to kill her. Hei manages to calm her by placing his hands around her face, and he suggests that if they leave this place, her power won’t return and she won’t have to kill anyone. He smiles weakly at her and she smiles back, but something soon pierces through her. It’s an icicle, and Havoc quickly gets speared by two more of them. Hei gets Havoc out of the open, but it’s too late. In her final breaths, Havoc touches Hei’s face and smiles at him. Above them, a star streaks across the sky. With Havoc dead, Hei puts on his mask and finds November 11. The MI6 agent immediately tries to freeze Hei’s feet, but Hei stops it with a blast of electricity. Hei then pits his acrobatic movements against November 11’s icicles, but it’s November 11’s second attempt at freezing Hei’s legs that gets him. When Hei then attempts to use his power on his opponent, November 11 reveals that he’s wearing rubber boots. As he lights up a cigarette, November 11 says that Hei’s mission should have automatically terminated with Havoc’s death. He wants Hei to give up and claims that they only want to know what organization Hei belongs to. Hei responds to this by throwing one of his cabled daggers into November 11’s arm and attempting to kill him with electricity, but November 11 manages to free his arm in time to save himself. Before November 11 can retaliate with his own power, Huang fires a special grenade between the two Contractors, and by the time the flames die out, Hei is gone.

By morning, the police have arrived onto the scene and find Havoc’s body in the alley where Hei left her. After inspecting the corpse, Misaki asks November 11 why Havoc didn’t use her power since Astronomy Department had confirmed that she had actually gotten her power back. Misaki surprises November 11 by saying that she hadn’t realized that November 11 had been that afraid of Havoc, but she then claims that it’s a joke. On a rooftop elsewhere in the city, Huang questions why Hei acted on his own. Huang’s not going to report it to the Organization because they wouldn’t get away with it if they’re found out. Hei answers this by asking why they didn’t just kill him back there. This gets Huang angry enough to grab Hei by the collar and declare Contractors should just keep quiet and kill people. As he stares out into the distance, Hei gets a surprise when Yin suddenly grabs his hand, but he quickly shakes himself free. Yin’s expression never changes through any of this. At that time, over at the British Intelligence Agency’s Secret Intelligence Department, a balding man calls up someone to tell them that he’s read the report and wants them to stay put to continue the investigation on the organization and 201-BK.

Preview

In reflecting on this episode, I found myself really liking how emotions played out between Hei and Havoc. At first, it felt kind of weird watching him torturing her like that (breaking her fingers, smacking her to the ground), and then feeding and caring about her. However, it really highlighted how emotional he was at the beginning with the prospect of finding out about what happened to his sister. Later on, Hei probably knew that Havoc got her powers back, yet he kept asserting that she hadn’t yet in order to give her that ray of hope to keep her going so that she would stop asking him to kill her. It’s things like this that make me respect Hei more and more with each episode.
Hei’s conversation at the beginning of the episode with Havoc raised more questions than it answered though. I wonder if his sister had been part of the Organization and/or was a Contractor, and I question how Amber fits into all this. I almost get the feeling that Amber wasn’t one of the good guys (though I hesitate to say that she was evil since there are always so many shades of gray in between). Unfortunately, I doubt we’re going to get any of these questions answered any time soon since the preview for next week looks radically different (in the comedic way) from what we’ve been seeing so far. At least we know that November 11 and the others will be sticking around for now, though I’d like them to show more creative uses for their powers in the future.
As a side note, I’ve had Tsukiakari stuck in my head since the PV for it was aired…