Things are pretty rough all over. Academy City is being invaded on multiple fronts, Accelerator has gone all psycho big-time, and the streets are running deep with blood. There wasn’t a lot of humor in this week’s episode, that’s for sure.

As things start out, Touma and Accelerator are continuing to look after each others charges. Kihara and his Hound Dogs are about to finish off Accelerator when, in a final burst of energy, he hijacks a car through unique methods and scoops up Index along the way. As they speed off – she reading him her own take on “The Ugly Duckling” – Vento shows up on a hit of her own, with Touma as the target. She tries to engage Kihara but he dismisses her out of hand.

The entire ep pretty much focuses on non-stop action from beginning to end. Touma and Last Order, fleeing the Hound Dogs, end up taking shelter in a family restaurant, where Vento catches up with them. Of course, she and the Hound Dogs are after different targets – so after Touma sends her off to get help she engages him rather then chase. After a good fight and a fair amount of verbal posturing from Vento, she starts coughing up blood and flees the scene.

While all this has been going Accelerator and Index have also separated – he sends her off the get a message to the frog-faced doctor while he proceeds to decimate the Hound Dogs with extreme prejudice. If all that weren’t enough we have a brief intercut with Railgun – who looks to have a bigger role next week – and the execrable Kuroko. And Tsuchimikado shows up to investigate why Academy City residents appear to be collapsing left and right, linking it back to God’s Right Seat.

What really fascinated me this week was the confusion that permeated everything, both strategically and morally. There were so many different competing interests out there that it was hard to keep one plot separated from another, and as for Accelerator… He’s a fascinating and dodgy character to say the least. He’s shown interacting quite domestically with Last Order and Index, but when he’s stressed and confronted he’s an absolute beast – a being of incredible power with no hesitation whatsoever in using it to kill – and in some of the ugliest ways you can imagine. It’s hard to root for someone like that, but he’s clearly intended as something of a hero in this arc – and knowing his background and what’s being done to him now, you can’t help but sympathize. I also found the mysterious kappa doctor interesting – his comment to Accelerator about the hells he’s seen was as revealing about his character as anything we’ve heard from him in two seasons.