Mikoto gets Touma to go on a fake date with her in order to dissuade the grandson of the school president from asking her out.Touma pleads his innocence, but the savage Index refuses to listen.Summary:Touma wakes up in the middle of the night with a nosebleed. Touma tries to find the tissue without waking Index and ends up stepping on the tissue box. Index is woken up by the commotion and thinks that Touma is trying to peek at her, so she asks if Touma he feels anything when looking at her sleeping body. When Touma answers no, Index gets angry about Touma's lack of feeling for her and starts biting him on the head. After falling on to the ground with Index on top of him, Touma spots some summer homework and remembers that it's the last day of summer vacation and he still hasn't finished his homework.Red face no. 1: Lying on top of Touma.It's morning and Mikoto is enjoying some tea in her dorm building. As Mikoto is about to go out, maid-in-training Maika (Motoharu's step sister) asks if Mikoto can go buy some BL manga for her, and Mikoto reluctantly agrees. Now in front of her dorm, Mikoto is waiting to cross the street but she is approached by a boy named Mitski Inaba. Inaba has tried to invite Mikoto on a date for the hold week and starting to get on Mikoto's nerves, but Mikoto can't just blow him off because he is the grandson of the school president. As Mikoto looks for a solution, she spots Touma walking up the street with Pierce and Motoharu, and this gives Mikoto the idea of pretending to be Touma's girlfriend. With the plan in mind, Mikoto approaches Touma with a friendly face but gets ignored, so she had to result to tackling Touma to get his attention. Touma has no idea what's going but Mikoto pretends that she is taking Touma out for lunch. Pierce, Motoharu and the residents of the girl dorm (including Kuroko) are shocked by Mikoto's brazen display, and Mikoto runs away from attention while dragging Touma with her.Red face no. 2: Mustard nose.Having gotten far away from her dorm, Mikoto treats Touma to hot dogs and explains the situation. Touma states that there's no need to pretend anymore now that they've gotten away from Inaba, but Mikoto wants to hang out with Touma for the day in order to dissuade Inaba from pursuing her any further. As Touma is complaining about how unlucky he is, Mikoto asks if Touma has any idea of what they should do and Touma tells Mikoto to wipe the mustard off of her nose first. Mikoto gets embarrassed and turns around to wipe her nose clean, but she ends up wiping the mustard into her nose. Touma sets down his hot dog beside Mikoto's to check on her, but afterwards neither of them remember which hot dog is whose. Touma casually grabs one as his but Mikoto insists on inspecting the hot dogs. After failing to distinguish between the two, the embarrassed Mikoto hands Touma one of the hot dogs. Touma eats his hot dog without a second thought, but Mikoto is still held up by the possibility of an indirect kiss.Mikoto to Touma: Don't feel so down. It's only natural to feel stupid when I'm around.After getting his hot dog back, Touma asks Mikoto what they should do to act like a couple. The two starts talking about the Misaka Imoutos and Mikoto reveals that there were only a dozen or so Misaka Imoutos remained in Academy City after the experiment and they all went to research institutes to undergo therapy. Mikoto then realize that this is not how couples talk to each other, but Touma doesn't care and gets out his summer homework instead. Initially pisses off about being ignored, Mikoto eventually peeks at Touma's homework and actually starts solving the problems that Touma doesn't know how to solve. After (indirectly) belittling Touma's intelligence, Mikoto goes off to buy some juice in order to improve Touma's mood. After Mikoto leaves, Touma spots Inaba chasing down a dog for a boy. After returning the dog to the boy, Inaba spots Touma and the two start talking with each other. While expressing her feelings for Mikoto, Inaba also helps Touma with his summer homework at the same time. Mikoto eventually returns with juice and after seeing Touma and Inaba together, Mikoto pulls Touma behind a street corner to have a little talk with him.Red face no. 3: Having a little chat.Mikoto tells Touma not to get friendly with Inaba or all of her efforts will be wasted, but Touma refuses, citing that Inaba seems like a decent guy and that his feelings for Mikoto are real. Mikoto reluctantly decides to drop the act, but she offers to treat Touma to more food for doing her the favor. Unfortunately for Touma and Mikoto, all the restaurants seem to be full and Mikoto goes to line up at a fast food place while Touma waits on the other side of the street. While waiting for Mikoto, Touma is approached by Inaba once again. Touma tells Inaba that Mikoto is buying fast food, but when he looks at the fast food place he spots someone who looks just like Inaba running into the restaurant. Inside the restaurant, Mikoto is surprised to see Inaba who is all bandaged up, and Inaba tells Mikoto that she's in danger.In hindsight, perhaps stabbing Touma with the knife would have been a better idea than just punching him in the back.On the other side of the street, Touma relays what he saw to the Inaba standing in front of him, and Inaba tells Touma to go check the restaurant out. As Touma heads to the restaurant, Inaba suddenly punches Touma in the back. Now that his masquerading has been exposed, the fake Inaba takes out magical stone knife and starts shooting rays at Touma, who runs for his life. While running from the fake Inaba, Touma calls home to Index for magical advice. Index explains the magical knife works by reflecting the rays of Saturn to kill anything, but Touma should be able to negate it with his right hand. Index then explains that Touma's pursuer is probably a Replica, an Aztec magician that can take the appearance of others after getting a skin sample of the person he/she want to masquerade as. Back in front of the fast food restaurant, the real Inaba tells Mikoto about what happened as he is being loaded into an ambulance, and Mikoto immediately runs of to find Touma.Another young, innocent mind has been corrupted by the evils of television.My face! My beautiful face!After hanging up on Index, Touma runs into a construction site that turns out to be a dead end. The Replica moves in after Touma and prepares to attack with his magical knife, but Touma takes a nearby shovel and throws cement powder into the air. Touma tries to take down the Replica while the dust in the air but the Replica fends him off. After the dust clears, the Replica tries to attack with the knife but discovers that it's covered in cement powder. Touma takes the opportunity to punch the Replica in the face with his right hand, and the punch destroys the Replica's disguise and causes the Replica to drop his knife. Touma questions why the Replica is going after Mikoto, and the magician explains that he has been ordered to disrupt the relationship between Touma and his allies. Touma's relationship with Index, the Necessarious magicians, and Mikoto has some perceiving Touma as a threat to the balance of power, so the Replica has been ordered to sneak in and break up Touma's group from within. Now that his identity has been exposed, the Replica plans to use Touma as his next disguise.The deceiver realizes he has been deceived when his fake magical knife broke.The Replica quickly retrieves his knife, wipes it off, and tries to hit Touma with the reflected light but he accidentally hits some of the steel beams in the building. Touma destroys the magical knife by punching it with his right hand and the two start a brawl while steel beams fall from above. During the fight the Replica reveals that he really does like Mikoto and would rather not fight Touma, but he has no choice now that the fight has started. The two continue to fight and the Replica pins Touma momentarily, but Touma sees multiple beams falling from above and knocks the Replica to the ground. Miraculously (or due to Mikoto's intervention), none of the beams managed to hit Touma, but the Replica is pinned by several of the steel beams. Realizing that he had lost, the Replica warns Touma that there will be more attacks against him and Mikoto. The Replica ask if Touma will promise to protect Mikoto from now on, and Touma gives an affirmative answer. Meanwhile, a red-faced and embarrassed Mikoto is hiding behind a steel beam. Even though Mikoto knows that Touma sometimes says things without thinking it through, her heart is still fluttering after hearing Touma answer.Red face no. 4: After overhearing Touma's heroic promise.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~A pretty nice episode overall and definitely an improvement over the flop conclusion last week. The episode was quite funny, and there was a good dose of action as well. The concept of Mikoto and Touma going out on a pretend-date is already hilarious in itself, and the actual date had all the confusion, angst, and embarrassment I was hoping for. Seeing Mikoto becoming red-faced over and over again was quite a treat. It looks like Mikoto is really falling for Touma now, which means there is some stiff competition for Index (and Aisa too). Let's hope that the fake date between Mikoto and Touma in this episode might lead a real date in future.We still don't know who sent the Replica after Touma and his friends, and it doesn't look like we'll find out any time soon as the next episode will feature Accelerator's heroic return as the protector of Last Order (the 20,001st Misaka clone). It'll be interesting to see what sort of hero Accelerator will make. He seemed to be a little towards the crazy and sadistic side the first time we met him, but he probably decided to turn his life around after being beaten by Touma. I'm looking forward to how this story arc turns out.Final note: in my last post I wrote that I didn't like the new OP, but after listening it a few more times it's starting to grow on me. Not sure if it will end up in my "like" list, but at least I don't dislike the song anymore.
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