Touma battles Oriana for one last time to save Academy City from falling under Roman Catholic control. Ahh that hurt!!! But I have to say, your foot smells really nice. Summary: In the open area near the air field, Touma tries to take down Oriana but ends being battered left and right. Stiyl recovers from the kick he received earlier and joins the fray by summoning Innocentius. Touma and Stiyl get in each other's way, but this is enough to throw Oriana off her rhythm and allow both Touma and Stiyl to punch her. However, Oriana is not knocked out and recovers by downing Stiyl (and thus his Innocentius) with some flying spikes, and thus it's back to Touma vs. Oriana one on one again. Falling and failing at the same time. Touma and Oriana spend the next five minutes talking about whose motivation is right and wrong before finally getting back to the battle. Oriana uses up all her spell tags to form an energy ball to toss at Touma. Touma nullifies the energy ball with his right hand, but within the ball their is another mass which blows up in Touma's face. Touma is stunned by the explosion, but manages to stay on his feet after thinking about his need to be a hero and catches Oriana in the face with a counter right cross just as she is running in to punch him. See how Oriana positions her cheek at just the right spot for Touma to punch? Oriana is knocked out for good, but Lidvia then starts gloating at Touma and Stiyl using the communication spell tag that was left in Oriana's cleavage. Lidvia states that Oriana was only there to lead pursuers astray and that St. Peter's Cross effects a wide area so it doesn't have to be inside Academy City to exert influence over it. As the seconds count down to activation time, Touma and company have no way of stopping Lidvia who is outside of the city. All seems lost, but Touma suddenly realizes something. As activation time approaches, Academy City is lit up by fireworks, and Touma knows that the fireworks is strong enough to interfere with activating the cross, and thus Lidvia's plan was doomed to fail from the start. Congratulations to Touma for knocking out a girl for the third time and attaining true lady "killer" status. Later back in his usual hospital bed, Touma is visited by Index who bites Touma for running off to fight without telling her. Touma and Index are then joined by Kuroko and Mikoto, and Mikoto informs Touma that her school has won the overall title of the festival and thus Touma has to man up and do whatever she wants. Mikoto doesn't like the fact that Index is hogging Touma all for herself. Let's see if you can save yourself. Somewhere in the skies, Lidvia is flying away in a private jet with St. Peter's Cross in tow, but she is soon informed by Laura Stewart's voice that the jet has been tampered with. Laura advises Lidvia to surrender, and Lidvia is dumped out of the jet after refusing and then she is hit in mid air by the cross and then the pilot of jet. Meanwhile in the windowless skyscraper, Aleister Crowley is plotting something. The next day at the hospital, Aisa wakes up to find the sleeping Index hunched over on her bed. Index informs Aisa of what happened and Aisa thinks she's a burden to everyone, but Index states that's not the case as Touma is happy to hang out with her. The two then overhear some commotion from Touma's room after Seiri stumbled into Touma changing, and all is fine once again. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Yet another disappointing ending to an Index story arc. The action wasn't bad, but the fight was marred by another one of Touma's nonsense hero speeches. And of course there was the bail-out ending with the fireworks saving the day. I'll admit that using Oriana as a decoy was kind of smart, but the fact that activation was ruined just because Lidvia and Oriana forgot to check that there was going to be fireworks is... just not very satisfying. The story arc dragged out so long to reach this point, and it turns out that Touma could have just ignored the whole thing and everything would have been fine. I guess you could argue this was all to show that Aleister and Laura had everything taken care of (with Aleister probably timing the fireworks just so that it ruins Lidvia's plan and Laura cutting off Lidvia's escape), but it's a rather roundabout way of reaching this point. I did enjoy Laura's spell tossing Lidvia out the plan and then dropping stuff onto her while she was still falling. Just goes to drive in the point that Miss Nice Archbishop is actually not very nice at all. Overall, the sports festival arc was another letdown. It was two episodes too long, and the resolution was unsatisfying. I guess every time Touma is in action he has to get hurt and beat someone up, but never had Touma punching someone out felt so empty. We also didn't see Mikoto's punishment for Touma was after winning the bet. Hopefully the next arc will be better, and that's not exactly asking much. From the feed of A Product of Wasted Time
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