While the girls fight Silver Gospel, Ichika has a dream where he meets a young girl and a warrior woman who asks him if he wants strength, which he agrees as he wants to protect his comrades. As the battle continues to rage, Houki manages to cut one of Gospel's wings and sees it fall into the ocean, only for it to re-emerge in its Second Shift form with "angel wings" and proceeds to to take down Houki and the rest. Houki is soon awakened by Ichika, who is now in Byakushiki's Second Shift form, Byakushiki Setsura, and gives Houki a hair ribbon as a gift as he still remembers July 7th as her birthday. With their combined strengths, Ichika and the girls finally defeat Gospel, with Ichika giving it the finishing blow. As they return back to their hotel, Chifuyu scolds them for defying orders but allows them some R&R as a reward for stopping Gospel. At a seaside cliff, Chifuyu has a talk with Tabane and believes she was the one who made Ichika the only male to pilot an IS and was behind the incident that discovered it, but Tabane reveals what happened with Ichika was a coincidence but admits she was the one responsible for hacking Gospel to go berserk in order to debut Houki's IS to the world before Tabane vanishes. At the beach, Houki apologizes to Ichika for his injuries and admits her feelings for him. As they are about to kiss, Ling, Charlotte, Cecilia and Laura arrive, angry in what they are seeing, which forces Ichika to run away with Houki in his arms from the other girls.