Steak--it's what's for dinner, if Excel and Hyatt's latest sizzler of a job can last. They want beef, but intead end up having it, because that spunky schizoid Ropponmatsu II has moved in to brighten everyone's lives. And when the girls try to find some quiet outside, they run smack into Lolita Orphan Annie: little lost Hiyoko-chan, object of the scientific affection of the admittedly even-prettier Dr. Shiouji. The tragic duty of getting Excel Saga's story moving again must then fall to Ropponmatsu I. When the proxy of Kabapu lays hands on the flunky of Il Palazzo, Excel discovers that sometimes when they touch, the honesty is, frankly, far too much. Oshii what happens as ghosts in the rattlin' shell that is our characters' lives appear, and a little-girl persona challenges their very perception of reality. That's not too much of a loss, when you stop to think about it.