‘Despite the image we now have of ourselves,’ a visiting White House Press Aide announces to a hastily convened huddle of print journalists who stand close together, their flack jackets fastened up tight, ‘the fight for oil has made us an industrial nation once again, and that is something of which we, as a people, can forever be proud.’
He stands against a background of blazing refineries. Thick black smoke drifts across the polluted shoreline on the edge of a radioactive sea. Helicopters and jets roar in overhead.

Burning jungles of gasoline lie buried beneath the desert. Memories of a thousand Vietnams have been turned into sand. A young Air Force officer at a press briefing is asked if napalm has been used in any of the recent air strikes against the enemy.
‘No,’ he replies, smiling. ‘We’ve moved on a lot since then.’

The opposing Iraqi forces have dug themselves down deep into an eternal night of biochemical fumes, hunger, firestorms and dust. Loud rock music is blasted day and night at them from booming sound systems installed along the American lines of defence.

A young soldier, fresh off the plane and new to the KTO, surveys the burning desert: the flaring oil wells and the grim silhouettes of combat troops in NBC suits wading through the smoke and flames towards a line of distant dunes. A lone robot gun platform lumbers into action through the murky chaos. The young soldier listens to the music blasting from the huge bass bins and shakes his head in wonder.
‘And they said there’d never be another Woodstock,’ he murmurs softly to himself.

The one calm girl in a city full of screaming people glances down at the chaos beneath her. Muri can see the whole of Tokyo laid out in her shadow, already run out of time. She and Eiga are creating ruins about them as they fight. The entire district has been transformed into an arena of leaning buildings. A shattered expanse of mirror glass, concrete and stripped steel lies beyond them; a city of empty towers cutting through the dark haze that rises from its burning streets.

Eiga’s furious hatred is still working Mechadon’s controls. Smoke engulfs him as he punches in the sides of buildings in his rage to get at Muri. He comes wading through the debris towards her, roof tiles tumbling around him, his mean eyes glaring through the gloom.

Muri sidesteps his flailing arms, grabs a handful of smouldering power lines and throws them around Mechadon’s neck. The cables twist over the charred surface of his armoured casing like creatures of living metal. Muri pulls on them hard, and Mechadon topples forwards, his segmented fingers tearing at his throat. High voltage discharges slither through the dusty air.

Over the shorting out of Mechadon’s overloaded circuits, Muri can hear the sound of Eiga’s screams coming from deep within the giant robot. The enormous figure sways for a moment and then crashes to the ground, where it lies writhing helplessly, facedown in the rubble at her feet. Aiming at the base of Mechadon’s steel skull, Muri unleashes a powerful beam of light from her eyes. Magnetic fluid spurts from the wound in the back of Mechadon’s head.

Muri picks up the twisted girders of a devastated iron bridge that lie at her feet and raises them high above her head. She stands outlined against the boiling sky while teams of news reporters hurry to take photographs of her. It is almost an automatic response. This is the last great image in the world: monsters fighting amidst scenes of darkness and destruction. The metal feels good in her hands.

Mechadon is down on all fours, getting ready to hurl himself at her once more. Muri brings the remains of the iron bridge down on his upturned face. The force of the blow sends Eiga recoiling inside his armoured shell, shrieking in the sudden darkness, his sensors breaking up. Firing a salvo of missiles blindly into the air above him, Eiga feels himself falling again. Great waves of pain and anger pump through him as he crashes helplessly onto his side.

When he regains his sight, Eiga finds that he is staring down at the ground. He tries to raise himself. The citizens of Tokyo have emerged from wherever they had taken shelter and are now fleeing in all directions. They look so tiny. So far away. He watches them as they begin to disperse. Spreading out like parasites leaving the host body. Running through the ruins of their city.