"For a man like me, who knows only how to fight, combat in Uoodo was something I could not avoid. And within the battle, I met her once more. Now all I can do is try to pursue here. She's tied deeply to my destiny. But what sort of destiny is it?"

Police helicopters comb the edges of the city, firing randomly in search of Chirico and his companions, who now complain that their continued association with him has gotten them into more trouble than they bargained for. Tired of their bickering, he wanders off into the city. Overhearing gossip about a outgoing shipment of jijirium, Chirico ambushes a cop to get more specific information. Coconna, who has been following him, is caught by a rogue member of the Boone Family, who carries her off to the bikers' fortress.

Elsewhere on the planet, Rochina is ordered by Battentain to take a personal role in the tracking of "Program One." Rochina is to take up residence in Uoodo and report directly for there as he obtains information about the secret society and the Prototype.

In Uoodo, Chirico has developed a plan with Vanilla and Gotho to hijack the jijirium shipment. As they make ready, Coconna returns. Frazzled and beaten, she wails that the only way she could escape the bikers with her life was to tell them about the jijirium shipment. Chrico is encourage by this; their involvement should only make things easier for him. And he is proven right - the bikers attack the airfield from which the shipment is to be taken, throwing the entire place into chaos. Using a rebuilt AT with Vanilla providing covering fire from the stolen helicopter, Chirico swiftly makes off with the very truck that was hauling the prize.

"Everything had worked out perfectly. I cared nothing for the jijirium we now had. But if I was right, and it was tied to the Prototype, then perhaps she would come to get it back. Perhaps..."

On the outskirts of EX-10, a small force of guerrillas knocks out the guards and ambushes the sleeping base. The mercenaries respond quickly, and Potaria arrives just in time to spot a woman fleeing into the jungle. Potaria broods about it later in the Fantom Club. The woman's name is Monica, and they were childhood friends.

The next day, Kan Yu chooses a task force to join him in an attempt to locate the guerrillas, who are believed to be hiding in Zonmu village. The task force includes Chirico, Kiderra, Potaria, and Shako. They arrive at Zonmu some time later, and Kan Yu orders all the villagers brought forward for questioning. The villagers deny any connection with the guerrillas, but Kan Yu orders the village searched. The search turns up Monica.

she refuses to reveal anything about her fellow guerrillas, even when forced by Kan Yu to play a cruel game of Russian Roulette. Chirico intervenes, and Turtles erupt for hiding! A firefight ensures which carries into the nearby mountains. Once again, the Blue At appears and Chirico attempts to communicate with the pilot. Separated from the battle, Chirico gets out of his AT and approaches his opponent on foot. The Blue AT opens its cockpit, revealing that the pilot is not Fyana after all - it is another Perfect Soldier altogether, a wiry young man who knows Chirico's name!

Surviving the helicopter crash, Borough crawls free in time to watch Fyana rise and flee into the jungle. Underwater, Chirico swims free of his sunken Marshdog and fires handgun rounds into the air tanks of Ypsilon's snapping Turtle. Ypsilon has no choice but to abandon the fight and loses himself on shore as the rest of Kan Yu's task force finishes off their remaining enemies.

Injured and angry, Borough is flown back to the palace, where he asks Kanjelman to order his men to hunt down the treacherous Proto-One and shoot her on sight. Both Perfect Soldiers have failed him, so Kanjelman declares that this is the last favor he will grant. Back at the lake, Chirico repairs his Marshydog and sets off to find Fyana, defying Kan Yu's orders to stop. The others die with Chirico, and their mission to find the Prototype PS gets underway again.

Not far away, Fyana picks her way across a mountainside, when suddenly she runs into the Blue AT. She tries to run, but Ypsilon stops her. She grabs his pistol and threatens to shoot, but he doesn't believe she can. They are interrupted by gunfire from another Turtle, who declares that he has orders to kill her. Ypsilon mounts up and leaps to Fyana's defense - but cannot bring himself to fire on his own allies.

Chirico notices the firing from nearby and leads his companions to Fyana's aid, just as Ypsilon's AT is disabled by the other Turtle pilots. After rescuing Fyana, Chirico frees Ypsilon from the wreckage of his AT, and Ypsilon slinks away in defeat. But when Chirico turns around, Fyana is gone - and so is Kan Yu. Kan Yu chases down and captures her, determined to take her back alone and abandon the others in the jungle.

Chirico tracks Kan Yu down and fights him hand to hand for Fyana's life. They wrestle each other into a raging river and Kan Yu is swept away. Fyana pulls Chirico free of the raging water and saves his life. the next morning, the two finally share a quiet moment together in the sun. But their peace cannot last while their enemies still live...and Chirico is determined to bring this fight to an end.

"I'd finally found Fyana again. Why did I still need to fight? Was there any point to my trying to stop Borough and his group?"

Lost and exhausted, Kan Yu stumbles through the Kummen jungle from one pitfall to another. He runs right into a Veela platoon and very nearly loses his life...until Shako appears out of nowhere and saves him. Later, he wakes up in the EX-10 hospital to seek Gon Nu standing over him. He will soon be back in action; the Melkian army is nearly ready to launch their attack on the prince's palace.

With Potaria's knowledge of the area, Chirico's group hijacks a Veela AT truck bound for the palace and takes it over, sacrificing Kiderra's and Potaria's mercenary ATs in favor of Veela Turtles. On the Palace ground, Monica wanders aimlessly, confused by Kanjelman's orders to abandon guerrilla warfare. Others speculate that he is giving up the fight, so she decides to find out for himself. She arrives just in time to overhear a conversation between Boorough and the prince, who states his belief that his kingdom is doomed, and that he has called all the guerrillas back to die with him. Shocked, Monica can only run.

Chirico's group smashes their way into the place grounds. Potaria leaps out of his AT and dashes into the palace on a mission of his own. Ypsilon is anxious to go and fight Chirico, but Borough orders him to wait until his new AT arrives. Tearing through palace corridors in search of Kanjelman, Potaria runs into Monica, who gets caught in a crossfire. Potaria drags her to safety, and she tells him of the prince's treachery...just before she dies in his arms.

In the skies above the palace, countless enemies appear; the entire fleet of mercenary ATs from EX-10 is preparing to attack. The battle begins in earnest, and Chirico looks up to see yet another object approaching from on high.

"There was no way of my knowing at the time...that the light I saw was a new custom AT made for Ypsilon..."

Chirico recovers after all and join Fyana in another attempt to hold off the enemy. The battle is fierce, but this time Chirico is not up to it. He is hit again, and Fyana pulls him inside as the Balarant Fatties swarm the ship. Their disappearance is reported to the Balarant patrol fleet captain, who orders his men inside to capture their mysterious opponents.

Fyana evades the Fatties as they comb the inside of the ship for her and Chirico. She finds her way to the infirmary for medication, and Battleship X makes a move of its own, firing its engines and moving off in a new direction. While some of the invading Balarant ATs attempt to disable the engines, Fyana returns to Chirico and revives him with the medicine she obtained. He laments his own helplessness, saying that Ypsilon would never fail her...and he slips back into unconsciousness as she prepares to face the approaching enemy. Fyana now fights alone, both on foot and in a Scopedog, pausing only to wonder again who placed her in this situation.

Not far away, the Secret Society follows the battle in their own ship, the Teltain. Captain Futtor keeps watch as Arron and Gurran put Ypsilon through a battery of emotional tests and discuss the prospect of a rematch between him and Chirico. Far ahead, a planet looms in the distance, and Fyana cares for a sleeping Chirico. They have faced much already, but the worst is yet to come.

"I've wandered the depths of hell. Its hot, suffocating depths. And in the distance, a light. Our ship, as though following a beckoning beacon in the night, drew us ever closer to the planet that lay before us."

"I was searching for any oxygen canisters left in the wreckage. I'd realized that I had miscalculated. My oxygen was running out. My initial calculations had let me to believe that I could just reach that unmanned supply situation. But I'd sacrificed one more canister than I'd counted on. Zophie's presence was the reason."

Chirico has made the magnanimous gesture of giving Zophie one of his own air tanks, but now regrets it as his own nears its limit. Evading Balarant patrols, Chirico eventually finds an underground supply depot, and sets Fyana down to investigate it. Inside, he finds more air tanks, but gives up his bazooka to carry them. He returns to Fyana and resumes his walk...but Zophie intervenes, having grabbed and armed the bazooka! Before she can end it all, however, other come to Chirico's rescue - Gotho, Vanilla, and Coconna charge over the dunes in a salvaged buggy, and scoop everyone up just in time to avoid another Balarant patrol.

The patrol chases them into the very supply station Chirico was bound for, and he takes over the buggy to face off against the single Fatty AT that pursues them. Destroying the Fatty, he rushes to Fyana, and prepares a liquid jijirium bath to save her from the edge of death. As he does this, Gotho and the others deal with Zophie...and Coconna emerges as the unlikely victor. Unleashing the pent-up anger of a lifetime, she pummels Zophie with everything she has, including the heart-rending truth that she, too, lost her family in the war.

As Fyana's life is restored, Gotho and Vanilla inform Chirico that Zophie has gone...but she left no forgiveness behind.

" I never answered her charges. Even if I had told her the truth, that my unit wasn't on this world when her family was killed, I still would have only been making meaningless excuses. Because I'd done the same thing in other places. Even if she knew the truth, she wouldn't forgive me. And in my heart, I felt the same way."

A task force of Zwerg Ats detaches from Killy's ship and descends toward Quent. Arron and Gurran try to reason their that he was nothing to worry about, but this does little to put Killy at ease.

Chirico catches up on recent history with Shako, who explains that Quentians gave up their technological civilization thousands of years ago to live in the desert crevasses. Suddenly, Zwergs appear to give chase. Shako outmaneuvers them and escapes, but damages the radiator in his sandrunner, and must push the vehicle by hand. He enters a deep crevasse in the desert in hopes of finding a village of Quentians, but the Zwergs require their target and open fire on the ailing sandrunner.

Chirico manages to commandeer one of their attackers' ATs and launches a counterstrike while Shako destroys another by ramming it. They continue their journey and word of their victory reaches Albert Killy. Furious that his men were brash enough to start a firefight in the vicinity of a Quentian village, he berates Arron and Gurran for their carelessness.

On the surface, Chirico and shako approach another crevasse, within which lies Shako's own village.

"The Quentian village lay in the depths of the ground. But was the mystery of the PS, of my own origins, hidden here? A race which had abandoned civilization and destroyed itself. Wasn't Quent, in the end, simply a graveyard?"

Furious over the turn of events, Lepard is bolstered by the fact that his force outnumbers Rochina's, and when the battle is over, the prize of Quent will go to the Gilgamesh. Rochina relizes Lepard's attempt to recover Fyana was only a ruse, and he pauses to receive visitors; Gotho, Vanilla, and Coconna, who barely made their way through the battle to his ship.

Even Chirico is hard-pressed to emerge alive from this conflict. He makes it back to Rochina's ship with little room to spare. And it is then that Quent makes its move; enormous streams of energy burst our of the Tower of Gomer and blast into space, destroying everything in their path! Both fleets are devastated, and the only survivors are Rochina, Chirico, Fyana, Gotho, Vanilla, and Coconna, who manage to escape in a shuttle and power down to avoid being hit.

They are soon picked up by the only other ship now in Quent orbit - that of the Secret Society. Killy gloats over his victory, with all of his enemies now under his control and the secrets of Quent ripe for the picking. But before he can act, his ship is seized by an invisible force and pulled away from the planet by the same superior intelligence that has manipulated everything leading to this moment.

Chirico finally recognizes its identity.

"Wiseman. The name of Quent's mysterious, ancient intelligence. As we proceeded into the unknown, toward our destinies, I felt as if the fate of everything we knew now rested with us."

Vanilla makes one final attempt to radio Fyana as he flies the others to safety away from Quent. She begs him simply to leave her behind. Only she can reach Chirico now.

The Gilgamesh and Balarant landing forces descend in staggering numbers, but Chirico cuts right through them in his Rabidlydog with the Secret Society's Zwerg platoons backing him up. They quickly fall to the greater numbers, and when Chirico is down to only a few allies, he orders Gurran to begin the second phase of their plan. Gurran orders the Secret Society ship to descent into the battle.

Fyana trails Chirico in secret, and just manages to attach herself to a landing craft as Chirico hijacks it. Chirico orders Gurran to prepare missiles, calling atention to himself and drawing the fire of the enemy. Gurran interposes his ship between Chirico and the combined army, taking devastating hits and striking back as best he can. As Chirico descends into the crevasse toward the underground labyrinth, the ship is overwhelmed and crashes to the ground. Gurran is mortally wounded, surviving just long enough to see an uninjured Rochina step out of hiding and slip away. He will find out once and for all if Chirico is a suitable successor to God.

Pursued relentlessly by a few tenacious enemies in Scopedogs, Chirico and his last two Zwerg pilots plunge into the labyrinth. Exhausted and bereft of ammunition, Chirico is called ever deeper by Wiseman, who declares that his true successor should need no help reaching his final goal. Chirico pushes beyond his fatigue and fights on.

"I'll have my vengeance on everyone in this galaxy! Unending war and chaos...I'll plunge them all into hell! To be the absolute ruler of this galaxy, that is what I desire! To become a living God!"