Two and a half years after the Lost July catastrophe leveled a city and threw the planet into chaos, journalist Meryl Stryfe is still chasing leads on Vash the Stampede, now as senior partner to her eager new colleague, Milly Thompson. New plant robberies point back to Millions Knives and put her in the path of the priest-gunman Wolfwood again. Vash himself is hiding out under the alias Eriks in a backwater town, until a girl named Jessica arrives with an SOS from the ship colony he still calls home.