Two centuries after nuclear fire sealed off the Japanese archipelago, Leon, a French soldier convicted of a crime he did not commit, is dropped into that wasteland with a work gang of other prisoners. Their price for freedom is an old-world weapon known only by the codename TORATSUGUMI. What Leon finds first is Tsugumi, a girl with talons who is not entirely human, and who saves his life before he understands what she has to do with the thing he was sent to retrieve.