Shangri-La (シャングリ・ラ)

It's time. Get a move on.

Kuniko! Kuniko! Kuniko! Kuniko!

Knock it off!

Don't forget us in here!

Give 'em Hell when you get back!

You better write!

Or just get nicked again!

This place won't be the same without ya!

Listen up!

Today's the day! The world's my oyster!

Good luck out there, kid.

Now, if I ever lay eyes on you again, it'll be too soon.

Understood?

No one's here.

Momoko!

You little delinquent.

Oh, honey it's so good to love your neck.

When'd you shave last?

When'd you eat last? The girls are lookin' starved.

Hello! Hot-button issue!

Oi! Ya ridin' or ain't ya?

Didn't expect to see you, old man!

Now don't start taking that tone with me.

Oh, pumpkin.

Miiko!

These past two years have been an eternity.

D'ya gain a pound for each month?

Ugh! You scrummy harlot!

Enough with the tears.

Just 'cause your face is built like a storm levee

doesn't mean you have to use it like one.

You are just the worst kind of harpy.

Who'd better have brought what I asked her.

Please. I look like a rhinestone?

Just promise to play nice.

How's this for nice?!

And that is?

A clink rag.

They had me salute this stupid thing day and night,

so I'm owed a little revenge.

But, now I can move on.

'kay. Homeward bound, then.

Duomo become a hustling boom town yet?

Oh yes. Poverty's the new affluent, it's fab.

Lots of new hoi polloi have set up tent there.

Ooohhh! Fresh meat!

The Shokuan block's been sinking

like Atlantis in slow-mo, though.

So, you know, there goes the neighborhood.

Yep.

Curtain in five, people!

The old lady wants to see you first thing, ya hear?

So why doncha-- Hey! Butter troll!

Move! Ah, damn it.

Relax. One doesn't put a tether on the wind.

She'll get where's she's going in her own time.

Hey! She's back!

"What began as disparate acts of civil disobedience

against the environmental austerity

charters enacted by the government became,

in time, the Metal Age movement."

"When new, draconian CO2 emissions sta-"

The polite way to absorb knowledge is by sitting still.

Take a good, hard look around you, girl.

These are the relics of a bygone age.

The Carbon Market would hemorrhage

to see the remnants of so many felled trees.

Yet the wisdom represented here is priceless.

Unavailable to the idle web-surfer.

Perhaps the old forests' greatest legacy.

Where wisdom's concerned,

the internet conceals far more than it yields.

When, during the course of your glory as Metal Age's leader,

you find yourself at a loss.

Kuniko! You could at least wait to tear off

until I've said my piece!

Love ya, grandma!

So the prodigal granddaughter has returned, eh?

What was your first clue?

Kuniko?

Whoa there, girlie, hang on! They break you out?

Naw I'm out fair and square!

Here. Help wash down the taste o' freedom.

Thank you!

No prob.

That's good. I'm glad to see they haven't broken her.

Yeah.

Should I know her?

Ah. You've never had the pleasure.

Kuniko Hojo. Nagiko's wild granddaughter.

That's the girl she's grooming to be

Metal Age's next president?

I'm not so sure 'bout that.

Hey, where's my souvenir?

Next time, I promise!

I'm not gonna hold my breath, cheapskate!

Your report, Shogo. Something I can use.

Madam.

Digma 2 has been released

from the girls' correctional facility.

She's returned home to Sector E-51, commonly known as Duomo.

Shion. Watch your fingernails!

My sincerest apologies!

Continue to monitor her actions.

As you wish, madam.

So the Sun assumes its Chariot.

And where pray tell does that leave the Moon?

As she ever is, madam.

Touring the lower realms at her fancy.

Feast your eyes on that. What'd I tell ya, huh?

Are you sure this is legal?

I mean, Atlas has those barricades for a reason.

Whose rank you think got us through 'em?

Ready the gun!

All apologies for the noise, milady.

How exhilarating the lower realms are!

They held a BC rank?

I'll not have Miss Mikuni's promenade savaged

by such a troglodyte!

For propriety, let us promote them to AG.

Sayoko. Prithee let us see all the fuss.

No, milady. 'Twould no doubt sully your vision.

No? Thou art an icy warden!

Indeed. That I am.

Chop, chop! The eclipse is spent!

Hey, Tokyo! I'm back!

Fine. If you insist, I'll recap.

You're familiar with the concept of Carbon Tax?

The levy designed to diminish global CO2 emissions. Very.

The rate of taxation fluctuates with a given country's ratio

of carbon emissions to carbon absorption. I'm not stupid!

'course not.

Now Japan's carbon index holds firm

at one-point-twelve at the moment.

Whereas your homeland is at a whopping two-point-forty-eight.

Meaning you basically owe

two-thousand, four-hundred eighty marks

per thousand marks of output. Not a sustainable rate.

Spout those numbers out to my face and I might take you

seriously, otherwise you can just go to Hell!

Face-time is so your generation.

Get with the era, sourpuss.

Economies aren't built on the back nine anymore.

We have that purview to thank

for despoiling the planet in the first place.

You had your chance and you blew it.

Carbonists do things differently.

I'm painfully aware of that.

This monetized carbon scheme's derailed the whole goddamn game!

Don't blame the charters for

your country's knee-jerk reluctance to comply.

No one forced you to hedge your bets against astronomical

tariffs by industrializing to the hilt. That was your choice.

Sure, you figured like every other dissenting nation

you'd outsmart the system by balancing the penalties

against the living wage you

consistently deny your workforce.

But that's exactly the kind of

out-moded quasi-imperialist strategy the Carbon Tax

is designed to render obsolete.

The longer a country takes to reduce its actual

carbon emissions, the higher the interest rate grows on the tax.

Ergo your present impasse.

You blather to me about imperialism when a handful

of well-heeled nations unilaterally impose a--

If you don't like it, become a self-sufficient economy

unto yourselves and pull out of the global market!

Sign a contract with us here at Ishida Finance

and we'll assume the tax debt for up to

one-hundred million tons of your carbon output.

It's as simple as that.

We'll transfer the lien to our LCTI holding company

when the balance becomes amortized across--

Thank you. I believe I have the gist of it.

In lieu of curbing pollution, we'll just be shrinking