Full Metal Panic!

Sagara Sousuke isn't your typical high school student. He reads military enthusiast magazines; he responds to questions with "affirmative;" he brings grenades to school in his bag. Though everyone at school takes him for a hopeless military geek, Chidori Kaname thinks there might be something more to him. When their plane is hijacked in the middle of a field trip, Kaname's instincts will prove correct: Sousuke is an elite, mech-piloting mercenary... and he's here to protect her!

Two months after Sunan, Sousuke and Kaname are in a holding pattern. He'll fire his rifle off the school roof; she'll yell at him to stop; lather, rinse, repeat. That all changes one day, when Sousuke's commanding officer Teletha "Tessa" Testarossa shows up at his apartment, trying to hide a key to a terrorist superweapon of unprecedented power. Tessa is brilliant, pretty, and the same age as Sousuke, and her presence might put a serious crimp on his relationship with Kaname... assuming the city survives the night!

Kaname is in the doldrums: There's just one week until the end of summer vacation, and she hasn't done anything interesting! Fortunately, Sousuke is here to provide a little adventure, by offering her a trip to Merida Island. But what starts for Kaname as a simple trip to learn more about the mystery surrounding her quickly snowballs into a firefight in a chemical weapons facility, a reunion with a mortal enemy, and a battle for control of a runaway submarine! However things turn out, at least she can't claim that her summer was uneventful...

With the defeat of Gauron, Sousuke's life has entered a comfortable rhythm. He's adjusting to school—the occasional car bomb false alarm notwithstanding—and balancing his newly-found normalcy with the needs of his mercenary life. He's even started to turn his thoughts toward the future—a future that might involve Kaname. But that future will soon face a threat, not from North Korean soldiers, Italian mobsters, or Russian spetsnaz... but from the hierarchy of Mithril itself!

On orders from Mithril, Sousuke has been forced to abandon Kaname to focus on learning the secrets the Arbalest and the lambda driver. Meanwhile, Kaname—left to the care of a remote and anonymous intelligence agent—feels the threat from a mysterious pursuer drawing ever closer. Their challenges will lead them both to the tension-racked streets of Hong Kong, a city even more divided than the burgeoning couple's destinies. And a series of climactic showdowns will bring them to a reckoning with enemies old and new!

The Pacific Chrysalis was Mithril's first true victory over Amalgam, but their success has only led to escalation. Between growing suspicion at school and cryptic warnings from Tessa's brother that everything is about to change, Sousuke begins to realize that his peaceful life in Tokyo might not last much longer. Before he can even prepare, though, Sousuke finds himself running a gauntlet beyond anything he could have imagined. He'll have to fight not just for his own life, but for the life of everyone he knows!

Sousuke has been torn away, not just from Kaname, but from the entire life he’s made for himself. His flight brings him to a lawless border town in Southeast Asia, whose economy revolves around mech battles played out for sport and profit. On a lead that Amalgam is involved with the corrupt authorities there, Sousuke joins a ragtag team headed by an impetuous young local and her reluctant foreign sponsor. But as he seeks what he’s lost, will Sousuke lose what he’s gained?

All hope is not lost! Mithril might be scattered to the four winds for now, but its members continue to work toward the same goal. While Tessa concocts a plan to strike back at Amalgam, Hunter conspires to create a new ace machine to turn the tide. Meanwhile Sousuke—even with few allies, limited resources, and a body riddled by mortal wounds—remains determined to free Kaname from Leonard's clutches. Can these disconnected factions meet up and begin working together in time?!

The battle at Niquelo ignited in Sousuke and Kaname a new passion to find each other, but the rest of the world won't make it that easy. While Sousuke fights, waiting for the operation that might bring her back to his arms, Kaname endures new trials at the hands of a jealous tormenter. Everything comes to a head in an abandoned Soviet research town, and the winding tunnels beneath it—tunnels that hosted a catastrophe seventeen years ago, and which might hold the secret to the Whispered themselves!

The secrets of the Whispered have been revealed, but that knowledge has only brought new danger. Leonard has retreated to Merida Island, where he seeks to rewrite reality itself with Kaname by his side. And with Mithril's forces already aching and depleted, Amalgam has occupied a Soviet missile base—with the intent to trigger worldwide nuclear war! It's a two-fronted battle on Merida Island and the mountains of Afghanistan for the penultimate volume of Full Metal Panic!

Clouseau and Mao lead the charge in Afghanistan to prevent nuclear war, while Sousuke and Tessa invade Merida Island, intent on stopping Leonard and his world-changing TARTAROS device. With resources depleted and the very world changing around them, their desperation to find each other is all they have left. Will Kaname awaken from her nightmare? Will Sousuke get through to her in time? Will anyone survive?! All bets are off in the explosive final volume of Full Metal Panic!