We open with a sunrise over a town in ancient Greece, the buildings silhouetted against the amber glow of a new morning. A rooster crows. The people start to go out and start their days. They go about their normal business, tending farms, washing clothes in the rivers, taking horses into the capital, and so on. Hero, a gentleman in his forty’s, comes out of his house, in his arms a box he holds with great urgency. He looks off and starts running to the city. Amon, another inventor from the same mold as Hero, in his lab while closes a small wooden crate on his desk. Strewn about are sketches and blueprints showing various kinds of aeolipile and primitive steam engines. He slowly steps out of his home as well with his box, which he covets and seems happy to have in his hands. He too makes his way to the capital.
We see a gathering of people at a forum. Hero is standing at the center square. Next to him is a table with the box he had earlier and on his other side, a torchlight in a stand. As he gets everyone’s attention, he announces he has made a discovery about steam, that it can be used as a source of power. Everyone looks puzzled. Amon is also in the audience, holding in his lab his box. He becomes nervous and confused and grips it tightly. Hero opens up his box’s lid and pulls out his aeolipile. Amon’s eye’s widen, shocked to see what Hero has. Hero yanks the torch out and lights the base of the aeolipile. Steam begins to billow out of the pipes in the sphere. Then, suddenly, the steam causes the ball to spin. It gets faster every second, and the audience goes crazy. Everyone except for Amon, that is. He gets up and pushes through the crowd and walks out feeling defeated and angry. Meanwhile, everyone continues get excited and shower Hero with attention.
That night, Amon tosses about all his plans and his work in a fit of rage. He then callapses into his seat, hi head down. He then notices a mosaic patter on his floor, but it’s covered by some of the paper he ripped up and threw. He cleans it up and finds a dragon revealed in the mosaic. He then looks over to one of the papers on the floor and sees a design for his aeolipile. This gives him a sinister idea.
We cut to a few months (or years?) later. The sun rises above the town once again. This time, instead of a rooster, a steam whistle like that of a train lets out a squeal. Farmers use rickety looking tractors to plow their fields, people put their clothes through a huge steam press to clean them, and we can see various other primitive mechanical creations being used amongst the townsfolk. Hero leaves his house (which is now a lavish abode) and takes a stroll. Along the way people look up from their tasks (and new machines) and wave to the man who has changed their lives. Meanwhile, Amon toils away in his lab, building something. Something big. We pan across a series of blueprints, each showing bit by bit what it is he is making. The final sheet shows the body of a mechanical dragon. We then tilt up away from the sheets and look into the darkness of his unlit workshop. Two red eyes light up, accompanied by a metallic growl and a jet of steam that fills up the shot and transitions to the next scene.
It’s night, and Hero is in his lab working on something new. He steps back to get a good look at what he’s made. It’s a clock with gears, and it starts to tick, but only to spring apart and send its pieces flying. Hero sighs and is about to continue working until a crash erupts from the roof, sending everything all over the place. Hero makes his way through the rubble until he gets outside. He sees a huge mechanical dragon, and he can hear Amon’s voice coming from it. Inside, Amon sits in the cockpit and yells through a horn at Hero, telling him he wants Hero to admit he stole his idea. Hero doesn’t know what he’s talking about, insisting he doesn’t even know who Amon is. This only anger’s Amon further, and his dragon leans it’s head back and shoots a searing blast of flames at Hero. He manages to just barely jump out of the way, putting out the cinders on his robes. He yells back to Amon and says they can work things out. Amon refuses to listen and swings the dragon’s tail around to knock down a huge chunk of Hero’s house. Debris falls on him, knocking him out. Amon is about to finish Hero off, the dragons head hanging high above him. A drop of water comes down and lands on Hero’s forehead, and just before he blacks out he see’s steam coming from the dragons nose. He realizes what this means.
Just then some soldiers come with chariots drawn by mechanical steam-horses. They shoot arrows and throw spears at the dragon, but they only bounce off its iron hide. Hero begins to regain consciousness and sees the battle. Amon swings the tail around and completely totals one chariot, and shoots flames at another, causing it to heat up so much that it explodes into a cloud of machine bits and steam. Hero begins to fret and struggle to get out of the debris. He grabs a chunk of wood runs toward the dragon while it’s back is turned. However, Amon turns around and grabs him with one of the dragons claws. He brings Hero to the dragons face. This brings Hero just close enough to quickly wedge the wood into one of the steam exhaust ports of the dragons nose. Amon tosses him and the dragons head swings from side to side trying to dislodge it. It’s not use, so he just makes his way over to the battered Hero. He gets the dragon ready for one last flare, but as he tries to unleash it, the wood absorbs most of the steam and there’s a huge back up in the beast. Streams of steam begin to shoot out all over the dragons body and the machine falters as screws come loose and servos fail.
Amon falls out of the rapidly falling apart beast. A couple soldiers come up to him and point their spears at him. Hero runs over to put their weapons down, and he tells Amon that he is amazed by the dragon’s design. Amon is a bit taken aback by the compliment, but he hesitantly accepts it. Hero then tells him he’s sorry if he had ever done any wrong to him, but he would like to help him make more of his machines. Amon says he doesn’t know what else he could do, and Hero asks if he could make a suggestion.
It’s now daytime, and we can see that the dragon that destroyed most of Hero’s home has been remade into a kind of excavator/crane. It’s helping to rebuild the home it destroyed. We then go to a wide shot of the town, and we see one crane, then another then another, and then the buildings begin to get bigger and more modern. The town becomes a thriving place of it’s own. Hero and Amon look on from the hills and see what their creations have made. As they look on, Amon asks what the ticking sound is he hears. Hero pulls out a clunky pocket watch, but explains he can’t get it to ever get the right time. Amon makes a would about how that would be an easy fix, and they make their way down the hill and out of frame, the last shot focusing over the hill and onto the new town.
The End
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