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Assistant: Title: SAC 2045: Singularity Condition
        Author: RiptideZ RiptideZ 
        Chapter: 2/6 
        Summary: "The day we become gods; we will not know the difference." A Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 reimagining.Situation Update: Prologue/Ch.1, Ch.2, Ch.3, Ch.5 complete & posted. Previews of Ch.4, Ch.6 posted. Ch.7, Ch.8 in progress.
        Contents: Chapter 2: Living with my Ghost  - NIGHTFALL
    

    


      
        
          This chapter was taking longer to work on. I admit I'm not really happy with this ~3000 words of output as it ended up something of a recount of events prior to SAC_2045 and more emotions than meat of a story, but there's parts here that I'm setting up that I feel its appropriate I can split it off for now here and let the next chapter: UNFINISHED GIG 2 do the telling. I've put this ahead of WITHOUT MOTIVE because of chronology, but also because if there's a prologue after the prologue, I guess it will be this one. Thanks for reading as always.02/20/2024 update: Adding another 2k words to this chapter hopefully.06/19/2024 personal note: Feedback noting "excessive beige description - not purple, seems more like facts than evocation. Need to implement more spread out, thin description, embed between dialogue and action. Keep concise, "description requires purpose." Shorter sentences. Tie description to an emotional through line will help out. Two key elements to keep in mind:1. Cooperative principle (~relevance, purpose, direct/simple)2. Grice's Maxims (quantity, quality, relation, and manner)09/30/2024 update: Nightfall chapter updated to 10,097 words... I maybe a little crazy...
      
  

  
  
    
    
“Living with my Ghost – NIGHTFALL”Osaka, Japan, 2036


  . . .
 
  Recollection One. Nine years from sea change...
For Kusanagi Motoko, terrible events commenced with the cacophony of bitter rain and storm. Lightning strikes brilliant enough to scorch her skin. Thunder so loud, the vibrations deafened the sound of impact. Kusanagi learned to associated such moments of fierce noise and light with white, hot pain from an early age.What early age—she could not say.She was much too young to remember losing her parents; she couldn’t recall their faces, or much of anything at all. The plane crash jumbled her memory, not to mention the consequences of her “surgery.” She remember little even of the crash or the cause. Blurs of color were all that came to mind even as they too faded away. Instead, Kusanagi had only sparse witness testimony and circumstantial accounts to fill the gaps to her life story. For an accident which destroyed her world and remade anew, she knew very little of it herself.But one thing stuck with her, regardless of real or fiction formed from an overactive imagination. The violent sensations. Her roaring storm. The girl who survived after had nothing left of her previous life. No memories and no relics to reclaim from the past. She barely remembered concepts like “girl” or “herself.” All Kusanagi had was lightning and thunder, and the long silence following. The silence was dark and lonely, empty of people and things but never wanting for she knew little of the world before or after.Like being born again, a clean slate.“The subject has come to...”Darkness was her oyster. Awareness came as a surprise. A painful one in fact, as her piecemeal brain attempted to synchronize with fresh artificial nerves. Her new form felt constrictive and dull, lacking the process capacity to enjoy the world as a flesh-and-blood human would. Kusanagi absorbed the world through two camera lenses with a horrible degree of tunnel vision. Her limbs moved through the environment with the grace of a drugged octopus. Her spatial awareness seemed cripplingly flat.“The wheelchair is only temporary. Soon your body will remember to walk, easy as pie!”This was the consequence. To save a young Kusanagi’s life, emergency responders fought a losing battle with her body. Sometimes just for pieces of organs as her health declined at a disastrous pace. The battle to save a single life eventually came down to a fight over individual neuron clusters.Why anyone in any age would go so far to save or resuscitate the near-dead was baffling. She found out eventually but the doubt followed her on through her limited life. She was a curiosity and an experiment. There was genuine care and mission to save her, but none expected her to survive. In the end, Kusanagi did make it through. But did an existence dominated by 98 percent circuitry constitute “living?”“What do you remember?”“I... ‘member?”A sense of entrapment fell over the young Kusanagi as she found difficulty expressing her thoughts across a synthesized rubber tongue through synthetic lips of similar construction. She struggled through her learning, building her person up from scratch. Her emotions grew from colors to words. The darkness became a small room. Nurses dragged her through clinical test after test, forcing her slow acclimation to her new body.“You’re so pretty, just like your doll. Aren’t you a cute one?”A look in the mirror revealed glassy maroon eyes and fine hair colored dull purple. Kusanagi looked like a doll. She was a doll. Even after decades of Japanese artisan engineering in pursuit of the human form. She was more of a human caricature than a flesh-and-blood being.Her given name was a paint over to mask her nature as a Yamada Hanako. The English placeholder equivalent of a Jane Doe, a Nanashi no Gombei—a no-name. A missing person, a ghost in the world.A name despised, a name she forgot. Kusanagi was just the university hospital’s plastic and lithium flower. It would take time for her to adjust her own mind to the uncanny valley of her own reflection, more so than everyone else looking at her from the outside.They tried to label her experience—this life of a human blurred with a machine. They argued the dysmorphia Kusanagi felt was a sign of her humanity reclaimed. The doctors found particular interest asking about those experiences which made her different from fellow humans.“Who is the girl in the mirror? What do you see, and feel?”“Me. Mirror.”Dread hung on Kusanagi’s words. Dread looking at the Pinocchio staring back at her.“This is me?”The caretakers made an effort to treat her as normal, she realized in later years. However, the effort manifested as certain concern and perceived fragility. Not like a regular child, but no child is regular. Rather Kusanagi was different, much more different. They treated her as unique, and therefore, alone. Singular, not human. Only human alike. Forced to fit into a human figurine.Kusanagi didn’t enjoy the reverberating pain every time she fell from the parallel walking bars. She disliked the minutes it took for her to get back up, assisted or otherwise. She hated the sensation of buckling knees when encouraged to stand on her own. Especially the rush of wind as she crumpled to the floor. But this was the world she knew.The nurses spoke so sweet, only adding to the frustration like audible poison to her sensitive rubber ears. Supportive, yet unnoticed as demeaning.“Great job, Mira. You’ve made it so far this time!”“Four steps! Soon you’ll be walking all on your own.”Despite her mechanical body, the young cyborg girl couldn’t extend her mind beyond her form. Her first cybernetic shell didn’t have the hardware. She received no hint to a wider world waiting beyond her bed, four walls, and obfuscating window. But wasn’t long before she shattered the tiny illusion.From the very first moment she had something called memory, Kusanagi lived the life of a cybernetic life form. She was a creature of the Internet. Sooner rather than later, she would break the confines of her pastel-white cage and spread her wings to never look back. From the moment she arouse out of the darkness, the Net became her home even before she knew its existence.Kusanagi remembered — the seventeenth night resuming life among the life among the living but hooked up to medical and neurological monitors. Within the wires, she found a tiny hole in her perfect cage. An improper-calibrated, intranet access point furnished for clinical purposes with an unsecured network plug. She was supposed to be asleep, but poking around revealed so much!Digging deeper revealed a pathway of accidental ports left open to the extended hospital network. Somewhat archaic and outdated but also relatively safe, it was akin to a cyber world reef. A shelter for a young girl, a view port out to the waiting world. Beyond it lay the vast and wide-open Internet, a sea of information.Every day from then on, Kusanagi swam further and further from the safe harbor. The hospital staff never caught her. She got better at covering her tracks. She became a creature of the Net, and Pandora’s Box was open. No one could put the little girl back in the cage.As Kusanagi got older, she grew suspicious that maybe one of the doctors or engineers left the misconfigured access point for her. She tried checking back but she could never prove for certain...
  \ \ Virtual single-session browser [ open ] ... >
  \ \ Establish connection [ Deep Web \ \ TOR ] ... >
  \ \ Login, [ Chroma#Ac3sf472CDjsfF29q ... ] .onion ... >
She soon blossomed and soared, and left the hospital behind. Kusanagi’s able-body experiences became habit, her new normal. Her cyberbrain dives became a fixture of her everyday life. She joined the rest of society. She became... Happy. She never returned to the tiny cage, even as she left behind regrets.“I’m going to practice making origami cranes so I can fold them for you someday, okay?”A little boy with a single functional arm, who loved origami cranes, and survived the plane crash just like her. Two lonely survivors, someone she might have known. He didn’t recognize her. But how could he?She was a doll of plastic and metal. She didn’t recognize him either. She didn’t know him. But they somehow made it where many others did not. They spent a little time together, but she ran away. Kusanagi never returned to show him her improved origami cranes. Her first terrible shame.She had a chance to apologize for her cowardice but she couldn’t overcome it as a child. She embarrassed herself with unique childish fear and regretted it soon after. She barely remembered the reason why. Or reasons. Was she trying to save him then? Did the young girl not think herself worthy of a friend? Was she not good enough to save him? Or was she scared he would join in her cursed fate?Maybe she was scared he wouldn’t make it through. The doctors never believed she would survive.By the time her origami skills and maturity were past her sense of disgrace, the boy left his nest for the world beyond. Kusanagi didn’t cry for she lacked the ability to produce tears. She didn’t cry because she knew it was her fault. She was the one who was afraid. By the time she wasn’t, he conquered his fear and soared. He left her behind.Motoko was not the cyborg girl’s name then. It was never her real name, but it didn’t matter. It became her name when she was ready. She left the nest too, offering few glances back. She became someone else entirely, someone powerful. The woman called Kusanagi Motoko. A major in the Japanese Self-Defense Force. A special forces military hacker, and a field commander of Japan’s premier cyber-offensive police tactical unit, charged with the security of the Prime Minister and investigating the most pressing of national security threats.Kusanagi didn’t think much on her past as she lived many lives and many identities in her time. She lived through two world wars, survived global nuclear fallout, and reached the doorstep of the emerging transhumanist future.2032 came and went.Kusanagi found the boy again, now a mature man. Or maybe he found the lost Motoko, now a grown woman. He replaced his natural brown hair for locks of synthetic off-white, matted in mud and dirt. Kuze Hideo. He looked nothing like the boy from the hospital but his presence and charisma felt familiar. His life story was an uncanny fossil of Kusanagi’s buried past. She somehow recovered her first friend in the world. And then, just as she could touch his presence and confirm her reality—he died.“Kuze? Do you know how to fold origami cranes?”“Cranes?”“Yeah. And only with your left hand?”“Can you do that?”“I can now.”Kuze. The former JGSDF mechanized infantry officer. Second Korean War veteran. Pacifist. Individual Eleven ideology hack victim and survivor. Charismatic leader and revolutionary who took up the refugee self-determination revolution on Dejima Island. He who sought martyrdom. A fellow and kindred survivor to Kusanagi, her rare equal. Soon gone, like smoke.“I’ll go ahead now, Major.”Kuze’s death shattered his revolution, saving Japan from the specter of a changing world. And broke Kusanagi’s phantom heart. The Major retreated into the Net, leaving her work at Public Security Section Nine to mourn and find herself again. The fleeting weakness stripped back her armor to reveal the scared, lost girl within. She tried to remake herself, find something different. She became a mercenary hacker, chasing her own ego and whim hoping she could create some good in the world unique to her capabilities.Kusanagi didn’t know if she succeeded after two years. But nothing could fill the fresh hole in her proverb heart. Eventually she found her way back and returned to the work and life she found meaning in most. For all her diving and running, Section Nine was home, there was nowhere else.Seven years passed by with many more ups and downs. The government around her bent and shifted under public pressure, gasps from Kuze’s revolution and runaway machinations of the political mastermind Gouda Kazundo evolved into something brand new. The passing time made into a great beast of excitement and violence. Time as an agent of dangerous, evolving, persistent change.From the 2032 Individual Eleven event, Prime Minister Kayabuki Yoko reneged political influences by the American Empire and other world powers, defusing the coup attempt by Chief Cabinet Secretary Takakura and his rogue Cabinet Intelligence Service led by Gouda. In 2034, Section Nine unfurled a runaway management AI and mass wealth-redistribution corruption scheme at the Ministry of Health, called the Solid State Society involving the kidnapping and jingoistic cyber-indoctrination of children.Underneath the complex crises faced by cyberization-obsessed Japan, new and newer patterns emerged. Socioeconomic and geopolitical movements. Nongovernmental structures of power. Strange forces Kusanagi and her team put down again and again, only to reemerge elsewhere in some other form. A lesson emerged for Kusanagi: try all you want, you can’t defeat culture.The citizens continued to ostracize. The refugees continued to struggle. Well laid, earnest plans fell aside to blind rage ignited in the masses. People wanted to become martyrs.For the average Japanese citizen, the Kayabuki years were shaping into a period of disorientation and division. No one could objectively declare the failings of the government in this era lay with any specific factor or faction, or any others. But Kayabuki drove the nation as the figurehead, the ages of emperors was long past, buried in the irradiated ruins of Old Tokyo. The troubles fell and stayed Kayabuki’s feet like clay, the curse of an elected leader.At some point the general public started calling the decade of struggle “Kayabuki Theater,” a parody of traditional Japanese theater. Even as an ally of the Prime Minister, Kusanagi could see the valid genius and destitute humor of the fed up masses. It was a mystical wonder sometimes as her Prime Minister continued to win elections and retain the conservative coalition’s control of the house elections. But such was life in the political arena. It failed to reflect everyday, normal life, until it slammed into everyone, without preference, all at once.2036 arrived.An 8.3 Nankai megathrust earthquake erupted near Wakayama and Tokushima prefectures generating a massive tsunami almost thirty meters in height, razing the southeastern Japanese coastline and riding up the Seto Inland Sea, river outlets, and unprotected spillways. The waves and the shocks tore through harbors and artificial islands, including Niihama capital district in Osaka Bay. Between the Wakayama and Tokushima coasts and up against Awaji Island, the lands acted as guardrails along a bowling alley for the churning water. There was no chance the tsunami waves would miss. The early warning system J-ALERT gave ample warning ahead of disaster but disaster still arrived—the “Big One,” promised at least once a century.Between the parallels of history, Niihama island rose from Osaka Bay bedrock after World War Three as an attempt to reignite domestic construction and industries. Tokyo and Yokohama burned in nuclear fire due to Japan’s place in the American global security alliance. With American troops forced home by civil war and nuclear fallout, Japan took a risk moving its emergency government far south to Fukuoka, away from the radioactive craters and sinking wetlands. The move was risky and precarious, within proximity of Beijing, Pyongyang, and Seoul City—an easy target as the renewed, second Korean War turned hot. But the city also had the means to rebuild: pragmatism, survival over preference. It was a risk deemed necessary.It was not the first or last hot war under two seasons of nuclear winter. Water turned to poison, crops failed, and the winters were extra cold. The developing world burned while the post-developed world turned a blind eye just to survive. The refugee peoples called it World War Four. Japan’s role was less than substantial, earning its wounds in the third Great War. Emergency military rule created policies which were unpopular, but got Japan through the first few years like it did after the American fire bombings of World War Two and the resulting famine.When civilian government returned, subsequent parliamentary coalitions sought to move the national capital somewhere more central and better defended. They chose Osaka Bay, thus the “New Port City” was born.Then convergence. The Nankai was simple circumstance aligning with consequence. A disaster of probability.The crash of the first waves cracked like distance thunder on the horizon as they pounded against the beaches and waterfront. They groaned on, crackling as buildings and streets crunched and flooded against millions of kiloliters of advancing storm water. From above, the tide looked like a slow-moving horde, eating away at the vacant city blocks. And absorbing – vanishing cars, trees, street booths, and everything else in the warpath.This marked Kusanagi’s third tsunami experience: a defining, common staple of Japanese geography and history, along with frequent, regular earthquakes. Yet the natural forces continued to mystify and shock her years later. A permanence of awe and fear towards mother Nature refusing to allow humanity to win in dominion upon the land.The forces of the surface wind and sea could not reach Section Nine’s rescue helicopters above, so the police officers watched helpless as once gray-green waters turned black and brown, sinking the capital island street by street like the unreality of a documentary or movie. From on high, the shattering city island was silent compared with the beat and hum of the deafening helicopter blades.Major Kusanagi chewed on her plastic finger nails in disgust. Togusa, their lead detective, growled in frustration at the angry sea. And as his defining mullet swarmed through the open air. Saito the professional sharpshooter thumbed his nose with a nervous fidget, eyes on the many leaning skyscrapers. He clutched at his chest, maybe in search of his missing, prized sniper rifle. Silence and the wind dominated the day and the helicopter crew. Few were brave enough to break the earth-breaking silence.Prime Minister Kayabuki muttered a Buddhist prayer, sitting cross-legged on the helicopter cargo deck. Her soft murmurs were lost in the growl of the propellers but Kusanagi could read her lips.“We are a link in Amida's golden chain of love that stretches around the world,
  We will keep our link bright and strong.

  We will be kind and gentle to every living thing,

  And protect all who are weaker than ourselves.

  We will think pure and beautiful thoughts,

  Say pure and beautiful words,

  And do pure and beautiful deeds.

  May every link in Amida's chain of love be bright and strong,

  And may we all attain perfect peace.”
Kayabuki rose from her half-kneel by the helicopter side door as a sudden, violent gust thrust into the cabin. Pulled off balance, she leaned on the giant and stoic Borma behind her. The Prime Minister gave a frustrated snort as her tears vanished on the wind. She rubbed her face into her ratty red coat sleeve. Once dry, her steely gaze found the balding, wild-haired elder in the back of the aircraft, Section Nine Chief—the retired-Lieutenant Colonel Aramaki Daisuke.“Chief Aramaki. I want your teams in on the search and rescue effort.”The Section Nine chief offered a stern stare back, tapping his cane thrice on the metal floor for thought and possible effect. “Madam, my team’s responsibility is to ensure your safety first and foremost. We can do no such thing with you present.”Kusanagi spoke up too as Section Nine’s field commander, but used neural communications as her voice faded in the wind.
  MOTOKO:
  「 The waves are still coming in too, it’s too risky. We need to wait for the water to recede. 」
The Prime Minister chewed on her lower lip, turning the surrounding skin white with force. From Kusanagi’s experience, Kayabuki was a cunning politician considering how she survived and even exploited scandals of caliber capable of shuttering previous governing coalitions. By compare, she thrived in controversy. But in this job and proximity to the office, Kusanagi and her team also saw the Prime Ministers at her weakest.Kayabuki’s first year in the role was weak with many bouts of genius, much in the way she defanged and put away Takakura for her false house arrest during the Dejima Island refugee crisis. But the Prime Minister’s strengths and weaknesses were a veil. It was part of her talent, the ability to hide strength as weakness, and weakness as strength.What was this one as Kayabuki mulled over the rejection of her request? The Prime Minister already did her job, activating martial law, mobilizing emergency services and military in advance to evacuate civilians across the Japanese coast. She declared a national emergency through the J-ALERT system, freeing disaster response funding for the emergency Reconstruction Agency. But her seeming, bold stubbornness mobilized Section Nine to rescue her and her essential staff because she refused to leave Niihama against the advice and judgment of her many subordinates.Was this bravery, or folly? Weakness or strength?“Fine, I’ll evacuate,” Kayabuki frowned. “But, Aramaki, we are airborne and I am safe. You should focus now on what I’m asking you to do. I’m not the only person out there in need.” After a pause, she added. “Please...”“Madam...” Aramaki grimaced at the continued persistence outpouring from his commander-in-chief.“No, Section Chief. Provide me two men and a helicopter escort for my staff if you insist. Your other aircraft and teams will remain. I recall your annual section budget described an “international search and rescue” team. Now is the time to act like it.”Aramaki paused, looking towards Kusanagi with his stoic, tired eyes.
  MOTOKO:
  「 You alright there, Chief? She seems more reactive that usual. 」
  
    ARAMAKI:
  
  「 She’s not wrong, Major. I’ll be fine. Carry out her wishes. 」
Kusanagi pursed her lips as Aramaki tapped his cane again, harder as if in finality of some additional, unspoken decision.“Understood, Prime Minister.” Aramaki flagged the Section Nine helicopter pilot and Operator-class assistant gynoid over neural communications to turn the helicopters towards the Osaka coast. He looked again at Kusanagi.“Major, take charge! Ishikawa and Togusa will join the Prime Minister and I. We’ll fly into Camp Yao, and then you will attach yourselves to Reconstruction Agency command structure. Assist in whatever way they need.”Kayabuki spoke up as well; her featureless, dark brown eyes meeting Kusanagi’s artisan violent orbs. “And if anyone asks, in fact, please notify anyone who might question you. The Prime Minister wants every asset in the area participating. From police to military to civilian. All hands are needed to assist.”Kusanagi nodded to both her bosses, then queued her radio network to dish out preliminary orders. “Everyone, listen up. We are headed to S.D.F Camp Yao in Osaka. Prepare to step off as we transfer the P.M. to the military. We will have a few minutes break then we’re to reconfigure the task force for disaster search and rescue. Any nonessential equipment will offload once we’re in contact with Army command elements.Orders will come from me, but we are attaching ourselves to the requests and hierarchy of the Reconstruction Agency. Team leaders will designate personnel for standby while others will return to the helicopters to assist in rescue operations. We will determine shift rotations after.”The Section Nine radio array echoed back with the voices of her senior officers, “Yes, Major! Understood!”For two days and two nights, Section Nine rotated through its personnel on helicopters and tilt rotors, pulling stranded civilians and fishing corpses from the angry sea. Below by sunrise and sunset, they watched Niihama’s sunk into a soup of debris, gasoline, and sewage. Other parts of the country reported fluctuating and rolling blackouts; and increasing safety risks around hydro power and nuclear generation stations. Some dams even broke, washing away rare rural villages after escaping a century of historical upheaval to end in whitewater.Anger and sadness flooded the Net as netizens looked for direction and reason among their fellow countrymen. And blame, because in the wake of crisis, both hope and cynicism won the day. The inherent balance of opposite pairs always together and warring over humanity, life, and reality.Some would blame the Prime Minister, looking for something she did wrong. Those voices might be right. Some might be wrong. Kusanagi tuned out the stormy jeers of crowded online public forums. Gone and abandoned until they became useful to her again.One small, personal detail did irk the Major toward Kayabuki’s subtle cunning. Her orders endowed Section Nine with the informal warrant and power of the Prime Minister’s office to do what they sought fit in helping rescue efforts. But wherever Kusanagi went, it was with the whispers of appreciation for Kayabuki.Every nice or good deed Section Nine did, Kayabuki’s act of selfishness turned into a theater of the Prime Minister’s generosity. A small, irrelevant public relations victory toward Osaka residents. The Major received “thank you” as she pulled children out of cold water, but it was Kayabuki who received praise as parents spoke to the news cameras. Such were the powers of politics, but Kusanagi kept the minor annoyance to herself.Where public opinion mattered—an assassination plot against the Prime Minister—she listened. A kitten crying out over spilled milk? The ill-cherished cost of human life? It was unfair, but this was the natural order: with reality as an uncaring, unfair master.All suffer. And all cover their ears, only to offer their selective listening. This is the world Kusanagi was born into, was a part of. The world she helped make. She had no misconceptions. And if she did, she buried them only to resurface in the rare moments of great boredom and doubt. She tried to stay busy to keep the demons at bay. But she didn’t stop hoping—dreaming in her bed at night after Section Nine was told to stand down from their search and rescue efforts. Soon they would pack up their exhausted airframes and tired cyborg bodies, and return to their provisional headquarters in Fukuoka, with the Prime Minister in tow. Kayabuki would return to her work, Section Nine would return to their operations.Life would continue, one more complicated mission fading into nostalgic memory. Kusanagi spoke the words on her lips in the dark, alone. Questions meant for no one, absent of comprehension or expansion. “Where are those who will usher us into a better world? Where are they now?”Thunder rumbled in a far-off distance. An unclear answer from the dark heavens.Light rain crackled against the overhead military tent as an ominous wind rustled against the temporary structure. Kusanagi cracked her violet eyes, staring towards the canvas ceiling in strange wonder. Her mind was so noisy a few moments ago, alight with ancient and recent memories. But in an instant she turned quiet, her senses distant like the impolite weather outside.This wasn’t the warm bed in her Fukuoka apartment, or one of her several safe houses dotting Japan’s depopulated countryside. She was on a raised, flat ground. A worn and ratty cot setup over a nylon tent bottom in the Self-Defense Force Camp Yao, atop an underutilized tarmac. So far, it seemed the airbase was not participant to any major airlifts of helicopters or airplanes. However, the field floodlights still glared through the seams of her tarp canopy turning the night into a hint of second day.Kusanagi knew she should go back to sleep, but there was a sensitive energy in the air. A jitter she could not set aside and return to her shadowy dreamland. On nights like these, she would do some aggregate web scrapping—dual booting her human sleep and letting her robot brain do machine things, collecting interesting data for the morning to come.The airbase network was up and running, interlinking with regional fiber optic lines and orbital telecommunication satellites overhead. And yet, Kusanagi did not feel the call of the Net. Its presence felt diminished, maybe in mourning for the loss of life brought by the tsunami. Or maybe it was a physical consequence of water washing away much of Osaka and Niihama, along with their server farms and provincial Internet of Things (IoT). The sea of information felt quiet, and the Major’s curiosity was left wanting.Kusanagi threw off her army blanket, and pulled herself upright while her polished legs touched the crackly canvas and nylon of the tent bottom. She grounded herself, feeling the coarse asphalt texture beneath against her false toes and sensitive soles. Putting aside the habitual fascination, she began her morning routine: Section Nine network diagnostics, security and driver updates for her cyborg components—every single one of them. Tonight there were 46 in total, from isolated limb firmware to haptic internal sensors. At the same time, she pulled on a set of army camouflage pants and a green Flecktarn jacket over her designer lilac leotard. Besides her undergarments, the leotard was the one piece of clothing she could fit under the form-fitting tactical suit she wore during the Prime Minister rescue operation.On base, it made sense to dress like military, for the simple reason of abundant laundry and fewer questions of what government agency she was with. But it came with the old traditions of cohesion and uniformity she left behind in the JSDF long ago. In another lifetime, Kusanagi was an Army intelligence hacker.Funny how she held the rank of Major there too. A time where she wore the uniform, marched to the drum of war, and saluted the national flag each morning. Her skills reflected her experience, and the rank followed her as an enduring stamp of service given. Tours with the United Nations Peacekeepers in Latin and South America. She participated in the Nemuro, Hokkaido maritime landing like many Japanese military veterans. But when she joined Section Nine, Kusanagi closed that chapter in her life just as she did with several others.Kusanagi could fall back into her military routines like putting on a second shell, as easy as returning home again. Being a police officer was not so different from the military, including a similar uniform. But upon pulling on the camo greens again, she still felt off—like its subtly thicker, wool fabric marked a new headwind. A warning of things to change and come. It seemed life was dropping more of those warnings day after day. Maybe she was feeling nervous.It was difficult to pin down where her displeasure seemed to manifest from. Kusanagi peeked out of the tent and placed a reflexive hand against her forehead and purple hair bangs as the overhead floodlight intensified against the tent flaps. Dribbles of water polka-dotted her hair and a spot of drizzle traced the ridge of her nose.Maybe her discomfort was simply the rain, or the intense light. Her artificial eyes adapted faster than organic ones to the dark-and-light values as smudged shadow palette transformed into more tents, guardsmen, and military vehicles shifting around near the civilian portion of the military encampment. Clearly no one was getting sleep tonight.Thinking deeper though, Kusanagi could not set aside the uncertainty of something born recently—the rescue operation, or maybe something from Section Nine’s public responsibilities rather than recent operations. Or maybe it was a deeper, personal unsettlement. From tonight, or before the tsunami, or before the Kayabuki administration, or maybe before Section Nine. The deeper she wondered, the more lost she felt.As if in an instant, the noisy mind returned. The clarity of thought escaped Kusanagi, leaving behind the buzz of discontent. Quiet, but present under the murky surface and begging for attention. The caricature of nuisance tugged at her, pulling her towards a darkness with an unseen goal or destination. Instead of standing under the floodlights to mull her feelings, the Major let the rebellious energy pull her along into the drizzling night.Kusanagi startled the gate guard on her quiet approach. She didn’t request a military rental vehicle, instead choosing to walk two kilometers to an east border gate of Camp Yao. For her disheveled and striking purple bob cut, she looked somewhat out of regulation. Her camo uniform was bare of Velcro tabs, instead marked with a Kusanagi name duct tape etched with permanent market and a borrowed set of two-bars-and-star insignias from a generous JSDF logistics officer. But that was for the daytime.“Who goes there? Where are you heading to?” The guard called out, putting up a stopping hand, flickering his glaring flashlight, and palming his Minbea PM-9 machine pistol.Kusanagi gave him a deadpan look, her features silhouetted against the floodlight glow behind her. Even cyborgs got tired, her synthetic muscles for emotion became rigid like a statue. Uncanny, inhuman feminine features—a creature masquerading as human.“Major Kusanagi Motoko, Public Security special attache with Central Army Aviation-Headquarters. I’m going for a walk outside the wire.”The single guard became a full security team as a couple more guards emerged from the shadows and exited the security station nearby. The first guard crossed his arms over his soft armor chest plate but relaxed his stance. “Can we see some identification?”Kusanagi obliged, ringing a government identification card slung from her neck. The lead guard stepped forward to examine it for a moment as the security team relaxed. She was quickly waved through the raised gate and into the darkened streets of Osaka. Or what was left of some."I recommend you take an escort, ma'am." One of the guards called after her."Thank you, I will be alright." The Major replied, glancing back once. Instead, she followed her long cast shadow, her ghost...The city didn’t look like the result of nuclear fallout, but the darkness could not hide a new flatness added to the land. Remaining car and floodlights glowed in the distance, flickering in different directions and patterns through the silent night. As the search and rescue effort turned from hours into days, the chances of finding survivors would decline. Still the rescuers and desperate families continued their work through the night, scared and hopeful they would find loved ones alive among the rubble of Osaka Bay. Some Section Nine members were still out here too, picking through the rubble but a little further east and upriver. Kusanagi didn’t follow the lights, instead she wandered toward the waterfront to the tune of her crunchy boots on fields of scattered debris.Out in the bay below Osaka, Kusanagi could see the glow-over of emergency and military tugboats buzzing around the half-sunken, Niihama capital mega float. The man-made island was difficult to make out now, a series of half-submerged towers—some to the East, bending and dangling on their last concrete supports at inconsistent 30 degree angles.The disaster intelligence reports the Prime Minister fed to Section Nine suggested Niihama Island’s hybrid concrete-landfill foundation snapped under the tidal forces of the tsunami. Years of saltwater weakened the reclaimed terrain and ate away at the island’s superstructure. Meanwhile, the megathrust earthquake drove fractures as far as several kilometers inland. No doubt Niihama was another victim to the fractured seabed. But with its collapse, gone were some recent physical memories of Kusanagi’s past.Among the toppled skyscrapers, at least one was Section Nine’s old Niihama headquarters. Their unit used to operate from the fortieth floors, now empty with water damage and shattered glass. A curious thought wondered if evidence of Section Nine’s old operations, or battles, still hid in those halls. Togusa’s old townhouse was somewhere behind her in the Osaka suburban high rises, now phantom pyramids against the dark, steep foothills around the Greater Yodo river basin. The Camp Yao airport was a fountain of lights compared to the fallen city. Kusanagi’s aimless path lay in these shadows. The military base faded behind her against some slant, rusted warehouses of the older, Old Osaka Waterfront. Two decades before, the concrete roads and container stores were also part of the open waters.In a strange twist, the deeper Kusanagi clambered through the darkness, the more she felt the call of the Net. Her heavy footfalls trudged through endless mud and all manner of organic and inorganic debris. She could multitask in her sleep. Breathing while walking and surfing the Internet was a cakewalk in comparison. And so she found herself back on the Net, doom scrolling through endless headlines and forum posts—most aggregated from the Niihama Television home page. Unfortunately, their site also wore the unavoidable banner at the top: EARTHQUAKE EVACUATION IN NIIHAMA. HUMAN SERVICES SUSPENDED. IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, CONTACT EMERGENCY SERVICES #119—@BOUSAI.GO.JP.Of course, the top simulated stories therefore were about the Nankai.
  
    TOP STORIES: EARTHQUAKE
  
  
    (NHTV) Live Updates: Death toll climbs, Rolling blackouts as South Japan search and rescue effort continue
  
  
    (SCTV) Video: Nankai tidal wave crashes over abandoned Tokyo One, Reconstructors evacuated
  
  
    (MDSI) Hamaoka, Ikata, Tokai nuclear reactors see temporary shutdown for damage risk, Radiation micromachines dispersed
  
  
    (OXTV) Video: Blame flies as Niihama Mega Float foundation falls to tsunami
  
  
     READ MORE. . . 
  
In the current day, big media outlets became auto-generative aggregates of social media content. A speculation loop complex. Amateur images, video, and commentary scanned by web-crawling programs as formatted data. Contextual information processed into human content by generative ghost-writing services built on data sets of once-greats for sprinkles of personality. And hordes of consumers increasingly less human day after day. Articles and videos spun and weaved together based on lies and truth with no distinction between the two. And yet reality still held on by a thread.Niihama Television and other platforms operating to the march and tune of cold machines was not their fault however. Not entirely at least. The earthquake and tsunami were circumstances out of their control, and passive operation and income would keep the business lights on, even after the eventual reconstruction. The other causes—according to Japanese scholars of the day—culture, economy, and war.A consequence of a spiraling, inescapable unreality created by real circumstance. In this strangeness, a collective reality survived, through average people—from journalists to business people to consumers. The reality of the media industrial complex was a game of diminishing reality, of entropy—less travelers, less news offices, less people. Automation took over because there wasn’t enough people left to tell the stories of civilization, lost both to war and to a global society scared to bring new life into an unfeeling, cold world. And even more were gone now, day after day in a numbing tragedy. From earthquake to tsunami, from depression to old age. So many were dead, but how was one to feel for just a number in a paragraph on a screen?Kusanagi could mourn because she held the survivors and dead in her cold machine hands. But what about the people outside the disaster zone?A scrolling, news bulletin zipped across Niihama Television’s secondary banner: “Immediate death toll estimates rises to four thousand, expected to balloon into tens of thousands.”Kusanagi’s boots continued to find new treasure to stomp in the debris fields: broken glass, gravel, mud, loose wood, contorted plastic, seaweed, and warped metal. But not humans, no fresh bodies. The rescue crews were already through this place. Kusanagi went with them on her first afternoon. She tuned out her thoughts as new headlines filled her unfocused retinas.[They] were talking about Kayabuki again. Of course they were, between journalists and social media users, but who could tell the living, dead, and machine apart?
  
    TOPIC: PRIME MINISTER
  
  
    (MDSI) Ousted Kayabuki cabinet protests national security law following biography legal pause
  
  
    (CBB) Chief Cabinet Secretary disputes ‘selfish’ PM Kayabuki refusal to evacuate in tsunami
  
  
    (NHTV) Video: Fleet air boss protests Kayabuki administration over favored anti-submarine jet retirement
  
  
    READ MORE . . .
  
At least one headline brought a smirk to the Major’s face. The ousted Chief Cabinet Secretary Takakura was a familiar face. He helped bring about the Individual Eleven incident almost four years ago, and now serving prison time on corruption charges. He was not the mastermind, but he brought Japan to the brink of war between America and Asian refugees; now he cried foul from his cell block over national security laws he helped codify. The same laws of which now censored his stalled biography.The secretary’s new replacement was having a difficult evening instead covering for Kayabuki’s attempt to stare down a tsunami. Probably not helped he was there too, staring down the disaster when Section Nine came to his and the staff’s rescue. And somewhere between all of the pointless news—a stray article bubbled to the top: some high ranking flight officer didn’t like the Prime Ministers snubbing the Americans again, this time over some foreign-licensed carrier strike fighter.
  
    TOPIC: TECHNOLOGY SCANDAL
  
  
    (CBB) East Sapporo traffic paralyzed for the third day as ransomware strikes rideshare company
  
  
    (MDSI) LOCUS SOLUS Japan executive board resigns after NPA probe into gynoid programming scandal
  
  
    READ MORE . . .
  
Kusanagi began to disassociate from the articles as her tired eyes spotted construction boats and the uncanny, remade Osaka beach close by.The headlines carried on and on still. Even for a brain of mostly machinery, the titles were bleeding together. The Locus Solus job stuck out to her, but she remembered little of it. She did little work on that case, Section Nine did—while she was away. Batou mentioned it in passing now and again as a real life horror story...After so many years as an investigator—inside and outside Section Nine—her own memory bled together too without assistance of external, cloud storage. It was two years now since she returned to Section Nine. In the same time, the work doubled and the bureaucracy tripled. The organization moved on without her in size and scale.According to Batou, Section Nine’s expansion was Chief Aramaki’s doing in a sense after losing her talents as team leader. She wasn’t sure whether to feel praise or insult. Did Section Nine need a ballooned operating budget and provincial teams across Japan to do their job without one, somewhat talented hacker like herself?Kusanagi did not want to downplay her abilities, or the team’s. However, believing herself to be top of the world fed an ego which forgot to believe in bigger, hungrier fish. She hoped the expansion of Section Nine made them less blind, not more blind to the dark corners of the world and the endless Net.As their on-and-off-again field commander, who was Major Kusanagi Motoko to them? It was a weird reintroduction in 2034. Some android lady walking into a conference room introduced by Aramaki to dozens of cybersecurity officers and police detectives as their new boss right after the Department of Health scandal.Workplace professionalism at Section Nine never dulled. Anyone deserving of being there was there. When Togusa and Batou took over vetting, they kept a tight ship. And yet, the massive team of “new” Section Nine took a while to adjust to her jumping back into leadership and all the new faces processing a commanding officer they knew little of. And two years on, some distance between herself and the new faces remained. Coming home didn’t fix all the holes she let behind...Then set aside the ranks, awards, and titles. Kusanagi Motoko was just a girl born from tragedy who found a motivated and lucky path in life. No destiny, no fate. She was just sometimes in the right place at the right time. All the strange and mysterious things she witnessed over the many years since World War Three could not be her own unique reality. They were a sliver of the vast, changing world Kusanagi could not keep up with. She couldn't be present for every minor discovery or advancement. And the world was advancing much too fast.The Major should be happy with her little life's taste of mystery, yet a dissatisfaction remained. It joined the other emotions: humor, despair, boredom, confusion, disgust, doubt, and anger.She felt this way before—been in this emotional soup before. The feeling of being lost, and always preceded a sudden change in her life. What would the new change be this time?A freezing, wetness flooded into Kusanagi’s combat boots as they faltered at the dark water’s edge. The hard clicking of underfoot debris faded into sloshing water and mud. The Major raised her eyes, closing out the endless-pointless list of headlines. The horizon and sky met in perfect, dark distance and brilliant with rare stars unseen by city nightlife.Kusanagi found herself on the Osaka beach. Once of smooth concrete sea walls, now just sea pebbles. A silly thought—if she kept walking, maybe her legs would’ve marched her into the sea. Of course not, but for a moment the odd thought brought a ghost of a smile to her cheeks.The smile slipped though because under the stars and boat lights, something—several somethings glittered in the dark amongst a dirty, rolling tide and the destroyed beach. Long, shiny and serpentine. Augmented by her night vision, Kusanagi could make out four blobs of silver fish skin along the shore and shifting about as the tide broke. But there was nothing living among the piled organic mounds. Large black-dead eyes gleamed, thought fogged over, amongst the silver against the boat lights nearby.“The Giant Oarfish. Do you know the legend, Batou?”Faded boots crunching on the new rocky shore halted twelve paces from the Major. Her purple bob cut spun gracefully in the humid evening air as similar eyes met the faded green glow of the Section Nine sub-commander’s unblinking “Sleepless Ranger” dish retina implants. The silver, saucer-like plates were a form of kill flash anti-reflection material which paired well with therm-optic camouflage but sometimes leaked the synthetic vision glow underneath when improperly maintained.“You heard me coming over, or did you detect me following you?” He asked as a non-answer.“I know you traced me by my cyber lobby. Didn’t see much point in telling you off.” Kusanagi shrugged back, her eyes returning to the giant fish corpses. If she was right, the bodies were fresh—brought in by the tsunami wake—and each measuring between three and seven meters in length. They were about average despite their reputation in fishermen folklore: messengers sent from the palace of Ryujin, the  kami (god) of oceans.Batou kept to the dry rocks as he closed his distance with Kusanagi. He stopped two steps from her shoulder. “If you can’t sleep, you should’ve invited me. The ground is still unstable out here.”“Sleep is still important even for someone who can’t shutoff their eyes. But I’m fine, thank you.” Kusanagi retorted, she raised a hand towards the dead oarfish. “You didn’t answer my question though—have you heard the story of the earthquake messengers?”“Kinda. See one, and they warn of a tsunami wave? They’re able to see through time and predict disaster.”“There’s a lot of animals our ancestors used to predict disaster. Birds, deer, and fish. Fishermen called them shrine maidens of the sea god’s palace. But yes, oarfish predicted disaster too.”Batou took a few more steps passed Kusanagi and knelt next to one of the dead sea creatures. “So, if we’re seeing them after the tsunami, does it mean they warned us too late? Or, is there another earthquake coming?”The giant of a cyborg prodded the dead carcass, pulling back withered skin which gleamed against the multi-sources of light within the night. Frilled fins extended at the flexing of the decaying muscles, turning a light purple-indigo. As he pulled part of the body into a straight contortion, its surface rippled like a cloudy mirror—similar to the surface activation of therm-optic camouflage.“I don’t think that is how the rules work,” the Major admit, uncertain of the full myth herself. “Either way, I’m not one to deal in superstition.”Batou eyed her. “I seem to recall you telling me that my spider tank developed their own soul. And I know you spent two years looking for Kuze on the Internet. Don’t tell me you aren’t a little superstitious...”Kusanagi offered an overly-human roll of her synthetic eyes. “We’re all a little crazy at some point or another.”The former Army Ranger shook his head. “Faith isn’t crazy. It might be delusional but its a biological phenomenon, a way to compensate for the unknown. We’re not creatures of pure logic because there’s no such thing. Logic comes from the same brain which produces belief and imagination. Logic is an emotion, just for a different biological purpose than faith because its faces inward rather than outward.”Kusanagi blew a wisp of humid air from her synthetic lungs. “You pull that off the Kyushu University website?”“I dabble, but I got it from my internal memory.”The Major huffed at Batou’s odd distinction. “And what about someone who never had a hormone system?”Batou shrugged with a slight chuckle, “Maybe human nature is just convergent mimicry. Give a robot human form long enough, and it might start singing in Japanese.”“Or maybe our human form limits us? I’ve spent all this time trying to be human, but maybe it holds me back?”Batou stood up and shifted is way over to the Major, grabbing her shoulder with both strength and gentile care she could not expect from him on the regular. He squeezed down, pushing against her false skin—Kusanagi wasn’t sure if it was to ground her, or to ground himself against her words.“You achieved a lot, or little. So what? What’s the matter with you? The last time you talked like this sorta nonsense, you disappeared for two years.”Kusanagi gaped at her sub-commander in surprise, leaning back from his grasp but unable or unwilling to escape it. Maybe his grasp was to ground her.“Could you stop with the angst and tell me what you’re thinking? At least tell me before you go doing something stupid you’ll regret a couple MORE years from now.”The Major finally balked and shrugged off his wrist. The giant cyborg continued, “Because either you’ll come back, or I’ll come find you.”“I’m not going to do anything. Not going anywhere or doing anything!  Maybe that is it?  An earthquake just hit the country, thousands are dead. I’m alive, but I can’t seem to feel like anything changed? The world didn’t end, just like it didn’t end after all the world wars and all the scholars in the world said it would.”“Hmm. Sticks and stones...” Batou muttered. “Whatever. You feel stuck? Like a dead fish on a beach? Is that it?”A flurry of confused emotions scrolled on Kusanagi’s face before settling on a deadpan stare. “How very funny of you... No, I woke up tonight and couldn’t sleep because I feel sad and I’m sad because I don’t know why I’m sad. Happy?”“Congratulations. You’re human,” Batou offered a smirk in return. “And happy? Maybe a little.”Kusanagi grimaced but couldn’t find it in herself to be angry at her friend. “I... You’re annoying, Batou. No, I’m not happy and it didn’t help.Yet despite her refusal, Batou remained quiet as if waiting for something. The seconds passed and Kusanagi couldn’t help it anymore. Her lips twitched upward. She didn’t know where it came from but she blew a nasally, spit-less inflection which warbled into a chuckle. A chuckle she couldn’t figure out from where, but the ice of her mind seem to give a little. Shifting a little as something else loosened free—give an inch, take a mile—light snowfall, and a glacier moves.She covered her lips and forced herself to calm down. A quick neural check confirmed Batou didn’t just inject her cyber lobby with a laughing virus or something. The chuckle came from inside her. Kusanagi sighed.“Maybe you’re right. Try being human long enough, and the different might not matter...”Kusanagi smirked at Batou.“Okay. I’m happy a little... Not much, but you helped the mood. I still haven’t figured out what this emotion is.”Batou offered his own half smirk, curling his left-side lip and tilting his head off center a little like a curious dog. “Better, better. You want to talk about it some more or you got something else in mind? These fish are pretty cool, you know? Even if their forecasting is pretty poor.”The former Army Ranger took two steps back from the surf. He then sat down on the gravel beach with a shoveling of pebbles and the thud of his b@tt. Whoever he borrowed his own military clothes from would probably be complaining in the morning. Still, Batou patted the gravel ground to his right.“Here, come sit with me.”“Okay,” the Major nodded with a thin smile. She sauntered over and sat cross-legged in the rocks and dirt. “I got something for you then. A navy legend about oarfish. It’s a somewhat recent tale, I doubt you’ve heard it?”Batou shrugged. “Never claimed to be a sailor, but do tell.”“So... Back during the Third World War, know—how Tokyo sank from nuclear attack? Do you remember the weapon used?”The former Army Ranger thought it over for a moment. “It was Russian right? Some kind of nuclear torpedo?”Kusanagi nodded. “Mm-hmm. The Status-6 Poseidon nuclear torpedo. A standalone, first-and-second strike crew-optional nuclear drone with supercaviation. Tokyo was hit by one estimated at more than fifty megatons, though it is unclear if the Soviets used one or maybe two. We just know it was Russian.”“So what’s this legend?”“It’s how we know it was Russian anyway. After the attack, the United States Navy retreated from the West Pacific and China filled the naval security void. It effectively ended the Article Nine agreement in the Japanese Constitution because the Americans were suppose to guarantee our common defense so we had no world-class military.”The cruel thing about all of it was we lost sixty percent of our population in a day. The United States lost its other forward bases to second strike nuclear bombardment so they had no fleet to offer. Our emergency government tried to prepare for an invasion of our Home Islands by the Sino-Soviet Alliance. And in some trick of fate, civil wars took up their time in the follow up nuclear attacks so we managed to dodge the invasion in the last days of the war.”Batou glanced down at the Major. “Okay? I learned about all this in high school,”“Well, I read about all this when I was still a toddler... Kinda.” Kusanagi shrugged.“Kinda?”“You know... I didn’t exactly have a childhood.”“Right, full body cyborg and all that.”“I did go to school though.” Kusanagi added.“Oh, okay.”The Major continued, “Well, the Russians actually had a fleet of Poseidon ready to hit multiple American allies. The Philippines, South Korea, Australia, Singapore. But something interesting happened. Three days after the attack, the Japanese submarine force nationalized the Nippon Geological Survey and Meteorological Agency and enlisted their seismic buoy arrays to scan for Sino-Soviet submarine activity because our satellites were useless during this time.”“So, they found submarines?” Batou asked, his eyes darting between the open sea and Kusanagi’s eyes.Kusanagi shook her head. “They found nothing, but suddenly there was a lot of surprise volcanic activity when Japanese subs started getting close to Izu Oshima Island, just south of Tokyo. In hindsight, it should’ve been obvious to the Russian submariners they picked a poor part of the seafloor to hide in. At the gap of the Izu-Bonin Trench—seventy miles east of Tokyo Bay. Like on our literal doorstep.”“If I remember my geography, the depth there is like 9000 meters deep? And that’s the big island just south of Tokyo?”The Major nodded. “Yep. And this strange seismic behavior seemed way too slow and too isolated for magma displacement.”Batou raised a gray-haired eyebrow. “So this was a sub? The sub?”“I’m getting there,” Kusanagi said, patting his shoulder. “The navy sent out three subs to chase the noise. But the start of the trench is very wide and not well mapped. If you go low, you’re bound to crash into something because few nations properly mapped this part of the seabed at the start of the submarine cable age. Then out of nowhere, flocks of these giant oarfish started to appear. There were so many of them, you could pick them out with sonar.”“Do oarfish usually live that deep?”Kusanagi shook her head, and she checked her external memory to be sure. “Their ideal environment is suppose to be closer to the coast and between 500 and 1000 meters depth. But there they were at 2000 meters, somehow flocks of them, gathered in clusters like balloons near this odd seismic activity. Some sub skipper thought, why not follow these schools of giant fish?”“And then...?”“They found her. The Volgograd. An Oscar II-class nuclear missile submarine with a Belgorod command extension module. If you’ve ever seen a diagram of them, they’re nine or fifteen meters elongated at the center to accommodate midget submarines as a sorta tender or mother ship. This one was super modified for every stealth function imaginable—early thermal distribution, ducted fan propulsion. And a free motion, six-legged, fiber-squid limbs for undersea maintenance and sea cable manipulation.”“And it was carrying or commanding the Poseidon torpedoes?”Kusanagi nodded, making another affirmative hum.“So they sank her with every torpedo they had. We got our revenge because a bunch of fish pointed the way.”Batou shook his head. “Wow... D@mn...”A silence fell over the two police commanders. Kusanagi watched Batou stare toward the dark sea, deep in thought. Batou was easy to flabbergast but he wasn’t easily stumped. Somehow she landed a rare blow. Kusanagi allowed herself a toothy grin, hidden away from Batou’s eyes as she looked towards Osaka Bay as well.The bigger cyborg finally coughed but Kusanagi didn’t meet his eyes immediately.“Major...”She glanced up at Batou. “Yeah?”“You got that off the Based32 forums... Didn’t you?”It was Kusanagi’s turn to gawk. She glanced towards the sea, then Batou with sudden wide eyes.“I would never...”“B@llsh@t, I’m looking at the forum post from nine years ago right here!”“No, its a slightly popular story among submarine—”“User: PotatoChip!Yokai@23, (ID: 458963) Forum Title: How the JSDF sank a Gojira Sub... (Follow the Fishes), Postmark Date...”Kusanagi scrambled, but unable to blush, raised her arms up at her sub-commander in protest. “No! No! Hold on, wait—! ”The sudden shouting and chuckling erupting from Kusanagi and Batou managed to bring out an unseen audience. Flashlights cut through the darkness, drawing their attention to the concrete ruins at the top of the beach wall. A squad of green camo JSDF troops with reflector belts and vests paused at the top of the hill, shining their lights down on the two.“Hey, you two. Are you alright out here? We heard a commotion. What unit are you with?”Kusanagi tried to rise to attention but Batou unceremoniously used her shoulder as a leaning stool to lift himself off the pebble beach. She grumbled at him but also rose once he was standing without assistance.“Sorry about that, I’m Major Kusanagi Motoko. Public Security. We were just checking the shoreline. Found some monster fish.”The Major pointed to the dead piles of giant oarfish scrunched along the rocks. Apparently it was enough to make the Army soldiers forget about the odd display they found two, strange military-dressed cyborgs jostling one another on a ruined beach after a nation-breaking catastrophe. They too were jumping down the rocks in sudden curiosity at the giant oarfish.“Wow! Get a picture!”By camera light and boat light, Kusanagi felt the days and thoughts of darkness slip away back into her forgotten nightmares and nostalgic memories. If only for a time, Batou bumped her shoulder to draw her attention. As their odd-artificial eyes met, they traded soft smiles."You're quicker on the draw, Batou. But you take out all the mystery, and all the fun..."Despite all the events, all the adventures and tragedy, the lifelong friends were still smiling. There was still life found in the aftermath of catastrophe. And once more, they began again—anew.'
User: Summarize the chapter based on the content provided, ensuring to follow the set format and emphasize key aspects within the specified length.
User: Summarize the chapter based on the content provided, ensuring to follow the set format and emphasize key aspects within the specified length.
Assistant: