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I
They have shared space much closer in the past than the one they inhabit now, but here in this room he feels almost overwhelmed by her presence. There's nothing in here besides themselves, what they've brought with them, and a single computer in the corner. They're forty-three floors off the ground and from here they've a spectacular view of Japan below. Saitou ignores it entirely. He has a gun to assemble. His superior stands beside him, and does not bother with the binoculars that she has brought, instead choosing to observe the world nakedly and silently. The sun casts a gold hue over the separate universe that is the view as it sets, and he chances a look at her as he snaps the scope to the barrel. She is straight-backed and unblinking, immovable and indestructible.
Her body is all faux-flesh and robotics underneath that, but she has a mind of her own – brain cells hidden from view that will wear down someday – but for all of her hidden humanity, he thinks that she might never die. Today they are doing nothing out of the ordinary: they wait in this room for their target. All it will take is one clean shot and the case will be over; she's here on intelligence that the mark's contacts have been using this room as a base and will attempt to run a back-up program through the desktop to her left. Knowing that she is here to intervene from on high feels like God herself is standing by him, surveying her creation. As far as he's aware, she has played no role in the creation of New Port, but in this moment that means nothing. She might as well be fifty foot tall and her breath the very wind for all the power she represents right now.
Confidence is not what shakes him. It's not that he doubts her backup, nor lacks faith in his own abilities, but something has him awed in this moment. Something about this woman makes him marvel, and he isn't entirely sure whether she's as human as she appears. Surely, surely, she knows what she does to others. One does not become the very best without knowing their own strengths and weaknesses, but she has never made even a passing comment about how unshakable she is. She has faced down tanks and the elite of the elite and he can only guess at what else in her spare time, and she has not once shied from duty or appeared cowed in any way. They are worlds apart, and not just genetically – cybernetic she might be and constant confidence she might exude, but she is still very much human underneath it all. Where he is mostly flesh, composed and reliable and her soldier through and through, she is shameless and humble all at once and far more complex than a person ought to be.
She blinks, and he loads the rifle's chambers without a word. God raises her binoculars to seek out impurity and finds it stopped at a red light forty-three floors below.
II
Some days, the world fails to amuse her and she falls to the back of their motley crew, quiet and grumpy. Sometimes she is bored, and it's then he knows her best. She is easy enough to entertain: he talks about everything and nothing all at the same time when there is a lull in their duties. Most fail to look past the muscle and assume him to have no brains, but he is more than able to discuss the world with her for hours if she so wishes. If philosophers study reality and existence, then she is easily the most devoted to her craft. She thinks far faster than he can ever hope to match and speaks her mind on endless topics.
It's the days that she's despondent that he's at just as much of a loss as the rest of the world should be. She never drums her fingers unless she's like this, and now she taps out an irregular beat on the bar top as she looks into her glass. The city does not interest her on these days. It seems to Batou that he might be the only one that notices when she gets like this – their colleagues say nothing if they know at all. Her listlessness is maddening and he is the only one able to help. He has his doubts whether what he's doing can even be classified as help.
Being unable to do anything fills him with unease, something he's only ever experienced around her. Whether or not his presence does anything for her, he stays by her side, and comments on anything that comes to mind. Sometimes she speaks back. Whatever she says never sits right with him. He likes to think that she's lost the filter that everyone's born with, that she's speaking just as randomly as he is, about anything that comes to mind, but that doesn't seem right. Where he talks about mindless, ever-changing topics, she always ends up back at her favourite subject. When she's at her best, she speaks with such fervour of the endless possibilities the internet provides, and when she's at her worst she muses about things he would deem impossible were she not herself. More than once he has worried that she might shuck her physical body in favour of becoming a solely data-based consciousness. It would suit her, he thinks, and almost hates himself for thinking it.
She is all at the same time exists as herself and no one at all and everyone who has ever wondered about their existence. If she decides to leave her shell behind and upload herself to the net, then so be it. If anyone is to become a non-physical representation of complexity, it might as well be her.
Even so, he is the last person that wants to push her to disappearing. He thinks that if he loves her he'll damn well love her in whatever form she chooses to take, whether it's in this body or another or none at all, but if he can keep her anchored for as long as possible then he'll do whatever it takes. When he garners no response for too long he switches topics and hopes he knows her mind well enough to fan whatever doubt fills her away. He thinks she doubts the world more than her own self, but the thought doesn't reassure him, and she keeps her thoughts locked up.
The world outside is smothered by night's thick blanket when the side of her mouth quirks upward, and everything is safe again. He tells himself that the next time she turns morose from pent-up unanswerable questions he'll be ready, and knows he's lying to himself.
III
At four minutes past the hour, the office is almost entirely empty. Toward the end of the year the mornings are quieter somehow – the light isn't as bright as it should be, stifled by thick cloud as it spills in through the windows. It looks like it might rain. The Major stands with her back to the door and looks out at the world. She's wearing as little today as she did the day before, and the day before that. He ignores her, and ignores her ass, and doesn't think about anything as he takes a seat.
She doesn't bother to comment as he lights up. The silence they share absolutely isn't camaraderie, and neither is it professional. It's simply two people keeping to themselves, not wanting to understand one another more than they absolutely have to – or at least, he hopes so. They know each other well enough to give and take orders and on occasion speak their minds about whatever case is at hand, but anything more crosses a line. He keeps his head turned carefully from her silhouette. She stays by the windows with her arms crossed and her hip jutted to the left just-so, and sixteen minutes pass before she moves. He's halfway through his cigarette and the Chief has entered the room to discover to his displeasure that they are the only two personnel who have bothered to turn up so far.
It's the Major who takes the questions and enters discussion easily, as though she hadn't been content with the silence that had filled the room previously. Paz ignores what she says and breathes out a long stream of smoke: he is busy entertaining the idea that for just over quarter of an hour his commander hasn't had a single thought pass through her mind. While he does not pretend to understand her, it does not stop him from wondering about her from time to time. She seems almost too good to be human. Maybe she's full cyborg and her ghost is just another part of her programming, wired so well that none of them notice a difference between her and someone organic. She's still and quiet as the grave when she's contemplative, and he doesn't think he's ever known a person to be so much like a machine before. He knows he won't ever meet another that's even half as similar to her.
When Aramaki leaves again the room falls back to silence and he thinks that maybe he's alone in the office. He keeps his eyes to himself and finishes the cigarette: from the windows there is an impatience noise, and he thinks that the day will end up chaotic. There is nothing that could tempt him now to turn. He knows there is no wrath to be had from her, and yet he wants no part of whatever mood she has been swept into. If she needs his help, she will call for him.
She takes her leave a long moment later, and he thinks he sees from the corner of his eye her hand lifted in a farewell. He reaches inside his jacket and retrieves another cigarette and wonders when the rest of Section 9 will turn up.
IV
She is a storm that has been building pressure for longer than he cares to think about. It's doubtful whether any of them have seen her truly angry before – they have heard her shout and they have seen her throw punches, but they have never seen her truly lose their cool so much that their heads ring with the force of her anger and her throat turns hoarse from yelling. It's an unspoken fear of Section 9 that one day they might see their commander emotional. Were she anyone else they would worry about her stoicism, but with her, it is not so. She is not herself if she is teary or smiling or anything but entirely collected.
The worst part is knowing that she is nowhere near as cool as she makes herself out to be. Much like the storm she represents, underneath the front she is endlessly churning up new ideas and pushing herself further and further. It's obvious: it's in the way she speaks about herself and the existence of the world and about the net, and it's in the way she devotes herself wholeheartedly to her job and nothing else. She is every bit as human as the rest of them are, no matter how hard she might try to hide it, and hide she does try to. Maybe not all of them see it – Ishikawa thinks that it's because he's seen her through peace and wartime and everything in between that he understands what happens beneath the surface. Once upon a time he knew her as almost jovial, but those days have long since passed. The majority would call her introverted and quiet, and they're not wrong, but that's not all there is to her.
Now she sits with her legs crossed and contemplates life and spends even more time than he does diving. He chooses not to ask why. Such passivity suits her, and wrongly so. She is from the field and works best with a gun in her hands. The Major is meant to right wrongs in this bizarre world, not concern herself with the way it's developed into something that might very well be sentience, if the net is anything to go by. He thinks that she likely doesn't understand her own mind most days.
When there are spare moments between each stage of reconnaissance, he wonders what she will be like when she finally swells to bursting with emotion. He thinks her tongue will be flashes of lightning and her words thunder directly above their heads. It will be terrifying and there will be no respite, no rain to dampen the rage that has spent so long pent up inside her. The clouds in her world may well part and let her alone, and they might as likely remain there for the rest of her life. Knowing her, she will shoulder the burden as she has with everything else in her life and continue without asking for help from him or anyone. He thinks that it might be sad, but he has his own demons to entertain. He is not the one to be able to help.
He hears that the day she does snap, it's raining, and he finds himself unamused by the fallacy. There may well have been a time long ago when it would have been the utmost relief for her to burst and cast her fury down, but no more.
V
They know their leader is not flawless, but that does not change the fact that it is almost impossible to catch her off-guard. It's not as though she's never made mistakes before; more than once their intelligence hasn't held strictly true and they've found themselves needing to shoot their way to safety. In those situations they are glad that the mistakes stop there. The Major has always seen to it that they've escaped with their lives no matter who they've been pitted against, and the last thing they wish is for her to fall on the battlefield.
Their curiosity is not fuelled by malevolence by any means. They are only curious, and men, and their world has never been free of mischief. None would admit to it publicly, but they all wish to see her stumble or get flustered at least once. If they've spoken of it to each other, they've spoken in quiet voices and never bandied names about. Bouma has a thousand yen riding on an unstable floor panel. He sees people trip on them daily and figures if anything is going to make her lose her step, it's going to be shoddily-made flooring. It's a better gamble than the cleavage of some passing beauty; he doesn't think that the Major has ever been distracted by some shell's appearance.
She's never once professed herself as omnipotent and they do not see her as such, though they knew her to be capable at most everything. She's the last person any one of them would want to cross – she acts with the maturity of someone that's lived five lifetimes already and has tried her hand at almost everything, or so it seems. None of them know how old she is, nor do they have any intention of finding out. It's not so much that she's a lady and that it's rude – she drinks just as well as any of her men and shoots straighter than all of them combined – but it's unfamiliar ground. One does not charge into battle without knowing the area well.
Months pass. Outside of missions, the Major never once trips in or out of government property. She also remains as articular as ever, and the one time they as an entire group find themselves caught in the rain, she is the sole person that produces an umbrella. Her team thinks that maybe they are never going to see their money change hands, that in the outside world, she will never falter. They are okay with that. Just as they forget to watch her every step carefully, the tanks develop sentience.
Of all the people in their section, she was the last person they thought would be unable to answer their questions. She's spent more than enough time online and in libraries to know the finer points of most, if not all, philosophical arguments – and yet, at the first sign of what are wes and why do we exists, her eyebrows lift high and stay hidden behind her bangs. The ones that are around to see it stare and exchange glances and know that this is the closest they'll ever see her surprised, and as the tanks surround her and bombard her with endless questions, it morphs into annoyance. To the untrained eye it probably wouldn't appear monumental: she has snapped at Batou plenty of times and made him step back into line, but it's something that everyone has come to expect. If nothing else, they're satisfied from then on that she feels more than just pensiveness and self-assurance.
VI
Initiation to Public Safety thrust its newest members into many an unfamiliar situation and introduced them to just as many strange new faces. While only the best were recruited, the change was often world-altering. For the most part, mercenaries had to adjust to new office hours and for those who had remained as organic as was possible, new cybernetic implants as well. For a police offer, the change didn't seem too drastic – Togusa was told that he would need to change nothing about his person and was welcome to stay full-human if he so wished, and getting up early to arrive at his new station was nothing he couldn't handle. All this and more – the paperwork, the being unable to return home some nights – was no new thing. The people were.
He'd fully expected big, burly men. Section 9 had been introduced to him as the government's counter-terrorism department. Terrorists, his mind said, were men of muscle for the most part and wouldn't refrain from using force to achieve their ideals. Counter-terrorists would reasonably then consist of even more muscle than the criminals they dispatched. He could not have been more wrong. Almost everyone in the new department surprised him the moment they greeted him: most surprising of all its members was the sole woman of the group, who seemed slight and shrewd and proved herself to be the most worthy time after time after time. Even the biggest of them rarely looked out of place in this strange, cruel world, and they functioned better than he'd thought humanly possible.
Then again, his mind reasons, none of them can really be considered human. Or can they?
In the months following his being hired, he finds himself slotting neatly into place besides the rest of them. He learns how to pick up on his colleagues' moods and knows when to take his leave from a briefing. He even joins them for drinks more than once, and finds himself embarrassed in the morning when he's the only one that turns up hungover. They work together and they work well, but he notices that he's the odd one out more than once. It takes a little over a week for him to realise that it is because he is not like them.
At first he thinks it is because so little of him has been augmented, but as time passes he realises it is because he is so much more than just a solitary figure as the rest of his comrades are. If he casts his mind back to the very beginning he realises that he can think of no situation where they are with other people – it isn't as though teamwork slows them down, for they need to work together to achieve the best results, but when office hours are over they drift apart and return to their natural state. He thinks that maybe the idea of togetherness means nothing to them.
He thinks this until he sees the Major and her second drinking together. This proves itself to be a regular occurrence and every time he sees it it bemuses him. He watches from a distance the first time and does his best to ignore them all the next times he stumbles across it happening: they do not speak as he lingers or passes by, but by no means are they ignoring each other, either. They sit close enough that their knees and elbows brush, and their backs hunch in almost the same way. He thinks it's strange for the Major to sit with her legs apart and then thinks that it's even stranger for her to keep company outside of work. She isn't someone that he thinks he'll ever know what she's like, no matter how much effort he devotes to their friendship: he could know her for ten years and still have no idea how do deal with her, probably. He knows that she makes no pretence of being indomitable: when she isn't at her best she refuses to hide away and tackles it as she would anything else, and the world is her audience, but he forgets often that she is a person like them. For all that she's on the same wavelength as the rest of her men, she is still the best in the world at what she does.
In all the months he's known her, she's never shown herself to depend on anyone but herself and one other. He wonders if it's obvious to the rest of the world – it must be. It can't be something that only he's noticed. Batou goes to her when Togusa supposes she needs company most and must know what to say, for his opinion is never discounted, nor is he ever silenced, and most important of all he is able to make her smile honestly from time to time. At first he thinks it's just good comradeship, and then he thinks it might be flirting, and after a long time of watching them interact he decides that not a damn soul knows what's going on, least of all those two. He would think of discussing it with the others were they the type to indulge in gossip, but the urge is always stifled, and he finds himself wondering from afar instead.
If it requires a name he supposes it might be called absolute faith, and it's something that transcends the status of both work and personal relationships: far too often he sees the Major pull rank and tell him to step down and listen to her commands, but they are more equals than not, and he thinks that everyone knows it. Motokoooo, Ishikawa mocks once they've been disbanded and yet not split up, and doesn't suffer nearly as much as he should.
He lets them to it, and if he watches from afar and tries to figure out what it is, then he keeps it to himself.