I'm a soldier, znatchit ya... I'm a soldier, and that means...
...i otvetchik i sud'ya ...that I am both defendant and judge.
Ya stoyu na dvuh kontsah ognya I stand at both ends of the fire.
Ogibaya virazhi, Leaning into the curves,
obgonyaya smert' i zhizn', overtaking life and death,
ya begu srazit'sya s ten'yu lzhi I'm running to fight the shadow of lies.
Skol'ko b nitej ne plyol obman, No matter how tangled the web of deception is woven,
pokazhet lik sveta istina... truth will always illuminate the outline of the light...
Save your tears for the day...
...when the pain is far behind.
On your feet, come with me.
We are soldiers, stand or die.
Save your fears, take your place.
Save them for the Judgment Day.
Fast and free, follow me.
Time to make the sacrifice.
We rise or fall...
Off to the ladies' room?
Looks that way.
Do we go after her?
Hang on a second.
The bathroom's walls and floor are fully tiled.
The windows are fixed fittings and have aluminum bars on the outside.
I think she could break them easily, but she probably won't do anything that rough.
It's an oven out here...
Here's a souvenir.
A beer?
Must be nice, being able to break down alcohol in your internal plants...
Still, don't you think that the difficulty level of this test for new recruits is a little off?
Get serious.
If you can't beat something like this, it means you don't have the right stuff as a trainee.
Well, yeah, but still...
- Batou. - Yeah?
What's the situation over there?
Reading the paper and drinking some coffee.
Not you. I meant them.
So did I.
They're totally relaxed.
Haven't they stopped to consider that they may have been planted with false memories?
That's the first thing I taught 'em how to spot.
How many are left?
Six people in three teams.
Let's move on to the next set.
Roger.
Is this the last team?
Yeah, as much as I hate to say it.
I'm sorry, sir! I lost the target!
Did you now? So, what's your next move?
We'll try doing another sweep of the area...
You will, huh? Well, good luck with that.
You're being a little hard on them, aren't you?
What's the point of feeling sorry for 'em?
Major, it's over. Let's head back to the office.
Major?
I'm not getting through.
Think she got ticked off and headed back?
Is this a hack?
Batou.
Batou?
So this really is a hack...
I didn't feel anything slip past my four layers of defense barriers.
If the trainees are behind this, they're pretty impressive.
The Memory Store
So, this is the finish line, huh?
What's this sensation?
The sensations being picked up by my skin's touch receptors are definitely real...
But in spite of that, this whole thing doesn't seem real at all...
Prosthetic bodies?
Aren't they adorable?
The children, I mean.
Do you run this place?
Something like that.
What would you like me to take care of for you?
Take care of?
That's right.
My customers leave their external memories here, and I look after them.
All of the items here might seem to be utterly worthless to another person,
but each and every one of them is stuffed full of its owner's memories.
That's why I sometimes feel as if I'm suffocating...
...from the psychic imprint that they give off.
Psychic imprint...
Were you drawn here by them, too?
These are rare items, created back in the early days of full prosthetic bodies.
The memories surrounding these two children are always painful for me.
But at the same time, it also allows me to experience...
...the joy of looking after the memories of others.
What sort of memories do you sense between these...
Oh, dear, is it already this late?
I'm terribly sorry, but I'm closing early today.
Please drop by again when you have time.
I'll tell you all about them then.
Oh, now I get it...
That strange sensation... It was nostalgia.
C'mon, big man. Let's call it a night, too.
We can make our report to the Major tomorrow.
Dammit, Major, don't disappear on us like that.
Where the hell have you been?
Oh, around.
So, how many applicants do we have who look like they might make it onto the team?
There's just this one who came up through GSDA Military Intelligence...
...who was recommended by that guy the Chief knows.
That's not very reassuring...
I can't deny the lack of quality material,
but one thing's for sure, and that's that we have an urgent need for extra personnel.
But if we lower the difficulty any further, all it'll do is weaken us overall.
So what do we do? Do follow-up testing at some later date?
I'll talk it over with the Chief and decide from there.
Hey, do you think I'm cut out to be an instructor?
If you're not cut out for it, then no one is.
I'm calling it a day.
Hold the fort.
C'mon, don't worry about it.
Even with me, before I came to Section 9, the Major would've shaken me in five minutes.
What, seriously? I guess you work at a fairly low level.
What's with you?
So are you saying that you can stalk a target...
...who can up and vanish like the Major does?
Damn straight I can.
A waking dream?
I'm not sure, but it might've been something more... spiritual than that.
Well, when I roll over in my sleep,
I sometimes have an out-of-body experience and see some pretty weird stuff...
Really?
So, have you ever sensed any psychic energy from something that you own?
Well, I've had the sensation of my car...
...being an extension of my arms and legs while I'm on a long drive, if that's what you mean.
Hey, why don't we call Courtin and go crazy for once?
I'd better pass. There's something that I have to do today.
What the hell is the Major doing, retracing the same route she took yesterday?
Did she realize that I was tailing her?
I've been waiting for you.
I had a feeling that you would be coming right about now.
Why's that?
Because these children were getting tired of waiting, too.
Oh.
Then I'd like to get right to it and hear about these kids.
My, but you're impatient...
All right.
These two prosthetic bodies were kept carefully preserved by the boy,
who has now grown into a man.
When the boy was six years old, he was in a plane crash.
Apparently, it was a terrible accident in which most of the passengers were killed.
I've heard that even those who were rescued all died soon afterwards.
All except for this boy, and a girl who happened to be in the seat next to him.
These two were miraculously spared, but the girl never regained consciousness,
and the boy was completely paralyzed except for his left arm.
When the boy's injuries were healed, he instantly understood the situation he was in.
Such as the fact that his parents, who were aboard the plane with him, were dead,
and why it was that his distant relatives, who kindly came to visit him at first,
soon began to distance themselves from him.
He tried as best he could to accept all this in his young mind.
And then he began to think of the little girl who was sleeping in the bed next to his,
this girl who was in the same straits as him, as his only friend in the world.
"Please, let her wake up."
He prayed that again and again as he painstakingly continued...
...to fold paper cranes with his one good hand.
But then...
Something happened to the girl, didn't it?
A while later, the girl's condition took a sudden turn for the worse.
BP 60. No diastolic.
Give her one unit each of lidocaine and epi!
I can't get an ECF reading.
BP's down to 40.
Prep the OR immediately!
The next morning, the boy was told that she had gone far away.
Two years passed.
He spoke to no one, simply spending his days silently folding cranes.
It was almost as his continuing to fold these cranes...
...was a grave duty that was assigned to him.
Did he say anything today?
Just that he wanted some white origami paper.
Then one day, when all the legal proceedings and so on from the crash were over,
one of the boy's relatives arrived with a young doctor.
This is what they said to the boy.
"If you're interested,"
"there is a treatment that will let us completely replace your paralyzed body."
"Are you brave enough to try it?"
"If it goes as planned, you'll be able to live a normal life, just like you used to."
The boy didn't answer.
But it wasn't because the boy wasn't brave enough.
Do you know why?
It was because the boy had no incentive to want return to his old, normal life.
After all, the boy had no interest in anything other than folding his cranes at this point.
And so, the adults around him gave up on talking him into it.
But there was a little girl who gave him the nudge he needed to open up.
Oh, that's who this girl is.
Yes. This girl had already successfully undergone the full prosthetics treatment.
I expect that the young doctor introduced the two of them...
...as a last resort to try to convince the boy.
Apparently, the girl came to see him every day.
She was a cheerful, energetic girl.
Even though it must have been very hard for her to get used to a full prosthetic body,
she never said a single word about it to the boy.
Not only that, but when the topic came up, she even recommended...
...that the boy get a full prosthetic body, as well.
The boy listened to her in silence, but one day, he suddenly blurted out,
"Can you fold origami cranes in your prosthetic body?"
"If you can do it, then I guess I wouldn't mind getting a full prosthetic body, too."
But even though she could support herself and move around,
she was still unable to convey commands for subtle movements to her body.
Perhaps the little girl didn't like to lose...
Apparently, she tried and tried to fold a crane.
I think that the girl was a source of hope for the little boy.
But they were both still very young...
The boy became dejected, and said,
"If I won't be able to fold cranes for the girl who died, I'm okay with staying the way I am."
After that day, the boy never saw the girl again.
She left, saying, "I'm going to practice making origami cranes...
...so I can fold them for you, okay?"
Yes, she was the girl that he had been convinced was dead.
Why didn't she tell the boy this?
She must have had a very pressing reason not to.
But that day, the boy made up his mind to get a prosthetic body, too.
And he swore to himself that he would go and see...
...the girl who had vanished from the hospital.
Some time later, the boy changed into a full prosthetic body...
...and endured the difficult rehabilitation process,
and apparently grew up into a first-rate prosthetic user.
Because there weren't many children with full prosthetic bodies at that time,
it must have been more difficult than anyone could imagine.
But when he thought of how that little girl had endured the same suffering,
he was able to overcome it easily.
So tell me, did he find the girl?
A girl with a full prosthetic body who had been in a plane crash...
You would think that that would have been enough of a clue to go on.
But he wasn't able to find the girl.
Where did he find the girl's prosthetic body, then?
Apparently, he found it being preserved as a specimen while he was at a lab in college.
He knew at once that it was the girl he was looking for,
but he could never track down the girl herself, who had swapped into a larger body.
That's why memories I get from the girl are completely blank even now.
What about the boy? Is he...
In the closing days of the war, he was shipped out overseas and never returned.
He hasn't come back here since then, so I suppose it's possible that he's dead.
Oh...
Thanks for telling me the story.
I bet that even now, the girl is still searching for the first boy she ever loved.
The first boy she ever loved?
The ice in your iced tea has melted.
Yeah, I know.
What's up?
Well, it's about the test for the recruits...
I wanna rethink the difficulty setting, and let 'em have another try.
What do you think?
What brought this on?
Nothing, really.
I was just remembering how I didn't have my act together when I first joined up, either,
and I got chewed out by my commanding officer.
Why not? Maybe nobody can do things well right off the bat.
Yeah.
It takes a load off my mind to hear you say that.
Finding out a galaxy...
...of planets and stars within me...
Listening to each of them...
...singing the same silent melody...
I've never seen such beauty...
In possibility...
No speck of doubt or fear...
Wake up!
I hear a voice,
hear a voice calling out to me...
I see inside,
see the light now ever holding me...
All the truth, all I need...
...to make of this reality, it's inside...
The beauty within the shell...
I hear a voice,
hear a voice calling out to me...
I see inside,
see the light now ever holding me...
All the truth, all I need...
...to make of this reality, it's inside...
Right here within the shell...