Death In The Shell Ch 00 Prologue

Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow nor the In Death Series by J.D. Robb.

Death in the Shell by ElectricOutcast

Prologue

It had been two years since she rejoined what was formerly known as Section 9, it was another year before when she and her partners were to break away from their old Government to become an independent spy network sanctioned by the U.N. Motoko Kusanagi could remember that timeline very well before that fateful encounter. She could never guess that a simple capture of a cyber-terrorist would lead to one of the most fulfilling moments in her life.

She wasn't a stranger to being alone on a stakeout, wires plugged to the back of her neck listening to voices in her head and sorting through said voices to find one particular voice and what it was planning. The sting that night had been almost too simple you could make a Hello Kitty game out of it. There had been overwhelming evidence against this terrorist that capturing him alive was completely optional, after all the death penalty would've been inevitable had he been captured alive.

"Major," Motoko heard the voice of her sniper Saito inside her head. "I got a clear head-shot of the target, awaiting your confirmation to take the shot."

Motoko slid off her sunglasses, "Make it so, Saito."

You could hear a pin drop when Saito gave out two bullets, one for the terrorist and one for the potential partner in crime. Those two bullets would be the only things found at the murder scene and that assassination would be marked as a kill sanctioned by the U.N. and it would all be swept under the rug.

Satisfied with the accomplishment, Motoko proceeded to disconnect the wires from her neck and was ready to pack up and go, but not before she heard the noise. The noise belonged to an old soda can that fell off an old dumpster, it was followed by a squeak that almost felt like it belonged to a mouse, but the whimpers were 100% human. Normally she wouldn't have given the noise much thought, but after the events of rescuing 20,000 kidnapped children including the daughter of her former comrade, Togusa, she figured to investigate the source of this noise by checking out the alley that the dumpster was at.

***

Frightened would not have been the word to describe what went through this little girl, she escaped a room that she could barely remember now, except for the flash of red lights from a building across the way. She escaped shouts of people, car horns, a bad drug deal that left her looking at a bloody man, she remember crawling into the alleyway that was littered with trash alongside a broken recycler. She preferred to hide in the dark because she didn't want that monster to find her. The monster who called her Little Girl and she called him Daddy.

Already crying from fright at the fallen soda can, she hid herself deeper in the cardboard box big enough to hide in. So deep in her sobs, she didn't notice the female stranger gently falling down on the ground, feet first. It wasn't until she saw a big black shadow, covering the faint moonlight, that she finally took notice of the female figure kneeling a few feet away from her.

Motoko took a very intense look at this little girl who wore nothing but a tattered night dress, she didn't need the X-Ray features in her eyeballs to know that her arm was broken and that there was blood on her hands and her face. It angered her inside when she figured out that this girl ran away from something very violent. But her face didn't show it because she had a feeling that anger would have frightened this girl even more

"It's okay, little one, I'm not here to hurt you," Motoko said to her in a voice as gentle as silk.

It triggered something in that little girl's brain, she realized that she never received any kindness from anybody. Not from the man who'd hurt her, not even from the woman who locked her in the various closets. This woman, who wore nothing but a black jumpsuit and armed to the teeth with guns and grenades, was talking to her as if she was an angel.

"Come on out, little one, I just want to help you," Motoko called out in that same gentle tone.

Slowly, this little girl used whatever energy was left of her, to walk to Motoko like an injured puppy. She fell into the angel's arms and Motoko began to cradle her 8 year old body as if she were a one year old. The little girl looked at this woman and finally noticed her violet eyes, her purple hair. She noticed how Motoko didn't smile at her, instead her face was full of focus, determination and a drive to do what's right.

"My name is Motoko," she said to the girl. "Do you have a name, little one?"

"Little Girl," was all she could say before she had passed out.

What the little girl didn't know was that Motoko had already dispatched her husband Batou to bring an ambulance to her location. There was something about this girl that struck Motoko and she was willing to find out what it was by outright going with her to said hospital.

***

The little girl had been in a mini-coma for three full days so it gave the doctors time to do their work in repairing her injured arm, they were able to reattach the bones on her arm without much fuss that she more than likely would've displayed if she were awake. After successfully reattaching the arm, they replaced the blood stained gown and let her sleep in some white fuzzy pajamas that fit her size. All throughout those three days, Motoko never left this girl's side, going as far as watching the doctors work on her through the observation glass, her U.N. rank giving her clearance to actually watch her.

Motoko knew that the bloodstained gown she wore technically fell under Dallas P.S.D.'s jurisdiction, but she since she had found the little girl first, the jurisdiction fell in her hands and she gladly claimed it. Besides, one scan of the blood stains told her that the blood belonged to somebody that was on Homeland's watch list.

But what Motoko eventually found out from those bloodstains, had flat out pissed her off. She'd been through her share of corruption before, but this had definitely taken the cake. To have Homeland Security sit back and listen to a little girl suffer while a monster raped her, in Motoko's mind, that was the corruption of all corruption. She wasn't sure if she would be able to take action without suffering through whatever ramifications might come, but one thing was for certain, she would be damned if Homeland or the local cops were to take this little girl away and put her in some shit hole so horrible that it would make her prior experience look like an amusement park ride.

By day three of Motoko keeping watch on the little girl, it gave her some form of comfort to see that she was sleeping soundly and not having any nightmares. The coma gave this girl some chance for a dreamless rest, which Motoko felt she rightly deserved. The cyborg felt the rays of the early morning sun hit the back of her neck, but it was nothing compared to when that sunlight began to hit the little girl's face. To Motoko the little girl looked like an angel that was recovering from a horrible crying fit. The sun felt bright enough for the little girl to finally wake up after three days.

She saw Motoko leaning against the hospital window and noticed that instead of the black jumpsuit she saw her wear, she saw her wear white jeans, a pink tube top that laid over a black leather jacket. But to her mind, Motoko still looked like an angel, she looked so beautiful in her eyes that she gave this woman a soft smirk.

"I see you're awake now, little one," Motoko said while preparing to sit down on her bedside.

The little girl nodded slowly and her face became curious when she began to look at her surroundings. The white walls, white ceiling and her feeling her back lean against a mattress alongside her arm being wrapped up in white bandages.

"Where am I?" she asked Motoko.

"Well sweetie," Motoko felt using word didn't seem so awkward. "I took you to a place where some good people helped you fix that arm and I made sure they fixed it just right."

The little girl thought that her angel would caress her arm, but instead relaxed herself when she felt Motoko's soft hand caress her face. The tenderness behind that touch made her shed some tears almost immediately.

Motoko felt sympathetic to this girl's silent sobs, she had a feeling this girl never received any real comfort from anybody, was more than likely prone to more abuse if she did cry. She didn't need to say anything when the little girl began to pull on her jacket to allow herself to sob against her cleavage. For the next few minutes Motoko allowed the little girl to cry and let out every piece of grief that was held inside.

"Do you remember anything that happened before you got here?" Motoko asked when the girl calmed down.

"Are you a police officer?"

"No, why would you think I'm a police officer?"

"My daddy says the police will snatch me up and put me in a dark hole if I go to a police officer."

"Police aren't bad, little one," Motoko said after the girl began looking at her own eyes. "Police are good people that can help you."

"What are you then?" The girl asked, "And how come your eyes don't blink?"

Motoko gave a light chuckle, "You got a good eye little one."

She explained to the girl that her full name was Motoko Kusanagi and that she was a member of a team that hunted bad guys to bring to justice whether dead or alive. She was initially hesitant to divulge her job in extreme detail, but what saved her from that was the next question that came from the girl.

"Would I be punished for killing my daddy?"

Motoko literally didn't know how this girl figured that out; she figured that the trauma the girl felt would have left her with amnesia. But since Motoko already knew the full story from scanning the girl's brain with just her right hand, she'd be better off giving the girl a straight answer.

"He gave you the broken arm, he kept torturing you and hurting you, you had no choice but to kill him." Motoko gave gentle strokes of her hand behind the little girl's head. "There's nothing more dangerous than a wounded lion and that lion will do anything to protect itself from death."

Those words were enough to convince the girl that she wasn't in trouble, nor would she be punished for protecting herself. But she was very curious about something and was tempted enough to ask the question.

"What will happen to me now, Motoko?"

That question gave some Motoko some serious time to think on it. She never did anything involved with the raising of a child, due to her having never been able to give birth on account of her having a full robot body. Even when she eventually married her longtime partner, Batou, it was mutually agreed by both parties that they wouldn't take part in adopting children, instead taking some orphans and training each and every child to be members of Motoko's agency.

But her mind still trailed back to when she first looked at the girl during the long trip in the ambulance, those thoughts briefly interrupted when the girl nudged Motoko for an answer.

"When I first looked at you, when you passed out in my arms," Motoko began to answer. "I saw something in you, something that's made me take an extreme interest in you."

"What something was that?"

"Potential," Motoko replied. "Potential to prove yourself, to not let anyone suffer the way you suffered and a drive to punish the people who cause the suffering."

The little girl looked at Motoko's face and how it wore a serious look, it wasn't threatening per se, but to her it displayed a sense of duty.

"Little one, what I'm part of is a group that finds and punishes people who cause some very complex crimes. Some criminals we've killed but many we have taken in alive, sometimes our actions have caused resignations of various people who used to be important. If I were to take you with me, I'd be willing to train you in how to be as good as me, if not better. I can train you to have one of the best minds that you'll ever have. And when it comes to crime solving and criminals, you will be the face of fear against those criminals."

And for the first time since she could remember, the little girl gave out a smile, it was a small smile because she didn't want to her face to hurt.

"What do I need to do, Motoko?"

"The training I will give you will be very tough and demanding, you will have some strict teachers along the way. But along with strictness, we also celebrate a positive outcome in training new people. There will be times where you will fall along the way, but as long as you place your trust in me and your trainers, I know you will make it to be one of the best students we've ever taken in."

It took the little girl a few minutes to ponder Motoko's offer and since she really didn't have any place to go or want to go if forced, there were only two questions bubbling in her mind and she proceeded to ask the first one.

"If I accept, what's the first rule I need to know?"

Motoko then gave the girl a much happier smile, "You will never call me Motoko when we're training or out on the field, or mother for that matter. Instead you will call me Major."

The girl nodded in understanding, "And what will you call me?"

Motoko gave a chuckle, "I thought you'd never ask, little one...the whole time I looked at your face, I knew your eyes told me who you were even though you didn't know it yourself. From this point on you will be named Eve Dallas and next week you will come with me to start your training."

Just then two of the hospital doctors and nurses came in with breakfast in preparation for a checkup.

"These nice people are going to take care of you for a few minutes," Motoko said as she began to get up and walk out the door. "I need to make some phone calls, Eve, but I need to let you know one more thing...if you ever need me for anything, I'll be there, little one."