Saito

Physically Saito retains far more of his original body than most of his teammates, trailing only Togusa in how little of him has been mechanized. His visible augmentations come down to a prosthetic left arm and a replacement left eye, both losses tracing back to a single old battle. That artificial eye is the Hawkeye, a specialized unit that links to orbital satellites so his shooting can reach extraordinary precision. He wears black hair and brown eyes and stands around 172 centimeters. Later stories hint that he may have quietly added internal enhancements to his heart or lungs, given how heavy exertion leaves him unusually drained.

As the tactical sniper of the unit, Saito can bring any automatic weapon to bear with lethal accuracy, though long-range work is where he genuinely excels. The satellite-fed Hawkeye lets him line up shots that would be impossible for an unaided marksman. Just as valuable is his instinct for the craft, since he can reason his way into an enemy sniper's mindset and predict where a hidden shooter would set up, insight that shaped Section 9's tactics on more than one operation. Even the Major once conceded his skill with a rifle after their first confrontation.

Before Section 9, Saito earned his living as a hired gun during the Fourth World War, fighting across South America against the American Imperial Army and assorted United Nations troops. His path began in Mexico, where he fell in with Red Bianco, a band of outsiders bent on driving occupying forces out of the country and the wider region. In Monterrey he traded fire with UN peacekeepers who happened to be commanded by Motoko Kusanagi, and it was there he lost his left eye and left arm. By his own telling, he had picked off several of her men before she cornered him, then baited him into a duel by pretending she lacked her marksmanship software. His round only grazed her cheek, while hers rode straight down his scope and drove glass into his eye; before he could reload she was upon him, pinning his arm with a combat knife and telling him he now belonged to her.

How much of that duel is real stays deliberately unclear, since the story reaches the audience only as a tale Saito spins over a poker game, with no confirmation offered. Fittingly, a Tachikoma later mutters that perhaps he had been honest all along. Years on, in Solid State Society, he spends much of the events away in Africa and is wounded when a rival sniper strikes his left arm, though his own answering shot proves the deadlier of the two. The rifle he favors in that film resembles the very Walther-style weapon the Major used against him in Mexico, closing a quiet loop on their shared history.