The Fact of Being There

The Prime Minister gathers her ministers to weigh the refugee emergency. Several rush to wash their hands of it, while senior officers and local police air alarm over the crowds pouring onto Dejima. During a recess she confers with Aramaki and Kusanagi, who warn her about the existence of cyberbrain hubs. She also admits that her weak standing is being exploited by figures in her own cabinet who want her gone, and she asks Section 9 to dig into the scheme.

Ishikawa comes back from the Korean Peninsula carrying the first real portrait of Kuze's history. He served in the Ground Self Defense Army and was posted to Korea once the peninsula unified, tasked with holding the northern territories against the withdrawing People's Army. His mechanized battalion fought in defense of a refugee settlement near the Chinese border.

Because Article 9 barred any official overseas deployment, a media blackout hid the operation, which backfired when whispers spread that the unit had taken part in a massacre. At some point Kuze set down his weapon, picked up a camera, and walked into the nearby camp, gradually earning a place among its people. When the order to return home came, he vanished instead, apparently slipping west across the border.

Ishikawa pegs Kuze's last confirmed sighting to Taiwan, where the briefing ends. The episode is the sixteenth of 2nd GIG, subtitled ANOTHER CHANCE, positioned between Afternoon of the Machines and Mother and Child.