GHOST

Appearing in Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045, GHOST is a for-hire combat crew built by Motoko Kusanagi once Public Security Section 9 had been broken up. She gathered her familiar circle around her, bringing in Batou, Ishikawa, and Saito together with a pair of Tachikoma units, and rounded out the roster with an American named Standard.

The team earns its pay inside the Sustainable War, a rolling conflict cooked up by the four G4 states, China and the Russian Federation among them, alongside the European Union and the American Empire, all seeking to prop up their finances. During 2045 the outfit takes a contract from the moneyed residents of a California enclave to shield it from raiders. They run down one raider band, a group of ruined college athletes armed by a benefactor styling himself the Good One-percenter, yet a missile still slams into one of the mansions, and the job slips away from them.

Beyond Kusanagi, the unit's core draws from her former colleagues Batou, Ishikawa, and Saito, the two Tachikomas, and the outsider Standard. Their final assignment comes from the National Security Agency's John Smith, who hires them to seize Patrick Huge, an inventor who has crossed into post-human existence. Smith plans to have the mercenaries killed once the work is done, but a presidential order halts him, prompted by Japanese premier Chris Otomo Tate, who wants the group alive so Section 9 can be rebuilt under Daisuke Aramaki. With the agency restored to chase the post-human mystery, GHOST is dissolved.