The Rhapsodic Melody of a Bygone Nation

Word that plutonium is set to leave the Uchikon Seven quarter of the Shinjuku Refugee District reaches militants, and the leak lands Daisuke Aramaki in a summons to Prime Minister Yoko Kayabuki. Coast Guard forces have already broken up an attempted arms deal, yet officials stay afraid that refugee radicals will move on the material anyway. To keep it out of reach, Section 9 accepts a quiet mission to shepherd the shipment beyond the district lines.

Kazundo Gouda takes charge of the transfer and folds the team into his command. The operatives drop into the enclave by parachute, reach a Ground Self Defense Army checkpoint, and swap into refugee clothing so they can pass unnoticed while minding a battered SUV and a shuttle bus that other members have seized to carry the cargo. Gouda talks the plan over with the checkpoint's officer, who lends three of his own men to the convoy.

Rolling out along the beltway, the group passes crowds of refugees living in squalor. A garbage truck lies overturned across their route, so the operatives climb out to look it over. Mid-conversation, one of the Self Defense soldiers reads a bent length of pipe in a refugee's grip as a drawn gun, and the gunfire that follows leaves several bystanders dead for nothing, souring the mood of everyone present. The bitterness deepens on arrival, when the crew learns they served as bait: the genuine plutonium had quietly gone out by ship.

The leaked shipment plan pulls Aramaki before the Prime Minister. Section 9 is handed the escort job under Gouda's direction and inserted by paradrop. A misread pipe triggers a fatal exchange with unarmed refugees. The convoy reaches its endpoint only to discover the plutonium was never aboard, having been routed away by sea while the team drew attention.

The installment belongs to the second season of Stand Alone Complex, carrying the production subtitle Pu239, and it sharpens the friction between Section 9 and Gouda. A pointed exchange has Batou challenge the Self Defense contingent's self-image, with Gouda retorting that a small elite squad would simply have been wiped out had the refugees actually been armed.