"You're sending me to the US?" Maj. Motoko Kusanagi asked her superior, Daisuke Aramaki, with a hint, and just a hint, of surprise.

"It wasn't my intention, but the Prime Minister insisted;" he asnwered "all the documents were backlogged and Section 6 had already taken care of the paperwork - there was little I could do,"

"Strange as it may seem," the Major said under her breath "I guess you also have superiors..."

"When do I leave?" asked Maj. Kusanagi, a little louder " - and why does the..." she paused as she reminded herself, as one often must, that no nation was a single coherent structure.

"FEMA," Aramaki replied.

"thank you," the Major mumbled "...FEMA want me?" she completed her question; it was more of a question than she had thought; Section 9 has worked with the CIA in the past, and the JSDF and the US Armed Forces were allied like spear and shield in the hands of a trained warrior, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency? A small echo, not quite a whisper, passed through her brain.

"All I know is that they asked for you by name," Aramaki answered, and met her suspicious half-glare, "I know Major, I'm as concerned as you are about this,"

"As to answer your previous question," he reverted "your flight leaves 22:00 tonight,"

The Major simply lifted an eyebrow - Short notice, she thought, Gah! This means I can't go crazy tonight - they're going to (want to) kill me!

DEUS EX/Emergence

"Is your room safe now, Major?" Batou asked, their mindlink stretched across the pacific ocean. It transmitted as light from Japan, running along the sea-floor until it reached a Japanese fishing trawler just outside US territorial claims that didn't quite as much trawl for fish as just sitting calmly in the waters, letting the (rather high, at this time of year) waves rock the ship up and down in a not-so-gently fashion while letting the fiberoptic cable dangle on the sea floor. In this boat, of which there were many, and quite a few of them not owned by Japan, the optic messages would be encoded into a tightbeam radio-message and broadcast to the relevant location, in this case a hotel in New York.

"Yes. I've set up a barrier-mask to fool the audial bugs," she replied "and there's so much encrypted traffic in the air our transmissions will be concealed, but I can't do much about the cameras without evoking suspicion, except spend inordinate amounts of time in the shower,"

They say you can't transmit a lewd look on a [VOICE ONLY] line.
They are wrong.

Then again, it is an equally un-difficult feat to send a sharp stare back.

"There's one thing that's bugging me though" Maj. Kusanagi said, not stressing any of the syllables in a humorous way because linguistics doesn't quite work like that " - it's not the US' MO to use bugs like these,"

"Laser microphones?" Batou asked. The Major lifted a curtain, ostensibly looking out at the street below - in all actuality, she switched filters on her prosthetic eyes, to more easily pick up lasers passing through an active medium. - The CIA, and later the FBI and other US intelligence agencies, had gained a reputation for relying heavily on human resources; if they really wanted to place surveillance in a room, they'd place a team on the job (for they commanded vast personnel resources) but whoever these people were (one were tempted to refer to them simply as them) they hadn't.

And this was worrying.

"Feeling nervous?" Batou asked.

"Hardly," she replied. "Cautious, on the other hand... - I'm grateful that the Chief have set you to take a closer look at this,"

12

"JC" Denton knocked on the door to the hotel room; 17th floor, Room 23. A cyborg woman, in her... 20's? - It was hard to tell with full-conversion cyborgs, but for police purposes appearances mattered just as much as actual age did. - opened the door. She was dressed, like him, in an inconspicuous attire assigned by FEMA; a black incognito suit, although the same could not be said about her brightly purple hair. (although that was slightly more common in the US than it had been in Switzerland) Then again, my eyes glow... JC reminded himself.