Shells of Heroes

TT/GITS:SAC X-Over. The year is 2030 and the Titans have long since split up. Driven away from the American Empire, the Titans all settled in Japan, remembering the time they spent there. Gar opens a restaurant where his stories entertain rather quirky guests.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything, Teen Titans and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex belong to their respective owners, no profit is being made off this story.

P.S.: There will be The Major VS. Slade in this fic, that is all. Eat your heart out GITS fans!

Episode 1: Reunion

It was a pleasant evening in New Port, Japan. The wind was gentle and the night air felt nice as Gar Logan went back into his bar The Old Timer, affectionately named for the good old days that he missed.

It'd been a long time since he'd seen his friends; he was excited that they were actually going to be there that night. After all, it was a momentous occasion; it was 20 years to the day since Starfire had crashed landed in Jump City, California, in the then democracy of the United States of America. It was rather funny, the future that Starfire had seen had come to pass in a different way than they all knew, they had separated and moved on, but it wasn't due to their friendship falling apart, it was due to the world that they protected falling apart.

World War III and World War IV had torn apart any notions of peace in the world. Superheroes were forced to retire, as their "tame" ways of not taking lives didn't cut it anymore for the general population, who wanted metahumans who would kill.

Then the advancements in technology allowed people to become cyberized and as the cyberization of humans began he and his friend Victor Stone, known as Cyborg had fervently opposed it, despite the fact that people touted Cyborg as proof that it was good for humans to be cyberized, he said, "My friend is a Cyborg who doesn't want to lose his humanity, while normal, perfectly healthy people want to go ahead and ditch theirs. I wouldn't wish what happened to him on anybody."

The world went on, but he refused to change, he even refused to cyberize his brain, which many normal people did, even if they didn't enhance their bodies with other cybernetic parts and prosthesis.

The other Titans had refused cyberization as well. Gar had joked with Dick, "With all the training you had from Batman, they couldn't cyberize your brain, you'd break the computer."

So the Titans had faded back into obscurity, most of them had retired from the hero business, except Dick of course, his drive to help others kept his Nightwing persona going, but with all the chaos in the world, he rarely made the front page of the newspaper.

Raven ran a meditation center, Cyborg still worked in cybernetics as Vic Stone, Kory was a model, she'd married Dick and they were happy, he kept up his rich boy persona and they had good lives.

But Gar missed the old days, he made a decent living as a bartender sure, but he missed the old days, when heroism was admired, when people actually cared about life and when you couldn't hack someone's brain for information. Everything was cold and unfeeling now in the world where being human was looked down upon, and being a machine was the norm.

Gar had resigned himself to his fate, after the America became an Empire and split the country three separate ways, the Russo-American Alliance forced Jump City to disband the Titans and tear down the Tower, not being welcome in the United States of America, or the American Empire had forced them to move to Japan.

It didn't bother him to live in another country; after all, he had enjoyed the time when they had taken a vacation there. He'd learned Japanese and become fluent, only to realize it was rather useless because people tended to download multiple languages to their cyberbrains. He had obtained citizenship and lived a happy life, and he was fine with it.

Being a bartender, he tended to have many customers who could not eat or drink normal food so he had invented a cybernetic substitute that was similar to alcohol that their sensors could actually taste and enjoy. It was a success and his bar was the only one with both ordinary and cyberized humans.

Gar looked up as a young woman walked in from outside. She was very pretty and wore a Japanese Self-Defense Force uniform. She didn't smile; she just sat down and asked for a drink.

"You want something strong or not?" Gar asked, always eager to please his customers.

"Just iced tea, thanks," she said.

Her voice didn't have much emotion in it. Her appearance reminded him of Raven. Except that her eyes were different, they were a reddish violet color. And she even shared a similar liking to tea that Raven did, except Raven preferred herbal tea over ice tea.

And here I thought Raven had the emotions of a rock. He felt amused; it was nice to see a new face.

"Thank you for your service," he told her. It took guts to serve in the military and he was very grateful, despite all the messes that the government and military seemed to get into; at least there were still people willing to protect and serve their country.

"You're welcome," she said politely. "I've never been here, how long have you been open uh—"

"Name's Gar, Miss, Gar Logan," he smiled, and shook her hand; she was definitely a cyberized human. But she seemed nice, as nice as someone who had the emotions of a brick wall could be anyway.

"I'm Motoko Kusanagi," Motoko told him. She shook his hand and noticed that since she was a cyberized human she could clearly see he was using a holographic projector, she'd noticed it since she'd first come in that he was green from head to toe, even his hair was green and knew that only people who had their eyes cyberized with a knack for being able to hack through a surprising complex program could see through the holographic generator.

The possibility of him being an alien crossed her mind, but it was highly unlikely since aliens tended to avoid the planet now that it had gone through two World Wars.

He seemed like something that was more of a science experiment rather than an alien. She put it out of her mind and decided to enjoy her tea.

"Major," Aramaki's voice said to her.

"Yes Chief?" she asked.

"I need you to go and stop an attempted assassination plot on the Prime Minister; we've just gotten wind of it. I'm sending Batou and Saito to your location. We don't know much about this one because he can't be found on record and he's a non-cyberized human. Whoever he is, he can cover his tracks very well, even with all the technological advances."

I'm on my way, Chief," Motoko said as she ended the communication.

"Sorry Gar, I have to go, but I'll try your tea some other time," Motoko got up and left.

"Oh, don't worry, you're probably busy." Gar figured she was different from a lot of people, but he was good at picking out extraordinary people from the crowd. Maybe she'd come back.

She left and the door opened as four people entered the bar.

"Hey Gar," Dick said, smiling. "Hard to believe it's been 20 years, doesn't it?"

"Yeah dude, it's hard to believe. Hey Rae, you look good."

"Thanks," Raven said, smiling.

"It has been too long, Garfield," Starfire smiled. "It is a shame that the future turned out better for us, but worse for Earth than the future I visited."

"Yeah, but at least we're all still friends," Vic said.

"Dick?" Starfire asked. He was staring at a small alarm that was beeping.

"Slade's back," he said. All five of them were serious. This wasn't good at all.

"Guess it wouldn't be a reunion without him," Gar quipped. They gave him hard stares. "That wasn't funny, I know."

"What do you say for one more mission? One last hurrah for all of us, huh?" Dick asked, he pulled off his civilian clothes with ease to reveal his Nightwing costume.

"Yeah dude, one last blaze of glory so they don't forget us. I just hope I'm not rusty," Gar laughed, he turned off his holographic projector, revealing his old Doom Patrol uniform.

The Major had changed out of her ordinary Japanese Defense Form uniform and was now in her form fitting combat uniform, she landed on a roof where a dark figure was lying in wait, a powerful sniper rifle in his hands. She was waiting for the others when she'd seen him and went after him. He matched the description of the assassin hired to kill the Prime Minister.

"You're not the one I was expecting," he said. "I was hoping Nightwing would show up." Slade was surprised. He'd expected the Aerial Avenger, instead, he'd gotten a female Cyborg, but according to his sources, she would be a challenge. He smiled beneath his mask; this was going to be fun.

"Major Motoko Kusanagi, of Section 9 I believe," Slade greeted her formally. The Major was surprised this man knew her name and rank, and that he knew about Section 9, especially since the public didn't know the organization existed.

The Major drew her gun. "Who the Hell are you, and how do you know about me?" she demanded.

"Call me Slade, just think of me as an assassin," he said.

"You're not like the others, they always run away," she observed. This guy was going to be a difficult opponent, she'd tried to hack his cyberbrain and it became quite apparent that he didn't have one.

Still, this guy was going after the Prime Minister, so she couldn't let him kill her. Still, she was facing a non cyberized human; he sure had a lot of guts going after her by himself.

The Major started firing. Slade avoided the shots rather easily and she moved quickly to engage him in combat.

Slade was good, Motoko admitted to herself. He was really good. She countered a flurry of kicks and punches that would have put normal people through a wall. She struck him, and started taking the offensive. Still, the man wouldn't back down, she would alternate between offensive and defensive combat styles and yet, she seemed to get nowhere with him.

Why have I never heard of him, surely an assassin this good would be on record somewhere?

Slade made a break for it and sprinted across the rooftop and leapt to the other building. The Major kept up with him, since it wasn't too difficult with her prosthetic body.

Slade turned around and launched a vicious assault, Motoko kicked him, but he caught her leg and without hesitation threw her through a wall. He leapt down to a lower building and began looking around.

"That was too easy," Slade smirked. "Time for me to go to work. She's not good enough to kill me."

He stopped, sensing something; he thought he heard something above him.

"Mind if I test that theory?" The Major asked. Slade felt two bullets enter his head and blood sprayed out.

He thought he saw her appear in midair and vanish. Too bad he hadn't died though; she'd been centimeters away from truly killing him for real, if it weren't for the armor in his mask and the blood bags to convince people he was dead, she would have left his brain exploded all over the concrete. Slade smiled, she was more fun than he thought.

Nightwing scanned the rooftops. He didn't see Slade, but he saw signs of a definite struggle, someone had engaged Slade, someone with excellent combat skills.

"Who beat us to him?" Cyborg asked.

"I don't know, but they're good, very good." He looked down and saw a huge amount of blood on the roof, but no signs of Slade or anyone else.

"He must have faked his death; again, he keeps doing that."

"Yeah, how many people have shot him in the head?"

"Plenty of times, but what's he after this time? This whole assassination plot is too boring for Slade, he wants something else, and apparently, he's not interested in us this time."

"Dude, we are not wasting our time looking for him," Beast Boy said.

"Yeah, he'll get our attention when he's ready." Nightwing turned to the other Titans, "We'll just have to see what he wants."