CHAPTER 5:

CASH EYE AND THE PHANTOM

Aramaki clearly didn't like Chairman Tadokoro, and Harry already began to share that belief, along with Motoko. The only consolation was that they were engaged in a major operation to basically stick it to this corporate fat cat. He wasn't that fat, especially compared to the obese Tonoda, but his manner was so oleaginous and sleazy, Harry was perpetually tempted to use an Incendio on the man and see how brightly he burned. Aramaki was making out that his superiors, including the Prime Minister, had badgered him into investigating, giving just the faintest hint of bad grace. Not that Aramaki was actually lying, but it wasn't the whole truth.

Harry wondered idly how Tadokoro would react if he learned that the very thieves who had broken into his headquarters last night, leaving only a pair of business cards, were Motoko and himself. Motoko had worn a skintight white suit and a special visor that concealed most of the face, while Harry had worn a similar suit and visor, using the Invisibility Cloak to remain invisible most of the time, and his broomstick to stay off the pressure alarm-ridden floors. Motoko looked so good in that skintight suit that after they had escaped from the building, triggering an alarm deliberately after leaving the business cards, they headed straight back home, more or less, for some quality time, pausing only to send an electronic report to Aramaki.

While the operation seemed somewhat convoluted to Harry, it appealed to his Marauder sensibility. The plan was this: fabricate the reputations of two thieves Motoko and Harry would be playing the roles of, namely Cash Eye and the Phantom, respectively; target Tadokoro's business, which was due to host a shindig where the movers and shakers would be showing off their sex gynoids; get asked to provide security to said shindig to prevent the robbery of Cash Eye and the Phantom; perpetrate said robbery to fake Tadokoro out and get him to give Section 9 access to the vault. Apparently Tadokoro had been laundering money for not just Hanka Precision Instruments (he had nearly become a victim of one of the prototype Tomliands), but a number of people. They just needed proof, checking the serial numbers on the cash he had in the vault. So, it was basically going to be a massive prank played on a rich arsehole.

They had basically sent him a warning, posing as hackers who stole e-money, with Tadokoro storing his assets in physical form in the vault afterwards. Last night was just a warning shot, to tell him 'physical defences don't matter either'. So far, Tadokoro thought the thieves to have sent a couple of droids as their proxies.

Aramaki sighed. "This does fall somewhat outside of our realm of expertise. You may have lost faith in the local police, but they have more resources than us, and are more suited to this sort of crime. Section 9 is specialised, after all." He was playing the role of someone badgered into doing this very well.

Tadokoro looked at the three of them. "Out of the question. I'm sorry, but tomorrow night, which is when Cash Eye and the Phantom intend to make their move, there's going to be a party here, held by the major players in finance and economics. While not actually illicit, it's a gathering of those with similar interests that the uncultured or unsophisticated may look askance upon, especially after that fiasco with Hanka Precision Instruments. But due to the nature of this gathering, it would be impossible to change the time or venue. National policies are frequently discussed, even set at functions like these. That's why I need a man able to understand the sensitive situation. I also want to make up for the Hanka fiasco. That's why I need someone to help with the security shake-up."

Sure you do, Harry thought, struggling not to roll his eyes. He knew Motoko and Aramaki were having the same trouble.

Eventually, Aramaki said, "My superiors made it clear I can't decline."

"Aramaki, there's no need to sound so sour," Tadokoro said. "The Prime Minister recommended your team, and I can see why." He looked over at Motoko, managing to keep a leer off his face, but not from his eyes. "I can almost smell her white blood from here."

"Major Kusanagi is not a gynoid," Harry said. "You're the second person in about as many weeks to make that mistake."

"My apologies," Tadokoro said with an insincere smile. "It's just that multipurpose prosthetic bodies really fan the flames of my libido. I have a thing for artificial bodies, you understand, cyborgs or gynoids."

On the car-ride back, Harry shuddered. "Okay, it's one thing to have a fetish or something for gynoids and cyborgs. That's fine. But is it just me, or does that guy make you want to go scrub yourself in hydrochloric acid?"

"It's not just you," Motoko scowled. "I'm not looking forward to tomorrow night, I must say."

"I know, and I'm sorry, but it's going to get worse from here. There'll be a lot fraying your nerves, so try not to lose your temper, Major," Aramaki said.

"After dealing with those poor girls Hanka ghost-dubbed into sex gynoids?" Motoko asked. "Dealings this sleazeball may have had a hand in? At least we've got them better circumstances now. But even so, it makes me sick."

"It makes us all sick," Aramaki replied. "Harry, for the function tomorrow night, I will have to be accompanied by the Major, with her pretending to be my gynoid. I will have you with Ishikawa until it is time to infiltrate the vault. If Tadokoro asks, I will say that you are checking holes in the physical security. When the Major gets the retinal and cyberbrain patterns, that's when you move in. You'll have to be careful. Ishikawa's still trying to find anything about the vault, and there may have been new security measures."

"Pity I can't use my magic on the vault," Harry muttered.

"It can affect electronics, and it may set off anti-tampering alarms. Better to do it my way," Motoko said.

"Hey, we get to stick it to a sleazy douchebag financier by robbing him blind while we're wearing skintight catsuits," Harry said, grinning. "My father, godfather, and honorary uncle would be so proud."

"And your mother?" Motoko asked.

"She'd be glad I'm screwing over a greedy idiot who profited from the misery of others. I think. Come on, Motoko, we'll try to relax a little tonight before we have to deal with the Pretentious Prick Party."

Even Aramaki laughed at that little bit of alliteration, even if it was spoken in English rather than Japanese.

Harry was peering at the surveillance feed with Ishikawa, Batou and Togusa looking with them. "The thought of a ritzy little shindig for these guys, where politicians and bankers show off the sex gynoids they hide from their wives…well, it's mind-blowing," Togusa muttered.

"Togusa, to be fair, this seems tame by comparison to what we found at Hanka," Harry muttered. "Except for the costumes. I mean, look at that one! Is that a headband with two pairs of rabbit ears on it?"

"Heads up," Saito said, as he was in charge of the surveillance on the arrivals. "The former Minister for Foreign Affairs just showed up. I thought he would have been scared away from anything involving gynoids after that whole business with the NAIPA."

Harry scowled as he looked at the familiar jowly face emerging from the limo, followed by a gynoid dressed, not as a geisha, but in a kimono of some sort, and looking like the yamato nadeshiko, the ideal Japanese woman. That being said, that gynoid was more conservatively dressed than most.

"Unbelievable," Paz remarked over cybercomms, with him and Bouma working security at the front door.

"Yeah, this is depressing," Bouma muttered.

"Wait a moment. Here comes the Chief and the Major," Saito said. "This ought to be good."

And indeed, it was. Aramaki was dressed in an elegant suit and a bow tie, being one of the few people who could pull off a bow tie with dignitas. Motoko emerged dressed in an elegant lavender number that, while undeniably sexy (and showing off a good chunk of her cleavage, and the side of her breasts), managed to look more dignified and classy than most of the gynoids brought here.

"Now that's more like it," Bouma remarked.

"Eyes front, soldier," Harry said with a smile. "Motoko's my girlfriend."

"Yeah, but look at these idiots gawking at her," Togusa said. "The old man looks like he's enjoying himself a touch too much."

"Yeah, and the Major is a real hit with the freaks down there…" Batou scowled at the same time as Harry did when they noticed something from the camera feed.

"Oh, you bastard!" Harry snarled at one of the men standing around Motoko. "That wanker just copped a feel!"

"I think we would have been better off not knowing," Ishikawa remarked dryly.

"Oh, I am going to turn him into an Incredible Bouncing Ferret for that!" Harry growled.

"We don't need a scene," Ishikawa said. "Okay guys, get ready. The Major's going to get the information needed for the vault. Harry, you're on standby here until we get confirmation. Batou, Togusa?"

"Yeah, I hear you," Togusa said. "Time to hit the party and do some mingling too."

As the two left, Harry spoke over his smartphone, "Fuchikomas, you all set?"

"Preparations complete!" Batou's Fuchikoma, who was on the roof, said.

"We're ready over here too!" the others said from their own position near a manhole.

"Good, kids. Don't forget to wait for the Major's signal," Harry said. He then said to Ishikawa, "How's the search for the other security measures Tadokoro may have installed?"

"No luck," Ishikawa said with a small growl of frustration. "The manufacturer's server has been wiped clean of anything of use. Even the metadata is patchy, and gives no useful information. I have to give them props for their information management procedures. I'd bet they've even burned anything on paper media."

"Well, they do make vaults to try and keep naughty little criminals with sticky fingers out," Harry said. "In this day and age, they'd want to make sure nobody could hack anything out. Would they include any booby-traps?"

"That's a bit of a grey area, legally, but in the case of people like Tadokoro, the police'd look the other way if it was a criminal in there." Ishikawa looked back at Harry. "You said once, while we were prepping this op, that you once had to break into a bank yourself. What was that about?"

"A long story. And they had dragons as guard dogs, amongst other things," Harry said. "We were trying to get rid of something keeping the man who murdered my parents alive. He was obsessed with two things above all else: immortality, and killing me. Ironically, I'm now immortal, and he didn't succeed in killing me either, even before I became immortal."

Harry scowled as he listened in to Motoko's sensory feed, with Tadokoro coming onto her in increasingly heavier ways (she told Aramaki that she avoided feeling one of his gropes by turning off her senses, much to Aramaki's amusement), until Motoko offered him the bait. She offered to lie back and become a pliant, willing doll for Tadokoro to link up to. He was foolish enough to accept, and was put to sleep by Motoko. "Sorry about that, lover boy," she murmured, "but I think if you did actually try that, you'd have a heart attack." She clipped a ghost-key onto his cyberneural interface. "Pick up where we left off in your dreams."

"Looks like we're on," Harry muttered. "No rest for the wicked, and even less for the virtuous. Major, I'll meet you down at the vault…"

He arrived shortly after Motoko did, with Batou, Togusa, and a couple of Operator gynoids, dressed in more formal wear, present. As she put the feed of the cyberbrain patterns and retinal scan into the door leading to the vault's antechamber, he took the Cloak of Invisibility off. "I'm never going to get used to you doing that," Togusa said quietly.

Harry shrugged, clipping the visor onto his face. "I presume the surveillance feeds have been hacked?"

"Need you ask?" Motoko asked.

"Still, should have brainjacked Tadokoro and brought him down here," Togusa grumbled as he pulled a security guard to a corner, said guard having been gassed.

"We need him for part of the plan. A bit of sleight of hand," Harry said. A long stretch of corridor was revealed, leading up to the vault door. Motoko took a business card out of her cleavage, and threw it down. Harry knew from the visor that it was filled with infra-red lasers, and the card was instantly incinerated.

"Can we turn that off or disable it?" Togusa asked.

Ishikawa's voice came over the cybercomms, as well as the earpiece Harry had with him, linking him to his smartphone. "It runs on its own, and if we destroy it, the control centre will know something's wrong immediately. It can only be deactivated remotely on Tadokoro's authorisation. Any mistakes, and we'll have to abort."

"It's not a serious obstacle," Motoko said. "I have my cybernetic body, and Harry has Apparition. It's opening the door to the vault that worries me."

"I did dig something up. Based on the amount of cash Tadokoro brought into the building, I reckon that the vault door is an analogue model, using four layers of old-style locks."

"Like I said, we should have hacked Tadokoro and brought him down here," Togusa grumbled.

"It's too late now," Batou remarked.

"We'll go with a Code B," Motoko said. "That will work, won't it?"

"Yeah, the charges should burn through the door in the right way, but the moment we do, we alert them to the break-in," Ishikawa said.

"Well, I guess we'll have to take the risk," Harry said. "No luck on finding any info on booby-traps?"

"No. Sorry."

"Well, stealing the money isn't our objective," Motoko said. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."

As Togusa handed Motoko a small bag with explosive charges on them, Batou said, "Okay, Code B it is. But remember, you two are on your own. You two, be careful."

"Thanks," Motoko said. "Harry, let's Apparate."

Harry nodded, grabbing onto Motoko, before Apparating over to the vault door proper. The loud crack echoed in the corridor, while Batou, Togusa, and the Operators left. Harry fished out the explosives, and handed them to Motoko, who placed them on the vault door. "Is the Fuchikoma ready?" he asked Motoko quietly.

"Yes. I'll hack into the security of the vault proper to trigger any booby-traps, make them think we went inside," Motoko said. "The Fuchikoma will feed a security image of our going inside and being hit by whatever booby-trap we get."

"Okay. Does anyone else know about it?"

"No."

"I must be rubbing off on you. That's pranking Aramaki and Batou, not to mention the others. Batou's going to give Tadokoro that last business card saying he was to be audited by the Tax Bureau."

Motoko nodded, smirking as she placed the last charge. "Okay, take cover. Fuchikoma? Are you ready?"

"Ready and waiting, Major!"

Motoko shook her head as she cut off the connection. "I'm getting too used to the idea of them having Ghosts. Take cover."

They pressed themselves into alcoves flanking the door, before Motoko activated the charges. In the process, the power was cut, with the emergency generator activating. Motoko then waited for a while for the metal around the door to cool, before beginning to open up the vault. She and Harry began to step towards the vault, and then, Motoko signalled Harry to halt, and then move away. After about fifteen seconds, a series of heavy shutters slammed shut, and a distinctive hissing noise was heard.

"Son of a bitch," Harry muttered. "Is that poison gas?"

Motoko shook her head. "No, but it's as lethal. Hear how the noise is dying away? He's evacuating the air inside the vault, creating a near-vacuum. Even someone with a full-prosthetic body would be hard pressed to survive, and that's even if they went into autistic mode. Come on, we'll need to change out of these."

Tadokoro hurried down with Togusa, Batou, Aramaki, Bouma and Paz in tow, opening the vault while Harry and Motoko waited under the Invisibility Cloak, having changed shortly before. As it turned out, Tadokoro had demanded Aramaki to come down with him, to show that his actions in killing a pair of potential tax auditors was the result of self-defence. Tadokoro was wielding a rather small derringer (Harry would remark it was exactly twice as big as Tadokoro's dick, to Motoko's amusement), and demanding that they find the thieves, who had somehow disappeared.

As Tadokoro yelled at them to search harder, Motoko and Harry made their appearance, the former telling the others about what happened over cybercomms (Harry turning his feed off from his smartphone), while talking out loud about Tadokoro's stamina. And then, Aramaki sprang the trap, telling the others to check the banknotes. Tadokoro claimed that the money here was all his assets, but as Motoko soon found, at least one box of banknotes belonged to former Party Secretary Yakashima, amongst other ne'er-do-wells, with Tadokoro being a money launderer and helping people with tax evasion. When he learned this, the wonderful 'oh shit!' look on Tadokoro's smug face was something to treasure. Motoko even promised that she had taken a screenshot of his face, even as he dropped the derringer (miraculously without it discharging) and the business card.

And with tonight's events, they would find through the attendees even more links to various financial misdeeds, they were sure. After they were dismissed for the night, Harry and Motoko knew that, while the fallout would continue for some time to come, it was a most amusing experience playing cat burglars, especially in the pursuit of justice.

The fact that they had played a prank on more than one person made it worthwhile, even if Batou was berating them for making him think he was going to find them freeze-dried in the vault. But, in thievery and prankery as in special ops, secrecy was key, after all. Harry and Motoko would be amused by that night's events for some time to come, they were sure…

CHAPTER 5 ANNOTATIONS:

Sorry about the wait for the new chapter. As you noticed, this one was based on the Stand Alone Complex episode Cash Eye. Hope you enjoyed. The next chapter will probably be based on a manga chapter, namely Phantom Fund. After that, another Stand Alone Complex episode will be adapted, in all likelihood, Missing Hearts.

Review-answering time! Jostanos: I don't know who adopted the kids, but some went to good homes, and others went into institutions, albeit better ones than those seen in the second chapter of the manga. And while Motoko and Harry can potentially have kids (by Harry transfiguring Motoko), it's not safe, as she would have to remain 'human' long enough to get pregnant, and that would be dangerous in their line of work. And ovaries are presumably amongst the exceptions to Gamp's Law.

jgkitarel: That's a good point, though I am not versed with Japanese political and criminal history. I know a few things here and there, but not enough to know what you seem to.

whitedorumon: Being immortal sort of gives him a bit less fear of being shot, so he gets a bit loud anyway, even if he can do it stealthily.

CMAlm: The original manga was quite comedic.

Reishin Amara: The chapter in question was turned into the anime movie Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence.

No numbered annotations this time…