"Angelui i demonui kruzhili na duh minoi Angels and demons were circling over me, rassekali terni-i mlechuie puti Breaking apart shadows and milky ways." "me znayet shastya ottovo Not knowing happiness is the only one." "shto evo zova ponyat ne s-mog The one who could not understand its call." "mana du vortes, mana du vortes The flow may swallow you." "The flow may swallow you aeria gloris, aeria gloris Flying in glory, Flying in glory mana du vortes, mana du vortes The flow may swallow you." "The flow may swallow you aeria gloris, aeria gloris Flying in glory, Flying in glory" "I am calling, calling now." "Spirits rise and falling." "s-toboi ostatsya dalshe To be with you longer..." "Calling, calling..." "In the depth of longing s-toboi ostatsya dalshe To be with you longer... mana du vortes, aeria gloris The flow may swallow you, flying in glory" "What is this?" "Internal documents from a social welfare/Nfacility owned by the Ministry of Justice." "A social welfare facility?" "A place where they temporarily isolate those with/Nserious cyberbrain closed shell syndrome, and train them so they can re-enter society." "You've heard about it before, right?" "Last week, the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare's database suffered a large-scale hack that originated from that facility." "The information that was stolen included Class A top-secret material." "Look at how quickly they got past the protection." "Whoever did this went through a three-layered offensive protection in two hours." "If one person did this, that person is better than the Major." "Better than the Major?" "I had Ishikawa and Bouma do a careful trace, so I'm pretty sure that the hacking tok place from there." "But the weird thing is that the facility's line is usually turned off, so it's impossible for data from the inside to go outside and vice versa." "In addition on that, the Ministry's reaction was strange as well." "They had top-secret data stolen, yet they have not filed any damage reports." "Although it was a disgrace for them to get hacked, it's unusual to not report it." "There must be something they want to keep secret, and there's a chance that they would be caught red-handed if they just barged in." "So..." "An inside investigation, eh?" "Inside the Forest of the Sub-Imagoes" "Note:" "An imago is an insect in its sexually mature adult stage after metamorphosis." "The communication room..." "It's just as the report said, this area doesn't even have power." "What's wrong?" "Connect..." "I'm going to connect today." "Hey." "Who are you?" "We found him." "You must be the new trainee." "I'm the chief, Marta." "I'm Togusa." "Bad boy, you're supposed to be working with everyone else right now." "Connect..." "Today's the day I connect." "What's wrong with him?" "Do you have your cyberbrain in closed-mode?" "Yes." "Get out of the way!" "Warn him." "Today's the day I connect." "Yes, you're right." "But it's time to work right now." "I'll go to Virtual City Alpha." "Today's..." "Today's the day I connect." "Today's the day I connect." "Hey!" "Catch him." "Hurry!" "Don't let your guard down." "Thank you." "That helped." "Don't worry, he's just sleeping." "Is that so." "What was that?" "We have a rule here that a staff member must be present when connectiong to the outside world." "And this place has been unusable since yesterday, so he panicked." "Please sit." "Thank you." "He obsesses over schedules and sequence." "Still, the way out handled it was quite rough." "The public has a strong belief that a person with cyberbrain closed shell syndrome can't deal with the net..." "But the problem is that they have too strong of an affinity for it." "Too strong of an affinity?" "Yes." "Once they desire to connect with the Internet or someone, they try to do it no matter what." "If it's with a certain person, they try to share their thoughts thus committing a ghost hack, or they die trying to break through the other's offensive protection." "But, there are some cases where they close themselves off inside their protection and refuse to communicate with others," "and thus are not able to come back." "This is the sector where children with serious symptoms like those gather together around noon." "To prevent the accidents that you mentioned, you need to isolate them from the network." "Because it protects them as well." "That's your reasoning. correct?" "But, are they supposed to possess the ability to blow away another's substitute protection like the boy I just met?" "You will understand after seeing this." "This is a danger zone in a way." "Cyberbrain closed shell syndrome and mental handicap may happen at the same time..." "But they show incredible aptitude in the cyber world most of the time." "I have them program protection mazes as training for jobs that make use of their syndrome's traits." "Sometimes, someone makes a very good protection some of those are adopted by government organizations." "They are all very unique." "If I leave them like this, they will assemble and disassemble protection codes all day long." "I think I've shown you everything now." "Yes..." "I will leave you in charge of one community room." "His name is Aoi, you will be in charge of him." "Yes ma'am." "I think the other children have already returned, please take care of them." "I understand." "Aoi, right?" "Nice to meet you." "You're late, Aoi." "Where were...?" "Hi!" "I'm going to be in charge here starting today, I'm Togusa." "Nice to meet you." "Want to play catch?" "It's still bright outside." "Hey, give that back!" "He wants it back." "Oh..." "He panics when his glove is lost." "And no one here wants to go outside." "Are you guys treated badly?" "Hey!" "Hey!" "The leader said that he'd come back again!" "Really?" "!" "Yeah, a message just came in." "I'm surprised, he came here just a week ago." "A week ago?" "Who's this leader you're talking about?" "You're sharp, Mister." "What?" "We don't know if we can trust you or not." "Yeah." "So, we can't talk to you so carelessly." " You,re strict." " Of course." "I'll go let the others know." "Okay." "He's late." "Are you worried about him?" "No way." "He's slow, so I was wondering if he screwed up or something." "Who are you calling slow?" "You're late!" "What were you doing?" "!" "Well, um..." "It took time for me to setup a connection without being caught..." "Since this is the only place that has a line connected to the outside." "So?" "This facility uses people with cyberbrain closed shell syndrome to program and disassemble protection mazes." "If there's someone in here who can make use of that technology..." "We can explain the clever hacking done to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare." "I see." "So, are there any clues as to who did it?" "No, not yet." "But there are heavily armored cyborgs here" "It's a weird facility." "Understood, resume covert investigation." "Roger." "Oh, Major, there's one more thing that caught my attention." "What?" "Who do you think "leader" refers to?" "Leader as in, a leader?" "Yes." "The children at the facility were using that word and said he came to the facility last week." "I see, we'll try to find details about that." "You try to gather information about that person before your next periodic report." "Roger." "That means someone else other than me is using this place." "I thought what I'd do was." "I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes or should I?" "What's this?" "Oil paint?" "Wow, that's good." "It looks like a photograph, but you're not going to paint it on that canvas?" "Do you know who this "leader" is?" "He's going to create a beautiful world." "He's going to look at a new heart." "Good morning." "What?" "I'm not going to tell you about the leader." "I know." "Have you seen something like that before?" "It's extremely cool, isn't it?" "You guys can read quasi-image programs?" "What, you can't?" "Yeah..." "Then try connecting with his brain." "You'll see something interesting." "But be careful." "Last time a staff member tried to dive into his brain, their consciousness got mixed up and now he's a goner." "So, what are you going to do?" "No, I'll pass." "How boring." "You're more of a coward than I thought." "Hey..." "Who's this leader you all talk about?" "Please take care of the rest." "Oh, it's you." "I appreciate your hard work." "Are you going somewhere?" "Yes, to a conference on welfare businesses." "Is that so?" "Have a safe trip." "Sorry..." "Hold on a minute, I'll be done in no time." "There are oil paintings here as well." "There are no suspicious documents here." "And no one visited here last week." "Damn it..." "It's so inconvenient when I can't access outside documents." "We can't have this." "Are you soying on us while leaving the one you're in charge of alone?" "You won't find any information on the leader even if you search there." "Looks like I'm in no position to make excuses." "Hurt him, but don't kill him." "Hold on a sec." "If we fight here, this precious picture will..." "Are you trying to fight me with that?" "I was trying to warn you not to let the picture go to waste." "Unlike electronic information, it can't be copied." "You thought I was unarmed?" "Public Peace Section 9?" "Major..." "All the terminals in the facility went online just now." "Did something happen?" "They're trying to crack our access code." "Did they find out?" "I don't know." "Shut off all the lines!" "What are you doing?" "!" "They're locked!" "Batou, we're going to get Togusa out of there!" "Roger!" "Ishikawa, get control of all the lines in the facility." "Saitou, clear a path for our retreat!" "Yes!" "I burned the AI of the guy who was spying on us!" "Kuroha." "Leader!" "Where were you?" "Something bad happen, someone from outside found out." "A lot of adults will be coming here soon." "I have to get out of here before that happens." "Why?" "You were able to get through these situations before." "We'll protect you this time, too." "No, I had to leave here soon anyway." "Wait!" "Are you going erase Onba's and my memories as well?" "Unfortunately..." "I see..." "So, I can't cheer you on from Virtual City Alpha anymore." "Okay." "But we don't want to forget about you." "Can you leave someting behind?" "Okay, I promise." "Togusa!" "Hey, Togusa!" "Togusa, what happened?" "Togusa!" "Hey, wake up, Togusa." "Togusa!" "So, is there any proof that the boy Togusa was speaking of, Aoi, existed?" "We couldn't find any." "It's possible that the facility's computers and the staff's memories were tampered with..." "But since we only have Togusa'a word to go on, there's no way to get a definitive answer." "What about the picture that girl was drawing?" "We couldn't find that either." "Is that why he's going to turn in a picture of a boy instead of a report?" "Yeah..." "A handsome boy in a wheelchair with a southpaw catcher's glove." "He's going to draw that using the memories left in his cyberbrain." "A southpaw catcher's glove?" "In internet slang that means, "Although it seems it might exist, it dosen't"." "I don't know about that." "Sorry for being late, Major." "Hey." "I'll check it out if it's something that can make up for your failure." "Don't wet your pants, it's one of my best works." "What the heck is this?" "Looks like you got a weird memory inserted from some weird place."