Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Solid State Society 3D

Public Security Section 9, led by Chief Aramaki, raids the refugee dictator in the Siak Republic in 2034. They intend to arrest him, but discover the target is already dead, removing the capture from their hands. The raid unsettles the team and pushes the investigation toward the Siak suicides and the emerging threat.

In response to the dictator's death, a Siak operative schemes to unleash a terrorist attack using a micromachine virus. Batou is dispatched to intercept the operative and halt the plan. The confrontation ends with the operative dying, leaving behind virus ampules as crucial clues for investigators.

Motoko Kusanagi pursues her own line of inquiry, crossing paths with Batou's team during the widening case. The encounter is tense and cautious, reflecting mutual distrust. After the operative's death, Kusanagi retrieves the virus ampules and warns Batou to steer clear of the enigmatic Solid State Society.

Section 9 operatives begin to piece together a theory about a hacker known as the Puppeteer, whose fingerprints tie to the Siak suicides. The investigation expands to hint at a colossal network that could involve up to 20,000 missing children. The Puppeteer's influence seems to ripple through the system itself, binding disparate acts into a single ominous design.

Togusa learns of sixteen kidnapped children meant to carry the virus, all listed as offspring of the Noble Rot Senior Citizens. The scope of the case widens into a possible network involving countless missing youths. The moral and political implications of such an abduction program weigh heavily on Section 9.

Soon the Puppeteer orchestrates the disappearance of the sixteen children, intensifying the sense of a hidden system at work. Batou reveals growing suspicions that Kusanagi herself may be the Puppeteer, a suggestion that destabilizes the already fragile balance within Section 9. The pursuit tightens as more clues surface.

Togusa receives a call from the Puppeteer that hacks his brain and drives him to a cyberbrain implant hospital with his daughter. He faces a grim choice: lose his daughter to the Solid State or commit suicide. Kusanagi intervenes in time to save him and continue tracing the Puppeteer's trail.

Kusanagi follows the Puppeteer's trail and identifies the mastermind as a rhizome formed by the collective consciousness of the Noble Rot Senior Citizens housed in a welfare center. The revelation reframes the entire mystery, turning the Puppeteer from a single hacker into a distributed, emergent power. The Puppeteer becomes a force that operates through the connected system rather than a lone operator.

Kusanagi confirms Ito Munei, a powerful politician, was behind the assassination of General Ka Rum. She uncovers that Munei and allies use a brainwashing facility as a front to cultivate an elite, pure-blooded Japanese ruling class. The plan envisions a new Golden Age, though Munei remains ignorant of the full extent of the abduction network.

Designer Tateaki Koshiki briefly steps forward, claiming responsibility for developing the Solid State before taking his own life. Kusanagi probes into his cyberbrain and is trapped by a trap that allows the Puppeteer to hijack her cybernetics. The exchange demonstrates the Puppeteer's reach inside individual minds.

The Puppeteer hijacks Kusanagi's cybernetics, revealing that the Puppeteer is a rupture of identity spread across multiple egos and coalesced into the Solid State. This entity can move through wider society as a vanishing mediator, not easily defeated by standard means. The revelation reframes who wields power in the system.

Batou informs a recovering Kusanagi that the real Tateaki Koshiki used a prosthetic body and built the Solid State under Munei's hire. The Puppeteer's identity remains tantalizingly unknowable, reinforcing the sense that this is a system-level threat rather than a single mastermind. Kusanagi hints she will rejoin Section 9 when the moment is right, planning her next move.