In the summer of 2020, Saito was fighting in Mexico as a mercenary with anti-government forces. The situation was going from bad to worse and the mercenaries were waiting for an opportunity to surrender. In the middle of this torment, Saito learns that an enemy special operations unit was secretly transporting nuclear material. And so he plans to seize them in hopes of correcting the situation. It was a twist of fate that brought Saito to encounter on the operation theatre the then young Kusanagi, who was in the special operations unit. Could Saito get hold of the nuclear material?

In search of Kuze, Section 9 realizes he had spent some time in the Self-Defense Forces. Further investigations revealed his unit at the time was responsible for an incident the government had desperately tried to suppress. In 2024, the Self-Defense Forces were sent to a small country struggling with civil war under the request of the UN forces. It was the coldest day in winter, and as they marched in the mountains they inadvertently got caught up in a conflict in a refugee camp. This dreadful combat shattered the soldiers' morale and the army gradually lost its self-control.