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It is 2015, 12 years after the events of "Patlabor 2 the movie". The crew of the SV2 are taking a well-earned break at a hot springs resort. Captain Keiji Gotoda is called in by the local police while watching a strip tease show. He is reprimanded by the local police chief as Isamu Ohtawara has been arrested for brawling with a group of local thugs. The police chief questions why he and his group are enjoying themselves a hot springs town as Tokyo is chaos. Gotoda looks at him puzzlingly. The police chief points to a nearby TV behind Gotoda which shows the a news programme showing the Rainbow Bridge in Odaiba on fire with a large section in the middle missing (echoing the attack on Yokohama Bay Bridge in 2002). Later than night at dinner, the members of the SV2 discuss who bombed the bridge and how they did it. Gotoda wonders if it is the prelude of something worse to come.
By the next day the SV2 have returned to Tokyo. Yuma Shiobara is riding to work through the industrial port area in Odaiba. He spots a young woman playing basketball by herself and stops to watch. Impressed by her skills he vocally expresses his excitement. The woman turns to him and coldly smirks at him. A little taken aback, Yuma hurries off to the SV2 hanger. Kei Takahata of Public Security pays the SV2 another visit. She says she has a video to show Gotoda. Unfortunately Gotoda has no idea how to set up the audio/visual equipment, so he asks Yuma (who is attempting to eavesdrop on their conversation along with the rest of the SV2) to help. Eventually the rest of the SV2 end up coming in the meeting room to help out with equipment. Finally everything is set up and video is played. As Gotoda expected it is a high resolution video of the attack on the Rainbow Bridge, supposedly shot by a private film company. It clearly shows an actual missile being launched towards the bridge and the explosion.
Additional analysis of the video by Public Security shows a previously unseen helicopter. Yuma, who is a military otaku, recognises the silhouette of the helicopter; an AH-88J2 Hellhound, the Grey Ghost, a modified attack helicopter with thermo optic skin to make itself inviable to the naked eye. It was developed by the Japanese Self Defence Force (JSDF). Takahata sarcastically applauds Yuma’s analysis. She asks everyone to leave and tells Gotoda that the helicopter was stolen from the Gotemba military base three days ago. Naturally the theft has been kept secret from the public. The secret service hasn’t found the helicopter or the people who stole it. Their investigation has come to a halt. Gotoda ask what the terrorist’s motives could possibly be. Takahata tells him that a group people sympathetic to the ideals of Yukihito Tsuge (currently in prison for the attempted coup d'etat on Tokyo in 2002) stole the helicopter and are preparing to wage war on Tokyo. She asks him why he visited Tsuge in gaol recently. Gotoda answers that he just wanted to know if Tsuge still felt that his actions were justified, to which he replied they were.
Takahata asks Gotoda for help. They need to know who is resupplying the helicopter and supporting them. However Gotoda knows there will be no going back if he does say yes. Takahata provides him with a wealth of information regarding the case on a USB stick. The data contains information about the Hellhound’s pilot, 30 year old JSDF pilot Rei Haibara apparently defected to the terrorist group and stole the helicopter. While she was the first Japanese woman to pilot an attack helicopter, she had numerous disciplinary problems. There are no images of her and it seems someone has manipulated and deleted a lot of her JSDF records. The only other clue is a photograph of what seems to be a stone monument and a tower in the background. At lunch, the SV2 members discuss the case. Ohtawara gets angry at Yuma’s nerdiness about the Hellhound, hover he makes the point that terrorists are essentially holding all of Tokyo hostage by just flying over the city with it.
Later Public Security discovers the refuelling site for the Hellhound which is an open field. Takahata imagines the refuelling and resampling of the helicopter taking place at night around her. They also discover Haibara’s basketball which mysterious has “Ash” scrawled across it. Later that day Gotoda and Takahata meet at an aquarium where she gives more information about the terrorists. Most of the support crew are ex- JSDF, developers of the Japanese version of Hellhound. They resigned months ago and took jobs at a small airline which when bankrupt soon after. However this was a dummy corporation and didn’t really exist. Bank transfers show that a mysterious item was bought for a large sum before the company folded. While the pair talks about the case, Haibara’s backstory comes up. With all of the Haibara’s files being manipulated or deleted, the pair wonders if she even existed in the first place. Later Gotoda surprisingly receives a phone call from his former senior, Shinobu Nagumo, who has returned to Japan in secret from her overseas stint with the UNHCR in the Middle East. Meeting through a fence at a military base, Nagumo explains that she hitched a ride on a military cargo plane and that she is in Japan unofficially. She suggests that the departure of herself and Captain Goto inadvertently left a time bomb which is about to explode. Gotoda ask why his mentor Goto won’t contact him. Nagamo says that he believes he won’t listen to him. Gotoda asks why the she and Goto disappeared after the failed coup d'etat in 2002. She explains that it was due to the fallout of the actions they took to stop the coup d'etat. Nagumo asks him who he will protect in the upcoming war on Tokyo and for what reasons.
Gotoda returns to the SV2 where head mechanic Shigeo Shiba (or just plain Shige to everyone) is ropeable at the captain’s disappearance. He informs Gotoda that while he was away Security Bureau came in an effectively shut down the SV2. Shige believes that end is near and the SV2 will be disbanded. He warns Gotoda not to follow the path the pervious captains took. Gotoda orders the members of SV2 to mobilise. That night, the SV2 raid the terrorist’s hideout. Yuma goes in to scout out the building and confirm if the Grey Ghost is being kept there. He manages to take a photograph of the helicopter with his mobile phone but is attacked by Haibara before he can report back to the captain. After a scuffle where Habara clearly has the upper hand, Yuma somehow manages to send the photo the captain’s phone before being knocked out. Gotoda orders the rest of the SV2 in while the mechanics (headed up by second in command mechanic Buchiyama) use specially made explosive shells fired by the revolver cannon into the building.
Despite the fact that the SV2 are only using small arms such as shotguns and pistols (though Kasha is using her AK-47), the terrorists are having trouble trying to stop the attack. The decision is made to abandon their base of operations. However the SV2 attack weakens as the mechanics run out of explosive shells and Kasha’s AK-47 runs out of bullets. However backup arrives in the form of Kei Takahata and agents from Public Security. But by this time the Grey Ghost has taken off and it’s support crew barges through the Public Security vehicles. A police road block on the highway is blown away by the Grey Ghost’s machine guns and the terrorist make their escape. Later the rest of the SV2 rescues the beat up Yuma. Gotoda finds Haibara’s basketball and Yuma realises that the woman he saw playing basketball in the industrial area in Odaiba is the same one who beat him up.
The following day Takahata meets Gotoda again and says no one has any idea where the terrorists went. The most likely hiding spot for the Grey Ghost is along the bay amongst the thousands of containers that lie in various ports. It’s an impossible task to search them all. Takahata also has some additional information on Haibara. After investigating her life before joining the defence forces, she seems to be an ordinary girl from an ordinary family. None of her classmates could really remember anything about her which made her stand out. Except for the fact she always had a smirk on her face, but seemed rather cold.
The following morning the Grey Ghost takes off. It flies directly to the SV2 hanger and peppers with hundreds of rounds of machine gun fire and eventually several missiles. The building is utterly destroyed and in flames. However the mechanics and SV2 have been hiding under camouflage nets in anticipation of this happening. Shige is utterly devastated by the destruction of his workplace, his true home of the last two decades. However there isn’t any time to wallow in pity. The SV2 remove the camouflage nets covering the Labors and their carriers and prepare to do battle.
Gotoda has been called in to explain himself to the police chiefs at headquarters. They seem to be more concerned with his actions than those of the terrorists that stole the Grey Ghost. He recalls that Nagumo was in the exact same position in 2002. Eventually he can’t take anymore and asks them to dismiss him from his post. His phone rings and Nagano is on the other end. She advises him that the SV2 hanger has been taken out and asks him what he will do next. The police chiefs realise that Nagumo is on the phone and demand that Gotoda tell them what she is up to. Eventually they can take no more and order Gotoda to be taken away. But before that happens, the Grey Ghost attacks the building, shooting a hail of bullets into the conference room. Gotoda escapes and heads to where the SV2 are.
Meanwhile the Grey Ghost shoots up various buildings around Tokyo including the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Offices. JSDF helicopters and F-16s try to take out the Grey Ghost but have no luck. Attack Helicopters are sent into take it down, but Haibara shoots one down and it crashes in the park in front of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Offices in Shinjuku. Afterwards Haibara lands to refuel and rearm. A police car tries to intervene but Haibara shoots it up. While the Grey Ghost escapes, Takahata and agents from Public Security capture its support team. Knowing that they won’t give up the next refuelling point easily, Takahata begins shooting members in the legs in an effort to make their leader talk. Meanwhile Gotoda tells the members of the SV2 that they can either quit now or suffer the repercussions of what they’re about to do and get kicked off the force. Surprisingly all of them decide to go on. Gotoda revives a call from Takahata who tells him that she discovered the place in the photograph that Rei Haibara left. It was a graveyard where the Haibara family grave is. Rei died when she was 13 years old. Gotoda is shocked and asks out loud who is flying the helicopter. Meanwhile on bridge over Tokyo Bay, Ohtawara and Izumino get in their Labors and prepare to take on the Grey Ghost…