Calm &
Noooooooo!
“Noooooooo-!”
“Nagachika, shut up. You’re in public.”
Hide draws his knees further into himself, burying his face into them while groaning loudly, the dreaded papers still clutched angrily in his fist. He doesn’t give a toss that he’s slouched in the corner of the office, he thinks he can feel eyes on his on him, probably the many other investigators who have been interrupted by the noise, but he still doesn’t care and he can definitely feel Akira’s ice cold glare. He thinks he deserves more sympathy, Akira of all people should understand his pain, she was the one to deliver the horrifying news. The file in his hand makes a sound as Hide grips it tighter, and he groans again.
He has a mission; he was going into space. That was the information he had digested from the file that Akira had slapped on top of his desk, at first, which promptly caused him to stand up and punch his fist in the air, yelling over to Seidou from the other side of the room that he was going to space before him, only to be shut down by Seidou ignoring him. But, after calming down his excitement enough to actually read the file properly, he read what he was going to space for.
To collect crystals. The crystals the CCG uses to power the cores of their space ships. To get some freaking crystals like he was some space janitor.
Hide is more than frustrated. Having just turned twenty-two, marking his fourth year working at the CCG, he believes that he should be sent on missions as a fighter pilot to battle hostile aliens, since he has passed all his simulation tests at the top of the class, or he can even be sent to planets to use all the skills he learnt from his combat training, but they are sending him to retrieve crystals like he is just a dumb rookie (okay maybe he is. He’s still Rank 3 but that’s not the point).
“Why did they have to pick me.” Hide sighs into his knees, he would take boring earth investigations any day over this. It was what Hide had been originally doing anyway, tracking down a gang of red aliens who had been transporting illegal substances from their home planet, gunning down an alien with two ugly heads that was wanted for eating someone’s pet, sending back a pod of dog-like men who tried sneaking on to earth, he’d done it all. It was boring, far more boring than going into space to blast away approaching fleets of foreign ships which most of the high-ranking CGG pilots do on a monthly basis.
But, anything was less boring than collecting fuel. In the tedious lessons he used to have in his academy days, he was taught about the power crystals, he never thought he actually needed the knowledge of them.
“If it makes you feel better, it was originally just Amon and I who were going.” He hears Akira say and raises his head. She is sat in his desk chair, a few feet away from him, staring down at his place on the floor clearly unimpressed, “But I put in a good word for you, I thought you wanted to go.” Well, she was wrong and Hide feels betrayed that she was the one to drag him into this.
“I didn’t sign up for this.” Hide moans, waving the file in the air to make a point, and he knows he sounds childish.
“Yes you did.” Akira states, “Most of us investigators have had to do it. Isn’t that right?” She says it loud enough for the entire office room to hear, and she receives grumbles of agreement around her. She looks satisfied at the response. “How else is the CCG meant to provide fuel for the hundreds of ships that they have?”
“B-But this is the first time I’m going up there,” Hide lifts a finger to the ceiling, gesturing vaguely while pouting, “I wanted to kick some space alien butt for real, not handle crystals.” Jeesh. It’s not the 21st century anymore, a guy shouldn’t be stuck on earth doing the crappy jobs and just to go into space to do more crappy jobs.
“The fact that this is going to be your first time in space proves that you’re not ready for that- no don’t look like that, it’s true. Just use this trip as experience. Then, next time you go to space it will be your second time and they might send you to do something better. Okay?” Hide can’t help but be assured at her words and drops his arms from around himself, she softens her face and stands up, brushing her skirt down to rid herself of the invisible dust. “Now, I suggest you spend the rest of your time reading over that file like your life depends on it, you need to know how to extract the crystals like the back of your hand.” She advises, giving Hide a stern look as he pulls himself off the floor.
“Yeah, yeah, I will.” Hide scratches the back of his neck sheepishly, Akira nods and turns to leave. “Uh- Wait!”
“Yes?”
“Thanks, Akira-san” She shakes her head, lips tugging upwards, and pointedly looks at the crumpled file in Hide’s hand.
“Just get on with it.”
“Sooo, Amon-san… what do you think of this predicament?” Hide asks after stuffing a three pieces of sushi in his mouth. Akira glares at him for the seat next to him, in a silent warning for him not to speak with his mouth full of food. Amon lets out an amused huff. The sushi bar they agreed to go to after work is practically empty, only a few stragglers left at the tables because of the late hour. Hide preferred it like this, the quiet atmosphere with his superiors, who he’s worked with for years.
“Well- Uh, it could be better.” Amon admits, “But it won’t take long, the planet we’re flying to isn’t far away.”
“Huh? Which planet is it?” Hide asks, genuinely confused, he was sure his file didn’t say which planet they would be visiting. “Oooh, don’t tell me it’s Padunelk.” Hide glowers, if they are going to that awful purple planet that he heard stinks of vomit, he might purposefully break his legs so he can’t go.
“So you didn’t read the file after all.” Akira accuses, pointing her spoon in Hide’s face.
“Wha- I did! I swear I read every line five times.” Hide spluttered, leaning away from the threatening spoon. “I swear!”
“Then how-” Akira cut herself off suddenly, narrowing her eyes at Hide. “Did you read the back page?” Hide blanches, there was a back page?
“How was I supposed to know there was a back page!?”
“By using your brain.”
“Hey!”
“Akira, he’s young.” Amon interjected, preventing Akira from retorting, “Allow him to make a few mistakes.” Hide grumbles to himself, he’s not even that much younger than them, yet they treat him like a child. “Anyway, we are not going to Padunelk.”
Akira snorts into her soup, “Thank god, they don’t have the right type of crystal.” Hide releases a breath of relief, picking a piece of fish off his plate and happily taking a bite out of it.
“I heard that Arima and his squad are going to-” Amon interrupts himself with a laugh, both Hide and Akira look towards eachother, then at him curiously, “They’re going to Falcon Petmu for crystals.” Hide almost chokes on his last piece of fish at the mention of the planet.
“Are you serious!?” Hide shouts, Akira nudges his leg with hers, shushing him, but her eyes are wide too. “That’s the planet with the surface that’s covered in-”
“Let’s not think about that.” Akira exclaims, shaking her head at Hide. “Let’s just be grateful it’s not us.” Both men nod in agreement, and the table drifts into a comfortable silence, the clatter of cutlery and chatter of the few other people in the restaurant being the only sounds to disturb it. Hide is much more pleased about going to space after learning about the Arima squad’s misfortune, nothing can get worse than that planet. It makes Hide think what the planet he’s going to will look like up close, could it be like Earth? Hide remembers he still doesn’t know what planet they’re going to.
“You never told me what the planet is called.” Hide asks after a while, finally wanting to fill in the silence after placing his chopsticks down.
“Oh yeah, sorry.” Amon apologises, “It’s called Saois V.”
“Sa-oh-is V?”
“Yes.”
“Never heard of it.” Hide shrugs, testing the name in his head. It sounded like a serious kind of planet, if serious kind of planets existed, but there was something about the name that made Hide’s head pang weirdly. It’s almost like he knew the name from somewhere, but he knows he can’t. “Do you know what it looks like?”
“Apparently the surface is quite barren.” Amon answers after a moment to slurp up his noodles, “No one has been there before, though. So-”
“We’re gonna be the first there!?” Hide couldn’t help but burst out, Saois V is starting to sound more and more interesting. They are going to be the first people to explore a planet, and it’s enough to make Hide a little bit more eager to go. “Why has no one been there before?”
Amon looks like he is going to speak, but ends up shrugging.
“It’s complicated…” Akira continues for him, twirling a spoon in her hand, “I think the CCG hasn’t been certain about the safety of this planet, I mean, it’s strange that the planet is uninhabited.”
“…Why is that strange?” Hide leans forward slightly, intrigued and slightly scared.
“On the surface it may be barren, but a large quantity of crystals has been detected underneath. It has more crystals than Earth and the other visited planet have combined.”
“Yeah,” Hide drawls, already feeling a dark coil of foreboding in his stomach. “That’s fishy. Why hasn’t any other being gotten to it. Crystals are, like, super valuable aren’t they? Surely-”
Amon and Akira share a look.
“- someone else has already colonised it, meaning we’re going to have to battle it out with weird space people. We should ask for more back-up, only having us go there is too-”
“Hide.” Hide’s sentence trails off, Amon and Akira are both staring at him funnily. He doesn’t know which one of them called him, maybe it was both of them.
“Uh- Sorry.” He feels a hand land on top of his head.
“You’re a good kid.” Amon ruffles the blond hair reassuringly, “We’ll be fine.”
Hide can’t sleep.
He’s lying awake on top of his covers, the slight chill of the autumn air coming through his window brushes against his skin. He feels the prickly feeling of goose bumps forming on his bare arms and shifts uncomfortably on his bed.
Tomorrow, he’ll be on Saois V, looking for crystals. It sounds easy, right?
Yet, he can’t shake the nagging feeling in the back on his head.
It’s an annoying sensation, he can’t even shut his eyes without becoming irritated. While he had a shower, he had just brushed the feeling off as a little bit of anxiety, the other guys probably feel it too, no biggie. It doesn’t go away, in fact, it’s gotten worse. He can’t explain it, he only knows it’s making him more and more nervous as morning approaches.
The night before, he tried to search the CCG database for ‘Saois V’ and came up with nothing. Nothing. Nada. Not even mentioned anywhere. Doesn’t exist. Which is worrying since he could literally search up ‘poop’ and still find something (not like he’s done that or anything… *cough*).
He has a bad feeling, really bad feeling and he knows his intuition is right like 99.9% of the time, so accurate that it could rival Akira’s, but if he told her that he would be ignored for the rest of the year.
He tries closing his eyes again. Go to sleep for god's sake, Hide.
Now, the feeling makes images of him and his team on the mysterious planet flood his brain. They’re stranded, looking for shelter, out of supplies, dying. He feels hot, tiny beads of sweat rolling down his collar bone into his tank top. The visions look so real, real enough to scare Hide into opening his eyes.
He breathes out, staring at his ceiling. It’s not real, not real at all.
Yeah, he’s not getting to sleep anytime soon.