Oasis

“You look like absolute crap…  as always.”

Hide clutches his helmet against his chest, mocking offense.

“Don’t talk to me, or my space suit, ever again.”  Seidou grins and shakes his head.

“If Saois V is as dodgy as you’ve been telling me, I might not.”

“You’re just jealous!” Hide blurts, rubbing his hands over his new space suit. “I look freaking cool in this.”  He was only back at the CCG to collect the suit from the office, and boy, was he shocked. His whole body covered from his feet to his Adams apple in white and grey. Bulky white armour plates his upper torso, arms and covers the knee-high boots, while firm grey material covers his neck and any other area not shielded by the armour. It was bulky, but light and easy to walk around in and hugs his body nicely. His helmet has the same white design. To finish it off, glowing gold CCG logos are etched in the side of the shoulder plates.

“I’m not jealous.” Seidou scowls, turning his lips down at the suit. He did think it looked bad-ass, but he wasn’t going to admit that anytime soon.

“Are too.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Am not!”

“Cut it out.” Amon had entered the lobby, kitted up in his own space suit and a backpack on his shoulder. “Nagachika, we’re leaving for the port in five.” He reminds, Hide puts his hand to his head in a salute, but Amon has already made his way down the corridor.

“Hey,” Hide turns back towards Seidou, who has a slightly more serious expression on his face. He’s looking down at the ground with his fist clenched tightly by his sides, brown bangs covering his face.  “I didn’t mean what I said.” Hide makes a confused noise in the back of his throat. “…About me not seeing you again.” His voice wobbles.

Hide walks closer towards Seidou to put a hand on his shoulder, “It was a joke, I get it. I’m not dying or getting stuck on some random planet anytime soon.” He tries to make it sound comforting, but the images he can’t rub from his eyes of everyone’s death causes his words to come out slightly strained.

“I wish I could go up with you guys.” Oh no you don’t. Seidou should be glad that he’s forced to stay on earth and do investigations, the safe option, Hide realises. “It’s always Akira and Amon who are sent on stuff like this, but I never get to-”

 “Don’t worry, I’ll look after Akira for you.”

“EH!?” Seidou splutters, red covering the entirety of his face.  “When did I say anything about her.” Hide’s already laughing and the stiff man pulls himself away from him with an angry pout.

“You didn’t have to, man.”

“Do you have everything?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Extracting equipment?”

“Yes.”

“Blaster parts?”

“Yes.”

“Food supplies?”

“Yes.”

“Water”

“Yes.”

“Toilet paper?”

“YES! Holy crap. Ha-ha, get it? Holy crap… because of toilet paper?”

“…”

“Erm... Anyway, is this necessary?”

“Yes.”

“Can I get on the ship now?”

“No.”

“Oh thank- What!?”

“Do you have my coffee?”

“…Have you seriously been joking all this time?”

Hide settles in the pilot’s seat comfortably, stretching his arms in front of him and smirking at all the different controls surrounding him. He’s feeling more ready for this. The ship for him and his superiors has a spacious white-gold interior, long fluorescent lights lining the floors and roof. The exterior of the ship reminds Hide of a whale, large curved front and small tail lined with gold lights, three wings on either side. When he had first entered the ship, he immediately dropped his bag and ran to the cockpit to caress the many different control panels and switches, the buttons lighting up in response. It was more high-tech than the ones in the simulations, more sophisticated. In the rear area of the ship there are beds that retract from the walls, a water closet, what looks like a kitchen with a smooth black table (and to Hide’s delight) a fridge and coffee machine.

It seems like the CCG’s really gone out to advance their technology this year.

Hide almost drools over the digital displays surrounding the pilot chair, and he is just reaching a hand out to touch one when someone grabs him under his arms and lifts him out the seat.

“Wha- Hey! No!” Hide cries, watching himself helplessly being put in a similar chair away from the control panel. “I want to fly!” He reaches his hand out towards the main seat miserably, but to no avail.

“Sorry, kid.” Amon chuckles, hands forcing the younger of the two into the chair. “You can’t pilot just yet.” He reaches around the seat to buckle Hide up.

"Why?" Hide choses to ignore the fact that he's being handled like a baby. He was just starting to enjoy himself and, yet again, its ruined.

"Because we don’t want to die before we get there.” Akira answered matter-of-factly, walking up the few steps leading to the cockpit. Oh, so now his piloting skills are being insulted, great.

“We’re more likely to die after we get there, actually.” Hide grumbles, gesturing wildly with his hands. “Or, maybe we’ll be in luck and only crash into the planet and get kidnapped by weird magic cat people… who’ll keep us as slaves for the rest of our lives.”

“Good. I’ve always been a cat person anyway.” Akira has a hand on her hip when she positions herself in front of Hide, who’s mumbling incoherently under his breath. “Look, this is for safety reasons-”

“Safety reasons-”

“Hide.” The way she says his name makes him shut his mouth. “Just put your helmet on.” She shoves the backpack that Hide had dropped in his face, helmet making up a huge bulge in the bag. Hide complies without a word, tucking his small pony tail into the back of his collar in order to click the helmet in place. Unsurprisingly, Akira plonks herself down in the pilot seat while Amon has already situated himself in a co-piloting chair. They start familiarising themselves with the controls before Hide feels the soft hum of the ship booting up.

“Okay, Amon, check the vitals for me.” Akira orders, flicking a couple of switches that suddenly turn all the screens are on, Hide can see the percentages of gases present in the atmosphere surrounding the ship on the monitor closest to him.

“Everything’s Fine.” Amon responds after tapping away on the panel, “Fuels at 97%, we probably only need 50% to get there and back.”  Hide watches a transparent map view of the galaxy project itself on half of the window and is reminded that he’s actually going into space, oh hell. Maybe he’s not ready to fly, he’s too excited and terrified.  Space is a big place after all, big enough to get lost in… forever. Hide quietens his mind before he gets himself into that dark place again.

“Destination set to: Saois V.” A monotonous female voice blares from the speaker, the map projection scrolls rapidly through the universe before setting a flag point on a small blue dot labelled ‘Saois V’. Hide can’t tell how far away it is from earth, it looks kind of close on the map, but the computer estimates a three-hour journey, not that long.

“Alright,” Akira mutters processes as she presses buttons and grabs onto the handles of two levers beside of her, “You guys ready?” She looks back at Amon and then Hide, a determined grin on her face. Her confidence is infectious; it makes the doubt clouding Hide’s mind quieten enough for him to return her smile.

“Hell yes!”

Hide only realises he's fallen asleep when his nap is disturbed by an extremely irritating sound.

"...five more minutes." He croaks, shifting his body to the right. It’s a little uncomfortable, he can feel the arm of the chair digging into his back. How did he even fall asleep here?

"THRUSTERS DIS.... ATION...LOCK... PREPARE FOR..." Hide cracks his eyes open blearily; his ears start to pick up the interface voice through the sound of...

The ALARM? SHIT! Hide jumps up in his chair, head swimming at the fast motion, and blinks the sleep away from his eyes. What the hell could have triggered the alarm?

"Uh- damn- We have a problem!" His head snaps towards Akira, who's standing over the control panel with her hands splayed out like she doesn't know what to do. Shit. If Akira doesn’t know what to do, they are all truly fucked. Hide can't help but think of all those death scenarios he thought up the night before. Sucked into the abyss through a black hole, or maybe engine failure causing the ship to drift in space forever or…

At least life was good while it lasted.

"Akira! What's going on?" He shouts over the blaring of the sirens, he looks around to see several screen flashing a bright red. Red can only mean one thing, danger, but maybe, just maybe things aren’t that bad. She looks like she's about to answer him when she's interrupted,

"THRUSTERS DISABLED, NAVIGATION CONTROLS LOCKED, PREPARE FOR DESCENT."  He takes back everything he thought. they are going to die here, on this ship. Right now.

Hide snaps his gaze towards the window.

Saois V is massive; it’s an entirely red planet, entirely lonely looking planet.

 Nothing special about it except for the fact that it would be their graves.

Yeeaaaah, they were heading straight towards it. The ship was ready to dive head-first into a sea of red dust, and quickly too. Hide turned to scream about their imminent death, when suddenly the ship jolts sharply to the left, causing both Hide and Akira to fall and tumble to the left wall of the ship. They land next to each other, and Hide can feel the throbbing of his head where it hit the side of a desk. He bites his tongue to stop himself from crying out.

“N-Nagachika,” Akira sounds out of breath. “Get in your seat.” She orders, hauling herself of the floor, ship still tilted awkwardly, and offers Hide a hand up. Once he’s up, Hide hears the swoosh of a door opening before Amon staggers towards them from out of it.

“I tried tampering with the internal wiring.” A bead of sweat trickles down his lowered brow. “Nothing seemed wrong, it might be an external problem.” Akira rubs a hand down her face and lowers her head.

“We can’t exit the ship at this speed.”  She sighs. “We have to just make-do. I’ll notify the office of the problem.”

“Akira…” Amon steps forward in front of the pilot seat after a long pause. “I’ll pilot.”

“No!” She places a hand on Amon’s chest to push him away. “It’s no use, I’ll just continue. It’s fine.”

“I don’t want you to feel responsible for this.” He sets his mouth in a determined line, pushing her hand off of him. But, his eyes are soft as he watches her.

“Uh guys-”

“I’m already responsible!” She snaps, leaning furiously into Amon’s face. “I can deal with it, okay!”

“You’ve piloted for long enough, I’ll take over.” Amon doesn’t back up, instead countering her position with his own intimidation, “You’re clearly stressed.”

“Guys…”

“I said I’m fine!”

“You say many things but it doesn’t mean it’s true!”

“EXCUSE ME!” They both turn towards Hide, startled by the interruption, and watch as he clears his throat and points to the window. “Sorry, but this isn’t the time to argue. As you can see, we’ve already entered the atmosphere.”

It’s true. They are much closer to the ground, and Hide can feel the awful feeling in his stomach, caused by the ship falling. He’s close enough to see the faint oranges and yellows mixed into the red colour of the terrain.

Then the ship violently lurches to the other side and they’re forced to scramble into their seats. Amon jumps into the pilot seat without any argument.

“We’ll still be able to land this, don’t worry.” Amon voice wavers uneasily, Hide almost comments on it, but a shout replaces it when he hears a screeching sound coming from inside the ship.

“What the hell was that!?” Akira took the words straight from Hide’s mouth.

“I don’t know-” Amon pulls one of the handles forward, causing another screeching sound to resound around the ship. “Shit.”

“What is it?” Hide yells over the sirens.

“Everything’s in lockdown.” Amon desperately fumbles with the controls, “I don’t know why. This makes no sense.”

The ship makes another wobble, and Hide doesn’t think anything of it. Until the ship continues to spin all the way around, continuously, and- shit- he feels like he’s going to puke. The alarm is blaring louder in his ear and he struggles to hear Akira.

“Amon, try something else!” She shifts downwards in her chair when they turn upside down. “Anything!”

“I’m trying.” Amon grits his teeth, finding it difficult to concentrate as they turn. “Nothing does anything.”

“They’re must be something.”  Hide squints at the window, the world outside bright in contrast to the inside of the ship.

“TEN SECONDS TILL IMPACT.”

There so close. Hide can now see tiny little cracks in the dry surface of the planet. His eyes are stinging from staying open for too long, but if he blinks he feels like he’ll miss the moment they crash.

“I’m sorry.”

It doesn’t matter who says it, they all agree. The ship stabilises enough to keep them upright and it makes it worse. He can clearly see that they are going to die.

“THREE SECONDS TILL IMPACT.”

Hide couldn’t bare it anymore.

He thought about his home. His room that he had lazily left untidied. His bed with the manga he had only read halfway through. The empty halls. That one track on his Backstreet Boys album he didn’t listen to.

He thought about work. The files he still hasn’t read through; the case he is meant to be on after this mission. Seidou. He was probably still moaning about not being here. What a lucky man he is.

He thought about - - -

He squeezes his eyes shut.

“ONE SECOND TILL-”