Oasis

“A distress signal was received an hour ago by one of our spacecraft.”

“From where?”

“It was set for Saois V.”

A heavy silence falls over the room.                                                                       

“From who?”

“First Classes, Mado and Amon. Also the former assistant, now Rank 3 Nagachika.

The sound of a glass slamming against the desk broke the silence.

“Who let that happen?” It was said with barely contained concern.

“It-”

“Because it certainly wasn’t me.”

“I allowed it.”

“Why?”

“That kid is special, more skilful and observant than other people on the job. It’s what got him promoted so fast.”

“…”

“I wanted to send him out there. Test him. I feel like he’s going to be useful. Something about him…”

A weary sigh.  “You know I trust your decisions.”

“Give them five days before we send in back-up. Saois V is uninhabited; they can’t be in too much trouble.”

A hum was the only response.

Hide hears before he sees.

A faint hissing and crackling sound accompanied by a shrill static noise pesters his ears until he twitches his head in annoyance, only to groan silently at the awful crick in his neck.

After that he notices a lot of things.

His chest aches painfully every time he tries to breathe through his cracked lips, a cough caused by air tickling his parched throat rattles his rib cage so hard that he doubles over, except he’s restrained by the seat belt. There’s a distinct smell of burning metal coming from somewhere which makes it even harder to breathe and his head feels light, like all the blood in his body has moved towards it.

Only after he pries his eyes open does he realise the entire ship is on its back. He’s hanging upside down in his chair, arms dangling towards the ground- or ceiling really.

Why is it-

Shit. Shit. Shit. He remembers everything, the mission, the crash, his- Akira and Amon!

His body is suspended awkwardly as he moves his head and he’s lost his helmet. Everything is disorientated because of his position and he feels very sluggish. On his left, Akira seems to be intact, just not conscious, and with no visible injuries. With Amon it’s harder to say, he’s in front of Hide meaning that he’s out of his line of sight, the back of his chair the only thing he can see, and Hide’s not in any shape to somehow climb down to take a look.

“Akira...? Amon?” His mouth is drier than a cracker, lips only slightly parted as he struggles to speak. He doesn’t receive a reply which makes his heart pick up a tiny bit. “…Uh?”

“O- - - SECOND - - ILL - - PACT” At least the ship’s computer could answer him… even though it wasn’t exactly an answer, and it had malfunctioned. “O – NE - - - SECO – SEC – SEC - SEC – SEC…” The constant reply of the message is never ending, and Hide wishes he could knock himself out again to escape the noise.

“SEC – SEC – TI - SEC – SEC – PAC - SEC…”

“…Shuddup.”

Hide is considering seppuku to end his misery when he hears Akira mumble the word and he jolts up (down because he’s the wrong way around) in relief.

“Akira?” He tries, but it’s too quiet and doesn’t rouse her. “Akira!? Wake up! Come on!” Even though his voice is weak, it’s enough for her to groan and flutter her eyes open. “Akira!”

“Huh?” Her eyes are as dazed as she sounds. “Hide?” She turns her body in the chair before halting abruptly. “Oh.” He can see her calculating everything in her mind and taking in as much of her surrounding as she can. The smashed up control panels that hang from their hinges, sparks flying from them hazardously, the cracked window that has a direct view of the ground and the huge dents in the side of the ship. It doesn’t take a genius to know what happened.

“Yeah, ‘Oh’.”

“We crashed.”

“Yeah.”

“We’re upside-down.”

“Yeah.”

“We should get out.”

“Yeah.” Akira sends him an unimpressed glare. “What?”

She ignores him in favour of calling Amon’s name. When he still doesn’t respond she calls his name again, and again, and again. Hide doesn’t miss her worried glance. Hide hardly ever questions the nature of Amon and Akira’s relationship (because it’s none of his business and when Seidou gets involved it gets complicated) but he knows something’s up. The way she stares at him when he’s not looking, there’s definitely something there. Akira almost never shows her emotions outright, but with Amon… Hide’s only ever seen her this worried when her cat went missing for a day, only to be found locked in a cupboard.

However, now’s not the time to be thinking about that. Hide kind of wants to get out of here. Pronto.

Akira pulls herself up in her chair, wincing as she does so, and tries to peeks around the side of his chair, before falling back down against the back of the seat.

“Did you see anything?” Hide attempts to do the same as her, but his neck hurts too much from him to get his head to move to the side.

“His helmet’s off.” She takes a moment to breathe through her nose. “He’s not moving.” Hide can see his and Amon’s helmets discarded on the ceiling. The crash must have been pretty rough if it caused them to fly off their heads.

“Uh – so, how are we supposed to get down from here?” He thinks if he stays like this for any longer his brain will drown in all the blood that’s pooled around his head. “…With Amon.” He adds, remembering that Amon being out of commission is going to make everything a tiny bit harder. Hide would say to just leave him here, but he’s not a bad person (and he doesn’t want to be on the receiving end of Akira’s wrath.)

“I’ll go down first. You, stay there.” Akira rolls her shoulders, then unbuckles her seat belt. Before Hide can get another word in, she has already jumped straight down from the seat, turning in the air, feet landing perfectly on the ceiling.

How the hell did she do that so easily?

“The ship’s a wreck.” He hears her voice below him and the sound of her boots making crunching noises on the groung. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to fly this thing again.”

“Definitely not, since Amon and I are still up here.”

“Oh yeah,” Did she seriously forget in two seconds!? “Can you get down?”

“No?” Hide makes an irritated sound in the back of his throat. “Unlike you, I’m not Cat woman in disguise.” He hears her sigh.

“Look, I’ll catch you.” She walks underneath him with her arms spread out. “It’s not a big fall.” Akira looks up at him with a look that undoubtedly says “If you fail this 7ft jump, I’ll personally kick your ass back into assistant position.” and Hide begrudgingly unbuckles his seatbelt. He’ll show her that he can. It should be easy, pfft. If Akira can do it, he -

Except he forgot that unbuckling his seatbelt meant falling immediately. 

And he didn’t turn quickly enough in the air because he was too busy flailing around in panic.

And he’s an idiot.

“SHIT-”

“HIDE-”

Akira has a second to scream, laced with utter incredulity, before Hide lands directly in her arms. Unfortunately, they both crash towards the floor because of his weight and her not expecting Hide to actually fuck up. Hide doesn’t know whether to find it embarrassing or funny. In the end, he is finds it neither of those because he’s in too much pain.

“Um,” Hide groans, sprawled across Akira’s torso. “I think I broke my whole body.” He might be exaggerating, but if his neck and chest were hurting before, it’s killing him now. The smack of his body on the ground almost made him pass out again and he has to blink the black spots forming in his vision. Luck’s really on his side today.

Not.

He expects a little sympathy for his superior, he’s hurting after all, but instead Akira uses her leg to kick him off her like he’s trash.

Hide rolls onto his back, ready to whine at her, when he sees face. Underneath her helmet her expression is livid. Her bangs hiding half her face, one eye revealed, glaring at him through the glass. She’s being quiet, and that’s scaring him more than anything.

Hide swallows loudly. Maybe apologising will help.

“…Sor-”

“I cannot believe-!”

Nope.

“-that you messed that up! All you had to do was-” Oh boy. A lecture from Akira, while they were stranded on a different planet, and hurt. Just what he needed. He closed his eyes and braced himself for the long, long tongue-lashing. “-drop down normally, instead of moving around like a madman and crushing me with your heavy body. I think my stomach’s-!” A cough interrupted the rest she had to say.

It didn’t come from either of them.

“AMON!?” They both sprinted to below the pilot seat and looked up at the hanging black hair.

“What- cough- did Hide do now?” Amon’s voice was very hoarse, but at least he was alive. Hide gave Akira a relieved smile, despite her previous scolding, and she dropped her harsh look to nudge his shoulder with her own.

“He fell from his seat onto me.” Akira answered, ignoring Hide’s instantaneous sulking. Amon chuckles feebly and shakes his head at the younger boy.

“Give him a break, it’s not every day you have to do this.” Hide internally cheers as Amon defends his honour and Akira tuts.

“Your next, Amon. Unless you can do it by yourself.” She puts her arms out once again, eyes twinkling with amusement. He shakes his head once again and points to his head.

“As much as I wouldn’t want to burden you, I’m feeling dizzy right now.” There’s a line of read across his forehead, he must have hit his head on the control table during the crash. “Just be careful, I’m heavy.”

Hide puts his hands out as well. “Yeah just don’t kill us, you might with how big you are.” Amon snorts and unbuckles himself.

Amon’s body is like a huge sack of potatoes as it descends upon them, it happens so fast. Hide only has a half a second to regret trying to catch him because, damn, you would have to be the world’s strongest person to catch him and stay standing.

“OH-”

“UGH-”

They all end up on the floor once again.

Hide’s sure he’s going to suffocate with Amon’s back covering his face, but Amon is too big to get out from under him. The hard armour is digging severely into his front and once again his aching body can’t get a break from the abuse.

Amon still hasn’t moved. The two human pillows underneath him had been enough to cushion his fall, but he couldn’t feel his legs. “Sorry.”

“I think you broke my body. For real.” Hide’s voice is muffled by a face full of back.

“Ditto.” Akira says somewhere else from under Amon’s body.