A tropical paradise. Luscious rainforests serenaded by the song of unseen birds. Clear crystalline waters sparkling in morning sun. Rukia stared blankly out at the beautiful scene. To say she was indifferent could not be further from the truth.
With a sigh Rukia seized a small remote from beside her on the bench and pressed a button. In a flash the rainforest disappeared, the mirage vanishing upon the screen; it wasn't real. The same could be said for her dreams the night before; it wasn't real.
So she told her self, over and over, if only to make the trembling stop.
Distracted from the scene around her, life went on as usual. Beyond the plate glass window behind her people strolled past and chatted casually, unaware of the nightmares she had been put through. For some time she waited alone out in the artificial wilderness until the door opened and the familiar face of Ichimaru Gin emerged, all smiles as usual.
"I'm so sorry to have kept you waiting," he said with his usual air of calm, "traffic was a bitch this morning."
The words flew past Rukia without register. "Have you heard anything about my daughter?" she asked. The question caused her voice to creak, the inevitable trepidation of the unknown seeding doubt in her mind.
Gin averted his gaze for the briefest moment before glancing at her once more. "I think you should worry more about the hearing right now. We don't have much time." Without even bothering to hear her protests he continued on, "Now I've looked over your files; you should be fine as long as you stick with it. Remember, there are a lot of heavyweights in there..."
Gin rattled off meaningless titles while Rukia glared. After humoring him for a short time she cut him off and stepped forward to ask once again, "Have you heard anything about my daughter?" Her voice was firm the second time, her irritation at being ignored working to steel herself.
The man's smile faltered and his voice failed at the sudden interruption. With a shaky grin he nodded his assent. "Yes. Well, we found a few little pieces of information. Why don't we sit down?" he gestured to the bench. "Honestly I wanted to wait until after your inquest, but..." he rolled his eyes and fumbled through the papers in his suitcase. After finding several crumpled sheets he dragged them out and read aloud, "Hisana Kuchiki, age sixty-seven. At least...that was how old she was when she died. That was two years ago, the cause of death was listed as 'illness'. I am sorry, truly."
Rukia slowly took the papers from his hands and stared at the image of her beloved daughter, aged beyond recognition yet still looking every bit as beautiful as she remembered her. She gazed down with fond eyes and stroked the face smiling back at her.
"Hisana..."
Gin frowned, watching as Rukia's shoulder slumped and her eyes grew cloudy.
"I promised her... *sniff!*, I promised her I would be home for her birthday..."
Her eleventh birthday...
She bowed her head and sobbed.
Tessai smiled up on the screen. A file photo. Following close behind was Urahara. More photographs of the Nostromo crew, long gone. Rukia watched them drift away and returned her attention to the board.
"This is ridiculous," she groaned. "We've been here for over two and a half hours; how many more times do you want me to repeat the same story?"
Silver haired, dead eyed board members stared at her without the slightest hint of remorse. A man at the head of the table leaned forward and gestured for her to be seated. Only realizing she had rose out of anger, Rukia calmly sat down.
"Look at this from our perspective," the man asked, his voice a deep as the oceans on the Earth they had long since abandoned. "You openly admit to detonating the self destruct sequence on one of our ships; a very expensive piece of equipment."
"Forty-two million adjusted dollars, excluding the payload," one of the other members explained.
The man at the head of the table nodded and glanced back at Rukia. Eyes like stone, shoulders stiff. He continued. "The onboard recordings of your lifeboat do support some of your claims; for reasons unknown the Nostromo did land on LV-426, an as yet unsurveyed planet at the time. The ship then took off and resumed it course, only to be set for self-destruct, by you, for further reasons unknown."
"It was not 'reasons unknown'!" Rukia snapped. "We set down there, by company orders," she spat the words as if they were poison, "to pick up this thing and it destroyed my crew!" Seeing no looks of sympathy on their faces she sighed and added, "As well as you expensive ship..."
The head member remained unconvinced, clasping leathery hands together upon the desk. "The analysis crew, which analysed your life-craft centimeter by centimeter found no trace of evidence of this alleged creature you found."
Rukia's eyes flared with anger, "I should hope so; I blew the damn thing out of the airlock!" She noticed she was on her feet again. Turning back to the screen she saw Inoue staring back at her with a gleaming smile. She tried her best to return it, even if it was just an image.
"Are there any hostile organisms like this on LV-426?" one of the other members asked, looking across the table to an elderly woman smoking a cigar. She shook her head adamantly before letting out a thick plume of smoke from between her crinkled lips.
"No, it's a rock. No indigenous life whatsoever."
Rukia turned back and clenched her fists. "Did IQ's drop sharply while I was away or something? I already told you that thing wasn't indigenous! It came from a derelict spacecraft, an alien ship! It wasn't from there at all! Do you understand?" She glared at the assembled board members, silently accusing each and every one of them for her ill-fated mission. "We homed in on their emergency beacon-"
"And found a life form that has never been recorded even once on over 300 surveyed planets." The old woman nodded condescendingly and read from the report before her. "'A creature that gestates inside a living host'."
Rukia nodded.
"These are your words?"
"Yes."
"And...'Has corrosive acid as blood'."
"That's right."
The board members exchanged dubious glances. They had done the very same quite a few times in the last two and a half hours.
With a sigh Rukia seated herself and looked around, realizing none were on her side. "Look I know where this is going, but you've got to believe me. These monsters really exist!"
"That will do Officer Kuchiki. Thank you."
"Wait, you have to believe me!"
The head board member raised his hands but it had no effect.
"Hanatarou, my crew member! He said he saw thousands of eggs there!"
"I said that will be all!" he roared.
Unable to resist getting flustered, Rukia's cheeks burned as she threw her papers at the board. "It is not all! If one of those things gets down here then it will be all! All of this garbage you think is important...You can kiss it all goodbye!"
Silence befell the room and all stared at Rukia, bar Gin who was rolling his eyes and trying his best to look the other way.
The head board member stared straight through her as he gave his judgement.
"It is the finding of this court inquiry that Warrant Officer Rukia Kuchiki has acted on questionable judgement and is no longer capable of holding an ICC license as a commercial flight officer."
Rukia's jaw quivered but no words managed to escape. She knew the very words he as about to say even before his lips moved.
"Your license is hereby suspended indefinitely. There will be no criminal charges held against you at this time, and you will be released on you own recognizance and placed in six months of psychometric probation which will include monthly assessment by an ICC psychiatric technician.
"These proceedings are now closed."
Rukia sank back as the group made their leave, not even bothering to acknowledge Gin as he approached her with a pained smirk. "Well now, that could have gone a little better..."
Ignoring him and his protests completely Rukia made for the door to cut off the board members, crying out their name as she neared them.
"Wait, Ishida-san! Why don't you check out LV-426 and prove me wrong!"
Ishida Ryuken stopped and smiled a smile dripping with malice and conceit. "I don't have to," he explained, "there have been people living happily there for over twenty years and we haven't encountered any monsters, hostile or otherwise."
He brushed past her but Rukia stepped in his way again.
"What do you mean? What people?"
"Terraformers. You could call them environmental engineers. They go over there and build atmosphere processors that turn the toxic air breathable, it usually takes decades. We call them 'shake 'n bake' colonies."
He made to leave again only to be barred by Rukia's arms.
"How many?" she pressed, "How many people are there?"
"I'm not sure. Perhaps around sixty or so families. Now really, do you mind?" He nodded towards the arm obstructing his passage.
Rukia moved aside and collapsed against the door, staring at nothing, jaw dropped in shock.
"60 families...Jesus..."
The winds raged on LV-426, something that terraforming couldn't fully quell. Nor could it really do anything about the near constant cloud cover, giving the surface minimal light at best. It was also quite dusty, too, requiring breathing masks whenever someone went outdoors. 85% of the time the winds raged.
Still, that didn't stop the people living there from thriving as much as they could, the Karakura Town facility lasting a good twenty years since its construction. The 267 people living there were diligent in their work, whether it be manning a switchboard or checking a set of grid coordinates off base.
Four of those people, a couple and their son and daughter, were part of the later, and were about to arrive at the place they were sent to check.
"They're taking too long!" the large man said, his baritone voice practically shaking the rover, "I knew we shouldn't have asked Control about this!"
"Dear," his petite wife chastised, pulling the collar of her coat over her mouth as another aging component in their vehicle blew out a puff of steam, "if we don't get conformation on this then we'll just get in trouble when- Luppi! Give Nelliel back her doll, stop bothering her. ...As I was saying, it's better to know now than get reprimanded later."
"I know that," the man said, scratching his prematurely white beard, "but do we really have to tell them we found anything if we don't hear back? I mean, we've been doing this for fifteen years now, don't we deserve more than just the salary Gotei 13 gives us?"
"And if we don't follow proper procedure, we might not even get that- Children!" The petite woman turned to face her two kids; a boy and a young girl, "What did I just say?"
"Luppi won't give me back Dodonchakka!" the little girl whined, trying to grab her doll.
"She said I could have it!" her brother protested, hiding the ratty plushie behind his back.
"I thaid you could have him if I could have Pethe!"
"It's Peche, you little tunnel newt!"
"MOM!"
"Oops, sorry!"
Thankfully, before either child could come to violence, the radio came to life.
"Alpha Kilo 24 Niner, the inquiry about potential salvage you made has been processed. If you find anything you think is worth saving, it's yours by all rights."
"Copy that, Control," the mother responded, "we'll contact you again once we've searched the grid. Over and out." She hung up the mic and turned to her husband, "See? now we won't have to worry about reprimand when we get back."
"Good thing, too," he said, staring straight out the front window, 'cause I think we just found the motherload!"
