Yeah... This fic is now rated M. Because.

The sand leaps up at us, cloying and attempting to get into the cracks. I can feel the joints start to lock up already.

This isn't how I planned this to go.

"Not good." I look at the map again. "Jura, Dita, Get to the edge of this area and get out of here ASAP. Barnette, follow me."

"Who are you to give-" Barnette starts.

"Shut up and follow." I snarl.

"...Roger."

I sprint as fast as I can through the sand towards Meia, mentally berating myself for letting my facade slip. I can't afford to mess up.

The lasers are ever so slightly visible once the sand starts to flow in earnest. Hopefully, the rest of the group won't be stupid enough to trip them. Before long, a horrified scream comes through the comms, signalling that Meia's mech has been consumed by the sand. Her panic is clear even over the comm system.

Okay, time to switch to plan B. Plan B wasn't constructed beforehand, so... default to what happened on the show. This may be a problem, since I can't remember this episode that well.

"Oh god! I've fallen! Somebody help me!" Jura's voice cuts through my concentration.

"Dita, use the forward thrusters at Jura. Blow the sand off." I command.

"O-Okay!"

"Barnette, get to Meia and see if you can get the sand off of her, we need to get out, now." I stop in place and start looking around, trying to get a handle on the situation. I'm not good at on the fly adjustments. I like to plan, and have a plan for every contingency. It's my fault I didn't actually make more than one for today.

Barnette doesn't even reply, just starts tearing across the sand as fast as her Vanguard will let her.

Now, assuming Dita and Jura can get past the laser grid-

"The self destruct sequence of the system has been activated!" Comes the voice of one of the bridge bunnies.

"SHIT!" I slam my fist on the wall of the Van. Just give me a break! I can't improvise if everything keeps changing.

A cold spike starts to settle on, no, in my spine. "Not now, Paksis." I grit my teeth.

"I can't get the sand off!" Barnette says. "It's starting to cover me too!"

Behind me, two loud roars sound as Jura and Dita take off, the staff portions of their descent umbrellas turning into rocket boosters. Well, that's two saved at least.

"Barnette, pull out."

"But Meia-"

"I'll get her. You get out. We have no idea how big that blast is going to be." That, and with only me active on the battlefield, my plans can be a lot simpler.

My Vanguard beeps at me. It figured out the frequency the sand is using. "Now to hope the radio on this thing is as powerful as it seems." I mutter to myself.

I switch my comms over to that frequency, and my ears are assaulted by noise. I turn the sound off and grimace, toggling the speaker button as I do.

"FUCK YOU!"

The sand around me stops behaving properly for a fraction of a second, before resuming once I'd stopped yelling.

I hear Barnette's rockets fire. Three of five out.

Well, this might work...

See, radio jamming is just introducing noise over a system. The best way to think about it is playing static noise so loudly it drowns out a violin player. The violin player is still playing, just nobody can hear him over the static.

Thankfully, my antenna allows me to be loud enough, and... well.. my voice isn't the signal the robots are expecting.

Noise.

I keep up a stream of insults, the broadcast confusing the microscopic swarm. I keep it up, my throat scratchy, until I can get to Meia. I switch to regular comms temporarily.

"...Two-hundred seconds until detonation."

"Meia! Can you hear me?" I growl.

The sand is completely covering her, and as I watch, she starts to stand up. Then she swings a punch at me.

"Oh, no you don't." I tackle her unit back to the ground. Around me, I can see more of the imitation Vanguards forming out of the sand. I forgot about those.

"Stop it." Meia's voice is drained. "Don't bother with me."

"Shut the fuck up!" I roar. "Like hell you're allowed to lie down and die in a ditch!"

"I-I'm not worth... Save your-"

"You say another word, and I'm going to beat you up once we get out." One of my teeth chips with how hard I'm grinding my teeth. I switch channels and start screaming my frustration out, the sand flying away as it loses it's instructions. I can move again, temporarily.

How the hell did Hibiki get everyone out?

Something about cold wind...

I don't have anything like that though, and only one boost staff. Meia's is a good distance away from the two of us.

"FUCK!"

I wipe the sand off Meia's lenses, allowing her to see again. I grab her unit, stuff my staff into her hands, and activate it. Thankfully, she managed to regain her senses enough to steer and hold on.

"That's it then." I take a few calming breaths, though the effect isn't as good from the fact the Paksis has frozen everything below my head to a solid block of ice. I can feel my heartbeat settling down. "I... I'm not going to make it." The sand swirls around me, obscuring my view and locking up the joints. "I'm going to die here. Because I saved someone who hates me." Of all the things, that's what gets me?

My own low, hollow laugh fills the small compartment.

I switch back to comms.

"HIBIKI!"

"MISTER ALIEN!"

"fifty seconds!"

"Missiles incoming!"

...What?"

Several missiles crash down around me, cracking the buildings and releasing... a cold wind. It's probably liquid nitrogen boiling away. Whatever it is, it's stopping the sand's consistent advance. The sand covering me starts to crack and fall away even as my own systems start to freeze up.

Fighting the rapidly icing systems, I tear across the now freezing dunes to find that staff Meia brought with her.

It's my only shot, after all.

I barely make out "Twenty seconds!" through all the yelling and screaming.

I flip my comms off.

The staff is thankfully unburied. The sand robots must not have thought it as a priority. I lift it up, and press the launch button.

Nothing.

"Oh come on-"

I thumb it again and-

The robot's arm is almost yanked out of it's socket as the rockets kick it, yanking me high into the sky. My vision blacks out temporarily from the G-forces. Below me, the sands swirl around until-

A blinding light blocks out all else. The surface of the planet is covered in violent explosions, so large that I don't think they could be conventional weaponry. Well, there's a chance a significant portion of the surface was made of plastic explosive...

Great, I lost my composure. I strike out with my fist, slamming it into the plate armor in front of me. Dammit. DAMMIT! I... I...

Back on the bridge, Magno sits back in her chair.

Ezra sighs happily. "All Vanguards are safe!"

"We intercepted some data from the planet." Says Coco, the blond haired woman on the bridge.

BC turns to her. "Read it."

Coco turns around. "Huh?"

"What's wrong? Didn't you hear me?"

"I'm sorry, I'll read it now." Coco reads over the data again. "'This seasons harvest items: Red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, lymph cells, etc. All components in good condition.' This is where the data ends."

BC turns to Magno. "Captain! This is..."

"It seems our enemy really wanted to harvest us. I guess they only think of us as something like vegetables. If there is one thing I have learned from this incident, it is that our enemy is truly formidable."

Four of the five pilots are draped around the hanger bay. Dita is snoring contentedly. Jura is laying in Barnette's lap, and Barnette is propped against a wall.

Similarly, Meia is propped up around the corner.

It looks like I owe a man a debt. She thinks to herself. And of all the men, it had to be him.

She glares up at the golden Vanguard, whose occupant still hasn't climbed out.

Duelo and Paiway show up with a few of the security forces to take them all to the medical ward.

Meia waves them to get the other three first, and pulls herself painfully to her feet. Slowly ever so slowly, she drags herself up the ladder to Hibiki's Vanguard.

"Hibiki?" She calls.

There is no response.

She raps her knuckles on the frame.

Again, no response.

Meia searches around for the emergency release hatch she'd made extra super sure she'd known where it was, but Hibiki's Vanguard is a little different. The release is still there though.

She pulls it, and the hatch opens.

The first thing that hits her is the smell of iron.

Hibiki sits in the seat, legs pulled up to his chest. His arms are wrapped around him. The backs of his hands are bloodied, and so is the vast majority of the interior of the Vanguard.

Meia comes to the conclusion that he was punching everything is sight.

"Hibiki?"

"I lost it again." He mumbles. "I told myself to keep it down, but I lost it. Again."

Meia reaches forward and places a hand on his shoulder.

He doesn't flinch. He instead looks up at her with eyes devoid of any light or life. "What do you want?"

"I was checking to see if you are okay."

All she gets in response is a long, cold, hollow laugh.

When I wake back up, the lights are all down in the hospital ward.

It doesn't bother me. I like the dark. I've never been afraid of the dark.

I'm not really afraid of anything.

Dogs growl and bite me, and I causally ignore them.

High voltage electricity that can kill you a million times over? I'm still playing around like it's no more harmful than a foam ball.

Driving? Who need to pay attention to driving?

I'm not afraid of anything. Anything but myself.

I sit up. There's a few tube running into my arms, and I know better than to just rip them out, no matter how badly I want to.

My knuckles are swathed in bandages. That's to be expected.

I'm... glad I wasn't able to reach anybody.

This time.

There's two other occupied beds. One has Dita, sleeping peacefully with a cute snore. The other has Meia, who is lying on her back, staring at the ceiling. Her eyes flick over to me.

"Hibi-"

"I apologize for usurping your command, yet again." I cut her off. "I'll see to it that I stay in the Reg."

"What happened to you?"

"I'll probably be fine in the Reg. Nothing there to... anger me."

I sound like the hulk. Wheeeee.

"As my subordinate-"

"Like I said. Not your problem anymore."

"...Thank you for not leaving me behind."

"It's my fucking job."

Meia rolls on her side, facing away from me, which translates to conversation over.

I lie awake for another hour before anything else interesting happens. BC comes into the room and pulls out my IV and two other needles. "Don't worry, Duelo's assured me that you'll be fine even if I pulled those out. Come with me."

I follow the vice-captain all the way up to the bridge and into Magno's quarters in silence.

Once there, BC gestures to a chair, and I obediently sit in it.

"Hibki Tokai." Magno walks carefully into the chamber from her room, with the aid of a walking stick. "A boy with... curious discrepancies."

My eyes track her, but my face is still completely blank. I haven't put any effort into a mask yet. Ha, I forgot I used to call facial expressions "masks."

"You know too much. Just a little too much." BC says. "About a lot of things."

"You knew I picked the Nirvana as the name of our ship." Magno says. "And you knew there was a trap on the surface of the planet."

I look up at her. "I overheard Parfet talking, and it's called prudence. You prepare for bad luck, and hope it goes better." Canned, pre-planned excuses.

"Parfet assures me she hasn't seen you around in days." BC says. Her eyes seem to be reminding me of our last conversation as well. Her secret.

"As for the planet..." Magno taps something on the table beside her, and some data shows up, scrolling too fast for any real analysis. "As soon as you landed, you started a frequency scan."

"Yep. Prudence."

"You also took charge as soon as things started to happen, with no delay."

"...I have good reflexes."

"But that's not your job."

"Actually, it is. It's my job to make sure everyone gets home safe because nobody else can."

Magno sits in her chair slowly. "Explain."

"Your pirates are so... lackadaisical that there's no good command structure. I get it! You're pirates. Still, four people almost died down there because they were incompetent, or emotional wrecks. Dita lives in lala land. Jura is so self centered it's surprising she's not a black hole. Barnette was... actually useful. She should be commended. Meia was literally having a panic attack and still came to the front lines. These are our ace pilots."

"Oh, and what makes you so much better than them?" Magno says.

"I'm not better than them. Dita, for all her flaws, is an ace pilot. She can and had pulled off ridiculous stunts that have saved lives, if indirectly. Meia is a good leader when she's calm, which is most cases. Barnette, aside from her questionable loyalty to Jura, is actually keeping up with Dita, Meia and Jura, which shows great skill. Jura is some sort of idiot savant like Dita. They could all easily, single-handedly beat me in a fight, dread or no."

BC crosses her arms. "What's your point?"

"I'm not better then them."

"Then why do we need you?" Magno asks.

"Because they need an anchor, and Hibki Tokai was supposed to be that anchor." I mutter.

"Hibiki Tokai? But not you."

"No. Not me."

Magno sits back in her chair and contemplates. "What was the real Hibiki like, then?"

"Stupid. Angry all the time, but easily swayed by food. Could easily be convinced to do something just by saying 'I bet you can't do this!'. Made a severe ass of himself at every junction."

"Really now."

"He also got along with the stupid Paksis, seeing as it values guts over logic."

BC raises her eyebrow. "The Paksis? You mean, our power source?"

I glare at her. "Yes."

"But it's not-"

"Sentient? Human? Who cares? It decided to send us half the fucking galaxy away because it was scared."

"So, this Hibiki. Did he have any good points?"

"He... forged ahead without fear." I turn my head.

"Interesting. Now, we've cleared up what you're supposed to be like, now let's discuss who you are."

"Are you some sort of time traveler?" BC asks bluntly.

I shrug. It's an honest shrug too, since I genuinely don't know how I got here.

"Can you see the future?" Magno asks.

"Not really." Also true.

"What happened to you on that planet?"

"I was attacked by a swarm of microscopic robots disguised as sand."

"No, what happened to you. Meia said you were saying 'I lost it' over and over when she pulled you from the Vanguard. Our recordings of your comms system..."

She lets them play, edited down.

"Clearly, something happened for you to go from the normal boy you are to..."

She plays a section of the log again. Screaming and cursing, then some resignation as the sand finally overwhelms me, before the missiles come down.

I sit in silence. It remains unbroken for a long time.

"What do you want from me?"

"The truth."

Resisting the urge to quote a movie. So hard. "I don't think I'm going to tell you. I need something up my sleeves. Let's just say for now that I'm too useful to discard and leave it at that."

"You honestly think we're going to let you go just like that?"

I turn and look BC in the eyes."I can spill the darkest secrets of the most important members of the crew, publicly. While Dita might not be that affected, Meia would, and so would some of the other characters." I look meaningfully at BC.

Magno lowers her head slightly, concealing her eyes. "Is that so?"

I stare into the shadow cast by her hood. "Can I go now?"

"Yes, well." Magno coughs into her fist "Don't tell anyone else about what we talked about."

I smile, the first expression I had decided to bother with since I was dragged here. "Why would I? Blackmail is only good as the secret it contains."

Of course, I didn't actually get far without being accosted. Silly me, thinking that I might get some piece and quiet in a place where those two words are basically non-existent.

"Mister Alien!"

I stop in place, erect a tired smile and turn around. "Hi Dita."

Let's keep the facade up this time, hmm?

"I'm so glad you're okay!"

I take her flying tackle in stride, sucking wind as she gets her own feet under her again.

"I thought you were going to d-d-die on that planet." Her arms start squeezing me even tighter.

I stare down at her. "Don't worry about me. I'll be fine."

"Really?"

How the hell should I know? "Really."

She wipes the tears out of her eyes. "I'm so glad." She lets go of me and I start walking back to my cell. Dita is still following me.

"Um... I cleaned the blood out of your Vanguard." She says.

"Mmm? Thanks."

Silence, aside from the steady rhythm of footsteps.

At least, until the choking sobs come.

"I... I... I didn't mean..."

I turn to look at her. She has her head in her hands. "I didn't mean to set off the tripwires."

I look forwards and backwards down the hallway. No sign of anyone else.

"Nobody's blaming you for that." Wasn't it Jura who threw Dita?

"B-But, I almost got everyone killed again."

...Can I get overtime pay for being this girl's therapist? "It was an accident. Nobody could have predicted that." Outside of me.

"But-"

"No, no buts. Seriously. Everybody's okay, so no harm no foul."

Dita wraps me up in a hug again, stopping my forward momentum. "Thank you." She says, then suddenly lets go and heads in the other direction.

Magno turns to BC. "What are your thoughts?"

BC shakes her head. "I don't like it." Her eyes narrow. "Did he refer to us as 'characters'?"

"And what about his... episode?"

BC brings the data back up, this time with an image of the boy inside the cockpit of his Vanguard, beating his fists against the interior, blood flying from the splits in his skin from the repeated motion.

"It looks like we've picked up a guy with control issues." BC frowns. "In all other fights, he's been calm and collected. There must have been something that set him off."

Magno nods. "It's strange he lost it on the same mission as Meia. Speaking of which, I know Meia's claustrophobia is an open secret, but who knows about Hibiki's episode?"

"Only us two, Meia and Duelo. Dita saw the aftermath, but she assumed it was rough handling due to the explosion."

Magno relaxes slightly. "Sometimes it's good that girl is so naive."

"Still... the only thing that stands out is his heart rate." BC points to several spikes in the graph. "They match up with Jura collapsing, and with Barnette reporting failure."

"He lost his calm when his teammates were in danger? There's nothing odd about that."

"Then why didn't it ramp up here where the entire system was set off?"

"He probably knew it would happen. For all his efforts to say he wasn't from the future, he certainly seems prepared."

"True... but that doesn't explain this." She points to where the heartbeat slows down to normal levels.

"Oh?"

"This is right after Meia took off."

"...Oh dear."

"There's a very real chance that our Hibiki doesn't care about his own life."

Despite how tired I feel, its actually not that late. Only about seven in the afternoon, according to the ship's clock. Still, that meant the the bridge lights are out and the garden area is dark enough that I can sit and look up at the stars outside without interior lights washing them out.

I know a lot of people who romanticize the stars. They act like the little points of light control their fates, or go outside to "bask in their beauty" on a regular basis. To me, stars are giant balls of fusion.

A clinical definition, not romantic at all.

Now I sit on a bench, staring at the points of light as we move past them, whatever warp drive the Nirvana using keeping us going without anyone actively steering.

I finally had some time to sort through my things, I found that my big bag of stuff included my headphones. I put them on to drown out... well, it's silent on the ship, so the only thing to drown out is my own thoughts. No point in dwelling on what happened on the surface. What's done is done.

One thing I've always been good at is putting the past behind me.

I don't sing along with my music this time, content to let myself relax into it. I close my eyes, and lie down on the bench.

Next time I open my eyes, my phone's clock tells me it's way past dinner and I might as well go to bed.

The hallways are silent, which I guess could be considered a blessing. I don't really want to deal with anyone right now.

Once in bed, I lie down and turn off my music. The silence creeps in, and I glance at my phone a few times to see how long I've been lying here. Back at home, if I was still awake at three in the morning, I would write, or go on YouTube or something.

A dim light appears, bobbing around as if carried in hand. It interrupts my thoughts, and I close my eyes and pretend I'm asleep, certain I didn't want to bother with whoever was coming by this late at night.

Soft footsteps come closer, closer, and eventually get close enough that whoever it was, they had to be right beside me.

I can feel the thin mattress shift as whoever it is sits down on the edge of my bed.

She starts humming.

It's a tune I know, but I can't place it.

It doesn't last very long.

When she's done, she gets up, and leaves without another word.

I wait for a minute after the steps fade away before removing my headphones.

That wasn't Zan. Somehow... Zan would've sung something else.

This tune isn't one I listen to often, but I know I've heard it before.

I wrack my brain, trying to recall what the tun could be.

I was still at it six hours later, when the ship's sirens started blaring, signifying the next fight.

Honestly, this fic should have been rated M from the start, given I'm pretty sure I can't go to certain topics that will come up in later chapters. This chapter gets the rating for excessive swearing, and...

Well, I listed it under "angst" for a reason.