Shioreta hana no fukkatsu - Revival of a wilting flower

[Hana Ken]

Emiko Sato‘s message blinks out from the vidcomm screen as a finger presses on the console, leaving a crimson fingerprint. A pained groan leaves the lips of the Kusarian as she sits back into the flightseat of the battered shuttlecraft she had ‚borrowed‘. She looks to her right arm. With the sleeve of her flightsuit torn away, shards of hull plating and cell door that had kept her in transit were buried into her flesh. Whilst the arm was covered in blood, the bleeding had been stemmed. Hana had pulled a tourniquet tight over the upper arm and then strapped the arm to the canopy of the cockpit around a metal loop in the hull. Presumably for stowing cockpit baggage.

The shuttlecraft was on an auto-pilot course for Kinkaku-ji, and fortunately so. Hana could barely keep her vision focused. Her skin felt like it was covered in ants, scurrying over her body with no intention other than to keep her unoccupied hand busy with scratching them off. She could feel their nips and bites at her skin. She wanted to shake them off but every time she went to move her strapped arm would set aflame.

‚Fourty-three K from Kinkaku-ji‘, she thought as her head lolled towards navigation. Her feet felt wet. Leaning her head forward to look down, a bright orange liquid was flowing into the cockpit from the lower hull plating. Hana looked outside only to the see the vacuum. Puzzled, her worry eased as she felt the liquid against her skin. The ants ceased their assault where it touched as they dissolved into the orange. Hana lay back in her seat and closed her eyes as the liquid rose, and rose, and filled the cockpit entirely.

Her mouth fell open. She could breathe, and on opening her eyes she saw bubbles rise from her nose. Floating in an endless orange ocean, she swam upwards following the bubbles. Bursting through the oceans surface, she gasped as she looked up. The world was ocean, an endless ocean, and the stars above them. Laying on her back, she gazed up to the sky in wonder as she floated aimlessly.

„I failed.“ She said to the stars. „I failed to bring our kin unity. I failed to unite us in mind or spirit.“ Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes. „To bring an end to the destru-„

„Your work has not finished. You are cleared to dock in hanger bay 2.“ Hana turned her head, and her eyes went wide as she saw a female silhouette standing on the ocean surface. A dull blue light shining from it’s edges. Opening her mouth to speak, Hana let out a cry of pain as the shuttle touched down in a bay on the Kinkaku-ji – the thud wrenching her back into her cockpit. She looked through the canopy for her sisters, and used her free hand to search for the canopy release.