User:Hollywood101x/Hikari - Maiden Voyage

Silence. Nothing could be heard, that is until a repetitive tapping came, heels walking across the metallic floor. Kokoro Tokunaga walked briskly through the small hallway in her white navy uniform. Her shift at the bridge was over, replaced by the captain of the ship for the rest of the “night.” Kokoro was the Executive Officer onboard the UNSC Hikari, a Missile-Class Frigate. The ship, and the rest of the small battle group, was still in UNSC friendly space with quite a while before reaching a danger zone. So the captain kept the ship operational with minimal crew. Now she would make her way towards the ships gym station to relieve some stress and think.

Kokoro was of Japanese decent; a quite woman who kept to herself for the most part, kept things to herself, and at times could be quite stubborn. She stood at 5’8”, long black hair dyed to a light brown that went past her shoulders. The hair ran over her ears to partially conceal the holes of past piercings from her high school years. Her slender body complemented her nicely, more than once on board the ship she had turned the heads of the men onboard but she ignored them completely. They were just a waste of her time.

She walked into the gym station a thirty by thirty foot room filled with machines for training and exercising, all of which were bolted down or kept in heavy containers to prevent them being tossed around in combat. The walls were all mirrored except for a small portion which led to a bathroom and water fountain. Empty, good. Kokoro preferred to be alone. She went to the bathroom to quickly change from her uniform into black sweat pants and a black hoodie that curved to her body. She stood in the bathroom for a moment taking in the silence then stepped out.

Immediately that silence was gone. A thriving beat rang out inside the gym. Who the hell is playing music at this hour? Kokoro thought to herself as she frowned with annoyance and anger. She exited the bathroom and walked to the gym where in the corner was a man, dancing. She watched him for a moment; he walked in a quick circle than began to swing his legs, his head nodding with the beat. He pointed at the mirror to himself as if there was someone else there. He ran forward and tossed himself up to make a back flip. Kokoro thought he was about to fall flat, he hadn’t completed the turn, but to her surprise he made contact with the ground with his right arm, and only that. He was suspended in the arm holding himself up with just that one arm as his legs formed a Nike sign. He held it there went back into a normal stance and continued this time putting himself onto the ground and kicked his legs around in a circle. Each movement was coordinated with skill and experience until the legs kicked upward and he kept himself up by only his head and quickly spun making seven rotations until purposefully falling on his back in a spread eagle position.

Kokoro watched for a moment as he got back up, she than recognized him, Bryan Ki, the ship’s Operations Officer. He had the same shift as her, she wasn’t aware that he was capable of doing this kind of thing. He turned around to grab his water bottle and than spotted her. He smiled to her and waved, however Kokoro simply walked to the treadmill and pressed in numbers and began with a slow jog.

Bryan looked into the mirror, partially to watch her. For some reason it felt awkward for him to practice now. An extremely odd notion seeing as how he and his friends had won Battle of the Year 2548. Two of his friends were even on the other ships in the battle group. Anyways Bryan thought and stretched a bit than continued this time with a different set. He stopped when he felt that he was starting to piss of Kokoro, normally he wouldn’t mind but she was his superior officer onboard the ship. “Music too loud?” He asked.

Kokoro didn’t acknowledge, just kept running and increased her pace. In the corner of her eye though he watched Bryan. The music was too loud. Bryan was a Korean, his hair shaved short and he was strongly built, a reason that became clear to her now. Bryan was the kind of guy who was care free, loved to talk, and very social. The complete opposite of her.

Bryan shrugged and kept going. He had heard from some of the other officers of Kokoro’s personality. He thought he’d be able to get something out of her but he was wrong. He laughed to himself and kept going. He would get her attention. He pumped his arms as a form of a stretch than did his powermove set: airflare, flare, airflare, 1990, airflare, coindrop, windmill, halos, headspin, 2000, coindrop, munchmills, suicide. Bryan lay there for a second, the set and brought back memories. It would have made the crowd go wild. He breathed heavily and brought himself up to look at Kokoro through the mirror. She had earphones on and a MP3 playing, she hadn’t taken notice of him one bit. Bryan grunted and fell on his back in defeat. “What the hell…”

Blake Kesey sat in the captain’s chair, he yawned and lazily asked an aid for a cup of coffee. Blake was a young captain, only twenty-three and captain of a ship. He didn’t want to be on the bridge now, only wanted to sleep but it was his shift, but where the hell was his coffee? “What’s our location inside the battle group?” Blake asked as he finally got his coffee. He sipped but ended up burning his tongue.

“We’re on the port side of the Nal Gae, the Sakurabira is on the starboard side and the Top Hat is to the stern, Wolf Fang has the bow.” One of the crew said.

“How much further until we reach the danger zone?” Blake asked, the danger zone was an affection name he used to define the area that held the possibility of Covenant vessels.

“A day and a half travel at this rate sir.”

Blake thought for a moment. “Lauren what’s the status of our armaments?”

Lauren Evans was the ships Weapon’s Officer. A Caucasian woman with long dirty blonde hair and a fit body from years of soccer and track. “All archer pods on safe, pods 1 – 10 are ready for anti-aircraft action. Pods 11 – 30 are for ship to ship action. The MAC is unloaded and will take ten minutes to be operational. The four PDGs (Point Defense Guns) are fully operational and are ready.”

Blake smiled to himself, Lauren was a professional and never let her personality show while on duty. Blake looked around the bridge, it was going to be a long shift and an even longer trip.


 * Still Under Construction