Heritage

Aliens

Commander Shin listened in silence to Kinjou Shirasu's warning. He appreciated the man's protectiveness, but he definitely did not appreciate being threatened. At least they got two pieces of good information. 1) They weren't after the mindless monster that they had been led to believe 'Chuutaro' had become and 2) they now had a fairly good idea of where he was. It was strange, though, that the head of the Fuuma clan would slip up like that. Something must have thrown him off balance. But what?

"You're dismissed." Commander Shin told the soldier when he was done giving his report, "And go see the doctors like you were supposed to before being debriefed."

"Yes sir," He he answered with a crisp salute, "Sorry sir."

"Just go. And make certain Evans isn't flirting again."

The man spun on his heel and left at a pace as crisp as his salute had been, which told Shin why he hadn't gone straight to the doctors; the Fuuma hadn't done him any harm. Again; strange. The Fuuma weren't exactly known for their compassion. The door closed behind the soldier and Commander Shin was left to his thoughts again.

What are you playing at Kinjou-san? He wondered.

Kinjou Shirasu was terrifyingly ruthless. Shin knew that from personal experience. Not that he wasn't grateful Shirasu had killed his own son; that boy had been dangerous to the entire world. Even so, as a father Shin found it disturbing that any man could kill their own child. Shin was actually glad that Shirasu had broken Keiko's heart all those years ago. Now, if only he could finally find his granddaughter Hotaru... After that second explosion a couple of years back they hadn't been able to find any trace of her.

She was still alive - of that much they were certain - but it was still frustrating. The whole mess with his grandchild could have been avoided if he could have proven that he was the grandfather... But he hadn't aged in thirty years and at seventy-seven...

At least I don't look like I'm in my twenties.

He'd never get taken seriously as a military commander if he did.

With a sigh Shin got up and walked over to the door at the back of his office and went through it, locking it behind him. At the back of the nondescript filing room was another, more discreet and equally nondescript door. His excuse for the filing room's presence was that it made his life easier and it served as a redundancy for the base's records. Making his way past the shelves he pulled his glove off of her right hand. Underneath was an appendage that almost looked natural. They were still working on making the joints look a little more natural. The skin was also a bit thick, but it also kept the arm's alien technology from interfering with electronics.

All of the conspiracy theories about the NASA moon landing had turned out to not be entirely wrong, just mostly. For one thing, it certainly hadn't been faked. They did, however, discover a lost, alien civilization. They had no idea how long ago it had fallen into ruin due to the exposure of the ruins to solar radiation, but it probably had been at least a few thousand years ago. Ever since finding it the world governments - in a rare show of co-operation and foresight to avoid another World War - had been working on reverse-engineering the technology they had found there.

His prosthetic was one result of this.

Pressing his prosthetic palm to the metal door he began the process to open the way to a lab that was one of the more unfortunate results of that research. The metal door lit up with circuit lines leading to symbols. They rapidly lit up in a random cycle before one, then two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten and so on were settled on one color or another. In all, twenty symbols in different colors made up the key code. It changed daily - and with good reason.