insert name here

It's been two years since the defeat of Messiah.

I suppose things have changed quite a lot since I woke up- not, as I had expected, in the EMC's own infirmary, but in an actual honest-to-goodness hospital, hooked up to more machines than I could probably name.

Also, eleven years old.

I probably shouldn't have woken up, probably shouldn't have been able to, with all the scrambled data that made me up in a metaphysical sense, too old and too addled to just go back into my little body and be dragged out before the subdimension collapsed. But that's what happened, and I wasn't even unconscious for more than two days, which was frankly, the doctors said, some kind of miracle.

The miracle is that I'm still kicking around two years later. I'm guess I'm supposed to be thankful that my body just kicked back into gear and started aging normally, but I'm learning very quickly that having missed puberty the first time around, I'm really in a unique position to hate it exponentially more this time.

I'm living with Hiromu now. How he's putting up with me through this, I will never understand, but he loves me and I love him, we've been through so much together... And as long as we're careful not to be too affectionate when we go out of the house (as if I ever really go out of the house much anymore), it works for us.

We're both still technically employed by EMC, but mostly for protection and support. We each get a stipend for things like groceries, my parents' estate pays for the house. Hiromu has gone back to school, to university, something he never had the opportunity for before, during the fighting and all.

I mostly sit around at home, spending time with Nick and Kotako, and honestly, feeling sorry for myself.