Epilogue

Epilogue 1.11

---Em---

     "So, did you miss me?"

     Comma rolls her eyes but grins all the same. Tahj walks over to her, no doubt relieved to see her alive. I can't help but notice how closely he's standing to her. Their shoulders are practically touching. Come on. I mean... it's not as if I think of her in that way, it's just... reasons and stuff.

     "Oh. You probably want this back." I hand Comma back her strange transmitter device. It had taken an hour to find it in pseudo-Olivia's apartment. Good thing too—I bet Comma would've killed me if I'd lost it, seeing as it's her only means of tracking down her old crew and all.

     "Thanks." She pockets the device.

     "Not that I ever figured out how to use it."

     "So who's the new recruit?" asks Tahj.

     "The name's Mya," she says, before anyone else gets the chance to speak for her. She leans casually on her rocket launcher and tosses her curls. I'm still not used to her British accent. Apparently pseudo-Olivia gave Mya an American accent as part of her reality makeover. Now that all that's over and done with, we're all gradually slipping back to status quo.

     "Pleasure to make your acquaintance," says Crawford of all people. Staring a little more intensely than usual, aren't we buddy?

     Tahj snorts. "So what the hell happened to you anyway?"

     "Oh, nothing special," I say with a shrug. "Survived a zombie apocalypse for six months. Killed a god. You know, the usual. I won't bore you with the details."

     "Six months?"

     Gail nods. "That's what we reckon, yeah."

     Tahj shakes his head. "Damned time discrepancies."

     "You don't know the half of it," says Mya. "I was fifteen when the world ended. Now I'm old enough to star in an adult film." She pauses. "Not that I would, of course."

     "You from our world?" Crawford asks, wiping the sweat from his brow.

     "That depends," she says. "Was your world run by a race of sentient dung beetles?"

     "I'd say yes," says Crawford. "But something tells me you mean that literally."

     "So," I say, before we chat ourselves to death. "Anyone care to fill me in?" I stare at Comma; beneath her toque, a white streak runs down the centre of her hair. "Did you dye your hair?"

     Before she can answer, Miu-sama—currently in glowing-orb-of-energy mode—is absorbed back into her paper-doll vessel. "I detect that the spatial anomaly has been reconfigured," she says, levitating.

     Gail raises an eyebrow. "In English, please?"

     Our friendly neighbourhood shikigami frowns. "That was in English."

     "That ain't what English sounds like where I come from."

     "Uruse, kono aho!" Miu-sama takes a deep breath to calm herself. "To put it in layman's terms, the barrier is no longer present."

     "Then we haven't got any time to waste," says a giant Bengal tiger, because why not? It's not the weirdest thing I've seen today by a long shot.