Rose

It was cold. Cold, blurry and hard to breathe, like her body forgot how to. It certainly forgot how to stand upright, for some reason.

What even happened? There was so much green around.

"Oh my god, it actually worked this time," a blurry figure above her breathed, the voice cutting through the fog, painfully loud as their hands went up to support her weight.

For a second, she thought it was Tadashi. Somehow alive, and looking weird even to her yet unadjusted eyes.

"I actually did it."

Then, the hug came. Strong. Desperate.

Familiar.

"Hiro?"

Why was he taller now?

Silly CoM went wrong au where Karmi almost died after detransforming and Hiro suddenly understood exactly how Diane could condone human experimentation to save just one person so easily.

Except it wasn't just parasynths this time, and he wasn't a biotech prodigy, and Liv just didn't have the fucking balls to clean up the mess her creation made—

And suddenly, Obake's willingness to make sacrifices in the name of progress was understandable too.