**1 – Stranger in a Strange Land**
I awoke to an unfamiliar ceiling, and cursed. I suppose I may have simply deluded myself. I had hoped with the amount of effort I had put into my original disappearance that they wouldn’t find me. After all, I had spent over a year planning it out. Naturally, I started by faking my death in a spectacular, yet admittedly inordinate fashion by blowing up my ship, the Isekau. By the time the first recordings surfaced on every form of media imaginable, I was in for plastic surgery, the kind that every girl in the solar system indulged in. Well, every girl other than me.
I suppose losing your own ugly, scarred mug isn’t the end of the world, but damn it, it was almost worse than destroying the Isekau, my pride and joy. Not to mention the prized collection of scars I had accumulated tromping around the system.
I really thought it had worked, too. An entire year with her, of sleeping in the same place every night, of stability. Not having to check door seals for any flaws, where a little cloud of death could slip in.