On Christmas day, 2029, the doorbell rang: a single solid buzz, followed seconds later by an excited melody as the button was pressed again. Kyle answered. He looked out through the opened door at the two people who stood there. "Ah, hello. Carlos and… Maria, right?"

Maria's mouth dropped open as she pointed straight at Kyle's new face. "Whoa! T-That's so… weird! It's like you're nearly Big Bro, but not quite. So weird!"

"Maria…" Carlos interrupted awkwardly.

"Sorry, Big Bro," Maria said sheepishly.

"Still, it is strange," Carlos murmured, studying Kyle intensely, "It's not just the hair…"

Kyle's hand reached up automatically and stroked through his hair, which he had let grow untidily out of Carlos' crew-cut and then dyed jet-black.

"It's everything," Carlos continued, "The entire way you hold yourself. From your posture, it's clear you've never been down a pole in your life. Akane and Junpei told me what had happened, but actually seeing you… It's something different."

"I'm glad I have been able to differentiate myself from you enough," Kyle replied. He stroked his hair again. "I felt that you had, ah, priority on your original appearance."

A voice called from deeper inside the house. "Kyle! Are you going to invite them in yet?" Phi strode up and peeked past Kyle and through the open door.

"Ah, Phi!" Kyle exclaimed, "We were just talking about how I've started dying my hair since I got back. I've yet to properly thank you for getting it for me."

"Well…" Phi shrugged. "I was already buying all my white hair dye from them; with yours as well I qualify for the bulk discount. And…" Phi tilted her head. "It suits you a lot better this way."

Phi and Kyle led Maria and Carlos through to the spacious lounge. Sigma and Diana were already there, cuddling on the long sofa by the fire, watching the Christmas movie that played on the television. As everyone entered Sigma and Diana turned to greet them.

"Hey, Carlos, Maria!" Sigma exclaimed, "Come on in!"

Carlos sat down in the armchair closest to the sofa and replied to Sigma. "Thanks for having us. It's a shame Akane and Junpei couldn't come with us, but they're still on their honeymoon. They sent me Christmas cards to pass on to you, though." Carlos took the cards from inside his coat and added them to the large pile on top of the coffee table.

Maria bounded over to the window on the other side of the lounge and stared out into the garden beyond. "Whoa! This place is huge."

Diana shrugged. "We never know when we might need the room."

"That's right," Phi said as she strode over to the other armchair and flopped down into it, "When things go down, they go down in the Nevada desert. We need all the space we can to prepare for that stuff. Plus, we're a big family." Phi glanced over at Kyle, still hovering by the doorway, and smiled.

Carlos gazed around the room. "The mortgage on a place like this has to be pretty hefty, though."

"Well, that's the thing," Sigma said, "We didn't need one in the end. We'd managed to scrape together the down-payment between Diana's promotion and my new job…" Indeed, Sigma had finally managed to officially become Dr. Klim, forty-five years after he had first been called that.

"And that's when Phi dropped two hundred thousand dollars on the table and bought the whole place outright," Diana explained. She paused. "Phi… where did you…?"

"Nope," Phi interrupted, "Not talking about it, no matter how much you ask me."

Maria skipped back over and sat down, perching keenly on the armrest of Carlos' chair. "So, you're loaded, Phi?"

"Yeah. I guess you could say that," Phi replied.

Kyle watched from the door as the others began to open the Christmas cards, one by one. One came from Diana's colleagues, congratulating her for finally moving on from her ex-husband. Another came from Sigma's doctoral supervisor, rather meekly apologising for keeping Sigma at the office the year before. And, of course, there were cards from the many people they had met due to the Nonary Games.

"Ooh! Here's one from Delta," Diana exclaimed, fishing that card from the pile. "Let's see… 'To Mom and Dad and Sister and Brother'… How does Delta know about…?"

Phi plucked the Christmas card from Diana's fingers and flicked it into the fire. "Ignore it," she said, "That old bastard never misses a chance to be creepy."

They were about halfway through the pile of envelopes when the television screen flickered and the face of a young boy replaced the movie. It took Kyle a moment to recognise that face, but it belonged to the boy that the robot named Sean was based on. When Sigma had offered to make Sean a more human-like head, that was the face Sean had chosen.

"Hey, everyone. Merry Christmas!" Sean said, his voice playing through the television's speakers.

"Hi, Sean," Diana replied, "What brings you here?"

"Um… Eric's visiting Mira in jail right now. I wanted to connect you both together so we could have a really big Christmas thing together. Is that okay?"

"Of course," Sigma replied.

"You can do that?" Carlos asked, "Show Eric and Mira everything that's happening here, and the other way round?"

"I'm in the big powerful computer now. I can see everything!" Sean explained, "I'll bring them up on the screen now."

The image on the screen changed again. Everyone looked at it, just for a second. They quickly averted their eyes.

"Sean, dear…" Diana started to say.

"Yeah, Diana?" Sean's face – smiling innocently – reappeared on the screen, covering a rather fortunate patch of it.

"I think Eric and Mira want a little private time," Diana explained.

"Oh! Okay." The image went black for a second and then the movie started playing again, though Sean's face remained in the top left corner. "You were opening Christmas cards earlier, right? Do you want to carry on? Can I watch?"

"Of course." With that, Sigma reached back down towards the pile.

"Wait, Sigma," Phi said.

"Huh?"

"There's one card in there that definitely has to be opened next." Phi leaned across and shuffled the envelopes around. "This one. The one addressed specifically to Kyle."

Kyle stepped forward unsurely. "Phi. It's, ah, okay…"

"No, Kyle. You've been standing over there for, what, half an hour? This is your Christmas, too," Phi said.

Sigma looked over towards Kyle. Kyle saw in his father's eyes something he hadn't seen for a long time. Shame, and guilt.

"Don't worry, Father, I'm…" Kyle started to say.

"I have not been the best father for you," Sigma stated, his voice filled with a solemn weight, "I have too often been distracted by other things. But everything is supposed to be over now, and I am still missing things I should be noticing. I'm sorry." Sigma shuffled closer to Diana, so there was space on the sofa next to him. "Come over here and tell me what's wrong."

"No, Father, it's okay. I wouldn't want to, ah, ruin everyone's Christmas," Kyle said. With a deep sigh, he turned around and left the lounge.

o-0-o

By one minute later, Phi had dragged Kyle back into the room and placed him onto the sofa next to Sigma.

Leaning out so she could look at Kyle past Sigma, Diana said, "It's okay to talk about whatever it is that's worrying you. It doesn't mean that anyone's done anything bad, just that there's something we can do better at. And it's better than letting it fester: that's something I learned very well over the past few years."

Kyle took a deep breath, trying to put his unease into words. "I'm grateful that you found a way for me to come to this timeline. And I'm grateful to all three of you that you have allowed me to live in your home. It's more than I could possibly deserve. All of you were the ones who saved the world from Radical-6. I merely showed up after the end: a, ah, hanger-on. I am out of place, here."

Phi snorted. "I don't think there's such a thing as being in place or being out of place. There's no-one who can tell you that you don't belong somewhere; you can take whatever destiny you choose for yourself. And if you asked any of us, we'd tell you that you belong here."

Kyle shook his head. "I tell myself that I do not belong. I feel it. This…" Kyle patted his chest, "This is not my body. I stole it from someone else."

Carlos replied, "I can't be certain what the other me was thinking, back then, but I'd have made the same decision."

"Being in Big Bro's body just makes you that much more huggable!" Maria exclaimed. She then demonstrated, first around Carlos' shoulders before dancing over to cuddle Kyle as well.

Sean piped up from where he was in the television as well. "I don't know much about you, Kyle, so I'm sorry if this is completely wrong. Um… it probably will be. But Sigma and Phi told me a little bit about what happened to you, and I think it was kind of like what happened to me at the end of our game. It felt really weird, the helmet and the not-having-memories-of-things. I spent a lot of time thinking I was the odd one out. But if you want to like people and they want to like you back, everything just sort of works out okay."

Even surrounded by the encouragement of family and friends, Kyle struggled: deep down, he was unconvinced. "I thank you all. But… I have done nothing to deserve this."

Phi interrupted. "Tell you what, Kyle. Take a look at that Christmas card I pointed out. Talk afterwards."

Gingerly, Kyle removed that envelope from among the others and turned it between his fingers, inspecting it. Within the gold trimmed border, drawn so that it was crossing the sealed flap, was a picture of a rabbit."

"Huh? Isn't that one of the ones that Akane asked us to bring?" Maria asked.

"Yes, I think it was," Carlos replied, "Get it open, Kyle. I want to hear what Akane has to say."

Kyle carefully opened the envelope. Inside, he did not only find a Christmas card. He found an entire letter with it. Kyle unfolded the sheet of paper and began to read aloud.

o-0-o

"Dear Kyle,

"As this timeline drifts from the one in which you were born, I become less and less able to connect with it. I will now never be the Akane Kurashiki that you knew. But I do still know that you once called that Akane 'Mother.'

"I also know that there is much she wished to tell you before you left, but was unable to because you left that timeline because you woke up. That is the reason I decided to tell you this through a letter rather in person: the rest of this letter is her final message to you. She should say it, not me.

"Kyle. The mind that has replaced you in your body has just awoken here, and it has already become clear that he is not you. I can only hope that means you have safely made it back to some point in the past. Which past, and which version of that past, we do not know.

"It is entirely possible that you did not arrive in the timeline we would have hoped for. If that is so, then I wish you the best of luck. Though any future with Radical-6 in it is dire, it is clear that you have the skill and determination to survive there.

"I believe, though, your father succeeded: both in preventing the outbreak and in reuniting with you. In which case, you are now living in a world with a golden future, surrounded by a loving family, where every possible threat has been ended and every possible problem has been fixed. And, if I know you as well as I think I do, you are feeling that something is wrong.

"There is a reasoning that is obvious, but mistaken. Having woken up in another man's body with this feeling, you perhaps started to wonder if that was what was troubling you. But if there is one thing I have learned from my four Nonary Games, it is that minds are far more important than bodies. In time, you will learn that too. Instead, I want to focus on the root cause of your unease.

"Most likely, you are feeling frustrated by inaction. Just as likely, Sigma hasn't realised."

Akane's writing became a bit untidy there, but Kyle quickly interpreted it and carried on reading.

"It is understandable. After Sigma was first ripped from his everyday life, he has spent forty-five years trying to create the world where everything was back to normal. He has finally achieved all his dreams. It is not a surprise, then, that he would expect everyone else to be happy as well as he finally settles down.

"But that is not you, Kyle. You were born to help save the world. You grew up knowing that you would play a pivotal role in the AB Project: maybe even lead it if Sigma failed. And then, when the time came, you played that Nonary Game only as an amnesiac; in the key timeline you did not play it at all. If you feel as though you have been wasted – as though you have been written out of the story of your life – that feeling is justified.

"But know this, Kyle. The world will always need espers. Your day will come sooner than you think.

"With Love,

"Akane."

o-0-o

Kyle tremored slightly as he folded up the letter and placed it back on the table. His deepest feelings had been laid bare. With nervous eyes, he looked around the room, waiting for everyone's reactions.

To Kyle's surprise, Maria was the first to speak. "Hey. Carlos," she said.

"Yeah?" Carlos replied.

"Kyle looks a lot more like you, now." Maria tilted her head to the side and squinted and Kyle and Carlos in turn. "Not, like, normal you. More like you when you first joined the Firefighter's Academy. Or when you saved me as our house burned down. Like that."

Carlos nodded and grinned. "I think you're right about that."

As the immediate jolt of reading Akane's letter faded away, Kyle realised that the response of only one person mattered. He turned his head to the side and looked directly at Sigma. "Father."

Tears glistened in Sigma's eyes. "I only wanted to keep you safe, Kyle."

"I know, Father. You've kept me safe my entire life. But, ah…" Kyle shivered. He forced himself to say the words. "I cannot stay cooped up any longer. Either in Rhizome 9 or here."

"Okay." Sigma let out a deep breath. Through Sigma's eyes Kyle could see a weight being lifted from his heart. Suddenly, Sigma spoke to the entire room. "I know we weren't planning on doing it 'til later, but is it okay if I start on the presents now?"

When he had everyone's assent, he stood up and left the room, returning almost immediately with an envelope. He sat down next to Kyle again and opened it up, taking two pieces of paper from inside. He presented them to Kyle: one in each hand.

Kyle peered at them. "Plane tickets? To Helsinki?"

"The people at Crash Keys located a community of espers in Lapland. Northern Finland. There's a chance a human-trafficking ring is moving to exploit them, so they wanted two us to go there and check it out. I'd intended on taking Phi with me, but… Now, the decision seems obvious. Kyle?"

"Of course!" Kyle exclaimed. Then, he paused. "If that's okay with you, Phi?" he asked meekly.

"Hmm…" Phi scratched her chin. "Well, I wouldn't have minded going with you, Kyle, but… ah, what the hell: get the father-son-bonding-thing out the way. There'll always be another time."

"Thank you, Phi." Kyle turned back to Sigma and held out his hand. "Merry Christmas, Father."

Sigma placed one of the tickets in Kyle's hand. It took a second for them to properly connect, but then Sigma's hand grasped Kyle's firmly; the paper of the plane ticket in between was a resounding connection, not a barrier.

"Merry Christmas, Son," Sigma replied.