1.1.1: 0000 A.E. - ??? - DiTh Awakens

"Ugh..." DiTh groaned as he awoke. Everything hurt, but not unmanageably so. The fact that he was feeling some pain was a good sign; as no pain at all could be an indicator of shock. Cold light filtered through the autumn tints of his eyelids. He furrowed his brow and began to take stock.

Legs...

Pelvis...

Torso...

Arms...

Head...

Everything still existed, at the very least; whether they were attached or not was yet to be determined.

DiTh slowly opened his eyes and scanned his surroundings. He was in an expansive field. The overcast sky seemed dimmer and colder than it should, as if several full moons lay behind the clouds rather than the raging heat of Sol. Other than that the immense grassy field he found himself in was seemingly normal. His back didn't hurt enough to warrant concerns about spinal injuries any more than waking up in such a strange situation did, so he sat up to better assess the situation.

He raised his arms to his face. Both there. A quick pat down showed that the rest of his body was intact.

"How did I get here?" DiTh mused, the last few hours that he could remember were a haze. He felt nauseous. A memory drifted lazily across his consciousness: someone was yelling, an alarm was blaring, and there was a lurch followed by a sharp pain on the side of his head.

Tenderly probing with his left middle finger, DiTh found a mat of crusted fibers where the brown hair on the left of his head usually laid. "Well that explains the memory loss," DiTh murmured, "hopefully it's temporary."

"Lets see, I remember my name is DiTh, or at least it is now. Used to be Tom Hum, but that was before I was recruited after the incident when I was 14... I'm from Nevada, born and raised... 23 years old..."

DiTh had an awakened ability; he could - through barely understood-means - control the relative offset of various parts of his body. He vaguely remembered some egghead explaining it as 'his body being similar to a frothy liquid, but with wormholes instead of bubbles'. Something about that memory annoyed him, but whether it was the patronizing tone, the egghead in particular, or the fact that his remarkable ability was being downplayed to the point that they basically called him hot milk he wasn't sure.

He thought for a moment more before coming to the conclusion that he was sound of mind with only a few hours of memory missing before he had fallen unconscious. "Probably the most important few hours of my life so far, judging by the circumstances," he mused dryly.

A sizeable leafless black tree of unknown species stood in the near distance. The aged tree's height was neatly covered by the width of DiTh's thumb held at arms length, but only just. DiTh estimated two kilometers to its trunk from his current position.

How he came to be in this field was a mystery, but he knew that nothing he could do would change that for the moment. He started walking towards the only landmark in sight.