A SI as Naruto non-canon, NaruHina, Do it my way! 2-19-19
Kishimoto merely channeled the Narutoverse dimension... I am living it!
A/N: I'll start with a stream of consciousness in this first chapter and maybe a bit beyond, then get into the reality, so don't worry.
Death...afterlife...not what I expected.
So all my life I was taught at death I would come before my God and be judged for my life. I believed in this earnestly. Faced with the other religions it seemed the more logical choice. The many religions of my world believed in heaven and hell of some type, a few in constant reincarnation, but all in something more that nothing after death if you were devout.
But none of that prepared me for what has happened to me... what's a guy to do?
My old world's idea of reincarnation was as penance or reward for how life had been lived. Yet the reincarnated soul would have no recollection in the new life of any old lives unless certain nirvana had been reached. Even then, that new life would be bound by the rules of life and existence within the bounds of eartly living.
I had lived what I'll call an average life, over 50 years spent growing up and learning who I was and where I fit in to the 'big picture'. I never was much part of that picture, more like a small pebble in some insignificant stream. Carried along by the occasional flood but never of consequence. Leaving the world only the pebbles around me would remember until they too passed on. Yet now I am something new, someone different, somewhere foreign.
I guess whatever mechanism causes this reincarnation takes time to make the transfer because most of my transitional memory is like a long dream. My death was unremarkable because my last 'real' memory was of going to bed. Then I fell into the typical dream like state I was use to. Dreams in what I understood were REM sleep, where the unconscious mind collated memory, senses, thoughts, and experiences into a nightly play more often forgotten the moment the conscious self took hold again. Except this 'dream' felt more real than ever before.
I dreamt of being reborn. Yet I was reborn as someone from my penchant for anime. I was born seeing a great and fearsome nine tailed fox with terrifying power eminating from it. You know those dreams where you feel you can't move, where fear has you frozen. It was like that. But then two voices rose in my mind to aid and comfort me. One a female whose loving voice held hopes and dreams for my life with advice that barely made sense for I was not some child except for in this dream. Then a man's voice, sincere yet troubled though hopeful. In the dream I could sense their love wash over me, enshrouding me even as the great fox was somehow absorbed into my body. The voices of the man and woman fell silent and suddenly I was alone, utterly alone. I cried out in fear... but I didn't awake from the dream.
My dream went on, my consciousness only registering moments. It was like when I was a child, my earliest memories did not seem connected, but rather strung together moments, pearls of a necklace, all part of the the same string but all of different shape and lustre. In the dream I could see a caretaker hold me, feed me, change me. Then I remember my first steps as a toddler, pulling myself up for the first time.
More moments of significance flashed by, without large connection of significance in the dream. Slowly the pearls of experiences began to connect, a pattern of memory, of recollection. I could replay the few pearls, but nothing in between them seemed to register. Strangely recollections of the old life mingled with the new so that I remembered more of my old life as a child. The struggles I faced as a toddler. The struggles to get my body to do the things I wanted it to. The struggle to learn to speak, to understand what others around me were saying. To register what my name was.
But in the dream my name wasn't my own... no it was a name of a fictional character I enjoyed. I thought it odd that in my dream I was him, he was me. That had never happened before in my dreams as much as I can recall. No in my dreams it was always me. Yet this was me too wasn't it? Even if my name was changed I was still the same person inside. Wasn't I?
Perhaps this was how it was done, a reprogramming of sorts. To refit the self into the new life? To be reincarnated as something new, something different, but still part of the old? Finally my dream seemed to be ending, like so often they do. Something significant happens, sometimes good, sometimes not so good, and finally you wake up either with a start or with a yawn...
For me it was a start... I bolted upright, looking about me. I was in a large room, familiar from my dream, yet also foreign to my old reality. I thought for a moment it was still the dream, but the pressure in my bladder was telling me it was all too real. I'd felt that pressure upon waking far too often. I looked about me trying to think where a bathroom could be in this room. In my old life it was just steps away from my bed through a doorway. Here in this large room with other beds... it was across the room and down the hall. I slipped my legs over the side of the bed... wait, why did they not reach the floor? Then I became directly aware my arms, my legs, my whole physique was different. It was smaller! I was dazed for a moment but the pressure in my bladder overcame my disorientation about my body. I stumbled to the floor nearly falling. The coolness of the old wooden boards well worn by many feet, slick to the feel of my small soles.
My bladder directed me to scurry, rocking back and forth as I made my way between the other beds towards the door. My small hand was barely a quarter of the size I expected as it reached for the doorhandle. I turned the handle with effort, the smooth metallic surface cool to my touch. Finally my small hand was able to rotate enough for the door to unlock and move outward. I pushed, and the door gave way with a creaking of old hinges. I heard stirrings behind me and turned quickly to see a few shapes move slightly on a few of the other beds. I slipped through the doorway, forcing the door was difficult for my small stature. Yet I did not register that fact for long as my bladder reminded me yet again that I should find relief quickly. I scurried down the hall and headed for the door my brain was telling me was the bathroom.
This door was just as tricky to manage as the last, but my will, or rather my bladder's insistence was more urgent and I passed through quickly. The bathroom was only remarkable in that it had multiple sinks and toilets all exposed together. I selected the closest and stood in front of it and undid my garment and proceeded to relieve myself. It seemed like forever I stood there, the only thought in my mind of finishing this most banal of personal issues.
Finally done I flushed the toilet, finally recognizing how small I was compared to it. I stood barely taller than the toilet! I shuddered, this was the most lifelike dream I'd ever had, for surely I must be asleep still. Yet the coolness of the tile floor was enough that such feeling seemed odd for a dream. I turned to the sinks and took three steps to make it to one. Odd that distance never seemed so far? I turned the faucet on and let the cool water cascade over my small fingers. I let it fall for a while marvelling at how this dream again seemed so real, the water felt like water, cool yet flowing across my fingers with force. I reached for a nearby towel and dried my fingers and turned around. On the opposite wall a mirror in the semi-darkness gleaned back at me. The shadows of what was early morning hours now registered in my brain. That time when all was quiet before the day started it's march to meet the sun coming over the horizon.
The mirror stared back at me as I looked at it. The poor lighting was still enough to reveal my vissage to me. My eyes shot wide both in my body and in my reflection. I froze with chills running down my body and goosebumps shot up my arms like I hadn't felt in many years. My vissage... not my own... not my own... yet yes this was me. My consciousness battled with my subconcious self, waging war. It is me, but it isn't. Though the goosebumps stayed I began deeply inspecting my face, bringing my fingers up and seeing them pull the mop of my blond hair up off my forehead. Then they traced the faint lines upon my cheeks, the sensation quite real to me, as though the lines were receptors of sensitivity. My eyes were bluer than ever. Not my blue-green of the ocean I was used to seeing, but the blue of a sky laden with hope and richness. I remember those skies, my favorite. The blue of the orb of the earth as seen from space. A memory of the Apollo mission popping into my head. Yet this vissage I was seeing in the mirror never had seen that had he?
I looked at my hands held up in front of my face, looking in the mirror again, seeing the size being proper for the head I was seeing. Yet these were the fingers of a child, not my fingers of so many years, average in length, but meaty from having a body too that was more on the heavyset size. I remembered my vissage as a kid, I had gapped teeth, they were gone, now replaced with normal average teeth. My nose was maybe average too. Not that my old nose was large, but it was definitely similar to the others in my family. This childs nose was slimmer with no roundness to the end. Something I noticed when I had been a child. Yet this new nose was my nose, as the saying goes... I'd know like the nose on my face!
The odd comparisons continued to swirl in my mind. Somehow in my musings of differences I had made my way automatically back to my bed. I climbed into the bed, something I hadn't done in more than 40 years. I turned over and pulled the blanket up and looked at the ceiling of the large room. The early light starting to push back the blackness with a grey slowly creaping from window to the opposite side of the room where the door stood still open from my forgetfullness to close it. My brain was tired of the gymnastics. How odd I thought, this dream is so odd in it's realism. I'll just roll over and wake up in a while and laugh for a few waking moments before this dream fades and is quickly forgotten. I let a smile creep across my lips... this was certainly weird. But it's just a dream really after all.