Hi everyone!

So, if you're reading this chapter, you're either new to this story or have been sent back by my notes in Chapter 3/4. Yes, this story has been entirely revamped and rewritten. The honest truth is that I wrote myself into a corner with Second Chance, and the way it was, I knew deep down that I was never going to complete it and especially not to the extent that I had when I first dreamed it up.

Old readers, you'll notice a title and summary change. I thought it was better, given the rewrite. I know a lot of people who liked the old story are going to be upset by the fact this has been rewritten, but I promise you'll like this one equally, if not more, than the original. The first three chapters are kind of short, but that's just us building up to longer, 3k to 4k chapters. I write how the story breaks itself up, not how many words chapters are typically thought to be. Still, I can promise faster update with this new story, and I will also introduce some of the themes here that are changed, and what is not.

Things Staying the Same

1. The SI/OC still ends up in Rio's body and becomes her.

2. The SI/OC still catches Izaya's interest with knowledge she shouldn't have (though, as you'll see, the way that interest pans out is much different than before).

Things Changed

1. 'Rio' is a much stronger character than before.

2. While 'Rio' still doesn't want to get involved with the plot, it's for entirely different reasons.

3. 'Rio' fucks with Izaya much more this time, and in a way that I like to think is entertaining for people who understand Izaya as a villain and not a sympathetic character.

4. The original Rio is not present at all. She's gone entirely with the SI/OC's presence. (That was one of the plot points I hated and couldn't get over.) There will be more on how original Rio got kicked out of her body later, but that's spoilers. ;)

5. This story is admittedly darker, but if you like a character that's not afraid to bash Izaya to his face with an understanding of his character better than anyone else in Ikebukuro has, then you'll LOVE this.

6. 'Rio'/Izaya banter (that's what Izaya would call it, tbh. 'Rio' legitimately hates his guts and would consider it fighting.)

Anyways, I really hope everyone, new and old, enjoys this story! I hope to hear your thoughts in reviews!

Prologue

Death and Rebirth

There are a lot of things that can cause hopelessness: failure, impotency, depression, loss, pain, and so on. Usually, what causes the hopelessness can be healed, forgotten, or otherwise passed over so that hope can once again spring eternal, as they always say. The thing about humans is that we do, somehow, seem to always find hope.

Hope springs eternal, yes. But sometimes, hopelessness springs just as eternally.

I've always been predisposed to suicide. It just came with my brain chemistry, the mental illness I was simply born with. There was no real 'childhood' for me; I wasn't a old soul, but there was always a sort of jadedness about me, I think—adults liked to call it maturity—that drove the other kids away from me. At least that was my perception; when my parents worried about a lack of friends, the teachers were either blind and said that I did have them, or they simply lied to my parents. Or maybe I did have friends after all—I was six at the time, and it's been well over a decade since, so forgive me if I've forgotten the details.

With that jadedness comes a lack of hope for the future, and so at a very young age, I made the first attempt at taking my life. It was a failure, of course, because of my own internal inability to just let go. I thought I was ready to die, but I wasn't. But as the years passed, as more and more tragedies heaped upon me, as therapy brought my self-awareness and intuition to soaring heights, and life shattered every rose-colored illusion that was the naivety of youth, I finally reached a breaking point.

I was diagnosed with brain cancer, just as my mother had seven years ago. Even with my awareness of symptoms through experience with my mom dying, we still only managed to catch it at Stage IV, just like my mom.

Just like my mom, I had brain surgery.

Just like my mom, I was told the best they could do was make me comfortable.

Absolutely unlike my mom, knowing I was going to die and having already looked death in the eye before, I found that I was ready. I had no legacy to leave behind, no children or job or anything. I asked one of my friends to finish the books I had failed to finish and publish. I made sure my pets went to good homes, the new owners thoroughly vetted. I updated my will, and with the leftover money from selling my pets, I bought a gun. The state where I lived made it absurdly easy.

I considered all the ways I could die. A jump from the bridge I had sat on a few years ago didn't seem right. Pills had failed me before and I wasn't going to risk it now. Bleeding out was too messy, too painful, and came with the risk of being saved at the last minute.

So I bought my gun, I trekked out to the greenbelt not too far from my apartment complex, and found the place I would breathe my last.

But I sat there for a little while, not immediately putting the gun to my head and pulling the trigger. This wasn't half-cocked, and it wasn't like I wasn't going to die anyways. This was me, at last, taking control of my life. I hadn't been capable of so many things because of my severe mental illness and I had always wanted to live the life that so many other people could. I wanted to work, to go to school, to make something of myself, to make my notorious ambition and drive lift me to high places.

Instead, I had been mentally crippled from birth and was forced to watch the world pass me by while I scraped by here and there to make my impression on the world, to not leave without a trace.

And now my mark on the world would be as a statistic and a smear of blood on the tree behind me. But I believed in reincarnation, had read way too many self-insert fics online because they gave me hope that maybe I would be reincarnated—not as myself, never as myself—and the new me, the new body with my soul, now their soul, would be able to reach the heights that I had always wanted for myself.

I considered karma for a moment. Well, hopefully I had done enough right in this world to get my soul a step up from this life.

And then, finally, I lifted the gun to my head. I said a few words, mostly apologies to those who were already expecting my death but not like this, and then pulled the trigger.

I remember all of this like a dream, and then my eyes snap open.

All I see is the crotch of some guy who's kneeling over me, but he's leaning forward and speaking in rapid fire Japanese, which is much more than I could hope to comprehend. I pause, blink. This is not death, of that I am certain.

But why? I wonder through a fuzzy mind. Why am I not dead?

And why the fuck is this boisterous pig who really needs to learn about personal space speaking in Japanese? I'm an American, though since 2016 it's not something I've been proud of, and—

A skidding of wheels and a violent turn to the left makes me realize I'm in a car. Things are moving too fast, I can't make sense of this, I'm supposed to be dead and god dammit, have I been kidnapped, no, I felt the gun against my temple, I remember my index finger pulling—

A rush of memories, thoughts, and information hits my brain like an eighteen wheeler.

A mysterious sender of pictures of her father with a younger woman, hugging and kissing and looking all-around very happy-

-her father was not faithful to her mother, he was seeing someone else-

-pictures of the woman and her father delivered through the mailbox-

-her mother didn't care and acted like everything was just fine-

-a man named Nakura, who was just like her, he said, "Let's disappear together"-

-meeting this Nakura, who wasn't actually Nakura, the smell of chloroform-

-being dragged into a van-

When I open my eyes again, after not having realized that they had even closed, I can understand the man—men—who are speaking.

"Job's gonna pay a lot, right?"

The voice makes me flinch. Vaguely, vaguely, vaguely I can hear that the voice is familiar, not to the memories but to me. It shouldn't be. I know I haven't met this man before or any of the men my memories are telling me I'm in the car with.

But I've seen them.

I twitch, just testing my theory. Legs: immobile at the shin, sticky-feeling. Arms: same, but behind my back. Mouth: dry, tastes too sweet, like chemicals, unable to move lips.

If this is what I think it is, god fuck me, because hadn't I specified that when I was reincarnated, I wanted my soul to be scrubbed? To not be me?

And no, I'm not me, not technically, but for fuck's sake, I'm Kamichika Rio, enroute to meet Orihara Izaya for a mindfuck of the century.

Fuck.