Wanted to put a twist on the whole 'rebirth' thing, and was interested in narcolepsy. I don't have narcolepsy, so if anything's wrong, please correct me. All the info i got, i looked up.


Dying wasn't fun. Of course, most would assume so. That's probably why it's natural for human beings to be afraid of it. Death is something that happens every day, but the moment it happens to you, it always comes at a shock. You think things like, 'no, it's too soon', 'I'm too young to die', 'I should still live'. You know, the usual stuff. I can't blame you. That's what would've went through my head at the moment of my own death. Twenty-six years old, finally out of college and traveling to the good old UK to try and snag a job at the Smithsonian. Things had finally started looking up for me, then the plane I was on just had to have some malfunction over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It was a strange experience, let me tell you. Everything was fine one minute, then the lights went out. People began to panic a little, stewards and stewardesses tried to keep everyone calm, but even they were frightened so nothing really helped. No one had any warning. Just a feeling in your gut that told you we were descending, then a violent jolt.

I suppose it wasn't too bad. I could've felt what happened afterward or I could've died another way, so I was glad the way I died was relatively pain free. It was what happened after that had me worried. Despite my religious parents bring me up in their faith—where some all-powerful God chose whether you went to heaven or hell—I was more of a realist and figured that once you died, that was it. You brain stopped sending signals to your body and your consciousness faded into nothing and that would be it. The end. No thoughts, feelings, or anything else. Just alive one minute then nothing the next. Of course, my friends never accepted this answer when this question was brought up. They always wanted something else. I had always been the 'out of the box thinker', so they wanted something more elaborate. Things like this being a dream of some boy in a coma and when he woke up, it would be over. Or when we died, we would just wake up as ourselves when we were born and live our lives over again as the same person but with no memories of how we lived the last time, and ultimately live our lives a different way before repeating the cycle. Or—their personal favorite—being reborn as someone else in another world or another universe upon dying. Needless to say, I stuck with my answer of nothing happening after death, but now I was beginning to regret it. Now, I was dead and there wasn't nothing.

Well, not exactly nothing. There was warmth, soft murmurs, and I could tell I had a body of some kind, but that was it. I couldn't move much, almost like any signals I tried to get to my limbs would either not reach them at all, or would make them move far faster than I wanted; resulting in me kicking something more than once. It was weird though. Because I slept more often than not and when I did, it was sudden. My body would be just fine one minute, then I was out like a light the next. I didn't mind it too much. Kept me from being bored, but it also kept me from trying to figure out where I was and what exactly was going on. It wasn't until the walls started closing in on me, that I finally grew uncomfortable with my surroundings. Of course that didn't prepare me at all for being pushed out of the warm darkness I had been in and into a freezing room. A wail went out and it took me a moment to realize that it was my own wail and at that point I only cried harder as realization dawned on me. I'd been reborn into a baby.

Large hands passed me to someone who cooed and shushed me to try and stop me crying, and I recognized the voice from the murmurs I heard before. This, I realized, was my new mother. I stopped crying for a bit, opening my eyes finally and trying to see, but everything was blurry and I couldn't see any colors or anything, so I just sniffled and shut my eyes again as I prepared to cry once more. Yeah, sue me. I'm a twenty-six year old crying, but you would be too, if you were in this predicament. The woman though, held me close and I peered my eyes open once more to actually see a bit of her face was in focus. She was a pleasant looking Asian woman with dark (honey-brown, I later discovered) eyes and black hair and I couldn't help but feel captivated as she smiled and cooed at me. That is, until she spoke in a language I recognized; Japanese.

I didn't understand everything she said—something about me being cute—but the realization that I was Japanese made me start crying again up until I fell asleep. It was only later when I woke up at a home that I tried to calm myself down enough to work through what had happened and what I was going to do next. It was obvious I'd been put into an infant's body and that I had a new family, but something had gone wrong, because I still had all my memories of my past life and all twenty-six years of knowledge crammed into my little baby head, made me quite the fussy child for the next week or so. I felt bad for what I was putting my parents through—my father being a rather gruff, black-haired, brown-eyed Japanese man—but that first few weeks were rough for me. I mourned over the fact that I had died in a plane crash and how my family would find out and mourn over me. I mourned over them, because I'd probably never see them again. Then I cried because of the nightmares I had of dying.

Once I had a good cry about it though, I lightened up and did my best to make it up to my new parents.

My father—from what I understood of their babble—was a regular old business man who was gone most of the day and came home in the evening around dinner time. I believe his name was Shindo, but I couldn't be sure. My knowledge of Japanese only came from two years of high school courses and anime. My mother was a simple stay-at-home mom who would clean and bake and play with me on and off throughout the day. Her name, I was certain, was Misaki and she was more than nice enough to me despite my weeks' worth of crying fits. So, to make it up to her, I did my best to keep from crying and only grew a little fussy when I needed a diaper change or I was hungry and such. Though, that brought up a whole new problem, because I also hadn't been born into the same sex body as I had been. That's right folks, I was a little boy, not a little girl. My name should have given me a clue, after all, there probably aren't any Japanese girls named Takeo, but that realization made me cry for another day. I felt horrible for doing that to my parents after promising not to, but that was a tough blow to my poor womanly pride. It was a whole new set of parts that I'd have to figure out how to work, and I was not pleased about that. Though the lack of periods and other fun joys of being a woman would not be missed.

I got used to it and after a few months, my parents came to the realization that I wasn't going to be like the other kids. It was then, after all, that I started showing signs of narcolepsy. It was harder to tell for them when I was younger because I needed so much sleep, but I had realized after the first month or so that suddenly sleeping the way I was, wasn't normal. I couldn't exactly tell them, seeing as I couldn't even get my poor tongue to form words, so I only hoped that they'd realize it sooner or later and at three months old, I was taken to the doctor's to figure out what was wrong and I was diagnosed with narcolepsy. My parents took it rather well, actually. I was a little surprised at how easily they did so, but it wasn't as though I would die from the illness. I just had to be a bit more careful about where I was and what I was doing when I did have my sudden bouts of drowsiness. My parents helped with that quite a bit and often tried to keep me from hurting myself when I started to sit up and crawl around, only to fall asleep and very nearly topple over. They kept a good watch on me after that doctor's appointment though and that guilt of being a bother to them kept me from speaking my first words to them well past my first birthday. Of course, I probably gave them both heart attacks when I finally did speak at nearly two years old, and in a full sentence, no less. All I said though, was…

"Oka-san, I don't like these."

And I gestured to the carrots on my dinner plate. Dinner had been practically forgotten at that point when she started trying to get me to say something more and I had given my father a pleading look, somehow convincing him to save me from her multitude of questions and excited squealing. After that though, she would often continue to pester me into speaking and I would indulge her occasionally. As I grew older though, it was soon time for me to enter elementary school and—after a talk with my teacher about my narcolepsy—I ended up discovering something I would have never expected. The name of my home town where I lived, was called Namimori and a young, brown-haired boy in my class was the Tsunayoshi Sawada from Katekyo Hitman Reborn; a character from an anime I'd watched in my old world when I was a little younger. And I, the newly reborn Takeo Hideyoshi was sitting directly beside him.


Now, don't get me wrong, my mother did take me out on occasion to the park or out to the grocery store with her, but I never really paid any attention to anyone we may have bumped into there. Though I think I saw Yamamoto at the park once. Not only that, but how was I supposed to know that I'd been reborn into an anime? I wouldn't have thought to look out for characters at all, much less when half of my outings with my new mother turned into naps partway through. Which brought me back to my time in elementary school. Despite sitting beside 'Dame-Tsuna', we hardly bothered one another. I was dubbed too quiet and strange by our other classmates and Tsuna actually got along rather well them, unless he was called on in class. It seemed the moment any pressure was put on him, was when he'd grow too nervous to say anything or he'd stutter so bad no one would understand him. That, and he wasn't the brightest crayon in the box and often got wrong answers. None of the kids saw a real need to bully him though. I caught them talking behind his back once or twice, but it was just the usual childish teasing and it didn't seem to be doing much harm. Tsuna was just a shy kid. A really shy kid, but I honestly found him rather cute. Like a skittish little brown puppy.

Yeah, I know. I'm a boy now. I shouldn't be thinking things like that, but I couldn't help it. My mind was that of a girl and, while I did find some of the girls in class cute, it was more of a reflex. Like when you see kittens playing in a pet store and you can't help but think they're adorable. I was still a twenty-six year old woman (now a thirty-two year old, if you count this life). So I was allowed to find the kids around me cute. As I grew a little older though, I could tell that my child-like body was rebelling against my mature mind and I often had moments were I slipped back into the demeanor of a child. One particular moment was when I turned seven and my mother became very sick.

She ended up spending weeks in the hospital and my father did his best to work and help take care of me, but I tried my best to take care of myself when he was unable to or when he came home from work and just couldn't do much more. When my mother passed away though, any restraint I had on my childish emotions fell apart and I cried for the first time since I was a baby. And not the quite sniffles and whimpers, but full on ugly crying. With snot being wiped on my nice suit and tears streaming down my face, I cried in my father's arms for hours until I couldn't do it anymore. It was a rough time for the both of us, but we managed to push through and I did what I could to try and go back to my usual demeanor, however, it was harder than I thought. I began throwing tantrums in class when someone did something I didn't like and I'd suddenly burst into tears at the smallest things. It wasn't until one fateful day that everything changed.

It was our lunch break at school and I had just managed to wake up from another bout of my narcolepsy and prove to the teacher that I didn't need to stay in to catch up on what I'd slept through—a common occurrence in order for me to keep up with the lessons with my narcolepsy—and I had decided to read a book outside under one of the trees. It was one of my favorite books from my old world that I'd convinced my parents to buy for me in English—which was a shock to them, but they gratefully bought it. I hadn't gotten far into it though, before I heard childish jeering and I spotted a group of boys kicking dirt at someone on the ground. Upon spotting a fluffy brown head of hair, something in me snapped and I rushed over to the group before punching one of the boys in the face. Rash, yes. Reckless, most definitely. In fact, I stared at my little throbbing fist in shock as soon as I had done that in disbelief. I'd lost control of my young body thanks to the surge of adrenaline and I'd just punched a little boy in the face.

My older mentality panicked, forgetting that I myself was a child and I struggled to say something or do something, but a little fist colliding with my face knocked me out of it. I fell back into the dirt and winced at the pain in my nose, before one of the other boys tackled me to the ground and we began wrestling and fighting one another. There was shouting from the other kids as the three boys who'd been attacking Tsuna teamed up against me instead, but I'd done some minor self-defense before in my past life as a requirement for the security job I'd picked up before trying to get to England; and I was using that to try and give me the upper hand. Problem was, I wasn't the lithe woman I had been and in this smaller body, many of those tricks I'd learned were useless. Thankfully, a couple of teachers had finally noticed what was happening and separated us before we were all brought to a class room for them to hear the story of how this happened. Of course, it was three versus one, so it was obvious who would get into more trouble.

"We were just playing!"

"T-Then h-h-he hit me!"

"W-We didn't do anything! H-He started it!" They wailed, tears running down some of their faces as I wiped the tissue I'd received under my bleeding nose with a frown.

"Takeo-kun, is this true?" The teacher asked and I didn't bother turning to her.

"They were picking on Tsuna-san." I grumbled and she sighed before announcing that I needed to apologize to the boys and sit in the hall until my father came at the end of the school day.

Needless to say, I was severely reprimanded by my teacher in front of my father, who made me personally apologize to the boys and their angry parents. When they left and murmured about my father being a bad parent though, I very nearly rushed out after them to get angry once more for them being the bad parents to allow their kids to pick on someone like Tsuna, but my father stopped me and I knew I was in trouble by the angry gaze he laid on me. Once we got home, I bowed and apologized to him.

"I'm sorry, tou-san."

I stayed bowed and sniffled as my childish emotions took control again, not wanting to have embarrassed my father or be a burden to him after he'd just got out of work, only to have to deal with what happened with me at school. What I didn't expect though, was the heavy hand to land on my head and ruffle my hair.

"It's okay, Takeo. I'm sure you had a reason."

I looked up at him in surprise, getting tongue-tied at his expectant gaze asking me what had actually happened to make me get in a fight.

"I-I, um… T-They were picking on another boy at school and I… sort of lost my temper..."

I shifted my eyes away from his—having never really gotten used to his gruff expression despite him being my father here—and he hummed.

"Your mother wouldn't be happy you got in a fight with some other boys at school."

I flinched at his words, imagining my mother scolding me like she once did about not eating my carrots. And that was just over vegetables. If it was this, who knows what she would've done.

"However..." My father went on, making me turn back to him in confusion. "...I'm sure she'd be very proud of you to stand up to bullies who were picking on someone."

I felt hope rise in my chest that my father wasn't angry with me—he'd probably be fifty times as scary as my mother would've been—but he soon crushed that hope.

"But resorting to violence is not acceptable." He grumbled, frowning down at me as I felt a shiver rack my spine.

Thirty year old woman or not, my father was scary as hell.

"Sorry, tou-san." I apologized again and he sighed as he went into the kitchen.

"No desert for a week." He announced and I pouted at the punishment as I trailed after him to see what he'd make for dinner and what I could help with. "But I believe you need to be able to protect those close to you, so… if you want… I will sign you up for a self-defense class after school. Though your mother probably wouldn't like it..."

I mentally chuckled at my father's frustrated expression, but then got to thinking about what he said. Because me taking a self-defense class would be a nice way to get stronger, especially if I somehow got dragged into the plot of the show, but then again, I don't think I'd be able to do much. My narcolepsy made me fall asleep at random moments and fighting with that sort of thing probably wouldn't be a good idea. Sure, I was doing better about it and managed to get a nice sleeping schedule down so that I'd be awake most of the day when remaining active, but I still fell asleep in class once or twice a day and who's to say that wouldn't happen smack dab in the middle of a fight? Not only that, but I didn't want to actually kill anyone. While technically the show never had anyone die, per say, they were defeated and that was basically the same thing. Byakuran, for instance, was defeated by being turned to dust. As much as the show didn't want to say it, that was a group of middle schoolers killing someone. And I wouldn't be able to do that. So would taking a self-defense class really be something I want to do? But it's to protect people. Shouldn't that be a good enough reason to fight back? I frowned, coming out of my thoughts when I felt eyes on me and I looked up to see my father watching me with his usual blank expression.

"Your mother's right."

I tilted my head in confusion as he turned back to the stove.

"I think you took after me a little too much."

I blinked, before remembering a conversation my parents had had when I was a little baby, about how I thought too hard and would often stare into space, much like my father. I didn't mind though and I smiled a bit as I bounded up beside him, sitting on a stool, and he passed me a knife to chop up some vegetables.

"Don't tell your mother."

I smiled and nodded, chopping up the veggies with ease with a small glance at the family altar in the other room. We were quiet for some time before he spoke again.

"You don't have to, you know."

"Hm?"

He glanced at me as he put food on the two plates on the table. "Take a self-defense class. It was just a suggestion on my part. I won't force you."

I frowned in contemplation, trying to word my answer before I responded. "I… I want to think about it a bit. I want to, but I want to choose what kind. Is that okay?"

He nodded and said nothing more as we ate our dinner. It was perhaps about a week later that I'd found what I wanted to try out, as far as a self-defense class goes, and I took up bojutsu and judo at a dojo nearby. The bojutsu was my idea—the least dangerous weapon I could learn to use to incapacitate, not kill—and judo was my father's idea. He figured that I could use at least some hand-to-hand combat and I'd rather immobilize my opponent than actually hit them. Once I started up those classes though, my narcolepsy seemed to act up the moment I wasn't physically active. It was rough the first few months, before I drank my father's coffee before school one morning on accident. That seemed to keep me actually awake the rest of the day and I only fell asleep once before my judo class started and once waiting for my father to pick me up from said class. After that, coffee in the morning became a regular thing and my father wasn't too pleased at first, but it soon became something normal.

As I grew older, things started to change bit by bit. By the age of nine I had managed to somehow get my brown belt in judo and had begun training hard to work up to getting my 1st dan black belt. I was more than proficient at bojutsu though and my father had gotten me my own wooden staff that year for my birthday. At eleven years old, however, puberty hit and I don't think I'd ever seen my father that nervous about the 'birds and the bees' talk. I spared him the pain and informed him about already knowing about this, but I did need an explanation about some… other parts and he begrudgingly talked with me about that. I'll save you the details though, and move on. My relationship with Tsuna had progressed, but only slightly and not of my own doing. Mostly.

Basically, after the whole problem with me fighting off the bullies that one time, he'd been afraid of me and would do his usual squeal whenever I even looked in his direction. After a while though, of me not bothering him, he came over and thanked me for standing up to the bullies for him and I responded with a simple 'you're welcome'. We didn't become friends or anything like that though. More like a couple of friendly acquaintances who sometimes hung out during lunch—when I wasn't sleeping or staying in for extra lessons. Of course, this meant that I didn't really make friends either for hanging out and protecting Dame-Tsuna, but I didn't mind. I was, after all, an older woman trapped in the body of an elementary school kid. It would be obvious that I wouldn't be entertained by simple games like tag or hide and seek.

My father actually brought it up once that I should try to make friends, but I had been reading another English-printed book at the time and all I had to do was peek over the top cover of it and raise a brow before he sighed and gave in. And just before I turned twelve, I discovered the middle school I would enter and promptly groaned. As if it would be anywhere else. Namimori Middle School, here I come.