Zombie Cat Science

Alt titles: Zombie Chakra Science or Black Cat Science.

Summary: What would you do if your power is dying repeatedly? What if you weren't the only one from another world, and others with different goals caused mayhem? What if you weren't the loyalty above freedom type? What if the only one you met like you was an insane monster named Orochimaru? Science loving suicidal insert comes to the Naruto-verse. Humanistic philosophy at the very end.

An interesting idea I haven't seen anyone test yet, which is what happens when an insert dies a second time? Slightly self!inserty in that we both suffered neglect and like science; Neko the insert will also be much like a certain canon character, at least in trauma and grumpiness, and reflects a different way that character could have gone, points if you can guess which before a certain chapter: Black Cat Luck.

They do not know the Naruto-verse is a manga. They come to identify as a genderless asexual (body shenanigans affect that too, well, you'll see how), and if genderqueer and QUILTBAG/LGBT bothers you, stop being such a shitty bigot and keep reading. And for the love of Loki and science and puppies, please don't tell much you are 'glad there is no gay stuff cuz they are ace'. It's phobic, and it makes me want to add gay scenes just to piss you off. You make Neko want to commit suicide again.

Trigger warnings (For story as a whole) for suicide, failed suicide attempts, fearlessness and wishfulness towards death, abuse, fondness and even love for abusive authority figures, broken violent friendships, threat of rape toward a male character for bloodline limit (and implied to have been done to females for the same reason), and depressed suicidal thoughts.

No lemons/sex, though there may be references.

On fan-fanfics and fan sequels: If there is an element of my work you want to nick, go ahead but drop a credit, okay? I don't mind the fourth wall weirdness of having an insert in another fic remember reading my fanfic or something like that, or someone having a fic with the same premise as this.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, or Orochimaru, Sakura, etc. I do own Neko, but not Sasuke. No money is made off of this, and it bares little resemblance to the Naruto story besides the basic world and a few mentioned events; it is created purely for discussion and educational purposes, and used to critique certain ideas.

.

.

1 Curiosity killed the Cat, Satisfaction Brought It Back

So... can't say I expected that result of my experiment. Most interesting, most interesting indeed.

What if you reincarnated?

Why, you'd test it by killing yourself again, of course.

Or at least, that's what I planned before things got derailed. To be honest, I didn't really need another excuse to kill myself; as one might guess, in my old life I was not a happy person. I kicked my own bucket before anything else could do it for me. I was not a religious person, but even if I was, the thought of being judged by Anubis and having my heart devoured by a crocodile headed god didn't scare me. I'm more afraid of being maimed than I am of pain, and if you're dead you are pretty much as maimed as you are going to get, I figure. Also, I was already in hideous pain; how exactly was the thought of being in pain again going to deter me? Best case scenario (or so I thought) I would feel no more pain, worst case I'd continue to feel pain. If I got trapped in some sort of limbo with other people, perhaps I could even cheer them up and work to improve their life, or afterlife.

I was a pretty altruistic person, and it had been extreme isolation that had ended up helping me kill me.

You see, I had been locked in my parent's attic like some kind of modern day Rapunzel, unable to go to school or have any opportunities to interact with other people outside the family. I even wasn't allowed to cut my hair without permission, just like Rapunzel. When I was old enough to understand this situation was fucked up, I was told I was too old to call Child Services. No one wants to adopt an adult, anyway, and I was constantly told how I could end up with so much worse for a parent, that the foster system was pretty screwed up and often led to more abuse. I was left with a bizarre love and hate at the same time for my family; they were all I had, they insisted they loved me, and yet... they neglected me so...

Eventually I couldn't take it anymore, you know? I didn't even feel sad, or all that angry, just sort of resigned and bored. Not what you normally imagine a suicidal person to be like, right? Or at least, that's what I had often thought of suicidal people being like: very sad and obviously depressed people, or the TV breed of 'insane' even though I knew the TV was full of bullcrap when it came to mental illness. I wasn't like that at all. It simply felt like the logical thing to do, killing myself. I wanted to please my family and get away from them at the same time, and that was impossible.

I didn't want them to cry, so I went through efforts to hide my death, told them I was going traveling far away and to not worry if they didn't hear from me for a long time. They'd done everything possible to sabotage my education and prospects (or so it felt anyway), so to drive off suspicion about how I got the money I just told them I was going to be a hobo.

They were less than pleased by that plan, but, hey, I didn't exactly stick around to hear their criticisms. It was really nice to have silence, as it seemed like every day I had to listen to them blather.

I profess, when the moment came to kill myself, I cried like a damn baby.

That was quite fitting, as next thing I knew... I was a baby.

My lucidity towards this bizarre fact thankfully did not last long, coming and going for brief moments as I grew, my world a baby's synesthesiac world of tasting blue and feeling sweet and sour and seeing melodies in colors. Yes, that's how very young babies view the world, with senses intermingled. It was even more different than that, as my mind was still learning to interpret vertical and horizontal, background and foreground and making three dimensional images from the information coming from both eyes; sometimes everything looked totally flat like a cartoon! It was a very strange experience, and as you can imagine when your head is that alien, not the most productive to thinking adult-like thoughts.

My limbs wobbled about randomly and with little control from me, sometimes making entirely instinctive movements; the suckle response, grip, and the pick me up responses are hardwired in infants, just like the swimming response if you put them in water.

All that was fine, as babies sleep most of the time anyway and can't do much. Now, you may have read stories about adult minds in child brains. That's... not quite how it works, or not how it should work in a world where brains hold minds rather than dualistic mumbo jumbo soul nonsense. If you have a child's brain, you have a child's mind, automatically. That doesn't make you stupid, mind, children are quite intelligent. The biggest advantage adults have is better development, emotional maturity and experience, and some prodigies may be more intelligent than adults many years their seniors.

You might wonder how I know this, when I lack any examples of adult memories being implanted into children. Well, I don't know it exactly, but science allows one to make predictions based upon facts. Assuming a non mind-body dualistic world, the mind and the brain are essentially the same. We may assume with confidence, therefore, that in a case of 'reincarnation' either the brain is entirely a child's, simply with a cloned personality (like a twin) and memories already imprinted into the brain tissue, or the brain has been modified to be more like an adult's, in which case it isn't a child's brain anymore, and the body is not fully a child's; anyone doing an examination of the brain who knew what they were doing would be quite perturbed. The latter situation is a bit like a transgender person, actually, which would make them, what, a trans-adult?

Admittedly, reincarnation brings up the strong likely-hood that there is a kind of soul mumbo jumbo duality, in which case known science goes out the toilet, but since there are brains in this world and they effect the mind and directly mirror changes in it, that duality if existent does not seem to be very strong.

I had been a prodigy myself of sorts in the old world, skipping grades and teaching myself many things. My parents certainly had not taught me much beyond basic math and reading. I had to teach myself writing, advanced math, spelling and history, and my own siblings to the day of my death couldn't spell too well. I'd enjoyed learning science, logic, programming... couldn't claim to have the most well rounded education, but, hey, I'd tried my best.

I had been a lucid dreamer, capable of knowing when I was dreaming or not, and I apparently started walking and talking on the early side. This served me well now, helping me to come into full awareness. It was an awful lot like dreaming and becoming lucid actually, and made me, if not for the incredible detail of the world and the fact I could feel pain and heat properly, almost wonder if I was dreaming. It didn't help that very young children tend to not form long-term memories, so I was actually quite a bit along, sitting upright even, before I fully 'woke', reviewed my situation, and actually sharply remembered my previous recent bouts of lucidity or near lucidity and deduced I'd been having them since rebirth.

In a lucid dream, it's not uncommon to become lucid for awhile, then forget you are dreaming, then become lucid again but not remember you were lucid before. On awakening, you remember both bouts of lucidity. My full 'awaking' was like that, as I remembered previous lucid bouts but had not been fully aware and rational. Probably my child mind couldn't handle it.

I discovered I was a girl child, in what seemed to be old fashioned times if the formal clothes were enough to go by, and decided, nope, not doing this bullshit. You could not pay me enough to be a woman raised to be nothing but a babymaker. And I wanted to kill myself again in any case. In science, you have to replicate results in order to test theories anyway, and this could just be the mental delusions of a deranged child. I needed to test and make sure, get more data for a pattern formation; would I reincarnate in different worlds each time, for instance?

But first, I decided to learn the language. And music. The world as a baby is actually quite fascinating; you have perfect pitch, and you hear languages in a way you don't as an adult. It's very difficult to describe, except as a sort of sensory overload where you can't tune every little detail out very easily. It was a foreign language the adults were speaking, and it was fascinating to learn a whole new language all over again, as well as figure out how to 'talk' to adults with eyes and smiles and coos to get what you wanted. It was a bit humiliating, sure, but honestly I'd had worse experiences.

The life itself was quite boring. It was a simple little family, making shoes and clothes to sell in a... sweatshop? A place with a bunch of people making clothes together with nothing more than sewing machines. Made me kind of sad, actually. It looked like mass manufacturing with robots hadn't been invented yet, or maybe this was some third world country where nobody gave a damn about the workers and used human labor because it was cheaper than building machines when you didn't have to pay the workers fair wages above a few cents an hour.

Some of the clothes were quite strange looking though. Were there legions of ninja cosplayers around here? Seriously. Of course, the actual most logical conclusion were that there were actual shinobi running around, which considering the language was not unexpected. I'd thought in real life though most ninja wouldn't do something so obvious as wear ninja costumes though!

It wasn't long after that that I found ninjas were real and had literal super powers here. As if my life could not get any stranger. Yet, it actually offered hope. The phenomena behind my reincarnation had to be connected to this, and it gave me something to work off of besides 'it happened somehow'.

I'm sad to say I didn't attach much to my new family when I began to walk and talk. We had little in common, and I was considered a spooky child from the beginning and ostracized by my new siblings.

I enjoyed listening to stories of ninja and was quite happy when I learned I'd be going to the same school, if only at first, since civilians and ninjas shared at the beginning (not a bad idea, actually) to scout talent. I was less happy when I realized I'd just be learning reading and writing and basic maths all over again, rather than doing any jutsu. I did need to learn to read in this new language, but, ugh... perhaps my time of death should be soon. It was clear I had little chakra talent in this body, and the best jutsu were reserved for jonin or special clans. Knowledge was hoarded here, and that was a death blow to the passion of a scientist.

Perhaps if I died again I would not have to stay in such a horrible universe!

On the day of my planned second death, shortly after I'd had my fill of mind numbing baby school for a few months, I spotted a strange looking man with a pale and snake-like face. From what I'd heard, he must be Orochimaru. He was talking to another ninja, who poofed away. He stood on a building and made no note of me.

"Hello sir. You are Orochimaru, right?"

He looked down at me with unveiled disgust. "I have no desire to indulge the whims of children. If you have lost your parents, go get lost somewhere else."

Wow, what a nice character. Still, I felt we were comrades of curiosity. "I heard you got in trouble for human experimentation. I don't think human experimentation is inherently bad, though. And I heard it was just corpses, right? They can't complain." I could tell I'd mildly surprised him with my large vocabulary, if nothing else.

"Oh? Is that so?" He flicked his tongue in a snakish manner over his lips. Another person might have found it creepy, but not me. He was obviously part snake or something, and snakes did that to smell, nothing ominous.

I was telling the truth about my annoyance. There had been nothing more annoying to me than when people butchered facts and said someone 'experimented' as code for 'they did evil'. At least have the decency to say 'experimented in an unethical manner' or, even worse of a sin, 'experimented haphazardly'. Did they even have a scientific method in this universe though? Did this Orochimaru at least use, say, controls, models and tests designed to disprove hypotheses in his experiments, or was he just doing random things to corpses and seeing what happened? Not that random things to corpses didn't potentially have value, but it was a lot better if you actually had some concept of what you were doing.

"Yes. Especially if people volunteer and are properly informed of what they are consenting to, then there would be nothing morally wrong with it at all. Although with corpses I guess you'd have to get people to agree to donate their bodies to science ahead of time." Of course, there were some experiments where an element of surprise was necessary, but you could still get consent to something vague like 'possible psychological discomfort'. Although, if it's to a corpse, they can't really care, can they? I admit I was a weirdo, but I didn't really care what happened to my corpse after I died. "There are benefits to ethical experimentation. Unnecessary pain or blood loss could skew the results. You want as few new variables introduced as possible, and pain is a variable. Did you know that if you cough as you get stabbed with a needle, you won't feel any pain? Pretty fascinating, no?"

He stared at me, tilting his head, and I wondered if perhaps I had gone a little too far. "What is your name?"

"Neko."

"You seem quite articulate, more so than some adults I know. Where did you learn this, Neko?"

"I read. But some of it is obvious." The benefits speech was something I came up with myself on the fly.

"What exactly is your point, child? Or did you just come to me to blather?" He looked rather annoyed. Oops. Guess he didn't like being reminded some considered his work unethical, or the idea some of his work might be shoddy.

I actually didn't have one, but, since he was here... "Are you still doing experiments? I might like to volunteer for one. I'd like to know the plans of it first though, I don't want to go through a flawed experiment that you'll just have to throw all the results out into the toilet for." I know most would call me a total lunatic for volunteering, but I didn't care if this resulted in pain or even death.

This caught him completely by surprise, and he looked very suspicious. "You want to volunteer?" he hissed. "Why? I don't think you would like most of my experiments. They can be... quite painful."

"I like science. And you can only think of painful experiments to do? That's not terribly imaginative, now is it?" I was pretty mouthy and fearless, but I had nothing to lose. Although I admit I was mildly worried he might be a pedophile of some sort, he struck me more as a plain old sadist. Plus most pedophiles are a little more subtle, you know? They do things like marry the mother to try and get close to the kids, pretend to 'like' kids, offer candy and car rides, and such. I had encountered one once, luckily got away unscathed. Or maybe he figured he just didn't need to bother with me, because I was obviously a lunatic like him.

"I am a ninja, pain is our trade, little girl." He laughed at me. However, miraculously he still hadn't left, so I must have caught his interest. Then he grew angry. "Did someone put you up to this? Trying to get me in trouble again?"

"What? No!" I exclaimed, horrified anyone would try to mess with scientific testing. Unless it was unethical, I suppose. Damn, I suppose experimenting on children without parental consent would count though wouldn't it? I hadn't thought this through. "Uh, I might be able to get parental consent if that's the problem. If I get them drunk enough." Mom, Dad, can I have horrific experiments performed on myself?

"Kukuku," he chuckled, anger disappearing again as he seemed to decide I was genuine. Which I was. "Perhaps another time, runt." He disappeared in smoke.

No science partner? Noooooo! Oh well. He probably had to go on a mission and was too busy to stand around chatting.

.

.

One day, as I walking early in the morning near where I'd met him, wondering if we'd ever meet again, hands suddenly came over my face. I bit down, only to have insubstantial smoke greet me. Again hands grabbed me, but not over the face. "Shush, it's your lucky day, volunteer."

I stopped wiggling. "Oh?" Looking up, I saw Orochimaru staring down at me.

"I've got an experiment for you."

"Then what's with the seeming kidnapping attempt?" I did not like where this was going.

"Ah ah~. You aren't going to like it." There was a gloating quality to his near sing-song voice.

"I'll be the judge of that!"

Suddenly we were moving incredibly fast, the world a blur, and I found myself underground in some strange laboratory before I could blink. Eh, he had secret labs underneath the village? Well, more like a city than a village. Town. Whichever. It was so cliché! What next, a hunchback assistant named Igor?

Well, they weren't a hunchback, but there was an assistant, a masked ninja wearing a short, black jacket with red straps on the shoulders. "Hello, Orochimaru. Another one?"

"What do you mean, another one? You got more than one volunteer?"

"Most aren't volunteers."

"Woah, hey, that's not cool. You can't just kidnaps kids without asking them if they want to be kidnapped first." I found my dreams of having a science buddy looking less and less likely.

"This one is a little deranged in the head, I see," said the masked woman, and I immediately felt annoyed. Hey, I wasn't deranged! A little mental in a depressed way, maybe, but I was quite cognizant of my situation and surroundings!

Orochimaru let go of me and held up a large needle. He smiled sadistically. "Do be a good volunteer and be still, Neko."

"Ah, time to see if my coughing trick works?" I grinned. "But I want to know what you're testing me with first."

"So nosy. Perhaps I should just kill you."

"I could care less if you do," I snapped, truly getting annoyed. "You want to tell me what's in there or not?"

"The DNA of Hashirama Senju."

"The so called God of Shinobi? So you're trying to give incredible powers to children who don't like you so they can, what, kill you easier in revenge? I am not seeing the logic of this plan, Orochimaru sir."

"Orochimaru is not stupid! We'll kill the children the moment they – I mean," the ninja seemed to realize this would cause me distress and make me struggle more. Not that they couldn't restrain me if they really wanted, but screaming could be annoying to the ears. "Kill any disobedient children the moment they showed signs of wanting to use the granted powers against us." Us who? Hmm, there was some kind of secret organization here. Or a cult. No, not religious enough for a cult.

"I grow tired of your questions, little Neko. You should be more humble to the man who is going to grant your wish to be an experiment." He sounded quite impatient, and gripped my arm painfully now and prepared to push the needle into me. I winced.

"Have you attempted experimenting with animals first? I told you ethical experimentation isn't just for good feelings. It's much easier, quicker, and more cost effective to use small doses on tiny fast breeding animals like mice to perfect the technique than waste large unrefined doses on larger human subjects that are difficult to replace. With mice you could experiment on tens of thousands quite quickly."

He actually seemed to hesitate to consider this. "Mice would not be as high quality. And they do not closely resemble people, not casting jutsu or the like, except for summons." That was pretty odd. A world with many diverse (clearly evolved; there seemed to be thousands of beetle species just like my old world) animals and only human-animals* and these 'summons' cast jutsu? That didn't make sense. I'd have to learn more about these summon things.

*Yes, I consider humans a kind of animal. Unique for being a sapient one, rather than just sentient.

"DNA is the same chemical whether in mice or humans however, so if you're inserting DNA, it's better to perfect the technique with mice first. It's simply more cost effective even if you aren't concerned with making your subjects feel nice. What's better, ten subjects or a thousand subjects?" I held out my hands and pretended they were a scale with one side getting outweighed by the other, letting one hand drop low and the other lift high.

Orochimaru let me go. "An interesting concept, child." He put his hands together, and I wondered if he was going to use a jutsu to kill me. Instead, out popped from the air several small snakes! "Your life is spared, for the moment. I wish to try this."

"Oh cool, I love snakes." I bent down to pick one up, careful to get a grip on the head in case it was bitey. I went for the most docile one, and held it gently, letting it slither in my arms like I was a tree and it was going from branch to branch. "So these are summons? Snakes should work. Although mice breed faster, being prey animals." Snakes had DNA just like everything else. And, ah, it made sense now what summons were! Summons were just animals with high amounts of chakra, like ninja were humans with high amounts of chakra.

"I have near limitless amounts of snakes to draw upon, don't worry."

"Oh, okay." I wondered if one could cancel a summon contract. I don't think I'd like being able to be summoned by a lunatic who wants to torture me! Or then again, I was weird so maybe I would if he or she presented it enticingly enough?

"What shall we do with the other children, Orochimaru?" said the other ninja, quiet. "Induct them into Root? Kill them?" What is Root? Kill them? Jerks.

"Keep them for the moment." He waved a hand in dismissal, then grabbed a snake and injected it with the needle. "I will want them for later experimentation. The human experimentation has only been delayed, if this works out. The ones already injected shall continue as planned."

Hopefully, I had just saved some of their lives and made things a lot less painful. Or had I? I wasn't stupid, I knew she only added the 'killed if disobedient' as an afterthought. They planned to dissect the children eventually, I bet. But this bought me time to potentially get them out of here. Us. If I lived that long and could locate them?

"What are you using to replicate the DNA? A virus?"

He gave me a measuring look I didn't understand. Social behavior was not my strong suit, you might have guessed. "A medical healing jutsu, corrupted to replicate the foreign DNA instead of the native DNA, somewhat akin to what a virus does. It's part of why there is such a high death rate."

"Oh. I should have guessed. I think an engineered virus might do better, although then the body's natural defenses and antibodies might fend it off."

"No, I've thought of that. Viruses only do so much, they don't usually grow new flesh or chakra natures. And medicine is not quite my strongest suit. There is another who is better," he seemed to hate admitting this, if the dark brooding look he got on his face was any indication. Could be entirely unrelated, but hey, just a guess. "Especially at the non-jutsu aspects of medicine. Chakra manipulation, however, I can master."

"There are tumorous viruses, but I take your point. It would be quite complicated to engineer them to act like the body is a fetus again and grow, I assume this is how it works, different chakra coils."

"You do not talk like a normal child," he pointed out the obvious. "I was going to just kill you, but you remind me a bit of myself."

I blinked, unsure. Wow, did I really come off that creepy? "Are you offering to let me experiment with you?"

"For as long as you prove useful to me," he said, eying me like he did not expect this arrangement to last long. I didn't expect it to, either, but, I had made progress here today. Psychopaths can't be cured, but on the off chance he was 'only' a sadistic narcissist perhaps I could poke him on to a path slightly less horrible. A path of more ethical and useful science, which, in my opinion, often produces superior results. I did not think he'd ever be a nice person. And it was not like I had anything more in my power to do.

"Well, I was planning to kill myself for fun, but I suppose I could do that for awhile."

Orochimaru looked off-put for half a second. I felt pretty pleased; I don't think many people have managed to creep him out before! I might even be the first one, and I was childish enough to revel in this idea. Although creep out might be too strong a word. Mildly uncomfortably surprise and disgruntle, but hey, that was on the scale of 'creepy', right? In any case I did not think I'd ever manage to again, so soak in it now.

"Yes. I will show you what to do. Come pick up the snakes and prod them with this needle, Neko."

"Yes... sensei."

.

.

.-.

.

notes:

Fic update schedule/completion:

This was a quick-written story, already completed, me barfing out 60,000+ words in a month with nothing better to do. :P I originally submitted it as a huuuge one-shot, but, after cautiously reading reviews (I'm a bit people-phobic, but you guys were really nice! thank you) it seems like you want me to break it up into chapters, so I'm going to quickly split it up. Maybe post one every day or two, although it was suggested I should do every week I want to make sure I actually remember to repost the fiction in entirety. For only 100 views, 5 reviews is not too bad a ratio. I might do some bonus material at some point; the ending was satisfying but there was room for a sequel and some loose ends.

lastly..

I make it clear now: this is not a brainless 'get stronger and beat them up' story, but a psychological and intellectual story, even if a character becomes quite strong and threatens to break everything. Events that go just like canon will only be lightly detailed or mentioned, rather than repeated in mind boring agony like a lot of fics do.

I warn you, it's a really weird story with lots of Orochimaru and a heavy theme around depression and non-psychotic bordering to psychotic mental illnesses, which means mood swings, narcissism, and paranoia. And that while I don't intend to bash, this will be filtered through the viewpoint of the OC, which I do not necessarily agree with at times but do heavily sympathize with. They may call some characters idiots, pick fights, choose lousy friends (I did say there would be Orochimaru), abandon friends, border on hypocritical to actively being so, etc. That said, there is also critique of the shinobi system and by it Konoha itself and Naruto.

There -is- a humorous arc in it (a certain fellow named Freddy), because I don't do morbid 24/7, that, since I wrote it as a free-flowing thought-to-keyboard story, ended up a bit superfluous (according to reviewers at least). It would have been more important had I decided to make the fic longer.

...fucking fanfiction net ate all my linebreaks.