Zombie Cat Science

Alt titles: Zombie Chakra Science or Black Cat Science.

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3Poly-ticks

"I talked to the Hokage about human experimentation."

"And?" I woke excitedly, sitting upright on 'my' bed in my tiny room, or really more like prison. It had been several days, and I felt completely better now. He didn't visit every morning, but I looked forward to it when he did. I told myself it was stupid, because he was a manipulative, jerkish son of a gun, but, he was also the only other person around who knew at heart what it was like to yearn to know everything, and to have that fact about you demonized. To, say, learn every jutsu for the sake of it. Another person might say, 'what is the point of learning every jutsu? What you need is to learn one super technique that can do anything, or learn the fundamental nature of chakra and just not need jutsu at all blah blah blah', but that would be indeed missing the fact there didn't need to be any point, beyond sheer enjoyment! Some activities could be enjoyed in and of themselves, otherwise, you'd have an endless illogical circle where everything had to be justified by something else.

Although, he did say he was interested in the principles behind chakra and jutsu. Learning every single one might not be the most efficient way to go about it, better to do experiments on chakra itself and see what composes a jutsu. Although if it was like chemistry, it wouldn't hurt and with every new jutsu something new could potentially be discovered!

"He said no. That he might have thought about it if not for the scandal of the corpses incident," Orochimaru said with distaste. He slouched a little, like he was sulking. Was he? Yeah, I think he was, just too proud to admit it.

"Damn, I hate politics. I suppose the chances of you finding support elsewhere to help change his mind are slim?" My morality was probably a little skewed, considering I was not bothered at all by the fact he'd been messing around with corpses, but, hey, it was not like my current company cared. Although that was probably a sign I should care.

"Very. I have a little support, but overall I am not popular, despite everything I have done for the village." Oooh, how very bitter sounding. Could I dig up a story behind there?

"That little support mostly comes from Root and its leadership?"

He narrowed his eyes at me. "You are too clever sometimes, little Neko."

Time to change subject. I stretched. "Are you alright? Not even snakes actually have cold blood. Your hands were kind of cold earlier."

"Your concerns are misplaced. I am fine." He seemed disgruntled, not an unusual state. I seemed to annoy him easily.

"Well, alright, onward to more science! I was thinking the best route for any study of immortality would be to look into souls, reincarnation, that sort of thing. How much have you?"

"Somewhat. My first route was to look into snakes and other animals with rejuvenation abilities. I admire their ability to regrow an entirely new skin and shed off the impurities of the old one."

"Most animals grow new skin, they just do it gradually," I told him. He gave me a glance that told me no one my age should know so much, but I didn't care really. Or maybe it was a 'does this have a point?' glance. Glances aren't actually that great at communicating advanced concepts, and it was not unlikely I was prone to interpreting them in an ego stroking way. "Salamanders actually grow new limbs when cut, and I believe there are breeds that stay in a state of permanent neotony, which under the right conditions can be triggered to change to the 'adult' form of related non-neotoneous species, though their babyish form was perfectly capable of reproducing before." I could have sworn there was a species of worm or hydra that was effectively immortal, but I couldn't remember it. "Death is related to the fact our human cells only replicate a certain number of times to cut down on cancer, and that our growth development genes don't ever truly turn off even in adulthood when we don't need them anymore, leading to errors and mistakes."

"And where did you learn this?"

"I read a lot." I shrugged at him.

"If your chakra and abilities were not so incredibly pathetic, I'd suspect you of being a ninja spy."

"Well, that's just sloppy. I thought you suspected everyone, including the mailman, to be a ninja spy," I teased him. Then I wondered if there were mail men or if I had just confused him.

He was not in the mood to be teased, pressing a kunai to my throat. I just sighed and patiently waited for him to grow bored of that.. The pale snake sannin did, eventually. After, he acted like nothing had happened. There was that weird pressure of murderousness suffused in the chakra again. "I have studied the scroll of the second Hokage, Impure World Reincarnation. It wouldn't work well for gaining immortality, as it requires someone else to cast the jutsu, and it requires a living vessel which the caster can control after the subject reincarnates into it."

Hmm. "Well, perhaps it could be modified. A time or event triggered seal for a jutsu could deal with the first problem, preferably with the event being death." Why am I helping him gain immortality? Well, it looked like he was perfectly capable of finding methods on his own, so, might as well have fun and see if any information might be useful to me. Apparently souls were indeed a thing, that was already useful information I hadn't known for certain before. "For the second, maybe it could be downgraded to a simpler non-sapient living thing than what I'm assuming are people. With all the transformation jutsus and the like, it doesn't seem like it would be hard to change a snake to function like a man. You could do all the preparations you wanted on it and it wouldn't put up much fuss if you treated it well, not understanding death. A human subject on the other hand might try to remove any seal you put on it or kill themselves out of spite to end your existence."

He looked less than thrilled at the idea of using a mouse or snake to reincarnate into, but thoughtful when I spoke of event triggered jutsu. Me personally, I didn't know why event triggered jutsu were not the biggest thing ever. They had time-set bombs, didn't they? Why not make other things?

"I have another, similar technique I have been working on that gets around some of those problems. Living Corpse Reincarnation. I am still working on it, but it will allow me to steal another body, overpower the host soul, and use the body for my own soul."

I didn't like the sound of that much. "So that is what the mysterious corpses showing up were about?" If he'd been practicing any of these techniques requiring sacrifices, seems like it wasn't just corpses (who could have just died of natural causes), but people he murdered to make into corpses! Bastard.

"Ah, no. I was having students dissect them to study their anatomy, and occasionally dissecting them myself. Much better than just studying anatomy out of a book," he chuckled. "Especially for body parts you won't find written down."

That made me feel marginally better. So he hadn't started butchering people yet. Emphasis on yet. He planned to.

"As well, some of my test subjects perished." Okay, never mind the yet. He'd helped kill people.

"So, the DNA you wanted to inject into me, did that have something to do with immortality too, or just power?"

"Little escapes you, I see. You spoke of salamanders regrowing limbs. That ninja had incredible healing abilities himself, almost immune to wounds and damage."

"Not a bad way to go, I admit. But if I were going for immortality, I'd go for the ultimate fail safe." Here was my opening. "An aware soul that doesn't even need a body and can reincarnate by itself. If souls normally reincarnate into new lives," I glanced at him to see if this was correct or not. His emotionless expression was entirely unhelpful, so I continued, "then all you would need is the awareness after death and the ability to stay so aware after coming to a new body."

"No, I don't think natural reincarnation is common. Otherwise, Impure World Reincarnation would usually fail or never work without a soul to latch on to."

"Oh," I sighed. Well, that was one theory down the toilet. Or maybe not, I found myself doubting whether he had truly tested Impure World Reincarnation enough to see what the success rate was. Maybe only civilian souls reincarnated naturally for instance; he was unlikely to have tested that or other counter hypothesis to try and disprove his hypothesis. "So... you want to become immortal, and you don't want to attach to anyone else because they'll just cause you grief when they die or get hurt?"

"Correct, Neko. I suggest you remember that attachments are a waste of energy." So he can feel grief. That meant he wasn't a psychopath, just a maniacal narcissist. Didn't make him any safer to be around, but, true psychopaths were incapable of attachments. Of course I, with my total lack of true attachment to anyone, was completely one to talk here.

Now, what looked like grief could just be getting upset that something they were using (parents) got taken away from them, but in this case he would not have cared to deliberately avoid attachment, as he wouldn't have understood what it felt like. Psychopaths had problems with emotional processing in the limbic system of the brain, learning from past mistakes and punishments, problems looking to the future (grandiose visions but lack of other long term plans), and with impulse control, as well as sometimes a Jekyl and Hyde affect caused by the two hemispheres of their brain not communicating correctly. He seemed a little too intelligent to be someone with an orbitofrontal cognition problem, and he seemed to understand abstract emotional concepts without entirely engaging in parroting. He didn't seem to 'Jekyl' along with 'Hyde', or descend into nonsensical gibberish as some psychopaths like Putin did ('Should they get a dog?' 'blah blah blah elephants, wifely submission, you could get an animal coat'), not that I'd seen the way he acted enough to tell that for certain yet, so, not a two sides of the brain communication problem. He was able to hold a job for a long period, but ninja work was exactly the sort of job that would appeal to a psychopath so that really didn't count. He did seem emotionally stunted and to have difficulties comprehending people with different emotions from him, so, perhaps there was some damage to his limbic system, particularly the hippocampus. One out of three damage zones wasn't good, but, emotional stunting could be caused by neglect rather than brain mis-development, or neglect could cause lack of development; if you don't use something in the brain, you can lose it.

"For introverts. For most extroverts, attachments make them more energetic." I corrected. I understood he was not a happy party and large crowds person. I was introverted myself, but despite the drain of energy other people presented I still had the urge to seek them out from time to time. Actually, it was quite unusual of me to talk this much, but then I usually had no incentive to speak either. "Theoretically then, you could attach to someone if they were immortal then?" I enjoyed messing with him far too much.

"I have no desire to. Do not think I plan to share my techniques. " He gave me a hideous glare that made it clear the conversation was over before disappearing in a blur. Immediately in danger of boredom, I frowned, looked around, and went to my small bookshelf of scrolls to read by a lamp light.

Surely he realized that if he gave me details on how to do related jutsu and snippets of how he planned to do the jutsu, I could probably figure out his methods for myself? Ah well. Maybe he just planned to kill me when I looked in danger of being able to become immortal.

I trained, and the weirdest thing was, I actually stopped planning to kill myself. By all rights this situation, being trapped in some kind of weird underground labyrinth and being occasionally forced into weird experiments, should have depressed me worse. In reality I was actually beginning to be cheerful. That's right, my previous life had been so incredibly dull, suicidally depressed and lonely that being kidnapped by a creep who probably wanted to kill me someday was an improvement!

Left alone for awhile, it didn't take me long to grow bored of reading (I read pretty fast), learn the typical schedule that my captors came and went, and decide to escape for some exploration in between sessions. A locked door was not much trouble to me, as I applied chakra to manipulate the lock with success after some trial and error. I carefully kept track of my paths and listened for danger, and eventually after who knows how many days of exploring, going back to my room, meeting my captors, leaving for exploring, going back to my room, exploring, came to a new laboratory area.

Children floated in tanks, like a bad TV show trying to depict a science experiment. Looking around trying to sense if anyone was there, I decided to creep in and try to free them. I realized one of them was actually conscious, so I freed them first, after some difficulties trying to get the tank open.

Water spilled, or at least I thought it was water, all over the floor, getting my shoes soggy. The dark brown haired child stumbled. I immediately realized a flaw in my total lack of a plan. I didn't actually know how to get out of here. By all rights, I'd just fucked everything up by not escaping myself and alerting authorities, but I'd reacted on impulse when I saw that miserable face. Who could resist, honestly?

"Are you alright?" They stared at me with complete shock, like they could not believe this was really happening. "You don't have to speak, you can just nod."

Nothing. Okay, ugh, fine. "Do you understand me?"

A nod, slowly. Okay, good. Then the boy spoke, "Wh-why?"

Glorious, a comrade in questions! "You looked miserable in there. Come on, follow me, I can hide you under my bed maybe." I barely had enough food for myself, but I didn't mind sharing even if it meant starving. "I'm Neko, who are you?"

"I..." his voice was raw, and he struggled to speak. "I'm having trouble remembering. Ten..? Tenzo? That sounds familiar."

"Alright, good to meet you Tenzo!" I said cheerfully, while trying to keep my voice down. I led him to my room and had him hide under the bed. "I will try to find a way out. Hopefully I will be back soon, okay?"

"Okay."

I had a hell of a time, narrowly avoiding several ninja at one point. I dared to follow after several minutes, found an exit that way, and found myself hesitating. Did I really want to leave? Where did I really have to go, anyway? I couldn't leave the kid on his own, though, could I? Ah, but, maybe I could spring him out, then return with no one the wiser.

Quickly heading back, there was no time to lose. "Okay, I think I found a way out, hurry!" Tenzo crawled out from under the bed and weakly made his way over to me. Poor kid wasn't in the best of shape, his muscles a bit atrophied from lack of use. After a moment of thought, I simply picked him up and ran off with him. Or fast walked, being that I tried to avoid panting and getting overheard by someone.

The new plan almost worked, but as we came to the exit someone jumped out from the shadows in front of us.

"You brat. You've been causing a lot of trouble -" I have? Huh? How? "and now this? Stealing experiments from Root? You'll pay for this!" It was that masked ninja woman who had been watching me on several occasions before. Clearly, she worked for Root first and not for Orochimaru. I wonder how he felt being a subordinate? Unless he was actually the leader. That might be possible.

"No! I won't die like the others! I won't go back!" Tenzo shouted, and to my shock roots suddenly sprang out from his hand and attacked the enemy nin. What the hell? Oh, right, he was an experiment with powerful ninja DNA, this must be his ability! That meant it was a success, at least for one child. Not about to politely wait for the enemy to get up, I ran with him out into the bright daylight, and was almost blinded.

Ugh, sun, how I hate you sometimes. Not about to let this stop me, I continued to run, even when I felt a sharp shuriken embed itself in my back. Ow. Did this mean I wasn't going to get to come back? Altruistic instincts, I hate you sometimes. I put the kid down, panting. My endurance was not the best, and I'd taxed myself to the limit without realizing it. That and I'd been carrying a kid who probably weighed as much as I did, but, somehow I thought everyone in this universe having chakra would mean that wouldn't be a problem. Guess I overestimated. "Run, kiddo."

It was quite silly of me to call them kiddo, but in the harsh situation no one noticed. Tenzo glared and shook his head. "No, you can't leave me alone!"

"I'm sorry," a voice interrupted us. "My orders are to take you back. But really, you have been quite a naughty child, haven't you? You didn't think you could honestly get away, did you?" Looking back, it was a silver haired ninja, a youthful male, a teen or even a lanky preteen perhaps. I'd always been really bad at judging ages. He wore glasses, and the light reflecting off it at the moment reminded me of a predator's glowing eyes in the dark.

"Oh, I wasn't planning to go away. But I wanted to see this one -" I jabbed a thumb in Tenzo's direction. "- happy, and no one can be happy floating in a tank."

Tenzo tried to throw up another plant, but only a small weed sprouted. I sighed, knowing we were done for here, especially if Tenzo wasn't going to flee. If he had, I would have made some attempt at distraction.

"It appears the process has not fully completed." He adjusted his glasses, a rather interesting behavioral tic. Here was someone who liked to have something occupy their hands, an intellectual type like myself perhaps. "He will have to go back in the tank."

"What? No, you can't do that!" I shouted, angry.

"I believe I can." Abruptly, he vanished from sight, and I whirled around barely quickly enough to see him take Tenzo. "Come, and perhaps I will not tell Master Orochimaru about this. You would not want to make him angry."

"Ah, but he should be pleased," I attempted to play with his mind, following along a little reluctantly, sulking over Tenzo's fate. Perhaps I could attack him if I could get him off guard? Then I spotted the masked ninja woman waiting back at the entrance, and gave up this plan. I'd forgotten about her for a moment, hoping the plant attack had finished her. She closed the opening behind us.

"Why?" he said with disdain, like I had just stated the most idiotic thing. I kind of had, admittedly.

"Because I have just proven the process works, even slightly. That is better than no results at all. And I would not have learned this if I had not tried kindness towards the boy. You see, sometimes kindness is the intelligent thing to do, and sadism pointless even for the least compassionate of people. If all you care about is results, then you should be willing to use a little kindness to get at it, yes?"

He looked pleased. "Ah, you mean like in manipulation? Perhaps you are not entirely a fool."

Wait, no, not in manipulation... gah! Way to misinterpret what I said. Some people only hear what they want to hear. "No, I mean the genuine thing, actual kindness. It has benefits in and of itself, whereas pointless malice, sadism and spite can cost you, since for one it encourages counter-spite. If you don't believe me, run the calculations on it. For many scenarios, the logic works out." Huh, they didn't have computers did they? Might be difficult to run simulations then. I hope I hadn't just assigned something impossible for him; humiliating someone isn't the way to get them on your good side. Time to make it simple for him then. "Consider a simple game. You can cooperate and both parties get a full reward, spite and get half reward but ensure the other party gets no reward, or have both parties spite and no one gets any reward. The best strategy over multiple rounds in this game is to play forgiving tit for tat, punishing spiters but periodically giving them chances to start cooperating again."

We arrived back at the laboratory, Tenzo kicking and screaming as he was dragged away. "No! Let me goo!" I felt sick and powerless, and slouched. I wouldn't forgive them for this. Please, by some miracle, let my words convince them.

"That is quite interesting. But that is for a simplified game, and hardly all scenarios of that game, correct? If there is only one round, you don't have time to establish tit for tat." Damn. Well, I'd give him that, he was a smart cookie to figure that out so quickly.

"What's your name?" I asked suspiciously.

"Ah, nothing important," the silver haired ninja chuckled. "You are quite interesting to talk to, I must say. It is a shame we have to punish you."

"...what?" I said my second favorite word with less enthusiasm than usual.

"I may have lied by implication when I said I was not going to tell Orochimaru if you co-operated to make it sound like you would not be punished at all. But the mischief you have committed can't go on."

"Why?" I said my first favorite word with no enthusiasm. He ignored me like I hadn't said anything. Admittedly I'd just asked that one to try and stall for time or some argument I could use to twist things in my favor.

He gave a nod to the woman, who stepped forward, hands glowing. "I hear her treatments, deliberately misdone 'healing', can be quite painful. Enjoy." He dipped his head and disappeared with Tenzo.

"Are you a spy?" the woman asked, pinning me down.

"No! Who would I spy for, what would I get out of it?" I was baffled but curious. What enemies did this Root have? Heh, maybe I should contact them and be an actual spy, serve them right. It would be difficult with the weird seal on my tongue, but if it just prevented speaking I'd write down what I knew or draw pictures easy enough, or physically lead them here. Lots of ways to circumvent.

"I hope for your sake you are telling the truth," she said with dark mirth, before pressing down with a chakra scalpel. I screamed like I was dying. Maybe I was.

He hadn't been lying, it hurt like hell. Then she healed me and repeated with even more wounds.

There was another scream, but it wasn't mine. I blinked and shuddered, as she fell down to the floor and whimpered, a great long blade plunged in her gut. Her blood splattered over my already soggy clothes.

"What were you doing to my student?" Orochimaru hissed. For once, and probably the only time, I was glad he was a temperamental bastard. At least until he realized why I was being hurt. I really hoped the lab mess got cleaned up before he noticed anything amiss over there.

"I was wandering out and about by myself. She was punishing me." Little lie by omission.

"Fool." He leaned to stare into the face of her corpse, as the life rapidly went out from her eyes. "Did she think I didn't know you were wandering in the night?"

I felt embarrassed. I thought he hadn't known myself. Did he put some kind of tracking jutsu on me? Or follow me on occasion without my noticing? That was more than a little unnerving, and broke any feelings of freedom I'd had with my little secrets. Unless this was just a psychological tactic to unnerve me and he hadn't actually known, in which case good job, it was working quite well.

She gurgled something, and I prayed for her to be unintelligible before I remembered I don't pray. If I did, I'd probably be really confused what with the different universes not factoring into any major religion I could think of. Seemed a whee bit important maybe.

The sannin checked me over with a diagnostic jutsu. I mimed him out of curiosity, and found this one to be much easier than an actual healing jutsu, despite also demanding yin release chakra rather than yin-yang. A precursor jutsu? I managed to maintain it for a few seconds longer. It tingled pleasantly, which helped deal with the throbbing pain in a very marginal way.

The bastard didn't give me any painkillers, once he was satisfied I wasn't going to die on him he sent me to my 'room' and left.

"Neko, you seem unenthusiastic about what I am teaching you. Do pay attention, few have this honor." He tried to pretend the next day that nothing had happened, or perhaps to him nothing really had happened, and gave me a basic lesson on self defense as my defense sucked. Another death, so what? He killed all the time, I suppose, without remorse. Maybe he hadn't started as a psychopath, but, contrary to my earlier judgment, it seemed he had successfully become one.

"Do you ever miss your parents?" I was suicidally bored, if that was a thing. And at the same time sulking over my situation and his killing people problem. That death had been quite disturbing, though I suspected it bothered me less as someone who had killed them-self and faced death already.

He narrowed his eyes very slightly."What makes you think I have no parents?"

"It had a high probability of being true and was easy enough to deduce. You spoke of grief and the worthlessness of attachments. They are either dead or estranged."

"You are no idea how lucky you are Neko that I tolerate you speaking of such subjects," he said in a tone that brooked no argument and meant he wasn't actually tolerating it that much at all. "I hope you do not expect me to become sentimental." Or, warning, this could get violent fast.

"No. I was just wishing that I missed my parents," I said with amusement, before returning to my lowered head and sulking.

"That does not make sense. You wish for more pain?" he questioned. I loved being able to confuse him. But, I got the feeling sometimes everyone who ever smiled confused him and his own plastered on smiles were just fakes, so that wasn't hard.

"Rather I wish for the happiness, so that there would be something to miss. I didn't have a close relationship. I have no attachments, but it does not make me happy, Orochimaru-sensei." I raised my head slightly to look him in the eye.

"You are weak, Neko," he tsked. Oddly he seemed a bit happy. Was he teasing? No, couldn't be. Or maybe he was pretending friendliness. Some manipulators put on quite a good mask when they wanted to.

"One set of values is not inherently better or worse than another, unless you can come up with some kind of objective standard beyond 'Because'. But I agree that for this scenario, I fit poorly even by my own standards." I did not expect him to agree with me, of course. I have always been more logically minded than the people around me, even occasionally other people who like to pride themselves on logic due to my willingness to admit sometimes the choice to do one action or another came all down to emotion. (I beat wannabe-Spocks, basically) And occasionally I do something monumentally stupid, so, really, it was easy to pull the 'well, you are not that smart so I do not have to listen to you Neko!' defense, which was technically not a proper argument but it didn't stop others from using it anyway.

"You are quite self demeaning, Neko."

Huh? That was not the response I was expecting at all. Was that some sort of compliment?

"If you master the henge, I will take you outside."

"Really?" For, like, something fun? Or a mission? Well, anything was good just to get fresh air. They had put an annoying guard at my door twenty four seven. "Sweet. Oh, is the henge a genjutsu, or do you really take on a different shape?" If it was a different shape, then that was over-powered, seriously. You could do so much with that.

"A different shape."

"So what prevents you from turning into air?"

"The jutsu requires constant concentration and chakra. The interaction with the environment in a vastly different form would prove extremely taxing. Theoretically however it is possible, though the more different the transform is from the subject the more difficult it usually is. Mass is also a problem; you can't change it easily, though you can do things like stick material to yourself for extra mass or stretch or contract your volume to fake different sizes. Skilled enough ninja would still be able to notice you." My respect for him grew. He did seem to know his stuff. For a time I'd worried he might just be a hack doing random and aimless experiments.

"Hmm. Sounds ripe for modification so it doesn't require constant concentration and maintenance. Could make for an interesting experiment," I mused.

"I would be most interested in seeing your research on it, Neko." Perhaps he was just toying with me and it wasn't possible, but I brightened at the prospect.

I didn't even know how long I'd been here for anymore, but I was jubilant, working happily away, while trying to forget about the pain the human experiments were suffering until I was powerful enough to do something about it. Without meaning to, I'd started trying to live again, for their sake alone was enough, at least temporarily while I tried to resolve it. It was kind of funny. I didn't think I could convince Orochimaru to stop the experiments, and really I didn't want him to – I just wanted him to start using volunteers instead and only use humans when he had a high certainty of success in his methods! I thought I'd made a little progress, for he did talk of his animal experimentation from time to time, though I could just be deluding myself.

While practicing, I heard the door open and turned my head in confusion. Nobody came at this time, what was going on?

I attempted to dodge a row of shuriken, reacting to the sight of something hurling itself toward me reflexively. However, it was followed by a second set and that I couldn't avoid, limbs taking the blows. Shit, someone was trying to kill me! "Hey, what's this about?" I simply couldn't resist more questions.

"My deepest apologies but you've proven to be quite a nuisance," an older man spoke, flanked by two ninja. "I've been informed you are a bad influence. You've been making every ninja who listens to you act less obediently," Like how? By questioning more? Because I might be a pretty bad influence if it concerned questions. "But worse, you've been whispering in his ear and making one of our most powerful ninja behave more unpredictably."

Eh? Me? No, I was pretty sure I'd managed very little at all, thank you very much. He could be unpredictable on his own, I'm sure, if we were thinking of the same person.

"I can't believe he actually spoke to the Hokage about doing legal experiments," the man hissed. "If he had succeeded and stopped his work here, do you have any idea what you would have cost me you little rat?"

Oh, that! Yes, I did encourage that, I suppose. The fellow had me worried and wondering if Orochimaru had started petting puppies or something.

Everything went black without warning. I barely felt myself die. Once instant we were talking, the next, I was dead.

Looking on the bright side, I suppose it was for the best? I had been wanting to test death again, and I'd almost started getting fond of life here despite the shitty conditions. Worse, I'd been kind of getting attached to that silly snake, even though he was abusive and liable to kill me himself someday.

The test was a success, anyway. I opened my eyes to bright light in a tiny body.

I had reincarnated again.