A/N: Welcome to Logic Rising, a (hopefully) more realistic take on a self-insert style of story, and my first written story. I've long pondered the logistics of such an occurrence even though this genre has always seemed like simple wish fulfillment, and finally decided to bite the bullet and try my hand at writing one as a thought experiment.
In that vein of thought, what you can expect is a very "simulationist" story. While I will be incorporating reviewer feedback and ideas into the story, this will NOT be some kind of ridiculous story where the protagonist is tearing apart armies by the age of 6. While the protagonist will have an incredible advantage over people his own age (20-some years of knowledge and wisdom will do that), he will very much be human and limited by science.
Likewise, his knowledge of the world will be limited to what I had when I thought up the story (at least, as well as I can remember as I learn new things), and the various chakra arts will be limited by actual scientific principles, although not the actual math involved (that would not exactly be most people's cup of tea).
I'm setting the rating as T for now. I'm not currently intending any mature content, but I suspect that my style of writing may go beyond beginning readers.
Being a baby, the "newborn" reflected, was a horrible experience.
His memory consisted of living the comfortable life of a newly minted engineer, fresh from the university, laying down in bed one night. Followed by the sudden experience of being very cold, very wet, and very, very naked. Admittedly, he was too shocked to experience the situation for long, and by the time the panic subsided, he had been dried and bundled up in warm fabric before quickly passing out.
It took, he estimated, several days for him to come to grips with the situation, but time was... difficult for a newborn. Consciousness was fleeting, and his waking moments were nearly exclusively filled with being fed or changed. He wished there was a clicking clock in the room so he could at least count the seconds he was awake. Sadly, some rough guesswork was his only way of telling time.
Many ideas had been tossed around in his head since his rebirth, but very little was able to be confirmed. He thought at first it was simply a bizarre dream, but time and hunger pains threw that idea out. Hallucinations and other kinds of simulated experiences were also ruled out, he believed. He was skeptical that anything could make such a realistic experience.
He grew tired and still as his hunger subsided and he was placed back in the crib he had woken up in. He gazed the tired sounding woman who had set him down, straining to try to make out her face. Adults, he thought, really misjudge how bad a baby's vision is.
Was it because he was a baby? He knew cats and dogs couldn't see right away, but they didn't rely as much on sight. Was it possible he had been reincarnated in a body destined for blindness?
Instantaneously, his world became darkness.
When he awoke next, it was darker and colder than it had been since his rebirth, but he could also hear muffled sounds. Scraping, pounding, and yelling all could be heard from what must have been outside, but they were overshadowed by the now familiar feelings of hunger and a full diaper.
Unable to do anything but cry for food, he did so. After a few minutes, he began to grow worried. Had something happened? Before, help had always been prompt. Why was nobody coming this time?
Suddenly nervous, he cried louder and louder, hoping that help would come soon. As his tiny lungs started to burn from exertion, he was surprised by the muffled noises suddenly rushing closer. Were they coming from above him?
Through the scraping noises, he started to recognize frantic voices. Nervousness gave way to confusion. Was he underground? Any thoughts that he was reliving his life from the beginning vanished; he would have heard this story if it had happened to him.
Light broke near him as the the voices suddenly were clear. Their words were unintelligible, but that wasn't new. The thought that this wasn't just a baby's brain learning to recognize speech, however, was. Such thoughts didn't last long as he was scooped up by a pair of warm arms and quickly rushed into the light.
Things passed in a blur after that, in what could have been seconds or hours, he was handed off to another, and felt the familiar scent of milk. As the stomach pains started to settle, he quickly succumbed to his exhaustion.
His last thoughts were on the shockingly familiar spiral he saw on transit.
Thankfully for his sanity, things started to improve after that. Time was easier to keep track of; he wasn't sure where he was being kept, but the new room had a window that let in natural light. He guessed that he was awake for somewhere around 3 hours per day based on how long he was awake and how often night fell. The light that streamed in during the day helped him stay awake longer, though he continued to feel perpetually exhausted.
Most of his waking thoughts were occupied by the newest sources of information he had picked up on. His eyes were sharpening and his hearing was clearing up, relieving the feeling of being stuck in a sensory deprivation tank. Neither was truly clear yet, but he was nearly able to make out the faces of the caretakers who would pick him up when he needed feeding or changing, and he could tell what they would say to try to soothe him.
Or at least, he could have if they had spoken English. As it was, the only term he could really identify was "Kiseki-kun," and he only recognized that because it was said frequently and he recognized the honorific as one of the insignificant bits of Japanese he knew. It seemed logical to assume that Kiseki was his new name, though he had no idea what it meant. He reluctantly decided to try to come to terms with his new name, since he was stuck here for the foreseeable future.
Combined with another detail his "enhanced" senses had picked up, he had been able to figure out where he was: Konoha. He had seen the recognizable leaf symbol on some of the clothing his caretakers had worn, though the shape had always seemed more like a bird's head to him.
He would have laughed off the honest idea that he would end up in this situation if he wasn't actually living it. People did NOT just end up sucked into fictional worlds in baby form. Or at least, he didn't THINK they did. People did sometimes just disappear in his old world, could it have happened to others? Were "fictional" stories just these different realities bleeding into each other?
Putting untestable theories aside, Kiseki was fairly certain he was here for a reason. He considered himself a man of science, and he had always enjoyed learning about fantasy settings. There simply was no reasonable explanation for an adult mind being copied or plucked from one reality and placed inside a newborn body in another.
Even if he had been placed in a fresh copy of his body, it would have taken the power of a god or something comparable to perform such a feat. But he knew he hadn't simply been regressed in age; he'd been born with a minor birth defect on his hand in his old life that wasn't present in the new one. At best, he was in some kind of clone, but he wouldn't be able to tell that for years, if ever. He simply did not have a clear idea of what he had looked like as a baby.
He was honestly unsettled at the thought of how he got here. Had he been abducted from his world, or was there another version of him still walking around living his life? Or, even more frightening, what if he was just some kind of super-meta fictional character? He'd previously thought that the philosophical question of reality was irrelevant because reality, at the very least, FELT real, but finding himself in a story had turned that idea on its head to some degree.
As much as Kiseki hoped he would be able to return to his old life, he was frightened of what the answer would actually be, if he ever got one. Even if it was possible to return, would his old life still be there? He was far from an expert on the subject, but time was...weird when looked at critically. IF he could get back to his old body (if it was even still there), would he find that time had progressed as it did here? As much as he tried to put these thoughts behind him to focus on the short-term, he found it difficult.
He would have nightmares for weeks.
A/N: This first chapter feels kind of awkward and short, but it fits thematically with the character's state I guess. Babies are born with bodies that are still very much in development, and I wanted to make sure that shone through. This is kind of my best take on what a baby would ACTUALLY experience based on what I could dig up.
The second section feels rather contrived, but I wanted Kiseki to be an orphan for ease of writing, and the (implied) Kyuubi attack seemed like a good opportunity to make that happen. If his survival feels too contrived, think of it as whatever cosmic entity (technically yours truly) pulling some strings to set up the board.
Regardless, give me your thoughts in the reviews. Likes, dislikes, thoughts for how to proceed; I'm in uncharted waters here. Oh, and expect a bit of a timeskip in the next chapter. I think I've exhausted (pun unintended) most of the material that could reasonably happen to a newborn. Once Kiseki can move around on his own and stay awake for more than 45 minutes at a time or so, he can try to figure out his situation more.