Summary: The Theory of Everything states that all the physical aspects of a universe are linked together—connected in a sense. To an extent, that theory supports the ideology that everything affects everything. But what happens when you were never meant to become part of that 'everything' in the first place?

Edit: 8-3-16

I have revised this chapter and edited its silly grammatical errors! Hurray.

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

When I died, I expected to stay dead. Of course, as I'm here retelling this story now, I clearly did not.

It's just that the whole(and I use this term as loosely as possible) reincarnation business was a bit too much for me to swallow. The idea that a person's soul could transfer into another sentient being was(and still is) preposterous to me.

Even now I cannot fully accept what happened. There's always that tiny feeling—that 'what if' aspect as in 'What if I'm not dead?' or 'What if I'm simply lost in a dream?' I had a family before, though for the life of me I can't remember who they were. I saw glimpses—little blurs and distant voices that barely anchored me to who I was. I could recall the moments of significance—all the important bits, but the images to fit the descriptions were simply no longer there.

Even my name, my first ever possession in my past life, was long forgotten.

I was given the name Mai in this life, though often I wonder if I truly am Mai, or if I'm simply a soul that latched on and stole 'Mai's' body. The name Mai was too delicate, too kind for a kunoichi, and perhaps being a kunoichi was never meant to be the real Mai's future. Perhaps if I had never intervened, she would have followed in the path of her mother and become a working girl in Konoha's red light district. It wasn't an uncommon occurrence for a whore's daughter to become a working girl too. Truth be told, though, I like to think that I am Mai, just a Mai with memories decades beyond her years. Ignorance (to whether or not I had stolen some poor girl's life) truly was bliss.

I'll call this a reincarnation, seeing as I can't grasp a term that can completely fit my situation. After all, usually reincarnations held no memories of a past life that was connected to their new one.

I'll spare you the details of my past life, partly because of their irrelevance and partly because I can no longer retell them. My death was the one and only thing I can still bring to mind, and that I still will be able to do decades later. It had been unforgettable, seeing as I had a firework impale me, followed by a rain of blood, guts, and innocuous limbs. Needless to say many of the attendees had to attend therapy sessions for years after the event.

While my death was odd, to say the least, what was odder was the event that followed my untimely demise. I lingered around for a bit, attending my own funeral and scoffing at the strangers who wished they had known me better.

And then I disappeared. Not mentally, of course, because if I had ceased existing all together I wouldn't be able to retell my time of not existing. It was my physical body that faded away, leaving me with nothing but a floating mind. Maybe I was in purgatory, or maybe I was never dead at all. The ideas that come to your head when you're left with no one for company but yourself are strange, to put it lightly.

Floating through nothingness affected me—affected my soul even, though I don't like to admit it. I lost things in there, I lost parts of myself in there. You see, the empty space surrounding me was only a physical feeling. What I felt in my mind was far worse. I felt death, in a way. I felt the loss of life from everything around me, a constant draining of the will to live, which was odd when there was nothing around me I could see with my vision. I mourned over my own death for the first few days spent in what I came to call Oblivion, but one can only pity themselves for so long before becoming bored.

So I thought about other things. I thought about my life and what I loved and hated. I thought about my siblings and their contrasting personalities. I thought about my life at college and grasped at the images that I could feel slipping away. I spent an eternity in Oblivion(or perhaps it was only a few hours?)

And then I woke up.

I'll spare you the details of my birth, seeing as all I would be describing is the sensation of being pushed out of a vagina. It was an odd feeling—being reborn again—but I was indescribably relieved over it. Of course if I had known what the future had in store for me, I wouldn't have rejoiced so soon. In fact, I would have gladly driven myself to insanity in the god forsaken place that was Oblivion.

Of course either way, my feelings of happiness were quickly squashed when the situation fully sunk in. Being a baby with the mind of an adult was... Indescribable. It was the uncomfortable temperatures that were too hot or too cold and the constant coddling that was too much or too little. It was the extreme nearsightedness that all newborns have that impaired me for the first six months of my rebirth. It was the extreme chill of winter that hit me once(which later I would figure out to be my mother dropping me off at an orphanage in the midst of winter). It was all those things and more added together that reduced me to seem nothing more like an infant anyways, aged mind be damned.

Basically, I cried, shit myself, and vomited a lot. A humbling experience for an adult who had lived on their own for several years already. I was a child from hell to all my caretakers in the orphanage, beginning to crawl before I could fully see and almost getting myself killed as a result.

But I was fine, showing no signs of being more intelligent that a baby should have been. Granted that was most likely because I couldn't speak yet either. I knew the language the adults were speaking around me was most likely Japanese, as some words I vaguely recalled from my. days of militant anime watching. I paid no mind to it. It's not like it would have been likely for me to be reincarnated into America anyways, especially since they named me Mai.

And then the day of the reveal came during my seventh month of rebirth. We often had visitors at the orphanage—potential adopters. It was a normal occurrence for them to make an appearance. What wasn't normal was the fact that that day's visitor took an interest in me. Usually they went for the older kids—the kids that seemed like they needed the most care to readjust to the 'real' world. Adopters, shinobi especially, just didn't want a sniffling, crying baby on their hands.

The man(I assumed it was man when I saw the short hair) who had singled me out leaned in closer, closer, and closer, until every detail in his face was crystal clear.

It's funny how even now I remember the exact thought that went through my head that fateful day.

'Oh shit.'

Because not only had my 'reincarnation' been botched up. By the looks of the hitai-ate wrapped around the man's forehead, I had also been 'reincarnated' into the world of Naruto.

Yes, 'Oh shit,' indeed.

Authors Note: Wahh I'm so excited to be posting a story on here! Hopefully I don't do too badly with my SI. Much love guys! Please review and critique to help with my writing!