The Sky Sage: Hey everyone! Welcome to my first, and, hopefully, last shameless self insert. It's been in production for over a month, now, and, while I have finished the first draft, I have been reworking it. So what you guys are getting it the finished product. Hopefully, I've avoided the trap of the Mary Sue and you all find this interesting.

Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh!

The Butterfly Effect

Chapter I: Deus Ex Machina

A lot of people would have called it deus ex machina. Some kind of godly intervention that would, in an ironic twist, make a lot of people jealous or envious. There are even some them who would scream at their screen in anger, rage at the complete coincidence of the situation and say that I didn't deserve the position that I was given or that they would have been happy to be in the situation I was.

And while I agree with the first, the second is one I can't even begin to. Not when I woke up in a hospital bed, IVs and breathing tube in my throat, wondering where I was before being surrounded by nurses and a doctor who rushed to check my vitals. Not when the tube was carefully removed, making me cough before the doctor asked me to breathe slowly as they took my temperature. There was nothing happy about finding yourself in a hospital when you're pretty sure that the accident you were in just cost you your life. Nothing envious about the fact that, once they were sure I was stable, the doctor simply sat in a chair, asking questions that didn't clarify where or when I was.

So I wasn't happy or ecstatic. I wasn't even wondering how I'd landed there in the first place. I was confused. Sure I was happy that I was alive, even though everything felt wrong and I had a feeling that things wouldn't get any better from there, but the question of how the hell I survived was a whole lot more important than anything else at that moment, and, with my lack of voice because of the breathing tube, I wasn't about to figure that out just yet. Really, really not about to when my body started feeling heavy without the nurse putting anything into the IVs attached to me, the beeping of my heart slowly fading into the background. The simple fact that I had woken up in such an upstart fashion had exhausted me, and I couldn't hold anymore. It was time to sleep and sleep restfully.

At least, that was what the doctor told me.

My dreams, though, where far from that. The questions, the confusion, and, more importantly, the fact that I had seen the car I had been in crumpling before glass had hit my face and a piece of metal hitting straight center in my chest were enough to drive me awake more than a few times, leading the medical staff to post a nurse in my room until the trauma passed. If you counted the fact that I was being reminded that I died an ultimately violent death a trauma. The presence of the nurse helped, though, so complaints were out the window as I learned to get reacquainted with myself with every start.

I was definitely shorter – I remembered reaching both ends of a hospital bed and now, while my head was reaching the top of the bed, even stretching didn't let me reach the end of it – and my hair was a whole lot longer since I could feel it on my shoulders and see it flow along my sides, reaching my waist. I had all my senses. Even if I couldn't eat because of an irritated throat, I could hear, see, feel and smell. And while I didn't have perfect movement, I could still move. The jerks and quick twitches from my hands confirmed that I wasn't infirm, and, with a bit of reeducation, I would be able to stand, even walk, which, all things considered, should not have even been a possibility since I had died.

But all of that flew out the window when the doctor came back with a smile after it became obvious that I could hold for more than a few hours awake – it took a few weeks, and, most of the time, I couldn't even reeducate my body since the nurse was around and would notice if I so much as shuffled – telling me that my family was in for a visit. As far as I was concerned, I had no family. I had a husband, maybe even a few friends, but no real family to talk about. My father was long dead, my mother and sister had forced my departure and made the need to cut them out more than necessary, so I had no family.

Yet when the door opened, I could no longer deny that I had family.

The women, two of them, were first, wearing typical Asian features and, although they both politely quiet, the fact that either one them went to grab my hand and the one that I supposed to be my mother – of the few words she said, daughter was one of them – gently passed a hand along my face with a kind, relieved smile made it clear that I was one of them. The men were next, and there were two of them also. The first was supposed to be my father, of that I was sure because it finally gave an explanation to the lighter brown hair I had compared to the two women. But it was the second man, the second man who could only be my brother from the age, unless I was wrong about the whole thing, that had me reeling.

I knew that haircut. I'd known it for years. I might not have known that uniform he was wearing, but I knew that mohawk, even if I didn't recall the face of its bearer being so young.

My mouth took off without my consent and I found myself rasping, "Hiroto."

The reaction was immediate. He looked up, at me before looking at his – our father who simply nodded, making the man, the boy get up and slowly, almost hesitantly, make his way to my bed, looking extremely uncomfortable as he took the hand I'd outstretched to him and I got a better look of his face.

Of all the places to land. Of all the things that I had thought possible but, ultimately, set aside because it was too much of a stretch to even try believing in them, how was this one even true? I could – I could understand them. I could understand them and I knew, I knew they couldn't be speaking English because I knew that Hiroto, Honda Hiroto was his Japanese name. I was in Japan. How the hell could I understand them when I spoke only bits of Japanese where I'd been before I died?!

If I needed any more confirmation that this was a deus ex machina after the fact that I still alive after dying in a car crash, this would have clinched it. This would have definitely clinched it as Hiroto, my brother, turned to look at his – our father who again nodded before the former swallowed and said, "Hello, little sister."

Some people would have been happy with this. Some people would have killed to be in my place. I wasn't. I wouldn't.

Of all the places to land, why here?