Edit 21/06/17 Adding a little preface since this is still going somehow:

Yes this is an OC Self Insert and a bunch of you just left...for those remaining this is also a reincarnation fic and if you are not familiar with that already you should go and read at least the first several chapters of Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine, not hard to find search it or just sort the Naruto library by follows it's like number four from the top go on now I'll wait...

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...okay welcome back! Good stuff right? I hope I can put my own spin on the concept like so many others have with a modest degree of success, cheers for stopping by. Wagons Roll or something like that!

After this, things can only get better - Betelgeusian Death Song

Dying sucks.

It sucks in varying degrees for different people and for me...it really sucked.

When some people die they do it peacefully with smiles on their faces seeing an end to their pain, others are gone like the light of their lives have been flicked off by a switch and some teeter on the brink for a time to watch and wonder if they'll come back from the edge of the precipice or slip away with a hellish inevitability.

In case you can't tell yet I fell into the last category.

I don't remember how it happened but I found myself drifting (floating? suspended?) within a void lit only by the guttering flame of my life-force. Vague sounds and a distant pain filtered down from the light and I grasped at both with equal desperation, these sensations were my only path back to the world of light and life.

After an unknown stretch of time that seemed an aeon I noticed that the feelings that coloured the otherwise soundless, sightless emptiness were fading away, I was fading. I'd been on the edge for a long time but now I was sliding off it.

The long if not eternal sleep of death called to me, my reply was a scream terror and defiance. The sound went nowhere, no medium existed to carry it through the emptiness. I yelled and cried out and blasphemed against whatever god or demon thought I could be simply dumped out of the universe and ignored.

Hours passed as I raged against the nothingness until I grew desperate enough for a response to fall silent and strain for some sign that I was achieving something with my struggle. Even with my senses heightened by the lack of stimuli it took some time for me to notice that the only thing that had changed was the fact that conditions were no longer changing, while sound and pain had left me sometime back the light was no longer fading. I pondered this reprieve debating whether I should risk calling out to the dark again, my thoughts spiralled out of control until a dull pulsing reverberated all around me which translated into a regular rhythm of sound.

Content to listen to the varying rate of the strangely comforting beating I remained silent. The odd fluctuations gave me back a sense of time, it slowed and returned to 'normal' at fairly regular intervals allowing me to mark them in cycles. Dozens of my newly conceived cycles passed as the beats became clearer bringing with them muffled voices speaking in a language unknown to me.

While I had regained a sense of sound and time the feeling of touch remained absent, I still floated in darkness. I'm not the kind of person who desperately craves the company of another but I needed to touch something to make certain I wasn't dead.

Outside the odd speech continued, the closest and the one I heard most often seemed to be a female voice. It had spoken calmly or with a happy excitement until that day. The day I was reborn.

My world shook suddenly and a shock reverberated through the space, the Voice cried out and shouted with an infectious panic.

Fleshy walls shoved me from all sides pushing me away from the void I had been trapped in for so long. I was forced in vaguely the same direction but I didn't seem to be reaching the end of whatever this was and the Voice was joined by others that spoke calmly yet urgently.

The only thing about what was going on was that I was as about to start whooping with joy, it seemed I was going somewhere at last and more importantly; I had touched something! The jostling and discomfort was to me the proof that I'd been yearning for, proof that I was truly alive.

My rising hope seemed abruptly dashed when the shifting walls stilled leaving me stuck in a cramped space. I struggled and squirmed as I tried to move further outward until the surface above my head was split open by a giant hand wreathed in a green glow reached for me.

I was so desperate for any kind of human contact that I lunged upward as best I could and grabbed on to the glowing hand with both of mine. My hands were different, wrong, they were tiny and my fingers were little more than useless stubs. The glow surrounding the giant hand dissipated revealing a surgical glove covering it, the gloved hand pulled gently out of my grasp and widened the gap in the ceiling of my enclosed world.

I'd run out of explanations that made any sense based on my knowledge from before a long time ago, I had been dying, probably had died and grown again into a brand new body before becoming the only person to remember witnessing a c-section from the inside. I mean it was terrifying but overriding that was the sheer exhilaration at having come back from death, for all I knew God had reached out to draw me into his bosom and I'd told him to piss off.

Gloved Hand had managed to extricate me from inside my new mother while I was connecting the dots, an experience I wouldn't mind forgetting for a second time, Gloved Hand poked and prodded me until I remembered that I was supposed to make a noise to let them know I was alive.

Taking a deep breath I yelped ungracefully at the sharp pain as my new lungs inflated. My best attempt at swearing turned into a string of wails and gurgles that apparently satisfied the two adults since Gloves well...the doctor I suppose swaddled me up and placed me in New Mother's arms. Getting some names soon would be nice.

Finally finished with all the palaver I felt calmer listening to the familiar voice and managed to get a look around; I seemed to be in a normal hospital room apart from having less 'machine's that go ping' than I expected, or surgical tools, for that matter how did that doctor or surgeon whatever perform the c-section? He'd used his hands with that weird glow the whole way through.

New Mother cooed and bounced me a little in her arms apparently dissatisfied with me for not paying attention to her. She kept speaking in the same confusing language, she had been saying one word over and over; "Toshio."

What is that? Is..is that my name?

Somehow I hadn't considered that I'd be given a new name, silly to think that I would get to keep the one I'd had before but it just hadn't crossed my mind that the only things left of my former identity were going to be my memories and a strange obsession with the number 42.

Overwhelmed for a moment I huddled close to Mother, the only constant I had. Looking up I studied the face of the woman who had carried me out of the dark: she had black hair and a sharply defined face that looked all the more gaunt for it's fatigue but through it she held me securely and wore a beatific smile.

Who are you? What is this place? Do you know what happened to me?

Unable to form words in any language I simply made random noises until another man burst into the room and spoke quickly to Mother who answered back in a calm and familial tone.

And who might you be? Am I meant to call you father now? Wait-what the hell is that thing on your head?!

He'd been leaning over me and moving closer when I noticed the impossibly familiar symbol on his forehead. Following my gaze Not Father grinned and tilted his head so I could run my tiny hands over the leaf crest etched into a metal plate.

Bollocks to that, he's got to be some kind of cosplayer or something.

The symbol bounced around in my mind for a moment before connecting with the doctor's glowing hand from earlier and his not needing any tools. The only explanation for that symbol and the glowy-ness turning up seemed impossible.

Not impossible, just very improbable.

I felt a growing desire to bang my head against the wall.

The kid wearing the same symbol on an identical headband that seemed to teleport in from nowhere effectively shot down any objections to the truth I had left.

I had died and somehow managed to be reborn into another world with my memories intact.

That world, was the world of Naruto.

Author Notes: Bugger me I actually did a thing! Is anyone still reading? Well for starters yes this more than a bit inspired by the works of Our Saviour Silver Queen who hath absolved us of the sins of the self insert. You see a lot of these around but I haven't seen any starring blokes well except for Supernatural Crossover Girl's Dysphoria which is it's own beast. This is getting overlong so review and/or fav or follow as you please, I'm ready to cry in the shower anytime. Ok signing off for real.