A/N: If you've read any of my other stories, you can likely skip to the end of this chapter. Some of them have different details at the end. I'm working off the multiverse theory for all of them, so some shenanigans are allowed, and I can be a lazy bastard when I think it suits me and the story.

Prologue: Death and Life

He died. It's a quiet thing, to die while sleeping. No tragic accident, no murder, no stupid mistakes or suicide. He simply fell asleep, his body died, and his spirit left. Medically, it would be labeled as heart failure as a result of long term cardiac disease, after his family or coworkers noticed and reported he was missing.

Not to say he was in pain or suffered. It truly was a peaceful, quiet passing. His family and friends were aware of his situation. They would be sad and grieve, and he would miss them, but as he looked down on his peacefully resting corpse, he knew they would ultimately be fine, and therefore, so would he, though that didn't stop him from letting out a heavy sigh as he floated around his room.

Or at least a metaphysical sigh, seeing as he couldn't actually breathe or move air any longer.

With nothing left to do but calmly wait for whatever happens after death, which was already surprising enough as he thought about it; the fact that there was actually something after death, he decided to reflect on who he was as a person.

He grew up in a loving middle class home, never wanting for anything, though that's not to say he was spoiled. He was raised by a single mother, with one little sister, both of whom he loved dearly. He lived his life as he wanted, pursuing happiness and fulfillment over money and fame, and while he never felt that he had found his true calling, he lived well enough.

If he had to guess, he held a positive karmic balance, though he was definitely no Gandhi. He loved animals, animals loved him, he was a huge nerd, and he read voraciously. He treated everyone he met at least neutrally, and was always true to who he was as a person, never compromising his morals or ideals.

He graduated university with an engineering degree, made some decent money, left it all to his little sister, and died.

The summary of his obituary would read:

An incredibly smart asshole who lived, laughed, and loved. He will be missed dearly.

Next to which a picture of his mid-thirties scruffy grin would be printed in black and white. If it was color, you'd have seen his hazel eyes and neatly kept short brown hair.

And then he started crying, which was weird, since his metaphysical tears simply evaporated once they fell off his face, which again, was weird, since he appeared more as a floating white wisp and had no face, or even eyes to cry from. Mentally he chuckled dryly, even in death he deflected pain with humor.

Because ultimately, he didn't want to die. He never got married, he never fell in love, he never would get to see and do so very many different things, and that, no matter how much he thought he had prepared himself for the inevitable eventuality, hurt.

Which was precisely when the process for his afterlife began.

It appeared honestly accepting everything was the kickstarter to his next destination, as once he admitted how he truly felt he was jerked from his room, pulled up through his roof, above his city, through the clouds, all the way until he hung above the shining blue gem of his beautiful planet Earth where he briefly stopped for a moment and was allowed to appreciate the splendor of his world as it turned and spun through space.

Then the pull resumed, and he was tugged further.

He saw the Milky Way, and was allowed to watch it rotate as stars spun themselves into and out of existence. Then the pull began again and he witnessed clusters of galaxies zoom past until he hovered at what he believed was the edge of his universe, and watched the intricate web of infinity dance and pulse.

Time meant nothing to him during the entirety of this process, and he basked in the presence of the universe, of life and death, soaking up as much as he could, as much as he would be allowed. He never wanted it to end, but all things must eventually cease, and so too did this. He was momentarily depressed as the pull returned, though he could tell whoever was behind it understood his feelings, and was gracious enough to slowly pull him from the grasp of his universe.

It was only once he had fully left the grip of his old home, that his perspective once again shifted. He gazed down upon his universe as he knew it, and saw it in its entirety from beyond the wall. A glowing marble of incredible potential, separated from other, similar marbles by the barest of margins. They spread in every direction imaginable, and some unimaginable, beyond his comprehension as he witnessed an unknown number of marbles overlap, some occasionally bouncing out of their shivering, layered mass, while others bounced in.

It was at this point he had to shut out his consciousness, as whatever had been guiding him thus far could or would no longer extend its protection to his mind; and he felt the scale, the impossibility of the scope threaten to crush him. So he closed himself off from his surroundings, retreating into the depths of his soul to protect himself, and there he stayed. He clung to his internal ego; to his memories, and experiences, the foundation and structure of what made him who he was, where he floated, embraced in warmth, embraced in the darkness, for an unknown amount of time.

And then the darkness left.

He awoke to light. Searing, bright light, and cold air, and he despised it, crying out his displeasure and rejection before he felt himself being bundled once more in warmth, though the light refused to fade. Soothing tones were whispered gently to him in a foreign tongue as he was gently held and rocked.

He calmed, sniffling as he finally opened himself up to his new experiences. He was alive again, recently reborn if he understood his situation correctly. All he knew for an eternity had been the darkness, and suddenly he was being flooded with light, and sound, and sensation that could only be indicative of life.

His new mother continually whispered sweet tones to him, and despite his adult mentality felt himself relaxing. He could feel the love she held for him, cradling him in her arms, and that was a more than suitable replacement for the warmth of the darkness.

Finally calmed and relaxed, he took stock of him. His time during his universal-slash-dimensional travels, and subsequent timeless existence in the dark, had caused the structure of who he was to deteriorate. As an analogy, if his identity was represented by a building within his soul, then the materials of the structure had begun to rot, while Mother Nature had taken its toll and began to reclaim the abandoned structure.

In this instance, he had pictured the structure as a three story pagoda. To continue the analogy, the wood had decayed and the structure was rickety after so much time had passed, though the foundation of the building, the foundation of him was still sturdy and unblemished.

What this ultimately meant, was that he had lost, or had many of his memories fade. It was sad, to take stock and think back on some things, only to find faces and names missing, portions of his old life simply having disappeared into the ether.

He no longer remembered his own name, or any of his family or friends, though he could still recall the bulk of his experiences with and without them. As depressing as it was to lose the intimate identifying connections, he was unsurprised. He had always had a terrible time remembering names, and while many of the now faceless memories were important people in his life, it made a twisted kind of sense that those details would be the main things he would forget. The rest of the missing pieces were random chunks throughout his life, similar to how memories of childhood and youth faded over the years.

As he lay in his mother's arms, nursing on one of her nipples – a necessary evil, the memories of which he planned to immediately destroy once he graduated to soft foods – he contemplated on his situation. Reincarnation was a tricky subject, and no matter how much he thought or speculated, in the end he would have to wait, learn, and grow for a while before he could come up with any sort of concrete plan or goal for his new life.

It was with a full belly, wrapped in a warm blanket burrito, and cradled in loving arms, that he drifted into unconsciousness on his first day in his new life.

A/N:

Yo, this is one of the fanfictions I've been piddling with. I'll be tossing all of them up. They're across several different fandoms, so take your pick and hit me with some constructive feedback. It's likely most of my work can be considered Self Insert fictions in some capacity. If you hate SI fics, I recommend you read something else. If you're just going to be bitching about the story direction or what you want to see, gonna be honest here and straight up tell you I don't particularly care. These are my stories playing with other people's universes, so your wishes and desires for how I play in my playground mean nothing to me.

Unless you own the original content. Then I might care.

Warnings for this story

This is rated M for a reason.

Likely Harem

Profanity, Sexual Content, Violence