Let's get one thing straight. I was a god.
A broke, malnourished, and perpetually caffeinated god, sure, but a god nonetheless. My divine realm was a cramped apartment that smelled faintly of desperation and stale pizza. My holy texts were the thousands of words I hammered out daily on my greasy laptop. My congregation? The beautiful, degenerate masses who read, and occasionally even paid for, my fanfiction.
My name was Kapa Sixtynine, and my magnum opus was a little gem called Harry Potter: Let the World Burn. It was a philosophical masterpiece where the Boy-Who-Lived solved most of his problems with creatively applied explosives and a complete lack of morals. It was, and I say this with no ego whatsoever, the peak of modern literature.
On the night of my death, I was in the zone. Fingers flying, empty energy drink cans forming a metallic graveyard around my desk. The scene was perfect: Dumbledore, that manipulative old goat, had just tried to confiscate Harry's last lemon drop. A fatal error.
"The old man's beard, usually a symbol of wisdom and grandfatherly charm, began to smolder," I typed, cackling like a madman. "He hadn't accounted for the fact that Harry had replaced his entire candy supply with cleverly disguised, military-grade incendiary devices. A lesson, Harry mused, in the importance of respecting a man's property."
Ping.
An email. I almost ignored it. Art, after all, waits for no one. But the subject line caught my eye.
Subject: You have a new MONSTER TIER patron!
Reader, I want you to understand something. The Monster Tier on my Patreon was a joke. I'd set the price at an amount that could be mistaken for a small country's GDP. The rewards included things like, "I will travel to a location of your choosing and insult your mortal enemy" and "I will write you into my story as a god-like being before killing you off in a deeply humiliating manner."
No sane person would buy it.
My heart, an organ that had survived a diet consisting exclusively of caffeine and processed cheese, gave a violent lurch. My hand trembled as I clicked the link. The page loaded. It was real. Some absolute legend, some titan of culture, had actually done it.
The validation was a physical force. It hit my system like a lightning bolt made of pure, uncut dopamine. The room started to spin. My vision blurred. I could feel my blood pressure skyrocketing into the stratosphere. A warm, coppery taste filled my mouth.
Ah, I thought with a moment of shocking clarity, my gaze falling upon a fine red mist settling on my keyboard. I'm literally dying from success. That's… actually hilarious.
My heart gave one last, pathetic squelch, and I face-planted into my keyboard. My final, dying contribution to the world was a literary masterpiece: "Dumbledore's beard burst into flahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."
A fitting end for a god.
The afterlife, it turns out, is criminally overrated.
I was floating in the standard-issue Isekai Waiting Room™—an endless black void with zero amenities. Seriously, not even a complimentary beverage. The customer service was appalling.
"Hello?!" I thought, projecting my voice into the nothingness. "Is anyone there? Reincarnation department? I'd like to file a complaint and also cash in my cheat skills. I just died a legend. The least you could do is hook me up with the 'Infinite Harem and God-Slaying Weapon' starter pack."
Silence.
"Fine, be that way!" I huffed. "But you better not be sending me to some generic fantasy world with goblins and a damn status screen. I swear, if I have to grind for levels, I'm going to find out who the manager of this whole operation is and give them a piece of my mind."
It was then I felt a… squeezing. A truly disgusting, undignified sensation of being forced through a tube that was far too small for a being of my stature. There was light, muffled sounds, and the distinct feeling that I was covered in what I sincerely hoped wasn't someone else's bodily fluids. (Spoiler alert: It totally was).
With a herculean effort, my new, pathetically weak eyes fluttered open.
The world was a blurry, oversized mess. A giant face swam into view. A woman, with long, dark hair and eyes that held all the sadness in the world. Even through the blur, I could tell she was a solid 10/10. An S-tier waifu.
My new baby brain, which was unfortunately saddled with my old, very adult soul, formed a single, eloquent thought: Well, hello there, mommy-milkers.
Naturally, I did the only thing a self-respecting degenerate-turned-infant could do to express this complex blend of existential horror and raw, unfiltered horniness: I opened my mouth and screamed like a banshee.
A man's voice rumbled nearby. "He's healthy. What will you name him?"
The beautiful, sad woman looked at me, a tear escaping her eye. "Raikou," she whispered.
Raikou. Not bad. Has a nice, edgy ring to it.
Then another voice spoke. A kid's voice. Quiet, serious, and so familiar it sent a jolt of ice through my soul. A voice I'd heard a thousand times while watching my favorite show.
"Raikou Uchiha," the boy said, testing the name on his tongue.
My screaming stopped. My entire body went rigid. The two words slammed into my consciousness like a Chidori to the chest.
Uchiha.
I strained my useless neck muscles, forcing my head to turn. My vision, still blurry as hell, focused on a small figure standing by the bed. A boy, maybe seven or eight, with short, dark hair and kind, perceptive eyes. On the back of his shirt was the unmistakable symbol of the Uchiha clan: a red and white fan. A Gumbai.
My brain, the same brain that had memorized entire wiki pages and argued for hours on internet forums, put the pieces together with horrifying speed.
The timeline. The sad, beautiful mother. The prodigy older brother.
Oh no.
Oh nononononono.
My new older brother, I realized with a wave of nausea that threatened to make me spit up on myself (which, as a baby, was a very real possibility), was Shisui 'Death-Flag' Uchiha.
I had been reincarnated into the Naruto universe. As a member of the Uchiha clan. A clan that, as anyone with a passing knowledge of the series knows, had a life expectancy shorter than a housefly with a death wish.
I had escaped my boring, mundane life only to be dropped into a world of child soldiers, political conspiracies, and a looming genocide that had my family name written all over it.
I took a deep, shuddering baby breath and did the only logical thing. I screamed louder than I ever had before.