Bruh... I'm dead AF [DXD SI]

[Zone04]

Chapter 1

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In which a man decides he just really doesn't care enough, wants to chill n' vibe, and is honestly - half the time – dead af.

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I'm dead, you see. It was quit a boring end, nothing too spectacular but most certainly not something I would've expected from myself either. I had drunk a lot and, I know what you're thinking, it was not the cause of my demise. No.

It was negligence at watching my drinks. I don't really like alcohol any more, I can't stand the smell or taste of vodka, whiskey or most alcohol these days and even more so after my alcohol filled youth and parties. So understandably the only alcohol I drink is anything that I can put into my coffee or other drinks, and when going out with friends I usually get anything that is mixed and soft on my taste buds. Lest I wretch my guts out and my face scrunches into a multitude of permanent wrinkles. And in doing so – allowing a person who I barely knew to mix my drinks – had gotten spiked.

Normally you'd think 'oh, that's not too bad, at most it'll be LSD or something'. At most something to get rid of your inhibitions'. I saw him spike others' drinks after too but clearly didn't think much of it. This time however, I woke up on a street I recognized as the main road to my home, walking in the middle of the road and completely unaware, as is the case with drugs, of the big, small, bright, dark, and slowly enlarging truck. While staring at it. Next thing I know BAM I'm a fuckin' baby.

Legit, no cap. Literal baby. How'd I know?

Smell, hearing and lack of sight, mainly. No, seriously. My experience was as such:

A sort of sweet smell and taste which I later assumed was amniotic fluid at the time, along with extra crispy hearing of someone spouting some shit in Japanese and a tugging and pulling sensation sent of large amount of 'hol' up' signals. Following that, the distinct hospital smell, inability to see clearly 5 to 10 centimeters ahead of me and being held by extremely blurry and morphing giants (I shit you not I have never had worse vision before and that includes profuse amounts of crying and 'shrooms. Imagine de-focusing your eyes so much that shapes start to merge, while crying, and seeing every colour in the visible light spectrum swirling around everywhere), having sensitive everything to the point where it all borderline stings.

It was annoying and I didn't cry like a normal baby, so of course I had to be slapped. I cried. Funnily enough I could smell my tears, which was a weird sensation when compared with my old body. My sense of smell had always been fairly dulled in place of my hearing and taste I believe.

I didn't really care much about it. I was tired, and lacked the energy and will to really bring up any emotions to do so. Amusingly, this actually led me to be more apprehensive about my own lack of desire or energy to care about my rebirth, than the actual rebirth itself.

The following year had been a blur to be honest. I wasn't awake too long, and when I was I was usually a fairly quite and calm baby. Never loud, never obnoxious, never cried even when hungry or soiled, never really too active outside trying to walk or run or jump or roll or climb.

I didn't like crying, so I would not force myself to do so when hungry.
I didn't really feel like yelling or screaming, so I did not.
I didn't like not having the choice to do things, so I disliked being forced to do anything.
Being force-fed breast milk, which I already found disgusting, and being forced to defecate into diapers caused caused me to create a firm dislike and even disgust to things associated with those things.

My new parents were obviously quite worried. After-all, what child doesn't cry or wail when they're hungry. Is there something wrong with it? Why is it so quite? Why does it move so little? And so to the doctors we went, only for the parents to find out there was nothing wrong with me. Babies like me exist, although extremely rare.

I didn't particularly… care? Feel the connection? To my parents. Apparently when a baby is born one of the first things they associate in their newfound world is their mothers scent to the feeling of safety and comfort. I didn't feel those things. I cared about them much in the same way one would care about their friend, not as parents or family. And that concerned me for a multitude of reasons, actually. One, I would never love them the same way I loved my true parents. Not because I was unable to but because I was unwilling to. I knew that eventually I would forget my parents approximate faces, their behaviours, their responses, their worrying, their names, their details, cars, likes, dislikes. It was natural, really. I already had a terrible memory when it came to remembering peoples faces and clothing in my past life, I only remember what they looked like in general details.

So I made rules for myself. Guidelines. Things to never cross, things to never do, things to never become. A mantra. Something to remember and follow no matter what happens to me mentally. This may have seen like a pointless thing to do, but I was always of the belief that every person should have a code to stick to no matter what. I never had one in my past life, and with my seemingly increased apathy through birth, I thought it'd be suitable.

I will not replace my old family.
I will never experiment on sapient creatures.
I will never deprive a sapient of their choice, unless to save them.
I will not allow anything to dictate my beliefs or goals.
I will not lose my humanity, and if I do; I shall not forget it.
I will not lose myself.​

Boring mantra, and some of these can be taken in different ways. The last two always get me, 'specially so when you realize that other non-human sapient creatures exist and roam about. I saw what seemed to be bird people who I assume are fallen angels, various monsters which I deemed as youkai and even a dragon flying across the skies one time. I don't know how it is I saw them, and others didn't. Perhaps I have supernatural blood within me and the spells or SEP fields they have only work on humans perhaps unaware of the supernatural. Perhaps it's the constant toiling energy within me that I've been playing with since birth preventing their spells from affecting me. Or, perhaps it might be that my soul is too different or somethin'.

A new brain with all the synapses that an adult brain didn't have also meant I didn't have the natural fight-or-flight response when seeing or being next to bugs or arachnids. I didn't have arachnophobia or anything like that in my past life, but whenever I saw a spider I always went for the kill. They were disgusting, as were bugs, and I was afraid of getting bit. That didn't apply to all spiders though, some jumping spiders, tarantulas, black widows and some really menacing spiders always caught my attention and admiration. They looked cool. They looked dangerous. They looked cute. But if I were to ever see one, it would always get the flip-floppin' to the noggin. This time I didn't have those fear fight or flight connections. I could pick up a spider and look at it up close. It was great.

I think I lost what I was going to say. What was it again?

Oh yeah, it's this new baby brain that's caused me to find my energy. I think it's the fact that I was a human who had all of my memories of my old body, directly thrown into a new one. I could feel things that weren't there before, or things that were wrong. At first I freaked out, honestly. I thought the energy in me was something crawling within me. In my blood, in my stomach, in my eyes, in my brain. The panic was a quite one fortunately. It was the type where you freeze up, a little bit of cold sweat on your side, with egregious amounts of overthinking.

It lasted about 20 minutes before I figured out I could move it. Make it flow smoother. So that's what I did.

It was by accident by the way.

I made it flow towards my eyes when I opened them super wide in panic and pushed it upwards resulting in basically night vision, enhanced vision. It took a while to make it flow smoother, of course. It took about a week of experimenting what it could, how I could utilize it and its limits before smoothing it out. But once I did, it was the first thing I did. I couldn't sleep for a while, having the energy constantly crash against you from within and at first I could only do it when I was awake but I got there eventually. It took in total three months of actively controlling it and from there it gradually became a background process. I slept like a fucking baby.

Pun may or may not be intended.

If I had to describe the feel, it was like without actively smoothing it out it felt like a turbulent flow, crashing and twitching into everything compared to smooth, calm, laminar flow. Once I had that sorted out, I couldn't stop myself from experimenting.

Outside of playing with my energy at every possible waking moment, I suppose I loved either laying around doing absolutely fuck all (often thinking but occasionally just staring blankly, really) physical 'training' (I called it training because it gave myself a purpose to actually move and be active, anything else wouldn't get me up or make me care enough to do it), or playing around on Byaku's computer. Which actually cemented that it was natural-born laziness and apathy, and not at all a result of long-term undiagnosed depression.

Something that I will gladly admit was one of the most stupidest and extreme things I've ever tried. And while I knew it was stupid and risky at the time, I couldn't not do it. It was such a once in a lifetime opportunity!

I tried to make a mind palace. Wait! Hear me out first! So in my old world, let us call it Earth Zero or Prime for simplicity sake, a mind palace (a.k.a Memory Palace, a.k.a Method of Loci) was a viable technique in allowing people to remember extreme amounts of information and data, whether that be images, numbers, names through use of association. From what I can remember it was actually used by some people who entered and won memory contests even! I don't know if it was real or just a prank by those people but I figured it certainly wouldn't hurt to try and make one, more so when you consider that a mind palace doesn't require any esoteric form of energy to create or modify. Just the mind.

So why did I say it was one of the most stupidest and extreme things I'd ever tried? Well that's because (at age 5, nearing 6) once I finished my initial mind palaces (yes, multiple. I remember reading how a person can have multiple for different things to remember) at age 1, reconstructing and improving them multiple hundreds of times until age 3 (I lost count at 361), combining the multiple mind palaces I'd been using till age 5; I had decided I would make the ultimate mind palace. Make a mind palace and direct that alien energy that I've gotten so used to, to my brain at all times. Whenever I learnt, read, memorized, or felt, I would make tiny – almost indistinguishable – pulses with it.

My thought process was that I could use my energy along with my brain and mind palace to basically create the fandom version of Occlumency from Harry Potter. Amusing. I know. Trying to recreate a fictional technique originally made to defend your mind through clearing your mind, modified by fans to make it an impenetrable and deadly fortress in your head, further modified by me with an unknown source of energy, and directly using it on my brain. Doesn't sound stupid in the slightest, does it?

I didn't do it just like that though, of course I read a lot of books and scoured the net for studies and all that I could learn about the brain. Sadly, it was 1997 and the internet was still in it's relative infancy. Hey, at least I could be an early user of some sites at least. That and countless business opportunities. I didn't get anywhere advanced enough to learn the true intricacies of the brain however. I didn't live in a super advanced society, and while Earth Prime had certainly been more advanced in all areas seeing how it was 25 years the future. I knew some of the information was probably wrong, reasonably speaking. That's just how science goes in a constantly advancing field. I certainly knew more than I did before, that's for sure.

And that's me. Currently 7, seen as a mad-lad super mad-scientist (totally legit) unnerving emotionally stunted friendless lazy-ass genius (being an adult with a science major in a kids body does that to ya). Son to Byakuya Joichiro – Byakuya read as short night, white night, or night under the midnight sun and Joichiro for cheerful, explicit, honest – and Karoline Nosko – A half Japanese-Ukrainian gal born in Germany. I just call them Karo and Byaku though, they were my first words and I ain't calling them mom and dad.

Karo has hooded, hazel-bordering-gold eyes, with large iris' and black hair with seemingly gravity defying bangs while Byaku has black, spiky & messy hair shifted to his left side with fairly small, deep Brown, almost black eyes. Both natural, by the way. Just in case you wondering. It still confuses me as to how their eyes and hair just seem to defy how I believe genetics and hair was supposed to work, but then again I'm in a word where supernatural creatures vibe, so guess that answers that.

I think I got most of genetics from Byaku though. I have the same 'always high' face and lidded eyes that old me used to have and that he has. Although his eyes iris' are somehow drastically smaller making him look a bit more aggressive. Maybe he is just high. Honestly couldn't say, although I feel like Karo would honest to god beat the shit out of his ass with a ladle.

Saying that, I thought my mom was the type to do that until she caught me getting high and just told me the smell was getting everywhere, so I might just be misjudging her. God, now that I mention it I feel like havin' a smoke.

The only difference between old me and new me seems to be that rather than thin, brown-bordering-blonde, hair I now have pure black, thick, gravity defying hair. My eyes, whilst still green, are far, far, greener and vibrant than I thought possible. They're the type of green you'd see on an obviously photoshopped Google photo captioned 'The Most Beautiful Eyes' with each words first letter capitalized. I've decided I'm gonna grow my hair out. I liked my long hair. Fuck rebirth, man. I just wanna sleep all day, everyday.

God.

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So that's that. It's my first time writing anything outside of English essays in High School. Which was almost 8 years ago now, so please do give any feedback and constructive criticism. Did I make it too boring? Did I make the chapter seem pointless? Should I add something extra to his character? This chapter was 2.5k words, should they be longer? I was thinking 5k-7.5k as an optimum approach from a reader standpoint, but then I realized writing so much is way fucking harder than I thought.

It's a self-insert, but modified to include a more near-nihilistic beliefs and slightly more muted emotions. I originally wanted to make a chapter of the main character going through birth and going through all the pain and mental trauma that sitting in the womb for 9 months can cause, but I eventually decided to keep it with a slightly more reasonable and 'realistic' approach.

Also on a different note,
I haven't got a single thing planned out. My bad.
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