A/N:Welcome, one and all, to the new self-insert of Dreaming of Sunshine by Silver Queen. Yes, this is a fanfic of a fanfic. A self-insert of a self-insert. I fell in love with DoS and ended up binging the whole story. It's easily become one of my favorite fanfictions, so I thought that I'd do it some justice by giving it its own fanfiction. So, here we all! All credit to the plot of DoS goes, of course, to Silver Queen, as well as ownership of Shikako and just about any other original characters that are presented in this work.

Well, without further ado, I suppose all that's left is to hop right in!

Chapter 1: Staring into the Rabbit Hole

I was never really the philosophical type, nor did I ever particularly enjoy hearing or seeing philosophical debates and the like. So what if we could all just be brains floating in a vat and everything we knew is fake, just some kind of crazy hallucination? I didn't care. How exactly did the universe begin? Didn't matter to me. What exactly happens to us all when we'd eventually kick the bucket? Meh, I'd worry about that when my time came; and anyway, as long as I got to go out in a reasonably cool fashion, I'd be fine.

Now, you tell me, dear reader: What fucking god decides that tripping over a soda can that some environment-hating fucker left on the sidewalk, and falling into a pocket knife that was stuck upright between two squares of cement was a "reasonably cool fashion" of death?

I had just enough time to think, This street has really dangerous litter, before the knife pierced my chest, a hot pain flared throughout me, and I was whisked away into dark nothingness.

Or, well, I'd thought there was nothing at least. I wasn't sure exactly how long passed between my death and I came to the realization that I was - somehow - wet, but that realization definitely happened. This troubled me. Weren't you not supposed to feel anything after you died? I mean, your sense of feeling ran on nerves, right? And forgive me for saying so, but wouldn't souls, I dunno, not have nerves? Was it possible to feel anything without a physical body with which to feel it? For that matter, since emotions were releases of chemicals and memories were electrical impulses fired off by the brain, shouldn't I not have any emotions or memories?

And yet, I was definitely afraid and more than a little confused, plus I retained all of my memories from when I'd been alive.

...

Well, I supposed death was as good an excuse for getting philosophical as any.

I existed like that for a long time - conscious yet blind, warm and wet. I couldn't see or hear much, but wherever I was seemed to be really small and didn't offer much room. It had walls that were soft and squishy, and if I had to guess, I was floating in some sort of liquid. I saw nothing and heard pretty much nothing except for things that were very muffled. What I could hear, I couldn't understand, either.

I was bored out of my mind, which was rather worrying because as far as I knew, my mind was all I really was at this point. Therefore I busied myself by thinking about old books I'd read, imagining plot points for the stories I loved to write, mentally humming anime OPs and EDs (especially JoJo's, because JoJo), and trying not to consider the fact that I may have been confined to some wet, warm, and… strangely comforting prison for all of eternity.

Well, regarding the wet aspect, the whole brain-in-a-vat theory currently held a lot more plausibility than godly judgement, but still.

At some point - time was a bit difficult to tell in this strange state of being - I discovered that someone or something else was here with me. This was because a tiny little foot kicked me in the side.

Ouch.

I kicked back, my own foot connecting with something solid and fleshy.

Then I realized that a) I shouldn't be able to get kicked or feel pain, and b) as nothing but either a mind, soul, or metaphysical vat brain, I shouldn't have either a side to get kicked or a leg to kick back with.

Also, the very quiet, muffled buzz I'd been hearing for a while now was louder and somewhat more intelligible.

Rather floored, I didn't even register the fact that my cellmate had kicked me a second time. Rude little bugger, they were. Yoda, I wished I was.

And so my existence(?) carried on. Gradually, ever so gradually, my hearing got better and better. The weird, squishy prison I shared with whoever or whatever else had decided I made for a good kicking target got increasingly smaller and tighter. Nothing else as world-changing as realizing I had a cellmate occurred, and I felt so incredibly homesick. I missed my mom, I missed my dad, I missed my sister who was off at college. I missed my friends and family and home and I was never going to see any of them again.

That was when the universe threw me for yet another loop. The walls of my prison suddenly started heaving and contracting repeatedly, and someone was screaming - someone was in incredible pain. A woman. Her voice was somewhat muffled, but it sounded close, it sounded real.

The cell pushed me. It forced me into a tight tunnel, which slowly pushed me further in. I was alive. I knew it, I knew it. I had a body and I was alive, because how else could I feel every inch of myself against those tight walls? And yet it didn't feel like my body, no, it was far too small for that. All of this ran through my head as I was forced deeper and deeper into the tunnel, and the unknown woman kept screaming and crying.

Reborn, I thought a sense of awe. I've been reincarnated and reborn.

Then the agonized woman, likely mother, gave one final scream and I left the tunnel completely. Hands grabbed me, picked me up and held me close. I felt someone's warm breath on my forehead.

"Shikamaru," an immensely proud and happy man said. My new father, then. Or maybe grandfather? Hm, he didn't sound that old though. He said some words I didn't recognize, but which sounded suspiciously Japanese, and then repeated, "Shikamaru. Oi, Shikamaru."

Then mom started screaming again. Seconds later, it was over.

"Shikako, Shikako, Shikako," my mother babbled happily, relieved, and a baby shrieked and choked and cried. I blinked at that, and sucked in a worried breath, my first in ages -

And I choked, too.

What the hell was wrong with this air? It felt thick and weird… it wasn't just air. Something else was in it too. Hacking, I desperately tried to draw in another breath, but choked on the extra something in the air again. It felt rather like moving from the countryside into a really busy part of a city for the first time, where there's so much pollution tainting the air, but so much worse.

Mom and dad fretted over us, desperately asking, "Shikamaru, Shikako, daijoubu? Daijoubu?"

I coughed and found that finally, my breathing had steadied. The air wasn't actually painful going down my windpipe; I'd been simply unprepared for it. My twin sister stopped screaming, too, so she must've gotten used to the strange air as well.

~o~

My early days as a toddler did not go so well.

My eyesight got better after a short time, allowing me to finally see blurs of my parents. Mom was tall, fair, and beautiful, with raven hair flowing down her back. Dad was handsome and undeniably strong. His hair was as black as Mom's, too. They were kind and gentle parents, and constantly worried over my sister and I. This was understandable - both my sister, Shikako, and I had a tendency to wake up choking in the middle of the night thanks to the strange air. I also had an unbearable itch building in my body, underneath my skin. It was frustrating being unable to do anything about, and my baby instincts took over to make me cry whenever it got too bad. Shikako cried a lot, too.

After a couple weeks of this, our extremely worried parents took us to the hospital and got us checked up. I thought that we'd get hooked up to all sorts of medical scanners and the like, but no. A pretty woman in a lab coat just leaned over me and placed her hands on my fat little stomach, closed her eyes, and… did something. After a few minutes, that omnipresent itch turned full-force, causing me to cry again. Then the doctor looked up at my parents grimly and spoke to them in Japanese. They looked crestfallen, but not as crestfallen as they did after Shikako went through the same… diagnosis.

I found out later that we'd been classified as having abnormally high sensitivity to chakra; something that would mean by all rights, we'd never medically be able to be ninja. It caused us physical pain, they said. We reacted badly to the chakra coils growing in our systems, and to the chakra in the air. What they didn't realize was that our bodies weren't the problem. We'd both simply been unused to the strange additions to the world around us and ourselves and only needed to readjust. Actually, we were already waking up choking on nothing less and less, and getting used to the feeling of having chakra coils.

Two weeks in this new life turned to three, and that was when it happened.

The air ran rancid with evil, heavy and oppressive. Shikako and I had been sleeping soundly for once, and then we felt the sheer killing intent of a monster. I had no idea what was going on. All I knew was that I'd never felt such a palpable fear before. It was crushing, it was demonic; it jerked us awake from our peaceful dreams and made us cling to each other for the slightest shred of reassurance and safety.

Just when I thought I'd go crazy if someone didn't stop it, the hellish aura faded away.

The night was quiet and calm again.

I suddenly realized that I, a nineteen year old man, had been clinging to a baby for safety for the past God-knew-how-many minutes. I immediately released my twin sister and rolled into my pillow, burying my hot face in it.

Good thing she's a baby, I thought. At least she won't remember that.

Yeah, right.

Things were boring again after the Kyuubi attack. I refused to think about the absolute terror of that night and shoved all memory of that to the darkest corners of my mind. As time went on, I finally fully developed my sight again. That was a huge relief. I idly played with my sister a lot, and let mom and dad drag me to friends' houses. I learned my last name was Nara, and slowly started learning Japanese. I think Shikako picked up on it easier than me, though I wasn't far behind.

That name bothered me for a good bit - Shikako Nara. Shikako Nara, Shikako Nara… where had I heard it before? My own name, Shikamaru, also sounded oddly familiar paired with the Nara, but I just couldn't place it.

I began to notice things. Hints. Clues.

First off, Dad had a dark green Jounin vest and a Leaf Ninja headband that he wore constantly. Now, I'd never really seen a whole lot of Naruto, preferring shows like One Piece and My Hero Academia, but I'd seen enough of it to easily recognize that attire. This had made me frown once I saw Dad with them. What was he, a cosplayer? He did say "ninja" and "chakra" a lot when he was home from work, but cosplayers don't normally cosplay to work, and definitely not every day.

Also, a lot of our family friends seemed to wear the same or similar things.

Second, our city was… strange. I couldn't exactly place it in a certain time period. A lot of the houses were unimpressive, and there were no modern-looking buildings or apartments anywhere. If I had to guess, I'd have put the architecture at… maybe a mixture of late 1800s and modern suburbia? Besides that, there were no paved roads anywhere, only dirt ones, and yet we had things like refrigerators, coffee makers, microwaves, electric stoves, and modern toilets.

Nothing was ever certain, however, until around a year after my second birth, when Dad took Shikako and I out to the park to play. I looked up and saw a massive, rocky cliff looming over the village, the full thing. I'd never seen the whole cliff before, but suddenly, now I did. And carved into the left side of the cliff like fantasy!Rushmore were the unmistakable heads of the four dead Hokage.

I felt a little dizzy.

Everything suddenly clicked together.

I hadn't just been reborn. I'd been reborn as Shikamaru Nara from the classic anime and manga that got an entire generation running with their hands behind their backs… or rather, I'd been reborn into the world of a fanfiction that had been written about said anime and manga: Dreaming of Sunshine.

My big, blocky toddler head swiveled with dinner plate-sized eyes towards my twin, whose jaw was firmly touching the grass. I thought I heard her murmur, "Oh, shit."

Oh shit, indeed, my dear twin. Oh shit, indeed.

My hand shook, and I clenched it into a pudgy fist.

Shikako was going to get hurt in the future, several times. Badly, too.

I was going to lose my arm.

I swallowed, and glared up at the sky. Just try it, Fate. I fucking dare you. Right then and there, I vowed that I would protect Shikako from what was in store for her. To grow strong enough to not get my arm petrified. No, more than that, I vowed to protect everybody. Fuck Orochimaru, fuck the Akatsuki, fuck Madara, and definitely fuck Hidan. I'd rip them all to shreds if they so much as thought about waging war against this world and against Konoha.

Now then… How does one tell your sister who thinks you're the same character she knows and loves that you were also reincarnated from Earth? Surely with two genius Naras working towards the same goal, we could accomplish something. And at least Shikako would know that she wasn't in this alone, wasn't fighting against fate by herself. I just had to find a way to let her know without a doubt, I'm in the same situation as her… without getting suspicious about how I knew she was reincarnated, too. I needed something that all Naruto fans would instantly recognize as being from Naruto, but that would also be something I should have no right knowing. It should probably be natural, too, so that she wouldn't get suspicious of how I knew she was reincarnated.

...Hm.

Say, aren't we fighting dreamers?