Authors Note:

Hey guys, this is my first attempt at a fanfic, so please let me know how you think I've got on by leaving comments, whether you hate or love it! This prologue isn't really much of anything so I urge you to at least read the first chapter to get a feel for if you like the story or not.


Dying sucked just as much as I thought it would.

Getting run over by a car probably doesn't rank too badly on the grand scale of all the ways you could die, but somehow staying conscious and being in excruciating pain before finally dying 20 minutes later in front of some poor paramedic definitely wasn't how I envisaged dying. Definitely not at the tender age of 24 either.

I'm not ashamed to admit that in my final moments I was pretty scared, I hadn't been mentally prepared at all for this and I was terrified of what was about to happen. Was there an afterlife? If there was, had I been a good person? Surely I hadn't done anything that warranted me going to Hell? Or was I just going into a void of nothingness?

Of all the possibilities I ran through in those final moments, the one that never even crossed my mind was the one that happened.


I woke slowly, my body feeling incredibly lethargic as I tried to blink away the last vestiges of sleep.

Wait, I'm waking up? Am I in a hospital? Or did I really make it to the afterlife?

It certainly didn't feel like the afterlife. My body felt much weaker and, somehow, smaller? Like I had been shrunk in the wash.

Groaning, I rolled over and pushed myself out of bed. My vision was still blurry and I reached out my arm to fiddle with the light-switch. Disconcertingly, as my arm extended out to where the lamp should have been my fingers only grasped empty air.

Weird, maybe I'm in a hospital room after all?

The room was too dimly lit for me to be able to make out much but it didn't really feel like a hospital. There weren't any machines or medical equipment, and I couldn't see any nurses or doctors walking around.

I tried to take a step forward, with every intention of finding out just what the hell was going on here, but my body felt strangely slow and uncoordinated and I ended up stumbling and falling to my knees. I reflexively placed my hand on the floor in front to brace myself, before freezing in shock.

The arm in front of me was pale white, and thin, too thin to be mine.

My heart was pounding, how could I not have noticed? Trying to fight the overwhelming feeling of panic I scrambled around on the floor, my hilariously uncoordinated body fighting against me as I dragged myself around the room, before finally finding a small bathroom and pulling myself up opposite the mirror with shaking arms.

Back at me, stared the face of a young Uzumaki Naruto.