Genius Hyuga Twins

Prologue: Death

A screech of tires. Pounding rainfall. Shattering Glass. Pain. Darkness.

Those were the last things I remember before I found myself somewhere... that was definitely not Earth. I looked around, and I could only see darkness, but it was moving, pulsing, alive almost. The presence of the place was heavy, like the gravity was increased slightly and the air was thick. Everywhere I looked, I just found more of the same. I began to walk around, and felt myself moving in a certain direction until I reached a larger void, I could almost call it a room.

"Hello?" I called out tentatively, trying to see if there was anything here in this strange dark place.

"Welcome." I heard a voice say, the sound emanating all around me but at the same time, within my own mind. I spun in a circle, trying to find a source. It didn't seem to come from any one direction.

"Who's there?" I ask a little louder, still searching. On one of my spins around, an entity took shape before me, a subtle light glowing around it just enough so I could see it. It was large, cloaked in more moving darkness, and floating. This being, whatever it is, was not human.

"Death." I hear the voice say. I stare at the floating being, confused. The voice is still coming from everywhere, and almost feels like it's in my mind, yet at the same time all around me, instead of coming from the being.

"I died?" I ask softly, trying to remember.

"Yes." The voice says, "You died. However, you cannot yet pass on. You are... incomplete."

"So I'm stuck here?" I ask, looking around again. "Or am I going back?" I ask blandly. I start to think about the life I just had, the only thing that even stood out was that I hoped that my pets would be taken care of.

"Neither." They say in contemplation. "I am... Curious. Souls are not often so... fractured, weak, with vital parts not yet formed in them."

"I don't understand." I say timidly, really not following. "I'm fractured?" My mind races, and the only thing it can land on is this sounds like a Harry Potter reference, like a horcrux. I shake my head to clear the thought, trying to focus on the situation at hand.

The voice, or Death, stays quiet for a moment, as if staring straight through me. "Your life did not give your soul the opportunity to fully form, young soul. Lessons were not learned and that has resulted in this shell. I could reset you," Death trails off, and I shiver at what that could mean, "However, I am curious... If your soul could be... Revitalized." They say mysteriously.

"Lessons? Revitalized? How?" I ask slowly.

"Something that has not yet been done before. An opportunity. To be reborn with a chance to learn those lessons, to grow. Yes, that is what I will do." They say, almost to themself. "I will create a realm, one made from something within your memories, to teach your soul its first vital lesson."

"What lesson? What is missing from my soul?" I ask desperately.

"You will need to learn for yourself what each lesson is, there will be several, I think." Death says, the floating entity turning away and raising its arms. "Though I will give you a hint for this first resurrection."

I felt the pressure around me increasing, starting to become uncomfortable. Death's figure started to float further away, and their voice became just a whisper as it says one final word to me.

"Friendship." Death whispers out, and then they are gone.

I feel the pressure around me change, shift into a different kind of darkness. I can no longer feel my own body, either. I can't move anymore, can't breathe, can't speak. I feel like I'm just being held tight and squeezed, but not painfully, just restricting me. I stay this way for several long moments, and take this time to try to relax and not panic, and instead think about what Death said to me.

My soul is fractured, incomplete, that is what Death said, that I must learn lessons to grow it. I try to think back on my life I just left, try to remember important things about it. 

When I died, I was 30 years old, living in America. I had a stable job, a few pets I loved, but beyond that, not very much else comes to my mind. I was engaged, but the spark had been lost over the years, and we were close to calling everything off. I had a total of one friend, who was mainly my friend via her own persistence. I worked from home, and never really interacted with others. I was overweight, but not for lack of trying to not be. 

I had suffered a minor spinal injury in my mid-twenties that never healed properly, and unfortunately exercise was painful after that, and my range of motion limited just enough to be an excuse not to try new things for fear of reinjuring myself. I had arthritis too, which limited the use of my hands and weakened my grip strength. 

I had overall lost the genetic lottery, grew up with glasses, obesity, bad teeth, acne that never completely went away. I tried hard over my life to combat these things, got skinny before my injury, wore contacts, had braces in high school, wore makeup. All those things fixed my outward appearance at times, but never could fix my personality.

I didn't grow up the best. Broken family, crazy mother who moved us every few months, among her other insanities and vices. I had two older half-siblings, but was far from close with them, barely seeing them once a year, if even that. Absentee father later in life as well, and no other family I knew. Because of all the moving, I never made more than one or two childhood friends. I was always the new kid, and could make friends fast using a fake sweet personality, but it wasn't my personality, so I never kept the friends after I moved or when I dropped the act. I was put into activities I didn't want to do growing up, like ballet, when all I wanted to do was be a fighter like in my favorite shows. I retreated often to television and books, preferring fantasy over my reality.

As I existed in the darkness that I was in after meeting with Death, I began to think they had a point. Their hint of friendship hitting harder than I thought. I gave up over the years trying to make friends, seeing there was no point to them even if you had them. Even when I stopped moving around in high school and stayed in one place, the people around me were less 'friends' and more like 'followers'. I had given up on all 'kind' personalities and was just my sardonic, selfish self. Those around me acted more like they feared me for some reason rather than that they actually liked me, and they were more there to be around my one persistent childhood friend. 

As an adult after school, I had coworkers instead of friends, people who were around me via convenience. We could get along well enough during work, but never really outside of it. If I left a job, I never heard from those people again, and often not from lack of trying on my end. I would reach out, thinking we had made a connection, but they would sever it quickly once I was gone. So again, I gave up on trying to even make friends with coworkers by my last job, which was easy enough to do when working from home.