*Story is still rather new, and hasn't really started yet. I have high hopes for it*
*Spoiler in comment section for where we are in the story at the latest chapter*
Latest update: October 1, 2023
Summary:A genre-savvy submarine captain dies and is reincarnated into a rocky, desolate wasteland at the tail end of the Second Shinobi War. Hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean, she must scratch and claw her way up the totem pole, because she'll be damned if she had to die again on someone else's order. At least she has the power of the Gamer on her side…wait. She doesn't? GOD DA—
Link:https://m.fanfiction.net/s/14192764/1/Wannabe-Gamer-of-Iwa
Word count:181k
Chapters:36
Chapter 1: Hell has Goats
I was in hell. Or at least I thought I was, when I finally reached the mental acuity necessary to process visual information.
It was a reasonable assumption to make, as I was surrounded by crude huts made out of stones and wood, all of which were ablaze. Thick clouds of smoke clogged the air just above me, and even though it was nighttime, I felt scalding heat on my skin.
There was screaming too, a lot of it. No doubt the screams of the damned. I could see motionless bodies all around me, many smoldering, and I could smell the familiar stench of the dead and dying.
Yep, must be hell.
They didn't have a whole lot of fire at the bottom of the Baltic sea, and I vividly remembered my death. Remembered the beeps on my radar, the thunderous crash as the torpedo hit, throwing us out of our chairs and shattering the bulbs over our heads. Remembered how we were cast into unforgiving darkness, and the panic we all felt as the frigid water quickly soaked our feet.
It was a slow, terrible death. We had tried to rise to the surface, and I almost wish we hadn't. Nearer to the surface, but not nearly near enough, the pressure of the deep wasn't able to immediately crush our vessel the moment it was compromised. Instead the water rushed in, steadily seeping into the tin can I loved more than anything. I had always adored the water, and I think I still do. But feeling it slowly climb up my skin, inch by inch, felt like the ultimate betrayal.
Nearly half an hour after the torpedo hit, I finally drowned, alongside the rest of my crew. So the only explanation for my current setting was that I was in hell. God knows I probably deserved it—wait, should I say that here? Maybe I should try and get on the big man's good side.
Ah, screw it. I was already in hell, and I'm pretty sure the damned don't get let out early on good behavior.
By god it was loud. Both from the screaming and from the crash of fire ravaged buildings as they collapsed. I tried to get up, but found that my legs couldn't support me; I could barely even manage to position them under myself. Annoyed and panicked, I tried to at least cover my ears, but I didn't have the strength to lift my arms.
There was a body near me, a woman that might have once had dark hair, though now it was almost all burned away along with her scalp and the entirety of her back. I could tell she had frantically rolled on the dirt road, trying in vain to put it out, something I thought should have worked. The fires of hell must be unnaturally fierce, however, because she died with her face twisted in agony and desperation.
The strangest thing about the woman was how giant she was. If she stood, my eyes would have only matched up to her knee, if that. As I surveyed my surroundings, I realized that I must have been sent to giant hell by mistake, because everything looked to be scaled up. The doors on the houses, the metal braziers alongside the road—which were, ironically, the only things not on fire—and even the braying goat headbutting a wooden fence in a frantic attempt to escape were all massive.
Goats in hell. Huh.
I had seen the devil portrayed as a goat in movies, so maybe that wasn't so strange.
A tendril of smoke made it into my airways, and I coughed. And kept coughing, the sound strangely high pitched to my own ears. Breaths came shallower and shallower, my throat burned, and I tasted blood as my ravaged throat turned raw.
It was awful, and I tried to reign in the involuntary reaction. Tucking my chin and clenching all the muscles in my neck, I tried to build up saliva in my mouth for lubrication. I must have been severely dehydrated, because it took a long time.
Furious with myself and my circumstances, I scowled at my surroundings. Hell needed someone to upgrade their infrastructure. This burning village looked like it was built in the dark ages. Maybe, if I see a demon soon, I could make a bargain; I'm no civil engineer, but I have the basic mechanical knowledge I was forced to pick up in the Navy, and I knew how to make asphalt. Even hell's inhuman punishers must be able to see value in paved roads.
I might even see one now. The only living—er, conscious?—thing I've encountered yet, slowly creeping towards me. It was hard to see from this distance, but I could tell from his body language that he was rather shell-shocked. Not a demon then. A survivor?
I had seen such behavior before, the most notably when I had surfaced the first and only time in Latvian waters. Riga had suffered terrible air raids, but we needed to make repairs and the survivors would do anything to get payback at their aggressors, even at their own continued risk. As they led us through bombed out residentials and shattered ruins of what they might have considered skyscrapers, I saw the numb looks of incomprehension on their faces. The looks of someone who couldn't so much as process the atrocity leveled against them.
But as the person—a boy, he might have been a giant but his face was clearly young—drew nearer, I could tell that he was different. He was uninjured, for one, and his clothes were nice, if strange. A flowy red…tunic? That he all but swam in covered up most of his figure. The left sleeve was loose and long, but the right was missing all together, revealing a bare, toned arm carrying some sort of knife.
A soldier, then, I realized. Green, almost literally. He looks like he's about to puke. He's lucky he made it to the battlefield so late.
But why were there soldiers in hell? Was the underworld going through some sort of civil war? If so, I might just find an interesting way to spend my eternal damnation after all.
"Oi," I tried to call out, but the sound came out unintelligible and was overtaken by more wet, wracking coughs. Not wanting his first impression to be of me choking, I quickly smothered them as the cloying taste of iron coated my tongue. But the sound had captured his attention.
"Taicho?" he called out shakily. "You'll want to see this."
Another giant came into view, this one much older. He had a full beard, a brown bandanna with a metal plate, and an outfit that almost matched the kid's. Only, he had what appeared to be a brown combat vest over the red garment. Since his right sleeve was also missing, I could tell he was incredibly buff, and not with stunt muscles either. He almost looked like my dad, minus the gut I'd always known him to have.
"A kid?" He rumbled, and the illusion was broken. I'd never met anyone in my life who had a voice like that.
Then my brain processed his words. Kid? I raised a fist high enough to see, which was difficult, and I found the my fingers to be disproportioned and pudgy. I tried to make a fist, scarcely believing my eyes, but my fingers were slow to respond.
So I wasn't in hell for giants. I had been de-aged. Or reborn entirely?
"Why isn't it crying?" A girl looking to be the same age as the first boy, who was all but clinging to her superior's metaphorical skirts, asked. I would have taken offense at the selected pronoun, but I likely would have used the exact same phrasing in her place.
"Is he even alive?" the boy echoed.
Okay, it was permissible, but he?
I would have said something just to fuck with him, though I wasn't sure my tongue had the dexterity to manage such a feat. But it didn't matter, because if I unclenched my throat muscles even slightly, I'd be thrown into another fit of coughs regardless. Instead, I blinked lazily at him.
"So creepy," the girl whispered. Again, fair play. "It's just sitting there, in seiza. Isn't it scared of the fire? Kami, it's right next to its mother's corpse!"
Oh, was that my mother? I looked back at the burnt woman. She did seem to be reaching out towards me, with desperation fixed by rigor upon her face. Even though I didn't know the woman, I couldn't help but feel a little sad.
"She's a baby," their leader said, and I internally thanked him for his observational skills. "Babies aren't known for their ability to think."
He had a nice voice, a lot smoother than I would have expected. I bet he was a great singer.
"She's still an earth country citizen. We'll take her with us, and any other survivors we find if they can be transported."
As he surveyed the burning remains of the village, his face was a mask of fury. "Those Leaf bastards. Iwagakure will never forget this."
Wait. What?
Link:https://m.fanfiction.net/s/14192764/1/Wannabe-Gamer-of-Iwa