Tigress (BNHA Fanfiction)

Prologue

A/N: Playing the music at the top quietly makes this a lot more emotional! Happy Reading!

 Life is very short compared to the age of some things. And the things in which there is life are usually so incredibly fragile. It only took death to properly see the truth within those statements. I had always been afraid of how I was going to die, but the actual thing itself had never truly frightened me.

Being smothered to death by smoke while I was asleep was a pretty good way to go in my opinion. It hadn't hurt at all because I was already unconscious, and it would have taken only a few minutes without oxygen until I was well and truly dead. My only hope is that somehow my mutt of a dog had gotten out, however unlikely that outcome would have been.

Now that I was dead though, I was really, truly, incredibly bored. It would be incredibly hard to describe what I was feeling because, simply put, I felt nothing. There were absolutely no sensations at all. It wasn't hot or cold; there wasn't even temperature. No light or darkness, no feeling of touch, it was simply an all-encompassing nothingness. Even trying to speak aloud was rendered useless because there was no sound. I was left here, wherever here was, with only my thoughts for company.

Even with my thoughts with me, I had entirely run out of things to think about. Time was nonexistent in this place and I couldn't tell if I had been there for milliseconds or throughout the age of the universe. It felt like both and neither, and the only thing keeping me from believing that I had simply always existed here was my memories. I had lived and breathed, laughed and loved, and now all that was stripped away from me.

There was a terrible sorrow for a very long time, or maybe only a few moments, I couldn't tell. Then the nothing evaporated around me like mist. The first thing I noticed was the darkness. Instead of there being neither light nor dark, there came to be a darkness. It was not an all-encompassing darkness, nor a cold one. Instead it was a warm darkness that brought comfort and an indescribable peace.

Then came the feeling of being touched, or really, being able to feel anything at all. I was encased by something soft and warm, and it brought comfort after the long nothingness I was in before. While happy to be out of the nothingness and into something, I wasn't in the most comfortable position ever. I was curled up tightly and being gently pressed in by all sides.

I tried as much as I possibly could to move, and I managed to wiggle around a little, but it was just so tiring to do after an indescribable amount of time in the nothing. While not actually being able to sleep like I remembered, I did go into some sleep like state for a long while. My sense of time was coming back.

Eventually I started to hear sound every so often. Usually a soft coo of a gentle voice, and sometimes a stronger voice that inspired some sense of strength in me, despite me not understanding the actual spoken words. The voices persisted for a very long while, until eventually they became very loud.

The loud voices were to the least of my concerns however, as whatever I was in started to contort around me, pushing at me from every which direction. I was not one to be pushed around, so I tried pushing back, but whatever was around me simply proved much too strong for me. It was like comparing the strength of a worm to the might of a tiger. The pushing and shoving went on for a while longer, until I finally understood what had pulled me from that nothingness.

To say the least, I was not fond of the experience of being born, and it is not an experience that I will be describing beyond that. We'll just say that there is a reason that babies don't remember it. Yes, I was born again though, and it was terrifying enough that I did start to cry like a baby because, well, I was a baby.

Light was too bright, sound too loud, and I didn't have the presence of mind to calm myself down. Luckily I was handed to someone after being swaddled by blankets that had the same gentle cooing voice I had heard before. It was an Asian looking woman with dark brown hair and chocolate colored eyes. By all rights, she was drop-dead gorgeous. I'm also pretty sure she was my new mom in this new life of mine. A man was beside her looking down at me as my new mom cradled me gently. He had a lean, muscular build with ebony hair and eyes just as dark. They both looked down at me with the same tenderness and I slowly quelled my cries.

Both of my new parents gently cooed at me, and I finally recognized what they were saying. Well, I didn't know what they were saying exactly, but I at least knew they were speaking Japanese to me. My new life would at least be interesting, because I only knew English, and something was telling me that it wasn't about to be my supposed first language in this new life. It's not like I could complain though, I had always wanted to learn Japanese.