Playing with the dead in the new life

//(Author's note: The normal conversations will be between "", the inner monologues will be between -)

"Fuck m-... " was the last thing she managed to say as she got decapitated by a huge glowing zweihander. Her head hit the ground with a small thud then rolled away. Even before the creepy head stopped its movement the room erupted into a deafening cheer.

There were many people in the room, and even more dead bodies, the last one belonging to our hero. Most of the people were dead tired, leaning on their swords, shields, bows or whatever weapons they used, the toll of long combat clearly visible on them, but nevertheless they still found some energy to announce their victory.

"She finally died...!" "There will be peace again...!" "We can start rebuilding...!" "For the Resistance...!"

Those were the last fading sounds that manage to reach the head that only stopped rolling when it hit one of the corners of the room. - Well it wasn't a bad run, I just wish these assholes could leave me to my work alone instead of shake in their boots by my 'potential to destroy them'... Well maybe the uncountable human experiments were a bit too much... Now I have to start again somewhere else. Fuck me, it's been a while, have to take my luck for a spin again. Please, not a woman again, anything but that its so fucking annoying... Please be merciful... -

Those were the last thoughts of Dave Smithson... or Her Majesty Cerella, queen of Rabdon, or Major Zrik'thar, military commander of the 4th space-marine battalion of the Federation of the Eastern Quadrant. When he was an animal nobody gave him a name, so it's hard to recount those.

Lets clear things up. Dave Smithson first died in military service on Earth in 2008, taken out by a sniper in an urban warfare in Afghanistan. Even though the overall density of his brain matter got a bit higher due to the addition of a 7.62mm caliber sniper round, his thoughts never stopped moving. He just barely understood its dark all around and his body is somewhat numb, but he kept throwing a tantrum about joining the force and his displeasure of meeting his death in a desolate place forsaken by whatever God there is.

Soon his ranting was interrupted by the sudden realization, that for a while he was moving his body without even thinking. He tried to turn around consciously, but was unable to. He tried flexing his muscles, but it was extremely hard, his body was unable to do anything, except for a few small twitches here and there. Soon he learned the ropes of his new body, a concept he was still unable to comprehend.

- What the hell is this shit? I just died I believe, nobody can survive a shot like that, but then whats up with my body? Did I survive in the end? Must be a cripple now for sure... Lets just wait and try. But I can almost see stuff, and this ain't no Kansas anymore for sure. Did I really die? Heard some bullshit of 'reincarnation' or what, I think buddhists spread it, that we reincarnate as something when we die. But why do I still have my memory... and what am I then?-

Dave never really heard about reincarnation, not the kind he was experiencing. In around 2000 the Japanese kind of reincarnation is still far away, nobody knows about them, except for a few extreme Japan-fan people. So his confusion is understandable.

Because his lack of knowledge, his chance of survival was close to zero, as he was reborn as a fish. Not a big one at that. He died as a human, then was reborn as an unspecified type of fish on an unknown planet in an unknown galaxy. He didn't last long, as all the senses his body had evolved throughout thousands of years were useless to him, whatever basic programming there was in the brain of the fish before, it was overwritten by Dave's. So in a matter of hours predators found him and tore him apart, ending his senseless and mindless swimming around.

He barely felt anything, just a sharp pain for a second, then nothing again. It was confusion of the highest order. But it doesn't stop there, because that was only his first round.

Next, instead of slowly and steadily coming to realize he is alive, the pain came faster and stronger, battering at his body and mind alike. The suffering took a while and many times Dave thought he fainted, but the pain cruelly continued without any care or sympathy. Dave had no idea whats going on, he was just dragged along for the ride. It felt way worse than dying, he had experience with that already, but he was unable to die by himself to stop the suffering, so he just held on. There was nothing else he could do. Soon the agony seemed to subside, he also caught a glimpse of some sort of light.

He immediately understood what just went down. He was born. At the same time he gagged at the sight around him. There were four half-humanoid, half octopus kind of creatures, one holding him, the others doing some stuff on their own or helping the former. He was crying and trembling, mostly because of the event that just took place, but partly because his thoughts were in such a disarray he barely counted as sane. At one moment the dread of a sudden realization shook him, he looked down and saw that he too had tentacles instead of arms. At that moment he fainted.

Dave's third life was quite uneventful. We could talk at length of how different the 'aliens' life, or social structure, or biology, or scientific advancements were, but Dave never really got into any of those topics. We could talk about how Dave managed to handle his life as a human in a completely different planet, maybe even dimension. But he just had to get used to everything as a baby, apart from that, its nothing mind-bending.

The life there was normal for them, just like our life is normal and uninteresting for ourselves. There aren't many differences, maybe that the 'aliens' are a bit more advanced technologically, or that they are even more militaristic than humans. But they also communicate with language, have a consumerist social structure, they wage wars and reproduce in a similar way.

Dave decided to learn from his previous life, well not much to be honest, and he became an 'alien' space marine, but instead of dying on the battlefield he managed to get into officer-training and rose in the ranks quick enough to mostly avoid combat. In the end he died to 'alien' cancer. He was always a loner due to this being his 3rd life, he was unable to share his thoughts with anyone and pushed everyone away, thus he died alone to a common disease on an 'alien' hospital bed.

He was hoping that by dying relatively peacefully, his reincarnation stops and he will be left alone.

But that's not how it works.

Next he was reincarnated as an animal again, and the one after that too, and by that time he completely lost his sanity.

He spent many lives moving around killing whatever was in his sight, like a raging lunatic. Most of the time he barely got anywhere or barely survived for a few hours, but he didn't care, just kept on going, kept dying.

At one point he was back to being some sort of intelligence life form, he was admitted to a sanatorium, where he was locked up all the time until he died. They tried to get some sense out or into him, which only partially worked.

But that little something managed to rekindle the 'humanity' in Dave's mind and in the next few cycles of reincarnation he managed to calm down, settle his thoughts and recount what happened to him without trying to destroy everything.

By that time he was rather tired, so after spending a whole life doing nothing just thinking and lazing, he managed to put together a plan for the first time in decades.

When he next dies, he will try to hurry and die as fast as possible, 'reroll', as one might call it, until he meets 'magic' once again. One or two of his previous reincarnations were so different, that the usual laws of physics only partially worked, instead other natural laws dominated the dimension, that made the manipulation of energy easier for any intelligent life even without external tools, simply by the power of their 'souls'. This is what people back in his human life called magic... or something similar.

Dave never managed to stay around for long in these lives, but what he had seen stayed with him for ever. He himself managed to use magic once, but that life was a disaster too, he was unable to progress anywhere and didn't want to either. It was well within his insane period.