Chapter 1- New Life Recap

As my alarm clock goes off on my bedside table I groan softly as I reach over and shut it off, continuing to lay on in bed for another few moments before I let out a sigh and sit up rubbing the sleep out of my eyes with my right hand as I get my thoughts in order, glancing to the calendar on the wall to remind myself of the date.

The twenty-first of July, my birthday. Most would be happy on the day of their birth, excited even, but for me it marked something else, the eleventh anniversary of the start of my new life. You see, eleven years ago I died. I honestly can't remember how, one minute I'm dead the next I find myself waking up in the wailing body of an infant just being born, an experience I do my best to forget about, there's a reason that people aren't supposed to remember things from that early on.

I honestly don't remember much from my first life, after eleven years it's all kind of fuzzy. I can't place names or faces of people I once knew, which at first bothered me greatly, but after so long I've come to accept it, my past life was behind me and I had come to accept that this was my life now.

I can't even remember my old name, which sucks, but in my new life I am Leonidus Burton, yeah laugh it up, my dad chose the name and he's a real history buff, though to anyone who knows me, I just go by Leo.

As you can probably guess I'm eleven years old now, I have short shaggy black hair, same as my dad, and oak brown eyes, same as my mum. Unlike most my age I have a lean, toned, muscular form, mainly due to my calorie counting and calisthenics training over the past few years, the two things that had remained a constant in both of my lives.

Climbing out of bed I make my way to the small ensuite bathroom joined to my room, shivering slightly as my bare feet went from the carpet to the cold tiled floor as I walked to the sink to wash my face to wake myself up some.

"Happy birthday to me" I muttered before splashing cold water onto my face and shivering even more as I felt myself properly waking up from the sensation before reaching for a towel to dry myself before I go to take care of the rest of my morning routine.

I suppose most would be excited to find themselves being reborn in another world, only there were a couple of things that quickly killed the excitement for me. The first being as far as I was able to tell this was just a carbon copy of my old world. Only about thirty or fourty years from when I had kicked the bucket, and given how I had never really been much into the stock markets, not that I currently could use them, I couldn't really abuse future knowledge like that. Oh don't get me wrong I knew a number of big names of tech companies and once I was able to do so I'd be buying as many shares of Apple, Microsoft and other such companies once I was able to do so, but right now that door was closed to me.

The second thing that burned me was the fact that while I was apparently reborn I had gotten no perks from it, not-a-one. I mean I read a bunch of fanfictions in my last life and you can bet your ass as soon as I realized I was reborn I tried to experiment with things in my head, mentally calling out things like "System" and "Status" even "Inventory" but I got nothing. Yes sue me, I read those kinds of fanfictions in my spare time and I loved them, they put a whole new spin on great stories and made for hilarious reads.

So here I am, stuck in the body of an eleven year old kid, in 1991, in a regular world, I feel absolutely cheated.

"Leo! Breakfast is ready" I hear my mum call to me from downstairs, and I can't help a small smile come to my face.

"Be down in a minute," I call back as I walk out of the bathroom, morning routine taken care of as I go to pick out some clothes for the day.

Okay I guess I really shouldn't complain much. While not the fantasy I had in mind, I did get a good deal with this life. I could have winded up in some third world country or some crappy orphanage like most of those fanfictions I read. I was fortunate enough to be reborn into a well off, stable, family in jolly old England. My parents both had successful careers and I had been given a happy second childhood. While I wouldn't say I was born with a silver spoon up my backside and wanted for nothing, I know I could have been a hell of a lot worse off, and had taken every opportunity that this second life had presented me.

After pulling on a pair of slacks and a shirt, I left my room and made my way down stairs, giving passing glances to the photos and awards that hung on the stairway wall, many of them with me in them on various occasions, like sporting events or competitions, where the awards were from.

I shook my head fondly at one of the pictures, it was when I had actually gotten my Black Belt in Karate last year, my mum had been the first against me starting lessons three years before that, but you wouldn't have guessed it from the massive smile on her face as she hugged me while I held my new belt while my Dad grinned behind me with his hand on my shoulder. The belt, as well as all of my other ranked belts were in a display mounted right next to the photo, it was just one of my handful of achievements I had attained in my second go of life.

As I reached the kitchen I was greeted with the familiar sight of my dad sitting at the kitchen island paper in one hand coffee in the other, a smile on his face as he saw me come into the kitchen.

"There's the birthday boy," he said with a grin, "Happy birthday lad!"

I smiled back, "thanks Dad," as I made my way to the island as my mum came over from the counter and put a plate in front of me stacked with five large freshly made pancakes with a healthy covering of syrup.

"Happy birthday sweetie," she said as she kissed my forehead making me smile even more as I tucked into my birthday breakfast, yes I could have definitely gotten a worse deal than this.

Chapter word count: 1167

Authors Notes:

Okay, in an effort to keep up regular updates any new fictions I will be working on will have drastically shorter word counts than previous works, a minimum of eight hundred words per chapter is what I have set myself, this should ensure that I will be able to keep up a steady stockpile of chapters in reserve so that I can post frequently.

As of posting this chapter I have 21 chapters already written of similar length, at a word count of 25K in total, which is higher than original 17.6K estimate