With love, a Civilian and Death God

Chapter 0

XxX

Dear Father in Heaven,

I have been kidnapped by Uncle Garp. Please help me.

With Love, your precious, darling son

XxX

I hate this. It stinks. It hurts. And it burns everywhere. Why must I be dragged to the most abysmal places in East Blue by my stupid Uncle? Or more precisely, why do I have to be related to any of the characters to begin with? Anyone else would have been better – a random street guy killed by random devil fruit powers, a journalist, a weak pirate or marine…

"I hate this…" I groaned.

Civilians aren't made to trek in the mountains of Dawn Island. Give me a break.

"Bwahaha! You sure are weak, Minoru! I bet even Luffy can defeat you in your state!" Garp shot me a smirk.

Stupid D's. I rolled my eyes. Stupid Garp and stupid One Piece. Sure, choose the freaking main character to compare me to. Even if I have nine years ahead of him, it's clear who the winner is.

"Not all human beings have the same monstrous build as you and him, Uncle." I gasped out. "Frankly speaking, you marines and pirates are an entirely different species altogether."

"Bwahahaha! Still, that doesn't excuse your lack of effort in making up in the physical area." Garp glanced at my thin, wiry frame. I scowled.

"I am a civilian, Uncle." I emphasized. "Tiny and weak are the main attributes to being civilian."

"Uh-huh." He nodded indulgently.

I sighed. Knowing Uncle, my words had totally bounced off his thick head.

"Still...You're seriously too slow, Minoru!" He boomed. "It's been a day and we still haven't reached the summit. Can you be any slower?!"

I groaned. The urge to slam my head into the tree was growing too quickly for my liking, but I held back. Being mauled by another death serpent or kung fu monkey is never a favorable way to go the second time.

Why must I be related to this man?

Ah, if only I have paper at this point. I want to write another letter to my dear father in heaven, primarily focusing on why he hadn't escaped to the other side of the world to avoid Garp, and why he just had to tell his accursed brother about my existence. I heard paper airplanes can somehow carry their message to their intended receiver if flown from a high altitude. Or at least, that was what the Uso Island said.

Then again, there was that rumour about messages in glass bottles being able to reach the deceased. And hadn't it been a fun experience dropping one into a sea king's mouth? Smoker had a heart attack rescuing me from the sea king's clutches.

"Yosh."

I paled. What was he doing? Why was he lifting me up over his shoulders like that? And why was he extending his arm back-

"Tell Dadan I say hi!"

The jerk tossed me.

He fucking tossed me.

Apparently, Dawn Island has cumulonimbus clouds around this time of the year and rain will likely be rampant. And it's shaped like a moon. And the skies are blue and the other islands are visible and there is a bird smirking at me before me and I am fast falling-

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!"

"A-ho!" The bird cried, flapping its wings. In English, that cry translates to 'stupid', for your information.

Tears escaped from my eyes as ground approached me – or is it I approach it? I would have clasped my palms together in prayers had there not been air resistance. Regardless, to think that this was how I would go the second time...If I am reborn a third time, I hope I would be able to meet Garp in the next world and somehow kill him for this.

My amazing Tarzan mimicry was cut short by a series of 'ouch' and 'youch' and all other pained cries as the branches of the trees pricked into me.

My pain does not stop there.

Through the blurring world of greens and browns, I saw a flicker of peachy tan skin. Before I could even process it with my spiraling eyes, I crashed into the poor guy, squashing him for all I was worth.

"ARGH!" The squeaky, slightly childish voice cried out.

I feel like crying too.

This is too much in one day for any civilian teenager to put up with.

"Get off! Get. Off!" The child yelled, struggling against my weight.

Poor child. Unfortunately, my body has lost all control over itself and I can't move. Sorry, but you're just going to have to bear with being flattened until Garp comes.

"My, my~" A woman's voice chuckled in amusement.

"Haha! What an interesting turn of events!" A man's gruff voice spoke in turn.

I froze, ignoring how the child tensed in turn. There was a layer of haziness that was covering their voices – kinda like listening to muffled voices, talking behind a door. And it was all too familiar to me.

Did I mention it? As someone who was technically both deceased and alive, while I get to maintain a physical form in this world, I have attained a single non-devil fruit ability of being able to communicate with the spirits.

The ability isn't very useful, especially when you're in a dog-eat-dog world where eight foot tall men were common sights and people with devil fruit powers pop up on an almost daily basis. I prefer to ignore that ability altogether unless it was for the sake of my occupation. However, there are always limits to how much one can ignore their presence.

This was one such case.

I lifted my head just briefly, catching a glance of strawberry blonde locks and a ruffled black mug with black mustache and similar wide smiles of amusement.

"Ace, don't just sit there with that look. You have to help the poor boy." Rouge chided lightly, ghosting a hand over the child's raven locks.

Ace shuddered, looking confused as he did so.

"Honey, you forget that he cannot hear us." Roger smiled.

"Ah, indeed, I have." Rouge returned a sad smile.

My right brow twitched twice.

Come to think of it, there was a myth on Uso Island as well about the twitching of brows. If it was the left brow twitching, something good will happen, vice versa for the right brow.

It was twitching the day before Garp came for me, and the morning before I was swallowed whole by the sea king, and just before we reached this island, it twitched over ten times.

It twitched again.

I have a looming sense of doom.

"I hear Garp coming in this direction." Roger suddenly said.

Ah, so it's because of him.

Unabashedly, my sense of self-preservation decided to knock me out there and then. I could already feel my head pounding. Darn it. This is exactly why I tried to avoid the characters for so long.

XxX

Dear Father in Heaven,

I take back my words. Please send me into my third rebirth soon.

With love, your unfortunate, poor, poor son

P.S: Don't laugh at my dilemma.

XxX

A/N: Please tell me what you think of this story :)