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A/N - What do you get when you drop a dead guy into the world of OP? Nothing good. Just a story of a guy trying to keep himself sane when the world around him is from a Japanese comic book. Yes, I have hopped on the SI bandwagon. My very first fic, too! I really had character development in mind when I wrote this so don't shoot me. Rated for language, drug mentions, and mild imagery.

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"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

—Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

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For me, death was quick. A fucking imbecile who thought a gun was going to solve all the world's problems had decided my fate. The blackness that followed didn't surprise me; in fact, I was expecting it. I'd never believed in an afterlife, heaven, hell, purgatory, what-have-you. It was of my firmest beliefs that once you die, you're dead. Really, the word itself is emphatic. Death. Written right there on the package.

What I hadn't expected was that I would be conscious after my death. That sounds weird when I say it. I was aware of myself... as some disembodied essence of who I was. I knew that I was dead; however, I was in a plane of sheer nonexistence. I had no limbs, no voice, nothing. I'd ingeniously christened that place "The Void."

My time in The Void was inestimable; I could've been there for a few hours, I could've been there for a few weeks. After playing the game of "How Long Will It Take Me to Go Fucking Nuts" and losing at the 307,710th second, I stopped trying to figure it out. Who was to say my time in The Void could be measured by earthly standards, anyway? For all I knew, it was an interspatial dimension where what felt like one second could've been one century – or vice versa. To me, it felt like years, stuck with only my thoughts as company. I couldn't sleep—there was no sleep, just me. It was excruciating.

I'd mulled over the possibility of being in hell. The ubiquitous darkness mocked me, offering no response to my questions. Where am I? What's going on? How long have I been here? When will you tell me anything? Damn it, why can't get an answer? It was dreadfully hellish. More time seemed to pass and I was left alone to think: about my life, my death, all my wrongdoings, and how I could've ended up in The Void.

It didn't really add up.

If having memories in The Void was a trial of hell, it wasn't a good one. I was just your everyday dude; I was an only child and I grew up in American suburbia. My parents were pleasant, in the sense that they made sure to buy me a suit—make me look good, make them look good—when we had neighbors over.

Sure, I wasn't a saint; my sins were the basic ones. I had my rebellious stage as a teen, left the nest right after. I might've conned a few people in my early college years, had sex before marriage, smoked cigs for about two years, and partook of psilocybin (as well as a variety of other narcotics) every now and again.

Nothing too bad.

Hell, I was even working on getting my medical degree. I wanted to be a neurologist, treating the PNS and all that. I was the guy people knew to ask where to buy some cheap weed and crack a snide joke. I showed up to class most days, of course, but I wasn't an exemplary student. Neither my professors nor my contemporaries would have anything especially good to say about me, as well they shouldn't. None of them knew me. I kept to myself. Not a damn person would've cared if I died.

When it finally hit me, I'd have laughed if I had the means to.

Is that why I'm here? I think this punishment is a little over the top, don't you? You could've explained that to me, you know. Told me what was up. Instead, you stick me in a black hole and expect me to figure it out, basking in the ambiance of where my sin brought me. Super.

I don't know whom I was talking to—God or whoever handles that shit. I can't tell you when it happened but after an insurmountable stretch of time, I was ejected from The Void. After being incorporeal for so long, I couldn't fathom being compressed, and turned, and pushed out of the negative space I'd become so...accustomed to for so long. The process was sick and brutal. It was a paroxysm of sensation; suddenly I was breathing, it was bright, cold, I was breathing. The panic set in instantaneously.

What happened? Now where am I? What's going on?

Everything was an amorphous mix of severe brightness and not. I heard noise, voices, except I wasn't hearing them. The sounds were dulled, as if I was underwater; what I did hear, I couldn't understand. Had The Void made me deaf? Verbal agnosia? The only discernable things were the giant shadows moving around, which served to peak my fear.

It was fucking terrifying.

In that situation, I did what any frustrated man who had been inhumanly numb for God knows how long and was abruptly subjected to harsh sensation, limited vision, near deafness, and utter confusion would have done.

I bawled.

It was an undignified cry, holding all of the pent up frustration—confusion—disappointment—anguish that I couldn't express when I was stuck in The Void. I screamed. Howled.

This isn't what death is supposed to be. I'm not supposed to be here. It's supposed to different. I'm not supposed to know anything. The Void shouldn't even exist. I died; why am I not dead?

I felt something touching me, holding me. Surely it was the time of my reckoning. I had figured out the puzzle of The Void and now my judgment was to be passed. At least it was warmer. I was still fucking wailing; at that point, even when I tried, I couldn't stop.

(Looking back, I realized that my new body's instincts had taken hold of the metaphorical wheel and wouldn't let me shut up. I passed out after exhausting my lungs, anyway.)

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Early life was confusing. I could never figure out why my world was a blur of colors one moment and black the next. In a state of constant sleepiness, my limbs refusing to listen to me, I was upset and perpetually afraid (and I admit I woke up screaming once or twice... Or several times. Who knows. Who cares?). It was—damn it, I knew that I was cognizant and I could see – I remember the blended pinks, blues, and greens of the world – yet I couldn't see and I didn't know what was going on. I was trapped? Something like that but not quite. Stripped of my dignity, I should say. The feeling is hard to explain.

Moreover, infancy is a time that I still try to bury in the recesses of my mind.

By the time about five months had passed, I'd figured out that I was reincarnated. I'm still getting used to it, to be honest. At times I think that the bullet missed my vital spots and I slipped into a coma, all of this shit an illusion my fucked up mind concocted. The notion is laughable, but it gives me a weird sense of solace.

Maybe I'm on an extremely long trip from acid I don't remember taking. The bullshit that goes on around here is enough for me to believe it. Why else would I have memories of my "other" life? The alternative gives me a headache when I think about it. I don't know. I don't know a damn thing anymore. It certainly feels real enough.

Originally, I thought that I was in hell; no control of my motor functions, trippy sight, helpless. It was a form of hell in its own right. The fact that a giant creature would lift me up and make weird noises at me made it that much worse. However, the noises vaguely resembled sounds meant to pacify, which left me to ponder over things for a while (when I wasn't wallowing in frustration or sleeping... or both. Dreams can do so many things to the isolated mind).

Once my eyesight had started (re)developing, I recognized that I was inside of a jail-like thing. It was a crib. I thought it was another trial of hell, telling me that humans were only infants and deserved to reside as such. I was drained from my existential contemplations about what hell truly was (Sartre's ideology of the realm being built around others was horrifyingly captivating. It was disappointing that I had to spend eternity as a damned baby). I'd even entertained the probability that the situation was tailored to me specifically (for a person of my pride, that form of hell is atrociously perfect; take everything away and leave me a shell of the individual I used to be. Not much else is worse).

After exhausting myself from thinking too much, I fell asleep.

When I awoke, I was in another creature's arms. Fear is a crippling thing when there are arms from a being seven times your size wrapped around you. Of course, I was over the screaming after the first couple of months; fuck if it stopped me from trembling. That only served to freak the guy out (that was the first time one of them had picked me up since my sight improved, so I finally got a good look at him) and make him sing to me off-key while rocking me to his abnormal tempo.

His performance was horrible, and the way his voice cracked from time to time made it even worse to bear. Eventually I calmed down and managed a half smile at his shitty attempt; he seemed relieved at that and sat back down. Sight made things so much easier for me to handle and we spent a few moments staring at each other. I'd briefly wondered if that was Satan and then promptly hurled the thought out of the window. It was ridiculous that Lucifer would sing to the damned, even if he weren't speaking English.

He was nothing special; thick eyebrows, deep-set gray eyes, hooked nose, black hair. If that were Satan, he'd have to work on his scare tactics. In any event, the man had this loving expression on his face, as if he just gave birth to me. It was mildly disturbing. When I furthered my examination, I saw that he couldn't have been any older than twelve; still-there-but-slimming baby fat clung to his cheeks and I spotted the beginnings of acne. The "man" was no more than a boy.

With that revelation, I was sure that I wasn't in hell. I had died, I was then an infant, and there was a child coddling me. The moment he pressed his forehead to mine, I came to the reluctant conclusion that I had been reincarnated.

Taking that into account, I couldn't help but fall back into my original assumption. Yeah, I wasn't in Dante's Inferno; nevertheless, I'd made my peace the first fucking time around. To do it again? Oh, perhaps I had ended up in hell. The hell of being human, sculpting a life that could fall apart at any moment from unforeseen happenstances.

There were memories I shouldn't have and trying to live out a "new" life with predisposed cynicism and a slight drug... craving (because I was never addicted, I'll tell you that right now) was appalling. The idea of repeating everything, in my own body or not, had my stomach rolling.

My tiny body was very receptive to my emotions and I wound up puking on the little kid. I commended his will, taking everything with only a little scrunch to his nose. I passed out again.

The next time I woke up (it's hard for me to say how harrowing the whole passing out thing was – I refuse to call it falling asleep, since it was less of a refreshing experience and more of an unwilling and interruptive one) I was back in my crib. I was also unhappy. Well, I was unhappy since I was in The Void; it wasn't quite as frustratingly potent as it was when I realized I wasn't in hell.

I wasn't sitting in a cage, incapable of doing jack shit. I was sitting in a cage, incapable of doing jack shit with people taking care of me. It was different from when I thought I was damned; I could've wasted away with perpetual ennui, not had a person who I didn't know doing everything for me until I gained full control of my speech and motor functions. Utter helplessness was fucking maddening.

The whole situation made me spiteful. I refused to call attention to myself when I was hungry (luckily, breastfeeding was never attempted) and gave no effort to cooperate with my "family." I never smiled when they made silly faces, I purposely screamed when they tried to touch me, and I constantly threw tantrums. I figured if I was unresponsive to outside stimuli and unnaturally persnickety, they'd think something was wrong with me and drown me or whatever.

I was an annoying little fucker.

Truthfully, I was hoping that I contracted SIDS while I was young. Being a cosmic anomaly and whatnot should've made me more susceptible to that type of thing, right? If not, then the tumultuous nature of my attitude would make my family avoid me and I'd die from lack of physical stimulation; that much I knew was true.

Unfortunately, nothing of the sort happened, and my female primary caretaker (I've always been loath to say mother) eventually brought me to a doctor. The quack had the gall to say that situations like this are completely normal and all I needed was some time to adjust because certain children can be a bit finicky.

If I wasn't being a brat, I was in my crib stuck with my frenemy, boredom. The bastard was around so often, I couldn't help getting used to him. Let's not forget our bonding time in The Void as well as in my previous life. He's the type of guy to grow on you, you know? He's still a total pain to deal with.

My bad behavior did nothing to deter the kid who I'd vomited on, though. A little while after the doctor's visit, he'd started coming into my little room every day without fail. I was a volatile and bitter soul at that point in time; it didn't help the guy when I gained enough control of my limbs to pick things up and chuck them at his head when he sat in front of me, trying to play peek-a-boo.

Soon enough, I learned that the kid's name was Parker, and he was my older brother. (I had three other siblings as well; my capricious displays kept them away for a long while and I only started interacting with them after I'd begun learning how to walk.)

I spent almost all of my time with Parker. The kid fed me, taught me things, played with me, changed me (I will never talk about this again, as it's horrifying and life shattering), and was pretty much my surrogate mother. My "actual" one didn't want to deal with the stress of trying to handle me, so all of my trust and love went to Parker.

Surprisingly, he still tried teaching me things, not at all on board with the idea of me being mentally handicapped. A few of the books he shoved in my face contained what I'd recognized to be kanji, making my first assumption that the people were speaking Chinese. In fact, it wasn't until I learned how to say 'butterfly' at eight months old that I figured out it was Japanese. (Why butterfly? Blame my parents' desire for me to be as "cultured"—stuffed shirted—as possible, shoving shit like Puccini's Madama Butterfly down my throat. I spoke fluent Italian but no, I had to be thrown in a Japanese speaking world.)

The oral aspect of it was easier than the written; not to say it wasn't hard to learn. My pliable child brain made learning much easier, but the fact that one word could mean five things depending on the way it's written and the context it's used in is ridiculous. Let's not forget slang, dialects, and the odd verbal tics everyone seems to have.

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By the time I was two, I was walking and had already acquiesced to the reality that I had to live out this life. Ergo, I'd dropped the whiny brat act and was much mellower. The change seemed all too suspicious to my... family and they had questioned Parker on whether he'd beaten me or not. His horrified shock was as strong as the wry kick I got out of it.

It was also when people started noticing how "prodigious" I was. While I didn't learn the language as quickly as I wanted to, my progress was still fast in terms of child learning. Beyond that, my other skills were exemplary for my age. Only my eldest sister picked up that my intelligence was unnatural.

The most important thing I learned upon reaching two, however, was the knowledge of my birthplace.

Parker and the others had deemed me a normal enough child to bring me out in public around then. Therefore, when he set out to get some meat one day, there was no argument as I toddled after him in the overalls he'd dressed me up in that morning. Even better, he offered me a piggyback ride (probably more in necessity than affection), to which I happily obliged (probably more in laziness than cooperation).

As we walked out of the house and to whatever square from which Parker had intended to get our food, I felt the oddest sense of déjà vu and wonder. The ground was all plush-looking grass, the kind you see in those crazy movies about faeries and forest spirits. The kind that's practically extinct due to industrialization. My head swam as opalescent bubbles—so pretty, so familiar, so—ascended from the ground itself all around us and I spotted gigantic trees with two tones of green due to vertical striping.

They seemed to be everywhere, with roots conglomerated around each one like bunched up string, dilapidated buildings out of place sitting upon them. My grip on Parker's shoulders tightened as it got harder to breathe, each bubble popping louder and louder and—nasty human auction houses with mermaids and nobles and—that tree was almost like—a giant—mangrove.

As a bout of vertigo washed over me, my brother jostled me a little and took me off his back. I threw up and blacked out. (I did quite a bit of that back then, didn't I?)

I can't truly say if the world I was reborn into is better or worse than America, the land of the frivolous and the home of the boneheads. It was definitely more dangerous, what with humongous sea monsters and pirates. Despite that, there was also an atmosphere of greatness to this world. I got the shit end of the stick landing on Sabaody, where Celestial Dragons and slave traders lurk, but there wasn't the stagnant loom of expectation anywhere. That fact alone made the air a little easier to inhale, even if it reeked with stench of shit I didn't want to deal with.