Hey guys! Soooooooo, I know it's been a while, and feel free to string me up in the streets for that. I just wanted you to know that I'm re-writing the entire story up to where I left off, and before you start complaining (if you are complaining, that just makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside) I promise that the plot will be remaining entirely intact, and that most of the scenes are just being re-vamped and improved, with better writing, better pacing, and just overall better-ness. I hope you all enjoy this re-done first chapter, and let me know if you like it, or if I should scrap it and go back to the original. I love you guys so much for all of your reviews, and be pleased to know that this is the end of hiatus for this story! Also, my other stories are being re-written, so check those out as well! Fans of The Five Below Ground, be pleased to know that I haven't forgotten you, and a new chapter for you guys should be up lickety split! Until then you crazy demons! - Mikki

Chapter 1: Can You Here Me Up There? It's Me, Monkey D. Luffy

When I was seven years old, they told me I was going to die.

There was no fanfare, no epic reveal.

Just a cold, hard hospital bed and four simple words, "you're going to die."

And then the world turned gray. Just like that.

I remember staying up really late the night before, unable to sleep because of my excitement. School started in the morning, and despite what my jerk brother said about it being nothing but six hours of my life I would never get back, I was looking forward to it. I counted the stars in the dark blue sky outside my window and decided that I would have one friend for each tiny glittering light.

I had no friends at the time. It was kind of hard to make them when your grandfather was the big scary police chief across the street. And as much as I tried to hide it, I felt a little lonely. Ace had friends, and he went places with them a lot. I wanted that.

At school, I was told I was going to make lots of friends, and so I was excited.

That night, I closed my eyes with a smile. My straw hat was stuck firmly on my head, and it filled my head with dreams of far-off lands and exciting adventures. Of friendship.

I woke up with a dull ache in my chest.

When I opened my eyes, I immediately knew that something was wrong. My room was dark, darker than it should be at seven o'clock on a monday morning in September, and my eyes felt heavier than usual. I rubbed them sleepily, telling myself that I was probably still tired from counting stars all night, and swung my feet out of bed. Immediately a sharp pain shot through my chest, causing me to gasp and fall to my knees.

My heartbeat quickened and confusion filled me. What the heck was that?

I kneeled on the floor until the pain eased up a bit, into a low throb that filled my chest and made it difficult to breathe. Was I sick? I'd never felt like this before, sure I'd had colds, and even the flu on occasion, but this, this felt bigger than that. I waited until I was able to move before shakily getting to my feet and padding out into the hall to find my grandpa. I leaned partially against the wall until I made it to the top of the stairwell.

As I slowly made my way down the steps to the kitchen, I found that the aching only increased, to the point where it became incredibly painful and hard to draw breath. I gripped the railing so tightly my knuckles turned white, and by the time I finally made it to the bottom, I was gasping for breath and clutching the front of my shirt. I shook badly, clammy sweat beading on my forehead and on my palms. I was starting to get scared.

What was wrong with me?

I grasped the banister even tighter in an effort to steady myself, thinking back to the night before. I had felt just fine then. Was it because I stayed up too late? Was I just really tired? I didn't know. Just then, Ace rounded the corner and saw me.

"Hey Luffy!" He said, grinning and walking over. "Finally decided to drag your sorry butt outta bed, huh?" I looked up at him and half-heartedly smiled back.

"Hey, Ace," I said shakily, trying to keep the fear out of my voice and keeping both my hands securely wrapped around the banister. "Where's Grandpa?"

"He's still in the kitchen," Ace frowned. He must have noticed the tremble to my frame and the fact that I was practically gasping for air. "Hey, Luffy, you okay?" He asked, reaching out with one hand to feel my forehead. "You look like you're about to collapse. Did you stay up all night like I told you not to?" I blanched. The last thing I wanted right now was to get chewed out by Ace for something that wasn't even really my fault, whatever this was.

"Um, no," I said, trying to look as innocent as possible. I must've failed miserably because Ace flicked me in the forehead, which made my head spin terribly.

"Liar," he said, putting his hands on his hips in his signature "don't bullshit me Luffy" kind of way.

"R-really!" I forced out. "I didn't stay up that late, I promise!" I curled in on myself as a sudden flare of pain flashed through me.

Ace's frown deepened. "Lu, you REALLY aren't looking good." He said, folding his arms across his chest. "Maybe you should head back to bed. You look dead on your feet."

I almost chuckled at my brother's choice of words, because that was exactly how I felt right then. I tried to say something back, but y fingers had become increasingly sweaty and shaky from gripping the railing too tightly, and in one fluid motion I slipped and fell face forward onto the wood floor. The impact sent a jolt through my entire body and I gasped loudly from the pain.

"Luffy?!" Ace cried, a look of surprise and concern overtaking his features. He quickly fell to his knees and flipped me onto my back. "Luffy, Luffy, Hey! What's wrong? Are you okay?!" He shook me slightly and I grimaced. I looked up at him, his freckles drawn up over his nose in a worried expression that wasn't like Ace at all. I tried to speak, to tell him that I was okay, but my mouth wouldn't work right. My vision slowly got blurrier and blurrier, and the pain in my chest overwhelmed every other sensation. I could faintly hear Ace begin to scream for Grandpa, and barely saw the old man's hulking form as it rounded the corner and rushed over to us.

The last thing I saw before my sight faded to black were a pair of large hands, reaching for me.

When I came to, I was in the hospital, nestled underneath a thin flannel blanket with a long tube sticking out of my arm. The room was dark, with only the pale red and green flickering of the various monitors and machines giving off any form of light.

I wondered if it was nighttime.

I lifted my arm a little and felt the needled inside it shift, much to my discomfort. What happened? Where were Grandpa and Ace? What the heck were all these smelly beeping machines by my face?

Tears pricked my eyes and I fought the urge to scrub at them. Hospital or not, I was still Monkey D. Luffy, and Monkey D. Luffy didn't cry, even when he was terrified out of his mind. I lay there alone, in the darkness, for what felt like hours.

At last, the door of my room opened, a thin trail of light stretching from the corridor up onto my bed. A doctor wearing a strangely colored hat walked in carrying a clipboard, followed closely, to my great relief, by Grandpa and Ace.

Ace looked like he had been crying, which unnerved me because Ace never cried. I tried to call out to them, but for some reason, the words caught in my throat and I couldn't speak. My whole body felt numb, and yet hot at the same time.

It smelled really bad and in that moment all I wanted was to go home.

The three approached my bed almost cautiously, like they were afraid that any sudden moves would frighten me away. Upon seeing that I was awake, they offered me three weak and yet honest smiles. At first, I didn't know what to make of them, but then Grandpa took my hand and I frowned. His fingers were shaking, badly. I thought that it might've just been me, but slowly gave up on that idea when I saw Grandpa's shoulders trembling as well.

I stared, fear creeping into me from a cold spot on my spine. The doctor, whose name tag red "Trafalgar Law," met my eyes and trained his eyes on his clipboard. He cleared his throat.

"Monkey D. Luffy?" he asked, looking at me with shadowed eyes. I nodded. "This morning, at approximately 7:10 a.m, you collapsed in your house with chest pains and trouble breathing, correct?" I nodded again, my free hand unconsciously creeping up to feel the sore area around my chest. The doctor sighed, like he was displeased with my answer. "When your family brought you here this morning, you were in pretty bad shape. You had an irregular heartbeat and your lungs appeared to be highly inflamed. All we could do was put you on painkillers and oxygen. We drew blood and tissue samples to send off for testing, and a little while ago, we got the results back." He sounded tense. He was about to say something I wasn't going to like at all I could tell.

Trafalgar Law's gaze softened as he saw the fear in my expression. "I'm sorry, Luffy, but what we found wasn't good."

Despite the fact that I had no idea what he was talking about, I recognized the tone. Something was very wrong.

Ace crept over to my bedside and buried his face in my blankets. I wanted to tell him to stop it, because it wasn't like him and it scared me. Instead, I turned my gaze on Grandpa, who wouldn't meet my eyes. I swallowed and took a deep breath.

When I spoke, it was barely above a whisper.

"What's wrong with me?" It came out young, childish. I was seven years old, but in my own eyes I was a hundred, and I felt shame that I couldn't keep my voice steady.

There was a long pause, but at last, Trafalgar tilted his head down and read something long and medical-sounding off of his clipboard. He saw the confusion in my eyes, and shortened it into terms I could understand.

"You are going to die."

I am freezing because I'm lying on the ice and I'm bleeding and I don't have one of Ace's shirts to staunch the blood.

My life.

My life...

I found out eventually that I had a sickness in my blood that was killing me slowly, and there was nothing that anyone could do to stop it. There were treatments of course, pills I had to take, weekly examinations and tests.

It didn't change the fact that I was going to die.

I was told that there were many things I would be forced to abandon, like running and playing sports, childish dreams like becoming a pirate, or an astronaught, or a monster big enough to swallow the sun in one gulp.

Those were things only healthy kids got to have, and starting with that first day beneath the knives and needles, I was no longer considered so. My life wouldn't be as long as other people's, and I had to live carefully, never overstepping a very specific set of boundaries if I wanted to survive. No more wrestling with my brother, or midnight trips with Grandpa to the ocean, or surprise training in the backyard under the warm branches of our oak tree.

The outside world was banished from my sight.

I had to take icky tasting medicine, and stay long hours at the hospital, where all anyone ever seemed to do was take blood or filter it carefully into my body. The hat that I'd been given as a promise of friendship and adventure was heavy on my head, and the straws jabbed into my scalp with more ferocity than before, almost as if to say "This is your fault for not being strong enough."

I whispered "I'm sorry, Shanks," more times than I care to remember.

In many ways, my sickness broke me. So many things had been taken from me, things that I had treasured and loved, and sometimes my heart ached more than my body did. For a long time, I was just... broken.

Utterly.

Completely.

Entirely.

Until one breezy spring day when a boy who shouldn't have been there walked right into my world.

For their credit, my brother and my grandpa took extremely good care of me, bringing me toys and telling me stories to keep me entertained during the long months I was forced to spend cooped up in my room. Whenever I cracked, they were there to gather up the pieces and glue them haphazardly back together.

They were the reason I kept smiling. Grinning like a friggin' idiot despite the sting of the needles and the bitter taste of the medicine. Even though it sometimes felt like I was already dead.

I could tell that they loved me very much by the way they always smiled back and held my hands, but I also knew that my illness was affecting them as much as it was affecting me. Ace cried a lot when I was first diagnosed, and all grandpa could do was hold us and tell us that everything was going to be fine, even though I really knew it wasn't. I wasn't stupid, no matter what anyone said.

Personally, I didn't cry at all. Not once.

Whether it was acceptance or some other foreign emotion that kept me from shedding tears over my situation I didn't know, but I didn't let even a single drop escape my eyes. I think that Ace cried enough for both of us in those days, and even though he tried to keep them hidden, I could hear Grandpa's broken sobs through the too-thin walls of our small house.

I was strong, and yet at the same time made of glass, unable to change my fate. It was a very lonely existence.

Two years of it went by like dust in the wind.

And then I met a boy named Zoro.

And the world was colors again.