Harley was a phantom in his own life. At nineteen, he was the guy you walked past without ever really seeing—quiet, blending into the background, a shadow in a crowd. He didn't mind it. The spotlight was too bright, too demanding. He preferred the cool comfort of the low-key life. His passion, his true arena, was digital. In the world of League of Legends, he wasn't a shadow; he was the shadow. Specifically, he was Zed. He excelled at the precision, the quick strike, the sudden, lethal efficiency of the shadow assassin. He'd spend hours refining combos, imagining himself slipping through reality, unbothered by the mundane.
That mundane reality shattered on a perfectly ordinary Tuesday. Harley was walking back from campus, head down, already planning his evening matches, when the world simply broke.
There was no warning. No scream of sirens. Just a catastrophic flash. A stray missile, having malfunctioned and veered impossibly off course from half a world away, intersected perfectly with his life.
The explosion—a violent, localized sunrise—was instantaneous.
Harley opened his eyes. He wasn't in agony; he wasn't in pieces on the asphalt. He was standing in a place that defied reason—a endless, shimmering void of shifting ivory, feeling simultaneously as open as the cosmos and as confined as a waiting room.
In front of him, sitting behind a desk composed of solidified stardust, was a man who looked like he hadn't slept in an eternity. He was massaging his temples, sighing as he looked at a floating, holographic file that clearly belonged to Harley.
"Harley," the man said, his voice carrying the weariness of a thousand timelines. "I am the Arbiter of Transit. I manage... logistics. The final ones. Look, I'll be direct with you: that missile? Total statistical error. It was locked onto a primary school three blocks away. But you happened to be the one-in-a-million anomaly in its revised flight path. Your death vaporized the payload. You saved an entire school of kids."
Harley absorbed the information. He felt... detached. He wasn't crying, or screaming, or questioning God. He just gave a slight, numb shrug. "So... I'm done. At least I did one useful thing."
The Arbiter paused, looking surprised by the lack of hysterics. "You are surprisingly pragmatic. Most of them scream. Regardless, because of the overwhelming 'Karmic Merit' you accumulated—saving hundreds of innocent lives carries a lot of weight—you're not just moving to the standard afterlife. You're getting an offer: reincarnation with all memories intact, into a world of your choosing, plus one powerful 'Cheat' of your design."
Harley finally focused. Reincarnation? A cheat? He didn't have a fantasy list. He had a main. He thought of the ultimate expression of his favorite character—the one who wasn't just a ninja, but a cosmic event.
"I want the powers of Galaxy Slayer Zed," Harley said, his voice solidifying. "The full cosmic horror pack. The one that unmakes reality."
The Arbiter managed a tired smirk. "Ambitious. Very well. Given the scale of that power, your soul will also be fitted with a System Interface to help you process and master it. Otherwise, you'd burn out your new body in seconds.
The Arbiter waved a hand, and a truly massive, terrifying roulette wheel materialized from the stardust. Its slots hummed with malevolent energy. Harley's blood ran cold as he read the names etched into the divisions:
WARHAMMER 40K (Literal eternal damnation in space)
REVEREND INSANITY (Where everyone is a sociopath or soon will be)
LORD OF THE MYSTERIES (A polite invitation to cosmic madness)
"No... God, no... please, anything but 40k..." Harley whispered, the chill of the cosmic void finally sinking in.
The Arbiter spun the wheel. It became a blurring chaos of horrifying possibilities, roaring with a sound like a distant star dying. Slowly, agonizingly, it began to click... click... click.
The marker stopped on: ONE PIECE.
Harley let out a ragged breath, slumping in relief. Compared to the other options, the Grand Line felt like a sunny vacation. Dangerous, sure, but there was sunlight and laughter, not just despair and ancient gods.
"One Piece. A dynamic world," the Arbiter observed, a spark of amusement in his tired eyes. "A world of endless oceans, pirates, and impossible abilities. Let's see how the powers of a Galaxy Slayer fare under that grand sun."
The Arbiter snapped his fingers.
The white void shattered around Harley like glass. He felt his being twisted, pulled through a terrifying vacuum of pure energy, his essence rewritten on a fundamental level. As he plummeted toward the vast, blue horizon of the world below, his eyes bloomed, bleeding into a perfect, abyssal black—the eternal signature of the Galaxy Slayer.