Monkey D. Luffy's eyes snapped open.
It was instantaneous, the way it always was with him—no gradual surfacing from the depths of sleep, no lazy blinking against the light, no slow gathering of consciousness like a normal human being might experience upon waking. One moment he was dead to the world, sprawled across his bunk in the men's quarters of the Thousand Sunny like a starfish made of rubber, one arm dangling off the edge of the bed, one leg somehow tangled in the hammock above him despite the fact that he slept in a regular bunk, his mouth wide open with a thin trail of drool connecting his lower lip to the pillow beneath his head. The next moment his eyes were open, wide and round and perfectly alert, and the very first thought that entered his mind was, predictably, devastatingly, inevitably:
Meat.
"Hungry," Luffy announced to the empty room.
Well, mostly empty. The men's quarters aboard the Thousand Sunny were spacious enough to accommodate the male members of the Straw Hat crew comfortably, with bunks lining the walls and personal effects scattered about in various states of organization—or, more accurately, disorganization, because Luffy's idea of "putting things away" involved throwing them in the general direction of where they were supposed to go and then forgetting about them entirely. His straw hat hung on the post at the head of his bunk, and he grabbed it with one rubbery hand, plopping it onto his head with the practiced ease of someone who had performed this exact motion approximately eleven thousand times in his life.
He sat up, and his stomach growled.
Not a polite little rumble. Not a modest gurgle. This was a full-throated, thunderous, almost aggressive declaration of emptiness that seemed to vibrate the very planks of the ship beneath him. It was the kind of sound that, in a lesser vessel, might have been mistaken for a Sea King bumping against the hull. It was the kind of sound that communicated, in no uncertain terms, that the body producing it considered its current state of unfed-ness to be a personal affront of the highest order, a crime against nature, a travesty that demanded immediate and overwhelming rectification.
"So hungry," Luffy elaborated, as if the sound hadn't made that abundantly clear.
He swung his legs over the side of his bunk and dropped to the floor, his sandals slapping against the Adam Wood planking with a familiar thwap-thwap. He stretched—not in the way normal people stretched, all yawns and extended arms and arched backs, but in the way that only a rubber man could stretch, his arms briefly extending to twice their normal length before snapping back into place with a satisfying elastic twang. He scratched his chest through the unbuttoned red vest he'd fallen asleep in, adjusted his straw hat, and made for the door.
As he walked, he tried to determine what time it was.
This was, under the best of circumstances, an exercise in futility. Luffy's relationship with the concept of time was adversarial at best. He understood it existed, in the same vague way he understood that navigation was a thing people did, or that there were rules about eating food that belonged to other people (rules he chose to ignore with the cheerful impunity of a man who had decided, at the age of seven, that he was going to be King of the Pirates, and therefore the rules of polite society no longer applied to him). He knew there was a "morning" and a "night" and some other stuff in between, and that Sanji served meals at specific intervals that Luffy had never bothered to memorize because his internal clock operated on a single, unwavering principle: it was always time to eat.
But even someone with a functional understanding of time would have struggled in their current situation, because the Thousand Sunny was, at this very moment, sailing approximately twenty thousand feet beneath the surface of the ocean.
The ocean.
Which was dark.
Very, very dark.
They had finally departed from the Sabaody Archipelago—reunited at last after two long years of separation, two years of training and growing stronger, two years during which each member of the Straw Hat crew had honed their abilities to new and terrifying heights in preparation for the challenges that awaited them in the New World. The reunion had been chaotic and joyful and punctuated by the Marines' latest ill-advised attempt to stop them, which Luffy had dealt with through the application of his newly mastered Haki in a display that had left his crewmates (and several very unfortunate Marine captains) thoroughly impressed.
And now they were descending. Down, down, down into the crushing depths of the Grand Line's most treacherous passage, following the route that would take them to Fishman Island—the underwater paradise that served as the gateway to the New World, the second half of the Grand Line, where the greatest treasures and the most dangerous waters in the world awaited.
Fishman Island. Just thinking about it made Luffy grin his enormous, face-splitting grin.
But first: meat.
He pushed open the door to the men's quarters and stepped out onto the grassy deck of the Thousand Sunny, which was currently enclosed in a massive coating bubble that kept the ocean's crushing pressure at bay and allowed the crew to breathe and move about normally even at these impossible depths. The bubble shimmered faintly overhead, a translucent membrane through which the dark waters of the deep sea were visible, occasionally illuminated by the bioluminescent glow of passing deep-sea creatures—strange, alien things with too many eyes and not enough regard for the conventional rules of biology.
Through the bubble's surface, Luffy could see... darkness. Endless, impenetrable darkness, broken only by the occasional flash of some luminous deep-sea creature drifting past like a living lantern. There was no sun down here, no moon, no stars—nothing to distinguish morning from evening, dawn from dusk, breakfast time from lunch time from dinner time.
Not that this distinction mattered to Luffy. As far as he was concerned, all times were food times. The hierarchy was simple: there was "eating," and then there was "the time between eating, which should be spent walking toward food."
He was currently engaged in the latter.
"Kitchen," Luffy said to himself, orienting his body toward the part of the ship where food existed. His navigation skills were, as a general rule, absolutely abysmal—he was the kind of person who could get lost in a straight corridor—but when it came to locating food, he possessed an almost supernatural sense of direction. He could find a kitchen in the dark, underwater, in a hurricane, blindfolded, with both arms tied behind his back. (He had, in fact, done something very close to this during their adventures in Alabasta, though the specific details had been lost to the haze of his generally terrible memory.)
He set off across the grassy deck, his sandals leaving faint impressions in the carefully maintained lawn that Usopp had... no, wait. That Franky had... no. Who had put grass on their ship again? It didn't matter. The grass was nice. He liked the grass. The grass was not, however, meat, and therefore held only marginal interest for him at this particular moment.
He was about halfway across the deck when he encountered Zoro.
Or, more accurately, he encountered someone standing exactly where Zoro would typically stand, leaning against the mast with arms crossed in precisely the way Zoro always leaned against the mast with arms crossed, positioned in exactly the spot where Zoro liked to nap and train and generally exist in a state of brooding swordsman-ness.
This person had Zoro's three swords—the white-hilted Wado Ichimonji, the cursed Sandai Kitetsu, and the black blade Shusui—propped against the mast beside them, arranged in the exact configuration that Zoro always arranged them. This person had Zoro's distinctive green hair, though it was now considerably longer, tumbling past broad (yet somehow delicate) shoulders in a cascade of emerald waves that caught the faint bioluminescent light filtering through the coating bubble and shimmered like sea-silk. This person had Zoro's single remaining eye—the left one, the right one hidden behind a closed lid marked by a long, dramatic scar—and that eye was focused on Luffy with an expression of pure, undiluted, almost radiant adoration.
This person also had breasts.
Enormous breasts.
Absolutely, categorically, devastatingly enormous breasts that strained against a white shirt that was very clearly not designed to contain them, the fabric pulled taut across a chest that could only be described as monumental. We are talking about breasts that defied not merely the laws of good taste but the actual, literal laws of physics—breasts that were so large, so round, so impossibly, magnificently, absurdly prominent that they seemed to generate their own gravitational field, a localized distortion in the fabric of spacetime that might have concerned a physicist but which Luffy, being Luffy, did not notice even slightly.
Below these breasts was a waist that curved inward with dramatic severity before flaring out into hips that were—and there was really no other word for it—ridiculous. Absolutely, preposterously, almost aggressively ridiculous hips, wide and round and thick in a way that seemed to actively challenge the structural integrity of the dark pants that attempted (valiantly, heroically, and with increasingly questionable success) to contain them. These were hips that didn't just enter a room—they announced themselves, heralded their own arrival, demanded attention and acknowledgment and possibly a moment of respectful silence from anyone in the vicinity who had functional eyes.
And below the hips were thighs. Thighs. Thighs that could only be described as thicc, because the conventional spelling of the word "thick" lacked the necessary emphasis to convey their sheer, staggering, almost aggressive thickness. These were thighs that could crush watermelons. These were thighs that could crush cannonballs. These were thighs that could probably crush the hopes and dreams of anyone who made the mistake of getting between them without an invitation, and they were attached to legs that went all the way down to bare feet planted on the deck with the wide, stable stance of a born swordfighter.
This was, impossibly, Zoro.
A Zoro who was now approximately five foot seven (down from the original five foot eleven), whose jaw had softened from its usual sharp angles into something rounder and more delicate, whose shoulders were still broad but in a way that now served primarily to accentuate the dramatic difference between upper body and the catastrophically curvy lower body, whose single visible eye was looking at Luffy with an expression that could only be described as heart-eyes, the kind of look that shojo manga heroines gave their love interests during the pivotal confession scene, the kind of look that communicated, wordlessly but with absolute clarity: I would follow you to the end of the world. I would fight a thousand enemies for you. I would die for you. Also, I think you're really, really cute.
"Good morning, Captain!" Zoro said, and even the voice was different—still recognizably Zoro's in terms of its cadence and inflection, still carrying that same undercurrent of barely restrained intensity that characterized everything Zoro said and did, but pitched higher now, softer, with a musical quality that hadn't been there before. There was also an unmistakable note of warmth in it, a fondness that the old Zoro would have rather died than express openly.
"Oh, Zoro!" Luffy said cheerfully, waving as he continued walking. "Morning! Or is it night? I can't tell."
"I don't think it matters down here," Zoro replied, pushing off from the mast and falling into step beside Luffy. The motion caused a cascade of secondary motions throughout Zoro's new anatomy—a bounce here, a jiggle there, a general rippling of curves that would have stopped most sentient beings dead in their tracks. Luffy did not stop dead in his tracks. Luffy did not slow down. Luffy did not even glance sideways. Luffy continued walking toward the kitchen with the single-minded determination of a guided missile locked onto a target, and the target was breakfast.
"Are you heading to the kitchen?" Zoro asked, keeping pace easily despite the fact that every step produced a hypnotic secondary motion in at least three separate areas of this new, impossibly curvaceous body. There was a hopeful quality to the question, as if the answer might determine the entire trajectory of Zoro's day.
"Yeah! I'm starving!" Luffy declared, patting his stomach, which growled again in emphatic agreement.
"I'll come with you," Zoro said, and the smile that accompanied this statement was radiant—genuinely, almost blindingly radiant, the kind of smile that could power a small city, the kind of smile that the old Zoro would have considered a sign of weakness and suppressed with extreme prejudice. This new Zoro smiled like it was the most natural thing in the world, and the specific configuration of this particular smile said, very clearly: I would walk with you to the kitchen. I would walk with you to the end of the Grand Line. I would walk with you off a cliff if you asked me to, and I would do it with this exact smile on my face.
"Shishishi! Okay!" Luffy laughed his signature laugh, completely and utterly oblivious.
They walked together across the deck, Luffy bouncing along with his characteristic energetic gait and Zoro keeping pace beside him, and every few steps Zoro would sneak a glance at Luffy—a sidelong, adoring, almost reverent glance that lingered on his profile, on the set of his jaw, on the way his straw hat sat on his head, on the X-shaped scar on his chest that was visible through his open vest, and each time this glance was accompanied by a faint blush that spread across Zoro's cheeks like sunrise.
They were ascending the stairs toward the upper deck where the kitchen was located when they encountered Robin and Nami.
The two women were sitting at a small table that had been set up near the mikan grove—Nami's precious tangerine trees, which she tended with the kind of obsessive devotion that most people reserved for children or small, easily killable pets. They appeared to be having tea, which was a perfectly normal activity for two crewmates to engage in during a voyage, and Robin was reading a book, which was also perfectly normal, and everything about the scene was entirely unremarkable except for the fact that both of them had, at some point during the night, become absolutely, catastrophically, weapons-grade thicc.
Nami had always been a beautiful woman. This was not a matter of opinion; it was a matter of empirical, observable, scientifically verifiable fact. She had always possessed a figure that turned heads and inspired nosebleeds (particularly in Sanji, whose nasal blood vessels operated on a hair-trigger that was tripped by the mere concept of feminine beauty). She had always been tall, long-legged, slim-waisted, and generously proportioned in the areas that society tended to focus on when discussing feminine beauty.
But this Nami—the Nami who was currently sitting at the table with a teacup held delicately in fingers that were somehow both more slender and more elegant than they had been the day before—this Nami had transcended "generously proportioned" and entered a realm of physical abundance that didn't have a proper name. Her waist was still narrow—impossibly so, like the neck of an hourglass designed by someone who had very strong opinions about the ratio of sand chamber to sand chamber—but everything above and below that waist had expanded dramatically, exponentially, apocalyptically.
Her chest was enormous. Not just large, not just big, not just impressive, but enormous in a way that seemed to warp the surrounding space, her bikini top (she was still wearing the bikini top from yesterday, which was performing a feat of structural engineering that would have earned it an award from the Grand Line Institute of Materials Science) straining heroically against a volume of flesh that it had clearly not been designed to accommodate. Each breast was larger than her head. Possibly larger than two of her heads. They sat high and round and impossibly perky on her chest, defying gravity with the casual ease of someone who had never particularly respected the laws of physics and saw no reason to start now.
And her lower body—God, her lower body. Hips that flared out from her tiny waist like the bell of a trumpet, wide and round and thick, curving into thighs that pressed together when she sat, creating a crease of soft flesh that spoke of incredible, almost structural thickness. Her rear, visible even while she was seated because it simply could not be hidden—not by the chair, not by the table, not by the fundamental concept of sitting down—was a monument to the word "thicc," round and heavy and prominent and so utterly, magnificently there that it seemed to redefine the spatial dimensions of the chair she occupied.
Her orange hair was longer than it had been, falling past her shoulders in glossy waves, and her brown eyes—sharp, intelligent, perpetually calculating the monetary value of everything within visual range—had softened when they landed on Luffy, melting like chocolate in the sun, transforming from the eyes of a hardened navigator and world-class thief into the eyes of someone who had just seen a puppy do something adorable.
"Luffy!" Nami called out, her voice carrying across the deck with a musical quality it hadn't possessed before—still recognizably Nami's voice, still capable of the terrifying sharpness she deployed when crew discipline was required, but underlaid now with a sweetness, a warmth, a honeyed quality that wrapped around Luffy's name like a silk ribbon around a gift. "Good morning, Captain~!"
The tilde at the end of that sentence was audible. It was physically, acoustically present in the air, a lilting upward inflection that transformed a simple greeting into something that bordered on a love confession.
Robin, for her part, had undergone a transformation that was no less dramatic but somehow more... composed. Robin had always been beautiful in a different way than Nami—more mature, more sophisticated, with an air of mystery and intelligence that spoke of archaeological digs in forbidden ruins and decades spent running from the World Government. She had always been tall and shapely, with long dark hair and knowing blue eyes and a serene smile that could either comfort you or make you deeply uncomfortable, depending on the context.
Now, that already impressive figure had been amplified to a degree that could only be described as obscene. Her breasts, previously large, were now colossal—great, round, heavy things that pressed against the purple leather of her outfit with a quiet insistence, the fabric creaking softly with each breath she took. Her hips had widened into something almost architectural, spreading out from her waist in a dramatic curve that spoke of abundance and softness and an absolute, total disregard for moderation. Her thighs, crossed elegantly as she sat reading her book, were thick enough that the lower one rested on the chair with a weight that was almost audible, soft flesh pressing against the seat in a way that made the furniture seem grateful for the privilege of supporting them.
Her dark hair was longer too, falling to her waist in a silken waterfall, and when she looked up from her book to see Luffy approaching, her smile—already enigmatic, already layered with decades of complex emotions—gained a new dimension of warmth, a new layer of tenderness, a softness around the eyes that the old Robin would have considered a vulnerability and therefore suppressed.
"Good morning, Captain-san," Robin said, her voice low and warm, like honey being poured over velvet. "I trust you slept well?"
"Morning, Robin! Morning, Nami!" Luffy chirped, breezing past without breaking stride. "I'm heading to the kitchen! I'm STARVING!"
He did not notice that Nami's thighs were now roughly the circumference of industrial support columns. He did not notice that Robin's chest had gained enough volume to qualify as a legitimate navigation hazard. He did not notice that both women were watching him walk away with expressions of such concentrated adoration that the air between their eyes and his retreating back practically shimmered with hearts and flowers and little sparkly effects.
"He's so cute when he's hungry," Nami sighed, resting her chin on her hand and watching Luffy's back recede toward the kitchen. Her elbow pressed into the soft, abundant flesh of her own breast as she did this, but she didn't seem to notice or care.
"He's always hungry, Navigator-san," Robin observed, turning a page in her book with one hand while the other held her teacup. Her smile had not diminished by even a fraction of a degree.
"I know," Nami said dreamily. "That's what makes it so cute."
Robin chuckled—a low, warm sound that resonated through her entire (vastly expanded) body. "Shall we join him?"
"Obviously."
Both women rose from their seats, and the act of standing up was, in itself, a production. It involved a complex redistribution of mass, a cascading series of jiggles and bounces and sways as flesh that had been compressed by sitting reasserted itself into its full, upright, and spectacularly curvaceous configuration. Nami's rear, freed from the constraints of the chair, settled into its natural position with a gentle bounce that lasted approximately three seconds longer than physics should have allowed. Robin's breasts, released from the slight compression of leaning over her book, surged forward with a momentum that seemed almost enthusiastic.
They fell into step behind Luffy and Zoro, and the four of them—the rubber captain who had noticed nothing, the impossibly thicc swordswoman who was radiating adoration like a space heater radiating warmth, the impossibly thicc navigator whose eyes had not left Luffy's back for even a moment, and the impossibly thicc archaeologist whose serene smile had taken on a quality that could only be described as besotted—made their way toward the kitchen.
From behind, the three women presented a spectacle that would have caused mass hysteria in any populated area. Zoro's hips swayed with each step, a hypnotic lateral motion that was accentuated by the contrast between muscular definition and extraordinary softness. Nami walked with the confident, almost aggressive stride of someone who was accustomed to commanding attention, but every step produced a jiggle in her rear that seemed to propagate upward through her body like a wave through jelly. Robin's walk was more measured, more graceful, but no less dramatic in its effects—she moved with the fluid elegance of a dancer, and every motion set off a chain reaction of gentle wobbles and sways throughout her dramatically enhanced figure.
Luffy noticed none of this. Luffy was thinking about meat.
"Sanji!" Luffy bellowed as he reached the kitchen door, his voice carrying through the wood with the boundless enthusiasm that characterized everything he did. He slammed the door open—not out of aggression, but out of simple inability to do anything at a reasonable volume or intensity—and burst into the Thousand Sunny's kitchen like a rubber cannonball.
"SANJI! FOOD! MEAT! I'M DYING!"
The Thousand Sunny's kitchen was, thanks to Franky's brilliant shipwright skills, a masterpiece of nautical culinary design. It was spacious and well-equipped, with a professional-grade stove, an enormous refrigerator (fortified with multiple locks, all of which Luffy had circumvented at least once), ample counter space, and a large dining table surrounded by chairs that could accommodate the entire crew. It was Sanji's domain, his kingdom, the place where the chef's artistry transformed raw ingredients into dishes that transcended mere sustenance and approached the sublime.
Sanji was currently standing at the stove, stirring something in a large pot, and Luffy's brain registered this sight with the simple, binary logic that governed most of his cognitive processes: Person at stove = food being made = good.
What Luffy's brain did not register—could not register, would never register, not in a million years, not if it were pointed out to him explicitly, with diagrams and arrows and flashing neon signs—was that the person standing at the stove was no longer the tall, lean, blonde man in a black suit who had been the crew's chef for the entirety of their journey together.
The person standing at the stove was gorgeous.
She was slightly shorter than the old Sanji—about five foot nine, down from five foot eleven—with the same golden blonde hair, though it was now longer, falling to mid-back in lustrous waves. The familiar curlicue eyebrow was still there, a spiraling accent above a visible eye that was now larger, bluer, and fringed with dark lashes. The facial features had softened—the sharp jaw replaced by a delicate, heart-shaped face, the prominent chin now petite and slightly pointed, the overall effect one of startling, almost aggressive beauty.
And the body.
Oh, the body.
If Zoro's transformation had been dramatic, and Nami and Robin's had been extreme, then Sanji's was apocalyptic. This was a body that had been designed by whatever cosmic force was responsible for such things in a state of absolute, uninhibited creative frenzy, a body that represented the complete and total abandonment of restraint, moderation, and subtlety.
The chest was immense. There was simply no other word for it. These were breasts that existed on a scale that challenged the viewer's ability to process visual information, two enormous, perfectly shaped spheres of soft flesh that stretched the fabric of a black dress shirt (the same dress shirt Sanji always wore, somehow still intact despite accommodating a bust that had roughly tripled in volume) to its absolute structural limits. Buttons strained heroically. Seams creaked ominously. The shirt was engaged in a war of attrition against the sheer volume of breast it was being asked to contain, and it was losing.
The waist was tiny—impossibly, almost worryingly tiny, a dramatic pinch point between the upper and lower hemispheres of what could only be described as an hourglass taken to its logical extreme. And below that waist, the hips flared out in a dramatic explosion of curve and flesh that made the hips look less like a part of a human body and more like a natural geological formation, something that had been shaped over millennia by the slow, patient forces of nature into a configuration of perfect, devastating roundness.
The thighs. Lord, the thighs. Sanji had always been the crew's kicking specialist, and whatever transformation had occurred had apparently decided that the primary weapon-bearing limbs deserved special attention. These thighs were massive—thick and round and impossibly soft-looking, pressing against each other with a gentle insistence that spoke of sheer, staggering volume. They were the kind of thighs that could kick through battleship armor and then be used as a pillow immediately afterward, and they were currently visible below the hemline of a black skirt that had replaced Sanji's usual trousers.
The rear was—well, it was there. It was very, very there. It was aggressively there, jutting out behind the tiny waist with a prominence that seemed almost confrontational, round and heavy and thick in a way that redefined the word "thick" and then laughed at the new definition for not going far enough. It was the kind of rear that had its own zip code, its own gravitational pull, its own entry in whatever encyclopedia the Grand Line used to catalogue extraordinary phenomena.
And Sanji was not smoking.
This detail—arguably the most subtle and therefore the most shocking of all the changes—would have been immediately apparent to anyone who had spent more than five minutes in Sanji's company over the past several years. The cigarette, the eternal, ever-present cigarette that had dangled from Sanji's lips like a permanent fixture, the thin white cylinder that served as both stress relief and aesthetic accessory, the smoke that had curled upward from its glowing tip as a constant atmospheric effect accompanying every meal preparation, every fight, every nosebleed-inducing encounter with a beautiful woman—it was gone.
The lips that had held that cigarette were now full and soft and painted a subtle pink, and they curved into a smile of such radiant warmth when they registered Luffy's entrance that the kitchen seemed to brighten by several degrees.
"Luffy~!" Sanji sang out—sang, because there was no other word for the melodious, lilting, almost musical quality of the voice that emerged from those lips—"Breakfast is almost ready! I made all your favorites!"
Luffy's eyes locked onto the pot on the stove with the single-minded intensity of a hawk spotting a mouse. "MEAT?!"
"Of course meat, Captain~!" Sanji confirmed, turning back to the stove with a little twirl that sent blonde hair cascading in a golden arc and caused approximately seventeen different parts of that impossible body to bounce, jiggle, and sway in a complex, cascading sequence of secondary motions that lasted a good four seconds after the twirl itself had concluded. "I made a special menu just for you. Three types of roasted meat, grilled fish, sautéed vegetables, rice, and a dessert that—"
"THREE TYPES OF MEAT?!" Luffy's eyes literally turned into the shape of meat on the bone, stars and sparkles erupting around his head in a visual manifestation of pure, unbridled culinary excitement. "SANJI, YOU'RE THE BEST!"
Sanji's entire face turned the color of a ripe tomato. A full-body blush swept from hairline to collarbone, and one hand came up to press against a cheek in a gesture of flustered delight that the old Sanji would have died—literally, physically died—before performing.
"Y-you really think so, Captain~?" Sanji stammered, and there it was again, that audible tilde, that little upward lilt at the end of the sentence that transformed a simple question into something soft and sweet and vulnerable.
"Yeah! Food is the best and you make the best food so you're the best!" Luffy declared, applying the same brand of simple, irrefutable logic that he applied to everything in his life.
Sanji made a noise that could only be transcribed as "kyaaa~" and pressed both hands to flushed cheeks, swaying slightly in place. The motion caused a seismic event in the chest region that would have registered on instruments designed to measure tectonic activity.
At the dining table, three other crew members were already seated, and each of them had undergone transformations no less dramatic than the ones already described.
Usopp was seated at the far end of the table, and the changes to the crew's sniper were... comprehensive. Usopp's long nose remained—still prominent, still distinctive, still the nasal hallmark of the Usopp legacy—but everything else had shifted dramatically. The wiry, lean frame had been replaced by a figure that could only be described as luxuriously curvy, with wide hips and thick thighs that pressed against the edges of the chair and a chest that, while perhaps not quite as astronomically large as Sanji's or Nami's, was still substantial—large, round, and prominently displayed beneath the straps of Usopp's overalls, which had somehow adjusted to accommodate the new configuration without losing their essential Usopp-ness.
Usopp's dark, curly hair was longer now, falling in thick ringlets past newly softened shoulders, and the face—still recognizably Usopp's, still long and expressive and capable of producing the full range of exaggerated reactions that Usopp's face was famous for—had been refined into something almost pretty, the jaw softer, the cheekbones more defined, the lips fuller. The muscles that Usopp had worked so hard to develop during the two-year training period were still there, visible beneath a layer of soft flesh that rounded out the edges, but they were arranged differently now, distributed across a frame that was wider at the hips than the shoulders, creating a silhouette that was undeniably, unmistakably feminine.
And undeniably, unmistakably, catastrophically thicc.
Usopp was currently telling a story—because Usopp was always telling a story—but the usual bombast and bluster had been replaced by an earnest, almost breathless quality.
"—and then I said to the giant beetle, 'You don't scare the Great Captain Usopp-sama! I once defeated ten thousand Marines with a single shot!' And the beetle was so impressed that it—oh, LUFFY!" Usopp's face lit up like a lighthouse, the long nose seeming to glow with excitement. "Good morning, Captain!"
The adoration in Usopp's voice was unmistakable—not the reluctant, I'll-never-admit-it respect that the old Usopp had harbored for Luffy, but open, unabashed, almost worshipful affection, the kind of affection that turned Usopp's entire face into a heart-shaped emoji.
"Morning, Usopp!" Luffy said, already sliding into his seat at the head of the table. "Is the food ready yet? Sanji said three types of meat!"
Next to Usopp sat Chopper, and the crew's doctor had undergone what could only be described as an aggressively adorable transformation. In his usual hybrid form—the small, vaguely humanoid shape he defaulted to when not in combat—Chopper had always been cute. Relentlessly, almost weaponizedly cute, with his big round eyes and tiny body and blue nose and the pink hat with the white X on it. This was a known quantity. This was established fact. Chopper was cute in the way that the sun was bright—it was simply a fundamental property of his existence.
But this Chopper—this new, transformed Chopper—had taken that baseline cuteness and multiplied it by a factor of approximately one thousand before adding curves that had absolutely no business existing on a creature that stood three feet tall in this form.
She (and yes, she, because whatever had happened during the night had been thorough) was still small, still covered in soft brown fur, still wearing the pink hat, still possessing the blue nose. But the proportions had shifted. The hips were wider, the thighs rounder, and there was a distinct, unmistakable softness to the chest area that the old Chopper had not possessed. In this small form, the effect was less "devastatingly sexy" and more "impossibly cute in a way that was technically curvy," but the adoration directed at Luffy was no less intense for the reduced scale.
"LUFFY!" Chopper squealed, hopping in the chair with excitement. "Good morning! Did you sleep okay? Do you have any injuries? Let me check your temperature! Actually, you look fine, but let me check anyway because I want to take care of you because you're the best captain in the whole world and I love being on your crew and—"
"Shishishi! I'm fine, Chopper!" Luffy laughed, reaching over to pat the tiny reindeer-girl on the head, which caused Chopper to make a noise that was halfway between a squeal of delight and a complete emotional breakdown.
"Saying that doesn't make me happy at all, you jerk~!" Chopper protested, performing the signature wiggling happy-dance that always accompanied this lie, except now the wiggle had a pronounced sway to it, the wider hips generating a motion that was more gyration than wiggle. "Definitely not happy! Not even a little!"
The blush visible through the fur was nuclear.
At the other end of the table sat Franky, and the crew's shipwright presented perhaps the most structurally impressive transformation of the entire lot.
Franky had always been big. Before the transformation, Franky had been a seven-foot-four cyborg built like a battle tank, with arms that could punch through walls and a body that was at least seventy percent machinery. The post-timeskip Franky had been even bigger, even more mechanical, even more imposing—a walking fortress of steel and flesh and raw, unrestrained SUPER energy.
The new Franky was still big. Still tall—probably six foot two now, down from the towering seven-four, but still tall by any reasonable standard. Still obviously, unmistakably mechanical in places—the forearms were still oversized and armored, still containing the weapons and tools that Franky relied on, and the legs still had the distinctive mechanical joints and plating that characterized Franky's cybernetic lower half. The signature pompadour was still there, a magnificent tower of blue hair that added several inches to the overall height.
But everything that wasn't mechanical—which was, admittedly, a minority of Franky's overall mass, but a significant minority—had been transformed into curves. Dramatic curves. Astonishing curves. The torso, which had previously been a broad, flat expanse of cybernetic armor and exposed machinery, was now a genuine hourglass—still incorporating mechanical elements, still featuring the visible cola-powered engine that served as Franky's power source, but shaped around a figure that possessed both enormous breasts (encased in what appeared to be a custom-built mechanical bikini top that was itself a feat of engineering) and hips that flared out from the mechanical waist with a width that was genuinely startling.
The thighs, where flesh met machine, were thick—the organic portions round and soft and absolutely massive, transitioning seamlessly into the mechanical knee joints and lower legs. The effect was something like a pinup girl built into a mech suit—all soft, abundant curves above and below, with hard mechanical edges in between, creating a contrast that was simultaneously imposing and incredibly, devastatingly thicc.
"SUUUUPER morning, Luffy-bro!" Franky announced, striking the signature pose—forearms pressed together over the head, hips cocked to one side—and the effect of this pose on the new body was significant. Everything jiggled. The mechanical parts didn't, obviously, but everything that could jiggle absolutely did, and the result was a complex, cascading display of bouncing flesh and gleaming metal that lasted approximately five seconds.
"OW! This is going to be a SUUUUPER day! I can feel it in my SUUUUPER bones!"
"Franky! Nice pose!" Luffy said, giving a thumbs up before turning his attention back to the stove, where Sanji was plating the meal with the artistic precision of a master chef. "IS THE FOOD DONE YET?!"
"Patience, Captain~!" Sanji chided gently, and the word "patience" was spoken with such tender affection that it barely qualified as a reprimand.
And then there was Brook.
Brook was—and this was perhaps the most remarkable transformation of all, not because of its scale but because of its sheer impossibility—no longer a skeleton.
This fact alone warranted a moment of pause, a period of quiet contemplation, perhaps a brief philosophical interlude on the nature of reality and its apparently flexible relationship with the concept of "things that should not be possible."
Brook had been dead for fifty years. Brook had been a skeleton for fifty years. Brook's Devil Fruit, the Yomi Yomi no Mi, had allowed Brook's soul to return to the world of the living, but it had returned to a body that was already decomposed, leaving Brook as an animate skeleton—all bones, no flesh, perpetually grinning because a skull has no choice in the matter. This was an established fact. This was a defining characteristic. Brook was a skeleton. It was, in many ways, the thing about Brook.
And yet.
The person sitting at the table, holding a teacup with elegant, flesh-covered fingers, was undeniably, impossibly, miraculously not a skeleton.
She had skin. She had flesh. She had a body—a full, complete, living, breathing body that was covered in smooth, dark skin and wrapped in the same formal black suit and frilled cravat that Brook always wore, except the suit had been dramatically altered to accommodate a figure that was just as catastrophically curvaceous as every other transformed crew member's.
The face was narrow and elegant, with high cheekbones and a long, aristocratic nose and dark eyes that sparkled with the same joyful, mischievous energy that had always animated Brook's skull. The afro was still there—the magnificent, towering black afro that Brook had maintained for fifty years as a promise to Laboon, the whale waiting at the Twin Capes—and it crowned a face that was, quite simply, beautiful. Hauntingly, ethereally, almost impossibly beautiful, in the way that a piece of music could be beautiful, all sharp angles and graceful lines and an expression of perpetual, gentle amusement.
And the body. The body that should not exist but apparently did. It was tall—Brook had always been tall, the tallest member of the crew, and while some height had been lost (she was now about six feet even, down from the original nine foot one, which was still tall by any reasonable standard), the verticality was still there, expressed now through incredibly long legs that went on for what seemed like miles, long and shapely and thick in the thigh, tapering to slender calves and delicate ankles. The hips were wide. The waist was narrow. The chest was generous—not quite as astronomically large as Sanji's or Nami's, but substantial, prominent, clearly visible beneath the frilled shirt, and very much real in a way that Brook's chest had not been real for the better part of a century.
Brook looked down at the teacup, then up at Luffy, and the smile that crossed that impossible, living, flesh-and-blood face was one of pure, unbridled adoration.
"Yohohoho!" Brook laughed, and even the laugh was different—still recognizably Brook's signature "yohoho," still carrying the same musical cadence, but richer now, deeper, resonating through an actual chest cavity with actual lungs rather than rattling through an empty ribcage. "Good morning, Luffy-san! What a wonderful day to be alive! And I mean that quite literally now, since I appear to have a body again! Yohohoho! Though I must say, having skin again is quite the adjustment. I'd forgotten how much things itch. Oh, but may I see your—"
Brook paused, as if catching an old reflex, and then laughed again.
"Old habits, yohohoho! Though I suppose I could ask myself now... do I wear panties? I should check. Yohohoho!"
"BROOK! You're funny!" Luffy laughed, already halfway out of his seat in anticipation of the food that Sanji was carrying toward the table.
The food arrived, and every other thought, observation, or potential realization that might have penetrated Luffy's consciousness was instantly and completely obliterated by the sight and smell of meat.
Three types of meat. Three. A massive roasted leg of some deep-sea creature that Sanji had acquired from their provisions, glazed in a sauce that shimmered with spices and herbs. A platter of grilled fish steaks, each one as thick as Luffy's fist, charred to perfection on the outside and tender and flaky within. And a mountain—a literal, geological mountain—of sautéed meat strips, seasoned with salt and pepper and something fragrant that Luffy couldn't identify and didn't care to identify because it smelled amazing and that was enough.
"MEEEEAAAT!" Luffy declared with the kind of reverence that most people reserved for religious experiences, and then he was eating.
Eating, for Luffy, was not the genteel activity that the word typically described. It was not a measured process of placing food in the mouth, chewing thoroughly, and swallowing politely. It was a force of nature. It was a natural disaster. It was a rubber man expanding his jaw to three times its normal width and shoveling food into it with both hands at a rate that defied biological possibility, his arms stretching across the table to grab dishes that were technically in front of other people, his cheeks ballooning to accommodate volumes of food that would have been lethal to a normal human being, his entire body seemingly vibrating with the sheer ecstatic pleasure of consuming large quantities of delicious food.
"Mmph! So good! Sanji! This is amazing! More! More meat! Is there more?!"
"There's plenty more, Captain~!" Sanji assured him, already returning to the stove to prepare the next wave of dishes. The chef's new body moved through the kitchen with the same fluid grace that the old Sanji's had—the same precise footwork, the same elegant economy of motion, the same instinctive understanding of spatial relationships that came from years of working in a professional kitchen. The fact that this body was now equipped with hips that could barely fit between the counter and the stove without causing a minor structural incident, and a chest that required the chef to stand slightly farther from the stovetop than usual to avoid catastrophe, did nothing to diminish the efficiency of the cooking. If anything, the movements had become more graceful, more fluid, as if the new body's additional mass had been seamlessly incorporated into the chef's physical vocabulary.
"Luffy-san eats with such enthusiasm!" Brook observed, watching the captain consume his weight in meat with an expression of fond amazement. "It reminds me of a song I once wrote about the joy of dining. Would you like to hear it? It goes—"
"Later, Brook! Eating!" Luffy managed between enormous mouthfuls.
"Yohohoho! Of course!"
Around the table, the rest of the crew—the newly transformed, universally gorgeous, categorically thicc, and unanimously Luffy-adoring crew—settled into their own meals, and the scene that unfolded was simultaneously the most normal and most abnormal breakfast in the history of the Thousand Sunny.
Normal, because the fundamental dynamics were unchanged. Luffy ate like a vacuum cleaner with a rubber man's metabolism. Zoro (now seated to Luffy's right, having claimed this position with a territorial intensity that the old Zoro would have applied to a good napping spot) ate steadily and efficiently, one hand resting on the swords propped against the table beside the chair, always ready. Nami (seated to Luffy's left, having arrived at this position through a navigational calculation that put her closest to both the captain and the door, in case a strategic retreat became necessary) ate delicately, calculating the caloric content of each bite with the same precision she applied to navigational charts. Robin ate with quiet elegance, a book open beside her plate, occasionally sprouting an extra arm to turn pages while the original two were occupied with utensils. Usopp told exaggerated stories between bites, each tale more implausible than the last. Chopper listened with wide-eyed credulity. Franky periodically shouted "SUUUUPER!" at volumes that rattled the dishes. Brook made skull jokes that were no longer technically accurate but no less entertaining.
Abnormal, because every single person at the table (excluding Luffy) was now a ridiculously, absurdly, almost punitively thicc woman who gazed at the captain with eyes that radiated enough collective adoration to power a small sun.
The adoration manifested in different ways, each one characteristic of the person expressing it.
Zoro's adoration was fierce and protective—a warrior's devotion, intense and unwavering, expressed through proximity and vigilance. Every few seconds, that single emerald eye would slide toward Luffy, checking that the captain was safe, happy, and well-fed, and upon confirming all three, would soften into an expression of such tender warmth that it seemed almost physically painful for a face that had spent years perfecting the art of the intimidating scowl.
Nami's adoration was exasperated and fond—the love of someone who had long since accepted that the object of their affection was a disaster of a human being and loved them because of it, not in spite of it. She watched Luffy eat with a mixture of horror (at the mess), annoyance (at the noise), and overwhelming tenderness (at everything else), and occasionally reached over to wipe a spot of sauce from his cheek with a napkin, a gesture that the old Nami would have replaced with a punch.
Robin's adoration was quiet and deep—an ocean of feeling beneath a placid surface. She watched Luffy over the top of her book with her characteristic serene smile, but there was a depth to it now, a vulnerability in the blue eyes that spoke of someone who had spent most of their life alone, who had been hunted and betrayed and had given up on the concept of belonging, and who had found, against all odds, a person worth belonging to.
Usopp's adoration was enthusiastic and hero-worshipping—the devotion of a self-proclaimed coward who had found, in Luffy, someone brave enough to make cowardice feel safe. Every story Usopp told was, at its core, about Luffy—about the captain's strength, the captain's kindness, the captain's unshakeable faith in the people around him—and each one was told with the breathless, wide-eyed wonder of someone who still couldn't quite believe they were lucky enough to sail with this person.
Chopper's adoration was pure and uncomplicated—the love of someone who had been called a monster by the world and had been called a friend by Luffy, and for whom that single act of acceptance had rewritten the entire meaning of existence. Chopper watched Luffy eat with eyes that were approximately eighty percent sparkle and twenty percent tears of happiness.
Sanji's adoration was devoted and nurturing—expressed through food, through service, through the relentless, passionate desire to ensure that Luffy was fed and nourished and cared for in the most fundamental way that Sanji knew how. Every dish was prepared with love—not the metaphorical love that all good chefs put into their cooking, but a literal, specific, targeted love that was directed entirely at the rubber-bodied idiot inhaling meat at the head of the table.
Franky's adoration was bold and unabashed—a SUUUUPER love, expressed at full volume and full intensity, with no room for subtlety or restraint. Franky loved Luffy the way Franky did everything: loudly, with maximum enthusiasm, and with a complete disregard for the conventional rules of emotional expression.
Brook's adoration was musical and joyful—a song in human form, a melody of affection that played in every word and every laugh and every "yohohoho" that rang through the kitchen. Brook loved Luffy with the open-hearted gratitude of someone who had spent fifty years alone in the dark and had been brought back into the light by a boy in a straw hat who had refused to take no for an answer.
None of them commented on the transformations. None of them seemed confused or alarmed by the changes to their bodies. They simply were, as if this were the most natural thing in the world, as if they had always been this way, as if the concept of a crew of ridiculously thicc women sailing the Grand Line under the captaincy of a rubber-bodied, meat-obsessed, emotionally oblivious future Pirate King was so perfectly, harmoniously right that questioning it would be absurd.
And Luffy—sweet, beautiful, incredibly dense, magnificently oblivious Luffy—sat at the center of this adoring congregation of impossibly curvaceous women and noticed absolutely nothing.
He didn't notice that Zoro's voice was higher. He didn't notice that Sanji had stopped smoking. He didn't notice that Brook had skin. He didn't notice that every single member of his crew was now a woman, or that every single one of those women was built like a Renaissance painting brought to life by someone with very specific and very enthusiastic preferences, or that every single one of those women was looking at him like he had personally hung the moon and stars in the sky and they would like to thank him for it.
He noticed the meat.
"Sanji! More meat!"
"Coming right up, Captain~! ♥"
He noticed that the coating bubble was still intact.
"Oh cool, we're still underwater! I wonder if we'll see a Sea King!"
He noticed that he was excited about Fishman Island.
"Ne, ne, do you think they have meat on Fishman Island? Like, special fish meat? Do mermaids poop? Shishishi!"
"L-Luffy, don't ask things like that at the breakfast table!" Nami scolded, but there was no heat in it, only fondness, and the hand that reached out to smack his arm was gentle—a love tap, barely enough to dent a normal person, let alone a rubber man. Her enormous breasts bounced with the motion of the smack, creating a seismic ripple effect that traveled through her entire upper body and lasted approximately four seconds. Luffy did not notice.
"But I wanna know!" Luffy protested, laughing.
"I believe the biological processes of merfolk are quite fascinating, Captain-san," Robin offered, smiling her serene, adoring smile. "I've read several archaeological texts on the subject. Their digestive systems are actually—"
"Robin! Not at breakfast!" Nami cut in, though she was smiling too, helplessly, the way everyone smiled around Luffy—involuntarily, irresistibly, as if the rubber man generated a field of joy that overrode the normal facial expressions of everyone within range.
"Yohohoho! I, for one, am simply happy to be eating with my mouth instead of... well, I'm not sure how I ate before, actually. That's a mystery even to me! Yohohoho!"
"You didn't eat, Brook," Chopper pointed out. "You're a skele—wait." The tiny reindeer-doctor paused, staring at Brook with wide eyes that widened even further, which shouldn't have been physically possible but was. "BROOK! YOU HAVE SKIN! AND FLESH! AND—HOW?! AS A DOCTOR I NEED TO EXAMINE YOU IMMEDIATELY! THIS IS A MEDICAL MIRACLE! OR POSSIBLY AN EMERGENCY! I CAN'T TELL WHICH!"
"Yohohoho! I was wondering when someone would mention that!" Brook said cheerfully, holding up one newly flesh-covered hand and examining it with theatrical wonder. "I woke up this morning and thought, 'My, these are lovely fingers! And they're attached to hands! And the hands are attached to arms that have muscles! What a wonderful surprise!' Of course, I nearly had a heart attack, but then I remembered that I now have a heart to attack, which made the whole experience even more exciting! Yohohoho!"
"THIS IS SERIOUS!" Chopper shrieked, but the shriek was adorable—everything Chopper did was adorable, and the transformation had dialed the adorable up to eleven. "I need to run tests! Blood tests! Bone density tests! Skin elasticity tests! Do you have organs?! DO YOU HAVE A LIVER?!"
"I certainly hope so! I do enjoy drinking, yohohoho!"
"Oi, oi," Usopp cut in, leaning across the table, the motion pressing thick thighs against the table's edge and causing significant lateral displacement of breast tissue. "Forget Brook's liver—has anyone noticed that we're all—"
"ALL REALLY HUNGRY?" Luffy interrupted, having already devoured his entire portion and most of Usopp's besides. "YEAH! SANJI! MORE!"
"—never mind," Usopp sighed, but it was a sigh of affection, and the exasperation on that long-nosed face melted almost immediately into the same tender, adoring expression that everyone else was wearing. "He's hopeless. That's what makes him perfect."
"Agreed," said everyone at the table simultaneously, including Zoro, who then looked mortified for approximately half a second before deciding that being mortified was a waste of energy that could be better spent looking at Luffy.
Sanji arrived with the second course—another mountain of meat, because Sanji understood Luffy's needs on a fundamental, almost molecular level—and Luffy fell upon it with renewed enthusiasm, his rubber arms stretching to grab multiple dishes at once, his cheeks expanding like a chipmunk storing acorns for a particularly ambitious winter.
"This is the BEST!" Luffy declared, meat juice running down his chin, his straw hat slightly askew, his eyes shining with the pure, uncomplicated joy that only food could produce. "I love my crew! You guys are the best!"
Eight hearts simultaneously skipped a beat. Eight faces simultaneously flushed. Eight bodies—ranging from tall to short, from mechanical to reindeer, from impossibly busty to impossibly hippy to impossibly everything, united only in their shared state of being absolutely, categorically, ridiculously thicc—simultaneously experienced a rush of warmth that started in the chest and spread outward to every extremity.
"He said he loves us," Nami whispered to Robin, her hand pressed to her chest, her eyes shining.
"He says that quite often, Navigator-san," Robin replied, but her smile had widened by approximately one millimeter, which for Robin was the equivalent of a full-scale emotional breakdown.
"I know," Nami whispered. "It never gets old."
"SUUUUPER CAPTAIN!" Franky announced, striking a pose that sent mechanical arms skyward and organic curves bouncing. Tears streamed down a face that was now considerably softer and more feminine than it had been twenty-four hours ago, but no less expressive. "This is what it means to be a Straw Hat! This is the SUUUUPER feeling of family!"
"Yohohoho! I'm so happy I could cry! And I can actually produce tears now, so I think I will! Yohohoho!" Brook proceeded to do exactly that, dabbing at dark, tear-filled eyes with a handkerchief while maintaining a smile of absolute bliss.
"Captain Usopp has always said that Luffy is the greatest captain on all the seas!" Usopp declared, chest puffed out with pride (the puffing having a considerably more dramatic visual effect now than it ever had before). "In fact, I was just telling—"
"MEAT!" Luffy said, because he had already finished the second course and was ready for the third.
And so it went. Breakfast aboard the Thousand Sunny, twenty thousand feet beneath the surface of the ocean, in a bubble of air and light surrounded by the crushing darkness of the deep sea. A captain who would be King of the Pirates, eating meat with the single-minded determination of a man who had identified his purpose in life and pursued it without hesitation or distraction. A crew of impossibly, ridiculously, catastrophically thicc women who adored that captain with every fiber of their dramatically enhanced beings, who watched him eat with hearts in their eyes and smiles on their faces, who loved him openly and enthusiastically and without reservation.
And Luffy—wonderful, oblivious, rubber-brained, meat-obsessed Luffy—sat in the middle of it all and noticed nothing.
He would probably never notice.
And somehow, somehow, that made them all love him even more.
"Ne, Nami!" Luffy said, leaning back in his chair, patting his distended stomach with both hands, wearing the blissful expression of a man who had just consumed approximately forty pounds of meat and felt great about it. "How long until we reach Fishman Island?"
"Based on our current depth and speed, I'd estimate another day or two," Nami replied, consulting a mental map with the practiced ease of the world's most talented navigator. She tucked a strand of orange hair behind her ear and smiled at him, and the smile contained multitudes—pride, affection, exasperation, love, and the bone-deep satisfaction of being asked a question that only she could answer by a person she would follow to the ends of the earth. "But the currents down here are unpredictable, so it could be sooner. Or later. We'll have to be careful."
"Careful is boring!" Luffy declared. "Let's go FAST!"
"No," Nami said, with the gentle firmness of someone who had long since mastered the art of denying Luffy things for his own good.
"Awwwww! But Nami—!"
"No."
"Pleeeeease?"
"No. And stop making that face."
Luffy was making The Face—the wide-eyed, lower-lip-extended, puppy-dog expression that he deployed when verbal persuasion failed, which was always, because Luffy's verbal persuasion skills were roughly on par with his navigation skills, which was to say nonexistent. The Face was a weapon of mass manipulation, capable of breaking down the defenses of hardened criminals and seasoned Marines, and it was currently aimed at Nami from a distance of approximately two feet.
Nami lasted approximately 3.7 seconds.
"F-fine! We can go a little faster! But if we crash into a Sea King because of the increased speed, it's your fault!"
"YOSH! Nami's the best!" Luffy cheered, leaping out of his chair with an energy that should not have been possible for someone who had just consumed his own body weight in food. He threw his arms around Nami in a hug that was as brief as it was enthusiastic, his rubber arms wrapping around her shoulders (and, by geometric necessity, making contact with a significant portion of her dramatically expanded upper body, a contact that he registered with exactly the same emotional response as he would have registered hugging a tree or a large rock, which was to say none at all) before releasing her and bounding toward the door.
Nami sat frozen in her chair, face the color of a fire truck, steam rising from both ears, one hand pressed to the spot on her shoulder where Luffy's arm had been, the other hand clutching the edge of the table hard enough to leave finger marks in the wood.
"He hugged me," she said, in a voice that was barely a whisper.
"He hugs everyone, Navigator-san," Robin observed, but even she was smiling slightly wider than usual.
"He hugged me," Nami repeated, and the smile that spread across her face was the kind of smile that poets wrote about, the kind that launched ships and toppled kingdoms, the kind that contained so much pure, undiluted happiness that it seemed almost too big for her face to contain.
"ALRIGHT!" Luffy shouted from the doorway, silhouetted against the faint bioluminescent glow of the deep sea beyond the coating bubble, his straw hat casting a shadow across his face, his scar visible through his open vest, his grin so wide and so bright that it seemed to illuminate the entire ship. "LET'S HEAD TO FISHMAN ISLAND! FULL SPEED AHEAD!"
He turned and ran out onto the deck, already looking for the figurehead so he could claim his spot at the front of the ship—because that was where the captain sat, at the very front, facing forward, looking toward the horizon (or, in this case, the impenetrable darkness of the deep ocean, which wasn't nearly as poetic but was no less exciting).
Behind him, eight ridiculously thicc women exchanged glances—some fond, some exasperated, some tearful, all adoring—and then, as one, rose from the table to follow their captain.
Because that was what the Straw Hat crew did. They followed Monkey D. Luffy.
Through danger and darkness, through storms and calms, through the crushing depths of the ocean and the soaring heights of the sky. They followed him because he had asked them to. They followed him because he believed in them. They followed him because he had looked at each of them—at the swordsman who had lost everything, at the navigator who had been enslaved, at the sniper who was afraid, at the chef who was starving, at the doctor who was called a monster, at the archaeologist who wanted to die, at the shipwright who had lost his dream, at the musician who had lost everything including the ability to lose things—and he had seen not what they were, but what they could be, and he had reached out his hand and said, simply, inevitably, irresistibly: Come with me.
And they had.
And they would continue to follow him, through whatever came next—Fishman Island, the New World, the final island, the One Piece itself—because that was the unbreakable, unshakeable, fundamental truth at the heart of the Straw Hat crew:
Where Luffy went, they followed.
Even if he never noticed their new figures.
Especially if he never noticed.
Because that obliviousness, that pure-hearted, meat-obsessed, adventure-chasing, dream-pursuing obliviousness, was exactly what made him Luffy.
And they wouldn't change a single thing about him.
Not one single thing.
"FISHMAN ISLAND! HERE WE COME! SHISHISHISHI!"
The Thousand Sunny sailed on, descending deeper into the dark waters, carrying a future Pirate King and his crew of impossibly curvaceous, hopelessly devoted women toward the adventure of a lifetime.
Luffy sat on the lion figurehead, legs dangling over the edge, straw hat on his head, grinning into the darkness.
He was thinking about meat.
And Fishman Island.
And the One Piece.
And absolutely nothing else.
Behind him, eight pairs of heart-shaped eyes watched his back with enough collective love to heat the entire ocean, and if he felt their gazes at all—which he almost certainly did not—he probably would have assumed it was a warm current.
The deep sea stretched out before them, dark and mysterious and full of wonders, and somewhere far below, Fishman Island waited.
But that's a story for another chapter.
To be continued...