It started with a sneeze.
A tiny, adorable, barely audible sneeze that sounded less like a bodily function and more like a kitten being gently surprised by a butterfly. It came from the crew's doctor, who was currently seated cross-legged on the infirmary floor, surrounded by medical textbooks and handwritten notes that she had been reviewing with the obsessive thoroughness that characterized everything Chopper did when it came to medicine.
"Achoo~!"
Chopper sniffled, rubbed her blue nose with one small hoof-hand, and returned to her reading. She was attempting to make sense of what had happened to the crew—the transformations, the sudden and inexplicable shift in everyone's biology—but the textbooks were proving unhelpful, which was frustrating, because textbooks were supposed to have answers, and these textbooks were just sitting there being full of information that was completely irrelevant to the situation at hand.
"There's nothing in here about spontaneous gender transformation," Chopper muttered, flipping a page with slightly more force than necessary. "Nothing about overnight development of secondary sexual characteristics at accelerated rates. Nothing about—"
She paused.
Something felt... different.
It was a subtle sensation at first—a warmth that started somewhere deep in her core and radiated outward, like sinking into a hot bath after a long day. It spread through her limbs, her torso, her extremities, a gentle tingling that was neither painful nor unpleasant but was definitely something, definitely happening, definitely new.
Chopper looked down at herself.
Then she looked down further.
Then she looked down further.
"Eh?"
The floor was farther away than it had been thirty seconds ago.
This was not, in itself, unusual for Chopper. As a Zoan-type Devil Fruit user who had consumed the Hito Hito no Mi—the Human-Human Fruit—Chopper possessed the ability to transform between multiple forms, ranging from a tiny reindeer to a massive humanoid monster. Shifting size was literally what Chopper did. It was the core mechanic of her entire fighting style.
But those shifts were deliberate. Those shifts required conscious effort, or at the very least a Rumble Ball—the special medicine Chopper had developed to access additional transformation points beyond the standard three. Chopper had not eaten a Rumble Ball. Chopper had not consciously activated any transformation. Chopper had been sitting on the floor reading a textbook, and the floor had simply... receded.
"EHHHH?!"
Chopper scrambled to her feet—and the scramble itself felt wrong, because there was more of her to scramble with than there had been moments ago. She stumbled, caught off-balance by a center of gravity that had shifted significantly since the last time she'd been standing, and grabbed the edge of the examination table for support.
Her hand gripped the table edge at a height that was, unmistakably, higher than where her hand would have reached in her usual hybrid form. She was taller. Not dramatically taller—not yet—but noticeably, measurably, undeniably taller. Where she had stood approximately three feet in her default form, she was now pushing three and a half feet, and as she watched—as she physically, visually watched—the number continued to climb.
Three feet six inches.
Three feet eight.
Three feet ten.
Four feet.
"W-what's happening?!" Chopper yelped, staring at her reflection in the glass door of the medicine cabinet. The face staring back was still recognizably hers—the blue nose, the wide dark eyes, the soft brown fur, the pink hat with the white X—but it was... different. Longer. More defined. The roundness of her cheeks had begun to sharpen slightly, the jawline emerging from beneath baby fat like a coastline revealed by a receding tide.
And then there were the other changes.
The curves that had appeared overnight—modest by the standards of the rest of the crew, but significant for someone who had previously been a three-foot-tall reindeer—were growing. As Chopper watched, transfixed and horrified and scientifically fascinated in roughly equal measure, the gentle swell of her chest pushed outward, the fabric of her pink top stretching to accommodate a volume that was increasing in real time. The hips widened, the thighs thickened, and the overall silhouette in the medicine cabinet's reflection shifted from "cute small thing with curves" to "increasingly tall thing with increasingly substantial curves" with a speed that was medically impossible and therefore deeply concerning.
Four feet two inches.
Four feet four.
Four feet six.
"This isn't—I haven't taken a Rumble Ball!" Chopper protested to no one, patting herself down with both hands as if checking for a Rumble Ball that might have been accidentally ingested. "This shouldn't be happening! There's no pharmaceutical explanation! There's no biological mechanism! This is—this is—"
Four feet eight inches.
Four feet ten.
Five feet.
"THIS IS A MEDICAL EMERGENCY!"
She burst out of the infirmary door with the wild-eyed urgency of a doctor confronting a symptom she couldn't diagnose, and immediately tripped.
The tripping was caused by several concurrent factors: the sudden increase in height had lengthened her legs, which meant her usual stride carried her farther than her muscle memory expected; the widening of her hips had altered her gait, requiring adjustments that her brain hadn't had time to make; and the growth of her chest had shifted her center of gravity forward, creating a top-heavy imbalance that physics addressed through the simple expedient of gravity.
She went down face-first, caught herself with her hands, and scrambled back up—a process that took longer than it should have because the thighs kept getting in the way of each other, thick and round and pressing together with every step in a way that was new and confusing and why was this happening.
Five feet two inches.
She could feel it continuing, the warmth still pulsing through her body, the tingling still radiating outward, and everything was still growing—the chest pushing against the straining fabric of her top, the hips stretching the waistband of her shorts, the thighs filling out with soft, dense flesh that jiggled with every frantic step.
"LUFFY!" Chopper called out, because when something was wrong, when something was scary, when the world stopped making sense, Chopper's first instinct—her deepest, most fundamental instinct, burned into her psyche by years of loyalty and love and trust—was to find her captain. "LUFFY, SOMETHING'S HAPPENING TO ME!"
She found him on the main deck.
Luffy was doing what Luffy often did between meals, which was absolutely nothing productive. He was lying on the grass—the beautiful, carefully maintained lawn that covered the Thousand Sunny's main deck—with his arms behind his head and his straw hat over his face, one leg crossed over the other knee, the picture of total, boneless relaxation. He appeared to be napping, or staring at the inside of his hat, or possibly thinking about meat. (It was always a safe bet that Luffy was thinking about meat.)
"Luffy!" Chopper cried, running toward him at full speed—which was faster than it used to be, because her legs were longer now, each stride eating up more deck than before.
Five feet four inches.
Five feet five.
Five feet six.
Luffy pushed his hat up with one finger and looked at the approaching figure with his characteristic expression of mild, cheerful curiosity—the expression of a man who approached every new situation, no matter how bizarre, with the unshakeable confidence that it would probably be fine, and if it wasn't fine, he would punch it until it was.
"Oh, Chopper!" he said, sitting up. "What's—"
Chopper collided with him at speed.
It was not a graceful collision. It was the collision of a panicked, rapidly growing reindeer-girl with a rubber captain who was sitting on the ground and therefore positioned at exactly the wrong height for what was about to happen. Chopper's arms went around Luffy's neck in a desperate, frightened hug—the kind of hug that said I'm scared and you make me less scared and please don't let go—and the momentum of her sprint carried them both backward, Luffy's back hitting the grass with a soft thump, Chopper landing on top of him in a tangle of limbs and fur and rapidly expanding curves.
And Chopper's chest—which had, in the time between leaving the infirmary and reaching Luffy, grown from "modest" to "considerable" to "significant" to "really quite impressive actually"—ended up directly on Luffy's face.
Pressed against it, in fact. Smooshed, one might say. Enveloping it, if one wanted to be precise about the spatial relationship between Luffy's face and the two large, soft, warm, fur-covered mounds that were currently occupying the same space that his face was attempting to occupy.
For approximately 2.3 seconds, Luffy's entire world consisted of softness.
Warm, gentle, pillowy softness that pressed against his cheeks and forehead and nose, that smelled like cotton candy and the faintest hint of the medicinal herbs that always clung to Chopper's fur, that compressed slightly under the weight of Chopper's body and then sprang back with a gentle elasticity that spoke of density and volume and presence.
Luffy's brain, operating at its usual frequency—a frequency that prioritized meat, adventure, nakama, and the One Piece, in roughly that order—registered the sensation with the same casual, indifferent efficiency it applied to all non-essential sensory input.
Something soft on face.
Acknowledged.
Filed under: Not Meat, Not Dangerous, Not Interesting.
Discarded.
"Mmph," Luffy said, which was all the commentary the situation warranted in his estimation. He reached up with both hands, gently pushed Chopper back to a distance where communication was possible without suffocation, and grinned at her. "Chopper! What's wrong? You look bigger!"
"I AM bigger!" Chopper wailed, tears streaming down fur-covered cheeks that were, even now, continuing their slow transformation from round and childlike to defined and feminine. "I keep growing and I don't know why and I haven't taken a Rumble Ball and this isn't any transformation I've ever experienced and as a doctor I should be able to diagnose what's happening to me but I CAN'T and I'm SCARED and—"
"Shishishi! You're fine!" Luffy said, wrapping his arms around Chopper in a hug that was as casual as it was total, his rubber arms stretching to accommodate her new size with the easy adaptability that was literally built into his biology. "You're Chopper! You're always fine!"
The tears shifted—instantly, completely, like a switch being thrown—from tears of fear to tears of overwhelming emotional fullness. "L-Luffy... saying things like that doesn't make me happy, you jerk~!"
The happy wiggle that accompanied this statement was considerably more pronounced than usual, owing to the increased volume of everything that was now capable of wiggling. Hips swayed, thighs jiggled, and the chest that had moments ago been plastered against Luffy's face bounced with an enthusiasm that seemed almost celebratory.
Five feet seven inches. The growth was slowing, but it hadn't stopped.
"See? You're fine!" Luffy repeated, releasing the hug and hopping to his feet with the effortless physicality that characterized everything he did. He dusted grass off his shorts, adjusted his hat, and immediately lost interest in the medical mystery that was unfolding before him, because his attention had been captured by something far more pressing.
"Oh! I think I can see a weird glowing fish out there!" He pointed at the coating bubble, through which a distant bioluminescent shape was visible in the dark water. "I wonder if it's edible!"
"LUFFY, I'M HAVING A MEDICAL CRISIS—"
"It's probably edible! Everything in the sea is edible! Except the parts that aren't! Shishishi!"
From across the deck, seven pairs of eyes had been watching this scene unfold.
Seven pairs of eyes that were, in varying degrees, narrowed.
Nami's narrowed the most. The navigator had been leaning against the railing when Chopper had come sprinting out of the infirmary, and she had watched the entire collision-hug-face-in-chest sequence with an expression that started at "concerned for crewmate" and rapidly evolved through "wait what" to "hold on" to "did Chopper just" to "DID CHOPPER'S CHEST JUST—" to a final resting state of pure, distilled, white-hot jealousy that radiated from her body like heat from a furnace.
"She got a face full," Nami muttered, gripping the railing hard enough that the wood creaked ominously under her fingers. Her own enormous chest heaved with a breath that was more growl than inhale. "She just—her chest was right on his—he was just—"
"Navigator-san, your grip is damaging the railing," Robin observed from directly behind Nami, where she had appeared with the silent, startling instantaneity that was Robin's trademark. One moment there was empty air behind Nami; the next moment there was six feet of impossibly curvaceous archaeologist, standing with her arms crossed and her serene smile in place, as if she had always been there and the rest of the world had simply taken a moment to notice.
Nami didn't flinch. She was used to Robin's sudden appearances. She was NOT used to watching another woman's breasts make contact with Luffy's face.
"Did you see that?" Nami hissed. "She just—right on his face—"
"I saw," Robin said, and her serene smile remained serene, but her blue eyes had taken on a quality that was less "placid lake" and more "placid lake with something very large moving beneath the surface." "It appeared to be accidental."
"ACCIDENTAL," Nami repeated, in a tone that suggested the word "accidental" had personally wronged her. "She accidentally shoved her—which are getting BIGGER, by the way, did you notice that? She's growing—she accidentally put them right on his—"
"His reaction was characteristically indifferent," Robin pointed out.
This was true, and it defused approximately forty percent of Nami's jealousy, because the one thing that could consistently temper the navigator's competitive instincts was the reminder that Luffy's density in matters of physical attraction was not selective—it was universal, all-encompassing, and absolutely, beautifully democratic. He didn't notice Chopper's chest on his face, but he also didn't notice Nami's chest, or Robin's chest, or anyone else's chest. His obliviousness was an equal-opportunity phenomenon.
It was simultaneously the most frustrating and most endearing thing about him.
"I'm still going to glare at her," Nami decided.
"Naturally," Robin agreed.
Zoro, who had been doing one-armed push-ups on the upper deck (one thousand, two hundred, and forty-seven... one thousand, two hundred, and forty-eight...) had felt the disturbance more than seen it. The swordswoman's Observation Haki—still developing, still rough around the edges, but functional enough to serve as a passive early-warning system—had pinged the moment Chopper made contact with Luffy, registering a sudden spike of... something. Not danger. Not hostility. Just... proximity.
Someone was close to Luffy.
Too close.
Zoro was on her feet before the conscious decision to stand up had finished forming in her brain. The transition from push-up position to standing position was instantaneous and fluid, a demonstration of the kind of physical control that came from years of relentless training—years that had apparently translated perfectly to this new body, the muscles responding with the same precision and power they always had, the only difference being that the muscles were now overlaid with considerably more soft tissue than they had been before, which meant the motion was accompanied by a comprehensive jiggling of everything that was capable of jiggling, which was a lot.
Green hair whipping behind her, three swords secured at her hip (she had adjusted the sword belt to sit lower, resting on the dramatic flare of hips that hadn't existed yesterday, and the swords now hung at an angle that would have been impractical on the old Zoro but which worked perfectly on the new one), the swordswoman descended from the upper deck to the main deck in a single leap, landing with the silent, predatory grace of a large cat.
A very curvy large cat.
A large cat with thighs that could crush a Sea King's skull and an expression that said, very clearly: I don't know what just happened, but if it involved someone touching my captain, I have opinions about it and those opinions are sharp.
"What happened?" Zoro demanded, her single emerald eye scanning the scene with the razor-sharp analytical intensity of a trained warrior assessing a potential threat. She saw Chopper—taller, curvier, tearfully happy—standing next to Luffy. She saw Luffy—oblivious, grinning, pointing at a fish. She saw no threat.
The eye narrowed anyway.
"Nothing happened!" Chopper squeaked, suddenly very aware of the combined weight of Nami's death glare, Robin's calm-but-definitely-judging smile, and Zoro's predatory focus. "I was scared because I was growing and I ran to Luffy and I tripped and it was an accident and—"
"Your chest was on his face," Nami said flatly.
"IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!"
"Your chest. Was on his face."
"I TRIPPED!"
"Mmmhmm."
"Navigator-san, I believe Doctor-san is telling the truth," Robin interjected with diplomatic grace. "The growth appears to be involuntary and ongoing. As a medical phenomenon, it's quite remarkable."
This was Robin's way of defusing the tension while simultaneously redirecting the conversation toward something productive, and it worked, because Nami's jealousy—while intense—was no match for Robin's calm, rational influence. The navigator huffed, crossed her arms beneath her own massive chest (which compressed and then bulged outward above and below her forearms in a display that was also quite remarkable, from a purely volumetric standpoint), and conceded the point with a grudging nod.
"Fine. It was an accident. But you—" she pointed at Chopper with the stern, authoritative finger of a woman who was accustomed to being obeyed, "—you need to be more careful. We can't just go shoving our chests in the captain's face."
A beat of silence.
"Not that I've been thinking about that," Nami added quickly, her face reddening. "I haven't. That's not—I wouldn't—shut up, Robin."
"I didn't say anything, Navigator-san."
"You were thinking it."
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean."
Zoro, having determined that no threat existed and that Luffy was safe and happy and characteristically oblivious, allowed the tension in her body to release—partially. A true swordsman never fully relaxed. A true swordsman maintained a baseline level of readiness at all times, prepared to draw and strike in the fraction of a second between peace and violence.
But the eye softened. Just a little. Just enough to let the adoration leak through—that fierce, protective, warrior's devotion that burned in Zoro's chest like a forge fire, constant and hot and absolutely unwavering.
She took up a position approximately four feet to Luffy's left—close enough to respond to any threat in an instant, far enough away to not crowd him—and leaned against the mast with her arms crossed, assuming the exact same pose she had always assumed, the only difference being that the arms now crossed beneath a chest that was considerably more prominent than it had been a day ago, and the lean now canted wider hips against the mast's smooth wood in a way that created a silhouette that was less "intimidating swordsman" and more "intimidating swordswoman who happened to be built like a fertility statue."
She watched Luffy.
She always watched Luffy.
Not because she was ordered to. Not because it was her duty. But because watching Luffy—watching him grin, watching him laugh, watching him do idiotic things with absolute conviction—was the closest thing to peace that Zoro's relentless, battle-forged soul had ever known. Luffy was the eye of the hurricane, the calm center around which the chaos of the world revolved, and Zoro had planted herself in that center years ago and had no intention of leaving. Ever.
If something tried to hurt him, she would cut it.
If something tried to take him, she would cut it more.
If something tried to make him sad, she would cut it into so many pieces that the pieces would need their own zip codes.
This was the simple, elegant, brutally effective philosophy that governed Zoro's existence, and the fact that this philosophy now operated from within a body that was five foot seven, green-haired, one-eyed, and possessed of curves that could stop traffic on Water 7 did not diminish its lethality by even a fraction of a degree.
"Oi, Luffy," Zoro said, as casually as breathing. "You hungry?"
"ALWAYS!" Luffy replied, spinning around with his arms outstretched. "Is it lunch yet? It has to be lunch! It feels like lunch!"
"It's been forty minutes since breakfast."
"So it's basically lunch!"
"It's really not."
"Second breakfast?"
Zoro's lips twitched. The old Zoro would have suppressed the smile. The new Zoro let it bloom, small and warm and private, a flower opening in the sun. "Sure. Second breakfast."
"YOSH! SANJI! SECOND BREAKFAST!"
From the kitchen, a musical voice called back: "It'll be ready in ten minutes, Captain~! ♥"
"TEN MINUTES?! I'll be DEAD in ten minutes!"
"You won't be dead."
"I'll be SO DEAD, Zoro! Dead from hunger! They'll find my body and it'll be all shriveled up like a raisin! A meat-less raisin!"
"That's not how starvation works."
"A MEAT-LESS RAISIN, ZORO!"
The afternoon—or what passed for afternoon in the perpetual twilight of the deep ocean—found Luffy napping.
This was not unusual. Luffy napped with the same frequency and enthusiasm that he ate, which was to say constantly and with total commitment. His napping style was, like everything about him, characterized by a complete absence of restraint or self-consciousness. He napped wherever he happened to be when sleepiness struck, in whatever position his body happened to assume when consciousness departed, and he snored with a volume and vigor that was impressive even by the standards of a man who did everything at maximum intensity.
He had chosen, on this particular occasion, to nap on the upper deck, near the tangerine grove. He was lying on his back, one arm flung over his stomach, the other trailing off to the side, his straw hat covering his face, his breathing slow and deep and regular. The gentle vibration of the Thousand Sunny's cola-powered engines hummed through the deck beneath him like a lullaby, and the faint blue-green light of passing bioluminescent creatures played across the coating bubble overhead in shifting patterns that would have been beautiful if Luffy had been awake to see them, which he was not.
He was asleep.
Deeply, completely, rubber-brained-ly asleep.
And then, suddenly, his head was on something soft.
It was a gradual transition—so gradual that it didn't register as a change at all, more like the slow shift from shallow water to deep water, a seamless progression from one state to another that happened so smoothly that the person experiencing it couldn't have identified the exact moment the change occurred. One moment, Luffy's head was on the hard wooden planking of the deck. The next moment—or what seemed like the next moment, though an indeterminate amount of time had actually passed—his head was on something warm and yielding and soft, something that conformed to the shape of his skull with a gentle, welcoming pressure, something that gave beneath the weight of his head in a way that wood did not and could not.
He shifted in his sleep, nuzzling into the softness with the unconscious comfort-seeking instinct of a child burrowing into a pillow. A small, contented sound escaped his lips—not quite a word, not quite a snore, something in between that communicated, on a purely primal level, that this was nice and he would like it to continue indefinitely.
Above him, Nico Robin smiled.
She had appeared—as she always appeared—without sound, without warning, without any of the conventional prerequisites of physical relocation. She had not walked to this spot. She had not climbed stairs or opened doors or navigated corridors. She had simply... been somewhere else, and then she had been here, seated on the deck with her back against the railing, her legs extended before her, and Luffy's head cradled in her lap.
The lap in question was, it should be noted, considerable. Robin's thighs—already substantial, already possessing a thickness that the word "thick" was insufficient to describe—spread out beneath Luffy's head like a living mattress, soft and warm and wide enough that his head rested comfortably between them without coming close to either edge. The fabric of her long skirt was smooth against his cheek, and beneath the fabric, the flesh was warm and yielding, providing a surface that was objectively, measurably, scientifically more comfortable than any pillow that had ever been manufactured.
Robin's fingers were in his hair.
She was threading them through the dark, unruly strands with a gentleness that bordered on reverence, each stroke slow and careful and deliberate, as if she were handling something infinitely precious and infinitely fragile—which was ironic, because the thing she was handling was Monkey D. Luffy, who was approximately as fragile as a steel-reinforced rubber ball. Her fingers traced the contours of his scalp, followed the whorls and curves of his hair growth patterns, gently teased apart tangles with the patient thoroughness of someone who had nowhere else to be and nothing she would rather be doing.
Her other hand held a book.
Because Robin was always reading. It was as fundamental to her character as swords were to Zoro or navigation was to Nami. She read the way other people breathed—automatically, continuously, with a dedication that was less hobby and more biological imperative. The book in her hand was a thick archaeological text, something about the ancient civilizations of the Grand Line, and she was reading it with an expression of mild scholarly interest that coexisted perfectly with the expression of deep, tender, soul-warming adoration she wore whenever she looked at Luffy.
She could do both. She was Robin.
Turn a page. Stroke Luffy's hair. Read a paragraph about Pre-Void Century architecture. Smile down at the sleeping captain with enough warmth to heat the ocean. Turn another page. Gently brush a strand of hair away from his closed eyes. Note an interesting footnote about the construction techniques of the Ancient Kingdom. Feel her heart swell with a love so vast and so deep that it seemed to physically expand her chest, which was already expanded well beyond any reasonable proportion.
Multi-tasking.
Luffy slept on, blissfully unaware that his pillow had been upgraded from "wooden deck" to "the incredibly soft, impossibly thick thighs of a woman who loved him with the quiet, fierce intensity of a forest fire." He snored. He drooled. He occasionally murmured things in his sleep that were either the names of foods or fragments of adventure-dreams—"mmm... meat... Pirate King... more meat..."—and each mumbled word caused Robin's smile to widen by an imperceptible but measurable amount.
She turned another page.
She stroked his hair.
The deep sea drifted past the coating bubble, dark and silent and vast, and Robin read her book and held her captain and thought about how strange and wonderful it was that a woman who had spent twenty years running from the world had found a place to rest.
This was peace.
This was home.
This was a rubber idiot drooling on her thigh while she read about ancient architecture, and it was perfect.
Nami found them twenty minutes later.
The navigator had been looking for Luffy—not for any particular reason, not because she needed him for anything, not because there was a navigational emergency or a crew matter that required the captain's attention. She had been looking for him because... because she wanted to know where he was. Because not knowing where he was made her feel vaguely unsettled, like a compass needle that couldn't find north. Because she was, and there was no point in denying this to herself even if she would never admit it out loud, following him.
She had been following him all day.
Not in an obvious way—Nami was far too proud and far too self-aware for that. She followed him the way the moon followed the earth: maintaining a consistent orbital distance, always facing toward him, always aware of his position relative to her own. When he moved to the figurehead, she found a reason to be on the front deck. When he wandered to the library, she suddenly needed to check a navigational chart that happened to be stored in the library. When he went to the bathroom, she—okay, she didn't follow him to the bathroom. She had some limits.
But she was aware—constantly, persistently, almost painfully aware—of where he was at all times. It was like a sixth sense, a navigator's instinct redirected from ocean currents and wind patterns to the movements of a single, straw-hatted, rubber-bodied person. She could feel him the way she could feel a storm approaching—a subtle shift in the atmosphere, a change in pressure, a pull in her chest that oriented her toward him like a weathervane pointing into the wind.
So when she climbed the stairs to the upper deck and saw Robin sitting against the railing with Luffy's head in her lap and Robin's fingers in Luffy's hair, Nami experienced several emotions in rapid succession.
First: recognition. Oh, there he is.
Second: relief. Good, he's safe.
Third: warmth. He looks so peaceful when he sleeps.
Fourth: jealousy. WHY IS HIS HEAD IN ROBIN'S LAP AND NOT MINE.
Fifth: more jealousy. HER THIGHS ARE BIGGER THAN MINE. ARE HER THIGHS BIGGER THAN MINE? THEY MIGHT BE BIGGER THAN MINE.
Sixth: resignation. Of course Robin got there first. Robin always gets there first. Robin can sprout arms and legs anywhere. Robin probably sprouted a whole body next to him and then just... transferred. That's cheating. That's absolutely cheating.
Seventh: determination. Next time. Next time I'll be faster.
"Robin," Nami said, approaching with measured steps that made her hips sway in a way that was not entirely unconscious. Each step produced a rhythmic bounce-and-jiggle sequence throughout her dramatically enhanced figure—chest bouncing up as foot came down, hips shifting laterally with the weight transfer, thighs pressing together and apart in alternating sequence—that would have been hypnotic to anyone watching. No one was watching. Luffy was asleep. Robin was reading. The deep sea creatures outside the bubble were, presumably, uninterested in the ambulatory physics of impossibly curvaceous navigators.
"Navigator-san," Robin replied, looking up from her book with a smile that was warm and welcoming and contained not even the slightest hint of apology. "Would you like to sit down?"
Nami looked at Robin. She looked at Luffy. She looked at Robin's thighs—those impossible, vast, luxuriously thick thighs upon which her captain's head rested with an expression of such complete contentment that attempting to move him would have been an act of cruelty.
She sat down.
Next to Robin. Close enough that her own hip pressed against Robin's, creating a combined width of hip-to-hip contact that spanned a truly impressive horizontal distance. She drew her knees up to her chest—or tried to, but her chest got in the way, her enormous breasts pressing against her thighs and creating a soft, compressed barrier that prevented full knee-to-chest contact—and settled for hugging her legs at a comfortable angle.
She looked at Luffy's sleeping face.
The jealousy evaporated. It simply... dissolved, like sugar in warm water, overwhelmed and overwritten by the sheer, staggering force of the affection that surged through her when she looked at him like this—unguarded, vulnerable, peaceful, the furrow that he didn't know he had between his brows smoothed out by sleep, the scar on his chest rising and falling with each breath, the faint smile that played at the corners of his mouth suggesting that whatever he was dreaming about, it was good.
"He's drooling on you," Nami observed quietly.
"Yes," Robin agreed, turning a page with her free hand while the other continued its gentle exploration of Luffy's hair. "He does that."
"Doesn't it bother you?"
"No."
Nami considered this. "It wouldn't bother me either," she admitted.
They sat in companionable silence for a while, the two women and their sleeping captain, surrounded by the quiet hum of the ship and the vast, dark emptiness of the deep ocean. Robin read. Nami watched Luffy breathe. Luffy drooled.
"Robin?"
"Yes, Navigator-san?"
"...Is there room on your other side?"
Robin's smile widened—just a fraction, just enough to acknowledge the question and everything it implied. She shifted slightly, creating a space between her body and the railing, and Nami moved to fill it—pressing close against Robin's other side, close enough to feel the warmth of the archaeologist's body through the fabric of their respective outfits, close enough to reach out and touch Luffy's shoulder if she wanted to.
She wanted to.
She reached out and placed her hand on his arm, just below the shoulder, where the rubber flesh was warm and smooth and rose and fell gently with each breath. She didn't grip. She didn't squeeze. She just... rested her hand there, a point of contact, a touchstone, a reminder that he was real and present and here.
Luffy murmured something in his sleep. It might have been "meat." It was probably "meat."
Nami smiled.
Zoro found them ten minutes after that.
The swordswoman came around the corner of the tangerine grove at a pace that was technically "walking" but carried an undercurrent of urgency that suggested "sprinting" was being considered as a backup option. The single emerald eye was sharp and alert, scanning the upper deck with the systematic thoroughness of a trained predator surveying its territory.
She was looking for Luffy.
She was always looking for Luffy.
Not because she didn't know where he was—her Observation Haki told her exactly where he was at all times, a constant, low-level awareness that functioned like a compass needle permanently fixed on the captain's position. She looked for him because seeing him was different from sensing him. Sensing him told her he was alive and present. Seeing him told her he was safe—that no one was threatening him, that nothing was hurting him, that the world had not, in the thirty seconds since she had last checked, conspired to take him away.
The world was not taking him away. The world was currently watching him nap on Robin's lap while Nami held his arm, and the world, as represented by the deep sea visible through the coating bubble, appeared to have no strong feelings about this arrangement.
Zoro, however, had feelings.
Many feelings.
Complex feelings.
Feelings that the old Zoro—the pre-transformation Zoro, the stoic, emotionally constipated swordsman who expressed affection through violence and communicated vulnerability through the medium of aggressive napping—would have buried so deep in the subconscious that they would have needed an archaeological expedition to uncover. But the new Zoro—the fierce, protective, openly adoring swordswoman who had woken up this morning with curves and emotions in equal abundance—felt these feelings with a raw, unfiltered intensity that was almost overwhelming.
Jealousy. (Robin had his head in her lap. Zoro's lap was right here.)
Protectiveness. (He was sleeping in the open. What if something happened? What if a Sea King broke through the coating bubble? What if a Marine submarine appeared? He was vulnerable and Zoro needed to be close enough to cut things.)
Adoration. (He looked so peaceful. His face was relaxed and his mouth was slightly open and there was drool on his chin and he was the most beautiful, idiotic, wonderful person who had ever existed.)
Resignation. (Robin got there first. Robin always got there first. Robin could sprout body parts. This was categorically unfair and Zoro would have lodged a formal complaint if she had any idea who to lodge it with.)
She walked over and sat down on the deck approximately three feet from the group—close enough to draw and strike in under a second if a threat materialized, far enough away to maintain the illusion that she wasn't there specifically because Luffy was there. She positioned her three swords within arm's reach, leaned back on her hands, and stared straight ahead at nothing in particular.
She was not watching Luffy.
She was absolutely, definitely, one hundred percent not watching Luffy out of the corner of her single functional eye.
"Good afternoon, Swordswoman-san," Robin said pleasantly.
"Mm," Zoro replied, which was Zoro for "I acknowledge your existence and also I can see that your thighs are serving as a pillow for the person I have devoted my life to and I have complicated feelings about this but I will express them exclusively through monosyllabic grunting."
"Would you like to sit closer?"
"I'm fine here."
"You're welcome to—"
"I said I'm fine."
Beat.
Beat.
Beat.
Zoro scooted two feet closer.
She didn't say anything. She didn't acknowledge the scoot. She simply occupied a new position in space that happened to be two feet closer to Luffy than her previous position, and she resumed staring at nothing in particular, and if anyone asked—which no one did, because Robin was tactful and Nami was preoccupied—she would have said she moved because the previous spot had a nail sticking up from the deck, or because the light was better here, or because she felt like it and didn't need a reason.
The actual reason was that she could smell his hair from here.
It smelled like salt and rubber and adventure and something indefinably Luffy—a scent that Zoro associated with safety and purpose and home in a way that she would never, ever, under any circumstances, no matter what, regardless of the situation, admit to anyone, including herself.
Especially herself.
She sat. She watched (she was NOT watching). She maintained readiness.
If anything tried to hurt him, she would cut it.
She would cut it so much.
Dinner was an event.
Not in the way that formal dinners were events—there were no place cards, no dress codes, no courses served in sequential order by attentive wait staff. This was dinner aboard the Thousand Sunny, which meant it was barely controlled chaos moderated by a chef who was now a bombshell blonde with a body that could cause traffic accidents and a devotion to the captain's nutritional needs that bordered on religious fervor.
Sanji had prepared a feast.
The table was covered—covered—in dishes. Platters of roasted meat occupied the center, surrounded by bowls of rice, plates of grilled fish, baskets of fresh bread, tureens of soup, and an array of side dishes that represented every culinary tradition Sanji had encountered during the two-year training period. The smell that filled the kitchen was extraordinary—rich and savory and complex, with layers of aroma that evolved as they reached the nose, each sniff revealing new notes of herb and spice and the deep, primal, irresistible scent of perfectly cooked protein.
Luffy was seated at the head of the table.
Robin was seated next to him.
She had not walked to the seat. She had not pulled out the chair. She had not engaged in any of the physical actions typically associated with the process of sitting down at a table. She had simply... appeared. One moment the chair was empty. The next moment Robin was in it, serene and smiling, a book in one hand, as if she had always been there and the concept of arriving was something that happened to other people.
Luffy, who had been reaching for a drumstick, suddenly found himself relocated.
It happened with the same seamless, almost magical smoothness that characterized everything Robin did. One moment he was in his own chair. The next moment he was on Robin's lap—seated sideways across those impossible thighs, his legs dangling over one armrest and his back supported by Robin's arm, which had curved around behind him with the practiced ease of someone who had done this many times before (she hadn't; this was the first time; it simply felt natural, inevitable, as if Luffy had always been meant to sit here and everything before this moment had been a temporary arrangement).
The drumstick was still in his hand.
"Oh," Luffy said, looking around at his new position with mild curiosity, the way someone might look at a cloud that had drifted into an interesting shape—noting it, acknowledging it, and immediately moving on to more important things. "This is different."
He bit into the drumstick.
"Mmm! SANJI! This is SO GOOD!"
"Thank you, Captain~! ♥"
He did not question why he was on Robin's lap. He did not seem to notice that his back was pressed against a chest that could best be described as "two weather balloons in a leather jacket." He did not register the arm around his waist, or the way Robin's fingers rested lightly on his hip, or the expression on Robin's face—that serene, devastating, luminous smile of a woman who had achieved something she wanted and intended to enjoy every moment of it.
He ate his drumstick. He reached for another. He ate that one too.
"Robin, why is Luffy on your lap?" Nami asked, in a voice that was carefully, dangerously controlled.
"He seemed comfortable," Robin replied.
"He was in his own chair."
"Was he? I didn't notice."
"You—Robin, you moved him."
"Did I?" Robin's innocent expression was a masterwork of theatrical performance. "How strange. Perhaps the ship rocked."
"We're inside a coating bubble twenty thousand feet underwater. THE SHIP DOESN'T ROCK."
"How mysterious, then."
Nami's eye twitched.
Zoro, seated to Luffy's left (or rather, to the left of the chair that Luffy had been in before Robin had relocated him), had her single eye fixed on the archaeologist with an intensity that could have cut steel. Her hand rested on the hilt of Wado Ichimonji—not gripping, not drawing, just resting, a reminder that the hand was there and the sword was there and the willingness to use the latter was always there.
She said nothing.
Her eye said everything.
"More meat!" Luffy demanded, entirely unaware of the complex web of jealousy, protectiveness, and competitive adoration that was playing out around him like a silent, curvy, emotionally charged opera. He reached across the table with rubber arms that stretched to their full extension, grabbing plates from in front of other crew members with the cheerful entitlement of a man who believed, on a fundamental level, that all food existed for the purpose of being eaten by him.
Robin held him steady with one arm while he leaned, the motion causing her chest to press against his back, which he did not notice, and her thighs to shift beneath his weight, which he also did not notice, and her heart to do a complicated little flutter that she herself barely noticed because she was too busy being perfectly, serenely happy.
"Luffy, don't steal food from other people's plates!" Nami scolded, reaching across to smack his reaching hand.
"But Nami! There's meat over there and I'm over here and it should be over here too!"
"That's not how sharing works!"
"It isn't?"
"NO!"
From across the table, Brook observed the scene with dark, sparkling eyes—real eyes, still a novelty, still a source of constant amazement and delight—and a wide, beautiful, flesh-and-blood smile.
"Yohohoho!" Brook laughed, and the laugh resonated through an actual chest cavity, vibrating actual vocal cords, producing a sound that was richer and warmer and fuller than any laugh Brook had produced in fifty years. "What a lively dinner! You know, it reminds me of the old days—dining with my original crew, before the... well, before the unpleasantness. Yohohoho!"
She took a sip of tea—actual tea, consumed through actual lips, tasted by an actual tongue, swallowed down an actual throat into an actual stomach. Each sip was a miracle. Each swallow was a celebration. The simple, mundane act of eating and drinking was, for Brook, an experience of such profound joy that it made her eyes water with tears that she could actually produce for the first time in half a century.
"I can taste things again!" Brook announced to no one in particular, holding up a piece of bread with reverent wonder. "This bread! It tastes like bread! Do you know how long it's been since I tasted bread? Fifty years! FIFTY YEARS of existing without taste buds! Without a tongue! Without the simple pleasure of biting into something and experiencing flavor! Yohohoho, this is the greatest day of my life! Well, my second life. My third life? I've lost count. Yohohoho!"
She took another bite of bread. Tears streamed down dark, smooth cheeks—cheeks that had skin on them, cheeks that could feel the warmth of the tears rolling across them, cheeks that existed in a way they hadn't existed for decades.
"And crying!" Brook added, touching the tears with one finger and examining them with fascination. "I'm crying actual tears! Not metaphorical tears! Not the existential weeping of a soul trapped in a skeleton! Real, wet, salty tears! Yohohoho!"
She paused.
"Although... I do miss the skull jokes. They don't land the same way when you have a face. Yohohoho! See? That 'yohohoho' used to echo inside my empty skull, and now it just... comes out of a mouth. A MOUTH! I have a MOUTH! Yohohoho!"
"Brook, are you gonna cry all dinner?" Usopp asked, though the sniper's own eyes were suspiciously moist.
"Possibly! I have a LOT of tears saved up! Yohohoho!"
Brook picked up a violin—because Brook always had a violin nearby, it was as essential to Brook's person as the straw hat was to Luffy's—and began to play, and the music that emerged was different. Not in its melody or its rhythm, which were still unmistakably Brook's style—lively and complex and infused with a joy that seemed to bubble up from somewhere deep and irrepressible. But in its quality, its texture, its feel. The notes were fuller, richer, more resonant. When Brook had played as a skeleton, the music had been beautiful but thin—the sound of a soul expressing itself through bones and emptiness. Now, the music had body. It had warmth. It had the weight and substance of sound produced by an instrument held by hands with flesh and muscle, played by a person with lungs and a heartbeat and skin that could feel the vibration of the strings.
It was the same music.
It was completely different.
It was alive.
"Yohohoho!" Brook sang along with the melody, swaying in her seat, long legs crossed at the ankle beneath the table, the formal suit adjusted to accommodate a figure that was elegant and curvaceous and very much present in a way that Brook's figure had not been present for fifty years. "Binkusu no sake wo, todoke ni yuku yo~!"
The crew listened, and ate, and the kitchen was warm with food and music and the kind of happiness that comes from being exactly where you're supposed to be, with exactly the people you're supposed to be with.
And Luffy, still on Robin's lap, still eating meat, still completely and magnificently and heroically oblivious to everything except the quality of Sanji's cooking, grinned his enormous grin and laughed his signature laugh.
"Shishishishi! This is great! I love this crew!"
Eight hearts melted simultaneously.
The Thousand Sunny sailed on, through darkness and depth, toward Fishman Island.
And somewhere in the deepest, most inaccessible, most thoroughly ignored corner of Monkey D. Luffy's brain, a single neuron fired a single signal that contained a single observation:
Everyone seems different today.
The signal was immediately intercepted by the part of his brain dedicated to meat, which consumed it without hesitation or remorse, and the thought was lost forever, dissolved into the vast, meat-scented void of Luffy's consciousness like a raindrop falling into the ocean.
He would never notice.
They would never stop adoring him.
And that, somehow, was exactly how it was supposed to be.
To be continued...