One Piece - Halfway Broken (13-18)

Okay! Technically, if I were sticking strictly to my once-a-week release schedule, this wouldn't be up until tomorrow. The thing is, though...I've had it finished for a day and a half already and I'm impatient to put it out :-p. So, good for anyone that wants it a bit early. Note that the image is just a half-assed AI render of Nojiko (who appears in the later chapters of this release). I'm not particularly a fan of AI Art, hence why I'm going to the trouble of making art myself for My Hero Automata...but you've seen how painfully slow that is. So AI art placeholders for now, until I can get around to each story and make something for each of them.

As for the story release, this one is excitingly large! A solid 18,000 words, in fact! Don't expect that every time, as it's frankly easier to write the early portion of any work. It'll slow down once more and more people start interaction, and I have to account for more and more variables and changes in the world as well. I also...really wanted to push to the start of One Piece canon. Sadly, I didn't quite get there. I had originally thought I would...but I forgot I still needed to sneak in a visit to Sanji to plant a few seeds there. Just like with Usopp, Luffy needed to find out if Sanji was even someone he could work with. Not to mention hopefully work the seed of the idea that he might want to travel with them into Sanji's mind. He can't count on events like what happened in the original canon, after all. Far too much butterfly effect has already occurred.

Even if the release doesn't quite get to the canon start, it got us pretty close. There will only be a handful of character-development and minor training scenes, plus some work on their ship and testing of it, before canon. And once canon starts, they'll spend less time in the East Blue than they would have in the original series, since they'll have already cleaned out a lot of the higher-level bounties. 

On one last note...something I haven't addressed regarding this fic yet. Mature Content. There's a fade-to-black mature scene at the end of this content release, which was inspired by a bit of back and forth in the relationship poll with Keht Jelicho. Intentionally or not, he gave me an unexpected idea that will help in a few ways going forward. The part I wanted to address is ages, though. Normally, I'm very careful to make any and all actual explicit content only occur between characters that are 18+. Even here, I did the fade-to-black specifically because Luffy is only 16 physically. That's an age that sex is on the brain and completely reasonable for him to be exploring (I hinted at the same thing with Izumi and Momo in My Hero Automata).

The thing is, though, that this version of Luffy is an unusual case. Because of the insert character's memories, he's a bit more mature than he should be (intentionally). I don't really agree with the idea of adding up isekei characters ages to get how old 'they actually are.' Someone who lived to be 17 twice isn't the same thing as someone who lived to be 34, since maturity doesn't come from pure aging, but from life experiences. So Luffy/Alex doesn't have the maturity of a 34-year-old. He doesn't even have quite the maturity of a 27-year-old (he came in when Luffy was 8), given his relative isolation in the One Piece world. 

There is no question, however, that he's at least a few years more mature than his physical age. I'd personally estimate that at canon start, he'll likely be the equivalent of mentally around 20-22. This means that, as far as mature content goes? I'm just going to stop actively keeping track once canon starts and let relationships move at whatever rate feels natural. I'm not going to be super paranoid and force any Lemons to hold off until Luffy is exactly 18 physically. He'll be 17+ since canon starts when he's exactly 17. And given his mental maturity/additional mental age, that's frankly good enough for me. Hopefully it doesn't bother anyone else too much. 

As always, new chapters are here in both formats! And I'll update the Master Files shortly in the pinned thread.