ALL NOVEL Chapter 1: Transference
With one of my works (Mass Effect: Final Error) finishing up last month, I also decided to introduce a new option for my supporters to vote on. As always, I make everything available free to the public, with merely a few early access chapters. So here's the start of the new work. And, you know, the first 25k or so of it. As of cross posting this to Scribble Hub, it actually won its first poll to get an update, which will be coming out on the 8th (February, 2024). So you won't have to wait too long for more of it ;-).
Disclaimer: I am, very tragically, not in charge of One Piece. All rights to One Piece belong to Eiichiro Oda (so far as I'm aware).
Summary: When a young Monkey D. Luffy ends up braindead after an accident while training with his grandfather, someone else who wasn't supposed to die is given a second chance. Alex, a 17-year old teenager from earth wakes up as Monkey D. Luffy and a floating textbox declaring him a Gamer...
Relevant Notes:
1) Canon is going to die early and hard. Anyone who has read my other works should be aware I don't stick to canon in any of my works. Many canon characters will still be present, many canon events will still happen. They won't happen the way they do in canon, sometimes not even when they normally would. And there will be a lot of other completely original events. There will also be canon events that don't happen.
2) This is not a Self-Insert. I'm in my thirties and frankly have both too broad a personal skill base and too much emotional maturity. The character would end up as an over-powered Gary Stu and 90% of the romance options would be creepy as heck because of the emotional maturity differences if I inserted myself. The inserted character is, instead, a fairly generic teenager with only one or two stand out points. The biggest being some low-college-level engineering knowledge that will help him with a few things. Frankly, the only reason I'm using an inserted/isekied character at all is that canon Luffy is too much of a dumbass to actually properly figure out/make use of, a Gamer System. He would just dump all his points into strength and end up being a canon rehash. By the time of the actual One Piece series start, the fact the insert character has been inserted will mostly have vanished into the background.
3) Luffy's gamer system is NOT going to be overly broken. In fact, that's the whole point in the title 'Halfway Broken.' It's going to give him an edge, but he's not going to be utterly OP. He'll have to work hard to get strong, not just wash dishes to level up. This also means I've stripped down a lot of elements of typical Gamer Sytems. No Quests for example, and no Map/Mini-map, Drops, Dungeons, etc. Any powers he gets will be either One Piece compliant, or reasonable extensions on such. (No mana bolts, spinning mana bullets, mind control, or elemental summons). I also don't like constant stat blocks when I read stories like this, so you won't be bombarded with them constantly.
4) A few differences to expect. Luffy will get a different Devil Fruit, have a different ship, and recruit a somewhat expanded crew.
5) The Pairing for Luffy is as-yet-to-be-determined. I'm extremely tempted to give Luffy a mutli-pairing in this one, though probably no more than three girls. I legitimately haven't decided on that, though, and will be taking people's opinions into consideration. If it ends up as a solo-pairing it would honestly probably be with Robin. Multi-pairing would likely be Nami, Robin, and one more. Two more, at the most. Pairings for other characters have already been decided, but I won't spoil them.
... ... ... ...
Chapter 1: Transference
... ...
The world throbbed in time with the pounding migraine between his temples, everything appearing in monochrome in the rare moments he could force his eyes open. For a few dozen heartbeats, the pain was too great for memory to interfere. When it finally subsided, however, he almost wished it hadn't. Mostly because of the situation he discovered when the pain started to subside. The world really was showing in monochrome, with time seeming to be at a stand-still as what looked like a rural village doctor was frozen, screaming at an entirely-to-recognizable old man.
And, of course, one couldn't forget the hovering box in midair.
... ... ... ...
Welcome Gamer! Due to an error, you have died. As it was not your time yet, you've been given a second chance!
Save File Import Progress: 43%...
... ... ... ...
He vaguely realized, even as he fought against his shock, that the still decreasing pain was being caused by conflicting memories that were being slowly resolved. Not erased, simply made room for and rearranged so he could process them both. One set, by far the smaller, told him where he was. The clinic in Foosha village, Dawn Island, Goa Kingdom, East Blue. The old man was his grandfather and the younger who was screaming at him was the village doctor. Slightly older memories told the story of how he'd gotten where he was. A training exercise gone wrong, his grandfather frantic after Luffy had…died. Luffy had died. Even if no one but him knew it.
From an outside viewpoint, it wasn't even the old man's fault. Well, not entirely, at least. Yes, he'd been doing something reckless with the kid, but he'd been more than powerful enough to interfere if anything dangerous happened. Monkey D. Garp simply hadn't accounted for the possibility of that dangerous thing being Luffy himself. The kid had been terrified…and activated Conquerors Haki, at full blast, with a mind too young to handle the backlash. There hadn't been an outside threat. Nothing Garp could interfere with. One moment Luffy had been scared but fine. The next he'd been braindead. Presumably, Garp had rushed him here, his body still technically alive. Then, before they'd realized Luffy was gone, something or someone had intervened and dumped a new soul into the dying body.
A new soul that had been significantly older, with memories of its own. Ones that conflicted with the current body and needed time to integrate properly. That older set of memories told him it belonged to a half-Polynesian American teenager named Alex. An orphan who'd managed to score a academic excellence exchange program to New Zealand…and who'd been on a plane in flight to Auckland when everything suddenly just ended. Presumably due to his death, though it had been fast enough that all he had the memory of was a blur just outside the plane's window.
Despite having more memories than poor Luffy, Alex had only been seventeen to Luffy's seven. Significantly older, yes…but not exactly a staggering amount of life experience. Particularly given that he'd been a shut-in with a questionable foster family situation, who mostly spent what little money he had on anime and games. The anime, however, was what let him recognize what had happened to poor Luffy. Luffy, after all, would have had no idea what Haki was. For Alex, with the instant of the reaction in the world to the pulse of Conquerors Haki before Luffy died to work with, had only a little trouble sorting it out.
... ... ... ...
Save File Import Progress: 73%...
... ... ... ...
Which was probably a good thing, given that he suspected he needed to get over his confusion quickly, or things weren't going to end particularly well. The migraine had faded to barely a dull headache as integration continued, letting him think at least a bit more clearly. This could be some sort of hallucination, he supposed. But he could now recall too many events and details from Luffy's life to really believe that. Stuff that had certainly never been shown in the anime or manga, given how little it had gone into about Luffy's childhood. That, coupled with the pain, made him rapidly discard the hallucination possibility.
Which meant this was really happening and he'd somehow been dropped into Luffy's life in place of…a dead Luffy. That most certainly shouldn't have happened. One Piece wasn't his favorite series, by any stretch of the imagination. He had, in fact, stopped watching the anime entirely after the Fishman Island arc and had never read the manga at all. But he certainly remembered Luffy living to be a lot older than seven…and there was nothing in this universe or any other that could get him to act like Luffy had. Meaning that this hadn't 'always been intended' to happen. He hadn't hated Luffy. Hadn't even disliked him, honestly. But Alex had not been an idiot. Not a genius either. But certainly not an idiot. And Luffy…Luffy was a bloody moron, as the British might say. A loveable moron, certainly. Even a moron with a certain degree of tacticial acumen and extremely good instincts. Even, possibly, a genius at combat. But, still, ultimately, a moron.
Well fuck. He had zero idea what that was going to mean. He also, admittedly, probably had more immediate concerns. Like how to fool Garp and the locals that he was Luffy. He did have the kid's memories, so it should be doable, even if he was a little appalled at how he was going to have to act for the immediate future to pull it off.
... ... ... ...
Save File Import Progress: 100%!
... ... ... ...
Good Luck, Gamer! The tutorial will start in a moment!
He flinched, expecting the world to fade back into color…only for nothing of the sort to happen. Instead, a new box filled the screen.
... ... ... ...
Tutorial 1! Your interface and you!
Rewards: Access to your Interface!
... ... ... ...
There was an accept/decline button at the bottom. But, almost predicably, the decline option was greyed out. Even knowing it would be stupid to skip it, he couldn't help but grumble. Alex had always hated tutorials, since they usually told you a lot of stuff you already knew or could easily figure out. Still, if this was about his life now, it would be doubly stupid to skip it. Sighing, he reached out and tapped accept…