One piece of____

Also Ace's precious face 

I feel like Portgas D. Ace is one of One Piece's most tragic figures. Both for the way he died and the way he lived.

This child should've grown in a house of love, with a father that defied illness and a mother that defied fate. His birth was should've been something to be celebrated, yet he grew being hated for the crime of being born. 

Ace grew internalising the hate directed his way. They were right, he thought, and why wouldn't he? No one in his life told him otherwise. With no communication between his caregivers, both absent in some way, both thinking the other will fill their shortcoming, and Ace grew hollow.

Sabo gave him something, a dream. To be a pirate, to be free to do what you want and be who you want.

To have my name reverberate louder and higher than anyone. To wipe the existence that gave me my existence, so that I might start anew.

Then came Luffy, who gave him nothing short of a reason to live . Someone needs it, this life of his. This thing that he never wanted nor asked for.

So he gave it to Luffy. it's always been Luffy's.   

Ace grew, but he never moved on. He still remembers what Dadan said, tired and drunk and out of her depth. He probably remembers what Deuce said as well, when they met the first time :

"—if your dad was the King of the Pirates, I’d understand why you’d worry, y’know? Because that guy’s the worst. I mean, I’d want to kill myself if that were the case."

Deuce leanred not to mention it again, he learned how much it hurt Ace. But all the apologies in the world can't take these words back. 

But Deuce loved him, all of them did, and the more crew members flocked to Ace like the sun, the more he thought :

This isn't right. why are they here? Why do they follow me? 

They're not following the real me, no one will. I'm just a fake, I've tricked all of them. 

This isn't me. 

But it can be. 

I'll just have to eclipse it. Erase it. Be bigger, and brighter, and burn it all away.

The more Ace was loved, by the spades then by the whitebeards, his desire to break the chains of his blood grew, and the more he couldn't (the more his bounty rose and rose and rose so much for nothing) the more he hated himself, and felt like a fake.

Then his father opened his arms for all of him. And he found some comfort.

Even if everyone in the world hates him. He still has them, his father and his brother.

Then Thatch dies, and it's his fault. Of course it is, why wouldn't he think that? Never mind that no one knew the real Teach, not even his own father. 

Ace, so used to shouldering mistakes that are not his own, shouldered this as well.

His blood carries all the crimes of Roger. What's one more? 

This was his fault too. It will always be his fault. 

So he has to fix it.

To Ace, his life was a never ending series of mistakes that began with his birth. That's why he was so happy, so happy that people wanted him to live, that his family wanted him even after everything.

Portgas D. Ace spent the last seconds of his life consoling his baby brother, that he regrets nothing (not Sabo, not Thatch, not this war.) That he believes in him, and that he's thankful. He was so happy that someone could love the one thing never could, and never will.

Himself. 

And the greatest tragedy of them all? For someone who so desperately wanted to escape, followed endlessly by the shadow of the man who ruined his life, to end up buried as another one of his father's legacies. To die because of his first crime.

Being born.  

In twenty years. The world world will not remember the second division commander nor the captain of the spades.

They will remember Portgas D. Ace

This isn't what my medical degree is for but at this point only god can judge me.

So a scar tissue is the body's way of trying to restore the continuity of it's layers. It has distinct phases each designed for a purpose : 

The inflammatory phase to stop bleeding and fight any possible contamination/bacteria.  

The proliferative phase to re-establish tissue continuity.

The remodelling phase to increase the strength of the scar tissue.

Then there's the types of healing, to keep it short you either stitch the tissue together, like with Luffy's eye scar.

Or you leave it open when there's extensive skin loss and lots of dead tissue like his chest scar.

When a scar forms, the line of tissue will be parallel to the skin lines, not the usual criss-cross pattern our skin normally has. This is because a scar's primary function is closing the defect ASAP. You can see this with some one piece characters.

These types of scar are weaker than normal skin but they do the job of re-establishing continuity.

And here is where we say goodbye to reality and start thinking about the logic of rubber boy™.

Monkey D. Luffy has three unnatural traits that will effect his tissue repair

He is made of rubber, which means that all his tissue have the capacity to stretch and all the way to the cellular level. Theoretically this can allow the replacement of lost skin with the adjacent tissue stretching to cover the defect.   

He has rapid metabolism that allows him to consume and generate enormous quantities of energy. Luffy's body can again, theoretically, spare an enormous amount of energy for simple tasks.

And, he has the medically-unexplainable ability of regeneration. This might be due to active stem cells that allows him replace simple things like teeth.

So Luffy is cut

These types of wounds have neat edges and little to no devitalised tissue. A simple stitch or even adhesive tapes in Luffy's case can hold the wound edges long enough for  healing to occur. His healing process  -augmented by high metabolism - will occur rapidly yet it won't compromise the structure integrity, returning the wound to a near perfect condition where the defect, if found at all, is unnoticeable. 

Gaping wounds are a different matter. Usually i.e in the real world, they're treated by removing dead tissue, cleaning, then leaving them to close on their own. They tend to leave noticeable scars. So 

Jumping sharks yet again, I hypothesis that the rubbery nature of Luffy's body can take up a lot of beating before the tissue is considered damage beyond repair. 

Damage occur because of power transfer between objects and tissue. Since rubber can take up way more energy without being destroyed, a wound that might take a large chunk of a normal human being might look worse than it actually is with Luffy.

Not to mention that even with lost tissue the elasticity of his skin can close up any defect with ease, Turning an untidy wound into a tidy one, which will produce smaller scar tissue that can turn into near normal skin thanks to Luffy's regeneration.

The only time that it couldn't do that was with his chest scar

It wasn't a normal injury but a burn one, these depend on the duration of exposure and viscosity of the material causing the thermal injury. He was burnt with magma which left a 3rd degree burn. The tissue at the center of his chest is completely gone all the way to the deep layers, there's nothing to regenerate.

But you can still see that it's way smaller from how it appeared on the operating table. The surrounding tissue did try it's best.

That's really hard to tell. I'd tell you he'd live just from Oda's tendency to spare anyone not named portgas D. Ace😂😂💔 

He seems amused by the disruption of status quo, maybe he'll remain chaotic or maybe he'll chill in prison until he finds something else to do. 

She does! I actually felt like she could've done so much more in Dressrosa, she so OP!

I think she could placate him before because she was family, and when that status was revoked he showed her no mercy. He almost made her niece kill her 

That man was irredeemable and devoid of compassion by the time she met him :(

But maybe he felt comfortable with her because of how transparent their relationship was and vice versa, it was a simple business transaction, and as long as they knew this they can drop their guard. 

Thank you so much :D

It's kinda funny but to me, both brother's were projecting their wishes onto Law.

Rosinante wanted Law to grow the way Doflamingo could've been,  someone who let bygones be bygones, and allowed his heart to heal.

And Doflamingo wanted Law to be what Rosinante never was, someone who was shaped into cruelty by their circumstances, someone who hated the world that unjustly screwed them other.

Law grew to be neither, but carrying a bit of both, loving and unforgiving.

Thank you :D 

The first thing to address is how to properly view the Donquixote family. They are not a pirate crew. They are a business built by one man's dedication.

Trebol.

He is, first and foremost, a business man, and raising Doflamingo was the greatest investment of his life. 

But he couldn't treat it like a business. No, none of will matter to Doflamingo who had lost everything. At that time this child's greatest desire was to regain what he thinks was stolen from him.

His home. His family. His power 

And Trebol used those feelings to the fullest.

Doflamingo didn't need an underling or a boss, he needed a role model to teach him how to speak and how to act.

When he's insulted.

When he's hurt.

These father figures of his taught him to be a monster, encouraged it even. They raised him to be uncompromising, unforgiving, and though he had such festering anger, they were the one that turned it into cruelty.

Doflamingo may talk about killing people but that's not the same as action. Ace talked about killing people, he talked about killing another child. 

Talking is easy. But Doflamingo pulled the trigger, and it was trebol who gave him the gun .

This man built the foundation that Doflamingo stood on, he raised Doflamingo to stand above all.

Problem is, all included himself.

Doflamingo was raised well by them. He heard everything that they taught him loud and clear. He was a king. He was a god among men. He was their better.

And this is where Doflamingo's conflicting nature generates the most friction.

Doflamingo truly wants what he lost, but he can't have it.

His family of "equals" will never be truly equal, and he knows this.

This is why you can map the family, filling every place with a member of the Donquixote "family" except for one huge gap. 

His mother is his only equal. And that's why her place will always be empty.

A dead woman holds a higher place than Trebol,  and he knows this to a point.

  This is why he loses his sence of self preservation when Law says those words.

So what does his "family" do when he's is cut from umbilicus to sternum? 

Doflamingo says one thing.