local gremlin

This au is pretty bleak all the way through, with the sole exception being if your name is Donquixote Doflamingo, in which case you are having the absolute TIME OF YOUR LIFE.

Kill whoever you want, reputation be damned! Experiment with a fun new set of powers! Commit delicious interpersonal tragedies and sew a deep thread of fear into the ragtag band of idiots that made you destroy your country!

But only for like three weeks.

Getting stuck in Luffy’s body was decisively not the plan. Trapped, Doffy’s fun identity vacation stretches into a horrible nightmare. Not just because Doffy isn’t the kind of man who would take well to living out the rest of his days sharing a brain with Luffy, but also because being progressively less able to tell when he’s himself and not would be his literal ninth circle of hell! No joke, I cannot think of something he would hate more.

The backfire of the century, they’re calling it.

But Doffy and the rest of the straw hats don’t have to worry about that for a bit, because they’re currently Doffy’s playthings, and he’s still at the point in the story where everything is going great for him.

What does that mean in practice? He’s been coming up with quirky and interesting games nonstop!

Like the classics; deprive the straw brats of all but 3 hours of sleep, throw them in claustrophobic moving tunnel, make them guess how many innocents can be maimed with their bodies, and, of course, the infinite string-string dismemberment roundabout!

Some may call it psychological and physical torture. Doffy calls it quality time with the captain.

Meanwhile, Sabo and Law are faring… horrible!

Sabo was the first one to encounter Doffy after the body hop, and Doffy was able to convince Sabo to surrender, telling Sabo a bunch of misinformation that boils down to; “This brat is my puppet, so don’t bother resisting, because the only way to defeat me is to kill my real body— But not so fast, if you, or anyone else, gets close to this goal, I’ll just kill the Straw Brat. He’s my hostage, and the only hope of victory is to play my game and hope an opportunity opens up for you.”

(Reminder that What Doffy said here is a lie! Doffy’s entire fucking brain is in Luffy’s body— Luffy isn’t a puppet, he’s a host. If anything happens to Luffy it will fully kill Doffy, but by telling Sabo/the others to go after Doffy’s real body, he sets up a false goal to chase after. Even if they somehow kill Doffy’s real body, it’s just a shell. They’ll accomplish nothing.

(It’s the kind of double-bind I see Doffy really enjoying, a mind game within a mind game.)

(However, it’s worth noting that this lie ends up backfiring massively, causing the aforementioned ‘Doffy can’t leave Luffy’s body’ because Law operates on them believing Doffy’s fabrication to be reality.)

But back to Sabo. Who’s now failed to save his brothers twice. It’s arguably worse now, because unlike Marineford with Ace, Sabo was present in Dressrosa, and he still failed his brother. Saying Sabo feels like garbage is an understatement. He feels like a pane of glass that was shattered back into sand.

And Law? He’s watching people suffer fates worse than death on the daily, people who didn’t need to be involved, Luffy most of all. The only thing keeping him going is the fading chance to kill Doflamingo before Doffy gets tired of torturing the Straw Hats and decides to dispose of them, a goal so distant that it feels impossible.

Haha.. Would you believe me if I told you this is the less angsty section of the au? I have found a way to make things worse!

Also shoutout to @nneviil , they been a great sounding board for my ramblings about this au, and have given me tons of ideas on how to flesh things out! Not only did one of their doodles inspire the first drawing with Luffy ghost trying to throw hands with Doffy, they’re actually the one who first drew Luffy with the scar on his neck! I honestly think it’s my favorite part about drawing him now. Thanks again for that!