Character information

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For those unfamiliar with One Piece, or not caught up with everything regarding Trafalgar Law.

CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME: Trafalgar Law, AKA Trafalgar D. Water Law, AKA "Surgeon of Death"
CANON: One Piece
AGE: 26
GENDER: male
APPEARANCE: Law is tall - 6'3" - and slender but muscled, particularly in the torso. His thin, sharp features and tousled black hair, with the earrings and tattoos, give him a youthful punk appearance. His gray eyes usually have a shadow beneath them, as if perpetually tired or never fully recovered from some terrible disease. His most distinguishing characteristics are his tattoos: "DEATH" across the fingers of both hands, a cross-like emblem on the back of both hands similar to the World Government logo of the Four Seas, sunbursts with a faceless version of his jolly roger on both forearms, an enormous stylized tribal heart across his whole chest and upper abs with his jolly roger's grin in the dead center of his chest, double-hearts on both shoulders, and his Heart Pirates jolly roger on his back. He prefers comfortable yet stylish clothing, including sweatshirts and jeans, and most of the time they incorporate certain recurring themes: the Heart Pirates jolly roger, hearts in general, and a spotted pattern similar to a snow leopard.

Depending on canon point pull for games, he may still sport bandages around his right biceps, covering the stitches where his arm was reattached, or 0therwise an obvious stitched scar in that spot.

PERSONALITY: Trafalgar Law is certainly as cold and cruel as his reputation implies, though he's had a tough life to make him that way. He does have a few positive traits, but he is not in any sense friendly, kind, or happy. He's softspoken, cautious, calculating, and patient, slow to lose his temper, driven and determined. There is little good humor in his smile, when he smiles - it's more of a smirk, casual and a bit smug but still entirely unfriendly, and even dangerous in some situations. However self-controlled he is, he can be rude to those he considers inferior, sharp and belittling in tone, or snide and sarcastic, and enjoys flipping people off. He hates being told what to do, especially by other pirates roughly his equal. He became a warlord (shichibukai) briefly not to take orders but to gain certain perks from the Marines/World Government, like access to intelligence and confirmation of the existence of certain islands and individuals. Alliances, to him, are for seeking mutual gain but not necessarily friendship. His plans for reaching the end of the Grand Line and finding the One Piece are multi-faceted and careful, though the only life he's willing to sacrifice for them is his own. Despite any amicable ties between himself and his own crewmates or his allies, Law is a loner at heart.

On the plus side, Law can be respectful when he wants to, gives credit where credit is due, and does have the capacity to be disgusted by other foes' terrible behavior. Even if he refused to just jump in and help, he was genuinely offended and angry that Caesar stole children from their parents in order to experiment on them - unsuccessfully, at that, condemning them to an early death. Whether out of some deeply-buried sense of compassion or the simple drive of a doctor who can't watch someone suffer in front of him when he could heal them, he did eventually treat the children so they would be strong enough to journey to see Dr. Vegapunk to fully cure them. He rescued and treated Luffy and Jinbei after Marineford, and though he bluntly said it wasn't out of the goodness of his heart, he still helped - likewise Bellamy, he treated the man just because Luffy asked him to, but told him later that if he didn't like it he could just go off and die. If he has a personal code of honor, its terms are not explicit, but he does behave with some honor toward some specific individuals. He has few close relationships, but those he does have are fairly important. He cares for his own crew, to the point of having them wait for him on Zou so they wouldn't get caught up in the conflict with Doflamingo, even though he didn't expect to return to them alive. He's tough but fair with them, and even protects them by warning them who they shouldn't tangle with and using his power to swap the weaker out of a fight to let the stronger take their place. While not affectionate, he has a different relationship with his navigator, Bepo, a polar bear from the Mink tribe - Bepo carries his nodachi for him and will allow Law to rest against him, which isn't strange for a Mink (they're very touchy-feely) but it is for Law, who willingly lays on him sometimes. He treats the Straw Hats with considerable respect and seems to have forged a connection with Zoro and Robin, an understanding with Sanji, and a much deeper devotion to Luffy. In the process of enduring this fight to the death with Doflamingo, Law reached a point where he was willing to surrender his pride and his will to Luffy, and even begged Cavendish not to take him somewhere to get his wounds treated but rather to let him lie on the hilltop so he could witness the end of the fight no matter how it turned out - and if Luffy perished, he wanted to die with him. It shows he does still have it in him to respect and even tie himself to another, and though he and Luffy are equals (they even have the same bounty amount now) and supposed to be cooperating on their mutual goal to bring down the pirate-emperor Kaidou, Law defers to Luffy in command matters, or at least doesn't have to argue with him to try a different tactic anymore. He has not, however, joined his crew to be part of the Straw Hat Grand Fleet which was just formed as they left Dressrosa. He would be the first to admit that Luffy is stronger than he is, now that he's seen it for himself, and while he doesn't share Luffy's interest in being friends, he hasn't dissolved their alliance yet (he tried to call it off in a fit of anger, but he had no choice in the matter and after the battle ended, remained cooperative with the Straw Hats and still intends to see their mission through). Finally, since this is One Piece, he does have his small moments of goofiness, such as being impressed by the ninja Raizo (and trying to pretend he isn't) or throwing a fit over dinner because he doesn't like bread.

The Marines and other pirates tend to see people's surface traits only and never get to know the real person, so their remarks about others tend to reflect their limited knowledge. With Law, they only know what he lets them see, so people call him cruel and creepy and dangerous. He did send the hearts of 100 lesser pirates to Marine HQ in order to secure his position as a warlord, but after seeing his power in action, we can surmise that he didn't kill and then cut out those hearts but rather used his Ope-Ope no Mi to cleanly remove the hearts from their chests, leaving the pirates still alive to continue existing somewhere. He also would have been fine leaving the kids on Punk Hazard because it wasn't his problem, but appeals from the various Straw Hats got through to him. He is cold and indifferent toward the pleas and emotions of some, particularly if he doesn't respect them, and has absolutely zero qualms about tormenting and killing people who defy him. He killed Vergo ruthlessly and cruelly, by using his Devil Fruit to slice him into a dozen separate pieces and then lashing those pieces to a fence so he couldn't re-assemble himself - and then blowing up the room in which those pieces were trapped. On top of that, he protected his own assets and caused Monet's death by swapping out which heart Caesar was carrying as insurance; Caesar thought it was Smoker's, and stabbed it in order to kill him from a distance, but it was Monet's. Law is a complete asshole to his rivals, dismissive toward the weak, and will happily use people if they offer him some sort of advantage toward achieving his goals. If you're not a crewmate or an ally he respects, you're garbage to him, and he has no problem flipping people off, telling them they're weak, and ignoring their pain or their feelings. He doesn't go out of his way to do so, but if someone confronts him, that's how he deals with them. He is not interested in individual sob stories nor the "greater good" of any one island or the world itself. He carries the secret name of "D" and because of it, has a sense of belief that it's his fate to somehow tear down the elite nobles of the world (the Tenryuubito, "Celestial Dragons") though not in the way the Revolutionaries would; being an immensely-powerful pirate is good enough to achieve that end.

Thanks to his tragic childhood and the mental breakdown he suffered, being given hope and love again by Corazon and then having that ripped out of his life a second time, Law raised himself to become strong enough both physically and emotionally to eventually someday be able to stand against Doflamingo and kill him in revenge. He cut himself off from getting too close to people since everyone he ever loved was killed in terrible ways (parents, sister, his childhood friends/classmates, the nuns who ran the school, everyone in Flevance, Corazon) and even though his plan to take down Kaidou didn't necessarily include a direct confrontation with Doflamingo, once it turned into one, he was perfectly willing to sacrifice himself if it also destroyed Doflamingo. He considered himself more willing and ready to pull the trigger, where Corazon was unable to thanks to his family ties, but in the end he was physically too weak to do it and had to let Luffy. Once it was all over, he had to come to terms with the fact that his long nightmare is actually over and he has accomplished a sort of revenge/atonement for Corazon's death, though not in the way he expected. He didn't know what to do with himself and his feelings, but got advice from ex-admiral Sengoku not to second-guess Corazon's love for him and to just live his life, now, rather than seek to sacrifice himself.

Law keeps his pride, intelligence, and personal strength wrapped around him to protect him from getting too close to anyone and having to deal with the pain of loss yet again, but he is slowly warming up to the Straw Hats and even okay with affection from his own crew. Despite trying to keep his distance and seemingly not being willing to trust most people, he can be won over. Thanks to his pride he is easily embarrassed by people having fun or being cute, and hates it when people invade his personal space without his permission - though instead of pushing them away, he just sort of sits there and takes it but with a look of exasperation and horror on his face, as he did when Zoro got too friendly with him during the victory banquet. Most of Luffy's usual antics leave him nonplussed, even after being treated to Luffy's unique point of view several times he still has to WTF at the guy every now and then. It's hard to get close to him and even harder to gain his respect, and even if you do, you can still remain an enemy to him, like Smoker. He isn't kind and even his sense of humor tends toward the dark and sarcastic. Most of the time he plans his strategies carefully and thinks through his moves, but he can be inflexible and thus taken by surprise by unanticipated developments. Really, the collapse of his plan to pit Kaidou and Doflamingo against one another has its roots in the same trait that makes him still constantly flummoxed by Luffy being Luffy - when people or things don't go precisely as he, in all his wisdom, expects them to, he's thrown off balance.

Like many of the characters who have ended up in the Straw Hat Grand Fleet, Dressrosa was a turning point for Law wherein he had to make some tough choices and learn to approach problems a different way in order to survive and continue on with his life. He saw the end of his life's secret ambition but not the end of his own life, leaving him with a wide open road of new possibilities ahead. He nearly died at least three times over, lost an arm (but then got it back), and was allowed to return to his waiting crew only to have even more obstacles pop up in his long-term plan. Unlike being ambushed on Dressrosa, he's already rolling with the need to change and not plan things so rigidly this time. He will be pulled from a point after he splits up with Luffy, who is going elsewhere to rescue Sanji, and takes half the crew (Zoro, Robin, etc) with him on his ship to infiltrate the Kingdom of Wano.

POWERS/ABILITIES: Law is the user of the Ope Ope no Mi, the Devil Fruit controlling "Operation," a Paramecia type. At its base level, it allows him to create a spherical area of power called his "Room," inside which he can manipulate and control physical matter from the microscopic level all the way up to large warships and buildings. This means the entire bodies of people, including himself. Anyone and anything inside the boundary of the Room is subject to having the laws of physics warped by his control. A short list of things he can do with it:

• cut objects or bodies into pieces and then rearrange those pieces at will, or even remove them, without killing the subject (Amputate);
  
• remove hearts from bodies but keep the person alive so long as the heart is undamaged (Mes);
  
• swap objects and people from one location to another (Shambles);
  
• swap personalities (the "heart" of a person);
  
• perform delicate surgery without incisions or anesthesia, including removing bullets or poisons;
  
• attach bodies together and even create centaurs out of people and animals together;
  
• telekinetically levitate, move, or throw objects inside the Room (Takt);
  
• create and use an electrical charge like a defibrillator (Countershock);
  
• scan and detect objects and strength levels (Scan);
  
• create an energy knife or scalpel to damage internal organs without leaving external damage (Gamma Knife);
  
• and finally, it can give another person eternal life, but at the cost of the life of the ability-user.

This is not even a description of his actual fighting moves. The Ope-Ope no Mi is said to be the ultimate Devil Fruit, and in the hands of anyone with medical knowledge (such as Law) it can be used to perform medical miracles. It can also be used to enhance fighting ability, either to weaken/confuse the opponent or to exponentially strengthen the cuts of a sword, for example. He is most likely to commonly use Mes, Shambles, Takt, and Scan, as well as Amputate on NPCs (or PCs when permission is given), while Gamma Knife takes too much of his energy and is only used in desperation. He has also Awakened his Devil Fruit and has extra top-level moves (K-Room and R-Room) but those may never come up in RP. The Room itself is like an aura, mostly transparent, but the edges of it can be seen as a sort of blue haze.

With great power comes great drawbacks. The Room is 100% required to do anything, it has to be created first and if he's weakened or distracted enough, he can't maintain it and has to step back and re-create it. It can't move, so if the person or thing he's trying to operate on leaves the Room, he has to end that one and create a new one. If one can see the faint blue aura delineating the edges of the Room, theoretically someone could escape it by just running out of it. There is a finite limit to how large the Room can physically be, but considering Law has made it large enough that those inside couldn't see the edges and therefore didn't know they were in a Room (as large as a palace), we don't know that limit yet. Furthermore, it requires a huge cost of strength and stamina to use repeatedly and to its greatest extents. Law has requested others handle basic combat in his place in order for him to reserve his strength to be able to use his abilities when they count, but also exhausted himself trying to use it too often, and when wracked with pain and fatigue, couldn't even muster a Room the size of his hand. Using it too much even past the point of exhaustion shortens his lifespan. Some people with strong haki can resist some of the effects of the ability. Most of his moves within the Room require a hand-gesture, which means that if his hands are restrained or he's blocked from making that movement, the attack/operation can be thwarted. In order to use Shambles to swap or move people great distances, there has to be some object which he can swap out for them within the Room. If he were to use the Perennial Youth Surgery to grant someone eternal life, he would die. The Awakened forms of K-Room and R-Room require having his sword in hand AND are also extra energy expense/hard to maintain. And then there's the standard Devil Fruit weaknesses: the sea, seastone, and most bodies of standing water render Law completely weak and helpless, draining his strength and rendering him incapable of using his ability. If he gets knocked unconscious, the Room will immediately disappear and anything in the process of being manipulated will return to normal, though unlike some long-term status-effect Paramecia fruits, some effects don't end if he's knocked out. Instead, he has to manually return organs to bodies and the correct mind/spirit to the correct body, and then, only if the correct bodies are in front of him.

In addition to this Devil Fruit ability, Law has the use of haki. Haki is a natural spiritual ability all people in his world have but few awaken and even fewer train to use to full potential. While Law isn't shown having Conqueror's Haki (like Luffy and Shanks), he is able to withstand another person using it around him - most people faint from the aura of it, but he withstood Rayleigh's shock of it and had Luffy and Doflamingo using it literally inches above his chest and wasn't affected. Recent manga has made it uncertain whether he has finally awakened Conqueror's haki himself, it's a huge maybe but should nt come up in RP context. Law is proficient in the use of Observation Haki and Armament Haki. Observation allows him to sense the life force of other people and creatures, and even their strength level in some cases, as well as anticipate movement in order to dodge attacks. Armament allows him to imbue his body or anything he's holding, such as his sword, with a solid black coating that cannot be broken except by another person's more powerful haki. It allows him to deal damage to Devil Fruit users who otherwise wouldn't take damage from mere physical blows (especially Logia, or elemental, users) as well as protect himself and his blade from being damaged.

Finally, he is an extremely intelligent person with extensive medical knowledge. He was an advanced student, already studying medicine at age 10 and far ahead of everyone in his class before studying on his own, so by now he is probably one of the most skilled physicians in the world. He has a strong grounding in academic knowledge as well as the street smarts needed to make his way in a cruel world alone. He took care of himself from age 13 until his 4-person crew began to expand and he finally reached the Grand Line, so he has survival skills and extremely basic knowledge of ship-handling, navigation, and sailing process, as well as knowledge of medicinal plants/fungi and the medical advances within his world. In addition to his powers, Law is proficient in swordsmanship and has some background training in marksmanship and martial arts.

ITEMS: Law carries a long nodachi (almost as tall as he is), named Kikoku. It has a line of crosses down the black saya and a red tasseled cord tied around it, with fur trim around the tsuba. He also is likely to have at least one mini den-den mushi in his pocket. It looks like him, with a spotted hat just like his and a little goatee.