Chapter 013 Part 1:
Hogback who?
(or why you should go to med school before performing surgeries)

"One minute!" Kazuho shouted in her face after they went outside the warehouse to talk, leaving the now named Magne inside. "I told you to get out for one minute so I could change into Koichi's hoodie and baggy clothing! How did you manage to get into a fight with someone in less than a minute?!"

"I'm pretty sure it was more than a minute." Camilia replied, now being half Magne and half Kazuho to hide her real identity and practicing her Devil Fruit at the same time, leaving her even more unbalanced than before. She wasn't losing blood, but it was a close thing with her not being actually a half and half copy, but multiple copies for Magne's half to connect better. "And before the fight, I scared her to death, she almost killed me, we talked for a bit and then I realized she has an humiliation kink, so I decided to capitalize on it. The fight is probably a turn on for her and an excuse so I can beat her into the ground. I don't want to make her disappointed in fear she will leave, so I kinda accepted."

Pop Step just… stared judgmentally and tapped her foot with her arms crossed, clearly wanting to say something but refusing to say it.

"…Do you want her as your girlfriend?" D offered, trying to pacify her. "I know you're still mad about the Koichi thing, so maybe you should look for someone else? And hey, you could hit and insult her all you want and she will probably like it."

Even as she said it, the unbalanced abomination of nature knew those weren't the right words, because she was instantly in the presence of the pink demon, who was looking down on her even after becoming taller than it. However, the demon was merciful this time, as after letting D crumble under their overwhelming will for a while, it inhaled through its nose and let out a deep sigh, becoming an everyday if still very angry girl. She wondered if that utter fear was how it felt to be under the pressure of Conqueror's Haki… and somehow, she knew that it wasn't as bad as the pink demon.

"D, right now I want you to shut up and let me just… vent, okay?" at her eager nod, the teenager continued. "First off, you almost died again? Seriously? How are you even alive is one of life's greatest mysteries."

D swallowed her answer of 'I'm not, I already died once and it didn't keep me down' as the pink demon shot her a glare when it saw her opening her mouth. She just frantically nodded and zipped her mouth shut, which managed to calm it down.

"I won't ask how you scared her half to death because it's obvious how you did so." She mentioned while looking her body up and down. "I still don't get how you aren't terrified of your own reflection… Next time, maybe approach the potential client with the lights on, okay?" D nodded again, afraid of saying yes. "Good, you're learning."

Pop Step pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes, done with her new life despite it being less than a week since she accepted her position as crewmember of Camilia, slowly realizing she was more like a babysitter for the mentally older woman.

"And just because a masochist asks you to hit them doesn't mean you have to do it, my dear captain." She continued with a pained tone, as if asking how she couldn't see something so obvious. "If I'm getting this right, you were flirting with her so she would accept the deal. I'm pretty sure that seducing someone to buy your product is illegal. There must be a word for it, I just don't know it, but there definitely is one out there. Maybe enticement."

D wanted to comment on how it's a fine line that Pop Step is treading considering her costume and how she's a musician that would get lots of additional sells of an album if she printed herself on the cover regardless of the actual quality of her music, but she knew better than to say it. It was also different from directly seducing someone, which D actually just did, but only a little bit. The tiniest of bits, you could barely see it if you tried. And she was a pirate who broke the rules, so it didn't matter anyways. She obviously also kept this to herself, just nodding along in fear.

"I can see the pattern D. I utterly hate to see it, but I know that the more outlandish the claim, the more likely you're right. You're mostly wrong when you're the dumbest human on earth, like not realizing I'm fifteen, trying to eat the suicide fruit or not searching for a world map and thinking there isn't one without even trying." Pop Step deflated with each word, all anger leaving and only resignation remaining. "But if you say you're about to seduce that person so she will accept a sex change, I believe you. Somehow, you almost always know what to say and are pretty good at judging people and what they need… the best example being me, even if there were a few stumbles along the way. You're an excellent judge of character."

D nodded, promising to herself she would expose the String Bastard for the villain he was.

"So let's just get inside so you can flirt-fight with her and get this over with."

The crime against nature meekly raised a hand like she was in a classroom asking for permission to speak, which was basically what she was doing. Pop Step just rolled her eyes and nodded, allowing her to speak.

"She wanted the sex change first, then the flirt-fight… she also asked me to… to 'make her a woman' and that she would 'enjoy making me scream' after the change."

Pop Step gained a thousand-yard stare, looking at nothing for a while before she rebooted.

"…So let's just get inside so you can flirt-fight with her after I leave the warehouse and get this over with." She repeated with a correction, having erased that last sentence from her mind, deciding she didn't want to know any details of D's love life, both out of disgust and jealousy. It was sorely her mess and she wanted no part in it.

"Right, I will do that and you…" she said before trailing off.

"Will stay here so Koichi doesn't walk in on something that could scar him for life when he returns with even more clothing… which you will probably need depending on how this plays out." She muttered while trying to not throw up at the image of the abomination standing next to her doing… that. Or worse, her kid form. Shit. "D, if you dare to actually do it as your kid self I swear-"

"Wow, I'm not doing anything, even less in my realish body." She defended while raising up her hands in surrender. "I just flirted by accident and continued to do so. Nothing so serious. I'm just gonna pummel her into the ground until she can barely breath, and if she gets too horny from it I will knock her unconscious and dump her body somewhere."

Pop Step probably shouldn't be relieved about D preferring to brutalize someone over having sex with them, but she did. It felt more natural, she expected her to punch people, so she had become desensitized to it, especially after being hit so many times herself. Her captain would never kill someone in a fight except herself, because for her most fights were a game when there weren't any stakes and the pain was inconsequential as long as everyone lived healthily at the end of the day… or year. Hell, she was giggling when she was shooting her with air bullets the first time they properly met, and the girl had all but confirmed it after Kazuho shouted at her after the disaster with the Devil Fruit when she mentioned she enjoyed the fight in retrospective.

She honestly believed that Camilia would flirt-fight with someone she was interested in, which was why she thought she was being serious about this. She probably would fuck-fight too, whatever that would be.

Kazuho shuddered at that mental image as she followed D inside.

…

"…what…?" she barely had time to blink.

Pop Step wasn't sure how this happened, one minute they were going in and now they have the woman (Magne, she introduced herself as) strapped to a table with rope while the abomination known as Half D is sharpening knives over their victim while looking her dead in the eyes. She's even licking her lips in anticipation.

"Okay peasant, first of all, blood type?" the monstrosity asked with a hand on her hip to their first customer.

"…Uh, B negative." the subject answered, unsure of how they ended up like this too.

"…Well, shit." D muttered to herself while looking at Kazuho, who had A negative. "Let's hope I can do transplants with incompatible blood types… Anyway!" she continued loudly and with an unaligned smile of different-sized teeth, "You have multiple options! I can simply replace your genitals, though you will be infertile. Or I can give you Pop Step's magnificent boobs! I can give you her smooth legs and arms, her delicate hands, her dainty feet, her modest hips or skinny torso, even her pretty face! You can go as far as becoming a carbon copy of her beautiful self, if that's what you want!"

D ignored the girl's increasing squeaks with every 'compliment', because she was trying to sell a product here and saying something bad about it would be counterproductive, even if true.

"Or you can bring a woman (or feminine man!) here so I can give you the characteristics you want! We can even scope out a woman who refused to cooperate and we give you a change in the middle of the street after I touch her! No full identity stealing though, so hair and fingerprints are out. In theory, the skin and blood will eventually be replaced with yours after some time, but replacing your scalp may be going too far."

The monster's smile went wider, which didn't have the effect she wanted considering her unaligned halves, but D was uncaring of this fact.

"If you want, I can replace patches of skin so you don't grow hair in your face, arms, legs and chest. Eye color, nose shape, teeth, I can change anything you don't like about yourself for something better! I can also cover any scars you have by putting unblemished skin over them. Oh, I just realized I can probably change your ethnicity if that's what you want! I can replace your lungs if you smoke, I can give you a better liver if you drink, I can even replace your heart if it isn't working all that right! …though, the more invasive, the more compatibility for what a regular transplant would require is, well, required." she explained while tapping her chin.

Finally, D actually looked at the person she was speaking to and saw an extremely reluctant woman. She looked towards Kazuho for answers, but she was cringing at something.

"D-Okama King…" she corrected after slipping, "I don't want to sound rude, but… your offer felt like a deal with the Devil just now." She said in hypocrisy, as if she didn't wear a black outfit with bat wings. "Especially the part about taking someone's appearance without consent."

"I was thinking more like mad scientist looking for willing subjects myself." The woman tied to a table added her two cents. "Because she didn't look like she knew if half the stuff she said would work. But I can see your point, it does sound like a deal too good to be true and doing it for free is just even more suspicious, like you're waiting to cash in the favor years later or take away what you gave your unknowing victims unless they obey."

"Well, I can take away your new form at any moment." the monster-devil-mad-scientist commented with a shrug, which wasn't helping her case. "Though I never tried to take away a copy from someone who actually wanted to remain like that, instead of being indifferent about it…"

"See, that curious tone? That's mad scientist talk right there." the woman said while trying to point at the monster despite having her arms bound. "I'm not feeling a lot of love here."

"And aren't people supposed to accept themselves as who they are?" Pop Step butted in. "I get the sex change as affirming who you are on the outside, but a lot of what you said sounds like vanity and jealously with taking other people's looks, which… is even more like Devil talk, aren't those major sins or something?"

"Seven deadly sins, and vanity is only sometimes one." D corrected absentmindedly, having gone through an early chūnibyō phase once upon a time, before raising a knife and waving it around. "And imitation is the highest form of flattery. I should know, I copy people all the time, heck, my personality itself is a mask of a mask I wore for so long that there's no longer a face beneath. The point is-"

"Wait a moment, what did you just sai-?!"

"-THE POINT IS!" D interrupted, trying to maintain the conversation on track, "That taking other people's body parts is fine, as long as it's a one-time thing to reach your idealized body… Think of it as really advanced yet experimental plastic surgery." She offered with an open palm to her first subject. "The more people get the treatment; the more certain it will work for the next person because I will be able to answer my questions."

That seemed to calm down Magne, though not too much, she was still strapped to a table after all. Pop Step remained nervous for some reason-ah, the knives, yes, in retrospective they didn't help prevent the mad scientist allegations, especially because they were kitchen knives instead of scalpels. D put them down on top of a nearby box, deciding that maybe opening up people to see how her internal copies worked wasn't the best idea… yet, she would need anesthesia for that, and actually learn how to stitch flesh beyond basic sewing.

"Okay, the least intrusive thing I can do is replace your hair-growing skin with non-hair-growing skin. No more beard, or chest hair, or leg hair, or whatever hair you don't want anymore. I can even use your own skin to do it, so no transplant rejection risk."

D shrugged, not really caring about that aspect of her ability since she hadn't hit puberty yet… though, now that she thought about it, if she replaced the skin all over her body with her scalp, the possibilities…

"That sounds… fine." Magne conceded, before resting her head on the 'operating' table. "Not having to shave would be nice."

Starting to work as soon as she got permission, D touched the woman's face and copied the skin of her palms on her face multiple times until she covered most of it. It was… kinda ugly, with differently colored patches of skin, but a tan would fix it… probably… ignoring the fact that the palms were often more light than the rest of the skin.

"How do you feel?" the fake doctor asked, not expecting anything special.

"To-igt!" her patient mumbled, her face refusing to move.

"Mmh… yes, different patches of skin have different levels of thickness and elasticity." D noted while reversing the copy and trying with the skin on the soles of her feet. "How about-forget I asked."

D immediately reversed the copy when she saw Magne's face sagging, obviously too loose. She tapped her chin in thought, before deciding that she couldn't make her face completely hairless. Instead, she tried out parts of her skin that had minimal hair. Sure, some of those parts had hair so small that you could barely see it, but it was still there. Nobody would notice it, but it was the principle of the thing.

Ignoring the complaints of stinging pain, D continued her experiments. Using a little of her inner wrist, a little of the sides of her torso and a little from around her pelvis, Camilia eventually managed to create a mostly hair-free face which worked as it should. It still had slightly different colors, but now she was sure that a little tan would certainly resolve said issue, eventually.

It took countless tries and around an hour to reach elastic perfection, but she believed it would take infinitely less the next time she tried, as long as she remembered the specific places to take skin from and the future patient didn't vary too wildly in body fat proportions.

"Okay, what next?" she asked while wiping her hands in a towel provided by Koichi, who had returned at around the forty-minute mark. "Leg hair? Arm hair? I want to say that if you choose chest hair it may cause problems if you also want new breasts, but I have no idea if it's actually true."

D stared innocently at Magne, only to receive a glare for her efforts.

"Fuck this shit, just change me already so we can fight and get over this." She huffed, tired from remaining still for over an hour on a rigid wooden table.

"You asked." D shrugged, before touching Pop Step to gain her appearance for a minute.

Camilia looked at the lower abdomen of Magne and paused. She considered different pelvis structures (both from a different sex and because of her bigger size), different bladder positions and connections, space required to grow a new womb when considering the lower intestines, how the space between her legs compared to the space between Pop Step's legs and how that would interact with the new body parts, what parts she would need to outright replace and what parts she would need to slightly alter with smaller connecting copies, how to-

"Just do it already!" Magne shouted impatiently.

-completely ignore all these problems and throw Knuckleduster's warnings out the windows because she barely got a passing grade in Biology and she didn't care about the consequences of her actions, especially when she could reverse them with a snap of her fingers.

"Here we go!" she exclaimed with a smile, happy that someone shared her devil-may-care attitude.

…Magne was a lot more willing to wait when her stomach bulged from having a new womb without preparing empty space to contain it. Oh, the internal bleeding and slightly ruptured intestines helped in convincing her too, though it did put a temporary stop to the experiments. At least D got an excuse to use the knives from that.

Chapter 013 Part 2:
Torture-Torture side-effects
(or it's amazing what the human body can adapt to if exposed enough)

Magne rubbed her stomach, careful to not touch her new stitches. In theory, the Okama King could have dropped the womb copy that caused the damage and created a new copy of her previously healthy insides to heal her. However, she did not do that.

Instead, the maniac cut her open, rearranged her organs to make some space, realized she did not have enough space even after playing Tetris with her insides and decided to cut off a portion of her intestines to make enough room. Oh sure, the monster's Quirk allowed her to perfectly connect the two parts afterwards, but there was a moment in the middle when they were not, which brought a lot of issues of internal bleeding that had to be resolved before they could seal the gaping hole in her stomach.

And all of that would be fine and dandy if it weren't for the fact that they performed live surgery on her without any anesthesia at all. She almost bled out multiple times, only being alive thanks to the doctor somehow creating more and more blood inside of her as it continued to get out. Which Magne didn't care at the time, on account of being in excruciating, agonizing pain as she suffered through an accidental torture session where even the assistants of her tormentor were horrified by her atrocities.

Yet the damn devil didn't even seem phased, simply smiling while asking the others to restrain the flailing victim, waving her knife around with mediocre yet confident skill (which was not a good combination for a surgeon to have) and going so far as sucker punching her to knock her out so she would stop 'being such a crybaby.' The worst part was that Magne was thankful for the last one, because it at least allowed her to be unconscious for part of the process.

She understood that, on a logical level, her surgeon didn't have the resources available to give her even local anesthetics and that it was her own impatience that caused her injuries, expecting a sex change in less time that it took the mad scientist to replace her face's skin with a non-growing hair one. She understood that, and also the valid concern that healing her by creating a copy could possibly prevent her from changing her gender, since the Okama King couldn't copy onto an already existing copy.

However, that didn't mean she was also extremely furious at the moment for the experience and barely containing herself from punching a bitch who could have reversed all damage if she wasn't so curious about seeing her insides.

So, it was with great pleasure that she faced the Okama King. After a couple stretches and adjusting to having more space between her legs, she was raring to go and ready to rumble. She cracked her knuckles and her neck while sneering, her blood pumping.

"I am gonna enjoy this so much." She said with forced calm, barely restraining herself from punching her already as she still hadn't decided whether she was gonna beat the kid within an inch of her life or just straight up kill her.

Her comment gained an indecipherable expression from the teenager calling herself Pop Step but she paid it no heed, her attention fully on her target.

"Yeah, before we do this I have a question?" her opponent stalled, which made her scoff.

"Already chickening out?" she asked in contempt while taking a fighting stance. "Because we're doing this, no matter what."

"Oh no, I just wanted to clarify something." The woman copying her appearance explained while shaking her head, yet not expanding further.

Magne waited in silence as the Okama King made some faces, as if pondering how to word it, but her patience was paper thin at the moment.

"Well spit it out already!" Magne shouted with some spit.

"Mm… How to say it…" she continued thinking while looking at the ceiling, completely ignoring her words, before clapping her hands with a smile. "Ah, yes! Being direct is probably for the best, I guess I was just overthinking it, hidi."

So, with a spring in her step, the woman did a spin and turned to face her, happy to have found the perfect words.

"Dismemberment is allowed, right?" she chirped innocently, as if asking for the weather.

"…" Magne just stared, in both astonishment and horror.

"…" The Okama King remained quiet, waiting for an answer.

"…" Magne continued to stare, as she began to realize that the question was serious and began wondering what she just got herself in as she broke in a cold sweat.

"…/…" Both Pop Step and Cruller shared, one in resignation and the other in smugness for some reason.

"Guess those weren't the words after all." the girl said to herself, downtrodden, "Would you have liked better 'How attached to your limbs are you'?"

Words… failed to describe the mess of emotions she was going through.

"I myself liked best 'You wouldn't mind if I took a limb or four?' But while it sounds good to my ear, I'm not sure what I would do with the limbs afterwards… maybe I can still use it if I copy only the limbs of someone while retaining my torso and head, instead of implying mutilation?" the… thing wondered aloud, before shaking her head and muttering to herself some more.

Eventually, Magne managed to find her voice and interrupt the other girl's ramblings.

"No." she managed to utter robotically, still reeling from the experience. "No mutilation allowed." she decided, her desire to fight having taken a dive after the revelation of how far the other party was willing to go.

Because she knew, deep in her heart, that the question wasn't an intimidation tactic. It wasn't a threat to be carried out, or a statement of what was about to happen if she didn't back out. It was an honest inquiry of how far the monster was allowed to brutalize Magne before she had to back off.

And it was with growing terror that the woman realized that the abomination was being nice. She probably saw a cut and dismemberment in the same light thanks to her Quirk, which would allow her to reattach her limbs after tearing them off. So, for her, someone that clearly didn't care about the agony she inflicted on others, asking about dismemberment being allowed was… again, being nice and considerate without really understanding why it was of any concern yet playing along with the normal humans.

Magne gulped as she raised her trembling fists, not sure of this anymore.

Meanwhile, D both cheered and pouted on the inside.

In one hand, the danger of being torn apart was off the table, which made this fight winnable. After all, the Magne-Magne Fruit (hididi, Magne) was terrifying. She got her body destroyed when it was half-man half-woman because of two magnets attracting each other and smashing together, so one would think that being a whole gender would solve the issue. However, when she copied the DF, she also discovered that she could target specific portions of the body.

If she magnetized two portions they would have the same polarity, which would repel each other, except if you targeted parts that touched they would combine into one. Yet, if she magnetized an arm, left a tiny sliver of flesh after it and then magnetized the torso, those two parts would repel each other. That would result in the arm violently ripping off and flying away, though she wasn't sure how fast or painful the experience would be. Repeat with the other three limbs, or do the four limbs simultaneously, and you have a bloody stump where your enemies once stood. Or just pull apart the head from the body if you want to kill them.

In short, it was a limited and gory version of Law's Devil Fruit, and she didn't want to fight someone like Law any time soon without imposing heavy restrictions, hence asking about dismemberment.

On the other hand, she really really wanted to try it out, go wild west and let the fastest draw decide the winner of their bout. It couldn't be that painful, she only had to mostly fake her crying when her organs were being made into mashed potatoes, so doing the reverse couldn't be much worse.

D frowned, briefly wondering if something like that shouldn't hurt more, only to blush in embarrassment at the memories of her… experiments before she realized she could transform painlessly… and the multiple times during her brief training with Knuckleduster where she forgot she could do that while panicking… and the times when she lost body parts thanks to wrong copies while trying to figure out Half Woman… and all her messing around with her own internal organs to learn how to do a sex change leading to so much blood… and that time she tried to copy only the bones of Knuckleduster, leading to her entire skeleton coming out of her flesh through uncountable perforations… and then reverse happened, when she tried to copy only the flesh of Knuckleduster, thus becoming a mostly boneless pile of meat that could not move under its own power, which for some reason didn't hurt so much despite how it should have been worse in retrospect…

Maybe… maybe having her flesh and organs constantly rearranged in macabre demonstrations of body horror gave her a skewed perception of pain?

"Counter-argument: Shanks not even flinching at losing an arm, Nami stabbing herself, Zeff cutting off his own leg, a person having their entire body structure altered to fit into a chest, just… Zoro, in just the East Blue Saga, aka the weakest Blue." Her brain provided, which… fair, there was probably a higher pain tolerance in this world. And furthermore, they were in proto-Wano, which was New World endgame territory.

Yeah, now that she thought about it, losing an arm probably wasn't meant to hurt all that much after all, everyone else was just exaggerating. She would mutilate her own arm to demonstrate how they were all crybabies, but Camilia did promise to not dismember anyone during the fight, and she guessed that included herself.

Still, she had a fight to win and she had things to try out. So after a friendly (and reluctant) handshake with her opponent and her minute of freely copying her appearance renewed, she was ready.

"Size-Changing Brawling!"

(Is it torture if you do it on accident? Would that hold in a court of law if D was brought to the stand? Would Camilia demonstrate how it wasn't such a big deal by inflicting the same injuries to herself in the middle of her testimony, traumatizing almost everyone present?

Since I'm a writer and not a lawyer, I can only answer the third question with a resounding yes.

Anyway, I think this is the most graphic we will ever get in terms of gore for a long time, an after-action report of a surgery. To cleanse your palate of that barbaric and depraved stuff, we have regular old violence of punching each other silly for next chapter.)