Monkey D. Luffy/Abilities and Powers

Abilities and Powers
As captain of the Straw Hat Pirates, Monkey D. Luffy has immense physical strength, capable of breaking stone and shattering steel with his bare hands. Additionally, Luffy has always fought the strongest villain of the story arc (except in Captain Morgan Arc). Luffy's sheer physical strength and dexterity is a result of his grandfather's unorthodox training methods (thrown into a bottomless ravine, tied to a balloon, thrown into a forest at night, etc.) and he claimed he had a punch as powerful as a pistol even at seven years of age. Luffy's greatest feat of strength (so far) is seen in the Water 7 Arc, when he is trapped between two enormous buildings and escapes by pushing them apart.

Luffy also possesses great endurance and reflexes to match his strength and speed. In fact, on more than one occasion, Luffy was able to anticipate moves and counter attacks that would normally be beyond his field of vision due to his sharp reflexes. He is also shown to increase in his strength quite dramatically in a short period of time, most noticeably being the fight against Minotaurus, where the first time took the combined efforts of Mr. 2, Mr. 3 and Buggy just to beat him, but the next time, Luffy defeated him with a single Jet Pistol.

His vast strength is only exceeded by his enormous willpower, as demonstrated on several occasions throughout the series, most noted of all in the Thriller Bark Arc when he manages to take in 100 shadows without passing out, compared to normal humans, who can only take in 2 or 3. This willpower even lets him survive far beyond what normal people are capable of, as demonstrated recently when he was poisoned very far beyond what a human is capable of surviving, only living on despite his critical condition through sheer willpower. This is also shown when he survives through Emporio Ivankov's "Healing Hormones" ability, which even with a slim chance of surviving had not only survived the endeavor, but made a recovery in twenty hours when the normal time for the healing procedure is two days. This was later shown with Basil Hawkins' fortune telling, as despite doing it numerous times, he could never get Luffy's chance of survival to reach zero.

He also possesses extraordinary jaw strength, as seen in the Buggy the Clown Arc in the manga, where he had almost chewed through the metal bars of the cage Buggy put him in. In the following arc, he shattered Jango's steel chakram with his teeth alone (anime). He also ate the cage in which Gecko Moria put him in, and managed to give Rob Lucci a small bite wound. His greatest feat on this area, however, was that he managed to make Jinbe, who is known to have a extremely high tolerance towards pain, yell out in pain when he bit him in the hand.

Luffy is also shown to be very agile. Early on in the series, Luffy is seen being able to react to foes faster than him, like Kuro, Arlong, Bellamy and Enel. After learning the CP9's Soru technique to enhance not only his speed, but his strength as well, he became even more so. After the time skip he has become even faster, being able to dodge attacks even while in Gear Third.

Unlike Zoro or Sanji, Luffy's fighting style is completely improvised; it follows no particular code of honor, and so if necessary, he will attack women or animals, hit below the belt, attack his enemies even if they have their backs turned or are otherwise unprepared or unsuspecting, use enemies as human shields and even bite his opponents. While fighting, Luffy is adept at improvising, and regularly comes up with creative counterattacks to use against his enemies. This however leads both enemies and allies alike to wonder if Luffy is taking the fight seriously, especially when he comes up with ridiculous and over the top moves (like Crocodile when Luffy became Mizu Luffy), which prompts Luffy to respond that he's always serious.

When Luffy fights, he relies heavily on his instincts, which, interestingly enough, is mostly correct. Even as early as the Arlong Park arc, after getting bittten he managed to escape with his arm still in one piece by slamming Arlong's head to losen his jaw to get it out instead of simply pulling it. He picked out the real Mr. 3 from a bunch of wax look-a-likes on a hunch. He also destroyed Enel's Raigo using the gold ball as a conductor, but according to Oda he had no real idea what he was doing and was acting out of instinct. Before even learning Kenbunshoku Haki, Luffy could easily dodge any attack relying on his instinct as shown in his battle against Enel and Rob Lucci.

During his childhood, Luffy seems to have at least become competent with a staff, as he is seen using one against a variety of opponents.

He also appears to be intelligent enough to at least understand fundamental concepts, such as rubber being a natural insulator, which might be why he did not bother ducking out of the way of Enel's lightning attacks as it would have been pointless to do so since he is immune to such attacks. While easily noticeable as the least strategic member of his own crew, due to his tendency to simply barge in head-first into battle (often without any kind of battle plan or even any knowledge of his opponent's abilities), Luffy is a highly adaptive combatant. He is constantly coming up with ways to keep ahead of his foes, either by taking advantage of his own strength and Devil Fruit powers or utilizing the opponent's own strengths (along with their weaknesses) against them. This causes even warriors long considered unbeatable to have trouble keeping up.

He is heavily susceptible to any form of hypnotism and doesn't have the sense to turn away, such as Jango's powers of hypnosis or Miss Goldenweek's Colors trap. He is also easily distracted when he sees something that's "just too cool", like seeing Chopper's transformations for the first time, the Thousand Sunny's Gaon Cannon, a energy beam from a Pacifista or his wax armor made from Mr. 3's Doru Doru no Mi powers, ignoring everything around him.

Luffy also has the mysterious and uncanny ability to, while completely asleep, eat as if he were awake, even able to know when more food has been placed on the table. This is probably purely based on muscle memory since what Luffy does best is fighting and eating.



Another running gag in the series is Luffy's inability to draw. At the start of the Arlong arc, imagining how a fishman would look, Luffy drew a fish with tentacle-like paws and an anthropomorphic fish with arms, legs and hair (Greatly incensing Sanji, who, erroneously, thought, that Nami could be a mermaid and thus mistakenly believed, that Luffy was drawing her ugly). Before the Straw Hats arrived at Water Seven, Luffy drew a childish picture of what he wanted the future shipwright to look like (ironically, it looked a lot like Franky). This inability also extends to Jolly Rogers; the first Jolly Roger of the Straw Hat Pirates was a bad drawing designed by Luffy himself (he later used a similarly bad drawn version of his Jolly Roger as a promise marker on the face of Laboon) while also drawing a bad version of Foxy's flag after taking it from him in the Davy Back Fight arc.

Another of Luffy's amazing talents is his inability to do chores. Luffy is a disaster when it comes to doing simple errands, as shown when he was a chore boy in Baratie. Everything he tried to do or help with only ended up turning out to be worse. It got to the point that Zeff gladly allowed him to go after defeating Don Krieg, claiming the damage Luffy could inflict if he stays would probably put his restaurant out of business. Even a simple errand like purchasing water ends up with him being chased by the Marines. In fact it has gotten to the point where Luffy has to have a chaperone if he is only going to explore so as not to cause trouble, or do anything stupid, and even then it isn't guaranteed that he won't.

Even though Luffy is a sailor, and what more, the captain of his ship, he has no sense of direction. He believes that if one is to go north, he has to head in a 'cold-ish' direction. As a result of this, coupled with his abilty to get stuck in certain situations, he tends to arrive barely in time to beat his opponent.

One of Luffy's greatest strength is that people actually tend to underestimate him. Either due to his bounty, or his actions, or their own arrogance, his opponents usually take him lightly before discovering Luffy's great strength and determination. Because he is underestimated, his opponents, which include the Shichibukai, tends to let down their guards, allowing Luffy to gradually learn and adapt his fighting style accordingly. However, this changed when Luffy's heritage is revealed worldwide, as they now see him as one of the greatest threats in the world.

Though not exactly a skill or ability, Luffy is said to have incredible luck. His luck is so great that people around him, like Smoker, Ivankov, Elder Nyon and even his own crew, think that they were miracles, or even divine intervention. Examples would be when:
 * Luffy survived his execution with Buggy and managing to escape the Marines in Loguetown thanks to a freak storm.
 * Picking out a dud in a basket full of exploding apples;
 * Surviving two defeats to Crocodile, being the second one incredibly lucky, because the same water blast Crocodile dodged before drying Luffy's body with his Suna Suna no Mi powers eventually came back due to gravity and rehydrated him to save his life.
 * Accidentally making the man-hating Boa Hancock fall in love with him;
 * Having the willpower to survive Magellan's poison and recover from it through pure strength of will and some hormone enhancement, when it was said there wasn't even a shred of hope that he would survive, and even antidotes were out of the question.
 * Participating in the Marineford War and surviving.
 * Being poisoned by Hyouzou only to discover he developed strong resistances to poison due to his fight with Magellan.

According to Dracule Mihawk, Luffy has the most dangerous ability in the world; that of turning anyone around him into his allies, including former enemies. Luffy's powerful charisma has earned him many powerful friends and allies at times of need, allowing him to escape the tightest situations.

During the two-year absence, with his bounty raised, he earned an infamous reputation which was taken advantage of by Demalo Black to bring fear to the hearts of people in Saboady Archipelago as well as recruiting powerful members.

After the time-skip, Luffy has grown immensely in power and skill. He has shown new mastery over his Gear Second and Third along with his Haki, and easily destroyed a Pacifista with a single punch in conjunction with his Gear Second and Busoshoku Haki, a feat which has been shown to be amazingly difficult, then later defeated the Kraken with one hit from Gear Third imbued with Haki in a similar manner, and managed to defeat Vander Decken IX while he was tied up.

He has also gained powerful antitoxins in his blood stream from his fight with Magellan in Impel Down, which grant him a high resistance against poison. Hyouzou, a poisonous blue-ringed octopus merman in the New Fishman Pirates poisoned Luffy during their fight and Luffy would not have taken any notice to it if Chopper had not seen the entry point in his arm. Another testament of his power was showed when he defeated Hody Jones and only received a single bite from the latter during the whole battle.

Like all Devil Fruit users, Luffy cannot swim. However, unlike other Devil Fruit users, he doesn't avoid water sports, and sometimes will jump into the ocean to save someone from drowning (though will drown himself as well). Luffy could not swim before eating his Devil Fruit so this has made little difference in this capacity. At the time Shanks visited Luffy's hometown, Luffy had decided he would learn how to swim by the time Shanks left so he could leave with them, indicating Luffy was learning how to swim previously.

Devil Fruit


Luffy has gained extraordinary stretching powers from eating the Gomu Gomu no Mi (lit. Rubber Rubber Fruit, Gum-Gum Fruit in the English dub), which is one of the rare and legendary Devil Fruits. After consuming the Gomu Gomu no Mi, Luffy's body became like rubber, giving him the ability to stretch long distances. Having trained hard for ten years, Luffy is able to supplement his stretching powers with immense strength, agility, and creativity in combat. His fighting style is largely improvised, and heavily reliant on his Devil Fruit. It should be noted, Luffy can't automatically stretch his limbs (like superheroes with stretching powers, i.e: Mr. Fantastic or Plastic Man) since his body acts more like a rubber band, thus has to throw some force into it in order for his limbs to stretch out. However, he can hold his limbs outstretched for a long time, as seen when he reaches his arm out about half a mile to retrieve Usopp from falling through the Sea clouds.

Luffy uses his stretching power in ingenious ways. He is able to use the malleable stretchiness of his limbs to gain tremendous velocity and hit enemies with devastating impact. His rubber body is also extremely durable and virtually immune to blunt objects such as bullets (in One Piece, bullets are still round pellets, except for Don Krieg's), punches and electricity, bouncing off his body harmlessly or cancelling out attacks. It's even become a running gag that people find out the hard way Luffy is made of rubber when they shoot at him, only to have the bullets bounce right back. Another running joke is that whenever Luffy's body is in peril that would kill a normal human, he says that he's made of rubber, so it's okay, or acts like something was a small problem despite the person trying to kill him, such as being shot in the heart. However, he is still normally susceptible to sharp objects such as swords and knives as well as nonphysical attacks like heat, poison, cold, and dehydration. Not only can he use his ability to increase the range and strength of his attacks, but he can also use it to restrain and even control foes like puppets.

Gear Second
Gear Second (ギア･セカンド, Gia Sekando) is where Luffy uses his legs to pump blood around his body at a much faster rate. Activating Gear Second also uses a lot of stored energy from his body. Leaving his body exhausted, his heart rate also increases to levels that are normally impossible. His veins are able to withstand this, thanks to the Gomu Gomu no Mi. In this form, Luffy gains a considerable boost in speed and strength.

During the Enies Lobby Arc, Rob Lucci mentions that this is just like steroids because his muscles are receiving enough blood to do things otherwise impossible. Rob Lucci also noted that Gear Second does damage to Luffy's own body and in turn drastically reduces his stamina and his lifespan begins to diminish.

Luffy first discovers this Gear unofficially in the 7th One Piece Movie, where he has a large mechanical arm falling on him, he catches it, and the impact exerts extreme force on Luffy's legs, causing him to unintentionally pump blood at an accelerated rate to perform Gear Second and use the Gomu Gomu no Jet Bazooka (though he simply refers to is as a normal Gomu Gomu no Bazooka) to defeat a giant Mecha.



After the timeskip, it appears that Luffy has gained enough control over his Gear Second form, that he is able to use it in a single part of his body rather than the whole thing. This in conjunction with his Busoshoku Haki was able to take out a Pacifista with a single punch, something that took the entire Straw Hat crew to do before the timeskip. It seems that Luffy has become more adept with this gear as he has been using Gear Second attacks more frequently than before the time-skip.

Gear Third
Gear Third (ギア･サード, Gia Sādo) is where Luffy pumps air through his bones to make them literally gigantic. Obviously, only Luffy can do such a thing by using the Gomu Gomu no Mi. Used with his already-strong physiology, this apparently gives his arm more mass and a larger area to attack with far greater force, but he sacrifices mobility for this strength, as his limbs are now so large that Luffy has extreme trouble moving unless he is in his Fuusen form. Another after effect of this is that Luffy is reduced to child-sized proportions, the duration of which is equal to the time he spent in Gear Third. Also, he is able to use both gears at the same time which he uses to defeat Gecko Moria. This technique is first hinted at during Luffy's fight with Blueno, and first used, but not shown when Luffy is chasing Rob Lucci and Spandam, but is not seen until a later battle with Rob Lucci.



After the timeskip, Luffy's Gear Third is vastly improved upon. Previously, Gear Third would increase the size of the majority of Luffy's arm, thus reducing the speed of the attack in exchange for a powerful impact. However post-timeskip Luffy can seemingly control where the air is allowed to "sit" within his limbs, where his fist becomes large but allows a large mass to form behind the fist as the equivalent of the mass he would have achieved having his arm fully inflated. This allows a majority of Luffy's arm to remain as it is, allowing him to stretch it, thus allowing him to attack much faster than before the two-year absence.

Luffy is also shown using Gear Third at the same time as Busoshoku Haki causing his arm to turn black and harden (possibly undergoing vulcanization), with his arm in the ocean (which would normally drain a Devil Fruit user of their power). While he is affected by the ocean, he still lands a punch which knocks the Kraken out. After the attack (Gomu Gomu no Elephant Gun), Luffy appeared to remain the same size without shrinking temporarily, indicating that he may have overcome this side effect at some point during his training. Or like in the manga version of Marineford, Oda skipped it, though it appears that Luffy has managed to stop shrinking as within the Fishman Island Arc he had used it against Hody's army without shrinking.

Haki
Luffy has awakened the ability known as "Haki" and is one of the few known people able to use all three different types. His first manifestation of this was when Luffy managed to intimidate Duval's bison steed named Motobaro as it was charging towards him. As a result, Motobaro fainted at Luffy's unconscious Haki release. The second time he released his Haki was when Boa Sandersonia threatened to smash Marguerite who was turned into a statue. Enraged, Luffy yelled for Sandersonia to stop it and once again unconsciously released Haki, this time powerful enough that most of the arena's audience fainted. It was at this time that Luffy was identified to possess Haoshoku Haki. However, the Boa sisters noticed that he was not yet able to control it. The third time he used his Haki was when Luffy (although almost dying from Magellan's poison) tried to stop a pack of wolves from attacking Bentham (also known as Bon Kurei and Mr. 2) back at Impel Down Prison, Level 5.

After Ace was sent away to the Navy Headquarters, Luffy decided to break out of Impel Down and head for Marineford. In the process, he ran into an intruding Blackbeard who noted that Luffy's Haki increased since last time they met (which was in Jaya). It could be speculated that Blackbeard already noticed Luffy's Haki possession since their first meeting.

The fourth time Luffy released his Haki was at Marineford, when he saw Ace about to be executed. It was then that Ace and the Navy learned of his possession of Haki--and of the Haoshoku type, to top it off. This made him even more threatening to the government, although he was already threatening enough without him using it.

After the War at Marineford, Luffy decided to train with Rayleigh. Luffy managed to learn the basics of Haki within a year and a half, even though Rayleigh had intended to spend the entire two years teaching him, meaning that he either is a fast learner once he understands the concept, or he has an innate affinity for Haki. Rayleigh departed after a year and a half, leaving Luffy to train by himself for the remaining six months.

Haoshoku Haki
He is able to use Haoshoku Haki, a type of Haki possessed in one in a million people. Luffy used this ability several times in the series, as it was the type of Haki that manifested the earliest.

The first time Luffy was identified to have possessed this type of Haki was when he stopped Boa Sandersonia from smashing a petrified Marguerite, although he first showed possession of this type of Haki when he scared off Duval's bison steed, Motobaro.

When he protected Bentham from being attacked by wolves back at Impel Down (Level 5) Luffy released his Haki unconsciously. During the war at Marineford, he also used another burst of Haoshoku Haki when he saw Ace about to be executed, which knocked out a lot of individuals, whether marine or pirate. This made it clear that Luffy, setting aside his identity as the revolutionary Dragon's son, is also a serious threat as a pirate just by possessing Haoshoku Haki.

Before training under Silvers Rayleigh, Luffy displayed limited to no control over this ability, and did not seem to realize he had it, but used it on instinct whenever it seemed to be most needed, and could still use it even when extremely injured.

With this training, Luffy has demonstrated the ability to focus his Haoshoku Haki, knocking out a small group with a quick glare without affecting anyone else. A possibility of Luffy's Haoshoku Haki is that he can tame large animals as he was capable of taming all the animals of Rusukaina Island, and tame the Kraken, which he did with great success in a very short time. Up until the fight with the New Fishman Pirates, Luffy has only used Haoshoku Haki when he needs to get people out of the way with minimum damage. The true extent of Luffy's Haki is seen when he knocks out 50,000 of Hody Jones' men.

Kenbunshoku Haki
Luffy appears to have gained significant proficiency in Kenbunshoku Haki, allowing him to tell what an opponent intends to do. He was able to dodge a bullet shot point blank by Demalo Black. He can also dodge Pacifista lasers which are supposedly as fast as the speed of light. His proficiency with this skill is truly shown when he was able to completely avoid Hody Jones' Yabusame without effort.

Busoshoku Haki
Luffy seems to have also mastered Busoshoku Haki, which has been shown to darken his body (or parts of it) and harden it, like it is being vulcanized. How it works exactly is currently unknown. This is first shown being used when he defeated a Pacifista with a single Haki imbued punch used in conjunction with his Gear Second. He can now also use his Gear Third in conjunction with his Busoshoku Haki. He was capable of knocking out a giant beast such as the Kraken easily, despite the great disadvantage of being under water (where his power was considerably weaker). After he used this, he did not turn into his child-like form. Another demonstration of Luffy's Busoshoku Haki is during his fight with Hody Jones, where he was able to harden his arm, leg, and forehead for both strong offensive and defensive measures. The defense of his Busoshoku Haki, however, is not absolute as shown in his fight with Hody Jones, where it was revealed that while it is good for reinforcing his near immunity against blunt attacks, it is currently not strong enough to defend against sharp objects, such as Hody Jones' shark-like teeths. After the air bubble was produced and merged with Noah, Luffy used Busoshoku Haki combined with Gear Second to perform "Gomu Gomu no Red Hawk", made an explosion after it hit the target.

Techniques

 * Busoshoku: Koka (武装色 硬化): Luffy uses Busoshoku Haki to harden his body (or parts of it). It was seen used by Luffy in conjunction with Gear Second to make his attack more powerful and destroyed a Pacifista with a single punch and was used again against the Kraken in conjunction with Gear Third to harden his enlarged arm to the point of it attaining a completely dark and shiny appearance, in order to use his Gomu Gomu no Elephant Gun. In the FUNimation subs, it is called Armament; Hardening.

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