A name hung in the air, thick with history and unspoken tension.
"That straw hat…" Buggy whispered, his voice losing its theatrical boom, replaced by a strange, shocked stillness. "It reminds me of him… of that damn, red-haired…"
Luffy's head snapped up. His own fight was forgotten, replaced by a sudden, desperate hope. "Red-Haired? You mean Shanks?!" he demanded, his voice ringing with an urgency that startled everyone. "You know Shanks?! Where is he?! Tell me where I can find him!"
Buggy stared at Luffy, his eyes wide with a dawning, scornful recognition. He confirmed it, his lips twisting into a sneer. "So you know that bastard Shanks, do you?" He let out a condescending chuckle. "I might know where he is…"
"You idiot! Just tell me!" Luffy shot back, his patience wearing thin.
The word "idiot" was the spark that reignited Buggy's explosive temper. The brief moment of nostalgia vanished. "IDIOT?!" he shrieked, his face turning a shade of purple. "YOU DARE CALL THE GREAT CAPTAIN BUGGY AN IDIOT?! Fine! I was going to kill you anyway! Let's see if your rubber body can reflect these!"
From his coat, Buggy produced three sharp daggers. He held them between the fingers of one hand. "A rubber man might be immune to bullets and punches, but you still bleed when you're cut, don't you?!"
With a roar, he launched his entire upper torso at Luffy, his feet remaining planted on the ground. It was a bizarre, terrifying attack, a flying clown armed with knives.
Luffy leaped high into the air, easily dodging the initial charge.
"HAHAHA! You fool!" Buggy gloated from mid-air. "You're helpless now! You can't fly like I can!" His torso spun around, preparing to strike Luffy from above.
But Luffy wasn't helpless. He was resourceful.
As he reached the apex of his jump, his arm shot out, stretching an impossible distance and wrapping around a nearby lamppost. With a sharp tug, he used the recoil to pull himself out of the path of Buggy's diving attack, swinging through the air like a pendulum.
"What?!" Buggy gasped, his attack missing completely.
Luffy didn't waste the momentum. As he swung past, he launched a long-range punch. His fist flew towards Buggy, who twisted his body in mid-air to dodge.
"Too slow!" Buggy taunted. "Your power is also your greatest weakness! By stretching like that, you've left your entire body wide open!"
He failed to notice, however, that Luffy's fist, having missed its target, had kept going. It snaked through the air and the fingers latched onto the ledge of a window on a ruined building.
Using the ledge as an anchor point, Luffy's body slingshot forward again, this time like a cannonball, aiming a powerful double-fist attack straight at the clown. Buggy, with a yelp of surprise, managed to separate his body into pieces just in time, letting Luffy fly harmlessly through the space where his torso had been.
CRASH!
Luffy slammed into the ruins of a house behind Buggy, disappearing into a cloud of dust and debris.
From a safe distance, Nami watched, clutching a sack of treasure she had just liberated from Buggy's warehouse. Her mind couldn't comprehend the bizarre physics of the fight she was witnessing. A man who could split himself apart versus a boy made of rubber. It was a circus of madness.
A few of Buggy's crew, who had regained consciousness, peeked from behind some rubble. They saw their captain reassemble himself and decided it was much safer to continue pretending to be unconscious.
"You're a slippery one, Straw Hat!" Buggy shouted towards the rubble. "But you can't dodge forever!"
He launched another attack. This time, just his forearm, holding the three daggers, shot forward like a spinning projectile of death.
Luffy burst out from the rubble just in time to see it coming. He reacted instantly, his hands shooting out and grabbing the flying forearm, stopping its momentum.
"Gotcha!" Luffy grunted.
"Not quite!" Buggy cackled.
CLICK.
With an audible sound, Buggy detached his hand from the wrist of the forearm that Luffy was holding. The hand, still clutching the three knives, continued its deadly trajectory, a tiny, unstoppable missile.
It all happened in a split second. Luffy, surprised by the trick, threw his head back to dodge.
SHINK!
He wasn't fast enough. He felt a searing pain as one of the knives grazed his left cheek, drawing a thin line of blood. But that wasn't the sound that made his heart stop.
It was a soft, sickening rip.
The sound of a blade slicing through straw.
The knife had pierced the side of his precious hat.
Buggy's hand flew back to his arm, reattaching seamlessly. He laughed triumphantly. "Hahaha! How do you like that? Crying over a little scratch on your face, Straw Hat?"
Luffy stood completely still. He slowly raised a hand, not to his bleeding cheek, but to his head. His fingers traced the new, ugly gash in the side of his straw hat.
His bangs shadowed his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was dangerously low.
"You… you bastard…" he whispered. "You damaged my hat."
Buggy, seeing that the hat was the source of his anger, finally understood. His grin became even wider and crueler. "This? This worthless old hat is your treasure? How utterly pathetic!"
To add insult to injury, he launched his hand out again. It zipped past Luffy, and the fingers expertly snagged the hat, pulling it right off his head. The knives, still held in the hand, kept the hat impaled as it flew back to Buggy.
He held it up like a trophy. "So this is it? The great treasure of Monkey D. Luffy?"
Seeing his hat, his promise, held hostage and desecrated, sent a jolt through Luffy's entire being. A memory, as vivid as the day it happened, flashed before his eyes.
A giant of a man with fiery red hair, placing this very hat on his head. "When you've become a great pirate… bring it back to me."
"SHANKS!" The name was ripped from Luffy's throat as he charged forward, desperation in his eyes. "Give it back! GIVE ME BACK MY HAT!"
Hearing the name "Shanks" made Buggy freeze. The look of mockery on his face was replaced by a flash of genuine shock, which then soured into a look of deep-seated resentment.
"Shanks?" he snarled. "You know that red-haired bastard?"
He looked down at the straw hat impaled on his knives. In a fit of pure spite, he ripped it free and threw it onto the dirty ground.
"So this was his hat, was it?" Buggy sneered. "He and I go way back. We were crewmates on the same ship, once upon a time."
He then did the unforgivable. He lifted his foot and stomped on the hat, grinding it into the dirt. He then leaned over and spat on it.
"But don't you dare compare me to that soft-hearted fool!"
That was the last straw.
For Luffy, this was no longer about his treasure being damaged. It was about his hero, his inspiration, the man who gave him his dream, being insulted by this pathetic clown. The rage that had been simmering inside him erupted like a volcano.
He didn't scream. He didn't shout. He just moved.
He threw a punch, a blur of motion fueled by pure, unadulterated fury.
Buggy, seeing the punch coming straight for his face, laughed. "Too slow!"
He detached his head, letting it fly upwards to dodge the attack, his body remaining in place.
But Luffy hadn't been aiming for his head.
BAM!
The chapter ends on the visceral, gut-wrenching impact of Luffy's fist sinking deep into Buggy's undefended stomach.