Buggy sighed as he slipped out of bed.
The ship rocked gently under him, a lazy back-and-forth sway that made the world feel slightly off-kilter. For a moment, he thought about crawling back under the sheets, but the faint reek of stale booze and gunpowder quickly killed that idea.
His quarters were a disaster. Half a dozen empty bottles cluttered the floor, one of his boots had gone missing entirely, and someone, probably Cabaji, had drawn a mustache on one of the portraits hanging crooked over the table.
"Classy," Buggy muttered, rubbing his eyes. "Real bunch of artists I've got here."
It had been a long night.
After leaving Orange Town behind in a cloud of dust and chaos, the Buggy Pirates had thrown themselves a proper party.
They'd plundered enough supplies to keep them afloat for weeks, maybe more. The barrels of rum went fast, and so did everyone's dignity.
Mohji and Richie had gotten blind drunk, the lion more than his tamer, and were now somewhere on the upper deck, probably nursing hangovers and pride wounds alike.
Cabaji, meanwhile, had gone quiet halfway through the night, mumbling something about his "fallen unicycle" before drinking himself into philosophical oblivion.
Buggy hadn't fared much better.
He'd laughed, drank, and bragged about their victory just as loudly as the rest of them, but there was something behind the showmanship, a hum in his chest that hadn't faded even now.
The fight with those two brats had rattled him.
Not because he'd lost. he hadn't, technically, but because he knew, deep down, just how close that edge had been. Another minute, a few more hits, and he might've been the one coughing up dust in a crumbled wall.
He wasn't used to that kind of pressure. Not anymore. Buggy's body was also stronger than regular humans, but it wasn't like he had trained much in the past.
In fact, Buggy was rather confident that he would be doing just fine with his devil fruit, trickery and some cannon balls. He was too weak-willed to improve himself directly.
Circumstances would keep pushing him, but his will had always been weak, to the point where he was both a Joke and Punchline in the world of One Piece.
But the current Buggy was different.
He rubbed his bandaged abdomen absentmindedly, the muscle still sore from where Luffy's punch had landed.
"Guess I'm not as untouchable as I used to think," he murmured.
A groan came from the hallway. "Captain…?"
Cabaji poked his head in, his light clown makeup smudged and his hair sticking up at impossible angles. "We, uh, got the map ready. Mohji says it's decision time."
Buggy waved him off. "Yeah, yeah, tell him I'll be there in a sec."
He splashed water on his face, straightened his hat, and tugged his coat on—ignoring how wrinkled it was. By the time he stepped onto the deck, the morning light was already cutting across the waves, glinting off the ship's rails like scattered gems.
Half the crew was slumped in various states of hangover, while the other half tried to look busy so Buggy wouldn't yell at them. The air still smelled like cheap liquor and salt.
At the center table, a sea chart was spread open, held down with empty bottles and one of Richie's claws. Mohji was leaning over it, frowning in concentration.
"So," Buggy said, stretching with a loud pop of his spine. "Where's our next big payday?"
Mohji straightened, eager. "We've got a few options, Captain. Oykot Kingdom's just south from here, big trade route, lots of merchants. But it's crawling with Marine bases."
Buggy grimaced. "Yeah, that's a no. I'm not in the mood for playing tag with the Navy."
"Right, right. Then there's the Conomi Islands," Mohji continued, tapping the map. "Pretty quiet place. Not much trade, but not much law either. You could say it's… unclaimed territory."
Buggy rubbed his chin. "Not as unclaimed as you'd think, Fishmen Pirates settled there a while back… Nasty bastards when they're motivated."
He glanced down at the map again, then at the sea beyond the railing. The East Blue looked deceptively calm this morning, just a glittering stretch of blue with gulls overhead, but he knew better.
The East Blue was both the weakest, and smallest sea of the 4 extremities of the Grand Line.
And the Grand Line wasn't far. Not really. Just one step over the line, one more storm, and he'd be back in the waters that made legends and corpses alike.
The idea... it thrilled him. He had only seen them through a screen, but he felt like he knew them already...
Maybe it was the adrenaline from the fight still clinging to his blood, or maybe he was just tired of pretending to be a small-time act in a tiny pond.
His showmanship wasn't meant to fade quietly in East Blue.
"Conomi Islands, huh?" Buggy finally said. "That's about a two-week trip if we keep a steady pace."
Mohji nodded. "Aye, Captain."
"Then that's where we're headed."
Cabaji blinked. "You sure? We could try LougeTown instead. Get some supplies, maybe sell a few-"
"No," Buggy interrupted. His tone sharpened just enough to silence any argument. "LougeTown's crawling with Marines, and we're low on powder. You want to waltz into the execution capital of Gold Roger waving our colors?"
There was also the fact that his crew was not yet aware that Buggy planned to aim for the Grand Line. They would find that out in Louge Town, the Clown Captain would give them a choice.
But for now, there was no point in rushing to the finish line... Or rather, the starting line.
Cabaji hesitated. "…Point taken."
Buggy leaned over the map, tracing a red-gloved finger along the route. "Conomi Islands. Two weeks away. Plenty of time to train, think, and maybe stop smelling like yesterday's circus tent."
The crew exchanged uneasy glances.
Train? Buggy?
That wasn't exactly something their captain had ever said. Usually, it was more like "Drink!" or "Pillage!" or "Who took my rum, you bastards?!" But by now, they were getting used to the fact that their Captain had changed a bit after getting brained by a piece of wood.
Mohji scratched his head. "Train… for what, Captain?"
Buggy didn't look up. "For bigger gigs. What, do you fools plan to just hang around stealing from small villages forever?"
The silence that followed was heavier than expected. He wasn't joking, and they could tell.
He rolled the map back up, turned on his heel, and headed for the railing. "Cabaji, set the sails. Mohji, get Richie sober enough to pull his weight. The rest of you, if you're not working, start cleaning. I want this ship spotless before noon."
"Yes, Captain!" they chorused, voices overlapping with groans and mutters.
Buggy took a deep breath, watching the horizon. The wind whipped through his blue hair and tugged at his coat, carrying the faint scent of salt and distance.
The clown sighed as he shook his head, rearranging his long hair and removing his hat and throwing it onto the deck, deciding to rather have his hair flow in the wind.
For the first time in a while, the horizon, the future itself, looked inviting.
'By now, it's fair to say that none of this is a dream... But if it is, I'd rather not wake up...'
He allowed himself a small smile, right before something hard and feathery slammed into the top of his head.
"OW-WHAT THE HELL?!"
A folded newspaper flopped to the deck beside him, weighted down with a rubber band and a faint smell of bird droppings. Overhead, a News Coo squawked cheerfully, circling once before vanishing into the clouds.
Buggy glared after it, rubbing his head. "You feathery sky-rat! Learn some damn manners!"
The crew tried, and failed, not to laugh.
Buggy picked up the paper with a grumble, brushing off the mess and unrolling it. The bold black letters across the front page caught his eye immediately:
"CLOWN PIRATES TERRORIZE ORANGE TOWN – 20 MILLION BOUNTY"
Buggy froze.
He blinked once. Then again.
"…Huh."
Mohji leaned over his shoulder, eyes widening. "Captain, your bounty went up!"
"Yeah," Buggy said slowly, scanning the article. His portrait was front and center, paint smeared, grin too wide, eyes gleaming under the headline. "From fifteen to twenty million. That's a five-million raise."
Cabaji let out a low whistle. "Impressive, Captain."
Buggy frowned. "Impressive? That's nothing! We stole half of Orange Town! I fought a rubber freak and an infamous bounty hunting swordsman at the same time!"
He jabbed the paper with one finger. "And they give me five million?!"
Cabaji coughed. "Well… technically, Captain, the report says there were no civilian casualties, and you even 'instructed your men to avoid unnecessary destruction.'"
Buggy blinked, then snorted. "I did? Huh. Must've been one of my more responsible days."
He skimmed further down. The article went on about his supposed "growing threat" and the "reckless unpredictability" of his crew. It even speculated that he might try to make for the Grand Line soon, to which many of his men laughed when reading.
That part, however, only made Buggy grin.
"Not a bad guess," he muttered.
Still, the bounty itself stung his pride. Twenty million wasn't nothing, but it wasn't enough.
He wanted people to tremble when they saw his face on a poster. He wanted to be the kind of name whispered in Marine barracks late at night.
And, if he was honest with himself, he wanted to be strong enough to not get toyed with by a grinning rubber idiot next time.
Buggy folded the paper neatly and tucked it under his arm. "Fine. Twenty million for now. But mark my words, next time, they're gonna have to start printing larger posters."
He took off his coat and draped it over the railing, rolling up his sleeves. The morning light caught on the red and blue of his clothes, making the colors flare.
"Cabaji," he said, stretching his arms. "We've got two weeks to reach Conomi. That means two weeks for me to make sure I am more capable of delivering an ass whooping."
Cabaji tilted his head. "What kind of training are we talking, Captain?"
Buggy smirked. "The kind that makes me scarier."
He snapped his fingers, and his right arm detached instantly, hovering beside him. The crew jumped as it started flexing on its own.
"I've barely scratched the surface of this power," Buggy continued. "If I can split every part of me and move them faster, hell, if I can fight better in pieces, then there won't be a damn soul in this sea who can pin me down."
His floating hand pointed at the crew. "And that includes you idiots if you slack off again."
Mohji swallowed hard. "Noted, Captain."
Buggy chuckled, then turned back toward the open sea. The waves glittered under the sunlight, endless and inviting.
He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the rhythm of the ship beneath his boots, the heartbeat of something alive and forward-bound.
"…There's no real shortcut to getting stronger," he murmured to himself. "If I don't start now, next time I run into those brats, they'll wipe the floor with me."
He cracked his neck, took a deep breath, and launched his arm outward like a whip. The limb shot across the deck, grabbed a loose rope, and yanked it taut.
The crew watched in stunned silence as their captain began his bizarre, improvised workout, arms flying, torso twisting, body parts detaching and snapping back like some grotesque form of calisthenics.
Buggy needed not to just improve his Devil Fruit, but his very body was asking for training. He needed to improve his strength, if he wanted to actually amount to something in the end.
By the time the sun climbed higher, Buggy was grinning again, sweat streaking through the remnants of his face paint.
The clown was back in motion, the sea at his feet, and a goal burning behind his grin.
The ship cut through the waves, heading straight for the Conomi Islands,and whatever chaos waited next.