“Not the Navy and they’re still coming at us?
Which idiot has a death wish?”
Buggy snorted, launched himself into the air, and arrived at the crow’s nest in moments.
He snatched the lookout’s spyglass and trained it in the direction the man was pointing.
Through the lens, a small ship with its sails down was driving straight toward them.
“Driving” was putting it mildly.
The word that fit better was “charging.”
Because whoever was on that boat had looked directly at a pirate flag and not changed course by a single degree.
“Bounty hunters?
Unbelievable.
Someone’s actually coming after the great Buggy?!”
Buggy’s best guess was bounty hunters.
Normal people saw a pirate ship and ran in the opposite direction.
Only the stupid variety of bounty hunter saw a pirate ship and decided to close in.
The nerve.
Buggy wasn’t even bothering anyone right now, and somebody had the gall to come after him?
Did they think Buggy the Clown was an easy target?
“All hands!
Get the cannons out!”
Buggy dropped back down to the main deck, a vicious grin spreading across his painted face, and gave the order with a sweep of his arm.
“Show these fools what the Buggy Pirates are made of!”
“Sir!
Captain Buggy!”
His crew answered as one and moved immediately.
Within moments, several cannons had been rolled into position and aimed at the approaching vessel.
“Fire!”
Once the ship had come within range, Buggy’s red-painted mouth split into a cruel arc and he bellowed the order.
“Sink it!”
The cannons fired in sequence.
Cannonball after cannonball screamed toward the small sailing vessel, enough firepower to reduce it to splinters.
“A familiar face after all.”
Rocks had already spread his Observation Haki ahead and “seen” the figure on the other ship.
The corner of his mouth pulled upward.
“Buggy the Clown.”
The black speck he’d spotted earlier wasn’t an island.
It was a pirate ship.
And its captain was someone Rocks recognized well enough.
The man whose legendary luck with Conqueror’s Haki ran all the way through the original story.
“Quite the connection.
Though he’s got some attitude, opening fire on me like that.”
Rocks watched the Buggy Pirates’ cannons launch their salvo and found the whole thing more entertaining than alarming.
“Cero.”
His Observation Haki locked onto the trajectories.
Every shot hit.
The cannonballs detonated in midair, one after another, the chain of explosions lighting up the stretch of sea between the two vessels.
The shockwaves spread outward and disturbed the water’s surface.
Buggy narrowed his eyes watching the cannonballs blow apart in the air.
“That’s not nothing.
Not one of those trash bounty hunters.”
He’d been a junior crewmember on the Roger Pirates, had come through real battles, and knew what he was looking at.
Intercepting a cannonball volley that casually was not something an ordinary person could pull off.
Whoever was on that little boat was not ordinary.
Even so, Buggy wasn’t particularly concerned.
He knew who he was.
A former member of the Roger Pirates, a junior crewmember admittedly, but still.
Was there anyone in the weakest sea, the East Blue, who could actually threaten him?
Besides Garp, who showed up in the vicinity with uncomfortable frequency, nobody else in this ocean was worth Buggy’s serious attention.
“So you can stop regular cannonballs.”
Buggy spread both arms wide, his grin twisting into something more savage and unhinged.
“Let’s see you stop my special Buggy Balls!”
His crew loaded one of the special rounds into the cannon.
Buggy had already pictured it: the little boat folding under the impact of his special ordinance and disappearing beneath the waves.
One Buggy Ball could sink a warship.
He was about to give the order.
Boom.
An invisible pressure descended without warning, blanketing the surrounding area, pressing down on every single member of the Buggy Pirates simultaneously.
The moment it arrived, the world seemed to stop.
The light breeze that had been moving through the air vanished entirely.
Every member of Buggy’s crew felt it like a hammer blow directly to the skull.
One man’s vision went black at the edges.
His thoughts went to mud.
His body lost all its strength, and he went down hard on his back with a thud, foam gathering at the corners of his mouth.
The domino effect took hold.
As the first man hit the deck unconscious, the rest of the crew followed in sequence, folding one after another like wheat going down before a scythe.
“Th-this is…
this is…”
Buggy was the only one on deck still upright.
Even he had buckled, his legs giving out, dropping him to a sitting position on the planks.
His head was spinning badly.
He’d been through enough in his life not to black out completely, unlike the rest of his crew.
His experience was the only thing keeping him conscious.
“C-C-Con…
Conqueror’s…
Conqueror’s H-Haki!!”
Buggy’s voice had become a stammer.
He looked like a man who had just seen something that shouldn’t exist.
His expression was pure, wide-eyed terror.
His mouth hung open.
A string of snot trailed from his red nose. This story is hosted at g.com.
He looked absolutely ridiculous.
But he knew what this power was.
Conqueror’s Haki.
Awakened by only a handful of people in the entire world.
The bearing of someone who stands above all others, found in perhaps one person in several million.
The weakest sea.
The East Blue.
How was there a Conqueror’s Haki user here?
And how had he managed to run directly into one?
Whoosh.
While Buggy was still frozen in shock, he heard the sound of something cutting through the air.
He looked toward it.
A figure was moving toward him at extraordinary speed, closing the distance between the two ships in seconds, and landing on the deck in front of him.
“Buggy the Clown.
Ten million berry bounty.”
Rocks looked down at the clown sitting on the deck, expression frightened and bewildered, and regarded him from above with an entirely calm voice.
“You’ve got nerve, opening fire on me.”
In the original story Buggy’s bounty sat at fifteen million.
Right now it was ten.
Still a high-value bounty by East Blue standards.
Rocks had seen the wanted poster.
“You…
who are you?!”
Buggy stared up at Rocks, who looked absurdly young, and found nothing in his memory that matched the face.
His mind was drawing a complete blank.
East Blue’s strong fighters.
Aside from Garp, who came through the area more often than anyone welcomed.
The ones Buggy could actually place were the Fish-Men running that occupation in the south, and the Krieg Pirates who had been making noise recently.
This person was none of them.
So who was he?
Rocks let the corner of his mouth curl into a faint, unhurried smile.
“You can call me Rocks.”
“R-Rocks?!”
The name landed like a switch had been thrown somewhere in Buggy’s head.
He froze completely, eyes going wide.
Rocks.
He knew that name.
Of course he knew it.
The man who had once ruled the seas.
The existence that his captain Roger had mentioned, on occasion, in that particular tone.
He didn’t think for a moment that this was the original Rocks returned from the dead.
What he thought was that this kid was out of his mind, casually throwing around a name like that.
Did he have any idea what that name meant?