Gunfire

Blood.

Slowly filled the iron-gray deck.

Arne couldn't help shivering.

He wasn't some rookie pirate fresh out of the gate.

He'd burned towns and plundered merchant ships under his previous captain!

When he went to sea, he'd tossed things like his conscience overboard to feed the Sea Kings. They were thieves. Burning, killing, robbing, and pillaging were all part of the job!

If they didn't rob others, others would rob them!

But even so, the bloody scene before him left him trembling with fear.

As he ripped open his wound, pulled out the knife inside, and tossed it to the clown who looked a little ridiculous...

"Really sorry about that."

Buggy turned around and casually flicked his hair. "I was just so happy all of a sudden that I couldn't help myself."

"What's that saying again? Oh, right. I'm a lover of peace."

He casually tucked the knife into his waistband, ignoring the lump of mangled flesh behind him.

What was he called again... Musah the Vicious Dog? He'd been a bit too talkative.

He'd been bothering Buggy's eyes.

Buggy picked up the other hand lying on the ground.

Of course, escaping the Seastone Handcuffs meant for Devil Fruit Users came at a price.

He'd sawed off both his hands.

As long as he wasn't touching the Seastone Handcuffs, Buggy's immortality would naturally return.

Then all he had to do was reattach his severed hands.

"The Four-Way Split-Split Fruit. What an interesting power."

He licked his lips. The cross sections of his arms and hands touched, and the pieces fitted together like building blocks.

Before trying it, he hadn't known whether it would work.

The original Buggy wouldn't have dared to try something like this.

But Jack, who'd come out of Arkham Asylum, had courage to spare.

Ah, he hoped his dear attending physician and all his lovely fellow patients wouldn't be too heartbroken by his departure.

Especially that Batty Cutie!

He had even more fun waiting for him now!

"Devil Fruits... Should I get another one and give it a taste? I heard eating a second one would make you explode and die, but I can already blow myself apart. How much more could I explode?"

"Or maybe I could feed one to another Devil Fruit User and see what happens."

"Yeah, yeah. That's called an experiment."

Buggy thought of all sorts of interesting things from his memories, and his eyes gleamed brighter. His tied-back hair came loose, and paired with his babbling expression, he looked just like the clown... the madman! No good people in Gotham City could mistake him for anyone else!

"C-Captain Buggy."

Besides the nasty flaws common to pirates, Arne had some of their better qualities, too. For example, he could quickly figure out where he stood aboard a ship.

Of course, he couldn't have predicted what had just happened.

He'd only handed Buggy the knife earlier because he'd thought that someone with a bounty of just fifteen million Beli couldn't be all that vicious...

Damn it, did the Marines even use their brains when they set bounties?!

At this level of brutality, he was no worse than a pirate with a bounty over a hundred million!

"Don't worry, don't worry."

"I'm feeling a lot better now."

He watched as Buggy waved a hand, split his whole body into pieces, then calmly walked out of Musah the Vicious Dog's cage.

A curse of the Great Sea. The power of a Devil Fruit.

It had to be a Paramecia.

Arne had sailed the Grand Line, after all. He wasn't so ignorant that he didn't recognize one.

"Your hands...?"

Both of Buggy's hands seemed to have minds of their own.

One used its index, middle, and ring fingers to alternately pull itself toward the upper cabins.

The other floated off on its own and ventured deeper into the cabin on the deck where they were.

The three of them together weren't worth a hundred million Beli. The Marines wouldn't send a warship just to escort them.

They'd need a whole deck full of pirates to be worth that much.

Dozens?

Or maybe hundreds?

Buggy couldn't remember. He only knew that more than two hours had passed between the moment he'd been loaded into the hold and the moment the ship began to sway.

Also, controlling three separate parts of his body at once was surprisingly easy.

Maybe it was because he had three brains now.

The original Buggy hadn't been able to control himself this smoothly.

"Busy, busy," he said with a shake of his head. The rest of his torso looked like a lonely old man left home alone. "It's good to keep busy."

How could anyone not think he was crazy?!

Outside the hold.

The sea was dark.

The only thing cutting through the night was the warship, painted in dark green camouflage, sending out circles of ripples that shimmered with milky-white scales.

It was very late.

But as a Marine officer aboard the prisoner transport, Sergeant Jacques hadn't let his guard down at all.

He paced back and forth in front of the bridge with several first-class privates. His leather boots made soft footsteps, quiet enough not to disturb his superiors, yet loud enough to make his presence known.

The quiet was to avoid disturbing the officers' rest. The presence was so that if Commodore Brownie happened to wake in the night, he'd know that faithful Sergeant Jacques was doing his utmost to fulfill his duties just outside the warm cabin.

Once he was farther from his superior's quarters, Sergeant Jacques's steps grew more casual.

He casually lit a cigarette.

"We'll reach the Gate of Justice in about an hour. Hang in there a little longer, everyone. Once we're through the gate, we won't have to keep patrolling."

He patted one of the first-class privates on the shoulder, certain that nothing unusual had happened all night.

What Sergeant Jacques didn't know was that when he turned his head, a grubby but hardworking little hand darted past him.

Look closely, and you'd see a rolling eyeball and an ear stuck to the hand.

Before long, the hardworking little hand was bringing more and more things back to Buggy.

Gunpowder, swords, guns, nautical charts, keys, and even some officer's diary...

This guy definitely wasn't normal.

Buggy flipped through it casually.

The diary was full of tedious details. It rambled on about the officer's thoughts and daily routine, along with page after page of complaints about his current job...

Pretty boring.

But Buggy read it very carefully.

It could help him understand the real side of this world.

As for the nautical chart, he flipped through that, too.

Hmm...

He couldn't read it.

The Joker of Gotham City was highly intelligent and well educated. Even if a college student who moonlighted as a clown couldn't claim to be a genius, he'd still have the grounding that came with a higher education.

But that didn't mean he could immediately understand the specialized nautical charts of another world.

Especially not the Marines' charts, which followed their own set of standards.

And as for the original Buggy...

He was good at reading all kinds of riddle-like nautical charts. Give him the Marines' technical charts, though, and he was more likely to be stumped.

There were way too many notes!

"I can read nautical charts, Captain Buggy!" Arne seized his chance and hurriedly spoke up.

He still had shackles on both hands, and no one had helped him take them off.

The charts of the Grand Line were a lot like the answer keys at the back of a workbook.

They skipped over exactly what you wanted to see.

Still, they were useful for learning about the waters around each island.

"Excellent."

"Looks like I've found a candidate for navigator aboard my future Pirate Ship."

Buggy cackled and casually dangled a carrot in front of him.

"Yes! Yes!"

Arne looked thrilled, and he wasn't faking it. When you were out there making your way in the world, it mattered a great deal who you served.

Take his previous captain, for example. He'd claimed to have a bounty of seventy million Beli, but a Marine Devil Fruit User had taken him down in fewer than three moves.

"Next..."

Buggy lifted an arm and called back Little Right, who'd been busy. Little Left had more important work to do.

He picked a brand-new-looking pistol out of the sack of assorted junk in front of him, slipped a finger through the trigger guard, and spun it a few times.

Then he gripped it and fired three shots at Arne's cage.

All three shots were accurate: two hit the handcuffs, and one hit the iron bars.

The gunshots roared, and the clatter of bullets striking iron rang in their ears.

Arne clutched his aching wrist, but inside, he suddenly felt terrified. "Are you crazy? We're still on a warship!"

The Marines might be a little stupid, but they weren't deaf!

"Wow, you really are sharp."

Buggy grinned and praised him.

Wasn't someone who'd come out of Arkham Asylum a madman?

"So we don't have much time left to choose our crew, you know."

He tossed the sack to Arne.

Then he hummed an unfamiliar tune and strode deeper into the hold with a swagger that said he didn't care what anyone thought.

"Madman! You're a damn madman!"

Arne stamped his feet in panic, but still hurried after him with the sack in hand.