Monster?

People often said that the eyes were the windows to the soul.

You could learn a lot from a person's eyes.

Brownie had believed that once, but now he was starting to have his doubts.

The pirate before him had a bloody cleaver stuck in his forehead and one hand severed. He looked utterly wretched.

He even wondered...

Was this man a fugitive too?

The cleaver stuck in his head seemed to have the head chef's name on it. Had the head chef joined the fight too?

What use was that good-for-nothing besides making tasty curry?

But this pirate had lost so much blood and a hand. Shouldn't he have collapsed by now?

And yet, even so, his eyes were still so bright and resolute...

His will to escape must be just as strong!

Brownie suddenly felt a hint of admiration—admiration for a pirate fugitive. That was rare indeed.

But then Brownie's figure left a blurred afterimage in the shifting light. In the blink of an eye, a curved blade was pressed against Buggy's neck.

"Too bad you're a pirate..."

Since he was a pirate, since Brownie admired him a little, and since Brownie was a Marine...

Brownie felt all the more that he ought to give the man a clean death.

Maybe if he reincarnated soon, he could join the Marines in his next life before Brownie retired. If so, Brownie certainly wouldn't hold back when it came to teaching him.

The thought flashed through his mind.

The curved blade swept across Buggy's neck as easily as a knife through vegetables.

Brownie could even sense the gaze fixed on him.

Was it a plea for mercy in the face of death, or bewilderment at being caught off guard?

Who knew?

Brownie didn't give it much thought. He merely flicked his curved blade and prepared to throw himself into the next bout of killing.

He had just turned around...

When he heard two unsteady footsteps behind him.

The body that should have crumpled to the deck was still standing, as if having his head chopped off was no more than having a hair plucked out.

Buggy bent down.

He silently picked up his own head.

Instead of putting it back on his neck, he held it in his hands.

There was something novel about holding your own head in one hand.

"So this is what it feels like to be decapitated?"

His eyes were alight with excitement.

One novel experience after another was stimulating his unusually high threshold for amusement, and his smile was bright and sunny.

"Honestly, this feeling... well, it's definitely a first. I often tell people about how my father, that scumbag, cut the corners of my mouth with a knife when I was little."

He lifted his head and gave it a shake. Then, like a nukekubi, it floated out of his hands.

A Devil Fruit User?

Brownie's eyes narrowed. A flush suddenly rose to his face.

It wasn't exactly anger.

He just suddenly felt deeply embarrassed by how self-important he'd been moments ago.

This was clearly a vicious pirate. And yet, because of his pitiful appearance and those "extremely" deceptive eyes, Brownie had felt a sort of heroic kinship with him...

Thinking about it now, it was mortifying.

Brownie wasn't much of a talker and seemed rather reserved. He even had a bit of a sadistic streak when killing enemies, but inside, there was always a whole theater of dramas playing out in his head.

Put simply, he was a closet romantic.

When a middle-aged man like him occasionally did something foolish, he always felt so ashamed that he wanted to dig a hole and bury himself in it.

So he decided to leave this incident right here.

Forever!

Brownie's black leather boot slammed into the deck with a deafening bang.

He held his curved blade horizontally in one hand and appeared before Buggy again.

He leaned forward, poised like a leopard about to pounce.

This time, he watched with perfect clarity.

"Lunge!"

The word slipped silently from his lips, and a flash of white light vanished in an instant.

The white light skimmed right past Buggy's chest.

Buggy stretched out a finger, as if he meant to stop the slash with it, but his fingertip remained a short distance from the white light...

Buggy's lower half stayed behind, his legs taking a few uncertain steps.

His upper half, meanwhile, seemed to dance the cha-cha with the white light, drifting out in perfect time and always keeping the tiniest sliver of distance from it.

At the very last moment, his upper half dipped down, dodging the white light.

The whole movement was graceful, like that of a practiced dancer in an old London theater. It had a touch of old money about it.

Apart from the fact that his body was split into several pieces.

"What an interesting ability."

Buggy had lost count of how many times he'd praised this Devil Fruit ability.

Even setting aside all the wild theories about this ability that he'd picked up as a modern college student, its pseudo-immortal quality alone was fascinating.

It was especially suited to Buggy's fighting style.

His motto was basically to hurt himself a thousand times in order to kill the enemy eight hundred times.

If he could take this ability back to Gotham...

But there wasn't much fun in simply crushing his opponents.

At this stage, Buggy was more interested in the many fascinating people in this world.

While his mind wandered, Brownie had no intention of standing around and waiting for his opponent to finish reminiscing about his past.

He flashed forward and closed the distance.

The stench of the wind whipped up by his rapid slashes rushed into Buggy's nostrils.

Buggy didn't dodge or resist. He let Brownie chop him into several pieces, apparently just so he could fully experience what it felt like to be cut.

Honestly, he'd been cut more in a single month as Buggy in this world than he had been across his other two lives combined.

But after only a short while, his already-severed body suddenly sprang apart.

"Divide Divide Escape!"

"Mm, that's what I used to call it."

A mouth elsewhere explained with a grin.

That was all he had left—just a mouth.

"But that situation just now really was rather urgent."

Farther away, one of his hands tried to wipe the cold sweat from his forehead.

It searched for a while but couldn't find it.

Too bad.

Brownie's expression darkened as he sighed inwardly.

His left hand, the one not holding his blade, rested against his white coat.

On his left index finger, barely visible, was a copper-colored ring.

Set into the ring was a crooked, rough stone about the size of a fingernail.

A tiny piece of Seastone.

That was what had allowed Buggy to escape so suddenly.

As expected.

Whether pirate or Marine, anyone with half a brain would find a way to carry a piece of Seastone around.

Even someone like Smoker, who was a Devil Fruit User himself, had a piece of Seastone embedded in his weapon.

Devil Fruit abilities were simply too varied and troublesome.

And people who could use Haki proficiently were rare in the first half of the Grand Line.

Seastone was incredibly hard, though, and difficult to work with.

You could tell from the awkward little stone Brownie had mounted on his ring.

But that wasn't the only reason Brownie's expression had darkened.

There was something strangely familiar about the move his opponent had called Emergency Escape.

He just couldn't bring himself to believe it yet.

Could this guy also be...

One of those monsters?