Chapter Text
Buggy POV
"Captain buggy," someone yelled with fear.
I see Cabaji running into the captain's cabin with a face full of panic.
His loud voice makes my hangover headache throb harder. I want to scream at him to shut up, but that would only make my headache worse.
"Yes, Cabaji," I say with tiredness and a twinge of annoyance.
"I got news on Den Den Mushi from our informant in the Marines. Something big is happening, and it might be too late to stop it now. "
Cabaji looked like he might fall apart right in front of my eyes. His fear was contaminating me, but I didn't even know what the problem was.
"What is happening? Are the marines on our tail?" I say with a tone mixed with the fear that had contaminated me and rage.
"No, Captain, that isn't it at all. It's much worse, " said Cabaji.
There is a moment of silence that breaks when I yell "well spit it out, say it dumbass!"
Cabaji's voice is shaking as he says, "Captain a devil fruit user has started a rampage and people are disappearing she has already got… red hair shanks"
"Shanks," I yell with shock. So many thoughts are going through my head. How? As much I hated to admit it to myself, Shanks was strong and powerful to a God level, and he's gone. Doesn't make any sense.
Cabaji is looking down at the floorboards and hyperventilating. I need him to stay calm. He has the information.
Alvida and a good chunk of the crew are on a side mission. We are sitting ducks right now. I need to assess the situation. I take a deep breath and say
"Cabaji, look at me, I need you to tell me what her powers are. Also, why and when will she be a threat to us. Please, Cabaji, tell me what you know."
Cabaji takes a deep breath and says, "I can tell you all of that, and I have a plan."
"Great, please tell me," I say with a mix of relief and desperation.
"OK, her devil fruit powers are…
Beep
Beep
Beep
BEEP
I open my eyes to see my alarm clock going off. I quickly turned it off to stop the beeping. It's 6:00 am, and I see the sun peaking between the blinds.
My mind wanders to the dream I just had.
That dream was so vivid and weird. It was more of a nightmare if anything. It felt like a memory that you don't remember, but you're watching it on a home video tape.
"I have a bad feeling about today," I say out loud to myself.
"Bungo, are you up?" a elderly sounding voice says.
I jolted from under my covers at once and cleared my throat. To say "yes grandfather, I'm up, do you need something?"
"Yes, will you be a good boy and make your great grandfather breakfast and help me get dressed for the day?" the old man says happily but ends with a cough.
"Yes, grandfather," I say as I try my very best to lace my voice with pleasantness.
Still in my pajamas, I get up and make that old man breakfast. I quickly start the rice and then run in to get him up and dressed for the day.
I look down at him in his bed. Of course, he fell asleep again. He is old and weak, but he has a hold on me. As I go to Reawaken him, a memory flashes back to our first meeting.
I'm 5 years old, and my mother is holding my hand. She leads me towards the coast, and my red nose smells bird poop and dead fish.
We stopped at an old dirty wooden house overgrown with weeds and grass. I'm repulsed by the sight of it. The only good thing about the house is that it is across from the fishing port. I keep looking at the fishing port, not wanting to look at the house with my mother.
She moved to open the door, and I followed her in. Inside wasn't much better, but it was bigger than it looked on the outside. The living room had a small couch covered in plastic, and there was a chabudai with 4 stained cushions.
We stopped for a minute and stood in one place for what felt like eternity. Then mother said "Grandfather are you here it's me Rina" mother said it with joyful confidence, but the look on her face was fear.
"Rina, is it really you, I thought you would never come back here again," says a male voice in a condescending tone.
I see an old man walk in the room he is still talking, "Did Tokyo chew you up and spit you out, little girl."
We make eye contact. He looks me up and down, then he says, "What is that thing? Don't tell me it's yours."
Mother sighed and said "yes grandfather he is mine his name is Ban bungo he turned 5 on August 8th."
I feel scared, I want to run, and I sense mother fear as well. I look around the room for the best exits, but my brain freezes. The old man's face is right in front of mine.
"Rina, what I really want to know is, did you do something to the boy, or did he come out of you like this?" he said as he was gesturing to my face.
"What do you mean, grandfather?" Mother's voice is shaking slightly as she states the question.
"Is his hair naturally blue? Don't get me started on this nose. It looks swollen and discolored. If I didn't know a better word, I would call him a clown."
Mother is not mad at him for insulting me
But just calmly tells him I was born like this.
The 5 year old me didn't know much of anything, but I knew that I hated him.
I look at him in the eyes and yell "look hear you old fart whose nose are you calling big and red! Let's get one thing straight, I am not a clown!"
Before, I could even think of the consequences of my actions. I was on the floor of this dirty old house with blood dripping from my mouth.
I hear Mother Yelp in shock. Tears start to form in my eyes from the pain. But mother doesn't let me cry. She puts me on my feet and tells me to go outside on the porch steps.
I don't fight it. I go outside on the porch steps, wanting this day to be over and to go home.
I hear fighting, crying, and begging, then silence. Mother steps outside. I go to hug her, but she doesn't hug me back. She looks at me so cold and says with no emotion, "You will stay here now with your great grandfather in Kunigami, Okinawa. Do as you're told, and I will try my best to see you when I can."
"NO!" I scream
"Please don't leave me," I beg while crying
"Stop don't go,"
"Stop trying to wake me, boy. I'm awake," the old man says, obviously annoyed.
"I'm sorry, grandfather," I say, realizing that I was shaking him too much when I was trying to wake him while I was having a trauma flashback.
"OK, whatever, just sit me up and get my clothes ready for me," he said with a pout like a literal child.
I sit him up quickly and pick out some boring old man clothes. I put the outfit next to him, and then I leave to get his breakfast set up for him.
As I'm finishing up the rice porridge, I hear the old fart open the bedroom door, and he walks into the kitchen, if you can even call it a kitchen. I can't even stand in it properly, and I'm a 5 '7 15 year old boy.
The fossil is too close for comfort. "Really rice porridge again. I know you can make more than this boy," the fossil says, sounding extremely disappointed.
"Grandfather, I need to do some shopping. I will go after school today, I promise," I say with a smile
"That's great to hear but you will have to use your own paycheck because I gambled my social security check on bingo and lost" the fossil has the nerve to say this while fucking laughing.
"What do you mean, grandfather? we haven't gotten the check yet. It will come today, " I say while trying not to kill him.
"Oh, the post office gave it a day early, so I went to bingo to double it while you were at your job. I lost it all, but lady luck has never left me too long before, so next month, it will have a better turnout boy just you wait." The fossil said all of that with a straight face.
"I don't have time for your shit right now, grandfather. I have to get ready for school." I say in a monotone voice.
"What you say, boy!" The dinosaur yelled out.
I don't even answer, I just leave the dinosaur to his porridge and go to my room to get ready for school.
I look at my stash of cash under the floorboards. I take a good amount of money out to cover the expenses because of the dinosaur bunder.
I put on my uniform and fix my hair. It's starting to get longer. I will have to cut it soon. I have my school bag and the time is 6:36 am. I need to go now.
I don't want to see the dinosaur so I go through my window and start running down the street.
I head towards the convenience store to grab something to eat real quick. To my surprise there is Almira in front of the store eating.
She is in her uniform with a purple Cardigan and her long curly black hair that is currently cascading down her back. She is wearing purple tights on her long thin legs. If you just look at her smooth tan skin and freckled face you would be fooled by her beauty into thinking she is a cute innocent teenage girl but if you look down to the left in her hand is a baseball bat with nails inside of it.
She is one of my closest friends. She is a little crazy but who isn't. As I walk up to say hello, I get another flashback, but this time, it is the first time I met Almira.
I'm 7 years old, and most kids stay away from me, but not Almira. She looked very different as a grade schooler. She was chubby, short for her age, and her hair was always a frizzy mess. She was different from me. People were rude to her face at first but she was confident in herself she told everyone she was the most beautiful girl to live with a straight face and if they didn't agree she would beat them up.
It wasn't a coping mechanism, and she believed it wholeheartedly. That was amazing to me. She wasn't embarrassed by what people say about her because she was confident in who she was at 7.
We became friends. We weren't super close, but she was my friend, but at 12 her parents sent her to a fat camp and wouldn't let her come home until she lost, all of her is excess fat. She found a love for softball at the camp, and it helped her lose most of the weight.
She said she was as beautiful as she was, so it took longer than expected. Near the end she missed home so she just ate fruit for months then they let her come home.
By the time she came back, she was 14, and I started to dream about her, but in my dreams, she wasn't Almira Santos. She was Alvida, a pirate, and my co-captain
I think it made us closer, so I would say she could even be my best friend.
"Buggy?"
That silly nickname that stuck thanks to that red head, but I don't hate it mostly because of my dreams.
"Buggy!"
I snap back to the here and now. All of a sudden, Almira is right in my face.
"Buggy, are you there? I have been trying to get your attention for about 3 minutes. I got you a breakfast burrito." Almira said while being visibly annoyed but with a mix of concern.
"I'm sorry I'm having an off day. Thank you for the food," I say while extremely frustrated with myself.
I start to take off the tinfoil of the burrito to eat.
"We have around 15 minutes till we have to be in class if you want to talk about it." Almira says gently
We sat down at the plastic table and chairs in front of the convenience store. Almira sets her bat on the chair next to her and
I give in and tell her what I have been thinking.
"Almira, have you ever had a dream where when you wake up, it feels like this life is the dream." I say as I'm thinking she must think I'm crazy because I think I'm going crazy.
But to my surprise, she says "yeah of course I have those kinds of dreams all the time."
"Really?" I say in shock
"Yes definitely the other day I had dream like that I got up got a drink of water said hi to my mom and had a banana but as I was eating the banana I realized we can't have bananas because we ran out 2 days and we go grocery shopping on the 2nd Friday of the month then I woke up it was a dream but it was super realistic."
She said it with the confidence of a rich white guy.
I sigh and say that's not what I meant. "Almira, picture it in a Creepy conspiracy theory kinda way. Nothing is real, kinda vibe."
"Oh, I get it now," but she said it with no judgment.
"Have you ever watched the Truman show, it's a movie?" She says it as I am almost finished with the breakfast burrito.
"No, what does this have to do with anything?" I said in a confused tone.
"OK, listen, it is about a guy whose entire life is a tv show. Everything is fake and chosen for him for other people's enjoyment. This is from infant to adulthood. They made him afraid to swim to keep him in the set town.
Things that shouldn't make any sense are manipulated to make it make sense to him. Near the end of the movie, he has an epiphany and sees the flaws in his made-up reality.
Is this somewhat close to what you mean?"
As I'm about to tell her that is almost spot on, I look at the time school starts in 5 minutes.
I look at her and say, " Shit we need to get to school right now."
She grabbed her bat, and we ran.
I don't know how we made it, but we did. Even if the school is close to where we were, it is still shocking.
I enter classroom B and sit down.
Then I realized we were late because the teacher wasn't here yet.
Chuuji stands in front of me to get my attention, but I'm too distracted thinking about my dream today. Chuuji in my dreams is Cabaji, and Cabaji had something important to tell me, but it got cut off.
Chuuji is in my class this year, which is nice because he and half brother Muuji were my first friends.
I realize he wants to talk to me, so I say "Chuuji what is it" and get an almost painful deja vu.
"Buggy, I got something really important to tell you!" He said with a joyful attitude unlike the dream.
Yes, please tell me what it is! I say desperately.
I decided at that moment if he says anything remotely similar to any for my dreams I'm going to take them seriously but if he says something out of left field I'm going to push out all of these weird thoughts and be a normal teenager, maybe find a boyfriend or find a hobby.
Now Gomiya is very interested in what Chuuji has to say, so he joins in
"Yeah, tell us what it is! Come on!"
Chuuji snaps at him
"Look here, I'm talking to buggy, not you dumb 3."
Gomiya hates that nickname with a burning passion. The reason why well
In testing, he is always 3rd to last place. So "dumb 3" or sometimes he was just called 3 stuck because it was like clockwork every test season he was 3rd to last.
"Don't call me that chu chu," gomiya snaps back.
"Do you want to fight because we can!" Chuuji says, almost yelling it.
I need to hear what Chuuji is going to say for my sanity. The teacher is running behind, so she will be here any second.
So I tell them both in a threatening tone
"Will you two stop fighting before I get really mad. Gomiya, go sit down in your seat. We will talk later. Chuuji, don't call him that name. Ok, we are all friends now. Tell me what you wanted to tell me quickly now."
Gomiya makes a pouty face and goes to back his seat.
Chuuji is smiling now and starts talking.
"Yes, of course, buggy
Our school kendo team has been accepted into the Okinawa kendo tournament. Even though our own school is so small, they saw the videos the coach sent in of me. We got accepted because my hard work paid off."
I sigh a sigh of relief. I decided the dreams were nonsense, and nothing would make me question my life again. The matter is closed.
I congratulate Chuuji wholeheartedly. He is a great swordsman, and I have full confidence in him.
His face lights up, and it makes me smile . Somehow, I'm just glad someone is having a good day.
Almira, who was in the seat behind me, raised her head up and said, "Congrats, Chuuji."
I lay my head down on my desk, thinking about why the teacher is so late. My hair is in my eyes, so it almost works as a sleep mask.
I start to doze off, but I feel a hand push back my growing hair and say
"Blue, the teacher is coming it's time to wake up," a voice says, with a soft and warm tone. I know that voice anywhere.
I'm now fully awake, maybe more awake than I've ever been, looking up quickly and seeing Shanks right in front of me, filling up my whole vision as he has always done.
It feels like my world has stopped or maybe rebooted. The only thing I'm thinking about right now is that I know that everything will be different from now on.