"Nanananana… nani!"
"Pirate King? Me?"
Buggy's first instinct was that Ozz had to be joking. He threw his head back and cackled, mouth wide enough to swallow a grapefruit.
"Hahaha, come on, Ozz!"
The laughter kept going, then faltered, then died. Buggy finally noticed that Ozz was only watching him, quiet and steady, a seriousness on his face that left no room for punchlines.
"I am not joking, Buggy."
Ozz topped off his glass, the fresh orange juice catching the light as he rolled it slowly. Ripples shivered across the surface.
"Anyone can be Pirate King. Why not you. I do not remember Captain Roger ever saying it had to be Shanks who claimed the treasure."
The crew froze in a heat that felt like a fever. Mihawk did not speak, but the lines about his mouth deepened, thoughts drawing tight. Buggy's men looked as if their blood were trying to climb out of their skin. They stared at Ozz, then at their own captain, vibrating with the need to shout yes and the terror of speaking before their betters.
That was One Piece they were hearing about. Roger's hoard. The world piled into a single promise. With Ozz behind them, the throne suddenly did not feel like a fairy tale told over cheap rum. It felt close enough to touch.
Buggy, however, only stared back at Ozz.
The truth was simple. He had grown used to being a small-timer. Hearing Ozz say it so cleanly felt like an ill-fitting coat. Did he really deserve that word. Pirate King.
It was not that he did not trust Ozz. It was that his heart had not yet done the hard traveling it would need. The Buggy who once roared your lives do not scream would be forged years from now, tossed up and down the Grand Line, battered and mocked, then shocked into clarity by Shanks of all people, and only then would he throw his whole self into the race for the crown.
This Buggy was barely twenty, a fixture of the East Blue, dreaming in safe colors. Now Ozz was saying you, go be Pirate King. It collided with his reflexive sense of not enough. Borrowing someone else's momentum was one thing. Being chosen by Ozz, the one man he thought truly qualified for the crown, was another thing entirely.
He sank into thought.
Seeing it, Ozz did not push.
"No need to decide at once, Buggy." He clapped a hand on Buggy's shoulder, the smile he gave him more encouragement than pressure. "We have time. If you ever change your mind, come find me."
There was no hurry. Everyone was still growing. Even Monkey D. Luffy was only a kid somewhere, a spark in the straw.
There would be a day when Buggy made up his mind.
They stayed a few days more. When Ozz finally said his goodbyes, he left with a small cask of orange juice under one arm.
"You are leaving already," Buggy said, eyes shiny. "We only just started having fun."
"Do not sulk," Ozz laughed. "Sabaody Archipelago is always open to you. The sea is wide. We will meet again."
He lifted a hand. Ozz and Mihawk vanished from the pier.
High above the island, as the shoreline shrank to a dark comma on the water, Mihawk glanced over.
"What now."
"What now."
Ozz rubbed his chin, as if he had not made up his mind until this second.
"First, we wrap up this Warlords matter. I do not like leaving a game half played."
"The Warlords of the Sea."
Mihawk's brows pinched. He remembered very well why he had agreed to a government seat he would otherwise have ignored. Ozz had asked.
"With your reach, you do not need such ornaments," he said. "Why bother."
People said the one who found One Piece would gain everything. Mihawk did not buy that. In his view, the one who secured Ozz's regard would gain everything that mattered. Wealth, power, reputation.
Ozz only grinned.
"No grand plan. It amuses me. Also, thank you for playing along, Hawk."
Mihawk said nothing. Because it amuses me was the most Ozz answer possible.
"Who is next," he asked after a pause. "Kuma. Moria. That Hanafuda fellow."
"Moria."
Bartholomew Kuma belonged to one of Ozz's companies in all but name, a piece on the revolutionary board that would move exactly as Ozz required, whether now or later when the government tried to turn him into a machine. As for Hanafuda under Kaido, Ozz had no interest in recruiting or killing him personally. He could fall off the shortlist without ceremony.
That left one candidate worth a visit. The vampire lord of the endless night, who had once stood beside Ozz to watch Captain Roger die, and who had refused to bend ever since.
"Moria has a hard skull," Ozz mused. "We will see how to soften it."
"Gecko Moria," Mihawk nodded, turning old pages in his memory. The Shadow Shadow Fruit, the theft and puppetry of other people's silhouettes. A man broken by Kaido and burrowed into the mist of Thriller Bark.
They did not realize who they were forgetting.
Impel Down, deep beneath the Calm Belt.
Level 6, Infinite Hell.
Clink, clatter, clink.
Chains dragged and rang. The sound climbed cold stone and fell back like rain.
Crocodile had not been forced into the black and white stripes the other inmates wore. She still wore her own suit, a last shred of pride, though dignity did not count for much here. The cell choked your freedom. Shackles bit your wrists and ankles. The air was damp in a way that got into your bones, which was an insult to a woman of sand, and there were no cigars.
Compared to the indulgence of Sabaody, this was a coffin with a heartbeat.
She sat on the narrow bunk and turned the pages of an old newspaper, the paper soft from too many reads. The question gnawed.
Why.
Why had Ozz not come for her.
Was he not a Celestial Dragon now.
Questions were cheap, and the walls were thick. The prison cut every line she might have used to reach him. So she read yesterday's news today, and tomorrow she would read it again, and each day she told herself the same thing, that he would come when he wished and not a moment before.
Tap. Tap.
Footsteps clicked down the corridor, clean and measured. Crocodile lifted her chin. A figure in a Marine coat filled the edge of her sight, the word Justice stark across the back, shoulders squared to the bars.
"Crocodile." The voice was level, neither friendly nor cruel. "Have you reconsidered. About joining the Warlords of the Sea."
She let the paper fold shut. Her eyes slid to the cigarette burn she had etched into the corner of the bunk on the first day, the only mark that was hers.
Outside the cell, chains whispered. The sea pressed on the stone. In the dim light, Crocodile smiled, small and sharp.
"Ask me again," she said, "after you bring me a cigar."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The tides are shifting, and secrets linger in the dark... Step into the shadows early on P@treon, where the next chapter awaits before the world sees it.
[email protected]/_theon
Change @ to "a"