The laughing got louder as they moved deeper into the town.
It was coming from the main square. They could tell because the streets all sloped toward it the way streets in old towns tend to slope toward whatever the center of things is. The buildings got bigger, the road wider, and the silence around the laughing got heavier the closer they got.
They came around a corner and stopped.
The square was large. Stone ground, a dry fountain in the middle that hadn't had water in it recently, buildings around the edges with every window shuttered. And in the middle of it — a scene.
A man was sitting on a throne that had no business being in the middle of a town square. It looked like it had been dragged out of somewhere, a building probably, and set up here for no reason other than because the person sitting in it wanted to sit higher than everything around him.
The man on the throne was something.
Blue hair. White face paint with a red nose at the center of it. An enormous red coat draped over his shoulders. He was leaning sideways on the armrest with his chin in one hand looking at something in front of him with the bored expression of someone who had already decided how everything was going to go.
In front of him, on their knees, were four or five townspeople. An older man in the center — a mayor by the look of him, formal clothes, the bearing of someone who was used to being the most important person in a room and was currently having a very bad time of it.
Around the edges of the square, Buggy's crew. Twenty, maybe more. Spread out, weapons visible, the loose attentive posture of people who knew they were the ones with the power in this situation.
Luffy stood at the entrance to the square and looked at all of it.
"That's the clown?" he said.
"Seems like it," Ronald said.
"He actually looks like a clown," Luffy said. Not as an insult. More as genuine observation.
"Don't say that too loud," Zoro said from beside them.
One of Buggy's crew had already noticed them. A man near the edge of the square turned and looked and then said something to the man beside him and they both looked.
Buggy's eyes moved from the townspeople in front of him toward the entrance of the square.
He looked at Luffy. At Zoro. At Ronald.
The bored expression didn't change. If anything it got more settled.
"New arrivals," Buggy said. His voice carried across the square easily. The theatrical kind of voice. Built for audiences. "You picked an interesting time to visit Orange Town."
"We just needed supplies," Luffy said.
Buggy looked at him for a moment. "Supplies." He repeated it the way you repeat something someone has said that you find either funny or insulting and haven't decided which yet. "You sail into my town looking for supplies." He sat up straighter on the throne. "Do you know who I am?"
"Someone told us your name at the harbor," Luffy said. "Buggy."
Something moved across Buggy's face at the casual delivery of that. Not anger yet. The thing before anger when someone says your name without the weight you feel it deserves.
"Buggy the Clown," Buggy said. "Captain Buggy. I have a bounty. I have a crew. I have this town." He gestured broadly at the square. "And you walk in here asking for supplies like you're at a market stall."
"We are at a market," Luffy said, looking around at the buildings. "Kind of."
Ronald put a hand briefly on Luffy's arm. Not to stop him — just to communicate that the situation was worth reading before talking further.
Luffy glanced at him. Then looked back at Buggy.
The crew around the edges of the square had shifted. Still in place but differently — the way people shift when they've gone from watching something to preparing for something.
Ronald was reading all of it. The positions. The distances. The two men near the far exit who were the most relaxed which meant they were probably the most capable. The ones near Buggy who were closest and most visibly armed but whose posture said they were used to intimidation working before anything physical became necessary.
Zoro had read the same things from a different angle. Ronald could tell because of where Zoro was standing — he'd shifted two steps to the right without making it look intentional, putting himself at an angle to the nearest cluster of crew members that wasn't accidental.
"Those people," Luffy said, looking at the townspeople kneeling in front of Buggy. The mayor and the others. "What did they do."
"They exist in my town," Buggy said pleasantly. "That's enough."
"That's not a reason," Luffy said.
Buggy looked at him with the expression of someone being patient with something that was about to stop deserving patience.
"Kid," Buggy said. "You have two options. You leave the way you came right now and I forget I saw you. Or you stay and I demonstrate to this town why nobody gives me attitude in my own square." He smiled. It didn't reach anywhere above the mouth. "Either way works for me. Today's been slow."
The square was quiet.
The townspeople on their knees weren't looking up. Whatever had happened before Luffy and the others arrived had already taught them what looking up cost.
Luffy looked at the mayor. At the other people kneeling. At the shuttered windows around the square. Then he looked at Buggy on his dragged-out throne in the middle of a town that wasn't his.
Then he looked at Ronald.
Ronald gave him nothing. No direction, no signal. This was Luffy's read to make.
Luffy looked back at Buggy.
"I don't like this," Luffy said simply. Conversationally. Like he was mentioning the weather.
Buggy raised an eyebrow. "You don't like this."
"No," Luffy said. He took a step forward into the square. "So I'm going to do something about it."
---
Buggy moved fast.
That was the first real piece of information — he didn't posture or threaten or give a speech about what was coming. He just moved. His hand separated from his arm at the wrist, shot across the square with a small blade attached, and arrived at the space where Luffy had been standing in less than a second.
Luffy wasn't there.
He'd stretched sideways without looking at the attack — the rubber body processing threat and responding before the thinking part engaged. He landed two steps to the left, looked at the hand floating in mid air between them, and looked at Buggy.
"Your hand came off," Luffy said.
"Devil Fruit," Buggy said. The bored expression was gone. Something sharper in its place. "Chop Chop Fruit. My body separates and I control every piece." The floating hand rotated toward Luffy again. "Blades don't work on me. Cutting me doesn't work. Nothing works."
"Hm," Luffy said.
Ronald had already moved. Not toward Buggy — toward the crew members who had started closing in from the edges the moment the captain attacked. The nearest one came in with a club, overhand swing, the kind that expected to end things.
Ronald stepped inside it. The club passed behind him. His elbow found the man's ribs with a short tight movement and the man folded.
The second one was smarter — came lower, trying to tackle. Ronald's weight shifted, one foot back, and he redirected the momentum rather than blocking it. The man went past him and into the fountain base with enough force to sit there for a while.
Zoro had drawn one sword.
He was moving through the crew on the left side of the square with the efficient calm of someone doing something they were very good at. Not fast in the flashy way — just accurate. Every movement arrived where it needed to arrive. Three crew members were down before the others on that side properly registered that something had started.
In the center of the square Luffy and Buggy were figuring each other out.
Buggy's separated limbs were everywhere — hands with blades, a foot moving independently across the ground as a distraction, his torso floating slightly off the ground to avoid Luffy's ground-level attacks. It was genuinely disorienting to look at. Pieces of a person operating without being attached to each other.
Luffy took a blade across the arm. It bounced off rubber. He looked at the cut in his sleeve with mild interest.
"That doesn't hurt," Luffy said.
"I can see that," Buggy said. His voice was tighter now. The theatrical quality was still there but something underneath it had shifted. The tone of someone adjusting their assessment.
"Gomu Gomu no—" Luffy pulled his arm back. Far. Further than an arm had any right to go. Buggy watched it with wide eyes as the geometry of what was coming became clear. "—Pistol."
The punch covered the distance between them faster than Buggy's separated body could scatter away from.
It connected with his torso.
Buggy went across the square, through a market stall that had nothing in it, and hit the wall of the building behind it. His various separated pieces floated in the air for a moment looking lost. Then they began moving back toward the main body with the automatic urgency of things that wanted to be reconnected.
Ronald finished the last of the crew members on his side — a tall man who'd had a spear and had used it with more competence than the others. Three exchanges, each one tighter than the last, Ronald reading each movement before it arrived. The spear ended up on the ground.
The square went quiet.
Buggy's crew looked at their captain embedded in the wall of a building. Then at Zoro standing in the middle of eight people who were all sitting down. Then at Ronald. Then at Luffy who was shaking out his arm and looking at the wall with interest.
"That's a lot of damage," Luffy observed, looking at the hole.
"You did it," Ronald said.
"I know," Luffy said. "I'm just noting it."
From inside the hole in the wall there was a sound. Then Buggy's pieces reassembled themselves out of the rubble. He stood. He was dusty. His face paint had cracked slightly on one side.
He looked at Luffy with an expression that had fully abandoned the theatrical boredom.
"Rubber," Buggy said.
"Gomu Gomu," Luffy confirmed.
"I hate rubber," Buggy said with genuine feeling.
"That's fair," Luffy said.
Buggy looked at the state of his crew. At Zoro standing in the middle of them. At Ronald on the other side. A calculation happening behind his eyes.
Then he looked at the mayor still kneeling in the square center who was now looking up with his mouth open.
Something shifted in Buggy's expression. The calculation completing.
His hand shot across the square again — not toward Luffy this time. Toward the mayor. The blade pressed against the old man's throat before anyone had covered half the distance needed to matter.
"Here's what's going to happen," Buggy said pleasantly. The theatrical voice was back. "You three are going to step back. You're going to put the swords down. And you're going to let me and my crew walk out of this town. And then this old man keeps his head attached."
The square went still.
The mayor was very careful not to move.
Ronald stopped where he was.
Zoro stopped.
Luffy looked at the mayor. Then at Buggy. Then at the blade.
"If I let you walk," Luffy said slowly. "What happens to the town?"
"Not my problem anymore," Buggy said. "I've lost interest. Your rubber face ruined my afternoon."
"And the people? You'll leave them alone?"
"I said it's not my problem," Buggy said. "I'll find another town."
Luffy was quiet for a moment. Ronald watched him. Watched the calculation moving through him — not the strategic kind, not the kind that came from experience or training. The kind that came from whatever Luffy used instead of those things.
"Okay," Luffy said.
Buggy looked slightly surprised. "Okay?"
"Leave the town alone," Luffy said. "And go."
Buggy looked at him for a long moment. Looking for the trick. Not finding it. He took the blade away from the mayor's throat.
The mayor exhaled.
Buggy's crew gathered themselves — the ones who could still move gathered the ones who were having difficulty — and they moved toward the far exit of the square. Buggy last. He paused at the exit and looked back at Luffy.
"Straw Hat," he said.
Luffy touched his hat automatically.
"I'll remember you," Buggy said. Not as a threat exactly. More as a statement of fact.
"Same," Luffy said.
Buggy left.
The square was quiet for a moment.
Then the shutters started opening. Slowly. One by one. Faces appearing in windows. The particular exhale of a town that had been holding its breath for weeks and was only now beginning to believe it could stop.
The mayor got to his feet slowly. He looked at Luffy. At Zoro. At Ronald. His eyes were wet but he was holding himself straight.
"Thank you," he said. His voice was steady. "Thank you."
Luffy scratched the back of his head. "We just needed supplies."
The mayor stared at him.
Ronald put a hand briefly on the mayor's shoulder. "Where's the nearest place we can get water and food. We've got a boat at the harbor."
The mayor blinked. Switched gears. Pointed toward a street on the left side of the square. "The main market is that way. It's been closed but I'll — I'll have it opened immediately. Whatever you need. It's yours."
"We'll pay," Ronald said.
"You won't," the mayor said firmly. The first firm thing he'd said since they'd arrived.
Ronald looked at him. Decided this wasn't the argument to have right now.
"Alright," he said.
---
They resupplied in an hour.
The market opened fast — the townspeople moving with the energy of people who had been given permission to be themselves again after a long time of being something smaller. Stalls came open, goods appeared, voices that had been kept to murmurs found their regular volume.
Luffy ate at a food stall immediately and comprehensively. The stall owner kept putting things in front of him and Luffy kept making them disappear and the stall owner looked like this was the best thing that had happened to them in weeks.
Zoro got his hands on a bottle of sake from somewhere and was sitting on a crate outside the market drinking it with the settled expression of someone who had decided the day had earned this.
Ronald moved through the market carefully. Water first — four large containers, enough for the next leg. Food — dried goods, fresh where they had it, things that would last. He paid for everything despite the market people's protests which were genuine but also not that hard to overcome with enough patience.
The mayor found him near the harbor as he was carrying the last of it to the boat.
"The young man with the straw hat," the mayor said. "Is he your captain?"
"Yes," Ronald said.
The mayor nodded slowly. "He's an unusual person."
"Yes," Ronald said.
"He let Buggy go," the mayor said. "Some people might say that was a mistake."
"Maybe," Ronald said. "But the town is intact and everyone's alive and Buggy's gone." He set a water container into the boat's storage. "Sometimes the result matters more than the method."
The mayor was quiet for a moment. "Where are you heading after this?"
Ronald straightened up and looked at the sea beyond the harbor mouth.
"Don't know yet," he said honestly. "Wherever it takes us."
The mayor looked at him. Then out at the same water.
"There's a village," the mayor said. "North of here. Maybe two days. Syrup Village. Small place, quiet. Good people." He paused. "I have a friend there. He's been having trouble too. Different kind of trouble. If you're heading that direction anyway—"
"We'll see where the wind goes," Ronald said.
The mayor nodded. "Of course." He put out his hand.
Ronald shook it.
"Safe seas," the mayor said.
"Thank you," Ronald said.
He went back to loading the boat.
---
*End of Chapter 15*
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