The Home of Arnon Tolk, Flevance

Opening his eyes, it took a moment for Buggy to process where he was. Neither his nor any of the other rooms on the ship had curtains long enough to almost touch the floor, mostly because the windows were really just round portholes that weren’t much bigger than the average human head, so he probably wasn’t on the ship. And he couldn’t smell any of the hard liquors or stale drunken air he had long since become familiar with during his bar hopping escapades with the Roger pirates, so that ruled out any and all bars.

Which begged the question: Where in the hell was he? And why was it so oppressively warm?

He rarely drank enough to blackout, and he doubted that someone was able to drug him while he was drinking. It wouldn’t be possible since he always kept a watchful eye on his, and more recently his crew’s, drinks from the moment the mugs were pulled from the shelves. Unlike many of his shipmates on the Oro Jackson had been, he was not as trusting of strangers. Least of all of skeevy bar tenders who could be paid off so incredibly easily. Certainly not enough to let them handle his food and his drinks without careful supervision.

Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Buggy turned onto his side and found himself staring unblinkingly at the drapes. The white drapes…that were white…like most of the town they were in…the town that they…came to…for…

It took a minute to connect all the dots with his sleep-addled mind, but he gets there eventually.

A sudden urge to punch something came about as the events of the day flooded back to him. “Why is everything in this shitty town just a different shade of the same shitty color!? How can these people live in such a terrible place!?” He grumbled. He was never coming back to Flevance again! As of that moment, it was number four on the ‘Never Going Back’ list of places he’d been creating form the moment he set sail with Roger all those years ago.

Flevance officially sucked.

Now that he’d been sufficiently riled up, and with a decent mount of rest under his belt, it was time to get a move on. Rouge, her baby, and Shanks were waiting for him.

He didn’t bother moving from the couch to gather everyone. His hands detached themselves from his wrist and flew about the house, tapping the shoulders of his crewmates, as well as their captive doctor and nurse duo, and guiding them back to him. Having a devil fruit like his was just perfect for those rare moments when his need to get something done and his desire to just laze about in place happened to be neck and neck with each other.

When they finally gathered before him Buggy found himself intrigued at the way that the doctor was carrying himself. Unlike the hungover mess who had tried to threaten him with a gun just a few short hours ago, this Arnon Tolk looked every bit the part of a respectable obstetrician who was the top of his field. He half-expected the man to show up no different from when he’d left him.

He also half-expected to have to force another shower on him. Which would have been terrible for all parties involved. Arnon for being manhandled back onto the path to cleanliness and Buggy for touching a man who had been living in his own filth for who the hell knows how long.

‘This is good. A problem that solves itself is my favorite kind of problem. I was worried that I’d need to waste precious time trying to get him to not be useless when the time comes.’ There was too much pressure on him to get to Shanks and Rouge in time for him to allow even a moment a unnecessary distraction.

The last thing he needed was a fussy doctor to babysit.

Buggy was sitting up, by this point, not wanting to leave the admittedly comfortable couch but not needing to be seen as anything less than captain-like as he spoke.

“I’ll make this quick since we need to leave within the next few minutes.” He points to the Jal and Rosie. “You two are going to tell no-one that we’ve been here.” They share a hesitant and uncertain glance. But Buggy was having none of that. With a glare, “I mean it! You say anything to anyone…” He paused, feeling the threat die in his throat. “in all honesty you’d partly responsible for the death of a baby and its mother.”

That got a reaction. Specifically, very appalled looks directed at him. To which he rolled his eyes. “No, not because of anything I’d do. The whole reason I came here was to save them. If you go and tell someone and it somehow gets back to the group working to kill the people we’re trying to save…well, you know what would happen. Could you really report us knowing the consequences?”

Jal shook his head. He was a doctor. He took an oath to do no harm. And knowing what he knew, he had no choice at this point. Jal could tell that Rosie, on the other hand, needed to be convinced some more.

She’d been kidnapped, scared to the point of passing out, and finally threatened into silence. Wanting the people responsible to get in trouble for the trauma she’d gone through was only natural. But with lives at stake, it just couldn’t happen. Jal wouldn’t let it.

He took her by the hand, shared a meaningful look with her, and turned to Buggy. “If it means we save two lives in the process, we won’t tell anyone. Will we?” He spared her a glance. One she shrugged her shoulders and sighed lightly at, but nodded all the same.

“I-it wasn’t like we were h-hurt or anything, right?” Though it sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than anyone else. But if anyone noticed, and they did, no one said anything about it otherwise.

Buggy nodded, glad that the truth had been as effective as any threat he would’ve given. “Good. Now as for you, doctor.” He turned to Arnon. “We’ll be heading off for the Grand Line now, so if there’s anything you need to do before we leave, I’d get it done now.”

The doctor, surprisingly, shook his head. “I’m all packed. If you’re ready to leave, we can get moving. Just…answer a question for me?” Buggy’s eyebrows raised curiously, but he was listening. No fuss about leaving Flevance and he was sounding eager? The doctor could ask a hundred questions for all he cared.

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“Should we run into any marines, would have an issue with me hiding below the deck of your ship while you fend them off? I’m not much of a fighter, and the last thing that you want is anyone knowing I’m with you.”

‘Well, that’s an interesting consideration.’ Buggy thought. “And why would that be? You have a bounty? Some sort of black market doctor they’d rather keep alive and useful?”

The doctor scratched the back of his neck. “Let’s just say that it’s their shared consensus that I’m not supposed to even think about leaving Flevance. The consequences of which would be…unpleasant. Actually, in all likelihood, I’m probably never going to be able to come back here. They’ll have known that I was gone.”

Buggy nodded. “Well, we’ll deal with the aftermath of your recruitment” he stressed that last word. “once my friend and her baby are safe.” Did this mean Buggy would need to put him up until they found a port where they could dump him? Or was he being so easy-going so that he had somewhere to stay after he’d done what he was forced into cleanliness for.

Arnon sighs, relieved that his personal baggage wouldn’t put him in a negative light. He was already semi-forced into doing this. Any further complications was just asking for more trouble than he wanted with these people.

“Okay. Lilith, Solomon.” They both looked to him. “Get ready. We’re leaving in five minutes.” He turns to Jal and Rosie. “I trust you two can make your ways back to the hospital?” They nod.

Finally, things seem to be going his way and he was one step closer to getting to Baterilla.

-

Unknown Location, Unknown Island

A kick to the head brought Devlin back into the painful arms of consciousness.

“Hey!” The sound of someone taking several hits was muffled as she tried to clear her head of the fuzz she felt. The blindfold she could now feel on her face not helping in the least. “Take it easy, you fuckin’ idiot! If you rough her up too much she’ll be worth a lot less than what we could get.”

The stranger’s complaint was met with a scoff. “What does it matter if I toss her around a little? The little bitch is gonna make us a fortune either way! She’s a devil fruit user, she’s got a pretty face, and she’s, what, nine or ten? Either way, we’re still making some real money with this one. So fuckin’ lay off.”

She feels the man grab her by the chin without much care as to how much pressure is being applied.

Suddenly the hand is wrenched off of her just as fast as it came, painful it may have been but she’s glad to be free of the iron grip, and the man it’s attached to groans in pain following the sound of flesh hitting in flesh in rapid, nonstop movements.

‘It sounds like Iron Grip Guy just got his ass kicked.’ She mused.

“I said.” A grunt followed by a sharp groan after something hits something else. ‘Maybe he’s getting kicked? It’s impossible to tell with this damn blindfold on!’ “To leave.” Again. “Her. The fuck.” Again. “BE!!” One last time and the Iron Grip Guy goes silent. But not before a deafening crack reverberates around the room.

“Ah, shit.” The man who’d been punishing the man Devlin had known as ‘Iron Grip Guy’ had gotten a little too lost in his rage at being disobeyed. A frequent issue with Iron Grip Guy. Not that Devlin could have known beforehand that such an outcome was a long time coming. “Now I’m gonna have to fuckin’ carry this asshole up the stairs. Uuugghhhh!!”

As the sounds of a man struggling to drag what she suspected to be a dead body up a set of stairs filled the room, Devlin realized that she wasn’t on the Royal Blue anymore. There wasn’t any of the usual swaying or the sound of small waves gently slapping against solid wood.

‘They must’ve taken me further inland. Somewhere as far away from the docks as they could get’ But she couldn’t be certain. Who knew how long she had been out for? It could’ve been anywhere from several hours to several days. Possibly even weeks. According to what she’d skimmed through in the ship’s medical journals, the stolen ones that had originally been taken from the Morning Star, a person could be placed in something called a medically induced coma with the right combination of chemicals. It would put them into a deep sleep that could last for as long as the person administering the drugs wanted it to.

‘What did they do to our ship? If they took it then they’d have to either sail to a different island, get it broken down to salvage anything worth something, or hide it in a private docking area somewhere else on the island.’ No matter what they did, though, Buggy was going to be pissed.

She’d long since pegged him as the kind of guy to lose his cool if someone stole from him. But to steal something that meant as much to him as the Royal Blue did. That, she predicted, was treading on dangerous waters.

Not counting the Morning Star as his first ship as a captain, the Royal Blue signified his first significant step to becoming…whatever it was he was aiming to become. The look of pride in his eyes she caught every once in a while, as he stared at seemingly random parts of the ship said as much.

Beyond being enraged at having his ship stolen from him, Devlin also knew that her being taken as well would push him to a level that she’d never personally experienced him at. She knew that pushing his buttons with honestly light-hearted jokes and jabs at his nose would get him upset. Never anything that would warrant more than an instance of indignant verbal retaliation. She had a feeling that anything without the intent to actually hurt him, or anything he cared about for that matter, would end in nothing more than him harmlessly blowing up.

Buggy just wasn’t the kind of person to act out needless violence. It was one of the reasons she’d stayed with him, despite the fact that he was a pirate.

Until this sort of situation arose, that is.

What she didn’t know, and what Buggy was only vaguely aware of himself, was that losing Roger and then failing to convince, and therefore save them from being hunted, Rouge and her baby had instilled something in him. Something that came out when the stakes were high and the personal loss he would suffer were too great to measure.

So, she knew Buggy was going to be coming for her when he discovered what had happened; she had faith in him. She just didn’t know the level of ferocity that was coming with him. And until he and the others made it back to the dock they’d arrived at, neither did Buggy.

Devlin could hear the man, men if she counted the now dead one being dragged across the floor, moving across whatever room was above her.

Thinking about how care-free the man had been, how he had sounded more annoyed with Iron Grip Guy’s unintentional death than anything else, made her shudder in anxiety. If Iron Grip Guy was a colleague, possibly a friend, then what did that mean for a complete stranger like her. Not even a stranger, a target.

‘Fuck. I need to get out of here. Fast.’ Looking around the room, however, she found it was bare of anything remotely useful in getting her free. Even then, did she even have the strength to pick her own self up off the floor? She felt so…weak. Drained like the very energy was being sucked out of her.

But why? It didn’t…it didn’t make any sense!

‘I shouldn’t be this weak damn it! I have the power of the fucking wind at my command. So why…? Why can’t I…do something…? Why can’t I…do…anything? Please Buggy…Lilith...Solomon...someone...help me…’

If she had the physical capacity to do so, she’d have already had her head in her hands to hide the tears of frustration and anguish. But the best she could do was to slowly curl up into a ball and wait. Quietly hoping that Buggy would get to her soon. Otherwise…who knows what would happen to her.