Part 4 Parle

Luffy struggled to free himself from the barrel by using his devil fruit powers, but to no avail. It seemed the barrel was made out of seastone. (Seastone is a strange metal that neutralizes devil fruit powers.) All of a sudden he felt the barrel being lifted. "Hey! Anybody out there!" he shouted. His question fell upon deaf ears. That and no could here him since he was inside of a metal barrel. He waited until the carrier stopped. He could feel the barrel being put down. Luffy heard the locks of the barrel clicking as they disengaged. Afterwards the lid was lifted. Luffy slowly rose from the barrel only to be greeted by a flurry of knives coming right at him.

Luffy ducked back into the barrel, barely avoiding the knives. They whizzed over him and imbedded in the wall. "Hey what was that for!" he shouted. As soon as he dodged all of them he heard an all too familiar laugh coming from in front of him. He looked out of the barrel and saw an old enemy.

Buggy the Clown sat across Luffy's barrel with an amused smile on his face. "So we meet again Monkey D. Luffy! It's been awhile." But instead of replying, Luffy just stared at him. Buggy stared back at Luffy too. This went on for a few minutes until Luffy announced.

"Oh yeah. You're that clown guy right? What's your name again?"

Buggy was outraged. "You mean you don't remember!" Luffy thought for a minute.

"You're name's Boogie right?"

"IT'S BUGGY!" Buggy shouted as he drew a knife from his coat. He was about to fling it at Luffy but put it down instead. "Okay Luffy, you're wondering why you're here, right?" Buggy inquired tensely.

"Because you're men put me in a barrel and brought me here?" he replied. Buggy cringed.

"That and I wanted to show you these." Buggy said, as he put 3 pieces of paper on the desk for Luffy to see.

They were wanted posters. Luffy stretched his neck to look at them. One of them was his. However, instead of the usual 100 million berries reward for his capture. There was a whopping 300 million berries reward! He turned it over and saw another pirate's wanted poster. The reward for this buccaneer was 110 million berries. Luffy asked "Who's this ugly guy?"

"That's me you rubber ingrate!" Buggy said.

"But you used to be worth 15 million berries right."

"Well I've been beating some high level pirates... but that's not the point! Look at the third poster!" Luffy looked at the last piece of paper. Sure enough it was another wanted sign but with a very strange outlaw.

Wanted Poster Picture: A question mark. Wanted Poster Message: The Navy has placed a 50 million berry bounty on anyone who possesses devil fruit powers.

Luffy realized that 'anyone' could even mean Chopper would be hunted down. And he didn't really seem like the convict type. "Do you want to know why they made this crazy poster? Do ya'?" Buggy interrogated. Luffy shook his head in response. "Well Luffy allow me to tell you. Though the story's kind of long..."

Author's Note: So, what do you think? Please review.

Next Part: The Black Abyss