IT'S JUST A JOKE

I came t my senses with a splitting headache, the kind that makes your brain feel like its rattling in your cranium. The kind that twinges a bit more acutely with every sudden sound. The kind that usually one could associate with a hangover that followed a copious and debilitating amount of Tequila plus heavy brawling.

"... ou ok?" a voice clearly directed at me managed to somewhat distinguish itself from the others around me: "Are you ok?"

I blinked and focused my eyes on the owner of said voice, which dripped with distracted concern. It was like the red-headed young man who was speaking to me had been worrying over something different and of life-threatening importance before stopping to... oh, haul me on my feet from the ground I had been resting over, that was awfully nice of him.

"Yeah man." I tried to shake my head slowly in order to force myself properly awake, and surprisingly enough, the headache went from head-splitting to a dull ringing that I could feel focused on the side of my head: "Thanks." I added with slow clenching and unclenching of my gloved hands.

Uh? I stopped, and looked at my hands: no matter how much did I drink the night before, a pair of white gloves wasn't among the things I expected to ever wake up with. Without a thought, I shrugged them off, trying to remember my previous night, only to stumble when the read-head dragged me forward, his hand holding on my wrist.

"C'mon, we need to reach the plaza." he said quickly.

I followed numbly, taking stock of where the fuck I was: a cobbled road, that was good, I was in some kind of historical centre or something. Then my nose picked up the heavy but unmistakeable saltwater smell that clung in the air, and that gave me something to worry about.

I didn't live near the coastline.

That thought and the need of looking around hoping to find out soon some info point kept me distracted long enough for the redhead to drag me to this 'plaza'. It sounds like some kind of flash mob.

My eyes, and a brain that kept getting more and more confused, picked up on the strange way that everybody was dressed. Summer clothes, from kids that were being ushered away from the plaza to the old men, prepped against walls that found a way to snuck them back in with a knowing grin on their faces.

And more importantly, the big ass sword that the redhead had tied to his waist. What the fuck?

It was like knowing that something was there because you saw it, or only knowing it intellectually. Very much like drugs in a disco, if you knew how to look, they were easy to spot. From the junkies to the dealers, one could spot them among the relatively more normal people.

Only that in this case, there were weapons everywhere instead of pills of happiness.

Speaking of that, my eyes fell over my own waist, where... Why am I wearing a sash? AND WHY DO I HAVE KNIVES AT MY SIDE? I screamed in my own mind. Shocked into silence.

Slowly, I pulled out one. I must be in some kind of revocation or historical-shit. That thought perished when the knife shaved off my arm's hair without a single whisper of resistance: it was bloody sharp

My eyes boggled out as my breath caught in my throat: WHAT THE FUCK?!

I looked around once more, trying to figure out what the fuck was actually happening, my mind scrambling to find something to use as an anchor, something that actually started to make sense: the plaza was so full that if someone fainted, the crowd would have kept the person standing without even trying. The sun was blazing among a few white clouds, and there was only a light sea breeze to hold back the warmth of the day.

The people, pressed together like they were a single being, stank. There really wasn't a better way to say it, it was hot, and the sweat, along with the secretly spread farts and burps of everyone, were elbowing each other to better make themselves known in my nose.

My round, big nose... Wait, what?

I went cross-eyed as my sight picked up on the red sphere that stood in front of my face, my free hand tentatively rising to pull it away. Normally, even in case one had been such a bastard as to glue a clown nose over mine, pulling would be enough to take it off, my college experiences granted me that reassurance at last.

I didn't feel that pulling sensation over the skin of my nose. On the other hand, I felt my fingers squeeze over the red ball in front of my face. I stopped squeezing, looking around in the hope of finding some validation of my discovering, maybe someone blurting out a laugh and explain the joke I had fallen into.

Everyone however, had their eyes pointing in the same direction, so I was ignored.

Once more, I checked the red ball over my nose, and once more, it felt like the red ball was my nose.

What the fuck happened yesterday? Once more, I tried to remember, and slowly and hazily, I remembered that I was walking back towards my reasonably shitty apartment when I blinked, and ... Nothing, I had to draw a blank over the events of the previous night.

As I was busy looking over myself, noting with dismay dark leather boots and white baggy pants that were tucked into them, along with a body that most definitely didn't resemble the one I was used to...

Then it happened. The crowd went utterly still, and I felt my eyes move without my input, mimicking the rest of the crowd and even the red haired man that had dragged me to the plaza: from our left, a chained man was being escorted by very nervous-looking soldiers to what looked like an execution stand on the opposite side of the plaza. He was a 1,85 meters tall, muscular man. The most eye-catching feature was undoubtedly his curved black moustache, and he walked, no, he strode with a countenance that would have put to shame any king.

Seeing him, something stirred in my mind, the pieces starting to click together to paint something that... well 'the impossible' was apparently dead.

Even as the man was being paraded as a defeated prisoner soon to pay his due, I was close enough to see his grin. It was fierce and savage, holding the promise of victory even in his circumstances, and even if he never looked at me while he walked, I knew that his gaze would weight as a mountain. His black curtain of hair hid the sides of his face, but there was no mistaking his straight back and slightly puffed up chest, even forced as he was to take little steps because of the chains he had on his calves, every time his foot landed on the cobbled path felt like he was conquering it, claiming it as his.

Nononono... My mind refused it.

He wore a long red captain's coat, and beneath it, a blue shirt and a yellow sash around his waist. He had a white cravat around his neck, dark blue pants, and what appeared to be black sea boots. I remember thinking that it suited him, in the same way that thunder suited lightning or tsunamis suited earthquakes. Even as I thought it, I knew that he would have made wearing prisoner-rags looking like a kingly suit.

Time had been still during his walk through the plaza, and I realized that the sea breeze had died as soon as he had taken his first step in the human-made corridor towards his demise, so the air had turned so unbearably hot, that I could see it waver. Even the few clouds in the sky had stilled themselves, like they too were eager to witness the events about to unfold.

How... I blinked, my eyes still glued to the figure that I remembered hazily from that manga...

I looked him as he walked the stairs that led him towards the stage were two other soldiers were waiting for him, the chosen weapon for his execution glinting in the overbearing sunlight. I saw him stop briefly to exchange a few words with a soldier that denied him something, but they were too quiet for me to hear. Almost unwillingly, I hunched forward, my body answering to a need I didn't recognize.

He turned and swiftly sat in the middle of the stage, his legs crossing with the undeniable exact grace that I expected of him. He was too far for me to see his eyes, and yet, there was a glint of power behind them that made it look like he was looking straight at me, evaluating, waiting, pondering. There was something beyond the scope of my understanding at work, I could tell.

His eyes fell over the crowd, and I could swear that his grin widened when he saw the redheaded man with the straw hat at my side, and he almost barked out a laugh when he looked at me. His eyes were on me, and maybe, maybe because he couldn't possibly see me clearly among the crowd and the wavering of the hot air, a frown marred his features as he studied me.

His eyes snapped away from me when a man in the crowd called for his attention: "Hey! PIRATE KING!", and irrationally, I wished to hit him for having broken the sacred silence that was holding us by the troath: "What did you do with your great treasure? It's somewhere on the Grand Line, isn't it? You have it, don't you? The greatest treasure in the world?"

The soldier barked something back, but the attention of everyone was back on the King by then, but the man in the crowd couldn't be denied and continued: "Your one special treasure?" he insisted, "ONE PIECE?!"

Oh fucking hell... It was impossible.

And then, in a single second, even in those moments charged with tensions and a challenge about to be thrown, I felt myself dying, the infinite amount of small clues, from the strange clothes to the weapons that I could see everywhere... everything clicked together, and I realized the dramatic reality of my actual circumstances.

The King laughed, and once more everything stilled, a strange sense of gravity pulling everyone towards him, forcing each one of us to heed him: he was sight for the blind, water for the thirsty, and we all knew, deep in our bones, that if we didn't hear his next words, we would have just decided to lie down and await death. His laugh had started as a chuckle only to quickly spiral in a veritable maelstrom, anchoring us in the present, keeping us tied under of his revelation, held by his sheer presence: chained, seated cross-legged and waiting to die, he held more power than should be allowed to a mortal: "My treasure?" he repeated.

And his voice was thick with promises and allusions and images beyond what we could understand, it was bait, line and sinker for the young and the old, for civilian and soldier, for sky and sea. The soldier that had tried to quiet the man questioning the King barked something and pointed his weapon towards Him, but his words were drowned out. Not by other sounds, for everything was quiet and waiting for Rogers' words, simply, after hearing the King, the voice of the soldier was akin to an ant trying to cower the wind that announced an incoming hurricane.

"If you want it, I'll let you have it." and everyone felt like a boulder had been trusted upon our shoulders, an indescribable and unbearable pressure weighing us down: "Go look for it." he challenged the world as the soldier lost it and raised his weapon without being ordered to. "I left all of it at that place!" and with those words, he gave us a direction we were unknowingly gasping for, and while our bodies were still sluggish and slow to answer, our minds altìready were soaring forward, through the unknown and the impossible, we didn't know what His treasure could be, but none of us actually cared, after seeing Him, hearing Him, we all wanted to know, we all needed to know, it was planted deep within everyone: the call. His challenge. His promise.

What could a man like the King have found? What could bring him to offer such promise and challenge while he was being executed? As the blades fell, his grin widened beyond what I thought possible, and the pressure of his presence turned in something else, it was something beyond the ability of words to describe, something charged with far too much meaning for it to be tamed by definition, titanic, gargantuan, vast, unknown, mysterious, powerful, new, unheard of, impossible, joyful, terrible and again another list of words that managed to reflect a single shard of what the King was.

And when he died, the world broke.

I laughed.

I am in the One Piece world.

I laughed until I felt tears stream down my face.

I am Buggy the Clown.

I laughed with abdominals clenching painfully as I gasped for breath.

It's all a fucking Joke.

In Loguetown, the day of Roger's execution, I laughed until the redheaded man knocked me out.

AN

I really don't want to pull a NeonZangetsu and keep pushing out stories without ever completing them.

Having said that, yes, this is really an SI-Buggy fanfiction, starting at the execution of Roger. Why? Because his power is utter bullshit, and I want to play with it.

And yes, I went from wanting to focus on my main fics (Revolution, The Bigger Picture, Unbound, and The age of Men) to publish 4 more stories without any kind of middle ground.

And, sadly, I really need to get my ass in gear with real life, so I'll have to force myself to slow down with the writing, if nothing else because of the sheer amount of time it takes. Since January 18th 2020, I've published more than 500k words in several different stories, and obviously this has been acceptable with COVID hammering our asses, but there is really more stuff that needs doing in RL.

That means that updating stories will be a slow thing, but prepping these plot bunnies for further work is something that I can do in few hours.

I hope you enjoy.