Multitasking

The sky was clear and the sun shone cheerfully, making the straw hat on Shank's head cast a stark shadow over the upper half of his face while he relaxed on the deck of the small marine ship he and his companion had acquired. Or at least he tried to, since Buggy, of all people, or to be more precise the person he had grown into after his amnesia, was ruining his mood by simple virtue of existing.

With a tired sigh, the red-haired pirate opened his eyes and looked over the ship's deck, where most of the blue-haired clown was 'training'. Right under the mast, the legs of his companion kept squatting, but where the torso of the Devil Fruit user should have been, there was instead one of the two cannons available to the pirates, kept balanced over the flat surface of Buggy's hips two negligent fingers that pushed this and that way to keep the big mass of metal from tipping over.

Not far from that there were the clown's arms, which were curling up and down, each balancing a cannonball in their palms.

Tilting his head to the side, where the helm of the ship was, Shanks, looked at the oddly square-shaped section of Buggy's face that was holding one of his eyes while it turned this and that way, looking around as if keeping guard against a sudden attack. With another sigh, Shanks spotted the rectangular-shaped sections of the Devil Fruit user that kept the helm from turning where he didn't want it to.

When he rose from his slumped position, the red-haired pirate snorted to himself as one floating ear he hadn't picked up until that moment turned towards, him, only to be followed, a bit sluggishly, by the piece of head that was keeping an eye on the route the ship was following.

Perhaps it would have been eerie to someone that didn't know Buggy, but when the single eye closed quickly only to open again, the pirate let out a chuckle: "Isn't it absurd how I can recognize your wink from a blink, even when there is only one eye to see?"

This time there was no mistaking the eye-roll that that particular part of his companion executed, which was followed by a loud sequence of clangs and curses echoing from the hull of the ship.

Observing the pained narrowing of the piece of face visible to him, Shanks immediately moved into the galley, where most of Buggy's head was, along with his two pinky-missing hands, working carefully as he tried to cook.

'Tried' being the operative word: the galley was maybe four meters by three, and under the deck, it was undoubtedly the second largest room, as the cargo topped it by a whole half meter on the short side. Still, the whole room, which sported two portholes that let in natural light that along with the electrical one lit up the place, was covered in smudges of something not easy to identify, liberally sprayed flour, and... Are those sword-marks?

"Don't give me that face, Shanks!" despite the gritted teeth and the hand he was shaking to cool down after having burnt it by mistake against a hot pan, Buggy's voice was cheerful. "You know I have to train!"

"And finishing up our carefully stolen provisions is the way to go?" the red-haired pirate gave a tentative sniff to the room, only to walk towards the closest port hole in order to open it and let some sea breeze in to fight against the cacophony of the stink that the clown had been able to summon.

The head of the First Mate he had ended up with turned on itself until he could see Shanks and give him a fierce grin: "... multitasking is the way."

The captain couldn't help but notice how absolutely drenched with sweat that clown was, and that, no matter where he looked, the torso that was absent on deck wasn't in the galley either: "You look like you're ready to keel over."

Shanks sat at the table only to freeze when he guessed where the last missing part of his insane, amnesiac first mate was. Tilting sideways on his seat, the red-haired pirate spotted, in fact, Buggy's torso working through a set of abdominals. With a resigned sigh, the captain sat upright and eyed carefully, this time from a side, the hands of the clown moving ingredients here and there, occasionally bringing up a spoon so that the head could taste it. And unavoidably grimace in distaste.

"Seriously, you shouldn't waste food." the red-haired man insisted: it was alright to train, Shanks knew Rayleigh had ridden the asses of both cabin boys when they reached the New World to whip them into a survival-worthy shape, but food was one of those finite resources on a ship that had to be valued above gold.

"Best solution..." Buggy spoke slowly, as if taking great care to choose his words, "to train both body and multitasking."

"And you're talking like you're about to actually die, you should take a break." Shanks raised an eyebrow at the dish one of the hands had placed in front of him and immediately gave another whiff: it was... not terrible. On the plate, there was a generous portion of salmon on one side and white rice on the other.

"It is... easier..." the words came out haltingly, and were spoken with a voice tight with effort and a focus that was constantly on the risk of slipping away, "to make separate parts I can't see perform a routine, but... with my other eye, I have *huff*, *huff*, to keep track of seeing and hearing two entirely different things."

While he finished talking, Buggy's torso floated out from under the table and stretched this and that way while it hovered next to the entrance of the galley, just as the greater part of the clown's head returned fully towards Shanks and another plate was added to the table along with two glasses.

"Still, it took you hours to prepare salmon and rice." the floating hands handed over the necessary cutlery while a bottle of white whine, chilled in the small icebox present in the kitchen, was deposited next to the steaming food, "There are other options for multitasking, you know?"

A series of *pops* echoed in the galley as Buggy's torso stretched backward, distending the spine that had apparently been under a massive strain up to that point. As the same time, the clown's head tilted towards the plate, and observed with the utmost care how his hands cut into the fish and hesitatingly brought the food to his mouth. Still chewing, he asked: "Such as?"

"Well, every crew needs a musician, don't you know?" Shanks spoke while he began to eat: "If you manage to figure out that technique of yours, you'd be a whole band."

Buggy smiled at the thought while his hands slowly operated to uncork the bottle of white wine: "Getting there." with his words, his middle fingers came off his hands and separated themselves into slices that wrapped themselves on the neck and the bottom of the bottle.

It was almost comical how still Buggy was while his two middle fingers did the job: his intention had clearly been to keep eating while his fingers poured the liquid into the two glasses, but it required so much of his focus that his face was contorted into a rictus and his hands were completely still, hovering about and occasionally twitching.

It was an almost embarrassing spectacle, if not for the potential avenues that it opened. Slowly, the sliced middle fingers managed to pour the liquid into the two glasses and return the bottle to its upright position, and Buggy began once more to eat.

"You didn't have that many difficulties when you threw your mouth off the road to trick that marine." Shanks casually pointed out while the blue-haired clown drank from his own glass.

Once he was done and managed to think through what had been said and his answer, he spoke: "I'm not using parts of my body... to do what they'd do normally. I need to use everything differently, it's like having an entirely different set of muscles, while it is easier to move the single pieces in set patterns, wrapping sections of my back around the helm to steer the ship is too different from the normal movement of those muscles for it to be natural... like learning how to walk all over again."

"You're talking more like an actual person now." Shanks pointed out the obvious, and the First Mate chuckled heartedly.

"As I've said" the smirk on the clown's face was growing increasingly familiar, "I'm getting there."

"Why do you train so much?" the captain asked while pouring himself some of that sweet white wine that Buggy seemed to favor: "Given how we handled those marines, we're good enough for now, no?"

"Given what you've told me about the Grand Line," a taunting eyebrow rose above the part of his face that still had an eye, "I thought it'd be better to get stronger earlier rather than later. And I have a lot of bases to cover, the instinctive or automatic uses of my Devil Fruit make me strong, aye, but I want to see everything that I can do: maybe I'd be able to maneuver dozens of oars if I become strong enough... Who can say what can or cannot be done?"

With eagerness clearly painted on that face, and that deep hunger shining clear from the only eye present, Shanks dropped the topic and drank, his nose twitching as the lightly sour aftertaste of the wine hit him.

"Say, you want to head to the Grand Line immediately?" the question from his First Mate, the same man who had never once admitted that he considered Shanks his captain, made the red-haired pirate frown.

"As soon as we have a crew, why?"

"Well, I thought that since we'd be getting stronger and stronger on the way, it'd be better to visit the other Blues before looking for the One Piece." Buggy's gaze became distant, "Your dream is to be free like only the Pirate King can be, isn't it?"

A wide smile opened itself on Shanks's features as he listened to the serious tone of his only crewmember, and he nodded finishing up his meal with precise motions of his fork.

"Well, I think I figured out mine." at those words, the red-haired pirate straightened up in his seat and observed the blue-haired head floating in front of him. With the part holding his eye completely missing, Buggy looked like some sort of unfinished block puzzle for children, but the eagerness and the hunger previously present had become smaller, replaced by something far more steady and unyielding, something that Shanks could relate to all too easily.

"I don't care at all about my missing memories, or my past life. Instead, I want to experience it all: I want every Blue, every island, every storm, and every battle." the torso of the clown floated forth from the back of the room and the head attached itself to its proper place on his neck with a soft *plop*: "I want everything that this world can offer, and I want to be the first to do unthinkable things, stuff that nobody ever imagined before."

Shanks munched on the idea: he had never really one for too long reaching plans. He wanted to sail, to be free, and he knew he'd both need to be strong and to have a strong crew to succeed. After the execution of the Captain, he had simply figured out that he'd sail for the East Blue until he found enough people for the bare minimum roles needed to tackle the Great Line: a cook, a doctor, and a navigator. Even if he'd be able to take the role of the cook with some help from Buggy if push came to shove.

Then his old friend had amnesia, and that brought everything to a screeching halt, until that storm had separated them. Left alone, the new Buggy had revealed himself to be more resourceful than ever. Perhaps, not knowing what he could or could not do had allowed him to find new solutions, perhaps it had simply been the absence of a past that pushed him to grasp for everything that he could, with every method in his reach.

It had gladdened Shanks to witness that the new Buggy wasn't unnecessarily prone to bloodshed while being more than willing to do anything if it was needed. Oh, a situation in which it was 'kill or be killed' hadn't happened yet, but Shanks was sure that his First Mate wouldn't bend, that he wouldn't break. Not with a gaze like the one he had just regarded his captain with.

In some part of him, Shanks felt that easy hilarity that Buggy had shown while laughing in face of the storm, some remote part of the red-haired pirate's mind realized that there would be no stopping Buggy once he decided on something. And while he might have preferred to go directly from the East Blue to the Grand Line, he would find his crew anyway: at sea, interesting people were bound to encounter each other.

"Understood Buggy." he clasped the right hand of his companion with his, and they shook it so hard it almost hurt.

"And if you wanted to do something poetic as to sail from Loguetown into the Grand Line," the clown let go of the other's hand while he quickly placed the dishes back into the small sink of the ship's kitchen, "we can always come back in the East Blue to set off properly."

Shanks found himself following the floating torso and hands of his only other crewmember while he returned on the deck of the stolen ship they were sailing, only for a question to bubble to the forefront of his mind: "How are we going to reach the other Blues, Buggy?"

"How should I know?" the other shot back while the parts of his body stopped training and returned to him, falling into a single, whole piece while the clown's hands closed around the helm once more, "We can think of that later, there is a Pirate ship gunning for us right now."

The words hadn't managed to completely leave my lips when a cannonball fell right next to the bow of the ship, lifting a tall spray of seawater that glittered like diamonds under the sun.

"What!?" Shanks immediately unsheathed his sword while he pivoted where I was pointing at: and surely enough, he spotted the two-masts caravel that was coming our way.

Above the white sails, with pirates that moved about to adjust to speeds necessary to board what they thought of as a marine ship before sinking us, a jolly roger shook in the breeze, and I felt my heart thrum with excitement. How would we fare against another pirate crew?

I banked to our left to avoid another incoming barrage of cannon balls, but I shouldn't have bothered: Shanks cut those that came too close to the ship. With one foot on the bulwark of our vessel and his head tilted back, he sported a fearless grin that I could only hope to match: "Well, you did work through most of our supplies in order to better you 'multitasking'." he let out a peal of laughter, "How lucky that they're going to allow us to purchase everything we need from the next island."

I laughed my agreement while rectangular skin-thick strips separated from my back and they held the helm still as my ears popped off: one hovering next to Shank's Straw Hat and the other at the helm. It wasn't that I thought I'd need to listen to the occasional groan of the wood, rather, I didn't want to blow my eardrums off with what I was about to do.

I jumped forward on the deck of the small vessel and took a deep breath. In a flurry of movement, my body had broken into pieces, and I lifted both cannons from their positions: holding them against my shoulders, I let my hands float about to grab the needed lead to charge them, and as I popped off an eye to observe what I needed to do, I managed to lit the fuses.

With my knees bent and my feet distanced one from another, I could barely consider taking a single step forward, but luckily, it wasn't needed: my torso lifted itself from my hips and led me above our single sail while each of my eyes hovered just over the cannons, not unlike aiming scopes. My growing abs scattered into six cube-like pieces, and placed themselves in groups of threes just behind the muzzle of the weapons I was holding. Moving my pieces with the strange telekinesis that came with the power of my Devil Fruit, I aimed, and the lead balls rocketed where they were meant to.

Even with my body braced for the recoil, I felt like I was about to spit out my spine, but floating above our sail, I simply spun, performing some odd reverse cartwheel in the air to bleed off momentum while my hands immediately started to pour the gunpowder into the muzzles of my chosen weapons. As it was my first time using them and I didn't know how they'd fire, I had kept the angles of the two cannons slightly different.

As I returned to face forwards, I could only nod to myself in approval of my forethought: the cannon on my left had lifted up a tall spray of saltwater while the second had whizzed just beneath the rolled-up sail of the enemy's second mast. Eh, it's funnier than it has any right to be.

My ears couldn't quite hear myself above the chaos of the exchange of gunfire, and the thunder of cannons, but I fancied I could pick up the faint echo of my own mad laughter. This world was simply too large, to filled with impossible things for me to not have fun in every waking moment. The mere impossibility of my body being in pieces and still under my control was enough to make my head spin. And so I readied myself, and fired again, my ears registering the deafening sound as if it came from two different, and thankfully distant, sources.

This time, I had adjusted well, and one cannonball exploded just under the bulwark of the caravel, while the other... was kicked back.

What? I focused my eyes immediately on the man who repelled the attack that would have crashed against the main mast, and I felt my jaw literally fall from my body as the jolly roger that I had seen clicked. With a spatula and a knife instead of crossbones, and long, braided whiskers that shot as straight as a taut fishing line, the Cook Pirates flag seemed to laugh in the face of my attack, while a two-legged Zeff balanced himself on the bulwark, his eyes glaring daggers at my hovering torso.

That was the man who'd renounce his dream of finding the All Blue after the loss of one leg, that was the man who'd teach a yet not born Sanji how to cook, how to fight, and likely that strange brand of chivalry and unthinking-lust for every pair of tits to ever exist. And as I had recently proved despite my efforts, Shanks and I needed an actual cook. If only for me to learn enough to keep us both alive on the Grand Line.

The fact that I knew something of that man however didn't mean that I would stop exploring my newly discovered talent as a gunslinger. Or well, cannon-slinger would fit more.

So, our smaller vessel kept sailing while Shanks defended it from the cannonballs of the enemy, and while I worked my way through the ammo we had. Some smartass of the other crew decided that they'd optimize their efforts if they managed to nail me with a cannonball: sadly, cannons weren't made to aim higher than 45 degrees, and while all my weight pressed heavily on my legs, the telekinesis that accompanied the power of the Bara Bara no me seemed to not take any issue with me hovering this and that way to avoid the retaliatory attacks from the Cook Pirates.

Eventually, I finished the cannonballs, and the enemy ship reached us. At that point, it was the easiest thing in the world to hover high over the other pirates' deck and let the cannons 'slip' from my shoulders.

In a manner of seconds, I had joined once more with the rest of my body, and content of seeing the two ships carefully secured with hooks and harpoons one to the other, I jumped on the first stranger I met, a war cry leaving my lips while Shanks had apparently engaged the cannonball-kicker Zeff himself.

Well, the mooks to me, I guess. It would hardly be the most interesting fight of my life, but if nothing else, it'd help me work on my multitasking.

AN

Well, as I've already had Buggy think about the things he could do, I chose to have Shanks observe his attempts to keep pushing forward the characterization and the plot without stilling on an obvious and banal training montage. This chapter is more of a character-building one than I would have liked, but the action at the end balances it well enough in my opinion.

Let me know what you think!