"Shit, shit, shit shit shit shit-shitshitshit! FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU—!"

Hidan's severed head struck the water with a small sploosh that barely warranted mentioning, and from that point on it was all salt-water all-the-time, baby. He sank, as heads tend to, and during his long journey he found himself with plenty of opportunity to regret his choices in life. Not, it must be said, that he regretted being a murderous asshole, heavens no. No, it was the specific events of the previous day that bothered him the most.

He'd gotten himself smack-talked and smacked-down by a pervert cyborg, a bunch of bones in a coat, and some jackass who fancied himself a surgeon. Then, just when he'd been about to turn it all around and make his exhausted opponents eat crow in the most painful and humiliating ways possible, he'd had his head cut off by one of Orochimaru's animated corpses, then chucked into the ocean at the speed of sound. Even his asshole partner, Kakuzu, had been killed, and by the First Hokage no less!

There really was very little way this day could have gone any worse.

Deep beneath the waves, Hidan saw a shape pierce the darkness. A wide, flat plane of fishy scales and slime marked the passage of a creature that must have been fifty feet tall. Hidan drifted past its eye, which swiveled to face him. It turned, wobbling through the currents, revealing a profile that was only a couple feet wide. An Ocean Sunfish Sea King. Tall, but narrow.

Hidan struggled and flexed, but his headstrong efforts did him no good. The fish gobbled him up whole, fitting his screaming face right into its beak with great satisfaction.

That had been four days ago.

Now Hidan rested in the belly of a very lucky fish, brooding over his current situation. The problem wasn't being digested forever, no, this weak-ass stomach-acid wasn't going to do him in anytime soon. The problem, or perhaps blessing, was that he was starving. He wouldn't last long like this, and unless he felt like chewing on whatever this dumbass fish ate, which he really didn't, his days were numbered.

He could feel the other parts of his body, in general terms. His corpse had fallen to the ocean an hour after his head had, and his vague sense of the location of his various parts told him his body had been torn to pieces and was even now spreading out over a great area, perhaps forever lost to him. Even if he managed to make this thing shit him out, he had no chance to regain his form.

There really was very little way this week could have gone any worse.

His first sign of a change in his circumstances came while he was sleeping, with a violent impact, a hooked spear piercing the stomach lining right next to his head, and then a sharp and sickening sense of being wrenched into the air.

Captain Buggy of the Buggy Pirates had a very, very serious problem. He didn't want to get himself killed.

Oh, he was well aware he had brought his current miseries upon himself, but what choice had there been? He had gathered his ever-burgeoning crew with promises of wild riches in the New World, and they had drunk deep of his wisdom. As one of the only people in the world to have sailed with Gold Roger, the Pirate King, his words had weight, and people believed him even when he was just making things up off the cuff.

This time, however, he was in serious danger. He knew very, very well that his crew was not nearly as ready to enter the New World as they thought they were. And yet, only woe would befall a pirate captain who sprayed cold water on their crew's hopes. He couldn't let them down. More to the point, he couldn't let himself look like a total idiot.

The Rookie Summit had been a blessing in disguise. All expeditions down to the island of the merfolk had been temporarily suspended, and on top of that the great chaos from that light show a few days back was still unfolding. There was no question about returning to the archipelago for the next week or so, but all that was merely a reprieve. He needed an idea. He needed something that would solve all his problems for good.

He needed his next scam.

The answer came to him as if through miracle, and it took the form of two idiots strung together with rope.

"Steady there, Richie, steady on!" shouted Mohji, as he encouraged his humongous trained lion. "You got one! You got one! Pull it up! Good boy!"

The lion in question, Richie, was tied upside down from a jury-rigged crane, dangling into the water with both paws extended. He would duck his head beneath the waves, make a snatch at any passing fish or sharks, then retrieve the caught prey to be yanked aboveboard. As ridiculously, stupendously moronic as it was, the trained lion had been having some serious successes,and the crew, along with one very happy cat, would be eating well indeed tonight.

"Oof, this one's a big weirdy, ain't it?! Alright, I got it!"

Mohji took his long harpoon and stabbed down into waves, piercing the side of the massive sunfish and helping lift the squirming, fighting thing up into the air. An assistant winched the victorious lion up to the deck to much cheering.

Buggy approached this display with disdain, and his acrobatic assistant, Cabaji, followed him in a similar mood.

"Hey, hey, hey, you fools! What are you doing letting that monster onto the deck?!" The impromptu fishermen looked up with guilt. "You idiots! There's not any of the right type of meat on that ugly thing! Now it's just gonna flop around like an idiot-pancake until somebody finally stabs it!"

Several of the men looked at the strange fish in disappointment. Somebody finally stabbed it.

"Thank you, Reggie!" said Buggy. "Now throw it back over the side before it starts to rot."

Beside him, Cabaji smirked at his rival's misfortune. "You simply must train that feline of yours to hunt more appropriate prey, Mohji. Not only are these types of fish unappetizing in the extreme, their skin is covered in slime and parasites of all sorts."

Richie spat out a glob of foul-smelling slime and let his tongue loll out with displeasure and disappointment. Somehow, the kitty's new dinner seemed a lot less exciting. Mohji sputtered and turned red, ready to defend his newly-invented fishing technique to the death, when events took an odd turn.

The miniature Sea King flopped once, twice, twitched, coughed, and spat out a severed head covered in stomach effluvia.

"…Ewwwww…" groaned Mohji. Buggy, Mohji and Richie gave the thing horrified looks. Buggy and Mohji because of the human remains, and Richie because he had no interest in eating dead carrion.

It was a macabre reminder of how dangerous the ocean could be. Pirate attacks, rampant weather, rogue waves, anything and everything could prove capable of dealing death and tearing a man to pieces. Some here, however, were more affected than others. Cabaji reached down with a careful hand and plucked the head off the ground, lifting it into the air in his palm.

"Ah, it is like as new. How strange that it is so fresh. And unfortunate. I would have appreciated a bleached skull of my own. 'Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, H-'"

At that point, the head finished blinking the water and gunk out of his eyes, and found the slime clearing from his ears. It opened its mouth and screamed directly in Cabaji's face.

"AW, FUCK YES!"

"SWEET MOTHER OF PEARL," shouted Cabaji, staggering backwards and lobbing the head into the air. It sailed, swearing, in an arc until it slammed into the deck.

The head rolled around, groaning from the impact, and the new unaccustomed light. The crew stood, frozen in place. Even Buggy, or perhaps, especially Buggy, did their best impressions of the wide-mouthed, gasping fish dying upon the deck. Finally, the head stopped rolling, and, with a few twitches of neck muscles, came to rest upon its severed stump. The apparition cast its eyes across all of them with suspicion.

"Well, don't just stand there, assholes. Help me up already!"

Nobody moved. For his part, Richie, now pleased to see that his prey was alive and kicking, leaned down and chomped at his new meal.

"FUCK!"

Once Buggy had recovered from the shock of this strange event, he retreated to listen to the subsequent chaos from a distance, mind spinning and twirling like a top. He had a fine nose for opportunity, and there was something to take advantage of here, he was sure of it. His lead cohorts, Mohji and Cabaji, were interrogating their new captive/visitor with interest.

"Stop yammering on about heads already. I have a name. It's Hidan!"

"Head-on?" asked Cabaji, examining the head as if he'd never seen anything more curious.

"No, and… fucking listen to me already! It's Hidan! The dick lion over there just—"

"'Head-on-the-deck?' A strange name, but appropriate for the situation. Well, sir 'Head-on-the-deck'—"

Head-on-the-deck grit his teeth. "Just… Hidan!"

"Ah, just Head-on. My apologies."

"I hate this ocean," growled Head-on. "Hate it so much."

"Of course you hate the ocean," exclaimed Mohji. "Anyone would, in your state!"

The bickering was unimportant, on the surface. It took an hour to finagle the reason for his bodiless condition out of the cantankerous kinda-cadaver, during which he heaped all manner of abuse upon the crew. They took it well enough, their curiosity letting them weather the death threats and suchlike with aplomb. Granted, 'with aplomb' was just a synonym for violent retaliation on a pirate crew like his, but blessedly it seemed as though this mysterious visitor regenerated easily from all manners of harm. Wounds delivered in one moment were gone the next. It was astonishing!

Buggy himself was predisposed to allow their visitor some slight leeway in his behavior, having been caught without the appropriate pieces of his own body more often than he could count. And that was the problem; if you believed him, then Head-on was caught in a pinch, his body having been scattered to the four winds in recent days. All of this would have made Head-on's reconstitution tricky enough, but for the other wrinkle.

The problem, see, was that whatever nonsense had happened near the archipelago a few days back totally changed the ocean currents and Sea King migration patterns. It was an especially dangerous time to sail the ocean right now. People were reporting all manner of strange events, with this being just another rogue wave in the storm of madness. Right now, just about anything seemed possible.

And just like that, it came to him. A wicked smile turned up his grease-paint-covered cheeks, and he stalked forward across the deck.

"Alright, you bozos, gather round and clean out your ears! Get yourselves ready for a real treat, because it's time to regale you all with a story! A story… of my time sailing with the Pirate King!"

The crew, all of them, erupted into chaos, with half the deck going silent in expectation and the other half cheering, and then each half realizing they weren't giving the right response and swapping reactions. This continued for a few moments until Buggy shot Mohji a stern glare, then Mohji shared a word with his pet lion, and then Richie roared with a truly staggering volume. This silenced the rabble nicely.

Buggy cleared his throat and began for real.

"Where to begin… It was a bright and stormy night, that night… The light from a nearby midday island was reflecting off the distant clouds, and the lads and I were taking this strange opportunity to catch some of the curious fish. They snapped at the lines without even a lure, desperate for attention. Of course, it was only later that I learned what type of fish they really were. Groupies!"

His crew's faces were rapt. Not a single one laughed, and no one spoke.

"…Groupies," he said again. "Because the ship we were on… it was the Oro Jackson and—"

"You fucking blow, clown!" interrupted Head-on.

Richie leaned over and chomped down upon his newest chew-toy, lightly piercing Head-on's skull.

"AH, FUCK!" shouted the man.

"Thank you, Richie," said Buggy. "Anyway, jokes aside, it was a wonderful night already, and it only got more interesting from there. I stood there at the stern, and I felt a tug at the line. I reeled it in as quick as can be, and lo and behold what was upon my hook but a severed head that I had caught by its ear!" He removed his own ear with a *pop* and wiggled it around as a prop. "And then, to my great surprise, it spoke!"

Several of the crew gasped, casting astonished glances towards Head-on.

"That's right! You see, this is hardly the first time I've been in this situation! I took pity upon the poor creature, having worried I might find myself in a similar situation one day, all limbless and forced to rely upon whether a stranger would be intelligent enough to realize what I could offer them… Ah, but enough of that. Everyone crowded around to hear the creature speak, and this is the song he sang."

Torn to gibbets by a magic curse,

A power beyond death…

When I am whole we shall go our own ways,

Yet riches abound to those who aid me!

Even life eternal may end one day,

And we'll all meet again in the river of stars!

"That doesn't fuckin' rhyme, you red-nosed asswipe!" shouted Head-on. "It doesn't scan either, the syllable structure's all wrong!"

Buggy smiled sweetly. "Cabaji, stab him somewhere for me, if you would."

"Hmm, seems ill sport to stab a helpless fool in the head…"

Buggy rolled his eyes. "Then stab him in the kidneys like you usually do!"

"Ah, but you see—"

"JUST STAB HIM!"

The acrobat's arm whipped out, and a silver line pierced the air to land smack dab in the center of Head-on's forehead. The zealot went cross-eyed.

"Thank you, Kaba. Now… if I may continue without interruption… The man's words led us on a merry adventure all across the ocean, testing the very limits of our navigational abilities! Personally, the hardest part of the journey was after the first step of this macabre treasure-hunt; we had connected his head to his newfound chest, and all he could do was whine, whine, whine! It was like we hadn't even done anything nice for him! I tried to cheer him up, oh I did. I said to him, 'Hey, why the long face, my friend? You're doing great! You even got a cute nickname out of it… Torso Boy!'"

He sighed, fondly remembering an event that had never happened. "Ah, yes, we went to island after island, backtracking and jumping all over the place, though in the end… we did find what we were looking for."

He paused, detaching his hand and grabbing a pint that he'd kept over in the shade of the aftcastle. He took a quaff or two, relishing as his crew's tension built.

The lion tamer, Mohji, broke first. "Cap'n Buggy! Don't keep us in suspense, sir! What did you find?!"

Buggy laughed. "Oh, I didn't think anyone cared. It was magnificent! We collected his arms and legs, and fingers, and, oh, all of that stuff, and when the man's body had been fully assembled he granted us a boon… he turned himself to gold right there on the spot! A solid gold statue right there upon the deck!"

A tear came to his eye, apparently unbidden. "What a tragedy… and what a blessing. I always knew that Torso-Boy had a heart of gold… well, after we shoved the damn thing back in his chest cavity, at least. Ah… anyway, the point is, after we hacked the poor man back into little pieces we were suddenly rich as kings, and those riches financed our entry into the New World. Oh, how a fateful fishing expedition of mine spurred the Pirate King on to greatness!"

Before his stunned crew, he took a deep bow, raising his pitch until it reached a cutesy sort of screech. "The end. A Buggy Story, copyright myself."

The assembled pirates burst into applause at the end of his story, and Buggy slipped into a wicked grin. They had bought it.

There really was very little way that this day could get any better.

Later that night, Buggy plied the crew with rations of rum and then set about the second step of his genius plan. All of this sophistry was well and good, but it wouldn't do if Head-on didn't back up his story. Even the bunch of idiots he employed would notice something strange if this talking head offered them only threats and abuse instead of promises of riches untold.

But, hey, it shouldn't be hard, right? Finding the rest of his body was in this crazy head's own interest. He'd have to be a real idiot to screw his own chances of getting his body back just because he didn't like the story Buggy had woven.

I mean, a real moron.

He found Head-on in the mess hall being fed spoonfuls of potato soup by the chef. A stomachless head eating soup caused Buggy only a mild bit of puzzlement, but it resolved itself quickly, and he soon absconded with their resident pseudo-corpse and brought him to the captain's quarters, a gaudy affair littered with more knives than were strictly good for him.

"Alright, clown," said Head-on. "You brought me here whether I liked it or not, so what's the deal?"

Buggy gave Head-on an appraising look. Not nearly as violent and swear-y as he normally was, and he looked like he'd been doing a lot of thinking recently. Good. Gooood…

"Oh, I expect you know exactly why I brought you here," said Buggy. "You look like a cunning sort."

"Nope, no idea," said Head-on.

"I think you're not being honest with me," chastised Buggy.

"Maybe I don't feel like playing a fucking detective, or listening to you sing me another stupid circus song."

"Maybe I don't feel like I have to negotiate with a severed head, hmmmmm?" He frowned. "Trust me, I know how that song and dance goes. Anyway, I need to know what you're thinking, not what you think I want you to think, right? So stop wasting time and tell me what you think already!"

The head gave him a severe look, regarding him wordlessly. Buggy waited patiently for a full ten seconds, idly balancing a knife upon one finger, before shrugging and turning to his desk. "Fine, far be it for me to press you on this. I just thought we'd help you find your body, but if you reeaaaally don't want our help, then…"

Finally, Head-on spoke up. "You were telling the truth about that story, weren't you? Another follower of Jashin-sama… all the way out here… You helped him reach a fucking revelation… He found something in his trials, and he turned to gold at that very moment…?"

Buggy's eye shot wide open, his jaw nearly dislocating from the shock of disbelief. Only a life filled with the impossible let him stop himself from making a sound. Perhaps it was his natural charm, perhaps it was Head-on's brain-damaged state during that speech, or perhaps it was because the man was an idiot… but he had bought the same story as the rest of the crew.

Buggy quickly regained his composure. Behind his makeup, behind the red, fuzzy nose… he spun around and fixed the rogue head with a winning smile.

"My dear sir Head-on-a-Table… You do understand, don't you. Now, I'd never claim to be something that I'm not, but even I could tell that our journey was very important to your comrade-in-heads. Definitely a religious sort of experience for him, oh yes indeed. So, even though we all hate each other's guts… surely we can be of use to one another, hmm?"

Head-on made a little convulsion of his neck muscles that resulted in him hopping about ten degrees clockwise, the better to come face-to-face with Buggy. He looked at the colorful fop of a captain, examining him up and down.

"Having some doubts?" Buggy laughed. "Oh, Head-on, my newest acquaintance… trust me!"

Buggy's smile became distinctly murderous.

"Do I look like the kind of guy who would lie to you?"