Disclaimer: One Piece is the property of Eiichiro Oda. Many of the characters in this story are property of me. Do not use this story or its characters without my permission. Thank you.
"Did you see my crew lately?" Bard asked a random pirate. They shrugged and he went on down the street. "I'm Bard. Have you seen the Buster Pirates anywhere?" he asked. Everyone shrugged or shook their heads. He asked from the tattoo parlor in the square all the way down to the fisheries at the docks. Still, no one had seen and some had still not heard of the Buster Pirates. What Bard failed to notice, of course, was the sheer lack of people and shops in which to question, as a huge percent of the bounty hunters had been 'let go', or so he heard.
"Oi, Musashi" Kojiro prodded as he drank from his gourd in the street. Musashi, sitting on a fence not far away, didn't respond. "OI!" Kojiro shouted. Musashi snapped out of his trance and grunted quizzically. "Isn't that the Buster Captain over there?" Musashi looked over and caught a glimpse of the tall, muscular man as he spun around asking whoever he could an inaudible question. "Kind of pitiful that this guy's that crew's Captain now, eh?" Kojiro said. Musashi was already gone and over in Bard's path.
"Hey, have you seen the Buster pirates?" Bard asked Musashi.
"Yes"
"Damn" Bard cursed and turned to ask someone else. Then he stopped and did a shy double-take. "Really?"
"They left for the Labyrinth earlier" Musashi explained. "I believe they were going to look at a new ship." Bard's eyes lit up and he smiled a goofy, wide smile.
"That's great!" Bard shouted. He stole Musashi's hand and shook it hard. "Thanks a bundle, Bathrobe-guy!" With that Bard turned around and vanished. In his place was a huge gust of wind as he sped down the street out of town.
"NNN-GGRRRAAA!" Bard shouted as he sprinted in a blur. "Even with Soru it'll still take me thirty seconds to find them!" As he blasted apart the calm air throughout the entire city, people were looking after him and thinking that someone had shot a cannon down the street. Musashi stood gazing at space while Kojiro stumbled over.
"Man!" he exclaimed "That guy's fast!"
"It's his technique" Musashi replied. Kojiro looked at him blankly and drew out his sword from his back. He pointed it at Musashi, who turned his head with a stone gaze.
"No fancy-talk, Musashi" Kojiro threatened. "What do you mean?" Musashi brushed the massive sword aside and started walking away down the dock.
"He knows some dangerous skills" Musashi explained to the wind. "We can only hope the other users of his power don't find him before he masters his strengths." Kojiro was still confused, but satisfied. He sheathed his sword and jogged after his comrade.
"There it is!" the exceedingly old man presented. The Buster crew took in every inch of the offered ship's detail, from it's black-rot finish and torn sails to the mold-covered broken doors and orange strings of metal and chain. Aside from the complete aesthetic of a haunted ship, it had another very interesting design: two main masts with the immense main sail hanging between them. That was, however, not much of a distraction from the contagion of rot that seemed to infest the entire ship.
"Why am I here?" Araly complained quietly.
"YOU'RE KIDDING HERE, RIGHT!?" Rez screamed, the shock of the offered ship's condition forcing him sober. "This is a wreck, not a ship! Moreover, how do you expect a crew of thirty-odd pirates to operate a ship this huge!?" The old man was backing away already as quickly as his incredibly feeble legs could.
"You made a mistake trying to swindle us, old man" said the burliest pirate present. They prepared to descend on the man like a cloud of hungry locust over a field of fresh crops when a voice started ringing out from above. At first it was soft, but as their ears picked it up, it became clearer. Araly looked up and gasped. From out of seemingly nowhere, someone was dropping from the sky and shouting down below.
"WHA-SSUUUUUUUUUPPPP!!" and all the pirates recognized the voice of their Captain.
"Bard!?" Araly shouted in astonishment.
"Don't land on the ship" Rez warned "or you'll fly straight through!!" To this warning, the old man laughed. Rez turned with a curious grunt to the now cackling man. "What's funny?" The old man just pointed over.
"HAAAAAA--" Bard shouted. With a huge and dense thud, he landed point-blank onto the spacious deck. The doors rattled and the ship bobbed in and out of the water. After a second of posing with his chest flexing and his arms pumped back, hunching over and bending at the knees, Bard opened his eyes and fell over. "--AAAAAH GOD! MY KNEES ARE BUSTED!!" Bard started screaming unintelligibly as he rolled around melodramatically on the deck. The Buster Pirates were speechless as the old man kept cackling loudly and the waves from the bobbing ship came splashing up over the rocks.
"Ptoo!" Araly spat with a blank face as she peeled the seaweed from her head. "Why am I here?" she now demanded quietly.
"As you can see" the old man said sinisterly, "that ship is made of insanely dense wood. The structure itself has seen more battles than all of you put together! The amount of damage this monster of a galleon has absorbed is beyond dreaming..." The Buster Pirates were all listening intently now, as the old man had taken a pause. "...but you don't want it." he finished, waving his hand and starting away.
"Wait!" Rez shouted. "We do! It's amazing!" The old man's eyes glinted fiercely and his somewhat-toothy grin was widening. "Thank you so much for it, I promise as Co-Captain that we'll take the best care of it--"
"The cost is 500million berrie" the old man said an inch from Rez's face. Rez was shocked to a still, but the other pirates who overheard were kindling up their 'murder' faces very quickly.
"500million" Bard said, now suddenly close enough to listen in. "Is that a lot?"
"OF COURSE IT IS!" his crew shouted back. Rez too the old man by the neck of his tattered robes and hoisted him with to his twisted and contorted face of rage.
"That...is...way...too...expensive" Rez gritted out. The old man kept smiling and cackling.
"Then how about a trade?" he said. Rez lowered him but kept his face cautiously defensive.
"A trade for what?" Rez asked. The old man let out a short cackle and licked his lips.
"The girl!" he said, pointing over to Araly. She gasped and riled back. The crew looked on to her with surprise and Bard looked curiously around.
"Which one?" Bard asked honestly. Rez put the man down and bolted over to kick Bard in the gut with all his force, causing Bard to fold over in a perfect ninety-degree angle.
"Wha- me?" Araly finally said in horror. "Why me?" The old man slinked his way through the prate crowd like a hideous mist and edged up to the young miss in question, who nearly shrieked in terror.
"I need a pretty young woman like this for a very special purpose" he said perversely. The crew prepared to move forward as the old man drew closer to her, but they stopped. Bard was already there. As the old man reached his hand out lecherously, Bard took it and pushed it away.
"No deal" he said. The old man looked up, Araly looked up, and the Buster Pirates felt the blood rushing to their eyes in anger.
"Why not?" The old man asked. "Don't you know that having women on a ship is bad luck?"
"Listen" Bard said in a deathly serious tone. Araly straightened up in concern. "This isn't about stupid crap like that. You're treating another person, moreover someone I know, like an object to be traded. People aren't currency, they're people. Acting like people all carry a set worth demeans them, and lessens the chance that they'll become great! If you around treating everyone you meet like meat or spice, then your dreams will be dashed along with the people who really are treated like that!" Bard's rousing speech sparked a memory in the old man's brain, and the two events of the past and present started to overlap with startling accuracy.
"You've really pissed me off, man!" Bard screamed. "You can keep your stupid ship, I don't care how good it is. No matter what happens in my life or so help me anyone else's, I won't stand by and let people be abused like this. Not now NOT EVER!!" A heavy silence fell as Bard stared with mad rage down at the still old man. His crew was not only speechless, but frightened by their Captain's voracious stern on the matter, all of them knowing that such atrocities did indeed happen in the world.
"Let's go" Bard said, tugging Araly along by the arm. "We'll just steal someone else's ship like real pirates would."
"Balon!!" The old man spontaneously shouted. Bard turned with a curious face. "Oh, Balon! It's been ages! Don't you remember me? Old Scummy Sam from Havordy Port! I introduced you to your wife." Bard's expression grew even more curious and confused. "I'm sorry, but this must be your daughter, eh?" Araly grunted quizzically and jerked Bard's arm hard. Bard followed the motion and bent down far to aim his ear at Araly's mouth.
"Bard, I think this guy's confused you with someone else..." she explained. Bard nodded and looked back up with a grin.
"Well, I'm sorry" he started, "But I'm not--"
"And what's more, I haven't seen your ship anywhere" the old man said almost mockingly. "Why don't you take this one?" The Buster crew squealed in unison at the offer. Bard's face stayed as blankly confused as he could manage, but his arm was still outstretched from when he was dragging Araly along.
"Well...uh" Bard stuttered. "I-I'm not Balon. In fact-" The old man grabbed his hand and shook it regardless.
"It's no trouble at all, old friend!" the old man said happily. "You and your crew are more than welcome to take this heap with you. You'll have to let me meet the rest of your family someday, though." Bard just let his hand be shaken as he was still stunned and mindless.
A day later, the ship was fixed back up. The boards were re-finished to shine with the original colors of dark oak, the sails were all replaced and the Grand Sail, as it was called now, was emblemed with the new symbol of the Buster Pirates: a golden, sinisterly grinning Dragon Skull, as was the pattern on Bard's coat. Up above the crow's nest waved the flag bearing the same symbol, and everyone was gathered on deck to celebrate.
"WA-HO!!" Rez shouted out in ecstatic verve. He held up a mug of booze and proposed a toast. "To senility for helping us claim this wonderful ship!"
"ARR!" the group shouted back. Rez wrapped his arm around a still confused Bard, who sat on the highest-sitting crate that was in the musty hold as the new ship of the Buster Pirates began to set out. The old man was there in the rocky harbor to see them out, along with an assortment of very handsome young men who waved on with him.
"But grandfather" the most handsome and muscular and tan young man said to the old man, "you said you'd find me a beautiful bride in exchange for our old, ugly ship."
"I would have" the old man replied, "but I couldn't. The girl was the daughter of an old friend of mine..." As the overly handsome crew continued to wave goodbye to their fiendishly huge galleon, the old man smiled, remembering his only clean memories of the past: those had with the rambunctious young adventurer named Balon D. Samekawa.
Up in the craggy mountains, Sasuke sat in his pedestrian clothes and watched as the ship sailed off into the sun.
"What horrors await you in this dangerous world, Bard?" he said to himself. "And how will you face them?"
"It's not our place to know, Captain" Kaede retorted. Sasuke laughed under his breath and prepared to depart with her. He stood up and looked on one last time.
"I suppose not..." They both vanished instantly and sped across the rocky highlands towards the town, now perfectly rebuilt.
