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"Okay?" Crocodile murmured not really interested in Buggy's ramblings. His eyes were colder than usual, and not even find the patience to listen to the clown. "So?"
"What part of fortune and prosperity, didn't you hear?" Buggy exclaimed, breaking apart in his exuberance. Crocodile didn't like the liberties the clown was taking little by little but was too occupied trying to control the increasing feeling of dread the room was giving him. "There could be treasure buried somewhere! Immense wealth and power!" He continued, waving the pages of the file they had just found in the abandoned marine base in his face with his detached hand.
It had been a mistake, they had found an old outpost occupied by a single resident. An old and decrepit man still wearing his navy uniform - too big for his frail body- and a blu bandana tied around his neck had raised his weapon, before anyone could stop him, he had a heart attack and fell to the ground.
It had all been very anticlimactic and Buggy found himself with his finger raised and his mouth wide open ready to scream profanity in front of a corpse in mere istants. His crew had elevated him to divinity after witnessing what happened much to Buggy's cringe. The last thing he needed was the rumor he could kill people with his raised finger.
"They're talking about an island, which they are not sure really ever existed, with people or something similar to it, who again nobody's proof existed, with great richness and prosperity, that the World Government have raided to straighten their power, about, let me see if I'm understanding correctly, eight centuries ago in the void century." The man started taking the cigar out of his mouth deadpan. "There's absolutely nothing left to take, Clown. At least the lion is happy he got his dental plaque off chewing on those old marine's bones."
"They're speaking about Totems of Good Luck to be exact." Mihawk corrected, strangely attentive to what he was reading. “This appears to be lost history.”
"I'm not interested in lost history, Mihawk, it can't make me rich." He replied coldly. "Especially if it speaks about things that are either dead at best or slaves for generations at worst."
"Dead, probably." The swordsman conceded by opening yet another folder and digging into the documents. There were hundreds of them cataloged by strange acronyms, many were simple transcriptions of travel, supplies and legal documents, while others contained information of mysteries the outpost's men were investigating. Apparently, their captain was a fervent myths believer and a researcher in his free time. Pity his name wasn't even mentioned and nobody remembered either his work or his base. "It appears they didn't breed in captivity."
"I wonder why." Buggy snickered. "But still a whole population? We're talking about genocide, like a bit much for just stupid myths without a solid base and-"
"It's not the first, it will not be the last." Crocodile interrupted him by raising an eyebrow. "People just search for ways to legitimate their hate, doesn't matter how absurd they are." He shrugged. "Also they weren't that lucky if they were swept away like that. The strongest crush the weakest, it's a natural cycle of things."
"It seems that they weren't just lucky, they were devoted to the Sea, considering it a deity and speaking with It." Mihawk said way calmer than his associate, feeling the same dread, but cherishing it. "Their work was to favor the fate of whoever the Sea decided to select." Mihawk read with no problem in the shadowy light of the flame Buggy carried down with them. "Here it says that traditionally every greatest King the Sea's approved had a Good Luck Totem with them. This marine's captain was convinced he could still find them, that they were just hiding."
"See?!" Buggy exclaimed. "Finally someone else's with some senses!" Crocodile ignored him in favor of asking a single question: "King of what?"
"I suppose any equivalent of Kings ruling the world before this government took over."
Crocodile made a rather frustrated sound at the meanless answer. It seemed his patience was running low even for the interaction with the swordsman, not sharing the same passion for that kind of mystery. He liked tangible things, not myths.
"They also call them Good Luck Amulets, Mihawk," He snapped biting down his cigar. "They probably weren't even human, but some strange pets, which can't help us anyway, because, again, they've been extinct for at least eight hundred years! And even in the remote case, they weren't all dead, they're hidden like worms in the ground because the only good uses you can make out of them is lucky charm decoration for the walls with their heads!" Crocodile exclaimed exasperatedly, opening his arms wide. "But if you two want to keep wasting your time on this latrine of a base, forgotten by the Gods themselves, go ahead! As for me, I'm leaving."
Buggy moved out of his way just in time to avoid being hit by the man who imperiously exited the room, breaking under his leather shoes' soles the remains of the door they had broken to enter the vault.
"What the actual fuck is wrong with him?" Buggy asked as soon as he was sure Crocodile couldn't hear him anymore. "This information is worth our weight in gold! We could sell it to any researcher and they would pay us millions of berries! Scholars not under the Government control have been searching for information of the void centuries desperately for years."
Mihawk looked up and tilted his head. The tip of the feather wavered dangerously back and forth for a few seconds before stopping. “The energy in this room is...dreadful and smells of desperation.” He explained with a way more creeper soft grin, almost dreamly.
Buggy shivered, blinking and looking around. The room was lit only by the lamp he had brought, the flickering light swayed and the cobwebs moved, blending in with their own shadows. "Y-You're kidding me, right?" He chuckled, shuddering a second time. "You guys agreed to fuck with me, okay, ha, ha, ha, great, really funny, Mihawk."
"You should feel this even better than me, with your Devil's fruit Sea, fool." The swordsman shook his head.
"Yeah, right, I'm supposed to believe that if I touch something in here I'll unleash some strange curse from things that died eight hundred years ago? Let's not be ridiculous." He exclaimed and to prove it, he gathered courage and approached the table, slamming the folder on the ground. Flying papers covered the floor. "See? Now, let's see if the Totems Thing-y is coming for me."
Mihawk suddenly loomed over him and for an instant Buggy thought he wanted to hit him. He instinctively raised his hands to protect his face and closed his eyes, however, he felt a shift of air and no hit. He reopened them confused to find the swordsman kneeling on the ground on his feet as he was moving the folder out of the way.
“Wh-What are you doing?” He asked even more confused when the other started knocking on the tiles on the floor.
"There's something underneath, didn't you hear? It sounds hollow."
Buggy kneeled beside him, just in time to see Mihawk grab the cross dangling on his chest and fluidly extract the blade inside. The clown had to stop himself from making a high-pitched, terrified sound at the sight. However, the swordsman aimed the blade between the tiles and slowly lifted it, revealing the space below.
Buggy couldn't hold back a scream as he jumped back and landed on his butt.
"No, no, no, okay, Crocodile was right, we're leaving! We're leaving now!" He exclaimed ready to turn around and follow Crocodile out of that room.
Mihawk grabbed him by the shoulder straps and forced him to halt. "Stop behaving like a fool, I thought you were a treasure hunter." He hissed threateningly. "It's just a skull."
"A fucking weird and creepy skull, Mihawk! There's something strange about that thing." He whispered, refusing to turn around to look again at the macabre spectacle enclosed in a glass case. “Seriously what the fuck is that?”
“He's only missing part of his jaw bone, you idiot.”
"Huh?" He exclaimed in confusion daring to look behind him. Mihawk wasn't even staring at him, he was intent on studying the object with fascination. When he was about to reach out his hand, Buggy rushed forward in terror, grabbing his wrist. "Stop, ya crazy man, what if he's connected to a trap? Like explosives?"
Mihawk seemed one step away from stabbing him with the knife, staring offended at the clown's hand that had dared to touch him. Buggy immediately pulled away with a grimace.
"What do you suggest we do then?"
Buggy swallowed and, gaining courage, looked at the reliquary again. The skull had its jaw wide open as if in perpetual laughter, but what most attracted attention was a huge hole where the nostrils should have been. It appeared that something had hit him before or after his death, leaving him damaged. What was strange, however, was that the edges were not rough, as if brute force had been applied, but rather it was a precise excision. Which was even more ridiculous.
"There's a tag." He murmured approaching with courage he didn't think possessed, trying to read, but the dust that had accumulated was too much to make out any of the silhouettes of the letters. Buggy took off his hat and grabbed one of the blue and fluffy feathers, pulling it off with a quick motion. "If there is a mechanism, we should be careful not to set it off and this should be fairly light." He explained, bringing the tip of the quivering feather closer. His adrenaline and damned curiosity were the only thing that kept him going forward.
He released letter after letter from years worth of dust, after each movement that didn't make anything snap his hand became more and more confident and precise.
"Totem of Fortune." He read Mihawk behind him when finally even the last syllable was free, making him jump. “It appears they were ultimately quite human, noses aside.” He commented.
"Oi!" Buggy protested covering his own. "Maybe they killed him with a blow to the head, how would you know?"
"Mh, too precise, I wonder if it wasn't some post-mortem modification, maybe an inexperienced man damaged the artifact and decided to fix it as best he could." He proposed, fascinated, moving closer until they were face to face. "I wonder if the Sea favored them so much, why they ended up reduced like this, perhaps they no longer had a purpose, no king to guide."
"King of what, then?" Buggy repeated Crocodile's question wondering again the same thing. "Of the Sea? Of the World? Was even necessary a King or was it just a change, an evolution the Sea mediated?"
"I think it was a person favored by the Sea, it's even in other myths I encountered before, whoever can hear the voice of the Sea clearer than everybody else." He confirmed, narrowing his eyes which gave off disturbing glimmers. “I wonder if the last Pirate King was favored by the Sea.”
Buggy shrugged, the way Roger had lived, condemned to death his entire life, seemed more cursed than actually favored by anything really. Perhaps the Sea was just bored and capricious, and had decided to hinder its champion more than necessary, perhaps the Sea itself had to put a stop to Gol D. Roger's ambitions.
“It definitely enjoyed watching the Captain's travel.” He commented, ignoring how the swordsman had shifted his attention entirely to him and not to the skull anymore, staring at him with the same disturbing intensity he had reserved for the relic. "What do we do with this...thing?"
"I'll follow Crocodile outside." Mihawk suddenly said, out of nowhere, standing up and flapping his pants. "I don't want to risk setting off any traps, nor is this skull worth enough to invest my energy in. Put everything back and let's go."
"Wh-What?" Buggy stammered, confused by that sudden change of plan. "You really want to leave everything here?!"
"I believe it is in the best intentions of both of us that nothing leaves this room." He said cryptically as he walked towards the exit leaving the clown even more disoriented.
Buggy stood there for a few seconds blinking in confusion.
Crazy people. He was working with a bunch of lunatics. One after another his life was a constant pull to mad people.
He stared at the skull feeling the strange comfort of knowing that someone had it much worse than him and probably had an even worse nose than him. "Urgh, but why me? What did I do wrong? You know, I could use some luck right now," he continued speaking to the skull, who continued to stare at him with empty eye sockets and a frozen scream in time. "But I'm afraid if I were to touch you, at best I'd cause something to explode and at worst that hawk-eyed madman would come back for me with his oversized steak knife of his." He concluded by shrugging and hurrying to close the tile, not without taking a last look at the relic. "Uh, rest in peace? Whoever you were, buddy. " He tried to think of something to say and then frowned. "Oh, damn why am I talking to a skull? Goodbye." He muttered, letting the cover fall back into place with a dull thud.
He got up, looked around, and snatched a few interesting papers in his pockets, before heading out running. You never knew when you needed a bit more prohibited information.
***
"Shanks."
"Mihawk, hi! What natural disaster is happening to make you call me-"
"Didn't you tell me you believed children come from treasure chests?"
"Oi, now, listen! In my defence, Rayleigh told me that and I was a kid, alright? Plus they actually found us in some treasure chests."
"And you believed it until your thirties without doubting it?"
"Are you calling me just to insult me? Because I was happy to hear you, love, but now I might hang up."
"Did they find you in a treasure chest?"
"Okay, technically it was just me, Buggy, they found him floating in a dinghy with some food, from some shipwreck or something. Me in a treasure chest, because I am myself a treasure, your point is?"
“Did you know in ancient times boats were released adrift with offerings for the Sea?”
"Huh?"
"Nothing. Goodbye, Shanks."
Shanks scratched his head as he stared at the now-muted receiver. "What the hell was he saying?" He muttered in confusion. "Those guys are even more weird than I could imagine, no wonder Buggy made an alliance with them."