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“I’ll find more treasure than all of you!” Buggy announces, and it is only mostly true.
Largely, Buggy succeeds because there are very few officers in the Cross Guild who are actually participating in the treasure hunt.
Mihawk and Crocodile have turned up their nose at the very idea, and where Crocodile goes, Daz follows. Buggy’s original crew are all participating in name, though in practice they mostly walk around pretending to hunt for the treasure with wine glasses in hand like it’s some kind of chore.
Perona is the only one who knows that she is the champion in the treasure hunting game. It’s hardly an accomplishment, as none of the so-called treasures are hidden very effectively, but Buggy is also not the best at finding treasure, so she suspects that this is a deliberate choice.
Perona has known where every single treasure chest is since the start of the game, courtesy of her ghosts. She’s used her ghost form to peer inside several, too.
They’re just gold and other treasures. Perona likes treasure well enough, but she isn’t sure what she would do with it now that she doesn’t have anyone to haul it around with her. She’s claimed a few of the treasures that contained tasteful jewelry she can hide in her dress, but not much else.
The idea of the treasure hunt had sounded fun, but in practice, nobody but Buggy seems interested at all, and Perona wonders why this had been organized in the first place.
She voices this question to Mihawk, who quirks a rare smile at her.
“An excellent question. Self-preservation, or concern for a friend? I don’t have an answer.”
Perona grumps at Mihawk for giving no clearer answer, but as usual, he is unfazed.
*
Galdino is the one to organize the treasure hunt, mostly as a distraction to ensure nobody gets murdered.
Well, specifically so that Galdino doesn’t get murdered, he reminds himself.
Despite seeing through the façade of the great and powerful figure in which most of Buggy’s followers place their trust and faith, in the time he has spent following Buggy, Galdino has been forced to acknowledge that there is something almost godly about the way circumstances reliably seem to arrange themselves to benefit Buggy. He is surprisingly good at maneuvering himself around Hawk-Eye and Crocodile, despite the insistence of the latter two that Buggy is a mere figurehead.
Galdino has no doubt that whatever becomes of the Cross Guild in this world that grows more chaotic by the day, as the World Government consolidates its power and the four Emperors all simultaneously set their sights on Laugh Tale as the previous generations of emperors never had, Buggy will somehow come out of it unscathed. That luck does not, however, hold true for those who follow him unless they use their wits to keep themselves safe.
Alvida clearly has this principle well practiced in her leadership of Buggy’s older crew whenever Buggy himself is unavailable. But Galdino knows that her avoidance tactics will be less effective in the presence of Crocodile’s strategies and Mihawk’s raw strength.
In an organization of convenience such as the Cross Guild, the greatest threat comes from within. Galdino has survived Crocodile’s murder attempts before, but he isn’t confident he could again—especially not if Mihawk is also in the mix.
The true source of the threat, of course, is the loose canon that is Buggy. As long as Buggy is contained—and he often is contained, between Hawk-Eye and Crocodile, his body usually in pieces—he cannot tip the balance of power to the detriment of everyone around him. Galdino thinks, for a short while after the formation of the Cross Guild, that this is no different from his time in Baroque Works or the days he spent evading death with Buggy at Impel Down and Marineford.
But Perona’s arrival throws a wrench into the carefully maintained balance of power and temperaments that is this organization.
Perona’s ghosts make her nigh invincible, and though she verbally denies it, it is unmistakable that she is firmly in Mihawk’s corner.
Mihawk was already the most powerful member of the Cross Guild, and Perona’s inclusion, with her ghosts and her loud, demanding temperament, visibly sets Crocodile on edge, which in turn means Daz seems permanently ready to murder anyone and everyone in the room.
Perona and Buggy in combination are visibly grating at the nerves of the two most formidable sides of the Cross Guild triumvirate, so Galdino takes it upon himself to do something about it.
Buggy’s crew go along with it after much wheedling, explaining, and bribing, though they do not have the decency to act like they care as they walk straight past the poorly hidden treasures Galdino has hidden all around the compound.
It is an unexpected but not unwelcome side effect that Perona, too, seems temporarily distracted by the game—though Galdino notices that somehow she only claims the three treasures that were jewelry before returning to Mihawk’s side. He already suspected that her ghosts give her the ability to effectively be in several places at once, but now he wonders if she has the ability to see through containers as well.
If he were to try this again, he might need to find a way to keep Perona engaged for longer—if she had chosen to claim all the treasure for herself, that would have exacerbated tensions. (Although Galdino cannot say with certainty whether it would be better or worse to have Buggy and Perona at each other’s throats instead of annoying Crocodile and Hawk-Eye.)
For now, Galdino peers around the corner to where Buggy is cackling as he unwraps one of the treasure chests he has found.
This treasure hunt is a solution that will not work again, but it has worked this once.
Galdino grins to himself and leaves Buggy to cackle over “his” treasure.
He has to plan what distraction to organize next time tensions escalate amongst the strange extended family the Cross Guild seems to have become.
