#me ending on a cliff hanger in ch11 and going straight into a flashaback in ch12 seems a lil villainous on my part but trust in the process | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

acescorazon · 2 months

Text

Title: Changes

Chapter: 12

Rating: M

Word count: 2838

Chapter excerpt:

All of Buggy’s negative emotions quickly overwhelm and consume him. He feels like he’s trapped in a never-ending nightmare, and can’t help but go over his every little interaction with Mihawk and Crocodile. As he wonders where it all went wrong, a series of memories play out in his head like a movie.

|Ch1|Ch2|Ch3|Ch4|Ch5|Ch6|Ch7|Ch8|Ch9|Ch10|Ch11|

Buggy cries until he’s unable to cry anymore and even once his tears dry up, the heavy ache in his chest lingers as he tries to process what just happened between him and Crocodile. Their confrontation from earlier plays in Buggy’s head on an almost endless loop, reminding him of his failure to seize the perfect opportunity to get what he wanted finally. Buggy has wanted a somewhat peaceful life for ages now, yet when the opportunity arose for one, he foolishly turned it away.

How does that make any sense?

Buggy doesn’t understand why he couldn’t just accept Crocodile’s apology. It doesn’t matter if Crocodile was or wasn’t being completely sincere. His apology was a chance for them to be on ‘good terms’ at long last, so why did Buggy reject it so quickly?

Crocodile was apologizing and trying to make amends, he was offering to finally put an end to all the bad blood between them, but Buggy had a meltdown and rejected the opportunity to finally be happy. Even if they had a short-lived friendship and Crocodile ended up going back to his old ways a week or two later, Buggy could have still benefited from the situation greatly, but he just… shut everything down and didn’t want to hear anything.

Buggy can’t help but wonder when he became a man who cares if someone is being honest with him or not. Buggy himself is someone who would lie constantly if he needed to, so why can’t he accept Mihawk and Crocodile’s dumb apologies? Why can’t he forgive and forget, and just allow himself to have a moment of happiness?

It’s about two weeks or so after the official debut of Cross Guild, and the island is a lot more lively now that Crocodile and Mihawk (and, of course, Daz) are around. The three men are all the residents of Emptee Bluffs Island can talk about these days, well that, as well as the formation of Cross Guild.

Buggy seems to be the only one terrified that the two former warlords will be calling Emptee Bluffs Island their home from now on though, but he’s trying to remain hopeful. He thinks that maybe, just maybe, he can get on Crocodile and Mihawk’s good side, so not too long after the formation of Cross Guild and their first meeting, he starts brainstorming. The only problem is Buggy’s mind constantly loops back to the same idea. He wants to give them each an expensive gift but he doesn’t want Crocodile to ask where he got the money for said gifts from. It sucks because gift-giving seems like the best way to show Mihawk and Crocodile that he’s not so bad and make them feel welcomed, but he knows he can’t do it without Crocodile getting all pissy with him.

Meh, it’s not like he’d know what to get them anyways.

After several days of thinking, pacing around, and asking his men for some much-needed advice, Buggy decides to instead throw Mihawk and Crocodile a nice dinner. He knows that Crocodile and Mihawk aren’t exactly the most outgoing people on the planet, but he has hope that once they see all the effort Buggy and his men are going through to make them feel welcomed, they’ll be a little less hostile.

Buggy dedicates a lot of time and energy to planning his little dinner for Crocodile, Mihawk, and Daz and making sure that the event is kept a secret, which is no easy task considering how much his men like to sit around and gossip. Everything is honestly a little stressful, and at times he worries that everything will end up ruined thanks to someone running their big mouths, but thankfully that never happens. In between deciding the menu and the entertainment for the night, and sending his men out for supplies, he spends his time preparing a welcome speech for his two new subordinates.

The hard part is coming up with a speech that makes him sound cool yet warm and welcoming at the same time. He can’t just say something like, ‘Surprise! Welcome to the island!’ That’s too simple, too boring, and lacks the emotions that Buggy’s trying to convey, but he can’t figure out what he should say instead. Whatever, he’ll figure it out eventually.

Buggy and his men decorate the cafeteria to the best of their ability on the night of their surprise dinner. At the end of the day, their humble, little cafeteria is nothing compared to a lavish banquet hall, but it feels a lot more cozy and intimate than a banquet hall could ever be. They push several tables together, arrange them nicely, dress them in (cheap) white tablecloths, and decorate them with fancy dishware and napkins. After that, Buggy and his men bring out the food and wine, and everyone seems thrilled as dinner time rapidly approaches.

This is it, Tonight is going to be the night that he wins Mihawk and Crocodile over with his world-class charm and charisma. He has his speech ready and tucked neatly into the palm of his hand, and now all he needs is his honored guests!

Buggy has one of his men go and fetch Mihawk, Crocodile, and Daz once everything is ready. His heart is pounding in his chest as a mixture of excitement and anxiety washes over him and makes him feel all jittery, and he has to constantly remind himself that everything is okay. In fact, everything is going perfectly for once…Or at least everything seems to be going perfectly at first. Buggy and his crew wait for what seems like hours for their guests to arrive with the fear of Dinner growing cold lingering in everyone’s minds. Eventually, the three newcomers arrive, and when they do, they don’t look surprised and thankful… If anything, they look… annoyed.

Buggy doesn’t even get to yell ‘Surprise!’ or something cool because everything goes down-hill before he gets the chance to.

Buggy watches as Mihawk looks around the nicely decorated cafeteria. His expression is devoid of any emotion, and he looks… unimpressed at best and bored at worst. Buggy looks over at Daz next, and he has a similar expression as Mihawk, which is disappointing but not surprising and he shouldn’t have expected much of a reaction from him to begin with. As for Crocodile… Well, his face shows the most emotion out of all three men. Crocodile clicks his tongue loudly and looks rather annoyed as he scans the room and takes in the warm and friendly atmosphere.

“You made me stop what I was doing for this?” Crocodile asks, narrowing his eyes at Buggy, who is baffled, just baffled at the reaction he’s getting from all three men.

“We wanted to welcome you guys to the island!” Buggy says sheepishly, and he can’t help but feel slightly irritated that none of his honored guests are happy to see their surprise. In fact, now that he sees everyone’s sour expressions, he feels a bit hesitant to say the speech he spent so long preparing. “Uh…Um, Please, have a seat!” He says, gesturing to some seats that he specially picked out for the three of them that are right across from his own. Crocodile exhales a sigh, “I ain’t hungry.”

“Neither am I.” Mihawk replies immediately afterwards.

Oh. Buggy thinks at that moment. Just, Oh. Buggy had decorations hung up and placed all around the room, he had all this delicious food that they wouldn’t eat on a normal day cooked, he had fancy wine bought and live entertainment arranged… He... He really thought that Mihawk and Crocodile would see all the effort he put into welcoming them and would want to sit down and have a bite to eat with Buggy, but they just…

Crocodile’s cold words yank him back to reality, “Instead of throwing tacky little parties, you should be working on that list of things I gave you to do.” He mutters as he turns around and leaves, and, unsurprisingly, once Crocodile leaves, everyone else follows behind him silently.

A nasty tension lingers in the air once the three men make their leave. Buggy and the rest of his crew eat quietly and as quickly as possible before making their way to their respective sleeping quarters for the night. The whole ordeal leaves a bad taste in Buggy’s mouth, but he decides to give both Mihawk and Crocodile the benefit of the doubt. Again, they aren’t really social people, of course, they wouldn’t want to participate in some giant get-together, even if it was for them and was a friendly gesture.

So, after that Buggy tries again to get on Crocodile and Mihawk’s good side. He doesn’t want Cross Guild to be built on a rocky foundation, but more importantly, he doesn’t want Mihawk and Crocodile to hate him and make him suffer. He figures he was thinking too big, too flashy, and should have instead done something smaller, but just as impactful. His mind goes back to the gift-giving thing, and he really doesn’t want to give them something overly expensive and come off as seeming disingenuous or worse have Crocodile question where he got the funds for the gift from.

Everyone Buggy asks seems to think that Buggy should totally give them bouquets to welcome them to the island and as a friendly gesture, and after some consideration, he agrees. Buggy gets a couple of different recommendations but most of the people he’s talked to say he should give Mihawk and Crocodile lilies, and Buggy, not knowing much about flowers blindly follows their suggestions. He eventually decides to give them both a bouquet of beautiful orange lilies, which he has delivered to the island as soon as possible.

In the meantime, Buggy spends hours and hours trying to plan out the perfect scenario and what he’s going to say to each man when he gives them their gifts. He’s having the same problems as before, and can’t figure out what he wants to say exactly to either. It has to be cool, though, that’s for sure. Something like, ‘I can tell you’re shocked to see these stunning flowers but don’t be. I got these for you, friend, in celebration of you coming to the island and us forming Cro—’ No, wait, that sucks, but hopefully he’ll figure something out once his flowers arrive.

The day his beautiful, stunning, fragrant flowers arrive, Buggy goes to Crocodile first, who is in the meeting room and right away seems annoyed to see him in front of him (like always) but, hey, Buggy’s trying to fix that. He holds up the bouquet of orange lilies in front of Crocodile and gives him a sheepish smile, “So, uh-”

All those hours spent preparing what he was going to say become pointless in less than a second because the moment Crocodile takes a look at his flowers, he scoffs and turns his head away. “Instead of picking flowers, you should be getting my flagship ready.”

Now, Crocodile didn’t throw his gift on the ground and stomp all over it, but it kinda feels like he did. Does Crocodile really not see the effort he’s putting in to get them on good terms…? Buggy places the flowers down on the table in front of Crocodile and gives him another smile, this one a little more forced than the last, “Oh, well… I just wanted to give you these and…” His words fail him at that moment, and he no longer knows what he should even say to the ungrateful man sitting in front of him, “You know, welcome you to the island… and I hope that... Cross guild is a success and that we can be good friends in the future…”

Crocodile rolls his eyes, “I don’t need any friends, and I certainly don’t need any shitty flowers.” He says rather dismissively, “Now if you don’t have anything important to tell me, get out.” He orders and brushes Buggy off with the shake of a hand. Buggy’s head drops and he quietly makes his way to the exit, and he swears that on his way out of the meeting room, he hears the sound of something being tossed, most likely into the trash can, but he doesn’t want to think about it.

Okay, so Crocodile is a dick. Buggy already knew that and he shouldn’t feel so gutted. It was obvious from the start that he wasn’t going to act positively towards a gift from Buggy no matter how nice it was. But Buggy was just hoping that… Whatever. It doesn’t matter.

Things with Crocodile might not have gone well, but he still has Mihawk…Right? At least there’s still hope that he can make an ally out of him… right? He finds Mihawk several minutes later, tucked away underneath a tree and polishing his sword. The sight of his giant blade brings back memories to when Crocodile and Mihawk first arrived on the island and Mihawk chased him and tried to slice him to pieces. And although it isn’t possible for Mihawk to hurt him, at least not with a sword, Buggy still finds himself growing a little uneasy just from looking at his blade.

Buggy hides the second bouquet behind his back and clears his throat as he approaches Mihawk. “Uh, Hawkeye…?” He calls out quietly, and much to his surprise, Mihawk’s initial response isn’t hostile or cold. He expected him to glare at him with sharp, piercing eyes and go: “What is it now, clown?” Instead, Mihawk glances up at him for a split second before looking back down at his sword, “Is there something you need?” He asks in his usual flat tone.

By this point, Buggy’s forgotten everything he wanted to say to Mihawk, but still tries to say something nice anyways, “Uh, I know we didn’t get off to a great start, but I wanted to give you these as a welcoming gift…” Buggy tells him, “I don’t know, I just really want us all to get along. So…yeah, here.” Buggy slowly reveals the flowers that he has hidden behind his back, and the moment Mihawk sees them, his face contorts into an irritated expression. “You say that you want to be on better terms with me, but you’re giving me orange lilies?” He asks, narrowing his eyes at Buggy. Well, yes… though orange lilies seem to have several different meanings depending on who you ask, most of Buggy’s crew said they were a positive thing, something you’d give to someone who started a new job or got a promotion, or such.

However… It turns out Mihawk doesn’t have the same feelings about the flowers.

“You’re basically giving me a bouquet that tells me the opposite of that,” Mihawk states with a scoff, “Orange Lillies represent a deep-seated hatred for someone, did you really think i’d appreciate a gift like this?” Woah, woah, woah. What? Buggy thinks. He definitely did not mean for his gift to give off that sort of vibe, and he doesn’t know why Mihawk is the one person on the island who thinks these flowers are something negative.

Buggy feels a little flustered by it all. His face reddens and he tries to stammer out a quick reply, but is once again unsure how to salvage the situation, “No, I…” He tries to speak, but Mihawk puts his hand up in the air, signaling for him to stop talking.

“I don’t want your gift. Go away.” Buggy feels like he’s been punched in the gut, and he cannot for the life of him figure out why Mihawk’s being so… unreasonable. Is that even the right word to describe him right now?

“I didn’t mean for my gift to come off the wrong way,” Buggy finally manages to say after a moment of thought as he tries his best to defend himself, “I don’t know much about flowers, an–”

“Why are you giving me a gift you know nothing about then?”

Ouch. Buggy doesn’t have a response to that, so he just lowers his head in defeat once again and walks away from Mihawk. That’s such a nasty way to look at things, yeah, Buggy doesn’t know much about flowers, but he was genuinely trying to do something nice for Mihawk, and he’s acting like he spat in his face. Whatever, Buggy thinks, feeling rather hopeless at the moment. In the end, he decides to give the flowers to a random member of his crew, one who definitely doesn’t see the flowers as a hateful gift and happily accepts them with a beaming smile.

…If only Mihawk and Crocodile had that same reaction.

#cross guild #Changes #me ending on a cliff hanger in ch11 and going straight into a flashaback in ch12 seems a lil villainous on my part but trust in the process #If this is ass i DIDNT write it...crocodile did #fics #my writing

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