Who Will Win? Showdown Between the True Powers of the Devil Fruit!

Buggy lays out the one stroke of bad luck that shaped his youth. Years earlier he and Shanks both served the same crew as apprentices. During a raid on a ship, Buggy slipped a valuable treasure map into his own pocket, and Shanks let slip that the loot also held a Devil Fruit. His scheme was to snatch the fruit, ditch the crew, and sell map and fruit alike for a fortune, so he swallowed a counterfeit out in the open while stashing the real one. At the critical instant Shanks startled him into gulping the genuine fruit down, and a sudden gust swept the map off into the waves. Stripped of his ability to swim and of his prize, he was left to spend ten more years scraping together the funds a crew demanded.

In the present, Buggy catches Nami trying to slip away with his hoard and uses Bara Bara Festival to break apart and seize it back. Luffy steps in and pummels him, Nami lashes his scattered parts together with rope to shrink him down, and a single rubber bazooka punch sends the shrunken clown flying clear of the town. Nami passes the Grand Line map to Luffy, hangs onto the rest of the loot, and agrees to travel with the crew for the time being while she chases Bellies. The evacuated villagers return and wrongly pin the wreckage on Luffy's group until Chouchou stops the seething mob. Boodle wakes to find the Buggy Pirates routed and thanks the group at the pier, where Luffy quietly abandons the treasure so the town can pay for repairs, to Nami's dismay. Far off, a strange man stands awaiting visitors.

This installment closes out the Orange Town Arc and brings in Poro, Silvers Rayleigh, Usopp, and the Gecko Islands. Luffy also debuts a brand new technique here, the Gomu Gomu no Bazooka, deployed for the very first occasion. Rayleigh shows up well before his role is disclosed; Oda would at the time say only that he was second-in-command of Roger's crew. Much later, amid the Marineford summit battle, Buggy confesses his resentment still lingers, given that Shanks indirectly drove him to swallow the Bara Bara fruit. In one minor change from the manga, Buggy's underlings scream at Zoro on the dock where the source had them swim off.