That lunch was one of the best meals I ever had. All my favorite foods were there: Stew, stuffed peppers, chocolate pudding, tacos, french fries, potato chips, cucumbers (yeah, I like vegetables too. Sue me), and more. When I left the banquet table, the food I'd piled up on my plate resembled a tower more than a meal.
"Wow, you're really hungry, aren't you, Yuril?" a chef eating next to me observed. The clicking of silverware filled the restaurant, along with the happy exclamations of other chefs.
I laughed and stuffed more food down my pipe. "You think I've got a lot, just look at Lucy's!"
I had grabbed the last seat, so Lucy and Sanji were forced to eat on the floor, not the Lucy minded as long as she had food. And food she had. She was inhaling so much food, her stomach was the size of a beach ball and growing.
Lucy said something I couldn't make out because of her enormous mouthful of grub. "What was that, Luce?" I asked her.
She swallowed. "I said, 'They're acting weird.'"
I raised an eyebrow again and speared a few french fries that were drowning in vinegar. "They are?"
Sanji shrugged dismissively. "It's how they always are," he informed us.
I had just inhaled the fries when Patty slammed his fist on the table, nearly making me choke. "Oi, who made this soup?" he demanded, glaring at each of his fellow cooks in turn.
Blondie grinned and sat a little straighter, waving his hand high in the air. "It was me! Me! Pretty good, eh? Today's was even exceptional."
"I could hardly swallow this piece of crap," the big-chinned man taunted, wiping his mouth in disgust. "It's only fit for pigs!" He proceeded to make a big show of spitting on the floor.
Sanji's face was a mask of anger.
I blinked and frowned. I'd had some of the soup earlier and it had been just fine in my book. Lucy just kept eating her meat with a stupid look.
Sanji got to his feet and started insulting Patty, but I ignored them and drowned out the conversation, instead focusing on my scrumptious meal. Then, all around me, the other cooks started shagging on Sanji's soup, too, slamming their spoons down one by one, and I frowned. There was definitely something going on here, but it didn't bother me... So I just went back to my food.
Yum! Stuffed peppers with sea king meat!
The thing that really caught my attention was the shattering of a bowl into a thousand pieces.
"Owner!" a bunch of chefs gasped.
Sanji's fist shook. "Old man?!"
Zeff, who was standing up with the rest of them, pounded his chest. "What's up with this disgusting soup of yours?" he spat, jabbing his finger at the shattered remains of the empty bowl. "Do you intend to shut this restaurant down or something?"
The future Straw Hat approached his boss and yelled, "Stop kidding around, old fart!" He angrily grabbed Zeff by the collar and shook him. "Tell me what makes my soup and your soup so different! TELL ME!"
"Mine and yours?" The ex-pirate hissed. "DON'T BE SO CONCEITED!"
—WHAM!
Sanji was walloped across the face and was thrown to the floor, rolling across the blue tiles. The other workers of the Baratie gasped.
"The boss didn't kick him; he punched him..."
Zeff closed his fist and quipped, "You're a hundred years too young to ever compare to me, little eggplant! For I am the man who has cooked on all of the seas, all over the world!"
Sanji got up, and for a second, he was so angry I thought he was gonna start fighting Zeff, which would've been a pretty interesting battle. But then he simply cursed, "Dammit!" and raced out the door, nursing his cheek.
"I'M NO LITTLE EGGPLANT ANYMORE!" his angry cry echoed from outside.
Lucy sipped her soup—albeit, a bit cautiously because of what the chefs said. Then she set down her bowl and smiled, scooping more into her dish. "Ah! This soup's great!"
"I know so," Zeff sighed.
I blinked. "Eh?" Lucy and I said collectively.
He bent his head. "Sanji's cooking is revered by everyone here."
"It doesn't taste bad at all," commented a square-faced chef.
A rounder one added, "Yeah, it's really well made."
"Man that was scary," a big-nosed guy said, shaking his head. "He was really angry there."
I frowned and took another bite of stuffed pepper. "Then why did you flame on his cooking?"
"If we hadn't pulled this off, he'd never leave."
Zeff sat down in his chair again and folded his arms across his chest. "Say, girl. You say you need a cook on your crew, right? Well, we won't force you or anything but, care to take him with you to the Grand Line?" Lucy blinked. "The Grand Line is what he's always dreamed about," the man went on, smiling.
Patty smirked. "You see, the boss is a real troublemaker."
"I was worried for a second because of your shitty acting," Carne snickered, making his friend explode into laughter.
"Not to mention yours!"
One by one, the chefs called for another helping of soup.
***
"So, how about it, girl?" Zeff spoke up as the Baratie crew drank their soup. "Will you take him with you?"
"Nope." Lucy said simply.
We all fell over anime-style, even me. "WHAT?" some of the chefs shouted. "Why not?"
The old man stroked his long yellow beard, mystified. "But didn't you say you needed a chef on your ship? Or do you not like the kid?"
Lucy denied that, although a part of me hoped she'd say yes, and the other part wondered why. "No, it's nothing like that. I really want to take him with me, but he said he wants to stay here as a chef, so I can't take him even if you guys insist."
"But you didn't care that Zoro didn't want to go with you," I pointed out. "You still basically blackmailed him."
Her eyes went wide. "EH?! How'd you know that?"
"'Cause I'm a psychic, dumbass."
"Oh, hai."
Zeff frowned thoughtfully. "So what you're saying is, the only way you'll take him is if he says yes himself...?"
Lucy grinned and nodded. "Exactly. Seconds please!"
I regarded her bemusedly. "Shouldn't that be more like fifths?"
Ignoring me, the head chef nodded. "Yes, that's probably best. But that peculiar kid, would he ever just admit that he wants to go with you? Not a chance. He's a stubborn son of a gun."
I swallowed a piece of succulent beef with a deliciously autumn aroma. "And I wonder where he got that from...?"
Zeff chuckled.
"Seconds please!"
I sweatdropped. "Is food all you ever think about, Lucy-chan?"
—SMASH
Suddenly the west wall caved in on us and we all jumped to our feet, forgetting about our food in shock. What was going on? Had the Krieg Pirates returned, deciding that they wanted revenge on us or something? Then the dust cleared and we saw what had happened: Sanji had been knocked through the doors by a shark with someone in its mouth.
"What's going on?" someone asked, confused.
"Who is that?"
"A merman?"
"He came all the way from Fishman Island just to eat here?"
"Idiots!" Sanji bellowed over the muttering of the chefs as he backed away. "That's clearly someone in a shark's mouth!"
Lucy and I pushed our way through the sea of white shirts and tall hats, and guess who we found in the shark's mouth, covered in green clothes and crying anime tears over a puddle of sea water (which I quickly dried)? Yup, none other than...
"Yosaku?" Lucy announced, a bone sticking out of her mouth.
He gasped raggedly. "Ah, Lucy-aneki!"
"Why are you the only one here? Where's Nami?"
I stared at her in disbelief. "A friend smashes through the doors of a sea restaurant, in the mouth of a shark, and the only thing you say is, 'Why are you the only one here?' Really?"
Once he was dried and warmed up, the first half of the Bounty Hunting Idiots said, "We didn't catch up to her. But from the direction Nami-aneki was headed, we roughly knew her destination."
"Hey? Why didn't you bring her back then?"
I hit her over the head. "Idiot. He just said they didn't catch up to her."
He looked away sheepishly. "Well, about that... If her destination really is where we calculated, it'd be a dangerous place. Anyways, we need your help, Lucy-aneki and Yuril-aneki. Please come with me!"
He'd hooked her at 'dangerous.' "Yosh! I don't really get it but... I got it!"
"And what sense does that make?" I said, rolling my eyes. "Fine, I'll come along. My father came to me in a dream while I was out and said I needed to go there anyway."
"Eh? How do you know where I mean?" Yosaku frowned.
I shook my head. Do these people have memory problems or something? "I'm a psychic, remember?"
"Ah, yes."
Yosaku, Lucy, and I got up and walked through the demolished wall of the Baratie, but before we got very far, Sanji had lit another cigar and stopped us. "Wait," he said.
Lucy stopped and turned. "Eh?"
There was a pause, then the ero-cook said, "All of us have foolish dreams. I'm gonna do this for my own dream, to find the All Blue.
"Sanji?"
He stepped forward and crossed his arms. "As you wished, I'll go with you. On this 'Road to Pirate Queen.' Allow me to take up the position of cook aboard your ship."
That really caught her attention, and mine as well. A huge wave of relief washed over me. So I hadn't changed things after all. In the restaurant, Patty and Carne looked at each other in shock, obviously flabbergasted that Sanji had admitted he'd wanted to go.
"You got a problem with that or what?"
Lucy's face lit up and she started doing this stupid dance that I'm not even gonna describe. I don't want to burn your eyeballs out of their sockets or anything. "YATTA!" she cheered, which I somehow knew was Japanese for 'I did it!' "I got a new crewmember!"
"Isn't this great, Lucy-aneki?" Yosaku laughed. She nodded and they jumped around, singing, "Yay! Yay! We've got our cook! We'll always have something to eat now!"
I raised an eyebrow. "We? You're not a member of the crew, Yosaku."
Sanji smirked and turned to his ex-coworkers. "So, that's it, people. I gave you a lot of trouble, didn't I?"
"You really piss me off... I wanted to throw you out of here myself, but now things turn out to be so easy!" Patty complained, folding his arms across his navy blue shirt.
The Boy Blunder shrugged. "Well, sorry... That's what you get for putting on such an appalling performance."
"W-WHAT!? You figured us out?!"
"You couldn't be more transparent. You're all idiots."
I looked at him pointedly. "Judging by the fact that Yosaku and the shark pushed you in the restaurant with you," I said calmly, "you were probably just eavesdropping."
His face reddened. "W-Well, I..."
Patty ignored me and spit like a cat at the insult. "EH?!"
Sanji shrugged. "So you guys really want me outta here, huh? idiot old man?"
The big-chinned underling chef shook his fist angrily. "What's with that foul mouth of yours?!" He probably would've said more, but Zeff cut him off with a hand held up to Patty's chest.
"That's right," Grandpa Chef remarked, "you little eggplant. I hate kids! I regret every passing day that I let you live, ungrateful kid."
The 'kid' in question snorted. "Heh. That's alright, crap geezer. Now you can just sit back and relax for the rest of your old life."
After all that was over, Zeff supplied us with a small boat to take.
"Whoa! What a nice boat!" Yosaku approved. "You sure it's alright to take this with us?"
"It's Sanji's, so of course you can." a chef replied.
I had already boarded it and was lying against the railing with my hands folded behind my back, relaxing now that all the action was finally done (for now) and my belly was full of food. I felt warm and sleepy, despite the fact that I'd been conked out for at least two hours. My headache was also starting to fade, and the pins-and-needles feeling that had plagued me for the last few hours was gone too. Lucy was busy gathering some rations (probably a Santa-Claus-sized bagful of meat) and Yosaku was examining our vessel excitedly. Sanji was packing up his things, which reminded me: The next time I had belli, I needed to go shopping. If I was going to be a pirate, and by this time I was seriously considering joining the Straw Hats, I would need to look the part. But no matter what, I'd still keep my leather jacket. That thing was like a good luck charm to me, the only thing I owned that Cracked-Up Chuck gave me. Even if he had stolen it.
Eventually, Lucy returned with an enormous canvas sack full of what smelled like wolf bait, and she and Yosaku boarded the ship. The other chefs had all gathered on the deck near Sanji's boat to see us off. After a few minutes, Yosaku muttered, "Cook-aniki's pretty slow, isn't he?"
Lucy agreed.
"Idiots." I admonished. "This restaurant was his only home for more than half of his life! He's probably taking one last look around the place."
A few more minutes of waiting, and then Sanji finally stepped out of the restaurant, lugging his stuff. The cooks opened up a pathway from the demolished entrance to the ship. His face was blank, but his eyes looked a bit sad to me.
Ah, peace...
"THIS IS THE FURY THAT I'VE ACCUMULATED OVER THE YEARS!" Patty yelled, jumping from the second story deck down to this one and raising his weapon, while next to him, Carne did the same thing with his own taunt.
I sighed. I should've realized by now that I'd never get any peace in this world.
Sanji jumped back and did a handstand, lashing out with two powerful kicks at the same time, effectively dodging Patty and Carne while delivering his own attacks.
—POW! POW!
The two idiot chefs went down in a tumble with smoking skulls.
One cook knelt down next to them and shook his head. "You'll never beat him, ya know."
I snickered.
Sanji made his way though the chefs and to the edge of the deck, then dropped his bag into our ship. "C'mon," he said. "Let's go."
"You sure?" Lucy blinked. "No goodbyes?"
He smiled. "Nah."
The teen had just lifted his foot to step into the boat when Zeff called from the third floor, "Sanji!" His eyes widened and he froze. "Don't catch cold now..."
The chef's face twitched, and his eyes watered. Johnny, Lucy, and I grinned. Tears rolled down Sanji's face, and he turned and knelt low, crying "OWNER ZEFF! After all this time... I owe you a hell of a lot! What you've done for me, I shall never forget!"
Carne pounded his fist, tears pouring out of his eyes, too, and Patty complained through eye leakage, "You damn bastard! I'M GONNA MISS YOU, DAMMIT!"
"GONNA MISS YOU, ALRIGHT!" Carne wailed.
The other chefs tried, and mostly failed, to hold back tears as well. "This is so sad!" they moaned. "I'm so sad, damnit!"
"You idiots!" said Zeff, wiping his own eyes, wearing a sad smile on his face. "Men should leave without a final word!"
"LET'S GO!" cheered Lucy, leaping up and throwing her arms out.
I tic-pulsed, holding back the waterworks. "Lucy, you idiot! Read the situation, dammit!"
"Until we meet again, you freakin' bastards!" Sanji cried, jumping into the ship and smiling.
The Fighting Cooks of the Baratie roared and waved their arms as we set sail. Despite everything they'd all said about Sanji, I knew each and everyone of them loved him like a brother. And as the floating restaurant shrunk to a dot on the horizon and we waved our goodbyes, I couldn't help but feel a bit jealous of Sanji. I wondered what it would be like to have a brother or sister, or even a family. I'd been pretty much alone for so long that I'd forgotten what it felt like...