A Pirate's Kitchen Knives and Sizzling Spices
Written by Whimsical Symphony
So, this is my first story in the One Piece archive, and it'll be an Ace/OC story. Hope you all enjoy. I tried to make a realistic character for people to enjoy and I rather like Lydia thus far. She's gone through several distinct personality shifts during her time being written, and I think I decided on a happy medium. For those who kept up with my profile, she did start off really innocent, and then became pretty scary and malicious, until I decided on keeping the first bit of her mostly, with a little bit of the second in circumstances. She became a lot nicer than I intended for her to be during initial changes and reverted more to her original form and I think this strikes more of a realistic balance.
And uh… Rosa will be making a reappearance soon. I actually like the manly woman in the polka dot dress too much to let go. She was so fun to write! Most ridiculous character I've written in a while, but hey, it's One Piece.
I hope you all enjoy and give me tips or comments of any kind. I don't bite, even if you want to rip my OC apart and say you hate her. After months, I finally decided to post this up, so I hope it works out. Happy reading!
Chapter I - A Home Cooked Meal
The scent wafted pleasantly up to her nose – meat, rice, steamed and marinated vegetables, a mixture of spices and the fresh scent of coriander which reminded her so much of home. When she opened her eyes, she reminded herself that this food would always reside in a dingy kitchen. Her surroundings made her frown. The knives and cutting boards, no one cleaned, flour lay strewn across tabletops – the entire kitchen was in disarray. All because no one here cared for cooking.
Cooking is important, she chanted religiously in her head as she focused on chopping the vegetables, it makes people happy.
"What are you doing, Pavlov? Cooking these elaborate meals again?" Lydia looked up from the carrots she currently cut with precision. One of the other cooks stood in front of her, laughing at her effort, mocking her. "You know the soldiers like anything – why do you try so hard? No one'll reward you for your efforts, eh?"
"That's not true. Good cooking makes people happy," Lydia repeated dutifully what her Papa always told her.
And she believed it. Who didn't like the warm scent of well-made coffee and tasty food when home from a long journey? The Marines would have been grateful for it, she thought. After a long time of sailing and trying to stop criminals, protecting civilians, who wouldn't like a home cooked meal? Her Papa wanted to make every soldier feel at home, all while exploring the world and discovering new ways of cooking.
People liked good cooking, so why shouldn't he have cooked? It made people happy and joyful.
So, he took that all to the ships and travelled with the Marines from this base on the island she'd grown up on all her life, Mercator Island, making lavish food all the time for them while fulfilling his dreams of discovering new ingredients and dishes, rare ingredients one wouldn't find on Mercator, recording them all in his notebook until his passing in an unfortunate accident. He'd been the best cook that this building of Marines had known, but some time since then, only low ranks in the Marines who wanted to climb joined the cooking crew to save expenses on hiring cooks like her Papa. Now no one cared – now home cooked meals didn't exist, and her food went by underappreciated.
And her tears that she cried for her dead father... No one knew what happened to him. No one humoured her. Her cooking let her be close to him. People liked good cooking, so she cooked. She always stood by that ideal.
"Your father may've been a good cook – but what need does a bunch of soldiers have for that? All they need is something edible," he mocked, while tossing a bunch of uncomplimentary ingredients together.
The scent that reached her nose didn't smell nearly as pleasant, nearly as cozy and homey, like someone actually put their love into it.
"Soldiers need something to keep their spirits up, that's what," Lydia argued fiercely, before flushing a little at her own outspokenness. The cook across from her glared and she staunchly ignored his presence. He could glare all he wanted but she wouldn't take her words back.
Finally, with a show of attitude, he threw his apron on a nearby counter and left without another word.
Maybe someday her dream would come true. Someday she'd travel the seas like her Papa once did, learning the cooking of all sorts of people – from the cooking of Alabasta to the cooking of Amazon Lily. One day, the Marines would recognize her need for good food and she'd be able to travel on a ship. One day, she knew it would happen.
As long as no one said cooking was flat out useless, she'd stay cool about it.
But the depressing thoughts remained as she clutched ladle in her hand harshly, felt the tension in her muscles.
"Did you not like my cooking, sir?" Lydia mumbled to herself, moving to sauté some onions. "I apologize for not cooking well enough."
She slammed her knife on top of an onion, chopping it in half.
"Auntie Rosa, I brought back some cake I baked today; it's really tasty!"
She walked back to the bar that night where her godmother resided, located next to plenty of other similar places, since Mercator Island revolved completely around small shops – many tourists bought small trinkets and such from. Their island, being just a small tourist joint, really had no need for their small Marine base, so the soldiers were unruly, and they all rather would just have no work. And they didn't respect chefs. As long as soldiers fought and ate whatever, they'd be fine, they thought.
Hiring chefs cost good money they'd rather use to expand what they had available to tourists and their military, to some extent.
Nearly everyone became a businessperson of some kind on Mercator, at least in spirit. Sure, doctors still existed, and maybe engineers, but everyone became some sort of businessman, even them. They spent their lives trying to earn the most money they could, fool gullible tourists. Nothing really had heart on Mercator. People cared about money, that's it.
Artists sold their trinkets and made them cheaply; she hadn't seen real art in quite some time. Doctors made the biggest wads of cash from people who visited their island over making claims that they suffered from some sort of exotic gastrointestinal problem when it was really just the stomach flu. Engineers built things for amusement of those tourists.
Nothing really had soul on Mercator Island. It was barren of everything but fraud and money. They catered to tourists, a land full of business people. They didn't have anything that made them, them, like a culture on Alabasta or Dressrosa. They were solely business people, nothing else, no matter how many careers existed on the island. They weren't true, only false.
And Lydia hated to consider herself one, so she supposed that didn't make her fit in quite right.
When she walked inside her godmother's residence, she didn't expect for it to be so crowded – full of rowdy men, seemingly celebrating something or another, clinking glasses of frothy ale together and singing songs.
Her godmother, a large, tough and very masculine looking woman with strangely feminine golden locks of hair and layers of makeup, served a few of them with large pitchers of beer which they quickly drank, leaving not a drop as they continued to become drunker and drunker.
"Oh, Lydia, back already? And you brought cake? I've been dyin' for your cooking all day, hon," Rosa answered, beckoning Lydia to come to the counter with her, which she did.
Rosa liked her cooking. That happiness, that feeling of contentedness, relieving her tension, that soothing feeling, washed over her. Rosa liked her too, if she liked her cooking. Rosa was happy and wouldn't leave her.
Lydia quickly set down the cake on the counter while walking around customers in the cramped bar who swayed and whose faces where undeniably as red as fire trucks.
"I didn't expect for it to be so crowded… who are these people?" Lydia asked curiously, looking how rugged they seemed, yet so jolly. Adventurers, maybe?
"Bunch of pirates. They look the part, don't they? The Whitebeard Pirates, they are," Rosa answered. She cut herself a nice fat slice of cake and ate it. Her smile widened and she smacked her lips, smudging her lipstick a fair bit around her lips. "Yummy as always, Lydia. Your father would've been proud!" Then, she looked at Lydia's expression of surprise for a moment before giggling almost sheepishly. "Oh, probably shouldn't have told a Marine that pirates were about. But it doesn't matter – pirates are people too, aren't they? Everyone needs good food and drinks to pass the day, huh?"
And that did make her think about her Papa and not be so jaded by the way of the Marines. Maybe they were redeemable people, she didn't know. But her Papa would've said that everyone needed food in their stomach too, whether pirate or soldier, everyone needed a nice taste of home.
Besides, shamefully, Lydia found herself envious of a life of piracy: out all on the sea all day long from sunrise to sunset, even while the stars blanketed the sky, able to find out about new cultures all on the seas, learn from their cooking, borrow their ingredients... Looking at all their faces now, she knew that the notorious Whitebeard Pirates lived a life of enjoyment on the high seas. She wanted to become a cook aboard a ship too, but she never did know how long it would take for the Marines to even want a lowly kitchen girl like her.
But she even wondered if a rugged bunch like them even appreciated good cooking when they ate it. Maybe they just didn't care, and maybe they found it useless just like all the others.
"Hey Rosa, you got any more food? The meat really hit the spot."
Lydia looked at the grinning man who asked while sitting on a wooden barstool, a ridiculously handsome, well-built man who didn't seem to wear a shirt (which made her blush horribly, of course), had a tattoo on the expanse of his back, and wore a cowboy hat on his head. Strange attire, or lack of, she thought with a laugh. Though she found it rather strange.
Mercator was a little bit chilly, perhaps not as cold as some other islands out there, but chilly and rainy much of the time. Apparently he didn't feel it at all, but she imagined that when it came to the extremely cold islands, he did have to bundle up or risk pneumonia.
His almost childish freckles seemed to stand out when he smiled as well. He seemed too pleasant looking to be a pirate, especially one on an extremely infamous pirate crew.
"Oh, Ace, hon, my goddaughter just arrived. She's the best cook you'll ever meet and she'll cook you something right up! Consider it an honour, okay?" Rosa winked at him and nudged Lydia in the side. "Lydia, this gorgeous piece of man is Ace. Ace, this is my Lydia, my dear, dear Goddaughter with such a penchant for cooking she can make a delicious cake like this." She pretty much shoved the whole box of cake forward with a new knife and fork for Ace to use.
Ace didn't know how to react to being called a gorgeous piece of man.
"Ace?" she almost squeaked. Lydia didn't consider herself a fool, and to entertain the thought that the pleasant man in front of her was 'Fire-Fist Ace', the man with a terribly high bounty, one of the commanders on the Whitebeard crew, could have been foolish or intelligent. "That Ace?"
Ace took a huge hunk of cake on the fork and stuffed it into his mouth, then commented, "Nice cake, really delicious. You weren't lying at all, Rosa." He gave a charming grin to the both of them, then removed his hat before turning to Lydia. "Ace D. Portgas, nice to meet-"
To her shock, without completing his sentence at all, he simply collapsed, face-first, into the wood of the bar counter. Without even giving her a chance to mull over his cooking compliment. A chill entered her heart as she wondered if he was okay. Panicking, she rushed to the other side and began to shake him.
"Hello, wake up, are you okay?" She began to speak louder, closer to him in an effort to wake him up before her eyes widened. "Oh no… what if my cooking killed somebody? Is he… is he allergic to dairy or something? Or maybe I poisoned him, but I cooked the cassava in the cake just right so it shouldn't be! I made such an amateur mistake." She shivered just thinking about it. Just thinking about how cooking did have the capability to kill someone due to the toxicity of various ingredients scared her. And she just killed the invincible 'Fire-Fist Ace' with it! "I just killed someone!"
Rosa looked just as shocked, her palm over her mouth in surprise. "What should we do, oh no…"
"Don't worry about it. He'll be good in no time at all. The cassava in the cake didn't kill him; I never even knew it was considered poisonous," a voice answered, bored and sleepy sounding. It came from an equally exhausted looking, lean man with messy blonde hair. "This always happens."
"What do you mean?" Lydia questioned. Rosa looked just as confused. She frowned looking rather depressed. "I just killed someone with my cooking. Papa would have told me to be more attentive…"
"You didn't kill him," the man answered before taking a seat next to Ace. "Hey, another pint of beer, would you?"
Before she could chastise him for his apparent insensitivity, Ace sprang back to life and stretched once.
"Y-you're not dead?" Lydia questioned the man, completely shocked. She pinched her own skin and yelped in pain. "So… I'm not dreaming right? You're really not dead? I didn't kill you with my cooking?" She poked him once in the shoulder to make sure that he indeed was alive.
Ace laughed loudly and told her, "Don't worry, I'm all good. I have a habit of falling asleep at random times." He said this as if it were completely and utterly normal, as if he didn't just give her the biggest scare of her life.
He put his hat back on which he let go of during his tumble.
"You scared the life out of Lydia, dear. She thought her food killed you! Only this young gentleman here seemed to know what was going on." Rosa giggled like a schoolgirl and filled up a pint of beer for the bored man beside Ace. Pushing it over the counter to him she then mentioned, "Oh, for letting us know though, that'll be on the house. Don't you worry about it at all! What's your name, hon?"
"Marco, and no problem," he answered her, taking a nice big gulp of beer. "I'm used to watching out for him and making sure he doesn't scare anyone with that."
Ace grinned sheepishly. He then stood up and walked to Lydia. Placing a hand on her shoulder he complimented, "I really don't think this cake could kill me. It's delicious – you're a great cook!" He removed his grip on her then his grin slowly transformed into a frown when he mentioned, "Much better than all the stuff we eat at sea. Most of the time we have to make do with what we have, huh? And everyone cooks 'cause the crew is so large… and four ships, well the others do what they can on their ships too."
Four ships? Lydia noted that they did have a very large crew, and she wondered what all of them ate. All of them probably learned how to cook to some extent, probably made their own meals too… but…
Ace effectively proved to her everything she'd been striving for and everything her Papa held true: that people needed meals when they were on ships, nice home cooked meals, and that cooking made people happy. He complimented her cooking, called it delicious, and if she ever heard that from anybody after her cooking becoming so ignored at the Marine base, she never expected to hear it from a pirate, and 'Fire-Fist Ace' at that!
Warm feelings pooled in her heart and she found herself smiling widely at him, to this pirate who seemed to enjoy eating her cooking. That's all she ever wanted, people to feel happy and to get a chance to learn all the types of cooking that existed in the world. And she wanted someone to like her, just a little, and if they tasted her cooking they would. His compliment pleased her.
"I-I'll cook you something up right now, alright?" Lydia flushed, averting her eyes from his chest, of course, clasping her hands together and feeling a little guilty for thinking before that maybe his kind wouldn't appreciate her cooking at all. "You're… not allergic to anything right? I don't want to kill you."
Yes, she wanted to give him food filled with her effort. And she'd be attentive to it too, so if he did have any allergies he wouldn't wind up dead like she thought he had been just a little while earlier.
Ace laughed again and told her, "Nope."
So she headed with a skip in her step to the kitchen to make the greatest meal she'd ever made for a pirate who appreciated her food. That'd show that stupid Marine who mocked her that cooking made people happy, even a pirate!
People were people and everyone needed good meals and good drinks in their stomach, Rosa and Papa both said. She agreed with them wholeheartedly and prepared to make a meal full of meat, because Ace said that it hit the spot! She'd cook up the best meat that a pleasant looking pirate like him would ever try.
Lydia, filled with warm feelings from the night before, didn't really feel scared when her superior sat her down for a chat the next day. She did wonder what he wanted with a lowly kitchen girl like her. Lydia hadn't been called in for any sort of talk except on the first day she'd entered the Marines with high hopes that one day she'd be considered good enough to be in a position to cook for soldiers on a ship and research recipes all the while as her Papa did.
"It shames me to say this Pavlov, but we need to discharge you from the Marines, dishonorably at that."
The fat, pudgy man, with yellowing teeth, Supervisor Bogy, who sat her down, sighed and frowned in some feigned attempt to make her think he did really feel sorry for it. Her blood ran cold and she replayed what he said in her mind; discharging her, he said, which meant that all her dreams, he effectively shattered into irreparable bits in just that moment – no ships to travel on, no looking at the great blue sea all day and night while chatting merrily with a crew who appreciated her cooking.
No making people happy.
Her hands trembled in her lap.
I have to cook, I have to cook, I have to cook
What could she even do without cooking?
"You… don't mean that, right?" Lydia pleaded. "Have I done something wrong? I really don't know what it is I've done – if you do I'll correct it immediately, sir!"
And she really did mean it. If she could do anything to retrieve her dreams, have them not leave her and deem her useless, brush the wind again and hold it close to her as she once did, a treasure deep within her heart she could always call and hope upon, something which brought her close to her Papa, she would do it.
"Well, you are a good cook, not that we really need it," he told her, shocking her right then and there, breaking her more. "But, the real issue here is that it's been noted by some people who live nearby that a bunch of pirates visited your godmother's establishment. We can't really control what she does, but we can control what you do." He reached his pudgy hand out to the cup of coffee on the nearby table and drank a noisy sip of the bitter, tasteless black liquid before setting it down with a large thump again. Lydia shuddered. "We're going after them tonight. And we don't want the rumour floating about that a Marine associates with pirates. It's crime enough that they were let in."
"I had… nothing to do with that though," Lydia whispered, feeling the tears collecting in her eyes.
She imagined Ace's smiling face and the merriment that all the pirates shared while drinking and eating, how much Ace seemed to enjoy her cake and the meat she made afterward for him. Marco tried some after and also told her that it was some good food, and eventually she ended up cooking enough for all the pirates. Her food passed around in large quantities and for some reason, even though the work exhausted her, she felt contented, like someone actually appreciated her.
Then, she knew she couldn't change things, and knew that being with the Marines at this base who barely appreciated cooking and wouldn't put her on a ship really wouldn't make her dream come true and would abandon her regardless of what she did.
Lydia couldn't be herself without cooking. She had to cook. For people. Without it… she didn't even want to imagine it.
Idly, Lydia thought about how travelling with the pirates would feel like, going from island to island learning new ways of marinating meats and vegetables, learning new dishes, and most of all, discovering new ingredients to add depth to her dishes. She wondered whether her Papa would have even been fine with her thinking about travelling with outlaws. But then, she thought he would. Anything to travel the world.
Her Papa didn't have much attachment to the Marines, only to the benefits they brought him.
But what of all the time she spent with the Marines? Surely it had to mean something to her. She treasured all the work she put in, and some happy faces she did see when people managed to catch her cooking for lunch and dinner.
"It pains me to say it, but we'll have to remove you from our ranks," Bogy told her almost nonchalantly, "regardless of if you had anything to do with it or not. The reputation of our glorious Marines is at stake." Then he whispered spitefully to himself, but she heard anyway, "Cooks thinking they want to waste one good spot on our ships. Regular soldiers know how to cook basic things, no need for 'em really. Cooking is damn useless."
And that really had been the last bit of straw that broke the camel's back for Lydia who held cooking so close to her heart since when her Papa taught her how to cook her first omelette. So, she finally broke free of the bonds which held her from exploring the sea and all its mystical ingredients and stood up, removed the blazer over top her plain white shirt which signified her as part of the cooking crew, and threw it in the man's face.
If she couldn't cook here, she had no reason to be here. This couldn't even be considered a loss. All she lost was the company of a pathetic moron who couldn't even get any happiness from her cooking. How sad was that? She was abandoned, sure, she knew that but no one insulted cooking and got by without experiencing her wrath. It surged for Bogy right now, without restraint.
Placing the blazer on the chair, she laughed bitterly, then said, "I'm leaving. You don't even need to fire me, Supervisor Bogy. Rumours about fraternizing with pirates or not, once your crews start crying because of inedible food, feel a bit of remorse, okay?" Her gaze narrowed as she glared at him with all her heart, clenched her fists too. "I don't even want to be here anymore! Good riddance!"
Really, she left before she had the urge to do something regrettable. If she ever met him again, she swore she'd feed him an incorrectly prepared pufferfish and wouldn't feel bad if he ended up hurling and feeling awful.
That was what he got for ruining her dreams like he did, for something she couldn't control. Lydia only regretted that she hadn't left sooner, when she noticed they didn't appreciate her, not at all.
Even if it hurt, even if that pain filled her, the sweet success of her words counteracted that.
She walked out without one look back (except just once at the man's widened eyes and the thin trail of coffee down his chin that he accidentally spat out, in shock.) Never once did Lydia feel so liberated, so free and content, and proud of a man's suffering from a verbal lashing (without it turning physical).
Clasping her hands behind her, she knew what she'd decided in life and how closely she held the art of cooking to her. Grinning widely, she sprinted toward her godmother's bar to give her farewells and find out where the Whitebeard Pirates were now.