One Piece: In Hell!
by Laydee Jiraya
There's an old joke which goes something like this: in heaven, the French are the chefs, the Italians are the lovers, the British are the police, the Germans are the mechanics, and the Swiss make everything run on time. In hell, the British are the chefs, the Swiss are the lovers, the French are the mechanics, the Italians make everything run on time, and the Germans are the police.
If the world of One Piece were hell, Zoro would be the navigator. . . .
Chapter 1: The Mirror Mirror Fruit!
Identities Swapped!
"ZORO-SWAAAN!" A curly eyebrow twirled in delight, while the mouth a little further down inhaled a half-gone cigarette with deep breaths. Agile hands grasped a coffee cup and a plate, while the figure bearing them sauntered over, eyes transformed to hearts. This behavior was all very typical for Sanji, aside from who it was directed toward—and aside from the fact that this wasn't Sanji. It was Luffy.
Anyone would have assumed, naturally, that Luffy was making fun of Sanji, using his rubbery face to pull off an uncanny impersonation. Anyone who saw the way Zoro and the rest of the crew were acting would soon realize there was something else going on entirely.
"Not now, Luffy! This is terrible!" Zoro looked on the verge of faint, complete terror filling his presence. That was when Sanji burst through the door. Luffy had been cooking since dawn (although most of it was already eaten), the result being a kitchen laid to ruins and a smoldering stove, ten broken plates, and an almost-empty fridge. Normally, Sanji would have killed him. But this Sanji was different. This Sanji had an aura of cool, and an open shirt. And this Sanji was wearing nothing below the waist but a pair of tight black briefs.
His arms shot in the air, in a pose which was copyright to Franky.
"This week's me is feeling really SUPAH!" He grinned widely, and his arms fell as he strode over to the table, and plunked himself down. The way he walked, with his legs and arms spread wide, gave the idea that he thought he was a lot bigger than he actually was. "Oi, cook-bro! Gimme a cola, would ya?"
"Teme! Don't interrupt Zoro-swan!" Luffy almost caught fire in his outrage, but couldn't quite pull it off. He turned to Zoro. "Zoro-swan, my love! What ever can be the matter?"
"We've drifted off course!" A crumpled map got plunked down in the table. "I've managed to narrow down our location, but why . . . why don't I . . ." Luffy and Sanji leaned in to look at the map. It was a map of the universe, with the Milky Way vaguely circled. "WHY DON'T I KNOW HOW TO NAVIGATE?" Zoro's cry echoed out the door, across the ocean, and finally up into outer space—thoroughly blanketing all the areas he thought they might be in.
It all started last night, but they didn't know it, mostly because they couldn't put their finger on what, if anything, was wrong.
That night, everyone had been themselves, doing the things they would typically do: Robin was reading, Brooke was playing music, and Franky and Usopp were tinkering with the cannons, for example. And Sanji—Sanji was cooking, although little did he know that this particular dish would be the one thing no one but Luffy would eat. It was gorgeous, balmy weather, with a cool humid breeze and lots of sunlight and clouds, so they decided to have a picnic on the lawn of the Thousand Sunny, and waited for what Sanji had promised would be an unusual delicacy, an acquired taste well worth acquiring. Luffy got forced into helping Sanji bring the plates out.
And then, everyone looked at their dinner in horror and dismay. Chopper poked it with his hoof, mostly to feel for a pulse and determine whether or not it was still alive.
"What the hell is this, shit-cook?" Zoro bitched, and shoved the plate back at him. "Take it back and cook it!"
"It's steak tartare! It's meant to be served raw!" he fumed, fists clenching at his sides.
"And what's with this egg? A raw egg?" Nami frowned at it, not even willing to touch the thing. "Really Sanji, I can't eat this." Sanji's lower lip trembled, while tears threatened to flow.
"N-Nami-swan?"
"It can't be that bad," Franky noted. "Let's just try it." He took a bite. Nobody else joined him. A few chews, and a swallow. His face conveyed no particular emotion—and then, he went and hung his head over the rails, puking his guts out.
"Ah! He's got food poisoning!" Chopper cried out. "Doctor! We need a doctor! . . . Oh right, that's me."
"Take it back and cook it, shit-cook!" Zoro screamed. "That's your job! Do your fucking job!"
"Teme! I'd like to see you do better!"
"I've already done better! My food's never made anyone puke!"
"Actually," Nami began, and raised her hand.
"What, you think cooking is so easy?" Their foreheads were now pressed together as they screamed pointlessly in each other's faces. Luffy was using the distraction to nab everyone's unwanted steak tartare. Sanji broke their temples apart, mostly so he could lean back the proper distance to deliver a good kick. It didn't matter, because Zoro dodged it anyways, and pulled out his katanas. "Do you—" his verbal flow got interrupted as he moved out of the way of a blade. "Do you have any idea how much I do for this crew? How many dishes I wash? How many hours I stand around over a hot stove, baka-marimo?"
Zoro just smirked, and stopped trying to get at him. "So what, you think you do more than anyone else, or something?"
"I sure as hell do more than you!"
"What's that supposed to mean?" The shoes and blades were out again, thin metal edges impacting on tough rubbery soles. Everyone who wasn't puking over the railing just sat around watching in silent awe, like they were at a tennis match, heads turning back and forth to look at whoever was currently yelling.
"What it means—" kick—"is that all you do is fucking sleep!"
"I help you dry dishes!" Swing.
"Oh, what a vital chore! Baka-marimo dries dishes every once in a while! What would we possibly do without him?"
"Cook-san is sarcastic," Robin commented, and looked amused.
"Hmm." Luffy frowned. "Sanji! Zoro does a lot more than you!"
"NANI?" Sanji just stopped, his foot still hanging in the air as he glared over, and his pupils were very tiny. A nice big vein had started to throb in the visible half of his temple. For some odd reason, Zoro also froze, waiting patiently for the cook's attention to return, as if he didn't really want to hurt him—as if this wasn't really a fight, but a dance, something which required the cooperation of partners.
The captain's face cracked into a massive crescent moon of a grin.
"When he fights, he uses three swords! And you use only two legs! Shishishi!"
"ARRRRAAAHHHHH!" And with that, the cook was engulfed in flames. "Luffy," he gasped, his voice turned to a raspy whisper in his barely-restrained fury. The man before Luffy towered over him in a column of fire and smoke. His pupils contracted even further, then disappeared—leaving nothing but white in their place, and the idea that, with the flames and whatnot, Luffy was looking at some demon from hell. "We're not talking about fighting. We're talking about work."
"Hmm? I thought fighting was work." He tilted his head to the side, looking completely oblivious to the fact that Sanji was on fire, and possibly about to murder him. Robin noticed this, and decided to speak up.
"Sencho-san, I hate to tell you this, but cook-san is right. You, cook-san, and swordsman-san all fight very hard, but—"
Nami nodded, seeing where this was going, and finished it for her. "But when nothing's going on, Zoro sleeps, you goof off, and Sanji is still working." Suddenly the flames died out.
"Nami-swan! Robin-chwan! Of course you understand!" He clamped his hands firmly to his heart, one on top of the other, while his eyes became heart-shaped and he seemed to nearly float over the deck.
"I think cook-san is bipolar," Robin noted, and Sanji confirmed this by falling to the deck in a deep depression.
Luffy thought about this. "Hmm. . . . But food tastes good. So it can't be that hard to make, right?" His logic was beyond all of them.
"Luffy," Sanji gasped, looking up. "I wish for one day—just one day—" He stood, and lit a cigarette. Storm clouds were gathering, blotting out the setting sun like ink spilled on a wet watercolor painting. "That you could walk around in my shoes."
A figure nobody had noticed perched atop the crow's nest listened to those words, and chuckled mildly to itself. A wide scarf blew behind his back in such a way as to convey the idea of wings, while the intruder's face hid in the shade of a pinstriped fedora's brim—aside from a mild curve of smirk. He replayed those words in his mind. That was a prescription he could fill.
"Yosh! Here are my sandals! Gimme your shoes!"
"Baka! It was a figure of speech!" The people on deck moved around as tiny points of existence, like ants in a colony. From this distance, and this state of unfamiliarity with them, the figure wondered what their identities were fully like—and if any of them would be able to resist his Mirror Mirror fruit.
Author's Note:
Some characters may have been slightly OOC at times. This is bound to shamelessly continue. Forgive me.
~LJ
