Campfire

"Oi, Franky! I want to have a campfire! Can you make one?"

"Sure, captain-bro! I'll make a super campfire for us tonight, just wait?"

The raven-haired captain bounced up and down excitedly on the grassy deck. "Yay! I can't wait!" He hollered out to the crew.

"Yeah, I know, but you do realize that it's noon, right?" Usopp asked the energetic captain.

"So what?" he replied innocently.

"You can't have a campfire until it's dark out!"

"You can't! No way! But I want a campfire now!"

"Too bad! You have to wait!"

Luffy pouted for a while before sitting down next to the fishing Usopp and whining.

"Lunch!" Called the cook from next to the table, full of plates holding delectable-looking food, steam gently rising from them.

"Yay! Food!" Luffy hollered, flinging himself toward the table. Soon the meal was in full swing, complete with loud shouting and laughing, and even louder shouts of, "Hey Luffy, that's mine!"

The afternoon passed in a relatively quiet fashion. Being on the Thousand Sunny however, that meant that there were loud games played between the younger crewmates and an incredible amount of attempted kitchen raids. There were explosive fights between Zoro and Sanji which the crew now knew well enough to stay far away from, and the frequent banging of Franky building a fire pit. All of this was punctured with the altogether too frequent calls of, "Is it night yet?" and "How much longer?" by the impatient captain.

Finally, after dinner was devoured and the sun fell beneath the horizon Franky brought out his new invention. The metal gleamed in the moonlight and the wood scraps inside were set ablaze by his flamethrower breath. Then the cyborg handed out marshmallow roasting sticks, while the cook set out a plate of smore ingredients.

"Oh, look at this!" Luffy laughed while waving around a flaming marshmallow. Chopper's eyes widened in amazement.

"Wow! Look at Sanji's!" Usopp pointed out. The cook was twirling an exquisite golden-brown marshmallow on his stick. He deftly sandwiched it in between two gram crackers and a chunk of chocolate before taking a bite out of it.

"Perfect," he announced.

"Oh, that's what you're supposed to do with this stuff?" Luffy asked, one hand in a box of gram crackers and the other maneuvering a stick with as many charred marshmallows as he could fit on it into his mouth. The captain had chocolate smeared across his face, but his wide grin was contagious.

"Of course that's what you're supposed to do with it, idiot." The cook turned to face the lounging swordsman sitting next to him, brandishing his half-eaten smore. "I'd like to see you do that, Marimo."

"Yeah? You wanna bet?"

Soon both crew members had marshmallows over the flames and were knocking each-others out of the way to get the best roasting spot.

Robin giggled softly, her eyes full of laughter. Nami, sitting next to her, joined into her laughter until the fighting duo jostled her marshmallow. Then she wacked them on the head with her climatact and told them to stay on their side of the fire. They grumblingly obeyed but it wasn't long before their argument heated up again.

Luffy, Usopp, and Franky were busy trying to see who could get their marshmallow the most burnt. Franky was winning, with the added help of his mouth flamethrower. Chopper was lightly roasting his, taking only one mouthful of a burnt marshmallow to decide that he didn't like them.

After the marshmallows were gone, the crew slowly drifted to sleep where they sat. Zoro fell asleep first, then Chopper leaning against the sleeping swordsman. Usopp fell asleep up next to the fuzzy doctor, hand resting in his fur. Franky fell asleep next, extinguishing the fire before he drifted off, Robin sleeping by his side. Sanji fell asleep afterward, starting upright but drooping onto the swordsman next to him. Nami smiled softly at the sleepers before drifting off to sleep herself, her arm wrapped possessively around her captain.

Luffy was the last one awake. He looked around at his nakama, the things that were the most precious in the world to him. Their lives were more important to him than his own, their dreams more important than his. But he had chosen them all carefully. They were his perfect, hand-picked crew.

The stars above glimmered, out of reach. They were like the dreams that they sought, close enough to see, yet too far to touch. But that didn't matter to Luffy. He would become the king of pirates, and every single nakama of his would achieve their dreams, whatever the world threw at them. That was his final though before sinking into sleep, surrounded by the nakama that he loved.