Chapter 4: Interpol the Mummy!
Smoker Appears!
"In order to make a diagnosis, I will need to see your panties," Brook informed her. The skeleton sat in Chopper's short rolly chair, a chair he was clearly too big for, with a stethoscope 'round his neck. To the casual observer, it would appear that Brooke had also been subjected to the Kagami Kagami no Mi's powers—but that was not the case. Nami went a miraculous shade of persimmon.
"WHAT?"
Upon waking, Brook had stretched his skeletal arms, rolled out of bunk, and put on a puffy shirt which spoke of an ancient and tacky age of pirating—the kind of shirt which went with an eye-patch and a hook hand. Everyone was moving about, and as he observed them with a blank expression (the default one for a skeleton), he began to notice that they were acting differently.
Sanji was pretending to be the shipwright, who in turn was acting very reserved yet a bit surprised to be in the men's quarters—he supposed he was pretending to be Robin. Luffy's Sanji impersonation was unmatched. Zoro was also upset about being in the men's quarters, insisting that something weird was going on. Luffy was hitting on him and Franky, like Sanji would Nami and Robin, who they in turn were supposed to be. Usopp and Chopper were still asleep.
They must be playing some sort of game, he thought—and wanting to be part of the crowd, he promptly went along with it.
Chopper, Usopp, Luffy, and Zoro were the roles not taken. Zoro and Usopp would be boring. Luffy would be too exhausting. Well, he decided. I think I might like to play doctor! Yohoho!
Back in the present, Nami was staring at him with a murderous glare mixed with disbelief. She couldn't recall clearly who the doctor was supposed to be—and he was sitting in the infirmary with a stethoscope round his neck—but she got the distinct impression that something was amiss here. She decided to test him.
"Brooke," she asked cautiously. "How are you supposed to treat a broken leg?"
"Broken leg?" he wondered. Had they researched for their parts? This wasn't fair! She was trying to make him get out of character. He decided to just give it his best guess. If he had a broken leg, he would . . . "Drink a glass of milk, and then walk on it! Yohoho!"
The trouble was, Nami (as Zoro) wasn't entirely sure what to do about a broken leg anyways. To her, the correct answer was pretty much what he'd just said, minus the milk part. "Ah. I hadn't thought of milk. You're a pretty good doctor," she concluded. "I'll keep that in mind next time my legs are broken."
"So you'll show me your panties then?" But that question was never answered, because it was cut off by the sound of screaming—not screams of terror, but the sound of a guitar wailing out a bad note through an amplifier turned all the way up, and the screams which came with that as everyone stuffed their fingers in their ears.
Sanji wasn't sure why, but he got the distinct impression that there was usually more music playing than the current amount, which was none at all—so he took it upon himself to serenade the crew, being of the idea that he knew how to play the guitar. Loud strums of discord curled into the air, each one stabbing the people who heard it in the head, making its own cacophony rebound out their mouths.
"YAMETE!" Luffy roared, and kicked the amplifier over, but didn't break it. Sanji pounced on him, punching his face in.
"DON'T KICK MY EQUIPMENT, YOU PUNK!" That was Allpunk Interpol's cue to leap down from his position at the top of the crow's nest, where, as before, everyone had failed to notice him. Punk. He smiled to himself. He was certainly that. Nami and Brooke burst out the infirmary door right next to him, making his face pale even further than normal, and he ducked into Nami's mandarin trees, trying to swallow down the lump in his throat.
"Quit hurting the ladies' ears! If they go deaf and can't hear me call their names, I'll kill you!"
"We're fine, really," the real Franky insisted.
"I don't know what's wrong with me. I can't figure out how to play it . . . but . . . no, I'll have it in a second," he promised, and got up from his position pinning Luffy down. He unplugged the amplifier and sat down on the deck, strumming vaguely while testing out how to move his fingers. He pulled a cord chart out of the pocket of the guitar's black case, and got to experimenting.
One thing could be said for the real Sanji—he was skilled with his fingers, and he had an excellent memory, hence how he recalled every ingredient which went in almost every recipe on earth. Within twenty minutes he'd figured out how to play it, and he plugged the amplifier back in. Nobody was outside anymore except for Zoro, who was looking sullenly at the cloud he'd been following, which looked like a bull at first, but which had morphed into an orange in front of his eyes. He was sure it was now a different cloud, and thus not certain he should be following it anymore.
"You look worried, sista. Wanna help me put on a concert?"
Zoro looked up from his position of slumped over the rails. "Ah!" Within five minutes they'd obtained a boombox, a playlist, and the real Franky's blatant refusal to participate, on the grounds that this was embarrassing as a human being. So they got Robin instead, who was too out of it as Luffy to let anything embarrass her.
"ALL HANDS ON DECK!" Zoro screamed, and he sounded urgent, so everyone ran outside and gathered—but there was a smile on his face, as he pressed buttons on the boombox. The sounds of Boston's "More Than a Feeling" leaked out, augmented by Sanji serenading them with the guitar and his surprisingly good voice. The sweetest riff, and he noticed that Zoro and Robin were just standing there.
"Oi! You're supposed to be the floozies! Dance!"
"Woo! I'm a floozy!" Robin cheered, flailing about. She had no idea at this moment what a floozy was. Zoro just blushed.
"Chotto matte! I can't dance to that!"
"C'mon! Sing with me!" He started swishing about towards him, dancing skillfully.
"NO! I see why Franky said this was embarrassing as a human being. I—I'll pick the next song, and do it then!"
"You're not getting out of it that easy," Sanji sighed, and pulled the guitar strap over his head, laying it down against the rails. Interpol peeked around the corner just in time to watch Sanji slip one of his hands into Zoro's, and put the other on his waist. Luffy wasn't sure why, but this reminded him of something he couldn't put his finger on, and it made him turn a deep and ghastly shade of red. Nami felt the same way about it, and couldn't stand looking at it—nor looking away.
Everyone else had gotten bored and wandered off, except those four and Robin. When they actually started to dance together, Interpol burst into the loudest laugh imaginable—it was too much, with Zoro in a dress like that, and Sanji in his underwear—and that laugh was too much, because everyone heard it, and froze. Robin pushed the button on the stereo and listened, eyes wide. And then she caught sight of that face, peering around at them from the far side of the ship, hands clamped to his mouth.
"YOU!" The face disappeared, but that didn't stop her from running after. "MATTE!" She got to the other side of the wall just in time to watch Interpol zip around another corner, filled with incredible panic. The winged bear he'd had carry him here had already flown back, and wouldn't pick him up again for another hour—those had been the orders. There was no escape.
He darted into a door he knew from his last visit belonged to a bathroom, and locked it. But, no, he couldn't just wait in here until the bear showed up—he wouldn't see what was going on with them all if he did that. So he would need a way to go about them without them realizing he was the intruder they had just spotted. He would need a disguise. And all he had to use, at the moment, was toilet paper.
The sun set, the sky turning dark. It was the perfect time to try something like that. And from what he'd seen and heard of their idiot captain, it was the most . . . awesome . . . disguise of all.
A guy wrapped in strips of TP from head to toe stepped forward, leering at them with what he assumed was a scary face. Fingers clawed forward, clenching the air as he cackled. A single thought transversed through the minds of everyone present—everyone but one person. There's no way anybody would be scared of th—
"WAAAAHHH! A . . . A MUMMY!" Robin recoiled, face contorted in the stupidest look of terror anyone had ever seen.
"Oh?" The mummy looked confused. "Did I actually scare someone?"
And then there were stars in Robin's eyes. That wasn't a look of terror—it was awe. Bingo. It had worked. "SUGE! YOU'RE SO AWESOME! Which pharaoh were you?"
"Um . . . I was all of them."
"REALLY? Can I have your autograph?"
"Sure. Who should I make it out to?"
"Make it out to me! Oh yes, and I'm Robin!" Zoro, Nami, and Luffy's eyes squinted into narrow slits.
The wannabe mummy tore a strip of toilet paper from his forearm, and produced a pen. Scribbles started lining up across its surface, and then he handed it to Robin. Nami couldn't help but look over her shoulder. To Robin, Love King Tut, Ramses #1—24, Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Bob Hope.
"Ahhh! He was even Bob Hope!"
"You're an idiot." She smacked her upside the head. Franky was convulsing in stifled snickers.
"Thanks for appreciating all that we do," the mummy said, and pointed his finger at her like a gun, then made a clicking sound in the side of a crooked smirk. "I'm so happy! I've never met a fan before! Wah! The world is spinning! It's making me dizzy with excitement! Round and round it goes!" Actually, he had just started twirling about on the toes of one foot, his other leg stuck out behind him. Zoro facepalmed.
"No, you're just spinning around!" He stopped.
"Oh. . . . Wait, really? WEHEHEHEHE! When I spin, the world spins with me!"
"How did you even reach that conclusion?"
"WHOA! You're so powerful! Do it again!" They were . . . both so stupid. He started up again, his spins augmented with hummed strains of the Blue Danube. And then a flying bit of TP swooped past Luffy, and he thought, no, I mustn't. That's just too mean. So he did.
His fist closed around the strip and pulled it, yanking fistfuls of toilet paper from the intruder's body, unraveling him as he spun. By the time he'd stopped, they were left staring at a pale-haired guy with no clothes. Interpol looked down.
"AH!"
"AH!" Robin shouted, her finger pointing at him in accusation. "YOU'RE NOT A MUMMY AT ALL!"
"Don't look at me! Oh, the shame!" And then he ran away, his white pasty ass retreating into the darkness. Robin slammed a fist down into an opened palm.
"This is unforgivable! We were tricked!"
"Don't say 'we,'" Zoro sighed, and shook his head.
". . . Wait," Robin realized. "Was that the guy from earlier?" This time, they all facepalmed.
"Of course," Luffy muttered around his cigarette. "The question is, what the hell is doing on our ship?"
"That and, 'Why is he such a pervert?'" Zoro muttered, beet red. "I mean, walking around in nothing but TP on someone else's ship? Seriously?" But his offended rant got cut off, as a dozen search lights thrashed across the water to land in bright patches, rippling across the Thousand Sunny's flat surfaces, curves, and nooks. It reflected off the porthole windows, and streamed past the dark spot in the tangerines where Interpol had been hiding, slipping over his toes.
The loud wail of a megaphone being turned on, and a gruff voice booming through it. "THIS IS SMOKER. COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP."
