Title: Replacements
Theme: Cook
Words: 2,188
Rating: K+
Warnings: Nami's temper?
Notes: This is by far the longest, and the most fun to write. ^^
Summary: When your cook's down, who makes lunch?
Replacements
By Dandy Wonderous
No one was more surprised than Sanji when his leg gave out underneath him and he fell hard on his knees in the middle of the kitchen.
Chopper nearly knocked down the table trying to get to him as the chef started coughing violently, one arm raised as a shield against germs while the other hand massaged his leg. The one, Chopper remembered, that had gotten hurt in their last scrap with the marines. The wound he had assured the doctor was "just a scratch."
"Chopp-hack-er!" he protested hoarsely as the little reindeer started tugging at his pant leg. "Stop it! I told you, it's nothing-cough-to worry about!"
"Oh yeah?" Chopper managed to roll up his slacks to his knee, revealing a patch of skin that was noticeably red, raw, and inflamed. "Aah! It's infected!"
"It's fine!" Chopper looked at him skeptically, and he defended weakly with, "I washed it with soap…"
"Sanji! A wound this big is going to take a lot more than soap!" He switched to Heavy Point before the cook could protest further, pulling him up forcefully. "Come on, to the sickbay!"
Everyone else laughed at the struggling man's protests, except Luffy, who, upon Sanji's mention of having to cook lunch, got suddenly very worried about missing a meal and ordered Chopper to make Sanji better, quickly. Chopper agreed and shut the door behind them.
"Well?" Sanji asked once his wound had been cleaned and disinfected and he had been stuck with more needles than he wanted to be stuck with, unless it was by a sexy acupuncture therapist, of course.
"You're lucky," said Chopper with a sigh. "If you had let it go much further, I would've had to amputate your leg." He looked up at the blonde's sudden pallor and scrunched his nose in annoyance. "And I thought Zoro was the only one I had to worry about when it came to stuff like this."
"Don't compare me to that shithead," he muttered, but he had to admit that even Zoro wasn't stupid enough to let his own leg rot off. "So am I free to go no-umph!"
Chopper held the thermometer in his mouth while he pouted, folding his arms in annoyance. After a few minutes the reindeer pulled it out, ignoring Sanji's heated comments about "the emergency food supply." "You still have a fever," he announced. "The infection's not gone yet."
"I feel fine," Sanji protested, though the fine sheen of sweat on his brow and the almost imperceptible shake of his hands betrayed that he was, in fact, not fine.
"I'm not saying it's bad enough to lock you up here," Chopper assured him. "But you need to rest. It'll be good for your leg if you stay off it, anyway."
"But lunch-"
"Rest," he asserted. "Just for today?"
Sanji tried to fight the concern in his eyes with a harsh glare, but, damn it, the little reindeer was just too cute. He finally sighed in defeat and pulled himself up onto the sick bay's cot. "Well, you're the doctor."
"Calling me doctor won't make me happy, asshole!"
"How's Sanji-kun?" Nami asked when Chopper emerged on the deck, noticeably cook-less.
"He'll be fine, but I'm making him rest for awhile," the doctor replied.
"Aw, but then who's gonna make lunch?" Luffy explained, earning him a fist to the head from Nami.
"Is that all you're worried about!?!"
"If you're so worried about lunch, Captain-san, why don't we cook it ourselves?" Robin suggested, closing her book.
A silence fell over the crew at the thought.
"Well, I suppose we could," Nami agreed slowly, and Luffy threw his hands in the air.
"Woo-hoo! Let's cook lots and lots of meat!"
"You know, back when I was four, I won many awards for my elegant cuisine," Usopp began, earning sparkling eyes from Luffy and Chopper.
"Then you should be head chef, Usopp!" the dazzled reindeer cheered.
Usopp chuckled. "Oh, I couldn't… but if you insist-"
"NO! I'm the captain of the kitchen!" Luffy protested.
Zoro raised an eyebrow. "Captain of the kitchen?"
"Yohohohoho! I'll lend a hand. Ah, but I have no hands."
"Ow! Let's make a SUPA lunch and surprise Cook-bro!"
Nami hated to suspect Robin of doing anything bad, but she had a strange feeling that the archeologist had suggested they make lunch purely for her own amusement.
She supposed the first mistake was having Zoro cut vegetables. It had seemed like a fairly plausible idea at the time (if he was good with swords he should be good with knives), but he chopped so haphazardly that carrots and lettuce were soon flung everywhere. Finally she took them away from him and instructed him to cook the string beans instead, leaving the vegetables to Robin instead.
Chopper and Usopp were baking bread, under VERY close supervision, of course. Luffy had been helping, but after he decided it would taste better if he dumped in a pound of sugar he was taken off bread detail. At least the second loaf was now baking smoothly, if a bit lopsided and misshapen.
Franky and Brooke were in charge of the meat, grilled fish, which wasn't coming along too badly; at least Franky had some sort of cooking experience.
As for Nami herself, she was making dessert, a mikan cake she had inherited from Bellamere. She was just putting the batter in the cake pan when Zoro approached her.
"String beans're done."
She turned to inspect his work and nearly beat the stuffing out of him, right then and there, in frustration. "What the hell happened to them? They're all… stringy." To prove her point, she pulled one out of the pot, which was, indeed, a string bean that had been reduced to a genuine string.
"Isn't that the point?"
"No! What the hell kind of bean have you ever seen look like this!?!"
Zoro gave it a thoughtful look. "The string kind?"
"You, no more cooking!" she roared, pointing angrily for the door.
"Tch. Like I wanted to help, anyway." With that he took a seat at the dining room table and promptly fell asleep.
"I wonder," said Robin with a half-smile, "if Swordsman-san really does not know what string beans are, or if he just wanted to get out of work."
"Either way, his interest just tripled," Nami muttered darkly, turning back to the batter. "LUFFY, OUT!!!" She smacked the rubbery hand away.
"Aww! But Nami, I don't have a job!"
She sighed, picking up the cake pan. "Okay, okay, here's a job for you."
She took the finished bread out of the oven (it was a little underdone, maybe, but passable) and set the cake inside. "Listen carefully, Luffy," she said slowly, forcing him to look into her eyes. He nodded, jiggling in anticipation. "You are going to stand here and watch the cake-"
"Watch the cake? That's boooring!"
"No, listen, it's very important! Because there are… little imps inside the oven."
Luffy's eyes grew wide. "Imps?"
"Yeah, yeah," she said quickly, amazed he was buying it. "And if you don't watch the cake, they'll eat it!"
"What!?! They won't get our cake!" Luffy turned to watch it attentively, and she spun him back to look at her again.
"Yes, yes, but pay attention, this is the most important part. When the timer dings, put on the oven mitts-" she stressed it, knowing he would forget anyway, "-and take out the cake. Then we'll frost it. Okay?"
"Okay!" He turned to watch the cake, and Nami sighed in exasperation. Well, at least HE'S out of the way…
"Fish are done!" Franky announced, and she hurried to look. The fish looked odd… and smelled awful.
"What did you do? Those don't look very edible at all!"
The two interim cooks examined their handiwork, and then Brooke said, "Ah. We probably should have cleaned them first."
"AURGH!!!"
Brooke and Franky were banished to the dining room table alongside Zoro.
As Nami slammed the door she smelt smoke in the air and felt her eyebrow twitch. Do I even want to look?
She turned around and found smoke pouring from the oven. Rushing over, she pushed a panicking Luffy out of the way and reached for the pan. With a curse she did exactly what she had thought Luffy would do and was promptly scolded by said captain, who smugly grabbed the pan with his oven mitts and put the charred cake on the counter.
"What did you do to it?" she demanded, looking forlornly at the remains of her cake.
"I thought that turning the heat up would make it cook faster," he explained, as though it was the most brilliant idea in the world.
Nami groaned. She should have seen that one coming.
Luckily, she had planned for Luffy related incidents, and had made extra batter. She grabbed the bowl and a spoon and started stirring.
"Let me help!" Luffy whined. "I'm the captain!"
"No!"
Luffy wrenched the spoon from her grasp, and before she could yell "Your interest just quadrupled!" he had the bowl as well and was twisting his rubber arm around and around.
"This won't end well," said Usopp, already starting his retreat.
"I give up," Nami muttered, while Robin laughed.
"Gomu Gomu no… STIRRING!"
Sanji, pulling slowly and hazily from sleep, realized with slight annoyance that Chopper must have slipped something into that milk he so kindly brought him. Embarrassing really, for a chef to be drugged like that, but he had to admit that he felt much better after the nap. So good, in fact, that he had decided to see if another would make him feel even better, when a lot of yelling, banging, and splatting came from somewhere beyond the sick bay walls.
It took a moment before his brain caught up with his ears, but he realized that the ruckus was coming from his kitchen.
Red lights and sirens flashed before Sanji's eyes; someone (or, more likely, someones) was messing around in his domain. And probably wrecking everything. Which meant someone was going to soon be too sore to sit down.
He pushed himself out of bed reluctantly, half tempted to just keep sleeping and deal with cleaning and murder later. But an ominous crash forced his hand and he warily went to the galley.
He opened the door and leaned against the frame, his leg still a little sore, and stared in shock at the scene before him. Everyone was complaining or yelling, batter was splattered on walls, furniture, and people, the remains of a ceramic bowl were in the floor, there was smoke everywhere, and it was all punctuated by several odd smells. It took seconds for his experienced eye to size everything up.
"Ahem…" he said slowly, and everyone stopped panicking/snarling/strangling Luffy to look at him.
"Um… hi, Sanji," said Usopp slowly.
"I thought I told you to rest!" yelled Chopper nervously.
For a moment Sanji said nothing. He took a deep breath and blew out the air in a stream, almost as though he had a cigarette in his mouth.
Then he spoke.
"Let me guess: the bits of carrots are from where you let shitty marimo chop vegetables, the smell is because someone forgot to clean the fish, the smoke is because someone burned a cake, the ruined batter in the sink probably has too much salt or sugar, and there's more batter everywhere because Luffy wanted to stir."
For a moment there was only shocked silence. And then everyone nodded.
"Wow, Sanji… you must be psychic," said Chopper in awe.
Sanji continued to stare ominously at them all, and everyone sans Zoro and Robin shrank back in fear. They now realized that they had crossed a serious line, and retribution was coming on swift wings, or rather, swift feet.
But then the chef did something no one expected.
He started laughing. It started as a chuckle, then grew to a guffaw that morphed to a bellow. He doubled over and then sank to the floor, tears of merriment wetting the corners of his eyes.
It took a second before everyone realized he was laughing at them. Then they all looked rather murderous, some (Zoro) more so than others (Chopper). They seemed to mentally debate whether to beat him up for laughing at their efforts, and in that time got a good look at each other and themselves.
Batter was in everyone's hair, Franky's sunglasses and Brooke's hat had been knocked off, Chopper had it dribbling into his eye, Zoro had a cake batter eye patch…
It started with Luffy, and then they were all laughing with Sanji.
Once the roar dimmed a bit, the cook managed to get to his feet and stagger, still chortling, over to the counter. "How about I help you guys finish lunch?" he suggested.
Everyone nodded in agreement.
"I'll stir again!"
"NO!"
"Aww… but it was fun…"
Sanji rolled his eyes at his captain and turned to direct the rest of the crew's cooking. For once, he decided, a mess in his kitchen was completely worth it.
The End
*gigglesnort* Oven imps. XP