He wasn't prepared for the she-serpent to actually launch out of the water and drag herself over the grass like a frantic eel. Sanji had to step aside to let her pass, even when it meant that she had scared the living daylights out of Usopp, Chopper and Nami-san. A quick glance towards Zoro told him that the swordsman wasn't nearly as relaxed as a second ago.
Shizu had pulled all her impressive tail on solid ground by now, and boy was it that. He'd never actually seen her this up and close, counting when he'd managed to brace her pliant bones to the best of his ability. That had been a wrestle and now afterwards he was just glad she hadn't mauled him.
The chef hadn't thought that her lower body was that long, nor how it turned flat towards the end – most likely an evolutionary aid she shared with the rest of the serpentlike things in the ocean.
Well. Luffy seemed awfully interested in the sudden sealife beaching herself. Sanji watched how the captain pestered her with a rapid barrage of questions and exclamations. She on the other hand didn't look like she was doing well with the combination of dry land, people and all that was Luffy.
Sanji kicked the shitty captain in the head to get him away from her, telling him to get lost. Shizu's face might've not held a single known emotion, but if he looked closely at how her human back tensed and her eyes wandered from one person to another, he was pretty sure she was scared. Or confused.
"Why would you do that?" he asked out loud, mostly out of habit. She spared him a blank look even when she was already beginning to squirm. "You're going to suffocate. Go on, shoo, back to the water with you- or not, I guess..."
She'd pulled her lips back to reveal the rows of sharp teeth. His arm wisely retreated from biting range.
And then Usopp had pointed out rather loudly that this was the person who had torn up the giant's arm. Chopper, who hadn't been there when it had happened, looked up to the sniper and asked what he was talking about. Robin-chan had been speculatively quiet until then.
"Cook-san, I've never seen anything like her before," she regarded the she-serpent with a delicate hand on her chin. Ah, such elegance! "Would you enlighten me?"
Sanji rubbed the back of his head, smoothing out imaginary tangles. "She's ah... it's a she-serpent, Robin-chan. Have you ever heard of those?"
By the expression that spread over her face, she had. He wasn't so surprised about it, the mysterious, blue-eyed beauty was like a living library. He was glad when Robin-chan took over explaining what a she-serpent was and realised that Zeff hadn't known some things. Much of it sounded familiar, either he'd heard it from Zeff or he'd noticed it through interacting.
Chopper had tried to talk with her after hearing that she was techincally a fish, thus one of the animal kingdom. The doctor didn't fare any better at communications as Sanji did, making Chopper draw conclusions that she was either unwilling to talk with him, unable to understand him or simply couldn't talk. Sanji suspected it was a summary of all those things.
Shizu was vehemently not going back into the ocean and by now she was making a good imitation of a fish out of water. While fishmen had both lungs and gills of what he'd seen, she-serpents only had the latter. Luckily her self-preservation seemed to win over and they all helped her back in once she'd stop fighting against them.
They'd taken it rather well when Sanji'd explained that she was just following him around, never going deeper into how he'd come across her. He also found out that Luffy did know about her, only that Zoro'd drilled it into the captain's head not to talk about it.
All in all, a frazzling experience. The gut-wrenching feelings hadn't seized him like before, not until he realised that if they were going to follow where the log pose pointed, she wouldn't be able to come with them.