"Hey, Luffy, where did these come from? And why do we have them?" Nami called, coming into the kitchen.
Everybody looked up, confused. She held up a pair of gas masks, with the Strawhat symbol painted over the front of them.
"Oh, yeah, I forgot about those!" Luffy exclaimed.
"Why do we have them?" She asked again.
"Because of that idiot Kree." Luffy said simply.
"Who?" Was echoed. Although four of them had an idea of who Luffy was talking about. They were pretty used to Luffy completely butchering names of people that he didn't deem important enough to remember.
"Kree. That guy who tried to take over Sanji and the old man's restaurant." Luffy said, tilting his head and wondering if they had a hard time hearing him this morning.
"He means Krieg. Don Krieg of the East Blue." Sanji said with a sigh, and wondered if Gin was still hanging in there. They hadn't been able to get the poison completely out of his system, if he remembered right. "One of his many weapons was poison gas. All of his crew had masks, but he'd told Gin to throw his away after Gin refused to kill me. Gin was loyal enough to do it, too. Luffy managed to snatch two masks from a pair of Krieg pirates, but wasn't able to find one for himself, so Gin threw him his, and made sure I couldn't remove mine." He said quietly and slowly, relating a story that neither he nor Luffy had shared before.
"When it was all over, and they all left, we found a bunch of gas masks left behind. So, I took them." Luffy said simply. Sanji and Yosaku had been bored enough to spend the trip to get Nami painting his pirate mark on them.
"Why?" Usopp asked, confused.
"Kree was cowardly enough to use poison gas, and on one of his own men, even. I'm sure there are more like him in the world." Luffy said simply.
He wasn't about to let his crew need something like that, and not have it.
Sanji nodded his agreement. They hadn't seen what Gin looked like after having that gas used on him.
Nami looked down at the masks in her hand. "In that case... we better carry one on us at all times. I'm sure there will be plenty of places on these seas where the air isn't fit to breathe. And who knows, there's probably a Devil Fruit out there letting somebody control poison." She snorted, knowing that it was probably the case.
"True."
"I'll go figure something out to carry them for those of us who don't use pockets." Robin suggested, glancing at Chopper. His bag was full of medical supplies, he didn't have the luxury of taking any of those supplies out to make room for a gas mask. Zoro didn't regularly wear anything with pockets, either, and neither did Luffy. Usopp had his bag with his slingshot and ammo, so she wasn't too worried about him, he had room in there for one more thing. He deliberately kept space in there to fit anything he might pick up while away from the ship, anything that he might be able to study and adapt to use as ammunition.
"I'll adapt one to be able to fit Chopper in all his forms." Usopp offered, eyeing the small reindeer. In his human/yeti form, he could fit a mask on easily. His face in his smaller, more preferred form, however, might be a bit of a looser fit, which you didn't really want in a gas mask. His natural form as a reindeer, though... that might prove to be more difficult yet.
Zoro chuckled with a smirk. "You always surprise me, Luffy." He muttered, eyeing his captain fondly.