by Purple Mongoose/PallaPlease
--
Notes: Ha! See? Some of you wanted me to continue! I guess maybe I'm not going to be flogged for wanting to write kinda-sorta-smut. Anyway…apparently, I forgot to write some of the addresses for Sanji pics. Glorf – I'm an idiot, no? Check out for some suit-ariffic black-and-white sketches, for several sketches of his facial expressions (many mood swings), then for a color pic from the planner (both are related to the anime, by the way, not the manga – in which he's even cooler).
Sanji: Somehow this slipped my mind the first time around (ironically, actually, considering he's nearly constantly cooking), but Sanji also happens to be a chef. Apparently, a pretty darn good one, too. Additionally, Sanji has a particularly unique manner of fighting, as One Piece has a great deal of fighting in it – he kicks the ever-living tar out of bad guys. Seriously, he never uses his hands (as what kind of chef would mar the hands he prepares food with? So he puts it himself), and has kicks powerful enough to turn sand into rocks. 0o (A funny review for the anime has a caption under a Sanji-kicks-ass-literally pic stating: Riverdance…only much, much more painful.)
Time: The evening after the first part! And then the next day. Mm-mm, skittle goodness.
Continuity: Yep. Still following SMStars, with none for OP at all.
Other: Romance! Yes, there's more gooey romance shtuff coming up, with some kissing just to spice it all up. After all, who's to say Ami isn't a closet wild woman? (I know…she isn't. *sweatdrops*)
Summary: [One Piece/Sailor Moon] When Minako's plan for a relaxing evening after defeating the universe's greatest evil involved a nightclub, Ami was by no means expecting to actually enjoy herself!
Chapter: Crown Parlor is hiring help, and Ami is stunned to learn the new cook is none other than the lanky man who wooed her at Party's Club.
Pun: Makino of One Piece worked at Party's Bar (she is seen in the first issue of OP, and a few cameos later in the series). Nowadays bars are always included in a nightclub's design. ;]
--
--
I ain't straight outta Compton
I'm straight out the trailer
Cuss like a sailor
Drink like a mick
My only words of wisdom:
|Radio Edit|-Kid Rock, 'Cowboy'
--
--
"Thanks for inviting me over," Ami smiled quietly at the blonde currently embroiled with rubbing Artemis' upturned belly furiously. A pillow was launched at the smartest of the three via Makoto's lazy motions, her long arms arching daintily as the fluffy makeshift weapon struck her forehead, and she squeaked, ducking back against the wall from her futon. "Makoto!" she complained, holding two fingers to the injured spot and kicking limply the pillow back over the carpeting. "That was rude!"
"You sounded too surprised about sleeping over!" the much taller girl scolded, returning to setting up her previously rolled sleeping bag over the astonishingly clean floor. "God, you always seem convinced we think you're a hopeless nerd. Throw me my bag?" She caught the make-up purse with little effort, sliding it beside her returned pillow and unzipping it in quest of a toothbrush to match the nearly empty tube of toothpaste she already had set out. "Anyway, I met the cutest guy at the club," continued Makoto, and Minako, grinning, interrupted.
"Did he look like your old boyfriend?" she asked cutely, scratching the loudly purring ivory feline under his nose as his tail lashed contentedly. The girl with auburn hair granted her a dirty look, and she stuck her tongue out in rude response, scooping Artemis into her arms and plopping back onto the thin mattress of her single bed. "No need to be that way," she shook her finger in mock-lecture, teasing her cat's ears with her fingertips and swishing his fur about in brief hurricane whorls.
Ami smiled again, content with simply listening to her two friends exchange trails of conversation, and she primly lifted herself onto her knees, tugging the stuffed quilt over the stiff flatness of her traveling futon. Settling back a little, she smoothed out a wrinkle in her dark blue pajama bottoms, the warm flannel easily straightening under the pressure of her palms. "Um, Minako," she started in a voice painted through with a meek restraint, as Makoto, satisfied, snatched up toiletries and cheerily announced she was to clean her mouth as per every night.
Both girls made general piteous noises at the eldest one's departure and she merely laughed, waving dismissively at their affectionate teasing and disappearing on tiptoe into the hall so as to avoid the infamous wrath of Missus Aino. Still broadly smiling, Minako, golden hair twisted over her shoulder in an informal braid, switched her gaze from doorway to Ami, who began to worry if perhaps she should not have drawn attention to herself. "Yeah, Ami?" she asked, kicking her legs over the side of her cot and wiggling her toes energetically in the cool air conditioned atmosphere of her room.
"Um," she found herself stumbling on her words, and she slowly dropped her eyes to fiddling her fingers and thumbs together in ever-shifting patterns, "I wanted to," she stammered, uttering the occasional um and well as she tried to figure out how best to put it. "I enjoyed the club," she finally spat out, immediately clasping her hands together and ducking her chin to her collar as the soft skin of her cheeks reddened.
"Really?" Minako demanded in breathlessly pleased surprise, leaning forward excitedly and wrinkling her nose as she considered the words and expression on her friend's face. A thought occurred to her and she moved back again, patting Artemis' back in apologetic ruffling, a mischievous smile curving her full lips into a playful smirk that alarmed the smaller girl. "Ami," she sang, fingers growing a little more thoughtlessly callous against her cat's alabaster fur, "you didn't happen to meet a boy there, did you?" At the responding explosion of a blush and her frantic hiding of her face with small, pale hands, Minako launched backwards on her heels, rocking with the sheer delight. "Oh my God!" she squealed, throwing her hands up from Artemis and clapping them to her cheeks as her smile threatened to crack her facial muscles. "You did meet a guy! Oh, was he cute? Did he have a nice ass?"
"Minako!" Ami cried, aghast, from the shelter of her connected palms, and she drew her knees up in awkward arches as if they might protect her further. "That's a horrible thing to say!" Artemis, growing annoyed with his mistress' frequent mood swings, leapt from the bed and stalked, nose daintily held in the air, to the relatively calmer feline lover. "Hello, Artemis," she absently added, fitting her hands under his abdomen and easily moving him onto her lap; he rubbed his back against her ribs affectionately and, half-closing his eyes in smug triumph, purred softly while she stroked him with practiced expertise. "Anyway, I didn't look at his," she hesitated, "natural anatomical features."
Minako rolled her pale blue eyes expressively, hands wrapped over her knees, and spoke dryly, "Of course not. I assume it was his rapier wit that appealed to you straight off?"
The ensuing blush on the smaller girl's face more than answered it fully, and she continued to pet Artemis stately in spite of her own discomfort. "Not entirely, no," she answered in a tiny voice, keeping her dark blue eyes firmly locked on one spot in the sandy carpeting. "That is to say, I was impressed with his height right off, of course, what with him towering over me and all," she perceived dimly that it was highly possible she was babbling once more, as embarrassing as the flared redness in her cheeks, "and I didn't mean to imply he wasn't, ah, um…" Her voice trailed off, entering the realm of things far too tender a subject to attempt vocalizing in a successful manner, to judge by her history of internalizing potentially mortifying emotions.
"Physically endowed?" suggested Minako, kicking her bare foot from the delicate quilt covering her bed and grinning lasciviously. "Was he so utterly sexy you fell deep into his rapturous spell, kinkily sating that grooving itch he placed upon your mind with the heights of fantastical desire?"
Ami squeaked as she seemed oft to do, clapping her hands firmly over her face and shaking it rampantly from side to side, curling her toes into a smooth row of shells, and moaned, "Minako, that's a horrible thing to say!" She tried for a glare, splitting two of her fingers from the rest and peeking with one large, indignant eye through the willful crack, and primly took her hands from her face, clasping them royally in her lap. "As it was, I was quite in control of my own words and actions," she spoke stiffly, "and I would have returned very properly to the table had he not grasped my hands and taken me to the dance floor."
The blonde made a soft, romantic sound, her facial expression twirling away from naughty mischief into a daydreaming stupor of misting eyes and a finger toying idyllically with a loose strand of her dark gold hair. "He whisked you off into a beautiful dance, didn't he?" she sighed, pressing her hands together and sewing the fingers between one another as she drew her knees up to her chest, toes wrapping over the edge of the bed. "Obviously, as you wouldn't dance otherwise," she said, then, in a response to her own inquiry as she gazed dreamily at the blank ceiling of her room.
"Oh, sweet love of life!" cried Minako loudly, startling Ami badly enough for her to jump a little, clasping her small hand to her breast, over the pounding beat of her heart. Tossing her head back, the marginally taller girl threw her arms to the side, exposing the gold of her neck to the ceiling blindly observing them, and continued dramatically, "Bring thy chariot low and take me with thee upon your journey to the glowing starlight ever dreaming! Take me, love, take me!" She proceeded to make gushy sounds, hugging herself tightly as Ami blinked and laughed quietly, holding her fingertips over her mouth as if to hold it in, and Minako sighed a second time, lolling back to rest on her bed. Turning onto her side, she drilled her fingers into the bedspread and raised an eyebrow at Artemis' pleased rumbling in the gentle warmth of Ami's daintily sprawled legs.
"Artemis, shame," she mock-scolded, wagging her finger in a pretend gesture of exasperated maturity, and the white cat cocked his ears at her, lifting his head slightly to stare with unblinking azure eyes at her.
"Minako," the cat said wearily in his light baritone voice, "I'm enjoying a moment of rare peace. You really shouldn't be bothering Ami about such things, anyway. She's probably the only one of you lot that's been focused enough on her duties to afford a fling."
"Fling?" protested Minako. "This could very well be her greatest, truest love, and," she launched to her feet, jabbing a finger triumphantly into the air as she struck a pose similar to that of Sailor V's more flashy ones, "I can't abide your words! Never break the pure love of a young woman!"
"Minako," Ami interjected weakly, smoothing her palm over the silky gentle ivory of Artemis' fur, "I really didn't even talk with him, other than finding out his name." At Minako's intent gaze, slender eyebrows narrowing thoughtfully as she awaited the continuation, she hastened to add, "Oh, it's Sanji. I think he might be a gaijin, though, as he had an American accent. Not that I minded or anything."
The same eerily thoughtful look on Minako's face took on the same decisively evil look it had before, her lips curling up into a wicked little smile as she studiously stepped off her bed, feet padding quietly over her carpeted floor as she strove to keep from making loud walking noises, so as to not aggravate her sleeping parents. "Ami," she said cutely, plopping into a folded knees position, her lower legs folded under her waist, "he kissed you didn't he?"
Meekly, knowing there was nothing she could do to avoid answering it truthfully, she confessed, "Yes? Um, twice?"
"Oh, my God!" Minako declared, crossing her eyes as she faked a heart attack. "That is so not fair! You get the cute foreign guy and two kisses on your first clubbing, and all I get is a lost card and no bubbly. We have so got to tell Makoto, you do realize that, right?"
"Tell me what?" asked Makoto congenially as she stepped with excellent timing into the room, her teeth sufficiently clean and toiletries clutched expertly in her fisted hand. "So long as it isn't anything referring to whether or not the next vast evil has descended upon Tokyo, I'm game." She bent over her handbag, tucking toothbrush, toothpaste, and hairbrush into the waiting plunged depths, wiggling the zipper shut with a sturdy tug at the end of the zipper's little tag.
"Ami's got a boyfriend!" Minako told her.
"What?" the auburn brunette choked, shocked enough to warrant her falling back onto her rear, forest green eyes widened into a size close to that of dinner plates as she switched her gaze from the brightly grinning blonde to the furiously blushing aqua-haired girl seated on her portable futon. "Boyfriend?"
"Minako!" Ami protested. "That isn't what I said!"
"Lordie, relax," Minako rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest and looking infinitely superior. "Two kisses count as a boyfriend, in my book, and if he tongued you, then you're going steady."
"It was one night!" she replied, face brilliant under her cloud of dark hair.
"I'm confused," Makoto took need to inform them both.
--
"Usagi and Mamoru are having an afternoon together," Minako explained as they paraded down the sidewalk, a trio of girls in a range of colors from dark forest shades to ocean twists and fiery explosions. "And you know Rei: she's found something to do at the shrine. Friends? Bah humbug, not when she can train extensively in bizarre rituals." The blonde cheerfully deposited her tinted sunglasses over her eyes, a trail of curled hair passing over her cheek where it had peeled free from her coiled bun, the locks pressed in iron curlers at some indistinguishable point last night when they had pressed Ami for details. "Well, that's what she says, anyway, but I am of an opinion she's trying to tease poor Yuuichirou again. Poor, poor lad, having to be in love with her." She sighed pitifully, lowering her face and shaking her head.
"He doesn't seem to be complaining," pointed out Makoto, even knocking her finger forward in example. "In fact, he's all but willing to be her mindless love slave, as I'm sure you've noticed, Minako. Hell, he'd probably cut his own eyes out if she asked him to." She paused for reflection, curling her finger back to her palm as she stared blankly at the sky in thought, and then she slowly admitted, "If he has eyes, that is. I can't remember ever seeing Yuuichirou's eyes. Ever."
Minako laughed and the two pulled just a bit away from Ami, unconsciously, and she stepped carefully to the side, wanting a moment of privacy for the echoes of her own thoughts as she caressed her hand over one of the many parking meters lining the road. Freezing her legs, she faced the buildings lining the opposite side of the street, grasping her fingers almost desperately around the half-moon arch of the meter as she swayed slightly toward the pillared metal before her. A blush, different from the wild ones that plagued her nearly every time she even entertained the thought of romance or men, prickled her cheeks with the faintest scattering of budding rose pink, and she bit her lip, dropping her face just a bit to fix her eyes on the curb. Her slipper-sheathed feet were a dark blue on the curb's smooth, curved drop, and she shifted one of her feet, watching it with her matching eyes and lifting one of her hands to gingerly tuck a twining strand of hair behind the genteel swell of her ear.
I am being completely silly, she told herself with a squaring of her shoulders though her chin remained lowly dipped, thinking over some flirty guy at a nightclub. It hardly mattered that he was her first kiss, much less the first guy who had ever done anything remotely provocative in any form whatsoever with her, even if it was in the form of a wink, a tilted eyebrow, and a mild nip at her mouth when he molded his lips to hers. And what, precisely, had given him leave to do such a thing, she thought amidst a flare of stinging pride mingled with shame that she had given in so easily; caving in quickly to men was something that was most assuredly a Minako trait, and it was somehow both intriguing and frightening to accept she had done so.
Groaning quietly to herself, she drooped her shoulders, shrinking just an inch or so to bend her neck, resting her forehead on the lumps of her folded fingers as she exhaled deeply. "He was a very good kisser, in any case," she murmured to her dark slippers, wrinkling her nose almost imperceptibly at the unusual words coming from her own shy mouth. "At least, I think he was, seeing as I've never been kissed before." She shuffled her feet, striking the cement sidewalk with the scuffed soles as she tapped her fingertips over the graved metal of the parking meter, and she drew in a deep, strengthening breath, raising her head and stroking her hands through her hair as she tapped her heels to the ground. "Now, where did they go?" she asked softly, turning to see the duo of other girls waiting at the recognizable front of the Crown Parlor, their heads excitedly turned to one another.
Pushing from her mind the image of Sanji, curled eyebrow tilted into a gentle expression and sighing gold hair passing over that pale blue eye undoubtedly hidden behind his carefully styled bangs, leaning down to her, pressing his mouth to hers and catching her lower lip in his mouth, she set off for her friends.
--
"Minako!" Makoto hissed, grabbing her smaller friend's elbow and tugging her sharply to the widest window in the carefully maintained fore of the girls' favorite hangout, stalling their reluctant movements toward the library. "Look! Who do you see?" She waited impatiently for Minako's answer, which was a dry listing of Motoki and his sister's names, as well as that of the husky young man who had currently taken up residence working in Crown Parlor, and shook her head widely, unable to still her broad grin. "Look again," she said in a low voice, pointing into the store at a tall, thin masculine figure in a blue pinstripe shirt, tucked into black slacks, under a pinning white apron.
"Hey, he's cute," the blonde girl admitted, pinching her sunglasses a little lower on her nose so as to ogle him better. "I particularly like those big feet of his," she continued with a sly grin. "After all, you know what they say about men with big feet," she said airily, to Makoto's vast confusion, and she paused, a look of chagrined sweating crossing her features. "Sorry, Western gag," she muttered. "He's cute and all, but what's so special? Motoki's much more drool-worthy muscular. Mmm, Motoki, my lovely dollop."
Makoto rolled her eyes in thick exasperation, and she poked her friend carelessly in the ribs, pointing at the man again as he turned slightly, picking at the cigarette in his mouth as he said something callous to an amused Motoki. "Blonde hair," she prompted, "cigarette, extremely stylish, gentlemanly dressy outfit, and if you look closely, he's got an eyebrow that is really weird: see? Massive curliness there, kinda like a corkscrew."
Minako peered, squinting her eyes and slowly removing her sunglasses, folding them between her fingers as she stared at the tall blonde retreating toward the kitchen. "Oh my freakin' God," she gasped in blatant delight. "It's him! Ami's mysterious clubber! Good Lord, he is tall," she then gaped, raising her eyebrow in interested smirking. "Ooo, he's absolutely perfect for our favorite little bookworm," as he sketched a flirtatious bow at a blushing female customer.
"I think we need to make a rest stop before studying," said Makoto very seriously, her eyes glinting with gleeful amusement.
"Indeed-y deed," Minako grinned evilly right back.
A set of hurried, careful footsteps broke into their guilty exchange, and they had damning expressions of being caught on their faces, ones they quickly, expertly, hid with bright, innocent smiles that should have alerted her to something being pointedly off. She had a preoccupied appearance, though, did not seem to catch the dangerous warning signals screaming off her two friends, and offered them a thin smile at odds with the sad twist of pink on her cheeks. A pair of particularly devious smiles were shared between the other two, and both girls lunged forward, each grabbing one of her hands and tugging her sternly to the swinging glass doors of the Crown Parlor.
"I thought we were going to the library," she had presence of mind to argue when they easily dragged her through the doors, her slippers skating over the glossy tiles simply and lightly, "not the Crown Parlor!"
"It's always hard to study on an empty stomach," spoke Makoto convincingly, sharing a brilliant smile as she tilted her head charmingly to one side, leaf eyes glittering in cheeky amusement under her wavy bangs.
"And there's someone very interesting I think you might meet here," Minako winked in a quirky manner, her lips curving up sneakily, and she tucked Ami's arm in hers, leading her to the older blonde they had long known. "Motoki," she greeted, "we were wondering if you could tell us about your new worker? There's some mild interest amongst us," she knocked her head with a hinting grimace toward the utterly bewildered girl she and Makoto had pinned betwixt themselves, "as to who he is."
"Oh," he smiled his usual comfortable smile, and he continued with great ease, setting his mop under his elbow as he reflected, "you mean the new cook and server, ah, how to say his name? He's an American, so I suppose it would be…Brooks Sanji. Or would it be Sanji Brooks?" He frowned, considering it with great seriousness, and he shrugged, flipping the mop from beneath his elbow and swirling the dampened tendrils over the sparkling floor as though it needed it.
"Eat the damn food, asshole," a near-snarl sounded behind them and, as Ami tried to process what she had heard while simultaneously remember how to breathe, they turned about as one to see the man known as Sanji Brooks glowering threateningly down at a nasty-looking teenager with arm muscles thicker than the cook's neck. "I made it, you paid for it, you will shittin' eat it. Now." His eyes flashed a promise of immense pain and ensuing agony, and the teenager looked fit to grab him around the neck and snap it between his two meaty hands.
"Ami!" Minako bellowed pointedly and the blonde's eyes flickered to them as the girl with blue-shaded hair blanched, her face contorting into an anxious twist of horror and expectation. "What do you want to eat?" she continued in a loud voice, as Makoto fisted her hand in her mouth, trying to quell her shaking laughter.
"Oh, dear," Ami said faintly as Sanji straightened, a wide, flashing smile exposing rows of whitened teeth, the cigarette plucked from his lips by two curving fingers, and she swallowed thickly, having never learned at any point in her lifetime how to deal with unwanted confrontations. The double m's were no help as both, in winsome synchronicity, stepped back thrice steps, looping their hands in back of their respective hips as they shared conniving smirks.
Before she could stammer something fittingly goofy or ironically brainless, thereby ruining what little impression she had given him the night before, while mentally wondering if the ever-meddling specter of Queen Serenity had engineered this whole thing, he had swept up to her, one long arm catching her in the small of her back. She made a soft, startled noise, and then he had her in a compromising position, his mouth firmly fitted over hers.
In. The. Middle. Of. The. Store!
Ami came remarkably close to dying from the blood flow to her face.
--
--
Notes: Actually…that is a rather Sanji thing for him to do at the end. After all, why use tact when he can just sweep her off her feet. *snark* In any case, I'm building up for plotless smut. And then…I'll develop a plot. *sighs* My conscience will never let me live with myself, otherwise.
Feedback: I don't think this part was too bad…even though it could have been better. What say the teeming (*cackles and falls off chair*) masses? Continue?
Disclaimer: Don't make me cry. *sobs* You made me cry!
Replies: Sadie Joyce – Myst Lady, ah! Your comments always make me feel so very special inside – as if I really can be a wonderful writer. There are some very gifted writers out there, too, even if I haven't found any new ones by them lately. *sighs* Although, I very nearly dropped off the face of the planet before I started writing 'Requiem.' SailorPikaAngel, I just finished the first part of 'Requiem: 10' (as it will be posted in four parts) – I'm especially pleased you like Duo/Ami. I've actually been writing that pairing since way back in late spring of 2000, when GW first premiered on Cartoon Network…but I'm getting off topic. Your review cracked me up. *^.&* I adore Sanji's pick-up lines (he's such a goof). BloodyVixen, and yes, Minako is in this, as well as Makoto. I suspect they will be joining Ami as the main focus in this story (what with the fact that Rei seems to be the second most popular crossover senshi and whatnot). I'm considering a Zoro/Minako pairing, but it doesn't seem…right, somehow. What was confusing? *worries* Dee-Chan, no worries! If, by any chance, you have the opportunity, sasugabooks.com carries the One Piece series at about $5.50 a volume (a freakin' bargain, if you ask me), and they update their inventory quite frequently. Everyone out there, check it out! It's very worth it (and if I can get the link to work, there's a young man on-line who has some of the most accurate translations on the Internet, but his site has been down lately). And, yes, the dance floor – so painfully true. *grins* Devils Little Doll, yes! I was going for cute, very much so, and I'm pleased you enjoyed it. Yay noodles! *happy hippo dance* Is this quick enough of an update? Me hope so. ;]
(This applies to all!) Do you have Shonen Jump #3? If you flip through the interview with Eiichiro Oda at the beginning, it has two relatively small colored manga pics; the blonde guy in both is Sanji. In Shonen Jump #4, if you look at the movie poster, the One Piece merchandise, and a different, smaller pic, again, the blonde guy in the blue-and-black combo is Sanji. *waves happily*
In other news, I'm working on my ZoroxAmi fic, Siren in the Deep, after an unfortunate hiatus. *sighs* Must dedicate self further!