The voice sounded a bit muffled as it drifted in through the partly open doors to the restaurant, but Sanji figured that neither the guests in the dining hall or the chefs in the kitchen had much trouble hearing each word loud and clear.

"Known over the four great oceans! Feared throughout the Grand Line! Admired and praised all over the Red Line. I am the brave warrior of the sea…"

The doors to the restaurant were slammed wide open, revealing a man dressed in a long brown cloak who was striking a pose with the rising sun behind him. Sanji blinked twice before he allowed himself to believe what he was seeing. Then he smirked and stuck his hands in his pockets, watching the pirate who was standing just outside the dining hall with his arms folded across his chest, a confident smile on his lips and the long curly black hair fluttering lightly in the seabreeze. The pirate lifted his left hand, tapping the tip of his unusually long nose with his index finger before he continued speaking.

"…the great Captain Usopp." He finished, lowering his voice to a whisper when he said his name for effect.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Sanji said calmly, now smiling quite brightly towards the pirate. "Are you actually going to order something or did you just stop by to entertain my guests with your stories?"

The pirate dressed in the brown cloak flinched lightly at the sound of Sanji's voice, and for a moment, an expression of shock flashed across his long-nosed face. His eyes darted over the room until they landed on Sanji, who was standing by the door to the kitchen, smiling towards the pirate. Usopp's face immediately lost its shocked expression and cracked up in a wide grin.

"Sanji! Damn, it's good to see you!"

A low murmur of whispering voices soared through the room as the head chef walked up to the newly arrived pirate and shook his hand. Sanji could hear people mutter something about the sniper's bounty and someone who suggested that they should call for the Marines. He sighed lightly, but managed to keep his smile from fading. After all, it wasn't every day he got to see two of his old nakama in one day.

"Sanji," Usopp said again, laughing lightly as he released the chef's hand. "You have to be the last person I ever expected to see back here in East Blue."

Sanji nodded and returned the statement while gesturing for Usopp to sit down by the table where Ace was sitting. Usopp waved happily to Ace as he spotted him and smiled when the older pirate raised his hand in return. Then he turned towards the doors again, his hand lightly touching Sanji's shoulder to get the chef's attention. Sanji turned around, looking at Usopp while he wondered what the sniper could be up to.

"Hang on, Sanji…" Usopp said, cupping his hands around his mouth before he called out: "It's okay, you can come in now!"

The tapping sound of light footsteps against the wooden terrace outside the restaurant soared in through the open doors. Confused, Sanji glanced towards the open door where a small shadow appeared, looking very shy as it slowly stepped into the restaurant, its little head turning swiftly from side to side as if it was checking the surroundings for any possible danger. The sight of the little two-legged reindeer with the pink top hat and the blue nose made Sanji smile brightly for the second time in three minutes. The fact that the fur around the little doctor's face had started to turn from brown to silver wasn't something that bothered the chef as he felt the black hole inside him slowly retreat into itself, the pain easing steadily.

"Chopper!" he said gently, making the reindeer's eyes pull away from the guests in the room. He knew that the little doctor always had been a bit nervous around strangers. "You're here as well?"

"Sanji!"

The little reindeer's eyes lit up when he spotted Sanji, and he hurried over to the chef and the two pirates by the table, where he climbed up on a chair to reach up to shake Sanji's and Ace's hands. When the four men had finished greeting each other, Sanji was pleased to notice that the guests in the room had stopped watching them and had gone back to their own conversations and their food. Some of them still cast curious glances towards the pirates and seemed to be trying to listen to what was said between them, but there was at least no more whispering voices talking about calling the Marines.

"So…" he said, leaning back in his chair as he looked across the table at Usopp and Chopper, who were reading the morning's menu thoroughly. "What brings you two to East Blue?"

"Homesickness," Usopp replied, muttering something about trying the Elephant Tuna for lunch later, since he never had had the chance to try it before.

Sanji nodded, a bit taken aback by the short reply. He would have expected a long, unbelievable story with pirates, dragons and various dangers. Suddenly, he wasn't as sure that the two men sitting in front of him really were his nakama as he had been only a few minutes earlier. Quickly, he pushed that thought out of his head. What was he thinking? Of course he couldn't have expected Usopp and Chopper to stay the same over the year they had been separated, just because they hadn't changed much during the nine years they had been sailing together.

"So you thought you should go back to your village and that pretty girl you always talked about?" he asked, almost wishing that Usopp would start telling some weird story as he always did. He didn't know why, though; Sanji had never been a fan of those ridiculously exaggerated lies Usopp used to tell whenever he got the opportunity.

"Well," Usopp said, handing over the menu to Chopper as he leaned forward to look at Sanji across the table. "Yes and no. You see, I wanted to show Chopper the village where I grew up, and I wanted to see Kaya and the kids again and tell them all about our adventures. But that island stopped being my home when I decided to become a pirate. I realized that the moment I set my foot on the north beach."

"Then what do you mean by homesickness?" Sanji asked, leaning forward against the table. To his right, Ace was sitting quiet while he watched the reunited nakama, but at that moment, Sanji didn't pay much attention to him. He was feeling more and more eager to know what Usopp had meant by 'homesickness', and it was annoying the hell out of him.

The look Usopp gave Sanji made the chef blink in confusion. Then the sniper leaned forward towards Sanji with a cunning smile playing across his face. Usopp had definitely grown to the title of his dreams and Sanji noticed that it was clear that the sniper definitely wasn't the same coward he had been ten years earlier.

"Do you really have to ask that?" Usopp asked in return, the sly smile still on his face. "You're feeling the same thing Chopper and I've been feeling since we split up, aren't you?"

Sanji frowned. The sly smile on Usopp's face was unnerving, and Sanji started to feel uncomfortable just by looking at the marksman in front of him.

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about," he tried to defend himself, even though even he could hear how feeble his attempt of denial sounded.

"Of course you do," Usopp stated calmly and smiled. "You feel like there's something missing inside you, almost like a hole that never stops growing. A hole that hurts while you're alone and fills up a little every time you meet one of your nakama. That's why Chopper and I decided to team up again when we met. Neither of us could stand being alone anymore. We want to reunite the clan, or at least make sure that we don't have to lose contact with our nakama again."

Sanji didn't reply. He couldn't believe what he was hearing: he wasn't the only one with a black hole inside him? Knowing that made him both relieved and sad. So the only way to get rid of the pain inside him was to become an active pirate again? Sanji didn't know if that was an option any longer, since he had the Sagatie to worry about now. Instead, he made an attempt to change the subject.

"What's with the ship you came here with?" he asked with the most carefree tone he could produce. "From what I saw, she looks like the creation of a deranged madman. No offense, though…" he added, nodding towards Usopp as he remembered that one should never insult a ship in front of her captain.

"You don't recognize her?" Usopp asked with surprise, but then he seemed to realize something and waved his hand dismissively. "No, I guess you wouldn't. Of course, I didn't build her myself. The shipwrights in South Blue are amazing, you know. Anyway, her name is Meri Go, and the reason to why she looks a bit… well, like a half-finished jig-saw puzzle is because she's built with spare parts from different ships. It was the only thing we could afford since most of our treasures sank with Going Merry when she was destroyed once and for all seven months ago. I managed to save the tangerine sprouts Nami gave me, though."

Nodding, Sanji thought of the Going Merry, feeling a sting of pain in his chest as he got to know that the proud caravel which had survived nine years of storms, Marines and other pirates attacking (and not to mention her very lively and violent pirate crew) and four complete restorations, would no longer sail the oceans under a pirate flag. Even if he probably never would admit it, that ship had been his nakama, just like the rest of the crew, and hearing about her being destroyed felt just as bad as if Usopp had told him that Nami-san or Robin-chan had been killed.

"We've seen Keira's hometown on the Peacock Feather Island," Chopper added absentmindedly as he still studied the menu. Sanji blinked as he turned his gaze towards the doctor, taking notice of the fact that the reindeer's voice had turned a bit darker and was carrying a lightly creaking tone. "She and Seraly didn't want to come with us even when we asked…"

"Well, neither of them wanted to be pirates in the first place," Usopp chipped in, leaning back in his chair again. "So it wasn't that much of a shock when they declined. They just joined us back then because of Luffy, you know."

Sanji smiled at the memory of the two young girls and reluctantly got up from his chair. Time was flying by faster than the chef had anticipated. He had been sitting down for too long already and even if he wanted to stay and talk to his nakama, he still had a restaurant to look after.

"I have to get back to work now," he said to his nakama, reaching out his hand towards Chopper to retrieve the menu. "Have you three decided what you want to eat for breakfast?"

A storm of orders from the three men around the table followed, and Sanji mentally noted down each and every dish before he turned away to walk to the kitchen. As he walked through the room, he felt a strange kind of satisfaction growing inside him, almost as if he hadn't been cooking for the right people until now.

Then again, he thought with a barely visible smile, that's probably true.

He left the menu he had taken from Chopper on a small table in the middle of the room, where a tray of clean crystal glass, smaller plates and woven baskets with forks and knives were placed. Then, he took a short turn around the other tables, making sure that the guests weren't disturbed by the pirates. When that was done, he headed towards the large silverdoors at the end of the room, casually moving to the side each time a waiter emerged from the kitchen with trays loaded with food.

Once Sanji pushed the doors open and entered the large kitchen, he could feel everyone's eyes on him, but managed to ignore them. After all, he wasn't one to care what others thought of him.

"You can relax," he told the chefs the moment the doors swung shut behind him. "There's only two of them, and they're harmless. Get back to your chores now."

Sanji walked up to an empty counter and marked it as his by placing out a cutting board and his personal knife on it before he went to get the ingredients he needed. He wanted to be the one to prepare the food for his nakama, just likehehadused to do for nine years.On his way towards the cold storage rooms, he took off his black jacket and hanged it on a hook on the wall next to the double-doors. From another hook, he took down a slightly faded pink Doskoi-apron, which he tied around his waist before he rolled up the sleeves of his lightblue shirt to his elbows. All this was made in something that looked like one sweeping movement, a movement which Sanji was starting to perfect after the twenty years he had been a chef.

Returning from the storage with some vegetables, Sanji let the surroundings fade away and put all his concentration on the cutting board in front of him. As soon as his fingers touched the handle of his knife, his body switched to auto-pilot, allowing a part of his mind to start processing the morning's events while he was working. He was finding it hard to believe that he had been sailing the five oceans plus the Grand Line for seven months and had only seen a glimpse or two of some of his old nakama, and all of a sudden, three of them had shown up at his restaurant with only a gap of a few hours between their arrivals. It couldn't be just coincidence that they all had been in the same place at the same time.

With great expertise, Sanji quickly prepared the vegetables. His hands flew over the cutting board, slicing the tomatoes, cucumbers and carrots to shreds with a fantastic speed that made the other chefs in the kitchen glance sideways at him, mentally preparing themselves for bloodshed that never would come. Once Sanji finished slicing the vegetables, he reached down under the counter and retrieved a large frying pan and two smaller saucepans. Placing the three pans on the stove to his right, he walked over to the pantry on the other side of the room, from which he brought back two loaves of bread, a bag of flour, cooking oil, salt and a large bowl of eggs.

"Let's see now…" he muttered to himself, going over the mental notes he had made of his nakama's orders.

After about half an hour, Sanji turned off the stove and wiped his hands on his apron. On the counter, three trays were loaded with food. Oatmeal, stacks of pancakes, fried and boiled eggs, omelettes, sandwiches and various fresh vegetables. Wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, Sanji felt the surroundings making itself known again with all the noise in the kitchen thundering in his ears. Through the noise, the feeling of being watched started creeping up on him.

When he looked up, he met the eyes of his two best chefs, Pati and Carne, before the two older men continued working with their food. When he turned away to pick up the trays and walk out into the dining hall again, someone grabbed his arm and pulled him back. As Sanji looked up, he glared at the man holding him by the upper left arm. His saw his own reflection in the two black lenses of the small round sunglasses the older man always wore, and that allowed him to see his own face twist in an annoyed expression.

"Let go, Carne," he said calmly, but he could feel his hands being clenched tightly as he fought to keep his temper under control.

"Sanji, you can't let them eat here," Carne said, pushing his round sunglasses further up on the bridge of his nose with his free hand. Sanji understood that the man had been watching the pirates arrive through the windows of the door to the dining hall.

"They aren't going to harm the restaurant, Carne," Sanji stated, his voice as calm just as before. "Or the guests, for that matter. They're my nakama."

"I wouldn't speak out loud about that, Sanji," Pati warned quietly from behind Carne, not looking up from the fish he was preparing to boil. "You were reprieved because you saved those important Marines from starving to death once. Being seen with pirates of their caliber wouldn't be wise. What if the Marines or a bounty hunter shows up?"

Carne nodded in agreement, but didn't let go of Sanji's arm. Sanji felt the urge to just tear free from the older man's grip, but he didn't move. Instead, he stared into the four eyes of his own reflections with an expression that normally would have been far too childish for him to ever use it.

"After all," Carne said slowly. "Just the little animal has a bounty of 162 million Belli on his head, and according to some posters I saw last week, that long-nosed character is closer to 300 million these days! Use your brain, Sanji, if anyone found out that you used to be a pirate, you could be executed."

Sanji glared at the two men, finding it hard to believe what he was hearing. There they were, the two best chefs from the Baratie – except for the late owner Zeff and Sanji, of course – and they wanted him to deny the only life that had ever made him truly happy. Gritting his teeth, he jerked his arm out of Carne's loose grip and took a step back, straightening his posture while he continued to glare at his chefs. Around him, the clanging sounds of pots and pans subsided and Sanji could feel everyone's eyes on him again.

"If you can remember that I saved those Marines, Pati, then I won't have to remind you that I don't care if I was pardoned or not," he said as calmly as he could. "I am a pirate, and until the day I die, that is what I will be. One thing I learnt from my captain is that once a man becomes a pirate, he stays a pirate, no matter where his life takes him."

"You're insane," Carne muttered, glaring back at Sanji behind the dark glasses. "If Fire Fist Ace is here in East Blue, the Marines are never far away. He is the most wanted man in the world except for the Pirate King."

"How many times do I have to repeat myself?" Sanji said loudly, not caring what anyone would think of him. "I don't care! If I was to face the worst bounty hunter in the world, I still wouldn't deny the fact that I'm a pirate. My loyalty to my captain is stronger than that, and don't you ever forget that!"

And with that, Sanji turned around, scooped up the trays with his nakama's food and stormed out of the kitchen, anger radiating from him like invisible fire. He knew very well that the two older men were just trying to protect him, even if they were doing so in an incredibly clumsy manner. But he didn't need their protection, and he definitely didn't want it if it meant that he would have to turn his back to everything that meant anything to him.

– e – e –

As the doors swung shut behind the head chef, Pati and Carne looked at each other, both of them sighing deeply. They were just about to go back to work when a thin voice was heard behind them, startling the two men lightly.

"The owner used to be a pirate?"

Turning around, Carne found the three young apprentices standing behind one of the counters, looking very intimidated by the scene that just had played before them. He nodded slowly, rubbing his left temple lightly as he searched for the right words. Failing to do so, he figured that he could just tell the truth and then return to work as if nothing had happened. But before he could do so, another voice spoke up in his place.

"Yeah, and a really strong one too," Pati said as he took up the knife and continued to prepare the fish for that day's dinner. "He used to be the vice head chef on a restaurant just like this one, but then one day, he became the cook on a pirate ship. Heh heh… Do you remember the day he left, Carne?"

"Yeah," Carne replied, chuckling lightly as he stirred the soup in front of him on the stove. "And I remember that captain of his as well. Such a crazy boy is hard to forget, right? Especially with the power of that Devil's Fruit he ate."

The three boys stared at Pati and Carne with their eyes widening, apparently not believing what they were being told. One of the cyan-haired twins seemed to gather his courage and took a step forward.

"The owner's captain ate a Devil's Fruit? Which one? Who was he?"

Carne chuckled and turned to look at the boys over the edge of his glasses.

"I think you've all heard of him. The man who can stretch his body like rubber. The man who found the One Piece. The King of Pirates, Monkey D. Luffy."

The three boys and even some of the other chefs gasped as Carne uttered the name, and almost everyone in the kitchen turned away from the counters to look towards the swinging doors behind which the head chef had disappeared.For some of the chefs, another type of respect towards the head chef was formed at that moment. A man who had traveled with the Pirate King was sure to be a man worth all the respect he could get.

Nee... I hope you enjoyed that chapter.
I have enough material for another chapter, but it needs tons of work, so it'll probably take a while until my next update for this story. Hopefully, I'll be able to come up with more material while I'm working with the next chapter. I already have the end figured out in my head, all I have to do is work my way there.

Namibean - I'm actually not much for future fics, but this story just came to me and said "Write me or else" when I was out for a walk, so I started writing it. I'm glad that you like it so far, though.

Digitaldreamer - So, tell me:Was the new guest the one you thought it was?