A/N: I've been on a real One Piece kick recently. I love the ASL brothers and ridiculous humor, so this story was born.
Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece, the rightful owner is Oda.
. . .
Every few months or so the ASL Brothers (as they were dubbed by their respective friends/nakama- Monster Trio has been thrown around, but tossed out by the Straw Hats) got together on some abandoned or sparsely populated island to play games. Only the brothers played these games because most people (except Zoro, but he's crazy) thought they were way too violent, crazy, or impractical. But since these three words fit the three brothers pretty well no one was surprised by the games they played.
The island was always chosen by Nami, who did extensive research (they did not need to run into another Marine base, or make repairs to a town again because her stupid captain had morals) before sending out the coordinates. All the Straw Hats enjoyed these times, seeing them as a break. They got to lazy around for a few days, and after they left Luffy was extra happy and slightly less annoying for, like, a week. The food was great too. After the first time Sanji told Ace he had to bring Thatch. The ASL brothers were bottomless pits, and Ace being another D did not help. Honestly, Sanji could have handled cooking for everyone, but it was nice to have another chef around who one, wasn't scared of him and two, had the ability to keep with two Ds and Sabo.
The brothers had two rules they needed to follow: one, stay out of the Safe Zone (the area around the ships that varied in size depending on the island) and two, bring back food (subject to change by Sanji or Thatch, but was usually some kind of animal). Once Usopp had gone out of the Safe Zone to look at some plants. He'd gotten caught in the brother's game of Duck, Duck, Death and wound up with a broken arm, burns, and lots of bruises. The brothers felt bad and brought Usopp all sorts of plants, most of which were useless (Sanji claimed some for his herb garden and begrudgingly let Thatch have some, Chopper took two for medical purposes), except one interesting one. It kept biting Ace. His skin would turn purple for a minute before turning back to normal (Chopper, being a doctor, was very concerned and asked Ace about it "Eh, its bite is venomous, but my fire burns through it, so its fine" "That's not how biology works!"). The biting plant became one of Usopp's favorite plants ("His name is Audrey III" "... why?" "I feel like the names Audrey and Audrey II are already taken" Robin smiled knowingly at this).
The island they were currently on was a nice, peaceful one in the South Blue. Nami had wanted out of the New World after The Incident (it was pretty bad, Zoro even complimented Nami on the destruction she caused in retaliation for her ruined wardrobe). Everyone had arrived the night before, with the Straw Hats being the last to arrive. Naturally there was a party. The next morning came early, but the brothers were already gone (Sanji had premade breakfast for the three so he could sleep in) so it was a very lazy morning. Koala and Robin were exchanginggossip (read, highly secret government information), Sanji, Thatch, Chopper and Usopp were checking out the plant life in the Safe Zone, Nami and Brook were sunbathing (vitamin D is good for bones!), Jinbe was enjoying the peaceful waters while Franky was tinkering with a side project.
Meanwhile the brothers were playing Hide-And-Go-Seek-Tag-Fight. Observation and armament haki were essential (conqueror's haki was off limits, but Ace would always make sure to tease Sabo). The brothers had to hide from each other out and seek each other out at the same time, and then it turned into tag and when one was caught it turned into a fight. There was a complicated scoring system that no one could figure out and the brothers couldn't agree on.
At the moment Ace and Sabo were engaged in a fight when they heard Luffy scream "CANDY!" and he stopped concealing his presence. Alarmed, the older brothers immediately went to this precious baby brother. They burst into a clearing to find Luffy eating a cabin made of candy. Ace, being a D, yelled for Luffy to save some for him and got right to chowing down. Sabo hesitated for a moment, mind furiously running through various scenarios of traps, poison, or Big Mom before shrugging and jumping right in with his brothers.
There was very little candy left when an enraged shriek (not as impressive as Nami's) made them pause. An old woman (think Kureha, but older, uglier, and fatter) stood behind them. She glared at the brothers in surprised fury.
"You ate my house!"
"It was made of candy," Luffy in a reasonable tone (his brothers shuddered- Luffy shouldn't sound reasonable, ever), like the house getting eaten was the only possible outcome.
"That doesn't give you the right to eat it!" the old woman screamed.
"It doesn't?"Luffy tilted his head to the side. Ace also looked confused. Sabo face palmed. He dragged both his brothers off the house (Luffy was still trying to cram candy into his mouth).
"Sorry, we were kinda active this morning and I guess we got hungry." He and Ace bowed, both of them forced Luffy's head down.
"We'll make it up to you!" Luffy promised.
The old woman stared at him. "Fine. All thee of you go inside."
The brothers went into the house with the old woman following them. The house wasn't actually made of candy, more like decorated with candy. The inside was much smaller than the outside made it look. It was basically one large room. There was a fire place with a cauldron big enough to fit a person in it, a big fire fed oven, a large table, a huge store of dry goods, a mattress, shackles on the wall, and a cage.
"So cool!" Luffy gushed.
Ace and Sabo looked at each other. The shackles and cage were a little weird (but they grew up with bandits, so what did they know).
"You three go in there," the old woman snapped, pointing to the cage.
"Why?" Sabo asked.
The old woman opened her mouth but Luffy interrupted.
"Because we ate her house and this could be an adventure!"
Sabo let himself be dragged into the cage. Ace also had to be dragged into the cage, but he kicked up more of a fuss (if he really didn't want to go in there there was nothing Luffy could have done to make him go in the cage). The cage wasn't sea stone anyways, so what could be the harm? The old woman locked them in and then tried to start a fire. Ace kept up a running commentary of what she was doing wrong. Sabo and Luffy snickered at his comments. Finally the woman seemed satisfied with her work (Ace wasn't).
She came over to the cage and opened the door. "You," she pointed to Sabo (Sabo point to himself and muttered 'me'? in a surprised tone) "throw him," she pointed to Ace (Ace point to himself and muttered 'me'?in a surprised tone) "into there," she pointed at the oven. The brothers stared ta her in confusion. "Now!" she snapped.
Sabo grinned maliciously and punched Ace hard enough to stun him. He picked his brother up, hurried over to the oven and crammed Ace inside. Ace pounded on the door and Sabo used his full strength to keep him inside. Once the struggles stopped (Ace had fallen asleep based on the snores) the old woman motioned Sabo back into the cage.
Sabo went. He listened to Luffy's tale about Sky Island with half an ear. He was mostly amusing himself with planning escape attempts, the more ludicrous the better (his favorite plan so far involved only a potato). Eventually the old woman opened the oven door. Ace (still on fire) fell out. The old woman screamed and passed out. The scream woke the eldest brother. Ace looked at the passed out woman (where arms supposed to bend like that?) to Luffy (laughing his head off) to Sabo (pouting because he couldn't do any of his plans now).
"So... raid the house and head back to the Safe Zone?"
"Food!" Luffy yelled. He used his rubber body to squeeze between the bars. Sabo kicked his way out.
The brothers made quick work of gathering up most of the dry goods ("We don't need the onions or leeks or carrots") and all of the candy outside ("Luffy, don't you wanna save some for your crew?" "Yeah!" "Then stop eating it all!" "Does this mean you're saving some for Thatch?" "I will!" "Then you stop eating too!"). Because subtle was a word the brothers were only familiar with in passing (yes, even Sabo. He could do it, but it didn't come naturally, Koala was amazed every time he pulled off a stealth mission) everyone knew the brothers were headed back to the Save Zone well before they made it there.
Nami met them at the edge. "Why did you do and how much will it cost?"
"Shishishi, Nami, we brought a bunch of food, and we have candy and we met this cool old woman and Sabo shoved Ace in an oven!"
Nami looked at the Sabo. He didn't seemed concerned at all (well, only a little because he was fighting off Luffy who was trying to eat the candy he was holding). She looked at Ace (who was trying to do a sneak attack on Sabo to get some candy) and he didn't look concerned at all. She decided to trust the (very questionable) judgement of the other brothers. "Okay, fine, bring the food to the Sunny."
Nami headed back to the beach. She ignored Luffy who went flying over her head ("Meanie Sabo!") and the crash of Ace going back into the forest ("OW!"). She did smile at Sabo who caught up with her and started to walk beside her. "Do I even want to know?"
Sabo shrugged. "It really wasn't that interesting. I'm pretty sure the old hag wanted to eat us. But we got a lot of tasty candy, so its all fine."
Nami decided to just put the whole thing out of her mind, chalking it up to the ASL brothers being the ASL brothers. Besides, that candy looked tasty. She'd have Usopp try some first, just to make sure it was okay.