"Whirlpools, Mauloseums, and a Natural Limestone Cavern" (part 2)

Morning found Nami shivering at the prow of the ship, staring out into nothing. It wasn't hard to do. The ocean that day was wholly covered over in thick gray fog. It was like sailing through the folds of an endless dirty sweater.

The endless dirty sweater that was the fog...like the fog filling Nami's soul...obscuring everything bright and good...weighing her down...did that mean her soul was an endless dirty sweater?

Troubled anew by this thought, Nami bit her lower lip and wracked her brains for a better metaphor.

As if sensing her thoughts, Sanji sidled up behind her with a freshly baked confection, as he had been doing for every fifteen minutes since dawn. The golden-haired chef bowed low and said in his most sensitive voice, "How tortured are your memories of Bellemere today, Nami my sweet?"

Nami turned to him, her eyes full of anguish. She'd scrubbed off the bulk of the mascara, leaving only two grayish smudges under each eye, poignant testimony to her suffering. Sanji chose to interpret the distress as owing to a headful of painful memories, rather than to his quarter-hourly forced feedings. "Oh, Sanji," Nami began, in a voice which an untrained ear might have called protesting. Sanji, however, knew better. "It's been so horrible," Nami continued, reaching for the tiramisu. "Bellemere was my only source of happiness, you know. All this...navigation...and map-drawing...I just feel like I'm going through the motions. And then there's this fog!" She stared wildly out at the damp wall in front of them. "It's like - it's like -"

"The folds of an endless dirty sweater?" Sanji supplied helpfully.

"No!" Nami glared at him from around a bite of tiramisu. "Not an endless dirty sweater. Something that conveys the same feeling, but not actually a sweater, persay. And definitely not dirty."

Sanji held up his hands in an effort to placate. "Of course not," he said hastily. "How could I have been so stupid? The fog, it's like the opposite of an endless dirty sweater, really." He breathed a sigh of relief as Nami nodded morosely.

"Oh, Sanji," she said again. "My soul feels like it's being entombed. Like it'll never see the light again. It's like - like -"

This time Sanji held his breath patiently.

"Like a mauloseum of despair!" Nami finally burst out, looking fetchingly tragic in the misty half-light and just a shade triumphant.

"Er-" Sanji hesitated. "I'm sure you know the state of your own soul best, Nami my tortured cherubim, but I thought last night you said it was a whirlpool of despair?"

Nami all but glared at him. "It's the same thing," she said testily. "The whirlpool of despair leads down to the mauloseum of despair, which is all the more despairing for being at the bottom of the ocean, do you see?" Her look dared him not to.

It seemed a shame, but Sanji was forced to disappoint her in the name of self-preservation. "Of course I do," he exclaimed, taking a step back from her -- loveliness. "See, that is. Ah, do you know, I think I left something in the oven. I should hate for charred food to touch your innocent lips, Nami my love! And so I must away!" Backing away faster from her than he had ever moved from any woman, Sanji beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen.

He had ten minutes of peaceful pastry decorating before Zoro walked into the galley with that infuriating smirk on his face.

"Had a good morning, PrettyBrow?"

Sanji ground his cigarette to so much pulp and tobacco dust between his teeth. Damn swordsman and his damn baited greetings. "What's it to you, jerkface?" he shot back.

"Nothing," Zoro said, contriving to look as innocent as his thuggish features would allow. "Nami and I were just having a really interesting chat, that's all."

Sanji almost dropped the tray of cinnamon rolls. "You...and - and Nami?" He gaped. "What could you possibly say that would interest the vast intellectual superiority of my darling Nami?"

Zoro ignored the last comment. "Oh, you know. She said I was the only one who really understood her, and I told her it was always okay to cry, and she said I was the best emotional support a girl in inner turmoil could ever have, and we talked about the way her soul was like a cavern of despair. The usual." He smirked again, but felt it fade when he saw Sanji settling back on his heels, an identical smirk on his face.

The cook transported the cinnamon rolls safely to the kitchen table. "Dunno who you were talking to, Marimo," he commented, "but it wasn't Nami. Nami, you see, is entombed in a mauloseum of despair, not some crap cavern."

Zoro growled. He snatched a roll off the tray. Sanji was too busy congratulating himself to notice. "It's not a crap cavern, you shit cook," he said hotly through a mouthful of roll. "She is stumbling around in the dark, winding deeper and deeper into passages that never seem to end, while stalactites of doom continuously threaten to fall upon her. And she can never find the exit, and it feels like she's being swallowed by the very bowels of the earth, okay?" He took a deep breath and licked some cinnamon off his fingers.

"Right," said Sanji, unimpressed. "In other words, like a mauloseum."

"Not like a mauloseum, you ass!" Zoro snarled, banging a rather sticky hand down on the table. "A mauloseum," he continued, "implies a man-made structure. This is a natural limestone cavern, carved out by millenia of erosion from underground waters and boasting several geological wonders. Your stupid mauloseum of so-called despair cannot even compare."

Sanji bristled. "What did you say?" he growled, shifting subtly into a a fighting stance. "Take that back, Mosshead, or I'll send you into a natural limestone cavern of pain."

"Not until you admit Nami's soul is not a mauloseum of despair!"

"Well, I can't do that, because it is a mauloseum of despair!"

"Is not!"

"Is too!"

"Not!"

"Too!"

"Not not not!"

"Too too too times infinity!"

"Not not not times infinity plus one!"

"God, that's so cheap!"

"Hey guys!"

Sanji looked up from attempting to bite through Zoro's leg with his teeth, and Zoro abruptly loosened his headlock on the cook as Luffy strolled through the door.

"Ooh, are those cinnamon buns?" the rubber boy said brightly. "I was just getting hungry!" Not waiting for a response, Luffy stretched out two thin arms and snatched the tray, the entire contents of which he promptly slid into his mouth.

"Luffy!" Sanji shoved Zoro aside to tackle his Captain, putting his hands around the boy's neck as if to shake the rolls out of his mouth before they got too soggy. "Those were for Nami!"

"Geh." Luffy coughed, spraying bits of pastry all over Sanji's front, swallowed, and made a face. "But Nami doesn't need them."

"What? Of course she does! Her soul is being entombed in a freaking mauloseum of despair! Cinnamon rolls may very well be the only thing that can bring her back!"

"Natural limestone cavern," said Zoro from where he was sitting on the galley floor, massaging his leg and glaring.

Luffy laughed. "Man, I have no idea what you're talking about, but Nami's definitely not in a cave or a maulo-whatsit. I was just kissing her."

"WHAT?" The swordsman and the cook stared, aghast, at their Captain and blanched as one, then pretended they hadn't.

Luffy absently wiped some frosting from his mouth. "Yeah...Nami's soul got locked in a meatlocker of despair, so I thought a kiss might cheer her up. Plus maybe she'd give me some meat when her soul got unstuck." He frowned. "I wonder what soul meat tastes like?"

"There's no such thing as soul meat, Luffy," Sanji said impatiently. "Trust me, I'd know if there was. More importantly..." He pointed a challenging finger at Zoro. "Too too too times infinity plus two, you bastard!"

"Not not not times infinity plus three!"

"Guys? Don't you want to hear about the meatlocker of despair?"

"Too too too times bracket infinity times unknown value n bracket!"

"It's like, right? when the cold is like the cold in Nami's soul, and it's dark like her soul, and the frozen blocks of raw meat are like her unrealized dreams hanging frozen, never to thaw out and be marinated in a delicious truffle sauce because she's locked herself in and can't find the key, right? And -"

"Your stupid mauloseum wreaks havoc on the environment!"

"Oh, like you care so much about the enviroment! And when have you ever thought it was okay to cry, anyway!"

"If you licked a piece of frozen soul meat in a meatlocker of despair, would your tongue get stuck to it, do you think?"

"For the last time, Luffy, there is no such think as soul meat!"

"But if there was -"

"Guys!"

This time, the three of them paused in their activities - Zoro hitting Sanji about the head with Wadou, Sanji kicking Luffy in the head with one hard leather shoe, and Luffy blithely licking the remaining frosting from the cinnamon roll tray - as Usopp burst through the door.

"Guess what?" The sniper paused dramatically in the doorway. The fog circled in ominously. "The person standing on the deck isn't Nami!"

Zoro, Sanji, and Luffy all got up to peer around Usopp.

"Well, no," Sanji said finally. "It's Chopper." He pointed to where the little reindeer was fiddling with somethine medicinal near the mast.

"No, you ass!" Usopp said in exasperation. He directed Sanji's finger to the more distant, curvier figure standing at the prow of the ship. "The person who looks like Nami -" he paused again significantly, "isn't Nami!"

"Oh." They all stared some more. "That makes a bit of a difference, then."

With another swirl of fog, the day suddenly took a turn for the decidedly sinister.

- - - - -
notes: Who is the curvaceous figure at the prow of the ship, really? Have Sanji, Zoro, and Luffy all been played for fools? Does Luffy even really care? If given a choice, would you prefer to be stuck in a mauloseum, natural limestone cavern, or meatlocker? Or some other enclosing space of despair? How did this turn into a multi-part serial when I said it'd be wrapped up in this chapter? Oh, well.

My cousin really did get herself locked in a meatlocker once. Hearing the story later, I thought it was pretty funny, but she apparently found it much less so. Thanks for reading, please review!