Chapter 14: Sanji of the Baratie
Summery: I may never know how it truly began, but I do know that I never truly had a choice in the events that led me here. I am in one piece now, and have unwillingly left my own world behind. That is all that matters, and all I need to know.
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with any legal rights to one piece in any form, I do not own one piece or any part of the merchandising, gaming, manga, anime, characters, or anything of the sort. Please do not sue me as I do not have any money. The only things that I own from this fic are my own original characters.
Note: You can now look at artwork of the story by going to my profile and clicking on them.
'thoughts'
"Words"
(inner Kaede)
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The diaries of Kaede Tsuda Burnett, day -21
Great, my second entry and I'm not even sure what to write, the sheer boredom of sitting on this ship with out anything to do is what drove me to finally write in this journal again.
Gaahh- infinity. Nami's reading class and Zoro's snoring are all working together to drive me insane.
It also didn't help that it took us three days to get to the island that Nami wanted to go to, which turned out to be 'Treasure Island',or rather 'Rare Animal Island' with Gaimon on it, and that was three days ago.
We left Syrup Village six days ago and still haven't seen Johnny and his friend, who's name I still can't remember. We even came across the little 'island' that they were supposed to be next yesterday, but they weren't there.
And I wouldn't even call it an island, it was more like a small hill of rocks in the middle of the ocean, but that's not the point. The point was that if Johnny didn't get help soon, then he was going to die, or maybe that was his brother...
Whatever, it's just got me really worried.
Then there was Zoro's constant napping, which is driving me insane.
Really, he just goes to sleep at random moments and nothing, and I do mean NOTHING, can wake him. It SUCKS. I was half tempted to poor some of the molten steel onto his stomach, but I had a feeling that might kill him, so I decided against it.
And then there was Choco, who hit another growth spurt and is now up to my waist. By the time we reach Logue town, or however it's spelled, he'll probably be the same size as me.
Lil has been driving me crazy too. She doesn't really have anything to do on the ship, so she's constantly trying to force me to pet her, which is a problem because she has a tendency to choice the worst possible time.
This morning for instance, she started rubbing against my leg and demanding that I pet her when I was busy trying to poor molten steel onto one of the large stone slabs. Is she trying to get herself burnt to a little kitty crisp? If you ask me, that cat is crazy and I'm two seconds from killing her, I swear to god.
Another thing that pissed me off already was the fact that it takes way to much iron ore to make one damn pound of steel! Do you have any idea how annoying it is to put in ten pounds of iron and get out only about 6 pounds? Seven if I was lucky? At this rate, it's going to take me the rest of my life just to make the damn sub, and it's not even going to be that big!
I only plan on it being big enough for three people to be in for a long period of time, or eight people if everyone really squished themselves together (But that's only for emergencies.)
and that's another thing that's pissing me off. The damn marine engineering book I managed to bring into this world with me was a little ruined when a bunch of water almost drowned me, and when I jumped into the ocean. Most of the pages are OK, but a few of them are only half legible, and guess what pages I need. That's right, the ones that I can barely read! Even though the pages right before it and right after it are completely fine, the page with diagrams of ship hulls and submarine hulls is almost impassible to even see!
Which means I don't even know how thick I need to make the hull so that it doesn't implode when in really deep water!
But, there is an upside!
The Missal cannon design diagrams weren't ruined, so I'll at least have someway of defending it, if I can Jerry rig it with something from this world.
Maybe I can get a dial or something in Skypiea? But I have a feeling that they'll implode if they're taken to deep. I mean, they are 'created' or born in an very high altitude.
Anyway, I that's all I have to write about for now.
Signed, The diaries of a Mad Cat Woman.
Finishing up the second entry of my new journal, I closed it and shoved it into my backpack.
I had been sitting at the desk in me and Nami's room for the past hour, just trying to come up with something to write about. The past three days had been uneventful, though there was a point in time when Lil actually managed to catch a fish on the end of her fishing poll, which promptly dragged her into the water.
But apart from that, nothing happened.
Everything seemed to be going wrong, and it was driving me crazy. While I had managed to to turn enough iron into steel to build the main part of the engine for the sub in just three days, Lil had destroyed my momentary happiness by pointing out that it was an engine that required some form of guess, and probably wouldn't work here.
Then there was the fact that Luffy and Usopp wouldn't stop singing. It was driving me crazy, they sounded like two chickens that were being eaten while still alive.
OK, so they weren't really that bad. The real reason why it was driving me nuts was because they kept singing the same damn song over and over again.
It had been great the first few hours, but after that, I was ready to kill someone just to shut them up.
Then there was Nami. Nami, Nami, Nami. I was two seconds from strangling her. We had started my 'reading lessons' the moment the sun had come up on our first full day on the ship.
And they sucked.
Every time I got something wrong, which happened almost constantly, Nami would make some remark about Luffy not being the stupid one on our crew, or something like that.
In the end though, she was right. The reading lessons weren't going well at all, and there was nothing I could do about it.
I guess the only thing that was going right was experiments.
I had started making 'vitamins' for Johnny and the other guy after my first reading lesson with Nami.
OK, so that's not true, I told her I wanted to make something to help us out in the future in order to get out of 'class', and when she asked me what, it was the only thing I could come up with.
So, I had started boiling random fruits, then drying it out and keeping the powdered stuff that was left over, which I then had Usopp make into little pie size pellets for me.
They probably weren't even close to actual vitamins, but they would have to do until we got Chopper.
The other experiment that I had started was my 'health hazard' experiment.
I had started that experiment because I knew that while I was a little good at combat thanks to martial arts, the mallets, and the cat stuff, I also knew that I would never be a great fighter like Sanji, brook, robin, Luffy, or Zoro.
So, with that in mind, I had started trying to come up with as many things as I could to add to my little arsenal of attacks.
The first thing I managed to come up with was thanks to Usopp's cow drops, which he still had because he hadn't had to use them in the fight against Kuro and the black cat pirates.
I had figured out how to make a spring loaded mechanism so that a small ball of Cow drops could be sent flying through the air, and would explode on impact, but I ended up giving them to Usopp as they were kind of his specialty.
There had been other things too, but none of them had been very successful.
I was just about to reach for my latest experiment when I heard a shout from outside.
"Kaede!" Nami's voice called, sounding extremely frantic. "Get out here quick! And bring those vitamins you've been making!"
The fact that she was asking for the vitamins, or rather demanding them, wasn't lost on me. I wasn't a hundred percent sure if it was them, but I was hoping it was, I really didn't want Johnny and the other guy to die.
Grabbing the small jar of vitamins off the bookshelf, I took off running up the stairs, through the storage room and out onto the deck, nearly jumping for joy when I saw that it was them.
"Johnny! And the other guy!" I shouted, happy to see that they weren't dead yet.
"Huh? Do I know you?" Johnny asked, completely fine and causing me to realize that he wasn't hurt at all.
'Guess it was just the other guy that was sick.' I thought, wishing I had remembered that, though it didn't really matter.
"Nope, but I know you!" I said, running over to his unconscious brother, who was laying on the ground unmoving. "I even made these especially for you guys." I added with a smile before shoving several of the fruity colored pills into the unconscious guy's mouth and allowing Nami to get him to swallow.
"Hay! What are you giving him! Stop it! Your mocking his death!" Johnny shouted, grabbing my arm and accidentally spitting in my eyes as he spoke.
"Ge, that's just great, and I thought Nami was the one that was going to get the unwanted shower." I said, using my sleeve to wipe his spit off. It was really annoying to have someone spit on you while you were trying to help them.
"She's not mocking anybody! She's saving his life you idiot!" Nami said, grabbing his arm and yanking him off me.
"Huh? You mean little bro isn't gonna die?" he asked, staring up at her for a few seconds as giant tear streaks of happiness started running down his face.
"No, though you're lucky we ran into your boat when we did, any longer and he would've died." Nami said as Luffy and Usopp came running out of the kitchen with a huge crate full of limes.
"Huh?" Johnny asked in horror, hoping that it wasn't to late.
"He's got Scurvy." Nami explained." If we weren't to late, he should be just fine in a few days."
"Really big sis? Really?" Johnny asked her excitedly, giving Nami a spit shower in the process.
"Please," She said, putting her hand on his face and pushing him away slightly so that he wouldn't be able to spit on her when he talked anymore. "Don't call me that, it sounds so dumb.
"Besides, I'm not a magician," She started, planing on explaining a little more about scurvy, but getting cut off by me.
"Or a witch for that matter, that's my department." I said, standing up and walking over to Johnny as I continued on for her. "This used to be a hopeless disease that plagued sailors, but we know how to treat it now." I said, taking several of my vitamins and shoving them into Johnny's mouth.
"Yeah, it's caused by a simple deficiency of plant derived nutrients, like vitamin c." Nami explained as Usopp and Luffy started poring lime juice into the unconscious man's mouth. "Back in the old days, they couldn't carry fresh fruits and vegetables because the couldn't store them, But we know better now."
"Wow, you sure know a lot!" Luffy said, making me want to hit him over the head with my mallet for his stupidity as he and Usopp started shoving limes into the poor guys mouth, giving up on just poring the juice into it.
"Yeah! Your really smart!" Usopp said, proving that Luffy wasn't the only stupid one on the ship. "I guess I was right, she isn't dumb." He added to Luffy.
"Yeah, your like, a doctor!" Luffy added, staring at Nami in awe.
As Luffy said this, the poor 'unconscious' man woke up, and started suffocating to death thanks to the fact that his airway was now blocked by limes.
"You guys are morons!" Nami yelled angrily. "Every sailor should know about scurvy!"
"poor guy," I said, getting everyones attention as I walked over to Yosaku, who's name I just remembered. "first he he had scurvy, and now he's suffocating." I finished, hitting him on the back and causing him to spit out all the limes.
"Yosaku!" Johnny yelled happily when he saw that his brother was now sitting up.
"Hurray, hurray! Hurray, hurray! Hurray, hurray! Hurray, hurray!" The two brothers shouted over and over again, jumping up and dancing happily now that Yosaku was awake.
"You can't heal that quickly!" Nami shouted, knowing that Yosaku was just going to make himself pass out again.
The two idiots, and I don't mean Luffy and Usopp, stopped dancing and stood side by side, each crossing one hand cross their chests and bringing their other hands to their mouths, with Yosaku holding a cigarette.
"Please allow us to introduce ourselves." they both said in unison, causing Nami to growl in annoyance.
"My name is Johnny." Johnny said, placing a pair of sunglasses onto his face.
"And I'm Yosaku." Yosaku said, taking a puff of his cigarette.
"And together we are the baddest pirate bounty hunting duo in the world." The said in unison this time.
"Big bro Zoro there used to be one of us." Johnny said, causing everyone to look at Zoro for a second before turning back to the two brothers.
"Glad to make your acquaintance." Yosaku added to the rest of us.
"Small world, never thought I'd see you guys ag-" Zoro started, only to stop when Yosaku passed out again. "Yosaku!"
"Yosaku! Speak to me partner!" Johnny shouted in surprise.
"Yep, didn't need to be psychic to see that coming." I said, already walking up the steps to the kitchen and leaving the others to deal with Yosaku, knowing that Nami would straighten it out.
"Uh!" Nami growled in frustration, angry that they hadn't listened to her when she had said that he wasn't healed yet.
"Pick him up and set him down on one of the hammocks in the boys room." I heard her say as I walked into the kitchen, laughing slightly when I heard Usopp and Luffy practically running to do her bidding.
She could be really scary when she wanted to be, and she always wanted to be when people didn't want to listen to her.
While everyone was outside dealing with Yosaku, I was busy making some food for everyone, silently wishing that we had Sanji to do it for me. While I liked cooking, I wasn't really the best sheaf in the world, and tended to burn things when I wasn't paying attention.
By the time everyone was done putting Yosaku to bed, I had already made a nice fruit salad for everyone, knowing that Johnny was already showing signs of scurvy himself.
"Let this be a lesson to everyone." Nami said as she and the others walked through the door and into the kitchen to sit down.
"Yep, this is the kind of trouble you run into when you choose a life out on the sea." Zoro said, causing me to roll my eyes at him as he hadn't exactly known what was wrong with Yosaku either.
"Which means, when we're at sea, we really need to think about how we can get the right amount of nutrients from very little food." Usopp said, piping in with his on thoughts on the subject.
"Yeah, and it's absolutely necessary that there is someone on this ship that knows how to do that." Nami said, causing most of the people in the room to look at me.
"Hey, I'm just a witch, so don't look at me. I don't know anything about nutrition, and I'd probably poison everyone if I was the one left to cook everyday." I said, causing everyone to stop eating the fruit salad. "Hey! I know how to cut up fruits! Just don't expect me to cook much else, I only know a few recipes, and they're mostly junk food. Not exactly the worlds most healthy things." I said, a little annoyed that they had taken my comment so literal.
"Hm. So it's necessary, but we don't have anyone that knows how to." Luffy said, looking as though he was thinking something out, something I hadn't seen him do before. "Right! The ship needs a cook! Let's go find us a cook!"
"I'm in!" Usopp said, causing me to smile at him.
"I think all of us are in, besides, even if we weren't, Luffy is the captain, he could just over rule us." I said with a smile, getting Usopp to rub the back of his head in embarrassment.
"I know that, I was just saying that I like the idea of having Yummy food even when we're out at sea." He said smiling, knowing that I was just kidding around with him.
"A cook?" Johnny said, looking up from his bowl of fruit, not realizing that that was a vary dangerous thing to do, not to mention stupid. "In that case, I know just the place, and the food is gonna blow ya mind."
"Alright, let's go! Where to?" Luffy asked excitedly, his eyes getting the strange little sparkle in them that they always got when he thought about food.
"Consider your selves warned, this place is close to the Grandline." Johnny said, getting up and walking over to stand in front of Zoro. "And I've heard a lot of rumors lately that a certain Hawk-eyed man you're looking for is there." he said, looking down at Zoro with a smirk.
Zoro looked up at him, happily clutching at the three swords at his side, happy to finally have some information on the man he was looking for.
"Set a course!" Johnny said once he saw the look on Zoro's face. "North, North-East to the sea restaurant, Baratie!"
"Ok, but we'll have to do that tomorrow, it's getting late and I'm betting everyone needs some sleep." I said, getting up and washing my dishes, then heading to the door so that I could get to bed early. "Besides, only an idiot sails at night."
"Hey, I always sailed at night." Luffy said, causing the rest of the room to sweat drop.
"Anyway," I started, choosing not to address the comment that Luffy had just made, though it was incredibly tempting. "Goodnight everyone."
And with that said, I picked up Lil and Choco and headed for the girls room, marveling the fact that I could still pick up Choco even though he was getting so big.
It took us two days to get to the restaurant, and by that time me and Nami had both nearly killed Johnny several different times as he had a habit of not knocking before he barged into a room.
By the time we actually saw the Baratie, he was black and blue all over, though there were still some red from the nose bleeds left as well.
"So, what do you think?" He asked through his swollen lips, talking about the restaurant and not his life expectancy, which was short if he didn't learn to knock sometimes soon.
"Wow! It's a big fish!" Luffy shouted in amazement, his words causing Lil's mouth to start watering, much to my annoyance as she was sitting on my shoulder when this happened.
"Ew! Lil!" I said, looking at my now damp red t-shirt, wishing she wouldn't drool so much.
I guess feeding her nothing but fruit and bread for the past few days wasn't such a good idea.
"This is the coolest place ever!" Luffy said as I turned around and headed for thr girls room, smiling when I saw Yosaku coming up from the boys room.
"Hey, guess you're all better now." I said as I passed, catching Johnny's attention in the process.
"All better?" He asked, turning to see what I was talking about. "Yosaku!"
and before I had even taken a step into the storage room, the two brothers started dancing around and shouting 'Hurray, Hurray!' again like they had when we first met them.
Once I had changed my shirt so that I wasn't wearing a wet one, I walked back out onto the deck, smiling when the marines still hadn't arrived.
'Looks like I was right, being two days late means we don't have to deal with them.' I thought, smiling at the fact that we didn't have to deal with them.
When we had found Johnny and Yosaku two days later then we were supposed to, I knew that we probably wouldn't see Fullbody or his ship.
Which meant that Luffy probably wouldn't end up putting a hole in the roof of the Baratie, and therefor we wouldn't have to stick around for a month, but I had a plan to fix that.
I had a plan!
Since we needed to stay around until Don Krieg and his men showed up, I was going to do something that was going to make the others hate me.
"Why don't we head on in?" I asked once we had dropped anchor, trying to keep my grin from getting to big.
Don't want to tip them off, now do I?
"Sure, I'm in!" Nami said, jumping into Johnny's and Yosaku's ship, waiting for the rest of us to do the same.
"You guys go ahead, I think me and Yosaku's going to hang back for a bit." Johnny said, thoroughly confusing the hell out of me.
Hadn't coming here been his idea?
Shrugging my shoulders at the two brothers, I followed the others and jumped onto the smaller ship, smiling at the thought of all the free food me and Nami were about to eat.
Nami's makeover had it's perks, even if I didn't like it.
"Kweh?" Choco asked, looking at me oddly for a few moments from Merry's railing.
Siting on her back was Lil, looking at me with the same big, pleading eyes that Choco was sending me.
"Alright you two, get on." I said, knowing that they just wanted to go to the restaurant with us.
"Kweh!" Choco shouted happily, jumping onto the smaller boat, bringing Lil with him as she was on his back.
"Yeay!" Lil said happily, the look in her eyes clearly stating that she was going to eat the biggest fish they head at the restaurant.
"Hey, are you sure it's alright for them to come along?" Nami asked, once again doubting my magnificent power of foresight.
"Yeah, most restaurants don't let pets in." Zoro added, raising an eyebrow at me.
"Back in Syrup Village they always let people bring their pets with them, but I guess some places aren't like that." Usopp said, shaking his head at me for some odd reason.
"Don't worry, even if they don't want to let them come in, there is a chef in there that will let them." I said happily
"Huh? There is?" Nami asked curiously, wandering what I meant by that.
"Do you know one of the chefs?" Zoro asked, once again forgetting that I was supposed to be psychic.
"No, but when has that ever stopped me?" I asked as the boat finally docked onto the Baratie. "Come on Fuzz-bucket, You to Choco, let's go." I added, walking to the front door of the restaurant and pushing them open.
The inside of the restaurant was better then I had imagined. The walls were painted a soft pink, and had white pillars with gold trim set every so many feet. The floors were made of some sort of blue marble tiles, and the tables all had pure white table clothes over them.
"Come on, I think I see an open table." Nami said, grabbing my arm and dragging me over to the table and out of my thoughts.
Once we were all sitting down, a chef came over to the table and asked us how we would be paying, only to be knocked out of the way by a blond man in a black suit.
It was Sanji.
"Oh dear ocean- thank you for this treasure that you have shared from your depths." He said, handing me a rose and causing me to turn bight pink, which was quickly remedied when he caught site of Nami. "Such beauty I've never seen!" he said as he gave her two roses, having completely forgotten about me in less then a second.
"Yeah, should have seen that coming." I said, though I was still slightly embarrassed thanks to his comment.
"Who's this guy?" Zoro asked, clearly thinking that Sanji was an idiot.
"Oh yes my loves!" Sanji continued, acting as though he hadn't heard Zoro's comment, though this time he started turning back and forth between me and Nami as he spoke."I can't bare this hardship of loving you from afar, it is to difficult! I am now prepared to sail to the ends of the earth as a pirate if it means someone of your rare beauty will be by my said!"
"To be together, sailing the sees!" He continued, standing up and clutching at his chest dramatically. "But tragic, a great obstacle blocks our way!"
"OH, and that great obstacle would be me, right?" A voice called, dragging our attention from Sanji and over to another chef I had been wanting to meet.
Chef Zeff.
"Tassels!"
'Oh god, no!' I thought in horror as Lil lunged across the table and attached herself to one of the ends of Zeff's mustache.
"Tassels!" Lil said happily, speaking around the giant yellow ball of facial hair in her mouth.
"Did that cat talk?!" Everyone in the restaurant exclaimed, unable to believe their ears.
"Lil! No!" I yelled, running over and grabbing onto the damn cat, trying to pull her off of the long braided mustache.
"OW!" Zeff shouted as I continued pulling on my cat, nearly ripping his mustache off in the process.
"Lil! Let go!" I ordered, wishing she would stop tormenting me with her damn stupidity.
"No! Mine!" Lil hissed, still not letting go of the blond mustache.
"Huh, it did talk." Sanji said in amazement, not bothering to help us get Lil off of Zeff.
"Chef Zeff!" Several of the other chefs shouted, coming out of the kitchen to see what all the commotion was about, only to see a crazy girl pulling on Zeff's mustache.
Don't ask me why, but for some reason, they didn't see Lil attached to the end of it, they only saw my pulling on one of Zeff's long braids.
"What do you think you're doing to chef Zeff?!" some of them demanded, coming over and yelling at me.
"I'm not doing anything to him! I'm trying to get my damn cat off his mustache!" I explained, still trying to pull her off.
At my words. everyone looked at my hands and saw that I was right. I was pulling on a really fuzzy black thing that was attached to the end of Zeff's mustache.
"I'll get it off for ya!" One of them asked, getting everyones attention as he raised a large meat cleaver, clearly planning on hitting Lil with it.
Zoro and Sanji both made a move to stop him, but stopped when they realized that there wasn't any point in worrying, because what happened next shocked everyone, including me.
In a flash, I wrapped my tail around the chef's wrists and used it to throw the him off balance and yank him to the ground. Not wanting him to kill my cat, I didn't bother to stop and marvel at what I had just done, instead choosing to continue trying to pull Lil off.
She might be annoying, but that didn't mean I was willing to let someone hurt her.
"Patty! What the hell do you think you're doing?! You could have hurt her!" Sanji said angrily, preparing to kick Patty's ass, only to be stopped by a bop on the head from Zeff's chef hat.
"Damn it girl, get your cat off me!" Zeff ordered, annoyed with the fact that something was attached to his mustache, and someone was pulling on it.
The tone in his voice made me think that I no longer had to worry about my 'let's stay at the Baratie' plan.
"Lil, if you don't let go this instant, then there will be no fish for you!" I said, causing her to let go almost instantly.
"No! My fishies!" She wailed in misery, causing a vein in my forehead to start throbbing again.
This cat is going to get me killed.
"Hehehe, sorry about that." Nami said, trying to smooth everything over, only to be ignored as everyone continued to stare at me.
After a few minutes, everyone let out a shout that explained why they were staring.
"She has a tail?!" The all shouted, causing me to hang my head in misery.
Of all the things people could notice me for, my tail was my least favorite of all, though it did actually come in handy for once.
Before any of us even got the chance to talk, Zeff stepped forward.
"You've made a mess of the place, and your cat attacked me, causing me great bodily harm." He said, laying it on a little thick, though I didn't really have the ability to argue with him at the moment. "For that, you'll work here for one year without pay."
Yep, I didn't even need a plan to get us to stay here.
Great.
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OMFG! Over 100,000 words! XD That's a first for me!
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