Title: Bag of Tricks
Theme: #7: Salt
Claim: Zoro
(Words:) 1,980
Rating: PG...nothing really serious.
Warnings: Bad pranks? lol...like maybe two bad words too.
Disclaimer(s): I do not own, or pretend to own, One Piece or any of its subsequent characters, plots or other ideas. That right belongs solely to Eiichiro Oda. I do not own the prompts either-those are assigned by 30_OnePiece.

Zoro didn't know what was up with the three youngest members of the Straw Hat Crew, but for the past week they'd been going crazy trying to play pranks on every single one of the crew members. That in itself wasn't so surprising—what was strange was that they were actually succeeding.

They'd gotten Nami by taking advantage of her love of money. Chopper made a special coating that could be painted on pebbles to make them look like lumps of gold. When it dried, they put them in a clear glass and filled it with water, and then Usopp used a slim piece of cardboard to flip the glass over and set it unobtrusively near the edge of a nearby table. To the untrained eye it looked like an empty glass upturned over several nuggets of gold, and Nami greedily snatched up the cup without thinking, spilling water all over her skirt, legs, and sandals in the process. To top it off the deluge washed off the gold coating, leaving her with nothing but rocks for her trouble. Nami was not pleased to say the least, but the boys thought it was a riot.

They'd gotten Franky through a joint effort. While Luffy stood guard, prepared to drive Franky off if necessary, Usopp and Chopper snuck into Franky's workshop and broke into his personal store of drinking cola. His fuel-cola came in hard glass bottles to prevent breakage, but his drinking cola was in cheaper plastic bottles, and the trio happily took advantage of this. They poked holes in the bottom of the entire stock of bottles, drained out the cola, and submerged the bottles in a watered-down tabasco concoction of Usopp's, with special herbs from Chopper to make it still look like cola at a glance. When the bottles were re-filled, they carefully glued the holes shut, replaced the bottles, and beat it out of there. Franky's howl of spicy surprise when he took a swig of "cola" could be heard over the entire ship, and grew steadily worse as he tried to find a real bottle of cola to cool his mouth—only to make it worse. Luffy, Usopp and Chopper had been reduced to hysterical laughter, rolling around on the lawn with glee.

They managed to get Brook with a surprising amount of coordination (considering Luffy was a part of the group). Luffy happily provided a distraction in the kitchen galley, long enough for Chopper to sneak in and steal several tea bags without Sanji noticing, since the cook was too busy kicking his captain in the head. These were transferred to Usopp, who carefully unscrewed the shower-head in the bathroom and stuffed the tea bags in, just before Brook was due to take his usual morning rinse. Hot water filtered through tea bags turned into tea—in this case, a full shower of it. Brook took it in good cheer once he discovered what had happened, although he (or more specifically, his afro) smelled like a blend of Earl Gray and something extremely bitter none of them knew the name of, with just a touch of something citrusy at the fringes. Several non-pranking crew members had been tempted to toss him into the sea, Devil Fruit or no, just to get rid of the smell.

They'd even managed to get Sanji, and in the kitchen of all places. Usopp had wrapped a rubber band tightly around the hose sprayer attached to the sink, so that when Sanji turned on the water to do the dishes, he was sprayed head on by a gout of water all over his suit. Sanji was, unsurprisingly, less than pleased, and showed his displeasure with a series of very vicious kicks. What was surprising was that the younger pirates managed to pull it off in his enclosed space to begin with.

(It went without saying that they naturally attempted to pull something on Zoro, but one patented bandit-hunting Killer Glare, complete with bandanna for additional effect, was enough to send even Luffy scampering for cover. They didn't try anything on him again).

The trio seemed determined to get everyone at least once apart from themselves (and Zoro) but they ground to a rather abrupt halt when it came to Robin.

At first Zoro wasn't sure why. They seemed determined enough, but Robin never fell into any of their traps—probably due to her irritating ability to know everything. No matter what increasingly more elaborate schemes Usopp cooked up to finally catch their archaeologist with something, they never seemed to work, and Robin continued to act entirely unaware of the situation.

Zoro finally overheard the three having a huddling conference not too far from his napping spot after a good week of frustrated attempts on Robin. He pretended to still be asleep—probably the reason they were having their little conference near him to begin with—and listened in curiously.

"I don't understand," Usopp began, sounding anxious. "Every time we set up a trap for her at all it doesn't work, or she finds it before it goes off, or she knows something's wrong ahead of time!"

"I bet you're doing it wrong," Luffy said bluntly.

"I am not!"

"Maybe she's just too smart and we can't trick her," Chopper said, a little sadly. "I mean, I bet she's really good at predicting this sort of thing."

"Well, we tried Usopp's Super Secret Water Dispenser Mechanism right?"

"The bucket of water on top of the door? Yeah, but she knew it was there and took it down before she walked through..."

"What about all those confetti-filled balloons we made? Weren't you gonna fill the library with them?"

"I was gonna! I had the perfect time set up and everything, while she was sun bathing! But, well, I had to...that is, Franky called me for help, so..."

Zoro listened with curiosity to the slight waver in Usopp's and Chopper's voices and realized with surprise that they weren't putting as much effort into this one as they could have. Obviously they had the ideas, but not the resolve. He snorted when he realized they were actually scared of Robin's reaction if they did manage to prank her. He sure as hell didn't know why. As long as they didn't destroy any of her books in the process, she was nakama, and would probably take it in good stride if they did manage to best her.

"You're going at it half-assed," he reported, still with his eyes closed.

The trio jumped in surprise, even Luffy, and Usopp regarded the swordsman warily. "What do you mean?"

"I mean if you don't take it seriously and go all the way, you're not going to get her," Zoro elaborated.

"This isn't a sword fight, Zoro," Usopp said sullenly. "We know how to prank people, okay? I'd like to see you do better!"

He shrugged in his reclining pose. "No thanks. I don't do that sort of thing."

"Well then leave it to us!" And the trio huddled together again, discussing the next overly elaborate plan. Zoro rolled his eyes beneath the lids and went back to actually sleeping—if they didn't want to take his advice, that was fine with him.

Two days later the trio was still unsuccessful on the Robin front, and getting very frustrated about it. They were all flopped unhappily at the table in the morning before breakfast, and Luffy even lacked his usual energy to try and steal food while Sanji was preparing it. Zoro was at the table as well, mostly against his will. If he'd had things his way he would have been sleeping still in his nice, comfortable bunk. But the cook's swearing that morning had apparently startled Chopper enough that the reindeer had attached to Zoro's face and nearly suffocated him, which also served as a premature wake up call.

He was seriously considering putting his head down at the table and going to sleep again anyway when Robin and Nami walked in. Sanji greeted them both with his usual idiotic happiness, offering them pretty much anything their hearts desired. Nami immediately took advantage of his doting (witch) and Robin politely waved the cook off before glancing at the trio of would-be pranksters at the table. Her lips quirked slightly in a smile as she asked, "What could be wrong with you three? Are you feeling ill?"

"No," Usopp said sullenly.

"I don't think I am," Chopper said, a little more anxiously as the ship's doctor. He sat up on the alert and checked his own pulse and forehead before adding with relief, "No, it's okay, I think I'm alright."

"You're mean, Robin," came Luffy's answer, as he pouted at her. "You should—" But before he could say anything further Usopp and Chopper shut him up, slapping hand and hooves over their captain's mouth.

Robin's smile quirked again, and she turned to her coffee, brewing on the counter. She waved off Sanji's offers again and began preparing her usual morning cup with cream and sugar while asking, "Mean, captain? Have I done something wrong recently?"

"N-n-not at all!" Usopp stammered. "Luffy, just, uh, he had a weird dream, see, and he was just telling me about it, there was an insult contest and we were all in it, and well, you had the best insults, you know, 'cause you've studied all these other languages and stuff—"

Zoro rolled his eyes—their self-proclaimed liar really needed to get better at his improvisation. Robin looked amused at Usopp's crappy cover story, although her face was difficult to read. "That sounds fascinating," she said, as she finished with her coffee and looked at them over the rim of the mug. "You'll have to tell me about it in detail. Dream interpretation is a large part of many cultures, so I've studied a fair bit of it myself." And she took a sip, still smiling ever so slightly at the trio's trapped, panicked expressions.

But then the strangest expression seemed to twist over Robin's face, and it shifted from amused to surprised in less than a heartbeat. Without warning she raised her mug to her lips again and spat the coffee she'd just drank back out, before snatching one of the napkins on the table with a few extra hands and patting her lips dry. "Oh my," she murmured after a moment, regarding the mug with interest.

"Robin-chan!" Sanji said anxiously. "Was something wrong with the coffee? It's the same blend I've been preparing for you as always, I know it's Robin-chan's favorite—"

"There is nothing wrong with the coffee, Cook-san," Robin said, and then her gaze calmly turned to the wide-eyed pranking trio, before saying, "Salt instead of sugar. I suppose I will have to concede my defeat after all, then..."

"Salt in the sugar jar? I didn't do that..." Usopp said, sounding surprised. "Luffy? Chopper?"

"That's a great idea, I wish I thought of it!" Chopper said, eyes wide. He looked impressed.

"No fair, I wanted to get Robin..." Luffy pouted.

"Wait, so if it wasn't any of us..." Usopp, Chopper, and Luffy looked at around at each other once before turning slowly, almost as one, to face Zoro at the end of the table. He did his best to look innocent, which wasn't exactly his strong suit, and ended up resorting to playing ignorant instead—something he was markedly better at.

"An excellently played prank, Swordsman-san," Robin said, with a slight quirk at her lips. "You didn't hesitate for a second, did you?"

Zoro just shrugged, and tried to return to his nap—until Sanji's flying foot came slashing down at his head. But hell—the resulting battle was entirely worth the effort of seeing that look on Robin's face.

I had to research the pranks because I am an incredibly unfunny person and wouldn't know the first thing about pranking people. Now isn't that just sad...

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Zoro, you lucky bastard, you will never ever get punched for not wearing green...:P

~VelkynKarma