Title: The perils of group laundry
Theme: Set #3 - Weather
Claim: Zoro
Words: 1352
Rating: K
Warnings: Based on a filler episode.
Disclaimers: I don't own One Piece.
Acknowledgments: Thanks, ZeldaAddict42, for beta-ing this! You're awesome! :-D

It had been several miserable days of torrential rain, and as the Thousand Sunny breached the boundary of the storm, the Strawhats greeted the reappearance of the sun with a loud cheer. The girls immediately took advantage of the lovely dry heat, hauling out their clothes and bedding to recover from a week of moisture that defied even the ship's excellent water-sealing.

"Nami-swaaan, Robin-chwaaan, may I be permitted to assist you?" Sanji crooned, only to be shooed away by the navigator.

"No. And no, Brook, you can't have a look at our underwear! Go away!" Nami paused, sniffing the air, and her face wrinkled in disgust. "You boys stink!"

"We can't stink, this whole week's been like one long shower," Luffy said defensively, instinctively knowing what station Nami's train of thought would end up at.

Nami marched over to the boys' room and threw the door open, almost fainting at the stench of dampness that emerged. "Your room stinks too! You lot had better air out your own things before they start growing mould!"

"But, Nami, we want to play!" Luffy protested. "And look, Zoro's sleeping already!"

"That doesn't excuse him from helping to clean up! Luffy, go wake him up. The rest of you, get to work!"

Nami's pronouncement, delivered as it was with an air of expectant finality, was greeted with a single enthusiastic response and five dejected grumbles. Luffy ambled over to Zoro to try and wake him up, while Franky and Usopp strung up the washing lines from the convenient hooks in the walls of the Thousand Sunny up to the yardarms, Chopper and Brook busied themselves with the bedclothes, and Sanji disappeared into the galley to gather up all his teatowels and washcloths.

Nami came by to supervise presently, dissatisfied with the progress they were making. "Where's Zoro? Luffy, why didn't you wake him like I told you to?"

"I tried!" Luffy said indignantly. "I shook him and I made faces at him and I splashed water on him and everything! He refused to wake up!"

Nami clucked her tongue in annoyance. "Ever notice that whenever we're doing a major clean-up, Zoro manages to be absolutely fast asleep?" she complained to nobody in particular, making a mental note to charge Zoro a hefty non-appearance fee.

"Fear not, Nami-san, I will work twice as hard to make up for that lazy marimo!" Sanji volunteered.

"In that case, Sanji-kun, can you clean out Zoro's closet for him too?"

"Hai, Nami-swa..." Sanji's voice trailed off in horror as he realised just what he'd just agreed to do. Handle the smelly, fashion-less clothes of the marimo? But he'd already said yes, and to Nami-san to boot, so however unpleasant the task, he had to do it.

The boys headed into their bedroom, all of them grumbling now, stumbling out with armfuls of clothes. Sanji took a deep breath and began sorting through Zoro's heap. There was the red-and-white striped shirt he'd been wearing when he disappeared, ugly as sin if you asked him...the mustard yellow jacket from Enies Lobby...just how many murky green haramaki did the man need anyway...this black coat looked familiar, ah yes, it was that soldier's uniform Zoro stole from Drum Island...and what the hell was THIS thing?

"Sanji, I've already hung up my clothes, do you want help doing yours?" Chopper asked.

Silence.

Chopper turned to look at the cook, puzzled by the lack of response.

Sanji was getting slowly to his feet, holding up a small sleeveless yellow shirt, looking for all the world like a ten-year-old who'd just unwrapped a birthday present to find a set of first-class chef's knives inside. Everyone looked around as Sanji burst into hyena-like yelps of laughter.

"Oh my," Robin said, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips as she recognised the shirt.

"Is that Zoro's mother?" Usopp managed to gasp before falling to the floor laughing.

"She must be, he looks just like her!" Luffy guffawed.

"Really? I cannot say I can see any familial resemblance...although, I have no eyes! SKULL JOKE!"

"Hey, Chopper, are you sure this shirt isn't yours? Surely it's too small for Zoro," Nami said, torn between not wanting to laugh at somebody's mother and having to giggle at the sheer ridiculousness of the shirt.

"It doesn't look anything like Doctorine, and maybe it expands like my clothes do?" Chopper shrugged.

"Let's try and see!" Luffy immediately proposed. "Hey, Robin, can you...?"

"Leave it to me, captain-san."

Zoro was awoken a minute later by an unfamiliar breeze blowing across his midriff and the howls of laughter from the crew, now too loud to go ignored. "What's so funny?" he asked, before his eyes strayed downwards and bulged at the nightmarish face stretched across his broad chest, the incriminating word "MAMA" beneath it, and indignity of indignities, the little pink heart next to her face. "What the hell? Who's been messing with my closet?"

"So it IS yours!" Usopp deduced, which only sent everyone spiralling into an even bigger fit of laughter.

Franky emerged from the boys' room at that moment, and peered around his mountain of garish shirts to try and figure out what all the shrieks of laughter were about.

"Hey, I recognise her," he said, dumping his pile of clothes on the deck, pushing up his sunglasses to get a better look as he advanced towards the swordsman, who was still paralysed with horror. "Isn't she that obahan who does scrap-collecting? From the backstreets of Water 7? I didn't know you became Michael and Hoichael's aniki, Zoro-bro! Oh, and then there's Akihiro, Youko, Yuuya, Ayako, and...what's the name of that quiet one now?"

"Sho?" Zoro supplied, despite himself.

"Yeah, you really know the whole family, don't you! And of course there's the three little babies!"

"BABIES?" The word sparked off even more snickering.

"Hey, Zoro-bro, if you want, I can get my bros to ask Paulie to pass a message to them for you..."

Zoro didn't bother to dignify the offer with a response. Red-faced up to the roots of his green hair, Zoro tore off the shirt, stalked off to the stern of the ship and raised his arm to fling the offending article of clothing overboard.

Then he hesitated. He turned and took a furtive glance at the others, satisfied himself that they were too busy laughing at him to be paying him any attention, stuffed the shirt into his haramaki and slunk off towards the boys' room, fully intending to pry up a floorboard - if Franky's workmanship permitted - and hide it away, once and for all.

He grit his teeth as he stomped past the crew, hoping they wouldn't notice the telltale bulge, trying not to be bothered by the cook's tears of laughter, the fact that Luffy and Usopp were rolling around in each other's arms, Franky's let's-be-anikis-together pose, the titters Nami was hiding behind one hand and the knowing smile on Robin's face. Finally, he gave up in his attempt not to be bothered and took solace instead in the fact that Chopper didn't seem to find this at all funny and was actually getting to work, on what looked like the cook's clothes.

"Er, Sanji?"

Something about the note of doubt in the reindeer's voice made Zoro stop in his tracks on the threshold of the boys' room and turn around, to see Chopper holding up, from amid a pile of Sanji's pinstriped shirts, a long, white, lacy garment. "Sanji, how come you have a dress in your closet?"

It might as well have been the eleventh of November, for all the gleeful revenge Zoro exacted on Sanji afterwards.

A/N: Ah, Episode 318. The gift that keeps on giving.

As always, reviews of any persuasion are very welcome.

(Incidentally, I decided to edit some of the fics further down the line, which will take a while, so I'll be moving this series to a less frequent posting schedule. Apologies.)