DANCES WITH DEVILS, Part the FOURTH!
Chapter 4: Things Go Sour 「うまく行かねｴ」
Dinner on Sunny-gou. Sanji provided the main dishes, Kurt furnished all the beverages and desserts.
“Zeff must have gotten the idea of the peg leg from me then! Yadededede,” rolled his distinctive laugh.
Sanji had finished telling him the story of the island of starvation, and how Zeff came to be a restaurant owner.
“I swear boy, damn near the same thing happened to me, damn near it; pirate’s life to culinary superstar in no time at all, if I can be allowed to toot my own horn, as they say.”
This was, naturally, a lie. But then, he thought Sanji’s story was too good to be true as well.
“So, you any closer to finding All Blue boy?”
“Not even a little bit,” Sanji admitted with a little apologetic smirk. He was skeptical of Kurt’s claim to have been Zeff’s mentor as a pirate, seeing as Zeff never mentioned him-but then, Zeff never regaled Sanji with any tales of his past in any case. So Sanji felt obligated to give the old man the benefit of the doubt.
“This tea is bitter,” Luffy whined, spitting it out.
“It’s probably good for you, drink, drink!” said Kurt.
“…Only probably?” asked Nami.
“No, Luffy, you have to be more gentlemanly about it,” Brook admonished. “You extend your pinky while you’re holding the cup, you take an itty bitty sip, and then you spit it out.”
“But Brook, what if you don’t have a pinky?” asked Chopper.
“Ah, well, if you can’t extend your pinky, then proper etiquette demands you cluck like a chicken.”
“That’s a lie, Chopper,” said Usopp. “You have to bark like a dog.”
“…That’s a lie too, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, Brook’s right, you actually just have to cluck like a chicken. Well, what are you waiting for? Start clucking, Chopper.”
“Wait, what if you can’t extend your pinky or cluck like a chicken?” said Chopper.
“That’s when you’ve got to run rings around the ship while drinking your tea.”
“Be right back, guys!” Chopper took his tea out and drank while running circles around the ship, in due deference to their dinner guest. “Blegh!” Chopper spat it out over the side of the ship quite audibly.
“If Chopper thinks his awful-tasting medicine is fine and this is gross, I think I’ll pass,” said Zoro.
“I like it. It reminds me of the tea in one of my nicer foster homes,” said Robin, reminiscing on a rare pleasant patch of her past.
Fasmidi sat on Luffy’s shoulder, making absolutely certain Kurt wasn’t poisoning any one of the crew-if any of the Sacrifices were not in peak physical condition during their respective fights, the Sea Devil would not arise from his ancient slumber, deeming the matches unfair and not a true testament to the strength of the rulers of the World to Come. However, she knew Kurt was an infidel and did not believe, and so she had to ensure he didn’t break their promise and just outright poison them all. She knew his only stake in this was to have Sanji watch his comrades die. Fasmidi was an expert on poisons, having contacted the perfect death potion for her betrothed once he outlived his usefulness.
Kurt couldn’t help but see that the Straw Hats were decent people… if a little on the dumb side. “So I see you count the Demon Child Nico Robin amongst your friends,” he said, grasping at any straw he could to maintain his hatred. “Boy let me tell ya, if I had ten berries for every girl who wanted to destroy the world I’ve met recently…”
Sanji took this as a tasteless joke. He began to come across harsher in his questioning.
“So how did you manage to find us anyway, old man?”
“Oh, I’ve got connections in the Marines, and they informed me immediately when the Straw Hat Pirates were spotted once more. I couldn’t be seen fraternizing with a pirate, though-for my career, of course-and so I came alone. Same reason I never went to go visit Zeff; if you ever meet again send him my regards, but my job is way too cushy to risk losing it over some silly fiasco; at my level being associated with even just former pirates is anathema, unfortunately. As for how I tracked your ship, my submarine has state of the art sonar technology.”
“Sonar?” said Sanji quizzically.
“Yes, it’s the latest innovation of one Dr. Vegapunk.”
“Oho!” said Franky. “Can I see it?”
“Believe it or not, the interior of my submarine is rather cramped,” Kurt lied. He wanted Sanji to come alone or else the plan wouldn’t work. “I’m afraid a man of your bulk simply won’t fit. In fact, it can be pretty claustrophobic in there so I’d say one person at a time!”
“What is this ‘sonar’ anyway?”
“Come on over, I’ll show you!”
Had Kurt established sufficient trust to convince Sanji to stray from the rest?
Sanji sized the old man up. He could definitely take him down without too much effort if it became a scuffle. And besides, the dude had one foot in the grave as it was-might as well humor him. “All right, see you guys later, Usopp clean the dishes,” he said, lighting up a cigarette.
“Hey! Why’s it gotta be me?” said Usopp.
“Because you’re the only other one who does them right. And isn’t a girl.”
Kurt told him the real reason he wanted Sanji over on the way to the submarine: “I’ll be honest boy, there’s a reckoning that must be had and that’s why I sought you out.”
“Figured as much, old man,” said Sanji coolly. “What, did you wrong Zeff somehow and this is your penance?”
Sanji and Kurt entered the submarine, and that very second Jamal emerged from the shadows and pinched Sanji’s nerve, causing him to collapse.
“Wrong. It’s your penance, Black Leg Sanji.”
“…Just my luck. Another loser wants me dead for no reason.”
“It’s funny you should talk about luck. Mine is on the rise, and yours will keep plummeting as tonight’s events transpire.” This was a very well rehearsed speech. “You see, today is the day you experience complete loss. You will lose even the sun in the sky. This is your last night on the earth-and the last nights of each of your friends.”
“YOU BAS-“
“SILENCE!” Kurt rammed his peg leg into Sanji’s mouth. “It’s all your fault, Sanji. Your fault I lost everything and everyone I loved. That night would never have happened if you weren’t such bad luck!”
Oh no.
Sanji’s eyebrows tilted up. The tears flowed freely.
Kurt. From the chef’s boat before the Baratie. The memories swirled before him as he struggled to speak, to reach out to him.
“I’m going to find All Blue no matter what!” tiny Sanji piped up.
“But Sanji, I’ve told you a thousand times I’ve already discovered All Blue,” said Kurt, happy, whole and intact. “It’s in West Blue, between two upside-down volcanoes.”
“Jamal,” said Kurt. “Round up everybody from downstairs and attack the ship.” Kurt had used the vessel’s sonar capabilities to interfere with Luffy’s Color of Observation ability to count voices.
“Last time you said it was here in East Blue, sideways on the sheerest cliff of a mountain!” said Sanji, pointing his knife at Kurt all flustered and blushing. “You can’t make a fool out of me!”
His consciousness was already fading; how on earth had Kurt gotten so scarred?
“Yeah, ‘cause you’re already a fool,” teased one of the other chefs, but when he turned around to look at Sanji he grew considerably more irate. “Oi, don’t waste food, Sanji!” He smacked the little squirt upside the head for tossing out some leftover telapia. “How many times do I have to smack sense into that head of yours?”
Sanji placed his hand on his cheek, smarting-this was the first time he’d been hit. “But, but, it was just telapia!” he lashed back.
Kurt removed his peg leg from Sanji’s mouth and turned to his hulking associate, gesturing and giving orders, but the only thing Sanji could hear was a faint ringing in his ears. He wrung his eyes shut and tried mustering the energy to rise, to defend his crew, to…
“Listen to me, Sanji,” said Kurt, crouching down and ruffling his hair. “You know I can immediately sense what part of the world any fish came from by taste alone. Does that sound like something a person who hasn’t had his fill of every single species of fish at All Blue could do?”
“For all I know those are all lies!” said Sanji. “You’re just mocking me!”
“That fish you threw out, could very well have come from All Blue! You just threw out a vital clue, my friend!”
“Uhh, should I pinch this dude again? Looks like he’s wigging out,” said Jamal.
“No. That’d kill him-prematurely. I need to prepare him for the appetizers, so to speak, before we serve the main course. Just go attack the ship, this is practically a third of their real firepower at my feet so it shouldn’t be too difficult to subdue them as long as you’ve got the Orbs.”
“Wow, you really know a lot about this crew,” said Jamal, scratching his head. “Obsessed much?”
“This is the day I have been waiting for, Jamal, for two long years. Two years of climbing the culinary ladder, two years of skullduggery and deceit as I wrestled to the very top. Time and experience enough to exact the sweetest revenge. Now go already!”
“All right, all right, yeesh. First your damn sea kings gobble up my hounds, then you order me around…” He lit himself a cigar, quite deliberately, and puffed. “I like you, you made a mean three course churrasco and you swore like a sailor for the press even when your interviewers were kids. But, I’m glad you’ll be dead soon,” he smiled amicably, cracking his knuckles and indulging in a roguish chuckle as he strode down the submarine’s spiral staircase. For a man who believed doomsday to be imminent, he sure seemed awfully relaxed about the whole affair.
“You’re probably wondering what’s going to happen to your precious pirate friends,” Kurt coughed, glowering down at Sanji’s twitching form with nothing but iron contempt. “Or perhaps you’re wondering how I could have survived that night-that night your best buddy Zeff came ‘round and killed us all!”
The lines on Kurt’s face flared with hatred, all the pain and rage of his years of isolation stranded in the Calm Belt bubbling forth from his subconscious prison.
Zeff… killed them all? Sanji blinked, momentarily unable to speak, but more confused now than worried. It was the freak tempest that capsized his old chef’s vessel-Zeff had been looking for loot, to be sure, but he was far from a heartless killer-even if he pretended to be.
Kurt, feeble though he was, was livid enough to drag Sanji by the leg across the submarine hall’s rough grid of tiles into his kitchen: spacious, futuristic chic, and packed with all sorts of strange utensils that looked more like instruments of torture hanging all over the walls. The only window on the submarine was set here-not so Kurt could survey the fish swimming just out of reach as he cooked to keep him grounded, as he so often told his guests, but so that Black Leg Sanji could get an excellent view of tonight’s upcoming events.
Kurt heaved and hauled Sanji’s limp form up off the floor and into a chair opposite the window, where he slumped over the sides of the seat. Sanji was certain his nakama would be more than able to hold their own against whatever goons Kurt hired to try capturing them. There was, after all, so much about the crew that hardly anybody in the outside world could know. Sanji refused to faint, taking pride in his crew and his captain and relishing the thought of what stunning victories his crewmates would shock Kurt with. This defiance must have radiated through his eyes, because Kurt nearly lost it and slammed Sanji in the head with his rolling pin. But then he smiled, or curled his lips upwards, or even more accurately, swung open his maw like the hinges of his jaw snapped open, and laughed hoarsely, the bitter cackle amplified by his lack of teeth.
“Look outside, Black Leg,” he said, pulling some small levers adjacent the room’s stove. “What do you see, son?”
The submarine, still attached by its spider-like iron legs to the hull of Thousand Sunny, rotated as subtly as Kurt could manage towards the location his “fishing boat” had treaded not two hours ago.
The fog had lifted. Sanji reeled-if you squinted you could make out the silhouette of a dome-like ship in the distance.
“Our weather machine,” he gloated. “The oncoming storm. Lucky lucky!”
However, he didn’t know that Fasmidi hadn’t had the opportunity to slip off and surreptitiously cross the sea in her hybrid form back towards the weather machine to steer it closer to the Straw Hat ship as planned. He wondered what was taking her so long to bring it closer-perhaps in her arrogance she overestimated her own prowess at maneuvering the thing. If that was the case then he could use one of his sea kings to nudge the ship over, but he wanted the element of surprise, and there was absolutely no one within a ten furlong radius who could possibly fail to notice a gigantic Calm Belt sea king, even if it only poked its head up over the surface.
In any case, Kurt pressed on organizing his work station by the sink, whistling weirdly all the while. He glanced back at the window periodically while he began delicately picking the spines out of raw fish. Sure enough, eventually a bright white flash illuminated the night sky.
“And so it begins!” Kurt practically chirped. He flipped a few more levers and twisted some knobs by the wall, and the submarine detached and scooted away, her occupants having already crossed the threshold to assault the Straw Hats. “Looks like I’ll have to lend a helping hand, though. Bother.”
Kurt pounded a large yellow button near the dishwasher. The “fishing boat” on top of the submarine revealed itself to be a sound dish-it could emit sonar, and it could ring like a bell.
The clang of the bell invaded Sanji’s already muddled mind and caused him to nearly choke with shock, to say nothing of when the earthworm sea king issued from the deep and tugged the Kakisto towards Sunny in one smooth whip of its serpent body. The resultant wave tipped Sunny dangerously close to capsizing, but she was resilient enough to stay stable.
“And now,” Kurt said, fiddling with the controls to turn the sub around 180 degrees to face the battle. “Now we watch!”
Sanji could only see by the light of Usopp’s mist-flies since the wind was picking up so fiercely, but it was all too easy to see that the crew was in trouble. It was a free-for-all of deadly proportions, and Sanji could do nothing to stop them.
“Hmm, you want to know what’s going on, right?” said Kurt, having resumed preparing his mystery meal. Chop chop chop went the trout, chop went the catfish and the tuna, each fish expertly sliced and diced with increased intensity as Kurt’s typical sarcasm was smoldering and building steam, soon to erupt right back into full-blown hatred once more. “You’re dying to know why I hate you so bad, right? Well stay awake because it’s going to take a while. Tonight it’s going to be dinner, and a show.”
Chapter 5: All Blue 「オールブルー」
Kurt may have teased Sanji over All Blue. It was a silly old fable fit only for a North Blue children’s storybook, like that Noland the Liar. But in his heart of hearts, he too held out hope that a place so fantastical-a chef’s paradise-could exist, somewhere, tucked away in one of the four corners of the globe, just waiting for the intrepid cook worthy enough to enjoy its riches.
Kurt wanted to travel the world. He wanted to leave, to make a name for himself. But he was afraid to admit it. And he was afraid he might fail if he tried.
The Night of the Storm
Kurt couldn’t look back. He swam and swam and swam. The tremendous waves tossed him back and forth but he was on autopilot now, to avoid facing the horrifying fact that absolutely everybody he knew-colleagues, friends, drinking buddies, even his good-for-nothing supervisor-they were all being dragged down to the bottom of the ocean, by the wreckage of the restaurant ship they’d given their all to maintain.
Through sheer luck, Kurt was dragged off into the nearby Calm Belt. He floated serenely across the perfectly still water, though he might have been mistaken for a corpse, bloated with seawater as he was, were he not spluttering up and wheezing and spitting up phlegm and excreting yet another sort of bodily fluid from his eyes.
All that was left was waiting for a sea king to make him its lunch. The jaws of death could snap up at any moment. Seabirds circled in the scorching sun. Kurt didn’t blink for hours, staring at the islandless horizon. This was “the world,” he thought bitterly.
He wanted them to claim him. The jaws of death. Waiting was hell, the uncertainty aching. And with nothing else to think about, his thoughts returned to his crew again and again. Even little Sanji, who dreamed his selfsame dream, was the first to go. The seas had no mercy.
Kurt drank of the seawater. He couldn’t let himself drown; even if his psyche screamed for it, his body demanded sustenance and his soul shook indifferent. The sun beat his face red and flaky.
Finally his eyes drew closed. Dreams overtook him. The angry red disk high above seemed to blink off, once he started sinking. The seawater filled him up. He would join his friends in heaven soon, once he dropped to the bottom, sank through to the planet’s core, and emerged on the other side of the globe, where paradise lay.
A sea king had different designs for Kurt. It would rather Kurt find solace in its stomach.
His survival instinct overrode his existential ennui.
The sea king was a snapper. Had Kurt not thrust away, he would have lost much more than a leg.
Red. Beautiful red. Far from debilitated, Kurt grew incensed; the deep crimson defeated the blue.
The sea king did not bite him. He bit the sea king. He chomped on for dear life and did not yield to the serpent’s wild bucking. With every tooth he lost he only dug through the sea king’s flesh all the deeper, until he’d torn out a small chunk of its hide, destroying his teeth completely. The red flowed and dribbled but he ate. He was a beast now. His heart forfeit to feral ambition.
Somehow he survived. Perhaps the king was used to easier prey. Perhaps he had earned the neptunian’s grudging respect. In any case, the winding Calm Belt firstling dropped him off at a deserted island and bowed out with a farewell flourish of its enormous tail fin, the shower of brine baptizing Kurt’s lonely second life.
A whole archipelago brimming with wildlife awaited his sore eyes if only he would look back. But he himself felt barren. Was this turn of fate really so lucky?
He still had nothing.
Yes. The curse of the seas. It was the curse of the wide, vast, unending blue of the seas.
“All Blue.” He laughed blood, laughed and laughed until he was dizzy. All Blue was no paradise. Its allure was the honeyed trap of this twisted world.
The blue, this ceaseless, all-encompassing blue, it seared his brain, a blight on his eyes. The maddening calm, the featureless plane of water, it called out for his death, reminding him: any day now, and you will lose yourself.
But it all made sense now. In his heart he had harbored All Blue. So had Sanji. This was the punishment for their hubris. They both deserved to die.
For Kurt was all but dead. He crawled and ate of fragrant leaves, but they held no flavor-he had imbibed so much seawater that his taste buds were dampened, and everything that passed through his lips became bitter.
He fashioned himself a new leg out of wood. He built himself a life from scratch, but still he felt only emptiness.
Cooking was his only respite from grief and indifference. He still loved to cook. And the smell of his cuisine attracted surrounding sea kings. They would be his only companionship for he knew not how many years. He fed them dishes made from recipes he invented using just ingredients from his chain of islands, of which he was the sole human. Eventually addiction addled these sea kings and they became beholden to Kurt for meals. It was a simple purpose, but it was better than total listlessness. It was better than staring at the odious expanse of blue.
Two years ago
As luck would have it.
The first word Kurt wheezed in weeks, maybe even months.
“S-sanji?”
The stray bounty poster, borne to Kurt’s nowhere by a lost news coo coo, was one of the eight posters of the Straw Hat Pirates that landed on his stretch of beach.
The revelation settled over Kurt like trickling confusion.
Sanji? The All Blue kid? He’s a pirate now!?
He was alive. And well. If a bit ugly, by the looks of the photo.
He survived. Relief flooded him. What insane luck that blessed boy ha-
He became a pirate. Just like Red Leg Zeff, who brought the storm.
The little bastard spat on the memory of every single one of his comrades who lost their lives on that boat.
Kurt’s face quickly turned red.
What a cosmic joke. What a mockery of justice. Kurt suffered while that traitor Sanji lived the high life. Kurt didn’t deserve his fate, he realized: all that mattered was luck, luck, luck.
The poster crumpled in Kurt’s gnarled hands. The cad had grown up ugly. There was some justice in the world. But then…
Kurt glanced into his reflection by the gentle waves of the shore. He had not aged well. He was hardly recognizable.
A plan. The water grinned.
It was time Kurt escaped his prison and pursued his dream. He would reverse his luck. He came by the Calm Belt by luck, and now it was finally time he headed into the Grand Line. Into Paradise.
His sea kings would not be able to withstand Grand Line weather for a very long time. Once he reached an island-any old island would do-he would bid his companions adieu as they returned to their ancestral waters. And then he would work his body and mind to their limits every waking hour, and ascend to the top of the chef’s world by any means necessary.
The plan was totally, utterly insane. But he was determined that he should rise to a higher position than Sanji.
“Picture it, Black Leg scumbag,” said Kurt. “At last I start working my way up the culinary food chain, with no sense of taste, no ability to chew, no contact with humans for just under a decade, and no connections. And just around when I become confident I can do it, you and your crew drop off the map.”
He punctuated this with a particularly strong chop. He paused.
“My luck had run out. I almost gave up on my revenge.”
He shivered, as though his revenge was his reason for existing.
“But I triumphed over those misgivings. I gathered contacts, information. I learned there was no reason to believe you were dead. And I planned. What is the most fitting end for this man, I thought? Can you guess what I came up with, son?”
Sanji sat transfixed.
“I’m going to make you an All Blue, son!” he chuckled. “On this submarine is damn near every fish species in the Blues. I’m sure you won’t mind if you’re cooked alongside them! You’ll make a grand All Blue Fishcake with a savory side of peanuts and just a touch of alfalfa.”