One Piece Fic: Fish Stick Interlude
Title:: Fish Stick Interlude
Rating: PG13 for language
Pairing: None whatsoever, just Sanji and Zoro annoying people and each other.
Word count:: 2000 and some
Spoilers: None.
Timeline: Some time in the Merry days.
Disclaimer: All characters belong to the massive concerns who would crush a pipsqueak like me if I tried to claim anything other than the right to breathe.
AN: This is an interlude, thus it is short, pretty much pointless, hopefully amusing, and without much claim to any depth or continuation. Oh, and the title is senseless, too.
Fish Stick Interlude
---
Sanji leaned to one side, pulling against the resistance of the manacles holding his hands at shoulder-height until he was able to lift his cigarettes from his breast pocket by the tips of two fingers. A flick of the wrist sent the last slim stick scooting out of the pack. The chains clanked and gritted against their stone anchors as Sanji caught it with his other hand and flipped it into his mouth. Then he glanced to his left.
"Oi, marimo."
This time, Zoro stirred. Oh good, lazy-ass was finally waking up.
Zoro's scowl intensified before his eyes opened, first one, then the other. He focused on the pillars carved in the shapes of sea serpents, then he took a moody look at the boiling cauldron of red gloop and the gigantic octopus in the seawater pool at the back of the cave. His glance did not waver as it passed over the bloodied pendulum and altar, the two lightly clothed girls holding the stuffed alligator and the fat midget rattling two keys. Then he looked up at the manacles from which he was dangling. He got to his feet and gave the chains a slight tug. They clanked. Zoro went "Hmf".
There was a perturbed feeling emanating from the assembly. From the heaps of skulls nearby, they'd had a lot of prisoners in these chains before, but not many whose first reaction on waking was, to all intents and purposes, 'not again'. Sanji felt for them, he really did. He hadn't acted anything other than his usual suave self when he'd regained consciousness, naturally, but he had betrayed a moment of perplexity. Bloody marimo could at least look a little bit unsettled in his turn.
"Hey. Seaweed."
Zoro's head swung to his right. "What."
"Got a light?"
"You're the smoker," Zoro said, and then added, "idiot," as an afterthought. The blood from the large bump and cut on his forehead decorated his face, flowed into his eyes and underlined the pissy expression. That looked painful. Sanji sure hoped it was.
"Got a light that's not, like mine, in your hip pocket?" Sanji elaborated.
"No."
"Well shit. Knew you'd be useless." Sanji nibbled on the filter and looked thoughtfully at the midget. Nah. His gaze was more hopeful as it lit upon the girls. They seemed quite attached to their alligator, but..."Would either of you two lovely creatures care to put that down and come fish around in my pants?"
There was a disgusted snort from Zoro. The two girls stared at Sanji as if they'd never seen anything quite so remarkable. Maybe it was the eyebrow. Yeah, that was it; got the dames every time. Soon they'd be unable to resist the impulse to come up to him and run their fingertips over it-
"Ah," said Zoro in a satisfied tone. He must have spotted his swords behind the altar. Perhaps Sanji should have mentioned those right from the start; the poor marimo must have been a mess of fretting nerves up till now.
Zoro tugged at his chains a couple of times. They were steel and seastone, for the benefit of the occasional devil fruit user without a doubt. Zoro looked thoughtfully at the ceiling in which the chains were deeply anchored; his gaze tracked the trickles of water that seeped from the roof of the underwater cavern down the walls. Then he propped himself up against the rock at this back and closed his eyes once more.
"You're not going to fall asleep again, are you?" Sanji asked sharply.
Zoro didn't open his eyes. "You got any other suggestions?"
"Yes. Don't. Your snoring echoes in these caverns. It sounds like two pigs rutting."
Zoro did not seem to care that he sounded like two pigs rutting. His head was already starting to nod. Sanji wished he was manacled just five inches further to the left so he could kick the piece of thick greenery where it'd do him the most good. Sanji wasn't in the best of moods; tinnitus was doing a number in his ears, his sinuses twinged and he had a foul after-taste in his mouth. Being chained to the ceiling, unable to light a cigarette, only added to the unpleasantness of waiting to be fed to a sea-god for the past half hour.
Sanji considered the situation carefully. The answer to his dilemma was obvious, and right in front of his nose. Garlic. Garlic, ginger, butter, some fine salt and sautéed octopus, since there was one here; that'd get the shitty taste out of his mouth.
"You wouldn't have any lemons, would you? Or a light?" Sanji asked the midget.
Silence.
"Didn't think so." The cook sighed and looked at the tip of the unlit cigarette past his nose. This was just going to be one of those days.
Chiming sounds to his right caught Sanji's attention. He quickly twisted his head around to pluck the unsmoked smoke from his lips and give a beguiling grin. The lovely lady in the wonderfully daring ensemble didn't respond to his charm; she was probably a little shy.
"Hello again. I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name earlier," Sanji smarmed.
The woman was holding a shallow bowl full of red liquid and looking at him oddly.
"You're the one who captured me, right? Oh, but don't worry, I don't bear a grudge. How could I? You didn't even need to give me another dose of that knockout gas. I would have followed you willingly. To the ends of the earth! That is a very fetching bikini top. Is that real fur?"
"You let her...capture you?"
"Go to sleep, marimo. It's what you do best."
"You let her capture you? I took down fifty of them."
"Is that all?" Sanji sneered.
"I couldn't see, their yellow smoke had blinded me," Zoro muttered, a mite defensively. "At least I didn't let some chick capture me."
"No, they only had to slingshot a few lead balls at your head to knock you out. Usopp'll be over the moon when I tell him this."
"Nami will get a kick out of hearing about your own glorious defeat, dumbass-cook."
"I was surprised they managed to take you down, actually, it's not like they were aiming at your weak spot; that's pure bone up there."
"Did they even bother to gas you? Or did she just flash her-"
"Would you two shut up!"
Zoro and Sanji broke off their glaring match and glanced up at the High Priest. Sanji presumed the man was the High Priest. High something or other, considering the quantity of bling he thought necessary to wear. The High - Chief, maybe - looked like he regretted his outburst. It seemed that speaking was forbidden during the ceremony. But Sanji suspected the man was mainly embarrassed because the last words he'd uttered previously were 'Hahahaha, you've fallen into our trap, the smoke around you is gas which works instantly and will render you completely helpless'. If Sanji had said those words, and then spent the next ten minutes watching quite a lot of his men get kicked and sliced, he'd feel a little embarrassed too.
The High Mogul gestured at the girl carrying the bowl. She neared Sanji, and delighted the cook by finger-painting him with the red liquid on his forehead, cheeks and chest, once she'd ripped open his vest and shirt (Sanji forgave her instantly for that too).
"You have the most amazing fingers, has anybody ever told you that?" Sanji warbled. "You look so much more attractive without that gas mask, you know. It wasn't bringing out the color of your eyes. Did I mention you have beautiful eyes?" There was a revolted sound off to his left; Sanji ignored it. "Do you like sautéed octopus? I have this wonderful recipe- of course, I'd need my hands freed first, but I would still be your willing slave of love! Oh, please don't stop, there's plenty of bits you haven't painted yet- No wait don't go near- goddamn it Zoro if you hurt her I'll kill you!"
An empty threat, what with the chains, and Sanji was helpless as he watched the beauty stop near the savage beast. She hesitated, alarmed at the sudden shout from the otherwise indifferent prisoners, but alas, too late, she was within reach. Zoro's foot scythed up and sent the bowl and its contents flipping up and all over the girl. She stumbled back with a squeak of alarm.
"Damnit, you fucking marimo! You ruined her beautiful outfit!"
"I could have ruined her face," Zoro pointed out.
"You are a dead man when I get out of these chains."
"I can take you in my sleep, love-cook."
"Restrain him!" the High Muckitymuck snarled, giving up the code of silence in favour of good old-fashioned teeth gnashing. "Bind his legs!"
Zoro glanced around at the ring of spear points which had materialized around him. "Bind my legs?" he growled, migraine-grumpy. "Bind his legs. The stupid cook wasn't about to let fly at that dumb broad with the bowl-"
Whack, punt, thud, slam-
"-but you guys are fair game," Zoro finished, elbowing a spear blade aside and sending a truly pitiful, amateurish kick into the solar plexus of one of the guards out of Sanji's reach. Sanji sneered at the display; his own roundhouse had been much more exact and professional. Using the chains as support had given him that much wider a range, too, and a certain amount of class that the dumb piece of seaweed totally lacked.
Sanji's second kick picked up the midget who'd come forward with the guards, and booted him like a small human cannonball until he smacked right into the High Wizard, sending them both splashing into the octopus pool. Score. Sanji caught the midget's keyring with his other foot before it could hit the stone floor. A guard tried to stab him with a spear and was absently sent flying as Sanji kicked the keys up and caught them with his fingers- damnit all, he'd lost his bloody cigarette in the scuffle. His hands would be free in a second, his lighter within reach, and he'd gone and lost his last cigarette.
"The gas! Get the gas!" hollered the High Cheese as he tried to get out of the pool and away from the overly friendly octopus, which seemed fascinated by the bling.
Sanji sighed, tossed the keys over his shoulder without looking - there was a growl and the sound of a hasty grab - and went to stop the shit-head guards from getting the shitty gas. Some people never learned. Must be from wearing those heavy coppered helmet-and-gas-mask ensemble. Compacted the brainpan and reduced the airflow or something.
A minute later, Sanji had found some cigarettes on one of the guards and Zoro had found his swords, so they were in a somewhat more equable mood when they ran into each other at the center of the large cavern, a few feet away from the octopus pool.
"Let's get out of here," Zoro suggested.
"Yes, this isn't all that interesting anymore," Sanji agreed with a longing look at the corridor down which the beautiful girls had fled with their stuffed alligator. "My beautiful Nami-swan should be docking the Merry in that hidden harbour right about now. I hope she didn't suffer too dreadfully from my absence."
"Do they even know where we are?"
"No."
"Good. That'll give us time to go and meet them at the docks rather than see them tumbling through that door any second now. I don't want Luffy anywhere near this place."
"Why not?"
"He'll want to bring that back with us," Zoro said, one sword slashing down and cutting off a wandering tentacle.
"Good point. Here, this way- no, you moron, this way. Oh, and marimo?"
"Yeah?"
"As soon as we're back on the boat, I'm pureeing your ass for kicking at that lovely lady."
"I'd like to see you try, dumbass-cook, I'd like to see you try," said Zoro with a grin that suggested this day was turning out to be not so tedious after all.
End Interlude
Rating: PG13 for language
Pairing: None whatsoever, just Sanji and Zoro annoying people and each other.
Word count:: 2000 and some
Spoilers: None.
Timeline: Some time in the Merry days.
Disclaimer: All characters belong to the massive concerns who would crush a pipsqueak like me if I tried to claim anything other than the right to breathe.
AN: This is an interlude, thus it is short, pretty much pointless, hopefully amusing, and without much claim to any depth or continuation. Oh, and the title is senseless, too.
Fish Stick Interlude
---
Sanji leaned to one side, pulling against the resistance of the manacles holding his hands at shoulder-height until he was able to lift his cigarettes from his breast pocket by the tips of two fingers. A flick of the wrist sent the last slim stick scooting out of the pack. The chains clanked and gritted against their stone anchors as Sanji caught it with his other hand and flipped it into his mouth. Then he glanced to his left.
"Oi, marimo."
This time, Zoro stirred. Oh good, lazy-ass was finally waking up.
Zoro's scowl intensified before his eyes opened, first one, then the other. He focused on the pillars carved in the shapes of sea serpents, then he took a moody look at the boiling cauldron of red gloop and the gigantic octopus in the seawater pool at the back of the cave. His glance did not waver as it passed over the bloodied pendulum and altar, the two lightly clothed girls holding the stuffed alligator and the fat midget rattling two keys. Then he looked up at the manacles from which he was dangling. He got to his feet and gave the chains a slight tug. They clanked. Zoro went "Hmf".
There was a perturbed feeling emanating from the assembly. From the heaps of skulls nearby, they'd had a lot of prisoners in these chains before, but not many whose first reaction on waking was, to all intents and purposes, 'not again'. Sanji felt for them, he really did. He hadn't acted anything other than his usual suave self when he'd regained consciousness, naturally, but he had betrayed a moment of perplexity. Bloody marimo could at least look a little bit unsettled in his turn.
"Hey. Seaweed."
Zoro's head swung to his right. "What."
"Got a light?"
"You're the smoker," Zoro said, and then added, "idiot," as an afterthought. The blood from the large bump and cut on his forehead decorated his face, flowed into his eyes and underlined the pissy expression. That looked painful. Sanji sure hoped it was.
"Got a light that's not, like mine, in your hip pocket?" Sanji elaborated.
"No."
"Well shit. Knew you'd be useless." Sanji nibbled on the filter and looked thoughtfully at the midget. Nah. His gaze was more hopeful as it lit upon the girls. They seemed quite attached to their alligator, but..."Would either of you two lovely creatures care to put that down and come fish around in my pants?"
There was a disgusted snort from Zoro. The two girls stared at Sanji as if they'd never seen anything quite so remarkable. Maybe it was the eyebrow. Yeah, that was it; got the dames every time. Soon they'd be unable to resist the impulse to come up to him and run their fingertips over it-
"Ah," said Zoro in a satisfied tone. He must have spotted his swords behind the altar. Perhaps Sanji should have mentioned those right from the start; the poor marimo must have been a mess of fretting nerves up till now.
Zoro tugged at his chains a couple of times. They were steel and seastone, for the benefit of the occasional devil fruit user without a doubt. Zoro looked thoughtfully at the ceiling in which the chains were deeply anchored; his gaze tracked the trickles of water that seeped from the roof of the underwater cavern down the walls. Then he propped himself up against the rock at this back and closed his eyes once more.
"You're not going to fall asleep again, are you?" Sanji asked sharply.
Zoro didn't open his eyes. "You got any other suggestions?"
"Yes. Don't. Your snoring echoes in these caverns. It sounds like two pigs rutting."
Zoro did not seem to care that he sounded like two pigs rutting. His head was already starting to nod. Sanji wished he was manacled just five inches further to the left so he could kick the piece of thick greenery where it'd do him the most good. Sanji wasn't in the best of moods; tinnitus was doing a number in his ears, his sinuses twinged and he had a foul after-taste in his mouth. Being chained to the ceiling, unable to light a cigarette, only added to the unpleasantness of waiting to be fed to a sea-god for the past half hour.
Sanji considered the situation carefully. The answer to his dilemma was obvious, and right in front of his nose. Garlic. Garlic, ginger, butter, some fine salt and sautéed octopus, since there was one here; that'd get the shitty taste out of his mouth.
"You wouldn't have any lemons, would you? Or a light?" Sanji asked the midget.
Silence.
"Didn't think so." The cook sighed and looked at the tip of the unlit cigarette past his nose. This was just going to be one of those days.
Chiming sounds to his right caught Sanji's attention. He quickly twisted his head around to pluck the unsmoked smoke from his lips and give a beguiling grin. The lovely lady in the wonderfully daring ensemble didn't respond to his charm; she was probably a little shy.
"Hello again. I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name earlier," Sanji smarmed.
The woman was holding a shallow bowl full of red liquid and looking at him oddly.
"You're the one who captured me, right? Oh, but don't worry, I don't bear a grudge. How could I? You didn't even need to give me another dose of that knockout gas. I would have followed you willingly. To the ends of the earth! That is a very fetching bikini top. Is that real fur?"
"You let her...capture you?"
"Go to sleep, marimo. It's what you do best."
"You let her capture you? I took down fifty of them."
"Is that all?" Sanji sneered.
"I couldn't see, their yellow smoke had blinded me," Zoro muttered, a mite defensively. "At least I didn't let some chick capture me."
"No, they only had to slingshot a few lead balls at your head to knock you out. Usopp'll be over the moon when I tell him this."
"Nami will get a kick out of hearing about your own glorious defeat, dumbass-cook."
"I was surprised they managed to take you down, actually, it's not like they were aiming at your weak spot; that's pure bone up there."
"Did they even bother to gas you? Or did she just flash her-"
"Would you two shut up!"
Zoro and Sanji broke off their glaring match and glanced up at the High Priest. Sanji presumed the man was the High Priest. High something or other, considering the quantity of bling he thought necessary to wear. The High - Chief, maybe - looked like he regretted his outburst. It seemed that speaking was forbidden during the ceremony. But Sanji suspected the man was mainly embarrassed because the last words he'd uttered previously were 'Hahahaha, you've fallen into our trap, the smoke around you is gas which works instantly and will render you completely helpless'. If Sanji had said those words, and then spent the next ten minutes watching quite a lot of his men get kicked and sliced, he'd feel a little embarrassed too.
The High Mogul gestured at the girl carrying the bowl. She neared Sanji, and delighted the cook by finger-painting him with the red liquid on his forehead, cheeks and chest, once she'd ripped open his vest and shirt (Sanji forgave her instantly for that too).
"You have the most amazing fingers, has anybody ever told you that?" Sanji warbled. "You look so much more attractive without that gas mask, you know. It wasn't bringing out the color of your eyes. Did I mention you have beautiful eyes?" There was a revolted sound off to his left; Sanji ignored it. "Do you like sautéed octopus? I have this wonderful recipe- of course, I'd need my hands freed first, but I would still be your willing slave of love! Oh, please don't stop, there's plenty of bits you haven't painted yet- No wait don't go near- goddamn it Zoro if you hurt her I'll kill you!"
An empty threat, what with the chains, and Sanji was helpless as he watched the beauty stop near the savage beast. She hesitated, alarmed at the sudden shout from the otherwise indifferent prisoners, but alas, too late, she was within reach. Zoro's foot scythed up and sent the bowl and its contents flipping up and all over the girl. She stumbled back with a squeak of alarm.
"Damnit, you fucking marimo! You ruined her beautiful outfit!"
"I could have ruined her face," Zoro pointed out.
"You are a dead man when I get out of these chains."
"I can take you in my sleep, love-cook."
"Restrain him!" the High Muckitymuck snarled, giving up the code of silence in favour of good old-fashioned teeth gnashing. "Bind his legs!"
Zoro glanced around at the ring of spear points which had materialized around him. "Bind my legs?" he growled, migraine-grumpy. "Bind his legs. The stupid cook wasn't about to let fly at that dumb broad with the bowl-"
Whack, punt, thud, slam-
"-but you guys are fair game," Zoro finished, elbowing a spear blade aside and sending a truly pitiful, amateurish kick into the solar plexus of one of the guards out of Sanji's reach. Sanji sneered at the display; his own roundhouse had been much more exact and professional. Using the chains as support had given him that much wider a range, too, and a certain amount of class that the dumb piece of seaweed totally lacked.
Sanji's second kick picked up the midget who'd come forward with the guards, and booted him like a small human cannonball until he smacked right into the High Wizard, sending them both splashing into the octopus pool. Score. Sanji caught the midget's keyring with his other foot before it could hit the stone floor. A guard tried to stab him with a spear and was absently sent flying as Sanji kicked the keys up and caught them with his fingers- damnit all, he'd lost his bloody cigarette in the scuffle. His hands would be free in a second, his lighter within reach, and he'd gone and lost his last cigarette.
"The gas! Get the gas!" hollered the High Cheese as he tried to get out of the pool and away from the overly friendly octopus, which seemed fascinated by the bling.
Sanji sighed, tossed the keys over his shoulder without looking - there was a growl and the sound of a hasty grab - and went to stop the shit-head guards from getting the shitty gas. Some people never learned. Must be from wearing those heavy coppered helmet-and-gas-mask ensemble. Compacted the brainpan and reduced the airflow or something.
A minute later, Sanji had found some cigarettes on one of the guards and Zoro had found his swords, so they were in a somewhat more equable mood when they ran into each other at the center of the large cavern, a few feet away from the octopus pool.
"Let's get out of here," Zoro suggested.
"Yes, this isn't all that interesting anymore," Sanji agreed with a longing look at the corridor down which the beautiful girls had fled with their stuffed alligator. "My beautiful Nami-swan should be docking the Merry in that hidden harbour right about now. I hope she didn't suffer too dreadfully from my absence."
"Do they even know where we are?"
"No."
"Good. That'll give us time to go and meet them at the docks rather than see them tumbling through that door any second now. I don't want Luffy anywhere near this place."
"Why not?"
"He'll want to bring that back with us," Zoro said, one sword slashing down and cutting off a wandering tentacle.
"Good point. Here, this way- no, you moron, this way. Oh, and marimo?"
"Yeah?"
"As soon as we're back on the boat, I'm pureeing your ass for kicking at that lovely lady."
"I'd like to see you try, dumbass-cook, I'd like to see you try," said Zoro with a grin that suggested this day was turning out to be not so tedious after all.
End Interlude