บท 344: Luffy's Cooking
"I thought I was the only one who could separate my soul from my body, yohohohoho!" Brook laughed.
Pedro and Carrot were slumped forward on the deck with the illusion of their souls leaving their bodies. Cherry stood over them domineeringly and clicked her tongue in disappointment.
"Aren't you supposed to be from a warrior race? How are you already tired?" Cherry asked indignantly.
"I have soreness in muscles I didn't know I had…" Pedro groaned.
"I feel like an overcooked carrot…" Carrot whined.
"Up and at 'em!" Cherry jabbed them both in the back with a finger.
Pedro and Carrot shot up to their feet, suddenly full of energy.
"Now, let's do it again!" Cherry smiled.
Pedro and Carrot paled.
"I've got dinner ready!" Luffy cheered, looking quite pleased with himself.
The fact that he had been in the kitchen for hours now didn't bode well at all, but most of the crew hadn't noticed when he'd first gone in.
"Oh no, what has he done now…" Nami spoke hesitantly, clearly not wanting to even confront whatever Luffy had 'cooked' for all of them.
They filed into the dining room to find the most horrid excuse of food any of them had ever witnessed. Somehow the resultant mass of biomatter was violently purple with noxious fumes seeping from a saucy substance from bubbles.
"Luffy, this isn't edible! Did you use all of our food for this?!" Nami was irate, more angry at herself for forgetting that Sanji wasn't here to fend off her goofball captain from the kitchen.
"Of course not!" Luffy denied.
Nami sighed in relief.
"I used the rest as practice!" Luffy smiled like he was terribly clever.
"We can't eat this, Luffy! It'll kill us all!" Nami throttled him.
"Don't be rude! How could it be bad when I worked so hard on it!" Luffy pouted. His head and hand stretched over to the platter of primordial ooze and put a big spoonful into his mouth.
"?!?!?!?!" Luffy went green in the face instantaneously.
"What are we going to do?!" Nami rubbed her forehead, feeling faint.
Being without food or fresh water was deadly on a normal sea, let alone the most dangerous sea in the world!
As if to prove that fact, the entire ship lurched and tilted as a sudden tidal wave formed in front of it.
"Why now?!" Nami rushed outside to help Jinbe who was still manning the helm.
Several difficult hours passed before the sea calmed once more in the dead of night.
"Haaah!" Nami slumped to her knees, heaving a great sigh. Her stomach growled in protest for all the energy she's been spending running around or holding onto anything in reach for dear life.
Unfortunately, Luffy had destroyed all of their food, so she was going to have to grit her teeth and bear it. Hopefully the sea would be calm enough for a while to try their hand at catching some fish.
"Food's ready!" Cherry sing-songed out of the kitchen door.
Nami's head shot up in disbelief. She found enough energy to run for the kitchen and shockingly reached it even before Luffy did.
Standing in the doorway of the dining room, she saw a simple but abundant feast laid upon the table.
"How? Was I just having a nightmare; or am I dreaming now?" Nami pinched her cheek.
"I just used my devil fruit to separate the component parts of that slop Luffy made. Some of it I couldn't make heads or tails of and some of it was too overcooked for consumption, but I managed to salvage a fair portion of the mess." Cherry said.
Cherry looked like an angel in Nami's eyes at that moment.
Luffy slipped past her and dived at the table. "Foooooooood~!!!"
Once again Nami's panic and anger flared up at Luffy's second attempt to sabotage their supplies today.
"Geh?!" Luffy's trajectory through the air was suddenly diverted as a net slammed into him and pinned him to the wall of the dining room. He struggled in the unexpected trap, but quickly lost his strength. "Sea stone…?!"
"This is too much of an emotional rollercoaster. Thanks, Cherry." Nami walked in and sat down to tentatively test the food, as if it may still be tainted by whatever dark magics Luffy performed on them before.
"Come on…! Let me eat…! I'm starving…!" Luffy's flesh seemed to recede, allowing his bones to show through the skin.
"You can have what's left when everyone else has had their fill, Luffy. Don't pretend like you didn't snack on everything you pleased while you were 'cooking'." Cherry said, taking a seat.
"Sanji tastes the food before he serves it too…!" Luffy argued.
"Tastes, yes, not devours." Nami retorted.
Everyone had a nice peaceful meal, pleasantly surprised at the food's quality even though it wasn't all that impressive. Brook took a portion out to Jinbe and Luffy was released to gorge himself on the leftovers, which was plenty even though he bemoaned the amount remaining.
"We'll still need to come up with something, but at least we won't be starving tomorrow. If the weather is forgiving we should hopefully be able to fish something up." Nami said.
They still had Nami's orange trees, of course, but Nami was loath to hand them out willy-nilly. Scurvy was a serious health concern on the sea after all, they couldn't just eat their entire source of vitamin C. Not to mention that they're a keepsake that reminds her of home.
"I'll just have Takako grab something, no big deal." Cherry said.
"..." Nami blinked at her. "Right, your pet kraken. How could I forget that…? Wait, you knew food wouldn't be a problem from the start? Why did you let me worry about it, then?!"
"It's not my fault if you forgot my beautiful baby girl~" Cherry gushed.
"Remind me why we aren't having her pull the ship to our destination?" Nami asked.
"I will if time gets tight, but it's better not to arrive too early to a party." Cherry spoke as if it were natural.
"You're planning to crash that party, though. Wouldn't it be easier to do that early? What if we're too late and Sanji gets married before we get there?" Nami asked irritably.
"We'll bring his new wife with us? He's a grown ass man and he can make his own decisions, and live with the consequences of his actions." Cherry said with finality. "We're still going to get him back, though."
Nami sighed and supposed that was true to an extent.
"Yeah!" Luffy concurred, stomach bulging a bit less than the captain probably preferred. "And don't take the romance of sailing on the seas away from me! Takako is fun, but there's no harm in adventuring at our own pace!"
Jinbe could be heard chuckling at that, seeming to agree with the sentiment.
"Roger took, what, two or three decades to become king of the pirates? Slow is the way to go!" Cherry nodded. "And we're already on the right track to beat his time by no small amount, too!"
"Yeah, we're gonna beat his time! Fastest pirate king in history, shishishi!" Luffy laughed.
*Fwoom*
"""Cyclone?!?!?!"""
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