Work Text:
How it starts:
Zoro, for all of his strengths as the World’s Greatest Swordsman to-be and the best pillow in Chopper’s admittedly biased opinion, was still stupid. He lacked directional sense and though he was a strategist in battle, it did not mean anything outside of it. It was with this fact that he had to go.
“Zoro,” he began carefully and nodded at Robin and Usopp. Robin gave him a smile and Usopp a grimace and thumbs-up. “We need to talk to you.”
The swordsman grunted, “What ith it?” His back against Sunny’s mast with Luffy’s head on his lap. Franky was nearby fixing Sunny’s rails after a hard battle on the seas yesterday and was listening to loud music. Nami and Sanji were in the gallery as backup and Brook was sulking in the aquarium, hurt by Franky’s refusal, drinking tea with Jimbei.
In the mast, Robin’s sprouted hands are visible.
Chopper swallowed. “You need to go to the dentist.”
“The what?”
“Dentist. Like a doctor but for teeth.”
Zoro narrows his eye and Usopp, taking that as his signal, releases a gooey mass at Zoro’s chest, murmuring, “Please don’t kill me. Please, I have so much to live for!”
At Zoro’s outraged yells and Luffy’s surprised giggles, as the gooey thing dripped on his face, Robin’s hands grab the swords and toss it to Usopp, who was beginning to look like he regretted doing this at all.
“Give my thwordth back, Usopp,” Zoro struggles against the goop. “And thop laughing, Luffy! Get me out of thith.”
“Zoro, you sound weird!” Luffy says.
Robin smiles as Zoro tries to strangulate Luffy with his legs. “Luffy,” she calls, immediately getting his attention as he pokes at the mysterious goop that fell on Luffy’s face. “I think Sanji cooked meat. Let’s go see if it’s ready, I think I’d like to drink some tea.”
“Alright!” Luffy bounces off, Robin following in his footsteps.
“Don’t abandon me, Robin!” Usopp yells, dragging out Robin’s name and when she doesn’t turn around, squeaks in despair.
He looks up and meets Zoro’s glare and promptly drops Zoro’s swords. “Get me out of this, Usopp, and give back my thwordth.”
Chopper and Usopp exchanged glances and immediately in synch, leaps behind Franky.
“Franky!” Chopper wails, clinging to Franky’s leg which only hid his head, but not his body. “Franky! Save us.”
“Franky!” Usopp wails to not be left out, hiding behind Franky properly. Zoro could only see his curls and trembling legs from where he stood. “Zoro’s trying to kill me!”
Franky pauses his music and looks at the bodies clinging to him, glances at Zoro who was attempting to eat the gray mass on his chest and arms. “Well! That’s certainly not super! Why?”
“He needs to go to the dentist.” Chopper answers. Zoro let out a growl at this.
“My teeth are fine.”
Chopper, his doctor mode taking over, bravely steps out of Franky’s shadow. “You need to go! You haven’t been speaking properly for weeks and alcohol doesn’t grow back teeth!”
“Milk grows back Brook’th teeth so why wouldn’t alcohol grow back mine?” Zoro points out.
Each of them took a moment to think about how it was true – Brook never needed to see a doctor about a cracked bone, claiming milk is all he needs and Chopper had observed this, watching in fascination as Brook’s bones went back to normal. But Zoro wasn’t a skeleton!
Franky secretly thought Zoro was right – his cola did make him feel better despite Sanji’s mutters of, “Go ahead and rot your teeth for all I care, shitty cyborg.” Zoro was right!
Usopp, the relatively normal one of the crew, was torn. Chopper was right logically, but Brook existed to prove logic and science wrong so, Usopp didn’t really know. Zoro was a monster.
“That’s not how it works!” Chopper says, aghast and puts down his metaphorical foot down. “He’s a skeleton! No one understands how he works! You’re still a human and starting from today, you’re banned from alcohol until we go to the dentist!”
“No buts! Nami agreed with me. We’re all going to see the dentist!” Chopper says when Zoro protests. Franky cheers on him, chanting super reindeer, making Chopper preen while Usopp moves Zoro’s swords away from the swordsman.
“Fine,” Zoro says. Usopp cheers from where he stood by the gallery’s door. “But no cuddles for the next four weeks!”
Usopp and Franky gasp, exchanging twin looks of horror before they turn to look at Chopper.
Chopper let out a distraught wail at this and promptly faints.
03)
When the Strawhat Pirates come in the office, the office is ready with all of their gold and the dentist holds a gun in. Each of them is boisterous and loud; and if not, they laugh and laugh and walk around the floor loudly, a step there or there heavy and creaking or light and a sound of sandals running,
There were rumors of the pirates seeking a dentist and though no one understood why – pirates and hygiene were a strange combination, after all, they could only make guesses at why. One rumor spoke of a desire for gold teeth. Another was of a new hobby of collecting teeth. Even more sinister one was that they all lost their teeth and had been replacing them since they were a child with the teeth of their enemies.
Of course, none of those rumors were true, but no one knew of this.
“What do you mean you want a free cleaning?” The receptionist said, looking at the Strawhats’ navigator. Behind her, her captain and the sniper and the reindeer was looking at the fishes in the aquarium as the Fishman explained the types. The man in a suit was smoking outside and the others were sitting leisurely on the couch. One of them was reading a beauty magazine though he had no skin and was conversing about it with a cyborg. “I’m sorry, but we don’t offer free cleanings.”
The Cat Burglar raised a brow. “You do now, cutie.”
They met eyes. The Cat Burglar winked seductively. The receptionist immediately felt her heart race.
“You’re right! We do!” The receptionist said, flustered. “Who do you want for a cleaning?”
“Everyone besides Robin, Jimbei, Usopp, and I.” She gestured at herself, the other woman who waved with her… third… hand and the Fishman. “Especially Zoro. His teeth broke because he’s an idiot.”
At her words, the swordsman, Pirate Hunter, scowls at this. “You mean him?” The receptionist says.
“Yes,” The Cat Burglar waved at him and he growled at her. What? Who on earth growled and was a human these days? He must be a furry, the receptionist pondered. “Don’t mind Zoro, he’s really a softie. But you and I can talk more in private…” She trailed off, giving the receptionist a meaningful look.
“Oh, to discuss how you’ll pay? Sure!”
The Pirate Hunter let out a bark of laughter at the Cat Burglar’s expression. He immediately winced slightly when he closed his jaws.
“Did I do something wrong?”
02)
“What are the worst teeth you’ve come across?” Nico Robin asks pleasantly, perched on a chair.
“Well,” the dentist began, bent over and peering into Franky’s mouth. He missed his chair. “This…” He looks at the woman and raises his eyebrow.
“Cyborg.” Robin helpfully said.
“This cyborg, thank you, has one of the worse teeth I’ve seen.”
“Oh my, Franky, you haven’t been brushing your teeth?”
Below him, Franky lets out an outraged yell and with his mouth full of foam, speaks nonsense the dentist assumes is self-defensive denial. He manages to make out something about how this was supposed to be just Zoro. All of his patients react in the same manner though he has no idea who this Zoro was, he must have terrible teeth.
“I assume so. Half of his teeth have cavities and he hasn’t flossed.”
The cyborg pushes himself up at this and starts to stand up and Robin sprouts hands on his chest and pushes him down with a smile. “Franky,” she says sweetly. “don’t be rude.”
Still holding the cyborg down, she asks, “Is there anything we can do?”
“Not unless you can get him to stop drinking soda.” He turned and gave Franky a cup. “Spit. I’m going to rinse your mouth out.”
“NO SODA?” Franky gurgled, spitting out water. “Do you want me to die?”
Using her hands with gloves on, Robin covered his mouth and smiles mysteriously.
03)
After promising the Captain, the rumors spoke of as the mastermind behind Enies Lobby’s destruction and who fought at the War of the Best; took down Doflamingo and nearly Big Mom, he’d get free toys if he would sit down and stay still, the whole ordeal went fairly well.
“What is flossing?”
Well. Almost fairly well.
“It’s… a device that cleans your teeth?”
“Why?”
“Well, you have some food between your teeth that you need to clean so your mouth is healthy.”
He blinks, clearly confused. “I have food in my mouth? Where?”
“Between your teeth.”
Monkey D. Luffy stretched his mouth and pawed at his teeth. The dentist watched all of this in silence as the boy changed his face in ways that shouldn’t be possible. He really hates devil fruit users.
“Hey, mister old guy!” The Strawhat Captain says. “Why’d you lie? I don’t feel any food.”
“Um,” His brain spoke the only thing he could think of next. “It’s invisible and really tiny.”
“Oh. Well, that’s just boring!”
After a moment, the pirate piped up again. “Hey! Wanna join my crew?”
The dentist pictured himself on the crew’s ship; watching the boy eat everything and never brush his teeth and never floss and then pictured the others doing the same at a lesser degree and nearly panicked. He composed himself and said, “No.”
The dentist wiped off his hands and told him he was free to go with a bag while the pirate boo-ed him. Somehow, he had no cavities and had good teeth despite his comments about “only brushing when he needed to,” and “never flossing.”
He certainly could defeat powerful enemies, but he had no basic knowledge of dental care.
04)
“Listen, you really need to stop eating sweets.”
The pet let out another wail full of anguish and sobbed in the former warlord Jimbei’s arms, “I know! But it’s so good.”
“Not for your teeth.”
After the pet let out another wail and the Fishman patted him consoling on the back, the dentist sighed.
“You can have some…”
The pet smiled at this and the dentist had to resist the urge to pet him.
“As long you don’t eat it too much.”
05)
“Oh, come on!” The dentist looked at the walking and apparently living skeleton in his chair for patients. “How am I supposed to check your teeth when you’re a skeleton?”
The skeleton crossed his legs and sipped his water calmly. “Well! You’re just being rude! I still have teeth for you to check though I’m dead!” He laughed and said, “Skull joke!”
“I really don’t get paid enough for this.” The dentist muttered to himself and proceeded to examine the teeth of the skeleton and declared that he had the best teeth the dentist has ever seen.
When asked what his secret was, the skeleton cheerfully said, “Milk!”
(“Oh my god,” The dentist said later when he met the pet at a bar later that night. “I don’t understand! He drinks milk and his teeth are fine?”
“Milk?” He repeated. The pet nodded and hummed in empathy as he pushed another cup of alcohol towards him. “Milk? Listen, I know dentists say that you need Calcium D for strong bones and while it’s true, you don’t really need it that much. That’s just what the advertisements say!”
“It’s a lie?”
The dentist ignored this and steamrolled on ahead. “Milk can’t heal bones immediately! I don’t understand?”
The pet took a swig of his apple juice and slammed down the glass gently. “I know right!” He says. “And get this? He can eat and drink normally though he has no organs! He makes no sense!”
“How can he eat! He has no tongue!”
“I don’t know!”
“He has no stomach! I kept expecting water to fall from his throat when I rinsed his mouth but it didn’t! Where did it go? Why?”
“I don’t know!”
“Milk?” The dentist sobbed out.
The pet nodded sadly. “Milk.”)
06)
When the dentist asked the man in a suit to open his mouth, he regretted it immediately. The teeth were yellow and it was hard to focus on his teeth when the man had bad breath. He knew there was only one thing he could do.
“You have no cavities,” At this the man grinned. The dentist winced. “But, you have a case of bad breath and yellow teeth.”
“What? Why?” The man’s grin fell and, in the distance, he heard the Pirate Hunter laugh.
“Well, you smoke.”
“And?”
That was the last anyone heard of him for a while.
07)
When the dentist saw his last client of the day at noon, he was strapped to the chair and the three swords he carried were gone. He wasn’t even aware his chair had straps until now.
“Uthopp,” he said sweetly and the man with a long nose immediately looked frightened. “give back my thwordth and I won’t cut you up.”
“Nope, you won’t trick me! Nami ordered me not to listen.”
Now, the dentist thought as the pair delved into an argument, after encountering a talking animal, a living skeleton with somehow perfect teeth; a fussy cyborg, a pirate with poor dental care and unrealistic luck, a chain smoker, and now, a swordsman strapped to his patient’s chair. He was couldn’t be any more surprised by the Strawhat crew.
“Okay,” he cut in. “Open your mouth, Pirate Hunter.”
Two hours passed and some screaming though nor the dentist or the patient would admit who it was, some dramatic reenactments of Usopp’s lengthy will; and some medicine, the Pirate Hunter came out with a fractured cusp and a new crown over his damaged tooth with a stern warning to not bit down on his hilt too hard.
As the Strawhat crew left with the office’s money and their brains not any fuller of dental knowledge, the dentist decided to go into retirement before they came again for their annual checkup
After all, dental care was for everyone so why wouldn’t pirates do it too?