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~*~
It was Usopp’s voice screaming from the crow’s nest that startled everyone awake.
They were under attack.
Darkness still blanketed the ocean as the massive opposing ship attempted to ram into the Thousand Sunny. The only visible light shone from the quarter moon and the brief blasts of cannon fire. Sunrise wouldn’t arrive for a couple hours yet.
Jinbei took one look at the ship and immediately recognized it. A remnant of Big Mom’s crew—out for revenge.
Luffy had already flung himself into the middle of the enemy vessel, and Zoro and Sanji were right behind, on their way to take the battle to them.
~*~
Robin felt like she had been snapping necks for an hour, but the enemies kept pouring onto the Thousand Sunny—at this point Zoro had already sliced the opposing ship in half, and it was sinking fast.
As Sanji kicked yet another Devil Fruit user into the ocean, he reached up to feel his eyebrow. Dammit, it’s curling in the wrong direction again.
While the cook was briefly distracted cursing his messed up family, another Big Mom pirate swung at his back with a longsword—which immediately shattered into a half dozen pieces.
“Germa!” the peon yelped in realization, catching the attention of several of his comrades.
Sanji was seething when he put his flaming foot through the offender’s face. I’m not one of them.
In the background of the still-sinking ship, two enemy pirates whispered to each other. It’s Germa, get the new weapon! It’s untested! Well, what else are we going to do, huh?
~*~
In between separating heads from bodies, Zoro surveyed the area to find the cook still kicking the shit out of anyone who remained. Luffy and the other Devil Fruit users of the Straw Hats were already forced back to the Sunny due to the rising seas.
Sanji and the final, more annoying stragglers were forced to take to the sky, kicking at the air as the last of the opposing vessel disappeared below the waves. Usopp expertly sniped a few of them, with their forms barely outlined by the moon, before the rest learned to stay their distance. But that did them very little good because Jinbei immediately blasted water upwards from below, knocking the pirates down to drown in the sea.
The last man wasn’t kicking the air, he had wings, probably from some kind of bird Devil Fruit. The more concerning part was the giant axe he was swinging about, almost in a taunting manner towards the cook—the metal gleamed strangely in the night.
“You giving up?” Sanji asked, lighting a cigarette between the kicks to keep himself airborne.
“Never, Germa!” The bird-man exclaimed, leveling the axe towards the cook.
After that, the cook wasn’t exactly sure what went wrong. He easily dodged the initial swings of the axe, but this bird was fast. Sanji got in close for a kick and something flew out of the feathers into his eyes—dust, dirt, he didn’t know. But in that split second of loss of sight and the darkness of night, the axe swung again—and connected. This time there was no sound of shattered metal breaking into tiny pieces, only the sick sound of flesh being impaled.
From the Sunny, Zoro had been watching the battle when he was suddenly stricken with the image of the cook outlined in front of the moon with a massive axe buried all the way into his chest. And everyone froze.
“SANJI!”
He was falling, and someone was screaming his name. It sounded almost like that shitty swordsman, but he must be imagining things.
He tried to breathe, but there was only blood and more wailing from the Straw Hats.
As he faded, there was the distant sound of feathers being sliced by swords, and his final thoughts drifted to All Blue.
~*~
Having made sure that Sanji’s attacker met his swift end, the swordsman quickly swam back and climbed towards the deck.
“Chopper, how is—” Zoro began and then fell silent as he hopped over the railing and beheld the scene in front of him.
The only sound was the dripping of water and blood as Jinbei gently laid Sanji down. The swordsman went pale, the axe was buried all the way from the upper chest to the lower abdomen. Usopp held a lamp close by as Chopper was solemnly checking the cook over, but Zoro already knew what he was going to say.
“He’s— dead.”
~*~
The threat of sunrise stirred him awake at what seemed like the usual time to start breakfast, but something felt off.
He could hear Luffy away in some far corner of the ship wailing his name—which in itself isn’t unusual when the captain was begging for food, but today seemed a little over the top.
Only, now that he thinks about it, he couldn’t remember going to bed last night. Secondly, his body felt off, like he was still in the middle of a tough battle.
And there was the fabric covering his face. It was scratchy and not at all like his usual blanket—never mind the fact that he hates to sleep with something over his eyes.
It was then that he heard the sniffling coming from somewhere else in the room. He wasn’t alone.
~*~
Usopp blew his nose again and looked over at Sanji’s covered body on the infirmary bed. He was sitting next to the desk where Chopper was seated. The small reindeer sniffled and struggled to write down in his medical log the details of the demise of the ship’s cook. The cause of death—the giant axe made of an unknown metal alloy—leaned against the wall.
Deciding it was finally time to wake up, Sanji pulled down the coarse shroud and sat up in the bed. The captain’s straw hat slid down into his lap. For some reason Luffy must have placed it on his chest while he slept.
He glanced over at Usopp and Chopper who stared back in shock.
“What?” Sanji questioned simply.
“Z-Z-Z-ZOMBIE!” They screeched, fleeing the small room in terror.
The cook blinked several times.
At the commotion, Brook walked past the doorway and did a double-take.
“G-G-G-GHOST!” The skeleton yelped, flailing and running away.
Sanji scratched his head in confusion at his crewmate before looking down at the state of himself. His eyes widened at the huge tear down the middle of his blood-caked suit, all the way to the pristine skin underneath.
Sanji’s a zombie! What? Sanji? I saw a ghost! And a ghost scares you how? Zombies, zombies, help! There’s more than one zombie now? Sanji? SANJI! Wait, what about the cook?
The next person that appeared was Zoro being forcibly shoved through the door by the more superstitious members of the Straw Hats mumbling a bunch of terrified nonsense.
Sanji readied some usual remark to hurl at the moss head, but the words died on his tongue when he saw the swordsman’s haunted expression—Zoro’s hand gripping Wado was shaking almost imperceptibly.
“SANJI!” The tension broke as Luffy launched himself past Zoro and wrapped around Sanji in a hug.
“What happened?” Sanji asked finally as the rest of the crew filled the room with tears and shocked gasps.
“You died, Cook-san,” Robin said matter-of-factly.
Stunned, Sanji eyes glanced about the room settling over at the weapon that struck him down mortally not a couple of hours ago—the memory starting to come back to him. He swallowed hard as he slowly ran his hand over his chest to find no abrasions or stitches, only flakes of blood falling from his clothing.
“Never scare us like that again!” Nami sobbed with Usopp also shaking his head tearfully in agreement.
It took several attempts, but Chopper finally managed to shoo Luffy away in order to get a look at his patient.
“Sanji,” the reindeer began as he flitted about, checking the cook over, “I pronounced you dead less than two hours ago. You had no heartbeat and you bled out. Now your heartbeat is normal and you have no visible injuries or scars! How? The only difference I can see is your hair color has suddenly changed.”
Alarmed, Sanji pulled at his bangs that covered half his face. He wasn’t sure how he didn’t notice sooner but his hair was now solid black. Quickly, he felt his brows as well—still curling the wrong direction from the battle.
“Stealth Black—” He whispered, grimacing.
“Sanji?” Chopper questioned gently.
“Germa.” The cook explained, looking away. Being that close to dying must have activated more dormant parts of my body, even with the raid suit destroyed. Shit.
The reindeer nodded with some understanding, then proceeded to try and shuffle the others out of the room so Sanji could get some rest. Coming back to life after such trauma must be exhausting.
Nami gave him a quick hug as she left.
Franky did one of his signature Super poses.
And on her way out Robin said, “Somehow I thought this might happen, your corpse didn’t have the distinct smell of decay that it should have.”
Sanji just smiled with his usual heart eyes and thanked her for her words of wisdom.
The last person still in the room with him was Zoro. The swordsman was leaning against the far wall, arms crossed, eye closed. He looked contemplative.
The cook eyed him curiously when he made no move to leave.
“Oi, marimo,” Sanji called out, wondering what the deal was.
Saying nothing, Zoro moved from his spot at the wall and slowly walked over to the cook until he was standing before him.
They stared at each other unblinking for a full minute.
Sanji then watched as the swordsman pulled Wado from its spot at his side and began to unwrap a piece of cloth from around it which after a few moments he realized with a shock was his tie—he hadn’t yet realized it was missing from around his neck.
The cook’s eyes were wide as Zoro unceremoniously dropped the blood-stained piece of cloth in his lap before returning Wado to his side and turning to walk away.
“Zoro—”
The swordsman paused in his steps, not quite to the doorway.
Sanji felt something in his chest shift, his heart ached. He couldn’t place the feeling. The enormity of it all. It was my name I heard on his lips as I died.
“Thank you,” Sanji said finally, at a loss of trying to put anything else into words.
Zoro continued forward, and Sanji was alone in the infirmary—the roots of his hair already starting to return to their natural yellow color.
~*~