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Nami is mad at Luffy, and he doesn’t really know why. She’s always a little bit mad at him for everything. This time, it’s actually Zoro’s fault, Luffy thinks.
He gets how Nami can’t be mad at Zoro right now, because Zoro is still bleeding out a little, and also Zoro and Nami are bound together by their backs and she can’t exactly glare at him like this. Luffy is right in her line of sight, perfect glaring-distance.
But the fact is that it’s still Zoro who challenged Dracule Mihawk to this duel. If it hadn’t been for that, they could have passed by this island without much fanfare. But now there was a lot of blood in the town square, and a lot of it on Zoro’s shirt, and the entire town came to watch it happen, and also Luffy thinks some other pirate crew might have shown up. And then these guys showed up with soldiers, and stupid gadgets, and an annoying guy in charge, and now Luffy and his crew are suddenly chained and on the floor. None of this is Luffy’s fault. He wants to say as much to her when he catches her glaring at him, but he doesn’t get to before he is cut off.
“I’ve been looking for you,” The guy who Luffy thinks is in charge says.
It’s dumb, how everyone in the square seems to cower away from him, because he can’t be that much older than Luffy and his friends, and, honestly, his outfit is a little silly. His shoes look weird and bouncy, there’s a gaudy logo on his belt buckle, a weird swoop to his blond hair and an uncomfortable looking tight black mask over the lower part of his face. He fills the silly suit out quite nicely, though.
Luffy only realises the guy was talking to him when Usopp behind him jostles against his shoulder. “How do you know them?” He asks, urgently. Usopp also seems to be scared of the guy. Or maybe he’s scared of the soldiers the guy brought with him, or all the cannons on his ship. Either way, it’s dumb, and Usopp is scared of a lot of things.
Luffy shrugs. “I don’t,” He says to Usopp, and then, for good measure, to the guy: “I don’t know you!”
He can’t see his eyes, but he thinks they must narrow behind his sunglasses.
One of the soldiers closest to Luffy also seems to take offence in this. “You insolent brat,” The man, who looks exactly like a good portion of the other men in their uniforms and sunglasses, hisses. “Don’t pretend you don’t know who Germa 66 are. You will speak to the prince with respect or else—”
He is cut off by another man stepping forward. This one is also in a uniform, but a different one from the soldiers and who Luffy guesses is their prince. He also looks less streamlined. Because he’s old, for one, maybe about as old as Luffy’s grandpa, gruff and weathered. He has a beard that twirls off into two impressive braids. Now that he knows that the guy in charge is a prince, Luffy can’t begin to guess what this man is supposed to be, but he seems to be in charge as well, because the soldiers fall back in line when he barks: “Enough of that!”
Nevermind all that, Luffy still doesn’t know what’s going on here exactly. “I’ve never heard of any Germs,” He resolutely says. Usopp behind him whimpers. One of these days, Usopp is going to have to grow some balls.
None of the soldiers berate him for it this time. The entire square stays silent as the prince himself walks the few measured steps that separate them. He squats down in front of Luffy and grabs his chin in a vice grip.
Luffy knows he’s being scrutinised from behind those mirrored shades, and glares right back. The fingers pressing into his jaw are warm even through the gloves.
“What’s your prerogative here?” The prince asks him.
Luffy’s brows knit. “My what?”
“What are you planning?”
This, finally, is something Luffy knows the answer to: “I’m planning to go to the Grand Line and become King of the Pirates.”
The prince snorts. “Yeah, right.”
Luffy glares harder. “Watch me.”
He wishes he could see the prince’s eyes. It sucks, knowing he is being looked at but not actually seeing it. “I’m not planning to,” The prince says dismissively. he drops Luffy’s chin with a rough jerk and straightens up. Down the line of his nose, he keeps looking at Luffy and continues: “This part of the East Blue is under Germa 66 jurisdiction. You’ve been messing with our operations, and you will tell me why.”
“I don’t know anything about your operations,” Luffy insists. “I don’t know who you are!”
The prince holds up one finger. “You pulled a raid on Morgan’s base.” Another finger. “You took out Kuro.” A third. “And right now you are well on your way towards Arlong Park. You expect me to believe that is a coincidence?”
“I don’t expect you to do anything,” Luffy shrugs. “I’m looking for the entrance to the Grand Line.”
The sarcasm in how the prince nods indulgently makes him bristle. “Of course, because you want to find the One Piece, and the fucking pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”
Luffy can’t stand many things, but a weirdo in an ugly latex suit ridiculing his dream is up there, so he thinks he can’t be blamed for the way he immediately shoots back a sharp: “ Fuck you. ” Even as he can hear several pistols being cocked and trained on him, he thinks he can’t be blamed.
The prince looks at him for a long moment, then lifts a hand and his men stand down.
“What’s your name?”
“Monkey D. Luffy.”
Nami hisses sharply: “Give him your home address, why don’t you?”
“No need, Darling,” The prince says to her. “We won’t be bringing him back there.”
From the corner of his eye, Luffy sees Nami roll her eyes at the pet name, but he has bigger fish to fry right now. Goodlooking or not, his guy is pissing him off. “What’s your name?” Luffy cuts off whatever Nami starts to say.
“Excuse me?”
“Your name,” Luffy repeats and adds with emphasis: “Because I have no clue who you’re supposed to be.”
He can make out the way the prince’s lips pull into a sardonic smirk under the black mask. “My name is Vinsmoke Sanji, third prince of Germa.”
Before Luffy can react, there’s a weak cough from over Nami’s shoulder. “Are the first two princes too good to send on clean-up duty?” Zoro rasps. It’s weak, but it lifts Luffy’s mood despite everything, to know he hasn’t actually passed out again.
“You won’t get to find out,” Vinsmoke Sanji barks back, and there’s something sharp in his voice now, barbed wire and broken glass. Abruptly, the prince turns on his heel and beckons to his men: “We don’t have any use for an entire group of ratty teenagers. Take their leader and leave the locals to deal with the rest.”
The soldiers move as soon as Sanji and the old guy pass them on their way back to their ship.
“Struck a nerve there,” Zoro hums lowly as two identical soldiers haul Luffy up by his arms.
“Oh my God, shit, fuck,” Usopp mutters a litany of anxious curses as the cuffs that bound him and Luffy together at their backs are loosened on him.
“I should have never gone with you,” Nami hisses, as they begin to drag Luffy off.
Luffy throws a grin over his shoulder back at his crew: “Go get the Merry ready, I’ll be back with you in a bit!”
A soldier shoves him forward roughly, onto a gangplank and onto the deck of the ship. It’s quite unceremonious—Luffy thinks that being taken prisoner by a prince should have a little more decorum to it, but all he gets is a couple more shoves and a cramped holding cell somewhere in the bowels of this ship that is also a snail and also a little stone castle.
And then he is left alone and it all becomes torturously boring. For at least a full minute, nothing happens at all. It simply won’t do, so he decides to try his luck and fuck around with the locks on his cell. Vertigo and nausea hit him the second he touches the metal. Sea-prism stone. Just his luck. The dizzy spin to his field of vision doesn’t make him any less bored, so he stumbles over to the small, dusty window on the other side of the room. When he grips the bars to bend them open, it’s more of the same—the new wave of dizziness makes his knees wobble. He should have figured.
Luffy drops down on his butt to wait until the room stops spinning and to take stock of the situation. No clear way to break out, no way for his crew to get him, no people around—he hears steps just as the edges of his vision clear. Jackpot.
The soldier does what nasty military men sometimes do when they think they have the upper hand—he drawls and taunts and clearly ignores some form of protocol or order, because that’s all he does. It’s wonderful for Luffy’s purposes, because as he doesn’t listen to a word the man says, he inches one rubbery arm carefully out of the cell, out of the soldiers field of vision, up and around, always with enough tension on it to—
“You’ll learn of Germa yet, King Judge is going to wipe the floor with you as soon as we reconnect to the main fleet, you snivelling upstart of a—”
Luffy let’s gravity and the natural shape of his body do their thing. His balled fist zips back as his arm retracts, catching the soldier’s big head conveniently in its path and banging it against the prison bars. The noise is super satisfying. The feeling when Luffy’s fist grazes the bars, too, is less so, but the guy is out and it’s easy to grab his set of keys from here. It only takes another couple of moments of careful manoeuvring around the sea-prism stone, and Luffy is standing over the soldier’s prone body.
He hadn’t paid attention on the way down. But it can’t be that hard to get back out. He rolls his shoulders in their sockets as, somewhere down the hall outside, there are more heavy steps. Before he runs out the door to meet them head on, he briefly wonders if he’s gonna see that asshole prince again, before he leaves.
He does not. All in all, Luffy doesn’t spend more than twenty minutes on Sanji’s weird snail ship, but when he finds a way out and rejoins his friends, the Merry is gone, and Nami is gone, and everything that happens at Arlong Park is enough to distract him from any princes for a good while.
They meet Vivi and Luffy is distraught to learn of what is happening to her country and delighted by the way Vivi knows how to cook something that tastes of more than cardboard. He promises to help her, and that sweeps the Strawhats up entirely: They scrape by with no real direct way to Alabasta until they get to Little Garden and Nami promptly holds Zoro’s sword to Mr. 3’s neck for his eternal logpose. When Nami falls ill and they have to locate the only doctor on Drum Island, Luffy takes her up a mountain where they make it out of an avalanche only by the skin of their teeth.
So, yes, Luffy is a little busy. But he remembers, when he is sitting in a cell under the Rain Dinners Casino, and Crocodile picks up his transponder snail.
Sanji knows about Baroque Works, and he knows of the tentative neutrality they have with Germa. Tentative neutrality is enough for Crocodile’s right hand woman to escort him and Zeff to a room close to a huge casino as soon as they arrive outside of Alubarna, but it isn’t enough to keep him from getting involved. “I can’t let him be the one to take in Strawhat. He’s Germa’s to deal with, so I will be dealing with him.”
Zeff levels him with a long look, scathing enough to stop Sanji’s pacing across the plush carpet. A plush, expensive carpet, over marble floors that are polished and shining. Food and drink at their beck and call, should they want it. An entire moat around the perimeter of the casino. Filled with water. On their way inland towards the city, Sanji lost count of the abandoned villages, all inhabitants falling victim to the drought.
“Strawhat got away,” Zeff says, not for the first time since Sanji ordered a course for Alabasta. “He’s under Crocodile’s jurisdiction now, not Germa’s. Not yours.”
Not for the first time, Sanji throws him a glare. “So what do you suggest I do?”
Zeff scoffs. “You don’t listen to my suggestions, Eggplant.”
“Don’t call me that,” Sanji hisses. It’s futile, of course. Old habits die hard, and this is a habit decades in the making. If he were less agitated, Sanji would be able to appreciate that Zeff has stopped saying it in public, at least.
The old man doesn’t pay him any mind. “What do you plan to do? Destroy any sort of good will between your father and a warlord by breaking a wanted criminal out of his hold? Getting the World Government on Germa’s case while you’re doing it?”
It sounds dumb, it sounds childish and naive and it was exactly what Sanji was planning to do. Something ugly and red hot rears its head in his chest, he bristles, draws his shoulders up and gets ready to spew something venomous that Zeff doesn’t deserve for pointing out the obvious. Before he can, Zeff delivers the final blow: “Won’t help those poor people either, you know.”
Sanji deflates. He doesn’t meet Zeff’s eyes and his voice barely makes it above a dejected whisper when he says: “The third prince of Germa isn’t here to help the people of Alabasta.”
“No, he wouldn’t be,” Zeff hums. “I know someone who might be, though.”
The cushions on Crocodile’s couch give way unpleasantly when Sanji throws his body down on them. He hopes there is grit and sand on his uniform that will irreversibly destroy the silky fabric of them. “Strawhat can’t possibly know who is causing the drought. What’s he going to do?”
“He couldn’t have known Morgan had failed against Kuro. I’m sure he didn’t know what the Arlong Pirates’ business was either, before he got to Cocoyashi. But he helped a lot of people back in the East.”
Everything that Zeff is saying is correct. The fault in their lines of argument lies with something Sanji said before, and Zeff didn’t point it out. Sanji knows why he didn’t. He contradicts himself instead, something he’s become incredibly good at in the last ten years: “We don’t even know that there is someone doing this to Alabasta at all.”
There’s that look again, flat and unimpressed. Because Sanji knows why Zeff wasn’t the one to point it out. He knows why he spoke of a perpetrator to begin with. It couldn’t be natural, what was happening to this island. All these years without rain, out of the blue—Sanji’s hand clenches against the satin of a throw blanket.
The options, then, are grim. It might be the royal family, King Kobra dooming his own populace because of—Because of what? What motive could there be to inflict this on a country that you should want to see flourish?
Of course there is Crocodile—Crocodile who is associated not only with the Nefertari family and the World Government, but also with the underground. Mr. 0, a double life, and usurper that could greatly benefit from weakening a country he has clearly settled down in quite comfortably.
“The third prince of Germa,” Zeff starts, “Can’t compromise his position with the World Royals or with Baroque Works. Someone else will have to do it.”
Sanji grits his teeth and sits up. “And someone else will.”
He doesn’t even mean to get involved. Not this much. All he sets out to do, when he sneaks around the casino, exchanges his Germa uniform for a meagre disguise of an unsuspecting suit and sunglasses, is to find out whether the Strawhats were even capable of doing what the third prince can’t do. But then he stumbles upon the Dance Powder. Then he hears that the Strawhats are captured. Then suddenly he is slumming it with a peculiar man with an impressive amount of body hair and a gaudy pink hat, and they beat up one of Crocodile’s men and take his transponder snail.
It’s flimsy at best, barely even a plan at all. There is no way Crocodile will give up the crew’s location. The furry man, their doctor, is confident though, that their odds are better once Crocodile leaves their location and that he can sniff them out.
So now Sanji is on the phone with the kingpin trying to usurp this entire country.
“Mind telling me who you are?” Crocodile asks, venomously cordial even over the static of the call.
Sanji meets the doctor’s eyes and finds them looking back with a childish sort of curiosity. He hadn’t exactly introduced himself. It was a small blessing that he ran into one of the only members of the crew he hasn’t had the displeasure of meeting yet, and he would like to keep several people in the dark about his identity for varying reasons.
“Me? Well…” He didn’t mean to get involved. He didn’t plan to talk to anyone at all. The third prince of Germa is supposed to be enjoying the various amenities of Rain Dinners Casino right now. “Just call me Mr. Prince.”
There aren’t a lot of stupider things he could have said, but the moment is over before he can think too much about it. Vaguely, in the back of the call, he can make out a cacophony of voices as Crocodile and Miss All Sunday wonder about any Strawhat members besides the doctor that might have flown under their radar. Perfect for Sanji. Let them think that. The voices in the back are calling out for the fake name he has just given, really driving it home that they are relying on him. Wonderful. He can definitely make out the grating tone of Strawhat Luffy’s voice, as well as the rushing of water.
With an impatient wave of his hand, he gives the doctor and their captured star performer a signal—Their spiel goes off without a hitch. Crocodile is on his way to the front of the casino and Sanji has a pretty good idea where the prisoners are being kept.
“There has to be a basement right under this building and the moat,” He explains to the doctor as he wipes some specks of blood from the lapel of his stolen suit. Crocodile’s man had bled something nasty when Sanji did him the favour of knocking him out with a kick. “Head down there and you should be able to sniff them out.”
“Aren’t you coming?”
When he looks up, there it is again: The doctor is wide-eyed and blinking and looking much younger than his imposing figure suggests. If Sanji had to guess, he would say the guy looked a little scared and he—He didn’t mean to get involved. He didn’t have a plan, but this plan seems to be working. He should leave the Strawhats to their devices.
“Actually,” Sanji reaches up and adjusts the sunglasses on his face. “How are you as a decoy, Doc?”
There is no plan, but somehow he destroys the bridge leading to the Casino, finds the princess of Alabasta, who leads him to her friends, beats up a bunch of Crocodile’s Bananagators and one pretty pathetic Baroque Works agent, and suddenly finds himself face to face with Strawhat Luffy again.
“I knew it,” Strawhat proclaims. The wide smile on his face is incredibly distracting for how unbefitting it is to their situation.“I knew it was you.”
Sanji splutters, caught off-guard by the open expression where he expected nothing but contempt.. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Strawhat nods resolutely. “I recognised your voice when you talked to Crocodile.”
“You absolutely did not, there is no way—”
“You called yourself Mr. Prince !”
He sounds so sure of himself, like what he is saying isn’t absolutely insane. “Why in the world would you assume it’s me? Why would I be helping you?”
“Yeah,” The beautiful redhead throws in from behind her captain's shoulder. “Why would you be?”
Suddenly, Sanji has several pairs of mistrustful eyes on him. He feels caught. He reels in his expression, steels his shoulders and keeps his tone carefully measured when he says: “That’s none of your concern, and you don’t have any proof that I was here. My job here is done.”
“Okay,” Luffy nods. “I’ll see you around!”
And then he takes off with his crew to—kick Crocodile’s butt, apparently, if the captain’s reverberating proclamation is to be believed.
It’s pretty anticlimactic, for what it is—a covert mission ensuring the liberation of a country he shouldn’t even have set foot in. Sanji feels like he missed a step, and he doesn’t know where: He came here expecting to capture the pirates that he freed. It is very clear to him that he messed that up, but it does not explain what he feels as he slinks his way back to the room the prince of Germa is supposed to be residing in, through a city gearing up for revolution, through whatever insane brand of it the Strawhats inevitably bring anywhere they go: Sanji feels like there is more he should be doing.
It takes him a while to get back to the hotel unnoticed, ditching pieces of his lacklustre disguise as he goes. He is just smoothing down the lapels of his standard Germa fatigues as he steps into the hallway with its plush carpets. He’s not alone.
“Your majesty,” Miss All Sunday nods. “I’m sorry to say but I’m not sure it’s wise for you to go out on strolls in the current situation .”
Her eyes are bright and sharp and unreadable and Sanji feels trapped. She knows. It’s over.
Still, he plays along. Zeff is right behind that door, maybe they can still spin this to their favour. “Quite right, but no harm done, Ma’am. I will make sure to wait out any updates here.”
Miss All Sunday regards him for a long moment. “I’m sure you can imagine,” She finally hums. “That Baroque Works doesn’t take too well to rogue missions in our own territory.”
Sanji’s blood runs cold even as he schools his features. “I can very well imagine that. It would simply be ludicrous to even try.”
“That it would be,” She nods. Through the windowpane to her right, noises of battle reach them.
“I don’t quite know why, but I’m compelled to tell you that Germa has been notified. I’m told they have dispatched three of their officers in response.” She fixes him with a cold blue stare. “I believe your brothers are on their way here now, your majesty.”
Sanji blinks. “Why are you telling me this?” Would it not be better to leave him thinking he was in the clear? To let him sit in a luxurious plush hotel room and wait for his executioners?
Miss All Sunday turns and begins to make her way down the hall. “Call it one last investment,” She says, over her shoulder. “I’ve been running a casino for a good few years, you see? But I believe, one way or another, my gambling days might be over after today.”
Then she leaves and Sanji is left to scramble and mobilise Zeff. They are on their ship back out at sea while rain finally breaks over Alubarna, and Sanji won’t admit to himself, to any of the men he took with him to Sandy Island, or to Zeff, that they are running.
“You did the right thing,” Zeff says, watching Sanji pace again, around the control room this time.
Sanji nods. It was all part of the grander scheme, of course. Crocodile won’t be bringing in Strawhat—Sanji will, as soon as he figures out where the crew will be going next. He will find them, he will capture Luffy, bring him to Judge and explain everything. Judge will understand. He is a military commander first and foremost. Sanji is sure he can appreciate the strategy, the long game, that Sanji is playing, all for Germa’s gain.
When he says as much to Zeff, the man gets up and leaves without a word.
Just as well. Sanji needs to focus on outrunning his brothers, anyways.
Things get crazy after they leave Alabasta. Suddenly there is a former enemy with them, there are islands with parts of them missing, islands in the sky, golden bells and lightning and a God and, yeah Luffy nearly dies a couple of times, and some of his friends probably do too. Chopper spends a good while fussing over Usopp and Nami, who got a little close to someone playing God, and will probably forever carry the proof of it on their skin—Interconnected webbed scars lining parts of their skin, where the lightning hit and spread. Luffy thinks they look super cool, and Usopp at least cheers up a little when he tells him as much.
Things get crazy, and they stay crazy, and Nami complains that they have been crazy ever since Luffy dared to impose himself on her. Robin smiles and assures their navigator that she is sure things can get much crazier than they are. She refuses to elaborate, Usopp nearly has an aneurism, and the next thing they encounter is a huge frog doing the breast stroke.
Water Seven, Luffy supposes, is crazy too, but not the kind of crazy he likes. The Merry is broken, Robin is gone, Usopp is gone, everything is gone, gone, gone, there is a train they need to get to, which doesn’t happen, because Luffy is stuck somewhere and Zoro is stuck somewhere else, there is no other train but then suddenly there is —They’re camped out in Ice-Pop’s secret workshop when Nami rejoins them. She is having some old guys ferry in copious amounts of food. As soon as Luffy is done being distracted by that, he notices that Nami has also brought someone with her.
The man is out of the military uniform he had on when Luffy saw him last, but he recognises the weird style he keeps his moustache in—braided off to both sides. “Old guy!” Luffy exclaims and somewhere to his left, Iceburg looks at him funny, probably because: Yeah, that’s an old guy.
“He came to me, because he recognised me,” Nami says with a meaningful look. “He says he was at the station before the Sea Train left.”
Behind him, he hears Chopper begin to ask who they’re dealing with, but Zoro interrupts him. “We don’t have time for this right now, the Sea Train is getting further away by the second.”
Which is true, but they have a way to follow it now, and Luffy trusts Ice-Pops. If he says it’s possible for them to make it, they can. The old guy is a new variable though, and he seems to have something to say to Luffy specifically.
Paying Zoro no mind, Luffy prompts: “Is Sanji here too, then?”
The old guy—Zeff, he introduces himself as—recounts what none of them were in time for to see: Robin was escorted onto the train, which they knew. Usopp was thrown in too, tied up and muzzled. It makes Luffy’s blood boil so much that he doesn’t even pay the Franky family any mind as they appear out of nowhere and declare that they would join them when they hear from Zeff that Franky himself had been taken on it too. He only snaps back to attention when Zeff, over the Franky family’s clamouring for justice, fixes him with a long look and announces: “I’m coming, too.”
Puzzled, Luffy squints at him: “You sure you can do anything, old man?”
Zoro has no such concerns, as he bristles next to him. “What, so you can try to lock Luffy up again?”
Zeff stoically doesn’t react to either of them as he makes his way over to the stairs leading up to Rocket Man. Luffy never noticed the missing leg during their first meeting and, briefly, he wonders about the story there, but Zeff interrupts that train of thought, still with his back to them: “My boy is on that train, too. I’m coming.”
Well, that answers Luffy’s initial question! He decides that there isn’t much more to take care of here—The Franky family has taken off, talking about their King Bulls, Granny Kokoro has just leaned out of the front announcing that Rocket Man is ready to go, he has finished the food and Zeff is coming with them. The rest of his crew doesn’t seem to think so.
“Your boy?” Nami repeats, incredulous.
Zoro seems to be a step further, already having pulled Wado halfway out. “You talking about that prissy ass prince that’s been following us around?”
Chopper looks up at Zeff in wonder. “If Mr. Prince is your son, does that mean you’re a king?”
Luffy hadn’t even thought of that! “Woah! Are you the king of Germs?”
There is something hot and burning in the glare the Strawhats get for the assumption, something that distinctly reminds Luffy of the prince in question. It makes sense that they’re related. “The king of Germa,” Zeff hisses out. “Is worth less to me than any gutter rat, and you would do good to never mention him in my presence again.”
It’s all very confusing and remains that way as everyone boards the Rocket Man for a bumpy journey to save their friends. As they nearly die making their way onto the train tracks and discover some useful stowaways, Luffy tries to get more information out of the man and gathers the following:
Zeff is not Sanji’s father, but he raised him anyways, due to the previously established gutter rat tendencies of Sanji’s actual father, the king. Zeff himself started out as the head chef in Germa’s kitchens, but was promoted to a royal advisor of sorts. It has something to do with a bit in the middle where the old man gets really angry, something about a shipwreck, about Sanji and Zeff surviving said shipwreck but being stranded out at sea for months.
“A Germa fleetship found us and his father begrudgingly had to welcome him back to court, but he’s treated him like dirt ever since. For some reason the boy is obsessed with winning Judge’s favour, and he has decided that bringing you in will give him that.”
Luffy hums. “You don’t seem to think so.”
“It’s garbage, is what it is. Germa has sent his brothers to hunt after him as we speak, after Alabasta. There is no good favour to be won.” Zeff takes a deep breath. “Deep down, I think he always knew that. And now, I think he’s starting to really understand. It’s why he got on that train.”
“To help us,” Luffy nods.
Zeff rolls his eyes. “He got on there saying he would save Nico Robin. Chivalry isn’t something Judge Vinsmoke teaches his children, but Sanji has learned it all the same.”
Luffy laughs, but then everyone else screams as Aqua Laguna does its best to sink them to the bottom of the ocean. When he and Zoro climb back into the train car after taking care of it, Nami and Zeff are sitting over a transponder snail carrying the numbered insignia Luffy remembers from the Germa uniforms.
Nami beckons him over. “Sanji wants to talk,” She says, with a little grimace like she can’t quite believe the words herself.
As soon as Luffy takes the transponder snail from Zeff’s hand, Sanji says: “Your navigator told me why Nico Robin is doing all of this. I know what’s going on.”
But he still got on that train, before he knew. He’s on there right now, and in the background on the other end of the call, Luffy can hear Usopp’s voice— Usopp is okay— , and another one that must be Franky, which means Sanji has already helped them. Nami’s brought him up to speed, meaning he’s ready to help some more. Just like he’d helped in Alabasta.
Luffy doesn’t feel like there’s much more to talk about. “Great!” he chirps. “So you know what to do: Give ‘em hell, Sanji.”
“ I don’t take orders from you, Strawhat, ” Comes the predictable hiss through the transponder just as Zoro next to him says: “Hey, wait a second.”
Luffy ignores Sanji’s halfhearted protest for Zoro’s full-hearted one. He does get it—The first time they met Sanji, he took him captive, and chained up his friends, and that wasn’t super cool of him. But, since then, he’s been nothing but helpful, and against Crocodile’s bananas, he was really cool. Luffy had been a little bummed, actually, that Sanji hadn’t stayed for the rest of the fight, but he’d also known that he would see him again, so it hadn’t been hard to let him go—And he’d been right! Here Sanji was, ready to help, and Zoro might be reasonably cautious but in the end, Luffy thinks, Sanji would probably help them whether Luffy and Zoro agreed on it or not. He doesn’t take orders from them, after all.
But he shouldn’t have doubted Zoro, because his swordsman doesn’t say anything of the sort. “If he fights them now, he’ll die. What’s one little prince going to do against the entirety of CP9? He’s gotta wait for us.”
As Luffy reels him in, Zeff chuckles drily, before addressing Zoro: “Boy, your concern is honourable, but misplaced.”
“I’m not concerned —” Zoro huffs.
“Very sweet of you,” Sanji drones over the snail. “ But I was going to kick their asses before I knew what was going on. Now that I know the truth… I’ll be waiting for you with their corpses.”
The line disconnects and Luffy laughs. “That was so cool!”
“Don’t forget the guy still very much wants your head on a platter at the end of the day,” Nami gripes.
In the end, none of it happens: Sanji doesn’t die, he doesn’t wait for them after having defeated CP9, and he doesn’t immediately try to sever Luffy’s head. That comes later, after him and his dad and Franky join the Strawhats in their fight against CP9, and then in their declaration of war against the World Government.
When it does come, Luffy can admit—It hurts. Because Sanji had fought alongside them, he’d made sure they would have a way out, so maybe some part of Luffy assumed that he would be coming with them. Zeff hadn’t painted a very nice and welcoming picture of Sanji’s family on the Rocket Man earlier.
They don’t make a nice and welcoming picture as they’re staring the Strawhats down now, from the railing of their own weird snail ship, colour coded and menacing. Luffy, just as drained from their fight as the rest of his crew and unable to move a muscle, watches as Zeff shifts half a step forward, as if to shield Sanji from his siblings.
The blue one zeroes in on it. “Of course,” he drawls.
“Typical,” The green one nods.
“We’ve suspected this of course.” The red one levels Sanji with a look.
Logically, Luffy knows that the four of them, Sanji, and his brothers, look pretty much the same. Back on that tiny backwater island in the East, if all four of them had shown up that very first time, he probably wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart at all. But now, Sanji had fought at his side. And now his brothers were looking at him like predators look at their prey.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Sanji sneers.
The blue one throws a dismissive gesture Zeff’s way: “Everyone thought it was peculiar, how attached the cook got to you, after what happened back then, but it was just as well.”
“In any case” The red one continues. “Father is deeply sorry.” He sounds so patronising that Luffy’s blood boils, but when he drags his eyes back over to Sanji, the prince looks floored.
“He…He’s sorry ?!”
An indulgent nod before the red one continues: “For losing sight of the places you were going under this man’s tutelage. He has a history, you know? Of course Redleg Zeff would encourage you to do pirates’ dirty work”
The green one spreads his arms wide. “But we’re here now, to put an end to all that. And to take you home.”
Sanji is openly gaping. “Home,” He repeats.
“Eggplant—” Zeff hisses, alarmed. Luffy’s head is spinning, there is too much happening, and none of it is good, and why is the old man talking about vegetables all of a sudden?
He doesn’t find out, because the blue guy interrupts Zeff. “Father has big plans for you, Sanji, and it’s time you come home to your rightful place. We need you, you know? Germa depends on you.”
Zeff tries again. “They’re lying , Sanji, it’s—”
“You did a good job, luring in Strawhat, Father will be very pleased.” That’s the green one again.
This, finally, Luffy thinks, will shake Sanji out if it. He’s fought with them. He’s helped them. Zeff knows Sanji well, maybe like no one else, and he was so sure that Sanji understood that Luffy of all people couldn’t be the key to his father’s approval.
But then Luffy watches Sanji’s shoulder square. He watches as he steps out from behind Zeff, and as he turns to survey the crew—beaten down and exhausted as they are. And he understands how powerful it can be, to hear exactly what you’ve been telling yourself you want to hear.
“Of course,” Sanji says. Luffy suddenly feels so incredibly tired. He tries to say something, but his mouth won’t cooperate with him, just flaps open and closed once. He probably looks like a fish. Sanji’s family could easily take him in now.
“Sanji.” Zeff tries again, but the third prince of Germa is already moving, and between one blink and the next, he’s on the other ship, next to his brothers.
“Forgot something, you ditz,” The green one laughs, mean and sharp, and his eyes bore into Luffy. “After you went through all the trouble, too. No worries, I got it.”
He does something with his arm and it—detaches. It was cool, when Franky did it. Now, it’s decidedly not cool, as a detached hand flies towards Luffy and he can’t will his body to dodge.
There’s a harsh noise, metal against wood and flesh, as Zeff intercepts it, and intercepts the hit that comes after it as he advances on the enemy ship.
“I’m holding them back,” He clenches out between gritted teeth. “You kids get the hell out of here.”
The last thing Luffy sees, after Zeff jumps from Merry’s deck and before Franky activates his Coup de Vent a second time that day is Sanji’s face, and his heart aches.
Sanji has dreamed about this day. Sometimes, more often than not, the dreams were nightmares—torture, ridicule— but every once in a while, they were dreams of a glorious return of finally, finally truly coming home to the place that was always supposed to be one.
Sanji has dreamed about this, but he can’t say if any of his dreams were like this.
No matter what version of it he imagined, Zeff was there, and now Zeff is—Sanji doesn’t actually know where they took him. He couldn’t watch, and then he was whisked away too, and now he is in a room, his room, high up in one of the main castle’s towers, and Zeff could be anywhere below him.
He’s not sure whether he is in any position to ask about prisoners’ location yet. But then, of course he should be: he is a prince, the king has welcomed him back, he is free to move around the castle. It has been a week and the only places Sanji has chosen to go has been the gardens, and the kitchens. Places he used to go to as a child, when his mother would be in one, or Zeff would be in the other. Then, his mother was gone, and Zeff had left with Sanji. Now, neither of them are anywhere, and Sanji wanders around and feels like a ghost. But he is home, at least.
When the Strawhats fight and lose at Sabaody, Yonji throws the newspaper Sanji’s way over breakfast with no small amount of glee, that for once, isn’t directed at Sanji or the causing of bodily harm to him. “Look at that! Your problem took care of itself.”
Reiju stirs her tea and levels him with a neutral expression. “You must be glad to no longer be with them,” She says.
“I was never with them,” Sanji scoffs.
The Strawhats, the article says, disappeared that same day. It’s inconclusive if this means they died or have actually disappeared—The point of the matter is no one can find them. Sanji should feel relief, he guesses. It’s been a hassle, trying to capture Luffy, getting caught up in Luffy’s mission to be the biggest nuisance to the biggest assholes in his general vicinity. He should be glad that, now that he has his fathers approval, now that he didn’t actually need Luffy’s capture to facilitate it, he won’t have to worry about him and Luffy finding each other. What he feels instead is a bone deep sort of dread.
He barely manages breakfast, leaves after a couple bites. Back in his room his stomach roils. He thinks of the shipwreck, thinks of the rock, thinks of Zeff, and immediately feels worse. Something there, something in between the dread and the unwelcome memories and the regret, moves him to finally make his way to the dungeons at the very bottom of the castle.
Sanji can’t guess if they’re giving their prisoners enough food, but he’s sure they’re not letting them have newspapers. When he steps in front of Zeff’s cell, he slides a bowl he’d pilfered from the kitchen over with: “Luffy is gone.”
Maybe he should have chosen different words, something that would make him sound more a royal commander of a military force and less a scared kid telling his father of a nightmare he’s had. Maybe he should have said something else entirely. Maybe he should have begged for forgiveness.
Zeff doesn’t look at him and doesn’t touch the food Sanji brought for the entire time Sanji stays in the dark grimey hallway. He decides that he wouldn’t have survived if Zeff’s response to his remorse had been the same silence.
A couple of days later, the newspapers announce the execution of Firefist Ace, the kind of public event Germa 66, with its association with the World Government, is expected to make an appearance at. Judge declines, taking the transponder call with his children in the room there with him. Something complicated happens in Sanji’s chest when the king says: “With the long awaited return of my third son, there are some arrangements I have to make. I’m sure you understand that family takes priority over a public military appearance.”
As Judge gets to work on arrangements Sanji is not privy to, he keeps track of what is happening at Marineford, equal parts intrigued and mortified by the spectacle. The intrigue, he finds, stems from a place right above his sternum, that thrums with a note he recognises from Alabasta, and from Water Seven, one he cannot explain and does his best to ignore.
As the Warlords begin to arrive to Marineford, Sanji thinks he hears his family talking about an Emperor. As his brothers speculate the likeliness of Whitebeard showing up to save his lieutenant over dinner and Sanji chokes down a bite of perfectly cooked steak, he catches the name Charlotte Pudding in conversation between his father and an advisor.
“ …After all, she is still quite young,” The advisor hums.
“Nonsense,” Judge shakes his head. “You are very well aware of the Vinsmoke customs.”
“Certainly, you’re right Your Majesty. After all, the late queen wasn’t much older—”
Sanji forces himself to tune them out and downs his glass of wine.
The next day, as Strawhat Luffy and a band of prisoners from Impel Down have stormed the Navy stronghold, as Whitebeard is proclaimed dead along Firefist, as the tabloids show multiple angles of Luffy holding his brother’s dead body, Sanji can’t bring himself to do anything but stare at the print. Before the News Coo came in, his father had explained to him exactly what kind of arrangement he is expected to take part in, now that he has been welcomed back.
“We need you, to strengthen our ties with Big Mom, to get a stake in the territories of Tottoland. A marriage is the smartest way to do that.” Judge had relayed.
And: “You’ll be of use for us yet, and all you have to do is say yes and amen to this girl.”
And: “You should count yourself lucky, boy. This is more than I had thought possible for you, years ago.”
He thinks people around him are making arrangements for the journey to Tottoland. He thinks they’re talking about a Tea Party. He thinks there are invitations being sent out and he thinks at one point someone shows him a picture of the girl. He thinks that he wants to run back to the dungeon, to the garden, to the kitchens and that he wants to bury himself in any of these places and never come out.
The next News Coo comes, and Luffy is on its cover again. Back, again and again and again, to haunt Sanji. There is ink on his arm. A crossed out 3, a barely smudged 2. The Strawhats were separated at Sabaody.
Sanji remembers Luffy’s glare from the first time they met and how he told his meagre crew he would be back with them shortly. He remembers Luffy’s grin in Alabasta and how he told Sanji he’ll see him around. He remembers how Zeff went to the Strawhats for help in Water 7, and he remembers meeting Luffy’s eyes.
Somewhere above his sternum, there is a thrum. Sanji comes to a conclusion, to a realisation, and a decision in the same moment.
When he reaches the cells, Zeff is gone without a trace.
There’s a pain in his chest that reverberates with the realisation that this time he is alone when he leaves the Germa 66 fleet, He doesn’t have the skeleton crew they let him and Zeff leave with years ago. He doesn’t have Zeff and he no longer has the conviction that he will be back. All he has is the glorified dinghy he leaves on and a destination he can only guess is where he is supposed to be in two years.
The island he arrives at when he has to admit to himself that he can’t go further without keeling over before making it anywhere near Sabaody is—peculiar. It’s lush and pink and a fever dream and the antithesis of the grey castle walls he ran from. Maybe it’s this, or the sheer insanity of the place, or because he recognises the Queen of Momoiro Island from their fight alongside Luffy in Marineford: When they arrive back to their home, he tells them everything, and they let him stay.
Two years later, as the ship they lent him docks at the Sabaody Archipelago, Sanji thinks that he owes his life to so many people, to Zeff, to Ivankov, to Luffy.
It’s about time he started paying back some of his debt.
Sabaody is teeming with rumours of the Strawhats being back, but when he finds who people are talking about, it is decidedly not the Strawhats, and by the time he finds their ship and the real deal, things are chaotic enough for no one to question his presence as he kicks around some marines and watches the Strawhats’ various allies do the exact same.
Only when their ship is fully submerged and well on its way down to Fishman Island, does one of them look at him. Sanji can admit that he’d rather it had been anyone else—He’s sure this skeleton is nice enough, being a part of the crew, but it will take some getting used to, holding eye contact with empty sockets. He realises he’s getting ahead of himself. They might still punt him into the vast inky waters around them.
“Who might you be, then?” The skeleton asks, not unkindly. “You have quite the kick on you, if I may say so.”
The rest of the Strawhats stop in their tracks—some of them busy with the busywork of a ship, some still in the midst of joyful reunion—to stare at Sanji.
He’s been thinking about this moment for two years. He’s thought up quite the speech. Various iterations of it, one more rhetorically gifted than the last. It was going to be the perfect balance of thankfulness, of grovelling and hope and conviction.
All of it leaves Sanji as he meets Luffy’s eyes across the deck.
Somewhere to the side, he can hear one of them, Sniperking, his poster says, answer the skeleton’s question when no one else says anything: “That’s the third prince of Germa.”
It breaks a sort of spell, because suddenly a lot of them speak at once:
“Mr. Prince!” The doctor cheers, wriggling around so much that the swordsman glaring at Sanji something fierce nearly drops him.
The Cat Burglar makes an incredulous noise. “Where the fuck did he come from?”
“Where’d you leave your dad?” Franky, the ship dismantler calls. Nico Robin lays a hand over one huge metallic arm and adds: “More pressingly, Your Majesty, I do hope you haven’t brought the rest of your siblings. I find their company quite dreadful.”
Luffy is suddenly right in front of him and Sanji can’t focus on anything else anymore. His chest feels like it’s about to explode.
“Um,” he stutters, smartly. “Hi.”
The grin that spreads across his captain’s face is blinding. “Sanji,” he smiles. “I was hoping you’d come look for me!”