When we got to the Baratie, we heard the sound of something being smashed and the tinkling of broken glass before we even set foot in the restaurant. We looked at the door in surprise. I shrugged and strolled up to it, easing it open. The first thing we noticed was that everybody in the joint was staring in horror at one particular table at the back. Er, if you could call it a table at all. At this point, all it really amounted to was a few legs, a stained tablecloth, and many splinters. Some sort of soup was spilled in the floor and the tablecloth was soaked with wine. The woman in the red dress from the Marine ship was standing a few feet to the right from it, hands over her mouth.
And in the center of the mess stood a blonde waiter clad in a clean black suit with black pants and black dress shoes, holding up that Marine dude, Fullbody, who looked like he'd just gotten his ass handed to him.
I had an inkling of a feeling on who that waiter was.
"Huh," grunted Zoro. "A fight." He sounded vaguely interested.
" Never," the waiter growled, "waste food around me again! At sea, if you provoke your cook, you're signing your own death warrant!"
I smirked. Yep. It was definitely that guy.
"Oh, no—the customer!" someone shouted. "Dammit, not again, Sanji! That's a customer! And can't you see he's a Marine lieutenant?" The newcomer was a big guy who wore a blue jacket over a pink shirt and had a goatee. His chin was pointy and his lips were rather large.
Sanji snorted. "You're a terrible cook. What makes you think you can talk to me like that?"
"You're calling me bad? Restaurants can't exist without their customers. They're our lifeline, so we don't wanna hurt them the way you seem to keep doing!"
"But he deserved it. He didn't treat the food or me with respect," Sanji growled at him. "And he insulted all the cooks!" The blonde's face was a mask of anger. He dropped the beaten Marine on the ground. "I just taught him a lesson, that's all."
"You're gonna regret this," Fullbody groaned. "All of you! No restaurant should treat its customers like this. I'll shut you down. Do you understand me?! I will shut down this entire place! This whole restaurant is finished! YOU HEAR ME!?"
"Then maybe I should just finish you off now," the cook mused.
The lieutenant gulped.
The cooks, who I'd only just noticed now were on a spiral staircase that led up to the second floor, ran forward and held Sanji back, grunting with the great effort.
"IT'S FOOLS LIKE YOU, WHO THINK THEY'RE SUCH BIG SHOTS THEY CAN ORDER ANYBODY AROUND, THAT REALLY PISS ME OFF!" he shouted over the cries of the other cooks, who were all pleading for him to calm down and let it go. "YOU'RE NOT SUCH A BIG SHOT NOW, ARE YA? ARE YA!?"
Suddenly, completely out of the blue, the ceiling broke and two people fell through it. My jaw dropped and I nearly jumped a mile. The commotion turned everyone's attention away from Sanji and to the ceiling debris.
"What happened?" a customer demanded in shock.
"Are they okay?" someone else wondered.
I backed up, my eye twitching furiously. "WHAT THE HELL KINDA RESTAURANT HAS ITS ROOF JUST RANDOMLY CAVING IN!?"
An old man with a peg leg, a really straight beard, and an incredibly long chef's hat sat up, rubbing his head. At his feet lay—you guessed it—none other than Lucy.
"I can breathe again," she gasped.
I stared. "Lucy-chan!?"
"Chef Zeff, what's happening?" one of the cooks questioned. "You didn't hurt yourself, did you?"
"Dammit," said the tall-hatted man, Chef Zeff. He looked up in exasperation. "My ceiling! Now that old thing is gonna have to be fixed because of you too! This is all your fault, you damn brat!"
"It wasn't my fault!" Lucy protested furiously. " You attacked me! "
Suddenly they both noticed the chefs who had crowded around Sanji and who were struggling to hold him back.
"Sanji!" Zeff sighed. "Don't tell me you went on another rampage in here, you idiot!" He stood up and started walking over to his subordinate.
"Put a cork in it, crap geezer!" our future crew member complained.
"Oh, now you're ordering me around! Just who do you think you're talking to? You wanna sink my restaurant to the bottom of the sea? You punk!"
BAM! Zeff slammed his peg leg into Sanji's face. Hard.
Fullbody, still on the ground, smirked, clearly pleased to see the cook getting beat up.
"And you there! Get your ass outta my restaurant!"
WHAM!
"How can you deny our motto that the customer is king?!" Patty growled.
"The only kingly customers we have are the ones who stomach the crap that you call 'food,'" Sanji snapped, glowering at the man.
Oo, burn.
Zeff reprimanded both of them for fighting, saying that if they wanted to, they should do so in the kitchen. Suddenly someone shouted, "Lieutenant! Lieutenant Fullbody! The prisoner from Don Krieg's crew that we were keeping on the ship has escaped and killed seven of our men already!"
"Wow, this restaurant's crazy," giggled Lucy.
"Impossible!" growled Fullbody. "When we picked him up three days ago, he was on the verge of starvation! And we haven't even fed him anything! Where did he get his strength from?"
"Oh, no! Pirates!" A customer gulped.
"And the Krieg Pirates are supposed to be the strongest on the East Blue!"
The Marine said something else, but I couldn't understand him because suddenly... CRACK! A bullet hole opened in his body and he fell to the ground, the floor covering with blood. Standing behind him and holding a pistol was a man who was so thin, he looked like death itself. It reminded me of the time on the streets when I had nearly starved to death.
"Looks like things are about to get very interesting," I muttered.