The storm had painted the sky the color of a fresh bruise when the Cook Pirates descended upon the cruise ship *Ocean's Bounty*. Their captain, Zeff, stood on the railing of his own vessel, a man carved from salt and spite, his peg leg tapping an impatient rhythm against the wood.
"State your demands!" the cruise ship captain shouted, his voice thin against the howling wind.
Zeff didn't blink. "Take it. All of it. Every jewel, every coin, every bottle of wine that isn't vinegar."
His crew, a pack of wolves in aprons, surged forward with a hungry roar. The pillaging was a brutal symphony—splintering wood, shattering glass, and the muffled sobs of the passengers herded onto the main deck. Soon, a small mountain of spoils grew at Zeff's feet as his men hauled their plunder back.
Zeff's eyes, sharp as filleting knives, scanned the haul. They stopped on a burlap sack one of his men, a brute named Gasket, set down a little too gently.
"Stop."
The single word froze the deck. Gasket went pale.
"Open it," Zeff commanded, his voice low.
"C-Captain, it's just some dry goods, nothing special—"
"*Open it.*"
With trembling hands, Gasket untied the sack. Inside, nestled among silverware, were wax-paper parcels. The unmistakable, sacred scent of freshly baked bread and cured meat wafted out.
Gasket's excuses died in his throat. "I was just… a man gets hungry during a raid…"
Zeff moved. It wasn't a step; it was the release of a coiled spring. His good leg blurred.
"You never," Zeff growled, the words punctuated by the thunder-crack impact of his kick, "*touch another man's food!*"
The force was catastrophic. Gasket didn't just fall; he *flew*, a human cannonball that cratered the far deck railing before slumping, unconscious. A collective gasp swept through both crews.
It was then that a small, golden-haired blur shot from the huddle of terrified passengers.
"You monsters!"
Sanji, all of eight years old, brandished two kitchen knives. Tears of fury streaked his face, but his stance was pure, desperate courage. He lunged at the nearest pirate.
He was swatted aside like a gnat. A backhand sent him skidding across the wet deck, the knives clattering away.
"Sanji, no!" the cruise ship captain cried.
But the boy pushed himself up, blood trickling from his split lip. "I'm not… I'm not done!" he spat, scrambling for a knife.
Another pirate kicked him in the ribs. Sanji curled around the pain, gasping.
"Just stay down, you little brat!"
Sanji's vision swam. The cold rain, the jeering faces of the pirates, the certain doom—it all pressed down on him. *This is it,* he thought, despair clawing at his heart. *I'm going to die here.*
Then, his dream flashed behind his eyes—a mythical sea where fish from all corners of the world swam together. A chef's paradise. *All Blue.*
"No!" he screamed into the storm, the defiance coming from a place deeper than fear. "I won't die! Not until I've found it! Not until I've seen the All Blue!"
The raucous laughter of the pirates was immediate and cruel.
"All Blue? That fairy tale?"
"Even on the Grand Line, such a place doesn't exist, kid!"
"Die with your stupid dream!"
But Zeff was silent. He stared at the small, battered boy who dared to dream of a chef's heaven while staring into a pirate's hell. A strange, unreadable emotion flickered in his steely eyes—recognition, perhaps, or the ghost of an old, drowned hope.
"Enough," Zeff barked, cutting through the laughter. The wind was now a shriek; the sea had become a churning abyss. "Back to the ship! Now!"
As his crew began to retreat, a monstrous, foaming wave—a wall of black water—rose beside the *Ocean's Bounty*. It hung for a terrifying second before crashing down.
"Sanji!" the captain screamed.
The wave swallowed the boy whole, wrenching him over the side and into the raging darkness.
Zeff saw it. For a heartbeat, he hesitated. A pirate captain did not risk himself for a stranger's child. It was against every law of the sea he lived by.
He cursed, a raw, furious sound lost to the gale.
Then he moved. One devastating kick sheared the main mast of the cruise ship clean in half. He snatched the massive timber out of the air, and without a second look at his crew or his ship, he leaped over the railing, plunging into the furious sea after the boy.
"CAPTAIN!"
Their cries were obliterated by the storm's crescendo. An even larger wave, a mountain of water, descended upon the two ships. With a sound like the world breaking, it smashed them into kindling, scattering pirates, passengers, and dreams into the maelstrom.
***
The world returned in fragments.
The ache of a hundred bruises.
The scorching sun on his face.
The taste of salt and blood.
Sanji groaned, forcing his eyes open. He was on a flat, barren rock, adrift in an endless blue desert. The silence was absolute, and more terrifying than the storm.
He sat up, and his blood ran cold.
Across the small, makeshift island, leaning against a larger boulder, was the Red-Leg Zeff. The fearsome pirate captain looked like a shipwreck himself, his clothes torn, his peg leg gone, replaced by a crude bandage around a bloody stump. His eyes were closed.
Sanji scrambled back, heart hammering against his ribs. This was it. He was stranded with a monster.
Zeff's eye cracked open. "Stop your squirming. If I wanted you dead, you'd have drowned."
Sanji froze. "My… my ship? The people?"
Zeff gazed out at the empty horizon, where only a few floating planks and a tattered Cook Pirates flag gave testament to the carnage. "Gone. All of it. The sea doesn't give second chances."
The reality of their situation crashed down on Sanji with more force than any wave. No food. No water. No ship. Just ocean, rock, and a one-legged pirate.
"We… we wait for rescue?" Sanji asked, his voice small.
Zeff let out a dry, humorless chuckle that turned into a cough. He gestured to the vast, unbroken emptiness around them. "You see any trade routes, boy? Any islands? We're in the belly of nowhere. Rescue isn't coming."
Despair, cold and heavy, began to settle in Sanji's gut. They were going to die here. Slowly.
Then, Zeff reached behind him, his movements stiff with pain. He dragged a weathered, watertight sack into view. The same sack Gasket had tried to steal.
"We have one chance," Zeff said, his voice gravelly. He untied the sack and upended it.
Out tumbled a single, sealed cask of fresh water.
And one small, wax-paper parcel of food.
Sanji's stomach growled audibly. The sight of the food was a torture and a salvation.
Zff picked up the parcel, his expression grim. He looked from the meager rations to Sanji, then out to the merciless sea.
"The math is simple, boy," Zeff said, his voice devoid of all its former menace, filled only with a terrible, stark finality. He held up the parcel. "There's enough food here for one person to survive for maybe a month. Enough for two to starve in two weeks."
He locked eyes with Sanji, and in that gaze, the boy saw no pirate, no monster—only a man facing the cruelest equation of survival.
"So," Zeff said, tearing the wax paper open to reveal a single, small loaf of crusty bread. "Which one of us is going to die first?"