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In a boat stuffed so overfull, every tilt felt like the promise of capsize and every groan of the strained wooden boards sounded like whispers of cessation. That they ever made landfall was nothing short of a miracle. Or rather, that they made landfall was a given, practically a guarantee with Gin helming their little vessel—that he lived to see it through was the biggest surprise of all.
His jaw ached from Sanji’s kick and a small patch of skin still sizzled where the cook spit his cigarette into Gin’s cheek. His right shoulder crackled when he rolled it, overtaxed from use of his tonfa after Krieg had grabbed him. Even if he could concentrate past the coughing—hells, it felt like each round worsened, more prolonged than the last—he wasn’t sure how to tell what part of his felt worse. Even if they had a doctor, even if they found one, what could he tell them?
Yeah, that’s probably broken—our captain is kind of a monster, but I might die anyway, so why bother checking?
And yet he endured.
“Take the town. We’re pretty fucked up, but we’ve got numbers.”
A voice tinged in fear spoke up from the safety of the pack— “Don’t mean to contradict, sir, but didn’t Krieg say you were out of the crew…?”
It was only natural for uncertainty to spark dissidence. But they needed those numbers. Krieg too often treated his forces like unwanted toys, eager to discard them for a bigger win, chasing a higher peak. They needed a new way. Gin wasn’t sure where to find it, but he could start something different.
“Until he wakes up to say otherwise, you really wanna try me?”
The crewman retracted his question with the speed of a hand yanked back from a raging fire.
Gin kicked things off by bartering his way into a kitchen and dropping off a single demand of them. The head cook looked at him like he was insane. He might have been.
“W-what is this?”
“You blind? It’s a sack of treasure. Bits of shit collected all over the East.” Gin nudged it open with the barrel of his pistol. “Teach me how to make it and I’ll give you the whole thing. When our boss is up and moving again, I’ll double it.”
Their trembling slowed and they regarded him with wide incredulous eyes, “You…you’re serious?”
“Need a safe port to offload loot to eventually—a place to get fresh food and supplies from on the reg. Yeah, we pushed our foot in the door, but nobody here was gonna listen to pirates bleedin’ all over their doorstep—” On mention, he seized, catching himself on the counter with a hand as his body fought to double over through a violent fit of coughing.
With blood spattered over Gin’s hands, his pants, the floor—the horrified cook recoiled.
“Poison,” Gin rasped, fist clenched. “Not contagious.”
“A-and you want me to teach you to cook? Don’t you have more pressing—”
“On a timer, sweetie.” Gin grinned, the expression lopsided and pained, but somehow earnest all the same. “Can you do it or not?”
They forced him to wash his hands and fixed him with a face mask, with little straps tucked behind his ears and the bottom curled snugly around his chin. His nose wrinkled. Somehow the irritation of his scruff catching against the material was nearly more annoying than the dull throb in his shoulder.
The world shifted, all vertigo, as they began, but he persisted. There had been something magical about a meal—no, a gift that came without strings that sparked bright inside him, bursting and blooming larger and faster and wider than Gin ever hoped to contain.
Things could change.
Peering over the cook’s shoulder, Gin stared, brows pinched together as he tried to match their posturing, the blade of his knife pressed against the middle of a thick stalk of celery.
“No, no, no—start from the beginning—down here,” they guided, “Chop your way in. And, hm…” they hummed thoughtfully. Reaching over, they swapped his knife from one hand to another. “If that arm’s buggered up, try that. A steady hand’ll save more effort.”
He’d support Krieg in the end, unable to imagine a life without the man. But even together, they couldn’t stand on broken legs. Gin couldn’t accept things with a silent nod anymore as he stalked out to do the man’s dirty work. ‘Combat commander’ meant assessing, training, and fitting people with the tools most suited to their hands. They needed to build back stronger and not necessarily through numbers. They needed quality over quantity. Beyond that, they needed trusted allies to shield them in emergencies. The entire Baratie had been ready to throw in against them—they needed that kind of support network.
This time he’d raise his voice before things reached such a bloody fever pitch.
The whole prospect was more than a little dizzying, with more bullet points than he’d left bullet holes in people.
“Fat’s in the pot. Now we move fast—sauté your shit too long and it’s all fucked.” As they worked, despite lingering fears, the cook loosened up.
Cooks, Gin decided, he liked. They were rude, but honest. He could work with that.
With a full pot simmering, Gin looked to his new instructor with trepidation as they helped themselves to a taste. “...it any good, chief?”
Their expression teetered between the poles as they let the mouthful linger on their tongue. Then, after what seemed an eternity, they swallowed. “It won’t kill anyone, but it ain’t a dream by a long shot.” The cook shuffled off to gather more supplies for a second round and on return, shoved a fresh pile of vegetables into Gin’s arms. “Do it again.”
Luckily, ruthlessness in the pursuit of victory was Gin’s trademark. Knees weak, vision swimming—a second round was nothing. He fed the crew on his first effort and continued.
Two days came and went before Krieg woke from his injuries, dazed and sluggish. By that evening, the head cook called the endeavor an across-the-board success and graduated Gin to the position of “honorary line cook” with a shove out the door. By nightfall, Gin slunk back in with heavily loaded bags and left only with a full pot and an empty bowl.
With the restaurant finally free of the feverish training and the pirate out of earshot, one of the waitresses gathered the courage to sneak back in. With her panicked voice hushed, she begged for answers, “He didn’t hurt you, did he? What happened?”
The cook, tired but otherwise no worse for wear, shrugged, their eyes wide in overwhelmed disbelief, locked on the promised loot Gin delivered precisely as promised—all extra shares taken from Don Krieg’s personal belongings. With their net worth now swollen far beyond their wildest dreams, the cook barked a single laugh and stumbled back into a wall, slumping limply to the ground.
“I…think I taught a pirate how to make chicken noodle soup…”
Poorly slept and with a soft rattle trailing every breath, Gin let himself into Krieg’s temporary quarters, a hot bowl in hand. Even exhausted, seeing the other awake brought a wash of relief over him.
In rare form, Gin smiled. “Mornin’. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
Though decidedly not morning, Krieg squinted through the dim light as he let the detail slide. “You’re alive.”
Gin chuckled. His hands shook as he held the bowl out, though not from any measure of fear. “That’s one less thing to explain, then.”
Against the far wall, an empty gap existed where his spear once stood.
“You moved things,” Krieg jabbed, his tone flatter than he preferred. “When I woke up earlier, there was more in here.”
His accusation met its mark and Gin shrugged. “Some, yeah. Had to pay for a few things, grease a few wheels. Like I said, we need to talk.”
Krieg’s half-baked gaze swept the room as he tallied his losses, then down into the bowl. Hearty chunks of fresh rotisserie chicken and a heaping portion of short noodles bobbed between a mix of sauteed carrots and celery, all basked in a well-seasoned bath of hot homemade broth.
As the idea came to him to pitch the entire bowl at the man who’d cost him the Baratie, the scent of the soup drifted, spreading through the room, and traitorously, Krieg’s mouth watered and his stomach growled furiously.
Instead, more motivated to rid himself of the grumbling of his gut, Krieg's took a first tentative sip. Gin held his breath. Bushy eyebrows raised in surprise. Krieg licked his lips and tipped the bowl back for a larger swallow, then drained the entire thing.
Begrudgingly, “…Okay.” He held the empty bowl out and wiped his mouth on the back of his arm. “More of this swill and I’ll hear it.”
Grinning, Gin bent and lifted the entire pot into view, “Yes sir!”