Chapter Text
Eight years before a boy in a straw hat would begin his journey for the One Piece, Aokiji Kuzan decided to eat lunch at the Baratie.
It was not a particularly consequential decision. The sun was out, and the breeze whistled as it glided past the spokes on his bicycle wheels. A flock of gulls drifted overhead. It was truly a beautiful day in the East Blue sea, and the ice-ice fruit user was compelled to make a brief pause in his own journey to bask in great weather and even greater cuisine. If the weather had been slightly worse, perhaps a small gathering of clouds on the horizon, Aokiji Kuzan would not have stopped at the seafaring restaurant. But this day was perfectly cloudless, and so he decided to eat lunch at the Baratie.
It was not a particularly consequential decision. (It changed everything.)
Once seated in the dining room, Aokiji Kuzan ordered some lavender tea and the daily salad, a bowl of the freshest leafy greens around topped with sesame seeds and mango bits. A refreshment, perfect for such a balmy afternoon. It was truly a shame that, upon taking a single bite of the cold appetizer, Aojiki Kuzan discovered that he was deathly allergic to mangoes.
All Devil Fruit users fear the sea.
Even though he himself could freeze its tempestuous liquid into a docile solid, Aokiji Kuzan possessed that primal strand of terror all users had towards their collective enemy they knew, with a visceral horror perpetually unvoiced, they could never defeat. All Devil Fruit users know what it’s like to drown. Heck, they can’t even wash themselves in peace. Efferent neurons spritzing into numb nothing and the burn of the ocean searing into lung tissue are not uncommon feelings amongst them.
Suffocating to death felt the same. As Aojiki Kuzan’s body descended into anaphylactic shock, his blood pressure plummeted and his throat swelled rapidly. He could not move or breathe. His airways narrowed until oxygen could no longer enter and he drowned, on the hardwood floor of the seafaring restaurant.
It was almost poetic that the only devil fruit user capable of generating water—the users' collective enemy—would drown to death on land. The Devil himself must have deigned to correct that particular loophole.
On that truly beautiful day in the East Blue sea, Aokiji Kuzan died from ingesting a piece of mango. As it happened, the mangoes used for his fatal meal were in the kitchen nearby, and during Aokijii’s untimely demise undergoing peeling by a certain young chef.
That is where it begins.
After all, a devil fruit is known to reincarnate in the nearest fruit available…
Sanji was bored.
Zeff had barred him from cooking—again—because he was apparently “too damn scrawny and always getting underfoot” but Sanji knew that it was because the shitty old man wanted him to go out and be a kid more, or something. Every once in a while, the geezer would wake up from one of his old man naps and act like only days instead of years had passed since the rock. Sanji loathed when that happened, because Zeff’s voice would lower and he would kick him less and ban him from the kitchen and he wasn’t weak goddamnit.
At least Zeff had let him stay in the kitchen, this time. Sanji sat on a rickety stool in the corner, hunched over a crate of mangoes. In his hand, a paring knife deftly sliced off chunks of its reddish green skin. The Baratie received a rare shipment of the tropical fruit the previous week. It was a wonderful opportunity to add a variety of creative mango-inspired dishes to their menu, for a limited time. All the chefs took advantage of the fruit’s arrival, or at least Sanji had with a few simple salad dishes before he was banished from his workstation by the tyrant of a head chef. Even without his cooking, however, there were still many mango meals to be made, and thus many mangoes to be peeled.
Enter: Eleven-year-old “always getting underfoot” Sanji. Featuring: the mild-melting boredom of peeling a couple hundred mangoes.
Sanji was busy muttering nasty descriptions of Zeff’s parentage under his breath and hacking at a particularly stubborn bit of mango skin when shouts of distress sounded from the dining room. A handful of nearby chefs rushed to aid the hapless customers, but Sanji stubbornly stayed put. The shitty old man would only kick him right back to the kitchen for interfering. Tsk. Sanji hated that he was never allowed to help out in “adult matters.” He wanted to grow up already. He was already halfway there, in all the wrong ways. Might as well get the responsibilities that come with it.
His thoughts were so consuming that he hardly noticed when the fruit in his palm, ripe and ready to be peeled, began to change. Morphing into something distinctly not of this world.
He was just so angry, frustrated to his core that he couldn’t do more. He owed Zeff everything, and the man just wouldn’t let him pay back his debt. Sanji moodily brought the mango he was holding to his lips.
Later, when he recalled this particular moment, this major turning point in his life, he could not say if eating the fruit was accidental or not. He honestly did not know if he had taken a bite of the fruit in his hand and saw the swirls of the devil or saw the swirls or the devil and taken a bite.
Either way, the mango ended up in his mouth and oh was it disgusting. It was strangely cold, and tasted as bitter as Zeff’s strongest liquor and as sour as vomit.
But Sanji’s habit of not wasting food was instinctual, by then, and the powers of the devil were promptly swallowed with a scowl.
The aftertaste is even worse, he thought, and then the obligatory oh shit what have I done once his higher functioning came back online.
If he hadn’t seen the iconic swirls jutting from the now-maroon mango before, he saw them now. In his palm he held a devil fruit. Of unknown powers. Which he had just taken a bite of. Shiiiiiiiit…
A shriek stemming from his emotional cocktail of terror and rage tore past his lips as he burst out of the kitchen. He streaked through the dining room, past the prone form of one Aokiji Kuzan and the high-strung chefs who attended him, and out onto the deck that dropped off into the sea. A flurry of concerned voices trailed in his wake.
Sanji told himself that he must jump in, he had to make sure, but his body jolted to stillness nonetheless at the edge of the docks, the front of his shoes hanging off the wood. He was shaking, eyes rimmed with a glossy film of almost-tears. How could he be so stupid!
He released another incensed bellow as he chucked the Devil Fruit as far as he could into the open ocean. The mango landed with an anticlimactic plop and slipped beneath the gentle waves. Within a moment, there was nothing but the wide, cerulean stretch of the mother sea.
How was he supposed to get to the All Blue if he couldn’t swim! He was supposed to be a chef of the sea, not a lifelong prisoner to it!
He rocked forward, intending once again to throw himself into the sea to prove that it wasn’t true. There was no way he had just eaten a devil fruit, he must have hallucinated the whole experience, or the mango was just plain rotten. Yeah, that was it! Fruit was always finicky, especially when it was so warm out. A particularly spoiled one must have slipped past inspection.
Deep down, he knew that that was not the case. Somewhere in the sinew of his soul, an innate fear had been awakened, and he could not bring himself to leap into the sea.
Hundreds of miles away in the hallowed halls of Marineford, Fleet Admiral Sengoku the Buddha received a very consequential phone call. The exact content of the exchange is unknown, and not terribly important. The part that was important, came after.
He hung up the Den Den Mushi with a downward tick to his lips. With steady hands, he stroked his beard in contemplation. It wasn't every day an Admiral died, and from an unknown food allergy nonetheless. His colleague had died not on the battlefield nor in the clutches of the sea but on the dirty floor of some nameless restaurant in the East Blue. Sengoku couldn't decide if the mysterious way of passing fit the aura of the mysterious man, or if it was in any was suspicious.
He was unable to reach a conclusion before his brief period of personal grief was over, and it was time for the due processes of the navy to proceed. He called a grunt into his office.
"Phone Vice-Admiral Garp Immediately, he is known to hang around the East—" to keep an eye on his damn family , Sengoku didn't add, "—and tell him to send a fleet to the seafaring restaurant known as The Baratie. I want the place locked down until we decide that the cause of death really was an accident, as they have reported."
"Yes sir!"
"Oh, and one more thing. I also want every item that may even slightly resemble a fruit on that ship confiscated. On the authority of the World Government. The Hie Hie no Mi, Aokiji's Ice-Ice Fruit belongs to us."