Will struck up an odd sort of friendship with the professional cabin boy known as Ben.
The two of them were the only outsiders on this ship full of misfits. A crew of misfits who somehow found a place to fit in amongst each other, and become a family in all but name and blood.
Their closeness meant that Will and Ben, comparatively "normal" as they are, stuck out like sore thumbs.
Oh, at first Will thought there were a few mundane members of the crew, but he quickly found out how wrong he was to assume as much.
Robin? She could grow bits of herself wherever she liked, like flowers.
That swordsman, Zoro? His three swords weren't for show. He put the third one in between his teeth, like a maniac. Will wanted to know what his teeth were made of, if he still had all of them after fighting like that.
Usopp had been promising. A man who prided himself on his marksmanship. Sure, the choice to use a slingshot instead of a gun was a bit odd, but slings could also be deadly in the right hands. Then he showed Will his garden.
Nami seemed ordinary at a glance. However, the way she handled the more rambunctious members of the crew made him suspect there was more to her than met the eye. Then she changed the wind when it became unfavorable and proved his instinct correct.
The less said about the cook, the better.
His two last hopes for some normalcy were sitting across from him now.
"So you're the most recent addition to the crew, huh?" Will asked conversationally.
"I suppose I am, but if I were to nitpick, that would be Carrot. She might have boarded the ship before I did, but she only made it official later. I also joined up at about the same time as Reiju-onee-san." Pudding dunked a chocolate chip cookie in her tea and took a bite.
"Oh, where are they at?" Will asked, desperately hoping they weren't her imaginary friends or some nonsense like that.
"Those two went ahead with Brook, in the submarine," Pudding answered, pouring some chocolate milk into her tea.
Will had no idea what a submarine was supposed to be, though he gathered through context that it was some sort of sea vessel. He glanced at Ben to see if the boy might be better informed than him, but he was too distracted by the chocolate milk tea. To be fair, even Will was curious about the beverage; for a child, it must seem like the height of decadence.
Almost as soon as Pudding let go of the carton of milk, Ben was grabbing at it and dumping it into his own tea. It was probably more chocolate milk with tea in it than the other way around at that point.
The other woman at the table, Cabernet, looked affronted that the boy had snatched it all for himself. Ben only noticed her chiding look once he started drinking.
"Here you go, Cabernet-chan~" Sanji appeared with a second carton of milk, as if he'd known all along that it would run out and was only waiting for the right moment to swoop in.
The first time Will saw him do something like that, he really did think the man had predicted it. After it happened several more times, Will realized that the cook must have some uncanny instinct for serving beautiful women. There was no other explanation.
"Mm, thank you Sanji," Cabernet nodded. She opened the fresh carton, took a swig, then proceeded to pour her tea directly into it and shook it up for good measure.
Will got the sense that she didn't actually like tea all that much.
His attention was forcibly drawn away from Cabernet when he heard a thunk on the table. Pudding had pulled a pie serving knife from who knows where and had nearly impaled a snaking arm that was aiming for her bowl of cookies.
Nearly impaled, because the pie serving knife wasn't actually sharp and the offending hand was made of rubber. So instead of drawing blood, it was merely pinned down and squirmed with obvious discomfort.
"I asked you if you wanted any cookies before I baked them, Luffy," Pudding spoke with a warning on her tongue. "You said you were fine with your takoyaki, so I didn't make enough for you."
"But that was a whole hour ago!" the captain of the ship whined from the other side of the deck.
"An hour is only enough time for the cookies to bake and cool!" Pudding shot back. "I'm not Sanji, I'm not the ship's cook! It's not my job to anticipate your hunger pangs! I did enough of that with Big Mom, thank you very much!"
Luffy drooped and mumbled a quick "Sorry…"
Pudding held her glare for half a moment before sighing and releasing his trapped hand. "You can have one-"
Luffy already had a cookie in hand the moment she said the word.
"-but if you want any of my sweets in the future, you have to tell me! Baking is an involved process, and I'm not going to slave away at the oven all day just because you changed your mind!" Pudding chided, though in a much lighter tone than before.
"Thanks, Pudding! Shishishishi!" Luffy munched on his one cookie.
"Big Mom?" Will questioned. It sounded like the kind of moniker they gave to pirates sometimes, when they became notorious enough. Although he hadn't heard that one before.
"My mother," Pudding said, expression flat. "I'm the 76th of her 85 children."
Will felt his eyes bulge as his mind boggled in shock. "Surely not! How is that even possible?"
"More than a few sets of twins, triplets, and greater, as well as more step fathers than I care to remember," Pudding remarked with clear disdain. "Honestly, she should have kept a few of them around. It's not like she ever bothered to raise us."
Sensing that he'd stepped on a bit of a landmine, he lashed out for a change in subject. "So, Cabernet? How did you come to join your merry band?"
"I joined up when Cherry did," Cabernet spoke between the cookies she stuffed into her mouth. "Not that long after I was born."
Will blinked a few times in quick succession as he processed that statement. As odd as it was, it was still preferable to reengaging with the still moody Pudding. "Oh. I wasn't aware… that this crew was that old? Is it something like a legacy crew?"
"Nope!" Cabernet answered cheerfully. "That was about two years ago!"
Will didn't know what to say to that.
Ben apparently did, though. "I'm not the youngest on the ship! This is the first time that's ever happened to me!"
"You sure aren't, old man," Cabernet smirked.
"Peh, young people these days! They don't show us old folks any respect!" Ben harrumphed. "Back in my day, we used to sail against the wind and up waterfalls both ways! These young folks, though, they just wave their magic sticks around and change the direction of the wind to whatever suits them!"
Will decided that perhaps he should just sit back and enjoy the atmosphere.