"LUUUUUFFYYYYYY?!?!?!" An angry roar woke up most of the ship in the early hours of the morning, just before dawn.
The roar belonged to none other than Sanji, who stormed into the men's bunkroom and started throttling the newest emperor of the sea.
"What's going on?" Usopp yawned as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, unperturbed by the casual act of mutinous violence.
"Yohoho! Whatever it is, Luffy probably has it coming," Brook analyzed. "Would anyone like to make a wager?"
"That's a fool's bet," Zoro grumbled, especially grumpy since he'd only just gone to bed an hour ago. Normally he slept like a rock, but the cook's voice was particularly irritating to his ear. "Couldn't this have waited for a decent hour, you shitty cook? Like maybe twelve hours from now?"
"This can't wait, moss head! This idiot is like a dog; you have to punish him right away or he doesn't understand what he did wrong!" Sanji growled, his perpetual hostility towards the swordsman subdued in the face of this much more immediate issue.
"But I still don't understand what I did wrong!" Luffy claimed pathetically.
"It's a good thing you're actually a monkey then!" Sanji declared. "You'll get it when it's spelled out to you in simple terms; and you've got it, then you'll get it!"
"I don't get it…" Luffy said.
"The shitty cook means that he's gonna kick your ass," Zoro translated.
"... Oh…" Luffy wilted a bit.
A few minutes later, everyone was gathered in the dining room, doing their best to peer into the kitchen and pantry.
Not a single morsel, nor even the smallest crumb remained.
"How did you even do this, Luffy?" Nami was too stupefied to be angry. "Even you couldn't eat this much, surely! That was weeks of food, for all of us!"
"Well…" Luffy pushed his fingers together awkwardly. He had to stretch them to do that, since he was thoroughly tied to a chair. "I was practicing…"
"Practicing what?" Franky asked, less upset and more curious. In fact, he probably wasn't upset at all. "For an eating contest?"
"No, I can win those without practicing," Luffy spoke with pride. "I was practicing with Gear Fifth, but I get all drained when I use it, so I ate to get my energy back."
That was even harder to believe. They hadn't all seen that newest technique of his, but those who had were sure they would have noticed him doing it.
"And what, pray tell, were you practicing on?!" Sanji snapped.
Luffy's head attempted to retreat into his torso, Sanji grabbed him by the temples, his hands humming with armament haki.
Luffy gulped and answered, "The fridge…"
"So you used your new Gear to pry open the fridge and the pantry, bypassing the locks entirely," Sanji surmised. "And then you were so hungry from using it, that you ate everything?"
"... Uh-huh…?" Luffy admitted with no small amount of trepidation.
"What in the world gave you the impression that this was a good idea?" Nami was secretly impressed by his dedication to screwing them over, at least when it came to their food supplies.
"Well, Cherry can go get more, right?" Luffy looked over at the woman in question, hope shining in his eyes.
Even Nami seemed to have forgotten that, despite having just gone on her 'shopping trip' just a week ago. "Right. I keep forgetting we can do that."
"I can't actually," Cherry said, startling everyone.
"What?! Why not?!" Carrot squeaked.
"I've got a bad case of snail flu," Cherry crossed her arms and shook her head. "I wouldn't want to get the little guys sick."
"That's not a thing! I'm the expert on fake diseases, and that's definitely fake! You just don't want to go grocery shopping!" Usopp jabbed an accusational finger in her direction.
"Actually it is real," Chopper chimed in. "But she's still lying. When humans catch snail flu they overproduce mucus, sometimes so much that it blocks the airway and suffocates them to death. It's pretty rare for it to jump like that, though."
"Achoo!" *sniffle* Cherry made a very poor attempt at faking the symptoms. She continued speaking in a nasally voice, which she achieved by blatantly holding her nostrils closed, "I guess I'm pretty unlucky, huh?"
Her words were met with the most unimpressed dead pan stares the world had ever seen.
"Um," young Ben called attention to himself in breaking the silence. "I'm pretty good at fishing? I don't know about the fish in this sea, but they can't be too different from what I'm used to."
"You'd be wrong about that, Ben," Jinbe ruffled the boy's hair. "But that is certainly a good solution. Especially since Cherry doesn't have fish flu, to scare away the fish she'll be catching."
Contrary to what one might assume from Jinbe's attempt to betray her, Cherry actually seemed pleased with the result. "Yes, let's do that! Some good old fashioned fishing ought to do my snail flu some good!"
"Actually, bed rest is the recom-mMhmHmm?!" Chopper was silenced by Usopp's hand over his mouth. Usopp hissed at him, "Don't give her any more excuses to slack off, dummy!"
"You just wanted fish for dinner, didn't you?" Robin asked Cherry.
"What? No way, I can't stand fish. Especially not deep fried to golden perfection in beer batter, and tartar sauce on the side for dipping in," Cherry denied.
"It's a shame we don't have any of those other things, since Luffy ate them and you've got snail flu," Nami delighted in rubbing that in.
"Oh, I hid all the things we'd need to make it last night, because I totally didn't want to have it today, but since that's all we have left, I guess I'll go get them for Sanji," Cherry revealed.
Nami's jaw had dropped. When she recovered, she demanded to know, "Why didn't you save anything else from Luffy?!"
"Well, I didn't know I'd come down with snail flu this morning," Cherry sniffled again to really ham it up. "I didn't think it'd be a big deal, since I could just go get more."
"Why didn't you at least stop him from eating the fish we had?!" Usopp asked, just a bit hysterical.
"Aren't you listening? I don't want fish; especially not if Sanji is cooking it, since he makes it so delicious that I lose my appetite just from the smell, already sated." Cherry's smirk was a sight to behold as she laid out her nonsensical reasoning.
Before anyone could make any further attempts at unraveling Cherry's weirdly elaborate conspiracy to not have fish, they were interrupted by a familiar sound.
*Purururururu*
The den den mushi they had for the ship began to ring.
"I've got it," Cherry said, knowing full well she was only stoking the flames of her crewmates' ire by doing so.
"Hello?" Cherry plucked the receiver free before anyone could stop her.
The den den mushi suddenly grew the manliest, whitest mustache a snail could dream of, and even then it couldn't compare to the real deal.
"Oh, Cheapshot, is that you?" the unmistakable bass of Whitebeard boomed from the tiny snail. "I want to speak with Straw Hat. We have unfinished business."