As the hour dragged on at a snail's pace, the day got warmer and warmer and I got border and border. I was itching for a fight. I felt a huge rush of adrenaline or something like that, and I was feeling very energized indeed. Steam billowed up to the sky from the venting in the kitchen. Sanji was just about done with lunch, something I was glad for. At least eating those glorious stuffed peppers would distract me from my inactivity.
We sailed past a reef and I suddenly got a cold feeling. Something wasn't right. The sea was getting disturbed. I shivered and glanced about, but nothing was happening. I shrugged and wrote it off as jest nerves, but I still didn't let my guard down.
Then Sanji finally brought out the food, and I forgot my worries. I very nearly cried. The wonderful aroma itself was enough to make me think I'd died and gone to heaven, and the taste! Oh, the taste was indescribably good! Besides my peppers, he'd also laid out fried rice mixed with other vegetables and my lemonade, and the lemonade tasted like real lemons . It had exactly the right amount of sugar, a perfectly balanced scale of sour and sweet. The stuffed peppers were slightly spicy, but the heat was evened out with a touch of... something I couldn't quite put a finger on. Whatever the case, my respect for Sanji was definitely renewed. My one lunch today was better than all of the meals I'd had at the Baratie combined, which was truly saying something. I was finished with one pepper, a bowl of rice, and a glass of lemonade before I came up for air.
Lucy was so pleased she was literally shoving her plate into her mouth and bringing out shiny-clean, almost making me squirt lemonade out my nose from laughter. Yosaku had inhaled three plates of fried beans before he remembered how to breathe.
"Nothing less from Sanji-san!" Yosaku said as the object of his approval grinned and stirred a glass of red wine. "This is divine!"
Sanji shrugged. "I don't care about you, I just want to be able to cook for Nami-san as soon as possible." He took a sip of his wine indifferently, but I could tell he was pleased.
The green-cloaked swordsman nodded eagerly. "It'd be great if we could all dine together again!"
"Yeah!" I agreed. "We'll get her back, no problem. Just you wait, Yosaku-san! The Straw Hats shall be reunited once again!"
Lucy gnawed the meat clear off the bone, reminding me of a wolf. "Yeah! 'Cuz she's our navigator! She'll be going to the Grand Line with us!"
"About that," I spoke up, pausing from my meal. Everyone blinked and looked at me, confused. "Lucy, I have this quest I have to go on. The main reason I didn't want to join your crew was because I didn't know how dangerous it'd be, and I didn't know where it'd take me. I still don't know for sure, but after my dad talked to me yesterday when I was out cold, I realized that I'd probably have to go to the Grand Line. And even though I'm a demigod, there's no way I could be able to survive the Grand Line on my own."
Lucy shrugged nonchalantly. "Yeah. So?"
"Well..." I looked down, grinning weakly. "I know it's pretty freaky, me being half-human and all... I still haven't really gotten over it myself. I only found out about a week or so ago. But still... Lucy-chan, would you accept me as a crewmate?"
There was a pregnant pause, and I thought I'd blown it for a second. I sighed sadly, thinking that was that, but then Lucy broke into a grin so wide I knew it was only possible because she had rubber powers.
"Reay?" She giggled excitedly. "You wanna join?"
I blinked and raised an eyebrow. "Well, yeah."
"COOL! You're on! Hahahaha! I've got Yuril!"
I blushed and looked down again, embarrassed by her eagerness. "You don't have to be so excited about it," I mumbled, but she was cheerily ignoring me, instead attacking her meal with renewed energy.
Yosaku blinked. "Wait, you mean you weren't a member before today, Yuril-aneki?"
"Nope."
Lucy reached for a bone of meat at the center of the table, but Yosaku suddenly swiped it away from her, making her jaw drop. "Oi, that's mine!"
I slapped my forehead while Lucy giggled. Then her jaw dropped again and she glared at Yosaku, who backed away a little. "Oi! Give me my meat back!"
"But you just had one," he repeated.
"But it's mine!"
The morons started chasing each other around the kitchen while I sweatdropped and Sanji poured himself more wine. Then the ship started shaking and I spilled my lemonade all over my black leather jacket and Pac-Man shirt, making me aim an Aqua Blast at the passing bounty hunter's face, glaring at him dangerously. He was thrown into the wall of the kitchen and he came out of the dust cloud, blue and shivering.
"STOP MAKING THE SHIP SHAKE, DAMMIT!" I exploded. "IF MY JACKET'S RUINED, THERE'S GONNA BE HELL TO PAY!"
Sanji was unamused as well. "I ALMOST WASTED SOME FINE WINE!"
Lucy stopped short and giggled. "You guys are funny!"
"And you !" I fumed, getting ready to punch some sense into my rubbery captain, but just then I sensed something absolutely HUGE under our ship and my fist uncurled in shock. I turned blue.
Yosaku blinked. "Eh?... Yuril-san? Are you alright?"
I glanced around nervously. Why was the sea so dark until a hundred feet starboard? What was that cold feeling I'd just gotten? It was the same one as before, at the reef... "Do you guys see that?" I said, motioning towards the sea.
Lucy and Yosaku blinked. "Eh? See what?"
Sanji looked out over the ocean. "Yeah, the sea's all dark." We glanced at each other and said in unison, "Something's beneath us."
Sanji and I peered into the sea. I swallowed nervously. Whatever it was, it was large enough to cast a hundred-foot shadow! At least 100 feet by my estimates. I examined my new crewmates. Lucy looked excited to meet whatever was gonna surface, and I resisted the urge to knock some common sense into her. Only Usopp had a natural reaction. He was looking at the ocean and sweating bullets.
Suddenly...
—FWOOM!
The thing following our ship veered out to the left and surfaced, sending a giant wave up that we swept down, screaming in surprise. My senses were tingling, and something was telling me that they were connected to the sea's disturbance. As we hit the bottom of the wave and splashed out to sea, water falling around us like rain, struggling to maintain our balance while Lucy laughed and whooped like an idiot, I grabbed the table (our dishes and leftovers had been thrown haphazardly across Sanji's ship in organized chaos) and closed my eyes, projecting my thoughts into the sea as I'd been training myself to do since I'd sort-of come to terms with being a demigod.
The sea calmed, somewhat, and when the ship had finally stopped threatening to capsize, we all saw what had very nearly ended our adventure: A FREAKIN' GIANT FISH THING THAT LOOKED LIKE A FREAKIN' BULL AND EVEN HAD A FREAKIN' RING AROUND ITS FREAKIN' NOSE!
My jaw dropped and I paled at the sheer size of the creature. It had a stupid look on its face and at second glance looked a bit ridiculous, like a cow-fish nightmare baby, but it was at least TWICE the size of Arlong's flagship and ALIVE. How something like this could even be possible blew my mind at first, but then I remembered I was in the One Piece world. On the Grand Line, things like this were sighted on a daily basis.
Not that the thought made me feel any better.
Abruptly, I felt like I could understand Usopp's cowardice just a bit better.
"WHAT IS THAT THING?!" I yelped, quickly backing up to the edge of the ship and stabbing a shaking finger at it. I felt like an ant looking up at a giant!
Yosaku let out a very unmanly scream and cried anime tears. "A M-M-MONSTER!"
"You're telling me!" I gasped.
Lucy ran forward and grabbed the railing closest to the beast. "It's a cow!" she announced. "And it's humongous!"
"SAYING IT'S HUMONGOUS IS LIKE SAYING THE SKY IS BLUE OR THAT GRASS IS GREEN!"
Our cook took his cigar out of his mouth and regarded it blankly. "A cow? Swimming?" he deadpanned. "It's more likely a hippo."
"No way is that thing a hippo!" I shot back. "Hippos are silver-colored, NOT scaly, and do NOT have nose rings or fins!"
"Good point."
"But why is that thing here in the East Blue?!" Yosaku shrieked. "This kind of creature should only be at the Grand Line!"
Said creature gave a deep rumble and bent its enormous head down to look at us. The pupils of its eyes were as big as my head, but that wasn't the part that shocked me. The thing that surprised me was when it rumbled... I could understand it.
"It says its hungry." I blinked.
Sanji wheeled around and looked at me wide-eyed. "You can understand that thing?"
It grumbled again and gave a moo-like moan. I sweatdropped and asked the cook, "Eh, yes, I can understand it. You want the translation without the cursing, or cursing included?" For whatever it was, it had an extremely dirty mouth. My old freshman language arts teacher woulda washed my mouth out with a bar of soup for saying an eighth of what the big guy had said.
"Ah... cursing excluded, please."
"'I'm not a monster, idiot. I'm a sea bull. Give me food or I'll sink your ship, even if you have a child of Master Aes with you.' He says."
Yosaku shivered. "That's one mad cow."
Lucy erupted in a fit of giggles. "The cow thinks he can sink us? He's hilarious! Shishishi!" Then suddenly she gasped as she realized something and gave the cow a death glare. "EH?! YOU WANT OUR FOOD!? GUM-GUM PISTOL!" Her arm stretched out, causing my eyes to widen since until now I'd never really seen her rubberiness in action, and slammed into the sea bull's face.
—POW!
"Whoa, that was pretty awesome!" I gasped. Then I glared angrily and tic-pulsed. "EH? Wait a minute, what are you doing?! The poor thing's hungry! Let's feed it instead of hitting it!"
This time I didn't bother resisting the urge to hit her or Yosaku, who was cheering her on.
—WHACK! WHACK!
"But it was trying to touch my food," she protested childishly.
—FWOOM!
The sea bull had smashed into the sea, throwing droplets of displaced water high up into the air, creating a rainbow, and lifting another wave up from the watery depths. Gritting my teeth in annoyance, I once again sent my thoughts into the ocean, soothing it with calming commands like, Nice, sleepy ocean. Don't sink our ship. That'd be bad. Have a nap instead. Nice ocean...
Hey, it works! What's that look for?
Anyway, a second later, the ocean was disrupted again and the sea bull erupted up from the waves, growling angrily and letting out a bone-rattling moo. I paled, tried to calm the sea, and told my new captain shakily, "Uh, L-L-Luce? You might want t-t-to give it some food. It's really angry. It just c-c-cussed you out 50 times."
"In one moo? Cool..."
"HE'S GONE BERSERK NOW!" Yosaku yelped.
I gave both of them my best I'll-kill-you-if-we-ever-come-out-of-this-alive stare. "This never would've happened if you damn idiots would've just GIVEN IT A FEW FREAKIN' CHUNKS OF MEAT!"
The bounty hunter cried anime tears. "Sorry, Yuril-aneki..."
"IT'S HIM YOU SHOULD APOLOGIZE TO!"
"Sorry, Cow-kun..."
The sea bull from the Grand Line rumbled, a little less angrily this time. And when I say less angrily, it only cussed about twenty times.
"'My name's not Cow-kun," I translated, leaving out the cussing. "It's Mohmoo, and I'm a SEA BULL! Give me food.' ...He says."
"You want another?" Lucy threatened.
"DO YOU HAVE A DEATH WISH?" I fumed.
Sanji looked like he wanted to kick her, but he managed to restrain himself since Lucy was a lady. "Idiot." he admonished. "Don't beat up hungry people."
"It's a cow, not a person!"
"It's a bull, not a cow," I returned, while the cow eyed us reproachfully.
"Maybe he can't find something to eat because of an injury or something," Sanji mused, and I nodded my agreement.
"Is that it?" I asked the cow kindly, and the cook grinned at it.
"What compassion," Yosaku remarked blandly, unmoved.
We offered it a plate of meat that we picked up from the ship floor, and I even sacrificed one of the stuffed peppers that I'd managed to save, and the cow sniffed the food suspiciously. Then it opened its mouth impossibly wide, and my own jaw dropped at just how huge its maw was—then Sanji suddenly kicked it, looking like Nami when she got angry.
"GO TO HELL!" he told it.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" Yosaku and I demanded. "WHERE'S THE LOVE ALL OF A SUDDEN?"
"That thing was gonna munch on me, too." he said calmly, smoking a cigarette.
"Bastards," I mumbled, calming the sea YET AGAIN. "You guys keep making me have to keep the waves from overturning the ship. This ain't easy, ya know. Plus I DROPPED MY STUFFED PEPPER IN THE FREAKIN' OCEAN!"
He turned to me and raised an eyebrow. "So? You're a demigod of the sea. You could just summon it out and dry it."
"...True."
The sea bull Mohmoo ripped through the water at our ship, snarling and hissing up a fit, and I sighed. "Okay, since you two demons have attacked it already, I guess its my turn now. As wrong as this feels since it's a creature of the sea..." I jumped into the sea while Yosaku gasped. I willed it to support me and landed on it lightly, then bent my knees, building up pressure beneath my feet. I aimed myself at the approaching cow. "AQUA ROCKET!"
I was propelled forward with so much force it felt like my face was peeling off; not a pleasant feeling.
"AQUA BARRAGE!" I roared, and as I soared through the air at the angry sea bull, water rose up to wrap itself around my arms and fists. I landed on the creature's snout, slowing down its charge a little and bending its neck back. I cocked my arms back, then proceeded to land a series of devastating punches on its nose. As the attacks rained down, throwing droplets of water everywhere, my crewmates and Yosaku cheered me on. I let out a battle cry and a final, powerful blow rained down on it. Its eyes nearly popped out of its head and it was thrown back into the sea, while I kept the waves from getting too big and blasted myself back to our ship.
"That was awesome!" Lucy approved, grinning widely. "Now let's go back to our meal!" She gathered everything up and I cleaned it all of with water from the atmosphere (which for some reason, didn't tire me as much as it did the other day), and we returned to the food like nothing had even happened.
I heard Yosaku mutter, "These guys are crazy..."
I blinked in surprise. Had I been included in the crazy category? I didn't think I was all that powerful compared to the average pirate in this world...
Huh.