Sanji hears the explosion in the early evening. It's not very close — somewhere on the island, for sure, but not close enough to shake the house itself. He tilts his head towards it, pauses for a moment from slicing scallions, but doesn't pay it much more mind than that. Things explode all the time, around Big Mom and her family. So long as they're nowhere near him or anything important to him, Sanji does his best not to think about it. That's not his place. It becomes his problem when, five minutes later, Pudding shoulders open the door to his rooms, anger licking off her like flames. Sanji carefully places his knife to the side and turns to face her. She crowds him against the counter, glaring. "Did you know about this?" she demands in a hiss, leaning forward. “Are you in on whatever hairbrained scheme they're trying to pull off right now? Do you have fucking contact with them?" In a slightly different world, Sanji is made even more his mother's son.

“Luffy.” “Yeah?” “Please tell me I’m hallucinating.” Fear. The smell of it, the sound of it. Luffy’s never felt fear like this come from Sanji before. He hates it. “He’s real. And I think he’s you,” Luffy says. __ A reunion. A camping trip on an uninhabited island. A question. And a gift, or perhaps, an answer. Wherein a Sanji straight from the dungeons of Germa appears in their midst and no one, least of all Sanji, knows what to do about it.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Smoker doesn’t know what he did in a past life to deserve this but it better have been worth it to make up for the situation he’s stuck in. He’s no stranger to getting assigned chores and duties below his rank, but this is a new low. And now he’s stuck on a restaurant ship with the newest recruit and the order to keep her out of trouble while the rest of the crew tries to track down Dracule Mihawk to find out why he decided to visit the East Blue of all places. How they ever lost track of whatever big-ass galleon one of the Seven Warlords would surely travel on, he has no idea.