Queen of the Pirates

Canon Side Stories #3: Smoker

And now we return to more recent times, out in the middle of the Grand Line after Crocodile was captured by the Navy due to being defeated by Monkey D. Luffy. Now, Smoker and his crew are making their way to the next destination. Another island where another pirate with a large bounty is being tracked to in order for Smoker to capture. Not much stays the same from day to day, but there is one thing that never changes in Smoker's life.

Which is where we meet our third new face: Zelda. A couple years past thirty, this woman has spent a large portion of her life in the Navy as a cook. She worked from the bottom to the absolute top of a personal chef. Her days are now spent making every meal for Commodore Smoker and herself. The two have known each other for years when they joined the Navy within months of each other, and his first request was for Zelda to be part of his company. After all these years, it's the best thing he's ever asked for. And Zelda wouldn't want to be on anyone else's ship.

I pour the cooked pasta from my pot to the saucepan where my garlic sauce is waiting. As I mix everything together with my spatula, I open the oven to not overcook the bread. The salad sits on the nearby counter ready to be dished out when I begin to plate. It's just another day of creating the perfect two-person meal while out to sea.

I've always known that I wanted to be a chef when I was older; I just didn't know if that would be in a fancy restaurant or someone's personal at-home chef. From a very young age my parents had to create a toy kitchen with all the appliances and wooden food that could actually be cut or change colors to appear cooked. I would spend hours and hours making all kinds of meals. Once I was old enough, I even made my own little play restaurant that my family would make a point to dine there whenever they had a break in their days. Even my siblings loved to make stops are my make-believe restaurant between whatever they were playing.

Eventually, I moved away from the toy kitchen and wooden food to our actual kitchen and real food. My grandmother is the one that would teach me everything I know from the first day she took me under her wing. She has multiple recipe boxes filled with all kinds of recipes that she's gathered from all over the world, and I spent months copying them all down for my own extra large recipe box that my father made before I left to join the Marines. But long before that, I was just a kid in a kitchen watching my grandmother, then helping her, and at some point there was the transition over to me making entire meals. She would still help with pastries and sweets, but for the most part I was making meals for the family a couple times a week. And I loved it so much that I was finally doing what I had wanted to for so long.

Then, I reached an age where I could go out and show off those skills to everyone in town, and I didn't waste any time finding a place that would let me be a chef right away. I spent a couple years learning how to work with others and perfect my recipes. It was all going perfectly until a band of pirates came to ransack our town and left me wanting to find a place where I could help those trying to make the world a better place, so I went off to join the Marines shortly after the attack.

It was here that I met Smoker, a man that had joined the Navy a few years before me, but we were both eighteen at the time of meeting. Back then he was a troublemaker that couldn't follow any rules, but he was a strong man that would be a lot of help to the Navy if he could get on the right track. It was also at this time that I would meet Hina, a young woman two years younger who was (and still is) the epitome of professionalism. We worked together multiple times to ensure that Smoker didn't get in trouble with higher ups and expelled from the Navy. The three of us became pretty close in the years that we spent at Navy Headquarters, but we couldn't stay there forever. There's plenty of towns all over the world that need protection, so Hina and Smoker were sent out to watch over certain towns. Luckily for me, I was sent to be the chef for Smoker, and something I found out a few years later was at the request of the man himself.