Sea Circle Calendar, Year 1471 – Port Town "Saffron," East Blue.
The air in Saffron didn't just smell like the sea; it was a thick, suffocating tapestry of scorched cumin, rancid lard, and the sharp, acidic tang of fermented fish sauce. It was a "Cook's Port"—a chaotic intersection of the East Blue's merchant lanes where the wealth of a dozen islands was traded in peppercorns and saffron threads. Here, the taverns never closed, and the streets were perpetually slick with grease and discarded oyster shells.
Sinbad sat in a shadowed corner of The Rusty Cleaver, a tavern that felt less like a place of rest and more like a steam boiler on the verge of exploding. At sixteen, Sinbad had shed the last vestiges of childhood. He stood six-foot-four, a towering architecture of lean, functional muscle that seemed to hum with a restless, kinetic energy. His golden eyes, now sharpened by years of predatory observation, scanned the room with a clarity that bordered on the divine.
In his chest, the "Singularity" wasn't just humming; it was a rhythmic, thumping drumbeat. It had pulled him across the treacherous currents of the Calm Belt, guided by a psychic compass that ignored geography in favor of destiny.
Outside, the town of Saffron held its collective breath. They had seen the Tempest's Fury dock, but it was the shadow trailing the ship that had silenced the market square. Little Oars Jr. sat in the harbor, his massive, red-skinned knees pulled to his chest. To the locals, he looked like a demonic mountain that had sprouted from the tide, his gentle breathing sounding like the low roll of distant thunder against the piers.
"Oi, Eggplant! I told you, the sea-bass is sold out! Eat the carp or eat the floor!"
The voice was a whip-crack, slicing through the tavern's roar.
Behind the scarred wooden counter stood a blonde boy no older than Sinbad. He wore a stained chef's white, the sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms corded from hours of whisking and butchery. His hair was a wild, golden mess, and his mustache was a pathetic, downy peach-fuzz that he clearly tended with misplaced pride. This was Zeff. He wasn't the "Red-Leg" of legend yet; he was the spark before the fire. He had two strong legs planted firmly on the grease-stained floor and eyes that looked like they wanted to roast the world on a spit.
The "Singularity" flared—not a spark, but a solar flare.
For a heartbeat, the tavern dissolved into a grey, salt-crusted void. Sinbad's vision was hijacked by a future that shouldn't exist. He didn't see a boy; he saw a skeletal old man with a braided mustache standing on a jagged rock in the center of a desolate, starving ocean. He felt the phantom agony of a severed limb—Zeff's right leg, sacrificed to the hunger of the sea so a weeping child named Sanji could live. He smelled the rot of a dream nearly extinguished.
Sinbad gasped, his hand flying to his chest as his heart hammered against his ribs. The vision snapped back to the present, leaving a cold sweat on his brow.
He's just a kid, Sinbad realized, his throat dry. The tragedy hasn't happened yet. The 'All Blue' is still just a secret he whispers to his shadow.
"You're staring, purple-hair," Zeff barked, slamming a heavy cleaver into a thick oak cutting board with a resonant thwack. "Buy a drink or get out. This isn't a museum for your mid-life crisis."
The tension in the room snapped when a group of local thugs—vultures who preyed on the itinerant cooks—stepped forward. Their leader, a man with a jagged scar bisecting his nose, sneered at Zeff. "You talk a lot of shit for a brat who peels potatoes, Zeff. Give us the rum for free, or we'll turn this kitchen into a bonfire."
Zeff didn't reach for a knife. He didn't have to. He vaulted over the counter in a blur of yellow and white.
He moved with a frantic, unrefined grace. His right leg whipped out in a perfect, horizontal arc—a proto-version of the style that would one day make him the terror of the Grand Line. The lead thug's jaw didn't just break; it disintegrated with a sickening, wet crack.
"My hands are for cooking—they are sacred," Zeff hissed, his standing leg rotating with the poise of a dancer as he dodged a counter-swing. "My feet are for the trash. And you're looking like a pile of refuse."
The fight was a chaotic symphony of shattering glass and splintering wood. Zeff was fast, but he was outnumbered by men who fought with the jagged edge of desperation. Sinbad watched as a thug in the back pulled a flintlock, the hammer clicking back as he aimed at Zeff's exposed spine.
Sinbad didn't draw Maelstrom. He didn't need steel for such small souls.
He stood up. The movement was slow, a mountain rising from the sea. He let a microscopic sliver of his Conqueror's Haki leak out. He didn't unleash the storm; he simply let the pressure of his existence fill the room. The air suddenly felt like liquid lead, cold and unbreathable. The thug with the gun froze, his sweat turning to ice on his skin.
"The chef said the sea-bass is sold out," Sinbad said. His voice wasn't loud, but it resonated with an unnatural, kingly authority that made the floorboards groan.
He moved—a blur that the human eye couldn't track, his Singularity predicting the trajectory of every limb in the room. He caught the gun's barrel and, with a terrifying display of raw strength, twisted the iron into a pretzel. With a casual backhand, he sent the gunman flying through the tavern's front window, the man's body clearing the street entirely.
Zeff stood panting, his shirt torn, looking at the mangled hunk of iron in Sinbad's hand. "I didn't ask for help, you arrogant peacock."
"I wasn't helping you," Sinbad grinned, his charismatic mask clicking into place, radiant and blinding. "I was protecting the kitchen. I'm hungry, and I hear you're the only one in this sea who knows how to treat a spice without insulting the fish."
They sat amid the wreckage as the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the harbor in shades of burnt orange. Zeff cooked—not out of obligation, but as a silent challenge to the boy who carried the weight of a god. He produced a dish of sautéed Blue-Fin with a reduction of Saffron-pollen. It was the best thing Sinbad had tasted in two lives. It tasted like potential.
"You're a Pirate," Zeff said, leaning against the soot-stained counter, watching Sinbad eat.
"I'm a King," Sinbad corrected, wiping his mouth. "I just haven't claimed my crown yet. I have a ship, and I have a Giant who needs ten thousand calories of high-grade protein a day. I need a cook who isn't afraid of the Grand Line."
Zeff laughed, a sharp, cynical sound. "The Grand Line? It's a graveyard. I'm staying here. I'm going to open a restaurant that never moves. A sanctuary where no one goes hungry."
Sinbad looked at Zeff's two legs. He knew that in the "original" timeline, the Baratie was born from the trauma of loss. He was about to offer a different path.
"You want to feed the hungry?" Sinbad leaned forward, his golden eyes glowing with a faint, predatory light. "Then come with me. We'll find the All Blue. We'll build a nation—Sindria—where the kitchens never close and the World Government doesn't get to decide who eats and who starves."
Zeff froze. The mention of the "All Blue" was his push point—the ultimate heresy for a cook, and the only truth worth dying for.
"How do you know about that?" Zeff whispered, his voice trembling.
"The sea tells me things," Sinbad lied—or perhaps, given the Singularity, it was the only truth that mattered. "I've seen the man you could be, Zeff. You can either stay here and fight drunks for copper coins, or you can come with me and feed the world."
Outside, Oars let out a low, rumbling hum that shook the glasses on the bar, a call from the deep. Zeff looked at his hands—clean, unscarred, still holding his future. He looked at Sinbad, a boy his own age who seemed to stand at the center of the universe.
"One year," Zeff said, untying his apron and throwing it onto the counter. "If we don't find a lead on the All Blue in a year, I'm kicking you into the sea and taking your ship."
"Deal," Sinbad smiled.
As they walked toward the docks, Sinbad felt a sudden, sharp chill. He had successfully recruited Zeff decades before his "time." He was tearing up the script of the world. If Sanji is never saved by a one-legged man, does the Straw Hat crew ever form?
He brushed the thought aside. He wasn't here to facilitate someone else's legend. He was here to be his own.
As the Tempest's Fury pulled away from the pier, a black-sailed Den-Den Mushi on a nearby rooftop began to ring, its eyes rolling in a frantic, rhythmic trill. A man in a tailored white suit, wearing a mask with a single, vertical slit, watched them through high-powered binoculars.
"Director," the man spoke into the receiver, his voice devoid of emotion. "The Singularity has acquired a second high-potential asset. A cook with extraordinary leg strength. And... they are setting a course toward the Tequila Wolf construction site."
"Intercept them," a cold, ancient voice replied from Mary Geoise. "And bring me the boy's head. The Five Elders are losing patience with this anomaly."