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Sanji eyes the canister in her—his—hand warily, trying desperately to come up with an escape plan that leaves his masculinity intact. He is failing.
“Now, now, Sanji-kun,” croons Devil Incarnate #4. “Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.”
“Like hell!” he shouts, backing away slowly, ready to bolt. He takes another step back and bumps into something very large and very solid. He turns around and sees Devil Incarnate #3 smiling sweetly down at him.
“No,” he says, but before he can run the other way, Devil Incarnate #3 wraps her—his—burly arms around him and holds tight. “Noooo!” he wails, emphatically, thrashing about, but to no avail.
“Hold still, now,” says Devil Incarnate #2, the one with the fishnet stockings and the heavy mascara. “It won’t hurt at all.”
“Bullshit!” he retorts vehemently. He remembers when they waxed his legs. That was a whole new world of pain. After that incident, he is not letting his guard down ever again.
“Language,” chides Devil Incarnate the First, the one with the canister. It’s hairspray, Sanji sees now. An industrial-sized canister of hairspray, bigger than Sanji’s head.
“But think of the ozone layer,” he protests, albeit weakly. Devil Incarnate #3 is slowly but surely squeezing the fight from him. “The ozone layer,” he repeats. “The sun, UV rays cause skin cancer you know, and, and freckles,” he babbles, seeming to shrink into himself. “Hairspray evil,” he coughs pathetically.
They are not listening. They are too busy tugging ruthlessly at his hair and spraying copious amounts of hairspray and depleting the precious ozone layer to listen to his very sensible arguments. Sanji feels his brain cell count lower with every spritz of the canister. But the chlorofluorocarbons, he wants to say, but what comes out is a gargled, “alskd;”
When he is finally lowered to the ground after what seems like an eternity, he finds it difficult to stand without swaying on unsteady feet. He shakes his head to clear the miasma of hairspray and soul-crushing shame.
“Do you like it, dear?” purrs Devil Incarnate #2, batting her—his, god damn it—ridiculously long eyelashes.
They hold up a mirror to his face and he stares wordlessly at what he thinks must be his reflection, except there is now a very soft-looking cloud attached to his skull. He presumes it is what used to be his hair.
“It’s—“ he hesitates, still feeling faint. He gives his remaining brain cells a few seconds more to regroup. “Floofy,” he offers at last. “Very floofy.”
“Of course, honey!” Devil Incarnate #4 puts an arm around him and it’s to his immense credit that he doesn’t immediately curl up into a ball and sob. “It’s the cotton candy style! It’s how Ivankov-sama does her hair, you know.”
Why do you want your hair to resemble confectionary consumables, he wants to demand. He imagines Chopper chomping on his head, and he feels simultaneously horrified and a little bit sad. He shakes his head again.
“I hate it,” he says, miserably. “I hate you. All of you.”
The Devil Incarnates are not the least bit perturbed. “Silly boys don’t know how to express gratitude properly,” clucks Devil Incarnate the First. To Sanji, she—he—winks lecherously and says, “You’ll come around.”
He doesn’t.
He spends the rest of the day running away so that they cannot squeeze him into the new dress they had made with the measurements they took from his unconscious body a few days ago, when he had passed out from exhaustion, foaming at the mouth.
But at the end of the day, huddled amongst the highest branches of a pink tree like an especially disturbed squirrel, he notices with mild surprise that his hair is just as floofy and voluminous as it was this afternoon.