– Byron –
"Didn't you guys tell me that the log pose was the only reliable way to navigate this part of the Blue Sea?" Shura asked, scratching his head in confusion as he stared down at the object in his palm.
"That is usually the case, yes." Byron confirmed. What else was he supposed to say?
"Then what is this?" his first mate asked him, holding up the object in question.
"I believe Disco called it a turtle pose."
After the Honey Queen had come aboard as an unpaying passenger, Byron had wasted no time in trying to make progress on this quest he'd been saddled with. The first step of which was to gather information as to the Bear King's current whereabouts. Thankfully, while he had no way of sniffing out where the man may have gone, Byron was the only and hence the most important of Bellamy's affiliate captains. This also meant that Byron was entitled to enjoy certain privileges, one of which was the usage of Disco's intelligence network.
To say that Byron held a grudge against the man would be a gross understatement, but he was pragmatic enough to make use of the options he had available to him instead of trying to go into this blind. For his part, Disco was a consummate professional who didn't blink an eye when his former merchandise came marching up to his front door and demanded information on the current location of the bear king. Thus, instead of causing a fuss, he chose to hand over the requested files without saying a word. Why the man had a dossier on a barely known pirate from East Blue lying around in his office was a mystery to Byron, but he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Though he did have to admit that he was suitably impressed at the extent of Disco's network and the sheer quantity of information gathered by it on a daily basis. In fact, the man's organisation not only gathered but also categorised and summarised the mountain of snippets into handily accessible folders for easy perusal. To be honest, the fact that Doflamingo had discarded this man as if he were a moldy old sandwich still boggled Byron's mind. This was made even more bewildering, when one remembers that Disco's current capabilities were nothing but a pale shadow of what they had once been during his peak, much of it having been lost in the chaotic aftermath of Straw Hat's rampage through Disco's human auction house.
Regardless, Disco had come through, the man's many, many eyes letting him, and by extension Byron, know that the last reported sighting of the Bear King had put him on a heading for Mecha Island, an island only notable for being impossible to locate via the traditional log pose and requiring other more specialised means of navigation. Getting his hands upon the sole method of finding said island had been similarly simple as the island was, to quote Disco, not quite as secret as the residents liked to think.
Having thus prepared everything they needed, the Harmony Pirates raised their anchor and set sail for Mecha Island.
They arrived to find a city up in arms.
Even from a distance, it was clear as day that the town had been put through the ringer. Several buildings still bore the marks of a recent fire and that others were collapsed into ruins as if an explosion had ripped the supporting pillars apart. Combined with how the townsfolk had assembled on the beaches armed with pitchforks to group up behind a line of mechanical archers, it wasn't a difficult conclusion to draw. The town had been attacked and recently at that.
Three guesses as to who might possibly have been responsible and the first two didn't count.
When Byron gave Helena a blank look, the Honey Queen dejectedly hung her head, looking as if she wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear.
The question now was, how did Byron want to do this?
"Do we fight, captain?" Shura asked, stepping up to the ship's prow beside him. A moment later, the archers on the shore let loose their first volley. "Hmmm, seems like they aren't going to give us a choice."
"There's always a choice, Shura. One just has to grasp it." Byron corrected his first mate, ignoring Helena's screams and grabbing her by the scruff before she could dive for cover and forcing the self-styled queen to stand between himself and his first mate. Oddly enough, when faced with something which posed absolutely no threat to her wellbeing, the girl panicked.
"Kyaaah! Oh gods, they're attacking us! Do something! I'm too beautiful to die!"
"And how do you propose to do that?" Ignoring her screams, Shura calmly unwrapped his wires and whipped his arms forward. Moments later, the sun briefly glinted off a dense net in the sky, before the air was filled by the shredded remains of a thousand arrows. Another wave of Shura's arms and all the splinters were casually swept to the sides and into the sea.
"Simple. First, I'm going to calm our excitable hosts down. I can convince them of our good intentions afterwards." Byron replied. It was a simple plan but plans were meant to be simple things, lest they be foiled by the tiniest little variable behaving differently than envisioned.
"Should we set up the speakers, captain?" Shura offered but Byron shook his head to decline.
"That won't be necessary, Shura. Not for something as simple as this." After all, setting everything up would probably take longer than the performance itself. "This won't even take a minute."
Though in the end, Byron had to admit that he may have underestimated the locals a little.
It took two.
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Once Byron's impromptu concert had taken away their initial belligerence, the locals reverted to the peaceful, happy townsfolk they had originally been. It had helped that Byron had ordered his crew not to raise their jolly Roger. Which he had only done because one, he didn't want to advertise that they were pirates to the civilian populace when he wanted to grill them for information and two, his old one simply had too many bad memories attached to it for Byron to be comfortable flying it from his mast. Sadly, their attempts thus far to design a new flag had been met with abysmal results.
Still, whether by design or by accident, Byron had been able to convince the locals that the Harmony Pirates were in fact not pirates, but a team of roaming bounty hunters scouring the six seas in search of Helena's long lost brother, whom they believed to be in the unwilling company of the treacherous Trump Pirates. Yes, the very pirates who had unsuccessfully attempted to conquer the island not three weeks ago, and barely been driven off at great cost. This had the unintended consequence of garnering the Honey Queen many a look of sympathy, much to her chagrin and causing the girl to spend a lot of time uncomfortably staring down at her shoes. Of course, her discomfort just made everything worse, with the motherly queen dowager clamoring to feed sweet treats to the cute young lady in order to help take her mind off her brother's likely dire predicament.
However, work waited for no man and the local populace soon dispersed to go about their daily tasks, breaking into song as they toiled away.
Swaying, sway, sway, sway, swaying
The King of the Sea, the Golden Crown
The white snake's eyes, two moons
The sound of the black wind, feeling lighter
Time to drink up the blue water jug,
The lightning that falls on the green forest
Swaying, sway, sway, sway, swaying
Stolen story; please report.
The King of the Sea, the Golden Crown
Being the pirate that she was, Helena of course focused on the part about a golden crown and sought to investigate further. Faced with the full charm the blonde beauty could muster, the young ruler of the island, otherwise known as Dr. Ratchet, started babbling like a brook.
image [https://cdn.anisearch.de/images/character/screen/4/4659/full/19849.webp]
Turned out that the golden crown had existed only in legend for the last several centuries, with every attempt to locate the item having come to nought. However, Dr. Rachet was determined to be different and claimed to have dedicated his life to solving the riddle. A riddle which had been passed down through the generations in the form of a folk song.
So far, they had managed to identify the rocky outcropping on the island the White Snake referred to, but had gotten stuck on the two moons bit. Though, he quickly followed up on that admission by promising that it was only a matter of time. Though not before proudly displaying the intricate mechanical model he had constructed to simulate the moon's progress.
The next thing Byron knew, Ratchet had offered to give Helena (and grudgingly her servants) a tour of the location in question. Which was how Byron had found himself traipsing about the cliff tops with his entire crew in tow.
"There's nothing here." Judy concluded after taking a good look about the place.
"Yes, that is the problem." Ratchet agreed, "However, being the genius that I am, I have deduced that a hidden gate will open when the moon and its reflection align in some special manner. Hence, it is just a matter of finding when that moment will be."
The young man seemed confident, but to Byron that theory sounded pretty farfetched. Then again, he may be a captain, and a navigator by necessity, but he what he wasn't was an astrologer. Nor did he have the mechanical expertise required to judge the viability of such a gate mechanism. Instead, his specialty lay in music, which included a whole cadre of associated skills, such as the ability to clearly differentiate between the minutiae of sound.
"Shura?"
"Yes, captain?"
"Slice the Snake's head open."
"Aye, captain."
"Wait a moment! What do you mean by, slice the snake's head open? That's solid rock…?!?!"
Hence, finding a large cave beneath his feet was no trouble at all, Byron merely having to listen for the change in pitch in his footsteps as he walked about the place. Of course, finding the cave, wherever it may lead, was only the first step in this little side quest for the golden crown. Not only did they have to sail off a giant subterranean waterfall, which they only survived thanks to Shura's strings, but then they had to try and decode what was probably an ancient riddle after reaching an underground lake. Needless to say that, as they couldn't read the damn thing due it being written in some ancient script, they failed to make heads or tails of the engraved text. And if that weren't enough…
"Uhm, captain? There's something odd about this island. It almost feels alive."
"Alive? What do you mean, Marie?"
"I can sense the way this island breathes, captain. It slumbers yet, but it breathes."
…his medical officer had to start talking in riddles too. Byron bloody hated riddles.
They probably spent hours in that cave, searching every nook and cranny they could access for another clue. The big breakthrough arrived after they accidentally managed to drain the lake by punching a rather large hole into the floor. With no other avenue of investigation remaining, Marie had the bright idea to have Helena investigate where the water had gone. The blonde initially refused but folded soon enough after Shura dragged a puppy-eyed Judy in front of her. Byron gently humming courage and initiative into her probably hadn't hurt either.
And lo and behold, not long after the liquefied girl had departed she returned triumphant, having discovered an oddity hidden behind a wall. A wall Shura quickly reduced to rubble to reveal a rusty harpoon stuck into the ground.
"What do we do now?" Ratchet asked, prompting Byron to give the lad a small shrug.
"I don't know. Weren't you supposed to be the big genius?"
"Ahahaha, of course I am! Obviously we have to…"
Of course, nothing the pompous idiot suggested did a damn thing. It wasn't until Byron played a fast-paced and lively shanty at Marie's behest that something changed. With Marie's shout of "It's alive!", the island awoke, shaking and rumbling down to its very core. Unsurprisingly, the slowly forming cracks in the ceiling provided sufficient motivation for everyone to evacuate out of the caves as fast as they physically could.
But the sight which greeted them struck even. veteran like Byron speechless, for staring at him in curiosity was a huge, yellow eye set into a leathery face many times larger than his ship.
"My word…"
"Bloody hells!"
"That's one big turtle."
Like Judy just said, that was one big turtle.
And they were on it's shell.
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The Worst Generation
Welcome to Marineford Daily News, your only source of accurate and unbiased truth.
The Summit War took on a surprising twist, when twelve rookie pirates all worth over 100 million belli, decided to join the fighting on Whitebeard's side. These were in order of their bounties from highest to lowest:
Eustass "Captain" Kidd worth 400 million belli
"Straw Hat" Luffy worth 400 million belli
"The Magician" Basil Hawkins worth 311 million belli
"Red Flag" X-Drake, worth 306 million belli
"Springtrap" Bellamy, worth 303 million belli
"The Surgeon of Death" Trafalgar Law, worth 302 million belli
"Roar of the Sea" Scratchman Apoo, worth 267 million belli
"The Mad Monk" Urouge, worth 216 million belli
"Big Eater" Jewelry Bonney, worth 210 million belli
Capone "Gang" Bege, worth 199 million belli
"Massacre Soldier" Killer, worth 180 million belli
"Thunder Child" Aisa, worth 150 million belli (only alive)
For their crimes and for their audacity to directly act in defiance of both the Marine Corps and the World Government, these pirates are being labeled as the "Worst Generation" to arise since the death of the cursed Pirate King, Gold Roger.
Also included in this group is "the Pirate Hunter" Roronoa Zoro, worth 120 million belli, who was strangely absent from the battle. Experts say that this may indicate a break from within the ranks of the Straw Hat pirates cause by a conflict between their captain and his first mate. We can only hope that this is true and leads to the final dissolution of the Straw Hat pirates, who had gained notoriety by launching an unsuccessful attack on Enies Lobby.
According to eyewitness accounts, these rookie pirates failed to have any meaningful impact on the battle, in many cases being beaten back despite working together to fight our own in a clear act of cowardice. Examples include the utter, crushing defeat dealt to captains Bellamy and Trafalgar Water Law by the Royal Warlord Doflamingo and the routing of a team composed of Jewelry Bonney, Eustass Kidd and Urouge by the "Tyrant" Kuma.
Their current locations are unknown after they fled from Marineford in the company of Whitebeard's remnants, with the marines vowing to bring them to justice.
We, from the editorial team of Marineford Daily News, wish our proud boys in white and blue the best of luck in this endeavor.
On another note: While their interference had only a minimal effect on the balance of the battle, their involvement was significant in demonstrating how rampant crime is becoming in the world and the necessity of harsher policies to combat it. Thousands across the world are flocking to the Marine recruitment centres to join the ranks of this glorious institution and fight back against the current chaos. The World Government has put out a call requesting the common populace do their work diligently and to contribute to society as a whole, so as to act as a stable foundation against the rising darkness.
The world needs you.
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This was Marineford Daily reporting.