Note from the Author: Well, hi guys! Sorry it took me so long to get this up and running. Motherhood is...well, it ain't easy. Worth it, sure, but not easy. (Go hug your mom and tell her thank you.) Finding time to write is now a challenge, hardcore. But an even bigger challenge is keeping my creative mind sharp. I highly doubt I will be able to get onto a regular update schedule like the last one. (And as you may have guessed, NaNoWriMo did NOT happen for me this year, alas).

So, if you are new here, this story is a sequel to The Straw Hats and the Iliad. I am trying to write it with enough exposition woven into the beginning that it can stand alone; if you haven't read Iliad, you'll have to let me know if I did alright with that.

A note: the name Helena is pronounced "He-lain-a", not the more common "Hel-en-a."

Ch. 1 – Vivre Ilium!

T'was a pity that the likes of Roronoa Zoro could not appreciate the noble art of phrenology, Perona thought to herself as she watched the wrinkles in his sizeable forehead deepen the longer she tried to get his attention. Then again, despite Hogback's insistence that the size of one's forehead indicated some level of intelligence, Zoro wasn't exactly the sharpest nail in the coffin, was he?

She eyed him in displeasure as he pointedly ignored her. He sat cross-legged and meditating aft on their little casket shaped sailing-vessel, but though he had warned her to leave him alone during those times, she felt their current predicament worthy of his notice.

"HEY!" she'd floated up to him and shouted directly in his ear this time. He recoiled away from her, swearing, and summarily overbalanced and fell overboard.

When he surfaced, his face had gone a lovely, apoplectic shade of crimson, warm and angry despite the cold ocean. "What is wrong with you?" he snarled in that ugly, deep voice of his.

The ghost girl giggled her characteristic, hollow giggle, but did nothing to help him back on board. She didn't feel it worth the effort of returning to her body, which currently slouched in a chair under the cross-shaped mast at the center of their little boat.

As it turned out, he really didn't need her help much anyway. The boat rocked violently as he slumped back on board. When it settled, he glared at her, again wrinkling that sizeable forehead of his. How could it be so big yet he so dumb? Truly Dr. Hogback would have fun studying the anomaly.

"I swear, one of us is going to end up killing the other before this little trip is done," Zoro informed her, hand resting on his katana. Her eyes flickered to his swords, but she knew it was an empty threat.

"Hmm, well, you should just be grateful I'm here to navigate for you," Perona informed him, twirling her parasol. "After I dump your ungrateful butt at the Archipelago, I'm taking this lovely little boat to search for Moria-sama."

"Lovely my arse," Zoro cursed, wringing out his threadbare, soaking wet shirt. "Beats me why Mihawk likes to travel on this thing."

"I think traveling in a coffin is romantic," Perona said dreamily.

"And cramped," Zoro put in unhelpfully. His tone became decidedly more cheerful when he went on, "Hey! There's an island ahead."

"Yes, that's what I was trying to tell you," Perona replied dully. "The weather's been steady and warm for a while now. I think it's a summer island. In fact," she narrowed her eyes as dark clouds blotted out the sun. "I think a summer storm is on its way."

"Good thing we'll make landfall soon then," Zoro grunted. "Maybe we can look for a bigger boat and some supplies."

"And I can finally buy some new clothes!" Perona put in excitedly. "Something black and mysterious. –Hey, you need clothes that fit. If you'll carry my bags, I could help you shop…"

"And put me in a bear costume again? No thanks," Zoro retaliated.

Perona hummed a disappointed response, but then her own brow furrowed. "Something's weird though."

"What?" Zoro asked. He was now looking at the island ahead through narrowed eyes. It was obviously inhabited; they could see a harbor set into the mouth of a bay, and what looked like a large walled off city a little ways beyond it. At the center of the island stood an enormous mountain, so high it disappeared into the clouds.

"Well, I didn't think there was a Summer Island between Gloom Island and Saobody, but the vivre card you gave me is pointing right at it!"

Zoro's eyes widened and he swore. "No…"

"You know this place?" Perona asked.

"We are NOT landing there," Zoro informed her. "Let me see that vivre card!"

The wind started to pick up. "But the storm, we have to land…!"

"No!" Zoro insisted.

Though they'd entered into the island's climate, the storm came up as fast as anything on the grand line. It almost felt like an act of the gods, Perona thought. The waves darkened and grew, the wind strengthened and blew, pushing them around the island and away from the harbor.

"Get back into your body, idiot!" Zoro called to her, bracing himself against the swirling ship as she floated after him in a frenzy.

"B-but someone should keep a lookout. We're getting close enough to run agr…"

As she said it she heard a sickening crunch. In horror she watched the tiny coffin boat Mihawk had lent them break up into matchsticks as it smashed into a breaching reef. Zoro disappeared beneath the waves, and the last thing she remembered was seeing her uninhabited body fly from its throne-like chair toward the angry ocean as she watched from above. Then everything went black.

Perona awoke the devil-only-knew how long later to find herself face down in warm, wet sand. Her limbs felt like they'd been gutted and taxidermied; stuffed with soggy cotton like her old zombie minions. It was a moment or two before she even attempted to push herself upright, but something heavy lay across her back, holding her down.

Unable to move, with pins and needles threatening to shoot through her dead arms, she decided enough was enough and went into ghost mode. Leaving her leaden body in the sand, she floated through the obstruction holding her down only to give a start when she realized what, or rather who it was.

"You idiot!" she snapped, forgetting her lack of corporeality and attempting to smack Zoro on the back of the head. It was he who held her down, one of his heavy, muscular arms splayed out across her back as he lay unconscious beside her.

"Hey!" she screamed in his ear.

He offered no response, and the unthinkable suddenly occurred to her.

"Hey!" she bawled out again, tears stinging her eyes this time. "You didn't go and die trying to save me, did you? I won't forgive you if you did, you know. Wake up!"

Again he didn't stir. A few of her ghost companions popped out of her, wailing with her as her spirit whirled around in useless figure-eight patterns.

"You jerk! You jerk! I hate you so much!"

Her sobs came to a sudden halt as a feral noise rent the warm, late afternoon air.

HaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAaaaaaahnnnnnnnnnnnk…

The ghost girl's abnormally wide eyes grew, if possible, wider as she tried to place the sound. It seemed to be coming from the mouth of a cave not far off.

HaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhnk!

The timbre was inhuman, possibly a spirit or a monster of some sort. Well, if it was something like that, she shouldn't have anything to fear, right? She was, after all, the Ghost Princess. Summoning a few more hollow ghosts to her side, she turned toward the cave.

HaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhhhhhhNNNNNKKKKKKKK!

In the harsh afternoon light, Perona could see that the cave couldn't be any earthly being's home – a rockslide blocked up its entrance. Either the sound came from within the rocks themselves, or perhaps behind the spill of rocks blocking its mouth.

"What the-?" Zoro's voice behind her drew her gaze.

"You're alive!" she said, too distracted by their current plight to hide her relief. The large man stumbled to his feet, hand on his swords.

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHNK!

Quick and bright as lightning, something white shot out of the cave toward them. Just as quickly Perona shot some of her ghosts at it, hoping against hope that her power would prove effective against whatever unholy being besieged them.

"Honk!"

The creature fell to the earth in a flurry of white feathers, its avian face forlorn as Perona's depressing powers took effect.

"It's a…! It's a…!" Perona stuttered.

"Congratulations, Ghost Girl, you just took down a goose," Zoro informed her glibly, poking at the large bird with one of his unsheathed swords.

"I just caught us dinner thank you very much!" Perona stuck her tongue out at him, wondering why she had been so sad over his potential death a moment ago.

Zoro made a humming noise, squatting down by the enormous bird to inspect it. Meanwhile Perona zipped back into her body. It took a moment for her to get her sodden limbs working again. When she did, she glanced back at the swordsman to see that he hadn't moved.

"What are you waiting for, idiot? We haven't had a decent meal in ages!" Perona reminded him. The afternoon sun beat down on her brow, and she lamented the loss of her parasol. "Spit it and cook it for me! It's the least you can do for me after I…"

She trailed off. She was about to insist he serve her based on her merits as his navigator, but remembered that she'd not only gotten them shipwrecked, but that he had just risked his life to pull her from the drink in the middle of a summer storm.

"I told you! I'm not your servant!" Zoro insisted, glowering at her. He turned back to the goose, and went on more demurely. "Anyway, it doesn't seem sporting to kill it while it's too depressed to move."

"My powers are every bit as 'sporting' as your swords, you jerk," Perona asserted, but Zoro still waited patiently for the hollow-hollow fruit's after effects to wear off.

Perona was positive the bird would take flight as soon as it lifted its head from where it had hidden it in depressed shame beneath its wings, and then amen to their dinner plans (she had forgotten that Zoro could throw his slashes). To her surprise, when it recovered it didn't even try to escape. Instead it leapt at Zoro where he squatted, grabbing him by the nose between the toes of its webbed feet.

"HEY!" Zoro snapped, flailing uselessly, his sword having fallen from his lap in the wake of such a sudden and strange attack.

"HONK! HONK! HONK! HONK!"

"GEROFF YOU CRAZY BIRD!"

"Holo-holo-holo-holo! " Perona couldn't help laughing loudly at Zoro's expense. "That bird is nuts! What kind of goose grabs people with its toes when its beak is so much more effective?"

The goose paused to look at her a moment, expression pensive. Still holding Zoro's nose between the toes of its surprisingly flexible webbed feet, it started pecking him on the head.

"Wow! It understood me!" Perona laughed harder. "Holo-holo-holo-holo! I would help you out, but my powers just aren't 'sporting,' are they?"

Zoro grabbed the bird about the middle and pried it away from his face. He glared into its oddly blue eyes for a moment, deepening those trenches on that sizeable forehead of his as he did.

"You remind me of a certain, frustrating king I know," he informed it. The goose ceased its struggling, and matched his gaze, turning its head sideways to look him in the eye before wiggling its fluffy, goosey eyebrows. Was it just Perona's imagination, or did that goose have a little curlicue of a beard?

"No…" Zoro started, dropping the goose as it honked loudly in protest. "You're not really King Cygnus, are you?"

The goose had landed in a fluffy heap, and so stood, smoothing its ruffled feathers before nodding curtly.

"How?" Zoro spluttered, then he shook his head. "No. I don't care. Perona, we need to get out of here. Now. Before the queen finds out I'm here."

"The Queen Goose?" Perona asked. "Why would you be afraid of her?"

Zoro at first snorted as if the idea were preposterous, but then seemed to change his mind. He rounded on Cygnus. "Don't tell me the gods turned you all into geese or something."

Cygnus shook his head vigorously, but then held his wings toward Zoro, clasping his feathers as though pleading with him.

"I…think he wants you to help him?" Perona supplied unnecessarily.

"Look, Pops. I'd love to help, but Helena kind of banished me in a sense. I haven't accomplished what I set out to do, so…OW!"

The goose had pecked him sharply in the kneecaps.

"We could always roast you for dinner you know!" Zoro snarled at him, then realized that on top of attacking his kneecaps, the goose had stolen one of his katana. It took off into the nearby woods with Zoro scrambling after it, shouting curses.

"I could help him," Perona thought aloud to one of her ghosts, walking casually after them, "But I think I'll wait. After all, it's not sporting."

Sometime later, with the sun sinking down in the sky, Zoro still hadn't caught up with Cygnus. In fact, he'd lost sight of him entirely. The stupid ghost girl was no help. She meandered along, always a few yards behind him, enjoying the scenery. He slowed his pace, then stopped, looking for some sort of sign to show him which way the goose had gone.

"I'm tired," Perona whined. "Let's take a rest!"

"No! We need to find that stupid Cygnus and get out of here."

"UUGH!" Perona groaned. "You lost him, didn't you?"

"He wanted me to follow him, I'm sure he hasn't gone far," Zoro replied irritably.

Zoro heard quickened footsteps behind him. Before he knew it, Perona had jumped up on his back.

"Hey, I'm not going to carry…" he started, making to dump her, but she interrupted.

"Just look after my body for a sec, jerk."

Her body turned to deadweight on his shoulders as Perona's spirit floated into the air above them. "Time to get a bird's eye view," she chortled. "Get it, bird's eye? Cause we're looking for a bird."

"Yeah, yeah, very clever," Zoro replied flatly.

"I wasn't talking to you," Perona informed him, turning instead to a plethora of her ghosts. They appeared to giggle at her wit before scattering in search of their missing goose.

"See anything, Ghost Girl?" he called up to her after a while.

"That's Ghost Princess," she corrected haughtily before floating down to Zoro.

"Still nothing," she hummed. "So who is this goose king, anyway? And why didn't you just cut him down with one of your other swords?"

"That goose isn't really a goose," Zoro informed her.

"Yeah, I guess I gathered as much," she yawned. "So he's some king person trapped as a goose? What did you do to his queen to make her hate you, though? Oh, let me guess!" She placed a hand dreamily on her cheek, "Was it some sort of horrible, romantic scandal? You're really a prince!" she said excitedly. "And the current king killed your father then married your mother. Your father's ghost told you of the murder, and you returned to avenge his death, but nearly went mad in the process. You duel and kill your father with a poisoned blade, and your mother drank poison and…"

When she happened a glance back at Zoro, the man wore a thoroughly unamused expression. "This isn't some corny play you know."

"Yeah, I guess you're right. As if you could be royalty…"

Zoro chose to ignore that comment. "The queen doesn't hate me. And the king and queen of this island aren't married," Zoro informed her. "They are father and daughter."

"Oh…well… that's…unusual…" Perona started.

Zoro sighed. "Look at the Vivre card I gave you. It belongs to the queen."

Perona zoomed back into her body. Retrieving the card, she didn't get off of Zoro's back, rather held it in front of both of their faces for both to read. As he had expected, he'd given her the wrong card. Instead of a simple scribble of Rayleigh's name, it carried a longer message:

"Beloved," it began. Perona read the word aloud with some disbelief before reading on. "I don't want to see your face in Ilium again until you're the world's greatest swordmaster."

He hadn't actually read the card in almost three years, but he had the words on it memorized. Perona nearly choked him in her grip when she read aloud how it had been signed:

"Your loving wife?! You're married?! You never said you were married!"

"What does it matter?" Zoro asked. Her knee grip around him tightened to increase her balance as she started pounding him in the head with her fists.

"What if I had fallen in love with you, you jerk? We've been together for almost two years! Anything could have happened! You should have said something or I could have gotten the wrong impression! Honestly, do you know nothing about girls? I mean, you don't even wear a ring!"

"Yes I do!" Zoro replied, dropping her so she would stop pounding him. He went to show her the katana that bore his wedding band, only to remember that that was the sword Cygnus had taken.

"You're such a liar," Perona spat, getting red in the face as she sat herself up where she had fallen.

"It's not like you asked," Zoro replied with a calm shrug. "How was I supposed to know you were interested in me?"

"I NEVER SAID THAT!" Perona shrieked indignantly, jumping to her feet. She flipped one of her pigtails and went on more sedately, "It's the principle of the thing. So anyway, who is this woman crazy enough to say yes to your marriage proposal?"

"Actually, she proposed to me first…" Zoro started.

"Wait!" Perona cut him off. "You said that vivre card belonged to the queen of this island. Don't tell me you're married to…"

"That's right, Ghost Girl."

"Wait, does that mean you're a…you're a…"

"I'm not a King," Zoro informed her. "I haven't been crowned. I'm just the queen's consort, nothing more."

"But if you're married to her, and the king of the island is her father, that means you have a goose for a…"

A rustle in the trees above them drew their attention upward. Perona gripped his arm suddenly in fear as they both finished her sentence together:

"Father-in-Law…"

The goose appeared out of nowhere, dropping Zoro's sword on the swordsman's head. Like a white clad ninja, he dropped from the trees, aiming his sharp beak at Zoro's head.

"Ow! Hey! What did I do this time?" he demanded, shielding his head and pushing Perona away.

"Oh, nothing," Perona pointed out with a mischievous gleam in her eye, "Just led a poor girl on. I swear Mr. King, sir. I had no idea he was married. What a cad. In his defense," she flipped one of her pigtails. "Love is a hurricane."

At the word "hurricane," the goose gave but a moment's pause. His unnaturally blue eyes glowed with an angry fire, and he rounded on Zoro in a veritable flurry of pecking, hissing, and biting.

"ARGH! See if I ever save your life again," Zoro grumbled at Perona.

"Excuse me?" Perona asked above the noise. "Who saved whom first?"

"I never asked for your help!" Zoro snarled at her, grabbing Cygnus by the neck and holding him at arm's length.

"Hmm, but it seems his Majesty, King Goosey needs ours," Perona said, as Cygnus tried to honk but only managed to choke out a squeak."I know you're mad at him, Mr. King, sir. But what did you need our help for? And if we help you, can you get us a boat?"

A little blue in the face, "King Goosey" turned to nod vigorously at Perona. Zoro let him flutter to the ground, though the now avian king made sure to clip his son-in-law on the back of the head with his wings as he went.

"So, let me guess, you need help turning human again," Perona went on.

Cygnus nodded, honking.

"Do you know what we need to do to help you?" she went on.

More nodding.

"Perfect! So all you need to do is lead the way," she said, clapping her hands in delight. "Now, this boat you're going to lend us," she bent down toward him and started poking the bird in the chest. "I want it manned with servants who will bring me hot cocoa and bagel sandwiches and…"

"Hold up," Zoro cut her off, squaring himself towards his father-in-law. "If we help you, is Queen Helena going to find out about this?"

Cygnus shrugged his wings.

"Look. Technically I'm not supposed to be here, so…"

"Whether or not you run into her, we do need a boat…" Perona started.

"I will strap logs together to make a raft if I have to," Zoro informed her. "Cygnus, you know your daughter won't want to see me. It will just make things harder."

Cygnus let out a few indignant honks, gesturing toward Perona. Zoro quickly grasped his meaning.

"That girl is my guide. Choose to believe whatever you want; I've stayed true to Helena. That's not why I don't want her to see me."

Cygnus eyed him incredulously. Zoro could practically see the words "Hurricane Lover" running through the king's mind. Well, that was his problem, not Zoro's.

"So, do we have a deal? We help you, you give us a boat, but Helena doesn't see me."

Cygnus hesitated, but at last he must have realized he didn't have much choice. He nodded.

"Alright," Zoro said, "Lead the way."