The ship docked at the rather dilapidated. Gloomy port of the island they found, and Crow could have sworn that it wasn't just the port covered in fog if he had to guess. Not a single crew member made a comment about raiding, it had only been three days since their last one, for one (albeit, they'd had to return all of the things they stole). And while Crow generally wasn't someone to be feared by them, Ren was terrifying by herself and the last raid had been trouble for the pirates once she got involved.

"Anyone know where the hell we are?" Crow asked, stepping down onto the main dock after his crew had set down the ramp. He saw no one in sight, and the port itself was empty, not a single ship or boat in sight, not even the sound of people who might be working deeper in the fog beyond his line of sight. He knew it hadn't looked so foggy when they'd seen this place from the ocean, there hadn't been any fog at all. Had it come out of nowhere? That couldn't be possible!

"This is Ribon." Ren had suddenly appeared out of the fog, silent like the cats she seemed so fond of, in Crow's opinion. Though it also might have been the fact that as usual she was wearing no shoes as she walked and that made her all the more silent.

"Ribon?"

"We should probably leave now." Ren said, ignoring the question as the rest of the crew walked down the ramp. Well, some of the crew, at least. Toyo and Zen had walked down with Seto, actually by one of the other pirate's orders. Unbeknownst to Seto, of course. It was Zen who spoke up, sounding as if he didn't believe what was coming out of the first mate's mouth.

"You can't be serious, everyone knows Ribon is just a myth." He said flatly, crossing his arms as Crow glared between them, completely lost in the conversation.

"You must have seen those seven towers coming in here, they were bell towers you idiot. And this fog wasn't here before we pulled in, we cant be anywhere else." The silver haired girl snapped. Honestly, Crow was about to lose his patience with them both. Thankfully, Toyo and Seto spoke up in unison before he had the chance to.

"Where are we exactly?" Both teens looked at each other slightly surprised, but Zen cut in before anything could be said between either of them.

"Ribon is the name of a fantasy town used in old stories a lot of people at sea used to tell. It was originally represented by seven beautiful bell towers and had a tradition for giving seven orphaned girls chosen at random seven bells to wear around their necks, signifying they were chosen."

"A Chosen girl," Ren picked up, earning an annoyed glance from the pirate "Was to be treated especially carefully, under the protection of the ribbon tied around the bell, they were given homes and loving families. This had been the tradition for many, many years."

"But one year after the seven girls had been chosen, one by one they went missing," Zen interjected, sending a triumphant look towards Ren who rolled her eyes at his immaturity "Once a week one would vanish, and at some point someone noticed something."

"Whenever a girl went missing, one of the roofs on a Bell Tower was painted the color of that girl's ribbon." The story was back to Ren "No one could explain it, and in less then two months all seven of the girls had officially vanished and the bell towers had been painted accordingly by their ribbons. Red, blue, purple, yellow, orange, silver and pink."

"Everyone was upset about the presumed deaths of the much loved girls," Zen continued, and this time no looks were exchanged. Apparently they were teaming up for the telling of this story, since both were dead set on telling it "That was when the fog set in the town, heavy and thick almost like a haze, and all of a sudden the girls were back. Not all at the same time, one would show up, another would vanish, but they were all alive by the looks of it. No one was going to doubt the bells around their necks."

"But the fog never lifted, and the odd thing was that the girls never seemed to change as the years passed. They stayed the same age as they did the day they initially vanished; their personalities stayed basically the same as well." Ren said "And it continued that one girl would be around for a period of time, while the others simply seemed to vanish without a trace. No one had any idea where the other six might possibly be while one was in town, and that one would never answer the questions relating to the other Chosen girls." Zen did not interrupt this time, because he hadn't heard this part of the story.

"And when did this all supposedly happen?" Toyo asked, not believing the story in the slightest. Seto was listening intently…something about the bells seemed familiar, but what? It had to do with those colors…

"About a hundred years ago." Ren replied, when Zen jumped in, seizing the chance.

"But since then the place…possibly this place, has gotten a pretty bad reputation among sailors." Crow raised his eyebrow at them both, on Toyo's side on all of this. Honestly, he'd been on a pirate ship for most of his life, he'd never heard a stupid story like this one.

"What reputation would that be?" He asked, skepticisms evident in his voice.

"People still came to the island," Ren said, completely ignoring Crow "But as far as anyone could tell it was just a simple island from the distance until you reached port. That was when the heavy fog would set in that no one had seen before they pulled up; no one took it as a bad omen since it wasn't odd for fog to be at ports. So people would go into town, leaving people to watch the ship as they tried to find people for supplies and such. But days would pass, and no one would return to the ship. Others would go in after them, and they too wouldn't come out of the town after they entered."

"Sometimes, the ships would just leave, fearing the worst for the rest of the crew. No one could say a lot about the island, and the one single person who came back was raving mad. This was how this story was brought to life in the first place." Zen said, and Ren shot him a dirty look. "The point is, Ribon Island quickly became either a place for adventures to go to test their strength that weren't generally heard from ever again as the story from that one single mad man spread, and no one honestly knew whether or not the place was real to begin with." The listeners were quiet for a few seconds after the story ended, before Toyo (who had been gaping), finally asked-

"You don't want to go on the island because of some stupid ghost story?" He asked, And Ren's glare right then could have something on fire (too bad the fog probably dampened it)

"It's not just some story!" She snapped angrily.

"The seven colored bells!" All people on the port dock at that moment to turn and gave their best confused look to the person who had spontaneously spoken. This person was Seto, who looked incredibly happy with himself for some reason "Those seven colored bells you never want to sell Ren, aren't the ribbons tied to those the same as the ones in the story?" Now all turned to Ren, with interest evident on their faces. Zen gave her a skeptical look.

"And where exactly did you get those?" The silver haired male asked, crossing his arms in wait of an answer. Ren shot him a dirty look.

"The poor daughter of that so called raving mad man." She dead panned. The rest of group had no response "She came in a few years back with them, wanting to get them away from her father hoping that it might ease his madness a little. That's how I first heard the story, and after I asked around for a little bit. I spoke to the man once when he came by the shop with his daughter, and he told me all about Ribon. He said to never sell the bells, to never let them out of my sight."

Everyone was, again silent for a few moments after that. Unsurprisingly, it was Crow who broke the silence, and his trade mark smirk alerted the people around him that he had thought of something and they were all being dragged into it.

"Well then, what are we waiting for?" He asked, putting his hands on his hips impatiently "A place like this is bound to be full of treasure, is it not? I mean a town that's been avoided or hunted down must have some pretty nice stuff, especially if it's the real deal." Ren lost the ability to speak for a second.

"Did you not hear ANYTHING we just said! This is a bad idea!" she fumed, but the pirate captain just rolled his eyes.

"I heard everything quite clearly, and honestly now I'm just curious about whether your story holds any ground or not. Who knows, maybe we'll find out why this place seems to make people disappear into thin air." Ren said nothing, Zen took a few steps away from her fuming form, but Toyo…

"You know if you're scared, while we walk around you can just keep a hold of me." The red head teased, and the people near by just shook their heads. Ren kicked him in the shin and stormed back onto the ship, appearing only moments later with a purple-ish brown satchel and storming off ahead into the fog. The boys followed after (well, Toyo limped), and Crow made the comment to Seto "For being the most reluctant to go in, she sure seems in a hurry."


The group walked around the fog covered town for some time, and all noted the exact same thing. It was completely empty, unless it was like Garnet and was full of maze like alley ways. The city itself looked cold, almost, like the water from the fog had frozen everything and was slowly breaking everything down.

The cobble stones they were walking on were cracked and covered with moss, the buildings were a lot the same. Seto envisioned what some of these tall buildings must have used to look like, what kind of people would have lived here. The Ribon he came up with was a very beautiful place, with happy children and vendors under a bright sky surrounded by buildings that had people in the windows, talking to people below or hanging laundry. It made him think of Garnet.

The first possible sighting of a person had been seen by Ren, who had chased after the figure, only to lose said figure when Zen caught her arm.

"If you're so freaked out why'd you run off?" Zen snapped

"I saw a little girl run by! She was wearing a gray dress, and she had black hair, and-" A hand landed on top of her head, and she glared darkly at it's owner.

"I think all this fog is messing with your brain, Ren." Toyo said, as if trying to comfort her. It didn't work, and she smacked his arm away.

"My brain is perfectly fine, and that's First Mate to you!" She snapped, storming off again. Crow raised and eyebrow, but it was as if Seto read his mind.

"Ren seems a little…different, doesn't she?" The maroon haired boy asked as Toyo and Zen rushed to catch up. Crow nodded.

"Your eye isn't picking up anything, is it?" He figured if anything was living on this island, Seto would have seen something on fire by now, but the boy just shook his head.

"I haven't seen anything but…" Crow waited.

"But…?" He urged on. Seto didn't answer, and instead bit his lip. After a brief second Crow felt the other's hand on his face, and the usual initial shock that came with the touch of Seto. But he didn't see white.

"Your white vision isn't working?" Crow asked incredulously, his shocked look not falling from his face. Sure enough, his right eye was seeing what his left eye was seeing, just in a slight gray hue. Seto nodded. "Why didn't you say so earlier at the dock?"

"I still had it at the dock." Seto answered "But as we've been walking the white's been fading out, like to the gray it is now. I cant even see your guy's fires anymore…" Crow felt his heart twinge a little painfully at the sad sounding note in the other boy's voice, and set a hand on his shoulder.

"I bet its just this fog." He said reassuringly "I mean seriously, look what its done to Ren." It was a 'speak of the devil and he will come' sort of moment.

"Hey you two! Hurry up!" They couldn't see her through the fog, but they both knew Ren's voice well enough "I don't mind leaving behind Crow, but I cant let my personal cook get lost in this fog." Crow stuck his tongue out in the direction of the silver haired girl's voice and Seto laughed, his worry for the moment, at least, slightly eased.

"We better catch up to them, it'd be bad if we got lost." Seto said, and Crow grumbled in agreement, which only made Seto chuckle some more as he and Crow hurried in the direction of the annoyed voice of Ren. Neither boy noticed a slightly bedraggled girl standing in the alleyway across from them, barefoot on the cobble stone in a patch work gray dress, her black hair a crazed and tangled rat nest. A pair of black eyes that seemed to pierce the fog watched the group, and in particular, was eyeing Ren's bag.

TBC

End Chapter

Honestly, this was the side story of the main story I've been looking forward to writing the most ^^; I loved the seven colored bells from the game, and I knew I had to use them in here somewhere and then I got this idea. I'm very happy I can work on this part finally, I have a lot planned. A lot of things you guys probably aren't expecting~

Until next chapter!

xXSleepingXx