Note from the Author: I should just stop making any promises to my readers whatsoever, eh? This took me three weeks to write. At least it's a long update...right?

Sorry again that I can't seem to help introducing new characters. One Piece OCs are just so fun to create. I give Dragoscilvio credit for helping me brainstorm Cassandra's bundle of character quirks. I ended up using a lot of her ideas.

Ch. 5 – Moo

"Cows," Zoro observed, staring at the grazing herd before him.

"Lots of cows," Perona added, grinning malevolently.

"Lunch!" They both cried together, raising their weapons of choice with hungry gusto.

"HONK!"

Before they could launch slash or ghost, respectively, Cygnus jumped onto the wooden fence separating them from the enormous field of cattle. He waved his wings and honked emphatically at the two pirates, who made woebegone faces in response.

"Aw, come on, King Goosey," Perona whined. "We are pirates after all. We pillage. It's a thing."

"Anyway, we've got to get a decent meal sometime." Zoro's stomach growled right on cue, emphasizing his point. "If this is about the fire thing…"

"HONK!" Cygnus cried, interrupting him. He pointed to the cattle, saluted, and marched in place on the fence post.

Zoro and Perona exchanged a bemused glance.

"Do you understand him?" Perona asked.

"Nope," Zoro said with a shrug. "Come on."

The pirates hopped the fence, bypassing Cygnus without a second glance. They approached their prey cautiously, crouched and prepared for a fight. Especially when Perona pointed out:

"These cows don't have udders."

"Bulls," Zoro grunted, swords at the ready. "Careful. They're more aggressive."

"Do I look stupid?" Perona asked, ghosts swirling around her hands.

"Do you really want me to answer that?" Zoro retorted, smirking.

Perona stuck her tongue out at him, but her expression quickly became focused as she turned back to the huddle of bulls before her. A moment passed in silence, broken only by the lowing of the unsuspecting cattle. Then, yelling together in unison, the pirates launched themselves at their respective targets.

To their surprise, the bulls had more flight than fight in them. They charged away in fear, mooing blue murder to anyone who would listen. Still determined to have beef for breakfast, Zoro and Perona gave chase only to stop short as each found his or her path suddenly impeded.

Zoro's particular impediment was none other than his father-in-law, who flew down in front of him, honking and hissing, and completely blocking his vision. Perona ground to a halt for a much fluffier reason: a small, brown bunny rabbit. The little cotton tail waved its arms frantically at her, only to be scooped unwillingly into the Ghost Princess' arms a moment later.

"You are so cute!" she squealed, rubbing her face into his soft fur.

"Hmm, I suppose rabbit tastes ok too," Zoro started, wrist twitching antsily with katana in hand.

"Don't you dare!" Perona snarled, cuddling the squirming ball of fluff protectively to her as Cygnus launched another pecking attack at Zoro's kneecaps.

"GOOSE IS DELICIOUS!" Zoro reminded him, but it did nothing to deter the king. Grabbing Zoro by the nose with his webbed toes, Cygnus pulled him down to eye level so he could glare at his son-in-law eye to eye.

"Alright, alright!" Zoro snapped, sheathing his swords. "What's your problem?"

Zoro rubbed his sore nose and watched the king waddle away from him with his beak struck haughtily in the air. It was then that Zoro noticed the cattle behaving strangely. At a few honks from Cygnus, they formed obvious lines, no, ranks! Taking a knee, each cow bowed to the avian king, and Zoro finally understood.

"These aren't cows…" he started.

"Yeah, they're bulls. We already established that," Perona ceased her cuddling to snark back. It gave the rabbit a chance to escape, which he did with a will. He found a handy twig and raised it at Perona threateningly from a safe distance.

"No, I mean, these are soldiers!" Zoro pointed out, waving an arm at the kneeling bovines.

Cygnus snorted, if indeed a goose could snort; he made a derisive sound anyway, but Zoro ignored him as Perona went on:

"Well, your wife did say a lot of her men had just gone missing."

"Who're you, then?" Zoro asked the rabbit. "You don't look even remotely familiar."

The rabbit flushed at being asked its identity. He attempted to hide behind his little twig spear, waving an arm dismissively as if to say his identity didn't matter. Unfortunately the twig was a dead give-away.

"Hector?!" Zoro gasped in disbelief.

The rabbit shook his head vigorously in denial just as Cygnus nodded. Zoro let out a belly laugh.

"What's so funny?" Perona asked. "He's darling!"

"Exactly! I mean, ehem, nothing. Nothing's funny." Zoro cleared his throat, trying not to laugh anymore at the man's expense. "Good to see you again, General."

The rabbit attempted a snarl that came out as a squeak, and raised the twig like a spear again, which only succeeded in making him look even more adorable. Zoro snorted, unable to completely stifle his amusement. Hector was usually as big and burly as Franky; someone obviously had a sense of humor.

"So you all got turned into animals, huh?" Zoro asked, resisting the urge to reach down and pat Hector's fluffy head. A sudden feeling of alarm shot through him when he realized: "Wait, Helena's not here too is she?"

Cygnus, Hector, and the cow soldiers all shook their heads.

"So she's not some animal? I'm not going to run into her by accident?"

They shook their heads some more and Perona let out a groan:

"Zoro, I TOLD you. She's back at the palace with her suitors and her lover…"

Hector and the cows balked at the word and immediately started squeaking and mooing at Cygnus in confusion.

Rabbits squeak? –the thought passed through Zoro's mind, but he didn't dwell on it because Perona went on over the sudden din:

"Yeesh, if you're just so darn worried about her seeing your face…!"

She grabbed a brown paper bag, which happened to be blowing by in the wind. Poking one sizeable eyehole out with her fingers and straightening the bag with a sharp flourish, she promptly shoved the bag over Zoro's head.

"There," She said, dusting off her hands in satisfaction. "Feel better?"

"Uh, the hole's on the wrong side," Zoro pointed out, twisting the bag so that he could see out of it with his good eye, which meant that the bag sat at an angle on his head. He tested his range of vision and found it adequate if not satisfactory. "Alright, now what?"

He turned back to Cygnus, who had a wing over his face as though he were stifling a giggle. He honked something, indicating Zoro's face, and the whole herd burst into moos of laughter.

"Yeah, yeah. Lemme guess. You just told them I look better this way," Zoro said flatly. At least the cows weren't still freaking out about the whole lover rumor. How could any of them believe that? Zoro had only known Helena personally for three weeks, and he knew her better than the people who had known her for a lifetime apparently.

Cygnus pulled a beak-full of grass, dropped it into his wings, and then plopped it on his head before dissolving into honking giggles.

"Are you seriously going on about my hair again?" Zoro snapped. "Look, this actually isn't a bad plan…"

Ok, so a paper bag maybe wasn't the most dignified option. But Perona had led them uncomfortably close to the city walls before making a sharp turn and bringing them here; the closer they had gotten, the more nervous Zoro had become. A mask was a good idea. Not that he wanted Helena to see him with a bag over his head either, but at least the bag didn't have any grease stains or weird smells.

That Perona had found such a convenient piece of litter really didn't strike anyone as strange. The field in which they stood wasn't exactly the tidiest. In fact, though it did have grass for the grazing, it resembled more of a pigsty than a meadow.

"Holo holo holo holo," Perona's unique laugh pierced above the rest. But then she went on to answer his question. "I told you, we need to go to that barn over there."

She pointed, indicating a rickety building that could probably have been classified as a barn at one time. Now it looked more like a rather large, rather ramshackle sort of shack. Peeling red paint, missing shingles, boarded up windows – clearly it had been abandoned ages ago.

But then, the litter around the field was fresh.

"There was a woman there, wearing overalls," Perona wrinkled her nose. "So not cute. – but get this, she was talking to a navy soldier guy: chewing him out for losing, 'that goose king.'"

Zoro nodded, agreeing that it sounded suspicious. Perona burst into laughter again.

"Holo holo holo holo! – Sorry. I just can't take you seriously right now," she giggled. "Ehem, so anyway, as I was watching, she reached out and turned the navy guy into a goose! Said if she couldn't find the king by sundown today, he'd be on some guy's dinner plate in the king's place."

Cygnus honked, throwing off little tufts of down as a shiver visibly passed through him from head to toe.

"Someone seriously wants to cook and eat you?" Zoro asked him, feeling slightly guilty for his own threats to turn Cygnus into dinner. Only slightly.

Hector squeaked, drawing their attention down to him. Using the twig as a stylus, he drew something in a convenient patch of mud. It looked like a peach with horns.

"Devil fruit," Zoro grunted, kneeling down for a better look. "Figures."

Hector nodded.

"Hey, speaking of, why haven't you used your powers to fight this lady?" Zoro asked the General. "Rabbit or not, I'd think you'd be more than a match for her."

The rabbit held up the twig, appeared to concentrate on it to no effect, then shrugged his shoulders.

"Your powers are locked in this form, huh? Interesting." Zoro turned his gaze to the distant barn. "Well, if it's a devil fruit we're up against, all we've got to do is knock her out, eh? Sounds simple enough."

Hector shook his head, then drew the navy seagull.

"She's a marine?"

Hector nodded and saluted.

"She's a captain?"

He nodded again.

"So what?" Zoro asked, cocking his head within the paper bag.

Before Hector could give him an answer, pantomimed or otherwise, a distant ringing pealed through the air. The rabbit squeaked in surprise, then grabbed his floppy ears and pulled them down hard as if trying to keep out the sound. The cows mooed to one another in alarm and Cygnus honked, covering his head with his wings.

Mere seconds after the bell came a voice, loud enough to be heard over the cattle's din:

"Yodel lay eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

The cows and Cygnus went rigid at the awful imitation of yodeling. Not that Zoro was a connoisseur, but he was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to sound like someone falling to their death.

Regardless of how awful the sound, the animals all turned stiffly as though hypnotized, and started goose-stepping as one toward the distant barn and the yodeling voice.

Apparently Hector had successfully blocked out the sound because the Rabbit hadn't moved except to tie his ears under his chin. Hopping onto Zoro's shoulder, he thumped the swordsman once with his foot, pointing toward Cygnus with his twig spear.

"Yodel lay heeehehehehehehehehehehehehe!"

The mesmerized herd picked up the pace as the yodeling did (though now it sounded like a witch having a seizure). Their goose-stepping turned into a synchronized stampede. Cygnus took wing. Hector thumped Zoro's shoulder harder in desperation.

Zoro got the message and took to running beside the dangerous herd. If Cygnus was captured he was apparently going to end up as someone's dinner. But Zoro couldn't exactly cut him down from the sky without hurting him.

He'd just started to formulate a plan that involved a no swords-style dragon twister, which was sure to send a few cows airborne as collateral, but Perona solved their problem a little more simply:

"Negative Hollow!"

Cygnus' wings and head drooped as soon as the ghost passed through him. He fell from the sky into Zoro's arms. The swordsman didn't waste time; he quickly tossed his father-in-law to Perona like a football.

The ghost girl caught him in a small poof of downy feathers. "Aww, you are so much cuter when you aren't hissing and honking," she informed him, cradling him to her and smoothing the ruffled fluff on his forlorn head.

"Get him out of here!" Zoro shouted to her as he continued running.

"What are you going to do?" Perona shouted back.

Zoro took a running leap and landed squarely on the back of the largest bull there: a big, orange thing with a bushy mane. The creature was too hypnotized to try and buck him, so he got to his feet on the bull's back and crouched at the ready, flicking a katana a thumb's width out of its sheath

"I've got a date with a marine captain!" he called back through the paper bag. "Don't tell my wife!"

"Watch and learn, fellas! Watch and learn," Helmeppo shouted for all to hear before dramatically clamping down on the hilt of one of his kukri blades.

The Vice-Captain stood disguised before the queen, facing the twelve steel axes rooted into her palace floor. From her throne, she watched his antics with a bored look on her face, and didn't flinch when Helmeppo's blade made contact with the first axe, only to rebound with a loud pinging sound.

Like many of the marines and princes before him, he only succeeded in cracking his teeth. As he grasped his mouth in pain, a middle-aged woman with purple hair, a kilt, and a clipboard approached him.

"Complimentary Dental Service. This way," she said shortly, writing Helmeppo's pseudonym on her clipboard and directing him toward a door on the side.

Leaning against a wall in a covert corner of the throne room, Coby watched the proceedings, wincing on his friend's behalf. He had been trying to use the distraction of the Queen's challenge to scope out the palace with his Haki, but so far hadn't found Zoro or anything else of interest.

A man suddenly threw an arm chummily around Coby's shoulders, taking him by surprise:

"Shelfie!" he cried cheerfully.

He had what appeared to be a camera snail on a stick, which he held up to take a picture of himself, and Coby's startled face. "Welcome to the palace! Name's Paris! Where do you hail from?"

"Uh, I'm Prince Cobalt," Coby lied, rubbing the flash from his eyes. "I'm from Shell Kingdom."

"The Shell Kingdom, huh? Never heard of it. Well, except a few minutes ago that is, when I met that bloke who just tried his, uh, teeth at the axes. What was his name again…?"

"Helmetus," Coby replied. "We're from the East Blue."

"Came a long way just to sit around and watch," the man pointed out. Coby winced. Maybe they should have made up a country closer. "Are you two brothers? You don't look related, but if you come from the same kingdom…"

As they spoke, Paris took another few 'shelfies,' striking a number of poses while Coby just blinked in confusion.

"Cousins," he managed to sputter out their rehearsed backstory, still a bit confused by the flashes of light. "He's the one in line for the throne. I'm just here as moral support."

"So you're really not going to give it a go, eh?"

"Nah," Coby idly fingered the jeweled rapier that was part of his costume. He knew how to use a sword now: Garp had made sure of that. But he preferred to fight with his fists. "I know my own abilities. I'd rather leave here with all of my teeth."

Anyway, Coby really didn't feel right competing for the hand of Zoro's wife, even if the pirate really was dead. Not that he would be telling Paris that.

Paris seemed impressed by his answer. "I guess you're smarter than the rest of us."

"And who might you be?" Coby asked, trying to remain congenial as well as redirect what had started to feel like an interrogation. "If you don't mind my saying, you don't look like a royal."

"Me? Oh, Zeus, no! I'm not a prince like you fellows. I'm just one of the Queen's old admirers. I am a bit of a fanboy, though: it's exciting to meet royalty from all over the world," Paris said, posing for another 'shelfie' as he smoothed back his flop of brown hair. He took a few more pictures of himself and Coby (mostly himself) from different angles for good measure. "Anyway, there's no rule that only royalty can compete. I've been after the queen's hand for years! Long before her last husband."

"Zoro-san! Er…I mean, Roronoa Zoro. Did you know him?" Coby asked, hardly stifling his excitement.

"Oh, yes!" Paris said with a nod, "Bit of a scary guy. Saved the kingdom, though; he and his captain. Oh, and he defeated Queen Helena in a duel, twice!"

Coby smiled to himself at mention of Zoro and Luffy rescuing a kingdom, but the last part gave him pause:

"He defeated the queen in a duel?"

"Oh yeah, back then she was offering her hand to anyone who could beat her. Up until that point, no one ever had," Paris paused, then backtracked, "Well, rumor has it she lost to Dracule Mihawk, but he wasn't interested in her kingdom. – other than that though, she was undefeated until Roronoa showed up."

"She's that good, huh?" Coby asked, turning to eye the queen. He could already tell she was strong based on her aura alone. Even without using his haki he could see past her long, elegant build: the muscle tone in her arms said she was more than a pretty face. That and the well-kempt but well-used swords hanging within reach on the back of her throne. "Why doesn't she duel the suitors now?"

"Well, she's not just looking for someone as good as she is anymore, is she?" Paris pointed out. "She's looking for someone as good as he was."

"Seems like she could clear the throne room that way, though…" Coby mused. "How long have some of these guys been hanging around here, anyway?"

"Geez, you sure don't act like a prince. Most of the guys here don't give two figs about that sort of thing."

Coby flushed. Weren't princes supposed to be noble? Maybe not. Drat. He knew Helmeppo would be better at this; he had once lived a pretty pampered life and knew what it was like to always have his way. That was why they decided that between the two of them, the captain would be the lesser prince.

Coby was spared further embarrassment when a loud voice rang suddenly through the hall, silencing all chatter and drawing the collective gaze toward the entrance of the throne room:

"Repent, Helena the Heretic! Repent or watch Ilium fall, dontcha-know!"

A figure cloaked in violet darkened the doorway. Hunched and hideous, the elderly woman threw back her hood to reveal a thinning, wiry bird's nest of red-gray hair. She pinned Queen Helena with a glare through a tiny pair of glasses, which kept slipping from off of her tiny bulb of a nose.

The Queen genuinely smiled for the first time that morning, which made Coby knit his brows in confusion. Wasn't the crazy woman calling her to repentance a second ago?

"Hello, Cassandra. Back again?" Helena asked cheerfully.

The prophetess waddled her way past the suitors and axes to stand before the queen. The guards followed her, carrying spears, but they didn't otherwise move to stop her.

"Got to keep trying, dontcha-know," the woman said with a grin. "You look thin, Majesty. You really should be eating more." She reached into her cloak and produced two rolls of chocolate sandwich cookies, which she tossed to Helena. "You should have six small meals a day. But watch your carbs."

"Aw, you even brought my favorite. Double stuffed," Helena chuckled, catching the gift easily.

"And don't think I've forgotten all of you," the old biddy went on, addressing the guards. She quickly handed out juice boxes, which they all accepted, grinning. "You work so hard, dontcha-know. Make sure you're drinking 8 glasses of water a day, and watch your sugar intake."

Coby couldn't figure out where the old woman could be keeping all of it, but then he caught a glimpse beneath her cloak when she went to grab a bag of fruit snacks and toss it to Paris. It turned out she didn't actually have a hunched back. She was just really short and wore a backpack beneath the cloak. A back pack of snacks, apparently.

"You're still here, you fool?" the woman called out to him. "Most of the other natives have had the sense to give up by now, dontcha-know."

"Actually, most of them were deployed," Paris murmured to Coby under his breath. "They're all soldiers and such. – and good riddance. I was having a hard time competing with that Menelaus jerk…"

Despite what he said, he seemed worried about something.

"Aren't you a soldier?" Coby asked, eyeing his uniform.

"I'm a palace guard," Paris replied proudly, striking a pose with his snack and taking another shelfie.

"Deployed where…?" Coby asked, only to forget his question when a bag of cookies came flying his way. He caught it deftly in one hand, than blinked at it in surprise.

A murmur ran through the room and Paris turned to stare at him.

"You could do to fatten up too, Prince whoever-you-are," Cassandra informed him. "Just watch out for trans-fats dontcha-know."

The cookies she'd just thrown him contained the very fats she warned against, Coby noticed. What an eccentric woman.

Coby looked up from the odd gift to see everyone in the throne room staring at him, including the Queen. Her russet eyes bored into him for a short moment, just long enough for Coby to wonder if she saw through him. A moment later she turned back to the prophetess:

"Well, go ahead, Cassandra. Let's hear it."

"Right, right," the old woman said, smiling as she pushing her glasses up her tiny nose. Her countenance turned on a dime, as with firey indignation she raised a fist at the queen:

"Repent, Queen Helena! The longer you live in sin, the more devastating the destruction!"

An angry tension super-charged the air, and the room seemed to darken as the woman went on. Yet Queen Helena looked on with a bored expression on her face, placidly munching on one of her cookies.

"Cleanse the temple or the walls of our city will be reduced to rubble, dontcha-know!" Cassandra roared, rising as high as her short stature would allow so she could attempt to glare Helena in the eyes. "Repent or Ilium will fall! Your reign will end awash in the blood of your people!"

A guard just happened to finish his juicebox at that moment, and a loud slurping sound punctuated the end of Cassandra's speech. The prophetess became docile once more:

"And make sure you're getting 8 hours of sleep a night, darling. You look bushed, dontcha-know," she said. "But be sure to adhere to a sleep schedule."

Helena smiled. "Yes, thank you Cassandra. Do come back tomorrow, I enjoy our little chats."

"Give my regards to your father," Cassandra replied, turning to go.

"What, no snack for him?" Helena asked, one brow raised in amusement. "You usually ask me to give it to him for you when he's away."

"No, I wouldn't want to fatten him up too much," the prophetess said mysteriously. "Good-day, Your Majesty."

"I take it that's a daily occurrence?" Coby asked Paris when the room started to return to normal.

Before Paris could respond, a swarthy man with dreadlocks appeared out of nowhere, rounding on Coby:

"How'd you get her to give you the cookies, mon?" he demanded. "I've been trying for almost two years!"

"Calypso's right. You are the first non-Iliad suitor she's given a snack to," Paris informed Coby, grinning as he tossed some fruit snacks into his mouth.

"She doesn't give cookies to anyone unless she likes them, mon. What did you do?!"

"Nothing," Coby said, shrugging and chuckling awkwardly. "I've never even seen her before."

"Maybe it's an omen," Paris pointed out, taking a snack shelfie with Coby as he spoke. "You sure you don't want to try your teeth at the axes?"

Coby chuckled. "If I do, I won't have any teeth left to eat the cookies with."

"Fair point," Paris laughed. "I like you Prince Cobalt. You plan on sticking around?"

Coby shrugged. "I guess that depends on Helmetus. I doubt he'll want to try again." Truth be told, he and Helmeppo were going to return to their own duties as soon as he'd vetted the palace for Zoro, but he didn't want to sound like the visit was too casual, especially after he'd told them he'd travelled all the way from the East Blue. "Oh, where is the Queen going?"

Helena had just gotten to her feet, one package of unopened cookies in her hand.

"Usually she leaves after this, mon, and we don't see her for another couple of days," Calypso said. "But…Ah ha. Thought so."

Just as Helena stood, a pair of flouncy princes in ridiculously tall powdered wigs confronted her. They spoke in such piercing voices it was impossible not to overhear what they had to say:

"Your Majesty, if we may be so bold, you are finished with your husband's shroud," the first one shrilled, "We have not seen much of you in all this time we have stayed as guests within your palace, and we would like a chance at knowing our hostess better."

"Yes, yes, her highness has been most elusive," the second nodded. He had been fluttering a fan at himself, but he snapped it shut and dared to tap the Queen on the shoulder with it chummily.

Coby was pretty sure the phrase "if looks could kill" applied here. Queen Helena breathed in sharply at having her personal space so callously invaded, but the Prince in question did not back down. He poked her shoulder with the fan as she glared at him with a deeply furrowed and twitching brow:

"Of course, one would hate to believe you have been avoiding us, Majesty," he said pointedly. "Naturally you wouldn't want to offend any of your neighbors and allies. Not that I mean to imply anything by that…" He gave her a sly look that really wasn't all that sly.

"Of course not, Prince Popinjay," Helena answered at last. "And I would bid you excuse me for a mere hour. I have a pressing lunch engagement…"

The two princes looked as though they were about to speak, but Helena held up a hand.

"After which time, I will return to join you," she added flatly. "Nysa," she turned to the kilted woman with the clipboard. "Please have lunch set up for these gentlemen on the garden lawn. After I return we will all amuse ourselves with a rousing game of…" she paused, eyeing the crowd before finishing the sentence with an only partially stifled grimace. "Croquet…?"

This was met with a smattering of applause, and a bunch of proper men saying things like, "Jolly good!" and "Huzzah!" and "Charmante!"

The Queen sighed, then beat a hasty retreat.

"Lunch appointment, huh?" Coby asked.

"Excuse me, gents," Paris said, stashing his shelfie stick. "Gotta go! Nature calls."

Paris disappeared as quickly as he had appeared. Calypso pursed his lips and shook his head after him:

"Could you be any more obvious, mon?" he muttered to himself.

Coby didn't bother asking him what he meant. This was the perfect opportunity to spy on the Queen! Perhaps she was going to lunch with none other than her husband!

Excusing himself to go look after his now dentally impared 'cousin,' he made his way toward the the complimentary dental care, but quickly found a quiet corner in the hallway where he could concentrate. All the while he kept his haki honed in on Helena.

He could easily sense her aura now that he recognized it. He knew Paris' as well. Calypso's though…Coby hadn't meant to notice him, but the man's aura was ridiculously powerful. –on parr with the Queen's, in fact. Perhaps even stronger than her's!

He was certainly stronger than any of the contenders in Helena's court, yet he seemed so humble and unassuming. The man had been trying to win cookies from an old lady for pity's sake! Coby was starting to wish he'd asked more about him, just to sate his curiosity. Whoever he was, he wasn't a marine, and he certainly didn't seem like a prince.

No time for that now. The Queen had paused to talk to Paris, who had definitely not left for a bathroom break. Coby couldn't overhear their conversation at this distance, but he could tell from their posture that the discussion at hand was intimate.

He flushed. Paris wasn't the Queen's lover, was he? What on earth could he be whispering in her ear about?

After spying on them long enough for them to attend to the Queen's "lunch appointment," he soon discovered one thing for relative certain: Zoro wasn't the one sharing the Queen's bed at night. Pulling out a transponder snail, he quickly made his report.

Perona was starting to grow impatient waiting around with King Cygnus. She sat under a tree in the woods near the city walls, lip pouted, arms and legs crossed with one finger tapping her bicep as she watched the goose pace nervously back and forth.

She'd sent a ghost to guide Zoro back to them ages ago. What on earth could be taking him so long?

It wasn't like she was worried about him or anything. Just annoyed. Yeah, annoyed. He should know better than to keep them waiting. Anyway, he shouldn't make his father-in-law worry. The King had started molting for pity's sake!

"For all his faults, King Goosey, you know he's actually really strong," Perona tried to reassure him. "If it's really as easy as knocking some lady out, you'll be back to yourself in no time."

Before Cygnus could reply, they both heard a distinctive giggle. Perona's ghost guide had returned. A rustle in the bushes signaled someone more corporeal accompanied it, but if Cygnus hadn't transformed back into a human, that meant Zoro hadn't succeeded, right?"

Perona jumped to her feet, summoning a few more ghosts just in case. "Get behind me your Majesty," she barked, nerves on edge. Cygnus complied.

The ghost guide she'd sent to help Zoro giggled some more.

"What are you laughing about?" Perona snapped.

Her ghost spy quickly flew toward her, nearly invisible in the midday light filtering through the trees. It alighted on her shoulder and quickly whispered something in her ear.

"WHAT?" she cried, stumbling back to trip over the goose standing behind her.

Cygnus squeaked out a honk, trying desperately to get out from underneath her. By the time he had wiggled himself free, he could see what Perona had discovered before him. He honked in dismay just as Perona cried out:

"Zoro, you idiot!"

For a surly, one-eyed, mint-green fox had just stepped through the bushes. He did not look pleased.