-Byron-

"I thought you guys told me that the log pose was the only reliable way to navigate the Blue Sea?" Shura asked, scratching his head in confusion.

"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 finding out where the man may have gone, he was the only and hence the most important affiliate captain Bellamy had and as such, 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, instead choosing to hand over the 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 every day. 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. That Doflamingo had discarded this man as if he were a moldy old sandwich 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 log pose and requiring other 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 as secret as the residents liked to think.

Thus, having prepared everything they needed, the Sommelier 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 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 have possibly 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 beside him at the prow of the ship. 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 corrects his first mate, ignoring Helena's screams, grabbing her by the scruff before she can dive for cover and forcing the self-styled queen to stand between himself and his first mate. (Not) understandably, 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 before whipping his arms forward. Byron might have briefly seen the sun glinting off a dense net in the sky, before the air is filled by the shredded remains of a thousand arrows. Another wave of Shura's arms and all the splinters are swept to the sides and into the sea.

"Simple. First I'll have to calm our hosts down. I can convince them afterwards." Byron tells him. It's a simple plan but plans were meant to be simple things, lest they be foiled by the tiniest little thing going differently than envisioned.

"Should we set up the speakers, captain?" Shura offers but Byron shakes 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 his performance did. "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.


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 (of three) not to raise their jolly roger, 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, so far their attempts 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 Sommelier 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 company of the treacherous Trump Pirates. Yes, the very pirates who had unsuccessfully attempted to conquer the island not three weeks ago and 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 little girl (woman!) 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. Being the pirate that she was, Helena of course focused on the part about a golden crown and faced with the full charm the blonde beauty could muster, Ratchet started babbling like a brook. (That is a stream of water, not the Straw Hat musician though that guy certainly talked a lot too.)

Turned out that the golden crown had existed only in legend for the last several centuries, with every attempt to locate the thing having come to nought. However, Dr. Rachet was determined to be different and claimed to have dedicated his life to solving the riddle, which had been passed down over the generations in the form of a folk song. So far, they had managed to identify the location 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, 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 (& company) a tour of the location in question, and Byron 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 seems confident, but Byron wouldn't be so sure as it sounded pretty farfetched. Then again, he may be a captain and a navigator by necessity, but 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 differentiate within 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 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, 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 the cave, searching every nook and cranny they could access for another clue. They only managed to drain the lake by accident before 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 "puppy eyes" Judy in front of her. Byron gently humming courage and initiative into her probably didn'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 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 Marie suggested that Byron play a fast-paced piece of music that something changed. With Marie's shout of "It's alive!", the island awoke, shaking and rumbling down to its very core, prompting everyone to evacuate out of the caves as fast as they physically could. The sight which greeted them struck 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.