One Piece belongs to Eiichiro Oda
Kingdom Hearts characters belong to Square Enix and Disney
OCs belong to me.

-Chapter One Hundred and Two-

"I just love stories with bells in them, especially gold ones" Nami happily cooed.

"What a surprise, I never would have guessed" I quietly snorted.

"Hey, old-timer, it sounds like you just might be a little fond of Noland after all" Usopp teased, causing another fit of laughter to echo throughout the room.

"Look at this" Cricket said, suddenly rummaging through the room before setting a golden bell down.

"Wow! A golden bell!" Nami gasped in awe.

"Huh? It doesn't seem too enormous to me" Usopp remarked.

"And yet she's fallen in love with it all the same" I teasingly grinned as Nami picked up the bell and affectionately stared down at it. I chuckled as she childishly stuck out her tongue at me.

"None of these are the ones Noland was writing about in his Log Book—these are bell-shaped golden ingots we found on the ocean floor during a dive" Cricket explained.

"Golden ingots?" Chopper questioned.

"The City of Gold? It is real!" Luffy boisterously laughed.

"It's still not proof though" Shoujou corrected as sluggishly he pushed himself upright. "You can find gold and relics like that lying around in any old ruin in this part of the world."

"Maybe so, but it does suggest there was a civilization here sometime in the past" Robin said. "Ingots are made of divine gold and into standardizing units of weight and that would indicate an advance trading society" she explained.

"Right, and you remember that peculiar bird call he said they heard when they landed? Show it to them" Cricket motioned towards Masira who pulled away a sheet that had been covering a massive gold ingot that was in the shape of an odd bird.

"There's more gold?!" Usopp gaped.

"Just look at the size of it!" Zoro whistled.

"That's indeed a peculiar-looking bird" I remarked, shifting as I at up and curiously leaned closer to the golden ingot. "Impressive detail..." I lowly whistled, amazed by the incredible amount of detail on the golden statue.

"That's the last of it" Cricket grinned.

"Whoa! It's gorgeous!" Nami awed.

"Golden bells and birds, huh? Do you think they might be symbols of an ancient giant civilization?" Sanji asked.

"I really couldn't say for certain, but I'm pretty sure all these pieces were part of the same casting" Cricket shrugged. "This creature is called the South Bird, you can still find them on this island today" he said.

"Wow, and they have a peculiar call?" Luffy inquired.

"Uh-huh, just like in the Log Book" Cricket nodded.

"Sailors have used South Birds on ships since ancient times to help them—" Masira cut himself off, a look of realization suddenly dawning on both his and Shoujou's face.

"Oh no" they and the old man said.

"What's wrong?" we asked, baffled by the abrupt shift in their moods.

"This is really bad, you guys got to get to the forest on the south side of the island right away!" Cricket suddenly instructed.

"Huh? What do you mean—are you crazy?" Luffy frowned.

"Don't waste a minute! You got to catch one of these birds and quickly!" he shouted.

"How come? Why?" Usopp curiously questioned.

"What do we need the bird for?" Sanji asked.

"Now listen carefully" Cricket frowned. "Tomorrow you're going to sail for the Knock Up Stream, it lies south of here—how are you going to get there?" he asked.

"We just sail the ship south, of course" Luffy smiled.

"Sounds simple enough" I said.

"Have you forgotten?" Cricket asked. "This is the Grand Line, you're heading for the open sea, you won't be able to get your bearings" he explained.

"Wait, he's right" Nami realized. "Without a landmass to lock onto, the Log Pose will be useless and they'll be no way for us to navigate, but there's got to be some way we can figure out which direction to sail."

"There is if you can lay your hands on one of these birds" Cricket said, patting the golden bird-shaped statue. "Certain animals are known to have a very accurate eternal sense of direction as if they're born with a natural compass" he explained.

"Oh, meaning that they can't get lost if they were to fly off the island and out toward the open sea" I said.

"Exactly" he nodded as Luffy burst out into a fit of laughter.

"That makes Zoro dumber than an animal!" he snickered as I quickly turned my head, body now trembling with held-back laughter.

"Oh yeah, like you have room to talk!" Zoro snapped, glaring at our captain.

"The South Bird is the perfect example of this type of creature—in the middle of a vast bearing plain or a trackless ocean, its body will always point in the same direction" Cricket explained. "You see, if you don't get going to that forest and catch one of those birds right now, you'll have to kiss your only chance of getting to Sky Island goodbye" he frowned.

"And you're just telling us this now?!" we asked in baffled shock upon only just now learning about this important information.

"Quit your whining, there's no time for that—now go! Move it or lose it!" Cricket snapped, hurriedly ushering us out the door.

"You expect us to go stumbling through the forest in the middle of the night?" Usopp questioned.

"Don't forget these" the old man said, throwing down a couple of butterfly nets and letting them clatter to the ground. "The three of us are going to get started on the repairs to your broken-down ship...you know, now that I think about it, we probably shouldn't have had that party" he sighed with a smile.

"Oh, sure, now you tell us" Usopp huffed as Zoro and Sanji dragged him along behind us as the rest of us gathered up the nets.

"Listen, the clock is ticking, you have until morning to catch a South Bird or you can forget about the whole thing!" Cricket called out as we made our way into the forest.

-Later-

"Whoa, it's pitch black" Luffy remarked as we mindlessly wandered about.

"It's almost like it's the middle of the night or something" I rolled my eyes before smiling a little when I saw him nod after a moment's thought.

"Will you let go of me, you idiot?" Sanji grunted as he pushed at a terrified Usopp who was currently clinging to him.

"My stomach is so stuffed from that dinner, I couldn't catch a bird if I saw one" Chopper admitted, rubbing a hoof against his stomach.

"So where are they?" Luffy asked, already looking left and right for the bird we were supposed to catch.

"Let's just catch one of them...get back to drinking..." Zoro grumbled.

"Is that all you can think about? Drinking?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Hey, I think about other things sometimes" he defended.

"Sometimes?" I echoed.

"Will someone remind me how we ended up in this mess?" Nami irritably huffed.

"Move it!" Sanji snapped as he finally pushed Usopp away from him.

"Man, he couldn't have told us in the daylight? It had to be in the middle of the night?" the sharpshooter whimpered.

"Come on, what's wrong with the nighttime?" I asked. "There are plenty of things that are far more beautiful at night than they are during the day, like the woods for exampled" I smiled.

"No, the woods are creepy during the night" Usopp argued.

"Pfft! What are you talking about?" I snorted. "I don't see any axe-wielding maniacs around, so obviously we're not in any creepy set of woods...unless they're actually hiding somewhere and are just waiting for us to let our guard down" I teased with a grin as a low whine left the back of the sharpshooter's throat.

"That's not funny, Skylar" he trembled.

"Quit that!" Nami snapped, smacking the back of my head as I chuckled.

"Where are the birds?" Luffy asked once more.

"If I had any idea where the birds were, you think we'd be out here looking for them?" Zoro asked in annoyance.

"Yeah, probably considering your sense of direction" I nodded.

"Oi!" Zoro irritably snapped before grumbling as I gave him an innocent smile.

"All we know is that this thing has a peculiar call" Luffy huffed as he now gathered the men around in him a circle.

"Yeah, and it looks like that gold statue he showed us" Sanji nodded.

"It's kind of hard for me to believe that any bird like that could look that screwy looking in real life" Zoro admitted.

"Anyways, saying it has a peculiar call is too vague—we can't identify it from that" Usopp frowned.

A/N: Enjoy

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