"It must be prince Fukaboshi" the seahorse merman said, and the snail rang again.

"Should we pick it up?" Usopp wondered but before they could think about it further Zoro decided to pick up the receiver.

"Hello? Who is it?" he asked.

"Don't pick it up!" Usopp yelled at him, then the captives started yelling for help before Zoro told them to shut up.

"It's me Fukaboshi, what is going on in there? Lower the gate now and let us in" Fukaboshi demanded.

"And then what? I can't do that" Zoro said.

"Hey! What are you saying? Just be honest and tell him!" Usopp told him.

"Yeah guys, tie me and Camie up too, they'll think we're your accomplices" Pappagu said.

"Zoro-chin's scary" Camie fretted, the soldiers yelled for help again but then Nicole told them to shut up.

"Are you a member of the Straw Hats?" Fukaboshi asked.

"Fukaboshi! That's the Three-Sword Style swordsman of the Straw Hats, "Pirate Hunter" Zori!" Neptune yelled so it was heard through the receiver.

"It's Zoro!" he corrected.

"Father, you have father too!" Fukaboshi said in realization.

"Like you just heard we have Neptune and many other hostages, if you don't want me to kill them prepare for us to set sail, we need our ship Sunny with a fresh coating on, we don't know where it is so go find it on your own and we need the rest of our crew, a gloomy woman, a robot, a racoon and a dirty water imp" Zoro demanded.

"And Zoro, one billion berries in cash" Nami added on.

"No, you stop!" Usopp yelled at her.

""Dirty water imp" .... That's funny! Can't stop laughing" Brook laughed.

"Stop laughing you fool!" Usopp yelled at him.

"You're so sexy when you make demands" Nicole said flirting with Zoro, leaning on him as she drew a circle on his shoulder with her finger.

"And you! Stop flirting!" Usopp yelled at her.

"I understand your conditions, i'll make an arrangement for you to leave this country immediately with all of your friends, however i want all the hostages back alive!" Fukaboshi said.

"That's fine" Zoro said and went to hang up before Fukaboshi spoke up once more.

"There is one more thing, Zoro-kun, i wouldn't normally tell you this under the circumstances but i can't ignore my duty to Jimbei" the prince said.

"What is it?" Zoro asked.

"This is from the former warlord "First Son of the Sea" Jimbei to Straw Hat Luffy, he left two messages for me to give you when you arrived" Fukaboshi said.

"Luffy said that he became friends with Jimbei" Usopp mentioned.

"Ah, he was in the newspaper with Luffy-san" Brook said.

"Although he's a pirate, he's a big figure that people on the island trust" Camie said.

Zoro turned to Nicole "You know the most about the warlords" he said.

Nicole nodded "Yeah, even my father seemed to respect Jimbei whenever he talked about him" she said.

Zoro nodded, more to himself and turned to the receiver "Luffy is not here but i'll tell him later, go ahead" he said.

"First, he says to not fight against Hordy, second he'll be waiting at the Sea Forest, that's all" Fukaboshi said and Zoro put the receiver down.

"The Sea Forest? Hordy?" Zoro wondered outloud.

"Knowing Luffy he'll find Jimbei anyhow and fight whoever this Hordy character is" Nicole said and Zoro nodded in agreement.

~

There was a rumble, like something heavy was hitting the palace over and over.

"What's this?" Usopp wondered.

"What's this noise-jamon? Don't tell me it's Decken again, it's coming from the Hard Shell Tower-jamon! Shirahoshi must be in danger! Are there guards with her?!" the king asked frantically.

"No, they're all tied up here!" one of the soldiers said.

"What? Hey pirates! Go see if the princess is okay!" Neptune told them.

"Huh? What are you talking about?" Zoro asked.

"Neptune-sama! Then they'll find out about the princess" one of the soldiers said.

"We have no choice-jamon, the Hard Shell Tower is on the northeast side of the palace, you guys go there now!" the king told them.

"Why are we being ordered around by our hostages?" Zoro asked.

"Silence! Shirahoshi is my only daughter-jamon! Somebody is trying to kill her constantly! If something happens to my daughter, i'll shove you all off the end of an ocean trench!" Neptune yelled at them.

"So she is the Mermaid Princess am i right? Then i'll go there as soon as possible and can i ask her to show me her panties?" Brook wondered outloud before running off as he laughed.

"Hey wait Brook!" Usopp called after him.

"Oh i can't take it, he's heading there with lascivious intent, now she's in a different kind of danger!" the catfish merman exclaimed.

"Wait skeleton! You don't have to untie me but take me with you! I have jurisdiction over the tower, if something happened to the princess i would be beside myself with regret!" the seahorse merman yelled and Brook came to a stop.

"I assume you, wanna see her too!" Brook said taking the seahorse merman and running off again.

~

"Neptune-sama! There was a kidnapping! Somebody kidnapped the princess!" the seahorse merman yelled as Brook came running back with him on his shoulder.

"And pirates are falling like rain at the tower, in any event they're your enemies! They're attacking" Brook warned them.

"Kidnapped?! Shirahoshi?! Who did it?!" Neptune raged.

"Somebody's making a raid now? What should we do?" Zoro asked glancing at Nicole for ideas.

"Why now?! We're occupying the palace ourselves! What should we do?" Usopp cried as he panicked.

"Suppose we'll just cut them" Nicole shrugged, without more info she couldn't conclude a proper plan of action.

Just then the human pirates thrown by Vander Decken at the tower shambled into the hall.

"In order for us to survive, we have to open the gate at any cost" one of them said.

"Th-they're here" Usopp whined.

Nicole and Zoro prepared themselves for more fighting.

~

The pirates had been easy enough to deal with with many of them laying on the ground on the brink of dead, actually dead or just unconscious.

"What's wrong with these guys?" Usopp wondered.

"One after another" Brook said.

"Please" Nicole scoffed "These guys are pathetic, no wonder they would throw their pride as pirates away just to survive another day" she said.

Nami sighed as Camie was clinging to her "Why do we always get involves in trouble?" she wondered.

"Stop whining Nami, the battle is on already, they keep attacking us so we have no choice" Zoro said.

"Shut up Zoro! We don't wanna get ourselves into more trouble than we already have" Usopp said.

"What's wrong with pirates fighting pirates? There's no crime" Zoro said, Nicole nodded in agreement.

"Boy he never learns, guys you're barely clinging to life, why do you wanna fight so badly?" Usopp asked turning to the other pirates "Let's settle this peacefully" he suggested.

"Do you think they'll give up that easily?" Zoro asked and tisked as the pirates gathered themselves up and charge in for another wave.

Nami, Usopp, Pappagu and Brook all screamed but Nicole and Zoro faced the hoard of pirates head on.

They skilfully dodged strikes while delivering their own weaving around the opponents seemingly dancing to a tune only they could hear, although they weren't the only Straw Hats to fight as Nami, Usopp and Brook all fought too.

~

Once again the pirates had all been defeated and likely weren't getting back up again.

"Don't accuse me of cutting them just because i like it!" Zoro yelled at the catfish merman.

"But you looked like you were enjoying it, you're a natural born manslayer!" the catfish merman argued back.

"Well then if you were attacked by pirates what would you do? Serve tea?" Zoro asked.

"Well serving tea and talking is one way to solve" the catfish merman was cut off "They wouldn't let you!" Zoro yelled at him.

"In any case if you beat them all, you won't be able to find out what they wanted" the catfish merman argued again.

"Stop worrying so much about them" Zoro said.

"Yeah, like it matters what they wanted if we stopped them from doing it" Nicole said.

"Something is wrong with this picture" Usopp muttered as he and Nami sulked.

"Why do most of our crewmembers tend to act like this?" Nami asked.

"Well look at our captain" Usopp replied.

"Yeah there's no point in even questioning it" Nami said.

Brook laughed "I wonder if Luffy-san had met the Mermaid Princess already, i wanna see her too" he said before the king crashed onto the ground, shaking it, with tears streaming down his eyes.

"More importantly untie me! Give me back Shirahoshi-jamon!" Neptune demanded.

"Why do you think we want to kidnap the Mermaid Princess?" Usopp asked.

"I know Straw Hat Luffy did it-jamon! Shirahoshi!" the king cried.

"I saw Luffy-san and Shark-san coming out of the room for sure but i didn't see the Mermaid Princess with them" Brook told him.

"But she is not the kind of girl who just sneaks out on her own-jamon, Shirahoshi is as big as myself-jamon, someone will notice her if she gets out" Neptune explained.

"What?! The Mermaid Princess is big?" Brook asked getting a weird mental image of the princess "No way" he muttered getting depressed.

"Oh yeah-jamon! Maybe he hid Shirahoshi in Megalo's mouth and took her out" Neptune said but his soldiers laughed at the ridiculous idea.

However the Straw Hats, or at least Nicole, knew their captain was the sort of man to come up with a ridiculous idea like that.

"In any event, our captain wouldn't kidnap anybody! You better look for somebody else" Nami told the king.

"No, i can't think of anybody else, if Shirahoshi doesn't come back safely you can't have your ship or friends back-jamon" Neptune told them.

"No! You can't do that to us" Nami protested, as in the background one of the defeated pirates managed to pick himself up and opened the passage way to the palace for the New Fish-Man Pirates.

"We have intruders!" one of the soldiers yelled as a large number of fishmen entered the palace.

"How did you guys get this far?" the seahorse merman asked.

"I guess this is what the pirates were so desperate to accomplish" Nicole muttered to herself, they had said something about showing a switch.

She now had it figured out, they meant the switch to open the gates so these fishmen could invade the palace, however her and the others had already occupied the palace.

"I can't believe this, i was ready to start a fight right away but Neptune and all the soldiers are tied up" Vander Decken said.

"I didn't expect to see a present like this, what a surprise" Hordy Jones grinned.

"That guy!" the catfish merman said and the soldiers muttered something about why he was here.

"The hateful Vander Decken! You've shown up at last" the catfish merman said.

"And that's Hordy Jones from the Fish-Man District, why did he come back here?" the seahorse merman wondered.

"Hordy? That guy is" Neptune trailed off.

"He was one a decorated soldier in our army" the seahorse merman told him.

"Is this some kind of trap? It's too good to be true" Hordy said.

"We've had visitors one after another" Zoro said and then sighed "What a lively palace" he said.

"Ah-ha! You guys are their accomplices! You let them in didn't you?!" the catfish merman accused before Nicole punched in the top from in top hat.

"I've had just about enough out of you, shut up" she said.

"They look formidable, who are these people?" Usopp asked pointing to the fishmen.

"Hey, let us have our arms at least" one soldier said.

"Please, let us fight!" another begged.

"Vander Decken! Since you've shown up there is no doubt! You're the one who did it! Give me back my daughter!" Neptune demanded.

"We haven't even gotten married yet, it's too soon for you to say that Father-sama" Vander Decken said.

"Don't call me Father-sama! Where did you take Shirahoshi?! You better tell me she's unharmed!" Neptune yelled at him.

"What are you talking about? You're talking like the princess is missing" Vander Decken said.

"Quit acting dumb! Why else would have Shirahoshi disappeared from her room all of the sudden?!" Neptune asked.

"My Shirahoshi disappeared?!" Vander Decken yelled panicking.

"She's my daughter-jamon!" Neptune yelled back.

"Neptune-sama don't lose your temper over his nonsense" the seahorse merman said while Vander Decken was still freaking out, until the sound of Hordy's trident broke through the noise.

"Calm down Decken, look all of the humans that you threw aimed at the Mermaid Princess are here, that means that princess Shirahoshi was here at least during that time, plus it doesn't matter if they're lying or not because you know how to check where she is now" Hordy told his fellow fishman.

"You're right Hordy! You're a very smart guy, i suspect" Vander Decken said and ran out before braking a piece of coral and riding it towards the princess, who was currently laughing at a story Luffy was telling her.