The bird-man with round spectacles was scribbling away so intently he didn't even notice Ritter and the others barging in.
To be fair, this little excuse for a newsroom only had a handful of staff, but each one was utterly absorbed in their own frantic writing. Even when Ritter and his crew kicked the door open, not a single head lifted.
Ritter stood in the doorway, feeling oddly humiliated. When did I become so lacking in presence that even kicking down a door gets me ignored?
He was about to grab this fake editor-bird by the scruff of his feathery neck when the creature suddenly spun around, wings flapping, and launched into a sliding tackle toward his own staff.
"Dai Lai! How many times have I told you?! Headlines must be mysterious, they must tease the reader! They have to be 'half-revealed behind a pipa,' not this trash!"
He snatched the draft right out of his underling's hands, reading aloud with righteous fury:
"'Shocking! Blood Dawn's Captain Secretly Meets Rayleigh for Three Hours at Midnight!' Does this look like proper journalism to you?! This is indecent! This is vulgarity of the worst kind!"
The timid writer, a young man named Laient, raised a trembling hand. "B-but you said last time that the headlines needed to be explosive… Don't learn from Dai Zhenzi, he used to write trashy romance novels."
Smack! The editor-bird slapped his own forehead with his wing. "Explosive doesn't mean crude! Look, let me show you amateurs."
Clutching a pen between his beak, he scribbled furiously, then raised his head mid-sentence.
"Do we have any photos of Blood Dawn's captain? A back view will do."
Two skinny boys immediately dove into a mountain of photographs. "Yes, Chief, you brought some back last time."
"Excellent!" The bird squawked with triumph, rewriting the headline on the spot:
'Exclusive: The Moonlit Secret Conversation Between a Legendary Pirate Captain and a Retired Old Man (with Back-View Photo)'
Ritter: "…"
Tesoro: "…"
Enel: "What's the difference?!"
The bird pushed his glasses up his beak, speaking with the air of a genius unveiling an ancient truth. "The difference lies in the reader's imagination. A good headline doesn't say everything it leaves room for the audience to fill in the blanks themselves."
He waved his wings dramatically, delivering a lecture as though to disciples: "When readers see the word 'moonlit,' they'll think of romance. When they read 'old man,' they'll think of mystery. And when they see a 'back-view photo' they'll imagine scandal!"
A spark crackled at Enel's fingertip. "What they'll really imagine is you about to be fried by lightning."
The bird froze. His eyes darted from the glowing electricity to the dangerous expressions on Ritter and the others. He realized too late that he had just crafted the perfect excuse for them to kill him.
"You… you came to my humble paper because you admire my brilliance, didn't you?" he stammered. "Ah, I see it now! You want my autograph. At last! My years of practicing a signature worthy of greatness have not been wasted!"
He spread his wings dramatically, basking in his imagined glory only for Ritter's blood mist to swirl up and bind him tightly.
"Wait, wait, I have other works!" the bird screeched. His eyes lit with sudden inspiration. "Dai Lai! Bring that photo from last week the one of them outside the bar!"
Laient, trembling, handed over a blurry long-distance shot. In the photo, Ritter and Rayleigh were standing at the entrance of a tavern. But thanks to the angle and shadows, their silhouettes on the wall looked disturbingly like… an intimate embrace.
The bird beamed. "See? This subtle, ambiguous composition that's what I call professional!"
Ritter's eyebrow twitched. Tesoro facepalmed.
"Enel!" Ritter barked.
"200 million volts!" Enel roared, unleashing a storm of thunder.
The bird shrieked as his feathers smoked. After a long, drawn-out wail, he lay on the ground twitching.
Ritter's blood mist tightened again, his eyes sharp as blades. "Finally caught you, damn bird."
The bird stiffened. Slowly, he turned his tearful eyes toward Ritter, trying to appear resolute as he wiped his face with a trembling wing.
"…You came here looking for me? You… admire me? I never thought I'd live to see the day a great pirate valued my talent."
Sweat beaded on Ritter's temple. "Actually, your people dragged us here."
The bird whipped around, glaring at his subordinate Jangyo with burning betrayal in his eyes.
Jangyo whistled at the ceiling. "Wow. Look at that sky. So… sky-ish."
The room froze.
Tesoro broke the silence with a frown. "Bird-Bird Fruit user? But you're not Morgans."
The bird dropped to his knees with a dramatic thud. Tears streamed down his face as he sobbed, "Mercy, great one! I'm Moel! A birdman from the Mink Tribe! I only ate the Write-Write Fruit! I'm just a pathetic street-press bird! I pretended to be Morgans for sales!"
Then, inexplicably, he began to sing off-key: "We're all just living as hard as we can…"
Ritter buried his face in his hand. "Enel."
"AAAAAAHHHHHHH !" Moel's screams filled the newsroom again.
When it was over, Ritter glanced around the shabby office. The desks were piled with crumpled manuscripts. In the corner, two scrawny assistants clutched each other in terror.
"You're telling me… there's only three of you?" Ritter asked dryly.
"There are eight of us!" Moel corrected quickly, throwing himself against Ritter's leg. "But we have dreams! Please, Captain Ritter, take us in! We're talented! We just haven't been discovered! You'd be recruiting the future of journalism itself!"
Enel sneered. "Like that garbage article about me being a reincarnated news seagull?"
Moel's eyes lit up. "Yes! That was us! Just imagine, Captain Ritter tomorrow's headline: 'Blood Dawn Takes Over the News World, the World Government Trembles!'"
Enel's forehead pulsed with rage. "So you're the one who wrote that trash! I should've fried you months ago!"
Moel flailed, pointing frantically at three men in suits who had just climbed the stairs, looking confused. "Wait! Wait! It wasn't just me! It was them too! Dai Zhenzi, Dai Rongzi, Dai Sanzi! They all worked on it!"
The three newcomers froze mid-step.
"AAAAHHHHHH !" The four birds screamed together as lightning crackled again.
Ritter sighed, rubbing his temple. "All right, Moel. What can you actually do?"
For a moment, Moel looked broken. Then, suddenly, he sprang up with renewed vigor. He dragged Ritter over to a strange contraption in the corner.
"Behold, great captain! The manifestation of my Write-Write Fruit powers the Printing Machine!"
Ritter raised an eyebrow. "Show me."
Moel stood proudly, wings trembling with anticipation. As he chanted like a mad monk, words streamed from his quill, instantly printed into a finished newspaper.
"See? Instant publication! Fast, convenient, revolutionary!"
Ritter stared at the paper, black lines forming on his face. Without a word, he turned to leave.
"Don't go, Captain!" Moel wailed, latching onto his pants leg like a child. "If you abandon us, we'll starve! Look, my feathers are already falling out!"
Tesoro pinched the bridge of his nose. "Captain… should we just sink the whole island and be done with it?"
"Wait! Wait!" Moel shrieked. "I'm valuable, I swear! I know where the real Morgans is!"
That made Ritter pause. He narrowed his eyes. "Talk."
"He's planning a new paper the 'World Situation Journal,'" Moel whispered conspiratorially. "But he's looking for exclusive interviews with potential Emperors of the Sea. If you agree to an interview, I can get you access."
Ritter and Tesoro exchanged blank stares.
"…You really don't know when to quit, do you?" Ritter muttered.
"Shall I fry him again?" Enel snarled, sparks dancing across his arms.
"AAAAHHHHHHH !" The chorus of screams rose once more.
When the chaos finally settled, Ritter regarded Moel with an exasperated expression. As ridiculous as this bird was, there was a strange, familiar obsession in his eyes the same twisted love of news Morgans had.
Maybe all bird-men are cursed with this… Ritter thought.
Still, perhaps there was potential here. Starting his own news network might not be a bad investment. At worst, it was only money. At best, he might end up owning the future of the seas' information flow.
If Moel could endure… he might just turn this pathetic bird into something valuable.
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