After a few moments of reminiscing about the old days, Jack Sparrow cleared his head and stopped thinking about it to return to the current issue.

"Ye be the captain of this fine vessel, savvy?"

"I am..."

"Well, now spill the beans, mate. Where were ye thinkin' of takin' these folks, eh?"

The merchant captain paused for a few moments hesitating to answer but after one of the pirates in Jack's crew pressed him a little he opted to speak.

"Yarara Island..."

"Uh... Yarara Island, is it? Hmmm, ain't there a kingdom clingin' to the world government in them parts?" Jack recollected, his mind churnin' like a rusty ship's wheel. "If I ain't mistaken, that patch of land ain't too far from our current coordinates"

"That's r-right..."

"Oh, and do enlighten me, mate. What in the sev... the seas would drive a merchant like yourself to cast aside common sense and sail these treacherous waters, ferryin' around an unlawful cargo of slaves right into the jaws of that there kingdom?" Jack inquired, his eyes dancing with a mix of curiosity and mischief.

"Err... this..." the captain again hesitated to speak, but the sword at his neck made him quickly retract his soft attempt at resistance.

"...Ther-there are specific ports that allow it an-and the money they pay is pretty good" replied the merchant captain. "Please don't kill us, we could come to an agreement may be, I swear it's the first time we do this kind of trade, and its only because we had no other choice, we all needed the money"

"Aye, I reckon..., right then, Unshackle the slaves and confine them merchant blokes to the brig!" Jack ordered his crew.

"Ah, but not you, matey. You and I, we'll have ourselves a cozy little parley" Jack chimed in, a mischievous grin dancing across his lips as he fixed his gaze upon the merchant captain.

...

...

Moments later Jack managed to squeeze as much information out of the merchant captain as he could.

Naturally, he initially refused to cooperate willingly, yet given the constant threat of death that Jack was giving him, the man had no choice but to agree to tell him everything he knew.

In the first place, Jack discovered that the name of the man was Captain Sisco, a fairly honest merchant seaman originally from South Blue who only recently joined the Grand Line.

Apparently, he was part of a not well-known noble house on an island in South Blue that had fallen into ruin due to their financial situation and the many debts they had.

Captain Sisco had become a merchant in order to earn more money and pay off his family's debts.

And it turned out that Sisco heard from a few less-than-honest fellow sailors that King Potaufeu of the Yarara kingdom was looking for merchant traders to bring him a very special kind of "merchandise"...

Slaves.

Jack overheard how Captain Sisco tried to justify his position by arguing that at first, he had not planned to go to that extreme, but due to his financial situation, he had to rethink whether or not to do so until he finally made the decision to pay pirates to capture and deliver the slaves to them, and then take them to Yarara Island for a higher profit.

He also explained that apparently on this Yarara Island, within the kingdom, there was a private port belonging to the king where only ships authorised by the king himself could enter, and that this port led to one of the gates in the wall surrounding the king's castle.

Within the castle, there was a specific area where the trading of slaves was carried out in secret.

There was even a covert auction house, where VIP guests and nobles could buy slaves and many other things.

Jack was quite surprised that the king himself and his own men were in charge of this supposedly "illegal" slave trade.

To clear his doubts, Sisco explained that although slavery was banned by the World Government more than 200 years ago, it still survives in certain places in the world, such as the Yarara Islands or the better known Sabaody Archipelago.

According to Sisco certain auction houses are (secretly) authorised by the World Government.

It seems that the World Government receives bribes in exchange for ignoring the slave trade. And most of the nobles of the world practice slavery, using wanted pirates, other people, and races as servants, trophies, and "pets".

Of course, to hide the fact that slavery still exists, signs on the doors of auction houses read "Bureau of Public Employment Security", a euphemism also used by the authorities to allow them to ignore this blatantly criminal enterprise.

...

...

Once he finished getting as much information as possible out of Captain Sisco, Jack locked him and the rest of his men in the cells where the slaves used to be, while in his head he already started to think up different things to do with all that information.

Somehow he would make the greatest profit out of it all.

After thinking for a few moments, Jack finally took a look at all the slaves that had now been released by his crew.

A total of 15 slaves, all of them looked between 20 and 30 years old.

There are 5 females and 5 males which are regular humans.

Only 2 female humanoids with mammalian features called minks apparently, one of them had big rabbit ears and the other had cute black cat ears.

And 2 fish-man along with 1 fish-woman.

The majority of them looked at Jack with fear as if they didn't know what a pirate was planning to do with them now.

All the slaves made different guesses, only a few were hopeful that the pirate would free them, others believed that he would take perhaps the strong ones and the women in his crew and kill the weak ones, but the majority thought he would use the situation to use or sell them and get a profit from each one of them.

However, surprisingly for the group of 15, the first thing the pirate captain did was to get his crew to give them food and water.

Obviously, the slaves were suspicious and very alert, but gradually they accepted the food and drink, after all, they had been at sea for many days, and between the pirates who had captured them and the merchant sailors they were only given bad leftovers along with placing them in dark and damp cells.

...

Having thought about it for a while after observing the slaves, Jack finally decided on what to do and he explained first to the crew's officers what they would be doing.

"Well, we're going to do business with the King of the Yarara Kingdom"

"Yarara Kingdom? Isn't that where this merchant ship was headed?"

"Exactly, and we won't let them down, we will deliver the slaves, but first we must do something..."

...

After listening to Jack, some of them had doubts or were skeptical of his plan, but since he was the captain they agreed.

With a smile, Jack told everyone to set the plan in motion in order to have everything ready for when they arrived at Yarara Island.

After explaining everything to his crew, Jack informed the slaves what they would be doing and that they would need each of them for just a few days to help sail both ships and then they could decide what they wanted to do, whether to stay with the crew or go wherever they wanted to go.

When the slaves heard what the pirate captain intended to do they could not believe it but quickly agreed to his request.

And so Jack divided his own crew of 20 into two groups, 10 on each ship, and the 15 slaves were divided into a group of 8 and another of 7, and then sailed to Yarara Island.

...

...

A couple of days later, in a calm blue sea, with seagulls flying peacefully in the sky, when the sun was rising over the horizon, its golden rays began to caress the waters of the sea in an embrace of light.

In that incredible dawn, Captain Jack Sparrow's crew spotted a glimmer in the distance, a land emerging from the mist.

They were finally arriving at their destination, Yarara Island.

Jack quickly spoke to Kenta, his second in command, and told him to wait with the Pearl nearby while he headed for the king's private port with the merchant ship.

Heeding him, Kenta steered the Pearl to where Jack had said while the captain headed straight to land.

...

When Jack arrived at the private port of the kingdom of Yarara, he made sure to adopt a completely different identity, wearing clothes more suitable as a merchant captain along with an attitude that made him pass unnoticed as such.

This was not so difficult for him since Jack Sparrow himself had long ago been a merchant sailor.

Jack led the ship to the private port that the king had assigned specifically for such matters regarding the slave trade, a place where people would not see them openly since slavery had supposedly been abolished 200 years ago.

Once Jack arrived at the port, he passed his papers and information to the king's men stationed there.

After these men had checked everything, they let him off the ship along with his group of slaves.

As Sisco said, this port was next to one of the great gates in the walls leading to the king's castle and it was there that he was asked by the king's guards to show his documents again.

By giving his information as Captain Sisco and showing the slaves he was carrying he was allowed to enter along with the slaves he was carrying and after passing through the gates and walking for a few minutes they finally arrived at the assigned area inside the castle walls.

Inside the walls, he was surrounded by more of King Potaufeu's guards.

"Captain, I am Captain Dealer of the king's guard, welcome to the kingdom of Yarara."

"Captain Sisco of the Saint Ottova"

" A pleasure, now if you allow me, I'm going to inspect the prisoners."

" Sure... Ah, but first we must talk about money" said Jack with a smile stopping Captain Dealer.

"The payment captain awaits you after the inspection of the prisoners, 7.5 million berries."

"Only 7.5 million berries in exchange for 15 slaves and in good condition that are certain to be auctioned for much more than that. Do you know all the trouble we had to go through to get here? Sea beasts, pirates, thieves, it was a difficult and exhaustive journey. Don't you think that should be considered as well?"

"That's the price for 15 human slaves..., those were the king's orders."

"Then I'll have to talk with your king."

"Very well, you two, show Captain Sisco the way" commanded Captain Dealer looking at two of his men.

Accepting Jack's request, the king's guards escorted him to the residence where the king was so that he could personally arrange and settle the matter with him and not get them in trouble, after all, King Potaufeu was the one who was in charge of personally negotiating with the merchants who brought slaves in order to provide the world nobles and other VIP guests with the best of the best and with no problems.

After all, no one could afford to offend these people, so it was an important matter that the king would rather deal with in person than get into trouble later.

Once Jack was taken inside King Potaufeu's castle, he was left waiting in a large waiting room.

Soon a butler of the king's entered and informed him that the king was in a meeting and would be released in a few moments.

...

...

In the throne room of the kingdom of Yarara, King Potaufeu was talking with a tall, slim woman wearing dark red lipstick, with dark brown eyes and straight, waist-length pink hair worn in a middle part.

"Commander Hina, my sincere gratitude for your presence in my humble kingdom and my deepest regrets for interrupting your holidays" commented King Potaufeu looking at Hina who had come to the island as fast as she could.

She only wore a burgundy-purple two-piece suit over a white blouse, as well as dark brown shoes and a pair of dark gloves without the long white Marine jacket as she hadn't even found the time to look for one before rushing from her holiday.

"King Potaufeu, it is Hina duty, the headquarters already informed Hina of Commodore Shayo's whole situation"

"And until he recovers from his injuries Hina will fulfill the duty to replace him"

"Yes, and I must admit that it was our good fortune that you were only a few days away from the kingdom"

"It was just a mere coincidence"

"A very welcome one... Oh, I almost forgot, there are a few things I must make clear to you about how we operate here, things that due to Commodore Shayo's sudden incident you haven't had a chance to find out yet..."