"All right, all right."
Seeing that the tension had finally eased, Shanks clapped his hands and stepped in at just the right moment:
"We can dredge up all that ancient history later. Right now, we should get down to business."
The mention of business immediately brought everyone's attention back.
The joking expressions on their faces faded one by one, replaced by sober seriousness.
Shanks looked around and lowered his voice, recounting how he and Crocodile had tested the lightning barrier around Upper Yard, then unexpectedly discovered the White-White Sea underground.
He went through everything, leaving nothing out.
"So that lightning barrier protects the sky and the island's perimeter, but it doesn't cover the White-White Sea underneath," Shanks concluded. "If we can dive through that Cloud Sea that nullifies Devil Fruit abilities, we might still be able to get onto the island."
Silence fell over the room.
Aside from the Straw Hat Pirates, everyone from the Red Hair Pirates wore a faint look of shame.
After all, their part in this operation had been to land on the island and gather information.
And what had happened?
They had barely set foot in the port, without getting so much as a scrap of intelligence, before the Sky Knight had shot them down one by one. Now they were prisoners, humiliatingly confined to this building.
Shanks, on the other hand, had not only gone to test the lightning barrier alone and learned how it worked.
He had also managed to uncover most of the island's secrets and find out what had happened to them.
The contrast could not have been clearer.
At that thought, the members of the Red Hair Pirates felt their faces burn.
They really had every reason to be ashamed.
Noticing the guilt written all over his crewmates' faces, Shanks