Cherry and company arrived at the shores of Skypeia while night still shrouded the clouds in darkness just an hour or two before dawn.
Cabernet was slowly getting better at flying in her ship form. She was now a few times faster than most other ships while her flames were not burning on her stern.
Lunarians were truly strange in that way. Ordinarily, common sense would dictate that flames make you go faster, but for Lunarians it works the other way around. They were an odd people indeed.
Skypeia was a rather majestic sight to behold, even with only the moon light peaking through the cloud cover to illuminate it. There was no doubt it would be all the more beautiful during the day.
Cherry searched around with her Life Sense, while also practicing Observation Haki, to locate people and make sure they weren't discovered.
There were no people lingering near the beach, which was to be expected at this early hour in the morning.
"We should camp out under the cover of these trees here. Although we'll stand out like sore thumbs during the day, as the people mostly seem to be the same winged race, they'll be more suspicious of us if we go asking questions in the night." Cherry said, getting nods of agreement.
Cabernet, Robin, and Serene took long naps before the light of dawn woke them up, while Cherry kept an eye out while cultivating.
She noticed two people approaching the beach from the large staircase further inland. They were an older, bald man with a beard and a younger woman. They both had small white wings that were slightly different than the Birkans' wings. In addition to that they had odd antennae on their heads.
The older man was pushing some strange contraption alongside him.
Cherry snuck up closer behind them to eavesdrop on their conversation, hoping to glean some information from them.
"I'm getting close to working out the kinks of this waver Conis, then we can sell it. Only a day or two at most, I think. Then we'll have some extra Extols, maybe enough to fix up the house a bit. Sorry about that." The older man said.
"I'm sure you'll do a fine job, Father! I have faith in you!" The young woman smiled at him.
Their conversation was mundane and nothing regarding the conflict was learned from them. Cherry approached until she was right behind them.
"Hello." She said suddenly.
""AH!"" Both the man and woman jumped and yelped in fright.
"My name is Cherry. What are your names?" Cherry asked, ignoring their reactions.
"Oh my, you startled me. Sorry about that." The man said, and apologized for some reason.
"Oh no, I'm sorry! People have always told me that I look like a horrible monster or an evil demon. It's my fault for sneaking up on you, I should have known better when I look like such a wretched creature..." Cherry apologized and bowed repeatedly, looking as meek and sad as she could manage.
The woman and the man looked helpless as they tried to insist Cherry had done nothing wrong. They felt horrendous for having touched such a sore spot, even if it was an accident.
Robin, who had followed after Cherry when she didn't return, watched this scene from the trees. She was unsure if how she feel about the emotional manipulation playing out before her.
'I'm pretty impressed that she got them wrapped around her finger that quickly and easily, but it also seems wrong to do it to such seemingly kind people.' Robin thought.
"Oh, where are our manners! I am Conis and this is my father, Pagaya. It's nice to meet you Cherry." Conis introduce once she managed to make Cherry stop groveling.
"It's a pleasure to meet such kind people in such an unfamiliar land." Cherry said, wiping a fake tear from her eye.
"What's wrong?" Conis tried to comfort her.
"Well, you see, my friends and I were sailing the Grand Line to explore the world. The journey was going quite well, better than expected in fact, but suddenly the sky went dark and the ocean swelled up underneath our ship. Before we knew what was happening, the ocean erupted and sent our ship flying into the sky!" Cherry explained, tears flowing in streams as she choked back sobs.
Conis and Pagaya could only listen in silent horror, dreading what she was going to say next.
"Our ship was torn asunder and we found ourselves treading water in that white sea. If that wasn't bad enough, an enormous octopus sea king started to attack the survivors and the only things we could do was to flee for our lives. Only a handful of us made it to this island..." Cherry completely broke down, dropping to her knees.
Robin watched with a dropped jaw as Conis and Pagaya had uncontrolled tears streaming down their faces and panicked, unsure how to console Cherry in her grief. She even noticed there were tears welling up in her own eyes, and she knew for a fact the story was just a lie.
Robin came out from the tree line and approached the sobbing trio. She put on a suitably downcast expression, though it couldn't compared to Cherry's demonic acting skills.
"Cherry, there you are. Who are these people?" Robin asked, placing a gentle hand on Cherry's shoulder.
Cherry looked up at Robin and let her help her get to her feet.
"Ah, Captain Robin. I wasn't crying." Cherry lied unconvincingly, wiping her face. "Anyways, these are my new friends, Conis and Pagaya. I was just about to gather information from them like you ordered."
"You aren't in much of a state to ask questions, so I'll do it instead." Robin said. She decided that she couldn't let Cherry continue to drive these poor people into depression.
"You must be hungry after being shipwrecked. You should come to our home for some food and proper rest." Conis offered generously.
"We'd be happy to take you up on the offer. We have two other companions, would that be fine?" Robin asked with a gentle smile.
"Of course!" Conis insisted excitedly.
Cherry went to round up Cabernet and Serene, then returned to the others and followed Conis and Pagaya back to their home. Fortunately, there weren't too many people out and about this early.
"I've heard of the wingless people of the blue sea before, but I've never heard of someone with such large and beautiful black wings like you Cabernet." Conis complimented.
Cabernet felt embarrassed at the praise. "I can fly with them too, you know?"
"Wow! You can?!" Conis was amazed. Her people's wings were much too small to enable flight.
Robin asked her questions to Pagaya to get an idea of Skypeia's recent history and notable events.
As it turned out, Enel's side of the story about the war wasn't all that different from the Skypeians side. The official story from God Gan Fall was that there was a devil in Birka and that his war against them was as much for the Birkans' sake as it was for Skypeia's.
In private, however, many Skypeians didn't believe this was true. They had been at war for a half dozen years already and there hadn't been a single attack on Skypeian territory. If not for God Gan Fall's indomitable might in battle, there would have already been a rebellion in all likelihood.
God Gan Fall was master of dial combat, Mantra (which Cherry surmised was what the Skypeians called Observation Haki), and had mastery over the clouds themselves.
Cherry took note of the mastery of clouds, as the way it was described to them made it sound exactly like a devil fruit of some kind, likely a logia type.
'Hm, this ought to be interesting. I'd like to test myself against him, but we'll come to that later. We should try to find someone closer to Gan Fall and see if there is anything more to him than he just went mad one day.' Cherry thought.