Session 23

**Session 23** is unofficially titled “Davy Back Showdown”

## Summary

As the crew continues sailing to Oria, Chester spits out a transponder snail that begins broadcasting a show. The man on the show introduces himself as Davy Smire and begins the new episode of Davy Back Showdown, a competition between two pirate crews for a bounty erasure. The two crews competing on the episode are the Deep Pirates and Tiger Pirates. They go through the games challenges until the Tiger Pirates win, getting their bounties erased while all seven thousand nine hundred and ninety six remaining Deep Pirate members are arrested and sent to prison. Davy Smire announces that the next episode is the season finale and will be against the Hunters 5, a powerful bounty hunting group, and that crews will be able to sign up at the island of Oria.

After the broadcast ends, Stede shouts with excitement and proclaims that the crew will sign up for the next episode at Oria. Chester goes to the wheel to speed the ship up using the jets, which causes the ship to accelerate to an extreme speed. Ultra goes to the wheel to turn off the jets and the crew notices Oria from the view of ship. They anchor at the islands dock and see David Smire’s ship and his camera crew. The crew go to him and ask him questions about the show. He reveals that the show is sponsored by the Navy and is used to easily capture the pirates who lose. Despite the risks the crew agrees to sign up to be the pirate crew for the season finale and are offered costumes. Smire offers a special reward for winning because of his hunch that the crew aren’t interested in a bounty erasure.

After Stede, Low, and Ashton get into their game show outfits. They enter a blue ship while the Hunters 5 enter a red ship. Davy Smire starts the show and introduces the contestants and the first challenge. The first challenge is too identify if an individuals bounty is lower or higher than the fake number given to them. The first bounty is Soraen’s, who’s bounty is still at 300,000,000, the second bounty is Thunder Chad’s, who’s still at a bounty of 30,000,002. The third bounty is Black Diamond, Nunosuke Togari’s arch enemy, whose bounty is 1,500,000. The fourth is Nolan D. Menore, a short teenager who claims to be the son of an emperor. He leads a powerful crew known as the Fiend Pirates and has a staggering bounty of 1,210,000,000. The fifth bounty is for Lewaque, a master thief who has the body of a mole and a 46,000,000 bounty. The sixth bounty is actually not a bounty but a gauge of how much the ladies want a piece of Davy Smire, which is 0. The seventh bounty belongs to Moe D. Lonne, who set out to sea as a pirate and has earned himself a bounty of 2,930,000. After all the answers are submitted, Davy Smire announces the results. The Gorilla Pirates ended up getting five correct, while the Hunters 5 got all seven correct.

The show moves on to the next challenge, which is a crossword puzzle. Many of the answers being trivia the group has picked up on the way. There were a few answers Smire helped with, being “TYROLAND”, the last stop for pirate crews in the North Blue, and “TURTLEFISH”, an odd animal from the North Blue. Smire announces the results and the Gorilla Pirates win the round.

The show moves on to the third and final challenge, a boat decorating contest. Both groups have an unlimited budged to customize the blue and red ship respectively. The crew decides to try and appeal to the Navy, thinking it could sway the possibly egotistical judges in their favor. Low begins drawing a sail with a marine symbol, but his hatred overcomes him and begins making it into an anti Marine design. Stede attempts to break a marble slate into a skeleton figurehead for the front of the ship, and manages to get it done with a little help from Ashton. The crew decorate and paint the ship a bit more before finishing up. The time for decorating the ships is over and Smire begins to compare the two. The Hunters 5 painted their ship light grey with 24 karat gold highlights and decked it out with a custom sail, replicas of their weapons, and other fancy decorations. Then comes the Gorilla Pirate’s design, the judges don’t know how to feel about the sail, and Smire comments that it will probably be removed next episode, but it has more blue on it than the other ship so it wins, Davy Smire announces the Gorilla Pirates as the winners and the show concludes with an applause from the audience.

While the crew is celebrating their victory. Smire walks over to them and hands Stede their special reward, a devil seed. They are also promised that the Navy will not go after them for an unspecified amount of time. He tells them that the crowd were big fans of them, and that he plans to get them on future episodes no matter what it takes. After he begins to realize that Ashton is completely ignoring him, he shifts his focus to Stede. He asks Stede about anything new he learned from the show and comments about the self-proclaimed son of an emperor. Smire tells him supposedly classified information that Menore might be on his way to becoming a fully fledged emperor himself. Stede asks Smire on his opinion of what it takes to be an emperor, and he responds saying it’s mostly about leadership and guiding your crew to be strong and unified. After their talk, Smire and the filming crew begin to pack up the show equipment and sail away.