The Marine

Standing beside the dead body of Gild Tesoro, Bill didn’t need to double check if he had finished the job. He didn’t need to check the condition of Rob Lucci, either.

At his level, with his senses as they were, it was impossible for someone to fake their deaths and he not realize it.

For all of that, he breathed deeply, and after throwing the body over his shoulder blasted off towards Lucci’s corpse and did the same.

With the two bodies secured, Bill didn’t believe Dice’s corpse to be important enough to secure, in a flash he wrapped them up tight in some thick curtains that he took from a nearby building and returned to the place where he had left Nelson barely 45 minutes before.

To his relief and to his slight shame, he found Saint Camael and First Lady dead and Nelson still standing there – only now holding onto a strange looking sword.

Besides that, Bill saw that the Cipher Pol Agents and Gran Tesoro security staff – whom he had beaten before he went to finish off Gild, Lucci, and Dice – each had a gunshot in their head.

And finally, he recognized two shivering women – whose beauty were almost beyond compare – huddled up by the giant panda that Saint Camael had been riding.

Seeing Bills eyes fall on the slave women, Nelson didn’t ask about the body bags, but said with a slight shrug of his shoulders: “I know what I should do, but blimey it… it just doesn’t seem right.”

Nodding that he understood, Bill was relieved that Nelson hadn’t killed the slave girls. Even if it would make things riskier, and even if he would have to make sure that they stayed secure, all of those troubles were better than he and Nelson turning to evil for convenience’s sake.

But seeing that they had to be dealt with, as they were still wearing slave collars, Bill changed his dominant spirit and went over to them.

The giant panda growled but didn’t move, and the slave girls trembled more.

It wasn’t a great situation, but after telling them that they were safe, he told them to be still, and the women – who must have suffered an untold number of abuses – did just that, they even stopped breathing.

Shaking his head slightly, Bill slowed time almost to a complete stop, and using his fingers broke the collars.

In the instant before the explosions took the women’s heads off, he threw them high into the air, resulting in huge explosions in the sky above Gran Tesoro.

The women and panda fainted, and Nelson gasped while looking into the air for a couple of seconds before turning his attention back to Bill.

But Bill didn’t wait for him to speak, and said: “That’s a fine weapon, but you can’t use it for now.”

Without knowing its name, Bill gestured to [Funkfreed] and Nelson finally broke a smile: “Aye, it’s a bang-up weapon, sort of like the lassies [Compliance Tree]. Hard to believe it belonged to that blowhard…”

When it said this, Nelson suddenly thought of how Spandam would have acquired the elephant sword, and suddenly wasn’t in the mood to talk.

As for Bill, completely ignorant of who Spandam was – or the numerous evils he had committed over the years – he just shrugged, not even glancing at Spandam’s dead body, and said: “Well, alright, we need to organize a complete evacuation of the city… we don’t have long now.”

Confused, Nelson asked slowly: “Long for what?” and with a straight face Bill pulled out a small case from his Coat of Justice.

Opening up the case, Nelson was at first confused, but then seemed to understand.

The case, which held the chunk of True Gold and Paper Logia shined brightly, and Bill said: “I threw Olga’s ring into the harbor. We can expect Bonbori to be here at some point, and probably soon if he hadn’t left the South Blue.”

Thinking of the island eater, Nelson trembled and wiping his head with the back of his hand said: “Ok…” then seeming to think about something said: “…but the city?”

“The hull is made of interlocking seastone plates, the foundation of city itself should be fine but the buildings will probably have a hard time standing...” then added with a sneer said: “… gold isn’t a good building material.”

Stopping and taking a breath, Bill continued evenly: “We’ll need to sound out the call for evacuation and cut the cities power supply off.”

Thinking this, Bill realized that calling for an evacuation was probably not needed as nobody would want to associate with the R.A. and the fight between he and the others had shaken the entire floating city.

But still, Gran Tesoro had somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000 people on board and it was impossible to consider the devastation that would happen if they stayed on the ship when Bonbori arrived.

Understanding Bills thoughts, though he was tired and hurt, Nelson nodded and after waking up the former slave girls, he sat them on the giant panda and started to head for the central tower that held the command bridge.

For Bill, jumping up high in the sky and scanning the horizon, he saw tiny dots in the darkness, and to his frustration saw the Marine escort who should have been with Saint Camael.

‘… about 3 or 4 hours away, depending on how fast the wind blows’ thought he, realizing that the escort was set to arrive at the crack of dawn, or even just before dawn.

No matter what, Bill didn’t want to get into conflict with those Marine ships and in a flash, he wrapped up the bodies of Saint Camael and First Lady then headed towards the city’s power supply.

The city’s pump controls were near the massive electric generators, and sure enough he found Lindberg, Oliver, and several other members of the Revolutionary Army there.

Holding on to the 4 body bags like they were sacks of potatoes, Bill didn’t have time for pleasantries.

Softy dropping the bodies of Saint Camael and First Lady, he said simply but quickly: “These are what you were after, the Marine escort is almost here, where is Sabo?”

Surprised, none of them went to check the bodies, but Oliver was the first to talk, saying: “You… you didn’t have to- “I didn’t do anything” Bill cut him off and this time said more forcibly.

“It’s about time for you all to leave. Take whatever you can, take as many people as you can, take whichever ships you can, because you can not to be here anymore.”

As for adding manpower to the Revolutionary Army, Bill didn’t have time to care about that. Besides, the R.A. was a global organization, there was simply no way that they could recruit enough from Gran Tesoro’s slave population to empower an armed movement against the World Government.

At least, Bill thought to himself, ‘Not without superhumans…’

Hearing Bill’s strong words caused the R.A. members to look at each other, but mostly to Lindbergh who was their leader with Sabo gone.

Clearly, Lindbergh recognized that Bill was not giving them an option. Thinking whether or not to resist, he sized the Marine Commodore in front of him up and decided that it wasn’t worth it.

“We’ll follow your-gara’s suggestion for now, per the Captains’ orders we shouldn’t fight with Marines needlessly, nya, especially Marines like yourself!”

Frowning at this implication, Bill told the R.A. members that the cities power would be turned off in an hour and a half, and that they had that much time to do whatever they needed to do.

With that done, and hearing the sirens and call for evacuation, Bill headed to dispose of the bodies of Gild and Lucci by feeding them to the sharks that infested the waters beneath the floating city.

But to his momentary confusion… they weren’t there. No aquatic life was there.

Even the giant turtles that pulled the city were acting erratically, and understanding what this meant, Bill cut their chains so that they wouldn’t die, and throwing the bodies to the bottom of the South Blue, he immediately began to start rushing the evacuation.

*************************************************************************

Rummaging through an escritoire on the Celestial Dragon’s ship, Sabo was searching for anything that seemed like it could be useful before throwing it in a giant black linen bag.

Having already worked his way through the Cipher Pol quarters, he had quickly worked his way through most of the ship before ending up at the large section of ship that housed Saint Camael and First Lady.

Not knowing what he was grabbing, Sabo knew time was short and so almost anything with writing on it had gone into the bag.

Before having his memories kicked back into him by the execution of his brother, Sabo had lived a life of fighting for the Revolution for as long as he could remember, and he had naturally in that time fought and killed members of Cipher Pol.

But never had he – nor anyone else that he knew of – had the opportunity that was facing him now.

Unlimited access to a true Celestial Dragon’s ship was not something that anyone had planned for the mission.

Not to mention the hundreds of slaves that he had freed from the ship – nearly all of which would become loyal soldiers for the Revolution – the amount of potential data was enormously important.

To his mild surprise there were even a lot of technological devices on the ship, too.

Things that Sabo had never seen before despite being familiar with high technology.

‘Case and point…’ he thought to himself, pulling out of the drawer what looked like an ornate hand mirror, only this mirror had a strange looking face in it.

It looked like something Sabo had never seen before. Like a wide-angle shot of a strange human face.

The only reason he even called it a ‘human’ face was because of its red eyes.

Red with a circular iris around a small black pupil, Sabo held the mirror closer to his face to get a better look, only now recognizing that the object seemed to be wearing a crown of…

‘Wires?’ thought he.

And bringing the mirror even closer to his face, intending to get a good look, when the figure also leaned forward…

And it said in a booming mechanical voice:

“Intruder!
Trespasser!
Interloper!
Outlaw!

WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE!”

“GAH-HAAHAA!” screamed Sabo, as he fumbled the mirror in his hands.

With his chest thumping, it was no exaggeration to say that he almost had a heart attack in that moment, and in his panic and ignoring the long codes and violations being called out by the mirror, he shoved it in his big black bag and ran off the Celestial Dragon’s ship.

Moving fast with his adrenaline racing, the mirror stopped talking, and making his way back to his ship he threw the bag down on the deck – not seeming to realize that it had burst open.

“Don’t touch it! I got something to do!” He called out to the slaves that he had freed from Saint Camael’s ship.

Intending to go rendezvous with Lindbergh, Max, and Oliver, Sabo crisscrossed the buildings and streets but stopped when he ran into a woman that he recognized.

It was one of Gild Tesoro’s executives, Baccarat.

Surrounded by guards who were pulling huge carts, Sabo had no idea what she was doing, but figured this was a good time to strike.

As for Baccarat being a beautiful woman? Who cared, is what Sabo thought.

He knew clearly that while evil was often ugly and twisted, sometimes, evil was the most beautiful thing in the world.

Extending a thin metal pole that he had kept on his hip, he aimed to make it quick.

Jumping down with a speed that would have matched Rob Lucci, Sabo swung… and missed?

Stumbling over his own 2 feet, Sabo tripped and tumbled over and over, and getting up somewhat embarrassed, tried it again.

Not noticing that Baccarat had touched the guards following her, nor realizing that she had stolen their luck in the process, Sabo swung again – missed again – and when he smashed into the ground hit a gas line.

The gas line exploded, killing many of the guards but leaving Baccarat untouched, and sent Sabo flying off into the distance.

Landing with a huge crash and getting up woozy this time, he took a step forward only to step in the direction of a collapsing billboard – which hit him directly on top of the head and proceeded to bury him under rubble.

Knocked out, the soon-to-be 2nd in Command for the Revolutionary Army was snoring underneath the wreckage of a massive golden billboard, and it would be half a day before he woke up.

*************************************************************************

Working hard and rushing people onto ships Bill, Foxy, Borodo, and Nelson spread out different messages to the people they were evacuating.

While they were doing everything they could to get as many people away as possible, while at the same time confusing the story, Lindbergh and the Revolutionary Army members had made it to their ships and finding an open notebook that said ‘Left’ on the deck of their main ship, took it as a sign that Sabo had something come up.

As much as Bill’s men believed in him, Sabo’s men did the same, and his disappearance, while confusing, didn’t raise any alarms.

Besides, with the things he had gathered it was assumed that he had finished his task of ransacking the Celestial Dragons ship, and that alone was enough.

The evacuation by the Marines and ‘gun barrel’ recruitment by the Revolutionary Army continued for hours, and tens of thousands of people had fled.

But figuring that there were still at least 30,000 people in the floating city – most of whom were Gild’s debt slaves that were too afraid to flee – Bill decided to change course when he saw the Marine Escort getting very close.

Before cutting off the lights, he sounded the alarms for everyone to hunker down.

Moving the prisoners from the Frontier Run, those female pirates who had thought to rob them the day before, to safety, Bill moved helter-skelter preparing for what was about to happen.

By now the giant sea turtles that pulled Gran Tesoro were long gone, and the sea was stirring.

*************************************************************************

Vice Admiral [Gion], standing at the front of the lead ship, looked forward with a scowl.

She had told Lucci and the other CP Agents to not leave their protection, but none of them even tried to convince Saint Camael to stay close.

And now, looking ahead through the darkness, she saw dozens and dozens of ships sailing away from Gran Tesoro which was completely dark.

Naturally from the viewpoint of the Marines who were meant to escort Saint Camael, a darkened Gran Tesoro was a huge red flag.

Wondering if they were close enough for her to Moon Step over, her eyes suddenly drifted away from the outline of the dark city, and off to the side, the water began to rise.

And rise.

And rise.

It was like a mountain range suddenly sprang up from the ocean…

And finally, a light was turned on that illuminated the entire surrounding ocean.

Looking wide eyed, with her cigarette falling out of her mouth, Gion and the other Marines were stunned to see a sea king of the largest class… a true Island Eater.

Turning around fast to order the cannons to be readied, although she didn’t know what their cannons would do to a monster that size, she heard the Marines shout in surprise and turned around to see… to see that…

[Gran Tesoro] had been swallowed whole.