The Marine

Waking up twelve hours after he had gone to bed, Bill felt great.

Over the last month he had only taken micro-naps, but those were for nothing besides keeping the ‘engine’ going... but now that his body finally had some time to recuperate, he felt stronger and more ready to tackle the day than ever.

It was a good thing too, because no sooner than Bill walked into his Headquarters on New Haven, he walked into a frenzied mess of Marines running to-and-fro.

Along with secretaries who had bags under their eyes, preparing and organizing the detailed statements from the Marines who went to Gran Tesoro; Logistical officers carried physical copies of work orders that were either coming in or going out.

And seeing all of this, Bill himself didn’t rush.

Getting a cup of coffee from a mug kept near the water cooler, he was a picture of serenity despite the tornado of action around him as he walked to his office.

By now it had been six days since he had gotten back to the island, and seeing two mountains of documents on his desk, he didn’t fret.

Of course, he was not ignorant to the significance of the assassination of a World Noble, nor was he ignorant to the fact that Marineford had been calling for him to personally respond for five days,

It was only that dealing with the former debt slaves, merchants, pirates, and former security personnel had taken all of his time.

And now, so many days later, he knew he would have a lot to answer for anyway, so why rush?

Sitting down and looking over them, one mountain of documents was about their efforts in the East Blue. Pirate encounters, construction projects in the Goa and Frauce Kingdoms, Marine family transfers, about pay, and about requisitions requests from PIB – the Procurements Intelligence Bureau – about the expansion into the South Blue.

Thinking to himself, Bill thought that he had to give [Bascud] new orders… the plan before had been to start reaching into the West Blue for whatever commissions they could get.

But now that Beli wouldn’t be an issue for them for quite some time, he needed the former Bounty Hunter to focus on other things, particularly involving the Nobility who had seats in the World Summit.

Or otherwise known as the [Levely].

But putting that aside for the moment, Bill moved to the other mountain of documents on his desk.

These were the incident reports at Gran Tesoro starting from the time they docked at the casino city to the time when Bill pulled them to New Haven.

Each of these documents had to be gone over again and made sure to be arranged in a clear and detailed manner.

Because once they were submitted, there would be no do-overs, Bill knew that Marineford would have teams of investigators combing over the reports – looking for any discrepancies whatsoever...

First putting through the paperwork for his Marines pay, including the family transfers, Bill started to work on his own report.

First, he read the mountain of reports to see what exactly had been written, turning one page at a time he could read at a pace of one page per second.

Although his mind hadn’t been empowered to the extent that his body was, after Life Return Bill did not forget things when he didn’t want to.

He never had to go back and recheck something to make sure, he never had to write down page numbers for reference.

This is what made him such a good engineer and organizer – and far exceeded the abilities he had back on Earth.

But it was also what made it so that after about an hour his desk had become an ‘organized’ disaster zone with papers seemingly everywhere as he marked off certain accounts in leu for others.

Taking things one issue at a time, Bill worked until he felt stomps coming from down the hall, recognized who it was by their footsteps, and quickly held down all the papers so that they didn’t go flying.

*BANG!*

“Blimey! They’re coming, Bill, they’re coming!”

Looking at Nelson who had just swung his door open without knocking, he was about to admonish his deputy but seeing the alarm on his face, Bill instead slowly removed his hands from his papers and said: “Calm down, now, who’s coming?”

Fidgeting as Bill said this, Nelson nodded his head, and looked back before slamming the door hard – scattering the papers that Bill had just saved.

“It’s not just the Cipher Pol or the Investigation Bureau…” Walking down to sit in front of his desk, Nelson continued: “They’re sending a fleet to investigate Gran Tesoro, headed by Admiral Kizaru himself…!”

Being cut off before he could speak, Nelson said: “But that’s not all! Along with the Admiral are two Vice Admirals and the head of the Investigation Bureau himself!”

Nodding that he understood, Bill was putting the papers back where they belonged and asked cooly: “Alright, so who’re the Vice Admirals and… and… I know that the Head of Marineford’s Investigation Bureau is a man named Tensie… but I don’t know much about him, how about you?”

Looking exasperated by Bill’s nonchalance, Nelson quipped for him to ‘get serious!’ before adding: “Onigumo and Dalmatian… tsk… and bloody hell, what’s there to say about Tensie? The man is a black hole…”

For the others Bill wasn’t too concerned about but hearing that they had sent Vice Admiral Dalmatian was something to make him focus.

Dogs can smell anything and so could people who had eaten Mut-Mut Zoan Devil Fruits, and right now, Bill had one of the most Wanted men in the world hiding in his laboratory.

If Vice Admiral Dalmatian had smelled any scent of Sabo before, it was game over unless Bill did something.

But still being nonchalant about the whole thing, Bill just told Nelson that they had done nothing wrong and to stop worrying, adding that he planned to Fax Snail the incident report to Marineford by the end of the day.

“How do you know about this anyway?” asked Bill, and to his surprise, Nelson answered that it was Smoker to had contacted him.

“He was in Marineford getting promoted to Vice Admiral…” Nelson said, then added softly as he began to think about something else: “… good show, that one.”

Glad for his friend, Bill thought about Smoker, Tashigi, Gin, and Pearl and wondered how they were doing, before nodding in agreement with Nelson that the older Marine earned it.

And, as if to rain on his parade, Bill was only slightly tense when Nelson claimed that Smoker had told him that they were coming to New Haven with eight Battleships.

An Admiral, two veteran Vice Admirals, a high ranking Marineford Agent, and Eight Battleships was essentially a Buster Call – and that hadn’t escaped Bill’s attention.

For himself, he wasn’t too worried, after his battle with Shiki and then dealing with Gran Tesoro Bill wasn’t arrogant but instead he now had a good understanding of the strength held by the world’s most powerful forces.

Sitting at his desk now and listening to Nelson, while he would not claim to be the most powerful individual in the Grand Line, at least with his understanding, he judged himself not lacking in that regard.

Able to lift a mountain and if he had to he could Slow Time with his Observation Haki, or even make time itself stand still for a few moments, and Bill judged that to be enough to deal with most any threat.

Not to mention, at the physical age of 25, Bill believed he still had at least five years to go before his strength peaked.

However, as Bill’s own prowess had grown so had his responsibility and now it wasn’t a question of how dangerous such a Marine force represented to him personally, it was a question of how much danger such a force represented to the people under him.

All of this ran through his mind in an instant after Nelson had informed him about the force on its way from Marineford, but instead of showing any worry, Bill just repeated: “It doesn’t matter how many come, we’ve done nothing wrong…” letting that sink in, he repeated it to Nelson before continuing:

“… In fact, Nelson, this is a good thing. When Admiral Kizaru and the Chief Investigator arrive, in addition to fully complying with the investigation, we can present to him the [Iron Wardens] and [Minds] and make our sales pitch.”

Over the years Bill had been keeping up with the development of the Pacifista and despite his disgust for the cloning project would readily admit that those freaks of nature were very powerful.

There were many factors, but a single [Pacifista] could be relied on to take down Pirates with Bounties between 100-300m Beli in any theater besides the New World.

His [Iron Wardens] were not that powerful, individually able to reliably handle pirates up to around 100m Beli Bounties, but their main benefit, and the main benefit that he hoped to impress on Marineford, was simply that they were cheaper and more easily transferrable.

A Pacifista cost as much as a battleship, or in other words, northwards of 400-500m Beli, and Pacifista were cyborgs that needed to eat, sleep, and had a core of biology process that couldn’t be ignored.

Compared to an Iron Warden which cost about an eighth of that, around 50m Beli each, and were pure machines that could be ‘easily’ repaired or be turned off and on, there was a significant military advantage to be had.

The [Minds] were more expensive than Iron Wardens, almost the same price as a Pacifista, but [Minds] were not designed to get involved in any conflict and could control dozens of Iron Wardens at once.

All of this was what it came down to.

Bill knew that Marineford and the World Government were not idiots nor weaklings. If they knew he had killed the Celestial Dragon then all bets were off, they would hunt him down and exterminate everyone involved.

With that being said, Bill would never, ever, speak of the incident involving the World Noble or Cipher Pol – Sabo had taken credit for the assassinations, and Bill let him have it unconditionally.

So, leveraging his own strength alongside his Departments research, Bill bet that these things would sway those in power to not become needlessly accusatory, and he would come through this potential crisis.

In fact, he would come out of it better than ever.

Having calmed down a lot, Nelson listened to Bill easily when he told him that everything would be fine, and to have Borodo put half of the gold back in Gran Tesoro’s vault.

They wouldn’t return the true treasures and would keep roughly 5b Beli in gold coins and paper notes, but he didn’t want it to look like they had pilfered everything.

At the end of the day, he knew when to let go.

Seeing Nelson off, Bill finished his reports and sent them to Marineford through a Fax Snail.

After that, while it was still mid-day, he finally contacted Sasha, Yoko, and then Ranse.

With Sasha, it was half business and half personal. She wanted the report about what had happened on Gran Tesoro as much as Marineford did, and he told her pieces of it – things that he was comfortable saying over the Snail – but besides that it was her reporting to him Yoko’s mischief and the news from INFERNO Island, in particular, the work done by Dr. Indigo.

With Yoko, Bill didn’t threaten any punishment, he knew that while she was a good person, she was too headstrong for harsh medicine to work on. Instead, in recognition of her exploits, he offered her and her entire crew to be transferred to the East Blue Marine Headquarters, where he could guarantee her the rank of Commodore.

This, for Yoko, was a nail in the coffin that she could never accept.

Little East Blue Island, or New Haven, was her home, and Bill was the only family she had known for half her life.

So, after crying and telling him that she was wrong, she recommended that she should be punished by staying on New Haven or only leaving the island with him, and despite seeing her game – as all along she had only wanted to go to the South Blue with him in the first place – he agreed to wait before having her reassigned.

Then finally, Bill got in touch with Ranse, perhaps his first real ‘friend’ in this world and heard from the cowboy that he had been summoned to Marineford to be promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral.

For Marineford, Ranse was just one of many moving pieces during the ongoing World-Wide Draft, but for Bill it was a gut-punch, as not only was Ranse the 2nd strongest individual in the Procurements Department, but he was also the only one who Bill had to truly oversee their work in the East Blue.

All across the world Marines from the Lower Seas were being reassigned to Marine Headquarters, and new draftees took their places in the Blues.

Bill didn’t know the extent of it all, but rumors had it that the Marines had found a handful of very powerful individuals and had convinced at least one to sign up directly.

But that was still hearsay to him, Ranse being called up was critical to his operations.

For the time being, Ranse had put Pearson in charge of the efforts in Gray Quarter, but Pearson wasn’t suitable for the role of meeting with the various leaders like Ranse was.

Ricky was Bill’s best replacement option, but he wouldn’t want to go to the East Blue unless Sasha went too, and losing Sasha’s strength would be hard to replace.

Especially if he himself was called up to do anything…

This added one additional point of stress to him, but Bill couldn’t just stop working in order to worry about the future.

He had been putting it off for almost a week, but the last thing he did that day was to finally meet up with Acier Myskina.

The creator of Pure Gold had already agreed to work for him, and even if he had lost a step after living with the dinosaurs, it wasn’t an exaggeration to put Acier on the same level as Vegapunk himself.

At least, in the realm of Chemistry, Acier’s brilliance undoubtedly exceeded Vegapunk’s.

Though naturally, as the genius who created the immortal element [Pure Gold], Acier wasn’t just a Chemist, and Bill planned to use him to oversee a lot of the work that Dr. Indigo was doing.

In the best world Acier and Dr. Indigo would be an absolute powerhouse research team, together they could make Bio-Chemical technology and methods advance hundreds of years into the future, but Bill didn’t have such high hopes in reality.

After all, Dr. Indigo was certifiably insane and Acier had lived with the dinosaurs for 200 years…

This would limit what they could do, but that didn’t mean they weren’t still absolute geniuses in their fields, and Bill would use them the best he could.

So, later in the evening, when Bill was no longer feeling as great as he had in the morning, he met with Acier and Olga in their new home and handed over their papers of citizenship, the deed to their new property, and the research notes submitted by Dr. Indigo.

“I’m not expecting you to see these notes and have any great insights but familiarize yourself with the work that he’s doing with the IQ Plant, when Commander Zima returns, I’ll take you over to INFERNO Island and you can oversee his lab then.”

 Nodding his head that he understood, Acier asked Bill did he have any projects that he wanted him to work on, and after thinking about it, Bill answered: “The main project will still revolve around the Organoids and enhancing soldiers strength without the massive side affects of SIQ… but besides that…”

Bill thought for a moment, before smiling and saying: “… I’d like you to work on a new kind of Fuel, something more potent than Dihydrogen… hm… now, Acier I don’t know if this is real or not, I’ll need your expertise, but I’ve heard of an element that you may be able to synthesize…”

Then pausing again, Bill thought before saying: “… the properties of this element aren’t much less miraculous than the Pure Gold, but instead of immortality, it’s said to be able to bend space-time itself to a certain degree.”

Hearing this, Acier shot up, and his attention was fully on Bill, asking him what the element was called.

“It’s called [Element 115] … but to understand that name, this is how it was explained to me… you see, there’s something called the Periodic Table of Elements, and it goes something like this…”