The Marine

Over the coming days as Acier began to familiarize himself with the hypothesis and experiments of Dr. Indigo’s work and the potential of the Organoid machine, Bill made several inlays to the various research departments and their newest ideas that they had come up with when he was away.

Going up to the 3rd level of New Haven, towards his own laboratory, Bill looked around and couldn’t help himself but marvel at what had been accomplished.

It was exactly noon, and with the musical chimes ringing out from New Havens several Diamond Clocks, the Marine Base and research island had turned into something different than it had been before its near complete destruction at the hands of Shiki’s flying armada.

Before the destruction, New Haven had been a quaint modern-style island with remnants of the primitive colonial-era town that had been there before. Isolated and near the Calm Belt, smaller in population than most Marine bases, the old New Haven undoubtedly had its charm – but that charm was mostly in the eye of the beholder.

But after years of reconstruction from the ground up, and after having years of plentiful resources to work with, New Haven took on a new form.

Behind the imposing Marine harbor-fortress and on the other side of the drydocks, rows of whitewashed single-family homes dotted along the beach and the lower level was filled with residential neighborhoods, restaurants, and shops.

From the residential sector, following alongside the wide thoroughfares on moving sidewalks, residents and workers could make their way up to the 2nd level of the island which housed a mixture of concert halls, schools, parks and artificial lakes.

The parks were filled with strange non-dangerous animals and colorful birds, the lakes were filled with fish, and in certain areas there were exhibitions of unique inventions going on most of the time.

These exhibitions carried behind them the weight of potential investment and the inventions ranged from new ways to use Bubble Technology, to new ways to use Field Technology, to robotic top hats, to shoes that tied themselves, or to anything else under the sun that could be dreamed up by the island’s kids or made by Science Division workers in their free time.

From the natural sector, moving still either on the moving sidewalks or on floating buses that maneuvered over the wide thoroughfares, workers could continue to go upwards until they reached the highest level of the island.

This was the largest sector by land area, and housed the research and futuristic islands manufacturing plants, laboratories, and power plants.

Filled with metallic towers that flashed in all colors and which held various manufacturing plants, the manufacturing sector had the distinct look of a place hundreds of years more advanced than anywhere in the world besides Egghead Island.

And it was no surprise either, after all, Bill had acquired much of Eggheads Technology from Vegapunk, only to then make it public and freely accessible!

Of course, the world of the Grand Line was still an archipelago that covered vast distances, and Bill releasing so much of Egghead Islands technology couldn’t physically travel as easily as it would have on Earth.

Still, with the background of music as the Diamond Clocks rang, with the occasional spark of electricity, or with the pop of bubble shields that were coming in and out of existence while various tests were being run, the natural creativity of humanity was shown in all its glory.

Landing down near to the Robo-phase laboratory ran by Henzo, Bill was greeted by several men and women who were either coming or going, and with each face and with each name, he couldn’t help but think of their origins.

Of all the new people that New Haven had attracted over the years, the former Clockwork Island engineers were the brightest minds on the island and made up a disproportionate number of head researchers and design leaders that Bill employed.

From teams that designed the Departments renovated ships, to the teams responsible for improving the Rivet Rifles and King Cannons, to the teams that worked directly under Henzo designing new designs for the Iron Wardens, to teams working on the islands bubble shields, nearly all had those first refuges contributing in some very important ways.

This was even true in his own laboratory, where teams of technicians constantly monitored the nuclear reactor that Bill had assembled, and the head of those teams was a brilliant young man from Clockwork Island.

But putting that all aside, Bill quickly went into his laboratory and then into his main research station.

Modelled heavily based off Vegapunks own laboratory that had existed on Marineford, Bill’s laboratory specialized in robotics manufacturing and cybernetic computing but there was a plethora of machines that could be used for his other interests.

From synthesizing various metallic alloys, particularly biometals and seastone, to schematic stations where Bill was tinkering with more efficient ways to streamline New Haven’s factories, Bill’s form of science tended to skew heavily into pure ‘engineering’ instead of pure research.

This didn’t bother him much; Bill knew that he could never independently imagine how to create Dr. Vegapunks ‘Satellites’ or Warden Isaacs ‘Robots’ or Acier’s ‘Pure Gold’ or even Dr. Indigo’s ‘SIQ’ – but – give him an ounce of inspiration, give him any problem on paper to solve, and he was confident that he could streamline and produce even better products than the original creators had imagined.

Part of this was because Bill never forgot anything that he didn’t want to, he never had to go back and compare notes or look back over schematics.

But a larger part was that his mind, even back on Earth, was suited to seeing patterns

With all the patterns he had seen in the past, everything from how electricity surged to how cities and beehives were organized, the ability to map on that knowledge to just about anything served Bill well.

And so, walking into his laboratory and seeing everything was how he left it, Bill went straight to the suite where Sabo was hiding.

His goal for the rest of the day was to get Sabo to leave and hide on the still-wild West Island and to give one more look over the [Iron Wardens] that he planned to present to Admiral Kizaru.

Knocking on the door to the small bedroom, Bill entered without waiting for Sabo to answer, and found the revolutionary laying on the bed with his feet kicked up and reading the latest news from the World Economy News Paper.

Seeing Sabo unsurprised that he had come wasn’t shocking, Bill knew that the revolutionary had at least some form of precognition and in general very strong Observation Haki, but hearing what was said made him stone faced…

“Hey, Phill! Did you see this?!” asked the blond-haired revolutionary as he slapped the paper with the back of his hand.

“You know that’s not my name, but yes, I read it earlier. It’s unreliable, but that’s what the WENP is known for…” answered Bill, annoyed that Sabo never called him by his name.

Whether this was done or purpose or not was a legitimate question though, because despite his prowess, Bill recognized that Sabo wasn’t quite all there sometimes.

And this was further reinforced when the man just nodded alone, and responding: “Right, right, but listen, the news is that the Payback War is just about over and that the Whitebeard Pirates have been scattered… really, what are you Marines doing letting a guy like Blackbeard run around?!”

Slightly shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head, Bill didn’t react strongly, but just replied: “That’s not my department, I’m Science Division, besides, it’s better for everyone to let them kill each other, but that’s not why I’m here.”

Hearing Bill’s nonchalant answer, Sabo jumped up from the bed immediately and emotionally said: “But that’s where you need to get to, man, don’t you Marines understand that the Whitebeard Pirates were stabilizing the New World?! Now this…” it was Sabo’s turn to shake his head as he continued to talk: “… this animal Blackbeard is going to overturn decades of stability! What about the people there?! Just because they don’t live on islands controlled by the corrupt World Government you can just leave them to their fates?!”

Seeing Sabo riled up, Bill did not want to have this discussion with him again.

Almost from the time he woke up, Sabo had been debating and arguing with Bill about the ‘power structure’ at every opportunity he got.

For starters, Bill didn’t necessarily believe it was the Marines responsibility to protect islands not affiliated with the World Government.

The Marines were constantly being assailed and despite countermeasures, they could never know if the next ship they ran into held a powerful pirate who would gladly kill them all and take whatever valuables they held.

This wasn’t to say that Marines were innocent lambs, or that there weren’t Marines who abused their power, but by and large the Marines were a spread-out force contending with criminals from all corners of the world.

And as for the Whitebeard Pirates in particular?

Bill didn’t know how Blackbeard could be any worse!

It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that the Summit War had bled Marineford of its core veteran force, while revealing a massive weakness in the organization as a whole.

That weakness was the reason for the Seven Warlords of the Sea, it was the reason for the Pacifista, it was the reason that Bill himself wanted to implement the Iron Wardens… it was because while the Marines didn’t automatically lose out in terms of their strongest fighters, in terms of the mid-to-high level superhumans there was an explicit and severe deficiency!

Once superhumans reached a certain level, they were more akin to forces of nature – Bill himself fell into this category alongside the Admirals, but so did the Lieutenants of every Pirate Emperor… not to mention the Emperors themselves.

But if generally the Marines didn’t lose out in terms of top strength, then what about the superhumans just under that level, those like Sabo?

At that level of strength, a superhuman simply could not be killed by conventional means unless they were totally exhausted. These people, like Mad Treasure for example, could sink Marine Battleships and decimate Marine Bases on their own without greatly risking their lives.

For these types of people, and the New World had them in relative abundance, how could the Marines really be expected to safeguard the islands that didn’t pitch in to help?

But, not saying all of this because Bill didn’t want to get into another debate with Sabo, he simply just said: “Well, here’s a thought, you go and tell Dragon everything you just said to me, and you Revolutionaries can go to the New World and protect those islands unaffiliated with the World Government.

And hey, while doing that, you can see how well ‘anarchy’ actually works in the real world!”

For Bill, anarchy was the collapse of the Roman Empire, the collapse of Alexanders Empire, or the collapse of any number of Chinese Empires.

Anarchy wasn’t a state without government, anarchy was a state where there were too many governments!

Whether those governments were individual family units, or family clans, or tribes, or towns, or city-states – the breakdown of traditional power structures guaranteed war on a constant basis.

On Earth, the examples of that were too many for Bill to describe and that’s why, even after meeting a Celestial Dragon and Cipher Pol, he would fight tooth and nail to reform the World Government system but not to demolish it completely…

Whether or not the Revolutionaries could ever understand his reasoning, Bill wasn’t too concerned about it. He wouldn’t attempt to harm Sabo now, but that was only him repaying a favor.

If they met in the future on different sides, Sabo would need to either quickly retreat, quickly surrender, or quickly become ready to meet his maker.

Naturally, all of this was left unsaid, and Bill knew that Sabo likely felt the same way.

When they clashed before Bill had the upper hand, but he hadn’t shown such an upper hand that Sabo’s natural confidence would be shaken.

So, listening to Sabo give him another lecture on how evil the World Government was – and Bill didn’t deny that the Celestial Dragons were evil – he finally told the Revolutionary what he had come to say:

“Listen, in a few days Marine forces will arrive here, and in a week or so after that, a larger force will be coming behind them…” seeing Sabo’s eyes light up, ready to try and rope him again into the ‘struggle’, Bill rolled his own and continued: “… they’re not coming to fight but to deal with Gran Tesoro, and I can’t have you here. Do you understand?”

Logically leaving out the fact that an Admiral was on the way, Bill shrugged off Sabo’s excited comment of ‘Sure! just give me a boat and a log pose and I’m gone!’ because the only boats that were on New Haven were Marine ships and Bill needed to account for all his assets.

But again, keeping that to himself, he looked at Sabo evenly and told him simply: “That won’t work, you’ll have to move to West Island and survive there… ehhh, yeah, when the forces from Marineford leave I’ll make sure there’s a small ship ready for you. West Island is a wild and dangerous place, but with your strength, you’ll survive… and who knows, you may gain something.”

Seeing Bill trying to sell the idea to him, Sabo laughed out loud, and said: “Just a couple of months? No problem! But you’d better keep your word about the boat!”

Unknown to Bill, Sabo had spent his youth surviving in a jungle.

Unknown to Sabo, the death jungles created by Shiki were nothing like what he had experienced in the East Blue…

Still, with his agreement, Bill smuggled Sabo out of his lab at night. With New Haven’s security systems, it wasn’t easy, but given both of their abilities there probably wasn’t anywhere on the planet that they couldn’t sneak in to.

Seeing that done, Bill breathed a sigh of relief, then went back to his lab.

Sasha and Yoko would be coming back in a couple of days, and they’d be bringing with them the former Admiral, Zephyr.

Bill liked the old man who had saved his crew those years ago, but more importantly, he planned to use Zephyr as a test case before he met with Kizaru and Tensie… and to ensure that he’d gain a staunch supporter, he wanted to work on the Iron Wardens.

He wouldn’t get much sleep over the next couple of days, but everything had to work.

‘It’ll be fine…’ he said to himself, not sure if he was referring to the sales pitch, or the investigation itself.