The Marine

Felt but unheard by the city above, a series of deep ‘BLOOMPS!’ and ‘WHUMPS!’ shook the ocean beneath Gran Tesoro’s hull.

With the outer hull designed with rivets similar to pegs, each massive seastone plate was lined with dots which had to be forcibly pushed and twisted into the ships skeletal-like structure.

It was a job unfit for a man to do but Bill had been doing it for the better part of 5 days.

During this time he had been practically unreachable to the outside world. After staging the repairs, he had to isolate himself into a highly pressurized cargo hold – one that Vegapunk himself had designed and one that made it possible to access the underbelly of the city without risking sinking the massive vessel.

The pressure in the isolated cargo hold had to be equal to the pressure of the water down below, and this meant that besides the few number of Bill’s Marines keeping watch in an observation room, he was practically alone.

Moving from one task to the next, day by day, Bill had barely noticed the passage of time, even his Marines started to look bored after the first day.

But whereas these Marines had heard of the feats their Commodore had pulled off before, and seen him in action against Mad Treasure, the maintenance crew of Gran Tesoro had no such knowledge and given after 5 days looked pale at what they were witnessing through the video monitors.

BLOOMP

WHUMP

BLOOMP

Every single time Bill set in place a massive plate of seastone the ship city above would jostle, every time he pressed in a giant peg the underdeck would experience tremor-like vibrations.

These tremors had naturally affected the gambling above and many many people had lost fortunes or gained extravagant wealth due to them.

BLOOMP

WHUMP

BLOOMP

It had taken him almost 6 days of almost nonstop work, but finally, he was done.

Now, despite being weary he knew it was time to go above deck.

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

After the first day, annoyed by the ongoing quakes, Gild had sent his newest Executive to see what was going on.

Her name was Carina, a songstress able to catch Gild Tesoro’s fancy spoke enough for her singing talent.

She was beautiful and skilled, but what made her perfect in Gild’s judgement was that she had the natural arrogance and pomp that all Gran Tesoro Executives had to have.

And to put it mildly, in the view of everyone around her, Carina was the complete package as she walked into the room of greasy mechanics – nose up in the air and face half covered with a fan.

As it turned out, unknown to Gild or anyone else in the city, Carina’s singing skills was only second to her acting ability, and perhaps no one would have ever found out about the woman had it not been for one thing…

At the time when she went to interrogate the mechanics, Borodo was one of the Marines in the observation room.

And he knew Carina very well.

It had to be said that the professional thieves of the [East Blue] were a small community, and even smaller was the community of thieves that targeted pirate crews.

‘Cat Burglar’, ‘Phantom Thief’, ‘Thief Brothers’, and ‘Springhill Jack’ were exceptionally notorious thieves of the [East Blue] who would target pirates and nobles alike.

So when she looked at him, and he at her… time seemed to pause.

It had been 6 years since they had saw one another, and both thought the same thing: ‘Is (he)(she) on a job?’

For Borodo who had put that life of crime behind him, he naturally became defensive – fully knowing what Carina was capable of.

For Carina, she got defensive too, but figuring that her cover was better than his, directly escorted him away ignoring the protests of the Marines – the maintenance crew was too afraid to dare and protest.

Speaking half in insinuations and half in lies, Carina brought Borodo to a place where there was no surveillance and asked sharply: “What do you think you’re doing here? No wonder I hadn’t heard anything about you back then, why are you disguised as a Marine?! When did you leave the East Blue?!”

Seeing her get riled up, Borodo didn’t want anything to do with her, so speaking as clearly as he could, he said: “It’s not a disguise, I joined the Marines…” “Yeah right!” snaped Carina, crossing her arms across her chest defensively, but Borodo continued: “No, I really joined the Marines, the Science Division to be exact.”

Seeing Carina’s doubtful glare, he said calmly: “Look, the story is too long to tell, but I’m not here on a ‘job’, I’m not here for any other reason than to help the Head of my Department fill a work order.”

Hesitating for a moment, Borodo tilted his head slightly before adding: “Listen, I don’t like the feel of this place, it feels… well… it feels like those bad places where you have to constantly look over your shoulder, not knowing who you can trust, constantly worried about being stabbed in the back, it’s a feeling that I haven’t had in years Carina… I want your help.

I just want to get through these next few weeks, after that, I will see to it that our crew leaves immediately.

No jobs, no lies, no games.”

Looking at the man from the East Blue, Carina shrugged and said wistfully: “I don’t see how I can help you, I'm not the master of the city... oh, but I have heard a rumor!”

Saying this, she stopped, and Borodo groaned.

He could be greedy, back when he was ‘working’ he could be manipulative too.

But in the entire East Blue, the thieves known as [Cat Burglar] and [Phantom Thief] were in leagues of their own, and seeing Carina pause he knew she wanted payment.

Asking through his teeth “is it a big rumor?” he sighed when she nodded, and in a quick motion brought up his cybernetic arm, twisted off his cybernetic pinky finger and held it out.

Ignoring her screech, he said: “This pinky is a weapon, don’t look down on it. It will fire three laser beams each capable of sinking a small ship.

The charge will never dissipate… and here…” saying this, he adjusted the pinky, making it look like a cheap bracelet that had a red light on it.

“Is this good enough?”

With his arm stretched back out, Carina took the weapon and asked some more questions about it.

Once she was satisfied, she smiled sweetly and said: “There’s a rumor that a certain blue ship is going to be attacked in about 6 days. Now, something else you may find funny, Gild, oh that’s the Master of Gran Tesoro, he loves eating mutton!”

After she said this, Carina left with a smile and a new bracelet, and Borodo returned to his men with a neutral look on his face and made a joke that the Executive just 'wanted his number'.

Outwardly he was cool, but inwardly he was nervous. After all, he wasn’t born yesterday and clearly understood her warning.

He didn’t know how, but he knew that the news of the Pure Gold must have gotten out.

Tapping his foot on the ground to calm himself, he thought about his next moves and made a choice. He couldn’t tell Nelson or any of the other officers and he had to tell Bill in a way that wasn’t obvious.

Waiting to the end of his shift, he acted naturally and waited for Bill to resurface, when they spoke the discussion sounded like this: “Ah, good work today, Commodore Ox. You’re really knocking it out of the park.”

For anyone not familiar with their crew, this sounded like something the Officer may say to his Commodore, but for those who knew, nobody casually spoke about how much work Bill could do.

When it came to physical labor, Bill was simply outside normal logic.

But to the man himself, he didn’t see anything wrong with the comment and laughing replied back: “Yeah, once I got used to the water and figured out the layout of the hull it all started coming together nicely.”

Nodding at this, though Bill couldn’t see it as they were talking through an intercom, Borodo continued and ‘asked’: “So, you think it’ll take 5 days to finish?”

“Nah, more like 8 or 9 then we can start on the ballast pumps… those should be a lot simpler.” Answered Bill, just casually talking after several hours of hammering together the hull.

But Borodo wouldn’t leave it there, and continued to ‘ask’: “Ah, 8 to 9 was the high-end estimate, but Commodore, you know our timetable was set to be done in 5 days, can it be done?”

Now this sort of question disguised as a demand was something Bill was absolutely not used to. Even on Earth he hadn’t had anyone not shoot it to him straight since he retired as a teacher.

To put it simply, it had been over 50 years since someone had made a demand in that fashion to him, and he was taken aback by it.

But remembering who he was, who Borodo was, and what situation they were in, Bill didn’t break the flow of conversation when he responded: “It depends… I could be done in 5 days, but we’ll just have to see how hard the other installations are.”

By saying he ‘could be done’, Bill was actually saying ‘it will definitely be done’ and Borodo knew that, so dropped the topic and spoke about other mundane things.

By the end of the conversation, like a hot potato that had been passed, Borodo felt better, but Bill felt a mixture of confusion and frustration.

With that done, Borodo decided to wait on the ship for the next few days.

He may have lost his pinky finger, but his cybernetic arm had more to offer than just a few laser beams, and even if Bill couldn’t make it, Borodo would not allow Miyagi to stand on his own.

Unknown to him, it was a good thing he did too, because while he went back to the ship, he added just enough presence that the few disguised men decided to not attempt any sabotage.

It was a gamble that they weren’t willing to take.

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

Feeling the ground slightly shake under him, Nelson walked with a small group of Marines through Gran Tesoro’s main harbor.

Being the quintessential navy many, Nelson legitimately loved looking at ships of different shapes and sizes. Judging them against each other, he held imaginary sea battles in his head.

For Foxy the Casino was king, but for Nelson, the best part of the trip was looking at the huge assortment of vessels here.

It had been 4 days since Bill went to work, and ‘by the dragons was he working hard’ Nelson thought to himself.

He could tell this because of the tremors, and how they only stopped a couple of hours each day.

And while Nelson found this to be strange, it was Bill after all, and remembering when he saw Bill rip apart the mountain-sized iron cog that had been around Clockwork Island all those years ago, nothing the man did could really stun him since then.

Plus, out of everyone, Nelson believed he knew Bill’s strength the best.

It had been almost 7 years that they had been together, and during that time, besides perhaps Yoko, Nelson had been with Bill the most. But unlike the girl, he was an adult and so naturally spoke to Bill in such a way that she wouldn’t have.

This was all to say, that though it was strange to see Bill work like he was, it wasn’t anything that made Nelson worry.

Leaning on a railing and looking at the ships, Nelson started pointing them out to the small group of Marines following him.

These young men were the best navigators and logisticians that had been produced by their graduating rookie class, and ones who, if they trained hard, could foreseeably command ships in the future.

“See that one there? Yes, the one with two sails, that brig was designed to ram other ships. You all need to pay attention and watch out for any ship you see with the sails like that. Very bad, yes, very dangerous if it gets close and you’re not prepared.”

Pointing ships out one after the next, suddenly one of the young men spoke up: “Commander Royale, what about ships with oars?”

Turning his head back to the recruit, Nelson laughed and said: “Bloody hell, my boy, ships with oars have been retired decades ago! Perhaps you’ll see small skiffs with oars, but no ocean worthy vessel!”

Going on to say how impractical ships with oars were, Nelson could see the eyes of his small group widen and when one pointed, he turned around, absolutely stunned.

He was stunned because he wasn’t wrong… besides one caveat.

There was only one kind of ship that used oars, and Nelson knew clearly that those oars were worked by slaves.

It was a ship for a Celestial Dragon, and by the gods, he thought the worst when he watched a ship that he had only ever seen one time paddle into Gran Tesoro.

He wanted to run, he wanted to leave.

But he couldn’t. The Marines had set instructions about what to do when a Celestial Dragon was nearby.

No matter what, no matter the circumstance, Marines had to offer the World Noble their full and undivided services.

“Form up!” he hastily ordered, and following alongside the ship, when it stopped, he had his men form a line with him at the head of it.

They stood just like that for over 4 hours, not a single person on the ship acknowledging them.

But eventually, a woman and a small team from Gran Tesoro came – they didn’t look twice at the Marines – and the ships golden bridge extended over.

It was carried by six slaves, who then acted like stairs for a masked man to walk on.

Nelson knew this man wasn’t a World Noble, he knew this man was worse.

‘Cipher Pol…’ thought he, and sure enough, he was correct.

The Agent did at least acknowledge the Marines, though only dismissively at first, he spoke to a beautiful red-haired woman, and turning to Nelson asked him his name, rank, and origin.

For Bill, that question of his ‘origin’ would have been scandalous, but for Nelson, he understood clearly and didn’t dare lie.

“Eh, a Mutt then?” said the Cipher Pol agent, obviously referring to Nelson’s noble lineage.

For the Celestial Dragons, all of the ‘Lower’ Nobility were just Mutts, and gnashing his teeth with a smile, Nelson just accepted the insult.

“Well, at least you’re a Mutt, now listen dog, I am Spandam, member of the CP0, do you know what that means?”

Naturally, Nelson knew exactly what it meant to be CP0, they were the most powerful Cipher Pol agency, the only one directly working underneath the Celestial Dragons.

This man could kill him where he stood and face no consequences, so Nelson shook his head ‘yes’ and the agent continued: “We left our escort behind us aways, you will have the pleasure to go serve as protection duty for Saint Camael and fulfill his every order.”

Wondering if that meant right now, Nelson didn’t move and wished he hadn’t come to the harbor.

But before he could ask, Spandam answered him by slapping him across the face and demanding whether or not the ‘mutt was deaf’.

Hit in front of his men, Nelson felt ashamed, but nonetheless, walked up the golden ramp – even stepping on the slaves as he went.

His men followed behind him.