The Marine

Watching New Haven seem to sprout up directly out of the ground, Bill was primarily focused on his own responsibilities but could not help but to get news trickling in from the outside world.

Only now, some eight months after the execution of Portgas D. Ace the aftermath of the Summit War was finally hitting the [World Economy News Paper].

It was unknown who their sources were, but the speed of breaking news never stopped for months and for Bill it was shocking.

Firstly, [Fleet Admiral Sengoku] would step down from his position. Citing his old age and health for stepping down, there were mixed opinion pieces in the newspapers.

One line of argument claimed that it was due to his failure during the Summit War that he was forcibly ‘retired’. The other line of argument claimed that those were valid reasons to step down honorably and cited the successful handling of the East Blue Beast Wave as a great merit.

No one knew as of yet who would replace him, but it was widely hypothesized that it would either be [Admiral Akainu] or [Admiral Aokiji].

The next peace of earth-shattering news of a renewed war inside the New World. Already dubbed as the [Payback War] the remnants of Whitebeard’s fleet attacked their former comrade-turned-traitor Marshall D. Teach.

Teach himself seemed to appear out of nowhere with a crew of extremely power yet unidentified persons.

As alarming as this was, in Bill’s mind – and no doubt in the mind of many Marines – it was good to let these groups kill each other, after all what was the worst that could happen?

The next piece of big news was the apparent disappearance of Monkey D. Luffy and his entire crew.

Having entered the spotlight of the [World Economy News Paper] during the [Enies Lobby] fiasco, Monkey D. Luffy had played an outsized role during the battle of Marineford.

Having awakened [Conquerors Haki] in such a public way was just the cherry on top, and now he held a massive bounty of 400,000,000 Beli!

Besides these bombshells was an untold number of stories that pertained to tragedies occurring all across the New World and even islands relatively nearby New Haven itself.

It was almost like a plug pulled somewhere had unleashed a wave of ruthless criminals on the ocean.

Suspecting that it was due to a weakened Marine presence, Bill would have never guessed in a million years the truth of the matter.

Indeed, the world kept turning, and despite the monumental shakeups taking place, Bill woke up as per normal and greeting the day he organized what would be the first class of recruits to pass through [I.N.F.E.R.N.O Haven]

There were 275 young men and 75 young women all told, most of whom came with Ranse from the East Blue, but some were brought in by Sasha from various islands in Paradise.

Knowing he had to get this perfect, Bill set up a rotating schedule much like his father had done for him and his friends when they were young.

Professions were necessarily grouped together due to lack of Instructors, but in general the pattern followed this:

Four rotations of three weeks in the wild, one week in the classroom was the standard schedule for Special Operators.

Three rotations of two weeks in the classroom, one week in the gym/shooting range, one week in the wild for those entering technical fields.

Marineford still hadn’t paid out Shiki’s bounty to the Department and despite having prisoners as a domestic workforce, Bill had greenlit an extremely expensive project.

He didn’t need all of these Marine Recruits to be as powerful as Captains or master the [Six Powers], he did need to have them all completely ready for whatever combat they ran into and seamlessly integrate into existing crews under his Departments umbrella.

Of course, if a some of these recruits were standouts and could be selected to join the Elite Special Operators, known as [Beetleborgs], or were stand out Navigators, Surgeons, Mechanics, etc., then all the better.

With that said, Bill would never put his hopes in the one-in-a-thousand chance that they had luckily recruited another Bascud, Borodo, or Pearson.

To say nothing of the one-in-a-million chance that they would recruit a prospect like Rapanui, Carrot, or Adelle.

No, Bill didn’t put much stock into getting those kinds of prospects, and so substituting money for talent, these recruits would be given the best – and worst – resources available.

Leaving his temporary office once the final pieces of paperwork were done, Bill overlooked the skeleton of a city that was peeking out of the ground and steadily growing up.

Using anti-gravity construction machines, the first things being built were the refineries needed to melt down ores and synthesize low quality Seastone.

That’s right, despite it being of low quantity, and thus not affecting Devil Fruit users themselves all that much, the entirety of New Haven was being built with a Seastone Alloy that would provide buildings with immense strength.

Bill himself hadn’t worked on the calculations, but the engineers had demonstrated that even if there was an earthquake that sank the entire island, adding this Seastone Alloy to the building material would make it impossible for the buildings themselves to crack.

And as powerful as an innovation as that was, the engineers hadn’t stopped there.

After reviewing the recording of the battle, Bill and the engineers decided that the current line of [King Cannons] was not the solution for much of anything.

King Cannons were potential island killers, and that reputation had carried the big guns for all this time.

But in practice, they were shown to be too weak to fight against major foes, and too strong to use with abandon.

Furthermore, due to their size, they fired too slowly and took up too much space.

The harbor fortress had 14 of the massive guns, but it was wondered how much better it would have been if instead of 14 king cannons at their current size there had been 30 smaller versions.

Of course, ‘smaller’ did not mean ‘small’, even a King Cannon half its current size would sink any medium-sized Galleon on the ocean, but what was there to say they even needed that?

It was posited by Nelson that if they shrank down the King Cannons to firing shells 60% less destructive, they would be able to quadruple the number of them in a given area.

To put it another way, Nelson and the Engineers asked:

“What if instead of firing 14 massive shots every two minutes, we would have had 60 guns – each capable of destroying a large frigate – firing once every thirty seconds?”

This was something Bill agreed with, and seeing this, Nelson pushed the argument further saying that 60 of these new, smaller, cannons was just a number to demonstrate the point.

He argued since there was space, that there was no reason why the new harbor fortress couldn’t be armed with 120 of these smaller King Cannon, and with their increased firing speed, they would be able to fire two frigate-destroying shells each and every second for as long as they have ammunition.

It would still be a long time before it was seen in full force, but Bill did not recognize that by green-lighting this new tactic, he would be bringing [Drumfire Artillery Barrages] into this world for the first time.

And like that, the King Cannons were set to be re-outfitted.

On the Seastone Frigates, single large King Cannons were going to be replaced with smaller [King Turrets]. These [King Turrets] were quad-barreled and could swivel 180 degrees.

On the larger ships, like the M.S.S Victory and Salamander, they would each have three [King Turrets].

The last major innovation for these guns was range.

Bill had not been a military expert in his past life, but he knew the difference between ‘Howitzers’ and ‘Cannons’. Before, the King Cannon had straddled the line between the difference, but now after being redesigned, it was clearly the case that these [King Turrets] were howitzers.

Why?

Because when he demanded a range of 5 miles for these smaller guns, they came back to him designs for shells that could fly three times that distance!

Even if it would take time to get them built, installed, and have the gunner crews retrained, these [King Turrets] would be capable of firing shells 8 inches in diameter from 15 miles away!

Each one of these shells would weigh 250lbs and would just destroy any floating vessel that was unlucky enough to get hit while not being so large that they would have to be held in reserve.

Thinking all of this was well and good, Bill rubber stamped the proposal and in about another year the weapons factories would be rebuilt, and they would put these new [King Turrets] into production.

For the time being though, New Haven’s construction crews were finishing up the refineries that made the whole process possible, and with this thought passing through his mind, Bill jumped through the air and ‘flew’ to [Inferno Haven] as easily as a normal man may walk to his mailbox.

Having rebuilt his body using the essence given by the [Elixir or Life] was not for show, and it was no exaggeration to say that if Bill today fought with Bill from 8 months ago, the fight wouldn’t last very long at all.

As for Shiki?

Well, if the Bill today fought Shiki from then, no amount of SIQ enhancement would have protected the Flying Pirate’s life.

Bill didn’t believe in predetermination, but if he did, he would have said with certainty that it was very timely that he had fought Shiki then and thanks to his weakness he was able to realize the instability of his two souls.

And in some karmic roll of the dice, now that Bill was indisputably very physically powerful and could really benefit from his likewise powerful [Observation Haki], he would be stuck with his relatively weak [Armament Haki].

Of course, when thinking about this himself, he would only sigh and think that Yoko was probably the one who got the shortest end of the stick in all of this.

After all, for as long as his two souls weren’t balanced one would have to be occupied and she would never be able to utilize even a fraction of her Devil Fruit.

If there was any consolation to that handicap, he would say that in time her [Logos] would develop and would grow strong enough to fully control the Devil Fruits power.

If not, then she would suffer the same fate as [Admiral Aokiji’s] protegee, [Grount], who also had a powerful Zoan Devil Fruit that he wasn’t able to control.

Landing at the entrance of the redecorated fortress, all signs of Shiki had been erased and replaced with Marine trappings.

Getting a few salutes from the Marines stationed at the entrance, as he headed to Dr. Indigo’s laboratory one prisoner after another lowered their head and respectfully stepped aside.

With long gaits and his Coat of Justice billowing behind him, he soon arrived at his destination and walked in without announcing himself.

There he found Indigo standing over a machine that held an arm suspended orange substance.

The doctor was apparently analyzing something he deemed important because he didn’t make any movements except those with his hand that was inputting a stream of data.

Willing to be somewhat patient, Bill took a look around the lab and found tanks of VitaBoost and raw Vitalvine’s strewn across a workbench beside some notes.

Besides working on a stable organ and limb cloning method, Dr. Indigo had been tasked with providing supplemental support to the Marine Recruits.

With the SIQ squarely off the table the man’s options were reduced, but not to be discouraged, he had worked tirelessly between the two projects.

“This is just fascinating! Boink!” He suddenly cried out, and then shocked to see Bill, he froze, blinked with exaggeration, then continued as if nothing happened.

“I can truly see why that old guy is interested in cloning!” Indigo only referred to Vegapunk as ‘that old guy’ then continuing he said: “Look here! Boink!”

Then in a blur, Indigo ran to Bill and handed him his notebook.

Bill was not a biologist of any renown, favoring hard engineering and metallurgy most of all, but with his enhanced memory he was not completely uneducated and looking at the notes he frowned and said:

“I told you not to involve yourself with the [Lineage Factor]. Explain yourself.”

*Piro piro piro piro!*

Laughing, Indigo waved his hand back and forth and said quickly: “Commodore Ox, my honorable jailer, this can’t be seen as involving myself with that research, I just wanted to see how a recreated limb would respond to two inputs!”

Before Bill could say anything, Indigo cut him off by saying: “And look what I have seemed to discover! Lineage Factors can mix! Why with this research, if you gave me some of YOUR blood, I could create any number of super powerful body parts for any of your Marines!”

*Piro piro piro piro!*

“Why should we even worry about that Vital plant you want me to work on, I tellll’ya what! Give me some of you blood and I’ll…”

When he said this, Dr. Indigos entire demeaner turned sinister:

“I’ll replace their Bone Marrow, and their Spinal Cords, and every other foundational fluid in their bodies!

Their bones will become unbreakable! Boink!

Their hearts will grow strong! Boink!

Their very blood will become powerful! Boink!

And you, Commodore Ox, will stand as their Lineage Father and lea- Puhhh!

Having heard enough of this mad rambling, Bill flicked Indigo in the head so hard that the clown flew clear to the other side of the room.

With a flash of anger in his face, the clown quickly controlled himself when he saw Bill walking in his direction.

“Dr. Indigo, we had a clear understanding.” Spoken with a deep voice, Bill continued: “You work for me, and I provide you with research.

You have the chance to become immortal by pushing the boundaries of biological research and I get what I need for my Department.

But when you start this insanity, I get really itchy.” Then standing over Indigo, Bill said: “Because this was not the Deal.”

Then closing his eyes for a split second, Bill utilized his Observation Haki, and reading Indigos thoughts he answered them: “I know what you’re up to. Oh yes, I do. No that won’t work. I’ve never eaten a Devil Fruit.”

Standing there for nearly half an hour, Bill used [Presence Warp] and as he continued to answer Indigo’s thoughts from seemingly nowhere the more the doctor’s face turned pale.

This continued until the only thought Indigo had been: “Yes Commodore Ox, I understand now.”

Leaving the Laboratory later that morning, Bill turned up the security level for the always observing Iron Wardens.

But that was unnecessary because Indigo began to see Bill as something different.

In the mind of the insane genius scientist, Bill had become the goal for his evolution realized.