NOVEL NEXT Strong World 133
“Vice Admiral, Fide! We have multiple contacts!”
Grimacing at the news his Lieutenant had given him, Morty cursed his luck.
He had been in the Marines for over twenty years, had finally passed the great barrier known as [Rear Admiral], and his first Commission was to take command of a medium sized Marine base on the perimeter of Whitebeard’s core territories.
Even before the news of Ace’s execution was announced, Marine bases bordering the Pirate Emperors domains were hardly popular despite the litany of benefits offered by Marineford, but Morty Fide never questioned his orders, and given his long-awaited promotion, he was grimly determined to do his duty.
“Get me Captain Mehoff and Captain Clay, immediately!” yelled the Vice Admiral to his Lieutenant, who stood there for a second, paused, but then answered slowly: “Vice Admiral Fide, Captain’s Mehoff and Clay were the ones who first made the sightings. I’m sorry to say, but there’s we haven’t been able to reestablish communications with them since.”
“What?!” Fide roared. Mark Mehoff and Justin Clay were his best Captain’s, and along with himself the pillars of their entire base!
But more than that, Morty looked down and knew, career Marines of their caliber were hard to replace. That thought saddened him, not only for what it meant in the immediate term, but what it would mean for the future of the islands held under their protection.
With a sigh, he started to look up towards his Lieutenant to order a full evacuation, but instead of seeing his subordinate, he was met with a strange sensation of everything vibrating, and then was met with immediate annihilation.
The first shots fired between the Marines Whitebeard coincided with the first of the Marine bases surrounding Whitebeard’s territory to vanish without trace.
As Marineford started scrambling for their response, desperate to keep the war in the New World, Bill was crushing the skull of a large and quilled blue boar with his war hammer.
Waiting for Akisu to get his [Iron Wardens] back online he had been fighting nonstop for nearly two hours at this point but no matter how many of the mutant monsters he killed he never was able to deter their nominal brethren.
Swinging his hammer down like a golf club, Bill smashed a two-foot-tall bipedal horned bug into tiny pieces which spread over a wide area and while the nearby monsters abandoned their battles and their senses to try and lap up the tiny feast, he paused and looked around.
The fighting had been so steady and so fierce that alongside a veritable mountain of corpses, the caldera lake, which was located not too far from the wrecked submarine, now had a bloody stream flowing into it that turned the water into a bubbling torrent of murky brownish red liquid.
‘What in the world…’ he thought to himself, figuring that even the dumbest of living creatures still preserved that spark which wanted to hold onto life and thinking that the entire situation made no sense.
He had remembered this had happened before, and even though he had put the incident in the back of his mind, it had never left him.
Suddenly bending down, he picked up fist-sized stone and threw it hard in the direction of a razor-backed snakelike lizard who was a second away from chomping down on one of his unsuspecting Marines.
Seeing the lizard’s head splash into gore merely inches away from his face, the Marine tiredly hollered his thanks and rushed closer to the submarine.
Unlike the last time, when Bill found himself on that uncharted island with Captain Hina, this time he hadn’t lost a single man or woman to the jaws of a monstrous animal.
He personally covered the submarine in every direction but did allow Adele some freedom in movement as she fought with her claws in her hybrid Honey Badger form. Covered in black fur, with a long white mane running down her back, the girl was practically immune to fangs and claws thanks to her thick hide.
The [Weasel Weasel: Model, Honey Badger] fruit provided her with litany of benefits. Ranging from slight super strength, enhanced smell, and razor-sharp claws it was good offensively, but its defensive prowess stood out most of all.
In her hybrid form she was immune to most caliber rifle rounds, her bones became strong yet malleable enough to bend roughly in any direction without breaking, and she was practically immune to poisons and venom too.
Having been present during these examinations, this was why Bill had taken notice of the girl’s actions as she started to move strangely.
At first it was hardly noticeable, he saw her lick her blood-splattered lips, unnecessarily stomp in a puddle of blood, or rake her claws against an already dead beast, and so on. But now, regulating a good portion of his [Observation Haki] to focus on her, he found her to be almost out of her mind.
And all of her strange actions seemed to be focused on drinking the animal’s blood.
Having perfect control over his body, Bill had naturally avoided getting any blood on his face – despite having his bare chest covered in red – but now his concerns led him to do something he had never considered before.
Wiping the back of his left hand on his chest, he pulled off a bit of the dried blood and cautiously licked, and after several seconds his face bunched up.
Holding that pose for several more seconds Bill could tell that something was weird about the blood of these creatures, but in the midst of battle as they were he couldn’t analyze it further.
Using his [Observation Haki] to scan the rest of his Marines he could tell that they weren’t showing advert desire to drink it. Seeing this tendency, out of precaution he quickly made his way over to the fiercely fighting Adele, quickly killed the giant praying mantis that she was fighting and then said to her: “Ensign Bascud, go find out what’s taking Akisu so long.”
Hearing this, the girl made a rattling noise and spoke with a defiance not normally known in the Procurement Department: “No Commodore! I’m needed here, you need to someone else!”
Hearing this, Bill frowned and moved in front of the girl. Dwarfing her in size, he spoke clearly: “You will follow orders, Ensign. Do not return to the battle, protect Akisu and the others as they work… and wash off all of that blood.”
Looking up directly at him, Bill thought that the teenager was about to challenge him but after a couple of seconds she backed down. Saying ‘Yes, Sir’ she did as commanded and it relieved Bill that he wouldn’t have to put his foot down – having one Yoko was already more than enough.
For the next half hour, Bill continued as he had been doing. His Marines had organized into six squads of four who would take turns between fighting and resting.
Still conserving their ammunition, the Marines were armed with polearms and were able to put down most of the mutant monsters but left the giants for Bill to slay. The mountain of corpses grew ever higher, and with more free-flowing blood and gore getting into the lake it acted like a stimulant that caused the lake to roil ever more.
Throwing three stones, Bill began to tear through a herd of flying elephants when as if on cue, when the crashed Amigo Submarine flickered with light, a monster turtle of epic proportions stuck its head out of the now-stilling water.
The size of an islet, the turtles shell was shaped like a jagged mountain which accompanied rows of razor-sharp fangs, and with a loud hiss the attacking beasts seemed to regain their senses and fled.
‘The Boss, uh?’ Bill thought to himself and remembered the kilometer sized Crocodile and Python that had caused the shipwreck so many years before.
The turtle was much smaller than they had been, but it was still a genuine demon king that had no challenge in its habitat. Smarter than any turtle should rightfully be, it saw the amount of ruckus that was being caused in its territory and the local king had come to reestablish itself – lest the lesser creatures forget who they belonged to.
Unfortunately for it, its instincts nor intelligence were great enough to make out the danger of the strange creature in front of it, and instead chose to target the crashed submarine thinking that was flashing.
Reaching its head over to bite the ship in half, it barely saw the first figure move and hadn’t heard it shout at all.
“[SEISMIC PUNCH]!”
Connecting his fist with the turtle’s head, space condensed and the explosion could have been heard across the island. Dead before it even knew what hit it, the turtles strong head liquefied into a bloody mist, and its body was blown back far enough to sink under the waves.
Landing back on shore the area had gone quiet and not wasting a single second Bill went to the submarine telling his Marines to rest while they could.
He found Akisu covered in grease and sweating working beside two dismembered [Iron Warden] pods.
Looking over the work quickly, Bill could tell that the boy had removed several components from the pods. Figuring he knew what for, he still asked what the situation was.
“Ah, Commodore!” startled and looking up, the green haired sixteen-year-old wiped his forehead and continued: “The reactor itself wasn’t damaged from the fall, but I found that one of the heat sinks were busted and we needed to get one from somewhere else…”
He explained that even though the heat sinks for the charging pods were small, he thought it possible to loop together a couple of them to make it work.
And Bill agreed with this, after all, without a way to disperse the heat made by the fusion reactor they would need to turn the machine off or risk a meltdown. If the reactor did turn completely off, then they wouldn’t have to means to get it restarted.
Making his way to the reactor room, Bill looked over the connected coolant tanks, thermal panels, and recycled circuitry that connected the reactor, where electric current was generated, to the machines where that electricity was stored, deeply impressed by the boy’s work.
With the reactor running at near optimal range, getting the [Mind] and [Iron Wardens] operational would be easy, assuming that there hadn’t been great damage done to processors.
Thankfully, this time luck was on their side and with power restored to the bridge one display came on after another showing the statuses of their machines, facilities, and tracking devices put in the clothing of his crew.
Without the area mapped the tracking devices only showed distance and direction from the Amigo Submarine, but that was enough for him to work with.
Seeing a few single dots scattered around, Bill decided to see if they were alive and if so to save those isolated Marines first. After that he would move to the larger groups, saving his people one at a time if he had to.
Walking off the bridge, he gathered all of the Marines healthy enough to move outside and gave them their orders as [Iron Wardens] lit up and took positions around the crashed submarine.
Passing out their rifles he said breathlessly: “While I’m gone, I want a perimeter to start taking form. Don’t needlessly conserve ammunition, we’ll be leaving as soon as I recover the people who we’ve lost...”
Then looking at the mountain of mutant corpses he added: “… and burn those. Under no circumstances are you to consume of the creatures on this island.”
Still concerned about the strange blood that these mutants all had, Bill decided for now to air on the side of caution.
After that, Bill designated various Special Operators who were to be in command while he was gone. Despite Adele being the strongest fighter of the bunch, it was natural for him to not leave a sixteen-year-old girl in charge of a troop of experienced Marines.
When everything was said and done, Bill nodded to his people, told them he’d return soon, and blasted up into the air.
His first goal was to hit a group of stragglers that his sensors indicated fell not too far from the Amigo Submarine, and for the first time in a long time he silently prayed that everything would be alright.
One thing I wanted to show is that while the manga didn't show it, the Marines were hurt enough by the Summit War that they had to do a world-wide draft. Morty Fide, Mark Mehoff, are Justin Clay were just a few of the huge numbers of Marines killed in the war. Also, I think it makes more sense for Sengoku (who's more or less a good and pragmatic person)to try and hold the conflict to being all inside the New World.
In this fanfic, Shiki surprise attacked Marineford just as the war was getting started, so I don't think the execution of Ace would have happened like it did in canon - where we have thousands of Marines lined up just waiting for Whitebeard to attack Marineford.
'Thousands Spear' Boar
Demon King Turtle
