The Marine

With a growing sense of paranoia that he couldn’t rightfully explain, Bill had only reentered the [Sea of Souls] a few times over the past couple of years.

And without going back into that place of Chaos, where unimaginable power and psychic dangers went hand in hand, he had experimented with his Haki while staying firmly in reality.

Doing this his already powerful Haki had naturally grown further, but even so, using the power of his spirit to slow down time in his local area was not an easy feat even for him.

To any outside observer watching what happened next, it would have looked like he was moving at a blurring speed. But from his central perspective the speed that he moved hadn’t changed at all, only everything else moved slower.

Ranging everything moving a step slower to moving at the speed of a turtle, depended on how much energy he put into it.

But having experienced spiritual weariness once was more than enough to make it so he had never truly pushed himself to the limit.

The more energy he put into the ability the less time he would be able to use it, and so even now, Bill dared not try and make Shiki move at turtle speed, but instead opted somewhere in the middle.

He could slow time by half for 30 standard seconds, and doing just this the mountains of roaring stone became muffled, and with his already great speed, he bolted towards Shiki.

Of course, Bill knew of [Future Sight] and in a rare scene he could actually tell that Shiki was using it. Moving far faster than the Flying Pirate could hope to react to, Shiki still managed to slowly lift his right hand up to defend himself.

Though truly impressed by the pirate’s automatic motion to defend himself, it didn’t stop the inevitable.

Using his left hand, Bill grabbed Shiki’s outstretched right wrist, pulled, and twisted the arm under his armpit, then with Shiki’s chest arched up and fully unprotected, Bill stopped slowing time and gave a roar of his own:

TECTONIC HAMMER!”

Bring his fist down in a pounding motion a singularity formed between fist and chest resulting in a gaseous mid-air explosion that sent Shiki spiraling to the ground, spewing up mouthfuls of spittle and blood.

Looking down and breathing somewhat wearily despite that entire process only taking him four standard seconds showed just how much mental strain slowing time took on him.

But whereas Bill only felt somewhat weary, a huge crater in the ground and the collapsing of the hill-sized rubble lions showed just how much Shiki had been hurt.

Thinking to himself that the islands weren’t falling, Bill was sure that his opponent was still conscious, but in that moment where he was going to finish the old pirate off a series of stomps, roars, and bellows had Bill turn around and see that Shiki’s subordinates were burning down the [Daft Green] tree barrier.

And somehow the monstrous animals sensed it as they came rushing on by the dozens, of all shapes and sizes, eager for an easy meal.

Watching from high above the ground, Bill saw hundreds and hundreds of Merveillians and Marines alike rushing to the other side of the town where the barrier still stood, but all of this had taken him a minute to gather, and in that minute, a coughing ‘Jihahaha’ could be heard underfoot.

Looking down, Bill saw Shiki holding his chest and looking up at him, and with a sneer said: “Very well, even though you took me off guard you may very well have a place in this strong world, but let’s see how you can protect those insignificant creatures that you wanted to take!”

Then, all of a sudden, Bill’s face paled and saw the floating island start to tilt.

“CEASE!” Bill yelled with fury, but for Shiki, how could a man who had been willing to cut off his own two legs ever be afraid of anything?

Rushing down at full speed as the giant island started to flip over, Bill shouted [Time Warp] again and caught Shiki’s two sword legs before they could finish sending flying slashes up at him.

Ripping the two swords out of the Flying Pirates stumps, Bill held each in his hands and stopped slowing time with the blades on Shiki’s throat.

Wide eyed at Bill’s impossible speed, but still defiant, the island kept tilting over and Shiki said: “Go ahead and do it! But be warned pitiful Marine if I die the islands fall!

But maybe if you go now, you can still save a few of those pitiful souls! Jihahaha!”

To this, Bill almost lost his mind to rage, but holding himself calm simply stated “I shall return” before two quick motions with the blades resulted in Shiki’s screams being heard across Merveille.

After cutting Shiki’s arms off, Bill discarded the two Named Blades and tapped the device on his left wrist.

The island was still tilting and was almost completely on its side by this point, and since Bill would not directly kill Shiki with the slaves still being held prisoner, he did the next worst thing he could do.

At his notification, on another island, the [Mind] lit up and activated eight [Iron Wardens]. Moving in tandem the mechanical squadron made their way to Merveille’s main island to destroy the [Daft Green] barrier separating Shiki’s Headquarters from his [Zoo].

He would not be able to see the result of this however and dashing towards the people who were now starting to hold onto trees, and whatever else was planted into the ground, his mind was racing about what to do.

Bill may have been able to lift a small mountain but using [Moon Step] to carry 1,500 people through the air was obviously an impossible solution.

‘Even if I can, how long could I hold on for?’ he asked himself almost frantically.

No matter what though, the islands tilt was not stopping or slowing down and the best solution he could think of was shouting for everyone to tie themselves together.

This order was immediately followed by his Marines, such was their trust in their Commodore, but the civilians still panicked held on tight to the trees, boulders, roots, and whatever else they could get their hands on.

Rushing to get the sled before it fell down to the ocean, when Bill came back, he saw the first people lose their grip.

Naturally, it was the old people who fell first.

Then, before he could reach them, something amazing caught his eye.

Opening their arms wide, the feathers on the elderly Merveillians’ arms expanded and they started to glide.

‘!’

Clearly, these people themselves did not know they had this ability, but seeing this, Bill knew he would be able to save just about everyone.

“You can glide!” He hollered out loud enough for everyone to hear, but of course, hearing this and taking the first jump was not easy.

Still, over the next couple of minutes the Merveillians would see one after another fall and then start gliding, and by the time that Bill had scooped up every remaining Marine on the sled there was a flock of mostly children and grandma’s gliding over the ocean of Paradise.

And during that moment of experiencing ‘flight’ for the first time, the people had forgotten about their destroyed homes and the situation they found themselves in and were happy.

While Bill was leading his Marines and a flock of feathered humanity Shiki’s eyes burned with rage, pain, and indignation.

Flying back to his Headquarters with his severed arms and Named Blades in tow, he made sure to only be seen by Dr. Indigo.

“Stop your gesturing and quickly reattach them!” he said in anguish, and in surprise, the clown answered by shrieking: “What happened?!!”

Hearing the Doctor say this, Shiki momentarily forgot about his arms and shouted: “You could talk this entire time?!” then added: “Who cares! reattach my arms!”

Pulling out a series of multicolored vials from his lab coat, Indigo did as he was ordered but warned that even with SIQ it would take some time before they were strong as before.

“As long as they’re on…” Shiki said, but before he could say another word a series of explosions was heard around the Headquarters.

‘Huh?!’ he thought, and getting up he was interrupted by Scarlet, an evolved giant red gorilla, who speaking human language said stoically: “The [Daft Green] barrier has been destroyed.”

With both of his arms wrapped up from the shoulders down, Shiki gritted his teeth and said: “What?! Go and organize the men and deal with the beasts, and after that we will uncover how this happened!”

Somewhat woozy now from the beating Bill had put on him and the loss of blood, Shiki nevertheless had Dr. Indigo drape his robe over his shoulders and reattach his two blades to his legs.

Once that was done, he emerged from the laboratory and watched from a high balcony as thousands of the pirates hoping to join his Pirate Fleet took battle against the monsters.

Fighting on the wide plains in front of his Headquarters, it was quickly evident to Shiki which of these hopeful Division Leaders were worth investing in.

Watching many of them be eaten alive was of no consequence to Shiki either, after all the beasts inside his Zoo were the crème de la crème of Dr. Indigo’s experiments and it would have worse if the pirates killed them unscathed.

With bright lasers, quick blades, heavy hammers, bursts of electricity, and many other powers being used, Shiki evaluated exact values for these would-be subordinates.

By the end of the battle, about 1/3^rd of his assembled pirate force lay dead – nearly two thousand men and women in all – either by the maws of the beasts or by Shiki’s own blades as they attempted to flee.

The notion of using ‘fire to forge steel’ sounded good when the ‘impurities’ burnt away weren’t your own forces, but after the dust was settled and the Flying Pirate looked at the numbers objectively, he couldn’t help but rage from the losses.

And this rage was only intensified when, viewing the [Surveillance Snails], he saw eight iron machines destroying the [Daft Green] one after the next with a series of explosions.

“And tell me, where the hells did they come from?!” Shiki roared to the uniformed men in his command room, and when he wasn’t answered, in his rage he called a man to stand up, and directly cut hit head off with a kick.

“Someone will answer, or do I have to kill you fools one by one?!” he shouted again, and this time, he was answered timidly.

“C.captain Shiki, we don’t h.have enough p.proof to say but these same style of r.robots have been seen in the East Blue… it was during the Danro incident…”

Gritting his teeth further, suddenly Shiki remembered that one of his ‘Monarchs’ had been killed over a week before and putting two and two together he sharply cut the man off saying: “Quickly, contact our spies and see if the Marine who I fought is connected to this force who dared to interrupt our plans!

Interrogate every servant on this ship to find out whatever they know! I refuse to believe that idiot didn’t tell anyone specifics while trying to convince them to escape.”

Given these orders, the command bridge jumped into action, only to then freeze when the huge display screen beeped, and they watched the blip signifying ‘Ramoth’ vanish without trace.

‘Two Monarchs dead in two weeks?!’ was the thought in the room, only just barely surpassing the fear they had from Shiki’s reaction to the news.

With his arms wrapped up, Shiki shouted: “And find out what the hells happened there!”

Far away from Merveille, sitting on a Frauce Kingdom beach, Ranse held a huge revolver in his hand and upon letting it go the weapon slowly morphed into the shape of a tan woman with sandy brown hair.

“I told you’d we’d make it! haha” he said, looking at the girl charmingly.

In front of the two was an enormous half-beached moth monster. With an antenna forming a crown around its head, the monster was as colorful as a rainbow.

“Hmph… and what’re you smiling for? If it wasn’t for Willy and the Fish-men getting its wings wet, it would have been a nightmare!”

Shrugging his shoulders, Ranse knew that Fia was right. The giant moth had tiny hair-like metallic scales on its wings, and it was only thanks to Willy’s quick thinking that had waterlogged the creature before it could use those scales to devastating effect.

“Well, he went ahead and did his job, I’ll give him a commendation for it.”

Of course, like with Danro before, while the assistance of the others was nice, but really it had been Ranse and Fia who had killed the thing.

In a world of superhumans, scale was everything. Willy and the others were strong and resourceful, but in the face of overwhelming power they could only begrudgingly run away.

Still relishing the clean victory, Ranse slightly changed the subject and told Fia: “I think I’ll go meet the Queen, a lot of these scales are going to wash up on her shore and she’ll be able to use them if she’s quick about it.

Nodding her head in agreement, Fia took Ranse’s hand as they stood up and walking towards a harbor a line of Frauce Kingdom policemen, soldiers, and other civilians had emerged and started cheering wildly.

Throwing one of his fists up into the air, when Ranse laughed, they cheered more.

Unfortunately, that smile was short lived, when after barely a couple of minutes of walking a ringing could be heard from his Coat of Justice.

*Bebo Bebo Bebo*

Answering it quickly, the Communication Snail materialized a wide-brimmed black hat with a hook tattoo on its face.

“Alright Partner, lay it on me.” Said Ranse looking directly at the Snails eyes.

On the other side of the call, Bascud stood on a small two-sail cruiser and was looking at a monster far in the distance like he’d never seen before.

It was a massive three headed wyvern and crackled with a yellow energy that he couldn’t identify.

Speaking somewhat hoarsely Bascud turned to the Snail and said: “Captain McGrew, the Commodore is out of reach and New Haven has no idea what’s going on.

I… I’m seven days sail away from Loguetown and tracking a monster headed in its direction.”

“Give me the facts.” Ranse said seriously with Fia standing beside him looking on.

“Danger Index is at least Level 2… perhaps even Level 1… If this thing is aiming for them, the Marine forces on Loguetown won’t even be able to resist.

The Commodore is out of touch, the call is yours Captain.”

Glancing over to the woman beside him and seeing her nod, Ranse looked back at the Snail and said humorlessly: “What choice we do have?”

Then, hanging up the Snail and taking Fia up into a princess carry, Ranse turned away from the cheering crowd and used a combination of [Moon Step] and [Shave] to head back to the ships. He didn’t yet know the specifics of this monster, but if it was so close to Loguetown then he needed his force to set sail right away.

Whether or not the island had been the home of the Pirate King, Ranse would never stand back and do nothing.

Just like the hero sheriffs in those stories he had read as a child, he was sure he’d always find a way.