Following the fight on Monkey Island the investigation of New Haven calmed down considerably.

In truth, there hadn’t been much to tie Bill and the Science Division to the assassination of the Celestial Dragon in the first place.

Witnessed by tens of thousands of people, the Revolutionary Army had already taken credit for it, and as for the main suspect himself, he had a clean service record with a father who was about to be promoted to Marine Admiral.

If anything, Bill’s fight against Admiral Kizaru and Vice Admiral Onigumo strengthened Marineford’s opinion of him.

This was due to the fact that while Bill did raise his hand against a superior officer, he had enough sense to hold himself back.

In short, it showed Chief Investigator Tensei that William ‘Bill’ Ox was not a wildcard.

It even showed them what would hold Bill down.

These things were more than enough when it came to Marineford and controlling the superhumans in their ranks.

From Marineford’s point of view, they didn’t need perfect super soldiers, they just needed people who weren’t afraid of violence and wouldn’t directly say ‘no’ whenever they were given an order.

The point of view from the World Government was even more relaxed, after all, to the World Government even the Admirals, the Navy’s [Greatest Military Power], were nothing more than higher-end chess pieces.

This was why characters like [Monkey D. Garp] were tolerated.

Garp himself may have been an outlier in terms of how much he disregarded orders, but he was by no means unique in terms of being hard to order around.

To Marineford, that amount of insubordination was fine because the tradeoff was the Marine Hero’s abilities and his loyalty to the organization.

As for the World Government, while they recognized Garp’s power, they had about a dozen or so other people capable of similar feats so naturally didn’t care as long as the man himself didn’t try and rock their boat.

After all, in the view of the World Government, Garp may be strong, but he was still less than a Pirate Emperor. Because of that, even if his power rivaled some of [World Government Elders], wasn’t enough to make the ‘Machine’ look twice at the Marine Hero’s trivial insubordination's.

If there had been anything that Bill regretted from the Investigation was Kizaru’s and Tensei’s rejection of the [Iron Wardens].

Since Bill was a member of the Science Division, it allowed both men to talk openly about the [Pacifista Program] and their claim was that the [Iron Wardens] just weren’t strong enough.

“They’d work fine in any of the Four Blue’s, maybe even in Paradise, but we don’t sink so many resources in machines for those theaters...” Tensei told him, before continuing: “The Pacifista were made to provide much needed support in the New World.

You’re right that they’re expensive, costing about the same as a medium class warship, but they can reliably take down New World pirates with a Bounty of about 200m Beli.

And even if your machines are cheaper to produce, from the data you’ve shown the [Iron Wardens] simply can’t match that proficiency.”

To test this hypothesis, Tensei asked Kizaru to order a Pacifista that they had stowed away in the hull of his ship and demonstrate why the cyborgs were superior.

In a 1 v 3 battle that lasted quite a while, the Iron Wardens were defeated primarily due to the fact that they couldn’t deal enough damage.

The [Grenadier] class of Iron Wardens could knock the Pacifista back, its twin mounted cannons shot lasers similar to the Pacifista’s own, but being only able to fire about once every 30 seconds, the number of shots was not in the same ballpark and that allowed the Pacifista to recognize the threat and eliminate it first.

The [Gunner] class of Iron Warden couldn’t even make a dent with its 30-06 rifle, 50 caliber autocannons, and laser pistol.

They were smaller, they were more maneuverable, they had more attack options and attack formations, but an Iron Warden that cost 20 million Beli to produce could not break a Pacifista worth 300 million.

The fact that New Haven could produce 15 Iron Wardens for the cost of 1 Pacifista didn’t factor into Tensei’s judgement. After all, in his words: “In the New World, quality beats quantity.”

And even if Bill didn’t believe Tensei’s judgement was correct, he had to accept that at least for now Marineford wouldn’t alter its course.

This was a bitter pill to swallow, not just for Bill and Zephyr, but for many in New Haven who knew about the Pacifista.

The idea of cloned-cyborg soldiers was weak and immoral for the idealistic hero that Zephyr was, and for the Officers of the Science Division who came from ordinary backgrounds, they too were shocked that Marineford would go so far.

Naturally, there were others who rightly pointed out that during the [Whitebeard War] the Pacifista could have saved many lives, and then claimed that the clones weren’t any different than machines.

But those were the minority of opinions from those in the Robotics Department on New Haven, and with a flurry of motivation others began working on other technologies that the Marines could rely on.

When all was said and done the final orders given out by Kizaru and Tensei was the melting down of the gold on Gran Tesoro.

They ordered Bill and the Procurement Department to melt down a city’s worth of gold and ship it to old Marineford…

The estimates in pounds were already made and it was obvious that the Fleet Admiral would not allow this enormous windfall to slip from his hands. The [World Military Draft] was already underway and Sakazuki needed every single Beli he could get his hands on.

What Bill did not know was that by killing the Celestial Dragon and then stealing away Gran Tesoro he had solved a colossal headache for the new Fleet Admiral.

Sakazuki was a true believer in [Absolute Justice], but just as much as that belief pushed him forwards, he refused to live in the long shadow cast by his predecessor, Sengoku.

The World Military Draft was needed but it was also very ambitious. They had lost so much that simply rebuilding was already an enormous expense, not to mention the training and equipping of tens of thousands of new Marines.

Gran Tesoro falling into Sakazuki’s hands was one of the few good things that had happened to him over the last couple of years, so naturally, he would never let it slip away.

This also made him a bit more favorable to the young Marine who had towed the huge floating city halfway across Paradise.

Of course, Bill didn’t know any of this and the prospect of melting down the gold on Gran Tesoro – which had dozens of skyscrapers and virtually the entire upper deck made of gold – was headache inducing.

The plus side to this was that they didn’t say anything about the seastone hull or the non-gold resources on the massive ship.

This included an almost incalculable number of martial weapons, guns, and random technologies, all of which were good things.

Gild Tesoro had not just contracted the Science Division when he built the floating city and a lot of the pure engineering – for example how the city’s drinking water was recycled – was fascinating for Bill who valued such knowledge.

With that said Bill didn’t exactly have the time to study – that would have to wait until his next time setting sail – and so after the small fleet left New Haven to return to Marineford, Bill was left with Zephyr and his people.

By now it had been weeks since the former Admiral had arrived on New Haven and Bill knew what he wanted.

Zephyr had come to get support to oppose Sakazuki’s crusade into the New World.

Naturally, gaining the support of the young Commodore was desirable, but Zephyr was really looking for the support of Bills father, the newly promoted Admiral, ‘Green Bull’.

But Bill knew this was impossible.

Firstly, Aramaki hated pirates as much as Sakazuki did, and secondly, Bill knew that his father would not have been made an Admiral in the first place if he opposed Sakazuki’s plans!

Explaining this to the former Admiral made the man’s demeanor change, his eyes themselves seem to darken, but still, Zephyr spoke to Bill without discrimination or accusation.

“So, what’re you going to do now?” Zephyr asked Bill about two weeks after Kizaru and Tensei had left.

Now with Bill back and the majority of reconstruction done, New Haven had industrial power very few islands could contend with.

With 4 dry docks each capable of building a seastone hull Frigate in 3 months’ time, or a Battleship in just over half a year, with a robotics industrial park that was able to churn out an [Iron Warden] every 4 days, with armories able to outfit hundreds of sailors with semi-automatic rifles and a dozen ships with cannons each month, and with the higher tech laboratories that were run by Henzo, Acier, and Dr. Indigo, New Haven was by all measures accounted as a futuristic island.

But it was also more than that.

Because, besides the pure industrial and scientific power of New Haven’s main island, East Island was being settled rapidly, too, as the families of new Recruits decided to emigrate over for new homes and a chance at free land.

All of this was what was known by others.

What was not known to them, even to Zephyr, was the vast wealth and treasures that New Haven had gotten from Bill’s trip to the Gran Tesoro, or the fact that the Gran Tesoro would be able to be repurposed after stripping its gold… with plans to eventually become a massive city-sized Marine ship.

Still, shrugging his shoulders to Zephyr’s question, Bill sat back in his chair and answered: “We’ll continue to do what we have done.

With Ranse being called up by Marineford I’ll probably have to go to the East Blue myself, but it won’t be long until the contract with Goa Kingdom is complete, and then we’ll move to secure support for the next Levely.”

There was currently a [Levely] set to meet in just a few weeks, which meant Bill would have the next 4 years to gather support.

He believed his aims were relatively benign, simply for there to be a legal agreement stating that the [World Nobility] itself was subject to the World Government’s laws, but he was not naïve enough to think that his task would be easy.

He knew that he needed to be stronger, he desperately needed to fix the imbalance between his souls so that he could use his Haki simultaneously, and he needed New Haven to be in an even stronger position.

At least two of those things were easy enough, he thought.

It was just the imbalance of his souls was something he couldn’t solve easily.

His soul geared to Observation Haki, which was shaped like interlocking wheels lined with eyeballs, was so powerful that he could alter the flow of time.

It was so strong that even now he knew that it would still absorb his soul geared towards Armament Haki, which was in the shape of a winged man with three heads – the head of a Bull, a Human, and a Dragon.

Bill had always been apprehensive about entering the realm that he called Chaos. When he first discovered it, he was curious, but deep in his heart he knew he didn’t belong there.

Chaos was the realm of dreams, nightmares, and views best left unsaid; he didn’t even like entering it to change which soul was occupied.

To Bill, it was like walking on a tightrope… he knew what the problem was, but it was hard for him to fix it without falling over.

For now, he still believed that the risk wasn’t worth the reward – exploring the realm of dreams and nightmares for the hope of finding a solution to his problems didn’t sound like a great plan.

What he could do though is continue to use his Armament Haki as much as possible and focus on his real-world tasks.

He had been open to Zephyr about his plan for reforming the World Government, and it seemed that the former Admiral had thought of an alternative to his own mission.

For Zephyr, if he couldn’t make Fleet Admiral Sakazuki see reason then there needed to be extreme action taken.

Before coming to New Haven and seeing the organization Bill had built up, Zephyr’s plan was extreme.

Under no circumstances did he believe the rest of the world should suffer for whatever lay in the New World.

And if he couldn’t make his former protégé see that, then Zephyr knew just how to remove the problem of the ‘New World’ altogether…

But, not particularly happy with his idea to destroy the New World – it was a last resort after all – his thoughts changed when he saw New Haven, when he saw the Iron Wardens and young marines training on INFERNO Haven.

Zephyr was very pleased with Instructors Masterson and Toma.

He had never heard of either Marine before, but because of their obscurity, it gave him hope that the entirety of the gifted Marines wouldn’t be whisked away to fight in Sakazuki’s Crusade...

It gave him hope because when he saw New Havens special forces, the so-called [Beetleborgs], he realized that these men and women had been trained to a degree where they could easily Captain their own ships in the Lower Seas.

With all of this in mind, Zephyr wanted something extreme.

Staying on INFERNO Haven for several weeks after Bill had refused to contact his father, Zephyr took part in the next batch of trainees and with Masterson found four more individuals suitable to learn the Iron Body technique.

He rejected Bill’s offer to have Dr. Indigo clone him a new arm, stating that he would never forget what losing the arm meant to him, but in the background made a lot of calls from his flagship’s personal Communication Snail.

For what he wanted, Bill’s current rank of ‘Science Division Commodore’ wasn’t enough.

Finally, a month after the Investigation Fleet sailed away, with Kizaru and Tensei’s reports submitted when they finally returned to Marineford, with Sakazuki’s general favorability to Bill for securing billions of Beli in hard gold, and with Zephyr’s own machinations, he got what he wanted.

It was not long after Bill had secretly given a 40-foot sloop with a seastone-banded hull to Sabo – fulfilling his promise, while also ensuring Sabo that it would be best for them to never see each other again – that he received an urgent message from [Commodore Brannew].

William ‘Bill’ Ox along with his Procurement Department would be tentatively transferred from the Science Division to Marineford.

William ‘Bill’ Ox would be Promoted to the Rank of Vice Admiral, effective immediately.

William ‘Bill’ Ox would await further orders.