Deep underneath New Haven in a hyperbaric chamber that had been disconnected from the bedrock, thump after thump could be heard vibrating the air outside the hollowed-out space.

With several men and women in white coats checking vital data about what was going on inside the chamber, these thumps went on for hours before coming to an end.

Monitoring what was happening inside the room, when the medical research team saw the lone figure inside carefully removing the hydraulic restraints strapped across his body, they began doing their parts and soon white steam began to filter out of the chamber.

This steam contained oxygen and the concentrated nutrients from the Vitalvine making the chamber an incredibly efficient gym for the figure to train in.

Instead of redirecting the steam away to be disposed of, it was filtered into the upper levels of the laboratory, making air itself taste sweet and hold several benefits for whoever breathed it in.

It took just a couple of minutes, but when the hatch was opened, Bill walked out holding a towel over his shoulder even though he wasn’t sweating.

Behind him the inside of the hyperbaric chamber contained hoses, wires, treadmills, and several solid punching bags that were dented.

“How’s the new alloy feel?” Asked one of the scientists, a man who had come from Clockwork Island and had been working with Bill in his lab or years.

The alloy that he was talking about was the seastone blend that the punching bags were made of.

After all, at Bill’s current level of strength, it was hard to grow stronger. Even with tons and tons of pressure pushed on him by hydraulic presses, he could punch through iron and steel with little trouble.

“With the added weight it’s fine for now, in the future we’ll need to figure out a better way to meld the seastone in with the iron.” Answered Bill directly.

Seastone was like Diamond; it was incredibly hard, but that hardness also made it brittle. Well, brittle against someone like Bill – whose fists would chip it away piece by piece.

So, they needed to synthesize some alloy that combined the flexibility of steel and the hardness of seastone.

This process was easier said than done though it was important to perfect since it wasn’t just Bill’s punching bags that needed upgrading, it was the next step in improving the Iron Wardens.

Getting a round of diagnostics over his training details, diagnostics about the hyperbaric chamber since he didn’t need any for his body, Bill left his lab and headed towards his office to start his actual work for the day.

It had been just over three months since he had been informed of the new ‘Department of the Old World’ and been subsequently pulled into it, with his entire Procurement Department, by Zephyr’s – and by his own father’s – political schemes.

During this time a lot had happened, from numerous promotions being handed out across the Marines as Kingdoms across the world were handing over portions of their armies for the World-Wide Military Draft, to Straw Hat Luffy reappearing and attacking another World Noble in Fish Man Island, to the Levely itself being attacked by the Revolutionary Army.

The attack on Mary Geoise resulted in wide scale destruction and the assassination of the King of Alabasta. Merely a week later, with the so-called Eight-Nation Revolution making it impossible to hide, Sabo was proclaimed as both the assassin and chief instigator.

With two high-profile assassinations adding to his infamy, Sabo the Revolutionary was given a bounty of 3b Beli Wanted Dead or Alive.

All of this also resulted in postponing the debate on whether or not the World Government should disband the [Warlords of the Sea], with everything that was going on, many of the cowardly Allied Kings rushed home and regretting sending any of their soldiers to the Marines… whether they would help or not.

The more intelligent Monarchs sent the Marines soldiers who they were unsure of, and so across the World Government feelings were mixed.

Due to all of this, Bill was naturally concerned.

He had been in communication with Ranse and Fia who ended up being transferred under ‘Vice Admiral’ Smoker and was told in full detail the massive efforts being taken by Fleet Admiral Sakazuki.

 Like in the first half of the Grand Line, the New World only had a few paths that Log Poses would direct ships down, and according to Ranse, the fleets assembled by Sakazuki intended to blitz all routes at once.

This was surprising to Bill given his understanding of the New World, but he couldn’t dwell on the topic because he had his own responsibilities.

The [Department of the Old World] was Zephyr’s brainchild and his fervent belief that the New World should be abandoned altogether.

Bill didn’t know how many strings the old man pulled, but during the first week the former Admiral held nothing back from Bill about the current forces he had brought with him.

In tangible assets, there was a Rear Admiral (Ain), two Commodores (Shuzo and Binz), 37 Captains, and roughly 16,000 Marines who held every position needed to sail those ships.

These forces seemed substantial on their face, but after digging an inch deeper, Bill quickly figured that it was much less than it appeared.

Besides the top three Marines who had followed Zephyr – Ain, Shuzo, and Binz – not a single Captain had learned more than a single of the Six Powers.

This force could be argued to be substantial as a strike group, but to cover the entire world’s ocean? Bill could only shake his head.

To make matters worse, the Captains that Zephyr had brought in were not graduates of the Marineford Academy. The youngest of them was already 45 years old, but most were in their 50’s, and their only significant service record – besides the length of their careers – was that they had participated in the Whitebeard War and served under Zephyr.

Of course, Bill knew that Zephyr’s lack of talent wasn’t completely his fault. The Fleet Admiral had drafted nearly every experienced Marine into his growing war – and truth be told it could be seen as surprising that Zephyr had pried away 37 long-serving Captains in the first place.

But that didn’t make Bill feel any better about it.

As a matter of fact, even if he removed himself from the equation, the Procurement Department had far more strength and was more capable than all of the transfers that Zephyr brought with him.

Zephyr brought in about four times the amount of Marine personnel and 37 old fat-bellied Marine Galleons, which were slightly larger than a modern large Marine Frigate.

Those old Galleons could carry a lot of tonnage and had seastone bands across their hulls which made them more or less invisible to sea kings, but without being full plated with seastone, they were dreadfully slow.

Like with their old Captains, it was little surprise that Zephyr had gotten those ships transferred from Marineford too.

Bill himself on the other hand had a massive Galleon, a large iron-clad battleship, seven large Frigates, two medium Frigates, and one small Frigate on his payroll – not including the four large Frigates that were currently being finished in New Haven.

These ships were all modern, they all had electric generators so they could hold [Iron Wardens] and even seastone propellers that could be used in emergencies.

The Marines that he had recruited over the years were also much more powerful than Zephyr’s men.

Those older Marines all generally had learned one of the Six Powers and had survived for decades on the sea, but against Willy and his crew Whale Fishmen, the Marine Minks, or even Bill’s human Marines like Bascud, Pearson, and the Beetleborgs, they were simply outmatched.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that even without Bill’s childhood friends, Sasha and Ricky, the Procurement Department had more strength than Zephyr’s transfers.

But despite this, Bill did mostly agree with Zephyr’s idea and had to find a way to maximize their forces.

Had it not been for his prior experience in having large influxes of personal, Bill would have been lost… but with Zephyr organizing with him, he got to work on the most important things first.

Firstly, he had to create a new command structure because previously New Haven had been designed to oversee building projects… and he had to factor in at Zephyr’s three main commanders which added an unknown factor but was relaxed when Zephyr was fine with only [Ain] being in the top brass of the Department.

Second, Bill had to expand his factories and increase their output – a mind-numbing task because he needed to somehow increase raw materials for production – but it was impossible for them to be efficient while the majority of their forces were using matchlock rifles and smoothbore cannons.

The final thing he had to do, before setting in motion any sort of policy or strategy, was to disassemble Gran Tesoro.

Thankfully, for that purpose, those 37 old fat-bellied Galleons were very useful.

And so even if they trickled in slowly, rarely ever arriving in groups, the ships were loaded with gold and sent to Old Marineford.

This process seemed simple but took a lot of time.

Gran Tesoro itself had billions of Beli worth of gold alone, it was the size of a metropolis after all.

The distance between New Haven and Old Marineford was relatively close, but the galleons were slow, adding about 3 weeks to a round trip.

Naturally, those treasure fleets carrying hundreds of millions of Beli had to be protected, which meant that Bill had to send Sasha and Ricky on the M.S.S. Salamander to shadow them from the rear while Shuzo and Binz led them in the White Tiger from the front.

With all of this done, or at least all set in motion, Bill could begin organizing an effective way to reduce piracy.

Of course, with his meager forces it would be impossible to trawl the ‘Old World’ like Fleet Admiral Sakazuki planned to trawl the New World. With his and his leadership teams calculations, they would need something like 200 ships and probably closer to 100,000 Marines in total to cover the first half of the Grand Line alone...

What he had was about 50 ships which were mostly old and slow, with about 18,000 Marines, most of whom were either old themselves or simply regular humans.

To do this, they would have to think outside the box, and using Sakazuki’s example, Bill considered that [Paradise] only had 7 ship routes – routes that would be chosen at random by pirates entering the Grand Line.

So, Bill’s thought was thus:

A strong Marine presence near Reverse Mountain, which would capture or defeat 90-95% of the pirates entering the Grand Line. Leaving the very strong pirates alone while documenting which sea route they went down. For this, the old galleons would be useful.

A force would sail up and down each of the seven natural sea routes of the Grand Line, capturing and destroying whatever pirate harbors that they came across. This would be time-consuming and result in less actual results but would give their Department the outward face it needed to achieve their Commission and show the world that the Marines hadn’t lost their power just yet.

A very strong Marine force stationed on Sabaody Archipelago would be responsible for heading off any pirates that made it that far. This force initially would have the majority of Iron Wardens and would likewise use whatever galleons that weren’t stationed at Reverse Mountain.

With those forces working in the Grand Line, they would start building strike crews made up more modern ships which would be stationed inside the Lower Blues and basically be ‘on call’ whenever a Kingdom or Marine Base called for help.

Of course, unlike those eight Kingdoms which had just recently fallen in under two weeks, Bill didn’t think they represented anything other than years of planning by the Revolutionary Army.

Kingdoms and Nations would simply not fall so quickly under any normal circumstance, but if they did, naturally no Marine presence could help them.

These were the broad outlines of Bill’s strategy, and it got a round of approval from Zephyr and his people.

It had only been three months, but already Zephyr had placed nearly every final decision in Bill’s hands while he himself spent more and more time on INFERNO Island.

But that worked well enough for Bill who after years of being the ‘head’ of an organization felt comfortable in being in a position he never dreamed of back during his time on Earth.

Now, sitting at his desk, Bill went over the schematics on what they intended to turn the Gran Tesoro into.

The metropolis floating on water was going to be the ‘face’ of their efforts and in many ways the face of the Marines in Paradise.

Adding additional power stations, plants where they would refine seawater into Di-hydrogen fuel, factories where they could manufacture ammunition, and with bubble shields, the former floating casino would become the world’s only floating Marine Citadel.

Even Bill’s former dream of designing airplanes didn’t seem out of the question.

Zephyr himself loved the idea, and took it upon himself to name the vessel even before it was completed…

He said at one of their leadership meetings: “It’ll be a new age when [The Arc] sails across the world, and likewise, we must become new Marines with it.”

Then Zephyr said something that made Bill raise his eyebrow.

“To reflect this, I have submitted a new classification for our Commission and have gotten approval from the Commander-in-Chief himself. We are NOT the ‘Department of the Old World’…

We are [Neo Marines].”