Despite calling themselves [Neo Marines] Bill had no doubts about whether or not they were still under the authority of Marine Headquarters.

They were.

But with that said, Zephyr’s lifetime spent in the Marines had accounted for something and due to the fact that he had served as an Admiral under [Kong] – the current Commander-in-Chief of the World Government – he was in a unique position to be able to go above Sakazuki’s head on certain matters.

Sakazuki himself knew this, and while he did find it annoying to deal with the old dotard, in general he didn’t care what Zephyr did in the first half of the Grand Line or Lower Seas, just so long as it didn’t affect his move into the New World.

This was to say that while the so-called ‘Neo Marines’ were under the authority of Marine HQ, for as long as Zephyr lived, they had a level of operational freedom over such a wide area that it had never been seen before.

From Bill’s point of view, of all this it was fine, having his own experience from the past eight years and the former Admiral to bounce questions off of, his place effectively being the leader of the [Neo Marines] just meant operations were scaled up a couple of extra levels.

Already, as [The Arc] continued to be stripped of gold and refitted for more practical use, they had used their newfound authority to pull in a couple key Marine Bases in the Lower Seas under their jurisdiction.

Bases like those found near the East Blue’s Logue Town or in the South Blue off the coast of Briss Kingdom.

These places were natural choke points for pirates on their way to the Grand Line, and since those pirates heading for the Grand Line tended to be the more powerful of their kind, adventurous and brutal as they were, these bases would be where the Neo Marine strike forces would be based.

Sitting in New Haven, day after day, Bill’s routine of strengthening himself never stopped.

He had a lot of research material he wanted to go over for his own personal interest, things like [Wapometal] could add enormous benefit to his Beetleborgs if he knew how it was made, but that would have to wait for the next time he set sail.

For day after day, week after week, Bill’s attention at work consumed much of his day and was completely focused on the movement of his forces.

To go with this, the construction projects in the East Blue hadn’t been put on hold. The Gray Quarter had been virtually remade into a modern city, and the mountains of garbage cleaned up by the time that Bill was ready to renegotiate with King Sterry.

Before Shiki had dropped a dozen islands on top of New Haven Bill had quite a lot of plans for the land they had negotiated away from Goa Kingdom, but now those plans didn’t seem quite worth it, and he spoke to the Kingdoms diplomats about reselling them back the land there.

All he wanted for that decade of hard labor was the right to recruit directly from Goa Kingdom’s population and King Sterry’s support in a future Levely.

For the first point, in general the Marines had to be careful in recruiting on major islands.

They would mostly accept people who came voluntarily to sign up, but those Kingdoms had to be compensated in Beli for each of those recruits.

Normally this amount wasn’t incredibly high per individual, but it did add up fast and was one less thing that Bill didn’t want to have to handle, and so set out to settle the matter.

As for the second point, that was obvious. Bill didn’t spell out to King Sterry his plan to limit the privileges of the World Nobles, only to get the King’s agreement to support the Neo Marines agenda of ‘creating security on the high sea’.

In the end the Goa Kingdom was the first kingdom, but far from the last, where they gained full recruiting privileges – and likewise the verbal and written support for the Neo Marines mission statement.

To Bill the more important thing he had negotiated with Sterry was his support at the next Levely, but that didn’t mean the recruitment rights weren’t a major win.

After all, their meager numbers made both Zephyr and Bill’s plan next to impossible… tapping into the treasure they had commandeered from Gran Tesoro, Bill would need to expand his forces to at least 140 ships and 75,000 Marine personnel.

As the weeks turned into months more outrageous news came from the New World, and thanks to Ranse, Bill had a clearer picture of what was going on there than most others.

In fact, it had to be said that the ‘Sherrif of the East Blue’ was making a name for himself under the leadership of the [Smoker the White Hunter].

As the Base Commander of G-5, Smoker had one of the worst areas in the first part of the New World to oversee.

But with that said, he also had one of the best groups of Lieutenants of any single base.

Besides Smoker himself who had become much more powerful during the years he spent in the New World, no longer solely relying on his Logia ability, Tashigi had also become one of the standout swordsmen of the younger generation of Marines.

Accompanying them were the former Krieg Pirates ‘Diablo’ Gin and Pearl ‘The Iron Wall’, both of whom were absolutely strong enough to Captain their own ships but instead stayed under Smoker’s flag.

For Ranse’s part, he and Fia were together as usual. They had taken with them a medium sized Frigate and 120 men who primarily had come from Ruluka Island.

Outside of their elite Special Operators, these were some of the most combat-ready personnel in the old Procurement Department, but Bill hadn’t said anything when Ranse asked to have them reassigned to himself.

Heading into the New World, Bill wouldn’t risk his friend’s life for his own convenience’s sake and told Ranse to take also four Iron Wardens with him.

Under Smoker’s leadership, but commanding his own ship, Ranse and Fia had fought several famous pirates, including the likes of the [‘Magician’ Basil Hawkins] and the [‘Pirate Prince’ Cavendish].

Both pirates had gotten away, which astonished Bill since he knew Ranse’s abilities, but chalked it up to pure chance.

At least, with Hawkins, Bill knew the story involved the [Beast Pirates], making Ranse’s choice to not pursue somewhat understandable.

Thinking back to his own affairs over the course of three months, and with the help of Bascud, Bill had received recruitment rights and support from four Kings in the East Blue and one King in the South Blue.

Naturally, five supporters would not be enough since except for a few large Kingdoms the Levely did not have the same attendants every four years.

Plus, getting support from the East Blue where they had been working for years would be the easiest to do.

In order to secure the support of Frauce Kingdom, Bill had to guarantee that the huge flagship galleon M.S.S. Victory would stay in the East Blue.

Since the devastating beast wave created by Shiki, the huge ship had become a rallying point and symbol of stability for the people of that sea, so various island nobles wanted it to be stationed there permanently.

With the former Bounty Hunter, Bascud, effectively replacing Ranse’s work in the East Blue, Bill had Sasha start working on the South Blue since she was a minor noble of a large Kingdom herself.

The one supporter they had received so far from the South Blue was King Beer from Roshwan Kingdom – this came at the cost of several dozen King Cannons and the continued sale of shells.

To this point, despite having billions in Beli and numerous treasures – including multiple Devil Fruits – Bill wanted to shy away from outright bribes since he saw them as less reliable, but he was in no way opposed to using them if necessary.

The easiest way for these ‘bribes’ to work was for him to agree to pay a portion of the taxes due to the World Government, the so-called ‘Heavenly Tribute’, for a set period of time.

Naturally, he made sure that the timetables on these sorts of bribes occurred around the time for the next Levely – lest the leaders he spoke to wanted to renege on their support after receiving the benefits.

As time passed, Bill spent more time negotiating with the leadership of the Allied Governments via Video Snail with various islands than overseeing deployments personally.

On this point, [Ain] had become invaluable.

Working in tandem with Nelson and Borodo, she provided the leadership that would have been filled by Pearson or Ranse.

But, as it was, after months of staying in the East Blue and training Bascud to take over, the Hole-Hole Human requested to be transferred to Ranse’s crew in the New World, and despite it being an enormous loss, Bill granted it.

With Ranse and Fia acting on their own most of the time they were subject to dangers that Bill couldn’t be comfortable with.

Of course, he knew that they weren’t weak… at least, Ranse was stronger than most Vice Admirals and with Fia they could fight off mountain-sized monsters, but the New World held things more powerful than ‘mountain-sized monsters’, and with Pearson who ate the Hole-Hole Fruit, they’re likelihood of survival was increased exponentially.

As the actual Marine operations of the Neo Marines got under way, about six months after Bill had been pulled into the new organization, their Headquarters on New Haven had installed a computing system that was more advanced than anything in the world outside of [Egghead Island].

Created by Henzo and the robotics team, using the Iron Warden’s [Minds] as inspiration, this system was called [QuantiCargo Machine] and it replaced the logistical work of a hundred highly trained administrative Marines by showing detailed information on where each ship was.

Besides the old method of embedding a Vivre Card into each ship, now they had microchips that were produced on the island which showed approximate locations of Neo Marine vessels as well as their crew manifests.

Of course, true to its name as a futuristic island, the [QuantiCargo Machine] also kept track of supplies, could recommend when to order shipments of materials that couldn’t yet be made on New Haven, and even keep records of payments.

Whether payroll, purchasing, or income generated by Pirate Bounties, the sale of technological goods, and even custom taxes on traders coming to the islands to sell their own wares, the [QuantiCargo Machine] was a supercomputer made to handle numbers and figures.

Naturally, it was a huge time saver, and its effects were immediate on the entire Neo Marine organization – but particularly on Bill and Nelson who had overseen the bulk of the logistical efforts.

While Bill had been working from dawn until dusk every day, whether on himself or the Neo Marines, he had intermittently received notices on Zephyr who was the supposed leader of the organization.

The old man himself had initially spent a great deal of time on INFERNO Island overseeing trainees and reorganizing crews.

And while Bill had been in negotiations with various island leaders, Zephyr had been negotiating with the Marine Bases near those islands.

The reception they received from Marine Bases was almost solely connected with how much the World Military Draft had drained them.

In those bases which had their veteran force decimated, those with more new recruits or transfers than regulars, the Neo Marine were seen as a lifeline cast out unexpectedly and received veneration.

But for the larger bases, fewer in number as they were, at best the Neo Marines were seen as a nuisance since they either ‘stole’ would ‘steal’ pirate bounties that those bases relied on.

Still that was Zephyr’s role and without thinking about what Zephyr had been up to, just over six months of being in the Neo Marines, Bill ended a Video Snail call with the King of Harahettania which resided on Namakura Island – in their own language ‘Harahettania Kingdom’ literally meant ‘Land of Poverty’ – where he had successfully negotiated support for the Neo Marine agenda.

The King had outright offered Bill 25,000 of his people in order to ‘take them off his hands’… all for the cheap cost of several shipments of food at pre-arranged dates.

Though Bill balked at the blanket ‘offer’ of 25,000 people, he started to arrange for the Harahettania Kingdom to establish a small Neo Marine base where they would recruit the most suitable people they could find to the Navy or transfer hard workers to New Haven itself.

Over the months he had become very adept at such things, after all, his brain itself was ‘better’ after being introduced to Aramaki’s Elixir of Life and constant Vitalvine consumption.

Still, nothing could have prepared him for when Zephyr visited his office, and sitting across from Bill started explaining an ‘important Kingdom to the World Government’ that they had to get the support of.

Zephyr explained to Bill that this was one of the few Allied Kingdoms in the New World, and more so, it was a founding member of the World Government.

It was a big fish, and they would have to go personally to negotiate with them.

This sounded strange to Bill whose thoughts had been focused on the ‘old world’ but with Zephyr’s insistence that they should go together, Bill decided to look up the Kingdom’s intelligence as gathered by New Marineford.

Surprisingly, there wasn’t much information on the King of the Kingdom… despite the Kingdom being one of the [First Twenty], one of the original founders of the World Government.

There was information that a past king had been deposed but that didn’t mean anything to Bill, and with that, there were a lot of other facts about the place that pointed to Zephyr’s claims as not being exaggerated.

So, on Zephyr’s insistence, Bill agreed that gathering the support of a large founding kingdom would help more in the [Levely] than kingdoms who called themselves the ‘lands of poverty’ and began to organize his staff to operate without him personally in his office.

He gave Nelson administrative control if he was unable to communicate and left Borodo to assist him – and would take most of their sensitive treasures with him in tiny bottles while leaving one major asset, the Logia Paper Fruit, with Nelson in case of an emergency.

He gave Binz complete say over any military actions taken that involved more than three warships, and left Shuzo his Lieutenant, in the case that he or Zephyr couldn’t be reached.

Finally, after considering where he was going, and how close he would be to Zunesha, the Kingdom of Zou, Bill decided to take Yoko and her crew so that some of the Minks could see home again.

He wouldn’t be able to visit for long but knew that both of the Dukes of Day and Night would appreciate seeing with their own eyes some of the Minks who left years ago.

So, sailing out on his own small frigate the [Frontier Run] with a crew of some 150 Marines, Bill left New Haven with Zephyr, Ain, Yoko, a crew’s worth of Monkey Minks, and most of the Chore Boys who had now become fully fledged Marines.

With him on board the ship, spirits were sky high and the Howler Monkey Minks were singing sea shanties about places they had never been, women they would like to see, or songs about getting drunk.

After half a year Bill’s rough strength was known to Zephyr and Ain which made them feel confident, and as for Bill himself, going out to sea for the first time since the fiasco with the Gran Tesoro made him feel great.

It would take a few months to get there, but they were headed straight to [Dressrosa Kingdom].

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Heading back into the New World, what will happen?!

Find out next time!

Basil Hawkins

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'Pirate Prince' Cavendish

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Ain (Reminder)

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Zephyr (Reminder)

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