After weeks of not having any reliable way for outside communication Bill spent the remainder of the first day on Jail Island organizing the last pieces of his Departments outlays and personnel transfers into the East Blue, filing multiple reports with both the Science Division and Marineford – where he reported directly to an outraged Sengoku about Vergo’s treachery – and finally was able to reliably direct their next courses of action for when they left Jail Island.
By nightfall, he felt proud about how much he had accomplished, and seeing the rest of the crew start to file back on the ship realized just how much the sailors under his command needed the time off.
The Marine Fish-men came back laughing and smelling like alcohol while half of the male humans came back serenely while smelling like perfume.
Back on Earth, Bill would have had a strong opinion when it came to the world’s “oldest profession”. Back then, he fervently believed prostitution to be a scourge that took advantage of vulnerable woman and ruined the ethics of the male patrons.
But after spending two decades in this strange world his opinion had softened. Firstly, he recognized that his upbringing in middle America had a unique level of prosperity after the second war which allowed for more puritan ideals and secondly he reminded himself that it was only in the couple decades prior to him being born when the brothels were closed down.
With these and other thoughts while he still believed in the nuclear family, he no longer held strong opinions when it came to the world’s “oldest profession”.
Whether some women were lazy or others just found it to be preferable to a regular job, he reckoned and as long as there wasn’t coercion it was better to leave well enough alone.
As the crew began to filter in for the night so did the officers.
Ricky and Sasha had come back excited and with Sasha carrying a new sword he could understand why, her old longsword had been nicked by the Whitebeard Pirates and it would need to be completely reforged if it was to ever be used again.
What Bill didn’t expect was that her new sword was ‘Gram’!
It was both surprising and not to find one of the 21 Great Grade Blades, on Jail Island. On one hand, as a very wealthy and technological island it seemed appropriate to find high quality items, but on the other hand, for Sasha to stumble across one of the few Great Grade two-handed longswords was nothing short of fate.
She wasn’t the only one to find something good either, Willy came across a composite seastone-spiked club that was perfect for his size, Nelson found himself a set of eight mini-Snails which only communicated with each other on a unique frequency, and Miyagi purchased a store of unique minerals and herbs which he hoped would benefit his Miracle Drug.
Even with all the excitement of the city, dinner was provided for the crew at the usual time, but due to it being the first day of shore leave Bill had decided to extend the period which the sailors could come and eat.
And for one small member of the crew, it was lucky that he did.
Just as the sun was about to fall beneath the waves, and just before he was about to go out looking, a buzz was heard getting closer and after the tell-tale sound of Boss landing, Bill left his office just in time to see a very dirty Yoko landing on the deck and running towards the women’s quarters.
“Hold it!” he called out, and hearing him, the girl skipped forwards on one leg until she slowed down enough to turn.
“I’m dirty after all that crawling around and need a shower! I’ll come back after I’m clean!” She called back and then proceeded to ran into the ship before he could get another word in.
‘Crawling around?’ Bill thought but decided it wasn’t important enough to catch her before she went into the bathroom. It was unfortunate because if he had then he would have smelled the spiced wine coming off her, but as it stood, her smell was mixed with the scent of the alcohol coming off the Fish-men and so he was none the wiser.
After her shower, Yoko was smart enough to come to his office while eating a ripe peach and thinking that the fruit was slightly overripe, he just asked her about her day.
She told him about flying north past Steel City and then flying west until she saw a group of kids playing. Then told him some of their names and how they made a bet and that’s why she was crawling around.
“A bet?” he had asked, to which she just laughed and responded that there was ‘no way’ she’d possibly lose!
After speaking to the girl for a little longer, the crews first day on Jail Island came to an end and the next morning everyone was present for roll call.
Looking over his group of sailors, Bill informed them that they would be in port for at least a week or maybe longer depending on the how long the repairs took, and this was welcomed news amongst everyone who had months of back pay burning holes in their pockets.
Marines were in general better with money than Pirates, but that wasn’t saying much. Though Marine contracts were created to be enough for a Mate 2nd Class to buy a home on a medium-sized island after their initial six-year contracts that was not usually what ended up happening.
This was because people starved of wider society for months at a time would find themselves trying to regain what was ‘lost’ and, while their inhibitions were lowered, not consider their futures.
Knowing that he couldn’t do anything about this except to remind the crew not to throw their wages away, Bill finished up that mornings meeting and eagerly set his affairs in order.
Like the others he was not immune to getting excited after so many months at sea, and while the prospects of going to bars or prostitutes wouldn’t get him going, the chance to see Isaac’s laboratory did.
Leaving the ship his mindset shifted from Marine Captain to Engineer and he started to give serious thought on how it was possible for the robots to fly like they did.
For sure, he figured, they didn’t work on the same as his Pulse Boots. For starters, while his boots did use thrusters, their main ‘lift’ came from the pulses of anti-gravity particle they released in the moment of being used.
The Pulse Boots were simple enough pieces of high technology, but he had found the issue of energy storage to render them impossible for ‘flying’, with the best he could get being about 20 good kicks before their charge ran out.
Likewise, he dismissed out of hand the idea that they used the same ‘Field Theory’ principles of the Pulse Gloves. This was because despite the fact that the gloves were much more advanced, their anti-gravity fields were also much weaker.
And unless he discovered some new form of energy that would likely forever be the case. Simply put, creating permanent force fields of any kind demanded far more energy than what could be either produced or stored in something small enough to be held on a person’s body.
This was also what stopped him from designing anti-gravity airships. Di-hydrogen crystals worked great as portable energy and, in many ways, surpassed the output of fossil fuels. Even still, they weren’t nearly stable enough and burned away too quickly to power the futuristic technology he had studied during his apprenticeship to Doctor Vegapunk.
Walking up a steep incline into the naval base, Bill was waved through by the first set of guards but was stopped by a black-haired Marine who introduced himself as Lieutenant Merlin and explained to him that Isaac was waiting for him.
Following the Marine, Bill found that Warden Isaac’s laboratory was several levels underneath the base and assumed that this was common practice. It wasn’t as large as Vegapunks lab on Marineford but what it lacked in size it made up for in focus.
Nearly every room he passed he saw men and women in white coats surrounded by all kinds of mechanical equipment that would be used in creating robotics.
There were rooms of robotic frames in one room followed by another full of the thrusters used on the robots’ feet. The further he went the more specialized the pieces became until he saw by a room with sensors and gauges and finally came across a room in which sat the former Admiral, Zephyr.
Slowing down to look inside, Zephyr’s sat some distance away with his back turned towards him, and Bill saw several people attaching what seemed like a two-part cybernetic arm.
Or at least, he thought, it was a cybernetic arm and some kind of weapons attachment because the larger piece took the form of a large three-fingered claw that was bigger than the old man’s chest and probably would be useless for anything other than fighting.
Ignoring Merlin’s ushering, Bill stood in the doorway for a time and simply watched until he heard steps headed in his direction, and turning he found it to be the Warden.
Staying in place, the Warden came to stand beside him and said with a nod: “One of my finest creations.”
“Really?” Bill asked curiously, the giant claw looked formidable, but it seemed worse than the arm he built for Borodo. For cybernetic limbs, size wasn’t everything. There was a key balance to maintain between natural capability and mechanical functionality.
If the body couldn’t support the limb then there was an accident waiting to happen. Of course, the former Admiral was stronger than his Navigator, but the man was in his seventies and had naturally lost a lot of what he had been before.
Isaac didn’t seem to understand Bill’s thought process when he answered: “The Battle Smasher is 78% pure seastone, quite good for a piece its size. It also comes equipped with a machine gun and enough force to rip apart the haul of any pirate vessel it’s likely to come across.”
That level of purity was very good, Bill thought. Of course, he had produced pure seastone before leaving Vegapunk, but that was something only the size of a badge.
After that the two stood there for several minutes, Bill asked Isaac how the attachment made it neural connections and what was its response timer. Isaac in turn asked Bill more about Vegapunks cyborgs and seemed to be more and more dispirited by Bill’s answers.
On Bill’s part, he was having an absolute field day picking Isaac’s brain and once they left the doorway viewing Zephyr’s procedure, he happily followed Isaac to his personal workshop.
Looking around eagerly it was hard to not start touching things but holding himself in, Bill continued to ask questions about how the robots avoided flying into things and how their targeting systems worked in general.
Of the many things that Bill had learned, it was clear that the robots did not implant consciousness in the way the SATELITE Program had done but nor where they flown by a remote operator.
This level of autonomy was fascinating, but the more details that Bill asked the vaguer Isaac became until he finally cut Bill off and told him that if he wanted to know more then he’d have to pay.
“Pay?” Bill asked in confusion. He wasn’t immediately upset but thought it kind of absurd. Weren’t they both Marines? It seemed to him that the knowledge shouldn’t be withheld, after all, he wasn’t asking for anything material.
But Isaac didn’t see it the same way, and Bill reluctantly agreed when the Warden responded that this work had taken him and his Department years to research and finance. Furthermore, Isaac said, once Bill had the knowledge of his robotic designs, any sort of future compensation to him could be cut off.
With the prospect of learning how the flying robots worked and with his inhibitions lowered, Bill asked the Warden how much it would cost for him to hand over his research, to which the man laughed and replied: “For all my research? It can be yours for either 1 Billion Beli or in exchange for Vegapunk’s research on exactly how he plans to control his Pacifista.”
“Pacifista?” Bill asked in confusion, and while he was learning about the Pacifista Project for the first time, somewhere across the island a small Marine crept up behind a rifle-wielding pirate.
Moving stealthy, Yoko practically moved on all fours until she was just in range. Then in one swift movement bashed in the back of the pirate’s head with her hammer.
After a wet thump, there was a thud when the mans body hit the ground. At first startled by her actions, she leapt away from the body… looking wide-eyed at what she had done, she stayed like that for several minutes until her eyes turned red, and with renewed confidence, she tiptoed back closer and gave the man’s shoe a light kick.
Seeing that there was no movement, a wide smile spread across her face and she thought that after taking care of these evildoers, she should really drink some more of that wine.
UberNuber If you enjoy the fanfic please hit the heart icon and consider leaving a rating!
After weeks of not having any reliable way for outside communication Bill spent the remainder of the first day on Jail Island organizing the last pieces of his Departments outlays and personnel transfers into the East Blue, filing multiple reports with both the Science Division and Marineford – where he reported directly to an outraged Sengoku about Vergo’s treachery – and finally was able to reliably direct their next courses of action for when they left Jail Island.
By nightfall, he felt proud about how much he had accomplished, and seeing the rest of the crew start to file back on the ship realized just how much the sailors under his command needed the time off.
The Marine Fish-men came back laughing and smelling like alcohol while half of the male humans came back serenely while smelling like perfume.
Back on Earth, Bill would have had a strong opinion when it came to the world’s “oldest profession”. Back then, he fervently believed prostitution to be a scourge that took advantage of vulnerable woman and ruined the ethics of the male patrons.
But after spending two decades in this strange world his opinion had softened. Firstly, he recognized that his upbringing in middle America had a unique level of prosperity after the second war which allowed for more puritan ideals and secondly he reminded himself that it was only in the couple decades prior to him being born when the brothels were closed down.
With these and other thoughts while he still believed in the nuclear family, he no longer held strong opinions when it came to the world’s “oldest profession”.
Whether some women were lazy or others just found it to be preferable to a regular job, he reckoned and as long as there wasn’t coercion it was better to leave well enough alone.
As the crew began to filter in for the night so did the officers.
Ricky and Sasha had come back excited and with Sasha carrying a new sword he could understand why, her old longsword had been nicked by the Whitebeard Pirates and it would need to be completely reforged if it was to ever be used again.
What Bill didn’t expect was that her new sword was ‘Gram’!
It was both surprising and not to find one of the 21 Great Grade Blades, on Jail Island. On one hand, as a very wealthy and technological island it seemed appropriate to find high quality items, but on the other hand, for Sasha to stumble across one of the few Great Grade two-handed longswords was nothing short of fate.
She wasn’t the only one to find something good either, Willy came across a composite seastone-spiked club that was perfect for his size, Nelson found himself a set of eight mini-Snails which only communicated with each other on a unique frequency, and Miyagi purchased a store of unique minerals and herbs which he hoped would benefit his Miracle Drug.
Even with all the excitement of the city, dinner was provided for the crew at the usual time, but due to it being the first day of shore leave Bill had decided to extend the period which the sailors could come and eat.
And for one small member of the crew, it was lucky that he did.
Just as the sun was about to fall beneath the waves, and just before he was about to go out looking, a buzz was heard getting closer and after the tell-tale sound of Boss landing, Bill left his office just in time to see a very dirty Yoko landing on the deck and running towards the women’s quarters.
“Hold it!” he called out, and hearing him, the girl skipped forwards on one leg until she slowed down enough to turn.
“I’m dirty after all that crawling around and need a shower! I’ll come back after I’m clean!” She called back and then proceeded to ran into the ship before he could get another word in.
‘Crawling around?’ Bill thought but decided it wasn’t important enough to catch her before she went into the bathroom. It was unfortunate because if he had then he would have smelled the spiced wine coming off her, but as it stood, her smell was mixed with the scent of the alcohol coming off the Fish-men and so he was none the wiser.
After her shower, Yoko was smart enough to come to his office while eating a ripe peach and thinking that the fruit was slightly overripe, he just asked her about her day.
She told him about flying north past Steel City and then flying west until she saw a group of kids playing. Then told him some of their names and how they made a bet and that’s why she was crawling around.
“A bet?” he had asked, to which she just laughed and responded that there was ‘no way’ she’d possibly lose!
After speaking to the girl for a little longer, the crews first day on Jail Island came to an end and the next morning everyone was present for roll call.
Looking over his group of sailors, Bill informed them that they would be in port for at least a week or maybe longer depending on the how long the repairs took, and this was welcomed news amongst everyone who had months of back pay burning holes in their pockets.
Marines were in general better with money than Pirates, but that wasn’t saying much. Though Marine contracts were created to be enough for a Mate 2nd Class to buy a home on a medium-sized island after their initial six-year contracts that was not usually what ended up happening.
This was because people starved of wider society for months at a time would find themselves trying to regain what was ‘lost’ and, while their inhibitions were lowered, not consider their futures.
Knowing that he couldn’t do anything about this except to remind the crew not to throw their wages away, Bill finished up that mornings meeting and eagerly set his affairs in order.
Like the others he was not immune to getting excited after so many months at sea, and while the prospects of going to bars or prostitutes wouldn’t get him going, the chance to see Isaac’s laboratory did.
Leaving the ship his mindset shifted from Marine Captain to Engineer and he started to give serious thought on how it was possible for the robots to fly like they did.
For sure, he figured, they didn’t work on the same as his Pulse Boots. For starters, while his boots did use thrusters, their main ‘lift’ came from the pulses of anti-gravity particle they released in the moment of being used.
The Pulse Boots were simple enough pieces of high technology, but he had found the issue of energy storage to render them impossible for ‘flying’, with the best he could get being about 20 good kicks before their charge ran out.
Likewise, he dismissed out of hand the idea that they used the same ‘Field Theory’ principles of the Pulse Gloves. This was because despite the fact that the gloves were much more advanced, their anti-gravity fields were also much weaker.
And unless he discovered some new form of energy that would likely forever be the case. Simply put, creating permanent force fields of any kind demanded far more energy than what could be either produced or stored in something small enough to be held on a person’s body.
This was also what stopped him from designing anti-gravity airships. Di-hydrogen crystals worked great as portable energy and, in many ways, surpassed the output of fossil fuels. Even still, they weren’t nearly stable enough and burned away too quickly to power the futuristic technology he had studied during his apprenticeship to Doctor Vegapunk.
Walking up a steep incline into the naval base, Bill was waved through by the first set of guards but was stopped by a black-haired Marine who introduced himself as Lieutenant Merlin and explained to him that Isaac was waiting for him.
Following the Marine, Bill found that Warden Isaac’s laboratory was several levels underneath the base and assumed that this was common practice. It wasn’t as large as Vegapunks lab on Marineford but what it lacked in size it made up for in focus.
Nearly every room he passed he saw men and women in white coats surrounded by all kinds of mechanical equipment that would be used in creating robotics.
There were rooms of robotic frames in one room followed by another full of the thrusters used on the robots’ feet. The further he went the more specialized the pieces became until he saw by a room with sensors and gauges and finally came across a room in which sat the former Admiral, Zephyr.
Slowing down to look inside, Zephyr’s sat some distance away with his back turned towards him, and Bill saw several people attaching what seemed like a two-part cybernetic arm.
Or at least, he thought, it was a cybernetic arm and some kind of weapons attachment because the larger piece took the form of a large three-fingered claw that was bigger than the old man’s chest and probably would be useless for anything other than fighting.
Ignoring Merlin’s ushering, Bill stood in the doorway for a time and simply watched until he heard steps headed in his direction, and turning he found it to be the Warden.
Staying in place, the Warden came to stand beside him and said with a nod: “One of my finest creations.”
“Really?” Bill asked curiously, the giant claw looked formidable, but it seemed worse than the arm he built for Borodo. For cybernetic limbs, size wasn’t everything. There was a key balance to maintain between natural capability and mechanical functionality.
If the body couldn’t support the limb then there was an accident waiting to happen. Of course, the former Admiral was stronger than his Navigator, but the man was in his seventies and had naturally lost a lot of what he had been before.
Isaac didn’t seem to understand Bill’s thought process when he answered: “The Battle Smasher is 78% pure seastone, quite good for a piece its size. It also comes equipped with a machine gun and enough force to rip apart the haul of any pirate vessel it’s likely to come across.”
That level of purity was very good, Bill thought. Of course, he had produced pure seastone before leaving Vegapunk, but that was something only the size of a badge.
After that the two stood there for several minutes, Bill asked Isaac how the attachment made it neural connections and what was its response timer. Isaac in turn asked Bill more about Vegapunks cyborgs and seemed to be more and more dispirited by Bill’s answers.
On Bill’s part, he was having an absolute field day picking Isaac’s brain and once they left the doorway viewing Zephyr’s procedure, he happily followed Isaac to his personal workshop.
Looking around eagerly it was hard to not start touching things but holding himself in, Bill continued to ask questions about how the robots avoided flying into things and how their targeting systems worked in general.
Of the many things that Bill had learned, it was clear that the robots did not implant consciousness in the way the SATELITE Program had done but nor where they flown by a remote operator.
This level of autonomy was fascinating, but the more details that Bill asked the vaguer Isaac became until he finally cut Bill off and told him that if he wanted to know more then he’d have to pay.
“Pay?” Bill asked in confusion. He wasn’t immediately upset but thought it kind of absurd. Weren’t they both Marines? It seemed to him that the knowledge shouldn’t be withheld, after all, he wasn’t asking for anything material.
But Isaac didn’t see it the same way, and Bill reluctantly agreed when the Warden responded that this work had taken him and his Department years to research and finance. Furthermore, Isaac said, once Bill had the knowledge of his robotic designs, any sort of future compensation to him could be cut off.
With the prospect of learning how the flying robots worked and with his inhibitions lowered, Bill asked the Warden how much it would cost for him to hand over his research, to which the man laughed and replied: “For all my research? It can be yours for either 1 Billion Beli or in exchange for Vegapunk’s research on exactly how he plans to control his Pacifista.”
“Pacifista?” Bill asked in confusion, and while he was learning about the Pacifista Project for the first time, somewhere across the island a small Marine crept up behind a rifle-wielding pirate.
Moving stealthy, Yoko practically moved on all fours until she was just in range. Then in one swift movement bashed in the back of the pirate’s head with her hammer.
After a wet thump, there was a thud when the mans body hit the ground. At first startled by her actions, she leapt away from the body… looking wide-eyed at what she had done, she stayed like that for several minutes until her eyes turned red, and with renewed confidence, she tiptoed back closer and gave the man’s shoe a light kick.
Seeing that there was no movement, a wide smile spread across her face and she thought that after taking care of these evildoers, she should really drink some more of that wine.
UberNuber If you enjoy the fanfic please hit the heart icon and consider leaving a rating!
