“Pirates in these waters! Have they lost their bloody minds?!” [Nelson] hollered and for some reason started looking up and side to side despite the fact that they were standing indoors.
But Bill wasn’t in the mood for speculations and told his Commander to go organize a response, and knowing Bill as much as he did, Nelson quickly responded “Aye, I’ll see it done! Righto, Godspeed, Commodore!” before running off towards the door.
As for Bill himself, he also started to move and immediately went towards a bench on the side of the training room where his [Coat of Justice] lay folded beside a checkered navy-blue khaki business suit.
Quickly stripping off his training gear, he made sure not to break any of the rubber hoses that were attached to tanks of [VitaBoost]. With that done, he threw on his work clothes and grabbed a wristwatch-like device from under the pile of disorganized equipment.
The entire process from start to finish took him barely one minute until he was completely dressed and making long strides out of the same door Nelson had run through.
After tapping a code on his wristwatch-like device, four human-sized vertical chambers opened up in his personal lab and researchers throughout the facility watched as three unique [Iron Wardens] and one [Mind] sped their way out of the complex.
With island alarms still sounding, Bill’s long legs reached the training compounds door before the robots reached his signal, but by the time he took to the air and identified the source of the commotion, three bulky humanoid [Iron Wardens] and one wheel-shaped [Mind] could be seen speeding towards his exact location.
As the machines were speeding towards him, it took Bill several seconds to recognize just what he was seeing.
It was no pirate ship; it was a pirate… “submarine?” he whispered to himself as he saw a jolly roger slowly rise from the top of the vessel.
Until now, the idea of having a submarine in this archipelago world had never occurred to Bill after he learned of the existence of Sea Kings.
To say nothing of island-eaters and other mega sized examples, was not uncommon for Sea Kings to reach 50 meters in length. So, whatever dangers regular shipping faced it only made sense that submarines would face them doubly so.
Aside from the very real Sea King threat posed to submarines, the fact that they couldn’t see well unless they surfaced was another obvious issue.
And thinking this, Bill figured could only mean one of three things.
First, these pirates were fools who didn’t care about their surroundings at all, and they unknowingly sailed into a Marine base.
Second, it was a coordinated submarine squadron and there were so many more vessels waiting for news beneath the surf that these pirates didn’t feel the need to care about where they were attacking.
Third, the pirate captain of this crew had complete confidence that his people could assault a Marine garrison and live to see the next day.
Watching for a minute longer while still in the air, he saw the pirates file out from beneath the deck and while they seemed to gawk at the naval base, he quickly noted down their outfits.
Half of them were wearing ponchos and, other half dressed as bull fighters, and the entire crew seemed to have sombreros. They were all visibly armed with rifles more advanced than muskets and despite their gawking they filed onto the deck and into orderly lines.
By the time the robots reached Bills side, two more men were seen coming above deck and Bill didn’t need to be a genius to tell they were the crews’ leaders.
As the enemy assembled, he didn’t want to give them any more time to plan or run and so he sped through the air in their direction.
Using [Moon Step] Bill was faster than the speed of sound, but not wanting a sonic boom to be heard by either the pirates or Marines, he reigned himself in and moved at a speed that the robots could keep up with.
‘First let’s check in the water’ he thought. Then erasing his presence through an ability that he called [Presence Warp], Bill halted the robots and readied himself to sink or beach however many submarines he could find, but when he splashed down and looked, there was no submarine squadron or anything else in the water waiting for him.
Unintentionally rolling his eyes to this development and annoyed that he had gotten his suit wet, Bill swam through the water and breached the surface only a few feet away from the pirate’s ship.
With the robots still ordered not to move, Bill stopped using [Presence Warp] and jumped on the deck soaking wet, where he was quickly met by dozens of rifle barrels.
“Where the hell did you came from?!” shouted one of the men who Bill had pegged as a leader. He was a short bulky man who dressed like a luchador.
Utilizing [Thought Reading], Bill knew that the man was anxious and confused, but facing dozens of weapons pointed in his direction, he didn’t have patience when he made a clear demand: “Drop your weapons, any failure to comply will be taken as a hostile action!”
Whilst the short man looked befuddled and then outraged, the tall one began to laugh a strange tune that made it sound like he was weeping.
*Shik-shik-shik*
After his laughing was done, he said: “Señor, perhaps you have not grasped the fact that my amigos have you outnumbered, and truly” he clasped his hands together and using a Devil Fruit ability created a slimy substance “I can capture an uno Marino even before taking my siesta!”
Instantly touching the device on his wrist, Bill didn’t wait for either the [Iron Wardens] to arrive or for the pirate to act before he sprang forwards.
Cracking the wooden deck despite not planning to, he practically teleported to the first doomed pirate and gave him an open-palm slap.
Unfortunately, Bill didn’t know the strength of these men and he was still working on his three original assumptions, so the first one he hit was the unluckiest. When Bill’s hand connected with the pirate’s face, the hand didn’t slow down but directly blew the man’s head clean off his shoulders.
After having literally decapitated a pirate with a slap, Bill gritted his teeth and held back more and more as he tore through the pirate crew. Felling one pirate after another, only the two leaders seemed to be able to react now that he had slowed down.
“Gran bastardo!” called out the tall pirate shooting slimy nets in Bills direction and while he did this the short one pulled out two gatling guns from under his poncho and started shooting – disregarding the fact that he was only hitting his own crewmates.
Though everything had happened quickly, by now the [Iron Wardens] had arrived on the scene, and as the [Mind] determined the probable use of a Devil Fruit, one of the burly humanoid robots disassembled and turned into dozens of restraints homing in on its target.
Almost instantly the short pirate leader was slashed first across the back and then the chest and the tall leader was wrapped up in low-grade seastone – falling powerless to the ground due to the sheer weight wrapped around his body.
In the end, the entire engagement lasted around 60 seconds thanks to Bill not wanting to directly kill people who had no reasonable way to resist.
Although the danger was over Bill didn’t contact Nelson but walked through the submarine, and after pulling out six more pirates, all women, he then waited for his men to arrive.
To the credit of his Marines, he saw the first frigate pulling out of New Havens harbor in under 15 minutes, and in 25 minutes they had reached him on the submarine.
For a garrison who had never experienced a live attack, this was quite good he thought.
“Commodore!” shouted over Masterson from the head of a frigate as they neared. Waving them over, Bill waited until the Marines threw over grappling hooks, aligning the two vessels, and lowering boarding ramps.
The first one to come over Masterson first looked around, gave a sharp salute, and said: “Sir! What’s the situation?”
Motioning to the brutalized pirates laying around the ship, Bill just shrugged and responded: “Who knows, take them in and we’ll start interrogations.” Then pointing to the decapitated man, he added: “Bury that one at sea.”
Of course, ordering a burial at sea was just a fancy way to say “throw him overboard” but that was just life in this archipelago world.
Seeing that Masterson acknowledged his orders Bill jumped into the air, snatched the jolly roger, and returned to the island with the robots and their prisoner following close behind.
As his men started the process of restraining and booking the pirates, Bill quickly reached New Haven’s small Marine-run detention center and forcibly sat down the sneering pirate leader.
Not minding the sneer of his captive, Bill was glad that the low-grade seastone worked as intended.
One of the greatest engineering achievements of his Department in the last two years was the development of the low-grade seastone.
While it was admittedly worse quality in terms of durability and effect compared to the stuff that came out of Vegapunks lab, Bill and his team had created a process to manufacture this metallic alloy at a tiny fraction of the price.
Its downsides were that it could be destroyed and that it didn’t physically weaken Devil Fruit users, but its major upside was that it did stop a Devil Fruit user from using his or her ability.
With this innovation, Bill was able to equip his entire force with weapons that would turn Logia’s solid and disrupt the powers of any Paramecia users that they happened upon. Ranging from low-grade seastone knuckles and batons to special seastone ammunition, it was even useful as armor for his [Beetleborg] and [Iron Warden] soldiers.
So, with the Devil Fruit using pirate sitting across from him, Bill could be assured that there wouldn’t be any ‘funny business’ nor that the villain would be too weak to answer his questions.
And thanks to [Thought Reading], answers to those questions came quick.
The pirate in front of him was called Largo, and he was captain of the ‘Amigo Pirates’.
Bill had learned that while using [Thought Reading] he didn’t even need to ask real questions. Simply stating words seemed to involuntarily invoke certain thought responses. As long as he didn’t make it clear that he was reading the other person’s thoughts, the person couldn’t seem to help but to think about what he was talking about.
After learning the pirate’s personal details, he started probing as to why their crew had targeted New Haven, and what he learned made him narrow his eyes.
‘So, it was the Shiki after all’ he thought.
It was known in Marine circles that the ‘Golden Lion’ was recruiting various previously unrelated pirate crews throughout [Paradise], but with their forces pointed at Whitebeard and the [New World] coupled with the general lack of respect that [World Government] had for [Paradise] pirates, Marineford placed this threat lower on the totem pole.
Whitebeard was seen as such a threat that despite Shiki’s surprise attack and subsequent destruction of part of Marineford, Sengoku could not afford to send much power to contend with him.
If anything, paradoxically, Shiki’s surprise attack caused the [World Government] to harden its stance against the [Strongest Man in the World] since they feared that since they had lost reputation for the disasters at Enies Lobby and then Marineford, they couldn’t afford to show an ounce of weakness to Whitebeard!
“Look, I know why you’re here, so you’d better just tell me the truth” Bill started another line of questioning.
After giving Largo another series of vague statements, Bill had come to learn the surprising truth.
It turned out that [Boss] had escaped from Shiki’s flying islands, and now on the cusps of his all-out war, the flying pirate wanted the giant mutant beetle back.
It also seemed that while the Golden Lion was not as indiscriminate in his recruiting as Marineford had been led to believe he had gathered an Armada to follow him. The [Amigo Pirates] had come to New Haven, unaware of the Marine Base, but in search of Boss with the expectation that they would become the 51st Division in Shiki's vast crew.
'So, at least 50 crews...' Bill thought to himself seriously, before continuing to question Largo.
They had tracked down the beetle thanks to an electronic implant that Shiki’s researchers had put inside their mutant creations, something that Bill had never even considered checking for, but this was good news since they could use these implants to hunt down the beats around the East Blue.
“The so-called ‘Golden Lion’ is known for his flying ships and islands; how would you even find him?” he asked his final line of questions.
Sneering at this, Largo swore he’d never talk but before taking his ‘siesta’ Bill read his thoughts and inwardly smiled.
Walking out of the interrogation room, Bill was met by Nelson who said tersely: “What’d the scallywag have to say for himself?”
Now smiling, Bill looked at his confidant and said with a small laugh: “Nelson, quickly gather up 30 ponchos and sombreros…
We have a celebration to get to.”
UberNuber If you enjoy the fanfic hit the heart icon and consider leaving a rating!
Obviously a power like [Presence Warp] is potentially super OP, however, it does have one nerf that makes it not so strong. Basically, as long as one person can notice Bill when he's using the power, he becomes visible to everyone else in the area. At his current strength, the enemy would have to be Vista/Marco/etc strength to notice him.
Bill's normal checkered suit (minus Coat of Justice)
Spoiler [collapse]New Haven before industrialization (don't think I ever showed this pict)
Spoiler [collapse]Amigo Submarine
Spoiler [collapse]Amigo Pirates
Spoiler [collapse]
“Pirates in these waters! Have they lost their bloody minds?!” [Nelson] hollered and for some reason started looking up and side to side despite the fact that they were standing indoors.
But Bill wasn’t in the mood for speculations and told his Commander to go organize a response, and knowing Bill as much as he did, Nelson quickly responded “Aye, I’ll see it done! Righto, Godspeed, Commodore!” before running off towards the door.
As for Bill himself, he also started to move and immediately went towards a bench on the side of the training room where his [Coat of Justice] lay folded beside a checkered navy-blue khaki business suit.
Quickly stripping off his training gear, he made sure not to break any of the rubber hoses that were attached to tanks of [VitaBoost]. With that done, he threw on his work clothes and grabbed a wristwatch-like device from under the pile of disorganized equipment.
The entire process from start to finish took him barely one minute until he was completely dressed and making long strides out of the same door Nelson had run through.
After tapping a code on his wristwatch-like device, four human-sized vertical chambers opened up in his personal lab and researchers throughout the facility watched as three unique [Iron Wardens] and one [Mind] sped their way out of the complex.
With island alarms still sounding, Bill’s long legs reached the training compounds door before the robots reached his signal, but by the time he took to the air and identified the source of the commotion, three bulky humanoid [Iron Wardens] and one wheel-shaped [Mind] could be seen speeding towards his exact location.
As the machines were speeding towards him, it took Bill several seconds to recognize just what he was seeing.
It was no pirate ship; it was a pirate… “submarine?” he whispered to himself as he saw a jolly roger slowly rise from the top of the vessel.
Until now, the idea of having a submarine in this archipelago world had never occurred to Bill after he learned of the existence of Sea Kings.
To say nothing of island-eaters and other mega sized examples, was not uncommon for Sea Kings to reach 50 meters in length. So, whatever dangers regular shipping faced it only made sense that submarines would face them doubly so.
Aside from the very real Sea King threat posed to submarines, the fact that they couldn’t see well unless they surfaced was another obvious issue.
And thinking this, Bill figured could only mean one of three things.
First, these pirates were fools who didn’t care about their surroundings at all, and they unknowingly sailed into a Marine base.
Second, it was a coordinated submarine squadron and there were so many more vessels waiting for news beneath the surf that these pirates didn’t feel the need to care about where they were attacking.
Third, the pirate captain of this crew had complete confidence that his people could assault a Marine garrison and live to see the next day.
Watching for a minute longer while still in the air, he saw the pirates file out from beneath the deck and while they seemed to gawk at the naval base, he quickly noted down their outfits.
Half of them were wearing ponchos and, other half dressed as bull fighters, and the entire crew seemed to have sombreros. They were all visibly armed with rifles more advanced than muskets and despite their gawking they filed onto the deck and into orderly lines.
By the time the robots reached Bills side, two more men were seen coming above deck and Bill didn’t need to be a genius to tell they were the crews’ leaders.
As the enemy assembled, he didn’t want to give them any more time to plan or run and so he sped through the air in their direction.
Using [Moon Step] Bill was faster than the speed of sound, but not wanting a sonic boom to be heard by either the pirates or Marines, he reigned himself in and moved at a speed that the robots could keep up with.
‘First let’s check in the water’ he thought. Then erasing his presence through an ability that he called [Presence Warp], Bill halted the robots and readied himself to sink or beach however many submarines he could find, but when he splashed down and looked, there was no submarine squadron or anything else in the water waiting for him.
Unintentionally rolling his eyes to this development and annoyed that he had gotten his suit wet, Bill swam through the water and breached the surface only a few feet away from the pirate’s ship.
With the robots still ordered not to move, Bill stopped using [Presence Warp] and jumped on the deck soaking wet, where he was quickly met by dozens of rifle barrels.
“Where the hell did you came from?!” shouted one of the men who Bill had pegged as a leader. He was a short bulky man who dressed like a luchador.
Utilizing [Thought Reading], Bill knew that the man was anxious and confused, but facing dozens of weapons pointed in his direction, he didn’t have patience when he made a clear demand: “Drop your weapons, any failure to comply will be taken as a hostile action!”
Whilst the short man looked befuddled and then outraged, the tall one began to laugh a strange tune that made it sound like he was weeping.
*Shik-shik-shik*
After his laughing was done, he said: “Señor, perhaps you have not grasped the fact that my amigos have you outnumbered, and truly” he clasped his hands together and using a Devil Fruit ability created a slimy substance “I can capture an uno Marino even before taking my siesta!”
Instantly touching the device on his wrist, Bill didn’t wait for either the [Iron Wardens] to arrive or for the pirate to act before he sprang forwards.
Cracking the wooden deck despite not planning to, he practically teleported to the first doomed pirate and gave him an open-palm slap.
Unfortunately, Bill didn’t know the strength of these men and he was still working on his three original assumptions, so the first one he hit was the unluckiest. When Bill’s hand connected with the pirate’s face, the hand didn’t slow down but directly blew the man’s head clean off his shoulders.
After having literally decapitated a pirate with a slap, Bill gritted his teeth and held back more and more as he tore through the pirate crew. Felling one pirate after another, only the two leaders seemed to be able to react now that he had slowed down.
“Gran bastardo!” called out the tall pirate shooting slimy nets in Bills direction and while he did this the short one pulled out two gatling guns from under his poncho and started shooting – disregarding the fact that he was only hitting his own crewmates.
Though everything had happened quickly, by now the [Iron Wardens] had arrived on the scene, and as the [Mind] determined the probable use of a Devil Fruit, one of the burly humanoid robots disassembled and turned into dozens of restraints homing in on its target.
Almost instantly the short pirate leader was slashed first across the back and then the chest and the tall leader was wrapped up in low-grade seastone – falling powerless to the ground due to the sheer weight wrapped around his body.
In the end, the entire engagement lasted around 60 seconds thanks to Bill not wanting to directly kill people who had no reasonable way to resist.
Although the danger was over Bill didn’t contact Nelson but walked through the submarine, and after pulling out six more pirates, all women, he then waited for his men to arrive.
To the credit of his Marines, he saw the first frigate pulling out of New Havens harbor in under 15 minutes, and in 25 minutes they had reached him on the submarine.
For a garrison who had never experienced a live attack, this was quite good he thought.
“Commodore!” shouted over Masterson from the head of a frigate as they neared. Waving them over, Bill waited until the Marines threw over grappling hooks, aligning the two vessels, and lowering boarding ramps.
The first one to come over Masterson first looked around, gave a sharp salute, and said: “Sir! What’s the situation?”
Motioning to the brutalized pirates laying around the ship, Bill just shrugged and responded: “Who knows, take them in and we’ll start interrogations.” Then pointing to the decapitated man, he added: “Bury that one at sea.”
Of course, ordering a burial at sea was just a fancy way to say “throw him overboard” but that was just life in this archipelago world.
Seeing that Masterson acknowledged his orders Bill jumped into the air, snatched the jolly roger, and returned to the island with the robots and their prisoner following close behind.
As his men started the process of restraining and booking the pirates, Bill quickly reached New Haven’s small Marine-run detention center and forcibly sat down the sneering pirate leader.
Not minding the sneer of his captive, Bill was glad that the low-grade seastone worked as intended.
One of the greatest engineering achievements of his Department in the last two years was the development of the low-grade seastone.
While it was admittedly worse quality in terms of durability and effect compared to the stuff that came out of Vegapunks lab, Bill and his team had created a process to manufacture this metallic alloy at a tiny fraction of the price.
Its downsides were that it could be destroyed and that it didn’t physically weaken Devil Fruit users, but its major upside was that it did stop a Devil Fruit user from using his or her ability.
With this innovation, Bill was able to equip his entire force with weapons that would turn Logia’s solid and disrupt the powers of any Paramecia users that they happened upon. Ranging from low-grade seastone knuckles and batons to special seastone ammunition, it was even useful as armor for his [Beetleborg] and [Iron Warden] soldiers.
So, with the Devil Fruit using pirate sitting across from him, Bill could be assured that there wouldn’t be any ‘funny business’ nor that the villain would be too weak to answer his questions.
And thanks to [Thought Reading], answers to those questions came quick.
The pirate in front of him was called Largo, and he was captain of the ‘Amigo Pirates’.
Bill had learned that while using [Thought Reading] he didn’t even need to ask real questions. Simply stating words seemed to involuntarily invoke certain thought responses. As long as he didn’t make it clear that he was reading the other person’s thoughts, the person couldn’t seem to help but to think about what he was talking about.
After learning the pirate’s personal details, he started probing as to why their crew had targeted New Haven, and what he learned made him narrow his eyes.
‘So, it was the Shiki after all’ he thought.
It was known in Marine circles that the ‘Golden Lion’ was recruiting various previously unrelated pirate crews throughout [Paradise], but with their forces pointed at Whitebeard and the [New World] coupled with the general lack of respect that [World Government] had for [Paradise] pirates, Marineford placed this threat lower on the totem pole.
Whitebeard was seen as such a threat that despite Shiki’s surprise attack and subsequent destruction of part of Marineford, Sengoku could not afford to send much power to contend with him.
If anything, paradoxically, Shiki’s surprise attack caused the [World Government] to harden its stance against the [Strongest Man in the World] since they feared that since they had lost reputation for the disasters at Enies Lobby and then Marineford, they couldn’t afford to show an ounce of weakness to Whitebeard!
“Look, I know why you’re here, so you’d better just tell me the truth” Bill started another line of questioning.
After giving Largo another series of vague statements, Bill had come to learn the surprising truth.
It turned out that [Boss] had escaped from Shiki’s flying islands, and now on the cusps of his all-out war, the flying pirate wanted the giant mutant beetle back.
It also seemed that while the Golden Lion was not as indiscriminate in his recruiting as Marineford had been led to believe he had gathered an Armada to follow him. The [Amigo Pirates] had come to New Haven, unaware of the Marine Base, but in search of Boss with the expectation that they would become the 51st Division in Shiki's vast crew.
'So, at least 50 crews...' Bill thought to himself seriously, before continuing to question Largo.
They had tracked down the beetle thanks to an electronic implant that Shiki’s researchers had put inside their mutant creations, something that Bill had never even considered checking for, but this was good news since they could use these implants to hunt down the beats around the East Blue.
“The so-called ‘Golden Lion’ is known for his flying ships and islands; how would you even find him?” he asked his final line of questions.
Sneering at this, Largo swore he’d never talk but before taking his ‘siesta’ Bill read his thoughts and inwardly smiled.
Walking out of the interrogation room, Bill was met by Nelson who said tersely: “What’d the scallywag have to say for himself?”
Now smiling, Bill looked at his confidant and said with a small laugh: “Nelson, quickly gather up 30 ponchos and sombreros…
We have a celebration to get to.”
UberNuber If you enjoy the fanfic hit the heart icon and consider leaving a rating!
Obviously a power like [Presence Warp] is potentially super OP, however, it does have one nerf that makes it not so strong. Basically, as long as one person can notice Bill when he's using the power, he becomes visible to everyone else in the area. At his current strength, the enemy would have to be Vista/Marco/etc strength to notice him.
Bill's normal checkered suit (minus Coat of Justice)
Spoiler [collapse]New Haven before industrialization (don't think I ever showed this pict)
Spoiler [collapse]Amigo Submarine
Spoiler [collapse]Amigo Pirates
Spoiler [collapse]