Chapter 45: Chapter 40

“Oh, this is pretty cool!”

“See I TOLD YOU!”

Walking in the dimly lit cave system, Bill wasn’t just humoring the little girl.

This place was a natural maze, even if he wouldn’t get lost, he could easily see how defensible it was.

How far did it go? Bill had technical questions that would now probably not be answered.

He sighed thinking he shouldn’t have put the girl off for so long. It had been three days since the get-together at the Little Baratie and now the crew would be shipping off in the morning.

Over the past few days, a lot had been accomplished.

The burned sections of the forest had been replanted; the charred houses had been cleaned and rough furniture remade. Two of the three pirate ships had been completely stripped of all rigging, sails, anchors, cannons, and every other usable part while the HINA had been almost completely repaired – even the broken main mast had been replaced.

Besides that, Bill had dug several new channels over the highest level of the island and even sketched out the path where this small river could best flow.

Now the island had waterfalls going off of each of plateau.

As Bill did that by mostly digging with his bare hands, the MSU Recruits had wanted to build a water wheel but given time constraints figured their efforts were best spent elsewhere.

And now, with little time left Bill had gone to say his goodbyes to Captain Ryudo. When Yoko heard they were leaving, the little kid wouldn’t take no for an answer.

She demanded he go with her, and so he did.

Yoko: “Come on this way!”

Following the eight-year-old up a slight incline, Bill did his best not to overtake her speed. It was hard considering his long legs.

Yoko: “Now look, I’m gonna show you my secret base. You can’t tell anyone, especially those boys!”

With a laugh, Bill just replied: “Not a problem!”

The girl’s base was pretty far from the entrance they had come in at, he had noticed they were going higher and higher, and when he saw the actual spot, it nearly gave him a heart attack.

The area spread out in front of him was grassy, with a view of open sky and water as far as the eye could see.

It was a very good secret base but having an unsupervised eight-year-old up here was too much even for this world.

Bill: “Hey, Yoko, has your dad been here?”

Showing off a toothless smile, the girl replied: “Nu’ah! I’m the one who discovered it!”

Hearing this, he started to sweat a bit but try to stay cool Bill: “o’Oh…

Hey, uh, Yoko… isn’t this place a little dangerous?”

Looking up at him confused, the girl said: “Dangerous? Hahaha, Bill, you can fly! It’s ok, you’re safe here!”

Nodding his head and shrugging his shoulders in agreement, Bill didn’t want a reprimand to the cheerful kid to be his last impression and so as they walked around, he only gave out hints like ‘it’s not too good to walk near the edge’ and other such comments.

‘Yep’ he thought, he was absolutely going to rat her out to her dad.

After spending some time together at the secret base, Bill told her he had to go say other goodbyes and so the girl brought him back in a completely different direction then how they had come.

If he hadn’t an excellent sense of direction he would have gotten completely lost.

As they exited the cave system, Yoko followed him around as he said his goodbyes

Besides the Mayor Fabre, the Chef Mitsuboshi, and the small old lady Luigia, he didn’t know too many of the others and so the trip was mostly just him informing the islands residents that their Marine dispatch would be leaving soon.

This was received in various ways, but it was mostly reluctance he found in the eyes of the people.

After all, a strong Marine presence equaled relative safety. There was even a food surplus since Captain Hina had caught three small sea kings.

After refilling their supplies, she had directly given the surplus to the islanders.

Of course, Bill hadn’t actually seen this. Since the incident over the bounties, his relations with her and the other officers had been strained.

It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that besides Marron and the MSU Recruits, Bill somehow felt more comfortable talking to the islands Mayor than he did with those men and woman he had experienced a life and death situation with.

On the surface they spoke cordially, but now there had developed a sort of business-like attitude between them.

By the time Bill had spoken to the majority of the towns people, it was late in the afternoon.

Bill: “Come on Yoko, I’ll walk you home.”

Noticing that the girl had gotten quiet, Bill started doing more of the talking.

He talked to her about Vallipo Island and the archipelagos the Super wildlife. She was slightly older than he was, but also was fascinated about the Super Sparrow, big enough to carry a person and fly.

Bill didn’t stop to think about Chunchun, Itomimizu, or the Foxy Pirates and instead just laughed and continued on talking about how the place was.

Hearing him talk about just about everything else, Yoko asked: “What about your friends?”

Bill: “Which ones? I had a lot! Hahaha”

When he said this, Bill looked down to see her reaction, but saw the girl just looking down before saying lowly: “I… I don’t have that many.”

Looking down at her, the eight-year-old stood probably just over four feet; much smaller than Bill’s seven-and-a-half-foot frame.

Without thinking about what he was doing, Bill reached down and lifted her up to his shoulder with no effort at all.

She gave a squeal, and he laughed saying: “Well, I’m your friend, and if you ever need a boost or a hand, I’ll be here for you!”

Perhaps it was because she had grown up on this type of island, which had high peaks and long views, but Yoko didn’t show any fear being on Bill’s high shoulder.

Instead, she asked excitedly: “Hey, hey Bill!

Can you fly me back home?!”

Thinking for a moment, Bill decided and said: “Well, why not?!”

Like that, the two lifted into the air. With complete mastery of the Moon Step, it was impossible for the girl to feel that they weren’t really flying but were instead ‘jumping’ through the air.

Going this way, even though Bill had intentionally slowed down they arrived at Captain Ryudo’s house quickly.

The man was sitting on his porch, and as Bill let Yoko down, she ran to her dad and started talking about their day, only leaving her secret base out.

The Captain listened for a while, but eventually told the girl to wash up and get to bed because by now it was nearly dark.

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After giving Bill a hug goodnight, the two men were all that was left.

Gesturing to his porch, Ryudo asked: “Want to sit for a while?”

Following the direction of his hands, Bill saw a new, larger, chair and realized something.

Ryudo: “It’s nothing much, but thanks to you and Hina’s crew I had some spare time.”

At Bill’s height, he could still somewhat fit in most normal sized chairs. But as he followed Ryudo onto the porch, the extra space was well received.

Like that, Bill spent the night in conversation with the Marine who reminded him so much of his dad in a previous life.

They didn’t talk about anything deep but under the light of several moons, the night passed very quickly.

Standing up with the sun, Bill bid farewell to Captain Ryudo and the two shook hands.

Their last exchange was Bill saying: “I’ll come back and visit once I reach Captain.” and Ryudo replying: “We’ll be here waiting for you.”

Not waiting on ceremony, Bill jumped into the air then bounded towards the harbor.

Though it was just daybreak, there had already been movement in the camp.

The makeshift stockades had been demolished and the wood had been remade into proper cages which now took up most of the space on the deck of the HINA.

If it rained, these pirates would have to suffer.

Landing on the deck, Hina saw Bill and came towards him: “It’s nice of you to finally join of Lieutenant.”

Nodding his head, Bill simply replied: “Thanks, Captain. When are we setting off?”

Hina: “Within the hour, the only thing left is roll call.”

Though Bill hadn’t been present for most of the last three days, he had gotten rough reports on the convoys make up.

Nearly all of the recruited pirates were on board the MAKKO, the main exception being the loose officer core. While all the prisoners were on board the HINA, where Bill and the MSU Recruits had also stayed.

Bill had wanted to know why it was set up this way, and according to Captain Ryudo it was because of the threat of mutiny.

There was little chance the original crew would mutiny since they had signed up for the service, the recruited pirates were another story.

If the crews would mix, it was well documented that negative moral often overturned positive duty.

It seems the argument pushed by Hina’s Warrant Officer that they only benefited from the capture of the three ships if everything went right, was itself correct.

From Ryudo’s prospective, it was at best fifty-fifty that those pirates who had taken the pardon wouldn’t just run at first chance.

If for example a storm hit, or a sea king of sufficient size attacked.

None of that mattered now, and after a brief discussion Bill went on to find the Science Division members. By now the biology students didn’t have to do medical care, though Jerry still tried to learn as much as he could from the ships doctor.

Sitting in the refurbished mess hall, the group chatted as the ships set off towards Marineford.

The rest of the trip went smoothly, and after about two weeks Bill stood of deck and saw a flock of News Coo.

He had been out of the loop regarding the South Blue for months, but because he had no coins could only watch the birds fly into the distance.

When he wasn’t on deck, Bill found himself in the training room with the other MSU Recruits, much like when they had first set sail, this was the place he could most often be found out.

With his new understanding of his own body, Bill changed on a near daily basis and the most important reason was due to his ability to heal.

He hadn’t turned into wolverine, thinking about the comic hero of his past life, but he wasn’t too far off.

As he worked tirelessly, his only concern was that if his brain or heart were destroyed and if he could repair them fast enough before dying.

He had no proof but thought that even without his heart beating he could fix the organ before dying. Having this in mind, Bill held his breath but easily discovered that he could just breath through his skin.

So that answered the question about getting oxygen, now his thought was if his body could handle the trauma of it.

Unfortunately, he had no way of testing this, and so during the weeks-long travel came to the decision to finally apply to learn one of the Six Powers.

And he would naturally choose Iron Body.

He had of course seen the downsides of this technique before. At least when Captain Trapano had shown him, the man had to stay perfectly still to use it.

For whatever reason, Bill didn’t think he would have to do the same though. He also didn’t think ‘Iron’ would have to be the limit.

It was with this in mind, when after over a month longer at sea, the ships pulled into the huge harbor at Marineford.

Standing on deck, Bill instantly recognized Sentomaru was waiting for them.

There wasn’t much in the way of goodbyes between Hina and Bill.

During this entire trip the incident regarding bounties had only been brought up when he went to get financial statements for proof of returns.

Shrugging his shoulders, Bill just thought how some people get when money was involved.

As the saying went; beasts kill for food and man kill for treasure.

Leading the group of Science Division members on the dock, Sentomaru gruffly told them to follow him.

“Ox, I hope you have your report ready.”

And Bill naturally did.

The walk to the base was as long as Bill remembered, there waiting for them was several instructors, including the man who Vegapunk had called for, Bonaduce.

Bonaduce took the MSU Recruits, and the instructors took the biology students, leaving Bill and Sentomaru alone.

During this time, Sentomaru hadn’t been overly friendly, but also hadn’t been cold. When they were all that was left, he turned to Bill and said: “We’ll first go to my office where you will give me your brief. Submit your full report by the end of the day.”

To this Bill had neither any choice nor qualms. So, nodding his head, the two walked deeper in the huge base.

As they neared Sentomaru’s office, Bill heard a family voice, which was also apparently heard by the Captain in front of him.

While the Captain groaned, Bill saw a large but very familiar figure turn a corner.

The figure stopped and looked at him, causing Bill to say questioningly: “Dad?”