Chapter 64: Chapter 54

It had been two days since Bill told Yoko that she should come with him. He could tell that she wanted to, but it was a hard sell because she was also describing herself as the island’s protector.

There was also the initial issue of ‘Boss’ the beetle, but in the end, that beetle was what catapulted her to her choice.

Yoko considered herself Little East Blue’s protector, and so Bill told her that he would establish his laboratory on the island.

Yoko considered Boss to be her very best friend, and so Bill told her that Boss could stay and protect the island while they went to recruit engineers.

Then, after speaking with Fabre – who happily accepted the lab proposal, and even suggested renaming the island – Bill brought the others to the cave system where the laboratory would be built, and together they roughly mapped the area out over the course of a day.

While they did that, Miyagi waited on the ship and directed workers who cleaned and refilled the water tanks. They offered to do it for free, but Bill had paid these older people, though the amount was negligible.

It had been worth it, Bill thought.

Sure, Little East Blue was a remote island, but remoteness could also be seen as its virtue. Close proximity to the Calm Belt made it  impossible for any non-World Government force to attack from that direction.

Furthermore, thanks to their own seastone haul ship, they were about equal distance to islands in the East Blue as they were islands in the Grand Line.

Then there were the tangible things like Little East Blue island had a good fresh water supply – one that could be improved even. It was surrounded by deep water which housed sea kings for food but a natural harbor and coral reef strong enough to prevent them from getting too close.

Sasha had even found traces of an iron vein in the cave system. Even if it wasn’t extensive, that itself was a massive boon.

But more than anything else, Bill thought, what made it worth it was the young lady following Sasha around asking her a million questions.

‘Bill said you’re the strongest girl he knows’

‘Bill said you’re an expert swordswoman’

‘Bill said you’re even a medic’

‘Bill said… ‘

Slowly swinging her sword; the hawk-eyed blonde-haired woman nodded and grunted to the questions.

Just as he was about to laugh and tell Yoko to leave Sasha be while she trained, Yoko gained another question.

“Hey, can I also get strong like you?”

Hearing this Sasha dropped her stance, lowered her longsword, looked down at Yoko, nodded and said: “Go hang that coat up.”

Then turning around, she trotted down the steps and soon returned with a second blade and a wooden sword. The blade was a longer than normal single-handed sword, but when Sasha handed it to Yoko it was clear that it would be a longsword for an eleven-year-old.

Propping the wooden sword up, Sasha gave Yoko the real blade with a simple: “Here”

Seeing the little girl take the blade, Sasha nodded her head and said: “Follow my movements and look how my legs are spaced.”

Then Bill watched as Sasha went through the several longsword stances from Tail, to Side, to Plow, to Longpoint, to Ox, then finally to Highguard.

“These are the basic longsword stances. For the rest of the day, I want you to alternate in performing these stances until you’re comfortable taking them.”

Bill was surprised that Sasha could teach, but then he remembered Sasha wasn’t much younger than Yoko when she had first picked up a sword herself.

‘Is that how T-Bone taught her?’ he wondered.

Thinking that, Bill went to his office. He didn’t have much to do but had to draw up Yoko’s paperwork.

She would become a Chore Boy, it was the only way she’d be allowed to stay on the ship, plus it would put Bill in a position to watch after her.

Then he would start drawing up his laboratory schematics to align with the cave maps drawn out by him and the others. The cave systems still had routes they hadn’t explored, but even still, they had found three wide caverns where Bill could put his production equipment.

The caves had some refractile lighting, but it wasn’t nearly enough so he would also have to design the electrical system including the spot where the fusion generators would be.

The fusion material would have to be procured from Vegapunk, because Bill had no idea how to build the machines that made it, but once he had it, the generators would last for several decades before needing to be refueled. During that time, not only would they create enough power for the laboratory, but he would also be able to convert H2O from the surrounding ocean into Dihydrogen which would act as a portable power source much like gasoline.

 Once he had portable electrical power, his options for designs would really open up.

‘But that’s getting ahead of myself’ Bill thought to himself and laughed.

They currently only had 43m Beli, and though he hoped the iron vein found would be large, realistically the price tag for his supposed laboratory would be several hundred million Beli.

‘There’s always a lack of funding’ he chuckled. With that in mind he started designing his base from one manufactory room up, in this way he figured he could get started producing the items he had in mind with as little as 30-50m Beli.

In this way the days passed as Frontier Run made its way to the Calm Belt.

The situation now was much the same as it had been the last time they crossed a Calm Belt, except perhaps slightly livelier with Yoko around. Sasha turned out to be her favorite person, but oddly Miyagi was a close second.

If Yoko wasn’t imitating Sasha swinging a longsword she was in Miyagi’s medical bay.

The Mink was still mostly working on his panacea, but he would give Yoko small puzzles and other word games which helped pass the time. These puzzles all had extra meanings, giving the girl experience with medical vocabulary.

Whether she understood that, or it was just that boring on a ship on the open sea, Bill didn’t know and was afraid to ask and spoil it.

By now, Fia had the kitchen exactly how she wanted it and Ricky had Ranse build him his own office.

While Ranse and Sasha almost always were put in charge when he was absent, because of Ricky’s natural administrative talent, he had become Bill’s closest advisor. As such, Bill passed work onto Ricky which afforded him a bit more time in the gym.

The move was obviously beneficial for now, but Bill had more far off reasons to introduce Ricky with this kind of work.

This was because as Bill sat in his silent office crossing the Calm Belt, he foresaw a future where he would need a management team.

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Bill’s expectations for success grew each time he saw an undeveloped island. On Torino Kingdom, for example, those islanders barely had clothing, but the island was absolutely briming with precious minerals and as a result they all had iron tools.

They hadn’t stopped at any small islands on their trip so far, but Bill had eyed a few in the distance. Dirty cloths, worn out huts, and other detritus made him have a good feeling.

These small islands wouldn’t have cash, of course. What they would have raw materials that Bill would trade at an appropriate profit; then he would turn those raw materials into higher scale items.

Selling to the more prosperous port cities would be where the Beli was made, and because their commission was officially for the Marines, his ships wouldn’t be allowed to be turned away by local merchant monopolies.

Thinking of all this, Bill smiled and worked steadily, before he knew it, they had safely crossed the Calm Belt and entered the East Blue.

Unfurling the sails after exiting the Calm Belt was satisfying, and the ship picked up speed. They were headed to Lougetown, the place where the Pirate King Gold Roger had been executed.

Bill didn’t know much about the true history of the event but he was interested after learning about the figure, after all, he knew enough about pirates in his last life to know when one was called ‘pirate king’ it was usually just for someone unrelated to sell books.

Henry Avery, William Kidd, Edward Teach, and many others Bill could think of were like this. Their deeds were greatly exaggerated for commercial or political profit.

Then again, he told himself, people in this world were superhuman so it was possible for there to be more to the stories than even the press let on.

Well even if he couldn’t find out the true story behind this so-called pirate king, it was only a curiosity, Bill thought. His goals were more down to earth than to wonder about mythical treasures like One Piece.

After a few more days of sailing in a straight line, Bill was surprised to see just how many islands they had crossed. Six islands in three days were a high number and one he made sure for Ricky to note down.

One of the islands was especially large, even though they had only seen it from a far distance, it was undoubtedly Kingdom sized.

This was all good news because since leaving Little East Blue they had purely followed the Eternal Pose. If they crossed still more islands Bill thought this was going to be their first trade route.

Another week had passed and a couple more islands had been crossed, Bill was now sure this would be a trade route, crossing a dozen islands in a month was just too good to pass up.

The crew sat on the main deck and ate a breakfast of pickled eggs and steamed sea king. Ranse had picked on Yoko’s bed head which caused the girl to fire up and bite him on the head.

Her bite was apparently strong enough to support her own weight as despite Ranse running around screaming that he’d ‘been bit’ she never fell off.

On the open water you had to find ways to entertain yourself. Crews would either become close as family or the most bitter of enemies.

Lounging on the main deck in the morning was always a key part of their crew’s day, because they were so few and because their roles were more or less individual it wasn’t an exaggeration to say breakfast and dinner were the only times the multiple members of the crew were seen in one place.

Leaning over the railing, Bill read the East Blue Sentinel – a publication he had never heard of and was surprised with what was in front of him.

The news article was about the apparent destruction of the Krieg Armada, and how the most infamous pirate crew in the East Blue was missing.

Yet, right in front of Bill was a large, tattered, Dreadnaught-class warship with was exactly what was described in the piece.

The large pirate ship could easily be seen by the rest of the crew and as they prepared for combat Bill sent Yoko to the bridge with Miyagi as her guardian during the battle.

He didn’t know really what to expect, the paper claimed the pirate captain Krieg to be worth 17m Beli and his Lieutenants to be worth a combined 20m Beli more. The ship was large but in shambles as the makeshift sails could be heard creaking from several hundred meters away.

Because of Krieg’s reportedly large crew they wouldn’t take chances this time with Bill, Sasha, Ranse, and Ricky all going overboard. Fia would be staying on Frontier Run with the instructions to sink the pirate’s vessel if anything seemed amiss.

“You all ready?”

Seeing the trio nod, Bill jumped forward and they followed after him.

At the highest point of their jumps, Bill grabbed the free hand of Sasha and Ricky while Ranse was awkwardly using Moon Step to keep up.

From the angle they approached from the ships deck came into view well before they landed, what they saw surprised them. A quick estimate told Bill there were two hundred fifty men and women sprawled on the huge ship’s decks.

They all looked malnourished and as he got closer even saw the signs of scurvy on many bodies.

Four Marines landing on pirate ships deck barely caused a stir, and looking side to side, Bill said to Ranse: “Go back and have Fia whip up a ton of watery soap and citrus water.”

Bill had come to the ship with every intention of wrecking any pirate he came across, yet with these people in this state, that no longer seemed to matter.

Since he was here, they were naturally caught, and he didn’t want any needless deaths.

“Got it!”

Saying this, Ranse took off and the trio started forward, stepping across barely moving bodies.

“You two, check the bridge. I’ll go to the captain’s quarters.”

 Saying they understood was all he needed to hear from them. They would know what to do if anything unexpected came up.

Making his way to the captain’s quarters, Bill spurred his body to get ready.

His ribs started to slightly fuse together, the bones in his arms grew harder, his knuckles started to protrude a little more than they naturally would, and his knees and elbows grew hard shells around them.

From the outside, he wouldn’t look much different at all, but these changes and more were the steps he’d taken after being shot by the Fork Pirates cannon. With the Iron Body technique and these modifications, he wouldn’t fear any traditional firearms.

Opening the door, the captain’s quarters, Bill found two men. One sitting behind a desk and the other sitting on the floor with his back against the wall and his legs sprawled out in front of him.

The two looked exhausted, as if they had been arguing and then finally lost all motivation.

Despite the scene in front of him, these were men Bill recognized from the paper, and so walking into the room he gave his best smile and said: “Admiral Krieg, Man-Demon Gin. My name is William Ox, and you are both under arrest.”

In his mind, Bill thought pirate hunting may not be such a bad gig.