Chapter 88: Migraines
Chapter 88: Migraines
Garp grumbled, nursing a hangover cure that tasted foul but he knew worked. He was certain he’d aged more in the last month than in the five years previous, and had certainly consumed more alcohol. Getting near to blackout drunk was so near an impossibility for him that he’d rarely bothered in his life, but he’d made a solid attempt three times in the last three weeks. His fists might be mighty, but paperwork didn’t have a butt he could kick, and much of the news contained within the current batch was unpalatable.
Honestly, the only good news had come from one of his former crew, who he’d tasked with quietly keeping an ear on the private Den Den Mushi his grandson had the number of. Shiki the Golden Lion being dead was a hell of a relief, as he wasn’t at all sure the Marines could have dealt with that particular monster in their current sorry state. Doubly so as the crew he’d put together and sent to check the former position of Merville in the Sky Islands had stopped reporting. Most likely killed by Shiki or his minions, Garp assumed, as they had made it past the High West at least. With that crew dead and no quick way to get up to the Sky Islands, they hadn’t even known where to look for the bastard. He’d have taken the East Blue, where they didn’t have any officers stronger than a decent Captain, completely bare naked.
The West Blue, North Blue, and Grand Line were already a fucking mess. Adding the East Blue as another trouble spot would have broken everything entirely.
In the West Blue, his son’s Revolutionary Army had managed to take over half of that ocean before Kizaru, sent by Garp to manage the situation, had put a halt to their advance. He’d had no choice to send Kuzaru, he was one of the few who could counter Dragon, and not stopping the Revolutionary Army would have gotten those scumbag Celestial Twats on his back. As it was, he was virtually certain that half the reason Dragon had stopped pushing was more a supply issue than the Marines. The Revolutionary Army had obviously built up for a serious offensive, but with little held territory prior to the Whitebeard War, there had been limits to how much they could do so. It would take them months, at minimum, to now secure what they already had. Likely much longer if he left Kizaru there to harass them.
The North Blue was both better and worse. The Germa Kingdom had always been a problem. Only three hundred years ago it was still the Germa Empire and controlled the entire North Blue. It was one of the few major powers that the World Government had faced after the Void Century, and no one had been even slightly delusional about how badly Judge Vinsmoke wished to return that Kingdom to Empire. The only reason that the situation there wasn’t worse than the West Blue was that Sengoku and the WG hadn’t been foolish enough to strip the North down as far as the other Blues. A solid core of strong officers had remained, and Garp had quickly reinforced them with a slightly-battered Kuzan.
Judge had struck out, and managed to capture several islands in the North, but he had stopped pushing after Kuzan had arrived. The situation there was an uneasy stalemate that could still easily become a disaster if things went even a little wrong in reigning the Vinsmokes in. For the moment, only the fact that icicle boy had made a statement by freezing their entire home ‘Kingdom’ in place, trapping the giant snails in an iceberg, was keeping them from causing more trouble. Worse, Garp didn’t have the forces to send to free the handful of islands the evil pricks had taken before Kuzan arrived.
The Grand Line…
“Marineford is a loss.”
That fact pissed him off, even as he spoke it aloud. The stubborn part of him that insisted on bulling through everything wanted to rebuild Marineford stronger than ever. Unfortunately, Tsuru had stomped firmly on that dream. The island had been fucking shattered, in a way that would be a nightmare to rebuild. Worse, their supply lines were only holding because of how many losses they’d taken in the way. An unpleasant reality that had been causing them nightmares even before the battle.
The two routes Alabasta intersected were now effectively closed to them. In fact, the Sakura Kingdom had realigned itself under Alabasta’s banner, and they’d put in a combined forward naval station at Jaya. Reports indicated a few of the other islands in that part of the Grand Line were in talks as well, looking to reopen trade with Alabasta by more or less swearing to them over the World Government. None of those islands were overly important, but it was a disturbing trend regardless.
That growing alliance, which somehow had access to the technology of at least two Sky Islands, was firmly disrupting operations in Paradise. Worse, Alabasta had been given enough time to arm up and train that taking it out would mean slaughtering their way through a massive, well-armed army with a dozen Devil Fruit users. Given that his grandson would almost certainly respond, the only realistic way to take it out would be a full-on assault which would cost them nearly as much as the Marineford War. Given that the growing alliance wasn’t actually doing anything, aside from denying Marine and World Government ships passage, there was absolutely no way to justify that sort of thing. No matter how much the Celestial Twats wanted it.
Drumming his fingers on his chair arm, Garp leaned back with his eyes closed as his hangover migraine finally started to fade, and sighed.
“Going to have to move Marine HQ. The question is, where too? A year ago, I’d have argued to move it into the New World, but the problems now are in areas we used to control. North and West Blue, along with Paradise. Fishman Island now being allied with Big Mom instead of Whitebeard is annoying, but not actually important. Only pirates use that passage instead of Red Port.”
Considering where the trouble was, he grimaced.
“No, it’s still going to have to be somewhere in the New World, isn’t it? We need to be centrally located to deal with those two Blues, and they are both on the New World side of the Red Line. We almost have to move to G-1 or G-5, then. Given that West Blue is the bigger problem, probably G-5. That…actually works.”
Garp’s smile was a dark, foreboding thing as it formed.
“That gives me an excuse to clean up that bunch of fucking psychos. Most of them are little better than pirates themselves, and I can shove them into suicide units and set them up to be killed by Germa or Dragon in place of perfectly good Marines I can salvage. Fill in the blanks at G-5 with survivors from Marineford or my own people. Expand that base with salvage from Marineford, brought through Red Port, too. Yes, it could work. No, I’ll make it work.”
Suddenly regaining at least part of his energy with a solution in sight, a solution that would let him brutally beat the shit out of some psychopaths tainting his Marines at that, Garp sat back up. The beast that was paperwork couldn’t be slain, but he could fight it back long enough to get this done. As he was working through the complaints about supply lines, he even had another idea to solve the logistics situation!
Thankfully, that idiot…Spamdum or something? Eh, the handler for CP-9, whatever the fool’s name had been. That dumbfuck had managed to screw everything up and never gotten anywhere with the assignment he’d been given. Not that Garp really minded him fucking up getting plans for Pluton. The world didn’t need to deal with shit like the Ancient Weapons again in his opinion. Besides, in this case, Spamdum’s fuckup meant they knew a lot about Water 7 without having angered anyone there just yet…
… … …
Kong’s eye twitched as he read the report from CP-5. Their job had been simple. Get into Alabasta and assassinate King Nefertari. They’d been inserted months ago, and been given a wide window of time to get it done, being told to do it cleanly even if it took several months. The end result was uncertain enough that it hadn’t been considered a critical task, despite how much trouble Alabasta was causing. The King dying would force his daughter back to Alabasta, with several possible results. At worst, it denied her expertise to the Straw Hats Pirates, while removing one of the thornier political issues involved in simply wiping that group out. They might even have been able to use ‘clearing her name’ and ‘removing the consequences of her foolish actions’ as enough incentive to get Alabastian waters and ports opened to them again.
On the other hand, the girl was even more stubborn than her father, so it might have come to little. Possibly, it might even have made Alabasta angry enough to rebel more directly and openly. An uncertain gambit that had, nevertheless, been worth trying. If nothing else, knowing there was an assassination team set against the Nefertari families had helped calm some of the Celestial Dragons, who had always loathed the family for refusing to join them.
Only now, it had turned into something between a comedy and a disaster.
He couldn’t fault the fact that their members had taken initiative, when they’d identified an opening barely two months after arriving, barely a month after the Marineford War. They’d found an early-morning period where Cobra was routinely without most of his guards, with only a personal maid around. Better, they’d gotten one of their own people into position to open a hole in the Palace security cordon to let the rest of the team in. On the face of it, it should have been a textbook operation. In, out, with enough confusion over who’d done the deed to muddle the waters.
Instead, the damn maid had proven to be a bodyguard. An ex-Baroque Works agent that had taken a deal and been trained as a close-in bodyguard for the King. She, who other agents had now identified as the former Miss Valentine, had taken on three of the four agents that had gotten close and won, clearly having been heavily trained beyond just her Baroque Works past. The final agent had slipped past her…only to discover why the King had, shortly after Marineford, taken to having an hour in private at the start of the day with his maid.
They’d thought it was some sort of affair. More accurately, given that he was a widower, they’d thought he’d taken a mistress to help produce a spare heir. It’s not like his daughter had chosen to live life safely, after all, and they were the only two members of the royal family left. Honestly, it was a reasonable conclusion to make, and would have been a reasonable thing for the King to have done, too.
Instead, the daily one-hour, isolated meeting had been for makeup application.
The confused agent had been confronted by a much younger looking version of the King, who he initially took to be a body double. Trying to kill him anyway had been where the comedy routine had really started, as every blow had just slipped off the King. A King who was apparently a decent shot and the agent had needed to use Kami-e to dodge point blank fire from a pair of concealed weapons, all while desperately trying to hit the monarch.
Eventually, with guards pounding down the doors, the final agent had given up and fled to report, barely escaping pursuit even as the other three were captured. He’d gotten off his report on what had happened…before being hunted down by the Jackel Zoan from the King’s Royal Guard and torn to pieces. The infiltrator had also been caught by scent, and had to commit suicide to prevent interrogation.
An entire Cipher Pol team lost, because the King had somehow gotten his hands on the Smooth-Smooth Fruit and eaten it. Gaining youthful looks he’d been hiding with carefully applied makeup. Likely water based, to make it stick, which was why it took a full hour to apply. Grudgingly, Kong had to admit that it was an extremely good defense. Any other teams that got close would have to either be given seastone weapons or Haki, and the latter wasn’t something their assassin teams were normally taught. Any attempt made without one or the other would just slip off the King like it hadn’t happened at all…
… … …
Iceberg frowned, surprised at the request in front of him, attempting to see the deception that had to be in it. The problem was that, given who had signed off on it, he was having trouble believing there was a deception. Monkey D. Garp wasn’t known for knife-in-your-back sort of deception. Or deception at all beyond a very minimal amount that he might pull on the battlefield. The idea also happened to be exactly the same flavor of brute force and certifiably insane that the man was well known for.
It would also, if Iceberg went along with it, be both a tribute to Tom and a solution for Water 7’s own ongoing issues. Trade ships not allied with the World Government weren’t being stopped from moving along the routes that went through Alabasta, but there weren’t exactly reliable numbers of such ships. Running trading vessels on the Grand Line, in the Pirate Era, wasn’t exactly a job for the faint of heart. Nor for those who wished to live long lives.
For the first time since the Sea Trains were finished, Water 7 was facing supply issues of its own, even if they weren’t critical yet. Worse, in a way, with the unexpected loss of his secretary and a pair of his top shipwrights, production for the Galley-La Company had flagged slightly. Something which hadn’t been helped by a particularly nasty and damaging Aqua Laguna. Water 7 was hurting for cash and work both at the moment, and this insane project would turn the situation around…even if it did mean working for the Marines.
Of course, who could he get to run something like this? It was going to require lots of time away from Water 7, and he was the mayor. It couldn’t be him, and no one else could…no that wasn’t true. There was one other person on Water 7 who knew enough about the Sea Trains to reasonably take on this project. Sighing, he considered how best to make arrangements to quietly meet with ‘Franky’ where no one would see them directly interacting.
As insane as the idea of extending the Sea Train through the Calm Belt, from St. Poplar to the Torino Kingdom in the South Blue seemed? The basic outlines of a plan currently in front of him made it seem a great deal less so, and Tom’s other apprentice had always been the sort to enjoy completely insane projects…
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A/N 1: Ah, poor Garp, face with an enemy Fists can't directly defeat! Of course, his brute force nature and insane ideas are going to come up with some very different solutions than another Admiral would have...
A/N 2: Congrats to the few people that guessed Cobra ate the Sube Sube no Mi/Smooth Smooth Fruit. I figured it would make for a few comedic assassination attempts gone wrong...along with a funny reaction the first time Vivi sees him after he ate it :-p. Which hasn't happened yet.
A/N 3: I do believe I mentioned at some point that, while he will never join the crew, Franky will still get a cameo or two ;-). Now you can see where that will happen. As to how they expect to pull off the Calm Belt Seatrain? Simply coat the underside in Seastone. At worst, they'll have to replace sections of track from time to time when a seaking knocks it out of place by pure accident. Given the trains move faster than ships, they are even less likely to be noticed as they cross through...
A/N 4: Once per release, I remind people that...I have a Page! Nothing I write, fanfiction wise, is ever permanently paywalled. That said, I do have Early Access chapters. There is, in fact, currently roughly another 15,000 words of One Piece - Halfway Broken in Early Access (Chapters 89-93). Also, of course, you also get access to my other Early Access chapters for my other stories. There is typically around 75k+ words of various works in early access at any one time. I always appreciate any support, since it helps me free up more writing time...but most of all I hope you just enjoy the stories!