Encroaching War

The difference between Mikoto's rusty old ship was in stark contrast to that of Victoria's magnificent, glorious battleship was insane. Victoria's ship was probably at least ten or fifteen times bigger than theirs. A galleon that could swallow them up in a single gulp. Sufficient to say, Mikoto felt a little embarrassed that hers was so much bigger than his.

Nonetheless, this time they were working together. The strange thing was if they had met under pretty much any other situation Mikoto would pretty much assume she was an enemy and they would fight without a second thought and yet here they were, fighting alongside. Almost holding hands as they went to fight one of the biggest threats of all time. A Marine Admiral.

Perhaps this was the first time Mikoto actually felt his hands grow sweaty with fear and anticipation for the first time in a long time, probably since he had met Trevor. The instant fear that that man produced was still nowhere comparable to one of the three cornerstones of power. Not that Mikoto would ever willingly fight Trevor again.

"You look uneasy captain," stated Zesiro as he walked up next to the loyal dog, who was currently just staring out to sea, continuously clenching and unclenching his fists, checking periodically to see if he was still as nervous as he was before.

"We were never supposed to go to war," Mikoto muttered quietly. "We were just supposed to travel the world, be as free as we could be. I just wanted to be a better pirate than my dad. Return home with my head held high as someone who wasn't just the son of one of the pirates who fled from the Grand Line and then died in the East Blue. That was my only goal when I started off."

"And you did better than that already," Zesiro stated, "I'd say your goal was accomplished."

"When I was offered a position as a Shichibukai I'd say my goal was accomplished, if I had just quietly gone off the radar at that point I think the world would've finally respected the Azgard name, but by the time that happened I found that I couldn't do that. I didn't want this to end."

"What to end?"

"Me, you, Sage, Ridley, Enma, Hiro-Shu, Rosa, Lily, Maria," Mikoto stated, rattling off the names of his crew as quickly as he could. "If I called it off all the way back then our journey would've ended and I didn't want that. Its true that I accomplished my goal an awfully long time ago, I was one of the most feared pirates on the Four Blues, but I didn't want...I didn't want for it all to just wash away."

"And now you're uncomfortable," Zesiro stated, "our story could end at any moment. The war wasn't something you necessarily wanted to get dragged into. It was something we could've avoided, but for some reason or another we found ourselves heading into it, charging into the mist of no return and now..." Zesiro chuckled as he punched Mikoto lightly in the arm, "now you are having regrets. Ah, you wouldn't be you if you didn't rush into messes without thinking things through."

"Well, I'm thinking it through now, aren't I?" Mikoto snapped at Zesiro causing the Mako Shark Fishman to chuckle even louder. "Its just...its a war. Its natural to be afraid of it. Especially now heading into the enemy territory. With Marines."

"And a Yonkou on our side," Zesiro dared to point, nodding upwards towards Victoria as if to remind Mikoto that they were not alone in this stupid, daring charge that could possibly end up with all of them dead. Of course, Mikoto was going to try and prevent it if he could, but he shouldn't forget that they did have a Yonkou on their side. A great force that should not be reckoned with.

And the Marines probably felt that way too. Chances are Victoria kept this idea of them attacking the Marine base quiet, but had they heard of it they would be very uncomfortable at the thought, probably even worse than how Mikoto felt about attacking them. His was a pit in his stomach, theirs would be more like a black hole. A disgusting feeling that he couldn't shake and soon enough that same feeling would soon begin to dwell in the bellies of his enemies. Him and this little ragtag group of people would soon be marching out to sea.

"The island is coming up," Zesiro stated as he examined a nearby map, drawing his hands over the one that Victoria gave them. Zesiro jerked the ship into one direction and began to sail around the island, which was just poking up over the horizon. "We should probably wait a little while longer. We don't know where Sage and the rest are. We don't even know if they docked yet."

Mikoto nodded, feeling his particular worries were silenced pretty quick in favor of a more reasonable worry. The upcoming battle was indeed going to be troublesome and Mikoto had no real idea if he could handle them well. It was just going to be one big brawl coming up and he was hoping his crew did a decent enough job to survive.

"I just got a call in," Victoria stated, "a Den-Den Mushi signal transmitter. It is designed to send out a continuous transmission once activated as just a basic signal."

"We know what a Den-Den Mushi is," Zesiro complained, these basic explanations of everyday technology could get very annoying. Nobody on the crew were complete idiots that they hadn't heard of something like this before.

"Ah, so a magic Den-Den Mushi, eh?" Mikoto stated with a smile on his face as he looked off over the sea.

"Okay, so the people who matter know what a Den-Den Mushi is," Zesiro stated, "what's the point of telling us about this one. Is it from Sage?"

"I imagine so," Victoria stated calmly, "I told her when she got close to the island to immediately transmit a signal to us using one. I imagined it wouldn't be hard to get one. I imagine she's been here before us for quite awhile given the signal's strength. We are just able to hear it now. So I'm assuming she's somewhere nearby. Or at least the Den-Den Mushi is. They may have placed it down and then ran and hid somewhere else in case the Marines got wind of it."

The signal transmitter type of Den-Den Mushi had multiple different wave frequencies for this reason. Over 100 different ones, to prevent other people from accidentally wire-tapping into them and learning of a person's plan. Victoria must've set up a specific wave frequency as how they were to communicate meaning that no one else, not even the Marines or the Infinity Pirates even could pick up on it to find where the crew was.

But it was still a signal that was out there and in the open. The Marines could stumble upon it or even depending on how their equipment was set-up find a constant source of background noise coming from an unknown source, which could prompt a search of all nearby broadcasting frequencies for a couple of hours. It was something that Victoria had to be aware of when she told Sage to do so.

"What else did you tell MY crew to do?" asked Mikoto as he turned on the Yonkou, something about all of her plans smelled like bad mojo to him. He didn't want to admit that he was superstituous or even distrusted the Yonkou, who had lent them so much aid by now. But somethings just didn't sit well with him, she had given his crew a lot of orders and any one of these orders could potentially screw them over and get them killed and it was all happening behind his back.

Victoria lifted up a hand, perhaps feeling a bit of Mikoto's vehemence towards her and trying to placate him. He seemed a little annoyed at her and she could understand why. He hadn't seen his crew in awhile, but she has and she was acting in place of him. However, she was only doing this because she knew what needed to be done, Mikoto could try all he wanted, but he needed to learn that everything Victoria was doing was being done because it increased their odds of victory.

Even if Mikoto didn't see it that way.

"We will be docking soon," Victoria stated, "if your crew is on the island or nearby our first goal will, of course, be to find them. I'll activate our signal to let them know we are here as well. With any luck we'll meet up quickly. Only one Marine and maybe some of his faction are on our side during this."

"Yeah, what is up with this Marine Admiral stepping down," asked Ridley, "surely he'd have more pull as a member of the World Government then as some sacrifice to the future pirate king, are we certain this isn't some sort of trap?"

"The World Government is pretty much in divisions on everything now," Victoria groaned, obviously more annoyed with the current state of affairs rather than with having to explain them, "with the lack of a new Pirate King and the confidence in their strengths to attack the Revolutionaries, obviously they have decided to argue with themselves about how to do it.

"The three Marine Admirals have been bickering over simple questions about their priorities, the values of Revolutionary ideals, things like that and, of course, individual Marines have split up and decided to obey under one of the three Admirals and whose ideals match up closest to their own. Our current target is a more...outspoken Marine Admiral about his ideals."

"Like with what?"

"As outrageous as it seems he wants to do away with the Celestial Dragons and has openly spoken out against them, in a position as high as his it would be politicial suicide, but...thanks to the current turbulent times we are in some Marines and people, even a Celestial Dragon has spoken out in agreement with his ideas. He has also expressed sympathy with the Revolutionaries in some of their pursuits."

"And the Marines haven't seen it fit to just...quietly execute him."

"He has political pull, that's just what his side needs right now. A martyr. If the Marines kill him in anything other than the most obvious and over the top way that no one can look at and say its obviously 100% not involving the Marines in anyway, people will paint it that way. People will say that the Marines orchestrated his execution and riots will emerge within the Marines and other places."

"Which they did."

"Anything other than the most rock-solid evidence won't convince them otherwise," stated Victoria, "right now he is seen as a very over-the-top bleeding heart Marine, which a lot of people sympathize with. So if people think the Marines killed him they'd think the Marines are anti-his ideals, which a lot of the people, fishman, mermaids, and plenty of other races disagree with. He is trying to create a utopia, even if he fails people will remember him as an idealist of a generation.

"But he's now old enough where he has to retire, there have been some complaints about this, but for the most part people have accepted it as reasonable. The Marines are eager to get him out of his seat of power. The early they get rid of possible divides in their organization the better. The other two Marine Admirals, mostly agree that the Revolutionaries should be gotten rid of first and that hammering out their own problems can come later.

"He figures if he is going to lose his power he may as well hand it off to someone else who opposes this war. Force the Marines to re-think their problems rather than rush ahead into war, he figures that if they go to war the Marine and World Government would become too destabilized to address its issues for another century and would either stay with the status quo or worse. Continue down the spiral."