Marineford Main Building Strategic Passage
The Sengoku meeting had just ended, and the Suzheng faction slowly left the room, but the atmosphere remained, oppressive like a cold wave.
Sakazuki, Rogge, Leiter, and Enel walked side by side, preparing to go to Sakazuki's office to continue discussing the subsequent deployment.
"Boss, that look just now...it almost brought the roof down."
Lei Te rubbed his shoulders. Even though the meeting was over, his back was still drenched in sweat. "If you had been a second later, I would have thought you were going to use the conference table as a sandbag."
"Are you afraid?"
Enel carried the golden stick on his back, the corner of his mouth curled up, "I think you were almost going to jump out and give old man Garp a domineering iron head attack."
"f**k you," Rhett kicked his boots. "I call this my life-saving instinct, understand?"
Just as the two were arguing, a gust of wind swept through the corridor.
——Suddenly, a burst of hurried footsteps came from the other side of the corridor!
"Um...you guys finally came out!!"
An old but majestic voice was heard, and everyone turned around to see Zephyr striding towards them with a serious expression on his face. He was wearing a military training windbreaker, and the gold pattern on the cuffs was still shining.
He took a closer look at the few people and saw that no one was injured and their clothes were intact. He then breathed a sigh of relief.
"I just sensed the Haki outbreak from afar in the teaching building and thought you were really fighting in the conference room..."
Zephyr panted, slapped Rogge on the shoulder, and cursed with a smile:
"You little brat, do you want to scare me, your teacher, to death?!"
Rogge tilted his head and smiled faintly. Just as he was about to respond, Lei Te added a stab in a mean manner:
"The boss said that the old man was too patient. He thought he could provoke him, but he actually just sat there."
Zephyr's arm that was patting his shoulder froze, and the smile on his face froze. Half a second later, it turned into a roaring palm strike!
——Bang!
"You little b*****d! Do you really want to overturn this headquarters?!"
Zephyr cursed and laughed as he slapped Rogge hard on the back of the head.
Rogge coughed, but didn't hide. He let him finish the shot before turning around helplessly: "It wasn't me, he provoked me first."
"I don't care who comes first or last!"
Zephyr scolded him again, but there was a hint of unconcealable relief in his eyes.
He looked at the boy in front of him who he had slapped into the training pillar in the past. Now he was angrily confronting Garp in the conference hall and forcing everyone to bow down. Although he scolded him, he already felt a complex sense of relief and sigh in his heart.
Zephyr returned to Sakazuki's office with the four of them.
[Sakazuki Office]
Sakazuki sat leaning against his desk, his cloak still on, the lava flowing slowly beside him.
Seeing several people come in and sit down, he raised his eyes and gestured, whispering, "What are you going to do next?"
Rogge brushed off the dust and sat down with a cold look:
"Sengoku has made his statement, the law is established. It would be best if—"
Rogge said slowly, "Just follow Sengoku's order—any Marine who harbors, aids, or condones the Pirates will be eliminated, regardless of their status."
"From headquarters, branches, and front lines... peel off the skin step by step."
He paused and added in a cold voice:
"Next time anyone dares to stand before me and stop the Pirates, I will not hold back."
Zephyr's brow trembled slightly when he heard this, and his fingers slowly tightened, and he fell into a brief silence.
A breeze blew in from the window, and in it, he seemed to see the passionate days when he, Garp, and Sengoku had just joined the headquarters.
But... that "justice" seemed to have been torn to pieces by the word "era" without anyone noticing.
After a while, he whispered, "...I remember he wasn't like this before."
"Back when Sengoku, him, and I were still fighting for justice with Celestial Dragons with our fists—"
Zephyr murmured, "He always said he believed in 'human freedom'."
"But now...what he believes in is no longer freedom, but obsession."
He looked up at Rogge: "If one day, he really stands against Marine..."
He didn't finish his words, but just sighed softly, "I won't stop you."
"...Rye."
"Don't be like me, and don't be like Garp."
"You need to be someone who can calm the ocean without relying on anyone else."
Sakazuki looked up and nodded.
"That's exactly why I kept him in Marine."
The sound of wind passed over the windowsill and blew beside the five people.
The wind on the sea is quietly changing direction.
There was silence in the air for two breaths.
Sakazuki muttered, "We've come this far. There's no turning back."
"Have CP0 send us a list of those who have recently collaborated with the enemy within the Marine Corps."
"Rectify it, from top to bottom, and start comprehensively."
[Three days later, Marineford, Naval Headquarters, Marshal's Office]
The afterglow of the setting sun shone through the floor-to-ceiling windows onto Sengoku's broad shoulders, adding a golden edge to his slightly heavy figure.
He stood in front of the window, holding a thick stack of the latest intelligence in his hands, his brows furrowed tighter and tighter, as if he was suffocating under the pressure of the densely packed words on the pages.
He flipped through the pages one by one. The densely packed names on the intelligence were marked with red circles. Some were marked "under investigation" and some were stamped with "transferred to the Department of Justice."
These names, once the backbone of Marine, have now become targets of liquidation.
—— Rear Admiral, the treasurer of G-2 branch, was arrested for secretly assisting underground arms smuggling;
— The G-8 tactical advisor was found to have tipped off the Whitebeard Pirates.
—A certain commander of the headquarters has long-term financial dealings with the Shichibukai envoy;
The clean, ruthless "purges" came like hammers, shattering the long-standing false peace and tranquility within Marine.
The darkness that was once covered up is now ruthlessly exposed in broad daylight.
Sengoku sighed softly, a hint of fatigue in his tone. "I knew this would shake up the entire system... but I didn't expect them to move so quickly."
The Vice Admiral standing nearby nodded slightly, his voice calm but firm: "It's a little fast... but it's not necessarily a bad thing."
She paused briefly, a cold look in her eyes. "The longer it drags on, the more people will become accustomed to 'compromise'. The only ones who remain are those who can truly shoulder the responsibility of 'justice'."
Sengoku was silent for a moment, his eyes cast towards the distant southwest where the sky was gradually fading into night, as if he was searching for something in that endless darkness.
After a long moment, he slowly spoke, "Where's Garp?"
Vice Admiral Tsuru sighed softly, a hint of helplessness in his tone: "He retrieved the Straw Hat Pirates' information from the Intelligence Department and set off on his own."
Sengoku was startled, his brows furrowed slightly, "He went to find them?"
He nodded slightly and said nothing more.
She knew that Garp's decisions were never made lightly.
He went alone, perhaps to find answers, or perhaps out of some kind of responsibility.
Sengoku lowered his head, staring at the document cover on the table, which was dyed red by the scorching sun. After a long moment, he murmured, "...I hope everything goes well."
His voice was low, with a barely perceptible hint of worry.
The night wind gradually picked up outside the window, bringing a hint of coolness, as if foreshadowing the coming storm.
The whole Marineford seemed to have entered the deepest silence before the storm, with only the sound of waves hitting the rocks in the distance being particularly clear.
However, the Marine sky has been torn apart by the solemn thunder, and a storm is about to sweep across the entire world.
In this storm, the boundary between justice and evil will become clearer, and those souls that have been eroded by darkness will have nowhere to hide.