– Bellamy –?

  It may come as a surprise to some of you, but liberating a country was no trivial task. This was something that held true regardless of the size of the nation you were talking about, though admittedly the smaller the target the simpler the process became. Still, if one briefly stopped to consider what was all hidden behind an innocuous word such as liberate, the herculean nature of Sabo's goal became a bit more obvious.

  To start with, the simple act of tearing down the existing power structures was daunting enough on its own. Worse, unless you wanted to be left with a state of complete anarchy and chaos, you had to replace it with your own. There was a reason legitimacy played such a large reason in society.

  "It isn't like you can sit any old hillbilly on the big chair and tell everyone that he is in charge from now on either." I commented. Unless you were willing to hold a metaphorical gun to everybody's head, getting people to follow orders from a random nobody was rather difficult.

  "And even if you were willing to do that, the question is if such a heavy investment of resources would even be worth the hassle." Robin added, idly playing with a strand of her silken hair.

  After all, whether it be new resources, more manpower, or regional influence over trade… organizations didn't go around taking over kingdoms simply for the fun of it. Not unless they were led by a megalomaniac with an overly inflated sense of self-importance. That was without even mentioning the individual motivations for why people would participate in this venture in the first place. In a way, the Revolutionaries were special because, unlike the vast majority, they didn't desire power or wealth for their own sake but for the ability to end the World Government's tyranny.

  "This being the case, wasting a huge amount of their limited manpower pool to garrison an incompliant country and force its people into submission simply doesn't make sense from an investment standpoint." Sabo continued. "At least, not if you don't have manpower to burn – which we don't. In fact, even the leaders of the World Government acknowledged that directly, and more importantly successfully, controlling every component kingdom was always going to be a doomed endeavor from the start."

  Which was why they'd opted for a semi-feudal system with themselves at the top and the various kings below, packed into a loose confederation of member nations. All of it held together by the economic carrot that came along with being part of a large power bloc, and the stick that was the marines corps. A stick, that while significantly larger than the military any single kingdom could muster, was still far smaller than all of them combined.

  "Naturally, the World Government has no choice other than to keep most of their strength marshalled in a select few locations and maintain only a token presence in most of their naval bases around the world." Robin said, pouring herself a glass of water. "It's part of how I managed to evade them for so long."

  No, those bases mainly served to remind the world of the World Government's power and to let the marines know whenever a new threat popped up that went beyond the usual riffraff. By ransacking one of said bases, for example, which Luffy did while trying to recruit Zoro.

  Similarly, whenever the Revolutionaries liberated a country, they rarely placed one of their own in charge but employed cooperative locals instead. If those locals happened to be part of the nation's former administration, then all the better. The Revolutionary Army could then simply insert a few members into key positions to optimize the flow of resources – material, human or otherwise – and call it a day. As such, when the king of Kano country himself reached out to Sabo via unofficial channels, it had been too good an opportunity to ignore.

  "Turns out that King Miso isn't as satisfied with being a figurehead as the local gangs would like to think." Sabo said, expertly shuffling a deck of cards "Or maybe they simply underestimated the size of King Miso's ambition. He's certainly a different kettle of fish from his father, that one."

  "I'm rather surprised that he asked you for help to be honest. And that you accepted." I replied, accepting the two cards he slid my way. A spade four and a clover five. "I'd have thought you of all people would be a bit more critical about keeping nobility and royalty in power."

  "We weren't his first choice. That honor goes to the marines. They said no."

  "Because they're busy in the New World?" Robin asked, carefully lifting a corner to peek at her own cards.

  "Yep. Apparently Akainu couldn't possibly spare the Admirals and Vice Admirals he'd need to crush the gangs in a frontal engagement. After all, those gangs are stronger than most armies."

  "Sure didn't seem like it on Sabaody." I grumbled, throwing two hundred belli chips onto the table. "I'll open with two hundred."

  "Sabaody is also close enough to his new HQ that Kizaru could pop over real quick and be back before dinner. Kano, on the other hand, is all the way over in West Blue." Sabo pointed out. "I'll take your two hundred and raise you five."

  "I'll simply call for now."

  "Not the best hand, Robin?" Sabo asked, raising a suggestive eyebrow. Robin's answer was an enigmatic smile.

  "Do allow a lady her secrets, will you?"

  "And here I thought you were a gentleman." I piped in, shaking my head in a show of sadness. "Whatever would your mother say?"

  "She'd tell you to either match my raise or fold." Sabo grinned, flipping over the first three community cards after I threw in another handful of chips. "Huh, the flop cards aren't looking too hot."

  "A spade six, a ten of diamonds and a three of hearts. What am I supposed to do with those?"

  "Are you asking me or are you baiting me?"

  "That's for me to know and you to break your head over. I'll bet a grand."

  "Call." Sabo said, adding to the growing pile. "Anyways, as you can no doubt imagine, the gangs weren't too pleased that their puppet tried to invite the marines to discuss a matter of internal policy."

  "Sounds like he didn't have too many options left."

  "Nope. Truthfully, the only thing keeping him alive at this point is that none of the four big gangs can agree on who to replace him with. It's not a very stable situation, which is why I chartered your ship."

  "Five grand, gentlemen."

  "Eh?"

  "Surely you haven't completed a hand already, Robin. You're bluffing."

  "Like you said, Bellamy. That's for me to know and you to break your head over." Robin smiled, her eyes turning into upside down u's. "I'm sure you won't feel a thing once your skull is cracked open and your gray matter is leaking out."

  "…you sure know how to pick'em don't you, Bellamy?"

  "I sure do." I agreed with a wide grin. "Anyway, I raise."

  The pile of chips turned into a small hill and the turn card was revealed. Seven hearts on a field of white. I turned the hill into a small mountain.

  "What did King Miso promise you guys?" I asked Sabo, who answered me with his wine glass halfway to his mouth.

  "His full support for the Revolutionary Army. As long as we restore the monarchy to power, Kano country will throw its full weight behind our cause."

  "I'm not sure if that's going to be worth as much as you think it will." Robin commented from the side. "While they may have been a major nation in the past, their constant infighting hasn't done them any favors."

  "Do we have any support we can count upon?"

  When the river card was flipped unto its back, ten clubs stared in my direction. Useless. I threw in another three thousand. Robin raised me by another five.

  "Unfortunately, Kano doesn't have an official military, at least not one loyal to the king. Instead, the gangs have divvied up the task of defending the island amongst themselves and established paramilitary organizations for that purpose. The Happo Navy being a prominent example." Sabo explained. "Hack said he'd send us some reinforcements once we've established a foothold, but apart from that we're on our own."

  "Absolutely wonderful."

  "The situation isn't that bad." Sabo rushed to reassure me. "The gangs aren't going to have an easy time presenting a unified front, so if we're quick enough, we can pick them off one by one. The aforementioned Happo Navy is our first target, by the way."

  "Easier said than done. Don Chinjao isn't exactly a pushover. Though, do we have to eliminate them or do we have the option to recruit them?" I asked, idly revealing my hand. "I've got a straight."

  "It's a two pair from me." Sabo held up his two hands in surrender. "We probably have a bit of leeway as long as the king gains control of the country. Why?"

  "Then why not give diplomacy a go? I may just have a way to sway him over to our side and Don Chinjao comes as a package deal with an army."

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  "I suppose it can't hurt." Sabo scratched his chin in thought before glancing over to Robin. "Not going to reveal your hand, Robin-san? Bellamy is going to take the pot if you don't."

  "Fufufufu." Robin giggled, slowly flipping over her cards one by one. "A ten four-card, gentlemen."

  "So that's where the other tens had gone."

  "I see congratulations are in order." Sabo said, clapping enthusiastically. "Nicely done, Robin-san."

  "Thank you, Mr. Chief-of-Staff. It was a close thing." She said, gathering up her winnings. "Luckily for me, the last ten showed up just in time."

  "Well, there goes my drinking money for the week." I sighed, shaking my head ruefully.

  "I'm sure your liver will thank me."

  – Muret –?

  There was no denying that Muret loved her crew. Most of them had been her close friends for years and somewhere along the line, they had become family. Now, after two years' worth of adventure, her crew had become an existence she wouldn't exchange for anything.

  However.

  That by no means meant that they didn't drive her crazy at times. Today was one of those times.

  "No means no, captain."

  "But Muret…" Bellamy's voice came out as a plaintive whine. Combined with her captain's best efforts to emulate a pleading, soaked kitten, it made for a truly pitiable sight. Unfortunately for him, Muret was a pirate.

  "No." Muret repeated herself. Firmly. "No matter how often you claim otherwise, what you're planning is not medically viable."

  "But I know it is."

  Sometimes, it felt like Muret was the final bastion of sanity and rationality left on the Black Pearl, desperately defending herself against an unending onslaught of absurdity. Her trusted comrades, whom she had believed would stand by her side forever, had fallen one by one, drowning in the flood of silliness that her life had turned into. Even worse, like the zombies in those horror novels Robin liked to read, they'd gone over to the other side and started infecting the few who still remained. Now, it often seemed as if only Muret remained, clinging on to the last vestiges of common sense. It was a state of things that Muret found herself bemoaning more than once and at ever shortening intervals.

  "Captain, let me reiterate what you've just told me in the hopes that maybe, just maybe you'll recognize the ridiculousness of your proposal." Muret massaged her temple to ward off the impending headache. She wasn't particularly successful. "You're talking about intentionally fracturing someone's cranium in order to forcibly rearrange the broken fragments into a solid cone. A cone. Of the pointy variety."

  "That's the goal." The Captain nodded.

  "Not only that, but you also want said cone to be capable of withstanding immense pressures. Enough to break an otherwise unbreakable glacier."

  "A man's got to have ambitions, no? A teacher once told me to aim for the moon. If I miss, I'll still end up amongst the stars." Bellamy grinned. Muret, however, completely ignored what he'd just said to continue her tirade in the same exasperated tone.

  "And if that weren't that enough already, you want results immediately after the procedure."

  "The sooner the better, right?"

  Muret response to his rhetorical question was a long-suffering sigh.

  "And your proposed method to achieve this is to punch an elderly man in the face."

  "Not sure I see the problem. And it would be closer to his forehead, actually."

  "It's a problem because that's not how bones work!" Muret roared, brandishing her ever trusty clipboard. "You can't hammer the human skeleton into random shapes and expect the patient to be fine!"

  "I'm ninety-nine point five percent positive he can handle it. Give or take a few." Bellamy stated with absolute confidence. It survived for all of three seconds.

  "Oh really? On what basis?"

  "Eh… I've seen it work before…?" Her captain claimed, his eyes shifting to the right. Muret was not impressed.

  "Uhuh."

  "Well, it was only that one time, but that counts, doesn't it?"

  "…captain."

  "Yeah?"

  "Apart from the when and where you could have possibly seen such an unorthodox and frankly inane procedure being performed, in public no less, does the phrase evidence based medicine mean anything to you?"

  "I feel like that's important, but I can't say it does. I'm assuming it has something to do with the scientific method?"

  "Yes, captain. It has something to do with the scientific method. Doctors are supposed to apply those methods that have been proven to work in scientific studies or been established as best practice via many, many case studies." Muret explained, poking her captain repeatedly in the chest with her index finger for emphasis. "What we are NOT supposed to do is attempt unproven therapy methods that run contrary to all current medical knowledge."

  "Can't we consider Don Chinjao a case study for an experimental and possibly revolutionary treatment plan? We can claim it's for science!"

  "No."

  "Would it help if I claimed to have gotten the idea from your expertise with your clipboard….OW!"

  "I don't understand. I have haki. How do you keep hitting me?" Bellamy complained, gingerly stroking the freshly grown bump on his head, wincing when Muret not-so-gently applied some salve.

  "Dedication, captain. Dedication and a lot of practice chasing down everybody who refused to appear for their doctor's appointment."

  "Maybe you'd have a better attendance record if you didn't insist on poking us with needles all the time."

  "Those are strictly necessary medical procedures, captain. No more, no less."

  "Does that include the new serum you're working on?"

  "Not but maybe later, once I've refined it a bit." Muret replied.

  "I'm pretty sure you've told me before but do remind me. What was it supposed to do again? Turn us all into super soldiers?"

  "We live in the real world, Captain. Not in a science fiction universe. A super soldier serum." Muret scoffed. "That would be plain silly."

  "We live in a world that turns humans into cyborgs and where men use mountains as punching bags. A super soldier serum wouldn't be that out of place."

  "…that makes more sense than it probably should. Not sure how I feel about that, to be honest."

  "Meh, fiction is simply that part of our imagination which we haven't yet turned into reality." Bellamy put forward by way of a hypothesis. "Though it's not such a bad goal to work towards, is it?"

  "No, I suppose not."

  "But do tell. What does your serum do?"

  "It's something that Alcier's pure gold inspired. I asked myself what exactly about the pure gold supercharged human regeneration and whether I could isolate whatever that something was." Opening a cabinet, Muret pulled out a small vial, half-filled with a golden liquid. "We know that the effects of the pure gold aren't permanent or even long lasting, but what if I took that catalyst and distilled it into a highly concentrated form for a temporary boost?"

  "Something good, I imagine?"

  "The answer used to be cancer. An uncontrolled regeneration of the human tissue leads to the growth of malignant tumors if you didn't know."

  "Uhm…"

  "I haven't gotten to the part yet where I test it on someone other than myself, but this is going to revolutionize the field of emergency medicine." Muret's voice gradually increased in pitch as she lovingly caressed the vial against her cheek. "Imagine open wounds closed in seconds, broken limbs healed in a matter of minutes. Patients on death's doorstep stabilized via a single injection!"

  Muret likely would have kept going, preaching the virtues of her research for hours on end if Bellamy hadn't been in the same room. Alas, he was and he had to be an individual of above average creativity and imagination. As such, it probably wasn't all that surprising that his mind latched onto her words and twisted them to his own ends.

  "So…if I understood you correctly, if we dilute your serum enough, it won't kill a human. Is that correct?"

  "Probably not." Muret answered, uncertainly. "I'd need further test subjects, but I'm not dead yet."

  "And if someone did get cancer, you could cut it out in the early stages to permanently take care of it, right?"

  "Theoretically." Muret paused short before shooting Bellamy a suspicious look. "Where are you going with this?"

  "Which means, if I crack open Don Chinjao's skull and rearrange the fragments into a cone, your serum should be able to fuse the broken bits together into a solid whole." Bellamy exclaimed, snapping his fingers in a eureka moment. "Problem solved."

  "!?!?"

  "Am I a genius or what?"