Chapter 540: The New Marines
The rendezvous point Garp and the others had arranged was an unnamed island somewhere in the New World.
After witnessing what Imu's ultimate weapon had done to Marineford, nobody wanted to risk an exposed position. A revealed location meant a bombardment, and none of them intended to end up the same way. So they'd done the same thing the NEO Navy had done - found a quiet, forgettable stretch of land and stayed low until the final battle.
When Brett arrived with the Marine leadership, what he found was a cluster of rough wooden structures scattered across the island and the sound of tens of thousands of voices.
"Vice Admiral Garp! Grandmother Tsuru!"
Brett hadn't made any particular effort to hide their approach, so the island's occupants noticed them quickly. A handful of men and women still wearing Marine uniforms with Vice Admiral insignia stepped out of the buildings and raised their hands toward the group above.
Mostly toward Garp and Tsuru, but still.
"You've kept yourselves together."
Garp dropped from Brett's cloud platform. The old hero's face held a complicated mix of things - satisfaction and relief wound together with grief and something that wasn't quite regret but sat close to it.
The institution he had served had betrayed them. The Navy he had known had fractured. The old friend who had led it alongside him was gone.
But there were still strong, principled fighters who had chosen to follow where he led. Who had chosen what he still believed was real justice.
"You've been briefed on what we're facing?" Tsuru landed beside him and addressed the assembled Vice Admirals without preamble.
"Yes." One of them answered with quiet gravity. "Even if the World Government was once what we swore to protect - the moment it placed itself against justice, it became our enemy."
"The Government has abandoned justice. So let's build something that hasn't."
A dark-haired woman Vice Admiral's voice was clear and unhesitating.
"That's right!" Gion's response was immediate and loud. "It's time to pursue justice that actually means something!"
The response that came back from across the island was overwhelming.
Decades of service to the World Government had led them to do things they might not be proud of in hindsight. But nobody here could say the Marines had ever stopped caring about justice - not genuinely, not in their bones. It had always been there, even when the institution above them was rotten.
Brett's mouth curved slightly.
Battered, split down the middle, operating out of a shack on an unnamed island. And still a formidable force, just from what was standing here right now.
Not bad at all.
He looked over at Garp. "I'll leave you to it, then. I've noted the location - the supply runs will start coming through."
"Leaving already?" Garp's brow furrowed. Brett had delivered them and was already headed for the door.
"More or less." Brett glanced across the assembled Marines. "I'm probably not the most welcome face in this crowd."
Garp didn't have a quick answer for that.
He wasn't wrong. They were on the same side now, and the people here were adults who understood what mattered. But Brett had done real damage to the Marines over the years, and the fighters who had never dealt with him directly weren't going to have warm feelings about the man simply because Garp and Tsuru had vouched for him.
They accepted him as a partner. The ones who knew him did. But the ones who didn't - their view of him probably hadn't changed much yet.
"Either way," Brett said, "let's all get through this war together. Everything else can wait. Winning this fight is what matters - agreed?"
"Agreed." Garp nodded, firm.
"Then I'll see you on the other side."
Brett left without looking back.
The Marines' internal affairs were Garp and Tsuru's to handle. His most pressing concern was mastering Observation Killing and then working backward to develop a counter for it - every edge he could find before meeting Imu again would matter.
After Brett disappeared, the dark-haired Vice Admiral lowered her voice.
"Vice Admiral Garp. That man, Brett. Can we actually trust him?"
Whatever the larger picture, there was a history between him and the Marines. Years of open conflict didn't dissolve just because the same word - enemy - had been pointed at someone else.
"There is no one more trustworthy."
Tsuru answered before Garp could. Her voice was flat and certain.
"When it comes to standing against the World Government, defeating Imu, and building something new - no one is more committed to it than he is. In this war, he is the partner we can rely on most."
She paused briefly.
"And if you think back to where our conflict with him actually began, most of it traces back to the World Government's doing anyway."
"Yes," Gion said softly. "Everything goes back to the Sun Pirates. To the man named Fisher Tiger."
A quiet fell over them.
Was Tiger wrong in what he'd done? Looking at it now, without the framework they'd been operating inside - that man had been a hero by any honest measure. And yet he'd died at the hands of the Marines. And Brett had been arrested because of it.
If someone had to bear the blame for how that began, it was probably the Marines themselves, still following the World Government's lead back then.
The Vice Admirals sat with that in silence.
"Don't doubt Brett." Garp's voice, when it came, carried weight. "Without him, we cannot beat Imu. There is no version of this war where we win without him."
"Understood."
The Vice Admirals nodded as one.
If both of them were saying it, there was nothing left to hesitate over.
Prepare. That was what came next. Put everything into being ready, because the only path to justice that actually meant anything ran straight through winning what was coming.
Brett returned to Fish-Man Island and picked up his training where he'd left it.
The forces around him kept building. The second Pluton was nearly finished. The Seraphim development was approaching completion. The shape of victory was getting clearer by the day.
It was close now. The war he had worked toward for so long. The outcome he had never stopped believing in.
Brett felt something stir in his chest - a warmth, an excitement he hadn't felt in a while.
He pulled it back deliberately. Excitement made you careless. It narrowed your vision precisely when you needed it widest.
Right now the only thing to do was keep accumulating strength. Keep training. Keep quiet.
And then, without fanfare, the training was done.