Chapter 85: Thwarted Plans and Frustration
_________ POV Narration_________
As Enel, Garp and Francisco were making their way through the clouds in a relaxed manner, joking around and laughing at each other's jokes, the situation at the Holy Land Mary Geoise was a bit more... Complex?
The 5 elders stood around their table, 5 old men with grey hair and grey beards all looking at reports of the situation with darkened expressions.
Eventually, one of the punched the table.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!?!" The old man seemed to be beyond mad.
All of them had similar reactions though, the mood in that room had taken a dark turn the second they received the call from Hannyabal, the newly promoted Warden of Impel Down, about Garp breaking out.
Garp breaking out was obviously something that they had prepared countermeasures against, even going as far as to have one of their trump cards, the Pluton Cannon, at hand just in case he attempted an escape.
The Pluton Cannon was shot, but Garp had still survived.
Not only that, they had lost the cannon and some ammunition, a fleet of ships large enough to be called a buster call and quite a few agents in the process.
The cannon itself was replaceable, they had the blueprint, and Vegapunk could basically just mass produce them.
Pluton Cannons weren't that difficult to make, they didn't even need any special materials besides Seastone and some conductive metals.
It was a lot harder for them to make the ammunition for said Pluton Cannons... The Dyna stones themselves had to be mined with special equipment by highly trained personnel.
Very few of them were acquired each year and the mining process was so risky that the mine could literally explode at any second.
They had lost three Dyna Stones on that ship. It wasn't enough to put much of a dent in their stock, but it was still enough to be counted as a loss for them.
The agents they lost were also highly-trained. Finding new prospects to recruit in the Chiper Pol and raising them up would take quite a while.
When it came to fighting strength, they still had Pacifistas, which were still being mass-produced by Vegapunk.
But Pacifistas were absolutely useless when it came to espionage missions. They were just robotic guards and pirate hunters.
Pacifistas could also not deal with any decently powerful pirates, so they were only useful as a movable army to protect The Holy Land in case something grave happened...
"It's because of that man... Enel." One of the elders said, keeping his cool, although his anger was still visible in the veins bulging on his forehead.
Enel was reportedly the one that blew a hole into Impel Down, the man that knocked down the Vice Warden, Magellan, and sailed away through the skies.
"... Indeed. Everything seems to be going in the opposite direction of what we want it to. And every failure that we experience seems to be related to him in some way..." One of the elders said as he started stroking his beard.
"Doflamingo's loss of control over the underworld, Kaido's crew no longer being supplied with Smile fruits, let's not even talk about the situation with Marineford..."
"Kaido's army was supposed to grow stronger and destabilize the sea completely... Enough so that at least Big Mom would try and attack him after a while..." One of the elders said as he seemed to be rubbing the bridge of his nose in frustration.
They had planned for Kaido to grow the most powerful army using the Smile Fruits, they had agents already present on the Emperor's 'Closed-Off' territory.
Smile Fruits were defective goods in the first place.
They had managed to coerce and lead Caesar Clown into discovering the SAD formula, which was a collective of lineage factors from different animals.
It worked perfectly to replicate Zoan Fruits. At least in the strength given.
But they made sure to have a fail-safe put in place for when Kaido eventually tried to overthrow them after building a pirate army large enough and taking out his competition.
The SAD formula involved a faulty lineage factor, one that could grow to blow up the inside of a person that had consumed such a fruit.
All the World Government had to do was to activate a bunch of speakers in the Holy Land when the pirates attacked, and a sound at a strange frequency would play loudly throughout the island, turning all of the Beast Pirates that had consumed Smile Fruits inside out...
Vegapunk's genius shined when he created that strange Lineage Factor through extensive lab testing, and the World Government's deviousness shined when they managed to fool Caesar Clown into using it to 'stabilize' the Smile Fruits.
Now, their plan, Im's plan to get rid of the strongest pirates simply failed. Kaido no longer had any method of quickly mass producing Smile Fruits, as the factory had been erased completely by Enel.
The situation at Marineford was an even bigger mess. With the only good thing that came out of it was the death of Blackbeard, who had managed to fool them slightly by freeing so many dangerous pirates and attacking Whitebeard.
He was a dangerous individual, as Im also told them that he would have most likely stolen Whitebeard's fruit in that exchange.
But that was the only halfway decent thing to happen there.
Enel betrayed them on live broadcast, attacking marines and basically tuning the war completely in the favor of the Pirates.
The world also saw how the Marines had failed to kill even one of Whitebeard's Commanders, and Whitebeard himself was more than healthy enough to escape them.
Even worse... Ace survived, and the world learned that Gol D. Roger's legacy continued through him.
For them, a worse result wasn't even possible. It went to the point where they regretted not using something like the Pluton Cannon in order to win the war.
Enel's involvement was not something they expected though. They suspected him a bit, as he came into the picture abruptly and was absurdly powerful for his rank.
But they had no way of knowing he would actually be that monstrous.
The Goro Goro No Mi is one of the few fruits in the world that could stand up to an actual ancient weapon and even outshine one in some aspects.
Well, at least now they knew who ate it, and they could stop looking for it.
"Nothing good has really happened since his appearance... It's rather clear that, whether intentionally or unintentionally, he is going against us directly."
"Im, his highness, has also been getting more and more stressed lately..."
"It can't be helped. But we will go through this, the World Government has had powerful enemies before and even countless setbacks."
"Indeed, besides, the people will eventually forget all about both Gol D. Roger and Ace as soon as this 'Great Pirate Age' actually ends...
We need to somehow supply Kaido with more Smile Fruits... But we need to manipulate a new pirate in order to do so..."
The elders seemed to be getting a bit more hopeful at the first sentence, but they seemed to all get complicated looks when hearing the ending.
"Finding one opportunistic and greedy pig won't be difficult... But he also has to have decent enough strength in order to catch Kaido's interest.
Kaido won't start a business with a weakling no matter how beneficial it would be for him..."
Eventually, the Elders seemed to all relax. "We'll deal with it. This is a setback, but we will handle it."
"How should we deal with Garp?" Asked one of the elders, finally getting all of them back to thinking about the current situation.
"At this point... I think we can deal with him publically." One of the elders said as he stretched his legs underneath the table.
"Indeed... Didn't he break out with one old man? At least going by the reports."
"JAJAJAJA! Just imagine the headline! 'Former Marine Hero breaks into Impel Down alongside Sky King Enel, freeing a dangerous pirate in the process!'..."
"Wait..."
"Who exactly did he free?!"
The elders then quickly scrambled and called the CP0 agents they had available, getting all of them to give more details about the old man's reported appearance.
After a few minutes, all reports of all the prisoners in impel down were on their table. Including the oldest records, they had, as the prisoner was reported to be extremely old.
Then... They stumbled upon it.
The file of one 'Francisco D. Guzman'... Someone that had attained one of the highest bounties in the world... Larger than all of the current Emperors.
"This... Isn't good..." The elders were then stuck mulling the situation unfolding in front of them.
"Out of every pirate down there... It just had to be him..." One of the elders said as he sat down.
"Wasn't he the one that killed ten CP0 agents while bound in seastone chains and almost dead when he was first captured?..."
"... He was indeed... The Right Hand of the strongest pirate of his generation."
"The Rock's Pirates should no longer exist, we can't afford to publish anything related to him..."
"Regardless of his former strength, now he isn't anything more than a decrepit old man..."
"We could try to keep his identity out of it..."
"Yes, but then people will start asking questions about it... And that pestering bird, Morgan, would also likely start investigating it..."
"Let's avoid that for now..."
"But what are we supposed to do regarding Garp?"
"We just need to keep doing what we've been doing for years... Work away from the prying eyes of the public."
"We can start at his hometown... We can easily hold it, hostage, discretely. Build a base there, and make sure a celestial dragon is also moved there."
The elders proceeded to throw around a few more ideas, but the consensus was done.
They would just have to consult Im before proceeding.
Enel and Garp certainly won't be liking the news though...
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Hope you liked this late chapter!
Wasn't home the first half of the day so I didn't get to write all that much in the morning.
Also, quite a few things are revealed in this chapter :)) Wonder how everyone feels about them(tho I'll probably find out in paragraph comments)
If u want to support me look up VeganMaster on Patre_on, you'd also get 10 chapters in advance (or 5 depending on tier)