Navy's Sky-High Bounty Wanted Posters

The rosewood desk cracked under Sengoku's palm.

The freshly brewed tea, along with the shattered porcelain, crashed onto the carpet. Brown tea soaked into the wool, sending up wisps of bitter white steam.

A splinter stabbed into Sengoku's palm. Blood seeped along the lines of his hand.

He didn't pull out the splinter.

His chest heaved violently. His heavy breathing sounded like a bellows tearing apart in the dim office. A layer of mist covered his frog-shaped glasses.

Across the desk.

A Marine captain in charge of delivering the message stood ramrod straight.

The captain's back was already drenched in cold sweat. His uniform clung tightly to his flesh, and both legs trembled uncontrollably. Sweat pooled behind his knees.

He held a black encrypted Den Den Mushi in his hands. The World Government's crossed-star emblem was stamped on its snail shell.

The Den Den Mushi's mouth opened and closed, transmitting the lofty, aged voice from the chamber of authority in Mary Geoise.

"This is Mary Geoise's final resolution."

The Den Den Mushi's voice was rigid and left no room for argument.

"The Charlotte Family is to be classified as the highest-level threat. The Five Elders have issued an order to kill."

"No matter how much military funding it takes, bring those pirates' heads back to the Red Line."

"Click." The Den Den Mushi hung up, closed its eyes, and shrank back into its shell.

With his bloodstained right hand, Sengoku snatched up the newly printed stack of wanted posters from the desk.

The ink on the paper had not yet dried, and it gave off a pungent chemical-solvent smell.

The first one. Charlotte Linlin.

In the photograph, Linlin stood with her pregnant belly thrust out, swinging a fist wrapped in Armament Haki and smashing a warship to pieces. Strands of flesh clung to her mouthful of saw-like teeth.

Her bounty had doubled directly from its original amount. The number was painfully conspicuous.

Sengoku rubbed the poster between his fingers, revealing the one beneath it.

Katakuri.

There was no human face. The photograph showed an enormous Azure Dragon coiling through storm clouds. Its dark-golden slit pupils coldly looked down over the sea, while a pillar of destructive flame poured from its mouth.

First bounty.

One billion and fifty million Beli.

A child not even ten years old. The first time the Navy had issued a wanted poster for him, the number had already broken the billion mark.

The captain standing nearby glanced at the number on the paper.

His Adam's apple bobbed violently, and his stomach cramped.

His legs gave out completely. With a thump, he dropped to his knees on the carpet, clamped both hands over his mouth, and forcibly swallowed back the sour liquid rising in his throat.

When ordinary Marines saw a wanted poster for a monster of this caliber, even their courage to draw their swords would be drained away in an instant.

Sengoku did not rebuke the captain.

He pulled out Katakuri's wanted poster, revealing the sheet of paper pressed beneath it all.

Sengoku's breathing stopped for half a second.

The air throughout the office seemed to freeze at that moment.

The background of the wanted poster was the dark-red sky above the collapse of God Valley.

Rektol's profile occupied half the sheet.

His short pink hair streamed backward in the raging wind. There was no wild laughter or savage expression on his face. Only the indifference of someone looking at a dead thing.

Blue-white lightning and a gravity field that twisted the air interwove along the edge of the photograph.

No specific Devil Fruit name was listed.

There was only a string of bounty figures that made one's scalp prickle.

Three billion Beli.

A three-year-old child. He had been placed directly on the same level as the strongest Emperor-tier combatants on the sea.

Sengoku gripped the edge of the wanted poster. The paper wrinkled into a crumpled ball in his hand.

"Too fast..." Sengoku gritted his teeth, forcing the words through them.

Rocks had only just died. The Navy had not even had time to bandage its wounds.

An even more venomous and unreasonable serpent had already coiled itself in the New World, baring its fangs with the eight hundred years of the Celestial Dragons' accumulated foundation behind it.

Sengoku spun around.

He shoved open the blinds behind him.

Outside, torrential rain poured over Marineford's plaza. Rows of warships sat in the harbor, rising and falling with the waves.

"Pass down my orders!" Sengoku roared. His voice pierced through the glass and made the window frame rattle.

The captain on the floor scrambled to his feet. He pulled out the notebook he carried, the tip of his pen trembling as it touched the paper.

"Mobilize all branch forces."

Sengoku pointed toward the sea outside.

"Push them all into the first half of the New World. Build an iron wall in front of the Red Line!"

"Point every cannon at the Totto Land waters!"

Sengoku turned his head. His eyes behind the frog-shaped glasses were bloodshot.

"Seal everything off! Don't let even a fly through. The Charlotte Family must not be allowed to keep expanding its territory."

The captain, drenched in sweat, hurriedly wrote down the orders and gave a crooked salute.

He scrambled out of the office, his military boots pounding out an urgent echo in the corridor.

Sengoku collapsed into his chair.

The rosewood chair gave a muffled groan. He closed his eyes and rubbed his throbbing brow hard.

Marine Headquarters fell into unprecedented panic and frantic activity.

Countless barrels of gunpowder were loaded onto warships. Braving the pouring rain, the sailors pushed crate after crate of shells onto the decks.

The enormous war machine was forced to operate beyond capacity because of a wanted poster for a three-year-old child.

Meanwhile, in the New World.

The Navy's panic had not affected Rektol in the slightest, despite his being far away in the Totto Land waters.

Rektol did not care at all about the sky-high wanted poster bearing a bounty of three billion.

The sky cleared.

Sunlight pierced through the rain clouds over the New World and shone across the azure sea.

A massive island appeared at the edge of their vision.

The embryonic form of Totto Land's main base.

"Rumble—"

The low roar of the plasma exhaust erupted through the sky.

That pure-black steel warship dragged the enormous metal sphere behind it. Like a giant beast returning to its nest, it slowly descended.

Its enormous shadow fell over the island's beach.

The pirates on the island stopped hauling bricks and all tilted their heads back, staring open-mouthed at the sky.

Beside the breakwater.

The seawater was forcibly pushed aside by the air pressure beneath the warship. It rolled away in both directions, kicking up white foam more than ten meters high.

"Boom."

The heavy steel keel slammed into the shallows.

The reefs on the seabed were crushed to pieces in an instant. The warship came to a steady stop, while the enormous metal sphere slowly descended into the open space at the port under Cracker's magnetic control.

The treasure, weighing several thousand tons, hit the ground. The entire island shook twice along with it.

The heavy metal gangplank was lowered.

Rektol walked down the gangplank, his military boots pressing into the seawater-soaked sand.

The sea breeze carried a faint salty, fishy smell into his face.

He did not look at the pirates kneeling on the beach and cheering.

Nor did he pay any attention to Linlin, who was devouring roasted meat nearby.

Rektol surveyed his surroundings.

The camp previously bombarded by his Ten Thousand Thunder remained a charred wasteland.

Broken biscuit walls lay collapsed in the muddy water. The cream rooftops gave off the sour stench of spoiled fermentation, covered in black blowflies.

Several candy castles that had not completely collapsed were melting into sticky syrup beneath the sunlight.

He furrowed his brows.

His gaze was as cold as ice.

Weak desserts were utterly unworthy of his ambition.

Rektol stopped walking.

The sole of his boot crushed a hardened piece of caramel. Looking over the ruins covering the island and awaiting reconstruction, he formed a completely new vision for the island's future construction.