"Yo, Sengoku."
A voice weathered by time and tinged with mockery interrupted Sengoku's thoughts.
He raised his head and saw the man who had lain quiet for over twenty years. Billy approached with his arms folded, watching him with unhurried composure.
From Billy, he sensed a power as searing as the sun and unfathomably deep-the same power that had left him and Kizaru struggling to breathe not long ago.
Sengoku silently turned to face him, surrounded by countless Marine officers and soldiers with complicated looks in their eyes.
"Billy," Sengoku spoke first. "What do you want to do?"
"What do I want to do?" Billy chuckled, but his smile brimmed with endless coldness and hatred. "I just want to ask you one thing, Sengoku. This 'justice' you've spent your entire life insisting on-does it protect civilians, or those Celestial Dragon scum?"
"Watch your words, Billy!" Sengoku instinctively tried to defend the order he had upheld all his life. "You're still a Marine! Without the order established by the World Government, these seas would only descend into deeper chaos! For the peace of the greater majority, certain necessary sacrifices are..."
"Sacrifices?!"
Billy cut him off and took a step forward. His invisible presence made even Sengoku, the former Fleet Admiral, instinctively feel his heart lurch.
"So my wife and daughter became those 'necessary sacrifices' you speak of?!" The flames of vengeance that had never gone out in twenty years burned in Billy's eyes. "Stop spouting that sanctimonious bullshit, Sengoku! You and I both know perfectly well that your 'justice' is nothing but an excuse to serve as watchdogs for those Celestial Dragon wastes!"
He pointed at his own chest and declared, stressing every word, "From this day forward, my justice means making the Celestial Dragons pay blood for blood!"
After hearing