To face the largest war in eight hundred years, the deployment orders issued by Marine Headquarters were no longer recommendations, but compulsory summons that brooked no question.
Across the Four Seas, the Grand Line, and every G-Series Base on the New World frontier, the entire Marine machine was forcibly shifted from a bloated bureaucracy to a wartime footing in an extremely short time.
Seventy-five Vice Admirals-that number all but drained every reserve of high-level fighting strength outside Marine Headquarters.
When the veteran officers who had spent years stationed in remote waters, their names occasionally mentioned in newspapers, received their orders, some stared for a long time in their offices at the swords they had carried for decades. Some took their last letters out of their drawers and copied them out again. Some did nothing but nod to their adjutants and say two words: "Prepare ships."
One hundred thousand Marine soldiers.
That number was even harder to grasp-it was not a tactical unit, nor a population any single base could accommodate.
They were young people drawn from East Blue to West Blue, from South Blue to North Blue, from every Marine Branch along the Grand Line.
Some had still been giving recruits swimming lessons three days earlier. Some had been checking merchant ships' clearance documents at the docks. Some had just returned from wedding leave, the rings on their left ring fingers still gleaming as though freshly taken from a jewelry store window.
There were green recruits who had enlisted barely a year ago, who had never even seen a pirate's real blade and had only thrust bayonets into wooden targets at training camp. There were veterans of two or more massive campaigns who could still laugh and chat with their comrades that morning, saying, "After this battle, I'm going home