The moment those words left his mouth, the entire war council room exploded.
The long, suppressed silence ignited in an instant, then detonated!
"A war council?"
A rough voice thundered. The meteor hammer wrapped in chains belonging to the Seventh Division's captain Rakuyo slammed down onto the floor with brutal force!
Thud—!!!
The solid deck gave a tremendous sound; the floor cracked into a shallow pit where it struck, and countless fissures radiated wildly from the impact point.
"What are you still debating for!"
A watermark in the source text was here.
Rakuyo's eyes were bloodshot, veins bulging in his neck. Like an enraged lion, he roared at everyone present.
"The Marines have their knives pressed to our family's throats!"
"What kind of damn meeting is this!"
He swung his hand and jabbed at the island on the sea chart that marked Marine Headquarters, spitting as he shouted.
"We should gather every fleet right now and steam over there! Erase Marineford from the map! Grind into mince every one of those bastards who touched Ace!!"
That roar opened the floodgates of fury.
"Exactly! Rakuyo's right!"
Blenheim, captain of the Ninth Division — a giant of a man — slammed his fist against his chest like a war drum.
"What's the point of talking tactics with those Marine scum! We've got Little Oz Jr.! Let him bash open the harbor defenses; we go in right behind him and charge all the way in!"
"Charge in, then what?"
A calm voice cut through.
It was Izo, dressed like an oiran and holding twin pistols; he crossed his arms, expression icy.
"Marineford's inner bay is crescent-shaped. If we rush in, we'll be surrounded on three sides. The Marines only need to prepare some solid walls and we'll be beasts in a cage — sitting targets for every battery!"
"Then go through from under the sea!"
The Fish-Men captain Namuel of the Eighth Division proposed in a low voice.
"I can lead Fish-Man units to dive in and sabotage their ship bottoms, sowing chaos behind their lines!"
"No!"
This time the veto came from Vista, captain of the Fifth Division.
"The seabed around Marine Headquarters is surely laced with Seastone nets! They're designed specifically to deal with Devil Fruit users and pirates like us! Sending Fish-Men down there is a death sentence!"
"Then we concentrate all our ships' firepower!"
"Right! Aim every cannon at the execution platform!"
"We have dozens of ships! Hundreds of cannons! One synchronized volley and we can level that place!"
"If we can't get him out alive, at least we'll take Ace's body back!"
"Kill them all!"
"Kill that traitor Teach!"
"And avenge Captain Rakuyo at the same time!"
The council room had become a shouting marketplace.
No — worse than a marketplace.
It was filled with the rawest anger, the most direct intent to kill, and reckless madness without consequence.
Proposals were hurled like shouts and then shouted down by louder voices.
Everyone was venting.
Venting the fury at their captured comrades.
Venting the bone-deep hatred toward that traitor.
These ideas were full of courage, but also full of foolhardy recklessness.
Lucian Thorn stood at the back of the crowd without speaking.
He simply listened and watched.
He watched these legendary pirates, now like helpless, furious beasts, unleash their untamed rage with nowhere to place it.
He understood better than anyone.
Not a single one of those plans could succeed.
Marine Headquarters — Marineford — was a fortress forged by the World Government's centuries of accumulated wisdom and power.
It was a giant trap.
A vast graveyard prepared specifically to receive challengers like them.
The captains' rage was terrifying, of course.
But in the eyes of the Marines' cunning strategist Sengoku, such disorderly fury was nothing but the easiest weapon to exploit.
"Quiet… all of you!!"
A low roar suppressing his own anger overpowered the noise.
It was Marco.
He slammed both hands down hard on the table; his golden hair stirred though there was no wind, and the half-asleep look in his eyes burned with sudden fury.
His voice was not loud, but carried an undeniable authority that instantly calmed the room.
Every captain's gaze locked onto him.
Marco drew a deep breath and slowly scanned each brother's face.
His voice, squeezed out through clenched teeth, was cold and precise.
"Go in from under the sea? Under Marine Headquarters is a force permanently stationed and led by a giant admiral. Their sole mission is to defend the underwater approaches."
"Concentrate fire on the execution platform? Do you think the Marines would place the execution platform out there with no cover? The three Admirals' positions form the best shield in front of that platform! Our shells could never get past them!"
"Let Little Oz Jr. ram the defenses?"
Little Oz's huge body would be a live target for the Marines!
Marco's voice paused; he looked at Blenheim and spoke each word distinctly.
"That would only make Little Oz Jr. the first sacrifice! He'd die in front of everyone and there would be nothing we could do!"
Those words were like a bucket of cold water poured over the crowd, but they also sobered many from their vengeful haze.
Marco's knuckles were white where his hands pressed on the table.
"I know you're all furious and want to save Ace right now. So do I!"
"But!"
He jerked his head up; his eyes were as sharp as blades.
"The Marines want exactly this! They want us to let anger cloud our judgment, to rush like mindless beasts into the trap they've set!"
"If we do that, we won't save Ace — we'll bury every one of our lives in Marineford!"
"We're going to fight one of the three great powers of the sea: the Marines. This isn't a street brawl!"
"Use your heads! Think about who we'll face! The enemy is Fleet Admiral Sengoku! The Hero of the Marines, Garp! The three monstrous Admirals! And the Seven Warlords of the Sea!"
And even people from the World Government.
"If we go in like this, it's suicide!!"
That speech brought everyone fully awake.
It doused their fanatic zeal and rage cleanly.
The council room fell silent again.
But this silence was no longer the calm before the storm; it was the suffocating weight of reality recognized.
The captains who had just yelled about flattening Marine Headquarters lowered their heads one by one.
Some slammed a fist into a wall, leaving cracked handprints.
Some leaned back limply in their chairs, hands pressed to their faces in pain.
Powerless rage.
Yes.
Beyond anger, they could do nothing.
That immense helplessness washed over each of them like a tide.
Whitebeard, who had been silent the whole time, slowly lifted his eyelids.
His gaze swept over those faces full of pain and resentment, and finally rested on the corner where the young man who had not spoken once — his newest son — stood.
In that room of clamor and fury, the boy's silence stood out oddly, and in a way, strikingly.
Whitebeard's bell-like, deep voice sounded in the dead council room.
"Anger is the most useless thing on this sea."
His huge hand gently stroked the crescent-shaped island on the sea chart.
"We need a perfect plan."
"To get Ace back."
Anger and brute force alone will not rescue Ace!
Every man's heart trembled.
Whitebeard's gaze cut through the crowd and fixed precisely on Lucian Thorn.
"Lucian."
In an instant every eye in the council room turned to him.
"Do you have any ideas?"