After his massive tantrum subsided, the King of the Lvneel Kingdom directly dialed a highly classified World Government communications line. He paid an exorbitant, backbreaking amount of Heavenly Tribute every single year to maintain his status, and he absolutely wasn't going to let that money go to waste when he desperately needed someone assassinated.
Naturally, the World Government bureaucrats quickly passed the headache down to Marine Headquarters. This kind of petty, arrogant royal grievance was incredibly common and certainly didn't warrant bothering the Five Elders.
Normally, a report like this would simply be forwarded to the local North Blue Marine branch to handle. However, because Fleet Admiral Sengoku had recently issued a strict, high-priority directive to immediately flag any sightings of the White Dragon crew across the Four Seas, the intelligence report bypassed the local branches and landed directly on his desk.
Marine Headquarters, Marineford.
Inside the Fleet Admiral's office, Sengoku frowned deeply at the intelligence report, letting out a heavy, exhausted sigh. "This crew really refuses to sit still, don't they? Now they've crossed the Red Line and entered the North Blue?"
He leaned back in his chair, recalling the infuriating debrief he had with Garp after the old Marine Hero returned from the East Blue empty-handed. Garp had grumbled, "That brat is a real headache. If we hadn't been standing in the middle of Foosha Village, I definitely would have taught them a lesson!"
Sengoku knew Garp's strength better than anyone. For a monster like Garp to explicitly say that, it meant he genuinely could not guarantee capturing Bardock without completely wiping the village off the map in the ensuing crossfire.
Furthermore, Garp had explicitly warned him that standard Vice Admirals would likely be completely incapable of handling Bardock's top subordinates, Enel and Daz Bonez. Sengoku understood why Enel was so dangerous—the Rumble-Rumble Fruit was a notoriously catastrophic Logia—but this Daz Bonez was a surprisingly lethal, unexpected variable.
Currently, the three Admirals and Garp all had their own critical assignments scattered across the Grand Line. The only high-ranking officer who possessed both the sheer tactical brilliance and the available schedule to deal with a crew of this caliber was 'Great Staff Officer' Tsuru.
Conveniently, Tsuru had recently submitted a formal request to deploy to the North Blue to relentlessly hunt down Doflamingo. Sengoku made a rapid tactical decision. He would heavily reinforce her task force by assigning Gion (Momousagi) and Tokikake (Chaton)—two absolute monsters widely considered to be prime Admiral candidates—to accompany her. They could handle the Donquixote Family and simultaneously attempt to capture Bardock's crew.
With Tsuru's terrifying strategic mind and her bizarre Wash-Wash Fruit, capturing the pirates off guard was highly probable. As for Doflamingo... that natural-born monster absolutely could not be left unchecked any longer; Naval intelligence indicated the Underworld Broker was actively plotting another massive, highly disruptive operation.
Having finalized his decision, Sengoku immediately dispatched an aide to summon Vice Admiral Tsuru, Gion, and Tokikake to his office to draft the North Blue deployment strategy.
Back in the Lvneel Kingdom, Bardock and his crew were casually sightseeing, strolling through the capital's streets without a single care in the world.
There was honestly no better feeling in the world than knowing someone absolutely despised you, yet was entirely, pathetically powerless to do anything about it.
Bardock's blatant, arrogant disregard for the Kingdom's authority caused the King's blood pressure to spike dangerously high, prompting the monarch to furiously dial the World Government multiple times to demand immediate military intervention. Even long after the White Dragon finally set sail and vanished from the kingdom's waters, the King remained in a state of petty, seething rage, frequently calling the Navy to aggressively demand updates on the pirates' execution.
Meanwhile, on a gloomy, overcast island elsewhere in the North Blue.
A tall, pale young man with long blonde hair and cryptic facial tattoos slowly flipped over a tarot card resting on a wooden table. His eye twitched slightly.
Make no mistake, he wasn't playing a casual game of poker; he was actively performing a highly complex, fate-binding divination.
This young man was Basil Hawkins, the user of the Straw-Straw Fruit and a fiercely dedicated fortune-teller. For Hawkins, absolutely every single action in his life—from combat to what he ate for breakfast—was strictly dictated by the results of his tarot readings. This absolute, unwavering adherence to fate gave him a chillingly calm, calculating aura, making him seem like a mastermind who always had the situation under perfect control.
He had just calculated his personal fortune for the day, and the result was highly disturbing. If he wasn't incredibly careful today, he was destined to receive an absolutely brutal, inescapable beating. Fortunately, the cards indicated there was a zero percent chance of him actually dying.
But still... who in their right mind wanted to get beaten to a bloody pulp for no reason?
Hawkins calmly gathered the cards, shuffling the deck with practiced precision to initiate a new reading. He needed to know if he could simply hide inside his fortified base to avoid this impending beatdown.
He drew the next card and placed it on the table. His stoic, emotionless expression instantly cracked into genuine confusion. He had specifically asked the cards how to completely evade the danger, yet the reading emphatically declared: Evasion is impossible. 100% certainty.
This was incredibly bizarre. It was exceptionally rare for the cards to present an absolute, 100% unavoidable outcome regarding physical harm.
"How can this be?" Hawkins muttered softly, his brow furrowing as he stared at the cards. "Even if I completely lock down the base and hide underground, I still can't escape it?"
Refusing to blindly accept a random beating, Hawkins continuously drew several more spreads, recalculating the variables and asking different questions.
Finally, he arrived at an incredibly strange, yet seemingly optimal conclusion.
This newly predicted path completely conflicted with all of his current plans and pirate operations. However, multiple successive readings consistently confirmed the exact same truth: accepting this specific path was the only way to achieve the most favorable outcome in the long run.
If he stubbornly tried to fight fate or run away, he would go through a massive amount of agonizing effort, waste all his resources, and ultimately still end up receiving the exact same brutal beating in the end.