Capítulo 94: The Raid On Latten Island

[ Third Person POV ]

Latten Island

The Whitebeard pirates successfully managed to land on the island.

It was a battle like no other. Tsuru was currently within the meeting room making different strategies to combat them. She figured that she was more valuable making plans instead of fighting along with the rest of the soldiers. However, most of the plans that she made were brutally disrupted by the force of sheer numbers.

Since a replica of the Moby Dick had arrived along with the invading pirates, they had more than twice the number of men compared to the Marine base troops that were stationed there. Naturally, there would be Cipher Pol Agents based within this island as well, but the squad was currently off island investigating the higherups of the Whitebeard Pirates.

As a result, this left Tsuru with limited resources to draw from and use to formulate a plan that could successfully fend off the Whitebeard Pirates. However, this didn't mean that she was completely powerless, some of her strategies had managed to successfully. This managed to fend off the Whitebeard pirates from the core mineral that resided within the island: Seastone.

Tsuru had gotten a call earlier from the higher-ups of the World Government heavily insisting on preventing the pirates from accessing the mineral. They even went as far as to encourage her to destroy the mine should they find the situation impossible to defend it. Tsuru obeyed their commands, and just as she was about to hang up, she was promised with reinforcements making their way towards the island by them.

This completely shifted the goal of the battle from a defense battle, to a battle of time. She needed to contain the Whitebeard Pirates long enough to let the reinforcements come and finish the job. As such, she formulated a plan to bait the Whitebeard Pirates towards an abandoned part of the island and hold them their. She did this by purposefully leaking false information about the exact location of the Seastone Mine. Pinning its location to the direct opposite of where the actual mine was.

Additionally, she had the Marine soldiers set up different points of ambushes along the way to th eabandoned island. Just to make the information a little more credible to them. However, when the Whitebeard pirates received such information, one of the Division Commanders responsible: Bleinheim, captain of the 9th Division, immediately put into consideration that it might have been a trap.

Atmos and Fossa ignored Bleinheim's doubts and were about to start heading over to the said location, when they heard the talkings of a random marine.

"Are you sure that the ambushes are ready? Tsuru really knows how to plot doesn't she?!"

The random marine was promptly shot in the head before he could notice the presence of the three Division Commanders that was nearby. His ramblings were all that Bleinheim needed to confirm his suspicions, and Fossa and Atmos were also shocked to hear the plan against them.

They needed a counter-plan to fight against them, but none of them appeared to be on the smarter side. So instead, they split up into three groups: one group was responsible for raiding the mines, whereas another group was responsible for drawing out and attacking the ambushes, the last group was responsible for cleaning up the remainders of the Marines that the second group had missed earlier. It was a simple, yet effective plan that all three of them could agree to.

The three groups immediately split up and proceded to cause chaos throughout the island. Moreover, since Tsuru was so concentrated on the abandoned part of the island where the ambush was set up. She failed to assign some men towards the other end of the Latten island where the Seastone mines currently were. There were only a couple of Marine soldiers that were currently guarding the area just in case.

They were in for a rude awakening when they were spotted by the Whitebeard Pirate group. This group was being led by Fossa, who wasted no time charging at the men and cutting one or two marines down. The rest of the group immediately charged in after their own Division Commander, they clashed with the small Marine troops and ended up winning overwhelmingly. One of the remaining Marines secretly hid herself and called Tsuru to inform them of their current predicament.

"Vice-Admiral Tsuru! We are currently being attacked by the Whitebeard Pirates! I don't think that your plan had worked!"

"Damn it! They split in two! I'll send reinforcements your way, just hang on!" Vice-Admiral Tsuru ordered.

It was uncommon for her plans to fail as drastically as this did. She had thought about the possibility of the Whitebeard Pirates splitting up to cover more ground, but it didn't seem to fit their Modius Operandi. The Whitebeard Pirates often simply invaded as a whole single unit. Anyway, she could only sigh and pick up her transponder snail to contact some of the ambushing Marines to request aid for the mine.

She was in for a rude awakening when all the calls she had made were not picking up. Initially, she had thought that they had started the ambush on them. However, it was getting more and more suspicious as her calls traced down to the area of the ambush. She initially began calling the marines that were closer to the island.

The more she called, the more she found herself contacting people nearer and nearer the area of the ambush. It was only there that she had managed to get contact with one of the Marines surrounding the area. However, when the call picked up, all that Vice-Admiral Tsuru could hear were sounds of gunshots, swords clashing, and people yelling and screaming. She immediately asked for the status of the operation, but she was met with silence. She could only assume that the marine who answered the call was already eliminated.

It was then one of Tsuru's liutenant commanders burst into the door and saluted. Vice-Admiral Tsuru couldn't help but look up at the soldier.

"Vice-Admiral Tsuru! The remaining Marines have already prepared a ship for evacuation, we need to leave immediately!" She said urgently.

Tsuru used her right hand to message her sinuses as she explained the situation concerning Latten island. She had been ordered to protect it, but if she couldn't do that, then she needed to destroy the mine so that the Whitebeard Pirates wouldn't get their hands on it. However, her liutenant commander continued to convince her to ditch the island.

"Vice-Admiral, it would be counter-productive to go out of your own way to destroy the mine. We don't even have possession over it at the moment as it is already in the Whitebeard Pirates' hands. There is nothing we can do, except wait for reinforcements so that we can take back the island," The liutenant commander explained.

Tsuru remained unconvinced and briefly closed her eyes so that she could think of any possibilities to save the island from the clutches of the Whitbeard Pirates. It was then that she received a call via transponder snail. She picked up the call without having to look at it, and the more the transponder snail talked, the more both the liutenant commander and Vice-Admiral's expressions turned from frustration to shock.