Chapter 4: The Future Road Map

During this day Ethan cleaned his house arranged the stuff properly and then finally sat by the beach , considering his options for the future. His has lived for 60 years both lifetimes combined and he has seen much of the world and understands the real nature of the people. This world may be different from the last one but the basic emotions and instincts of human beings remain unchanged , if not more raw and unhinged.

The people here too experience emotions such as kindness , pity , cruelty , greed , lust , arrogance , hatred , happiness etc. Only as this world has extraordinary powers which anyone can obtain and the laws can't bind the strong , people tend to act on these emotions more often than not , as compared to the Earth where even though the laws couldn't do much to the rich but everyone more or less had a basic fear and respect towards the laws which in turn controlled them from acting on their instincts and commiting something stupid.

So , Ethan knows that if he wants revenge from world government and the navies responsible for this incident , he should not act impulsively and declare war on them by directly becoming a pirate or joining any of the other many opposing forces on the sea. When has any pirate no matter how strong or for that matter any other group no matter how powerful have been able to make the world government even flinch. He remembers that the previous Joyboy failed miserably when he tried to gather an uprising to overthrow the government even though he was the son of the plane at the time.

He doesn't know how the new son of the plane , Luffy will do it but he doesn't want to rely on anyone else let alone on an unreliable , brain dead guy like Luffy who jumps into all his fights impulsively based on his emotions and mood , hence leaving his life as well the lives of everyone on his crew almost entirely to luck. This is no longer just a Shonen manga but his reality so , he doesn't fully trust the protagonist group to complete this colossal task nor does he have the time to wait for them to grow up.

Moreover he has been hearing stories about pirates since being conscious here and he has slowly come to understand that they are not all about freedom and dreams as portrayed in the anime. Most of the are extremely cruel who loot , burn and spread destruction at every turn and even the very nice , likable and adventurous Luffy didn't hesitate twice before freeing the pirates from Impel Down before the top war just so that he can escape and participate in the event and couldn't care less about the consequences of releasing those heinous criminals back to the sea. After all Luffy's in essence is a pirate no matter how good and he can casually wash his hands from any remorse on his actions whatsoever by repeating the age old adage that he is a pirate and "Pirates are free".

As for the other forces on the sea they as unreliable as ever and one cannot fully trust them. He doesn't know whether Dragon has started forming the Revolutionary army or not at this time and even if he has , Ethan is not too sure about joining it due to multiple reasons. One prominent reason is that he doesn't know much about the inner workings of the revolutionary army from the knowledge of his previous life so that he cannot fully trust them and from whatever flashbacks or events they were presented in they don't seem really reliable , the cadres are not so much as thinking about the common people as they are about following their leader Dragon's orders and being extremely loyal to him.

One of the examples of this can be clearly seen from when Emporio Ivankov who has seen much of the world and clearly knows what will happen by releasing the pirates in the prison back to the sea , doesn't seem to care about this fact at all but is entirely focused on ensuring Luffy's safety and fulfilling his plan after he learned the Luffy is Dragon's son. Even Bartholomew Kuma who has been hiding undercover for many years in the Seven Warlords of the sea risked exposure just to help Dragon's son and his friends get away.

Moreover a much more substantial and practical reason for not joining the revolutionary army is that Ethan is not sure whether they would be even mildly successful in shaking the behemoth that is the world government or just prove to be of some nuisance to them as the W.G. has been stably seated as an overlord of this world for 800 years with no one being able to shake them , even though he is sure that many people and organizations must have tried to do so.

In the end Ethan thinks it is the most suitable to join the navy or the world government to be able to gain information about them , to sabotage them and to carry out his plans to entirely destroy his enemies. Although directly joining the WG may seem very reasonable but he is not very inclined to joining it as he doesn't have much information on the internal workings of its various office departments , and he doesn't want to become a CP agent who don't have much autonomy and are completely treated as brainwashed tools.

In contrast to this, joining the navy is much more beneficial as he has more or less a complete idea of the inner workings of the navy and its promotion system and even if some navies were involved in this cruel incident , he knows from the experience of his previous life that barred for some scourge , most of the navies are really good people who give their lives to protect the people and really have a 'Justice' in their hearts. Moreover he can slowly try to rise up the ranks and win the hearts of the navy to convert them into a sharp sword and a shield for his use , because navy is the largest violent institution under the world government on the bright side which has been helping it to maintain order for the past 800 years so its legacy and strength even though weaker than the WG cannot be underestimated. Even due to this the navy still enjoys some autonomy under the WG which is exactly what Ethan hopes for to be able to maneuver for his goals.

To implement all this , the first step is to take a page out of the book of his favorite character Aizen Sousuke from a manga in his last life and to completely reinvent himself into a new image who will be be easily trusted , liked and revered by everyone. He will completely cut off any connection he has with this Casterillla Archipelago just to avoid any unnecessary suspicion and take on a different life somewhere else with a completely different origin story than his own. This will make his plans progress much more smoothly in the future.

With his head full of these thoughts and plans , the day eventually passed and Ethan packed his personal luggage to prepare to go out to the sea tomorrow at dawn and start his new journey.