…
'Erm, what the sigma?'
Martin Luther King, 1967
…
Rustle. Rustle. Rustle.
I was surrounded by piles of berries; within a few days, I had become obscenely wealthy compared to the man who had entered Nanohana a week ago with enough money for one nice suit.
I was thriving.
Aside from the large piles, three bags of berries sat beneath the cabin table. Another two were wedged beside my bed because I had discovered, after considerable experimentation, that sleeping directly on money was substantially less comfortable than cartoons made it look. Several smaller pouches were spread across the table itself, along with casino tokens I'd forgotten to cash, receipts, playing cards and a single black chip from the Golden Scorpion that I had kept for sentimental reasons.
I reclined in my chair with both feet resting on another bag while the News Coo sat opposite me. Between us lay the morning paper.
GOLDEN SCORPION CASINO SUSPENDS OPERATIONS
I read the headline again, then the smaller print underneath.
Apparently, following what the owner described as an "unprecedented period of financial instability", the Golden Scorpion had temporarily ceased gambling operations while management underwent restructuring.
That sounded professional.
The article farther down was less polite.
According to unnamed employees, the casino had suffered enormous losses over the previous week after one customer experienced what witnesses described as "a statistically impossible winning streak" across blackjack, dice and roulette. Attempts to alter betting limits had apparently failed because other customers began copying said individual's wagers, multiplying the losses.
There was even a description.
Very tall, white hair, sleek black suit.
"...Could be anyone." My mouth tightened as the News Coo stared at me. "Lots of people have white hair."
He lowered his beak toward the wanted poster printed on the neighbouring page.
I covered it with my hand. "Fah! Biased journalism."
The bird made a noise that sounded suspiciously like laughter.
It had been around a week since my first night gambling, and I'd returned to the Golden Scorpion repeatedly. After the first day, I told myself the second visit was necessary because Baroque Works was watching me, and continuing to show up would eventually force them to respond.
That was strategy.
On the third day, the casino changed dealers and brought in completely different dice. On day four, somebody changed the roulette wheel. The next day involved complimentary food, which would've been irresponsible of me to refuse, and by the sixth, a manager had personally approached my table and asked whether I would consider "exploring alternative recreational establishments."
I won another six million berries while considering his proposal.
Unfortunately, my luck had finally run out, cause the Golden Scorpion was outta business.
I slowly lowered the newspaper. "That's actually kinda sad."
The bird tilted his head. "There were normal people working there." I said.
I glanced around the cabin. A particularly fat pouch had fallen over near the wall, spilling several coins across the floor.
I considered the human cost, reached down, picked up another bag and felt its weight.
"... never mind, it was worth it."
The News Coo screamed.
"Don't judge me. Baroque Works owns the place!"
Probably.
He pecked at the newspaper.
"Also, not my fault they loaded the dice."
That settled the moral debate for now.
I folded the paper and tossed it aside, then stood. Being rich, unfortunately, had not solved the issue of my ship becoming filthy whenever I stopped actively cleaning it. Nanohana's harbour was busy enough that soot, sand and salt seemed to materialise overnight, and the deck had begun developing the kind of grime that Pelli would've stared at accusingly until I felt guilty.
I missed that little bastard sometimes. Not enough to let him touch my money, but sometimes. I carried the empty breakfast dishes below, threw open the cabin windows and spent the next hour doing the deeply glamorous work of becoming the strongest man alive. I swept, scrubbed and reorganised the rope, then spent fifteen minutes trying to work out where a smell near the storeroom was coming from before discovering half a fruit beneath a cupboard that was mouldier than a motherfucker.
It went overboard immediately.
The News Coo followed shortly afterwards, though voluntarily in his case. He'd apparently decided sitting around while I cleaned was beneath his professional dignity and flew toward the city to do whatever the fuck birds did when they weren't extorting me for crackers.
A traitor nonetheless.
By late morning, the deck looked substantially better. I'd taken my shirt off because it was getting sweaty, tied my hair back into a ponytail and was scrubbing dried salt from around the mast when a woman's voice spoke behind me.
"You missed a spot."
My hand stopped. I slowly looked over my shoulder.
THE Nico Robin sat on my railing.
Just... sat there.
One leg crossed over the other, hands resting loosely together while a wide-brimmed hat shaded part of her face. Dark hair fell around her shoulders, and she wore the calm expression of someone who had every right to be there despite absolutely fucking not.
For several seconds, I forgot about the cloth in my hand.
Seeing Nami had been strange enough. It always felt weird meeting people who had once existed behind a screen and discovering they took up actual physical space. Robin's eyes drifted toward the deck beside my foot.
I followed them.
There was, annoyingly, a small patch of grime I'd missed.
I looked back at her. "You're here to criticise my cleaning?"
Her mouth curved slightly. "I thought I'd begin with something harmless."
Well…fuck.
I straightened and tossed the cloth into the bucket. "Most people use the gangplank."
"I did."
That made me glance toward it. I hadn't heard footsteps, hadn't felt the ship shift, and hadn't noticed another presence until she spoke. Since I was still a beginner with Observation Haki, I could guess her intentions were mostly positive. I think that's how it worked anyway.
"I should've heard you."
Robin unfolded herself from the railing and stepped onto the deck. "You probably should have."
Robin took her time looking around, her gaze passing over the patched section near the mast, the repaired railing Draeger had damaged and several old impact marks across the deck. Nothing about the inspection was rushed. She looked at the ship the same way someone might look through an old book, taking in details without explaining what she intended to do with them.
"This vessel has seen a surprising amount of violence," she eventually said.
"You should see the other guys." I smirked.
"I have."
I paused. Robin looked at me again with that same restrained amusement.
"So you've done your homework."
"Quite a lot of it."
"Hopefully from reliable sources. Newspapers've been slandering me lots lately."
"Have they now?" She crossed to the small table near the mast and picked up the wanted poster I'd left there earlier. "Then perhaps you'd like to correct the record."
She didn't need to unfold it.
"'Branchbreaker' Kai Voss. One hundred and twenty-five million berries."
My face tightened. "Just Kai."
That reaction earned more attention than I'd expected. Robin studied the poster for a moment before looking at me over its edge.
"You dislike the epithet."
"With a passion."
"Most wanted pirates eventually grow attached to theirs. Some choose them themselves."
"I'm not a pirate. More of a... free-spirited criminal."
Her eyes dropped briefly to the number beneath my face.
"A free spirit with a hundred-and-twenty-five-million-berry bounty, several assaults on Marine personnel and a stolen vessel from the now-arrested Marlo Crest.."
"Fah whatever!" I waved her off.
Robin allowed the excuse to hang there for a few seconds.
Then she continued reading.
"The official account begins in Shellstown. Petty Officer Kai Voss murders his commanding officer, attacks his own branch and escapes with government property." She lowered the page slightly. "The unofficial accounts are more complicated. The branch returned medicine it seized to civilians. They also redistributed money collected through extortion, and several Marines who supposedly attempted to stop you were detained rather than killed, and certain financial ledgers vanished before investigators arrived."
She folded the poster once.
"Captain Isolde Vale appears to have operated a rather unusual command."
My grip tightened slightly around the mop.
"She was a cunt."
Robin's brow lifted. "Succinct."
"I knew her personally."
"So I've read."
Those three words contained enough that I briefly considered asking what her sources had said. Robin didn't give me the opportunity.
"Port Tragedy is less coherent. You were arrested several times in the space of one day, encountered Vice Admiral Garp, fought Captain Smoker and escaped in restraints the Marines insist were made from seastone. Property reports vary so badly that it's difficult to determine which damage was actually yours."
I wanted to say most of it was Garp's fault, but something about the way she was speaking made interrupting feel childish.
She glanced at my right hand.
"The report regarding Captain Smoker is particularly strange. Multiple witnesses claim you struck him directly despite possessing no seastone weapon of any kind."
"Your research is thorough."
"I dislike incomplete stories."
That sounded so aggressively like Nico Robin. She stepped toward the railing, looked out across the harbour, then continued.
"Then there's Arlong."
I stayed quiet.
"Arlong Park was almost completely destroyed. Arlong himself disappeared along with much of his crew, yet the nearby village suffered comparatively little damage. Several civilian witnesses also described something emerging from the water during the fighting."
Robin turned her head slightly.
"A large, white humanoid figure. A wheel suspended above its head and one arm ending in a blade."
My eyes dropped to my right hand. The wheel mark sat across my skin as usual; when I looked up, Robin was already studying it.
"Your file has nothing useful concerning that marking," she said. "The Marines mention it often, but none of them seems to understand what it represents. I was curious whether you might be more helpful."
"I thought you did your homework."
"I did. That's why I know the answer isn't there."
Fair. I flexed my fingers once.
"Then I suppose government surveillance has limits."
"Everything has limits."
She walked past me, close enough that I caught the faint smell of perfume beneath the salt air.
My thoughts derailed for approximately half a second.
No. Absolutely not.
I'm a professional. I'm doing intelligence gathering.
Robin stopped beside the cabin door and looked inside at the extremely visible mountain of berries. Her attention remained there for long enough that I knew exactly where the conversation was going.
"So the rumours concerning the Golden Scorpion were accurate."
I folded my arms. "Depends on the rumours."
"You walked into a business belonging to Baroque Works, discovered the tables were being manipulated, then returned every day until the establishment could no longer afford to remain open."
When she phrased it like that, it sounded weirdly malicious.
"In my defence, I was winning."
"I had gathered that."
Robin looked back toward the money.
"The more interesting part is that you knew whose business it was."
"I figured it out on the first day."
"And still returned."
"Repeatedly." I added.
She gave me a long look, although there was no real disbelief in it. By this point I suspected disbelief required an amount of stupidity I had not yet demonstrated.
"You've spent the better part of a week making yourself deliberately visible to an organisation you know has already begun investigating you. Most people would become more cautious after discovering that."
"I wanted your attention." I smiled.
That came out more directly than I'd planned.
Robin's eyes sharpened a fraction.
"Baroque Works' attention?"
I hesitated. "Someone important enough to answer questions."
"And you decided financial sabotage was the easiest way to arrange an introduction."
"When you say it like that, it sounds irresponsible," I mumbled.
"It was irresponsible."
"Worked, though." I shrugged.
A faint smile appeared, but Robin didn't take the bait any further. Instead, she stepped closer to the table and set my wanted poster down.
"So you've succeeded. Someone important is here. What exactly were you hoping to ask?"
I watched her for a moment then decided I'd spent enough of the conversation reacting.
"You're Nico Robin."
The smile didn't disappear. It simply stopped reaching her eyes.
The harbour continued around us. Men shouted from neighbouring piers, rigging creaked overhead and somewhere farther inland a bell rang twice.
Robin remained perfectly still.
"Most people here know me as Miss All Sunday. The people who don't generally have no reason to know either name."
Her tone was still calm.
"Where did you hear mine?"
I smiled faintly. "That's one of the things I'm not answering."
A hand grew from the mast beside my head. The arm unfolded naturally from the wood, its palm opening next to my ear.
I stared at it.
Robin watched me do so.
There wasn't a threat in her expression. She didn't need one.
"That's disappointing," she said.
My gaze moved from the hand to her.
"The Hana Hana no Mi. Right?"
For the first time since she'd arrived, the amusement disappeared entirely.
I had definitely gotten greedy. The hand remained beside my head while I slowly raised both palms.
"Educated guess." I smirked.
"You've made several unusually precise guesses since I stepped onto this ship." Her voice never rose. She didn't accuse me of lying either, which somehow made the lie feel more obvious.
The hand dissolved into petals.
I let out a breath through my nose.
It wasn't that I thought she intended to kill me. It was simply difficult to relax when Nico Robin could grow limbs from my furniture without warning.
My imagination briefly attempted to investigate the broader implications of that ability.
I shut that thought down immediately.
Mostly.
Robin noticed the silence.
"You seem remarkably pleased with yourself for someone who has just admitted to knowing considerably more than he should."
"I've been waiting for you."
One of her eyebrows moved.
I heard the sentence again in my head.
"...That sounded better before I said it."
The corner of Robin's mouth curved.
"Baroque Works," I clarified. "I wanted someone high enough in the organisation to notice me. I hoped it would be you."
"Why?"
I picked up the cleaning cloth, wrung some water out of it and put it back down without using it.
"Because you're the one I wanted to talk to."
Robin regarded me for several seconds before crossing to the table. She sat without asking, picked up one of the spare cups and waited.
I stared at her.
Apparently we were doing this now.
I poured her some water, because I'm a gentleman. She accepted the cup with a quiet thanks, took a small drink and then rested it between both hands.
"You knew enough about Baroque Works to identify one of our businesses, enough about me to use a name I haven't offered you, and enough about my Devil Fruit to recognise it immediately. Yet you've gone out of your way to make yourself easy to find rather than avoiding us."
She tilted the cup slightly.
"That suggests either confidence or a very unusual lack of self-preservation. I'm curious which."
"Probably a bit of both."
"I suspected as much." Her eyes stayed on mine. "But that still doesn't explain why you wanted me."
An old, deeply embarrassing memory shifted somewhere in my head.
Vale standing behind her desk. With me, Voss.
Vale leaning close enough to smooth my hair away from my face. My clever little monster.
I mentally kicked that door shut.
No. Different woman ENTIRELY.
Completely different situations.
"Information," I said.
"About Baroque Works?"
"Partly."
"Alabasta?" I nodded.
Robin took another sip.
"And me."
I didn't answer immediately.
That was answer enough.
"Flattering," she said, although her tone remained neutral. "What about Alabasta interests you?"
I sat opposite her.
"The age of it."
That seemed to catch her attention more effectively than anything else I'd said.
"Alabasta is an old kingdom," she replied. "One of the oldest still governed by its original royal line."
"Four thousand years, give or take?"
"Older than most surviving states by a considerable margin."
I leaned back slightly.
"Exactly."
Robin watched me over the rim of her cup.
"You don't strike me as someone who crossed the Grand Line to study ancient governments."
"Rude."
A hint of amusement returned, but she didn't interrupt.
"I'm not an archaeologist like you," I admitted. "I don't know how to date pottery or read half-dead languages. But history interests me. Especially the parts people seem uncomfortable discussing."
Robin lowered the cup.
"What parts?"
I rubbed my thumb across the wheel mark on my hand.
"The parts that disappear, that fell into the void, if you will..."
For the first time in several minutes, neither of us spoke.
Silence. Robin's fingers stopped against the cup.
When she spoke, her voice had lost every trace of amusement.
"What did you say?"
I looked back at her.
Her eyes were fixed on mine.
I could've played stupid. For once, I decided not to insult her intelligence completely.
"You heard me."
The cup touched the table with almost no sound.
"Very few people even know there is a gap to question."
"I know."
"Where did you learn about it?"
I leaned back and studied her face.
"No."
Something changed behind her eyes.
"You're refusing to answer?"
"I'm telling you there are things I know that I'm not ready to explain."
Robin regarded me for a long moment. "You know my real name. You recognised my ability. You deliberately arranged for Baroque Works to find you, and now you're discussing a period of history that the World Government has spent centuries ensuring people cannot investigate."
She paused.
"If your intention was to convince me that you're dangerous, you've chosen an effective method."
"I'm not trying to convince you I'm dangerous." I laughed.
"What are you trying to convince me of?"
That one deserved an honest answer.
"That I'm worth talking to."
Robin said nothing. A gull cried somewhere overhead.
The News Coo was still absent, which was probably fortunate because I didn't need him judging this conversation too.
At last, Robin stood. "Curiosity concerning certain subjects has killed people far more capable than most of the men you've encountered."
"I know."
"You say that very easily."
"I don't mean it easily," I replied.
She stopped. I rested my forearms against the railing, giving her space as she joined me near the edge of the deck.
For a while we watched the harbour.
Then I spoke. "I have a hundred-and-twenty-five-million-berry bounty. I've evaded capture from a decorated Vice Admiral while wearing seastone, pissed off enough Marines that half the East Blue probably has my face pinned to a wall somewhere, and spent this week bankrupting a criminal casino because I wanted somebody interesting to show up."
I looked toward her.
"Concern stopped directing my schedule a while ago."
Robin's mouth curved very slightly.
"I can see that."
Eventually Robin asked, "Do you know what Baroque Works wants in Alabasta?"
I looked at her.
There was another question buried beneath it.
"No."
True enough. I knew what Crocodile would eventually want, but whether every part of the plan was already in motion was another matter.
Robin watched my face.
"And do you know who leads the organisation?"
I almost answered with another question.
Stopped myself. That habit was becoming annoying even to me.
"I have suspicions," I said instead.
"Based on?"
"Things I'm also not explaining yet."
Robin's expression told me exactly how useful she found that answer.
Fair. She turned slightly toward me. "Then perhaps you understand the difficulty I'm having. You ask me to believe you're looking for information while refusing to explain where your own information comes from. You claim not to know our objectives, yet you behaved as though you expected to find Baroque Works here. You know enough about forbidden history to concern me, but apparently not enough to know what you're stepping into."
She said it gently, so I didn't have a clever response ready, and…because she wasn't wrong.
"I'm working with incomplete information too," I admitted.
That seemed to surprise her more than another joke would've.
"I know certain things. Some of them very specific. Other things, I'm completely blind on. That's why I'm here."
Robin's gaze stayed on me.
"And that's why you wanted an archaeologist."
I nodded. "You're an archaeologist."
Her expression shifted again.
I continued before she could decide what that meant.
"I want to understand this world properly. Old ruins, records, languages people stopped speaking. Things that survived because somebody couldn't destroy them."
My fingers tapped once against the railing. "Stones that last longer than the people trying to erase what they say."
Robin went still.
Her eyes moved slowly toward me.
"That's a strangely specific example."
"Stone lasts."
"So do some secrets."
I held her gaze. "Not forever."
This time I left it there.
Robin studied me in silence while the harbour carried on around us. I couldn't tell what she was thinking, which was irritating given I was normally the person in the room with unfair information, being a transmigrator and all.
Maybe this was what Nami felt like around me.
I briefly considered apologising to her the next time we met.
Then remembered the seastone cuff.
Absolutely not.
Robin pushed away from the railing.
"I should go."
There was no point pretending I wasn't disappointed.
"So that's it?"
"For today."
I glanced toward the city. "No attempt to drag me in for the bounty?"
"If I intended to collect your bounty, this conversation would have been considerably shorter."
She said it so calmly that I wasn't entirely sure whether that was confidence, threat or simple fact.
Probably all three.
Robin stepped toward the gangplank, then stopped.
"When I came here, I was supposed to determine whether you posed a danger to Baroque Works."
I turned toward her.
"And?"
She looked me over once, slower than before.
"I haven't decided."
I smiled faintly.
"Guess you'll need another conversation."
"Perhaps."
There was just enough amusement in the word to please my ego.
She turned away.
The meeting had gone almost exactly how I wanted. Robin was interested. I hadn't exposed anything catastrophic, and Baroque Works now had precisely the kind of uncertainty I wanted circulating through it.
Still.
"Robin."
She stopped on the gangplank.
I let the silence sit for a moment before continuing.
"There are things the World Government couldn't erase."
She didn't move.
"Even after they burned everything around them."
Her hand tightened against the railing.
There.
For one ugly second, the woman standing in front of me disappeared, and I saw the little girl I knew from the story instead. An island burning behind her as books were desperately thrown into the water. Everyone she knew gone because they'd decided knowledge itself was a crime.
Robin slowly turned her head.
"Who are you?"
I could've said, Ohara. I could've mentioned Saul.
Clover.
The library beneath the lake.
I could've proven beyond any doubt that I knew exactly what happened, yet I didn't.
She deserved better than that.
"Kai."
Robin closed her eyes briefly.
When she laughed, it was small and tired.
"Just Kai?"
"That's all you're getting."
She looked at me fully now. The suspicion remained, obviously. But something else lay beneath it. Not Miss All Sunday evaluating an unpredictable bounty anymore.
Nico Robin was trying to understand me.
That was enough.
"I'll remember that."
She stepped off the gangplank and onto the pier.
"You planning on visiting again?" I called.
Robin kept walking; she raised one hand without turning.
A second hand bloomed from the railing beside mine. Its fingers gave my wrist a light pat.
I froze.
The hand disappeared into petals as Robin finally glanced back over her shoulder.
"Try not to bankrupt anywhere else before then."
She smiled and continued down the pier.
For several seconds I stayed exactly where I was while the harbour noise slowly returned to my brain. My wrist still felt strangely warm. I stared at the place her hand had touched, then toward Robin's retreating figure.
I slowly covered my face with one hand.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, Kai, lock in", I muttered.
There was something deeply defective about my survival instincts around commanding women.
I blamed genetics. Or Mahoraga. Maybe reincarnation had damaged something.
Either way, somebody other than me needed to take responsibility.
A familiar squawk came from overhead.
I looked up.
The News Coo descended toward the ship with another folded paper clutched beneath one wing. He landed on the mast, looked toward the pier where Robin had disappeared, then down at me.
His head tilted.
"No."
He stared.
"Don't."
The bird fluttered down onto the railing and pecked the exact place Robin's hand had appeared.
I pointed at him.
"Nothing happened. She interrogated me."
Another peck.
"Fuck off."
The News Coo screamed and flew into the cabin.
Little bastard.
I remained beside the railing for another minute before looking back toward Nanohana.
My plan had worked.
Baroque Works knew I was here, and Robin had come personally. She knew I was interested in forbidden history. More importantly, she knew I possessed information I had no intention of explaining yet.
And Nico Robin was here, already working beneath Crocodile, already digging for whatever pieces of history she could reach while pretending her interests aligned with his.
That complicated things.
It also made them considerably more interesting. I picked up the cleaning cloth again, then looked down at the patch Robin had pointed out when she'd first arrived.
Still dirty.
"...Fuck."
I crouched and started scrubbing.
She really had been right about the spot.
…
End of Chapter!
Word Count - 4307
a/n -
Ngl, this chapter was WAY harder to write than it probably looks.
I've been writing the Tarnished fic at the same time as this one, and for some fucking reason Robin kept slowly turning into Ranni in my head ＞﹏＜
I genuinely don't know why. They're both calm, intelligent women who speak like they know more than you, I guess, but I kept having to go back through conversations like, "Robin would not fucking say this. This is Ranni again."
So yeah. That was fun.
Anyway, we finally have Robin properly entering the story!
I wanted their first actual conversation to mostly just be them feeling each other out. Robin already knows an uncomfortable amount about Kai, while Kai obviously knows WAY more about her than he has any reasonable explanation for. Neither of them really trusts the other yet, but now they're both curious, which was the important part for me.
I also really liked getting to show Kai's position regarding his meta-knowledge a little more clearly. He knows some ridiculously specific things, but he doesn't know exactly where everything currently stands or how much canon has already changed. He's working with incomplete information too, and Robin can potentially fill in a LOT of those blanks.
Also yes, I am aware of whatever the fuck was going on between these two throughout this chapter.
Kai needs to lock in!
Finally, before anybody asks, the quote at the beginning is 100% historically accurate.
Look it up. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anyway, let me know what you guys thought of Robin's introduction and her dynamic with Kai so far. :)
ByeBye!