At roughly the same time, while the Officer Agents discussed the 'Pirate Slayers', a certain Mr. Blue-Haired Devil returned to his people. By then many captains had already informed their crews about the fortune awaiting them, and the atmosphere throughout the Baroque Works camp had become downright festive. The Blue-Haired Devil's men were no exception. After hearing the news from other groups, they had already been preparing to celebrate with everyone else. Then they saw the face of their late-returning captain, and every thought of celebration vanished instantly.
"Pack all your belongings and return to the ship," the Blue-Haired Devil ordered, his face pale and grim.
"Captain?"
"Quickly!"
"Sir, yes, sir!"
Amid the general atmosphere of celebration, nobody paid much attention to the commotion among the Blue-Haired Devil's people. Less than an hour later, the entire crew had relocated aboard the 'Blonde Lady'.
"Raise anchor and unfurl the sails," the Blue-Haired Devil ordered.
"Captain?!!"
Already thoroughly confused, the crew could not possibly react calmly to an order like that.
"Did we receive some special assignment?" the Blue-Haired Devil's first mate guessed.
"No assignment. Starting today, we're no longer members of Baroque Works."
"!!!"
"Anyone who wants to stay, I won't stop you."
"But Captain, why?!"
"Because our Boss has gone insane," the Blue-Haired Devil answered darkly. "He attracted the attention of people he should have avoided by every possible means. Worse, he then decided to fight them, something no sane person would ever do. Baroque Works is finished. There's no point dying along with everyone else. But if anyone disagrees, the lifeboats are at your disposal."
Strangely enough, nobody wanted to remain behind. So the following day a considerable uproar swept through the Baroque Works camp when everyone discovered that the 'Blonde Lady' had vanished without a trace together with her entire crew.
Plenty of people had seen the ship depart the previous evening, but it had never occurred to anyone to report it. This time, Baroque Works' own rules worked against the organization itself. Nobody ever discussed the orders or assignments they received, in order to prevent information leaks. Consequently, nobody ever asked anyone else about those same orders or assignments, already knowing what sort of answer they would receive.
Everyone simply assumed Mr. Blue-Haired Devil and his people had received some special order from the Boss, so nobody attached any importance to the 'Blonde Lady's' departure. By the time they discovered the next day that no such orders had ever been issued, there was no longer any point sending pursuit.
At that same time, several days' journey from Little Garden, an extraordinarily important question was being asked.
"Robin, are you a virgin?" Johnny asked seriously, his eyebrows drawn together.
Naturally, the question seemed important only to one very specific and excessively curious idiot.
"Of course she's a virgin, moron!" Yosaku snapped irritably while Robin herself tried to recover the ability to speak. "Have you seen how many eyes and ears she constantly grows around herself? A fly couldn't get near her unnoticed. Do you seriously think a paranoid woman like her would offer somebody her defenseless ass?"
Over the previous few weeks, every member of the family had gotten to know Robin fairly well, including both her strengths and weaknesses. As far as strengths went, the woman possessed an exceptional mind and remarkable composure, which gave every one of her actions the vile aftertaste of disgusting rationalism. Naturally, it only looked disgusting from the point of view of any member of the family.
The rest still had a long way to go before reaching Luffy's level of constant absurdity, but living within the confines of sensible logic had already become impossible for them. Luffy himself had gone so far as to classify the word 'rationalism' as forbidden, because its very meaning murdered every possible form of fun at the root. As a result, Robin took a great deal of 'abuse' from everyone.
Intelligent and cool-headed, she had absolutely no idea how to deal with situations where someone showed her open affection or started digging into her soul. That was the woman's greatest weakness. Robin had spent almost her entire life keeping everyone around her 'at arm's length'—or, more accurately, 'at cannon range'—letting nobody close and trusting no one. Unfortunately for her, that time-tested method proved completely useless against the pressure of friendly Straw Hats.
"Why does it automatically have to mean offering her ass, and why does it automatically have to be defenseless?" Johnny objected quite reasonably. "She considers herself an assassin, so answer me this, genius: when is the best time for a woman to kill a man? Face-to-face, or when he's enthusiastically panting on top of her? Missionary position and a dagger in the back is practically a classic. And cowgirl position with a dagger through the heart is even more of a classic."
Johnny warmed to the subject.
"And all of that's possible for an ordinary woman, so what about our Robin? Thanks to her Devil Fruit, even if she offers someone her 'defenseless ass'—" Johnny actually raised his fingers to make quotation marks in the air, "—she can still grow a couple of handy arms on the back of the guy panting over her at any moment and, again, stick a knife in his back. Or break his neck, whichever she prefers."
He shrugged.
"Finally, ordinary rape still exists. A bounty was placed on her almost twenty years ago. A lot can happen in that amount of time. And what's the best way for a woman to secure someone's protection? There's only one universal method in the world—jump into bed with somebody strong and influential. You going to tell me I'm wrong? Then look at our Nami."
Contrary to the advice, everyone sitting around the table involuntarily looked not at Nami but at Robin. The woman currently had no idea where to hide her eyes or what to do with her hands. Embarrassed and flustered, she looked absurdly cute and charmingly defenseless. Which was exactly why every member of the family never missed an opportunity to stomp all over that particular weakness.
Within days it had grown into something resembling a competition, with Nami as the undisputed leader, leaving everyone else far behind. The reason was simple: Robin without her composure looked mind-meltingly adorable. Sometimes even Zoro could not resist such temptation.
"I can see you've thought about this a lot," Yosaku said, finally managing to tear his eyes away from the embarrassed Robin and stare at Johnny as though he were a complete idiot. "Had nothing better to do?"
"You don't have an answer, do you? Or are you going to say I'm wrong?"
"Personally, I'm far more interested in why you mentioned my name," Nami said with a friendly smile. There were far too many teeth in that 'friendly' smile, both literally and figuratively.
"You going to say I'm wrong too?" Johnny was not frightened in the slightest. "Then let me remind you that for almost ten years you were basically Arlong's little house pet, trying without any success to get rid of him and his gang. Then you jumped into Luffy's bed and suddenly all your problems disappeared. We killed Arlong and his bunch of idiots, freed you, your sister, and everyone on your island, and as for your beloved money? Now you've got so much of it you don't even know what you could spend that amount on. Just try telling me I'm wrong."
Despite the highly debatable wording and excessive exaggeration—deliberately debatable and exaggerated wording, it should be noted—Johnny had not actually lied about the core facts.
Nami really had been unable to get rid of Arlong for ten years, and all her previous problems had unquestionably been solved after she personally met Luffy. Everyone knew it, so strictly speaking there really was nothing to argue about.
Robin was the only one for whom Nami's dark past came as a complete surprise. Against revelations like those, her own embarrassment involuntarily retreated into the background. Understandably so.
The current Nami might have earned the nickname 'Queen', but she behaved more like an extraordinarily beautiful and incredibly spoiled princess—a mischievous little devil. A devil who knew with absolute certainty that everyone loved her beyond measure and indulged her, meaning she could get away with practically any prank.
A girl so free, uninhibited, and constantly filled with love and positive emotions did not look remotely like someone with a dark past. Quite the opposite.
"Of course you're wrong!" Nami replied instantly and rather predictably. "I wasn't sleeping with Luffy back then!" she objected with tremendous 'weight'. "And even later, my kind of sleeping had almost nothing to do with your kind of sleeping."
"If you really want to play sophistic games, we can replace sharing his bed with sitting on his lap," Johnny replied with unshakable smugness.
The guy rarely won verbal arguments with members of his family, so he treasured every single 'victory'.
"Oh, so that's how we're talking now? And look at you throwing around such a clever word—sophistry. Did you ask Yosaku what it meant?" Nami's smile turned downright dangerous. "Excellent. In that case we don't have to replace our bed with his lap, but then you'll have to agree that our entire family sleeps in that bed. Zoro, did you hear what Ryu-chan just said? Luffy fucks you."
"I NEVER SAID THAT!!!"
One reason Johnny so rarely won verbal arguments was the simple fact that this idiot often chose to argue not with someone like Usopp or Sanji, but specifically with Luffy or Nami. What chance of victory could he possibly have?
"Just leave me out of this!" the swordsman refused to take the bait from such a crude provocation.
"We were doing perfectly fine even before all this!" Johnny protested, his smugness instantly evaporating, though he still refused to raise the white flag immediately. "We would've lived perfectly normal lives without ever meeting Luffy. Hell, if we hadn't met him, maybe by now we'd already have families. I mean normal families, with wives and maybe even children, and we'd be doing something like fishing."
"More likely you'd both be dead already!" Nami brutally dragged him back down to earth. "Hunting pirates while being idiots and weaklings like you were, you didn't have much chance of ending your careers alive."
"Now that I disagree with, Nami," Yosaku said, surprisingly taking Johnny's side.
Normally, whenever his friend got into a verbal fight with someone—especially Luffy or Nami—Yosaku was far more likely to pour fuel on the fire than try to put it out. This time, however, the girl's 'attack' had far too large a 'blast radius'.
"If Luffy hadn't dragged us into his family, we'd have had to change jobs anyway. You can't survive in East Blue on bounty hunting alone anymore. There are too few living targets left and the survivors hide too well."
"That's assuming you'd have lived that long," Nami replied. "Or do I need to remind you how Zoro and Luffy met you and why you ended up in our family? With your old strength and those suicidal impulses, you wouldn't have lasted long. It's amazing you survived long enough to meet our pair of monsters at all."
"Fools are lucky," Luffy contributed from a lounger nearby, sprawled beneath a large beach umbrella while reading the fresh morning newspaper.
"And here's your dessert, Nami-swaaaan, Robin-chwaaaan!" a delighted Sanji bounced over carrying a pair of trays. "And this is for you, assholes! Eat up."
"Anyway, you've dragged the conversation completely off track," Johnny said, using the convenient moment while everyone took their bowls of dessert to escape a topic that had become dangerous for him. "Robin, you still haven't answered my question. Are you a virgin or not?" He turned his attention back to the woman.
"DON'T YOU DARE ASK A LADY THINGS LIKE THAT, IDIOT!!!" Sanji roared.
For his attempt to change the subject, Johnny immediately received a solid kick directly to the face. He really should have thought more carefully before trying to return to his original question. The first time he had asked it, Sanji had been busy in the kitchen.
"I thought we'd already settled this, didn't we?" Yosaku looked indifferently at his friend writhing on the floor.
"I don't care about your theories, I want to hear her answer!" Johnny declared emotionally, clutching his face with both hands. "Besides, nobody disproved the rape theory!"
"I get the feeling Luffy's lessons aren't improving your powers of observation at all," Nami sighed.
"What does that have to do with anything?!"
"Because you need to pay attention to facts instead of just indulging your wet fantasies," Yosaku replied. "If you've forgotten, let me remind you: during the first few days, when Nami had only just started constantly hanging all over our Robin, Robin instantly turned into a plank of wood every time."
"So what?" Johnny failed to understand. "We took her prisoner, and then somebody started hitting on her. That reaction is completely normal and easy to explain, isn't it?" Lowering his hands from his face, the guy looked questioningly at Yosaku.
"Yeah, except it wasn't just anybody hitting on her. It was specifically Nami, and that changes the whole picture. Our Robin wasn't disgusted then and she isn't disgusted now. She simply didn't know—and still doesn't know—what to do with that kind of attention. She still doesn't even know where to put her hands when somebody hugs her. All of that told us, and still tells us, that before meeting our family she hadn't had any normal human contact for a very long time. And while that behavior doesn't prove she never had a protector, it makes the existence of one pretty unlikely."
"What about Crocodile?" Johnny asked after getting up from the floor and sitting back down in his folding chair. "Looks like a genuine protector to me."
"Let me remind you again that our Robin behaves as though she hasn't had any human contact for a very long time—if she ever had it at all—and sex rather obviously involves that kind of contact. Crocodile didn't need her as a bed warmer, so yes, he was a protector, but a completely different kind."
"Then what about rape?" Johnny still refused to give up. "If she hasn't had normal human contact for a long time, that could easily be the result of psychological trauma."
One had to admit that at least some of Luffy's lessons had remained in the guy's memory.
"Then she'd react completely differently to our touch and Nami's harassment, and she'd look at us differently too. During the first days, what our Robin feared most was that we'd hand her over to the World Government or kill her. If she'd ever been raped, that would have been the outcome she feared. Now add together the power of her Devil Fruit, her brains, the prolonged absence of human contact, the fact that she doesn't even know how to hug properly, and her highly developed paranoia, and draw the final conclusion. As far as I'm concerned, the only thing missing is a 'virgin' stamp on her forehead to make it completely obvious."
Yosaku was merciless. Not only to Johnny, but to Robin as well.