And her conclusion was not even particularly wrong.
But this was Luffy, so once again everything came down to details. Any member of the family could easily have said that the young man had simply informed Robin of her inevitable future membership in their family. Overall, a pretty great promise. Probably. The main problem was how he chose to say it! A person would have to work hard to find wording even worse than what he had already used. Once again, the bastard refused to miss an opportunity to make everything unnecessarily complicated from absolutely nothing.
All for his own amusement.
Luffy was not a name.
Luffy was a diagnosis.
"By the way, you've got greetings from the Fleet Admiral," the young man announced cheerfully as he walked around Robin and stopped directly in front of her, never taking his intent gaze off the blood-covered woman's face. "Didn't understand?" Luffy asked when he received no meaningful reaction. "Then let me rephrase it: greetings from Aokiji! He asked me to tell you he'll be dropping by soon!"
Oh yes.
Robin's reaction after one of the Marine Admirals was mentioned proved so eloquent that no further questions were needed. Recoiling from Luffy as though he had promised at the very least to cut off and eat her face, the impossibly frightened Robin landed on her backside. Looking up, the woman stared at the young man looming over her with the most charming expression she could possibly produce.
From Luffy's point of view, naturally.
In light of his new fetish for frightening little girls—a definition that could easily include absolutely any woman regardless of her actual age—Robin looked so amazing it defied description! And that frightened look in her eyes!
In short, one could confidently say it was an excellent day to be Luffy.
"So it was Aokiji who saved you twenty years ago?" the young man finally began clarifying details after enjoying her terrified expression to his satisfaction.
"..."
But the frightened Robin was clearly in no mood for conversation.
"I was joking! Joking!" Luffy waved one hand reassuringly. "I mean, I was joking about the Fleet Admiral and Aokiji. Nami and I weren't sure exactly who you're connected to inside the World Government, so I had to improvise."
"Connected?" Robin repeated in confusion, slowly beginning to recover from the shock he had given her.
"Think about it yourself. Someone unbelievably weak who possesses information as important as the location of the Ancient Weapons—things perfectly capable of causing a global apocalypse—somehow manages to remain free for a good twenty years. Doesn't that sound ridiculous? Obviously somebody is covering for you! And who could that person be except the one who saved you during the destruction of your island? There's no doubt somebody saved you either. At eight years old, even I couldn't have survived a total purge of an entire island! Considering those conclusions, the current Fleet Admiral and Aokiji looked like the most promising candidates for the role of protecting a little girl. On top of that, Nami and I thought only a person like that could control World Government forces and repeatedly destroy every organization you've ever joined. But you know, right now I'm starting to lean more toward the possibility that you really are cursed." Luffy unexpectedly looked around appraisingly at the end of his little speech.
"I've known for a long time that I'm cursed."
Not a trace of doubt could be heard in Robin's voice. The woman sincerely believed she was cursed.
"Yeah, I'm starting to think so too." Luffy nodded in agreement and once again began looking around. "I mean, literally fifteen minutes ago Nami and I were discussing how Aokiji might be protecting you from the World Government on one hand while destroying every organization you've ever joined on the other. And only now did it occur to me that we're already halfway to completely destroying Baroque Works, while neither the World Government nor Aokiji has anything to do with it. So you're definitely cursed! Awesome! If that's the case, then as long as we keep you on the ship, all kinds of problems are guaranteed to keep showing up! I couldn't have dreamed of anything better!"
Robin's mouth involuntarily fell open at that statement, giving her an adorably foolish appearance. Once again Luffy was delighted, both by his own conclusions and by the way the woman looked.
"Even so, don't think for a second that the gift of your curse is enough to bribe me!" The young man's face took on exaggerated severity. "No matter how happy I am about such excellent news, it doesn't change the fact that you shamelessly broke our agreement! So from today until we reach Alabasta, you're responsible for cleaning the Going Merry every single day," Luffy declared sternly. "And since I'm a kind man overflowing with generosity, I won't even forbid you from using your Fruit power. But from now on, our ship must always sparkle with cleanliness and smell like summer freshness. And of course I should warn you immediately that my punishment doesn't cancel Nami's punishment. I may be kind, generous, and forgiving, but I'm not that kind, generous, and forgiving!"
"..."
"And no more stupid ideas!" the young man warned as he stepped right up to Robin, who was still sitting on the deck. "Be a good girl, and you and I will never have any problems again." For emphasis, he patted her on the head. "And if you ever decide to run away from us again, first make sure your curse is working at full strength! Strong enough that after you escape, none of us are left alive. Otherwise, you'll have nobody to blame but yourself afterward! We're not the World Government. If necessary we'll dig you out from under the earth and drag you back down from heaven! Then we'll keep using you, using you, using you!"
On that promising note, Luffy ignored the partially dried blood covering her dress, bent over Robin, wrapped an arm around her waist, and with one easy motion tossed her over his shoulder. The ship's railing cracked beneath his foot and the entire vessel sank noticeably lower in the water, but one enormous leap later Luffy and Robin reached the island's shore.
"Go back to the ship and start cleaning immediately!" Luffy ordered after setting the woman on her feet and giving her a loud slap on the backside for her stunt. "And no more foolishness! Next time I'll use a belt, and I don't care what anyone thinks!" he added before vanishing into the jungle, heading back toward the Baroque Works camp he had destroyed.
Robin watched him leave with a blank expression, rubbing one hand over her burning backside, then slowly trudged back toward the Going Merry. If not for the blood and her age, the entire situation strongly resembled a little girl being spanked for disobedience.
Which, in fact, was essentially what had happened.
Despite Robin's age, almost everyone in the family treated her like a little girl. Weak and helpless. The contrast with how she had been treated within Baroque Works and previous organizations was monstrous in scale. On the other hand, as she moved along the coast, Robin involuntarily discovered that all the nearest ambush ships had suffered the same fate. Compared with Angels of Death like these, devouring the souls of their enemies by the thousands, she really did look like nothing more than a little girl. While she carried out murders, the Straw Hats conducted total genocides.
Completely incomparable scales of activity.
"Good Lord, Robin-san, why did you even do that?!" Vivi asked anxiously, involuntarily wringing her hands when the dejected Robin, covered from head to toe in blood, returned to the Going Merry.
A frightened Karoo immediately began fussing beside the princess.
"...You need to wash and change clothes," Tashigi said softly, looking at the woman with eyes full of sympathy. "Wash, change, and you'll feel better right away."
What was the point of scolding someone who already understood everything? Especially when Robin looked so miserable that no one felt any desire to scold her. And what would be the purpose? One look was enough to understand that she had already suffered more than enough. Scolding her now would be like kicking an opponent who had already been defeated.
"...Almost all the ambush ships have been destroyed," Robin said after a long silence while Tashigi and Vivi used all four hands between them to scrub dried blood from her body in the bathroom.
"You should have understood that there couldn't be any other outcome," Vivi answered. "Sir Crocodile has no idea who is coming for him."
The princess was completely right. Though it should be clarified that Crocodile was not the only one who failed to understand whose attention he had attracted. His subordinates did not understand either. However, their blissful ignorance was gradually coming to an end.
And that enlightenment began directly with Yosaku, Johnny, and Sanji.
"You little runt, if you even think about picking up that brush again, I'll roast you properly!" an irritated Johnny declared, pointing one finger at Miss Goldenweek, who was casually drinking tea with Sanji. "Killing little girls isn't my habit, but if you don't leave me a choice, I'll tan your ass without a problem—or I'll sic my captain on you, and then..."
Whatever came after 'then' never got said—Johnny had to block Mr. One's incoming punch.
"You waited that long. You could've waited a little more and let me finish," Johnny bared his teeth bloodthirstily, beginning to squeeze the man's fist with all his strength after catching it in his open palm.
The force of the blow did not impress Johnny in the slightest, but he quickly realized that his opponent possessed an unusually durable body. No matter how much force the young man applied, he could not break the man's bones.
"Who are you?" Johnny finally showed interest. "You hit like a girl, but your body's hard as steel. Want to introduce yourself? Name? Number in your lousy organization? Got a bounty? My captain might not care about the names of future corpses, but personally I prefer killing people I know. Makes it more interesting."
"...My name is Daz Bones, nicknamed the 'Killer'. I'm Mr. One, my bounty is seventy-five million berries, and I'm going to kill you," the man answered with complete seriousness.
"Seventy-five million?!" Johnny exclaimed involuntarily. "You're this weak and your bounty is one and a half times mine?!" The young man clearly found such 'wild injustice' difficult to believe.
Hard as it was to imagine, Daz Bones's already grim, darkened-with-anger face managed to grow even darker. In the next second, Johnny nearly lost his fingers. Feeling some incomprehensible metamorphosis beginning in the fist trapped in his hand, followed by a strange sound strongly resembling the buzz of a circular saw, the young man hurriedly jerked his hand away. As a result, when several semicircular blades sharpened to razor edges emerged from Mr. One's knuckles and began rotating at the speed of the aforementioned circular saw, Johnny's reflexes let him escape with only a few shallow cuts. He immediately returned the favor with a powerful kick to the stomach that sent his opponent into a long flight.
"That just became a lot more interesting." After admiring how rapidly the cuts on his hand closed, Johnny shifted his gaze toward the still-grim Daz Bones slowly rising from the ground. Despite taking a blow capable of tearing an ordinary man in half, he looked as though he had never been hit at all. "And by the way, free advice: from now on, you'd better stop telling people your nickname and bounty. You're too weak for them. Keep throwing them around carelessly and somebody's definitely going to kill you for the arrogance. At the very least, if Zoro-aniki heard your nickname, he definitely wouldn't be able to resist testing your strength personally, and that would mean certain death for you."
"You say... cough-cough... you say all that to him... cough-cough... like you're planning to leave him alive," Yosaku said while rising to his feet, spitting clots of blood and pieces of internal organs from his mouth. "Ptooey, damn it!" He spat heavily to the side. "I've been used to it for ages, but I still hate this part of my power."
"He's alive!" As expected, in a crowd this large there was inevitably their own personal Captain Obvious.
That development caused a noticeable stir, and even the numbered agents became somewhat uneasy. Yosaku noticed their reaction and smiled, flattered, which in no way prevented him from breaking Johnny's nose. Judging by the force of the blow, one could easily have thought he had been trying to punch straight through his friend's head.
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