Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The heat of the day had made the edges of the parchment curl inward.

Robin sighed before smoothing out the rubbing again. Poneglyph characters were vexing enough already, but the midday sun was making them all but indecipherable. The air between her eyes and the scroll wobbled, animating the characters in a disconcerting manner. Poneglyphs were usually unassailably static, carved into gunmetal-blue rock and resisting the pull of time. Here, the perishable material and the heat haze made them waver and writhe like vines. Like snakes.

She wiped the sweat off her brow and leaned back in her chair, propping her cowboy boots on the table.

Such was the Calm Belt. The encircling band of water that girdled the world, part of a pair, forever in the doldrums. Nary a breeze rippled the water and the sun climbed punishingly high each day. Amazon Lily was a Summer Isle in the truest sense. heat pulsed out from every rock, clung to every broad leaf. The midday sun would catch the fangs of Hydra’s Peak, that great limestone pinnacle at the island’s centre. It made the mountain a natural lighthouse for any returning ship. Of course, only one ship ever docked in Amazon Lily. The Perfume Yuda. The people’s ship. The Kuja’s ship. Her ship.

All in all, a very good place for reptiles.

Not for the first time, Robin counted her blessings. The island’s only town of Utena was nestled deep within a natural gorge, high walls taking the edge off the heat. The Calm Belt was another natural defence. Not only because of the lack of currents and wind. Sea Kings nested here. More than once she had looked to the horizon and seen a sinuous body arching out the water. Looked down from a ship and seen scales flash in the depths. The Kuja had always had ways of placating the beasts and respecting their boundaries, but they had become extremely co-operative with the ascendency of the current empress.

Robin closed her eyes and saw a perfect face framed by golden snakes...

“Flower Empress.”

Robin quickly whipped her feet off the table and turned to see her attendant waiting in the hallway. She could have simply grown eyes on the back of her head to keep constant watch on the entrance to her study, but the effect was disturbing to any observer and the sensory overload had made her head spin the one time she’d tried it. With more Haki training she would be able to see and hear the presence of all living things, to see as a snake does or so her teachers claimed. Until that time, she would be Robin. Just Robin.

Except she wasn’t that anymore, was she?

“Flower Empress?” The attendant repeated, uncertainly. Lycoris was every inch a model Kuja warrior: Broad-shouldered, bronzed-skinned, sleek black hair in a practical braid. She was bare-chested, displaying battle scars and cellulite with equal pride. An actual crew member of the Kuja pirates, made to stay behind and tend to Robin’s needs while her compatriots went off raiding. Robin suspected that the Empress had selected Lycoris for the task of being her waiting girl precisely because she was so quintessentially Kuja, so uncontroversial in appearance and manner. The hope was that Robin could somehow absorb some of that wholesomeness and acclimate to the world of Amazon Lily faster.

“The Yuda has been sighted offshore.”

As if on cue, a mighty horn rent the air. The lookout from one of the many mouths of Hydra’s Peak, sounding the blast, letting the Kuja know their leader had returned.

“So it has.” Robin smiled as sweetly as she could. “I will go down to welcome the Empress and her coterie soon, I assure you.” She drew out ‘assure’, trying to mimic the hissing intonation the woman of this island displayed so often.

Lycoris gave a beaming smile before holding out an arm. A snake, previously unseen, slithered down the wall and curled around her bicep. She spoke to it. A dry, venomous hiss that worked its way into every corner of the room. Yuda. The cant, the battle-language used by every member of the Kuja and every crawling thing on this island. Robin had thought about trying to construct a script for it and transcribe it, so that she could learn its subtleties faster. But she’d decided that was a bad idea. She’d seen the way the warriors had glanced at her poneglyph drawings. Imagine how they would react if she started drawing a whole new script from scratch.

She picked herself up and exited the room, trusting Lycoris not to sneak a peek at her work. Her empress wouldn’t have picked someone who was nosy to guard her. Through scented corridors she went, the red lacquer incense pots adding to the weight of the afternoon air. Dappled sunlight fell on waxed wooden floors, exquisitely polished. Smooth as a snake’s belly and shining underfoot. In the past, Robin would have walked unseen through a space like this, keeping to the shadows and holding her breath. Now, she walked in the dead centre, her head held high, and eyes fixed firmly ahead, imagining the crowd that would no doubt have assembled outside to greet her.

Inside her room. Pulling her best clothes from the wardrobe. Smooth. Uninterrupted. Snake-like.

The jacket. It had to be the jacket. Pure-white, with a ruff of sublime ermine fur. Embroidered with rhinestones and sequins that formed patterns of flowers and snakes. She didn’t feel any hotter when she put it on. It was soothing, contrasting perfectly against her brown skin and brown eyes. Not much else to do, considering the boots she had on already and the white hat resting on her bedside table would complete the look. The only new thing to add to the ensemble was her empress’ gift.

She pulled a small box from under the pillows. She opened it to reveal a velvet-lined interior, two earrings in the shape of fangs nestled inside, gleaming with a whiteness that put her clothes to shame.

Fangs for the consort. These would be the finishing touch. Letting others know of her power, that she was not the ornamental flower they suspected her to be. Set in her ears, they perfectly complimented her dark bangs. A shock of contrast, just enough to unsettle whoever might be assessing her.

She exited the room, the tail ends of her coat dragging slightly on the floor, making a slight swishing sound. Like a snake. Hopefully.

Today we shed our skins, my love

Robin fiddled with her earrings as she went to greet her people.

A calyx had already been assembled to act as her escort. A unit of women, bare-chested with long bows slung across their backs and hunting horns at their hips. Rattlesnakes the size of rottweilers lay coiled at their feet; this island’s idea of tracking dogs. All standing at attention for her. For her.

“Flower-empress.” Chirped one of the younger ones, a scrappy lass with a mop of unruly blonde hair. She seemed eager to please. “We are here to escort you to port.”

Robin inferred as much from the second she stepped out the palace doors, but she made no snitty comments. It was critical she come across as personable and graceful. To that end, she gave a dazzling smile that linked her fanged earrings together.

“Many thanks. I can smell the sea beckoning us already. But please, call me Robin.”

The warrior looked a touch puzzled at that last request. Too friendly? Robin silently chastised herself as she slid into the centre of the calyx.

Down they walked from the palace into town, the ridged shining cliffs of the island all around. She knew that if she glanced behind, she would see the characters for kuja carved on to the sheer rock face, looking down on them all. She imagined those characters etched on to her back, imparting the collective might of this pirate nation down on to her. Her spine straightened and her stride lengthened.

The hustle and bustle of town reached her ears, the red tiles of the swooping eaves burning bright and crisp as an apple in the afternoon sun. Townsfolk came running to see them; some wearing the gleaming white cloaks of the home guard, others in their everyday clothes, cheongsams and qipaos which bared their arms and hugged their bodies in a way that gave their movements the suppleness of snakes. Still more came shirtless and bloodied, from the jungle, the sea, the arena. They carried nets of silver fish and jewelled sea king meat, every colour of the rainbow. Until they were put under the butcher’s knife and became uniformly pink, all carved up for the banquet table.

More and more women joined their entourage until she stood at the centre of a streaming current of bodies making its way down to the ocean. Several faces peeked over the shoulders of the warriors to catch a glimpse of the elusive flower-empress; young faces, old faces, bronzed and wrinkled, scarred and plumped. Robin couldn’t believe the diversity of skin tones and body types across the island’s population, given its strict isolation. Then she reminded herself that a kaleidoscope of forms and colours existed under the taxonym of ‘snake’. One thing united them – they were all hunters.

They reached the harbour. The Perfume Yuda was waiting for them.

The treasure-ship of the Kuja pirates dwarfed any caravel or ship-of-the-line that Robin had encountered before coming to Amazon Lily. 44 zhang in length, double masted, its planks and sails a sultry red colour. The twin Yuda eels that helped pull it through the waters of the Calm Belt had been uncoupled and allowed to slink back down to their caves in the island’s bedrock, resting until the next excursion woke them from their slumber.

Her escort parted, allowing for a clear look at the returning crew.

A host of muscled women came striding down the plank from the ship’s high deck. Carrying chests and sacks, waving marine uniforms wrapped around poles as battle trophies. The crowd squealed with delight. Wives rushed to their spouses and locked themselves in passionate kisses. Sisters jumped into hugs, had their hair ruffled and cheeks pinched while laughter and scolding voices bubbled in the air all around.

Robin smiled. A natural, soft smile. She had often looked upon scenes like this in her childhood, never receiving any affection herself. Things had changed and things had stayed the same. It was enough to make her lip wobble, ever so slightly.

A resounding BOOM came down from the deck. The sound of a foot.

It was followed by another. Two massive bodies making their way down to the ramp. Two massive forms standing above the assembled Kuja

The Gorgon Sisters.

Well, two of them at least. Boa Marigold and Boa Sandersonia. Each big as giants. Each crowned with a waterfall of hair; Marigold’s was a fiery red that curled into horns at her brow, Sandersonia’s was a poison green that writhed of its accord. Marigold was heavyset, having a wrestler’s build with a thick neck, fleshy jowls and a mouth like a knife cut. Sandersonia was slimmer and long-limbed. Her face was flat and wide, her eyes golden and curved fangs poking down from behind the upper lip. A forked tongue came out her mouth to taste the salty air. She spotted Robin with those golden eyes and gave a precious little wave. Robin returned the favour, smiling politely. Neither made any move aside from that. The third sister had yet to appear.

Then it was heard.

Clip. Clip. Clip. High-Heels hitting the planks of the deck. The noise carried more weight than the sisters’ stomping footsteps ever could.

The Kuja held their breath as the Empress appeared.

The air shimmered around her, but this was no heat haze. This was power. The conqueror's spirit. It clung to the straight black hair that fell across her back. It breathed on her muscled arms and long legs, perfectly proportioned. It came spitting out of her pure black eyes, off her long voluminous lashes, from her high, proud brow. To look was to stare. To stare was to worship. All of her – from the golden hissing snake earrings to the loose sarong emblazoned with the Kuja skull – seemed perfectly chosen to draw in the viewer and make a supplicant of them.

‘Pirate-Empress’ Boa Hancock. Ruler of Amazon Lily. Captain of the Kuja pirates. One of the seven warlords of the sea. Initiate of the Snake Cult and its mysteries. Immortal head of the Hydra. The prodigal daughter returned. The greatest of the gorgon sisters. Sweet serpent...

Robin considered all the titles and names Hancock had received as she made her way down towards her.

Salome followed, licking at her heels. The captain’s personal titanboa, a red and white serpent the length of three longboats. A water-buffalo's skull crowned her arrow shaped head. Poison fangs lay hidden under the bone visage, for Salome had the poison of a mamba and the strength of a python. Capable of killing enemies in several ways.

An absolute cutie. Robin had been despondent without her around.

Step, step, step. The Kuja held their breath as their empress approached. They made a path for her, leading directly to Robin.

They stood face to face. Hot breath flowed out of Hancock’s pink mouth on to Robin’s eyes. She resisted the urge to blink, meeting the dark stare of the island’s ruler head on.

A few seconds passed. Then...

“You look tired.” Robin said. “I thought you said you don’t get seasick?”

A sharp intake of breath from every Kuja.

Hancock blinked. Then her marble features morphed into a beautiful, terrifying smile.

She pulled Robin in for a hungry kiss – one the archaeologist immediately reciprocated.

And the crowd went wild.

Chapter Text

“I like your earrings.”

“Oh, you do? They were a gift from someone precious to me.”

“Is that so? Do tell me more.”

Robin smirked as she wriggled deeper into Hancock’s embrace.

They were nestled in the royal palanquin. Red silk curtains blocked out the sun, plush cushions took their shared weight. Their pallbearers moved at a slow, leisurely pace. Hancock had insisted that they slacken their stride so that she and her lover could have some privacy for a little bit longer.

Robin smiled as she traced a lazy finger across her empress’ bronzed triceps.

“Well, to give you an idea...” She snuck in closer, lips grazing Hancock’s ear, weighed down by the golden snake earring. “She’s tall … dark–haired … born to stand at the prow of a ship and cast her gaze on the churning sea below … eyes like burning coals ….”

A single brown finger touched pink lips.

“Her muscles are corded, her skin tanned.” Robin continued. “She wears the richest silks, though they do not hide her warrior’s body.”

Hancock breathed with aroused satisfaction; her hot breath was split by Robin’s lingering hand.

“I should like to meet her some time.” She purred, giving a toothy smile. Up close, Robin could see her fangs. The sharpened incisors weren’t a natural feature like Sandersonia’s. In her youth, Hancock had taken to filing them with a wedge of sea stone. Few would ever get near enough to see them and how they complicated the empress’ perfect features. None save Robin would ever be looked at by her with such love and lust.

“You know, I also met a woman recently.” Hancock drawled, returning to touch Robin’s earrings, to cradle her cheek. “She really took my breath away...”

“Oh, yes?” Robin replied, knowing how the game was supposed to go. She felt anticipation and trepidation in equal measure. It was one thing to heap praise on the pirate-empress, to shower her with affection. Every person in the world did that, they could not resist. It was another thing for the reverse to happen – for Hancock to speak lovingly of someone else. Robin was keenly aware that she was experiencing a privilege that some of the most powerful men in the world would kill for. Fire flooded through her chest. Ice chilled her blood.

“This woman is soft but sharp … like a quilt. Like a knife.” Hancock shifted away from the earrings to stroke Robin’s dark bangs. “Like a feathered pen.”

Oh, that was a good one. Hancock had been paying attention to her writing.

“Poised … subtle …" Hancock was dragging out the S in each word, her speech like a trawler net that caught every emotion in Robin’s head, seized every wriggling, fluttering thought planted in her heart by the empress’ touch and voice.

“Simply...” Her mouth right next to Robin’s waiting ear. “Precious...”

That was too much. Robin let out a sharp gasp. She inhaled and exhaled afterwards, like the air had been ripped clean out of her lungs.

Hancock obviously sensed that her lover was a touch overwhelmed. She pulled her into a cautious hug, stroking the nape of her neck.

“She has the prettiest eyes as well.” She eventually said, much gentler than before. “Brown, not black. They shine like varnished wood. They’re warm like the fur of a doe,”

Robin smiled again, looking up to meet Hancock with the eyes she had just praised. They shared another kiss. Chaste, not passionate like the one the crowd had seen. Feather-light and wistful.

“I really missed you.” Robin whispered.

“And I missed you.” Hancock said back. “I won’t be off island for a long while. You’ll have me all to yourself.”

Robin smiled and nodded. There likely wasn’t a person in the world who didn’t want to hear the pirate empress say such words to them, but only Robin knew of Hancock’s past. Knew the true enormity of that statement.

The palanquin came to a halt and was lowered to the floor. The silk curtains parted with a whisper as Salome poked her mighty head into their space. Robin was constantly amused at how such a powerful beast could appear so cute up close. Her curious black button eyes, her neatly overlapping scales and piebald jester colours. A forked tongue came out of her rounded snout to give Robin several little snake-kisses.

“She missed you so very much.” Hancock cooed, resting her cheek on Salome’s trunk-like body. “I had to give her so many toys to play with just to make her feel better. She broke them one after another.”

Robin smirked at that, as she cupped the snake’s head and nuzzled it. She took the meaning; Hancock had given captive marines over to Salome and let her pet constrict the life out of them. How those gulls must have squawked.

“Sister?” Sandersonia’s dry rasp floated down to them. “We’re at the palace steps.”

“Just a moment, Sonia.” Hancock said, somewhat curtly. She looked at Robin in an almost apologetic fashion.

“It’s a lot of steps up and all the island is watching.” She fiddled with one of her golden earrings. “It might be good if … that is, if you’re willing...”

It took a second to decipher, but Robin realised what she was implying. She clasped Hancock’s hands and gave an energetic nod, determined to show her full consent.

“I agree, let’s do it.”

Hancock was startled for a second before she slipped into her trademark composure. She roughly patted Salome, who slunk back out of the palanquin with mechanical grace. Then she reached forward and wrapped her arms around Robin, who offered no resistance. She let herself go limp, as weightless and harmless as a flower pressed between the pages of a book.

Soft but sharp? Well, one word came before the other. Robin knew which to emphasise and when to do so.

The exited the palanquin as one body; Hancock rising, standing tall. Robin in her arms, safe in a bridal carry. Sure-footed steps took them up the stairs, the host of warrior women crowing at their back.

When they reached the top, Hancock turned around to face her subjects. Robin looked sideways the joyful mass down below. She wondered if they could feel her gaze on them as keenly as she felt theirs on her.

“KUJA!” Hancock roared. The crowd quietened like admonished children.

“The seas have given up their riches.” She raised her arms a bit higher, drawing Robin closer to her breast. “Marine, pirate, slaver and smuggler, they have all fallen to our sovereign might!”

“NINE HEADS, ONE HEART!” The call came up in perfect unison.

“One heart...” Robin murmured to herself.

“The leaders of these groups writhe in their beds at night, for the venom of the Hydra is in their veins! They languish in the throes of fever while our glorious island burns with life.” Hancock’s voice reached a crescendo. “Yet, if there remains any doubt, let them feel this...”

The empress drew in a sharp breath of air. Robin felt her chest compress and her sinews bulge. She heard the power rise from the depths of Hancock’s being as a sharp hum in her ears. She closed her eyes.

The conqueror's Haki came forth as cannon-blast of pure power. It swept across the crowd, knocking some of the younger warriors on to the ground, raced down the island to challenge the waves that kissed the shore, crawled up the sides of the central mountain to come screaming out the gaping mouths of the nine snake heads. Frightened sea birds left the peak, carrying the message of Kuja power onwards to the grand line and the four seas.

The ringing died down and a burning silence settled on the town. Hancock gave one last look at her people, before turning on her heels and walking into the palace with her sisters at her side and Robin in her arms. Raucous applause followed at their backs, only dimmed when the doors closed shut.

Chapter Text

“You were magnificent out there!”

“Hush. It was only because I had you with me.”

Hancock had pulled Robin into a bone-crushing hug the moment the doors closed. Her voice still had the even tone of a captain, but Robin could feel something like an apology working its way through her protective touch.

“I’m sorry.” Hancock added, seeming to read her thoughts. “I didn’t really want to push you in the public’s eye like that, but the people needed a display of strength to cap off the voyage. Such is statecraft.”

“Yeah, statecraft. Farting into the wind!” Sandersonia said, turning a finger in her ear as if traces of her sister’s haki had got stuck in there.

“Sonia...” Cautioned Marigold, growling out the corner of her mouth.

“Piracy too.” Robin interjected, with a mischievous smile. “By my calculations, one burp from you would be enough to belly the Yuda’s sails and bring the crew from the grand line to the calm belt in under an hour.”

Sonia tilted her head in mock-contemplation, her forked tongue licking her eyes. Then she breathed in and let out a truly colossal belch. Dust came down from the ceiling as the echo ran unchallenged through the hall. Marigold buried her head in her mighty hands and pulled at her face.

“Good form, Sonia.” Hancock said, patting her younger sister’s pillar-like leg. “Keep practicing and you might be able to scare the marines into surrendering before they even sight us.”

“And miss the chance for a good boarding. Never!” Sonia arced her head back and gave a mighty laugh. “In my anaconda form I can hold ten of those chickens in my mouth, before spitting them into the sea below! Mari can only manage five.”

Robin gave a girlish chuckle while Marigold hurriedly tried to clarify that no they didn’t snap up marines just to spit them out again. How she had missed them both.

Hancock gave an audible tch, as she looked beyond the three of them, to the waiting throne at the far end of the hall.

“Ghastly thing. I thought I gave the order for it to be melted down and made into arm-rings for the most vicious in our crew. That would surely motivate them to step up their game...”

“You’re too demanding of them, sister.” Marigold interjected. “None can ever hope to keep up with you, but they fulfil their roles well enough.”

“Hmm... Well Enough and up to snuff are two different things.”

Robin directed her attention away from the bickering siblings to the offending throne.

Carved of solid gold – sourced from now-spent seams far up in the island’s highlands – the throne was a looming presence in the long hall. Moulded in the shape of a king cobra, with rubies for eyes and flame designs running along its sides. A plush red divan waited at its base for an empress to fill it. Hancock had declined to sit upon the alluring seat multiple times. She preferred to rule while lounging upon the coils of her beloved Salome.

Every time I get too close to that thing, I hear a hissing. She had said. Can barely keep my thoughts straight.

“I reckon if I keep practicing, I’ll be able to burp out all the warrior songs in order.” Sonia boasted, shaking her green locks like a happy dog.

“Burp, fart or take a loud shit on the planks of the deck.” A reedy voice said, ringing across the hall from an unseen source. “All would be preferrable to the little stunt you pulled outside.”

The three sisters stopped dead in their tracks - Sonia and Mari looking like children caught in the act of stealing sweets, Hancock wearing a dark scowl as she stared keenly at the throne.

“Old bag.” She muttered. “You’ve come out of your den, have you?”

There was a faint pitter-patter of small feet heard before a small figure stepped out from behind the cobra’s head. A shrunken, wrinkled woman with hair like unspun wool and chapped lips set in a thin line. Her eyes burned with life though, their flinty gaze skewering the four of them in turn. So intense was the glare that Robin barely noticed she was clutching a rolled-up newspaper until she held it up for them to see.

“Front page news.” The elder Nyon quipped. “To think, I believed my horoscope would be the only thing in here worth worrying about.”

“Stone ships.”

“Can you not see we are eating, old lady?”

“A most morbid maritime phenomenon, dear readers. Ships, floating into port or wrecking on the shore. Seemingly unharmed. Unmanned. Until someone ventures aboard and discovers crews of leering, gurning statues.”

Hancock ripped a lobster’s claw from its body and moodily sucked out the white meat, staring daggers at the wizened ex-empress.

Afternoon had passed into evening and the gorgon family were seated around the feast meticulously prepared for them. Suckling pig, roasted taro, baked crab, skewers of sea-king meat glazed with dark gold soy sauce. Plum liquor on hand to wash it all down. The sound of carousing could be heard welling up from down below, as the Kuja celebrated their successful voyage in the Great Hall. Their captain and her commanders remained in the palace, efficiently tearing apart their spread as the island’s foremost elder read the remains of the day to them. Or at least tried to.

“This will not go unnoticed.”

“Nor should it!” Snapped Hancock, throwing a meat skewer at Nyon with blinding speed. Nyon merely pulled her head to one side and the missile flew through empty air, before embedding itself in the nearest pillar.

“You seriously expect me to turn a blind eye to marine ships and others slithering into the calm belt? If they somehow managed to avoid the wrath of the sea kings, then that makes them a threat. I dealt with them accordingly and sent their ships bobbing away to back from whence they came.”

“You should have let it slide across your back.”

That caught Robin’s attention. She looked up from her food to gauge Hancock’s reaction. No expression blighted the empress’ face, but she was attacking her food with even more ferocity than before; shucking meat off the bones and then proceeding to eat those bones without hesitation. Osteophagy. Skeletal consumption. Robin remembered that term from time spent flicking through dictionaries in her island’s library, a lifetime ago.

The average person likely wouldn’t be able to reconcile the sight of Hancock ripping into her meal like a hyena gorging on a carcass with the sanctified image of the snake empress. But it was not distressing in the least for Robin. She’d first met Hancock looking like this – drinking straight out of a trough meant for horses, her skin scarred, and her clothes torn.

Her hunger hadn’t abated since.

“It really isn’t as bad as it sounds, auntie.” Marigold said placatingly. “Hancock’s petrification isn’t fatal, so it’s not like we massacred them. Immersion in sea water should be enough to return them to normal...”

“Turning navy men into literal lawn ornaments and casting them adrift is far more of a statement than simply offing them!” Nyon snapped. Mari pulled back, abashed.

“I maintain my borders.” Hancock growled, pulling the elder’s focus back to her.

“The Kuja’s borders, you little sidewinder! It’s the Kuja who will pay if the government come here seeking retribution.”

“As if they would! Those pen-pushers let warlords do as they please as long as they don’t rock the boat. See how they allow that lizard to poach ships in the Florian triangle, or permit that turkey-man to have his pretty petty toy kingdom? How am I any different to them?!”

“They don’t attack marines! At least not in the open, and they certainly don’t send their remains back to the ones in control of the whole operation. That is the definition of rocking the boat, young lady!”

“They let their own people be taken for slaves. Think they care about what becomes of press-ganged recruits?”

Nyon had no answer for that. Awkward silence ensued, crunching and chewing filling the scented air. Robin let her eyes wander and rest on the wild pink colours of a dragon fruit. Its hypnotic shade and bizarre spiked form reminded her of another fruit she had sampled, so very long ago...

“Tell me.” Nyon eventually said. “How goes your devil-training?”

That was addressed to all of them, Robin included.

“I really wish you wouldn’t call it that, auntie.” Sonia mumbled.

“They’re called devil fruits. What else am I to call it?” Nyon sniffed as she helped herself to puffed rice. “Hancock’s prowess with the love fruit is apparent. But you two – have you mastered your snake forms?”

Muttering something inaudible, Sonia held up her arm. The air seemed to waver around it, and it appeared to lose all rigidity, becoming as pliant and flexible as serpent flesh. Greenish scales creeped up her skin, a sleeve of natural chainmail that caught the light of the low-burning torches and scattered it.

Marigold simply swirled something in her mouth. Then, with lightning speed, she spat out a gob of something deep purple and viscous. It splashed on to the stone floor, ate its way through it as if it were paper. Robin knew it would continue to burn all the way through the soil and the bed rock, down to the ocean beneath the island.

“Pray no one was standing beneath us...” Nyon quipped. “Still, selective transformations. The mark of a fully realised Zoan user. I’m impressed.”

“You don’t sound it.” Said Sandersonia, pouting while her sister massaged her changed throat with a generous serving of iced water. Hancock remained perfectly still.

“The powers of the devil’s fruit and the ways of the Kuja are like oil and water.” Nyon said matter-of-factly. “Relying on the former too heavily might have dire repercussions for your image as rulers.”

“We work with what we got.” Hancock finally said, playing with her food.

“You certainly do.”

Silence resumed for a brief period, until the elder turned her attention on to Robin.

“I understand you’ve eaten a fruit as well, miss Robin.”

Robin’s insides churned as she set down her cup and presented her arms in a seemingly supplicant pose. She closed her eyes and reached deep inside. When she opened them, petals danced before her.

The arms came out of the walls, floor and table. Long and brown, with perfectly filed nails, waving in an unseen wind. Like a puppeteer pulling at the strings of their marionette, Robin focused and made the fingers of each hand curl and flex. The twitching of so many severed limbs lent an uneasy quality to the dining scene, but Robin was assured she had given a good demonstration for the assessing elder.

“OK, that was a good demonstration.” Nyon said, giving the nearest hand a high five. “I can see this power becoming very handy in the near future.”

The sisters groaned in unison at that comment as Robin dismissed the manifested limbs with a flick of her wrist, privately proud of herself. Even after all this time, her spirits would always be raised by the praise of an elder,

“So, Hancock, when do you plan on marrying this girl?”

Robin choked on the liquor she was drinking. Sonia’s eyes bulged as a piece of meat got stuck in her throat. Without a word, Hancock got up from her seat, walked to where Nyon was, pulled her up by the hair and started to move towards the window.

“This again? You know you can’t put it off forever. You owe it to your people, and you owe it to her! How did you two even meet-”

Nyon’s diatribe was cut off by Hancock pitching her out the window with cannonball force. She then stalked back to the table and flung herself down on her cushion.

“You know she’ll come back, right?” Marigold said, raising an eyebrow.

“Ha! I’m counting on it. That way I can serve her up alongside the crabs and the pigs. Not that she’ll taste any good, that skin-and-bone biddy...”

Hancock’s voice trailed off into mumbling, then to eating noises. The other three knew she would say nothing more on the matter and instead focused on finishing their meal.

Robin picked up the dragon fruit and cut it open. A mass of black seeds set into white flesh greeted her. Like staring eyes.

She bit down hard and let the juice dribble down her chin.

Chapter Text

“I swear, that woman just doesn’t know when to quit!”

“She’s like all Kuja in that regard then?”

“Kuja know when to stand aside. Her time as empress came to an end some while ago, yet still she insists on loitering in the palace and hissing in my ear!”

“Would you know when to stand aside? Would I? Would any of us?”

Hancock didn’t have an answer for that. She simply slid off the bath’s jade rim and sunk deep into the steaming water.

Hancock’s private bathroom was as sumptuous as one might expect. Pipes shaped like open snake mouths poured heated water into a tiled basin. Jasmine and sandalwood bath salts lent their fragrance to the scene. Candles glowed in the corners, shining down on the rippling surface. Beads of perspiration, glinting like pearls, had already started to gather across Hancock’s broad shoulders, as she waited for her lover to join her.

With silken tread, Robin walked to the shimmering pool and lowered herself in.

The effect was immediate and delicious. A warm feeling of powerlessness that spread from the tips of her toes to the forehead that was forever shadowed by her bangs. Her skin tingled and her nostrils drank in the sweet scent. Devil fruit users were weakened by immersion in water of any kind, but there were certain subtleties that she had come to learn of. Variations. Sea water paralysed outright, locking the limbs and freezing the nerves. Water derived from other sources – mountain streams or hot springs for example – had a kindlier effect. It loosened and unencumbered the body. A good soak was enough to relax anyone, but it was far more poignant for a power holder. It was a feel of vulnerability like nothing else.

She lazily trailed a hand through the water, wondering if the bath salts were a natural counter to the stupefying effects of sea salt. Hancock simply raised a finger and beckoned, a ‘come hither’ expression spread over her severe features.

Smirking, Robin floated over to her lover’s arms. Close and personal like this, she could see the scars, Long, white, tapering over her skin and serving as testament to hundreds of battles. Perhaps it was the light, but Robin was sure she could see traces of black at the edges of the harsh lines. Remnants of Armament Haki. Even here, in the most intimate of spaces, Hancock couldn’t entirely let go of her battle instincts, her fighter’s spirit that was always just below the surface, ready to flare up at the slightest provocation.

Well, it wasn’t like Robin couldn’t help with that...

Holding a block of soap, she began to clean the empress’ mighty body.

A lifetime of handling precious materials had well-prepared her for the task of attending to Hancock’s muscular form. Her hands glided across the body, leaving a lathe of creamy whiteness in their wake. She let her fingers stray, connect with the skin in such a way that made the Kuja leader squirm with barely concealed glee. She wrapped Robin with her legs and pulled her close, causing the soap bar to slip from her beloved’s fingers and fall into her waiting hand.

“My turn.” She said, winking.

Robin nodded happily and let herself be washed. Hancock’s hands were more suited to ripping out men’s throats than cleaning a loved one’s body, but the nervousness in her touch just made her more endearing to Robin. It was like the empress was running her hands over an envelope, guessing what was inside, too afraid to slit it open and see.

They continued in this manner, passing the soap bar back and forth, cleaning and being cleaned, until a swathe of creamy white had spread over the water’s surface outward from their joined bodies. Robin felt so clean that she knew if she were to summon arms and hands, they would be flushed with a rosy glow as well. Hancock’s treatment went deep. Peeling back layer after layer to find the garden behind the thorns.

Robin felt at ease. But she knew what was about to be asked of her. She steeled herself for it.

Hancock’s mouth opened slightly as the question rose from deep within. Then she saw the look in her lover’s eyes and realised that no words would be necessary.

She turned herself around, so her back was facing Robin. Pulled aside her hair and laid bare the mark.

At the top of her spine, between the shoulder blades, a space no one could see or clean by themselves. A perfect circle of raw red flesh, crowned by three sharp-pointed triangles with a fourth at its base. The slavers who had branded her had known their foul craft well; no matter what other transformations the body went through, their mark remained as fresh and ugly as the day heated iron had been pressed on to the quivering skin of a young girl.

The hoof of the soaring dragon. The brand of the world nobles.

Here was the one part of her body that Hancock could never display. Here was the one space her devil fruit couldn’t beautify. It stared back at Robin, a barrier between her and her lover. Taunting her...

Exhaling, she set the soap on Hancock’s back and slowly started to work.

Every shudder that rippled through Hancock’s body was like a knife in Robin’s heart. She didn’t know whether to go fast and get it over with or go slow, to keep from breaking the burnt skin. Ultimately, she found herself slipping into a mechanical rhythm completely at odds with the tenderness she had displayed before. It was as if she was back scrubbing the floor of her aunt’s house as a child, disassociating, trying to forget what she was doing even as she did it.

She finished up. The mark remained, as if her washing would have been enough to remove it. Breathing shakily, Hancock turned back around. Robin caught a glimpse of scratch marks she had gouged into the bath’s jade sides.

“Thank you … for that.” She managed to say. “For indulging me.”

Robin paddled forward and cupped Hancock’s face in her hands, her real hands.

“It’s not an indulgence if it’s necessary.” She said sweetly, remembering one of her teacher’s sayings.

“You’re necessary.” Hancock replied. “Vital. To me, to Mari and Sonia, To the whole damn island, even if they don’t know it yet.”

Robin thought back to the scene at the stairs; her in Hancock’s arms, looking askance at the tumultuous crowd. Vital to them? Attached to the empress, maybe, as a symbol of conquest. By herself? With her strange glyphs, her endless arms, her shadowed eyes? She wasn’t allowed on the Kuja’s ship for a reason. For what misfortune she might bring on to the island if she was ever sighted by a marine. It was a restriction she herself had insisted upon, despite the gorgon sisters’ protests. She stayed on the shore. The flower empress, craning her neck to the warmth of a sun forever on the horizon.

Hancock cupped Robin’s cheek. Ran a thumb over her pressed lips.

“With you as my queen.” She purred. “Anything will be possible.”

Anything. Anything. Anything...

The rising heat made shapes dance in front of Robin’s eyes. Shapes that twisted themselves into Poneglyphs. She thought of what she had seen in her research. The path to an ancient power. A power that could change the world.

“Hancock.” She began to say, finally finding the words. “I-”

BANG

It came from outside. An ear-splitting explosion, accompanied by light that pressed against the misted panes of the windows. The sounds of sparks followed.

“Fireworks. Must be celebrating the voyage.” Hancock sniffed. Then she noticed how rigid Robin had grown in her arms. “You OK?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine -” She assured her. Then the next explosion came. She began to shake.

“Robin...”

Hancock’s words came to Robin muffled and distant. Her mind was being taken back. Back to an island under full-scale bombardment. Explosion after explosion breaking apart the earth, throwing soil into the air, as a tower of black smoke climbed to the sky and concealed homes reduced to rubble. She was crouched in a john boat, shivering and trying to laugh as she floated down a path of ice.

The explosions continued. She started to spasm. Extra limbs appeared on her body, on the walls. They sprouted out of her lover’s back, grasping and flailing, just like those who had been drowned that day, drowned trying to escape the fire.

Hancock wasted no time. She lowered Robin’s shuddering body into the water, so her ears were below the surface. The sounds of revelry were muffled, and she heard her own panicked heartbeat like a war drum.

“You’re safe here.” Hancock’s voice was as clear as a bell, despite every other sound being muddled. “Safe with me. Everything will be fine. I promise you. I love you.”

Must have been some form of conqueror's haki, the way it slowed down Robin’s panicked mind and unravelled the knot of dread in her core. Her senses began to return to her. The limbs she had created in her panic faded, leaving behind only petals that rested on the disturbed surface of the bath.

Slowly, tentatively, Hancock raised her up again. The fireworks had ended, though Robin’s ears hummed with the echo. She looked at Hancock. Stared into her concerned eyes and tried to muster an apology.

No words came. She crumpled on to her beloved’s shoulder and began to cry, great heaving sobs that seemed to fracture the very air of their Sanctuary.

Outside, the festivities continued. Not fireworks this time, but voices; a groundswell of voices reaching them from all the way down below.

“KU-JA! KU-JA! KU-JA! KU-”

Chapter Text

She has horns.

She has wings

When she looks down, she sees the Red Line. Sees the Holy Land squatting on its roof like an obscene layer cake. Sees countless forms running around like ants in a colony. Noble and slave, the distinction was lost. They made for the cliff’s ragged edge. Some crammed themselves into lifts. Others threw themselves off the side. Down to the sea, countless miles below.

She licked her lips. Felt fangs jut up from her lower jaw. Fangs jut down from her upper jaw.

Those in the lifts would not make it far. Snakes of every hue and pattern were crawling up the cliff face. They poured into the descending coracles. Robin’s pointed ears caught the sound of constriction and venom seeping into perfumed flesh. Muffled screams. It was a kind of catharsis she never thought she’d experience. Catharsis. A word you could hiss out. Perfection.

Her gaze danced across the shifting wall and locked on to a single serpent. A thread of red and white with the horns of a buffalo coming out of its skull. Clutching it was a woman with a mane of jet-black hair and a slave brand that stared out from her back like a burning eye.

She reached the top and set to work. First wave of fleeing nobles was turned to stone. Shattered in a blast of haki. The remainder, she dealt with using hands and claws and teeth. A viper’s strike took her mouth to the throat of a fleeing priest, pulling back just as fast, leaving a streak of blood in her wake. She crushed another man’s skull in one hand while trampling a woman underfoot. The lifeforce of the Ancient Families soon wetted the cut grass of the Holy Land. The Red Wall became the Blood Wall.

So enraptured was she by her lover’s performance that Robin didn’t realise she had been taking part as well. Hands had sprouted like daisies to hold down the panicked crowd and allow the empress to descend on them.

It would take so much holy stone to wipe the gore from the roof of the world...

Hancock was looking up at her, standing amidst the carnage, grinning from ear to ear. She was growing. Growing and growing and growing until she could look Robin dead in the eyes. Wrap her arms around her. Her hair had changed to a mass of snakes, rattlers and adder heads, flicking their tongues out to tickle Robin’s skin. Her smile was fanged, and her eyes were burning bronze.

She pulled her lover in for a kiss. Robin offered no resistance, only closing her wings so that they might have some privacy.

Then came a noise like a foghorn straight out of hell.

A light burned the air.

And then, only darkness.

Robin awoke to a scaled snout booping her face.

Morning light stretched lazily through their room. Salome had snuck into the bed and looped around their snoozing forms. Hancock had her beautiful face buried deep in a feathered pillow. Pig-like snores came out of her hidden mouth, as her mighty shoulders rose and fell.

Fake sleeping, was it? Robin made no move to shake her. She obviously had the events of last night on her mind.

She herself yawned and stretched, not manifesting any arms like she used to when she was younger. Salome had already fetched her slippers for her. The giant snake had improved her technique as well. Last time, she had swallowed the slippers and regurgitated them on to Robin’s lap. Practice makes perfect.

Most of the time.

Robin sighed and rubbed her back, just to make sure there were no wings there.

Wings?

Horns?

What part of her mind had cooked up that darling image?

Memory or imagination. The line between the two had grown increasingly blurred.

She stirred her coffee with a silver spoon as she sought to unpack the contents of her lurid dream. That form she’d assumed wasn’t like anything from her childhood. There had been no grotesques or gargoyles of that kind in her home island. She’d grown up admiring the bumblebee dancers, their gelungan crowns decorated with tiny golden sandat flowers, a patterned sabuk sash around each dancer’s torso. Heay gold bracelets weighing down their wrists, showing that they would never lose control, would never use their hands for ill deeds. Robin had aspired to be like that. But you couldn’t trust a girl who could make more hands on a whim. Couldn’t trust her not to steal and sneak and spy.

Robin took a bitter sip of her drink.

No, more likely the dream was linked to another image from her past. A name. Devil Child. Stamped on wanted posters that covered every dock, every wharf, every tavern wall. A picture above that damming epitaph; that of a young girl looking askance, her dark bob of hair swaying slightly in the sea breeze...

“More dreams?”

Robin nearly jumped out of her skin. Re-asserting herself, she saw that Elder Nyon had pulled up a seat and was buttering a slice of toast.

“I don’t recall telling you of my dreams.” Robin said curtly.

“A snake can see with more than eyes, scholar-empress.” Nyon replied, biting down into her breakfast with a satisfying crunch. “I’ve seen the discontent brewing in you for days on end.”

Robin felt something churn in her stomach. She hated when her body reacted before she had even got a chance to formulate a response.

“Don’t tell Hancock.” She muttered.

“No need to worry about that. She’s likely to skewer me if I enter her peripheral vision.”

Robin gave a polite chuckle at that, knowing that Hancock would almost certainly scale the red wall if anything were to happen to Nyon.

“You think you could bring disaster upon the island? Worry not. This place has weathered worse storms than your past.”

“Just last night, you were scolding Hancock for angering the marines. Why the change of heart?”

“I was scolding Hancock, my dear. Not you. She’s a leader, she must be taught restraint and focus. You need not feel such pressure.”

Robin hadn’t uttered a word about her past to anyone outside of the Gorgon sisters. But the rush of understanding that came from the wrinkled ex-ruler was so potent, so tangible, that it rocked her to her core. She set down her cup with trembling hands, flinching at the chink of porcelain.

“As the empress-consort, it is your duty to stay unburdened. Centred. So that you can give warmth and guidance to the empress herself.” Nyon continued. “This will be of utmost importance when you two are officially wed.”

Aaaand there it was. Normalcy restored. Still, a concerned woman elder trying to find common ground with her future daughter-in-law was something Robin never thought she’d experience. You had to find pleasure in the little things...

THWACK

Another noise smashing through her silence. A faint clattering sound followed. Rocks. Pieces of shrapnel, falling to the floor.

Robin and Nyon exchanged looks before rising from their seats and making for the source of the disturbance.

A quick, panicked run took them to the training courtyard. Hancock had already got to work.

The floor was littered with chunks of masonry. The empress, resplendent in a Tyrian purple qipao, was making her way through a line of training dummies. Each represented a different type of opponent; A pirate, a marine, a fishman, a long-arm, a snake-neck. Each was destroyed in turn by the Kuja ruler.

Her execution method was a one-inch punch coupled with her devil fruit power. Forming a fist, turning the target to stone and shattering them. All done in under a second.

Love taps. That was the name she’d given her attack. It was a favourite of hers. Minimal energy exerted while making quite a statement.

Marigold and Sanndersonia were standing to one side, watching the display. The former’s face was as impassive as ever, the latter clapped her hands together every time Hancock annihilated a dummy.

“Bah! These things offer no resistance.” Hancock spat, putting a hand on her hip as she observed the mess she had made. “I thought Sargasso had made these to emulate real bodies in every way.”

“I did, your highness. Your strength is simply too much for real bodies of any kind.”

A new figure stepped out of the shade. A scaled woman, her skin coloured in alternating shades of black and white. A forked tongue darted out to taste the air, likely savouring the power that Hancock had just displayed which still blanketed the training ground. Sargasso, the island’s weapons master. A coral reef snake fish woman. She was the one who laboured to craft arms that could match the sisters’ brutal rage. She had not succeeded in fashioning a weapon worthy of Hancock but treated every failure as an opportunity to learn from. Robin had tried to emulate her work ethic when she puzzled through historical texts.

“As it stands, you are simply a cut above.”

“The gap is closer than you and others think. Mari, Sonia, spar with me.”

Robin, Nyon and Sargasso barely had time to exit the stage before the sisters charged forward in their human-beast forms. Sonia reached Hancock first, a wild grin over her face. Hancock simply jumped into the air seconds before her younger sister crashed down. She twirled above ground while Sandersonia struggled back up, spitting out a mouthful of gravel.

Mari, who had hung back, now seized the moment. She spat out a barrage of steaming purple gobbets at her airborne sister. Hancock lashed out with a swiping kick, and the poison artillery was blown back at her attacker. Marigold yelped as one bubble splashed on her scales, the others crashing on to the ground, where they hissed and steamed.

Hancock touched down with meteoric force. Then the sisters began attacking in earnest.

Stabbing tails, fanged bites, armament-clad punches … Robin was sure that even the duo’s hair changed, taking the form of snakes that attacked their prey. Hancock took it all on with contemptuous ease. Fluidly moving between forms, unleashing kicks worthy of a master capoeirista and hand strikes that channelled the tiger and the bear. She wasn’t even drawing upon her devil fruit, as far as Robin could tell.

“Quite the spectacle, no?” Sargasso hissed in her ear.

“Quite.” Robin replied.

“You have been with them the longest. Notice anything noteworthy about their fighting styles?”

An intrusive question, but Robin supposed that as weapon master Sargasso wanted as much information about the ones she was meant to outfit as possible.

“They are fighting against their own power.” She said, narrowing her eyes at the twisting, writhing fight. “Sonia has an anaconda form, but she constantly lunges, not using the constricting power of her coils. Mari is a cobra but doesn’t use that animal’s speed. She keeps her distance and shoots venom when she could attack more decisively.”

“And the empress?”

Robin closed her eyes, remembering Hancock’s awkward intimacy, her fake sleeping, as the grunts and cries of the fight fell on her ears.

“Hancock-the pirate empress.” She bit her lip. “She doesn’t fight with all her strength.”

“She’s always been too concerned with appearances.” Nyon mused. “Wanting to appear strong but not monstrously so. She repels or paralyses opponents, but she can’t settle the matter. She can’t finish the attack.”

Robin looked at her lover whirling and striking at enemies from both sides. She felt her heart clench.

The match eventually concluded in a way that was both indecisive and completely unambiguous. Mari and Sonia shunted aside, returning to their regular forms. Hancock drew herself to her full height, panting and sweating.

The beautiful fool. Even her exhaustion was affected. She hadn’t struggled at all.

Robin and Hancock’s eyes met. Both opened their mouths to speak. Then the horn was sounded.

Only one this time. High-pitched and warbling. The border horn, meant to announce unknown ships drawing close to Amazon Lily.

Robin heard footsteps approaching and felt her blood grow cold.

Chapter Text

Hancock had the message relayed to her three times. Only then was she satisfied that she understood its contents.

“Thank you, Marathos. Take water.”

The runner, Marathos, gave the Kuja salute – two fingers curled to represent snake fangs – before exiting.

Silence reigned in the courtyard. The air, the ground, the walls and the shattered stone pieces all adding to the quiet.

Nyon was the first to speak.

“At Anchor.”

“Shut up, granny.” Hancock hissed.

“A government ship. At anchor. In the Calm Belt.”

“Silence!”

“Vice admiral on board. No sea kings even trying to get close to it...

Hancock roared in frustration and slammed a fist into the ground. Robin felt the earth buckle beneath her, as her mind swam in an ocean of new information.

A Navy ship pulling up in the Calm Belt and staying there. Waiting. No attacks by Sea Kings. Could only mean that the commander on board was sufficiently powerful enough to deter the beasts. Could only mean that they were here for something and wouldn’t leave without it...

Mari reached down and placed a leathered hand on Hancock’s shoulder. Sonia crossed her arms across her chest and started to shiver, despite the midday heat.

Nyon breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth.

“What’s done is done. Now, you must go out and meet them.”

“Meet them?!” Hancock said hoarsely.

“They have come alone, in a single warship. Not as part of a fleet. They wish to open communications. Do your duty to the island and meet them. Meet them head on.”

Hancock muttered something about untrustworthy marines, but Robin could sense the truth in Nyon’s words. She of all people knew what an island assault from the Navy looked like.

They weren’t here to fight. But that didn’t mean they weren’t a threat.

“I think we should hold back before going to meet them, elder Nyon.” She ventured, walking over to set a hand on Sonia’s trembling leg. “They might not want a full-scale attack, but they could still be plotting something. Perhaps an abduction? Get Hancock on board and then...”

She couldn’t bring herself to visit the sentence, but the point was taken by all.

“They wouldn’t risk that much.” Hancock snarled. “Besides, they will need an admiral on board if they want to cage me.”

“We can be assured that they don’t have an admiral with them.” Said Mari. “We would have seen more than frightened sea kings if they did. The island’s weather patterns would have been changed.”

“Very true.” Nyon said in agreement.

They spoke so matter-of-factly about elemental power. It was chilling to hear. Robin remembered rowing through the dark with ice to her front and fire at her back.

Sonia was still trembling. Robin had claimed she could fill the sails of ships with her breath alone last night. Now, she was like a quivering aspen caught in a gust, shedding leaves. Her hair was twisting again, resolving into the shape of snakes. Robin considered manifesting hands to soothe and untwine the green locks, but she figured that would only distress her more.

“Let’s re-assess.” Nyon continued, starting to pace. “Perhaps they’re not here to take, but to give.”

“Give?!”

“Present an offer. A summons. You’re a warlord. They would call on you eventually, you had to know this.”

Hancock hissed and rose, her old poise starting to re-assert itself.

“Well, whether they’re here to take or give, they’ve lingered in our waters for too long. Prepare the Yuda. Have our best observation users up in the rigging, they need to see every detail and call out anything suspicious. Have archers at the ready.”

The Gorgon Sisters nodded and started making their way out of the courtyard, down to the town to rally the crew. Hancock lingered. Looked askance at Robin. Then at Nyon.

“If anything should happen...”

“I’ll keep her safe.” Nyon finished for her. “Now, go and be a captain.”

Hancock nodded curtly, before turning on her heel and striding down to the waiting port.

Robin released a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding in.

Minutes turned to hours as the sun glared down on the island, observing all things across land and sea.

For the first time, Robin considered the merits of summoning an eye on the surface of the sun. Would she see all? Or would she be burned to a crisp? Either would be preferable to what she was currently doing; staring at the dusty floor and waiting for her empress to return.

She busied herself with drawing mandalas in the sand with a stick. A square first, with four circles in its corners. Then a square within that square, indentations at central points representing gates. Starting from the outside and working to an inner core. This was a way of centring oneself, of entering a space away from one’s immediate surroundings. The scrolls in her island’s library had them. Her mother had her own private collection of them. In her absence, Robin had pulled them out and lost herself in the designs. A small reprieve from the drudgery of everyday life.

“It won’t be your doing.”

Robin swallowed down the urge to scrub out the pattern she had made. She turned to face Nyon.

“The government haven’t come to claim you.” The elder continued. “They have no way of knowing you are even here. You took every precaution and so did we. Whatever they’re here for, it won’t be you.”

It was meant to be a comfort. But something dark and heavy had settled in the pit of Robin’s stomach. When she opened her mouth, it was this weight that spoke.

“They don’t need to know I’m here. I’m joined to them and them to me. No matter where I go, they’ll follow. It’s inevitable.”

She turned back to her unfinished mandala.

“I just thought … maybe here I could be something more.” She gave a bitter little chuckle. “That I could shed my skin.”

What a farce. She had no fangs. No venom. No horns. No wings.

There was a slight pitter-patter of approaching footprints. Then, Robin felt a leathered hand be laid on her shoulder.

Nyon rubbed her skin lightly, as the hours wore on.

Hancock came back near evening.

No one was harmed but their faces were death masks.

When she met with Robin and Nyon, she said two words.

They were the last words that Robin ever expected to hear her say.

Chapter Text

“Security Detail?!”

Hancock nodded wordlessly. Her mouth was set in a thin line and she breathed in and out through her nose, nostrils flared.

Robin had expected ultimatums, threats, challenges, dull righteousness. She hadn’t expected bewilderment.

Typical of the marines. Still capable of blind sighting her with pure audacity.

“Hancock...” Nyon eventually said. “Have you, perchance, checked the calendar lately?”

Hancock rounded on the elder.

“What does that have to do with anything, you decrepit -”

“Because if you had.” Nyon pressed on. “You may have seen a date of global import.”

Global import...

That got the wheels in Robin’s head spinning. Since her life on the run began, she had made a point of memorising every important annual event in every nation on the Grand Line, so she would never be taken off-guard.

One event would be recognised by all under the banner of the World Government.

“The reverie.” She finally said.

Each monarch of the World Government gathering upon the roof of the world to discuss matters that pertained to every nation. A meeting of unparalleled sanctity and importance. One that would decide the fates of millions in the decades to follow.

And the navy wanted the warlords to act as...

“Security detail.” Hancock spat out the words like there was poison in each letter. “This was never a condition of the deal I struck with those seagulls!”

“The ‘deal’ stipulated that warlords were required to come forth if called upon by the World Government.” Nyon corrected. “This order fits that description quite well, unfortunately.” She stroked her chin. “Perhaps this has been done in response to those who believe the warlords are given too much free reign under the current arrangements. To show the world who’s in command...”

The old woman trailed off into thoughtful mumbling. Robin fixed her attention on Hancock. Before, at the mere mention of marines arriving into their waters, she had punched a hole in the earth before rallying her warriors. Now, she was swaying like a reed in the wind. Weak at the knees. Being an escort, a guard, to some pampered monarch would have been insult enough. But this would mean journeying back to Mary Geoise. The Celestial Abode. The place of her enslavement. That or have her island annihilated as an example to any who thought of walking back on their ‘promises’ as warlords.

The world would celebrate if Amazon Lily was destroyed, she realised. The approved story would be fed to the press then spread across the seas. A pirate nation with a devil-queen put to the torch. Absolute justice done.

Robin didn’t know where the strength came from, but she walked over to her empress and placed a hand on her trembling arm.

“We will take council. Let them know they will have their answer in the morning. Keep lookouts on their ship, through the night.”

Nyon blinked. Then something like pride crossed her face.

“Very well.”

She started to hobble away. Before she passed from view. Robin remembered the question that had been on the back of her mind.

“To which ruler have we been assigned?”

“We’ve been tasked with protecting another kind of snake.” Nyon said, not turning back. “Nefertari Cobra, king of Alabasta.”

Chapter Text

“I should have listened. To you, to the old woman. I should have listened to anyone but myself.”

“There’s no way you could have prevented this.”

“I could have kept us hidden!”

“You can’t hide from them, darling. It’s their world, we just live in it.”

We die in it. Robin finished in her head.

They were in their chambers. The sun was setting outside and Hancock had her head in her lover’s lap, kneeling at the foot of their bed. Robin stroked her trembling head, clever fingers passing through the strands of jet-black hair. She had no shirt and the slave-mark on her back looked pitilessly back up at Robin.

Cobra. Cobra. Cobra...

There was a name with some meaning. King of Alabasta, patriarch of the Nefetari family. The sole royal house that hadn’t undertaken the migration to the Red Wall, to live among the clouds, looking down on the mortals below. Alabasta had loomed in her imagination, even before the destruction of her home. Alabasta was understood to be an archaeologists’ paradise. One of the oldest continually settled islands of the Grand Line, with a dry climate that perfectly preserved so many materials that would be lost elsewhere. Some artefacts were believed to have been dated to the Void Century itself. Prosperous, peaceful, proud. Different from her in every way.

But there was something there. Something beneath the marble and the sand. Knowledge of it had come to her in whispers and rumours, in scraps of parchment, barely legible. Now, she heard its call every hour of the day, in the back of her skull. Information waiting to be shared.

She looked down at Hancock’s shaking body and the scorch mark on her back. Felt her resolve solidify and sharpen.

“Hancock.” She said, tilting her head up so she could look at her in the eye. “We should answer their call.”

“You can’t be serious-”

“WE should answer the call. Both of us. I’m coming with you. You won’t be alone.”

Hancock knelt, gobsmacked, for a second. Then she pulled herself away from Robin with a serpent’s speed. The sudden break in contact made Robin’s stomach drop, but she forced herself to remain steady and look her lover straight in the eyes.

“Hancock.” She repeated. “There’s something in Alabasta that could change our fate. Deliver the island from its current state and make it so we don’t have to rely on a lopsided deal with the World Government.”

“Robin, I don’t understand what you’re saying. What thing -”

Robin leapt off the bed and pushed herself against the empress. Fear and anticipation merged into a single bolt of action. Concerned about eavesdroppers, she pulled Hancock in and whispered the name of the thing she believed laid in wait in the bowels of the desert kingdom.

Hancock went limp. A sail with no wind to fill it. Then – slowly, agonisingly – she brought her hands to Robin’s shoulders. It was as if she couldn’t believe what she heard and needed physical content to gauge her lover’s sincerity. Robin didn’t shirk or shiver. She stayed rooted in place as she waited for her beloved’s response.

“If - if this thing can be found there...” Hancock said, shuddering. “You realise what this would mean, right?”

“Intimately.”

“You would give this to me? Me?”

“To you and all the Kuja.”

“We would be more than Kuja if this power came into our hands. We would be transformed, such as we have never been before. I tried to keep the violence of the world away from our shores. With this we would become...”

“Strong enough to defend and not simply hide.” Robin interrupted. Surprised at her own curtness, she sighed and buried her head in her lover’s chest.

“I tried to hide from the stories at first.” She hissed. “The ‘official’ story of what happened at Ohara. Then one day I saw it on the front page of a newspaper. The central tree. The stump of it. They had carved the symbol of the government into what remained. They let just enough my home survive so they could defile it further.”

It was her turn to shake now. No arms or petals appeared, but she felt a million thoughts of rage and hate blossom in her mind.

“My mother … my mentors … wanted only to learn and find the truths of this world. For that they were killed. I was told to live, so I taught myself to survive. I thought I would simply have to hold what I knew in my head and heart, praying that I could keep it from being lost for all time. Then I met you and I gained something they never had; a champion.”

Hancock’s eyes widened at that. A thousand titles had been laid at her feet; a thousand insults had been thrown her way. Never had she been gifted with anything as intimate as ‘champion’. After all, who would ask for a snake to be their protector?

Robin brought a cool hand to cup the cheek of the empress.

“This power … it might destroy the world. Maybe this world deserves to be destroyed. All I know is that if there was ever anyone worthy to wield it, it's you. The serpent who encircles the world...” She breathed on to Hancock’s waiting flesh. “Sister, lover, leader. You have come so far, already. This will be your apotheosis.”

That last word she hissed out perfectly. It filled the room and shivered in the waning light of day.

Hancock’s dark eyes were alive with the implication. Robin could sense her being tempted by the offer, could feel her pull herself back to the centre.

“I will go. To ensure the island’s safety and to … explore what options may be waiting for us there.”

“You’ll need me.”

“Robin-”

“Not strong enough. I know.” Robin had tried to master haki, wrapping snake skins around her wrists to better imagine the armament covering her skin. But her way of doing things – strangling from a distance, staying in the shadows – were not a warrior’s methods. She couldn’t course-correct. Couldn’t keep from her assassin’s ways.

But power could be shared.

“I have heard rumours of what conqueror’s haki can do.” She whispered. “It can be used to coat a weapon and increase its power tenfold … or it can be fed into a person.”

Hancock’s eyes widened again. This time the emotion was unambiguous; fear.

“You CANNOT be serious.”

“I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life.”

“The old woman warned me against...”

“When have you listened to her?”

“When will you listen to me?! If I were to do that, I could burn the life out of you!”

She was near hyperventilating now, a tidal wave of implication and possibilities crashing on the shores of her mind. Robin reflected on what she had been told before; she can’t settle the matter. She can’t finish the attack.

Gently, she took one of Hancock’s hands and directed it to her neck. Carotid artery. She let her empress feel her pulse. Steady and strong. Not frantic like it had been at the sound of explosions coming through the windows and walls of the palace.

“Feel it?” She asked. “That’s the heart you gave me. Strong. Unyielding. Blood goes in and blood goes out. It can take what you have to give. I will be stronger for it. I am stronger for having you. So please … have me. Take me.”

She let her hand fall from Hancock’s arm. The empress’ bare fingers lay on her skin, as if welded to that spot. Robin saw her dark eyes dance with concern, with misgivings and forebodings. Then came the steel. The fire.

Her lips parted in silence. Robin took in the fangs with heightened clarity. Power was gathering around them. Black lightning, sparking up from her throat and filling her mouth. The conqueror’s spirit, waiting for a vessel to fill.

Robin would be that vessel. She would forge herself anew. For her lover and the future they would share as equals.

Hancock leapt at the throat offered and her fangs pierced Robin’s waiting skin.

As the lightning arced through her body, as her eyes rolled into her skull and her blood turned to fire, The part of Robin that could still think turned back to that day spent in her study; to the scroll curling into itself under the force of the sun.

Then everything went black.

Chapter Text

They passed from the Calm Belt to the Grand Line with ridiculous ease.

Things went at clipper speed. The navigator called out freak weather changes every couple of minutes. Jack Tars went squirrelling up the rigging. Recruits dragged brittle holy stone across the deck and muttered to each other.

Everyone tried to ignore the row of decapitated statues crowded around the door to the hold.

All former hands, now current corpses. Each had crowded around the porthole to get a look at the ship’s honoured guest. The door had then been flung open and a beam of pink light surged out to envelop them all. Statues made and erected in a quarter of a second.
Not content with this, Hancock had struck out of her room and beheaded each one in turn. The crew had tried very hard not to notice. The gulls squawked in the sky above.

It was going to be a long voyage.

Some of the men muttered something about the statue that the empress had insisted on taking to her room; a strange, multi-limbed goddess figure, dancing with weapons, tools and snakes held in her many hands. The warlord had demanded that the men carry her rations, clothing and armaments to her quarters, but this strange idol she had carried herself. Holding it, cradling it, as if it weighed no more than a child’s toy. Quick glances aimed at onlookers made it clear that anyone who so much as touched the statue would suffer a fate much worse than being turned to stone.

“Probably one of her island’s gods.”
“I thought that lot were all snake-worshippers.”
“Well, I mean, that statue had snakes on it.”
“We’re the real snake-lovers. You realise where we’re going?”
“Mary Geoise. Why, they got snakes there too or something?”
“Snakes of a different kind..."
“Are they, like, bigger than the usual kind?”
“That’s very clearly not what I meant...”

The gulls continued to circle the advancing ship, as it made its way to the desert kingdom.

Dreaming in the stone, a memory appeared before her
The girl was tall and lean. Her black hair fell across her arced back, as she dipped her head into the trough and drank greedily. Her face was obscured. Bubbles rose to the muddy surface and popped silently, as the water went down her scarred throat.
Normally, Robin wouldn’t look any harder. This was a frontier town on the Grand Line. Navy presence minimal to non-existent. Pirates round every corner. Staring at anyone or anything for too long here was just asking for trouble. Still, she couldn’t pry her eyes away from this wild girl, who looked like a starved wolf and smelled like a battle ground.
The water wasn’t sanitary. That much was obvious. She could contract something nasty if she kept sucking it up like that.
You never wasted water. Not on land and most certainly not out on the sea. Definitely not on in a grotty pirate town where a person might shank you for a drink. Robin knew all this.
Yet her hand still strayed to the flask at her hip.
Her fingers unscrewed the lid.
The drinking girl froze. Her hands gripped the sides of the trough, knuckles becoming white as the bone beneath the cracked skin.
Slowly, she pulled her mouth away from the filthy water. Slowly, her neck arced up, seeking the source of the noise.
Then Robin saw her face.

She was pulled out of the dream by a kiss.

A soft, private warmth that spread out from her lips and passed across her entire body, up to and including the arms she had manifested for the ruse. She felt them all turn from stone to flesh and wrapped them around Hancock, the items she had been holding falling to the floor with a clatter.

When they pulled apart, Hancock immediately set to work checking each part of Robin's face for any sign of disfigurement.

"You're not hurt are you? No loss of function?"
"None to speak of." She said, dismissing the extra arms in a flurry of petals.
"Thank the seas. I've never ... never used it on a person I meant to resurrect."
"You did magnificently. Like a prince from a fairy tale."
"No princes here, my love. Only wolves and sheep."
"Then we better make sure we are one and not the other."

Hancock nodded, a hint of a smirk on her lips. She hissed and the snake that had been petrified now slithered to her feet, awaiting orders.

"Hide yourself." She commanded. "And come back regularly with anything you believe to be of interest of us"

The snake wriggled off, having apparently understood Hancock. When it left, both women were alone, in the bowels of a navy vessel.
Robin set to work picking up the fallen parts of her disguise. A scroll, a coat hanger, a dagger ... she had dithered over what might seem appropriate for an idol to be holding, but then remembered that the marines wouldn't care. They didn't care for anything that wasn't gold or at least gilded. That, and they would be too busy looking at Hancock.
She glanced at her empress. Hancock had settled down on to the plush queen-sized bed and was clawing at the sheets. Salome wasn't with them. She was a little ways behind, following the ship's path through the water. Best the marines didn't immediately know that the warlord had a titanic snake as a pet. Robin had a hard time reconciling the slight figure on the bed with the powerful pirate she knew and loved, always flanked by warriors and wrapped in Salome's coral coils.

She snuggled in beside her and rested her head on her shoulder.
"Try and get some sleep. You'll need to make a grand impression when we make port."
Hancock said nothing, merely pulled Robin in with both arms, as if to reassure herself that her lover was still flesh and hadn't remained as stone. Slowly, the strength ebbed from her hands and she drifted off to sleep.
Robin remained awake, eyes on the door. It was strange, to be back on a boat. The feeling of the sea churning beneath her feet had been a near-constant sensation during her years on the run, but her time spent on Amazon Lily had made her forget. Now, the wild waters of the Grand Line produced contradictory emotions: lulling her to sleep while also keeping her alert to any new change, however small. Perfectly in line with her feelings about their mission. About her choice.

Gradually, she did fall down into dreams, her eyes on the locked door and the feeling of Hancock's power pulsing in her veins.

Chapter Text

"Nane Toy."
"Nane tooy. Draw out that last part."
"Yuda is easier to handle, these round sounds don't roll off the tongue. I'll have to make the most obscene faces just to splutter out a vowel!"
"Wait til' I tell you there's four different scripts used for writing it..."

Their Alabastan language session was interrupted by the sound of screaming from the deck.

"Ah, Salome has clearly arrived. Very kind of her to provide a distraction."

"She always puts on the greatest show." Robin mused, inspecting herself in the mirror. Only one change had been made. Contacts. Her usual brown eyes changed to icy blue. She'd worn disguises before, she knew the value of changing one's eye colour. But Nyon had insisted that this was the only change that should be made.

"One key difference is all you should need. The more intricate the disguise, the more people will pay attention and the more likely they are to realise the truth. Change one thing and let them do the rest."
The moment of scrutiny had been at the loading of the ship. Now they were underway - had been underway for a merry week - no one would pay much mind to a servant of the Empress. Marines always dismissed the help. Besides, Hancock had done a marvellous job of ensuring that none of these lusty sailors would dare look her way.

Coming up behind and holding the warlord's fur-lined cloak like any good attendant should, Robin followed her out of the room and on to the deck.

A blazing sun overhead and three men screaming to high heaven as a massive python choked the life out of them. This was the only way a ship should come into port.
Hancock clicked her tongue and Salome relented, disentangling herself from the poor bastards and rushing over to her like an excited puppy. She took her place by her side but not before giving Robin a ticklish, forked-tongue kiss.

"Hancock!" The vice-admiral - Momonga - snarled, striding forward in his pinstripe suit, hand resting on the hilt of his katana.
Robin wondered if he had been one of the commanders that day, then immediately crushed that thought. She looked down to the planks of the deck, not trusting in the disguise that she had been given.

"Your beasts were meant to be kept back on your ship."

"Salome has been tailing the vessel for the last couple of days." Hancock said dismissively. "That your men haven't the competence to sense her presence is no concern of mine. You should have trained them better."

A spark of Haki shot out of Hancock's eyes. Robin felt it as a sharp jolt in her gut; the power her lover had laid in her responding to this minor flex. It boded poorly for what might come when she started seriously trying. But this was the price she had paid to stand by her side. She could take it. She had to.

Momonga scowled. He seemed to take the point.

"Just keep it on a leash. We have a reputation to uphold."

Hancock gave a mocking chuckle, before spitting on the deck.
"Your men can work on their reputation by cleaning that up. Also, I blocked your toilet so you might want to attend to that. Can't have the precious royals getting a whiff of reality."

Momonga opened his mouth to protest, but was interrupted by a gaggle of men pouncing on the spit-stain, buckets and sponges in hand. Another group were racing each other to the door and the toilet beyond.

Smirking, Hancock turned aside to the railing, gazing out at the Yuda, now coming up beside them. Sonia and Mari were standing on deck, one waving, the other peering through a telescope, her discomfort coming off in waves. Their new beast companions were at hand; a panther and a hawk.

It had been Sargasso's idea. She'd observed how well Hancock got along with Salome and posited that animal companions would be better fits for the other sisters than any kind of weapon. To that end, she had requested the island's beast wranglers catch two of the most exquisite predators they could find.

Bacura, the panther, was Sonia's companion. A beast of supple fur and rippling muscle, it made a fitting partner to someone as lithe and deadly as the green-haired sister. In her mind, Robin had taken to calling the cat Barong, after the spirit-king of her island who took the form of a massive panther and battled against the demon queen for all time.
Then there was the hawk, Kirke. It could perch on Marigold's bare wrist without any need for a glove, her skin being tough enough to handle giant talons digging into it. An airborne ally would be most welcome, here in the dry, flat land of Alabasta.

Just pray that no one here flies too close to the sun

She kept her head down and let the sound of the ship flow over her, until the smell of incense told her that they had arrived.

As a child, Robin had heard that in days long past, An Alabastan queen had announced her presence to the assembled royals of the Red Line by having her guards wrap her up in an exquisite carpet and then having them roll her out at the foot of the Empty Throne's steps.

The party sent out to welcome them was not nearly so dramatic as all that.

A handful of guards, with white cloaks and spears in the shape of the papyrus plant, curved blades glinting in the midday sun. The flag of Alabasta flapped in the sea-breeze; an orange circle surrounded by eight teardrops. Standing under it was a young woman.

Plainly dressed in a white thobe, with dark skin that contrasted vividly against her bright blue hair. Her eyes were bright with sincerity, not a trace of fear in them as she observed pirates, beasts and marines all merge into one well-armed mass. She couldn't have been any older than 17. What was she doing welcoming them all in? Didn't this country have a king?

"Glad tide-ings!" The girl said, a sparkle in her eyes.

Sea speech? That was peculiar. The language of the common sailor, used to facilitate communication across the oceans and the myriad nations thereupon. Not something a royal wouldn't bother learning. At least, no royal that Robin had ever met.

"Glad tidings." The ambassador repeated, more calmly this time. "It is my honour to welcome you to the kingdom of Alabasta. I am Nefetari Vivi, daughter of Nefetari Cobra, sixth of his name. I shall be serving as your escort from here to the capital of Alubarna-"

"HEAR ME!"

Hancock interrupted the introduction with a roar and a blast of haki that sent everyone behind her flying backwards. She arced her neck back, til it seemed she was looking straight at the sky, while keeping an accusing finger pointing straight at the young girl.

Robin smiled politely as she looked down at her lover doing her thing. Not the diplomatic path she would've taken but oh well.

"I AM THE PIRATE EMPRESS BOA HANCOCK! ONE OF THE SEVEN WARLORDS! CAPTAIN OF THE KUJA PIRATES! SOVEREIGN RULER OF THE NATION OF AMAZON LILY! I HAVE BEEN CALLED HERE TO FULFIL MY OBLIGATIONS AS A WARLORD AS YOU ARE APPARENTLY TOO WEAK TO HANDLE MAKING A TRIP TO THE ANNUAL ROYAL GET-TOGETHER. FEAR NOT! YOU ARE HENCEFORTH UNDER THE PROTECTION OF THE SERPENT! GROVEL IN A WAY THAT IS CONSISTENT WITH YOUR ESTABLISHED CUSTOMS!!!"

The echo rang around the port until it faded, leaving only the sound of the waves lapping against the shore.
Robin heard polite clapping from somewhere that awkwardly ended when it was clear no one was joining in.

Then the princess spoke up again.

"That was ... a lot." She said, attempting another polite smile. "Well, you certainly live up to your reputation. As do we"

She snapped her fingers and men came before them, carrying boxes of sandalwood. They set them down before the Kuja before immediately scurrying back behind the girl they were supposedly guarding.
"What's this?" Hancock said, eyeing the boxes suspiciously.

"Gifts. My forbears set a precedent of hospitality. I intend to live up to their example."

Hancock gave a sharp kick to the nearest box. The lid came off and a collection of small wooden ducks was revealed, nestled in straw and gleaming like honey.
Salome shook the other one loose. A pile of brown incense sticks lay inside.

"You smelled that coming in. It's a scent we always employ when welcoming in new arrivals -"

"Put them in the hold." Hancock ordered. "Now, if we can get to the capital or is there anything else to address?"

Nobody dared venture an answer. But Robin sensed an expectation of reciprocity floating over everything. Pirates took whatever wanted. But they couldn't just be pirates here; Hancock had announced them as representatives of a sovereign nation. There was a certain decorum that had to be shown...

Not stopping to doubt, Robin let Hancock's cape fall to the ground and crossed her arms.

She imagined a limb manifesting back on the ship, hidden in the hold. The effects of Hancock's planted haki was obvious. A whole flurry of petals bloomed in front of her, when before there might have only been five or six. Concentrating, she forced those petals to fall into the crook of her arms.

Satisfied with the amount, she mechanically walked towards the young princess, feeling the incredulous gaze of Hancock and the others resting on her.

"Our gift." She said, neutrally as she could. "Amazon Lily is the land of flowers and warriors. Here are the petals of our gardens. may they beautify your halls and lend their fragrance to your homes."

The Nefetari girl looked at her, gobsmacked, before the light returned to her big, honest eyes.

"How wonderful! Yes, yes, we will treat them with utmost care. Can I get a container?"

A guard presented an amphora, ready to be filled. Robin fed the petals into its dark interior. Good that they would be concealed this way. They would dissolve into nothing within the hour.

Satisfied, she walked back to the Kuja. Hancock looked at her with bemusement and pride in equal measure. The gift had had the desired effect. The tension radiating from the princess' guards was ebbing. They now understood them to be honoured dignitaries, not uncouth pirates. Manoeuvring through this country had become much easier.

"Now that the greeting rites have been observed, it's onwards to the capital!"

Nefetari Vivi turned on her dainty feet, her men falling in formation behind her. Hancock strode forward, warriors at her side. Robin saw Marigold raise her arm and let her hawk take to the sky. A witness to all things that may happen below.

The sea at their backs and white buildings stretching before them, the pirates entered the Desert Kingdom.

Chapter Text

If she had to say, Robin believed the main difference between sea travel and sand travel was the ducks.

That sand was technically solid meant nothing. Riding over dunes the size of foothills and leaving a cloud of powdered crystals in their wake made things simply incomparable to any kind of land-based travel Robin had endured during her years on the run. Alabasta truly felt like a nation of the Grand Line. It was as if the unpredictable nature of the surrounding sea had permeated the island's interior, birthing a desert that breathed and fluxed with every change of the weather. Amazon Lily, by contrast, had soaked up the languid nature of the Calm Belt; no breeze to rustle the leaves, the sun climbing to a fixed point each and every day, petrified serpent heads looking down upon everything from their mountain perch.

The ducks, though ... she really had no reference for them.

Around seven of them, each with its own personal headgear, riding in wedge formation ahead of the sand barge. They moved with improbable speed, webbed feet turning into orange licks of flame that ate up the desert beneath them. Fleet-footed birds. What exactly was their purpose?

"Do you like the ducks? Their leader is my personal steed, Carue."

The princess had sneaked up on her. That caused Robin to bristle inside. She'd put too much faith in her disguise, hadn't taken strides to properly blend in with her surroundings. The moment they touched down in the capital, she would slip into the background and stay there. For now, humour the child.

"They're quiet beautiful." She said demurely. "What breed are they?"
"Spot-billed!" Vivi replied, beaming like an apple-cheeked stable hand who'd just been asked a question about her favourite filly. "They're the fastest of all Alabastan creatures. The royal family always has a clutch of eggs to raise to adulthood. I still remember when they gave me Carue's..."
"They don't appear to be dragging the barge. Are they instead softening the sand before us so we have an easier passage?"
"Well, that and also to help with -"

She was interrupted by a riotous choir of quacking coming from the prow. The ducks were falling back, as something swelled beneath the sand. There was a flurry of movement around the barge, men in all haste attending to the ropes. The barge was pulled sharply to one side, barely avoiding meeting the surfacing mass head on. As they passed it, Robin glimpsed the flash of scales beneath the pouring sand and an eye, huge and orange, staring back at her.

They glided onward. The ducks resumed formation, running ahead.

"-That" Vivi finished. Belatedly, Robin realised that she had helped the men course-correct. "The desert is home to all kinds of life. Some you don't want to run into at full speed. The Alubarnan sand dragon sits at the top of that list."

Robin smiled and nodded, privately thinking about what she just saw; a beast hidden beneath the sands, rearing its head up and fixing her with its gaze. She wasn't a superstitious woman - superstition wasn't a luxury she could afford - but she felt keenly that this was an omen, a sign that what she sought was in this kingdom, waiting to be uncovered and claimed.

What they sought. This fire inside her ... could it be Hancock's haki? Was this the hunger she felt?

She turned away from the dunes and looked back at the snake empress. She was standing silently near the bow, keeping an eye on their wake just as Robin had been looking out beyond the prow. The crew had wisely given her and the Kuja that accompanied her a wide berth. The remainder of the crew - Mari and Sonia included - were riding in another barge a little ways behind them. The tension in her body was clear to see, even under her travelling cape. Robin felt she should be there, at her side, but being too close might mean onlookers starting to familiarise themselves with her presence. She'd already put herself out a bit too much when she salvaged the situation at the port. She didn't want to compromise her anonymity any further than she already had.

There were glints on the horizon at either side of the barge. Turning to her left, Robin observed them more closely. Sporadic bursts of light, skipping through the heat haze. Probably nothing. Though she couldn't help but feel they resembled...

"Mirages" Vivi said, butting into her musing yet again. "Nothing dangerous. Just important not to follow them anywhere. They're never what you think they are."
If she had to say, Robin thought they resembled running figures, appearing one second and disappearing the next. She didn't voice this to the girl. Just nodded and smiled. Nodded and smiled.

More quacking from the front. The ducks fell back and men got ready to swerve the ship away from the titanic lizard that was breaching the sands.

They needn't have bothered.

Before Robin could even process what was happening, Hancock somersaulted over their head and delivered a straight kick to the beast. It turned to stone and shattered into countless pieces that were blasted all over the dunes with meteoric force

Hancock then fell back on to the ship, her sullen expression unchanged.
"...Thank you?" Said Vivi, clearly in a daze. Then she straightened up and cleared her throat.
"I must insist you don't engage like that again, though. Any debris could harm other potential travellers coming on sand barges. Besides, the dragons are beloved of the desert. We must strive to leave them be."
"I'm a pirate and a warlord, girl. That's what you wanted. Best you know what you paid for before we ship out."

The words 'paid for' were laced with an all-too familiar venom. She then stalked off back to the bow, men scrambling to get out of her way.
Robin kept her silence. But she looked to where the pieces of stone-flesh had fallen. Hancock had flung them to either side of their barge, like artillery pieces. Almost as if she was trying to keep something at bay.

Their ship ploughed on as the sun set. Although the shimmer of heat was disappearing, Robin could still see the figures she had glimpsed before, keeping to the edges just beyond reach.

They weren't running anymore. They were watching. Watching and waiting.

Chapter Text

When night fell, Robin set to work.

Her plans for anonymity had been scuttled the moment they touched down in Alubarna. A city built on the site of a massive plateau was intimidating enough, but the walk up the stairs was another kind of gruelling. There were statues crowning either side - falcons on the left wall, jackals on the right. Their combined stare was worse than the heat and the force of gravity pressing down on the troupe as they made their way up the marble steps.

Robin could sense Hancock's discomfort as a burning beneath her own skin, the seeded haki flaring up in response to her lover's distress. It made her stumble and, of course, the Nefetari girl immediately rushed in to help. Took Robin by the arm and assured her that it was the heat, asked her if she needed further assistance, if she would like one of the ducks to carry her...

Robin politely refused all offers, silently screaming in embarrassment and frustration. This young royal was sticking to her now. Even after she had fixed herself on becoming anonymous, unseen. Maybe she should materialise a hundred arms and use them to point right at her face, just to make sure people knew she was, in fact, the devil-child, sole survivor of Ohara who had been wanted by the government since the tender age of eight. Just to kick things into touch a little bit.

Hancock didn't look back. Didn't check to see if she was OK. Good. She was acting her part impeccably. She had to stay ahead and lead. Let Robin stay behind and do her business in the shadows.

They had torpidly moved through the atrium of the palace to the throne room. Nefetari Cobra was a slight man. His robes were no different to a shepherd's, save for their royal purple colour. No rings on his hand nor a crown on his head. His dark-eyed stare was proof enough of royal bearing. They met Hancock's gaze without the faintest hint of strain.
Hancock thankfully didn't lead with the same display she had given at the port. She had only asked for her crew to be shown to their rooms. And clarified that if anyone touched the snake, the panther or the hawk they would be flayed alive by her personally.

Cobra put up no resistance. He gave orders to his guards and soon the Kuja were walking though the cool corridors to their chambers.

A tense silence ensued. The green bekhen stone of the throne room seemed to amplify the quiet to agonising levels. The only sound was Salome coiling and uncoiling in that way she did whenever she was uncomfortable.

Then...

"I'm sure you're tired." He said, in a perfectly inexpressive monotone. "Take your rest. We shall discuss the particulars of our present situation tomorrow."

Hancock arced her head slightly, as if pondering whether she should strike the man in the chair down for the impertinence of suggesting she, the pirate-empress, was tired. Then she shrugged.

"Indeed."

Nothing more, nothing less. The Gorgon sisters and Robin filed out, soundless save for the noise of Salome's scaled belly being dragged across the marble floor.

Robin allowed herself a faint look back. Vivi was approaching the king, clearly ready to inform him of all he had seen. What she chose to say and what she chose to hide would determine the nature of their stay here...

There was a rustle, a sound like wing beats. Robin immediately snapped her head back to the front, but there was nothing in the darkened corridor ahead. The scent of sandalwood lead them on.`

The silence of this place would be her truest companion from this point forward. She let it in.

And so, with Hancock asleep in bed and her crew winding down in one of the dorms, Robin set to work.

First, she took water in the bathroom. Cautiously, she unbuttoned her shirt and observed what lay beneath. The gift of Hancock's Haki was plain to see; black veins arcing down from the puncture holes in her neck. The scar tissue rose and fell even when Robin stopped her breathing. Clearly working in response to the sleeping empress and her gentle snoring. It gave Robin some sense of comfort, to know that her lover was working with her, through her, even as she was oblivious to the world around her.

Sliding out into the hallway, she began her first reconnaissance mission.

The marble floors were an immediate asset. Even at her best, Robin couldn't help but elicit a creak from floorboards of any kind. Sneaking through manor houses and archives as a starved child, she had always pressed a hand to the floor and discerned what manner of wood was used before making her next move. No need for that here, with the cold stone allowing her to glide soundlessly through the dark.

The palace interior was a patchwork of corridors and courtyards, enclosed in soaring arched columns. It made for sudden moonlit vistas waiting around corners, whispers of vegetation stirring in the night wind reaching her ears and making the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

Perhaps she was simply out of practice, but Robin felt more exposed than she had been in years. She hadn't forgotten the sound of wings earlier, nor the king's impassive stare, nor the moving figures in the desert...

She stopped. Sneaking about wouldn't suffice, she wasn't a child. She'd needed to truly enter this space, As it stood, she was still at the door peering in through the key hole - even after climbing all those steps with statues staring down. Even after prostrating at the foot of the throne.

The moonlight fell on one of the wall paintings; a two dimensional representation of a man, their profile visible but never the full face. This kingdom's art erred towards the figurative. That single white eye stared out blindly, its kohl-lined edges silvered by the falling rays.

An idea came to mind.

Robin closed her eyes and opened 8 more.

The Haki in her chest allowed her to do this trick on a level not possible before. She replicated eight different pairs of eyes, all in different parts of the palace complex. The sheer number of images should have fried her mind, but she now could take it - though it did feel like spinning several plates at once while dancing on hot coals.

Robin tried to take the visual data in a steady, ordered manner. First, she focused on the sight of a small room. A bedroom, The Nefetari girl was asleep, her blue hair even more vivid in the streaming moonlight. The bed seemed made for two people, but she supposed that royals enjoyed every basic comfort on a grander scale. Only a couple of other oddities caught her eye - what looked like maps on the nearby desk, a couple of plump tangerines on the bedside table - before she let the image fade.

Next was a view from the outside, looking down at the steps from a slight elevation. Robin guessed she was peering from the eyes of one of those statues, a thought that brought her a strange kind of smugness, remembering how they had glowered down at her for the whole of the gruelling climb up to the palace. Not that there was anything here for her to see. Just whispering sand that had gathered on the stone slabs and was drifting away in the night wind.

Then there was a footprint.

A footprint in the white sand, appearing out of nowhere. Robin had no way of zoning in on it, but she was sure it was there just as she was sure it hadn't been there before. Then there came another. And another. Each blooming from nothing and patterning the featureless rock.

Robin had not manifested any ears, a mistake in hindsight. She was sure that if she could hear this scene, there would be a sharp noise like something accelerating past at high speed. That was the sound she had heard back in the desert, as those shadowed figures had leered on the edges...

No sense in remaining here. She closed her eye.

The last sight was the greatest. A full panorama of the plateau and the city below, spread resplendently across the earth. Whitewashed houses reflecting the moonlight and awaiting the dawn. The sky an upturned jewellery box, shining in a way that only that the desert would allow. Robin supposed that she had manifested an eye on the highest point of the minaret, the minaret she had seen glinting in the light of the setting sun as they had all swept into the city. How funny it was to think, that as her body stood in a shadowed corridor her eyes took in this splendour.

This gave her a good plan of the city grid. But she knew her quarry was locked beneath the earth...

A sudden jolt - likely Haki - caused her to look up. Just in time time to see a giant winged form silhouetted against the full moon, descending on her with gleaming talons outstretched.

She dissolved the manifestation as quickly as she could, but not before she felt those talons graze the tender flesh of her unprotected eye.

Robin entered her room, Adrenalin and Haki mixing in her system to ensure she took in every mundane part of their quarters in excruciating detail.

She slipped into the sheets and gazed at the ceiling, fixing herself in place after her adventure in the night time world.

It was then she realised how badly she was bleeding from one eye.

Chapter Text

"A chunk of rock?"

"Yes. I think it came from the beast you petrified and shattered."

"I see..." Hancock caught herself. "I'm sorry, that could be seen as insensitive." There was a pause, then the indomitable pirate empress buried her face in her hands and groaned.

Robin giggled. "Don't fret, love. It was my eye not my brain that got scratched. I know what you mean."

What she'd said wasn't entirely true; as it turned out, the claws hadn't scraped across her eye, but rather her forehead. She'd dissolved her cloned part just in time, but there had been enough of a connection to allow for her face to be scarred. The blood then trickled down in the night, seeping into the eye that may have already seen too much.

Hancock had been apoplectic with rage. Took three servants to assure her they had medicine available to help with the cut. She'd watched with burning eyes as they applied a styptic of egg and honey to Robin's face with shaking hands. Robin had whispered a few apologies on her lover's behalf, while drinking in the scent of the perfumes that people in this kingdom seemed so fond of.

When they left, Hancock collapsed into a chair, Salome wrapped around her shaking shoulders.

Scarcely a day into their mission and already she'd given Hancock cause to worry. Tactfully breaching the topic of finding the treasure hidden in this place just became a lot more difficult...

Undaunted, she strode over to Boa with a sunny smile, fiddling with her night gown in a way that suggested total lackadaisical ease.

"Tis but a scratch." She said, nuzzling Hancock's bare neck. "This country is known for its stone. Only natural that we should get a few cuts from sharp edges here and there."

"It wasn't this place's stone though. It was me." Hancock whispered. "I broke that beast, scarred your face and only realised when I woke up this morning." Her lip quivered. "What if the worst is yet to come?"

Robin had no answer for that. Her foray last night had proved singularly inconclusive. Footsteps appearing out of nowhere, a child's bedroom and an unseen flying beast that had struck her clean off the side of the dome? Not exactly promising portents. She would have to train harder, learn to focus more and make full use of the Haki that Hancock had gifted her.

Gently, she cupped Hancock's cheek and turned her so they were face-to-face
.
"Your mark on me is the strength you sowed in my breast." She said, pulling back her shift enough to let show off the black veins coursing through her skin. "I've only made it this far and been able to pursue my dream because I've had you to make a path for me."

Hancock's eyes widened, before settling into a look of buttery warmth. She pulled Robin into a kiss, one that fed the Haki in Robin's chest until it felt like a campfire sending sparks through the forest of her being.

Naturally, there was then three sharp knocks at the door.

They broke the kiss, remembering that they were playing the roles of captain and attendant. No one was to see them in any stage of intimacy.

"What?" Hancock growled.

"Father requests your presence." Vivi's voice came sweetly through the stately doors. "To clarify certain positions and plan how we will proceed in the coming days."

"She came herself instead of sending a servant. How diligent." Robin whispered in to Hancock's ears. Of course, they both knew that if another quivering lackey was sent here Hancock was likely to disembowel them. But it was the thought that counted.

Before the empress could rebuff the princess, Robin raised her voice.

"The captain will be with you presently. She is just finishing up."

"Splendid!" Robin could hear the smile in her words. "Meet us in the central garden. There will be refreshments."

And with that, she left, high-heels clattering against the marble floor giving sound to her passage.

Hancock grumbled and shifted in her seat.

"Are we children, to be summoned to class this way?"
"You never attended a single class in your life and I would've given anything to receive a formal lesson as a child."
"hmmph. It'll be in the gardens. Will they think to provide shade?"
"I'm sure they will. Not that you'll need it, right?"
"I was thinking of you."
"I'll be fine." Not quite a lie, not quite the truth.

Hancock bit her thumb and stared at the closed doors.

"There's snakes in every garden. What one will be found here?" She mused.

"We are the snakes, my love." Robin said reassuringly, pressing her cheek to Salome's warm scales. "Beloved of the earth and sea. We will make the demands."

Hancock smirked, contented, and rose from her seat, humming a little sailor's ditty; We'd be alright if the wind was in our sails. We'd be alright if the wind was in our sails...

Robin smiled as she helped her get her coat on, brushing specks of dust off the epaulettes, all the while thinking of snakes with their bellies on the ground, and the footprints she had seen the night before.

And we'll all hang on behind

Sitting in the shade of the terraced courtyard, Robin admired the princess' stick fighting.

It was a rectangular courtyard, symmetrically divided into four parts along its central axes, with a fountain dead in the middle. In front of that fountain, Nefetari Vivi was tracing figure-eight patterns with two four foot long staffs. one in each hand. Her speed was such that Robin could hear the air being displaced by her movements, see the water vapour coming from the fountain being cut by the arc of the sticks.

Hancock was less impressed. She audibly twisted in her wicker seat beside the old king. When Vivi finished and set down her staffs, Cobra applauded while Hancock rubbed her temples.

"A fine showing." She eventually said. "But you should have opened with that at the Port if you wished to make an impression. And she should have had an opponent - it's only impressive if there's an enemy to test your skills against."

"I think the midday sun is an opponent enough." Cobra quipped. He turned his chair in order to face Hancock properly. Standing at their backs, Robin noticed his seat was wheeled. A small piece of information that made her re-assess many aspects of their journey thus far - why Cobra hadn't been present at the Port, why he hadn't risen from his throne upon greeting them, why he even needed protection for the journey to the Holy Land in the first place.

"My daughter performs for you so that you might understand how the following days must proceed; precise, elegant, one action flowing into another. Royal affairs do not allow for clumsiness in any form."

"Clumsiness?" The last two letters came out as a hiss, and Robin felt leaking Haki add more weight to the heated air.

"Allow me to re-phrase that; forwardness." Cobra said, wheeling himself slightly backwards. "Even the most neutral of everyday acts gains additional meaning when said amongst monarchs and dignitaries. It takes only the slightest of miscalculations to cause an international incident."

"My sisters are more than capable of doing complex mathematics." Hancock replied smugly. "Besides, doing things sideways is no problem for a snake."

"That as may be, the government is attempting an experiment and we are the guinea pigs."

"I don't follow. Is this part of the lack of forwardness you were referring to?"

"It means that every thing we do on the world stage will be laden with symbolism!" Vivi exclaimed, coming over to them. Her brow and arms glistened with drops of perspiration sparkling in the afternoon sun.

"The warlord system has always been controversial. Too many pirates took the pardon and then pillaged to their heart's content with the government looking the other way.
This summoning is meant to show the world that those currently on the roster can be trusted, brought to heel even."

"Just what are you trying to say -"

"That if you ride with us you gain a degree of legitimacy. We, of course, become associated with a warlord, deterring all future pirates from attacking our shores. We can help each other."

Robin readied herself for the explosion that this girl had unknowingly invited. But it never came. Hancock merely tilted her head and regarded Vivi with measure appraisal. No. Not quite. Robin realised that she was looking beside her, as if there was another person standing there, backing the princess up.

"I only moved because they pointed a gun at the heads of everyone I loved. If you want my 'help', you should probably get used to the feeling."

She then rose from the chair and sauntered off back inside.

There was a silence. Vivi looked ashamed, Cobra rubbed his veined forehead, Robin remained silent.

A sound of wing beats came down from above.

Robin arced her head up. That couldn't be Marigold's hawk...

Sensing her discomfort, Cobra spoke up.
"Nothing to fear, my dear. Just a guard making his rounds."

He did not clarify any further. Robin steadied herself and smiled politely.

"Thank you for your assurances. My empress is impressed by your boldness, though she would never admit to it."

"I don't expect her to. I said a lot of puff back there about forwardness and acted like I was uniquely attuned to the subtleties of ruling."

"My actions were unbecoming as well." Mumbled a despondent Vivi.

"Nonsense." Crooned Robin, settling into a familiar cadence. Her scar throbbed but the sun would be heading downward soon and cooler shadows would stretch out through the palace. "You were right in the most important aspect; we have a lot to offer one another..."

Chapter Text

Days passed. Questions were asked. Answers remained elusive.

Their everyday routine became a constant study of the innumerable monarchs who would be attending the reverie, what their quirks were and how to avoid offending them in a way that might lead to a war or a similarly unpleasant conflagration.

Hancock was not getting full marks on the last part.

Cretin with a boiler plate for a jaw, cretin with a moustache, cretin with a protruding chin, another cretin with a moustache, inbred, inbred, inbred...

Cobra had gone from elaborating on potential alliances that might be forming under the government's nose to begging the empress not to kill anyone on sight. She made no such promises.

Robin was having more luck on her end. Realising that she couldn't progress without the favour of the royal household, she'd taken a more active approach in ingratiating herself. Hancock's lack of tact proved helpful, as it gave her plenty of opportunities to swoop in and smooth things over. They started saying her false name - Blanca - with warmth and no small degree of relief.

Blanca. White. White as alabaster. A blank slate. Oh, yes. It was all coming together.

When not sitting in council, she took to wandering the palace. Always had an excuse on hand if questioned by the staff. Though often all she had for company were the figures on the walls, with their staring eyes and frozen gestures.

The palace simply wasn't deep enough. It barely penetrated the bedrock of the massif, the lowest rooms being a couple of dusty wine cellars. Water was drawn up for use in the royal baths, but otherwise it did not seem like there was an extensive network of tunnels or chambers. What she sought was said to be located in a hidden room; silent, dormant, waiting. It wouldn't be shown to the public or even royalty except under the most exceptional of circumstances. It wasn't something she would simply happen across.

Then she was told about the tombs.

The royal tombs. Some distance away from the city. Where all the kings and queens of Alabasta were interred. A whole network of connecting chambers, spread out beneath the ground...

She shared her suspicions with Hancock later that night.

"You're certain of this?" The empress drawled, fondling Robin's hair.

"Positive. It's the only place at hand that could harbour what we're looking for." Robin replied, resting across her lover's bare chest.

"Mmm..." Hancock brought both arms around her archaeologist and pressed her into a tighter embrace. "I'll ask them for a guided tour. It's the least they can do after forcing me to sit through that royal prattle."

"Not enjoying statesmanship?"

"Not enjoying old men and young girls talk at length about dignity and temperance, that's for sure."

"Don't worry, love. Will have them lead us to the tombs and whatever's hidden there. Who knows? Might find a nice rock for Salome to sun on while we're there."

Vivi needed no convincing. She loved her country and loved sharing it with outsiders. A small contingent consisting of her, Hancock, Robin, Mari and Sonia struck out for the tombs the next day. Duck and snake racing over the sands.

The Royal Tombs spoke to Robin's soul in a way that the palace failed to do. Under a bright blue sky, resting on an elevated platform. Pillars encircling a handle of limestone monoliths, unadorned save for a single darkened entrance in each. All gleamed white as bone in the light of the midday sun.

"So, what interest do you have in the tombs?" Vivi asked Hancock politely.

"Oh, you know, just wondering in case this mission of ours goes south and I am killed. I should like an exquisite tomb and was wondering if your architects could give me some pointers." Hancock said airily, inspecting her fingernails.

"Right ... well, in mortuary customs Alabasta is without parallel. Has mummification ever appealed to you?"

"I was once buried alive as part of my training..."

Robin snuck away as the pair began discussing the finer points of embalming.

The Tombs were both exposed and hidden, dead and alive. She fitted in here. She felt like water filling a vessel, immersing herself in the history laid before her feet.

What inscriptions she found circling the pillars and on the frieze above the walls spoke to the achievements of past kings - conquests, consolidation, edification. Going back tens of thousands of years. Still not far back enough.

Undeterred, she pulled a compass from out her pocket. Poneglyphs, as she had discovered, functioned much as lodestones did. The stone they were crafted from had magnetic properties, pulling in any metals that might be around. Indeed, many times exploring caves and jungles she had felt a strange tug beneath her skin, as if the poneglyphs were reaching out for the metal embedded in her bones.

She'd quickly figured out that a compass was the best tool for locating her quarry. Turned out the quintessential seaman's aid was equally useful to the archaeologist.

The needle spun with frustrating vagueness. Robin slowed her stride, passing from one pillar's shadow to another, eyes fixed squarely on the twitching piece of metal in her hands. She began to lose focus of that as well. She was entering a state of awareness where the only thing that mattered was the call of the past. Perhaps this was her variation of the observation Haki that the Kuja had perfected. She walked on in this fugue state, waiting for a whisper, a voice to lead her in the right direction, just like it had in countless other places before...

CRUNCH

Sand being crunched underfoot. Under a heavy boot. Robin spun around, hands crossed and ready to activate her devil fruit ability. But there was no one there. Just air that wobbled in the heat.

Or was that it?

Her senses sharpened, she looked at the empty space with a critical eye. The air wavered in a way that seemed unnatural, even for a place like a tomb. It was as if there was a body hidden from view, shaking in fear and making the air wrapped around it dance and shimmer. She felt with increasing certainty that this was no mirage. That there was a body of flesh and blood waiting just behind the veil...

She reached out. Nothing.

Pulling her hand back, Robin saw a faint layer of water making her skin shine, mixing with the perspiration already there.

As she made her way back, Robin mused that while she may have not touched anything physical, she felt she had just held the hand of an unseen world, waiting. Waiting. Waiting...

"Are ducks venomous?"

"Not to my knowledge, no."

"There you have it. Another way my nation has surpassed yours."

"You have venomous ducks?"

"Don't need to, we have snakes. They're basically the same. They both lay eggs."

"I think they have more obvious differences than that..."

Vivi and Hancock were leaning against a wall, deep in conversation. Hancock was as dismissive as ever, but Robin couldn't help but notice a strain of affection working its way through her speech. Sonia and Mari lumbered about with nothing much to do, Mari's hawk circling high above.

Sighting her, Vivi gave a jaunty wave.

"Blanca! wondered where you had gone off to."

"Oh, was just about." She said sweetly. "Much history to savour here."

"Savour to your heart's content! The way I see it, Alabasta's history is the Grand Line's history, the heritage of everyone upon the seas."

"Is that so?" Robin said, looking around as subtly as she dared.

Not subtle enough. Vivi followed her eyes.

"Seen anything strange?"

"No, no, not at all..."

"Because it's perfectly fine if you have." The princess assured her. "The tombs are famous for odd sightings."

"Oh?"

"Indeed, Oh." Hancock added.

"Old wives' tales mainly. Though there's some new talk going around - about men with wolf and cat heads stalking the place. I actually recently heard rumours about a man with bull horns walking out of doors made of thin air! Imagine that!"

"I shall try to." Robin said, thinking about the shrouded form she had just seen. Or indeed, hadn't seen.

"Well all that aside, right now there's something in this graveyard that has never been seen here before."

"And what is that?"

"A group of beautiful young ladies!"

Sonia guffawed, Vivi twittered and even Mari rolled her eyes affectionately. Robin found she was laughing to, an easy kind of laughter that she hadn't felt leave her breast since getting on the marines' ship and departing from Amazon Lily.

Vivi looked at her, beaming. Then there was a change. Slight, nearly imperceptible but enough for Robin to notice. Something hard snaking across her young face. Something that didn't belong there.

Robin took the greatest care to ensure there wasn't a single change in her expression. It was Blanca who smiled and nodded, same as before.

"Well it's certainly getting hot." Vivi eventually said. "Shall we head on back before the sun gets too high."

"Seconded." Hancock said, yawning. "I've had my fill of old dead things. Someone ensure I get an open casket."

"Need the world to remember what real beauty looks like, eh Sis?" Sonia quipped.

"Not really. Just keep the lid open in case I get tired of being dead and decide to come back to play."

The Gorgon sisters exited chortling, their throaty laughs heavy in the bone-dry air. Robin made to follow. Vivi stayed, rooted, until Robin had passed her. Then she started walking.

Robin willed herself not to look back. But she was sure she felt the presence of two people closing in behind her. Sure she heard the crunch of a heavy boot compacting the hissing sand.

Chapter Text

She made her way down the corridor, knife in hand and eyes on the ground, waiting for the first footprint to appear.

"They're really laying it on thick, aren't they?"

"They have no power of their own. They have to rely on ceremony and decorum."

"And food! We need to take some of these recipes home with us.

"Soft power, eh?"

"Warm, savoury, soft power..."

The four of them - her, Hancock, Sandersonia and Marigold - were seated in the Royal Baths. The rising steam was joined by plumes of bluish smoke exhaled by Sonia as she puffed on a truly enormous Shisha pipe, its tube the length of a fire hose. A gift from giant emissaries of Elbaf, Cobra had been glad to offer it as a token of appreciation. Sonia had benefited mightily from its calming effect, having had the hardest time staying calm over the course of the trip.

Truthfully, Robin had been spiralling much more than the youngest Gorgon sister. She was just better at keeping up appearances. Maybe she should take a drag on the mega-hookah. She'd need to be utterly unbothered if she was going to make it to the end of the night.

"The girl ... her earnestness irritates me." Hancock muttered.

"Really? Because the pair of you seemed to be really connecting out there in the tombs." Marigold said, rubbing Sonia's back with gel.

"That's precisely what irritates me."

"The possibility of amicable relationships developing on a diplomatic trip? When will life get easier?!"

Hancock scowled and sank up to her nose, letting a stream of angry bubbles float to the surface. Robin managed to coax her back up with the promise of a good massage. She re-surfaced but insisted that Sonia let her hit the pipe.

Robin remembered their time spent in the bath talking about blooming friendships, as she walked alone through the darkened corridor with a knife in her grimly steady hand.
That they were being watched was undeniable at this point. The figures in the desert, the footprints, the hawk, the presence in the tombs and, worst of all, the princess' strange stare ... everything was pointing towards them being discovered. She was walking these halls at night not because she wanted to find a target. She was looking for an escape route. The knife was only there because she knew that an attack was likely to happen at night. Well, better her than the others.

Another corner, another mural, stark in the moonlight.

This was a new one. No human figure to be seen. A long, coiling snake being decapitated by a cat with a knife commonly associated with funerary practices. The cat''s ears were erect and pointed, alert to any kind of threat. A cat of the desert. Likely a guardian deity. One paw held the knife, while the other held the snake's arrow-shaped head down. An image of meteoric iron being sawed through the scaled flesh of the snake's neck sent a chill through Robin's body. Here, with the night air cooling her back, she could practically feel the knife's keen edge against her neck. After all, the only way you could kill a snake was by chopping off its head...

Then she saw the eye.

It floated into her sight like a ball of St Elmo's Fire. Bluer than blue, enclosing a bone white circle, which itself held a pit of pure blackness. Turning in the air, she was drawn into the concentric circles, seeing its arc as if in slow motion. A space the size of a keyhole, yet she felt she could dive right into it. Dive all the way to the bottom.
It was then that she saw the metal cord attached to it.

She had barely seconds to register her mistake before the eye went whistling behind her ear and the cord bit into her throat.

Robin staggered as she was pulled away from the mural. The metal thread constricted her airflow and someone with an uncommon amount of strength forced her head up to the ceiling.

"It's strange." An all-too familiar voice hissed in her ear. "This is usually meant to ward away evil, not bring it closer in..."

A talker. Good.

Finding her centre, Robin manifested two arms from her shoulder blades. Grabbing the biceps of her unseen attacker, she wrenched forward as violently as she could. The thread was forced off her neck. Another arm sprouted from the middle of her spine to grab their stomach. With a snarl, she ducked, the arms coming out of her back lifting up her opponent in a fireman's carry and throwing them at the wall.

When she stood up, the enemy was back on their feet and launching into another attack. A new line of of cord shot out from under her wrist and wrapped around Robin's left arm. They pulled her towards them, before twirling and coming down on her bare neck with a dagger in hand.

They lunged too fast for Robin to manifest a defence. But she didn't need to. The blade didn't sink into unguarded flesh, but instead clashed against Hancock's seeded Haki. Its point broke off and a blast of energy sent it flying out of the assailant's hand.

Not wasting a second, Robin bloomed four more arms from out her wrist, thrusting them all into the foe's body as a five-handed knife strike. Some kind of hidden mail dissipated the force of the blow, but she was rewarded with an ugly grunt as her opponent was pushed back into the wall. She immediately crossed both arms and manifested four arms to pin them down.

Each of the attacker's limbs was secure. Robin felt their desperate attempts to break free course through her body, but she refused to let go. It was time to get a good look at her enemy.

Swaddled head to toe in a robe of blackest silk. absolutely nothing was discernible about their physical appearance except for a pair of blazing black eyes. Their hands were brown, fingers twitching wildly as they fought Robin's grip. Where they trying to summon another hidden weapon from their sleeves?

No. That wasn't it. They were signalling.

Robin had only seconds to duck before an invisible force went sailing over her head. It was accompanied by the same whirr of displaced air she had heard in the courtyard, when the princess had given her staff demonstration...

Ducking and rolling, Robin put as much distance between her and the new enemy as possible, struggling to keep the summoned limbs from vanishing. Her friend from the tombs had returned. The cooler night air gave them a more effective cover. She hadn't noticed them at all this time.

Rearing up, she shot out two extended limbs, several arms on top of one another to make snakes that moved at lightning speed. But the invisible fighter proved quicker. Though she saw nothing, she felt a body crouch beneath the arms and scuttle forward. She had seconds to realise that she had over-extended, before something hard and metallic made contact with her knees and she went down.

Another jab in her sternum and she felt a rush of electricity arc through her body. The arms keeping the first attacker vanished, as her real limbs seized and twitched. Alabasta didn't have the technology this invisible opponent was using. Just who was she up against?

Through blurred vision, the cloaked figure came over, rubbing their wrist. Their was another sound of air being displaced and the figure that had been concealed revealed themselves, twirling a long staff, the blue colour of which looked especially ghostly in the moonlight.

Blinking out spots, Robin struggled to focus on the pair. The staff-wielder was checking the robed one over, looking for any signs of harm while the latter assured them they were fine.

Intimacy. She could recognise that kind of bond anywhere. It gave her just the opening she needed.

Mustering her last drop of strength, she cloned a hand behind them both, where she had dropped her knife. As they continued to talk, she felt her fingers close around the hilt.

Pushing through the pain, she forced the arm to chuck the knife in their direction. Now it was time for the robed figure to be surprised by a twirling projectile cutting through the air. It sailed right pass their face and landed in Robin's real hand. The second it did, she kicked the staff-user's feet out from under them. They fell forward, right on top of her.

Automatically, Robin bloomed more arms to lock them in place and pointed the knife at their wobbling throat.

Their companion swiftly overcame their stupor and pulled out a knife of their own. But Robin was in control now and knew it.

"Girl your age shouldn't be playing with knives." She whispered. "Wouldn't you agree, Princess?"

The lock of blue hair coming down from the hood confirmed her suspicions, though in truth, she'd known the instant she'd heard that voice hiss in their ear.

Nefetari Vivi pulled back her hood to reveal the shock of turquoise hair in full. The steel in her eyes could not be more different from the gentle gaze that Robin had seen so many times since entering this city.

"Nico Robin. Could you please take your knife away from my lover's throat? We have much to discuss."

Chapter Text

"You can point the knife at me if it makes you feel better."

"Don't mock me, Nico Robin."

"Wouldn't dream of it, your form was impeccable. Would have been dead for sure if you didn't provide me a hostage to take."

Vivi's red-haired companion flinched and muttered a string of sailor's curses as they walked to the princess' quarters.

She was a strange thing, this invisible girl. Now that the mirage she'd conjured had faded, Robin could study her; Wiry and short, with lantern hair and skin that had bronzed under the sun. Her face with freckled, cheeks red with shame and eyes brown. More than anything, she looked young. Too young to have been able to hit as hard as she did.

Then there was her weapon. Robin had expected a devil fruit when she'd seen the girl appear out of nothing, but it seemed that her blue staff was the key to her abilities. She'd split it into three parts and stored it under her skirt, where Robin noticed was also the place she kept a variety of lock picks and keys...

They passed into Vivi's room. A modest little space, no different from when Robin had spied it earlier. But, as she'd learned this night, appearances could be very deceiving.

It came as little surprise when Vivi pushed a hand to the wall and a secret door swung inward.

"Impressive." Robin mused, as she looked into the darkened passage. "I thought this place looked a bit bare when I fist saw it."

A little bit of mischief, just to let the Nefetari girl know she had seen her room without her realising. To her credit, the young royal didn't react and kept her eyes forward, fixed on the doorway.

"Nami, a light if you please."

Nami - so that was her name - pulled out one of her staff-pieces and fiddled with the gears on it. A ball of vague, greenish light bloomed at one of its end, illuminating the steps that lead down into the dark.

"Saint Elmo's fire." Robin whispered, recognising its ghostly hue from illustrations in Ohara's books. "You really must share your secrets with me."

"We intend to." Vivi replied, getting behind her. "Just as soon as you give us yours."

As a three, they marched down.

Robin had been dead certain that she'd scouted the palace fully enough to be sure there wasn't any secret rooms or passages embedded in the building. How her teachers would have scolded her if they could see the hidden war room she had somehow failed to notice.

Low-roofed, with paper pinned to every wall, the room looked sturdy enough to withstand a Buster Call. A couple of projector snails lay stowed away in their shells at the back. Three cups of steaming tea lay on the gritty little table and a man was seated, rising to greet them.

Quite the specimen, this fellow. Wearing a full-length robe that was patterned by four-pointed stars and a matching head band. His face was as white as the cotton of his clothes. Eyes rimmed with purple kohl that ran down either side of his face and threw attention on his sharp black pupils.

"Your highness, I heard fighting. Is everything alright-"

His eyes met Robin's.

Immediately they changed. White sclera became golden and pupils narrowed to slits.

The scar above Robin's eye began to itch.

The man swept his robe aside to reveal a straight sword buckled at his waist. The hand that reached to unsheathe it was changed as well, becoming orange and gnarled, with black curved claws jutting from the fingertips...

Thankfully, Vivi was present to diffuse the situation. She whipped out a beaded chain and struck the ground with it, letting an almighty CRACK ring out through the cramped little room.

"If we can refrain from any killing, that would be marvellous." She said, breathing heavily as she re spooled her weapon. Her 'lover' stomped over to the corner, pulled up a chair and started filing her nails.

The admonished guard hastily pulled his hand away from his weapon.

"Apologies, Princess ... but those eyes are very familiar."

Robin responded with a jaunty wave and a beaming smile.

"I don't believe we've been properly acquainted."

"This is Pell, royal guard." Vivi said. "He ate the falcon fruit and has been keeping surveillance on you since you arrived."

A Zoan. Would explain the temperament.

"I thought your security on the ground looked pretty thin." Robin mused. "So, what happens now?"

Silence. Nami and Pell brooded. Vivi simply pulled up a chair and motioned Robin to sit.

Robin knew she would be putting herself in a subservient position but still she took the seat offered. Didn't look like there was any easy escape from this place anyway. She'd known that following the princess down the stairs.

"Pell, the projector snail, please."

The falcon-man nodded and went to the snails at the back of the room. Rousing one, twin beams of light were projected on to the wall. An image materialised; the royal tombs, in full colour. They were clearly looking down from a high ledge, likely one of the pillars. The snail must have been installed up there prior to their visit. Robin mentally kicked herself for not noticing.

"I didn't steal anything if that's what you're worried about."

"This footage was recorded long before you arrived." Pell said through gritted teeth. "Watch the empty space."

Robin had already noticed what he was alluding to. The air seemed to shimmer in a way that had nothing to do with the heat of the day or the quality of the recording. It had a greenish tinge, not unlike the St Elmo's Fire that the girl Nami had summoned. Something that didn't belong in the heart of a well-respected kingdom. Something alien and dangerous.

Then it happened.

Took a barely a second, but there was a change. The green haze seemed to swing open, revealing a far darker space, a window levitating in the air. Three dark shapes issued from it at bullet speed. A fourth stayed behind. Robin took in a hulking frame and what looked like horns curling up from a human head...

Then it was gone. Shut. The only indication that anything had happened were a scattering of footprints where none had been before.

The feed blacked out and Robin was left looking at the wall again.

"I see nothing out of the ordinary." She said, trying hard to strike the disaffected tone that had come easily to her before. "Ghosts in a tomb. It would be more disturbing to not see anything of the sort there."

"Don't play coy, Nico Robin." Vivi spat, the stress of the night starting to tell. "I saw you at the Tombs. We both did. Walking with purpose, looking for something. Don't tell me someone like you doesn't know about these apparitions."

"To someone like me these might as well be ghosts. I deal with the real world. Physical evidence. Human Remains."

"The way you've stalked the halls and materialised spying eyes, I'd say you're something of a ghost yourself, Blanca." Said Pell. His hand hadn't left the hilt of his sword.

"Yes, quite, I will be sure to take in criticism from a man who has been circling the skies. Maybe we should ask the invisible girl for her opinion, considering she was there at the day I visited the Tombs and acting more like a ghost than me."

The redheaded Nami flinched. Vivi immediately stepped in.

"Don't bring her into this. You have the skills to uncover hidden truths. Tell us what you know."

"Ah so that's why I'm down here. My skills."

No one said anything, which was answer enough. A diligent little royal would have called for the guards and informed her father right away. Instead, Nefetari Vivi and her magician girlfriend had fought a dangerous criminal in a darkened hallway, then marched her down to a secret room to get her opinion on something that was troubling them.

Vivi sighed and rubbed her temples.

"The sightings I mentioned - Bull-headed men, animals walking on two legs - they've increased over the last few weeks. In the run-up to the Reverie. We have reason to believe that the entire court is under surveillance. That now includes your crew and captain."

Robin said nothing, but thought about Hancock in her bed, oblivious.

"The World Government has never seen eye-to-eye with our kingdom. This critical moment may well be the time they choose to take a more direct approach."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning we would like your help to find the people behind these footprints."

"In exchange for not turning me over to the authorities?"

"Please. I know we can't ensure your compliance with threats, to say nothing about how your lover might react to any harm done to you. No. If you aid us, we will give you a gift in return. Anything that you desire which is in our power to give, you shall have it."

That took Robin by surprise. Seemed to have been a surprise to both Nami and Pell, the way they looked concernedly at their princess-commander.

Such forwardness. Robin wouldn't have expected it from the demure young woman who had greeted them at the Port.

"Fine." She said finally. "Let's follow these footprints to our fortune."

Robin held out a hand and waited for Vivi to take it.

Vivi hesitated, eyeing the arm suspiciously.

"How do I know that's your real hand?"

"How do I know you don't have another knife up your sleeve?" Robin countered.

Vivi sighed and offered her own hand. They shook, cold and quick. Vivi recoiled her hand far faster than Robin did. Still a child, despite everything. Robin could use that.

One more thing to clarify.

"How did you know?"

"Hmm?"

"How did you know my true identity? I took such pains to conceal it."

Vivi looked her dead in the eyes.

"I've had your bounty poster on hand since I was a child. All I needed was a close look to confirm my suspicions."

And that was the first time during the night that Robin felt true fear.

Chapter Text

She had done it now.
The girl hadn't taken the flask offered. She'd grabbed Robin by the arm instead and pulled her down an alleyway.

Robin had tried to wriggle away, but the other girl had a steel grip. She couldn't even summon an extra arm or two to aid in her escape. This wild girl must have some kind of Haki, to be able to nullify her devil fruit as totally as being thrown into the sea would have.

With a sharp wrench of the arm, the girl took them both under a house. The dwellings of this island were built on elevated platforms to better cope with flooding in the rainy season. Robin had been sleeping in such a space between the earth and the floor. Now, she was forced into another damp, dark gap, crawling forward on her belly like a worm. Like a snake.

There were two girls already taking shelter here. One had flaming red hair, the other's was a vivid green. Such glowing colour had been obscured by layers and layers of muck and slime, so that to Robin it seemed like there wasn't a single strand that hadn't been caked in refuse. More than just wear and tear. They had clearly slathered themselves in earthen filth. Hiding from something.

Someone.

The girl who had accosted her put a finger to her lips, but Robin didn't need to be told to hush. She heard the voices. Deep, drunk, boastful. It could only be marines. Sure enough, polished boots came tramping into view. The smell of shoe polish was like a knife cutting through the natural odour of the mulch. Robin had come to see the clean, artificial aroma as a prelude to violence. A gnawing fear grew in the pit of her stomach.

Whatever fear she was feeling, it was clearly nothing compared to the what the girls were going through. The green-haired one in particular was in a frightful state. Her entire body was writhing in barely-suppressed panic, such that her ginger companion had to grab her by the shoulders and hold her steady. Looking closer, Robin noticed that her form was changing; going from that of a half-starved girl to a mighty python and back again. Zoan users. The youngest she'd ever seen.

The men outside kept on talking, kept on joking. A thin line of urine came tumbling on to the floor, splashing droplets of piss on to polished shoes. It slowed to a trickle and Robin heard the sound of a zip being pulled up. The shoes began to move again, laughing and yawning as they made their way down the street.

The four of them laid there, silent as the tomb. Cold sweat slid off Robin's brow and seeped into the dark earth.

The black-haired girl turned to face her. She had been totally quiet all the time, like she'd been made of stone. Wordlessly, she reached beneath her shirt and pulled out a yellowed poster. Robin looked at it and the face of her child self stared back.

That was when the girl mouthed a simple sentence, her breath coming out as sibilant hiss.

"I know who you are."

"Something the matter?"
Robin blinked. Returning to the present, she saw Hancock looking at her concernedly. It was not a pleasing sight in the least.

They were seated in the royal conference room. Cobra was detailing the size of the retinue they planned on bringing to the reverie, how they might be incorporated into the Kuja ranks and how they would be expected to deposit all weapons at the gates of the Red Line (Hancock had taken immense umbrage at the last part). Vivi was no where to be seen. Indisposed, for whatever reason.

Robin had been listening, at least initially. But the princess' absence, the events of the night before and the drone of royal protocol had lead her to disassociate. Her mind strayed all the way back to her first meeting with the Gorgon Sisters, the three of them taking refuge underneath a house. Now they were in a palace, taking in matters of global import with their morning coffee, as bright sunlight streamed in through high windows. Yet she had never felt more trapped, more cornered. The weight of that house was nothing compared to the weight of uncertainty and potential failure that rested on her shoulders.

Such uncertainty was now apparently showing on her face, judging by the worried look in Hancock's eyes. Her reassurances were starting to wear thin. Soon she would be looking for answers, regardless of wherever Robin supplied any.

Fortunately, an alibi was floating in through the window.

It was barely discernible from the wobbling heat, but Robin could just about make it out; a sphere of vaguely bluish air, pressed against the glass. The redhead had said she would send a signal, but hadn't clarified that what it would be. Just that Robin would know it when she saw it.

More tricks.

"Feeling a bit queasy, captain. I am terribly sorry, but I must request permission to relive myself."

"Is it the heat? I can ask the old man there to get a bag of ice or -"

"No, no, just a little bit of fresh air will do me good."

Hancock's confused expression was like salt being rubbed in a wound. When the king's back was turned, Robin sneaked in a lightning-fast peck on the cheek. Then, soundlessly, she pushed her chair back and exited the room, the names of countless royals and dignitaries filling her ears.

Nami was leaning against the sandstone wall, twirling a segment of her blue staff.

"Bubbles, is it? That's the source of your power? It matches your effervescent personality!"
The redhead scowled and stowed the staff-piece under her robes.

"It's meteorology - carefully applied science. If you're really that interested in it, I can share a few secrets after we do what we agreed upon."

"Never fear, I wouldn't dream of taking away your trademark. Besides, I find my own power to be handy enough."

She gave a light flick of the wrist and a hand sprouted to gently poke Nami in the small of the back. The girl spun around, staff fully extended, but the limb had already vanished in a cloud of petals.

Robin smirked. Maybe it was a little bit like stepping on a kitten's tale or pulling at it's whiskers, but her midriff still hurt with a dull throb from the electrified strike she'd received the other night. Seemed fair that she get some payback.

Scowling, Nami brushed strands of hair back over one ear and fixed Robin with those big brown eyes of hers.

"When you've finished snickering, follow me. We're headed for the Tombs."

"For a picnic, I assume?"

"You assume wrong. We're staking the place out."

"Oh, delightful. For this phantom troupe that appear from thin air and move faster than the eye can see?"

"Yes, that's the plan. You've got the power to make a lot of eyes, that ought to help."

"Oh, my dear." Robin said softly, remembering how the compass arrow had spun about wildly in her hand. "When amongst the dead, sight is never enough..."

And so, with the sun climbing in the sky, Robin and her new compatriot took their positions in the shade of a wall.

Nami had conjured up another mirage to keep them hidden. All they had to beyond that was stick to the wall as much as possible and keep quiet. Robin could do that easily. Nami, on the other hand, seemed to be restless. She kept fidgeting, making grooves in the sand with her agitated movements. Could be because she found Robin's presence unnerving, but it now seemed obvious that this scrappy girl had difficulty keeping still in tense situations. That's what had given her away when they were here before; her shifting behind the veil she'd made. Nervous energy came out of every pore, quite distinct from the calm dignity that her 'lover' so effortlessly radiated.

She reminded Robin of herself, as a young girl. Anxious of who might be watching, who might be listening. Tensing for a blow that could come from any angle.

Robin started to feel privately shameful of poking her in the spine. That had been uncalled for.

"So, it's all just air?"

"What?"

"Your mirages. You send out a current of cold air from one end of that staff and a current of warm air from the other. They together affect the climate and give you a mirage for cover."

Nami didn't say anything. Just gave a curt nod.

"I'm impressed. You leave barely any footprint with a trick like that."

Still silence. It seemed that they would need to address the elephant in the room before attending to the mystery of the upright animals.

"How long have you been spying on me?"

The girl let out a long, unhappy sigh.

"I've been watching your crew since you touched down in the Port. I started focusing on you when Vivi - when the princess told me to do so, about three days past."

Robin remembered how the Nefetari girl had appraised her last time they were here. How she'd claimed to have had her wanted poster on hand since she was a child. Robin still didn't know all the details, but Vivi had probably been keeping an eye on her for much longer than three days.

"Well, I hope you like what you saw."

"I liked your wardrobe. You have good taste."

"Thank you. You're welcome to any of them if you need a burial shroud. I've already picked mine out."

"Good to know."

They relapsed into not-so-companionable silence.

Hmm. Seemed she wasn't as comfortable with morbid humour as her lover was. Or maybe Robin wasn't as good as telling such jokes as Hancock was. Whatever the case, she would have to change her approach.

"When did you and the princess meet?"

After a moment's hesitation, Nami answered.

"We met at sea."

"Oh? Was it a diplomatic mission?"

"No, no ... It was just me. My boat had gone under. She fished me out."

"Fished you out?"

"Yeah. Dived right in."

Dived right in ... Vivi had already defied Robin's expectations of how a royal should be, but never did she think that the young woman would be the type to dive in the sea to a rescue a drowning girl...

"Never heard of a royal who could swim, much less dive."

Nami gave a small but genuine smile.

"She's unique. That's for sure."

"That's for sure." Robin repeated.

Then they saw the soap bubble.

Robin assumed it was another one of Nami's tricks, but closer inspection revealed it to be something quite different. It was pearly white, almost totally opaque, and had a certain weight to it - distinct from the air it floated in, not made of it as Nami's cool and heat balls were. What's more, Robin sensed a familiar energy radiating off the sphere; a coiling unease that something in her gut responded to. This was undoubtedly the product of a devil fruit power. Nothing else could make her stomach churn so.

Quieter than the sand, she reached over to the other girl. Nami had likewise sighted the strange ball and was reaching for her staff. Robin dissuaded her with a soft but firm pat on the arm. They were here to listen, not to fight.

The sound of pebbles tumbling down the wall was enough to spook even the hardened archaeologist. It was followed by a rumbling growl and a audible strained cracking as the bricks started to give under the weight of something. Someone.

Robin's throat went dry. Two. Two of them. Right on top of her and the girl. How had they got there? A door in the air? Or had they simply darted over to them with blinding speed? Their manoeuvrability made her past excursions look like fumbling in the dark by comparison.

One thing for certain; they hadn't spotted either of them. Nami's mirage bubble was holding, despite the redheaded girl looking like she was about to throw up at any moment.
Robin perked her ears up, ready for voices and intel. But none came. All Robin heard were growls; two kinds of growling. One was low and close to a purr, with an undertone of power. tightly restrained. The other was much rougher-sounding, yips and yowls like a coyote or some excitable dog. The latter was clearly reporting to the former but beyond that, nothing could be discerned from their conversation. Underneath it all was the noise of the wall buckling and cracking under the weight of two massive forms.

Zoan types. Transformed. Conversing. Robin had never heard of such a thing. How in the hell were two transformed Zoans able to talk to one another? There wasn't any way she could pick apart their murmuring. The sheer bewilderment was enough to make her forget the anger she felt at hearing a historical site groan and break under the pair's combined weight.

The soap bubble popped.

Both Robin and Nami jumped, the sound being equal to a gunshot fired in a cramped room. There was a short slicing sound - like a razor being dragged across the skin - and the presence above them was lifted, gone like it was never there.

A few seconds passed, before Robin started exhaling, laboured breaths that came out shaky and pained. Nami was still silent, wound as tight as a coiled spring.
"Did you write any of that down?" Robin eventually asked.

Nami looked at her, utterly incredulous. But Robin noticed a little bit of the tension in her body had started to ebb away.

coo-coo

The pair immediately glanced forward. A pigeon was sitting in front of them, white, inconspicuous. Its head was tilted to one side in an expression of avian curiosity.

Not stopping to think, Robin grabbed the nearest stone and tossed it at the intruding bird. It flew off and flapped up to the sky, rising fast in the warm air, until it was lost in the glare of the sun.

Chapter Text

"Two individuals, you said."

"Correct."

"Talking with grunts and growls in their hybrid forms?"

"Correct."

"They seemed to understand each other?"

"Correct."

"That's impossible."

"Correct."

They had been going back and forth in this manner for the last hour and a half. Pell was seated in front of her, moulting from the stress that had built up in him. Vivi was laboriously rewinding the footage from the video-snails and making notes every couple of minutes. Nami kept in her corner, twirling a section of her baton with eyes glued to the floor.

"This gets us nowhere!" The royal guard exclaimed, losing a few more feathers as he slumped back in his seat.

Robin bit back another 'correct' and tried to speak in a placating manner.

"We know there's at least two of them now, that they're both Zoan-types and that they have definitely chosen the Tombs as their place of operations."

"All facts we knew before..."

"...And now you have confirmed." She said, with a strained smile. "Perhaps next time we can take recorder-snails to the scene and see if we can get better footage than what you currently have..."

"We?" Nami had spoken, putting aside her baton and fixing Robin with a brown-eyed glare. "There isn't any we."

"There is now. If that pigeon was anything to go by, then they've seen the two of us together and will be coming after us both. "

"How do we know you weren't the one leading them on..."

"Nami." Vivi sighed and turned off the snail.

"We know she's not involved with these guys."

"How?"

"Because if she was, at least one person in this room would be dead, if not all of us."

That cast a pall over the room. Pell's hands turned to falcon claws and left thin white lines in the grain of the wooden table.

"You really have done your research." Robin said, as expressionless as she could be.

"Needs must." Vivi replied blithely. She rubbed her wrist, reminding Robin of how Hancock's gifted Haki had blown the knife she'd used clean out of her hand.

"By suggesting I would be killing if I were allied to these individuals, you mean to imply they're fixed on violence of some flavour?"

"Do you think differently?"

"They could be grave robbers, going after what's already dead. One of them was a dog. Maybe they've been digging up bones?"

Vivi didn't seem amused by the joke made at the expense of her ancestors' remains. Pell somehow managed to blanch underneath his white face-paint. Nami, however, smirked just a little, before quickly returning to her previous dour expression.

There was no 'we'? Didn't seem that way.

"They're not interested in the dead." Vivi eventually said, through gritted teeth. "Their business is with the living."

"Because they're hiding among the dead." The princess took a long sip from a steaming mug of coffee. "If they wanted to rob us, they wouldn't have set up their camp right in the middle of the Tombs and hold meetings in the light of day. It's bad thieving!"

"Bad thieving..." Nami repeated solemnly, while giving an approving nod. Robin guessed that Nami had told Vivi that little phrase and maybe a little bit about the potential goals or strategies of invisible intruders.

"So not here for treasure. What then?"

The tension in the air was swilled further as the thought that everyone had been keeping at bay floated to the surface.

"Assassination." Robin said bluntly.

"I was going to suggest hostage-taking..." Vivi mumbled, fiddling with her bracelet. Robin considered assuring her that she wouldn't be the principal target for such a killing, but considered that such a pragmatic outlook wouldn't help with someone so young.

"Pains me to say, but I agree with ... our guest." Pell said, pulling a lone feather from out his wrist and inspecting it by candle light. "The techniques seen and described - moving faster than the eye can see, appearing out of nowhere - all match the tactics of various groups known to be active in the Underworld. Then there's the fact that they're Zoans, which should speak for itself."

"Whatever do you mean?"

"What I mean." Pell continued, clearly annoyed at having to clarify himself. "Is that Zoans tend to find employment as enforcers or assassins. Being able to turn into an animal certainly helps with either job."

"Speaking from experience?" Robin said demurely. "I don't think turning into a timber wolf will aid in the delicate work of assassination. Neither would becoming a leopard for that matter, considering there's no trees in this country you could hide a kill in. And lest we forget, there is at least one pigeon on the loose..."

"What's important is what they were saying to one another." Nami blurted out, her eyes fixed on Vivi's increasingly queasy expression. "None of us can speak wolf or leopard so we have no idea what it is they're planning!"

"It might not be as hopeless as it seems, young lady." Said Pell. "There is one among our number who might be able to help."

On cue, a dark shape bounded down the stairs and into the room. Years of experience kept Robin from leaping up from her seat but Nami shot backward and ended up banging her head against the wall. Even Vivi flinched, before settling into her royal pose again.

The shape was a dog. A golden-black dog, with ears that pointed straight up to the ceiling. Inquisitive eyes scanned the group, taking in each one of them in turn. Robin recognised the shape of it from the statues in the Tombs. Its size confirmed that it wasn't a regular dog, but another Zoan-user.

Sure enough, the dog morphed into a man in one seamless motion. A broad-shouldered man with a high-collared cape, aquiline noise and piercing black eyes.

"Chaka." Pell continued. "One of the two royal commanders along with myself. He has been closely monitoring the king as we've been down here."

"A duty I would like to return to." Chaka said in a dolorous voice. He gave the same look of cold appraisal to Robin that his feathered friend had. Robin, once again, smiled and waved.

"We need you Chaka." Vivi said, with the kind of sincerity that only she could muster. "You might be the only one present who can crack the code."

"I do think it's possible." The guard mused. "I certainly have the best senses of anyone here..." He winked at Pell who rolled his eyes affectionately.

"One's a dog and one's a cat, please guess what it is they're saying as they growl and you can get a treat." Robin said, ignoring Nami's scowl and Pell's spluttering.
Chaka just gave a sideways glance to Robin.

"I smelled you from a mile-off." He droned. "Be assured - I can sniff them out."

"I can sniff them out ... can you sniff this out, watchdog?"

Robin held up a single finger to the bathroom mirror. Four more hands sprouted out of her wrist, making a bouquet of profanity. It was a surprise that the glass didn't break after being exposed to such vulgarity.

She sighed. This was a disaster. Roped into this stake-out and now expected to align herself to the pace of two bumbling guardsmen. What's more, there was no way she could access the Tombs now, not with Zoan assassins making their base there. She had been close. Close to the stone and the truth written upon it...

She closed her eyes. Just for an instant.

There was a sound, quieter than a whisper. The sound of something slicing through the air.

Robin's eyes snapped open and her arms crossed her chest. Looking around, nothing had changed. Not even a mist of vapour on the glass or a trickle of water. But someone had been here. In the second it took for her to blink, someone had entered and left.

Then she saw the soap.

White as bone and sitting next to the green bar of olive soap that was used throughout the palace and the kingdom. Incised on to it was a string of symbols.

Robin didn't dare pick it up. She studied it instead. The code was familiar. A wayfarer's code that let vagrants know if houses and towns were safe to enter. This bar had the symbols for Unsafe/Don't Enter carved into it. Robin had seen those signs carved into fences and walls and heeded its warning each time. Written here though, the script took an entirely different meaning. One she didn't need to struggle to guess.

Don't Interfere.

Chapter Text

"Your mind is elsewhere."

"Whatever gave you that impression?"

"I'm the most beautiful woman in the world and one of the most powerful pirates to have ever lived. I can tell when someone's not giving me their full attention. Especially if that person is the only one alive whom I kiss and hold regularly."

Hancock's hot breath floated over to Robin's face and made her eyelids flutter. Robin sighed. With just a whisper, Hancock had her batting her lashes like a smitten schoolgirl. If she slipped into a lower octave, Robin had no doubt she would blurt out the truth of everything she had been doing and more besides.

They were in their chambers, splayed out on the bed. The afternoon sun was dipping outside and evening was heralded by a cool blue tint which stuck to the cerulean ware on the desk and the shadows which collected in the room's corner. It had been a long, hot and sticky day, so the only rational thing to do once the last bit of royal tedium had drained away was to get hot and sticky in the sheets for a long period of time.

Usually, pressing her lips to the empress' and feeling the blissful oblivion that came with it in a tidal rush was enough to drive even the darkest thoughts out of Robin's mind. Not so today. The Haki seeded in her breast leapt up at the touch of her lover, seeking to re-join the greater whole it had been plucked from. It meant Robin returned the kisses with extra vigour but the energy wasn't her own - it was Hancock's Haki calling to Hancock's Haki, with her as a background figure, a secondary passenger. She tried to compensate, trailing her arms over Hancock's broad shoulders, drinking in her giddying scent, letting her fangs dance across the nape of her neck. Still her mind was taken back to the fight she'd had in the corridor, when the plunging knife had been repelled by the Haki beneath her skin. She would've have died were it not of Hancock's gift and the empress didn't even know it. Or did she?

Sighing, Hancock wrapped her legs around Robin and pulled her in. Thickly muscled thighs kept Robin stuck tight with no way of escape. When they first met, Robin had tried to slip away from the Boas sisters, taking some of their supplies with her. Hancock had tripped her up and trapped her with her legs. It had been the first time they'd laid together and Hancock had certainly lived up to her namesake by constricting until Robin dropped the food. Her eyes had been closed then but they were open now and looked at her with loving, keen precision - weathered but sharp, like the oaken keel of a ship slicing through the frothy water of the ocean.

It was a jolting reminder of the past, but Robin wasn't disturbed. She wasn't the thief she had been . She trailed a finger lightly over her lover's bare skin and was rewarded by a faint ripple passing through her whole body. Hancock's gaze remained as focused as ever. Seems she wouldn't be plied by regular affection.

"Is there something out in the sands that disturbs you?"

Robin immediately thought of beast-men and sinister bars of soap. She dismissed them and let out her best exhausted sigh.

"The thing in the sand that disturbs me is the sand!" She flopped face-forward on to to Hancock's bare chest. "It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere..."

Talking about sand only made her think about cleaning, which made her think of soap, which made her think of the message: Don't interfere.

"Is that so?" Hancock replied, as if the constant irritation from windblown sand had somehow passed her by. "I would've thought you'd be happier, surrounded by the past."

Surrounded by talking animals, thieves and who knows what else Robin gave another sigh, much less affected this time.

"You ever seen the scarab?"

"Scarab? Isn't that one of the dishes we've had since coming here?"

"No it's a type of insect considered sacred in this country. Represents eternity and the passage of the soul."

"Oh. No I haven't seen that. Would of remembered eating something like it."

"Quite." Robin continued. "Scarabs are often seen out on the dunes, pushing dung balls up and then letting them roll down the slopes. I must say, I feel much the same way."

"You've been rolling shit around in the desert?!"

"In a manner of speaking." Robin shifted a little, testing to see if Hancock's hold had softened. It hadn't. "I feel like I'm pushing a mass of sediment - history, time, whatever you wish to call it - up a sheer face. It gets bigger and bigger the more I push, heavier and heavier. Until I'm at the top of the ridge and it falls down the other side. Then I have to push it up the next dune. And so onwards to eternity."

There was a pause. Hancock jutted her sharp chin up, a motion faintly reminiscent of her signature "looking up to look down" pose. Usually an expression of abject disdain, here it made Hancock seem intentionally vulnerable. Putting her head back let Robin see her pale throat, rising and falling evenly as she breathed in the scented night time air.

"Even with all the arms you could make, that would be an impossible task." She said drolly. "You should try to be more like a worm."

"Excuse me?"

"A worm eats the soil and allows it to pass through them and out of them. It's what lets them glide through the earth. I think you should dive into your history in the same way."

"Hmm ... an interesting metaphor." Robin remembered how they had once hidden in the dirt underneath a building. She thought that time behind her, behind them both. "Would you still love me if I were a worm?"

"Of course. But I'd love you even more if you were a snake; either clamp down with fangs or constrict with your body. Just make sure you get a good hold and don't let go until something gives."

She winked slyly. There was definitely a double-meaning to that last remark. Robin looked back down on the lovely legs that entrapped her. She focused Haki into two fingers and plunged them into the left thigh.

The effect was instantaneous. Hancock gave a delicious gasp and loosened her legs. Robin was free to crawl all the way up her body and position her face directly above hers.

"Clamp down hard?" Robin said in a treacle-like voice.

"Like so." Hancock replied, before closing the gap and kissing her with force enough to draw a trickle of blood from Robin's lower lip.

This was what Robin needed to hear. Not prying but caring enough to let her know that she still had support. Hancock was right. She hadn't got a firm hold on this place, on its centre. Once she did, she'd be able to take back control of things - be able to deal with the Princess' entourage and the hidden Zoans both. She just needed to find the right pressure point to dig her fingers into...

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The howl came shrieking through their chambers and cut straight through their bliss. It had a resonance that didn't belong to this world; a echo that came out from the graveyard and the world of the dead beyond. Robin heard another parallel sound beneath the animal cry. A man's cry. A death-rattle.

Hancock leapt off the bed and into a fighting stance.

"Was that a wolf?!"

"No." Cold seeped up from Robin's centre and beads of icy sweat trickled down her brow. "That is a jackal."

Chapter Text

"Are you absolutely certain about this?"

"I'm certain I'll win if that's what you mean."

"I was thinking more of what would happen when you win..."

"The Empress title? Captaincy? Easy. Nothing compared to what we've been through."

"We weren't seen back then. We will be seen if you take the throne and the helm both."

"Only the strongest survive on the seas, Mari. We knew that, even before everything happened. Now we show the island what we learned while we were away."

Outside, the crowd continued to bray. They were getting impatient.

Inside the gladiatorial barracks, the sisters sat, awaiting the gong that would announce the fight. Sonia was in the corner, knees drawn up and shivering. Marigold was tying the bindings around Hancock's fists. She wouldn't be bare chested like her opponent, nor would her hair be done up in a braid. Prior to the match, she boasted that not a drop of blood would land on her shirt nor would a single strand of her hair be pulled from her scalp.

A little bit of bravado to hide the shame.

"You've sworn off using your power?"

"I need to prove my strength is the real deal. Besides. I don't have full control of it anyway. People might get hurt."

"Demonstrating restraint and admitting to your limits? Are you sure you're Boa Hancock?"

Robin was standing in the darkened corner, inspecting the red clay walls and trying to forget the sound of the crowd outside. She always sought out the corners of rooms she had never been in before, as they allowed for cover and a chance to survey the space, check for any possible escape routes. There was no way out of this box. No way out besides the entrance they had come through. It was Hancock who would be stepping out that way. They'd follow her to victory or defeat. No grey space between the two. No way out...

The gong sounded. Sonia drew herself into a tighter ball. Robin considered going over to place a hand on her shoulder but remembered how the sister had turned into a writhing serpent when she'd patted her before. She'd been whipped by a thrashing tail and sent flying into a nearby river. Best to not repeat that here. The crowd might get the wrong idea if she came crashing through the wall before Hancock stepped out into the arena.

Of course, they hadn't noticed her at all before. Why should they now?

Slowly, deliberately, Hancock got up. The shirt barely rippled as she did, as if she were willing it to stay still and not reveal the mark on her back. Considering the Haki she had displayed over the course of their travels, it wouldn't surprise Robin if Hancock could command inanimate material to do as she commanded. Maybe this match would be settled by the oldest sister asking politely for the opponent to roll over and the opponent complying.

More likely it would end with cracked skulls and torn limbs. Hancock knew the crowd wanted a show. She'd been a performer for some time now. This wouldn't be any different.
Just before she exited, Hancock turned and fixed Robin with her too-dark stare.

"No kiss for me before I gallantly enter the fray?"

Robin smirked and put a finger to her lips like she was seriously considering it.

"Do a few somersaults while you're out there and I'll give you more than a kiss."

Hancock raised an eyebrow, letting her eyes run up and down the length of Robin's figure.

"Deal."

And with that, she threw herself forward and cartwheeled out into the arena.

And the crowd went wild.

Robin mulled on this memory, as she appraised the fan-shaped blades that boxed her and the sisters in and listened to the piteous moaning of Chaka in his hybrid form, being carried out on a stretcher.

"Part of your fieldwork, dearest?" Hancock whispered out of he corner of her mouth.

"Remains to be seen." Robin whispered back. She considered cloning an eye on the wall and surveying the whole scene from above but ultimately decided against it. Body parts appearing out of nowhere could potentially be be the spark that lit the fuse of this powder keg.

"You haven't killed anyone yet. Is that because you expect us to take the lead?" Sonia asked, looking down on he assembled guards with the expression of someone observing pigeons pecking at seed.

"Now, now sister, we're here on a diplomatic mission. Any violence would reflect poorly on us as a crew and a sovereign nation-"

Hancock was cut off when one of the guards pushed his blade further in and stepped on her toes.

Robin closed her eyes, put her fingers in her ears and tried to think while Hancock started to fling the armed men around like rag dolls. Chaka had a run in with the Zoan users, that was obvious. The question was if he had attacked them or if they had ambushed him. Discerning the nature of the engagement would be crucial to finding out what these people wanted. The jackal guard would likely not be able to give testimony any time soon. He'd wasted what little energy he had left on that howl. If the attackers were smart, they would have crushed his throat or slit his vocal cords to inhibit speech. Let his broken body be the message and keep him from sharing any details. When she had first started fighting back, Robin had made a point of strangling marines until she had developed the strength to snap their necks, to keep them from divulging her location. She imagined these trained assassins would be just as pragmatic if not more so.

Don't interfere.

The sound of wings overhead confirmed that Pell had finally arrived. Robin opened her eyes just in time to see him swipe the men Hancock had tossed into the air and touch down in his hybrid form, spreading his wings to keep the enraged empress from plucking more guards.

"ENOUGH!" He trilled. "Lay another hand on my men and I will scratch out your eyes, pirate!"

"I wouldn't dare lay a hand on your men, dog. I like to keep mine clean." Hancock thrust her leg out, perfectly horizontal. "That was five of my toes they stepped on so they've earned five hours of punishment."

"I'll not suffer one minute more of this!"

"Oh?" Hancock's neck started to arc back, her face began to point up. "Do I need to remind you that snakes eat birds?"

"That's the opposite of the truth! Hawks hunt snakes!" Pell had started to hover slightly, clearly trying to stay above of Hancock.

"Do not!"

"Do too!"

"Do not!"

"Do too!"

Hancock was practically bent double in her efforts to keep looking down, while Pell started to fully flutter to the roof, losing feathers as he did. In a more casual setting, Robin might have commented on how snakes and hawks often killed each other in their mutual hunts and left a conjoined corpse but she felt that such levity would not diffuse this present situation.

She sensed a faint dip in the temperature. Behind her, Sonia wobbled slightly.

"Are you OK?" Robin asked, striving to be heard over the guard and the empress screaming at each other.

"I'm fine. I'm fine. It's just ... did it get colder?"

She was swaying now, like a tree about to give way. Marigold placed a hand on her shoulder to steady her, but it was clear from her furrowed brow that she was being affected too. The nature of their Zoan fruits meant they were peculiarly susceptible to fluctuations in temperature. The weather had been so consistent in Alabasta, such that Robin hadn't even considered it being a problem for the girls. Now the air was growing cooler in this confined corridor, despite Hancock and Pell heating everything up with their sparring. How was this possible?

Robin's eyes strayed to the columns lining the walls. It was difficult to make out through the press of men, but she was fairly certain that she saw a flash of orange hair peeping out from behind the blue-green stone.

A now fully-horizontal Hancock noticed Sonia and Mari's disquiet. She immediately snapped back into a standing position. The force was enough to blow Pell back and make him land on his feathered buttocks.

"My sisters seem to have fallen ill. Take them to your medical wing, immediately."

"Are you joking?!" Pell said, picking himself up. "Look at what you've done to my men! To say nothing of what has befallen Chaka, which I will be questioning you about in due course-"

"Mind where you put your beak, man." Hancock hissed. "Besides, your men are perfectly fine."

To emphasise the last point, she gave the nearest felled guard a kick. He let out a piteous groan and clutched his stomach.

"See? Fine. The pain means they're alive."

Pell's hand reached for his sword. Robin was beginning to imagine the speech she would give to Vivi explaining how her favourite guard met his end, when the princess' voice rang out.

"That's enough."

The men who still stood parted to allow a view of the young royal. She was wearing a medic's apron, splattered with spots of blood. Her slender hands were enclosed in blue plastic gloves - also stained with blood.

"Everyone comes to the medical wing. No exceptions."

With that, she turned on her heels and walked back down to where she had come from, expecting them to follow. Expecting them all to follow.

The abruptness seemed to impress Hancock. She strode forward without any further complaint, giving Pell a friendly pat on the back as she did. The Kuja followed. The guards picked themselves up and fell into line.

Robin walked but in a very particular way. She let others buffet her and carry her to the edges of the group. A little trick she'd learned in her runaway years, that let her flow through a crowd, blending in and slipping away as needs be. Now she slunk right to the borders and ducked out, falling into the shadow behind a pillar.

Nami was there waiting for her. Crouched and alert, her clima-tact on the floor breathing out cold air.

"My crew mates really do not care for your weather tricks."

"Funny, cause I thought I just defused a situation while you did jack shit." The girl replied. She then grinned, It was the first smile that Robin had seen Nami's face and it reminded her disconcertingly of a switchblade being unsheathed.

"Of course, calming down your lover wasn't the primary objective." She pulled a satchel close to her and reached inside it.

"Did you know some birds struggle in cooler climates? Makes them lethargic. Easier to catch..."

She pulled her hand out. In it was a pigeon. It's wings and beaks were tied. It's beady eye was fixed dead on Robin.

Robin could have sworn she saw that eye begin to narrow.

Chapter Text

Robin had been on the money regarding the crushed throat, but everything else about Chaka's injuries threw her for a loop.

She'd been anticipating claw marks, Chunks of flesh torn from the gut and the flanks. Maybe puffy eyes, if the guard was allergic to cat fur.

Instead, she beheld a man with muscled flesh, bare under the lights of the medical bay. Smooth and toned. His scars were old, long since faded. Save for the bruises around his throat and a single puncture mark, just a little bit over his heart.

"He changed just before the blow was given." Vivi said, shaking. "He would have been stabbed right through the heart otherwise."

"Not stabbed." Robin whispered. Something was off. The puncture mark too circular, too perfect. Stabbings, as she knew, tended to leave ragged wounds. The precision here suggested a bullet of some kind, something aimed and fired. Would certainly be appropriate for an assassin. Robin had imagined that the Zoan users would be all to eager to get in close and commence tearing. Perhaps they were still, gnashing their teeth in the shadows. But there was another, the one who had left the soap message for her to find.

Maybe they were the ringleader. The one who held the leash. The whip.

"I would guess a pistol of some kind. Discrete." She continued, hovering a finger over the wound. "Have you managed to extract a bullet?"

"No." Vivi said testily, still looking at Chaka's face. "But it feels like there's something working its way through his system."

"Poison?"

"No ..."

"Haki?"

"There would have been black veins or something like it if that were true, surely." Vivi drummed her fingers against her lips. "It's like ... there's a bullet of air in him. We can't get it out. We can't even touch it."

"Bullet of air? Sounds like my speciality."

Nami's voice wafted over from the doorway of their private aid room. She was lounging in the doorway looking immensely pleased with herself. Dangling from her fingers was a rusted cage and within was the captured pigeon.

She sauntered towards them, happier than Robin had ever seen her before. It was a tad unnerving, especially as the captive bird didn't make a single sound and simply looked askance at them with an unblinking eye.

"I think I've finally found the role I can play for you here - a royal bird catcher!" She then knelt in an exaggerated manner and held aloft the cage.
Vivi seemed confused.

"Um, Nami ... I don't follow."

Nami blinked, then hurriedly picked herself up, seemingly realising how dramatic she was being right next to the badly wounded man laid out on a bed.

"Sorry, got a bit carried away..." She mumbled. "Basically, I caught the bird."

"The bird?"

"The bird that was at the Tombs!" She gave the cage a rattle, causing the pigeon to coo, confirming it was alive. "This thing has been spying on us all the while."

"Are you sure? That was a theory but..."

"She's right." Robin interjected, looking dead straight at the bird. "This bird is trained. It knows who we are."

Nami flashed a silent look of appreciation in her direction. Seems like the girl's past efforts to remain aloof were starting to falter. Took a lot less time than she had estimated.
"I see." Vivi said, re-appraising the bird. " How does it carry messages, I wonder? I don't see any kind of pouch for a scroll."

"Trust me, these people don't need paper to leave a message." Said Robin, thinking both of the words carved into her soap and the battered guard right beside her. "Perhaps they have a member who can directly talk to it."

"Talk to it?" Nami scoffed. "Are we saying that these shadowy assassin's speak in coos and chirps?"

"No, I was thinking more along the lines of a avian-Zoan type." Robin looked at the bird. It had begun tapping on the metal bottom of the cage, like any other dumb pigeon might, except it made an unsightly rattling noise. Nami set it gingerly on the bedside table.

"Impossible. Pell keeps watch night and day. He would have noticed if there was another flying Zoan in our airspace." Vivi protested.

"Well not to diminish the guarding capabilities of our feathered friend but poor Chaka did limp all the way back here and no one was aware of his arrival until he howled at the moon."

"I don't think you're really one to criticise considering you had your cloned eye scratched off the side of the palace when you tried snooping around." Nami said smugly. She was clearly riding the high of catching a small bird. A bird which wouldn't stop pecking at its cage.

"So that's how that happened." Hancock said.

"Oh, don't be upset it was scarcely even a - HUH?!"

All three women spun around to see the new woman who had entered their midst. Chaka continued to groan. The pigeon continued to peck.

"Apologies for the delay." The empress continued. "I needed an excuse to get away from the crowd, so I chose to mention how that bird-brained guard had scratched my clothes and made my exit. No one dared question me, you'll be happy to know. Your men have learned not to step on my toes."

Looking again, Robin could see that Hancock had swapped out of her formal captain's cape, with its epaulettes and lining, for a supple qiapo, coloured a deep purple - the one she wore in more intimate settings. The snakes sewn into the fabric flashed out as she turned left and right, surveying the four women.

"A girls' club and you didn't invite me?" Hancock fixed her gaze on Robin, eyes narrowing. "I'm insulted."

Robin's mouth grew dry. Sweat came down off her brow. Both unrelated to the heat of the afternoon.

"I didn't mean to deceive you -"

"I roped her in to this." Vivi butted in with such abruptness that Robin nearly jumped out of her skin. "I cornered her and coerced her into helping with a ... surveillance problem we have currently been experiencing. She made it clear that her only concerns were with you and your crew's safety. Her price was that we don't in any way imperil you. Our hope was that we could resolve our present problem before our convoy left for the reverie..."

She trailed off when she noticed Hancock's pitying expression.

"Girl. While I have to admit you've proven more capable than I was expecting, there is nothing you could have done or said that would have coerced my partner into aiding you without telling me." Hancock said this slowly and deliberately, like she was trying hard not to startle the princess with the shocking revelation.

She looked at Robin and her expression went from pitying to concerned.

"You didn't want me to worry. You wanted me to stay on task." Hancock looked away and her lip started to quiver slightly. "You wanted me to be the captain."

Robin hadn't felt this closeness between them in a long while. Not during their shared bed sessions, not during those tedious briefings they endured together. The last time she'd felt this close to the Empress had been in the fortress of their chambers back on Amazon Lily. Hancock, bare-backed and shaking, burying her head in Robin's lap as she confessed to not knowing what to do next.

Robin had helped take her out of that dark space. But now it seemed her dishonesty and her secret-keeping had pushed her right back into it.

Gingerly, Robin reached forward. With two fingers she tipped Hancock's face up by the chin and met her gaze.

"I was the one who wasn't sure of what to do. I was stalling for time." She remembered her scarab analogy and smiled. "I wanted to be self-reliant but not like before. Not like when I was alone." She breathed, shakily, exhaling tension she hadn't even been aware she was carrying.

"I wanted to be more than the flower empress, waiting on the shore. I wanted to be a crew member. Kuja, through and through."

Hancock's dark eyes wobbled. The serpent's focus was lost and a human uncertainty surfaced - one Robin hadn't seen since the early days, spent on the run. Angry and ill-fitting. Having yet to digest the devil she had been forced to eat and make it her own.

Then she blinked. Then Robin saw the same girl who had taken to the arena raising an eyebrow in mischief before she cartwheeled out into the fray. The girl who didn't look away from her mysteries and her strangeness.

"I just need Nico Robin." She whispered. "Will she have me?"

Robin was taken back to the tub they had shared together as the night gathered outside. How they had shared a bar of soap, passing it between each other to clean their bodies. How Hancock had lowered her beneath the water to muffle the sounds of the fireworks and re-assured her that she wasn't burning in the flames of her childhood. That she was safe.

Had she really chosen to stumble about in the dark after that?

Robin smiled.

"She does."

Then they kissed.

As they did, Robin felt a great heaviness be lifted from her. No, extracted from her. It was Hancock's Haki being pulled back into its source. Like a snake somehow withdrawing venom as it sunk its fangs in, Robin felt so much of the tension of the last few days ebb. It wasn't that Hancock's essence was incompatible her own. It was just that it could not be imbibed, kept in one form and in one place for long. Her power was the hurricane, the flurry of kicks she had given in the palace courtyard that dispelled all attacks. The posturing, the looking-up-to-looking-down, the piercing gaze - that was all power, but a power borne of necessity. A leader's need to intimidate. That Battle-Joy, the tumultuous defiance that came from the sea itself and flowed through the veins of all great pirates ... that was what Robin had been chasing. Chasing, when she didn't even need to.

They pulled apart. The pigeon had started to coo, though that might have just been the trilling of Robin's love-struck mind. Getting cosy in front of young girls like this. Must be the heat.

"That's very touching." Nami eventually said. "But can we get back to the most important thing here?"

"And what would that be, Carrot-top?" Hancock said, raising an eyebrow as she assessed the young thief. Nami nervously fiddled with the lock of hair that always got caught behind her ear.

"Our focus should be on the bird!"

"The bird? I swear if I have to sit through another lecture by that pellet-brained guards man I am going to snap someone's -"

"Not that bird! This one!" Nami said, rapping the bars of the cage with on her clima-tact parts.

The bird was still cooing. When it noticed everyone staring at her, it began to peck on the cage's floor.

"This?!" Hancock's eyes narrowed. Robin heard a faint crackle - likely a sliver of conqueror's Haki, spat out at the offending bird. "Is this another dignitary I am expected to meet and greet?"

"This, we believe, is a companion and spy for the hidden assassins that have been infiltrating the country over the last few weeks." Vivi said, in as matter-of-factly as she could. "It is our belief that they're intending to ... kill my father."

"Oh, those." Hancock replied, with the tone one reserved for talking about the weather. "I saw them zipping around our barge like flies when we came in here. I thought they were porters. Are you telling me that they're actually assassins?"

There was a silence. Vivi blinked while Nami's mouth went slack. Even Robin has to take a second to process what the empress had just said.

"You know, I would have confirmed as much to you if you had just asked!"Hancock said rather crossly to her lover.

"...Right, yes. Sorry." Not for the first time today, Robin felt utterly flabbergasted. She really had her ego checked over the course of this trip.

"Who are they? Where are they?" Vivi's panic came out in a great rush, moving towards Hancock in such a hurry that Nami stepped in to make sure that she didn't slam into her. "Do they mean to kill my father?!"

"Easy, princess." Hancock said, drawing herself up like a cobra before striking. "The ones I saw where not worth getting worked up about -"

She stopped. Re-examined the bird, still tapping on the floor of its cage.

"Something wrong?" Asked Robin.

"Those taps ..." Hancock's already pale face blanched further. "Morse code."

The bird stopped.

There was a sound directly above them. Like a plug being pulled out. Robin remembered the shimmering door in the tombs. The gateway in air. The one that wasn't a mirage.

She looked up, just in time to see white claws descend from the shadowed portal.

Chapter Text

There was no time to think.

No sooner had Robin looked up before she was wrenched to the ground. Hancock had pulled her down and put her body between her and and the descending claws.

The sound of tearing flesh filled the small room like a thunderclap. Pain convulsed Hancock's perfect face as she buckled.

That wasn't right. That wasn't right at all. Hancock could block anything. Her Haki was strong enough to shirk off any attack, to turn any blade. What kind of beast could maul her this way?

Then Robin remembered what was on Hancock's back. The slaver's brand, her own private shame, forever hidden from the world. If Haki was will and pride, then how could it reach a space she refused to lay bare?

All this she considered in a few seconds, for Hancock arched her back, growling, and sent her attacker flying with a burst of conqueror's Haki. The assailant whirled through the air, changing form in a rush of yellow and black. A sound like ricocheting bullets punctured Robin's ears. Though she couldn't see any bullets, she knew that these were the air shots that had mortally wounded Chaka.

A howling cry followed. Robin looked up again at the still open portal. A shock of silver-grey fur fell out, brandished claws aimed straight at the man in the bed and the girl standing next to him...

THWACK

A swing from Nami's staff collided with the snout of the descending beast. It veered off course and went sliding across the waxed floors, right to Robin's feet.

Before even registering what kind of animal it was, Robin crossed her arms and summoned a set of arms. The six limbs closed on the beast in a strong lock. Even without Hancock's Haki surging through her veins, she felt stronger than she had been before. Enough at least to contain the rippling flanks of the attacker as it flexed against its bonds. Wolf. A wolf Zoan. Just the same as the one who had loomed above them that day in the Tombs.

The leopard and the snake were circling each other, hitting and dodging with such force that neither were able to close the gap. Sounds like artillery blasts shook the room, as they traded blows of pressurised air. Scything kicks sent out razor sharp winds which left cracks in the plaster of the wall. Vivi had thrown her body over the bed-bound Chaka to protect them, causing her back to be streaked with lines of red from the invisible assault, dark blood against brown skin. Nami then threw herself on Vivi in turn to keep her from being caught in the whirl wind duel that had taken over the room. Robin couldn't spend any time looking at the others. Keeping the wolf shackled was taking everything she had. He writhed like a fish out of water, growing madder and madder at having been denied its kill. The bones of cloned limbs fractured against the straining assassin and Robin felt the pain in her own arms. The wolf was trying to slip through using that hyper-fast speed trick they'd used before. But robin wasn't going to let some transforming assassin fly through the air and kill anyone here. She gritted her teeth and tightened her hold.

Hancock and her opponent were starting to close in on one another. Robin could see a hybrid form, toned and streamlined with a rush of dark hair. The pigeon which had been caged moments before now fluttered around the fight, getting in Hancock's face and blinding her long enough for its owner to push in further. Hancock's wide kicks kept him from pouncing, but Robin wished so badly for her lover to have Salome to aid her. She also saw how the leopard was trying to circle her, to strike at her back - where her slave mark was.

The anger she felt at seeing this caused her control to waver. The wolf seized his chance. He changed into his full beast form, body swelling and lengthening to giant proportions. Robin's current set of arms couldn't take the strain. She had to dissolve them before they broke entirely.

The moment that the arms vanished in a flurry of petals, the wolf leapt into the air and vanished. Time seemed to slow, granting Robin the ability to see the assassin's body lengthen as he prepared to launch himself at the princess. Soon he would be moving at bullet speed and his fangs would be in her throat.

Robin rose an arm and shot a cloned arm out of her open palm. Another arm came out of that one and so forth until a vine of grasping flesh reached out across the room to grab the beast by the scruff of his furred neck. The technique she used had been inspired by the speed of a striking snake and she'd practised to make it just as quick, just as lethal. Now she might as well have been moving her arm though syrup. There was no way she could reach the damn dog in time. The message carved in to the soap bar rung in her head like a death toll: Don't interfere.

There was a sound like whip crack, ripping through the heated air. Then Robin was lifted off her feat by an almighty blast of wind.

She expected to be flung into a wall, but the rush of air which had grabbed her instead took her around the entire room at break neck speed. She had just enough cognisance to notice that everyone else had been caught up in the gust. Hancock and the leopard were streaks of purple and yellow, swiping at each other before the twisting current tore them apart. The wolf had also been lifted off the ground, his howl being lengthened and warped by the twister sending him for a loop. Vivi was still on the ground, her blue hair flying around and her arm tied to the bed stand with one of her peacock slashers. The culprit behind the storm had her hands full. Nami's ginger bob rippled madly as she held up the clima tact, two twining ribbons of air gushing out from its end. It wasn't clear if she was feeding the storm or trying to make it stop.

Robin kept trying to make arms but the gale-force winds made it impossible to concentrate. Her cloned limbs dissolved within seconds of being made, leaving nothing but petals that got added to the vortex. She had to swerve to the dodge the wolf, who was still trying to lash out at the girls below.

Nausea was building up in Robin and she knew she would likely be overwhelmed even before she bashed her head against a wall at breakneck speed. Just when she felt her arms grow slack, something sharp and metallic closed around her wrist and kept her from pulled into another lap around the room.

Looking down, she could see that it was Vivi who had snared her with her free arm. She stared straight at Robin, saying something. Though the words were lost in the squall, Robin could still read her words.

it's ... below

Then Nami finally shut off the storm.

Three bodies slammed into her. The overwhelming scent of the two Zoan users and the fainter, blood-iron smell of Hancock's Haki filled her nostrils, banishing thought. The slasher wrapped around her arm was ripped away, cutting in to her skin as it was reeled back. Then her head cracked against the wood of the floor and everything went black.

Chapter Text

She awoke to sand.

A pillow of grains that she had to spit out, shake from out her skin and hair. A feeling of queasiness was oozing through her limbs. She thought she'd been fed some kind of paralytic and brought two fingers to her mouth, ready to force herself to vomit. That was when she heard the clink of chains and felt the weight of shackles around her wrists.
Her vision began to adjust to the dim lighting. She saw the bluish metal glint and realised she was tethered to the wall. Not a drop of moisture in the air but the ill-feeling that seeped into her body through the chains could only mean that they were made of sea prism stone. Sea prism stone, the manufacture and use of which was strictly limited to the Navy. And the World Government...

A cough broke the silence. Glancing at the shadowed corner, Robin saw a flash of orange. There, scuffed, bruised and chained, was Nami. Her knees were pulled up to her face, obscuring everything save for the ginger bob that crowned her head. She was shaking. Enough to make every strand of red hair quiver like a palpating organ. Robin looked away. She knew that when someone was shaking like that, trying to talk to them was a fool's errand.

Fighting past the nausea, she tried to better perceive her prison. A cell, obviously. Judging by the sand on the floor and the blocks of reddish stone, they were still in Alabasta. Small comfort. Means they at least weren't on a ship. The question was whether or not they were in the custody of the kingdom or the World Government. The chains would imply that the Navy had been involved in their imprisonment to some degree but, then again, Alabasta was ancient. It was well within the realm of possibility that they would have supplies of sea prism stone bonds unknown to the World Government. Cobra had likely hinted as much in one of the meetings that neither she nor Hancock had paid much attention to...

Hancock.

Robin's assessment came to a shuddering halt when she remembered the sight of Hancock shielding her with her body, how her back had been slashed by the descending assassin, how she had grimaced in barely repressed pain. A lance of panic stabbed through the malaise brought by the stone chains, as Robin realised the empress wasn't in the cell with them. Neither were the other two Boa sisters. Neither was the princess, for that matter. It seemed that everyone of rank had been sent away somewhere else. That left her and the girl in this sand-choked hole. The dregs of a drained cup, swilling at the bottom.

No time to assess. She needed to get out of her. The manacles were unfortunately perfectly fitted to her wrists. No chance of wriggling out of them, as she had done on past occasions when imprisoned in underfunded Navy garrison cells scattered across the Grand Line. Further proof that the main fleet and their considerable resources were involved. She thought on what she could use to loosen its grip - oil from a lamp or sweat in enough quantities to let her prise her wrists out. She briefly imagined how useful a piece of soap might be in this situation, which in turn reminded her of that innocuous little bar in the bathroom and the sinister message carved out of it: Don't interfere.

Whoever had sneaked into the bathroom with her and placed that token on the sink was the one behind everything else; the strange shadows that had tailed them since arriving in Alabasta, the doorways that had appeared in air, the leopard and the wolf. Maybe they had even arranged this meeting between the rulers of the Desert Kingdom and Amazon Lily in the fist place, as part of some nefarious plot that Robin hadn't the time or the patience to unravel.

"They got the king."

Nami's voice intruded on her musings. It sounded strangely muffled. Her head still shook. Likely crying.

"Got?" Robin raised an eyebrow. "Be more specific."

"I wish I could be." The girl shot back. "All I heard is from the guards outside. They said 'they got the king'. That was it. No idea if he's alive or dead. Or if..." Her voice broke off. No doubt pondering the fate of her princess.

Guards outside. That was something at least. Meant they were considered important enough to keep under watch. She wondered if the guards had walked in on the carnage of the sick bay and not seen the attacking zoans. They had likely slithered away, to make it look like her and Hancock had done the attacking.

An idea came to Robin's fogged mind, bright and potent enough to push through the stupor inflicted by the sea stone chains, such that for one second she felt like she was standing at the threshold of a tomb having finally found the entrance.

"A set-up."

"Mhm?"

"This entire thing. Right from the beginning. It's been setting us up."

"Look, maybe the chains are affecting your brain. Try and get some rest, it's not like we're going anywhere..."

"Listen." Robin growled, steel in her voice. Nami's head stopped twitching, though she did not look up to meet her cell mate's gaze.

"The World Government have arranged it so that the king of this country can be assassinated while the Kuja are in it, thus giving them the chance to pin the crime on pirates and keep their hands clean."

She said this very slowly and was prepared to repeat it. Nami didn't strike her as the type to stay informed about world affairs.

There was a pause. All Robin could hear was the sound of sand crunching as Nami shifted her weight and let some of the tension ebb out of her body.

"Two birds with one stone." She eventually said.

That was surprising.

"I take it you don't need any further clarifications about the nature of our predicament."

"Our predicament? You're the wanted woman, I'm just a thief."

"A thief who was discovered at the site of a battle, where the princess and her trusted guard was, along with a warlord and her partner. If palace staff weren't aware of you before, they definitely are now."

Nami hissed at that, clearly indignant at being lumped in with a pirate, but didn't say anything in opposition. Robin watched her shoulders slump, the reality of their situation finally setting in.

Her dejection hit Robin harder than it should have.

"Look." She said, as gently as possible. "If you can help me out of here and assure the empress' safety, then she'll be in your debt. You'd be richly rewarded..."

Nami snorted at that.

"Pirates are pirates. They don't keep promises." A new venom laced her words. "I doubt a warlord will be any different."

"Think what you want of Hancock but don't doubt her capacity for anything. Warlords fulfil certain obligations, it's the reason me and her and the others are in this damn place to begin with."

"You're here because the World Government pointed a gun at your island and told you to move. Your empress said as much. Now, they're pinning the murder of a king they don't like on you, so the Kuja queen's spot on the warlord roster can be opened up someone who's a bit more compliant." She gave a sudden bark of laughter. "Not like whoever they'll pick will be a deterrent. Warlords make more pirates than they frighten away."

That sounded personal. Something to be used. Embarrassing as it was to admit, Robin sensed her way out of this cell was tied to this moody girl. She would have to press a little harder.

"You speak as someone with experience with warlords."

Nami lifted her head at last. Enough for Robin to see her eyes. Brown and distrustful as ever but not red-rimmed like Robin had expected. She hadn't been crying. But prisons had a way of forcing the truth out of people.

"Some years ago." She began to say. "A pirate was given the title of warlord. And upon being made one, he released a former comrade of his from the prison of Impel Down."

Robin nodded, wondering why she was listening to this girl give her life story when there was a dozen other things she could and should have been doing. Perhaps it's just that she would've liked someone to bear all to, in the early days.

"The pirate who was released made his way to the East Blue. He set up base on the Cocoyashi islands, enslaved the villages and murdered a number of people just to announce his presence. My mother was among them."

That hit home. Robin felt how dry and cracked her lips were and drew her tongue across them.

"This pirate..." Nami continued, her voice starting to wobble. "He found out I was good at cartography, so he took me from my home. Made a deal that if drew maps from him and amassed 1 million berries, he would free me and my village. I was ten."

She spat this out in one breath. Robin didn't say a word. Didn't even breath. The mention of a mother had taken her back to a burning island. It was taking all her control to not let that flame come out into this dry place and smother Nami as she gave her story.

"From that day on, everything was a struggle. I was either out on the sea trying to find enough loot to pay off the debt or locked in a map room drawing charts until my fingers bled." She'd bowed her head once again and Robin heard a strange clicking noise fill the bone-dry air of the cell. "Eight years of that. I got so close. So damn close. Until..." Her voice trailed off.

"Until what?" Robin asked, still not believing she was listening and not escaping. Maybe she had hit her head in the fight.

"Until the warlord who had loosed this pirate returned one day, beat every one of that pirate's crew to a pulp and carted them off to Impel Down." She gave a dark chuckle. "I was away at the time, trying to fork up the remainder of the money. I come back and my town was freed without me."

"...Well, that's quite a story." Robin couldn't have imagined what it meant to return to a home and find it free. "It goes to show how quickly things can change. Which is why -"

"It meant nothing." Nami hissed. "I bled, I stole and I used up every part of myself. Then the one responsible come out of nowhere, cleans house and left me looking like a fool."

She was panting now. Memories were clearly eating her alive. The clicking sound resumed.

"The warlord left and we we're left to pick up the pieces. I eventually left too, made it to the Grand Line and guess what? I nearly drowned. The weather was too much for even my skills. Would have died if not for Vivi, pulling me out."

"And now you're here." Robin finished for her.

"Exactly." The clicking sound grew louder and faster. "Each time, I try and help, try and make it, only for something to snatch that chance from me. Now I'm stuck in a cell while who know what is happening to the girl who saved me, talking to the one who brought trouble to our door. Well, screw that!"

The manacles around her wrist came undone and fell to the sandy floor with a clatter. Nami finally pulled her head up in full. Robin saw then what the source of the clicking noise; a lock pick wedged between the girl's teeth. she spat it out in to her hands and began to work on her legs.

"I see you came prepared." Robin said, at last seeing her way out of this holding pen.

"This isn't my first cell. Maybe it will be my last." The last bonds came undone and Nami shakily stood up. It was a strange thing, to have this slip of a girl standing over her when she had been so keen to avoid her gaze before. Just another way things had been turned upside down.

"Suppose there's no point in asking you to free me as well."

"Why exactly would I do that?"

"For one thing, there's still a pack of assassins on the loose. Strikes me that you could use some help warding them off."

"I have my clima tact..." nami began to say, before realising that the weather staff had been taken.

"Apparently they took your rod of tricks. A shame. Maybe it's time to change your tact, y'know?"

Humour. Didn't seem to have the desired effect, as Nami's brow creased into a scowl.

"You need back up. You're not a fighter."

"Neither are you. You couldn't beat the Zoan types back in the medical ward."

"Took me off guard. But this is a fine chance - people won't see us coming."

"If I did free you, then people would be convinced of us being accomplices, if they weren't before."

Robin had nothing to say to that. Once again, the dark truth that had shadowed her since Ohara's burning had re-surfaced - that associating with her was to court destruction. She may have doomed the Kuja already. What would a desperate thief gain from partnering with her?

Then...

"I'll let you pick something from out of my wardrobe."

Nami looked stunned. Then her eyes narrowed. Then, muttering admonishments to herself, she knelt down and started to pick the lock on Robin's chains.

Chapter Text

"Was that really necessary?"

"No it was only somewhat necessary, why do you ask?"

"Don't play dumb with me, you know what I meant!"

"You tell me I'm playing dumb when you're getting cross only after the deed's done. Here I thought that thieves were supposed to be pragmatic!"

A couple of sparks shot out from the charged air concealing them. Either Nami was losing control over her weapon or she was staring to show the first signs of Haki. Both cases would blow their cover so Robin prayed to whichever god was listening that the red head didn't compromise them before they had the chance to encounter the superhuman assassins.

The girl was referring to how Robin had cloned some arms to silently throttle the guards that had stood outside their cell door. Not enough to kill them of course, just the force needed to knock them out cold. She'd then manifested feet to herd them into the prison and helped herself to the knives and keys on their person. All this she'd done without thinking much of it but had then turned to see Nami somehow looking paler than before, blanching at the sight of very basic reconnaissance. To think she'd hoped that a thief would know the importance of getting your hands dirty...

"If that is seriously too much for you to handle then maybe you should stay in the cell until I wrap things up here." She hissed.

"It's not the knocking out part, it's just did you have to drag them in our cell?!"

"That's the problem?" Robin replied, genuinely bemused. "It's better that way for them, makes it clear that they didn't fall asleep on their shift. Why, did you want me to tickle them into submission?"

"No." Nami muttered. "It's just ... I really don't like cells."

Robin remembered how she'd picked her lock with clenched teeth while relaying the story of her past.

"None do." She replied simply. "None do."

They continued down the warren of corridors. Suspiciously quiet. Robin would have presumed that an assassination attempt on the country's monarch would have ensured frenzied columns of guards clanking up and down all of the palace's arteries, securing points of entry and exit and looking for intruders. Instead, the pair of them could walk abreast through empty halls, in such a way that she started to think that Nami's mirage trick might actually not be needed. The only thing watching their path seemed to be the eyes of the wall paintings.

This didn't reassure her in the least. It likely meant that the complex had been evacuated and with it the Kuja, Vivi and any other important persons. If the marines were fully involved then they would have likely used to river to enter the capital ... no not likely. Marines liked people to bring what they wanted to them and it wouldn't look good if a convoy of Navy boats penetrated deep into the heart of a sovereign nation, especially one as ancient and well-regarded as Alabasta. No, they'd be waiting at the Ports. Just liked they had back in Amazon Lily. Getting there would take the sand barges and they wouldn't be able to make any journey if there were sand storms and an abundance of creatures, meaning that her and Nami might still have a chance of catching up with them...

"What do we do when find them?" Nami whispered to her.

"Pick some locks, cause a panic and slip away, what else?" Robin replied, annoyed that the girl was intruding on her assessment.

"I'm not talking about Vivi and the others, I'm talking about ... the ones who attacked us."

Robin didn't answer at first. The only sounds from her were the tread of her feet on the polished floors. She looked through the veil of Nami's mirage trick and was uncomfortably reminded of how much it resembled the strange portals that one of the assassins had conjured to let in the beasts...

"We don't make any effort to find them and definitely no attempt to fight them understand?" She said eventually. "Assassins can only be permitted to fail in their labours once or twice. If we stay low, they'll break off in time and report to whoever ordered the hit."

"...Right." Nami sounded uncertain, clearly uncomfortable with the idea that government forces could be so ruthless. Well, Robin had no time to comfort the young paramour. These things you eventually had to come to terms with.

Their progress continued, the midday sun coming through rectangular windows being the only thing which illuminated the passage. Spokes of dust illuminated by slanted beams floated gently towards them only to rapidly descend when they came into contact with the veil of cooler air shrouding them, soundlessly touching down on the gleaming varnished floor.

This was becoming ridiculous. Though Robin had guessed evacuation as being the reason for the quiet but she'd been in tombs that were louder than this. She'd assumed that at least some of the Palace staff had remained, maybe a contingent of guards. She'd even take one of those ducks scampering about at this point.

"The floor is pretty nice." Nami said in a clumsy attempt at making conversation. "Could almost eat off of it."

"Don't." Robin said, hardly paying attention.

"Wasn't going to." Nami said curtly. "Though you ought to know, I've eaten worse things."

"Is that so?"

"Better believe it. Once when I was thieving I got so angry that I bit into a bar of soap 'cause I remember being told that it was made of animal fat. I can still taste it."

Soap.

The word pierced through Robin's musing like a stone dart. She remembered the block of bone-white soap and the warning carved into it. She looked down at the floor and saw it gleaming like unsheathed steel.

"get off the -"

She only got out the first part of that warning before the boards buckled beneath her feet. Warm tones of the wood changed into frothing yellow-white bubbles that fixed her in place. Robin had just enough time to summon a ladder of cloned limbs beneath Nami's feet and shoot her up, screaming, into the eaves. She took a deep breath as the white climbed to cover her eyes and darkness fell in a curtain.

"I must admit - I'm a bit disappointed."

The voice was treacle-like and haughty. It brought Robin back to consciousness like a slowly lapping tide pulling at her feet.

"Ignoring my warning was expected, accounted for even. But the way you progressed after that was just ... boring. I expected more from the girl whosank two navy ships at such a tender age."

Robin resisted the urge to open her eyes. She wouldn't let her interrogator get the satisfaction of seeing a stupefied expression pass over her face. Instead she let herself re-centre, felt her body coming back to her, piecemeal. Only when she could feel the bite of cuffs into her wrists did she - slowly - open up and take in her surroundings.
At first guess, she reckoned that she was in some kind of bathroom. A likely place for torture and interrogation. White walls and floor, with a sterile taste to the air. Yet, as she looked closer, the whiteness wasn't the white of tiles or porcelain. It was the creamy, lathe-like blankness of soap bars. It was as if she'd been shrunk and stowed in a candle, which was oozing and solidifying around her.

Her interrogator was no less artificial-looking. A peach-skinned young woman with glasses that shone like the varnished floor she'd just been walking on. Her blonde hair was done up in a prim bun and her pink lips were pursed as she scanned a piece of yellowing paper, pupils slightly blurring as her eyes flitted from side to side.

"Don't struggle. You're likely to cut open a vein."

Robin looked down and saw what she was referring to. Her arms were bound to the chair by a black rope. Jutting out from it were thorny spikes, some several inches long. She saw a faint maroon tinge circling her wrist and knew that spikes on the underside had already drawn blood. Is she moved indelicately, a river of it might spill out on to the white floor.

"I had at first considered using sea-stone cuffs but it would seem you had a lock-picking friend." The other woman drawled. "So I settled for this. You should be honoured. I don't use this weapon for most people, the soap is usually enough."

Taunts. Clearly meant to frighten her. Robin wouldn't be unsettled so easily.

"Who are you?"

The interrogator adjusted their glasses while smiling.

"Just the person who's going to ask you some questions. Try and answer them as truthfully as you can. Although I know that might be difficult -"

"I meant what's your call sign."

That struck where it was supposed to. Her captor's face was momentarily twisted by an expression of surprise, before settling back into pristine neutrality.

"I see nothing gets past you." She said, only a little irritably. "Cipher Pol 9."

Drawing herself away from the moment, Robin scoured her mind for what she knew about the Government's clandestine operations. A list of cells tasked with overseeing espionage, interrogation and counter-insurgency. It officially was a tiered system that went from 0 through to 8, with no mention of a 9. Yet she'd heard rumours of a secret group that handled extrajudicial killings, assassination and the like. A slight chuckle built in her throat, for in many cultures 9 was an auspicious number. And also a mark of death.

"Never heard of it." She lied.

"That is unsurprising, We are a peacekeeping group. Off record." The interrogator said. "We've been stationed here for some time, dealing with revolutionary elements. Then you showed up and made things even more complicated."

"You invited us. remember?"

"My overheads invited the Pirate Empress and her crew, not you. They thought they could speed up the hit we were given by the highest powers to carry out. It's this kind of bureaucratic meddling that makes a job impossible. I'm not sure if a criminal can understand but it's very vexing."

"I may have an inkling." Robin replied, coolly taking care to not rise to the bait. "I take it that your target is Cobra?"

"It was. I had really devised the perfect method of execution. No need for the boys to get their hands dirty. No need to even lift a finger!" She chortled at some private joke. "After all, an attack would be unnecessary if the target was applying the poison themselves."

She held up a a dainty hand. From out her palm, soapy bubbles bloomed. They rested on her skin like frogspawn, some of the smaller ones floating up and popping. She then swirled it and it changed, gathering together and becoming a bar of the same white soap that had been placed in the tray of the bathroom all those nights ago.

"People like to keep clean, in this country especially." She continued. "Which is a real boon for us. How else could we make it so that the mark would literally work his undoing into his own skin?"

Without warning, she closed the distance between them and stroked Robin's arm with a sopping hand. Robin felt weariness ebb from her skin, then a complete loss of sensation. She tried to make it move, to swat the other woman's hand away but the limb was paralysed. She had to watch the interrogator's fingers trail down her flesh and come away with bubbles floating out from her fingertips.

The deadening she felt in her arm was uncanny but it helped numb her to the pain of the thorny whip. Either the interrogator wanted her conscious enough to answer complex questions or she wasn't smart enough to realise how one action might cancel out the other. Whatever the case, it meant that Robin might have more chances to turn this situation around than she first assumed.

"Devil fruit?" She enquired. "Paramecia?"

"Right on both counts," The other woman said, inspecting her nails. "The bubble fruit. Cleans away everything - dirt, grime, even a person's control over their own body."
"A weapon that lets you kill while keeping your hands clean? No wonder the government gave it you."

"Alas, not everyone has the ability to clone multiple hands for whatever scheme they have brewing in their mind. Some of us must work with what we have. And what we have now, Devil Child, is you."

"I take that to mean you're finally about to clarify what you want from me?"

"What I personally wanted was for you to not not get involve, remember?" She said testily, "That way I may have had my kill and the promotion I'm owed. Instead, I had to come clean about you being here, Now all the boss says is did you capture Nico Robin? Have you interrogated Nico Robin? Did Nico Robin show you where the Asset is ? Bah!" A single flick of hair came undone from her perfectly slicked-back bob. She didn't put it back into place. "Now the killing of Cobra will seem of secondary importance to the capture of you. The whole team will get the credit! I could have been the singular killer of the king but no, no, you just had to mess things up..."

Robin parsed through her rambling to tr and discern if she'd done the deed and if the Kuja had taken to blame.

"The way you talk gives me reason to think that you haven't gone through with it. What's wrong? Can the government no longer multitask?"

The woman's doll-like face grew especially ugly at that remark, before her lips twisted into a cruel smile.

"No, he has yet to be neutralised. Things just ... got out of hand."

There was a mighty THUD. Robin flinched and the barbed manacles she wore shed a few more drops of her blood on the floor.

"Oh my. Looks like the fight is getting closer. Must be close to the end." the soap-woman noted, unbothered. "Would you like to see what I mean? Though I should warn you - You'll probably ask me to bleach your eyes once you've seen it."

Chapter Text

The fight was over swiftly. Or at least, the fighting was. Fights tend to linger long after the last blow was struck.

Still, it was as definitive a victory as could be imagined. One uppercut, lifting her opponent clean off her feet and sending her flying to the arena's edge. She would have certainly carried on and fallen in the bed of spikes that surrounded the battle zone but Hancock had prepared for that. Mere seconds after launching her enemy into the air, she rushed to the perimeter and caught her before she could fall and be impaled on the blades below. She then deposited her on the blood-stained stone floor. Mercy had never looked so disdainful.

The crowd ate it up. They roared their approval and stamped their feet, while beneath them came the sound of snakes hissing and rattling, offering up their own chthonic applause. It put Robin in mind of a pot come to boil. Did that mean that Hancock was about to be served to the Kuja like a meal on a platter? Her mind went to the occult symbol of the snake eating its own tail and she counted herself lucky (a thing she rarely did) that she had only ever needed to be a survivor and not a fighter.

The other sisters were handling their elder sibling's victory in their own way. Sandersonia had collapsed to the floor again, although not in her usual throes of painful remembrance. She seemed ecstatic, feeling an elation that made her appear like a puppet with its strings cut than any kind of warrior. Rapture, perhaps. Marigold, ever the anchor, had her hand flat on her sister's quivering back. She was as stone-faced as ever but Robin could see tears pooling in the corners of her eyes.

Turning back to the fight, Robin saw Hancock be given the vestments of a Kuja captain. The golden epaulettes, the cape (Robin felt a rush of relief when she realised how completely it covered her back) and the earrings. Then came the snakes.

Two of them, with red and black stripes. They were meant to be place on the arms of any prospective empress and permitted to sink their fangs into her flesh. If she was really worthy of the title, then she would only be strengthened by the venom. If not, the Kuja would be spared a weakling on the throne before she even had a chance to sit in it.
Hancock seemed to scarcely notice notice the offered serpents, instead taking utmost care that the cape sat well on her shoulders and moved as she did. When she eventually turned her attention to the matron, she took all of two seconds to register the snakes and their purpose before snatching them and letting them bite her wrists, as casually as putting on a pair of gloves.

The collective gasp from the crowd was immediately followed by a collective hush as everyone saw how the snakes grew utterly rigid, like they were in the throes of rigor mortis. Looking down apathetically, Hancock plucked one of them and pressed it to her breast. Once again, no expression on her face as it stuck its fangs in. She then let the other one join in, spreading her arms and arcing her neck back to give the assembled Kuja the best view possible.

Letting everyone see her front so no one would think to pay heed to her back. Robin never doubted her lover's ability to work a crowd but even she was unprepared for how well she covered her bases. She really did remind her of the snake biting its own tail, her whole body forged into one closed impenetrable loop.

The snakes fell off and were deposited on the ground. As Hancock began a speech Robin had helped her written - a lot to do with making sure the navy didn't dare intrude on Kuja waters, a standard promise of plunder and new positions being made on a new ship, a better ship - Robin noticed the pair of serpents starting to twine around each other amorously at her feet. An auspicious omen if there ever was. If Robin were ever permitted to write the history of this place, she'd be sure to place emphasis on that little detail. A good history was nothing without such way markers.

A wide hand settled on her shoulder. Marigold's.

"Get ready, we're up next. Hancock did most of the work we just need to help her stick the landing. You ready?"

Robin nodded, though she refrained from telling the second-oldest sister that the work had barely begun. She fell into line, the two Gorgons leading the way with their massive forms, her bringing up the rear like a shadow.

The air in the arena was as dry as bone and sticky like blood. Mari and Sonia played their part, flexing their muscles and letting their hair writhe into strange and powerful forms. Robin looked around furtively, manifesting an arm here and there to scoop up the pieces of bone and metal which were littered around them. Mementos of this day. She had not been able to take anything from Ohara so she made sure to take what she could of different places when she could. It would have to serve as the foundation for her life here. Their life here.

Hancock noticed her scavenging and bade her come closer. Robin did so, starting to feel the crowd take notice of her, the other girl in the midst of their new leaders. Robin felt ice bloom beneath her skin and begin to crack, same way it always did when people started to pay attention to her. It was alleviated somewhat by Hancock standing so close, the haki coming off her body in waves of exhaustion and triumph. She had not been bruised at all in the fight but a line of blood still trickled down from her lower lip. Most likely she'd been biting down on it as she battled, focusing on winning and winning in the most convincing way possible. Now she basked in the glow of victory, with no one screaming her name seeing the line of red that served as the only proof of any struggle on her part.

Hancock sensed Robin's stare and bent down to give her a little kiss. The blood was thus deposited on her forehead. Robin felt it dry beneath the glare of the midday sun and the eyes of the Kuja pirates.

Robin turned this memory over in her head as she was marched over to the window. She expected to be have her face shoved into the glass but instead, her captor thrust her into the very wall itself. The white surface bubbled and parted to admit her, sucking her in as she was pushed through a now viscous mass. She could feel it 'cleaning' her, penetrating every pore in a strange humiliation ritual. Then she emerged on the other side in a blinding flash of light.

Blinking to adjust, Robin realised a number of things simultaneously.

firstly, she was very, very high up. The base of Alubarana's great wall was beneath her, countless feet beneath her. It seemed that this soap room was somehow attached to the wall like a barnacle. Wind whipped her hair back and forth, carrying a very familiar scent. Robin prayed that it wasn't what she thought it was, knowing that it almost certainly was.

Secondly, the sun was very high in the sky. It was most certainly midday. As to what day it was, she had no idea. She just knew that the midday sun in Alabasta was potentially lethal to anyone with the right protection. She knew of the classic punishments doled out to criminals by the world government and those they empowered - buried up to their heads in sand, left on the shore in a leather vest with the tide coming in. Shoved into a large bar of soap miles above ground with the sun high in the sky was definitely a new one. Wonder where they got the inspiration from.

Thirdly - and most importantly - there was a battle unfolding outside the city.

Beyond the wall and the gates, a massive cloud of dust billowed up to the stainless sky. At its base she could glimpse scurrying forms locked in heated conflict. No individual detail could be spotted from so high up but Robin got a basic impression of a side with white cloaks facing a more colourful group. The way the smoke eddied and fluxed spoke to the movements of great, serpentine forms in its depths. Robin felt a sinking feeling so profound that was like she had already fallen to her death on the rocks below.

"They've been at this for some time." The woman's crooning voice came out through the walls of soap, encompassing Robin with its mockery. "They went after the boys when they escaped, not realising I snatched you. When they did they tried to make a complete U-turn but the army had already assembled and was ready to meet them." She gave a bubbly laugh. "Funny, I thought that snakes were meant to be smart. Your entourage was a lot more like a pack of dogs that had a flame lit beneath their asses."

Robin blocked her out and tried to focus on the battle. The dust cloud made it difficult to perceive but she saw that the Zoan snake forms were not attacking, or at least not striking as she had expected. They rippled in defensive lines, keeping back the press of men. The king's soldiers weren't letting up at all, waving fan-bladed pikes and shooting off rifles in a complete frenzy. Robin could see that they were being pushed; sudden streaks in the air materialised at their rear, striking down individuals and forcing the whole clanking mass closer to the coils of their opponents.

"I had the boys keep them on their toes." The voice continued. "Can't have the two sides chatting things out. Don't worry, once I get word that the king has succumbed, I'll give the order for execution. Put them out of their misery."

Robin continued to ignore her and focus on the battle but the material of the soap block started to crawl up her face. It covered her mouth and hardened, leaving her only her nose to breathe with. To keep her from yelling, as if anyone could hear her up here with the din of battle all about. Or maybe her captor was just so chronically incompetent that she couldn't handle her prisoner talking back to her.

"I now what you're thinking." The woman said. "What am I going to do to you? The answer to that is - nothing. I know torture doesn't yield information. So I'll let you be here for a while longer. Watch the battle while it winds down. You can see the pirates you hid among be taken away. When the sun sets I'll come back for you. You'll have a whole day to reflect on your life before we take you away and bring this whole ridiculous chase to a close."

She then gave the same bubbling cackle again, growing fainter as she exited the room. There was a small bumping noise and an 'ow!'. Clearly she had hit the door frame on her way out.

Robin put her out of her mind and re-focused on the battle. She had the details. She had a time frame. All she needed now was a way out and a way down to the fight.

Chapter Text

The day wore on. A way out and down to the fight did not reveal itself.

Robin had presumed the operative's power to be a silly party trick flavour of paramecia of devil fruit ability that was dime-a-dozen on the early stages of the Grand Line. But the soap constraints had proved frustratingly durable. It hadn't melted in the glare of the Alabastan sun nor had she been able to move her body enough to properly extract herself. She felt no sea stone on her person but she still couldn't summon her own power, not so much as a limb. She remembered how the agent had babbled about 'cleanness' and stripping someone of their strength by applying this power to them. It stood to reason that having been shoved into a cage of the stuff, Robin couldn't even twitch her muscles. Only her mind was still working exactly as it should, taking in all details. She wasn't sure whether she should be grateful or angry for that.

The battle, if it could be called that, roared on dully, a stalemate that doubtless had more to do with Hancock's restraint than any skill on the army's part. The sun sank beyond the river. The cloud of dust began to swirl less violently and settle back on the earth it had been loosed from. Robin couldn't tell exactly what had happened from her vantage point but guessed that it was likely winding down. Perhaps either side had taken hostages and were engaged in negotiations. As much as she loved Hancock, Robin knew that the empress was not one to engage in diplomacy at the best of time. She was certainly not going to attempt to start a dialogue after such a battle with her blood up. Not that it mattered. If those beast-users were really stalking the battlefield then nothing would come of such negotiations. They could just swipe at any random troop and hostilities would re-commence. Such was the power of controlling the field - not needing to to participate in the battle but still deciding who lived and died.

Visibility waned. The officer hadn't returned to gloat. Seems they were making good on their word to make sure that Robin drank up the entire spectacle without being able to do anything about it. Or that bump to the head she'd suffered upon leaving the room had resulted in her falling to her death. Neither scenario much availed her but Robin liked to imagine the blond woman's head cracked open. She wondered if bubbles and suds would come pouring out of her skull instead of brains. Nothing about their conversation had indicated that she had a particularly well-furnished mind so it wouldn't surprise the captive archaeologist in the least if a bath bomb was found nestled in her skull post-mortem in place of the regular organ.

That was her kind of humour. And a little bit of Hancock's. At least the cracking skulls part was. Conjuring up that little scenario had only served to remind her that they weren't together. She was stuck in a box and her empress was sweating and likely cursing on some dust-caked battlefield with night falling around them. A lifetime of surviving could not come to this - being trapped in a cube of processed animal fat while her lover was set up to take the fall for some shadowy assassin group that sought to take out a recalcitrant king on behalf of the world government.

Her mind started to work faster, as if rebelling against the fading light. She tried to think of what an animal might do in this kind of scenario, given that at least two of her captors were Zoans. A snake? A snake was the exact opposite of her usual multi-limbed self so perhaps it was best in this moment to imagine herself as one, cut off as she was from use of her powers. A snake turned a seemingly limited body to one of endless possibilities, turning and twisting to evade predators and track down prey. Her body was not paralysed and some freedom of motion remained to her. She tried to crane her neck back and forth - not unlike the way she'd seen Hancock do before commencing a fight - to see if it could weaken the wall in some way. It proved harder than expected. The soap had a cement-like consistency and seemed to have gotten harder with night's descent, perhaps due to the cold. Robin had aspired to be a snake but was increasingly feeling like a fly trapped in amber.

It was then when she remembered the nature of soap - it dissolved upon exposure to water. Not that Robin had any water to hand. All she had was her mouth, which was predictably dry after a hot Alabastan day. Still, she summoned as much saliva as she could and spat it on the soap walls. Better to spit than do nothing.

This she did for a while. spitting as best she could in the same locations in the hope that this would weaken the soap enough for some kind of breakage to occur.

Her face down, spitting at her bonds, sand picked up on the wind getting lodged in her ears. It was not a situation she ever expected to be in. It seemed just a little while ago that she was exploring the ruins and looking for clues to the location of this country's prize poneglyph. Now she was high up, seeing everything yet powerless to intervene. It was like a punishment reserved for the culture heroes that got too cocky and flew too close to the sun, in national myths and the like. Well, Robin had been punished since she was a child and for little more than reading that which she wasn't supposed to read. Didn't matter how elaborate the punishments got, she would not abandon her quest for truth. She spat out some more saliva, this time flecked with blood.

The air grew more chill. She started to feel more desperate, despite her best efforts to keep her cool. She stopped spitting and started to bite, craning her neck enough to let her sink her front teeth into the block's chalky surface. It barely scraped away the skin but she persisted. Even if only her mouth was left to her she'd use it to bite through any attempts to smother her. Cut off her limbs and she'd tear out their throats with her teeth. She would -

"You call this archaeology?!"

Startled by the noise, Robin ceased her biting and looked to her side. What she saw made the little soap she'd managed to tear off fall from out her mouth and go tumbling to the ground below.

Nami. Or, at least, it seemed to be her. A red haired girl, hovering in the air with no apparent support or leverage. Her trembling hands grasped the blue baton she'd used earlier, her legs wrapped around its full extended length, like a witch's broom. They had a moment to lock eyes. Robin saw a disbelief in the young girl's face that completely awed her. The kind of expression that screams what was I thinking coming up here, do I have a death wish?! It was the expression she herself had worn on more than one occasion. Seeing it up here was like the ghost of her younger self had hovered all the way above the earth and come here to gaze at her, stuck in her most absurd situation thus far.

Then there was the sound of some mechanism giving out and Nami started to fall.

Robin opened her mouth as a cry came up from her parched throat but just when it seemed that the girl would plummet to her death, a sudden burst of wind spurt out of the device. Nami was propelled at rocket speed right into the wall of the soap-cell, flattened against it like a pancake. With cat-like speed she ripped out a dagger and plunged it into the waxy white stuff. Thus anchored, she hung alongside Robin's bemused head.

There were worse ways to make an entrance.

"Hello." She said, trying - and failing - to keep the fear out of her voice. "I'm guessing this is the real head right? There's not another version of you some place else."

Robin closed her eyes and opened them, just to confirm she wasn't hallucinating. When it became apparent that Nami really was there, stuck to the wall like a swatted fly, she spoke, trying hard not to sound too grateful.

"Where exactly have you been?"

"Hey, I tried to come earlier but when I realise you were up here but the air's been too parched, there was no moisture! I had to wait for night for things to get cooler and even then I was barely making any progress. " He knife moved slightly and she gave a audible eek! huddling closer against the wall.

"OK, well you're here now." Robin's ears heard distant booms - possible signs of the battle picking up again. "I trust you have a plan for getting us down safe."

"No, I thought you did."

"If I had a plan why would I still be stuck up here?!"

"I knew you were stuck but I figured you knew once to do once you got loose! What have you been doing up here, staring at the horizon?"

Robin growled, remembering all the time spent spitting and biting.

"This is why I don't work well with others."

"Me too. Now what?"

A faint chill wind caused them both to shiver.

"I have an idea. Can that thing of yours make the soap wet?"

"Of course it can. But we'd likely plummet down the moment it started to break apart."

"Don't worry about that. I can stall our descent."

"Stall?! I don't want to stall I want to not fall at all!"

"Oh, you're rhyming. Maybe it's the altitude." Robin turned her neck as much as she was able and affixed her with her stare. "You know, coming up is harder than going down. Both are easier if you do it with another. Either way - we can't stay here any longer."

Nami looked doubtful. Still, she slowly reached for the baton shoved into her belt and pulled it out. Holding it against the soap wall, a large ball of moist air cold, damp air bloomed on its tip, swelling until it encompassed the whole block.

Robin felt its effects immediately, sped up by the chill of the night. She had seconds to concentrate, to fix on the image she wanted to make with her power, before the waxen structure started to break apart and their descent began.

Chapter Text

"So, what's your power?"

Robin flinched. This girl was so forward. What's more, she clearly had some kind of Haki, making it hard to deny her request, Robin started to wonder why a person like this had been drinking out of a trough meant for horses.

They had slipped out of the space beneath the house and made a break for the outskirts of town. That was when they ran into the garrison of marines. Not stopping to break their momentum, the two bigger sisters changed; their bodies elongating, hair merging with flesh, scales appearing on their flesh. They tore through the rank and file, sending men up into the air like confetti at a wedding. One was stronger than the others and could move faster than the eye could see. He zig-zagged through the air before descending in an arc with a finger outstretched, ready to plunge into the heart of the girl with the black hair, the girl who hadn't transformed like her sisters.

Not even blinking, the eldest sister put up her hands and cupped them into a heart shape. A beam of pink light bloomed out of it, swallowing up the attacker. Before his finger could connect, his entire body changed - turned to stone.

The girl then casually stepped to one side as the now-statue plummeted to the ground and shattered into several pieces. The girl didn't even look back to confirm he was dead.

Power-holders, all three of them. Meaning that there was next to no chance for her to outfight them. Based on what she'd seen, two had snake zoan fruits and the third had some kind of paramecia that let her turn a person's flesh to stone. Both abilities that countered her own quite considerably. Though even without powers in play, Robin doubted she could out-fight any of them. The black-haired one alone seemed stronger than several men.

So it was with resignation that she crossed her arms and made a few new limbs bloom. She considered making a few appear behind the three other girls, just to make a statement, but thought better of it. The black-haired one would likely spin around and pluck them out of the ground as if they were flowers. After a stressful day, the last thing that Robin wanted was the feeling of her arms being wrenched out of her sockets - even if the one doing the wrenching was pretty attractive. All things considered.

The green girl - Sonia - gave a low whistle of appreciation.

"That's a cool power." A forked tongue slipped out of her lips to taste the air, like she could somehow feel Robin's devil fruit on the night breeze. "It's like when you cut a worm and it makes two more."

"Sonia..." The bulky redhead grumbled, feeding their campfire more sticks.

"What?! I was being nice! We turn into snakes, that's not so different. Wonder if she was forced to eat her fruit as well..."

The black-haired girl stood up. That was all it took to keep the others from prattling. Cautiously but assuredly, she walked up tor Robin, still posing with her cloned limbs, looking like a statue.

The girl got close, Very close. Close enough for Robin to see her dark eyes and the light of the fire dancing in their pits. Her expression was impassible as she observed the arms Robin had made, like she was goading her to try and attack. Robin didn't rise to the bait. She knew, instinctively, that she could manifest a hundred arms and it wouldn't be enough to defeat this girl. The look in her eyes told her that.

Convinced that she wasn't going to attack, the oldest sister started to properly inspect the limbs, running her own fingers down them to feel the skin and the muscles and bone beneath. Her touch was light but electrifying; like a current of power was lying under the thin limbs and the ragged clothes. Robin wagered that a single flick from her would be enough to send her flying across the island.

"Well, these arms are flesh and blood at least." She muttered. "Are they any stronger than your normal ones or no?"

"No. They're clones." Robin replied.

"You can only make them on your own body or on other surfaces?"

"Other surfaces." She sprouted a couple arms from the ground, causing Sonia and Marigold to jump like they had seen ... well, a snake.

"Fascinating." The oldest sister said apathetically."That could prove useful. Can you make anything more with the limbs or is just more of yourself?"

"make anything? Like a horse?"

Sonia snickered at that. It was a nice sound, like the sniffling of some small animal. Reminded Robin of another giant's laugh...

The oldest sister wasn't laughing. Not making any kind of sound. Her eyes narrowed but Robin thought she saw her lips curve in a silent smirk.

"So you can't create things but you can clone your self. That's useful, I suppose. You can help with reconnaissance and stuff."

"Excuse me?"

"You're with us now, The marines saw you running away with us. Best we stick together. We can protect you."

She said these things in quick succession, like they were the most natural and obvious points to be made. The strangest thing was, Robin felt herself agreeing with her. Must have been the conqueror's Haki affecting her judgement or some aspect of her power she had yet to correctly discern. To think, this situation began because she saw a girl drinking head-first from a horse trough and thought she deserved less filthy water.

The more rational part of her brain acknowledged that there were three power users here, two zoan and one paramecia and one at least seemed to have Haki or at least the beginnings of Haki. Suffice to say it would take a while for her to slip out of this band. Besides, she could stand to benefit if she kept in close company to such people for a little while. Even if it meant hiding under houses now and again.

"My name's Hancock. This is Marigold and Sandersonia. And you are?"

Robin pondered for a moment if she should use an alias then thought better of it.

"Robin."

Not her family name, Just to be safe.

Hancock nodded before making her way back to her sisters. Robin took that moment to manifest an eye on the muscled back of the oldest sister It let her see herself in that moment - stained with dirt, wearing scuffed clothing and pinched at the cheeks from malnutrition but still alive.

The vision was cut off abruptly and Robin felt a sharp stinging inside her head. Blinking, her normal vision resumed and she saw Hancock in front of her in place of herself. The sister had her hand on her back - right where Robin had bloomed her eye. Swatted like a fly.

Hancock turned her neck by the faintest degree and fixed Robin with a narrowing eye.

"Nice to meet you, Robin."

As her and Nami plummeted to the ground below, Robin found herself reflecting on the memory of her first night with the sisters. Both the feeling of Hancock's power crackling through her body and the moment she'd been asked if she could make anything beyond replicas of her limbs.

Of course, it's difficult to think about anything with the air streaking past your face with gale-force intensity and a young women screaming in your ear at the top of her lungs.

Nami had wrapped her limbs around Robin in a strait jacket, such that she couldn't cross her arms to make her cloning pose. Her eyes were forced down as well, on to the approaching ground instead of the horizon. Chunks of the shattered soap house fell alongside them, falling to the earth and breaking into white dust. Robin could tell that they would fall squarely on to this bed of whiteness, turning into a red pulp of mangled flesh. She wondered if the blonde agent would have revelled in this outcome but then figured that the bubble-headed operative probably wouldn't be able to recognise good artwork even if it decked her in the face.

No time to contemplate her enemy's critical thinking skills, she told herself, she had to avoid a painful death.

"Let's switch positions!" She yelled up at the still-screaming Nami.

"ARE YOU INSANE?!"

"Let me be on the top and you be on the bottom!"

"NO, NO, NO, NO!" Nami screeched, thrusting against Robin's back. "I REFUSE TO LET THIS BE THE LAST THING I HEAR!"

Robin rolled her eyes and bloomed four arms on her back, lifting Nami off it with a hefty push. They fell in this manner, looking like a figure skating act that was falling like a comet. Then Robin curled and threw off Nami with her new arms, so their positions were reversed.

Renewed screaming from Nami was terminated when Robin shot out a vine made of conjoined arms to grab her and hoist her back up. Then the complicated part began.

Shutting her eyes, Robin imagined arms. More arms than she had ever manifested before and in a combination that she had only imagined and never attempted. She felt them surge out of her back in a fleshy mass and congregate together in a new shape. Transforming instead of replicating, stitching and merging in a way that sends jolts of pain through her wind racked body. She remembered the dream she had all those nights before, with her as a giant standing above the Red Line. Now she was a speck descending at breakneck pace to the ground below. But the memory of that power, that monstrous power helped her imagine a body beyond her own. Helped her do something more than clone herself again. Helped her stretch her power to its breaking point to make...

She felt the shape that had bloomed out of her back taper into a final form.

Sucking in a lungful of air, Robin rolled the muscles of her back and moved her new wings.

The effect was instantaneous. The ground, so close now, receded as the new limbs buoyed the pair up a good few meters. Nami's cries of fear trailed into bemused whimpering as they were borne upward. The strain was unlike anything Robin had ever felt - it was as if someone had grafted two ship's rudders on to her back. She was agonisingly aware of each individual arm and hand that had been merged into two wings, barely holding together and struggling to maintain coherence with the additional weight of Nami dragging her back towards the earth. She wagered that she only had a couple more flaps before the wings disappeared in a shower of pink petals and they resumed falling and went SPLAT when they reached the ground.

"An up draft, please." She said to Nami through gritted teeth.

"An up-what?!"

"An up-draft!" Robin clarified, flaring temper making them drop a few more feet. "If you still have that tool on you, then a gust of air would be much appreciated about now!"

Her wings were starting to come apart. Individual parts popped like balloons and they started to fall in a jerky, erratic manner. Nevertheless, Nami managed to produce her weapon with shaking hands and started to turn the knobs.

"You know, if this fails, we'll just be falling from a much larger height!" She yelled back up to Robin.

"I'm aware of the risks!" Said Robin, now close to dropping the meteorological thief. "The thing is ... miss navigator .. risking a fall ... is the price you play .. for achieving true flight."

"Are you a magic papyrus now?"

"JUST MAKE WITH THE WIND!"

Cursing with the anger of several drunken sailors, Nami thrust the clima-tact down at the earth right as the last few tendons of Robin's wings began to tear.

The bubble at its end popped and the pair were sent rocketing into the sky.

Across her research, Robin had seen many figures with wings and had come to understand them as being apocryphal. Metaphorical. Symbolic. A variety of words but never 'literal'.

For that reason she was majorly unprepared for the actual business of flying.

The air burst bore them aloft until the were in the moisture of the clouds. A writhing, serpentine current sent the pair of them spiralling away from the wall and into the open sky. Robin's wings - if they could still be called wings - were cutting apart pieces of the cloud bank, making all she saw a patchwork of blue and white rolling under one another in an endless loop. Nami was still bound to her at least. Her screams coming out as sharp exclamations instead of the continuous shriek she'd uttered since the soap box had fallen above.

Much less dignified than the images of flying figures she'd encountered across her research.

She caught glimpses of the horizons swathed under a mass of brown sediment and uprooted sand. The battle was on again in earnest and they were still some distance away. The current that Nami had summoned was powerful but completely uncontrolled and had the pair of them zig-zagging across the sky like a drunken bumblebee. Robin tried to master the gust with her wings but the competing winds meant that they never stayed on one course for long. It was like Nami had trapped a Grand Line level typhoon inside her little tool and had taken the lid off.

"If - you could - maybe - throttle it?" Robin spluttered out.

"I'm trying, I'm trying!" Nami replied. The gust ebbed in its intensity before rising once again as the weather-worker struggled to get a handle on the tempest she had summoned. Robin tried to test the air with her wings but it didn't stay fixed long enough for her to achieve a dignified glide. The battle was getting closer but reaching it wouldn't mean anything if they crashed on the edges of the fight. They needed to get into the dead centre. That's where Hancock would be. That's where she needed to be.

Just when it seemed that they would never achieve stability, Robin felt the air current dip into a smooth, cushioning pocket of wind. She looked down and saw that Nami had at last turned her weapon's dials into the right sequence. Warm air flowed, just the right temperature to support her tattered wings. The path straightened and they finally made their way forward.

"Thank you." She said down to her quivering passenger. "I knew you could do it."

"Yeah. Nothing to it" Nami's nose wrinkled as they got in closer, tasting the smell of the battle field. "Are we actually going straight into the fight? Like ... straight, straight in?"

"That was the intent."

"That seems ... ill-advised."

"If you see this through with me, I'll also let you have some of my cosmetics to go with what you take from my wardrobe."

Nami sighed, defeated.

"Aye-aye captain."

The pair dived into the fray.

Chapter Text

Robin had imagined a delicate descent onto the battlefield.

A graceful arc around the battlefield, her wings fully extended. Perhaps Nami could have conjured a few tasteful lightning bolts to give the scene an appropriate amount of strum und drang. Then she’d alight, en pointe, in the dead centre of the fight (wherever that was) and explain what was really going on to everyone assembled. Maybe she would clone a few extra mouths to project her voice across the fray. People surely wouldn’t be frightened by a woman with wings and extra mouths flanked by lightning and demanding that they all listen. Right?

Her expectations were dashed the second they entered the dust cloud.

A tide of dust particles, sand grains and upturned grit slammed into the pair of them. Her wings of naked flesh lasted a couple of moments before they were filled with holes and shredded. The pair of them dropped. A projectile slammed into them and they were separated, Nami giving a meek yelp as she was dragged away by the force of the churning air.

Spears, arrows, snakes with their mouths open and their fangs bared … these things went flying past Robin as she tumbled through the maelstrom. Her efforts to bloom a new set of limbs were all for naught, as the barrage of projectiles and tidal rush of sediment tore any cloned arms to petals that were lost in the wind. This tempest couldn’t purely be the product of clashing armies. There had to be a person at the root of it all, someone with conqueror’s Haki who could let off these blasts that ruptured the very balance of nature … someone like the captain of the Kuja pirates.
As she curled into a ball to protect herself, Robin reflected on the irony - She had come flying in to save her lover only to be caught in the storm of her rage and tossed around like a rag doll in the air while she battled on the earth below. Fate and its little ironies.

A body thudded into her compacted form and she heard a gasp of air, followed by a now-familiar mewl of discomfort. Snapping her eyes open, she wrapped her arms and legs around Nami - dazed and covered in sand but seemingly none the worse for wear.

“Well, we meet again.” Robin quipped, struggling to be heard above the roar of battle. “Did you magnetise us with your lightning?”

“Not funny!”

“It is a little.” This girl was so humourless, it was quite frustrating. “Do you think you can make a display of sheet lightning?”

“Sheet lightning?! Are you nuts?!”

“No, I'm fruit. There’s plenty of dust in the air to make a charge, surely. We need to capture everyone’s attention, or are you comfortable flying around up here like this?”

As if on cue, a screaming navy man came catapulting towards them. Robin cloned an arm and swatted him aside in another direction before he could make impact with them both. His cries of fear became sounds of bewilderment before he was swallowed up by the dust storm.

“Fine!” Nami shifted in the older woman’s grasp to produce her clima-tact. “But you better put some distance between us if you don’t want to be electrocuted.”

“If you insist.” Robin said, with a dark chuckle. Before Nami could realise the implications of her request, she bloomed a chain of arms in a long vine from out her waist. Nami yelped again as she was pushed away, at the far end of this cord of flesh.

“Make sure it’s a big one!” Robin called from over her end.

Nami belted out a litany of insults that would make a sailor blush but Robin could make out sparks from out the end of her weapon.

She gritted her teeth and tried to maintain control over the anchor of arms she had bloomed. To think, she had come into this storm with wings, hoping to proclaim her discoveries to the entire mass of people below. Now she was holding the thief she’d partnered with at a distance, like a kite, and was anticipating a lightning strike.

Through the cloud, she saw the end of Nami’s weapon grow brighter and brighter, until it seemed like a miniature sun.

A faint crackle sped down the nape of her neck and across her spine. She closed her eyes just in time - the blast still registered as a flash of whiteness that seared her eyelids.

That had to do the trick.

Not bothering to open her eyes, she pulled Nami back, dissolving the cloned arms that made up the vine, one by one. She felt the air begin to calm, the storm subsiding after the blast that the pair of them had created. Seemed they’d caught the attention of the most powerful person on the battlefield.

One small problem though - no vortex of wind meant nothing keeping them aloft.

The second she had reeled Nami in, Robin felt the pair of them begin to drop.

She thought of trying to make wings again but thought better of it. Instead, she let out a stream of flowers from limbs she cloned, creating and dissolving in an instant to ensure a stream of pink pieces floating in their wake, like a signal flare.

She kept her eyes closed and placed her faith in whoever was below, knowing they would catch them. Her hand stroked Nami’s shaking head as they tumbled to the battle below.

“Why did you ask my name?”

They were on the edge of the sea, far away from the island’s main port. Hancock had raided nearby lobster pots and supplied them with a host of crustaceans for dinner. The sound of shells being cracked open accompanied the crackling of the fire in near-perfect symmetry. It had been the only noise throughout the night until Robin had asked her question.

“What do you mean?” Hancock asked, spitting out some shell pieces into the fire. “Isn’t that the polite thing to do?”

“Not what I meant.” Robin said briskly, not caring to be lectured on manners from someone who ate the shell and the flesh of lobsters in one bite. “What I meant was - you said that you knew who I was under the house. Then, when we escaped, you asked my name. Why? If you knew who I was, why ask my name.”

“I said I knew who you were, not that I knew your name. There’s a difference.”

Robin hadn’t been expecting that. She looked to the bigger sisters for clarification but they kept eating, picking apart the crabs and lobsters’ limbs with their gigantic hands.

“Meaning?”

Hancock rolled her eyes, clearly growing tired of the conversation.

“Meaning, I could tell who you were without needing to ask your name. I can tell things at a glance, I thought that should be obvious by now…”

“And who - what - am I, exactly?” Robin asked. She couldn’t seriously believe that this girl knew of her reputation while somehow also not knowing her name. That strained credulity.

Hancock turned, at last, to meet her gaze. The flames made her skin seem harder, like ceramic fired in a kiln. Her eyes were as dark as ever but Robin could have sworn that she saw them grow softer, even if only for a moment.

“A girl on the run. What else could you be?”

A branch cracked, somewhere deep in the forest. Hancock immediately started to stamp out the flames with her bare foot and backed away from the fire along with her sisters. From the other side, Robin was left to ponder the other girl’s words, while those black eyes continued to stare out from their hiding place.

The ground shifted beneath Robin. She felt scales against the bare skin of her neck. A slight groan emitting from her waist confirmed that Nami was still with her and still alive. Hopefully, they had both managed to make it down in one piece.

Two faces loomed above them, blocking out the sky. Robin saw golden slitted eyes and forked tongues lolling down like curtain blinds , completely bemused at the sight of what they had netted in their coils.

Marigold and Sandersonia. Looking no worse for wear.

“Hello girls.” Robin said, her voice weak with the sand she had swallowed while being swatted around in the dust cloud. “I knew I could trust in your Observation Haki. Glad to see you’ve been practising.”

The golden eyes blinked. Then they changed, becoming human. Robin felt the joined coils formed the bed which had caught her begin to part, as the sisters’ bodies changed back into their normal selves. Robin was shifted and nudged into a standing position, still holding the younger woman to her chest. As the snake forms shifted and parted, she started to take in her surroundings - pirates with bare, tattooed skin and snake bows on one side, men with lamellar armour and shredded white capes on the other. It may have been her imagination but Robin thought she saw little bolts of lightning shooting off of their limbs and the metal points of their weaponry. Seems that Nami’s little weather trick had worked. Now all she needed to do was convince everyone assembled that they had been manipulated into attacking each other, while also not giving away the fact she was sorely wanted by the World Government and had been since she was a child. No pressure.

With one hand on Nami to keep her from falling, Robin held up an arm and began to prepare a speech, only to be interrupted by a shudder of power that snaked through the ranks of the men.
Robin groggily registered the site of white caped soldiers being thrown aside before the front line was blasted apart and a streak of red came crashing into her.

She initially raised her hands to block only to be swept up in a crushing hug. Black hairs tickled her nose and she felt long nails dig into the flesh of her back. Shudders travelled through this person and into her own body. At her feet, she felt a scaled trunk slither across her feet and wrap around her ankles. Salome.

Hancock. Back from the front lines.

Tentatively as she could, she pulled away from her lover and tried to get a clear look at her face.

What she saw came as a bit of a shock.

The pirate empress was crying. Not in the demure, aesthetic way that some might expect her to do. The perfect symmetry of her face was lost. Her cheeks were puffed and reddened, streaked with grime. The tears came as rushing rivulets that dampened her skin. The eyes, usually so penetrating and dark, were scrunched tight. Robin could only glimpse a flash of pinkish sclera. A thick thread of snot hung down from her nose and swayed side to side like the pendulum of a grandfather clock.

All in all not the most dignified appearance for one of the seven warlords of the sea.

“I thought - I thought you were DEAD!” The empress managed to say between sniffles.

“There, there.” Robin cooed, patting down her back. Her cape was intact. Good to know her mark hadn’t been revealed in the battle. “You know, practical archaeology is full of upsets. I just got a little sidetracked…”

“Don’t jest. She was about to lay waste to the entire city.” Marigold hissed, lowering her big head while casting her eyes at the two armies, murmuring among themselves about this sudden upset. “We need to get back behind the others so we can explain to them…”

“One second, sister.” Sandersonia pointed to Nami, who was starting to buckle and lean over. “I think Robin’s friend is about to-”

Nami finished her sentence for her, by opening her mouth and letting out a stream of vomit. Chunks of it splashed about on the sandy ground and an individual fleck ended up on the foot of the empress.

Silence. Nami went bug-eyed and looked up at the warlord with a face of silent pleading. Hancock, having regained something of her posture, wrinkled her nose as she looked down on the offending piece of sick, which was swiftly wiped away by Salome as he hurriedly slithered across his master’s foot. Then she calmly looked up and gave a small - and unusually benign - smile.

“Well the important thing is you and your … friend … are both safe now.”

The words were sincere enough but Robin could feel the sound of her lover’s Haki build like vibrating crystals. Going through the length of the battle without getting so much as a scratch only to have her foot marked by puke was probably not going to do anything for her mood.

The ranks of the Alabastan army rippled and they parted to admit a newcomer. A giant duck waddled out of the mass of men. On its back, panting, was the princess herself. Vivi.

“I’ve been trying to say … they already doubled back to the …” The panting royal stopped mid-sentence when she caught sight of her carrot-haired paramour still clutching the sparking clima-tact and hastily wiping the last flecks of vomit off her mouth.

She immediately dismounted and rushed to Nami, burying herself in the latter’s shaking arms. They fell to their knees, muttering assurances and stroking each other’s heads, uncaring to either the pirates or the soldiers.

Silence reigned for a short time. Then a voice from within the crowd spoke up.

“So, does anyone know what that lightning was all about?”