The Rain Feast Casino occupied a building that understood its purpose. Above the surface it wore the pleasantries of the most luxurious establishment in Rainland, a city whose entire identity was built around the promise of water in a land that almost never received any. Below the surface, in the floors that did not appear on any public directory, things were conducted with considerably more frankness.
Robin stood at the end of the second basement corridor with her hands folded, her posture carrying the professional composure of a woman who had learned to make stillness look natural. She had been in Alabasta long enough that the underground air, the particular quality of stone and filtered lamplight and the distant hum of casino machinery above, had stopped registering as unusual.
Footsteps on the stairs.
The woman who appeared at the top of the landing was tall, with the kind of presence that tended to produce silence in rooms before she had said anything. Her face carried a natural severity that was not unkindness but simply the baseline expression of someone who had decided long ago that other people's comfort was not her primary responsibility. She moved with the ease of a person who had never once in her life been required to make herself smaller.
The waiter who had been leading the way reached the bottom of the stairs slightly ahead of her and appeared to be making a sustained effort not to look directly backward.
"Nico Robin," Hancock said, her voice carrying the slight upward inflection of a statement dressed as a question, her eyes already running their assessment. "Crocodile's deputy." A brief pause. "You look the same."
"Thank you for coming," Robin said, and then looked at the waiter. "I'll take it from here. You can go."
The waiter departed with the visible relief of a man who had been granted a reprieve.
Robin looked at Hancock.
Hancock looked at Robin.
The corridor held them both for three or four seconds in the way that shared history held people, with the quality of something that was taking stock of the distance.
Then the severity on Hancock's face broke, the way ice broke in early spring, not gradually but all at once, and she smiled.
"Robin," she said, and this version of her name, said like that, sounded entirely different from the formal recitation of a moment ago.
"It's been too long," Robin said, and her own smile was the warm, genuine kind that she was careful not to produce in front of Crocodile.
They had known each other since childhood. The G-7 years, the complicated years of growing up in an institution that was at once a marine base and, for two girls who had arrived there for very different reasons, a home of sorts. Hancock had been older and possessed the particular quality of older girls who are not condescending about it. Robin had been, in those years, still working out what she was and what she wanted, and Hancock had been one of the few people who had neither required her to explain herself nor looked at her like something that needed managing.
Different paths had separated them afterward. Hancock back to Amazon Lily, then the Kuja Pirates, then the Warlords. Robin deeper into Marine Intelligence, and then the long undercover assignment that had brought her here.
Come to think of it, it had been years.
"Is that bastard Crocodile treating you decently?" Hancock asked, with the tone of someone who had specific opinions about the answer and was verifying them.
"He doesn't trust me at all," Robin said pleasantly. "Which is exactly the correct level of trust to have in someone you've known for two years under these circumstances. It makes my work easier."
Hancock's expression indicated that she found this answer characteristic.
"When this is over," she said, "come back to Amazon Lily for a while. Salome misses you. The Kuja warriors keep asking about you." A pause, then more quietly: "I miss you too, if we're being honest."
Robin's expression held something warm and briefly unguarded. "I'll consider it," she said. "After the mission."
Hancock understood the weight of that. "After the mission," she agreed.
Then Robin glanced at the corridor and straightened slightly. "They're all waiting. You're the last to arrive."
Hancock's expression returned to its natural state of composed authority. "I wasn't informed I was expected to rush."
"No one said you were."
"Good." She adjusted the fit of her coat with the gesture of someone settling a matter of personal presentation, and nodded. "Then let's proceed."
The third basement floor was where Crocodile worked when he wanted to work without being observed, which in practice meant most of the time. His office had the dimensions and the atmosphere of a room designed by someone who understood that authority was at least partially a matter of furniture arrangement. The desk was positioned to require visitors to cross the full width of the space before reaching it. The lighting was adequate without being warm. The enormous aquarium panel that formed one full wall glowed a deep, shifting blue, and behind it, something large and slow and prehistoric moved through the filtered water.
It was, Robin had always thought, a very particular kind of statement about oneself.
Crocodile was behind the desk with a cigar, watching the door with the focused patience of someone who has finished waiting and has entered the phase of sustained expectation. His left hand rested on the desk surface, the hook catching the light.
On the sofa to his left, Mihawk was examining the contents of a wine glass with the profound attention of a man who was here because there was nowhere else that had seemed worth going. His coat was folded over the sofa arm. Yoru leaned against the armrest beside him with the casual proximity of an old companion, its massive black blade somehow managing to look at rest without looking harmless. He had glanced at the door when Robin entered with Hancock, assessed the situation in the span of one second, and returned his attention to the wine.
Beside Mihawk on the extended sofa, Spandine sat with the neat self-containment of a man who had attended many meetings in his career and understood the value of taking up the correct amount of space. His suit was dark, his posture correct, his temples carrying the gray of accumulated years and the particular kind of experience that left visible marks. Behind him, standing with the stillness of someone who was present for security purposes without advertising it, was Who's Who.
In front of the aquarium, with his back to the room and his attention apparently on the enormous banana crocodile drifting beyond the glass, stood a figure so large that his presence shifted the room's proportions. Jinbe turned when he heard them enter, and his broad face opened into something genuinely uncomplicated.
"The Pirate Empress," he said. "This must be our first meeting."
Hancock took in the room, completed her assessment, and said, "Jinbe-senpai." The word was respectful in the precise way that covered several levels of meaning. As pirates, he was a senior. As Warlords, he was a senior. As what they both actually were, underneath the public profiles, he was very much a senior, and had been for considerably longer.
Jinbe received this and understood all of it.
Spandine rose slightly from his seat, with the practiced courtesy of a man who had met Hancock on several prior occasions under different circumstances. "Your Majesty. Always a pleasure."
Hancock's response was a glance that was not quite warm and not quite cold, calibrated to the specific temperature of someone who was cooperating without performing enthusiasm about it. "Spandine."
This was correct behavior for her position. Crocodile did not register anything unusual in it.
Hancock sat. The chair she chose placed her with her back to nothing, a habit so old she no longer thought about it. She arranged herself with the economy of movement that came from never having needed to perform casualness, one leg crossing over the other, one elbow on the armrest, her chin resting in her hand.
Crocodile exhaled a slow breath of cigar smoke and said, with the tone of a man reaching the conclusion of a long preparatory process, "Now that everyone is present." He set the cigar in its tray and looked at the room. "Let me be direct. The mission, authorized at the highest level by Mary Geoise, is the removal of the Nefertari clan. The royal family of Alabasta."
"I have no interest in that," Mihawk said, without raising his voice or looking up from his wine glass.
The words fell into the room with the specific quality of a statement that was not a request and was not negotiating.
Crocodile's jaw tightened fractionally. He had anticipated this. He had anticipated all of them, in their various ways, because men who commanded the kind of power in this room did not arrive anywhere with the intention of being directed.
Before he could respond, Mihawk continued: "The Revolutionary Army. Monkey D. Dragon. I've heard accounts of him. Leader of the most dangerous seditious movement in the current world. Former high-ranking Marine, Garp's son. Significant power, significant strategic intelligence." He turned the wine glass slowly. "I have been told he is here. That is the reason I accepted the summons." He finally looked up, and his amber eyes held the calm of a man describing weather. "I want to see for myself what the most wanted man in the world is actually capable of. Nothing more than that."
Crocodile absorbed this. It was, on consideration, a useful answer. It made Mihawk present, it placed his capabilities in the room, and it cost Crocodile nothing to acknowledge it.
"He'll have the opportunity to find out," Crocodile said. "Dragon won't stay hidden indefinitely."
Mihawk settled back. "Then I'll wait."
Jinbe spoke from his position by the aquarium, with the rolling, unhurried voice of someone who had learned that directness saved time. "My particular capabilities are not ideally suited to this climate. Desert conditions limit some of what I can contribute." He turned slightly, addressing Crocodile with the comfortable straightforwardness of a man who respected the other person enough not to dress up his meaning. "But I'm here, and if you need anything, I'll do what I can."
Crocodile looked at him with the faint surprise of a man who had prepared for difficulty and encountered something else. "The Sea Knight's reputation is well-earned," he said.
Jinbe smiled the broad smile of a man who found the compliment accurate but not particularly exciting.
Then Crocodile looked at Hancock, with the expression of someone arriving at the most complicated item on a list.
He did not quite get to speak before Spandine leaned forward slightly. "Empress. This operation carries significant weight for Mary Geoise. A successful outcome has real implications for Amazon Lily's standing and the ongoing arrangements that benefit the island." He paused, in the way of a man who understood that the difference between persuasion and pressure was largely a question of presentation. "I hope the Empress will not refuse Mary Geoise's request."
Hancock was quiet for a moment.
She looked at Spandine with an expression that did not change in any measurable way. Then she looked at Crocodile, with the same lack of change.
Then she said, "Only this once, Spandine."