…
I laid on the ground, staring at the cracked ceiling.
It's been almost 2 hours since we got here, and I still haven't found anything edible in the royal tomb. I'd spent years questioning why video-game ruins contained roast chickens or some other bizarre foods, you know?
Anyways, Crocodile sat against a pillar opposite me, his remaining hand resting beneath the ruined sleeve of his left arm. My tie had stopped most of the bleeding, and he'd regained consciousness about an hour ago.
Since then, he'd watched the Poneglyph far more than he'd watched me, which was optimistic for someone whose hooked arm lay on the floor several feet away.
Upstairs, the original two guards had become enough guards to make leaving inconvenient. I'd gone up when the first reinforcements arrived and explained that Crocodile was downstairs,
I was rewarded with six spears pointing at my chest. One of the men recognised me before their officer could order them.
"Anybody comes down those stairs, I'll kill them," I'd told them. "Stay outside." The officer had looked at my face, the blood on my ruined suit and the wanted poster somebody was hurriedly unfolding behind him, then ordered his men to hold the entrance. None of them had tested the distinction between holding it and entering it, so we'd enjoyed a remarkably peaceful evening.
"You're waiting for her." Crocodile's voice scraped across the chamber as I picked another piece of sand out of my remaining shoe. He'd already asked what I wanted, offered money, and explained how inconvenient the World Government could make my life.
Apparently, we were returning to subjects with better prospects.
"Unless you've learned to read that thing in the last hour." I tipped my head toward the stone, and his fingers tightened beneath his sleeve. Whatever he thought happened after Robin arrived, it still involved him getting Pluton.
I'd dragged him across a country and removed another piece of his arm, but the bastard hadn't quite accepted that his promotion to king of the desert was cancelled.
Footsteps reached the lower passage before he could reply. I stood as Robin appeared beneath the broken arch, dust on her boots and her coat folded over one arm. Her gaze passed over me, Crocodile and the severed limb beside his hook, then returned to my bare forearm where my jacket sleeve used to be.
"You might have mentioned that this was a kidnapping," she said. "I dressed for a meeting."
"So did I." I spread what remained of my jacket, and she studied the damage with a small smile. "The guards let you through?"
"They were watching the entrance rather closely. Fortunately, several of them developed an urgent interest in the opposite wall." A hand bloomed briefly from the pillar beside me, tapped two fingers against the stone and vanished. "Your instructions were quite clear. I thought it would be unfortunate if you murdered someone over a misunderstanding."
Crocodile pushed himself straighter. "Miss All Sunday. The stone." Robin turned toward him, but her attention caught on the carved face beyond his shoulder, and whatever she'd been about to say disappeared. Her coat slipped against her arm as she crossed the chamber, stepping over fallen masonry without looking down.
I'd seen her interested in old books, irritated by bad translations and quietly pleased when I remembered something she'd explained. This was entirely different, though. She stopped within arm's reach of the Poneglyph and raised her hand, letting her fingertips rest beneath the first line.
Neither of us interrupted her.
"How did you find it?" she asked eventually, still facing the stone.
"Had a look around the grounds earlier. He helped with the stairs." I gestured toward Crocodile, whose contribution to local architecture hadn't improved his mood. Robin glanced at the broken passage behind us, then at him, and a little amusement returned to her mouth.
"That explains the arm. Excavation can be dangerous."
"Robin." Crocodile used her name sharply enough to pull her attention back. "Read it." He shifted his weight against the pillar, working one foot underneath him, and I moved away from her to stand where he could see me. His foot stopped moving. Robin looked between us, then turned back to the inscription.
She read silently at first, her fingers travelling a short distance along the stone before dropping to her side. I leaned against a pillar and let her work. There wasn't a version of this where I supplied a helpful translation; my knowledge of ancient languages began and ended with recognising that the giant indestructible cube probably mattered.
The chamber settled around us. Dust stopped falling from the passage, and somewhere upstairs an officer called for another lantern. Robin finished one section, returned to the beginning and read it again, slower this time. I'd been waiting hours for her to stand here, but watching her hand settle against the same line for the third time made me wish she'd found something else.
"Well?" Crocodile demanded. "What does it say about Pluton?"
Robin lowered her hand. "Nothing. It records the kingdom's history. Royal names, events, the usual commemorations." She gave him the answer evenly, without once looking toward me, and I kept my mouth shut. I remembered enough about this particular stone to know he wasn't receiving an honest translation. That was her decision; I hadn't brought her here to finish his shopping list.
"Read it properly." He got one knee beneath him before the effort pulled at his injured arm. His hand clamped over the sleeve, and he stayed there, breathing through his teeth. "You know what I'm looking for."
"Yes," she said. "I do." She looked back at the Poneglyph, and he watched her for several seconds before his eyes moved toward the stairway. Beyond it waited palace soldiers; inside his coat there were no reports left to issue, and the woman he'd kept useful with the promise of this chamber had just refused him the only thing he still wanted.
He dragged his heel through the dust. "You'd throw away everything for this?" Robin didn't answer, and that silence seemed to do more to him than my reply could have. He sank back against the pillar, staring at an inscription he couldn't read while she stood beside it with nothing left to say.
I pushed away from my pillar when Robin turned from the stone. She took a few steps, lowered herself onto a fallen block and sat with her hands loose in her lap. Her eyes travelled over the chamber once, pausing at Crocodile before settling on the floor between her boots.
"It wasn't here," she said. I crouched nearby, close enough that she didn't have to raise her voice, and waited while her thumb brushed dust from one finger. "I thought this time I might finally find it."
"The True History." Her hand stopped, and she looked at me. We'd spent months talking around the missing years, the books people weren't supposed to read and the things the Government had failed to erase. She'd never handed me her past, though, and I wasn't going to pretend those conversations meant she'd offered me this part of it.
"You knew that too." She didn't sound angry. I would've preferred angry; she was good at making that unpleasant, and I knew what to do with unpleasant. Instead, she looked past my shoulder toward the steps. "You should go. There will be more soldiers soon."
"They can wait a little longer." I sat back on my heels while she slid from the block onto the floor, her back against the stone. Her coat pooled beside her, and she didn't bother arranging it. Above us, several sets of boots crossed the upper chamber.
"Crocodile is finished. So is Baroque Works." She glanced toward him, but he didn't correct her. "There isn't much reason to keep the arrangement now, is there? They'll have questions for me as well. You can leave me here and let them do what they need to do."
"You know what happens if they hand you over." I kept my voice low, and she finally held my gaze again. No little smile waited behind her words when she answered.
"Yes, Kai. I know." Her fingers closed around the edge of her coat, then relaxed. "I'm tired. Every time I leave, I find somewhere else, someone else, another reason to believe it'll be different. I don't want to do it again."
I'd known where this could lead before I'd ever reached Alabasta. Nami's problem had at least included a fish bastard I could beat up; that hadn't fixed every awful thing he'd done to her, but it had given me a useful place to start. Robin had been surviving people for most of her life, removing one employer wasn't going to convince her the next person offering protection would keep his word.
So I'd spent months becoming someone she'd visit, then arranged for her to reach this stone with Crocodile beaten beside it. I'd wanted her to see that there was somewhere else to go when Baroque Works couldn't keep her safe anymore. I'd also known what not finding her answer might do to her, and I'd let her read anyway. Sitting in front of her now, I couldn't make that part sound particularly noble.
"Did you bring me here for this?" she asked. Her eyes stayed on mine, and I wondered how much she'd found in my silence. I reached for her hands slowly enough that she could pull them away, but she let me take them.
"I brought you here because you wanted to read it," I said. "And because I want you to come with me." Her fingers lay still between mine. "I knew beating him wouldn't be enough."
"You could have asked," she replied.
I rubbed a little dust from her knuckles with my thumb, then stopped because fussing over her hands wasn't going to improve my answer.
"Yeah. I could've." I looked at her properly. "I know they'll come after you. I know what you're looking for won't be sitting in the next bookshop. I still want you aboard."
"And when they come?" Her fingers shifted between mine. "You don't even know who you'll be fighting."
"I'll have an archaeologist to explain it." I couldn't offer her a map with the answer circled, and I wasn't about to claim I'd suddenly become a sensible partner. What I had was a ship she already knew, a borrowed book I still hadn't returned and enough strength to make the people chasing her work considerably harder. I held her hands a little more firmly. "Join me, Robin. Come with me, and I'll help you find the True History of this world."
She drew a breath and held it. Her fingers tightened around mine as she searched my face, then her mouth opened twice before anything came out. "You... Kai, you can't promise—"
"You can finish upstairs." I let go of her hands, slipped an arm behind her knees and stood, lifting her over my shoulder before she could decide whether to slap me. I caught her coat as it slipped, draped it over her legs and secured them against my chest while she grabbed the back of my ruined collar.
"What are you doing?" The question came out considerably less composed than anything she'd said since arriving. "Put me down. There are stairs."
"They're full of guards." I stepped toward a chunk of masonry Crocodile had knocked loose earlier, crouched and dug my free hand beneath it. It was bigger than my chest, awkwardly shaped and absolutely unsuitable for anything a normal person might consider an escape plan. Robin lifted herself enough to see past my shoulder. "Kai. Why are you picking that up?"
"Trying something." More muscle gathered through my thighs, back and left shoulder, and I lifted the block clear. My fingers had begun crushing its edge, so I loosened them and reached for the pressure I'd occasionally managed around my knuckles. Keeping it there was still annoying. Getting it into something else had, until now, remained somebody else's problem.
The first attempt left me holding an ordinary fucking rock. I adjusted my grip, pushed again and felt the pressure catch beneath my palm. It spread farther as I held it, uneven and difficult to keep steady, but when I squeezed this time the stone stayed whole. A hard shine travelled across one edge before fading; the resistance remained.
Crocodile's eyes lifted from my hand to the ceiling. Robin followed his gaze and grabbed my collar with both hands. "You cannot possibly mean to—"
"MOVE AWAY FROM THE MAUSOLEUM!" I shouted. Boots scraped upstairs, somebody yelled an order, and I turned toward the stretch of ceiling beyond the nearest pillars. "Head down, Robin." She ducked against my back as I bent my legs, brought the block above us and jumped.
The stone struck first and went through the ceiling without breaking. Masonry burst upward around it, my shoulder cleared the hole, and we came out into the open courtyard beneath the night sky. I landed among broken paving with Robin tucked behind me, lost the pressure in my hand and let the block drop at my feet, where it finally split. Beyond the mausoleum doors, a row of palace guards stood with their spears pointing at the empty entrance.
One turned toward us, saw Robin over my shoulder and opened his mouth. I pointed down through the new hole. "Crocodile's alive. Get him a doctor." The man's eyes dropped toward the chamber, and his spear lowered far enough that I stopped paying attention to it.
Robin raised her head as I turned toward the outer wall. "We're outside now," she said, still gripping my collar. "You can put me—" I bent my knees, and her hands tightened. "Oh, surely not again."
The paving broke beneath my feet as I launched us over the wall. Alubarna fell away behind us, the western grounds shrinking beneath my remaining shoe, and the desert opened ahead. I'd crossed a river like this with Crocodile, but having Robin clutching my back while the night air tore through my ruined trousers was considerably better company.
I started laughing before I could help it.
"Kah-ra-ra-ra-ra!"
The sound rolled out over the rooftops, ridiculous enough that I laughed harder, and Robin shifted against my shoulder. When I glanced sideways, she'd lifted her face into the wind, her hair streaming behind her and a small, disbelieving smile pulling at her mouth.
"Alright," she said, close enough to my ear that I heard her over the rush of air. "I'll come with you, Kai." Her grip eased, and she settled against my shoulder while I held her legs a little more securely. We were already starting to descend toward the sand beyond the city, so I adjusted my back and thighs for the landing, grinning like a fucking idiot all the way down.
…
End of Chapter!
Word Count - 2500 (on the dot???)
a/n -
Alright, so that was Chapter 36.
And yes, Robin is officially coming with Kai now.
I've been building toward this for a while, so I really didn't want the chapter to just become "Crocodile loses, Robin joins, next arc," like with Nami. Crocodile being beaten was only part of the payoff. The more important part, at least to me, was everything surrounding the Poneglyph and what it actually meant for Robin.
Crocodile spent years building Baroque Works around reaching that room and finding Pluton, while Robin stayed because it gave her another chance at finding the True History. Then Kai basically walks in, fucks with Crocodile's entire plan, drags him to the one thing he wanted most, and lets Robin deny him the answer.
Can't spell Crocodile without L
I also wanted Robin's reaction to the Poneglyph to feel different from just disappointment. She's been doing this for most of her life. Another organisation, another temporary arrangement, another place where maybe this time she'll find something, only for it to lead nowhere again. By the time she tells Kai she's tired, she isn't really talking about Crocodile anymore.
Kai obviously knew that this could happen too. And yes, he absolutely manipulated the situation a little bit, and whether that was morally just or not is up to you.
He spent months getting closer to her, deliberately brought her to the Poneglyph after beating Crocodile, and knew that if Baroque Works disappeared she'd suddenly have nowhere obvious to go. He believes his intentions are good, but I didn't want to pretend the whole thing was some perfectly noble rescue either. Robin is smart enough to realise exactly what he was doing, which is why she immediately asked whether he'd brought her there for this.
Kai's answer is basically: kinda.
He could have just asked her normally.
That would have required Kai to behave like a normal person, though, and as you know, our boy is pretty insane, so naturally we got him carrying her over his shoulder, experimenting with his armament haki on a rock, smashing through the ceiling of a royal mausoleum, and jumping over the walls of Alubarna instead.
Much more efficient, no?
The promise he makes Robin is important too. He's promising to help her find the True History, not just protect her or give her somewhere to stay. That's something I fully intend to matter going forward.
But it also means Robin joining him will have consequences far beyond adding another person to the ship. The World Government already considers Kai a problem, and now he's defeated a Warlord and is travelling with the devil child herself.
I'm sure they'll respond calmly and reasonably.
Surely. (´･ω･`)
As for Crocodile, he is still alive, as Kai very helpfully informed the guards before destroying another section of the palace grounds.
His situation will be addressed very soon. This is probably one of the biggest butterfly-effect moments in the story so far, because Kai hasn't simply interfered with something anymore.
He has outright removed a major piece from the board years before canon begins.
That is going to matter.
Also, "Kah-ra-ra-ra-ra!"
I've given this man a One Piece laugh.
There is no going back now.
I'd love to hear what everyone thought about Robin officially joining Kai, especially whether the build-up between them worked for you. I'm also curious what people think happens to Crocodile from here, what Kai's new bounty should look like after all of this, and how badly you think the World Government is currently regretting allowing this large white-haired idiot to continue existing.
And as always, theories are welcome.
Sometimes I even steal the good ones. Character art may also appear eventually because I have zero self-control when it comes to seeing these idiots actually visualised, and no, it won't be AI'd.
Thanks for reading, and I'll see you in the next one.
Bye bye
(￣▽￣)