Chapter 100: The Devil's Bargain
The turtle drifted on the dark water, its massive body rising and falling with the slow rhythm of the waves. The night had no moon, only stars scattered across the sky like fragments of something broken, and their light caught the wet surface of the creature's shell and the faces of the two people sitting on its back.
Miss All Sunday had not moved since he said the name. Her hands were still gripping the edges of the cart. Her eyes were still wide. Her breath had stopped somewhere in her chest and was refusing to come back out.
"How do you know that name?"
Her voice was quiet. Not demanding. Not threatening. Just a woman asking a question she was afraid to hear the answer to.
Luffy met her gaze. His face was calm, the way it got when he had already decided what he was going to say and was simply waiting for the right moment to say it. "Doesn't matter. All that matters is I have been looking forward to meeting you."
She stared at him. The wind pulled at her hair, tugged at her scarf, but she did not seem to notice. "Why?"
"Because I want you to join my crew. I want you to join my harem."
The words landed like stones dropped into still water. Her eyes widened. Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
"Do you know how old I am?" The words came out sharper than she probably intended, edged with something that might have been disbelief or might have been the first stirrings of anger. "Do you know who I am? I am trying to kill your entire crew. I work for the man who just murdered your client's only protector. And you came here to say that to me?"
Luffy did not flinch. Did not look away. His voice was steady, unhurried, the voice of someone who had thought about this conversation for a very long time and was not going to be rushed through it now.
"Calm the fuck down, Robin. I am not as young as I appear."
She blinked. For a moment, just a moment, something flickered behind her eyes. Confusion. Curiosity. The particular expression of someone who had spent her entire life reading people and had just encountered a page that did not make sense.
"That doesn't matter," he continued, before she could respond. "Here is what is going to happen. You are going to join my crew. You are going to be part of my harem. And you are going to help me become King of the Pirates."
She stared at him. The anger faded. The disbelief faded. What was left was something colder, something more guarded, the expression of a woman who had learned never to trust anything that came too easily.
"And what makes you think I will do that?"
Luffy leaned forward. His elbows rested on his knees. His eyes never left hers.
"Because Crocodile doesn't know shit about what you are trying to find, does he? About the Void Century."
Her breath caught. He saw it. The way her chest stopped moving. The way her hands tightened on the cart. The way her eyes, those careful, calculating eyes, went wide and still.
"What if I told you," Luffy said, his voice dropping lower, "that if you join me, you will find the poneglyphs that killed your mother and your entire family in Ohara?"
She did not move. Did not breathe.
"Not only the regular ones. The ones leading to Pluton, Poseidon, and Uranus. The red ones. The ones that lead to Laugh Tale. Where the real poneglyph is. The one with the information about the real history that the Pirate King's crew discovered twenty-two years ago."
The silence that followed was absolute. The turtle did not move. The water did not lap. The wind did not blow. The world held its breath.
Nico Robin sat in the cart with her hands frozen on the edges, her face turned toward him, her eyes wide and wet. For the first time in decades. For the first time since Ohara burned. Since her mother died. Since she learned that the world would rather kill the truth than face it. She felt something she had not allowed herself to feel in longer than she could remember.
A sense of belonging. Of relief. Of someone finally seeing her and not looking away.
The tears started without her permission. They slid down her cheeks in the starlight, catching the faint glow, falling onto the fabric of her black jacket. There was no moon to witness them, only the stars, and the boy sitting across from her, and the vast dark ocean that stretched in every direction.
"How..." Her voice broke. She tried again. "How..."
Luffy did not reach for her. Did not try to comfort her. He just sat there, patient, waiting, his eyes steady on her face.
"All of that doesn't matter," he said. "What matters is I know where Poseidon is. What matters is I know who can build Pluton. Uranus, I am not sure about. I think the World Government has access to it. They can use it anytime they want. That is my theory, anyway."
He paused.
"So. Was I wrong, Robin? Are you not going to join my crew?" Another pause. "Will you join my harem?"
The silence stretched. The tears kept falling. She did not wipe them away. She let them fall, let them track down her face, let them drip onto her hands, because she had forgotten what it felt like to cry without hiding it, and she was not sure she would ever get the chance again.
He watched her. His eyes, she noticed, were not on her face. They had drifted lower. To her chest. To the curve of her breasts beneath the black fabric of her jacket. He was not even pretending to look anywhere else.
She should have been offended. She should have been angry. Instead, she found herself almost smiling, because of course he was looking. Of course the boy who had flown across the night sky to proposition her on the back of a turtle was not going to pretend he was not interested in what he saw.
She wiped her tears. Slowly. Deliberately. She composed herself the way she had composed herself a thousand times before, pulling the pieces back together, fitting them into place.
"Tell me one more thing," she said.
He tilted his head.
"On your poster. Your full name is Monkey D. Luffy."
He nodded.
"I see." She looked at him. "The Will of D."
He smiled when she said it. A small smile, almost private, as though she had confirmed something he had been waiting to hear.
"So," he said, "there is a lot of unknowns about it. Given my family is part of it. My grandfather is Vice Admiral Garp of the Marines. Hero of the Marines. The man who captured Gol D. Roger." He paused. "That's a lie, though. Roger was dying. He turned himself in."
She did not interrupt.
"If you look at my father, he is Dragon of the Revolutionary Army. So there is that." He shrugged. "Anyway, the Will of D is complicated. All I can tell you is we are big on freedom. We are the natural enemies of the World Government. That includes my grandfather, even if he works for the Marines. He has been Vice Admiral for decades because he values that freedom. He does not want to be a slave to the World Government."
He let that settle.
"Our will is very strong. Our passion is also very strong." He looked at her. "Want me to give you an example of someone you did not know was part of it?"
She nodded. "Please."
"Nefertari D. Vivi."
Her eyes widened. Her breath caught. She stared at him, and for a moment, the mask slipped entirely, and she was not Miss All Sunday, not the Vice President of Baroque Works, not the woman who had survived Ohara and everything that came after. She was just someone who had just learned something she had never expected to learn.
"I will join your crew," she said.
The words came out before she could stop them. She did not try to take them back.
"As for the harem part..." She looked away. The stars reflected in her eyes, or maybe it was something else. "We will deal with that later."
Luffy nodded. He did not push. He did not smile. He just accepted it, the way he accepted everything, as though he had known how this would end before he ever left the ship.
"For now," he begun, "I want you to continue with Crocodile. Do his thing. I do not really care what you do. Just get ready for my signal when we arrive in Alabasta."
He reached into his vest and pulled out a small transponder snail. It was dark and quiet, its eyes closed, its shell smooth. He held it out to her.
"Here is my number. I want you to keep reporting what his plans are. When you get to Alabasta soon, I want you to let the king know. Prepare for our arrival."
She took the snail. Her fingers brushed against his. She did not pull away.
He continued speaking, his voice low and steady, laying out the shape of what was to come. The words flowed between them like water finding its level, two people who had spent their lives learning to read others finally finding someone who spoke the same language.
The turtle drifted. The stars wheeled overhead. And somewhere in the darkness, the Going Merry waited, and Crocodile plotted, and the kingdom of Alabasta moved closer with every passing moment.
But for now, there was only this. The boy and the woman. The deal that would change everything.