Chapter Text
Robin's life went on like that for more than half a year. She relaxed in Foosha before following the crew (her crew?) to raid some unsuspecting Marines or to train on deserted islands.
Sometimes she, along with the rest of the crew, would be the one to train, other times the Chief and Benn Beckman would duke it out with the officers and everyone else would watch and learn.
They usually went into the Grand Line and Robin always stayed inside the ship to avoid being recognised. Her medical skills had improved enough that sometimes Hongo felt safe enough to leave the infirmary to her and another handful of crewmates who were learning the craft.
Hongo was, apparently, just as a fight chaser as the rest of the officers and it had only been his duty that prevented him from joining the fray.
Whenever they got back to Foosha, Robin helped Makino with the bar, so that the woman could join the parties, much to her and Shanks' happiness.
It was clear to Robin and to most of the crew that their relationship was progressing steadily and everyone was cheering for them.
Sometimes they didn't go back into the Grand Line but had adventures in East Blue, where neither the Chief and Benn Beckman nor the officers needed to fight at all.
On those occasions, they mostly had fun by bringing the crew to deserted islands and training them with their fighting skills.
Robin favored Monstar's fighting style which, like hers, focused more on strikes to vital points rather than pure strength. He was a competent teacher and Robin refined her non-fruit related combat skills under his tutelage.
Sometimes Monstar would defend himself or attack her with Armament Haki to help Robin with unlocking it.
She could feel the thin layer of armor that prevented them from making contact and she felt how his hits were stronger but Robin never managed to copy it.
The lessons in Sign Language were going well; all of the leaders of the crew were in the stage where they mainly needed practicing and to expand their vocabulary.
Robin was proud of their progress and Monstar was glad to be able to communicate more effectively.
It was helpful in improving his teaching skills, since he could tell her what she was doing wrong instead of trying to reposition her physically.
Every new lesson, all of the students brought new words they wanted to learn; Robin had found herself in need of buying books from the islands they visited in order to answer a few of their questions.
She had been proficient in Sign Language but her vocabulary wasn't infinite.
At the same time, Yasopp and Monstar were unsuccessfully trying to help her unlock her Observation Haki.
One with the method shown by the Chief and the other through their game of hide and seek.
One day, they were both trying to help her when the musician had a breakthrough.
Thanks to the sign lessons, he was able to communicate that he had learned Observation through meditation rather than the brute force method taught by the Chief.
When they proposed the alternative to the Chief, he smacked his own head.
"Why didn't I think of that?!
Just because we are all muscle-heads who learned by smacking each other with a stick, it doesn't mean she needs to do it the same way!"
Robin found it funny when Monstar explained that he had never proposed the different method simply because he thought he had been able to do it due to his monkey instincts.
He switched the way he taught her by incorporating meditation in their routine but Yasopp still kept trying with the stick method.
"It's the way Chief has taught me way back when we first sailed East Blue!"
He tried to defend himself.
Robin understood that he wanted to use a method that he thought worked and she didn't want to dissuade him from trying.
However, she was curious about something.
"Oh, right. You are from nearby!
You should go and visit!"
Yasopp had told her about the son and the wife he had left in his hometown, Robin wanted to understand why he hadn't already gone to visit.
"I don't think they should see me. A clean break seems more kind," he replied sincerely.
The Chief, as he liked to do, inserted himself into the conversation. "Break? You can't break up with your son!"
"Chief, please. We've talked about this!" Yasopp complained.
"Yeah," he nodded, "but I still don't get it."
Robin understood what Shanks was feeling.
"I have to agree with Chief here. I had to grow up without either of my parents but, that one time I met my mother I was overjoyed to see her.
I was around Luffy's age, which I believe is the same as your son's, and even now I'm glad I had one last chance to see her.
Show him you love him. Even for a day."
Shanks was gaping at her sincerity and even Robin herself didn't know why she had opened up so much about her past. Maybe she saw herself in Yasopp's son, remembering how she ached for her mother to come back home.
She didn't want him to question whether he was loved or not like she had done her whole childhood.
Even as an adult, after the deaths of the people she'd held dear, Robin wasn't sure there was anyone who could love her. That was why she held on tight to the love her mother had shown.
Robin was trying to carve her own place in the Red Hair Pirates but she had yet to feel like she truly belonged. Like the words spoken by Saul had referred to them.
She didn't want any other kid to feel that way.
"She makes a compelling argument.
Robin is the youngest here. She remembers better than us," the Chief was quick to support her, "we can leave you in Syrup Village for a week or two. Maybe without any of us so you can properly enjoy being with your family."
"Didn't you want to meet them, Chief?" Yasopp was obviously avoiding answering the invitation.
"Obviously! But I know you'd rather be the only one to go.
We'll leave you a Den Den Mushi with you, so if you change your mind and want us to visit we can come!"
The Chief was clearly ecstatic at the prospect of Yasopp meeting his family.
"Are you scared you wouldn't want to go back to the pirate life?" Robin pushed.
Yasopp shook his head.
"Nah, I'll always belong to the sea. I just don't want them to hurt more than they have to."
'And myself' went unsaid but Robin heard it nonetheless.
"Maybe they'll hurt when you go away again but everyone will be happier than before you visited," Robin didn't want to lie to him but she thought that seeing his son would be helpful to Yasopp.
When they dropped him in a lifeboat near his island, the crew was scared of him leaving them for good but the Chief was sure he would come back.
However, they didn't expect him to call them not even an hour after he was supposed to land.
"Chief!" He yelled frantically, so loudly that everyone on the ship heard him through the snail, "please come to Syrup Village with Hongo. Banchina is dying and we don't know why!"
"Fuck, I'll put him on the line so he can tell you what to do!"
Despite Yasopp being known for exaggerating his tales, the Chief was aware that he was serious about his wife's condition.
"Snake!" The Chief yelled, "we gotta go back to the Gecko Islands. Right fucking now. Turn this ship around," he demanded, "Hongo! Come here to talk to Yasopp. Banchina is sick and they don't know what to do!"
Robin was always fascinated by the Chief's switches from his laid-back personality to his seasoned pirate captain side.
One instant he acted like an overgrown kid, the next one he felt exactly like the heir of the Pirate King.
She had never thought about it but the sentence was probably actually true.
From the few tales he had told, only Shanks and the other cabin boy (that had never been named) were still active pirates among those who had sailed on the Oro Jackson.
Robin was shaken out of her thoughts when she felt the ship turning around violently.
At the same time she saw Hongo, who had gone to talk with Yasopp in hushed tones, handing the snail back to the Chief before gunning for his infirmary to grab various things.
Luckily they weren't too far from the island, so they arrived quickly.
However, before they could drop the anchor, the Chief yelled for the doctor. "Hongo. We are gonna jump before we drop the anchor!"
The man readied himself and the bag with some of his supplies.
"Roo, after docking, bring us everything else from the infirmary but be careful with it.
Everyone else, don't set foot on the island unless I say so."
With that, the Chief and Hongo jumped. They landed on a beach and immediately started running.
With the stunt, they cut a handful of minutes that, for what they knew, could have been fatal.
As soon as he could, Lucky Roo grabbed all of the equipment from the sick bay and quickly walked towards a direction where Robin guessed he could feel his crewmates' Haki signature.
Robin and the rest of the crew were worrying about Yasopp's family while Benn Beckman was busy paying the port authorities, explaining that they were friends of Yasopp and that they had a doctor that wanted to help his wife.
The man who managed the harbor spotted the unspoken words, "we are Yasopp's crew," but he was probably too worried about the woman to care about them being pirates, since they were clearly worrying too.
When the Chief came back, everyone immediately yelled their questions.
After he managed to silence everyone, he calmly explained that Hongo had managed to get Yasopp's wife to a stable condition and that she would recover but his tone implied that it had been very close.
After a while of listening to Shanks answering everyone's questions, Robin had understood that Banchina had fallen ill with a disease that wasn't known to the local doctors due to it coming from the Grand Line via merchants. It was barely contagious at all but could be deadly if untreated for long and the woman had been bedridden for a while.
Luckily, Hongo had some remedies that would help her but she would take at least a couple of weeks to recover.
After treating Banchina, he had checked Yasopp's son and the local doctors to make sure they hadn't contracted the illness.
He had also made sure to teach how to spot and treat it to the local doctors who had immediately ordered a shipment of appropriate medicine, in case anyone else in the village manifested the same symptoms.
Both Hongo and Yasopp decided to stay in the small village for a month to make sure everything was alright, while the rest of the crew went back to Foosha.
When Luffy had asked, Shanks told him the duo had gone to visit some friends but that they would be back soon, not wanting to make him worry.
The kid had recently started to declare that he was going to become a pirate and he often asked Shanks if he could join.
The Chief always replied that he was too young and he teased him about being a kid and an anchor.
Luffy was the only one to take the teasing at face value but everyone else knew that Shanks was refusing only because he was well aware about the dangers of being a pirate, especially for a kid.
One day, a couple of months after Yasopp and Hongo had been picked up from the Gecko Islands, it was Lucky Roo's birthday when the crew was woken up by Luffy yelling about being brave while standing on top of the figurehead.
Shanks goaded him and, apparently, Luffy had gotten a knife from somewhere, because he stabbed himself under the eye with it.
Almost everyone was shocked. They didn't think he would do it.
Hongo was the quickest one to react and he immediately went to get Luffy into the infirmary to patch him up with a couple of stitches.
The kid, after calming down from crying and from the pain, seemed to be proud of his injury, saying that the scar would make him look tough.
They brought him back to Party's bar and Makino was furious because they had let Luffy injure himself.
"We didn't think he would do it!" Shanks tried to defend himself and the crew.
Everyone nodded behind the Chief, using him as a shield against Makino's wrath.
"Why didn't you stop him when he pulled out the knife?! We all know that most of you could have snatched it from his hand even from the other side of your ship!"
"We didn't want to hurt him!" Someone from the crew whined.
Robin didn't miss the hidden meaning behind Makino's words; whether she wanted it or not, the woman had let slip that she knew the crew was more powerful than they seemed.
Judging by their faces, both the Chief and the First Mate had gotten to the same conclusion as Robin.
"It's fine, Makino. It didn't hurt one bit!" Luffy tried to placate his guardian.
"Liar!" Shanks called him out on it but the kid went on as if the Chief hadn't said anything.
"I'm not afraid of getting hurt. Take me with you on your next trip. I wanna be a pirate too!"
It was his usual speech and all of the crew had heard some variation of it multiple times. Everyone knew what was about to happen.
"You, a pirate? Impossible. You are still a kid. Wait 10 years and I may consider it," Shanks replied exactly like everyone expected him to.
Like clockwork, Luffy got upset. "I'm not a kid!"
"Sorry sorry, don't get angry. Here, why don't you take some milk?" Shanks slid him a glass towards Luffy, the only one who missed the mischievous look in the Chief's eyes.
The kid took it and drank the milk, sending Shanks into hysterics who, while laughing, told him that real pirates didn't drink milk.
"That was a dirty trick!" Luffy complained, making Shanks cry with laughter.
After a while, Robin noticed that all of the crew had joined the cheerful atmosphere of the bar.
One of the men whose role was mostly in the kitchen brought a gigantic piece of meat as a gift for Lucky Roo's birthday, prompting other rounds of cheers and drinks being shared.
They had also brought the treasure chest with the Devil Fruit they had taken from the Government and Robin heard the Chief: "Thanks for bringing it here. You know I don't want to leave it on the ship unsupervised."
It was somewhat of a routine. In the rare cases when nobody was on the ship, the last person to get off took the chest with them.
The Chief himself had started it by saying that leaving Devil Fruits unattended sometimes led to them being stolen or somehow disappearing.
Shanks was convinced that the Devil Fruit should be kept away from the Government at all costs.
Robin had identified it as the Gum-Gum Fruit, allowing the user to turn their body into rubber, which didn't sound like a particularly special power.
She knew that it was mostly up to the user whether a fruit would be dangerous or not but Shanks had made it sound like the Gum-Gum Fruit was special.
However, when asked about his reasons for it, he didn't provide any.
In the bar, everyone was laughing and celebrating Lucky Roo's birthday when a bandit opened the door with a kick, destroying half of it.
With a quick scan, Robin thought they wouldn't pose a real threat to anyone but the two civilians.
She had been behind the counter to help Makino since shortly after they had brought Luffy, so Robin silently got closer to the other woman, ready to defend her if needed.
The leader introduced them as bandits and demanded to be served grog.
Robin knew they had finished all of it and was about to say so when Shanks spoke up.
"Sorry, we took the last of it, I still have an unopened bottle tho. You can have it if you want to."
Robin knew what was about to happen even if she had yet to unlock Observation Haki.
The bandit smashed the bottle and covered Shanks with alcohol.
"What good is one bottle of grog?! Don't you know who I am?!"
From his clothes, he produced a slip of paper with his bounty and his name, Higuma, on it.
"My head is worth 8 million Berries. I've killed 56 people.
Watch yourself if you are fond of breathing."
The Chief didn't react to his threat and simply started picking up the glass pieces from the smashed bottle.
"Oh my, what a mess! Let me clean this up, Makino."
The bandit unsheathed his sword and Robin immediately pulled Makino back away from the counter.
Fortunately for the bandits, Higuma didn't attack Shanks but only destroyed a couple of tankards with his sword.
"You like to clean?! This will keep you busy for a while then!" The bandit cackled.
"Farewell, cowards," he yelled while exiting the bar.
Robin was glad that Shanks had been able to deescalate the situation without killing the bandits in front of Luffy and Makino.
Both the bar owner and the kid immediately went to check on the Chief. "Are you alright Shanks?"
Despite her previous insight about the crew's strength, Makino seemed genuine in her worry for Shanks. Robin chalked it up to her relationship with him.
"I'm fine. No harm done," Shanks tried to placate them with a straight face but he didn't manage to contain his laughter.
All of the crew joined him in his guffaws. "He got you pretty good, Chief!" One man yelled, prompting another round of loud laughter.
Luffy had, justifiably, misunderstood the situation.
"You are laughing?! He made you look like a weakling! Why didn't you fight?! You are a disgrace to all pirates!"
The kid had gone up to Shanks' face to yell at him.
To his credit, the Chief didn't tease Luffy about it.
"You'll understand when you grow up.
He only spilled grog on me. Needless killing isn't what makes you a good pirate."
Luffy, being a kid, didn't understand what Shanks said and thought he was just making excuses for his cowardice. The kid started to move away from Shanks when the Chief grabbed his arm.
"Where are you going?"
"To find a new role model," Luffy said while still walking away.
However, instead of being stopped by Shanks' grip like everyone expected, Luffy kept walking and his arm started stretching.
Lucky Roo was the first one to talk after connecting the dots.
"Luffy! Did you eat a weird fruit that was in a treasure chest?!"
He got up to look at said treasure chest that was in fact empty.
"Yeah, I thought it was dessert but it was disgusting."
Luffy was understandably distressed but still surprisingly coherent.
Robin wasn't too shocked by what had happened; Luffy was a perpetually hungry kid and someone had made a mistake by leaving the chest unlocked.
What actually took her by surprise was that Shanks started actually losing his cool together with the rest of the crew.
"That was the Gum Gum Fruit!" He yelled, "it's a secret treasure of the sea that gives you a strange power in exchange for your ability to swim!
Now your body is made of rubber but you won't ever be able to learn how to swim!"
Considering that the Red Hair Pirates had gone into East Blue mainly to get that fruit, Robin thought that Shanks was more upset about Luffy not being able to swim than about losing the treasure.
"WHAT?! REALLY?!?!" Luffy started freaking out.
There wasn't much they could do about it and, after the kid got over it and the whole crew had slightly calmed down, Shanks ordered them to set sail again.
To Robin it was obvious that the Chief hadn't completely chilled out and she was proven right when he immediately admitted it to the crew, after they had set sail.
He kept going and explained his plan: "I'm going to look for Mihawk to challenge him to a duel. I have to settle my nerves.
As always, Benn is in charge.
You'll stay in East Blue but wait for me to come back before going back to Foosha."
Robin knew that a fight between two of the best swordsmen in the world would have been an amazing sight to behold but she was also sure that it would be extremely dangerous for anyone less than one day of travel away from their fight.
She was also curious about how Shanks would travel there.
They all kept going towards the Calm Belt and they navigated alongside it for a while before they furled the sails and dropped the anchor.
The Chief handed his beloved straw hat to Benn Beckman before he turned to face the crew.
"I'll see you here in a week," he told them just before jumping into a lifeboat and into the Calm Belt.
"Everyone, hold on to the railing. I don't wanna fish all of you out of the water, even if it's just East Blue," Benn Beckman warned the crew.
Quickly sitting down, Robin immediately understood what was about to happen: Shanks had been upset and he was about to unleash his Haki; the combination promised knockouts all around.
As expected, Shanks sent out a wave of Conqueror's Haki so strong that some of the crew still fainted, despite having been somehow accustomed to it during their last voyages.
"We'll be heading for a bigger port nearby," Benn Beckman announced, "have fun but avoid getting into too many fights."
The announcement had gotten Robin excited, she hadn't had the opportunity to find any info about ancient civilizations in East Blue and in the Grand Line she didn't have any time to explore, due to her self-imposed reclusion inside of the ship.
They arrived at the coastal town in the morning and Benn Beckman gave some money to everyone to "relax" but told them to warn him if anyone wasn't going to come back on the ship to sleep.
Robin immediately spent a part of her allowance at the first bookshop she went into. There were a lot of books about either local history or about a more general history of East Blue.
She was also intrigued by some fictional stories, so she decided to buy one of them too, just to have something fun to read on the ship.
The clerk made a comment about the last one being part of a collection but Robin decided to keep the money for more productive purchases.
One of those "productive purchases" was some ale in a family owned tavern. It looked like a spot frequented mainly by local old people; the perfect place for Robin to investigate the oral history of the town.
She offered a pint to the most talkative old man who regaled her with tales of his youth. Robin listened to him attentively and probed him at the right moments to steer his speech when he was getting lost in his memories.
She always loved hearing stories about the lives of people in the past.
Even if it was less than a century, like with every tale from living people about their own lives, the details always fascinated her.
Her goal was always learning about the Void Century but, as an archeologist and a historian, she was interested in every small piece of history.
She was also glad that the people she talked to were almost always more than happy to tell her their stories and to find someone who was interested in what they had to say.
More often than not, Robin also asked about myths and legends. The stories themselves were an integral part of a culture and they also sometimes hid some morsels of truth and of ancient history.
At the end of the first day in the new town, Robin had already gathered some interesting books, lovely stories from locals, a map of the city that contained libraries and bookshops, and the name of a new distillery for Makino to check out because they made amazing alcohol.
A very productive day.
She went back to sleep on the ship and she started her day with a meditation session; Monstar had suggested that she try to meditate at least once a day to unlock her Haki.
After half an hour, she got up and treated herself to a tasty breakfast from Lucky Roo who was having fun trying some local recipes and ingredients he had collected.
After eating, she visited one of the public libraries and she found a very old history book. Unfortunately it was not on sale but she was allowed to read it inside the building.
The book took her a couple of days to finish because she was also taking notes in her own journal about the most interesting parts (there was something in nearly every paragraph).
The most important discovery in it was that nearly half of East Blue had been under the same kingdom back around 1000 years before her time.
Obviously, after that time period, there was nothing about the Void Century.
However, Robin found out the names of islands and cities under that kingdom and that it had ceased to exist 700 years ago, when it had been annexed into the World Government.
The rest of the week, Robin looked for other sources in the other libraries and she found information that corroborated the one she found in the first book.
She discovered more names of ancient cities and the position of some of them.
With the money she had left, she bought a handful of maps of different parts of East Blue to cross-reference with the notes in her journal about ancient civilizations in that Sea.
All in all, a very productive week for her.
So, when they arrived at the point where they would pick up Shanks, Robin was still in her cabin, planning for her search for history and the Poneglyphs.
Benn Beckman told the crew that they had arrived early so they dropped the anchor and Robin was called to help raise the sails.
In order to wait, Robin decided to meditate and, after some time of trying to perceive the crew next to her, she felt something.
An aura of power was coming from a direction and, instinctively, Robin turned towards it.
It was, in a way, similar to when Shanks used his Conqueror's Haki both because it wasn't anything she could actually feel with her five senses and because it somehow felt like the Chief.
When she heard the commotion of Shanks landing on the deck, Robin quickly got out in time to see the Chief being carried to the infirmary.
She guessed that she had probably unlocked her Observation. From behind the door, she could feel that same aura that sounded like Shanks.
After half an hour of waiting, Hongo came out of the room saying that everything had been taken care of and that the Chief was littered with cuts but nothing serious.
Shanks followed him shortly thereafter and he seemed to be in a much more positive mood, back to his old self.
Benn Beckman had probably kept the straw hat in Shanks' cabin because the Chief immediately went to his room to retrieve it.
While they were sailing towards Foosha, he drank and laughed with the crew as if nothing had happened.
When they docked, Robin thought that the atmosphere of the village was eerie, very different from all of the other times they had arrived.
It wasn't just the lack of a laughing Luffy waiting for them at the pier; there was something hanging in the air. She didn't know if it was her Haki; she had yet to feel any presence beside Shanks'.
She wasn't the only one to have noticed it and the Chief was back to being serious. "Everyone, follow my lead. We have a lesson to teach."
Shanks exchanged a look with Benn Beckman and the officers before he started walking at a fast pace, followed quickly by the rest of the crew.
When they arrived in the main square, Robin saw the mountain bandits from the other day.
Their boss, Higuma, had Luffy pinned under his shoe but the kid didn't seem to be too hurt, thanks to his rubber powers.
"Hey Luffy, I thought your punches were as strong as a pistol!" Shanks tried to ease the tension.
"Not now, Shanks!" Luffy whined.
The Chief didn't keep teasing Luffy but turned to the bandits, "I suggest you back off before you get hurt, bandits."
His warning had a light tone but Robin could feel the real threatening aura coming from the Chief.
"Come closer and we'll have to kill you, cowards," Higuma threatened back.
Following Shanks, the Red Hair Pirates kept walking.
One of the bandits pointed a gun at the Chief, so close that it was almost touching his face with it.
Shanks wasn't phased.
"You are putting your life on the line by pointing that at me," he warned.
"What?!"
"I'm saying it's not safe to play with guns."
The expression on the bandit's face promised he was about to shoot and Lucky Roo was the fastest to act. He got closer in an instant and shot him in the head point blank.
Robin knew that Lucky Roo would have been able to neutralize him without straight up killing him but, apparently, nobody on the crew was in the mood to play around when Luffy was being threatened.
The shock coming from the villagers and the bandits was palpable and one of the latter yelled about not playing fair.
"Fair?!" Benn Beckman was pissed as well, "stop whining, landlubbers. You aren't dealing with saints here."
"We are Pirates and we don't play by the rules." Shanks finished for his First Mate.
"This was none of your business!" One of the random bandits yelled.
Robin was confused about his lack of understanding. Luffy was one of them, even if he wasn't in the crew.
She also knew Luffy and it was obvious that the kid was in that predicament because he had tried to defend their name.
Robin could feel that Shanks was getting angry.
"Listen up. You can pour drinks on me, insult me, even spit on me and I'll laugh it off.
But I don't care about the reason, nobody hurts a friend of mine."
A sliver of Conqueror's Haki slipped from Shanks' control.
Higuma started laughing, clearly trying to cover his fear.
"Nice speech pirate but you don't stand a chance against us."
Robin didn't know if his judgment of strength was completely screwed or if he was bluffing.
"Kill them!" He yelled to his underlings.
The bandits started charging and Benn Beckman took a step forward.
"Chief. Let me deal with them."
Robin watched as the First Mate clobbered their enemies with the back of his rifle. She noticed how hard he was trying to restrain himself: he moved only slightly faster than them instead of his actual speed and his hits were much softer than the ones she had seen him deliver to Shanks and the officers in their sparring matches.
Despite his attempts at controlling himself, in a couple of seconds, everyone that had attacked was down.
Higuma was the only one left standing and, upon seeing how Benn Beckman had dispatched his men without breaking a sweat, he realized that he was outmatched.
He threw a smoke bomb and fled while kidnapping Luffy.
Shanks and most of the crew panicked. "I let him get away with Luffy!"
"Calm down Chief, we'll go looking for them."
Lucky Roo had lost his cool as well.
"Chief," Robin called him, "let's observe his tracks."
It was a clear message for him to use his Observation Haki.
Shanks exchanged a look with Benn Beckman and Robin realized that she had missed something, even if she didn't know what.
The Chief and all the officers would have been more than capable to attack Higuma even in the smoke cloud and all of them could have easily followed his escape.
Even if they had been too shocked, which Robin doubted, she knew that Monstar, Yasopp, Benn Beckmann, and Shanks could easily track his location with their Haki.
The crew spread out to look for Luffy and Robin decided to follow the Chief. She knew he had something in mind and, after following him for a year, she trusted him enough to know that he wouldn't let anyone harm Luffy.
He was heading towards the pier and, when they arrived, Robin saw Higuma kicking Luffy off of a lifeboat in the middle of the sea.
It was too far for her to see properly and she thought it was a trick of her eyes but it seemed like Luffy wasn't immediately falling into the depths.
Shanks jumped into the waters and started swimming with all his strength and as fast as he could.
She knew that his speed was more than enough to save Luffy from drowning but, before Robin could relax, she saw the Lord of the Coast, a Sea King that had claimed Dawn Island as his territory, rising from the waters and eating Higuma and his lifeboat.
The Sea King turned towards Luffy and Robin wasn't sure if Shanks would get there in time.
It was just outside of the range of her powers and Luffy was almost completely submerged so she couldn't sprout anything on him.
Shanks was moving too much water and was constantly getting sprayed with sea water by his swimming so her arms would immediately disappear if she created them on him.
The Chief was getting closer but so were the open jaws of the beast, threatening to eat both Luffy and Shanks.
Robin couldn't stand there and simply watch. Luffy was just a kid with so much hope and wonder in his eyes and Shanks had been the one to rekindle her own.
Shanks managed to get to Luffy and he emerged from the water to let the kid breathe.
When the Lord of the Coast started closing its mouth on them, Robin tried to use her powers, even for an instant, to push the beast away from Shanks and Luffy.
Despite the distance, Robin somehow managed to sprout hands on the snout of the Sea King to push it away from Shanks' arm that had been put protectively in the way between Luffy and the monster.
She felt it as her arms pushed on something and Robin hoped it had been enough to help Shanks and Luffy.
The next instant, she felt her limbs being drenched with sea water and they vanished, leaving Robin without energy.
She didn't see the result of her action very clearly but Robin did feel the subsequent burst of Conqueror's Haki coming from Shanks.
"GET LOST."
The Sea King heeded the command and fled.
Robin felt only relief at the wave of power: it meant that Shanks was alive.
The Chief started to swim back to the pier when Robin heard Luffy wailing: "Shanks! Your hand!"
"Don't worry kid, it's just a finger or two. I'm just glad you are okay," the Chief tried to reassure Luffy.
Obviously his attempt didn't work well enough to stop Luffy's cries.
As soon as Shanks arrived at the pier, Hongo was immediately there to grab the Chief and to haul him into the infirmary in the ship.
The whole crew had felt the wave of Haki from the Chief and they all had rushed to the pier, before piling up on the deck of the ship, waiting for some news.
Only the doctor and Benn Beckman had been allowed into the infirmary.
Robin had immediately handed Luffy to the tender care of Makino who had rushed to the ship with the rest of the crew.
Despite not being injured, the experience had been traumatic and Luffy needed some comfort from her.
Handing him to Makino had also the added benefit of giving her something important to do. That way she would have had less time to overstress about her lover's health.
After a couple of hours, Hongo came out of the infirmary with a tired face.
"He's stable. He lost a lot of blood and he has a couple of fingers less than this morning but he'll be in tip top shape in a jiffy provided the injuries don't infect."
At his words, the whole crew released a relieved breath.
"Robin, he wants to talk to you," Hongo added before being hounded by the crew who inundated him with questions.
Robin wasn't too surprised by the summon.
When she entered the room, she saw that Shanks was lying on a cot with his face nearly as pale as the sheets under him.
His hand was heavily bandaged and an IV drip was supplying him with blood.
"Robin," Shanks called her when he saw her, "thank you. Without your help I would have lost the whole arm."
Robin knew she should have responded with something like "sorry I couldn't be more helpful" or a simple "you are welcome" and maybe if she hadn't been with the Red Hair Pirates for so long, she would have managed to.
However, the reply that came out of her mouth was completely different.
"Did you plan to lose an arm from the beginning? Or did you take into account I would help?"
The questions had roamed in her head the whole time she was waiting for Hongo to be done and that was probably why she couldn't keep herself from blurting them out.
Shanks probably heard the bitterness in her tone. She had been kept in the dark and her Chief had suffered for it.
Shanks sighed. "I was ready to lose the arm, yes. But I don't think that answers your question."
"I don't understand," Robin confessed, "what were you trying to do?"
"According to me, I was placing a bet. According to Benn, "something stupid"," as always he was trying to lighten the atmosphere, "I wanted Luffy to understand that the world is dangerous. It wasn't exactly planned from the start, I just rolled with the punches.
I didn't think too much but I knew that I wanted Luffy to see that there are consequences to our actions," he tried to explain.
"Everyone needs to learn that eventually," she agreed with the theory of his sentence, "but there was no need to sacrifice your arm, your sword arm, for him to learn it early."
"I decided to protect him from the Sea King and I was ready to lose the arm, if needed, but I'm glad you were there to mitigate the damage.
I'm sure Luffy understood his lesson anyway," he admitted but Robin was still in the dark about his reasoning.
"Why did you bet so much on Luffy?"
Robin loved the kid just as much as the rest of the crew but Shanks had willingly lost half his hand (he would have lost even more if it hadn't been for Robin) just to prevent Luffy from setting sail too soon.
"He's destined for greatness. I hope one day you'll see what I mean.
Do you know why he's in Makino's care?"
Another non-sequitur but Robin didn't mind. She knew it would lead to something.
The question had popped out in her mind a handful of times and she had gathered some info.
"His grandfather has given him to her and to the rest of the village because he's too busy being a Marine."
"Yes but not exactly. He's busy being the Hero of the Marines.
Monkey D. Garp has hidden Luffy on this island because his father is on his way to becoming the world's most wanted criminal.
The moment he sets out to sea and makes his name known, Luffy will already have a gigantic target on his head because of his father."
It was Robin's turn to sigh.
"You and I both deeply understand what it means for a kid to have a target on their head for things out of their control but there could have been other ways to avoid him setting sail too soon."
"Maybe so. But not as effective and I am still sure that this bet will pay off in some years. You'll see."
Shanks was still smiling and Robin understood he wouldn't be persuaded about his decision.
"I hope I will, Chief. Now take some rest, please."
Robin took her leave and she was busy thinking about his words when Benn Beckman approached her.
"Thank you for mitigating the damage," he started, "I understand what he wanted Luffy to know. Luffy had to feel that the world is dangerous and learn to value his life but there must have been other ways.
When I told him that he had been a dumbass he said he would do it again in a heartbeat."
"I'm glad I could prevent his arm from being eaten but I still don't understand him," Robin admitted.
"If you ever manage to do it, please tell me," he replied before heading towards the infirmary.
Days later, as soon as Shanks had properly recovered, he declared he wanted to set sail for the Grand Line properly, leaving Foosha behind for years if not forever.
They bought supplies and prepared the ship for the voyage.
On the last day, Shanks was busy "saying goodbye" to Makino.
They hadn't had much alone time since the injury, so everyone in the crew left them alone.
They even took Luffy out of the bar and, under the strict supervision of Benn Beckman, he was having fun with the crew.
The kid had barely interacted with Shanks; the Chief had been confined to the infirmary and, apparently, Makino had decided Luffy wasn't allowed in the ship anymore after the incident with the knife.
Luffy had seen that Shanks was fine but nothing more.
As soon as everything was ready, Shanks came out of the bar followed by Makino.
The Chief was immediately hounded by Luffy.
"So you are leaving for good this time?" He asked for confirmation.
"That's right. We've been using this village as our base for a long time and now we have to go too far to come back.
Are you sad?" Shanks was being more honest and less teasing than Robin thought.
Luffy replied with the same honesty.
"Yeah I am. But I won't ask you to take me with you. I've decided to become a pirate on my own!"
"We wouldn't take you anyway.
You are still a kid, there's no way you'll be a pirate."
Robin mentally withdrew her silent praise for Shanks about not teasing Luffy.
The kid immediately got upset. "Oh yes, I will!
One day I will have a ship and a crew better than yours!
I'm gonna be King of the Pirates!"
Upon his declaration, Robin felt Luffy's Haki and got a glimpse of what Shanks had seen in the kid.
"You are gonna be better than us, huh?
Then do me a favor," Shanks said while removing his straw hat and placing it on Luffy's head, "keep this hat safe for me. It means a lot to me.
Promise you'll give it back to me someday when you've become a great pirate."
Luffy was crying silent tears, both because of the sadness at seeing them leave and because of the faith Shanks had in him.
Robin didn't know the exact history of the straw hat but she had seen how much Shanks cared for it. It had clearly a lot of sentimental value.
Robin decided to make an impulsive decision herself. "Chief," she called, "it would do good for one of us to keep an eye on your hat, wouldn't it?"
Shanks immediately understood what she meant and he nodded at her before turning back to Luffy.
"Luffy! When you set sail, take Robin with you. The future Pirate King could really use her help!"
Most of the crew started crying while saying goodbye to Robin.
When Shanks approached her, he grabbed her arm and hugged her tightly. "I'll see you in the New World, Robin the Red Hair Pirate."